What's the profile of a casual player?

I've been playing nearly since launch, and I've put a huge number of hours in the game. I still play the game heavily. Still, I consider myself to be a casual player.

I enjoy collecting badges, but I'm not going to make an attempt to collect all the badges. I don't fight AVs. I've never increased the difficulty. (In fact, I recently decreased the difficulty for a few of my characters, thanks to the I16 changes.) I have seven level 50 characters, but I could have had quite a few more if I had concentrated on leveling rather than playing a wide variety of alts. I've never fought Hamidon, I've never done a trial (including respec trials), and I've only completed two TFs. I use the market a little (mainly to sell items I know will be worth a lot), but not much. I don't fill up on IO sets, although I do frequently use the Invention system to craft IOs from recipes and salvage that drop. I dabble a bit in Ouroboros and the Mission Architect, but not a lot.

Excuse me, but I have the sudden urge to go do some missions.

Well, I would consider myself a hardcore player in every and any MMO I play, past, present, or future. Whether you define it by number of hours played or focus, I sit on the extreme high end of the scale. Because I often play at work (at least doing the menial things like dailies and errands and such), that tends to bloat my ingame time. Because I'm doing the menial things that most people have to spend/waste actual playtime on, I can focus on the 'accomplishment' end of things with my actual real playtime.

I'm just a hardcore MMO player. At any given time, I can be active in half a dozen or more MMOs at once. Right now, it's 8 (CoX (2 accts), lifetime in CO & LOTRO, WoW, EQ1 (6), EVE (4), Runes of Magic, Atlantica Online) and I'll add Aion (x2) and Fallen Earth in a couple weeks. The game's design will determine how I adapt my playstyle. For high-end/raid focused games (WoW, EQ1), that means multiple max level characters raiding constantly to stay way ahead of the gear curve. For PvP/sandbox type games (EVE, Ryzom), I find a niche and exploit it to the best of my ability (like marketeering, supplying pet corps of major alliances, etc).

In CoX, until fairly recently, 50 represented 'the end' of a character for me. I don't tend to know how to deal with a character reaching the top and having little to nothing worth doing (in my view). As a result, after five years of play (with a few breaks - only 51 months paid on my primary account), I only have two 50s. But honestly, I don't sweat that too much. I'm more proud of my 85s in full Tower/80s in Algalon loot than my 50s here (means a bit more IMO).

I think the actual profile of a casual player differs by game. Here it might be folks who don't play a whole lot (the 10 hrs a week sounds a bit extreme on the low side given weekend play patterns) and don't tend to become fixated on metagaming. They may enjoy one particular part of the game and concentrate their efforts on it (whether it be RP, the market, PvP, teaming, etc). I tend to see 'hardcore' players as having more broad interests if only because they can (due to more available time ingame). Most of my friends consider themselves casual players and their playstyles differ greatly from mine.

I think to developers, casual players (and the casual playstyle) represent the bulk of the available gaming audience. Thus, they tailor their designs to appeal to that segment.

If you ever put things off to play you are no longer casual.

I do not think that a measure of casualness should be linked to "Game Knowledge" and "Start Date" as some folks seem to be implying.

There are people who are very new to the game and have lots of level 50s, but clearly are not "Highly Knowledgeable". Some of us have been around a long time and, because of that, have a good amount of knowledge. Yet, we may have fewer prupoles and fewer 50s than someone much newer to the game. Thus, the newer person may be more hard core.

(Average XP gained per day across all toons) / (Average Level of all toons), may be a good way to measure casualness. Of course, AE might bork that forumula.

My friend, lets call her Amy*, is my defanition of a casual CoH gamer. She plays every Tuesday evening from 8 - 10i, sometimes we can convince her to stay up all the way to 11. Been doing it for 4+ years. At least 20 min of that time is spent at Wentworths, she has every thing she needs for her characters and most of the stuff she wants. She has never seen a purple in the wild, but knows how to get some, should she feel the need. Her main hit 50 just after getting her 48 month badge.









*Because it's her name.

Sure today is the first day of the rest of your life. But so was yesterday. And look how that turned out.

Well, first of all I can't agree that there are no casual players, because somebody has to be a casual player. It's like saying that nobody is a bad driver. 50% of the population of the US has to be better at driving than the other half, so there have to be 50% that are "bad drivers". Just no one's willing to admit they're in that half.

"Casual gamer" is usually defined as a contrast to "Power gamer" or "Hardcore gamer". Again, 50% of the player base has to be more serious about playing the game and gaining levels than the other half, so there has to be some scale between the two. At the most extreme, the hardcore gamer plays every minute of every hour that he has free time, and devotes as much energy and focus as possible to levelling as far as he can in that time. It seems reasonable to me to define the extreme of Casual player the other way around, he spends very little of his total free time in the game, preferring to spend time doing other things, and spends what time he does have in the game socializing and engaging in other activities instead of levelling.

Those are the extremes, though. I prefer the philosophical difference, that the Hardcore gamer is interested in the destination, and the Casual gamer in the journey. Or that the Hardcore gamer is playing for accomplishment, while the Casual gamer is playing for entertainment. Another comparison might be to a movie goer, a Hardcore Star Wars fan is going to see a Star Wars movie with a lot more interest and focus than the movie goer who is just going to be entertained for a few hours and then move on. OTOH, the casual movie goer is going to bring in a lot more ticket sales than the hardcore fans.

I don't think I'm a casual player, but I don't think I'm a hardcore gamer, either. I do devote a lot of time to the game, but I have an interest in doing things other than levelling. I prefer to experiment with it and figure out what makes it tick. I only got my first 50 recently, after being in the game since release. Yet, I have a huge number of alts, many of which are well over 30. So I have made many accomplishments, just not necessarily those that would indicate I'm a hardcore gamer. And I think that's what makes defining the terms so hard, accomplishment does mean different things to different people.

To me there are 3 kinds of players: casual, regular, and hardcore.

To me a casual player is one that just has a passing interest in the game and could just as easily be playing another game or watching tv.

There are many players who play on a regular basis but don't rise to the dedication or playstyle to be considered truely hardcore. I call them regular players.

I'd say I'm "average" with a few hardcore leanings.

I would be hardcore, getting into IO sets and stuff (I already make good use of generic IOs) but for the price... and I'm not hardcore enough the grind for the monies to get any major sets

I'm Caverage!

Only one 50, don't farm, but I have all Generic IOs/Cheap Sets and play 20-30 hours a week although much of it is spent "unproductively". Which is probably why I only have one lvl 50 and am decked out in Generic IOs & cheap sets.

Been playing casual since June, 2004...took off a couple of months the whole time and nearly have 63 month vet badge.

That said...I AM A HARDCORE ADDICT of the game. I average only ten hours a week of game play...but maybe twice that scanning the forums, thinking about game play, and wishing I could afford a new computer.

Casual player probably logs in a few hours a week, does some missions/tweaks their costumes without worrying much about the various metagames involved.

Me...I am a casual player.



Wait...didn't we have this discussion a few weeks ago? I remember it getting to 13 pages before a list of 8 different possible play types was proposed and mostly accepted.

Some of my friends and family are what I would call casual gamers - they play videogames maybe a couple of times per week, for 1-2 hours at a time (at most). They all avoid MMOs completely because MMOs generally require too much time commitment to get anywhere - and as my cousin's husband once said to me, while watching me play CoH, "that looks too complicated to be fun for me" (yes, really - we're so immersed in videogame culture we lose sight of how unintuitive even MMOs with good UIs are to the layman).

As for in-game limitations in CoH such as SO-only, no market engagement, no L50s... sure, you can make those decisions for yourself if you just don't care for individual systems or can't help it because you're an altaholic - but to have all of those things imposed on you, well that could only happen if you don't play that much - so I still think the main determinant of whether you're a casual gamer is how many hours you play per week.

On that basis I'm not sure anyone playing an MMO can term themselves a casual gamer, unless they're an edge case who only plays for less than 5 hours a week - and tbh CoH is so casual-friendly it's probably one of the few MMOs where you could do that and still make notable progress over time.

To further elaborate on my argument:

I have a couple of 50s after 2 years. I've never had (or wanted) a purple, and I've never worried about maxing out my characters. I do IOs on all my characters from about level 10 on, mostly because they don't expire. I'll upgrade them to level 20 or 25 as time and money permit, but I'm not concerned about it at all.

I use build planners, but pretty much only to plan where to put my slots. I almost never bother actually putting the enhancements in on the planner.

I've never PvP'ed, and don't expect to. Ever.

I couldn't care less if my character is doing the max possible damage per second. I only care if he/she wins the majority of the battles, and doesn't die very often. That makes them fun to play, for me.

I market, I craft, I occasionally farm. I've learned how to assemble sets and how to frankenslot, but I do all of that only to enhance my character as much as is convenient, not to get the maximum possible out of them.

I've never had even 20 million influence on a character, and I rarely have more then ten.

Is there anyone who would call that anything but a casual player?


Yet, until a couple of months ago, I frequently played 10-20 hours per week, and I've never seen a time-based definition that doesn't call that hardcore.


It's all about attitude.

Even if you only play 2 hours a week, if you're concentrating on maximizing your character, on getting the best possible performance out of them you can, so you can "win" every situation you enter (or at least as many as possible), if you have to have the best, the most powerful, the shiniest, you're hardcore.

Even if you play 40 hours a week, if your goal is just to play, to do whatever strikes your fancy, and you don't care if your character is the best $archetype he/she/it can possibly be, if you don't care if you have the "latest and greatest" as long as they're "good enough" to play, you're casual.

It's not about how much time you spend on it. It's about your approach.

Casual plays to play. Hardcore plays to win.

I am casual.

A casual player is someone who says 'BRB Bio' and actually goes to the bathroom/goes to get coffee/goes to water his plants, rather than spending his 'BRB' with tabbed browsing.

I like "Hardcore plays to win. Casual plays to play."

I'd consider myself a 'Hardcore' player by my own standards.

For me, the difference between the two isn't hours played. I have a number of friends who play many hours a week, yet I'd still describe them as casual. I think the difference lies in a willingness to do things that seem like work in order to advance in the game. PLing, farming for influence and drops, that sort of thing... stuff that people tend not to find fun for its own sake, but rather because it allows them to advance in the game toward a state of play that they enjoy more.

I think that's the line. Occasionally, I'm willing to farm for tickets, drops, and infamy because I really like IOs and that's the best way I can see to get them in large quantities. By contrast, I have friends that would rather just stick with SOs or make builds with what they can afford to buy playing the game normally. Even though some of these people play more hours a week than I do, I'd still call them casual and myself hardcore.