And i thought FF14 was supposed to be for casual gamers.

[Taaliph]

When i first heard how Final Fantasy 14 was going to concentrate it's effort on the casual gamer, i was overjoyed. Gone were the days of devoting 30+ hours a week to a digital media just to make headway. Gone were the days of going to work during the day, just to return home to start up my second "job". This it seems, was just another one of Square-Enix's empty promises, as many of the recent updates force players to allocate an ever increasing amount of time to receive any of the rewards.

First and foremost, I define a casual player as one that plays less than 15hrs a week, and, for the sake of argument, has limited resources as they never put in an extensive amount of time up to this point to level jobs or build a large sum of gil.

Case 1: Ifrit/Moogle
With an absolutely abysmal drop system, these fights have become a source of great disdain to the casual player. Using the above 15hr/week parameter for the casual player, this would allow for roughly 20 attempts per week at these fights (provided they allocated the entire week's time to these primals). Assuming all were successfully completed, it is still entirely possible to go the entire week without a single weapon drop, or should they get the a drop, there is still a chance that its for an undesirable job, or worse yet, a duplicate.
While this system is said to be changed in the upcoming 1.22 patch, the fact that it has remained for this long, or was implemented in this matter at all clearly shows how Square has no intention of showing any heed to casual players.

Case 2: Dungeons
Dungeons (CC + AV) suffer from many of the issues that plague the above primal fights (just swap weapons for Darklight gear), but have the added issue of having specific job requirements. Should for example, the casual player only have PLD/DRG/MNK to 50, it would be unlikely they could fit into a pick-up run, and would be forced into go with runs with a linkshell. Even runs with linkshells would be difficult as many have set start times for events, and by nature, causal gamers typically are unable to follow such stringent event times.

Case 3: Materia
The materia system requires a large amount of time and money (or an insane amount of luck) to be put into the system before there are actually any discernible results. As it stands now, the casual player would have to either Spirit Bond a massive amount of gear in order to receive the desired materia, or spend an exuberant amount of time farming gil in order to buy them off the auction house. All that time, work, and effort for just one decent set of single meld gear. Now the process begins anew with a whole new set of gear for another class, or should the player feel especially masochistic, going for a double melt set.
Simply put, the casual player is almost excluded from this content because of its very time sink nature. This is due largely by the difficulty to obtain decent materia. Should the casual player find the time to spirit bond a fair amount of gear, the fact still remains that 65% of it (from personal experience) will be useless, by useless i mean has very little gil value, has no practical purpose, or is so weak that its not even worth socketing. As for the remaining amount, 30% will be somewhat useful, either for personal use, or to at least sell/trade for something semi-desirable, this leaves only a 5% chance to get particularly useful/desirable materia. While this is not as much of an issue for hardcore players, those that aren't simply cant allocate the time needed for this, while still balancing out other events, such as leveling or linkshell events.

Ok rant over, this is just my 2cents on how square has alienated the casual gamer demographic.
Just for the record, i would technically qualify as a hardcore player, so many of the above points do not affect me as much.

[StateAlchemist]

MMO's are the entertainment industries' way of getting you to pay them to let you work for them. Didn't you know?

[Fiosha_Maureiba]

As you say, playing less than 15 hours a week, we're going to have different goals and be behind the community curve.

Clearing the dungeon or the fight is the casual expectation.

To me, artifact gear puts a casual player in a pretty good position.

And getting company seals for level 50 weapons.

Granted, it still is more difficult for a casual player to get a party to a dungeon or fight as someone with experience will generally be preferred. And most players going for the loot will be less tolerant of mistakes.

[Geo]

@ OP: Rock full AF. Nothing in this game REQUIRES more.

We've done 7 man speed runs (start to finish).. The dungeons, ifrit, and lolmoogle can be done in full AF.

[Estellios]

Dungeons/Primals cater towards casual gamers because they have lax time requirements (no lockouts, essentially). If you couldn't enter them for X days after doing them then it would be a problem and there would be absolutely no pickup groups or casual players doing them. The primal drop system looks like its designed especially for pickup groups because everyone gets their own stuff and there's no drama or worry about ninja lotting.

Many people have done all these fights/dungeons with "non-optimal" jobs, it takes practice and maybe reworking strategies slightly. If you need a LS, of course you should try to find one that fits with your playtime, there are bound to be quite a few. I don't know why anyone would be in a LS they could not do anything with to begin with. If you are in a LS for friends or whatever there is nothing wrong with getting another for "business" if you can't make the times your initial LS runs. We are allowed to have multiples and that's what they are there for.

And, as was said a few times, AF gear is perfectly fine and in most cases is better than crafted gear until you get 2+ Materia on it. Materia isn't that time consuming to farm if you join XP/Spiritbond parties which usually last 1-2 hours at most, the issue really is getting ahold of gear to meld and any strings of bad luck. A single materia on all gear is fine as that is what the game is balanced around.

[Riffy]

Hey I just want to say that I got Ifrit's Bow on my first day fighting him, which was three days ago. Fought him six times.

This game is casual; it's so easy to level DoW and DoM to 50. DoL and DoH are the real grinds that pay off imho.

[HiirNoivl]

Um... you should set your goals accordingly lol.

If you want to get the best of everything you're going to have to put in the time for it. You may not get it first, or fast but you'll get it.

But there's plenty of content for people who dont' have a lot of time. I often only have about 1 or 2 hours for end game content on a weekday.

Find a Linkshell that can schedule events for endgame content at the schedule you can play.

[Raldo]

Did you miss Yoshida's metaphor that he wants the game to be like a theme park? Not everyone likes roller coasters.

This game definitely caters to casuals, but that doesn't mean everything has to.

[Eld_Deran]

At the moment I think they are concentrating on the current players of the game, to keep them playing and stop bleeding players.

I think version 2.0 will introduce more content for lower classes and beginners.

[Asiaine]

Case 1: Ifrit/Moogle
With an absolutely abysmal drop system, these fights have become a source of great disdain to the casual player.

This still counts as 'casual' content on the grounds that you can go from Inn to fight, finish fight in less than an hour. This is where it can be iffy to understand the definition of 'casual'. I do not think it means: Full game content can be completed by a casual 15hr/week player. But rather: A person with only 15 hours/week can still engage in game content.

Contrast this to an encounter or event that would take 3-5 hours (or more!) to complete.

Case 2: Dungeons
Dungeons (CC + AV) suffer from many of the issues that plague the above primal fights (just swap weapons for Darklight gear), but have the added issue of having specific job requirements.

Similiarly, the dungeons are designed so that if you have 1.5 to 2 hours to play you can go do one run (maybe even 2). That is how it is casual. The reward at the end can not be scaled towards casual players, or it will be fully consumed by heavy players.

Case 3: Materia
The materia system requires a large amount of time and money (or an insane amount of luck) to be put into the system before there are actually any discernible results. As it stands now, the casual player would have to either Spirit Bond a massive amount of gear in order to receive the desired materia, or spend an exuberant amount of time farming gil in order to buy them off the auction house.

Hopefully the 'casual' player would not go in with the expectation of being able to level all jobs and get all gear with tripple-meld (that is not exactly in the line of casual play). More realistic would be they want to specialize in one or two jobs, and are happy to get good gear (single meld).

If that is the case, most materia can be cheaply bought with gil earned from the main scenario quests. If they spend a little time making some more money (logging and mining are amazingly good mechanics for casual players to earn a lot of money, as it requires so little 'bundles' of time or equipment and no partying to do), then they could get the rest of the materia they want.



I think this question has to do with the definition of a casual player (or casual game play).

The idea was to be able to ensure that all content can be experienced by anyone with only a couple hours of game time (in sharp contrast to the previous game of FFXI where a lot of the content required you to dedicate a 6+ hour sit-in).

However, they also indicated that it was not Casual Player ONLY, but would also cater towards those who have a lot of time to invest.

The only way this can be accomplished is to ensure that a reward would be available for those with a lot of time, that can not be obtained by a casual player.