Before I start, no, this isn't yet another uber vs casual debate thread. Rather, it is a "Am I the only who's seeing ubers and casuals as having a synergistic relationship?" thread.

Synergy - a mutually advantageous conjunction or compatibility of distinct participants or elements (as resources or efforts)

I have no evidence other than gut feel or little observations here and there, but I believe that casual players make up the majority of the playerbase. There are casual players who aspire to be raiders one day, thats one major source of new raiders for all except the most uber of guilds. In other words raiders need the wide base of casual players, some of whom will eventually step up to be raiders like themselves.

On the flip side, imagine a game like EQ without any end game content. What would such an EQ be like? My guess is it would be very much like what City of Heroes will be facing soon - heaploads of max-capped level 40 players who have completed all missions, all story arcs, all taskforces, seen all content that the game has to offer and wondering is there a what's next to look forward to? Imho, an end game is required to extend the longevity of the game (preventing players from saying "I win!") so that there is something for players uber and casual alike to look forward to.

Thus the game need raiders for longevity, raiders need casuals as a source of new raiders, the game needs to make it fun to keep casuals playing. Its a lifecycle of sorts.

For the first time, both ubers and casuals are both finding that EQ isn't as fun as it used to be. Rather than rehashing the same old uber vs casual debates over and over, why not work together to bring about changes that bring back the fun to EQ?

I get frustrated at the uber vs casual gaming aspect too, and I agree, EQ cannot continue to suceed w/o a healthy casual population, and it would have never been as popular, or as longetic, w/o the "uber" population.

I have no evidence other than gut feel or little observations here and there

I swear I read on one of the "I just came back from the summit and this is what happened" threads that one of the participants said that they found out the majority of EQ players were in the levels between 30 and 50. Hard to believe but IF TRUE, it supports your theory.

I have 2 level 65 toons on my account, and 4 toons that are level 33-35. I am not a casual player. And yet most of my toons are between 30 and 50... this is the problem with these generalizations of statistics, and they basically mean nothing unless you have access to all the data.

Rather than rehashing the same old uber vs casual debates over and over, why not work together to bring about changes that bring back the fun to EQ?

Some 'uber' players log on and spend all their time raiding except for some spare xp time which they usually do in flagged zones and find it trivial. Many casual players spend no time raiding, never enter flagged zones, and look to soloing and xp groups for progression and game challenges. I found myself recently playing my druid for raids (only) and my paladin outside of raidtime (only). It was two different worlds even though both were level 65 characters on the same account in the same guild.

Even when the casual and hardcore players face the same content their methods can be different. A hardcore player might box 3 accounts, log on a friends ranger to track, log on someone else's cleric if they're short of healing, and then take the place apart. A casual player will struggle to get a group of people together, it'll probably be short of a key class, they'll find the content really difficult, and they'll have to pay a cleric to come and res them all at the end if it goes wrong. Totally different problems.

I'm surprised so many people deny that the hardcore raiders see a different game to the casual players.

No one denies it. At least not I. But to think "ubers" cannot judge what "casuals" go through is a mistake.

And I think your view is quite exaggerated. I have known "casuals" who 4-box, who had a really easy time of Xping, who had no trouble finding/making groups. I have known "ubers" who could not find a group for the life of them, who had a hard time XPing, who don't 3-box.

Not having a key class is not a uber vs casual theme. The only difference there is the content wanting to be done. A uber might wanna do KodTaz minis, a casual will try his hand at a LdoN. Both will need the key classes to succeed, both can log in friends' toons - yes, 3-boxing is not exclusive to ubers - both will fail and need rezzes if they go without the key classes.

If a uber tries his hand at a LdoN, then of course he will find it easy. He is pharming, much like a lvl 60 casual pharming rockhopper hides.

Coming back to the main topic of discussion, I think they used to be synergistic, but it's slowly moving away from being the case. It used to be that ubers could provide some casuals with decent gear, while casuals could provide ubers with some raw materials. Now, many have high tradeskills, casuals dont have access to anything that a uber might want to have but doesnt have the time to do, most of the new gear is no drop. The synergy is going down the drain. More and more, they just co-exist.

Still, an EQ that caters to many kinds of players is good imho.

Callahad

I would never class anyone that 3 or 4 boxes a casual player. They are a serious gamer. Play time and raid focus are not the only thing that separates out casual players. Perhaps the lack of agreement on 'who the casual players are' has hampered discussions.

Whilst 'ubers' don't necessarily have access to multiple accounts and multiple boxes, it's likely that once you get a 4 players from a high level raiding guild together that at least one of them can box extra characters in needed classes to round off the group. Not always, but it's much more likely than a casuals pickup group. The key class demands of raiding give compelling incentives for people to dual box and share account details.

It is true that high end players can find great difficulty getting pickup groups. I don't have multiple accounts or multiple boxes and my druid became effectively invisible as soon as I went lfg wanting an elementals, hard LDON, or GoD group. A lot of people going to the high end zones take guild groups with them and don't collect people on the way as pickups, or are selective which guilds they accept people from. Even that though is an entirely different problem to the one faced by casual players who are in an enviroment where pickup groups may be forming regularly.

If someone calls themself a casual player, then they're a casual player. They might have 4 accounts for a number of reasons. People might have given them accounts when they leave the game. Maybe they enjoy PL'ing new characters to try out in their couple of hours online a night. They might play a lot of weird hours and can't raid because of their schedule. Maybe they only play when the kids are asleep. If anything, I noticed a lot of casual family style guilds end up with lots of alts and bots because they get bored and stuck in EQ, so there's nothing left to do but PL up another new character.


It used to be, just before I quit, that the bulk of the fun left in the game for me was PL'ing new characters. It didn't take that much time. With a couple hours per night I could get a character to 40+ in a couple of weeks. Probably take me about 6 weeks to get to 60 if I worked on it every night.

Jinjre and her husband had 4 character between them, they're part of a very casual guild.

So anyway, enough with the "If you have more than 1 character you aren't a casual player" nonsense. Lots of people turned to creating characters because that was about the last interesting thing to do in the game. Multi-boxing is rather fun, can be quite an art form to see what you can do running 4 or more characters at a time.

As far as your premise about a synergy between ubers and casuals, I'd have to say, no. I don't see it. It sounds like you're assuming that casual players aspire to be uber players. That wasn't my aspiration at all. I didn't want to put in that sort of hours or spend that huge amount of time in what was a lot of, to me, boring activities, like waiting for raids to start. Or doing the same raid for the 30th time. While actually doing a particular raid for the first time, or even the third time, was fun, going and doing it over and over and over to gear up an entire guild was hideous.

I also didn't care for the paradigm of Guild > Individual. I'm a human, not an ant. Sure I like doing the collective thing occassionally, but not ALL THE FREAKIN' TIME!

So unless I misread your post, no I just don't see it.

Tiane is correct, saying that the majority of the players are level 30-50 means nothing if you don't have all the information.

In order for the 30-50 statistics to be useful, the following information must be provided:
1 - What is the average playtime per week per day of those characters? (Not per account, per user)
2 - Is the 30-50 character the highest level character on the account? How many per account?
3 - Is that the only account registered to that player - if not, what is the highest level account on the "primary" account?

Explanation -
1 - If you find that the users who are level 30-50 only play for two to four hours (or less) a week, then the content you develop around those users would be radically different depending if those users played 1hr per day vs one large 4hr "spurt".

2 - The "mule" question comes into play. Even when I quit EQ, my "uber" guild had mules who were level 65. I know a lot of players who two-boxed characters to help their primary characters get AAExp, so they'd have their "token enchanter" and "token shaman". I knew a lot of more casual players who made billions of "n00b" characters because they were forever stuck in "trying out" mode, never settling on a single character. Level 35-40 is really where you'll start to lose interest in a class or character. My poor five-year-old bard was level 35ish when I quit. (In lambent armor, no less... oooooh.)

3 - Again, it's the "mule" question. Are the 30-50 numbers artificially inflated because they're mule/bazaar/token characters based off a main account?

If someone calls themself a casual player, then they're a casual player.

No. If that's true then I'm a banana, or not.

So anyway, enough with the "If you have more than 1 character you aren't a casual player" nonsense.

With more than one character/account then I'd say you can still be a casual. If you've rigged up muiltiple PCs and/or are using out-of-game software to help you play multiple characters at once then you're beginning to move outside my idea of casual player. You're making a serious effort to play your EQ beyond just having a PC in the house, logging on, playing a game, and logging off. If someone defines a casual player as 'not in an uber guild' then I think there are a lot of serious committed EQ players who'd be classfied wrongly as a casual player.

I also didn't care for the paradigm of Guild > Individual. I'm a human, not an ant. Sure I like doing the collective thing occassionally, but not ALL THE FREAKIN' TIME! So unless I misread your post, no I just don't see it.

I wasn't really trying to say anything about guilds and individuals other than they see very different aspects of the game. Although it would be great if guilds and individuals could have just one agenda to pursue, I don't actually think it's totally appropriate in this case and not beneficial to suggest it is.

If you've rigged up muiltiple PCs and/or are using out-of-game software to help you multiple box then I don't really think you're a casual player. You're making a serious effort to play your EQ beyond just having a PC in the house, logging on, playing a game, and logging off.

Whever you see casual gamer, replace it mentally with time-limited player. It better describes the difference between casual and uber.

Well, everyone seems to have their own personal definition of casual that involves elements as disparate as how many hours they play, how many characters they control, what kind of gear they wear, etc.

I think that casual, or time-limited, players are ones who find themselves unable to advance their character, other than in AA's and horribly repetitive LDoN adventures, because they don't have the time, or don't care to, take part in the large raid experience. Thus their frustration with the game is that they can't advance in any significant manner other than grinding out LDoN adventures and AA's and/or alts.

Contrast with other games, like CoH, where the largest scale thing is a Task Force mission where you take a maximum of 8 people for about 4 hours. And it doesn't even have to be 4 contiguous hours. That's a scale that's a hell of a lot more acheivable for a casual/time-restricted player.

I see three major categories of players:
-> Casual, who pursues non-raid content (e.g. ldon groups, tradeskills, quests, soloing) for most of his playing time, is typically in a 'family' type of guild, from very small to very large.
-> Time-restricted Raider, who devotes the majority of his playing time towards the pursuit of raid content, is typically in a small or medium sized guild with less (or no) required raids, and is doing content one or two expansions behind the latest.
-> Heavy Raider, who devotes the majority of his playing time actively raiding with his guild and is typically expected to place a higher priority on guild goals than personal goals.

Of course, just as there are casuals who raid occasionally, there are raiders who devote some of their time to tradeskills, ldon groups, quests, etc. Unfortunately most people don't want to acknowledge the overlap because it is so much easier to think in terms of separate content for each category.

~Firemynd

On the flip side, imagine a game like EQ without any end game content. What would such an EQ be like? My guess is it would be very much like what City of Heroes will be facing soon - heaploads of max-capped level 40 players who have completed all missions, all story arcs, all taskforces, seen all content that the game has to offer and wondering is there a what's next to look forward to? Imho, an end game is required to extend the longevity of the game (preventing players from saying "I win!") so that there is something for players uber and casual alike to look forward to.



I gotta wonder that these players wouldn't also have "finished" EQ shortly after its release. EQ hasn't always been the gigantic game it currently is. I do think EQ was more of a grind than CoH back then.

Chances are people who have maxxed out CoH already just aren't gonna be happy playing a game aimed at people with limited amounts of time to play. I've always felt that trying to appeal to both groups at the same time makes everyone unhappy, or at least one group over the other. Games should pick their market and go after it.

So quite the opposite of synergy. I think neither group really cares for, or respects, the things the other group would like.

You missed the 4th category Fyremind.

Casual non-radier - VERY small portion of Norrath
Serious non-raider - HIGH portion of Norrath
time restricter raider - VERY small portion of Norrath
Serious Raider - medial portion of Norrath

Ranked in terms of number of players
Serious non-Raider
Serious Raider
Casual non-raider
time-restricted raider

note that in my definition non-raider DOES NOT = no raiding at all

Where does my perspective come from?

1) Do a who all in PoK during prime time.
Make a list of all the individual guild names you see.
2) Do a /who all "guild name" and /who all 1 65 "guild name"(if you get more than 20 on the first shot) for every individual guild you wrote down.
3) Note the expansions those guilds are playing in.

You'll find 3-4 in GoD. 5-6 in Elementals+ and then you'll find everyone else, literally dozens of guilds below that.

Why must you label people? There's a lot of players in EQ and a lot of different playstyles. Labelling one group "uber" and another group "casual" is no more a reflection of reality than any other labelling system.

There are some basic facts. Some people who start EQ learn about raiding and yearn to do that. Some learn about it and think it would be cool but not for them. Some spend a lot of time in the game every day, some do not.

Without further hard numbers, everything else in this thread is pure speculation. Of course there are casual players who become uber raiders, and vice versa. But you cant know how many there are. As someone who's helped run an uberguild for a year and a half, and been in one for 5 years, I can tell you from personal observation that we get the occasional casual player who tries to make the switch to full time raider. Usually it doesnt work, sometimes it does. Take it for what it's worth, it's a small sample, but it's better than arguing about semantics.

Yeah, the labels are pretty arbitrary and everyone seems to have their own definition. Like Anka deciding anyone with more than one character isn't casual. But I think in game terms that affect real people the label is pretty simple, you either spend most of your online time raiding or you don't.

If you're in the former category, you've got access to pretty much everything in the game. If you're in the latter category, you're going to be very limited to what you can do and see and experience as you gain levels.

I don't think there is anything inherently wrong with describing the different playing styles of those you share server space with.


When I first saw the title to this thread, I'm like "****!, not another one". Then read it. I tend to agree, the game needs a balance between the players. Both(or all in Firemynd's case) sets of players need each other to spur them(and the game) on, if you will.

How that balance takes place is the tough thing to do(in future games, of course) right.

I have 2 level 65 toons on my account, and 4 toons that are level 33-35. I am not a casual player. And yet most of my toons are between 30 and 50... this is the problem with these generalizations of statistics, and they basically mean nothing unless you have access to all the data.

Actually you would not count then, I am too tired to scrounge up the quote, but it clearly said the majority of actively played characters were in the 30-50 range.


On the speculation...

The question may be as simple as Time Flags (this seems the current standard of uberness, right or wrong)..

If everyone who is not flagged for the plane of time quit the game tomorrow, how many servers would have to be shut down?

Then ask the converse..

I really don't know the answer but we can speculate.

At this point the game probally needs both groups to remain profitable, but I think given the fact that there are limited "Uber" zones, and the "Non-Uber" population is spread out over a lot more content, cleary leaving the ubers to be consolidated on a few servers would probally be the end of the game.


I think all the Ubers leaving would have a signifcant but less devastating impact on the game as a whole. (18 months ago no one would have even noticed had everyone who was "Uber" at the time quit, but the Non-Uber ranks seemed to have thinned since then)

It is in SoEs best interest to keep both groups happy, but they have given significantly more credence to the concerns of Uber guilds over time. This is not some sinister plot by SoE but really just laziness, Uber guilds are easy to identify and communicate with because they are a very limited number (This should have been their first clue that they were probally oin about things the wrong way).

Really EQs current problems go well beyond Uber vs Non-Uber, that is almost a side note at this time. The current gaps in power and bloated raid sizes are the result of a complete lack of creativity going into the gameplay of the past 3 or 4 expansions. (not to mention the repetiveness of all the zones since Velious, with PoP having some nice exceptions).

Synergy is possible, and probally required. We will have to wait and see, when the utters started drying out on the cash cow, Smedley stood up and took notice, but is it too late to fix...

You forgot the category of "is this person really a robot?" Lol I have friends and guildmates, and I love them, but sometimes I have to ask myself does this person sleep, eat, leave the house, leave the computer?

These people manage to raid 5+ hours every night, group all day and have 500+ aa, some have 800+. Have max to all ldon types and hp/mana augs on all their armor and any new armor they get. Do every uber quest that is found, sometimes even if the result is nothing good. Have 250 to all tradeskills. Have multiple twinks, most that are 50+, often some that have multiple 65s. (Mind you not all these people box either!) Their twinks not only have their epics but are time/elemental flagged etc.

I wouldn't call these people 100% raiders because they do basically everything in the game. They spend time with friends, they socialize, they raid, they quest, they tradeskill, they twink, they ldon, they dink around in lower level zones, they do pickup groups/raids, etc.

These people frighten me :), just wish I had the patience and interest to be able to accomplish that much in game lol, luckily my sanity doesn't tolerate it :P.

When EQ came out there probably wasn't more than one or two people that logged on each night thinking they "Had" got grind their hardest to killl vox in a week. My long term goal when I started and read the lore was to see all of the world and some day be on the raid that took down Majong Mistmore for the evil he did to the elves. It took me a lot of play to even get to lv 20 and the adventure was trying to kill mobs before they killed you. If you died, you got to make the multi hour(or if you forgot to bind multi day) trip back to your corpse and if in a dungeon the raid back down to get to it. I remember all night Fear plane CR's were a half dozen deaths was considered lucky. Prior to Kunark, I never even saw a dragon (other than dracolich). Now Shaman and Necros solo them for exp. Now there is so much content that I still haven't seen because the expansions come out so fast to keep up with those that feel the race to beat the boss mob is the only thing that matters.

Now death has no meaning since your just go get a soda and wait for the rez cycle to begin. And people consider spending weeks in the same spot grinding multiple levels as how the game should be played.