Most documents start by defining their terms. How do you define who is a casual player?
I know multiple casual players who love M+ and also enjoy mythic raiding. How? Because I define casual as someone who divests a relatively small amount of time to the game. And most of them play the game a lot at the start of the season, but that rapidly falls off to 1-2 times a week. I’d call them casual.
If you’re playing the game 4-5 hours a night grinding WQs, Reps, battle pets, etc… sorry, but you’re not casual. You’re hardcore. Just a different type of hardcore.
I have. You choosing to ignore them doesn’t change that they are there.
I have. I linked them. I base my opinion on facts.
You claim to have raided mythic. Link your logs. Prove that you have experience in mythic to back your claim that you can’t casually raid mythic even though multiple people have explained you can.
If you work Monday-Friday, that would be 70/5 = 14 hours a day.
you would wake up, for example, at 5 am, start around 6 am and finish at 8 pm without considering lunch time.
if you get home around 9 or 10 pm…yeah, there would be little time left to play, farm or do something.
If you work Saturday and Sunday, it would be 70/7, 10 hours a day… every day… it would be lighter, but you would still be tired to do something in your spare time.
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I’m just making observations, there’s no argument beyond that xD
You clearly have never worked a trade service job with emergency hours.
I’ll put it this way. My company covers my entire state and my longest shift on record is 27.5 hours straight. I also don’t take a “lunch”
I don’t have a standard schedule. I go home when the board is clear. I have a “go bag” in my truck that has a spare uniform and toiletries in case I get dispatched and out into a hotel room for a night.
There is areas of the dragon isles where the mobs are somewhat more challenging and are well made. If you are highly geared they aren’t much of a threat though. I’d say because they are part of the open world that it makes it more fun and freeing. I’d like the whole world to be scaled to a higher difficulty than that though. This would be optional though.
First off, the catalyst releasing late is a problem not just for casuals but the players in M+ and bad luck at the vault. At this point, they wait half of the season just to be on par with raiders. Something that can be a 20% or more performance difference.
From MY perspective as someone that enjoys competitive casual bg’s, the quest for tier, with the same problems as M+ players face, is too long.
So the easy solution there is to stop gating the catalyst.
Or at least for the pvp side, disable the tier effects in pvp. It is a huge difference since they balance around tier. And for those that want to roll an alt, or that start late in the season, their attempts to climb the ladder are daunting.
Another potential solution would be to give pvp’ers tier effects again. It doesn’t have to be damage oriented. It could be utility or survival(something that has been a problem in this bursty meta).
Another potential solution would be to have tier effects change based on the content. In pve, it’s the damage increases. In pvp, it swaps to the utility and/or survival effects.
Ultimately we have a situation where tier is very often mandatory but there are arbitrary walls in place that hinder acquisition. We need more players enjoying the game to keep it healthy, not frustrated players that weigh the frustration.
The real issue is that developers shouldn’t care what casuals want. Casuals, by definition, aren’t going to experience the majority of what makes this game replayable. They’ll play at the beginning of each tier, experience the “story”, anything that doesn’t take time investment or significant effort, and then peace out till the next batch of easy content comes out.
It doesn’t really matter if there’s a lot of stuff for them to do or next to nothing. They’ll pay for the expansion and they won’t stay subbed for the whole tier. From an income standpoint they don’t matter because the amount of content development it would take to keep them interested and engaged and subbed isn’t worth the cost of developing that content.
Casuals also aren’t the people who popularize a game. No one wants to watch a stream or a video of a mouth breather questing or grinding dailies. Rather, casuals are followers that cone to games already popularized by other activities and then operate in the periphery of the core game.
Blizz develops for esports and endgame raiders because that’s what popularizes their games and eventually attracts casuals. The faceless majority doesn’t matter… you’ll never keep them happy. You just have to attract their interest via more hardcore, popularized players… who you DO need content to keep happy. Luckily, hardcore gamers dont need a vast and intricate open world to keep them happy… they just need a nice hard raid to grind that the drooling faceless majority can’t do. You see, what the hardcore gamer is after isn’t gear or lore or fun… it’s exclusivity. So when you complain that elitism or toxicity or difficulty locks you out of content and nobody invites you to m+ and guilds dont want you for mythic raids…. That’s the whole point. If everyone can do it… it’s not fun for the competitive crowd. The worth of the achievement is defined by how many people can be excluded from the activity. Half the achievement in mmo’s is to be the guy that is “wanted” in a sea of untouchables. And as long as the superstars of the game are raiders, gladiators, and m+ high key pushers, that’s who blizz will design for. Not casuals. At the end of the day it’s all about giving just enough content to casuals to maintain the slightest hint … the barest facade… the flimsiest illusion that they matter… even though the truth is that they don’t.
I’d argue that for the truly casual player that has absolutely no interest in the harder scripted content that sort of defines wow’s theme park style, player driven sandbox mmo’s are the way to go. Player generated content in games that focus on player interactions encourage casual play mich more that games like WoW. For instance, Archeage when it first launched and had a crapton of players was great to play casually… and when body count mattered so much in those games for the zerg effect, everyone is wanted regardless or skill, gear, or play schedule. If you just want to feel included in the community without dedicating large portions of your life to a game… you’re probably playing the wrong mmo. Wow may have once had substantial sandbox elements back in classic where you could maintain the fantasy of a shoeless pirate in a raid guild of 40 ppl and everyone was discovering a new world… but nowadays it’s all about performance and everyone knows the guy with no shoes is leaving 10%of his dps on the table and you’re just wasting 19 other ppl’s time.
That’s why Guild Wars 2, ESO, and FF14 is conquering the MMO Gene Today with Player Housing, Guild Halls, outdoor content in early zones of leveling, and etc.
Casual player is someone who doesn’t do raids or M+ , those two are usually guild content, or devoted solo player who has time for waste on waiting to get invited in pug raid or dungeons group.