Wow's Casual Players Vs Hardcore Players Balance

[Faezwrystsyn-rexxar]

@Berrd-azgalor

Losing in solo world activities is unlikely, even if playing with one hand. The game can’t be made much easier than that.

End Mythic raiding is hard enough that even the best players die to a single boss hundreds of times.

That’s quite a range.

With that in mind, the game can’t really be too easy or hard as a whole. Difficulty is relative to the previous activity on the scale.

On the contrary, WoW has managed to be both “too easy” and “too hard” at the same time because of how the game is structured.

Leveling & questing are all too often “too easy” - and as such, are unsatisfying experiences. The trouble is that quite a few players, probably the thing closest to what could be called “casual players”, would prefer this to be their main mode of content. For it to be a joke just harms their enjoyment of the game.

Conversely, high-end raiding is so difficult and time-consuming that players will take one look at it and promptly decide it’s simply not for them. Because spending hundreds of attempts trying to down a single enemy isn’t fun for them, it’s stubborn stupidity that they want no part of.

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You’d think players would gravitate to a difficulty of content they’d enjoy… but more often than not, they don’t. Especially when their ideal difficulty is widely regarded as a “stepping stone” to harder content they often don’t enjoy.

It is exceedingly rare to see players find the “happy medium” unless it’s one of these:

• Heroic Raiding
• Mythic Raiding
• Higher Mythic+ Dungeons with a steady group

There’s always a few transient players trying to move up through these groups, but they seem to be the only logical end-points for WoW as a whole. Never mind that players may simply not enjoy that TYPE of content.

So for everyone else, what’s left is just unsatisfying.

Hell, even those who prefer solo play are often left wanting because even soloing old content has been rendered a joke thanks to absurd level-based damage scaling added in WoD.

@Yeastyholes-moon-guard

I’ll preface that the biggest issue to these types of conversation is what players define as “Casual” is very relative to the person based on what content they do. A high key pusher doing 16s and higher might look at myself who pretty much only does 8 +10s a week as a “casual” M+ player whereas somebody who only does delves would see me as more “Hardcore”. I might view a 2 night a week Mythic raiding guild as more casual than my guild that does 12 hours a week, where as I see the top 50 Mythic raiding guilds as being “hardcore” beyond what I can imagine. “Casual” and “Hardcore” are less defined boxes and more like 2 ends of a spectrum.

If I’m being honest, I would could every single activity mentioned “hardcore”… but I’ll admit, it’s not a great definition. But the bar I’d prefer to set is ANYTHING requiring a pre-made and coordinated group to complete. There’s a broad range within that category, but it’s pretty safe to say you’re past “casual” at that point.

Conversely, anything doable solo or via a queue is “casual content”… and for WoW, they seem to try and idiot-proof that type of content. WoW’s structured in a way to get players finished with that type of content ASAP, so that they can get into more coordinated types of content. And quite frankly, I think that’s where casual players want to stay if they can… though I suspect they wouldn’t mind the difficulty being upped somewhat so that they aren’t falling asleep while playing. I certainly wouldn’t mind.