Why do casual players seem entitled to cosmetic items added in game?

[AllenThyl]

Maybe this was a throwaway example that doesn't actually happen (in which case please disregard this comment) but I've yet to see any wipes in Jeuno at all on Light. Is this just hyperbole or does Jeuno have this as its reputation?

I had a "56 minutes elapsed" duty pop on mentor roulette as tank last week, which was Jeuno (Chaos DC). The last boss was already in progress when I zoned in. The raid came close to a wipe several times, effectively rescued by one SCH and one WHM (plus tanks). A few people were rezzed 6+ times.

[Tyintheron]

People like you who don't want to earn anything are ruining gaming.

Oh good. We're doing this "you, personally, are ruining an entire category of entertainment!" stuff again.

Have you ever watched a movie in a theatre before by paying for a ticket? Why didn't you just make your OWN movie? Everything you need to make a movie is right there, in the world, in real life! Sure, it takes time and effort, but that's what makes making your own movie so rewarding! It's people like you that don't want to go to the trouble of making their own movies from scratch that are ruining cinema!

==========

There's a fundamental misunderstanding between people who "don't want to earn anything" and people who "don't have the time." One of the big issues MMOs have, as a genre, is that they'll often be completely brutal in terms of the time it takes to get something worthwhile done. And that just gets worse the older the game and the later in the game's life-cycle your goal is.

If you wanted this haircut, had to make a character from scratch, wanted to watch all the story cutscenes, and didn't want to pay real money outside of the purchase price and subscription, how long do you think that would take? A couple of hundred hours? How many days away is that when you can play an hour a night?

Then add in that the content involved is above-average in difficulty and has above-average requirements just to take part in it, and is it any wonder people would be more than willing to skip all that noise by paying possibly half, possibly a tenth, of the money they might make in an hour to enjoy the thing they want to enjoy right away?

I'm still not entirely sure why games haven't cornered the "why not do both?" market yet. Earn something via difficult content in-game, for free? Sure! Can't do that for some reason, but can afford a couple of bucks for it outside of that? It's on the store!

That sort of flexibility would hurt nobody outside of the people wanting gaming skill purity tests, surely.

[Teno]

The issue isn't entitlement. It's more acknowledging a contributing factor of the issue on threads such as you yourself have made.

SE > Adds cosmetic item to game, locked behind savage.

Some raiders > It's not so much fun, why are there so many damn casuals that can barely handle AoEs in my savage parties?!?

Someone acknowledging the issue > This is what happens when you put cosmetic items behind savage. It will attract casual players into high-end content, that will suddenly want to do it for the reward, even if they aren't prepared.

Someone not actually reading the comments > CASUALS ARE SO ENTITLED THEY WANT THE REWARD FOR NO EFFORT.

There's several issues going on here, and not really correlated to entitlement. Most of the casuals that want this cosmetic are already trying to do the content. If people are proposing ideas then it is only to combat SEs fairly bad design.

If "casuals" want the cosmetic and don't want to up their game, it's up to them. Every game has cosmetics locked behind difficult content, this has never been different in this one.
And a haircut is no different either.

If there ever was an issue, it's how to make said content last long enough for people to git gud and actually get a chance at doing it without having to wait for 3hrs in pf or scheduling at a precise date on a discord.

[Lilapop]

People like you who don't want to earn anything are ruining gaming.

It's people like you who are unable to admit to flaws when there clearly are any, but we'll all live on. Some of us more content than others.

[Kaurhz]

If "casuals" want the cosmetic and don't want to up their game, it's up to them. Every game has cosmetics locked behind difficult content, this has never been different in this one.
And a haircut is no different either.

If there ever was an issue, it's how to make said content last long enough for people to git gud and actually get a chance at doing it without having to wait for 3hrs in pf or scheduling at a precise date on a discord.

I agree with this insofar that the content needs to last long enough so that people actually get a chance of doing it. I do think people not doing it right now is entirely a choice on their matter, and I think the longer they delay this content the harder it will be, and the longer it will take. The issue with "Having to wait 3hrs in PF or scheduling a precise date on Discord", is entirely a developer problem, however, and is especially worse when long-term desired rewards are locked behind it. - and unfortunately the development team do not know how to make long-term content without tying the relic to it.

[Collin_Sky]

Can't believe there are people now defending MTX in a subscription MMO as a preferred way of obtaining items as opposed to actually earning it in game. Good lord.

Maybe you guys should just bookmark playerauctions.com instead of the forums

[AllenThyl]

Can't believe there are people now defending MTX in a subscription MMO as a preferred way of obtaining items as opposed to actually earning it in game. Good lord.

The logical end result of "hipster culture". Having the status symbols of a subculture, but just for fashion, not for the culture / status associated with it. You'd think that zombie graveyard of pay2win MMOs would serve as lesson of what not to encourage in a game that one likes, but alas, here we are.

[Collin_Sky]

Except experienced raiders don't want new people anywhere near the content, especially when there's gil to be made by keeping the number of people running it per data center to a minimum. The grandest irony is that even if casuals DID want to do the content, they're explicitly forbidden from trying to when most PFs are asking you to have cleared all of current Savage/have BiS from there, and they can't just go and clear said Savage hurdle because its PFs ALSO have strict requirements set up to make sure they stay filtered out.

You are literally making things up to justify your argument.
This is Light PF at time of posting. All of the ilevel/entry requirements are completely reasonable (most PFs don't even have an ilevel requirement). So saying everyone expects BiS and the requirements are strict is pure lies.

[Tyintheron]

I'm not completely adverse to difficult content, I just immediately shrink and duck out of doing it when failure drags OTHER people down with me versus messing up and I'm the only corpse, and that goes double in a game like Final Fantasy 14 where "dying/failing = you are bad, never queue again" is a common sentiment, and there's way more people that will jump down your throat for costing them a wipe then will tell you to just keep going.

I'm just quoting this because it's actually a really, really good point to make.

Have I run really difficult solo content in a game a couple of hundred times to get the reward? I have! Am I willing to waste everyone else's time while I learn a fight they already know and suffer through me fat-fingering my keys a few dozen times? Absolutely not. Will that particular issue stop me from playing that high-level content at all? It will! And that's only compounded by the additional factor of Blazzta WuTang discussing his relationship with my mother afterwards. I'm too old and tired and disgruntled to put myself through that sort of thing a dozen times over 28 different hour-of-waiting 24 man parties.

So what's the answer?

Given that MMOs have always struggled with the "only 5% of our users engage with raid content" type of thing, I'm actually wondering if - maybe - the real thing that MMOs need to get raid participation up is the ability to practice the fights. No-reward (or first completion reward, to encourage trying) all-bot-run instances that let you see and practice the mechanics as much as you'd like before queueing up for the real deal.

That would give static teams the ability to play the content with progression rewards 300 times in a row if they wanted to, while also letting people with less time practice the fight's mechanics sans-reward on their own terms.

[Collin_Sky]

So what's the answer?

Find friends who either don't mind you causing wipes, or progress at a similar pace to you.
This is literally an MMO, making social connections is one of the primary purposes you play them.

If you aren't against actually doing difficult content and feel bad when you cause wipes, then find people who are similar to you in mentality/skill level and learn content as a group where the pressure is off and the goal is to just have fun learning at a pre-determined pace. It's not rocket science. What do you think us hardcore raiders do?

Given that MMOs have always struggled with the "only 5% of our users engage with raid content" type of thing, I'm actually wondering if - maybe - the real thing that MMOs need to get raid participation up is the ability to practice the fights. No-reward (or first completion reward, to encourage trying) all-bot-run instances that let you see and practice the mechanics as much as you'd like before queueing up for the real deal.

https://www.xivsim.com/