Player skill level classifications

[whiskeybravo]

Hmm.. I guess I'd classify myself as a "high midcore" since I don't think I posses any "natural skill" outside of familiarity from playing the game for such a long time. But I think I could move into the "low hardcore" if I wanted to, just a matter of how much stress I feel like placing on myself to do better lol

But, sort of a long the lines of Aana's comment, I think player usage of casual/hardcore terms is very subjective and requires context of the conversation. IMO it's a combination of skill and time invested. It's very to easy to have players on both sides of the spectrum which is why context is needed (time vs skill vs accomplishments). This kind of list is helpful if you're trying to figure out where you fit as a player, but as Aana states it'd be difficult to try to assign everything in between the extremes. Overall it's not a bad attempt, though.

[Nora_of_Mira]

you forgot SCRUB LORD: fails to roll any higher than 30 whenever a mount drops and that time you get >70 you think you can finally be put out of the misery of Doggo Farms but you still lose it and log off immediately.

I am a scrub lord.

[Hamada]

I may of missed you replying to this but as others people said, "hardcore" "casual" etc, is ONLY time spent, not skill. Logically more time spend on something the higher skilled they are but that is not always the case. Such as:

So which is more hardcore though, a raid group who only does ultimate 3 hours a week, or a raid group that does 10 but is stuck at God kefka? And when you ask for more hardcore and more casual content, what do you ask for? Skill-based content.

Neither, I do not see 3 or 10 hours a week a line to define hardcore. if they where doing 5 hours a day, sure, hardcore it is, regardless of the progression.

Thinking about this, but I'm not sure it works as much in FFXIV. The latter part we do see. The former part though I don't. Usually the big problem is people don't play with their friends if anything, the FC divides into raid group and casual group. Usually skill sorts out, sadly. I think this does raise the idea of mindset as a strong descriptor, but then you get into issues. At some point that skill usually needs to get expressed in some way. If you know you are good enough, you do want to try. But interesting point.

Oh it holds true alright, let me explain a personal exmaple of that 230 average bowler that does not want to do leage. If you know what to look for, even with out parsers, my friend which I do expert with almost daily will point out flaws in a person's up time or rotations no matter how they are greaed. She always throws tips for me and others in regards of scripts, so you are moving a head of time before you see the move, and with my lag issues time to time, it is very helpful. This friend however don't do savage even though i'm sure that they are quite able to handle it. why? because we both believe that gear get replaced too fast, making it feel overall pointless, and that she's a very hardcore crafter who enjoies it more than doing savage. I might that she might even be crazy hardcore one also , insane playtime with gathering and crafting at times, if motvated. She can grind for long periods of time like how i even remember her getting 2 lvl 60 relic in under 10 days during HW.

I said earlier logically, hardcore players SHOULD be more skilled then casual, due to the greater time investment, but its not always the case. Also one more thing, you can be high skill without ff logs, leads me to have issues with this sentence:
" FFlogs starts to record from high midcore on in my opinion; that's when the focus moves beyond clearing to optimizing and ranking"

Stop trying to pigeon hole people, the skill one does with keeping uptime while doing mechanics is not defend by if a player does savage or not. That is a schedule cooperation, nothing to do with player skill.

[Hamada]

Correct - unless something very strange is happening, player-skill will fall on a normal-distribution (or bell) curve, with relatively few players at either end and most somewhere in the middle.
Some people seem to think intensive tuition will change this but in fact, while the skill level of players may increase generally, the curve will stay the same shape. In other words the proportion of exceptionally good and bad players will stay the same.

My main criticism of your categories is that you are using terms which are frequently used by players and developers (especially developers), not to describe player skill but the time a player has available to play.

Looking through your list, your categories seem muddled and not particularly helpful.
You seem to be working on the assumption that skill will neatly align 100% with available time and preferred activities.
For example you assume that a player who values the social aspects of the game will be low-skilled, with the implication that the more skilled a player is, the less the social aspect matters. Are we to conclude that you think all highly skilled players have little to no social skills,
or no interest in social interaction? That seems implausible since raiding and even dungeons to some extent, require good communication and team work.
I feel you are confusing player-skill with player-types.

Which brings me to my main point, why are you attempting to put players into categories according to skill?
Usually this sort of post goes along with some sort of idea about training the bad players or excluding them from certain content so the poster won't have to deal with them. While it's refreshing that you are not making any similar suggestions, there doesn't seem to be a point to this.

Exactly, I might fit in the low casual on this list, I do level jobs but I do not do much outside that. I do the current normal version of raids and the current 24 man, but likely a lot less if my friend would not ask me to come along. She asks me to go for the pure social aspect, told me before she would hardly do anything without a friend because it feels empty and joyless.

With that said she talked to me about this list and explained why she would not fit anywhere on this list. highly skilled but values social aspect most of all. Does not do endgame contentbut crafts. She can keep up on uptime while watching others, and is very good at pointing out how well others are doing, regardless of job. Every day she explains clues about how well or poor someone is doing and ends up being right every time. (Todays exmaple would be showing me a log pic of someone being "new" to the game, but saw thier good play. Asked about it and found out the player does research. So when I say this it is not just about picking out obvious bad play but average and good play as well) Some newer players will admit as such, give tips to them, other times she gets backlash and ends up kicking people purely on toxic social interactions. Someone that cares only about productivity would tell her to deal with it, it is only 15 mintues, so you are not waiting on a replacment.

So her skill level would be one of the "hard cores" on the list, and yet she fits low causal from the socal aspect, plus mainly caring about crafting over battle content. She would also fit in the midcore statments, talking about they are critical over knowing rotations and keeping uptime, while once again, not doing savage. So like you said, this is definitely unhelpful list and will not work for some people at all. Hardcore, casual, etc is only amount of time players put in a day for time spent in the game, has nothing to do with skill or what they do in the game. When you try to link 2 or 3 unreleated aspects, you are bound to run into those that can't fit on the list.

[Squintina]

I don't know which one I'd fit into.

I rank pretty high, 80+ (without meta group buffs), that's above average isn't it? (though you didn't define what "low" and "average" count in fflog culture, but I'm usually purple).

But I've only beaten o7s once, and never even tried O8S. It's not that I can't, it's just my static isn't full of super hardcore players so we raid 3 hours a day, 3 days a week and don't really sweat over. I never feel like I'm being carried because I've spent the time practicing, watching vids, learning rotations, and analyzing top players' logs and feel very confident that as far as technical skill goes, I've reached peak. If I ever bothered to join a parse or meta group, I'd definitely get orange, but I'd rather play with people I know I like even if we go slower.

So, as an individual, based on my personal performance I'd put myself as hardcore or low hardcore.
But because I choose to play with a mix of hardcore/midcore/casual people, which a lot of this content is party play, content-wise I clear more like a midcore person.

Since your classification is both content and fflogs based, I don't know how I'd place myself because of the discrepancy.

Personally if asked I place myself as midcore because I choose to play with other people whose skill level and logs are grey/green/blue.

What do you think?

[Mikhaill]

I just play the game and do what I want lol.

[Okamimaru]

This is just trying to stir up unnecessary drama

[Penthea]

What are your thoughts on this classification list?

That it's incorrect. Players can't always be put into nice neat little boxes with labels. Often players can have aspects of themselves that are both casual or hardcore and the places inbetween. Each shade of grey has varying shades of grey.

Never mind how pve isn't the only progression route in the game that can require time, skill, dedication and hard work. Crafting is a whole progression route on its own. I doubt anyone who knows what it takes to be a consistently top tier omni crafter would call them casual even if they don't raid. Roleplaying can actually be super tough work if you're organising rp events. Pvp is another type of combat with its own challenges that has different demands to pve. You can be hardcore or casual in several facets of the game.

LOW CASUAL: Pure fun player.

You were incorrect very early in your post. How is being a pure fun player unique to this grade of casual? Contrary to what you might think "pure fun" is actually the goal of most players regardless of the effort and time they put into the game. It just so happens different players have different ideas as to what fun is.

Low is not meant to be a negative descriptor.

Maybe not your intention but looking at the list as a whole you have clearly created a hierarchy so low ends up looking...low.

why is such a thing necessary? Just play the game how you want to play the game, no need to shove everyone into a rigid class structure.

It's not necessary. It doesn't actually lend any useful knowledge. Reading OP's list doesn't make you better equipped to deal with anything.

[RiyahArp]

There's no drama intended. None of these are value judgements and no one kind of player is better than another. It's just a recent post kind of showed me how different people view what is casual and what is hardcore, and I thought about it some and put up a classification list. They have a history in MMOs: Richard Bartle did his famous Achiever, Explorer, Socializer and Killer typology a long time ago. I kind of notice no one has really done any formal classification of players, and, well, thought maybe people would like something different to read and talk on.

I made sure not to add any negative descriptors to this, but tried to link it to content levels that might help show what people like. Of course there are flaws, i was hoping people would talk about them.