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.