understanding your audience is pretty important. It's just a tool to do that.
Magic: TG started doing this a long time ago. Very interesting stuff that is widely used elsewhere: https://mtg.fandom.com/wiki/Player_type
understanding your audience is pretty important. It's just a tool to do that.
Magic: TG started doing this a long time ago. Very interesting stuff that is widely used elsewhere: https://mtg.fandom.com/wiki/Player_type
Casual Lifestyle, aka “The Grinder” wants grind - big misconception, that affects Blizzard too, cuz they think, that things like 200 days Anima grind is ok. Some Casual Lifestyle players, including me, prefer content with high reward/effort ratio, as they prefer (yeah, it's true) character progression at certain rate, not by tiny drips. And grinding for 200 days just to get crappy recolors definitely isn't high reward/effort ratio content, so it isn't meaningful progression. This is one of real reasons, why such players don't like hardcore content like mythic raiding. Because it's about putting lots of effort into may be having one item/week max.
Casual Lifestyle players:
1) Play a lot, therefore they don't like to be limited by time-gates or schedule. That's why they prefer unlimited content, like leveling alts.
2) At the same time they don't like to be obligated to play game. That's why they don't like quantized content, like killing boss in raid, where if boss isn't down = time is lost, but no reward.
3) Like collecting things, so they prefer alts with different classes, armor types, weapons, etc. and also transmogs, mounts and pets.
4) Motivated to play game by character progression, so they don't like when progression route narrows. That's why they don't like endgame content, that is designed to keep players playing for long time for little to no rewards. Like raids, where 13 pieces of equipment can be stretched to be obtainable within 24 weeks, so it's ~1 item per two weeks.
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Right diagram, but fake numbers. Amount of socializers usually matches amount of players, who do organized group content, and that's around 10%.
Last edited by WowIsDead64; 2022-11-06 at 12:17 PM.
I don't care about Wow 11.0, if it's not solo-MMO. No half-measures - just perfect xpack.
This is not a "postfactual redefinition of reality," whatever the hell that is.
Like any attempt to define things, this is an effort to make words we use more useful, that's it. Personally, I think any definition of "casual" that counts "person who logs in one a week to do world quests" and "person in a 1 day a week CE guild" as the same is so broad that it is useless. The same way that calling someone in LIquid hardcore but also the guy who does old raids 10 hours a day - those are not the same type of players.
The Bartle's thing is fine but it's not relevant to this. There's also the Magic: the Gathering one about those types of players, but again, not really useful to this discussion since the entire point is to reframe Casual and Hardcore not other terms.
This is a common axis used in politics and I think it's reasonably useful for wow players as well.
A better way to think about Casual v Hardcore: https://www.mmo-champion.com/threads...asual-Hardcore
There was such thread in the past. And I said there, that casual vs hardcore is more about dedication and effort, than play time, schedule or difficulty of content. Hardcore players threat game more seriously. More like job or sport. And there are just two ways for such players. Problem is - even if player is hardcore, he can't play this way forever, unless he wants to become professional player. Because at some point he gets real job and shifts focus towards it, while games become just a sort of entertainment or in the best case - hobby. Since this moment player can't say, that game >> real life. So, he no longer can stay home, because he has raid today. Raid turns into obligation, game puts on player. And player can no longer put such obligations on himself. Even if he actually has enough time to do it. He just can't be sure, if he won't be tired, won't want to take some rest instead of playing game or something like that. So, he starts to pick content, that doesn't put any obligations on him. Solo content, no schedule, no queues, no gating, not quantized.
I don't care about Wow 11.0, if it's not solo-MMO. No half-measures - just perfect xpack.
back in vanilla and BC, there was an entirely different type of player that just enjoyed the social experience. they developed close friendships with other players, even starting relationships, and got married in-game. often these types were heavy role players, using the game world as a canvas to develop their own fantasy themes. that involved everything from actual places in the world to world chat and zone chat. actually following the rigid design goals of the developers was purely optional. so raiding and pvp were way on the back burner. leveling was often a big part of the experience.
this type of player was largely driven out of the game tho.
they could have expanded on this game mode. added zones with special interfaces designed to accommodate role playing. add chat features for role players. create a fork off of leveling so people could replay a zone for role playing purposes. instead its all about gogogogoogogogogogogo content locusts.
TO FIX WOW:1. smaller server sizes & server-only LFG awarding satchels, so elite players help others. 2. "helper builds" with loom powers - talent trees so elite players cast buffs on low level players XP gain, HP/mana, regen, damage, etc. 3. "helper ilvl" scoring how much you help others. 4. observer games like in SC to watch/chat (like twitch but with MORE DETAILS & inside the wow UI) 5. guild leagues to compete with rival guilds for progression (with observer mode).6. jackpot world mobs.
Casual to hardcore isn't a single axis, it's a matrix. One axis is Commitment, one is Difficulty, and the other is Time Investment.
Mythic raiding is high in all 3 categories. You have to adhere to a fixed schedule, complete some of the hardest content there is, and it can take months of real time to do.
Lfr, by contrast, is low commitment and difficulty, with a moderate Time investment. It's queuable whenever and is easy enough that most of the group could sleep through it, but to fully clear a raid will take at least an hour or two.
The mage tower would be high difficulty, low commitment, with a variable time. You're free to do it whenever you want and each attempt is quite short, but it is generally hard and the sheer number of attempts can add up time.
Mount collecting is low commitment, low difficulty, high investment.
A better way to think about Casual v Hardcore: https://www.mmo-champion.com/threads...asual-Hardcore
"...money's most powerful ability is to allow bad people to continue doing bad things at the expense of those who don't have it."
there is no hard content in wow. all of it is easy. even mythic raiding.
its just a matter of finding enough people that have a stable and fast internet connection and a high end computer. mythic raiding isnt HARD as it is mostly reserved for people who are wealthy or mom and dad and pay for their stuff. even in the last raiding guild i was in during CN, a number of players had slow computers and just couldnt do all the content reliably, and others had bad connections.
there is no prestige in completing mythic raiding. it just says you've got money.
TO FIX WOW:1. smaller server sizes & server-only LFG awarding satchels, so elite players help others. 2. "helper builds" with loom powers - talent trees so elite players cast buffs on low level players XP gain, HP/mana, regen, damage, etc. 3. "helper ilvl" scoring how much you help others. 4. observer games like in SC to watch/chat (like twitch but with MORE DETAILS & inside the wow UI) 5. guild leagues to compete with rival guilds for progression (with observer mode).6. jackpot world mobs.
I'm a casual hobbyist, meaning i'm on the exact opposite of where I am on the political compass
I just stay to the tried and true tbc metric.
Are you decent or shit at the game?
If your decent people want to play with you and you advance. If your a shitter you live in normal mode and are shunned.
It was a better more simple time.
A better way to think about Casual v Hardcore: https://www.mmo-champion.com/threads...asual-Hardcore
In the end the whole distinction boils down to:
- players who enjoy WoWs holy trinity of content: organized raiding, mythic+ and ranked PvP
- players who don't enjoy that.
I've never seen a casual vs. hardcore discussion where time playing actually mattered, that was always just used to gaslight the terms.
Time always mattered because activities like raiding have a minimum time requirement. Casuals as in barely plays cant participate on account of not putting enough hours into the game which then means they need other content if you want to keep them in the game. This is not a question of enjoyment but how committed people are because you cant just hop in and do a blind raid at will unless its lfr. This is why lfr was made - to get people into raid content who would otherwise never raid.
I don't know why people have to complicate things. I think we should use a different word if it causes this much complication.
When people ask for "casual" content, they ask for stuff that is not the 3 pillars of organized dungeons, pvp and raids. That's it. No " you can do dungeons casually", no "I consider myself a casual because I only have 2 days of mythic raiding", no "I farm mounts 16 hours a day so I am hardcore". And not because these expressions don't make sense for everyone, they do. But nobody CARES about how people consider themselves. When people talk about hardcore content or casual content they talk about VERY specific things, not the blurred out mess that other people try to get at when the word crops up.
Last edited by Loveliest; 2022-11-07 at 11:13 AM.
M+ was created to have a less time-consuming progression alternative to raiding. There is stuff there for people from the first group with less time.
But there is usually no real progression alternative for people in the second group. Thats why they are complaining so often. Thats the whole basis of the casual-hardcore discussions.
If poor dear doesn't have enough time for Mythic Raiding and has to do M+ or ranked PVP instead no one sheds a tear, i'm afraid.
And we both don't know but my guess is that LFR was made for people that don't enjoy organized and hard content. Which is basically the second group. Because from the pure time constraints LFR still often needs 2-3 hours per section with queueing time + wipes and in that timeframe you could probably join a raid group.