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

[Evergrey]

It never took the time to ease me up..

This right here has me thinking, isn't this kind of a players choice?
FFXIV has had harder content for many years and you just chose not to do them.

In Endwalker there was a time when I felt bored and had "nothing to do". So I thought to myself, "maybe I should give Savage a try when it comes. See how far I can go while also giving me something to do/a goal."
And so I did and I finished 5 of the Endwalker savage raids. at least 4 of them I cleared using PF.
This was my first time trying Savage in FFXIV. Before that EX trials had been my highest content. And I haven't even done all of them.

Point is, sometimes the players have to choose to do something even if the game haven't "ease'd you up".
Nothing's holding players back than their own excuses why they don't do something.

[Ardeth]

This right here has me thinking, isn't this kind of a players choice?
FFXIV has had harder content for many years and you just chose not to do them.

In Endwalker there was a time when I felt bored and had "nothing to do". So I thought to myself, "maybe I should give Savage a try when it comes. See how far I can go while also giving me something to do/a goal."
And so I did and I finished 5 of the Endwalker savage raids. at least 4 of them I cleared using PF.
This was my first time trying Savage in FFXIV. Before that EX trials had been my highest content. And I haven't even done all of them.

Point is, sometimes the players have to choose to do something even if the game haven't "ease'd you up".
Nothing's holding players back than their own excuses why they don't do something.

Of course, but it also isn't something other players roll out red carpets for either.

Look, I'm not making excuses for me. I'm lazy. I want content I can jump into that feels rewarding. It doesn't have to always be gear, and it doesn't always have to be hard.

For years, I was told souls like games blah blah blah. I had played a few, and they were annoyingly hard. No matter what I tried, I couldn't get into them. Then I played Elden Ring and I really enjoyed it. I beat it several times. With that confidence boost, I tried Sekiro. I hated it.

I'm just saying that making something difficult doesn't automatically make it fun. Coupled with natural gatekeeping doesn't help either. Sure, I could make a party finder group and practice and watch videos, but you're forgetting I'm lazy. I take full responsibility for the parts of it that are my fault. I just want a fair share of content that isn't indefinitely locked out for me one way or another. Extremes and Savages don't bother me since I can do them later, easier. whereas Ultimates are dead to me as a player because I can't.

I just want to have something to do and be rewarded in kind. Currently, there is nothing to do but challenging content. And I don't want that. I couldn't care less about a hairstyle. That is the issue.

[Evergrey]

Of course, but it also isn't something other players roll out red carpets for either.

Look, I'm not making excuses for me. I'm lazy. I want content I can jump into that feels rewarding. It doesn't have to always be gear, and it doesn't always have to be hard.

For years, I was told souls like games blah blah blah. I had played a few, and they were annoyingly hard. No matter what I tried, I couldn't get into them. Then I played Elden Ring and I really enjoyed it. I beat it several times. With that confidence boost, I tried Sekiro. I hated it.

I'm just saying that making something difficult doesn't automatically make it fun. Coupled with natural gatekeeping doesn't help either. Sure, I could make a party finder group and practice and watch videos, but you're forgetting I'm lazy. I take full responsibility for the parts of it that are my fault. I just want a fair share of content that isn't indefinitely locked out for me one way or another. Extremes and Savages don't bother me since I can do them later, easier. whereas Ultimates are dead to me as a player because I can't.

I just want to have something to do and be rewarded in kind. Currently, there is nothing to do but challenging content. And I don't want that. I couldn't care less about a hairstyle. That is the issue.

All fair points and I agree on them.
I do like your example on how you enjoyed Elden Ring but not Sekiro. Both are the same genre of games but vastly different regardless on your personal enjoyment.
So just because one likes a thing doesn't automatically make it so everything else that falls within the same category do as well.

[Ardeth]

All fair points and I agree on them.
I do like your example on how you enjoyed Elden Ring but not Sekiro. Both are the same genre of games but vastly different regardless on your personal enjoyment.
So just because one likes a thing doesn't automatically make it so everything else that falls within the same category do as well.

I appreciate it.

I'm still salty about Sekiro. I bought it on sale on Steam after hearing how great it was, and I'm at the second boss, and I'm just drained. It's so punishing and not fun.

Not to derail the topic.

I just think there are better systems and better ways to get people engaged to harder levels of content without putting the carrot on the stick. Since if they can't, they resent you, and if they crash and burn on the attempt, they hate you more. It's catering to that 1% of casuals who can swim with the current while the other 99% afk in Limsa.

At least you can buy it. That's about the only praise I can give the decision honestly.

[Tyintheron]

I think the moment my own old ass "finally got it" was during one Steam sale a year and a half ago when I opted to buy an outfit in Final Fantasy 14 over a new game (they were the same price), because I would get more "mileage" out of said cosmetic than the title presented to me at discount.

"HOW? WHY?" are the obvious questions... but I just point to my large backlog of other Steam games bought on sale and there you go. At the time I was far more invested in playing Final Fantasy 14, so the idea of spending anything outside of it seemed like a "wasted purchase" regardless of the supposed worth of a full and complete one-time purchase versus something cute for my catgirl to wear every so often.

My wife and I did/do the whole RP thing in the MMOs we play together, so most of our play and purchase decisions actually revolve around that, which... y'know. I get it. We're nerds.

But I do things that are "out of spec" in a lot of ways because RP means the goals of our gameplay are different. I don't really care about gear progression outside of it being a means to an end - the "end" being, specifically, how my character(s) look.

As an example: I earned one of the seasonal PvP sets six seperate times on six different alts.

If they had've had that set up on the store instead I would've bought it.

But I'm sure some people would still class me as "casual" due to a lack of raid progression.

This "us or them" stuff about defining exactly what category a player falls into so you can then tell them what they want from the game is clearly "wrong" has always seemed incredibly weird and bizarrely hostile.

[Tyintheron]

I hear that, I've been running Shisui of the Violet Tides repeatedly just for all the outfits and weapons. Sometimes solo, sometimes via Duty Finder, and I always perk up when it pops up in Leveling roulette (one of the few roulettes I still do).

Likewise, I really REALLY wanted to do Return to Ivalice because I'm a huge fan of Final Fantasy Tactics and Final Fantasy 12... but I really REALLY don't have the confidence to do it after my performances in Shadow of Mhach, where I still keep putting myself through Dun Scaith for the minion only to lose every Need roll, lol.

Having a bad run (or a bad run of luck) can definitely make it a lot tougher to want to press on with your goals, that's for sure!

My wife and I once had an incident where we'd logged in to the new WoW expansion... Warlords of Draenor, I think it was... and got to our first dungeon. It was literally two hours into the expansion being released at midnight, and one of the random party members was going absolutely berserk about people not knowing the mechanics of the normal dungeon bosses. Tried to vote-kick people, started cursing when the vote-kick failed - he was the whole bingo card. Two hours in! It was wild.

My tolerance for slogging through that kind of thing over a video game is pretty much non-existant these days. The idea of dipping back into organized progression raiding actually makes me chuckle. People just get SO ANGRY.

[Aidorouge]

Having a bad run (or a bad run of luck) can definitely make it a lot tougher to want to press on with your goals, that's for sure!

My wife and I once had an incident where we'd logged in to the new WoW expansion... Warlords of Draenor, I think it was... and got to our first dungeon. It was literally two hours into the expansion being released at midnight, and one of the random party members was going absolutely berserk about people not knowing the mechanics of the normal dungeon bosses. Tried to vote-kick people, started cursing when the vote-kick failed - he was the whole bingo card. Two hours in! It was wild.

My tolerance for slogging through that kind of thing over a video game is pretty much non-existant these days. The idea of dipping back into organized progression raiding actually makes me chuckle. People just get SO ANGRY.

Aye, I've had my fill of similar things, thanks to WoW too no less, and it certainly made me re-think or disengage from content even when I did clear it back then. I mean, I did Onyxia's Lair and Molten Core back when it was still 40 man only, and I was still left thinking I was too old for that shit and I wasn't even 30 yet, lol. Nowadays I don't have it in me to herd cats, especially when a lot of players literally are cat people, so even if I could do the hardest of what FF14 has to offer, I still wouldn't take it to the same degree I did in WoW or SWTOR, my reaction time just isn't the same anymore for starters.

...It's all punctuated by me being a home care provider, so I get to see first-hand how people's age and disability can impact the things they want to enjoy ...or did enjoy... and being 41 myself, I know that can/will be me some day. So I guess there's a lot of personal bias in there too for just thinking there's nothing wrong with having options for everyone, casual or hardcore, but it's usually the hardcore players that are vehemently against it even when it often times doesn't impact them at all. And I won't just chalk it up to a lack of maturity, because that's disingenuous to the hardcore players who are in fact welcoming of all, to say nothing of the players even older than me still getting their clears.

[Tyintheron]

...It's all punctuated by me being a home care provider, so I get to see first-hand how people's age and disability can impact the things they want to enjoy ...or did enjoy... and being 41 myself, I know that can/will be me some day. So I guess there's a lot of personal bias in there too for just thinking there's nothing wrong with having options for everyone, casual or hardcore, but it's usually the hardcore players that are vehemently against it even when it often times doesn't impact them at all. And I won't just chalk it up to a lack of maturity, because that's disingenuous to the hardcore players who are in fact welcoming of all, to say nothing of the players even older than me still getting their clears.

I'll never understand the whole "let's keep things worse!" mentality. Something like bots to help people train up for multiplayer, for example, has been "a video game thing" forever, and hasn't seemed to hurt their respective genres at all.

As for getting older...

...my mother-in-law, who is a generation older than my own relatively older self, managed to slog her way to max rank in PvP in Guild Wars 2 through sheer bloody-mindedness over a two year period. She couldn't figure out how to move and user her character's abilities at the same time, so she'd just sit in an arena and one-finger hammer whichever number key's ability was off cooldown, standing in the one spot until she inevitably died and respawned, enjoying it for what it was.

We had to replace her large character keyboard twice because the number keys had holes punched through them from the nightly beatings they took.

When I asked her at one point if she copped a lot of name-calling she said it happened all the time, she just laughed it off as "people being idiots."

I thought that was pretty cool.

[JimCasey_RF6]

Because I deserve to have every cool piece of loot in this game, that's why.

[CVXIV]

Because I deserve to have every cool piece of loot in this game, that's why.

based and lootpilled