Casual vs Hardcore

[Kafeen]

It depends where you draw the line.

Yes, people who play more should be rewarded for it but the game has to plateau somewhere.

There's quite a clear distinction between those who play casually a couple of times per week and those who play every day. Perhaps even an distinction between those playing a couple of hours per day those putting in 4 or 5 hours per day

Do we need to take it further? Should the be a clear distinction between those playing 4-5 hours per day and those playing 8 hours per day? 16 hours per day? Should that kind of play even be encouraged or should SE have some kind of social responsibility and not be encouraging people to spend every waking moment ingame just to so they can get some e-Peen item.

All the content, whether new dungeons or more equipment is going to take time to implement. How much time should the devs be spending on content that won't be seem be seen by 90% of the players?

Games should be about fun, doing something that's enjoyable. Its very hard to make something enjoyable when all you're doing is repeating the same thing all the time. This is supposed to be a game, not a career. If you are finding you're spending THAT much time ingame perhaps there's other things you should be looking at.

You also need to look at what is better to reward. Do we want massive time sinks or do we want content that requires skill to complete? Those are two very different things.

[DarthTaru]

Again, I hate the term. In XI we never said "hardcore" or "casual."
Either you sucked or you were good, it didn't matter if you were a full time student, full time worker, or both.
The good, the bad, and the average. Those were the players. There was no "hardcore" or "casual" and "who is SE going to make content for?"

Right now, you can classify me as a "hardcore" player *cringe*.
What do casuals think I want? To spend 6 hours a night running the same boring and easy dungeons over and over again, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, just because you and your LS can't or doesn't?
Or to kite an NM in Hamlet in a circle for ten minutes for a seal... over and over and over?

I feel like these terms "hardcore" and "casual" got dragged into the FF community from elsewhere and now all we discuss is how tedious we want everything to be so you filthy casuals can't get your slimy hands on the drops.

Au contraire.

Good players simply want content that justifies them being a good player, or being in a good linkshell. FFXI accomplished this. BLM's and RDM's solo'ed NMs in sky and sea where entire linkshells would sometimes wipe. Linkshells defined themselves by killing (or even monopolizing) mobs others could not even get to 98% before the wipe. There were reasons to be a good player, not just a hardcore player, and many of the very best players were full time students or worked 50 hours a week. The most accomplished BLM on my server had to leave for weeks at a time because he was in the Coast Guard.

This whole notion of "hardcore" versus "casual" is annoying. It's a dumb WoW term (or wherever it came from!) and has no place, IMO, in a Final Fantasy community. Good or bad. Which are you? We want SE to give us the content to find out.

[Andrien]

The install base of potential casual users is high on the console gamer front. Also depending on the franchise they can sell millions.

In the end, both casual and hardcore gamers can peacefully coexist. In the long run casual can only be good for the gaming industry as it will bring in more fans, more money, and more verity of contents. When that content is good they'll stay and then at some point the casual gamers might start looking for deeper, more challenging contents, and hence becoming a little more "hardcore"

[Zaaku]

The install base of potential casual users is high on the console gamer front. Also depending on the franchise they can sell millions.

In the end, both casual and hardcore gamers can peacefully coexist. In the long run casual can only be good for the gaming industry as it will bring in more fans, more money, and more verity of contents. When that content is good they'll stay and then at some point the casual gamers might start looking for deeper, more challenging contents, and hence becoming a little more "hardcore"

But that is wrong. What a majority of casual players in your subscription base brings is vacant servers in 2 months time unless you can patch in another carrot-on-stick event to keep them complacent and busy. (See: Primals) Casual players are defined as 'casual" for a reason. They often don't have nearly as much invested into their characters or game as someone who plays 4-6 hours a day. These are the MMO players who tend to "Come back when they add something fun to do". They return for a month or so at a time until the newest addition has exhausted their limited interest and then wander off to the next new thing.

You cannot support an MMO based primarily on the backs of casual fans UNLESS you dedicate a significant amount of your resources into creating new content very often that is only semi-challenging. Too difficult and the bulk of your subscribers who can't cut it up and quit because the game is too hard for their liking. They want everything to be a breeze. Too easy and they burn though it in days instead of weeks and leave once more to more fertile MMO grazing grounds. That is the dagger that you don't see that screws over the "Hardcore" players. When the game developers make content for people with less commitment in mind we're always going to be getting the short end of the stick in terms of longevity and satisfaction. Even if it has a hint of challenge it will never prove to be a real conquest since the bar will be firmly set at our knees to ensure those with 1/10th the amount of player time per week can still beat it.

This leads to making the content spammable to create the illusion of challenge. That it is marginally hard but only those "HURDCURR" enough to run it 200 times will get the REAL prize! That isn't fun. It isn't noteworthy. It is what makes a game forgettable and ultimately kills off your high end player base when they find a game that does reward their dedication in more tangible and satisfying ways.

You cannot please everyone. The best you can hope for is disappointing both sides of the coin. So which do you make your game for? Those who play 2 hours a day for a month then quit until you dump the hours into making a new puppet show every 3 weeks. Or those who sacrifice sunlight, occasional sex, and Friday nights to master the wickedly hazardous content you get to pour heart and mind into making as difficult as you wish. When you make things more painful your fans resound with gleeful encouraging whimpers through the ballgag begging for more. One of these two is a much more stable platform for long term revenue. Even if you'd rather not enter their dwellings without first notifying authorities of your location.

You should also add tails for the Roegadyns. Your Galka players are hurting something awful (._.*)

[Kafeen]

Casual players are defined as 'casual" for a reason. They often don't have nearly as much invested into their characters or game as someone who plays 4-6 hours a day.

Well, now we're getting into different definitions of "casual".

Is someone casual because they only play a few times a week? Is someone casual because they cancel and come back?

For example. I play for a few hours a few times per week but I've had my account since open beta, subscribed at launch and never cancelled, even during times that I didn't play for weeks.

Many other people on the other hand play the game to death for long periods everyday, exhaust all the content then quit for a few months because there's nothing left to do.

So there are times when someone who plays on a more casual basis, who plays in moderation can be less likely leave and more likely to support the game for a longer period.

You can't just classify people into two camps.

[Eekiki]

You can't just classify people into two camps.

Casual vs. Hardcore

Democrat vs. Republican

Shia vs. Sunni

Smackdown vs. Raw

The world is full of two groups with the same goals and differing opinions of how to achieve them.

[Andrien]

To many words

But I'm right. Console gamers and PC gamers play games like FPS, and Farmville over and over. Did you read the whole paragraph or just the sentence you bold?

I try to make things as simple as possible to understand in that statement I made earlier.

Two Key points you missed
The console fan base. = Large
Engaging content that will keep them playing. = Addicting challenges
Eventually take on "hardcore" challenges.

[Hycinthus]

I'm a casual, and I agree completely that if you are "hardcore", you should be wearing better gear and weapon, and get better loot. This is fine and logical.

But what I don't want to happen is for certain contents to only be doable, or completable if you're a hardcore. You may say that, well, since you're casual, then it's logical for you not to be able to complete this dungeon. But casuals pay for the same game, and the same subscription, and we also want to see this beautiful dungeon SE created.

As a casual, I want to experience the dungeon, and also the beautiful environment, the monsters, and most importantly the storyline that go along with these. The drop rate should be adjusted of course. If you run the dungeon in Heroic mode, then you get better loot. The casual players can run in normal mode, and get worse loot, but at least we can see this content.

A way I think of it is like attending a concert. I don't mind sitting in the back row, because I cannot afford to buy the front row, or maybe because I was late in buying the tickets and not camping ticketmaster website, but I can still experience the concert. At least we are trying; if not then we don't even deserve to get a ticket.

[urhryu]

I still dun understand, are you telling me that casual players can't play the content?
Believe me, you can still enjoy the content (and being casual, you prefer to play the content more than the drops) since you only login to enjoy the fun, logout and might or might not come back few days later.

But if you consider yourself casual and wanted the relic FAST. I don't know how you can term yourself casual.
You can complain about the lack of content and makes you repeat and repeat...well, you are casual, just enjoy the game.
Until 2.0 is out with more content, just login when you are free or nothing else much to do irl.

To me, those that ranted alot about drops and stuff and repeat arent really casual players, just that they aren't hardcore enough. Because I do know real casual players, they login 2-3hrs daily, chat, do some raid, hamlet etc, they still enjoy it because that's what they are after, priority was not relic. They never had issues with repeat content because they aren't spamming repeats. They still have their chance on seal drop ofc (though much lower compared to others), but they aren't the least jealous towards people that keep repeating it for many hours daily to get the seal.

So, the question now is : Are you really casual? Or you are in between who wanted get the seals as fast as the hardcore?

[Hyrist]

Ohhh ho ho ho.

This is a bitter can of worms you have opened that I do not have time today to sit and write about.

Hardcore think they know what's good for a game, but many of it the things they'd implement in this game in particular would not only be counter-intuitive, but are reinforced by many of the system they heavily complain about.

For now, I'm backing out until about Friday to take on this issue again. I'll also start outlining about what Yoshi is doing right and doing wrong in this case.