TSO Instances: not casual?

Noaani wrote:

No confusion. If you read his description of how he plays, it clearly is an intense playstyle, which makes him hardcore and therefore clueless about the issues casual players face. He can offer all the advice he wants, but basically it boils down to "stop being casual, become hardcore", which achieves nothing.

evilbp wrote:

Ok here you go.

When TSO launched...I had mostly RoK legendary, RoK quest rewards, a few T1/Instance Fabled items..and even some MC stuff...Did not even have my Fabled Epic yet....and 1 T8 Master. I had about 120AAs.
My girlfriend plays my/our healer...a Fury...she was similary equipped.
Our guild is made up of families...in fact just about all our "core" players are pairs/couples.
Our guild has some better equipped players but for the most part we are all relatively equal.
I was able to run several (at least 4) of the easier TSO instances with my guildies just fine....Did we wipe..oh yeah...probably 5 or 6 times for most mobs/scripts. Did we need 2 healers...yep at first...We figured it out. Now we can do those easy ones with just the 1 healer. Are there TSO instances we have yet to complete...YEP...Are there TSO instances we will probably never complete...YEP. Seems fine to me.
I can guarantee there are many more players/guilds like mine out there with similar results.
If you are having as much trouble in TSO instances that you claim you are....sorry to tell you but it has nothing to do with being casual or the instances or the gear.
Anyone that claims TSO is not casual friendly needs to look in the mirror for answers.

Banditman wrote:

There you go with the confusion again. People become "smart" players essentially by playing a lot (ie are hardcore). There are going to be the occasional half wits around who are not going to be able to do squat properly, but for everyone else, these "smart" skills come from a lot of practice.. I play casually in EQ2, but hardcore in EQ. With the raiding guild I'm in there, people's playskills may vary but I'm pretty damned sure that every single one of them could play any casual player (someone who logs on for an hour or two a few days a week) under the table. The main reason this is so is because these people log in allmost every day, and have co-operative play drilled into them constantly by virtue of what they are doing. They can do stuff (in most cases) allmost without thinking and by reflex BECAUSE THAT IS HOW THEY HAVE BEEN TRAINED TO PLAY. Your average casual player on the other hand can't do that, so from the point of view of people like me (and you, in the case of EQ2) they would "suck".
Now, they are subscribers to the game as well, and have the same right to be entertained as me, so I fully support there being substantial content for their playstyle as well. I don't expect that everything has to present some kind of challenge to me, in fact I expect large amounts of it not too. The solution is not for them to "get with the program", but for the "program to get with them". After all, they are the ones paying, and if SoE wants their money to support future growth of the game, SoE has to cater to them, not the other way around.
That is not to say that everything needs to be easy, there has to be hard stuff as well, but having everything hard is just as bad.

Gaylon@Mistmoore wrote:

And you play with the same people all the time. The left hand allways knows what the right hand is doing, usually without even thinking. Allthough you might think of yourself as "casual", in fact you are playing with the same mind set as a raiding guild. You are right, it less about gear, and everything about working as a team. What you are missing however, and by your own admission, is that you do in fact play with a team. So, things might seem "easy" to you, but they are not so for someone without the sort of team you have. The thing is that the content pretty much requires that team, but, as has been pointed out in a great number of posts, a lot of players dont have that team. What about them?

*hands out tissue for everyone's Christmas stockings*

Problem solved.

Merry Christmas and happy crying!

Wow, some people really have no clue what it truely means to be a "hardcore" MMO player.
When did playing a few nights a week with a group of friends and learning to work as a team become hardcore? =P

Yellar, I totally agree with your last two posts. Sometimes the aflicted don't know they are aflicted ... there are lots of color blind people that don't realise they are color blind. Apparently there are lots of hard core games that don't realise just how hard caore they really are. Time spent playing a game does not make you hard core or casual ... playstyle does. Having a Mythical Epic is pretty hard core.
Thanon, I like the head light analogy, but i stop there. You and your friends are not casual players. You might think you are but you are not. If you aren't hardcore you are certainly in the passing lane of the expressway that leads to Hardcoresville.
I do have to ask ... Thanon ... have any of the gamers that you "addressed" or "corrected" ever told you to f*&^-off ? Damned, that takes huge brass b^##s to be so arrogant. I can understand if a player that you invite to a group (notice I said you) and expect is a healer is playing their Templar as a mini-mage and failing at his/her expected role AND the main tank is dying repeatedly. Offering some constructive advise might be appropriote here ... but correcting them ? Telling them they are not playing right ? Who left the door open and let you out ? Do the leaders of the "playing right police squad" KNOW you have joined their efforts and are leading the local chapter of the "play right or die inititive" ? I grant you, as a main tank, dying because the healer was nuking would torque me and we might try to find a solution ... but I don't know if I would "correct" another player. I would certainly expect to get told to "f^&*-O##" if I did. Just my thoughts YMMV.

Here we go one more time.
My little "group" cares nothing about progression. None of us even have our epics (gasp). I have one piece of treasured gear on and the rest is legendary. All my spells are Adept 3. I'm not spending 50 to 100 pp for a master. I don't have that much anyway. Everyone in my group is geared the same. In our entire guild we have two raid players they have fabled gear but no one else does. To someone that works 45 hours a week and has a family this game is nothing more than entertainment that is it. I jump on and play with friends I made back in EQ1 on Emarr and Prexus. Back then I wasn't a hardcore/raider either. People play these games for different reasons. I don't play EQ2 to be on the cutting edge of gear and my family group stays inside the guild for the very reasons I see listed in this thread. When people call out other players because they are not as good as others you need to stop for a second and realize that person you are bad mouthing maybe 10 years old or handicapped in some way. But since you are behind a computer it is ok to treat people like trash (L2P noob).
Not all of us are like that. I enjoying getting on doing a little crafting/harvesting and when enough of us are on we go out and do a dungeon or solo quest as a group (yuck). My idea of fun and your idea of fun are to totally different things. Dying 5 or 6 times isnt fun. I guess it all boils down to hating scripted fights. I had enough of all that back in eq1 in Hate, Fear, Air.
It kinda offends me when basically you are saying you don't know how to play. I think I'm a very good player. I just play different than you do. Do I judge you for your play style? No. I'm happy that you are happy with the state of the current game. All I was saying in my above post is that for casual players these instances are a little difficult and holding on by your fingernails during these instances isn't at all fun for me.
Also adding more solo quest isn't the answer either.

Nope, I've never been told to F myself. It's also pretty rare that I do a full pickup group. At most it's guild group + 1, with a rare PUG happening when my wife and I are on alts. It also helps when you have 4-5 people letting the 1 person know "hey, you might want to adjust your tactics a little bit because you aren't playing your class properly".
Everyone I've ever had to discuss it with has been grateful afterwards because their enjoyment of the game increased once they realized their mistakes. Any person out there who refuses the advice of a veteran of the field (be it in any field, not just gaming) is a flat-out idiot.
If I were to talk into a convention of doctors as the simple freelance writer that I am and attempt to perform a simple surgery, like say removing a ganglian cyst from someone's ankle or wrist, I would probably botch the job and would have multiple doctors telling me what I did wrong and what I needed to do to improve my surgical techniques. Now I could either ignore those doctors, call them "a-holes" or "elitists" for trying to tell me how to do my "job", or I could listen, and improve myself for the better by following the advice of experts.
I find it incredibly amusing that I am being described as hardcore with my present playstyle. Apparently playing "smart" = hardcore, and playing stupid = "casual".
*continues to stock stuffings with tissue*

evilbp wrote:

We call sit here and argue all day as to what each of us considers casual. I played EQ1 long enough to know what real hardcore is. 90% of EQ2 doesnt even come close.
Dying 5 or 6 times is fun only when its because we are working as a group/team figuring somethign out and getting a little better each time. If its just wipe x 6 because everyone just wants a tank/spank then yeah thats no fun.
Actually the fun part comes on the 5th or 6th try when we win and everyone is proud and gratzing eachother. We have often found we almost forget to loot the loot chest =P
My guild is full of players just like what you describe...harvest, solo, group-up....or simple sit in guild hall and chat.
While some are finding things abit harder in TSO....none are feeling left out.
I will continue to argue that TSO is extremely casual friendly.

Thanon@

Actually if you read between the lines of what some of the people are saying...its "expecting others in your group to play smart" = "hardcore" =P

Yella wrote:

First I find it hard to believe that anyone that has played this game long enough to get to level 80 and 120AAs does not have a "team", a list of people that they have met and played with in the past that they cannot call on to play with in the future. But let us assume that they do not have a team, have never played with anyone else. At this point, if they have played all by themselves all the way through all of the solo content that is in EQ2, and there is a LOT of it, they have two choices, they can start another character and play through all of the solo content again, but from another race/class and timeframe perspective. Their adventure will be different not only because of the different race/class but because over the next several months/years the game will continue to change as much as it did over the last several months/years that it took to get the first character to 80/120. We call this replay value, much like any solo adventure console game. Their second choice is to leave this game and go try another one, just like you do when you "finish" any other solo adventure console game.
Now if you truely do not have a "team" to play with and want to stick with this game and this character, then TSO is not the place to start. RoK and their 4 original instance zones is the place to start learning to play "as a team". When you can run all of the way through CoA and MC and clear them both, then you are ready for TSO. TSO has 20 zones for a reason. The original 4 RoK zones did not give enough variety for all of the different "levels" of EQ2 players (casual to "hard-core"). The 20 zones in TSO does. Scion is easy enough for any group of players that can clear MC. The rest cater to those that are ready for different challenges. SoE is not going to design 20 different looking CoAs. They are going to design 20 completely different zones, each one requireing a different approach and/or level of experience so that hopefully everyone has at least one place where they will be challenged to the limit of their ability. This is a good thing.

Yep. Very much so. Even the easiest instances drop gear that will work for most of the players. For example, my Mystic, a Mythical equipped MT raider, grabbed a Legendary hammer out of Deep Forge that he now uses as a weapon when solo'ing.
If the people complaining here spent more time looking through their class forums and harvesting the accrued wisdom of those veteran players I'd wager they'd have much greater success in getting through those instances.

Correcting another player does not have to be in the form of L2Play or ****. Its quite possible to go about giving advice much more approachably. Yes I have recieved , and given such advice, even searched it out from other players of the class.
Casual players don't read forums...thats one of my friends definitions =D
Wasn't there a poll a long time ago that SoE put out long ago where one of the choices was labeled Hardcore, and its description was 20+ hours per week.
Its a social game, if your playtime is extremely limited, make dates with the other players in your guild to run specific instances, schedule them like any gathering of friends. Communicate, cooperate, and you can succeed still casual

Yella wrote:

Could you let us all know exactly what you define hardcore as? It seems to me you are still getting hardcore players mixed up with good players (or players that do not suck, to be more accurate).
Being hardcore is not a requirement of this game at all, not even for raiding. Following progression, however, is required.
If your defination of hardcore is "someone willing to follow progression" and your defination of casual is "someone not willing to follow progression" then I agree, being hardcore is required for TSO. Anything other than that I simply do not understand, sorry.

Raiding in EQ2 does not require any sort of hardcore commitments. Persistant dungeons have removed any and all hardcore requirements from modern-day MMOing. The ability to save your progress and come back on another night to complete it = you can break it up into as many small segments as you want. Gone are the days of sitting in front of your computer for 6-8 hour sessions (for those of you who played EQ1 you know what I mean. I can remember running shifts during our most hardcore days in Velious, Luclin, and then PoP. You'd have people on standby and people would play 4-6 hours then drop out and let someone else replace them. THAT was hardcore!). You can play 30 minutes a day and still clear all of the content that EQ2 has to offer (except maybe VP. There's enough named in there that you kind of need to spend 3-4 hours each time you go in or you go nowhere, but that's pretty much the exception)
To me, hardcore gaming is "scheduling your life around the game", whereas casual gaming is "scheduling the game around your life". Progression doesn't factor into it. I've always been a progressive gamer. I've never played a game where I didn't see every single ounce of content that the game had to offer. Sometimes I've been a leader of the pack and other times, like now, we don't even show up on the radar of the "hardcore" guilds. I am the epidome of casual at present. I watch a lot of TV series, I go out with my wife to the movies, the opera, the ballet, and family functions at least once a week, but I spend at least 3 nights a week focused on gaming. When I log in, I log in to progress. Is that hardcore to progress? Hardly! It's how the content is designed. You are meant to go from point A to point B to point C and onwards. YOU, the player behind the character, choose how fast you go and how important it is for you.
I think too many people in this thread equivilate the term "hardcore" with progression. They think that "casual" means not going anywhere, not caring about gear, not caring about masters, not caring about doing anything other than logging in and seeing if they can possibly get something going. That is incorrect. Hardcore or casual, progression still exists, and you are meant to progress through the tiers accordingly.
You aren't meant to do tier 2 until you've done tier 1. You aren't meant to walk into Guk with RoK legendary and fabled weapons. You aren't meant to walk into VP with MC gear and a legendary weapon. You are meant to climb your way up the ladder of progression and do things in the order they are presented. Is that hardcore? Absolutely not! It's the nature of the game. It's the highway we are driving on. Some players avoid the potholes, others drive right over them. Some people even walk along the shoulder. But in the end we are ALL on the same highway going to the same destination.
At the end of the day the only person holding you back from progressing in TSO is you, the player behind the character. As has been detailed MANY times in this thread, you can do anywhere from 6 to 12 of the initial dungeons in RoK legendary. You can do the first 6 or so with MC gear. (I know, because I've ran main and alts through, each with significantly different gear). There are zones our guild has not cleared yet. Why have we not cleared them? Because we don't have the gear yet. We aren't worried. The zones aren't going anywhere. We aren't in a race to beat anyone there. We'll get to it on our own time. Right now we are working on getting the rest of our people into VP and getting Mythicals in January. It's taken our guild roughly 6 months of progression to get through to VP. Is that hardcore? I wouldn't say so. We don't have mandatory participation, we don't require that people spec their AA a certain way. We simply take one step at a time and adjust our tactics accordingly so we don't waste time getting our butts handed to us. We play smart, not fast.
In the end, if you aren't enjoying TSO, don't play it. The developers stated early on in TSO development that this expansion was going to specifically cater to the grouper mentality, and that the "easy" zones were going to be on-par with RE2 and Veksar. In other words, in order to step into TSO you were going to need at least 130 AA and a healthy knowledge of your class and the ability to adapt to situations on the fly and adjust your tactics accordingly if you go in with a different group setup from time to time. Tank and spank is out, thinking outside of the box is in.
The old saying comes to mind: if it's too hot in the kitchen, then leave.

Thanon@Runnyeye wrote:

Well said.
I have always tried to follow progression. Makes the game more fun and helps the player get better as they progress.
When people try to cheat or skip things I get annoyed. I'm already seeing alot of that since TSO. Trying to get folks to go back and do the harder RoK stuff is like pulling teeth.
TSO is group oriented...no doubt about that...but it offers something for all levels of group...from PuG to raid guild groups. The instances for the most part are laid out so you work thru the easier ones to be able to work the the next...then the next.
Again ...people that actually know what is really the difference between casual and hardcore should see that TSO is extremely casual friendly.
If your the type that thinks casual = Bad player with bad gear then yeah TSO doesn't have much for you. Cya.

We try our best to cater to all playstyles, but it is a daunting task and very difficult. However, we are also always watching your feedback and looking to improve.
That said, we have some AWESOME stuff in the pipeline "soon" (tm) that I think will excite all sides of the arguments going in this thread. I know I'M excited about it, and think y'all will really enjoy some of the new stuff we have planned for you =)

I know, I know, vague huh? I is not the announcer of details!

TSO instances do not equal fun. If I wanted raid scripting, I'd raid. Leave them out of heroic instances please.
Caverns of the Afflicted is labelled as being 'easy'. Yet the tons and tons of quickly respawning mobs make this zone a pain in the <beep>. Not fun
Guess I can always go back and level up new toons until the Lavastorm questlines are introduced or level up another toon.
I

Pedorro@Butcherblock wrote:

Once you know the strategy it's a 30-45 min zone, tops. I can think of four different ways to clear this zone depending on the makeup of the group I'm taking in. Not a single part of this instance is difficult.