The growing entitlement issues of the casuals

[Nephera]

Also yes this casual war is silly as hell.

Plus nobody ever said they wanted the best gear for no time. :|

[Shika]

I am a "casual" player... I only play from 8pm in the evening during the week after my son goes to bed and is settled, and I play for a few hours until ~12/1am as I work full time and have to get up in the morning.
At the weekends I may put a few more hours in depending on my RL schedule.
I do not expect to just be able to achieve the same gear in game as others who put in more time to certain events or NMs; there needs to be a balance for easy and hard content, which will reap different rewards accordingly.

However, I do not think it is fair to completely judge people on the amount of time they spend in game to determine if they are skilled and "worthy" of the better equipment. I saw plenty of bad players in FFXI with good gear- people leeching in events by turning up all the time to gain their points and "right" to lot, but who actually did very little compared to others- bad tanks that died straight away or bad healers that let the tanks die and have others sort out the mess... etc.

As a "casual" gamer I also want content that is challenging, that I can spend a few hours grafting at a day to eventually earn my reward. I may not necessarily be able to camp 24hr NMs for gear (as in FFXI), but I don't expect to get this gear, because I will not have the time to put aside and camp them. In FFXI I was able to put enough time into events such as Dynamis, Einherjar, Salvage, Limbus etc to gain IMO some very nice gear for my character- I didn't have the most "elite" gear but I didn't expect to gain the items from heavily camped HNMs as that wasn't something I had time to dedicate to, and that was absolutely fine with me

I think the biggest problem at the moment is that all quests, NMs etc are too easy, and there is no balance currently by having harder quests and battles. But with the introduction of the PvE and company content this could all of course change- at least I hope.

[Tezz_Xivectro]

My casual to hardcore analogy was just the playtime of the individuals.
It's always implied that skill takes precedence. Skill comes with experience(time) though & dedication.

I personally believe that a new player will eventually plateau in "skill" if the person is dedicated.
However, there are still mindless people who will take much longer to plateau and may be slower.

MMO's usually don't take much skill at all after someone paves the way, so i believe this is why its pretty fast to catch up "skill" wise. Monster behaviors become easily predictable.

[TonyMontana]

If casual $$ are a much larger percent of the income (once SE starts charging) then SE will cater to casuals. If hardcore $$ are a much larger percent of the pie then SE wil cater more to hardcore fans. Its just that simple.

Dont fool yourself into thinking the choices they make have anything to do with ANYTHING but $$.

[Tezz_Xivectro]

Dont fool yourself into thinking the choices they make have anything to do with ANYTHING but $$.

That's always a given.

[Nephera]

If casual $$ are a much larger percent of the income (once SE starts charging) then SE will cater to casuals. If hardcore $$ are a much larger percent of the pie then SE wil cater more to hardcore fans. Its just that simple.

Dont fool yourself into thinking the choices they make have anything to do with ANYTHING but $$.

well yes,that is how you run a business.

Edit: well that plus ethics if you can believe it.

[TonyMontana]

well yes,that is how you run a business.

Edit: well that plus ethics if you can believe it.

After they sold us a game (calling it ready for retail) when it was barely in alpha phase just to boost their ending fiscal years profits I dont think ethics plays much of a part of it.

[Kilta_Firelotus]

Also yes this casual war is silly as hell.

Plus nobody ever said they wanted the best gear for no time. :|

oh I know I think stems from Hate for WoW. I played the game I didn't really like it. But i can safely say that gear wasn't really handed to you. If this was the case My 46 warlock shoulda had the best gear for my level. I didn't and I was again under a 2-4 hour time limit everyday. Hack I barely could even make money on WoW.... And that is saying something. In some cases WoW does it right. Even in my shorter time limit I still got to actually see and try alot more content then in ffxi under the same limit. But the content isn't acually all that easy to do.

Just because stuff tales less time to do don't mean its easier or harder. I played Zelda games alot. They are pretty casual rpg. Don't take much time to get trough dungeons But the actuall puzzles, mini boss fights, boss fights are where you need skill and is where the chellenge lies.

[Abriael]

Some people simply need to understand that time investment does not equal skill.

Aside from the fact that people that play more will always have more and earlier than people that play less, for simple physical reasons, challenges in a game nowadays need to be just that, a challenge.
Having to grind endlessly for a drop, or having to wait for hours on end for a pop (getting bored to death in the process) shouldn't be seen as an indication of superior merit and as such rewarded more than defeating an actually challenging encounter.

I'm amazed to see people still advocating horribly boring timesinks to weed out the competition of people that simply play less time a day than they do, as it shows how they're willing to effectively have less fun themselves in order to be able to wave around an e-peen bigger than their peers.

It's funny how some don't really care about the level of actual challenge and fun in the game. All they care about is putting artificial stumbling blocks (endless grinds, long waits and so forth) for other people. I wouldn't be surprised if the cause for this was, for many, the fact that they know quite well that if the discriminating factor was just skill, they wouldn't come out on top (while others are simply overly attached to an irrational nostalgia for old MMORPGs and the wild timesinks that made them a niche genre).

And mind you, given that I sleep very little, I still manage to rack in a LARGE amount of playtime, possibly more than many that consider themselves "hardcore". My raptr tracked 1230 hours on FFXIV so far, and even considering quite extensive afk times (while I work and such), i challenge anyone to define me a "casual".
Yet i don't feel the need to put artificial stumbling blocks in front of other players to feel better with myself. If they're as good players as I am or better, and can face the same encounters/challenges that I do, there's no reason for them to have less rewards than me. I have plenty in my life to feel special anyway.

[Tezz_Xivectro]

Well the problem is that casuals should not be rewarded the same as someone working harder. Can't really do alot about gear drops, but what about the new systems coming.

Perhaps a system that records our achievements and we obtain better "Materia" for our accomplishments. That way everyone can have the same gear but the person who wanted to go kill 1 million toads gets a unique addition to his piece of armor, where the Casual gets whatever "Materia" they could get their hands on.