Disparity between casual and hard core

With the level cap of 100 in place for such an extended period of time, the disparity between different level 100 characters has become too great. This game has always rewarded people for the time and commitment that they put into their toons, but now a hard core player can be several hundred times more powerful than a corresponding casual player, both at level 100. I have literally grouped with the same class of character doing 15 million dps and one doing 3 billion dps. So it would take 200 of the first player to equal the second.

In the past, expansions with a level cap increase were great equalizers and provided everyone with the same starting point. From there they improved at different paces, and while there was a clear distinction between the two, at least they were still playing the same game. Now each expansion is just exacerbating the differences and creating more and more separation.

I don't know what the ideal difference between a casual and hard core player should be, because people should be rewarded and it is a huge part of the game to watch your character grow. I don't know if a hard core player should be twice as powerful or 20x as powerful, but it is ridiculous for them to be 200x as powerful. When the more casual players are made irrelevant to groups, it becomes a scramble for people to do all kinds of content they hate, trying to become relevant (for example people feel compelled to farm tithe in gray zones and players feel the epic is mandatory, even if they hate tradeskilling and factioning).

I believe if the game wants to continue to engage both communities, that the disparity needs to be addressed in the next expac. I play a raid geared defiler, and although I am having a lot of fun with the ramp up in power, I think that ultimately it is the wrong direction for the game.

you must be straight out of your mind !!. let me put it straight to you, you are saying oh if i log in 1 or 2 times a week or a month i should be rewarded the same as a hardcore player?. you have lost your marbles.. btw i am a casual player who logs in at least 3 hours a day every day and on the weekends about 36 hours for the weekend, AND i keep up with the hardcore players. so no if you cant keep up as a casual player and find time to log in and work harder you dont deserve to be rewarded you need to work just as hard as the hardcore players plain and simple.

In almost 20 years of MMO gaming, I've yet to hear someone define "casual vs hardcore" in a way that clearly made sense and didn't conflict with the six other interpretations out there.

Is it just play time?

Choice of content type?

Choice of content difficulty?

Does it involve doing out of game research on forums/etc to understand the game mechanics?

Is there some natural component of player intelligence or skill that can affect outcomes more than all of the above?

The world may never know!

There is plenty of content for everyone. And if the "casual" hates tradeskilling and heroic grouping there are still plenty of things they can do.

And most importantly, if you like someone, you group with them regardless of their parse.

IMO Part of the progression of the game is you becoming better at what you do regardless of content. I challenge myself to be the best i can be giving the content I am doing, to this end our guild is functions around helping the causal and returning players get back up to speed. you can not blame the game for issues you your self can correct. Our server crashing every 30 min nothing we can do about that. only being able to do 15 million DPS yeah some time on the combat dummy can fix that. Understanding char stats can fix that, understanding casting order and how to use macros can fix that. Understanding you need to surround your self with people that an help you understand how to be better can fix that. If you know any one that needs help understanding how to be better at their class I am always avail to help in game or on the forum as are many other players. people just need to ask. Heck if you are a necro I am even writing a guide to help you get to the right path Here Bottom line there are many things wrong with the game but Raiders vs non Raiders power levels should never be equal.

You can log in for a half hour to an hour every few days and make yourself very competent, and you can log in for 4 hours every day and yet stay terrible.

My point is, you can be casual awesome and you can be hardcore terrible.

I will agree though that this particular expansion brings the ultra casual nature of some players to light much faster than the others I have played. For example, it is no longer easy to maintain multiple good characters, and it is near impossible to maintain multiple great characters. Also, now that epics are a thing, if you have been slacking on leveling your ascension, then you will be very far behind those who have their epics for quite a while.

So in that regard, the disparity between dedicated, daily players and once or twice a week players is certainly huge and could continue to get worse as the game progresses.

I keep feeling that this is either the last major expansion of the game, or there is going to be some major 'catching up' mechanic put into play when the next one hits.

I agree that there is a lot that casual players can do to improve their characters and increase their power, but when the differences reach 10,000% it has gone overboard. At that point people aren't even playing the same game,and it leads to the kind of angst and unhappiness that is filling this forum.

I don't know what the power differential should be, but it is currently way out of line with the history of the game.

I am pretty much posting because I wanted to highlight that we need this "catching up" mechanic next expac. Nothing should be done in the middle of an expac, but whatever they are designing for next time around needs to at least partially reset the playing field.

My point, though, is that it is not a hardcore vs casual disparity. It is a playing smart disparity. If you prioritize your efforts to the few things that can make huge differences, then you can be fairly casual and still do well at this game.

Priority: TS for cloak
-Key quests first for gear then for plat. 2 relic pieces and 2 fabled pieces should do it. (incarnadine relic shadow quartz fabled)
-solos and advanced solos for jewelry items with more than 500 potency. prioritize sanctum until you have powders of pure magic with 1000 potency and rising tide.
-Shrouded temple event heroic for 1k potency ring and belt. place also has nice earrings.
-try to do the daily double dungeons for the green adorn and for some very nice possible drops such as relic pieces and 1k potency pieces.

And I'm not even saying to do all of these things every day. Pick one or 2 per day or do as many as you can if you only have a few days per week to play. But these are the handful of things that currently will yield the best casual results. Add in some PQ here and there and working on your epic weapon steps and you can very casually build yourself up very easily.

I think it's just that a lot of players now don't know which stats matter.

There's too few intelligent players

Or bosses at DBG that wont let the devs condense things like stats and AAs to make the game simpler (NOT simple!). After all, there is no direct pay off for spending the time and money to do that, and we know that some will be upset and threaten to quit (and some will). Its just easier and less costly to continue down this path we are doing now. The only problem is we are likely to end up where we are going if we do...

In many cases you're right. But let's make it simple:

Prioritize potency as much as you can. 20k is currently a good goal to start seeing bigger numbers.
Cap Crit bonus 4150 current max. Anything over 3500 is decent and easily obtainable.
Get the 100k ability mod purple adorns. Only need 2 of that set that gets you to 100k. This should easily get you to 200k and over. 300k is good. 400k is awesome. 500k is spectacular.
Reuse 100
Casting as much as you can get to get 100 doublecast

Win. Everything else is gravy. Those stats are priority. Priests have it easiest. Tanks need to add mitigation and strikethrough.

We don't need to go crazy stating what I missed, because if you prioritize those stats above, which you can do very casually, you will be in at least decent shape and close that gap.

I am of the opinion that is caused by us being treated like mushrooms here at the forums, and not due to anything to do with perceived power disparity between toons.

I think the rise of grinding bring into this game is that a hardcore soloer can have much achievement and reward from this game than a casual teamplayer. This seems to be a fundamental change and I think its Daybreak's intention. - edited, "strong" means rewarding, the fulfillment this game brings to you.

That is my opinion as well.

I agree for the most part. However once you meet the goals you outlined (minimum 300k mod), even for a caster ae auto to 100 with group buffs (conjuror will give 24 ae from a group buff) accuracy (till you have at least 90% hit rate) and strikethrough (again so you miss less due to mobs avoiding your attacks 35% of each is enough for heroics) not for the totally awesome dps from auto attack but for the increased proc rates. Let's face it, there's only so much cb you need or attack speed you need same with mod so rather than reforging that 20 haste to 1k mod, you may see better returns doing that. Never Reforge to potency the return is beyond abysmal. For those who don't know about it- dragons armoury is a great site to get a rough idea of your abmod caps for each skill.

That said the player doing 15 million dps.... I don't even know how they had that little. Even auto attack and procs should do far more. Tell them to take off the gear from AoM and buy some twark stuff from ka. And do some solo/advanced solodungeons.

I'm a returning player who never made it past level 60 adventure level in previous expansions and if I'm honest, it was a bit overwhelming coming back and trying to figure it all out. After a few weeks of playing, I decided to purchase the KA expansion. I see the great advise people are posting on the forums but most of it is coming with a caveat that you already know how to get to that point. I've reached 90s on some of the classes that I enjoy playing. I used the 100 boost on my monk because he may end up being my primary. I'm now trying to figure out where to go from here.

There are also a lot of returning players who haven't gotten the word about how much the game has changed in regards to stats and it takes them some time to figure out the changes for themselves. As an example see Lil Mantis's post above.

Welcome back Zanfae!

If you want to do it the slow slow slow way, do the Tears of Veeshan timeline followed by Altar of Malice timeline followed by Terrors of Thalumbra followed by Zek the scourge wastes and then Kunark ascending. You will actually need a lot of that completed in order to work for your epic as it is.

To make that faster, get some crafted kunark ascending gear before doing those quests. Also, mix in your city timeline which scales to your level. This will not get you gear, but it will give you experience towards your AA to get that capped. Tons of stuff to do. Also could do your epic 1.0 weapon questline and the greenmist heritage questline. Make sure your crafting is up.

omg please don't quit.

The Burnt Key also brings a chance to be any type player and reward you greatly for minimal efforts. You get quite a few pieces of 14 resolve gear and 22 res bracers for just being in a zone at the right time. So the opportunity to equalize with gear is there. Mind you this makes hard core players cringe, especially if they have poor RNG. But as others have pointed out, there is much more to it than just gear. I've been back for almost a year after taking 8 years off and the learning curve is pretty high, still learning things that are second nature to many players who never took a break.

EQ2 vanilla was so much harder... and that was part of its appeal for maybe a third of the player base. They dumbed it down so dramatically over the years to fit more with a majority of players, the only way to keep subscribers interested is to dangle the next carrot through some complicated mechanic/build/itemization or skill changes. Unfortunately for the casual player, that means in order to keep up, you have to put the time in to reach those milestones. For instance, I logged onto a toon last night for the first time since original Kunark, I found a mail from an old guild mate providing his build for AA spec... It was 2 tabs. We all got a good laugh last night at that.