I enjoy the direction this game is going

[Susanoh]

There are people complaining that this game needs more open world exploration and dangerous mobs that drop epic gear with a 0.05% but they need to stop trying to ruin the game for the general population by adding this elitist garbage when they know they'll leave and move on to the next game.

Can you point to anyone who actually said they want mobs that drop "epic gear" with a .05% drop rate or anything at all that comes close to that, or are you just using hyperbole to try and get a point across?

[skaterger]

The definition of hardcore has certainly changed over the years, and not for the better imo. Back when I played D2 and RO, only by playing 5 hours or more daily would one be considered hardcore and to be truly hardcore more than 10 hours daily. Heck back then forming parties and farming consumables would take an hour at least before the actual raid started. Nowadays it seems playing more than 10 hours a week makes you hardcore.

I just don't get it. 24 hours a day now is the same as it was was back then. Has people's time somehow become more precious that it is somehow unfathomable to spend more than couple of hours a day gaming? Or is it the general stigma that gaming is bad and that there are other more productive things to do with your time. I feel it has a little to do with both.

[Lord_Zlatan]

The definition of hardcore has certainly changed over the years, and not for the better imo. Back when I played D2 and RO, only by playing 5 hours or more daily would one be considered hardcore and to be truly hardcore more than 10 hours daily. Heck back then forming parties and farming consumables would take an hour at least before the actual raid started. Nowadays it seems playing more than 10 hours a week makes you hardcore.

I just don't get it. 24 hours a day now is the same as it was was back then. Has people's time somehow become more precious that it is somehow unfathomable to spend more than couple of hours a day gaming? Or is it the general stigma that gaming is bad and that there are other more productive things to do with your time. I feel it has a little to do with both.

I don't think it has anything to do with a stigma on gaming. I think for a lot of people it is just a reality of getting older, and having other priorities. Also, the labeling thing (hardcore vs. casual) is getting ridiculous (not by you, just to clarify). I have played games consistently at a hardcore (time wise) level before, and I can tell you that consistently doing that made me feel... off. I would often step away from the couch feeling sad at all the time wasted. Sure, it was all worth my while, I made great friends and did some awesome things... but as the years passed by I decided that my focus needed to be placed elsewhere... Playing LOTRO and FFXI at the same time really did me in lol.

Anyhow, FFXIV lends itself to people that want to play casually or play a lot... I don't think you can really be hardcore in this game (playing all the time doesn't necessarily equate to being hardcore [in my opinion, hardcore players are insatiable in that they MUST do all the game has to offer at the highest level, with little regard for other things in life]) because there are no systems in place that truly require you to play hardcore... myth and coil are/were capped... leveling 1-50 takes merely a few 3-5 hour sessions...

I usually don't get to play a lot during the week (an hour a day if my wife and kid aren't home). Maybe that makes me a filthy casual...
On weekends and breaks from work I can play for 20hrs at a clip... maybe that makes me an elitist hardcore prick...

All in all, to reply to your post and the original post in the thread, I feel that the game is working towards offering something to the average player... not the "I play all day" crowd, nor the "I want my relic in an hour" crowd. There are things that take a long time, and things that are cake. There seems to be more and more interesting things to do in the game with each patch. Ultimately, I think SE is trying to design a game that allows players to do what they want... you can get stuff accomplished in a small amount of time, but might not be able to do the top tier stuff unless you commit slightly more time. This pleases some, and turns some off. In the end, the only thing SE can do is continue to produce content that makes people want to play, regardless of how "casual" or "hardcore" they may be.

[skaterger]

snip

My first mmo was maple story back in 2002 and I played Ragnarok Online and Rose Online shortly after. These are your typical Korean MMO's with a level grind a ridiculously low drop rate. Now more than 10 years on I'm still playing mmos albeit much more casually. I have a full time job and a girlfriend but make time to squeeze in 1-2 hours of gameplay before bed every day. If I'm free on weekends I play a little more. I consider myself casual and in no way want/am able to play more than that.

The reason I feel that the amount of time invested into the game is a more accurate measure of the level of "hardcoreness" is that people that finish everything that a game has to offer (i.e. completionists) naturally have invested a large amount of time into the game (which is a subset of time invested). However there is another group of people who might spend a lot of time and focus on the one or two areas that they enjoy. So for example, someone who farms ct or runs primals for hours on end everyday would be hardcore about raiding and progression. Someone who spends his whole day in game chatting with friends or chilling out in their fc house would be hardcore about socializing. So to label the "Monday only" crowd as hardcore and elitist is a misnomer, cause they only play on Mondays, are really casuals. Just because some players does things in a more efficient manner and achieve better results than others does not automatically make them hardcore imho. Experienced? Yes. Skilled? Yes. Hardcore? No.

To put things in perspective, I started ff14 in end January and even with the little amount of time I had to play, I am currently working on T5 (up to twisters) and primal ex. When I was looking to join an fc for coil and primals, I had 2 options. One to join an fc that had t5 on farm but lost their blm, or another that just started working on t5. I chose the latter cause I wanted to experience the feeling of wiping and learning the encounter instead of being just carried through and I'm loving my experience so far. I'm just saying that I could in all possibility have already cleared everything less than the game had to offer in less than 2 months playing about 10 hours a week. SO you know I can kinda see where the "Monday only" players are coming from, especially if they had started since launch.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that I am currently extremely satisfied with the game cause I still have content yet to clear. But even for semi-casuals like me the content feels a little too sparse.