Casual vs Hardcore

[Ventus]

Hope you have those flame shields ready...

Uh, noooo. As a casual player, I can assure you, that if being casual left me in the dust, I would never even play this game at all (and I'm sure most share this sentiment), and there goes SE's business. You shouldn't be rewarded for having NO LIFE outside of a single game. MOST people have school, jobs, husbands/wives, kids, other family, other hobbies, other games even, etc... Just because you wont even get up from your game long enough to bathe, doesn't mean the rest of us shouldn't be allowed to have fun when we decide to play. If you want a "HARDCORE" game, go find one. This isn't it. Get over it.

Hardcore games are a dying breed because people who are "hardcore" gamers don't breed.

See what I did there?

[YuriSan]

I am a supreme human being.

Dun worry, i know...

[Rocl]

[Lacavi]

I gotta be honest to the people that think there's no "Hardcore" market. I would say that FFXI fell under that description, and surely Eve Online does. Guess what? FFXI had a steady 500K players for YEARS, and that's a low estimate. Guess what? When Abyssea was released, that number quickly fell to 300K, was it because people felt there was casualization? Maybe, or it could've been old. I stopped playing FFXI because Abyssea ruined it for me, personally.

Eve online, one of the most hardcore MMOs on the market, enjoys quite a number of subscribers itself, last best estimate was 600,000 subscribers. Is it WoW? No, but it's more than enough to keep the content coming and the players happy, all while keeping the company in the black.

That said, I honestly feel casual players are fickle, they go to the next shiny thing after they get bored quite quickly, it's actually the hardCORE players that keep a MMO going.

[Gramul]

¿Por qué en español?
Yo sólo soy familiarizados con ello Inglés.

[Punainen]

Hardcore games are a dying breed because people who are "hardcore" gamers don't breed.

See what I did there?

[Rocl]

¿Por qué en español?
Yo sólo soy familiarizados con ello Inglés.

yo quiero taco bell, mon ami

[fusional]

why do people feel entitled to equal rewards for less effort and/or execution?

"i only get to play this game for an hour a week and if i can't have the same shit as the guy who plays 2-3 hours a day i quit"

seriously?

you're really throwing a tantrum about this?

are you 12?

I gotta be honest to the people that think there's no "Hardcore" market. I would say that FFXI fell under that description, and surely Eve Online does. Guess what? FFXI had a steady 500K players for YEARS, and that's a low estimate. Guess what? When Abyssea was released, that number quickly fell to 300K, was it because people felt there was casualization? Maybe, or it could've been old. I stopped playing FFXI because Abyssea ruined it for me, personally.

Eve online, one of the most hardcore MMOs on the market, enjoys quite a number of subscribers itself, last best estimate was 600,000 subscribers. Is it WoW? No, but it's more than enough to keep the content coming and the players happy, all while keeping the company in the black.

That said, I honestly feel casual players are fickle, they go to the next shiny thing after they get bored quite quickly, it's actually the hardCORE players that keep a MMO going.

nail, meet head.

[DarthTaru]

The thing to do for endgame is to do a lot of what XI did for endgame. XI didn't do everything through horrendous drop rates; it did it through multiple levels of challenge. Let's see a linkshell of casuals go after PW.
Spoiler alert: The RNG wouldn't be their problem. PW would.

The key to keeping everyone happy should simply be in having a wide range of challenges. Some challenging enough to be fun, some challenging enough to give hardcore players something to really sink their teeth into. If it's too difficult for some people, that's too damn bad. In XI there were mobs that were too difficult for the hardest of the hardcore. They didn't whine about it, nor should you.

What seperates casuals from hardcore shouldn't be time, it should be skill. We shouldn't even be using the terms "casual" and "hardcore;" we should be using the terms "good player" and "bad player" and "average player."
There were plenty of mobs in XI that only three or so linkshells on every server could kill. Not because of bots, but because if the rest claimed it they would get their faces stomped in.

But for these people, there was plenty of things they COULD do. It wasn't so much about time as it was about the skill of the players. It's a fair game model for everyone. It allows "casuals" to gradually get better and reach new challenges and it also allows "hardcore" players to do the same.

Content like Cutters Cry and Aurum Vale are grindfests. They're for hardcore players that can dedicate night after night to runs with their linkshells. Mobs like Cerberus and Vrtra weren't exclusive to hardcore players. A casual linkshell could just as easily go claim. It was just a measure of skill, as much of the game should be.

[Kafeen]

It depends where you draw the line.

Yes, people who play more should be rewarded for it but the game has to plateau somewhere.

There's quite a clear distinction between those who play casually a couple of times per week and those who play every day. Perhaps even an distinction between those playing a couple of hours per day those putting in 4 or 5 hours per day

Do we need to take it further? Should the be a clear distinction between those playing 4-5 hours per day and those playing 8 hours per day? 16 hours per day? Should that kind of play even be encouraged or should SE have some kind of social responsibility and not be encouraging people to spend every waking moment ingame just to so they can get some e-Peen item.

All the content, whether new dungeons or more equipment is going to take time to implement. How much time should the devs be spending on content that won't be seem be seen by 90% of the players?

Games should be about fun, doing something that's enjoyable. Its very hard to make something enjoyable when all you're doing is repeating the same thing all the time. This is supposed to be a game, not a career. If you are finding you're spending THAT much time ingame perhaps there's other things you should be looking at.

You also need to look at what is better to reward. Do we want massive time sinks or do we want content that requires skill to complete? Those are two very different things.