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Let's define "Casual" gaming...
alpha1protocol
Member, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Hero Users Posts: 84
I am playing whenever my schedule allows. I have three toons around level 30. I also deleted a level 25 toon, and leveled one of my wife's toons to 25 for her.
How many hours a day or week constitute casual or hardcore gaming?
I started playing when open beta began.
I am obviously not in a hurry to get to endgame. I see myself as more than casual but by no means hardcore.
My question is this: with so many people hitting 60 in what many will say "a couple days"....
How do you see yourself... a casual gamer... HARDCORE.. or somewhere in between?
How many hours a day or week constitute casual or hardcore gaming?
I started playing when open beta began.
I am obviously not in a hurry to get to endgame. I see myself as more than casual but by no means hardcore.
My question is this: with so many people hitting 60 in what many will say "a couple days"....
How do you see yourself... a casual gamer... HARDCORE.. or somewhere in between?
Post edited by alpha1protocol on
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I have a Level 38 GWF and I recently deleted a lvl 32 DC, I have deleted a few dozen chars. probably before officially deciding yes I was going to play the GWF and make it work for me despite the naysayers about the class and I love it.
I am saving my other slot for a possible new class whenever that might come not worried about it though. I play off and on most of the day but have two year old daughter I stay home with so sometimes I am afk forever or only half paying attention.
Plus I am a foundry creator so I spend daylight hours a lot of them in that as it is easier to tear away if my daughter needs me.
My GWF should be 39 tomorrow I consider myself a social gamer but can float in attitude sometimes to the line between casual and hardcore when I do party for a dungeon or whatever I am focused and I am all in, it is part of the reason I don't do dungeons during the daylight hours, skirmishes yes but not dungeons.
I am in no rush I am just having fun with all aspects of the game and the levels are the reward.
i'll hit 60 when I hit it
Character handle:@skylia120410
(www.gwfnw.weebly.com)
GWF GUIDE SITE: Still being worked on not 60 yet
Divine Misfits (one of the Guild Leaders)(Guild Site Manager)
www.divinemisfits.guildlaunch.com
The most common definition has to do with time and how much you focus on the game play. You could be very much a hard core gamer who only gets 10 hours of gaming in a week if you planned it right or a casual 40 - 60 hours of playing a week. See what I mean about it being fuzzy to define.
All that said most people have an idea if they are casual or hard core.
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Foundry Content:Guide - Custom Channels and List (NW-DHBU9OTOS)
Asset upgrading poll.
I'm going to use an example of what I ran into last night in a Epic Dungeon. Had 2 CWs in the group...neither of them used black hole and said it didn't work well for them. K so clearly these 2 idiots have no clue what they are doing...So they spent "X" amount of hours leveling to 60 and if you said total hours played = hardcore....then those two would have taken home the award of "hardcore baddie"....was so pathetic.
Personally I'd think of "Hardcore" as being more along the lines of being more competitive then others. Always trying to one up someone, or figure something out, or be the first one to accomplish something. I believe this is what makes players "Hardcore". I spend a lot of time on video games myself, however, I'm not too competitive, and by no means will I ever race to be "First" at anything. I simply play to enjoy a video game I find interesting, and worth my time to play.
I personally believe this is what define's "Hardcore", from "Casual", you can spend more hours then a "Hardcore" player, and still call yourself casual if you'd like. But the "Hardcore" player is most likely racing towards, or trying to accomplish a certain task before a vast majority of the population.
This is honestly a question more on philosophy than anything else. I think to define someone as "casual" or "hardcore" based on time played is incredibly narrowly scoped.
A player can take their gaming very seriously, but have to work 40+ hours a week, plus however many hours of work at home it takes, to support themselves or their family. Should this player be thought of as a casual, because he doesn't put many hours into the game, or should he be thought of as hardcore, because he goes out of his way to find play time when ever, where ever, he can? Likewise, a player could spend 50% of their time on video games, only because there's nothing else to do. Maybe they just moved to a new, isolated town for the sake of work, and they find little in common with it's populace. So, although they're not very serious about it, they use video games to eat their free time. Another likely scenario in which defining a players status based on their time committed it not a proper reflection of the gamer in question.
It's for reasons like this that I define a player as "casual" or "hardcore" based on how they play the game. If a player finds little time, but plays a game to the highest level possible, takes it seriously, and plays to win, I'd call them hardcore. If a player spends all their time on a game, but never enters competitive play, never cares to push for some form of personal achievement and tends to occupy themselves with simple or repetitive tasks for the sake of killing time, I'd call them casual
I see myself as hardcore, because of a few reasons. Firstly, I play games to win; I don't go in to **** around, press buttons and see if anything cool happens. I want to be the best I can at what I do; I carefully think through every action and reaction that takes place in a game, and spend a lot of time min/maxing my character as well as playstyle. Even when I'm at work, I catch myself thinking about new builds or combos, or new ideas of what I can accomplish and improve.
---TL;DR---
Casual vs hardcore is more than just a time commitment to me. It's a stance on how you spend your time when you game. If you play to win, to feel accomplished, and most importantly, improve yourself, then you're hardcore. If you play for fun, and don't care about winning/losing or doing the best you can, then you're casual.
(Important note before I get called elitist: I'm not saying that people who play for fun are innately casual. I'm saying that if you're only goal is fun, then you're probably casual. I only have fun when I'm playing to the best of my ability, so in a sense, I only have fun when I'm being hardcore.)
Heh that was the point I was trying to make in my rambling reply above. it is all philosophy.
Take 2 players both play 20 hours a week. One could be the most casual player out there and the other the most hardcore player. It is all about how they approach the game and what they are doing with their time they are in game.
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I'm also a bit put off at the moment, because I was told that I'm doing something wrong with my play, simply because I haven't hit 60 yet in two weeks worth of play.
Hardcore is judging someone else inferior because they play a different way than you.....not to mention a few other choice words that would get me banned, so I won't say them. As an example, I was told I suck at PvP because in my experience, matches are won quicker by taking two points and holding them decisively, and pushing at the enemy's home point....hence I play that way. Apparently it's more in practice to take a point and swarm the next, never mind that the other team is going to take it right back. I got very tired of ending up swarmed by the entire other team while my teammates were more concerned with capping pillars. As I was the team lead in that instance, I very nearly kicked the complainer right out of the match....except that would have been lowering myself to its level. I'm not going there. Besides, I wouldn't even be IN a PvP arena if it weren't for the AD you get for the daily, and I'm not going to simply afk or not do anything. I'll at least try.
I reasoned that I was leveling too fast by trying to maintain the daily missions, so I'm going to stop doing them and focus on the storyline. (Not to mention wiping eight times in a row against the mad dragon on two different character classes and two different teams) So I guess that makes me more than casual. I'll outlevel the dungeon by simply doing content, and never mind elites. Not even going to step foot in that part of the game. Too much like work and not enough like play.
I won't join a guild because again, in my experience, a guild is a bunch of people wanting to impose their game play style on others. If you don't endgame, you don't belong. If you don't PvP, you don't belong. Plus, there's all these rules most guilds have posted on their sites or require of their members. Sorry. I play my way. I guess I'm hardcore in that respect.
Occam's Razor makes the cutting clean.
I am retired (every day is Saturday) so it isn't about time. I always figured hard core was those who ran to high level. I tend to take my time, especially in a game such as this where exploration has actual rewards. Many times I will back track out of a dungeon that everyone has run to the end of, just to see what we missed. So to me that is hardcore (run to the boss) versus casual (explore).
The hardcore tag I got is because I am running 4 classes through each zone. Again, it is not about the time involved, but I can, and do, spend at least six hours or more each day gaming. I like keeping the 4 classes leveled about the same to judge how they react to the mobs, plus they feed each other resources that they themselves cannot use. Since they are all about level 50 now, the word is 'Hard Core Pops'.
Comment was made above that this is a slippery title, and I agree. It probably has a lot to do with point of view I reckon.
Sort of like defining kinky sex. It varies, since all it really means is someone doing something you would not <shrug>.
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1- 20, 2- 35, 3- 18, 4- 20 min
Comments to -> the Book Binding
Casual - Looking to have fun
That's the main difference in my eyes... I don't think time has much of a factor, as you'll get Causual Gamers with loads of time on their hands & Hardcore Gamers that have to work around jobs and/ or family. You'll find that the majority of Gamers are pretty much stuck in the middle.
People are either in denial or just don't want to admit exactly how long they play, but I can assure you those people are playing at least 6-8 hours a day. It doesn't matter the quality of time. You have to put in the time to be hardcore. There is no way around it.
Personally I don't think how much time you invest in the game has anything to do with it, you can be a "hardcore raider" in WoW and only play one evening a week.
I am a casual player that will spend anything from 8-40 hours a week playing games, even with 40 hours I'm still playing casually.
Lol...um....did you not get the memo?
I started out hardcore in the 90's and slowly became more casual. But, the term casual means different things depending upon who's posting.
My definition of casual is: Someone who plays when they have time and plays for fun. Or someone who play a lot (like me) but still just plays for fun. The casual player doesn't feel the need to push to have the best of everything. Although it would be nice to have, and occasionally goes for it.
What a casual player is NOT: Someone who wants the game dummied down, so he can get everything the hardcore players get without the effort. That's not casual. That's lazy. I have a hard time calling myself casual these days, because many people believe that the "I want everything without the effort" players are casuals. They aren't. They're the lazy self-entitled players.
I play a lot, but I play relaxed and just enjoy the game. I DON'T want the games dummied down. If I can't accomplish everything the hardcore players can, because I don't want to put the same effort into it....that's my decision. Don't change the game because of it. The challenges need to be there. If it takes me 6 months to accomplish what a hardcore player can do in a couple of weeks, that's ok with me. I don't expect it to be easy...just fun.
Good luck with that.
(That said, based on what I've seen on most gaming forums, "casual" is usually just an epithet thrown around by "fans" as someone to blame for why their Favorite Game Ever sucks/didn't live up to their expectations/etc. "Man, the gaming industry sucks! <My Game> is terrible because it was Dumbed Down for those <many expletives deleted> Casuals!1!11one!!" This is right up there on the Idiotic Meaningless Complaints list, alongside "I hate <feature> because it Ruins My Immersion!