Why Casual Friendly Would Stop ARR From Dying

[debola]

If you're talking about gear getting. which is really all the game is. I'd say that ffxiv has a decent casual friendly approach already. Sure "darklight" only drops in time attack, group necessary dungeons, but that is for the hardcore players who r willing to put in the work. If u'r an easy going player. spend some time levelling up your craft and gather classes at ur leisure. Then make high quality melded gear which usually can rival although may not be as good as darklight.

For example. If I made a high quality lightning brand with 50 int and 20 mag acc (which stat wise trumps the stardust rod). IT would take me a hell of a long time but its something i can solo and make at my leisure, the pace at which i gather the mats and materia is completely up to me. This to me sounds like exactly what you're asking for in your post.

[Jynx]

I was reacting more to the comment about it counting as "solo content" within the context of character progression. Which would very much be BS.

Does content require character progression to be fulfilling?

[Zumi]

Common misconception that its really easy to get the best gear in WoW. WoW doesn't hand you the best gear in the game for logging in every day and doing daily quests. What it gives you is gear that is slightly worse then normal mode raid gear. Best gear in the game comes from beating hard mode raid bosses which less then 1% of the player base can kill.

But yes SE does need to have content that caters to the casual player because figures show that is the largest amount of players that you will have and they need something to do.

[Kyri]

I agree fully with the poster. Im tired of mmo's being "Play for 2 months max character and raid"
The funnest I have ever had on a MMO was XI, pre abyssea and smn burns, when leveling all jobs to 75 was a huge pain in the butt and a serious achievement to have maats cap. Max level or lv 10 I was always crazy busy and found enjoyment in a huge versatile LS calendar with a different event every day of the week and still not enough room to do all the possible events.

For the people who are complaining about the thought of casual players being able to work towards say things like darklight by way of say guild point system or something else, its equally frustrating to go on your 150 raid with a new pickup who just joined your shell and got DL first drop on their first run. I would feel a little less aggravated by the casual player who logged on two hrs to work for theirs everyday.

[IloveYouPumpkin]

Common misconception that its really easy to get the best gear in WoW. WoW doesn't hand you the best gear in the game for logging in every day and doing daily quests. What it gives you is gear that is slightly worse then normal mode raid gear. Best gear in the game comes from beating hard mode raid bosses which less then 1% of the player base can kill.

But yes SE does need to have content that caters to the casual player because figures show that is the largest amount of players that you will have and they need something to do.

I know what you're talking about because I used to play WoW. I know the top raids are hard, but the heroics are way too easy. Ridiculously easy it's not fun at all. It's so easy that you just want to roll through it with a good AoE tank as fast as possible and that's just not fun anymore. So I don't mind the existence of 'casual' content but don't have the entire game + heroics be easy as hell. Whens the last time you heard someone say 'CC' in a heroic? Burning Crusade x__x So yeah you can find hard content in WoW.. but it's all in the top raids which get incredibly nerfed soon after a new one comes around.

99% easy mode 1% hard is pathetic don't you think?

[Zumi]

I know what you're talking about because I used to play WoW. I know the top raids are hard, but the heroics are way too easy. Ridiculously easy it's not fun at all. It's so easy that you just want to roll through it with a good AoE tank as fast as possible and that's just not fun anymore. So I don't mind the existence of 'casual' content but don't have the entire game + heroics be easy as hell. Whens the last time you heard someone say 'CC' in a heroic? Burning Crusade x__x So yeah you can find hard content in WoW.. but it's all in the top raids which get incredibly nerfed soon after a new one comes around.

99% easy mode 1% hard is pathetic don't you think?

99% of the game isn't 5 mans.

More like terms of difficulty
Daily quests (very easy)
Heroic 5 mans (easy most players can do)
Raid finder (slightly harder then 5 mans but still easy)
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Normal Mode Raids (fairly difficult) About 10% of the playerbase can finish these.
Hard mode raids (extremly hard) About 1% of the playerbase can finish these.

Once Blizzard adding in Raid finder easy mode raids, the normal mode raids went up in difficulty. They really don't nerf the difficulty in normal/heroic until the next raid is really close to coming out. But when they do the number of people who can beat them goes up by about 10% or so on normal/heroic.

[IloveYouPumpkin]

99% of the game isn't 5 mans.

I didn't say 99% of the game is 5 mans I said 99% of the entire game including 5 man heroics, are too easy. Like made-for-retards easy. I really don't believe I'm exaggerating.

Mostly every reward in WoW is handed to you without any real effort. And you admit that by mentioning that the only hard thing about wow is when you're doing some new-ish raids at max level. It's mind boggling how ridiculously stupid some players still are at playing their class even when they're near cap. Should that ever happen I don't think so.. They should have been left in the dust at level 20-30 and either quit or decided to start using their brain. If it were up to me I'd just give a big middle finger to anyone that plays games and expects anything to be handed to you without figuring things out.

So I'm just saying WoW is too easy for the majority of the game until you get into a raid guild at max level and in my opinion, they should have made the game hard long before you reach that point.

I don't know, maybe put more fire in dungeons for people to dodge or something. ;3 .. I can only tank or heal in wow because as DPS I run the risk of falling asleep. I'll admit that tanking is fun though, especially as you're leveling up by dungeon grinding because you're able to pull 20-30 mobs at a time if you know how to play. That's fun but shouldn't be happening lol. I enjoyed amazing a bunch of noobs by doing that though.

[Kyri]

I believe the threads labeled Why-Casual-Friendly-Would-Stop-ARR-From-Dying not WoW raiding guide ^^ thanks!

[Shurrikhan]

So I'm just saying WoW is too easy for the majority of the game until you get into a raid guild at max level and in my opinion, they should have made the game hard long before you reach that point.

I don't know, maybe put more fire in dungeons for people to dodge or something. ;3 .. I can only tank or heal in wow because as DPS I run the risk of falling asleep. I'll admit that tanking is fun though, especially as you're leveling up by dungeon grinding because you're able to pull 20-30 mobs at a time if you know how to play. That's fun but shouldn't be happening lol. I enjoyed amazing a bunch of noobs by doing that though.

Isn't "fun" exactly what matters though? The greater the difficulty, the fewer available paths to complete the challenge, less freedom. People will still enjoy doing things perfectly. DPSs will try to break their old records with every boss fight. As a tank I often challenge myself to allow not one point of non-AoE / aura damage to reach my party. When leveling a healer and skimping on drinks, I'd try never to over-heal. Speedy mass-grabs are incredibly satisfying. And none of these personal challenges could be accomplished at near-peak difficulty. Instead, only one or very few methods are even possible, and the game becomes a sequence machine instead of a team's own flow.

I'd agree that much of WoW is too easy, but I honestly think you may be forgetting that a challenge is present when you take a party of green-geared new-caps into a heroic, if only for simple, flat, mathematical reasons. This will almost certainly no longer happen; the game has passed that stage. But it did have to be possible. And for the same reasons, heroics will be a cake-walk to high-blue to epic-wearing parties later.

If anything I blame the lack of personal scalability. But I do think peak-challenges, that truly, truly hard material, is best left for those who can enjoy acting like raid-automatons to get the job done. It shouldn't eclipse the rest.

[Cynthis]

Isn't "fun" exactly what matters though? The greater the difficulty, the fewer available paths to complete the challenge, less freedom. People will still enjoy doing things perfectly. DPSs will try to break their old records with every boss fight. As a tank I often challenge myself to allow not one point of non-AoE / aura damage to reach my party. When leveling a healer and skimping on drinks, I'd try never to over-heal. Speedy mass-grabs are incredibly satisfying. And none of these personal challenges could be accomplished at near-peak difficulty. Instead, only one or very few methods are even possible, and the game becomes a sequence machine instead of a team's own flow.
...
But I do think peak-challenges, that truly, truly hard material, is best left for those who can enjoy acting like raid-automatons to get the job done. It shouldn't eclipse the rest.

Bravo Sir, Bravo! Nothing annoys me more in games than the staged fights with only one or two viable strategies and were the party decides to wipe as soon as something goes slightly wrong because there is no way to recover from anything.

... They should have been left in the dust at level 20-30 and either quit or decided to start using their brain. If it were up to me I'd just give a big middle finger to anyone that plays games and expects anything to be handed to you without figuring things out.

While I can understand the frustration I think that is the wrong way to go. Instead I think the game should do more to help players understand the game better. I for one hate the pouring over logs and stats from fights to figure out what went wrong and how to improve. From the players view, a game shouldn't be about the mathematics of the battle system.