I enjoy the direction this game is going

[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.