Why "Casual" mode is a good thing...

[Holgar]

I am not a casual player. I am not uber-leet, but certainly I have my fair share of good gear and effective builds.

But I have friends who, quite frankly, are never going to have time to run the Shroud a gajillion times to gear up their toons. Most of them are running 28 point builds with substandard gear. And now I will get to share content with them.

And what is the cost?

Those who are bristling with raid gear and greensteel equipment are not the only ones who will enjoy high end content. Heck, I rarely see PUGs running any of the Amrath content, and I would love to experience those more frequently without abandoning the friends in my guild. Now we can all run it. Or I can even solo it.

With Dungeon Scaling, I recently soloed the Bastion of Power all the way to the end, beat the first boss (after two failures), and then finally got hammered by the final boss and her 8 million cronies (although I got her down to half!) It was a fun experience, but really, I wanna another crack at it! I build solo-able characters, but I like the occasional PUG too, especially at upper levels. Now I can play however I want whenever I want.

People say there will be a lot less grouping among new players. I will believe that when I see it. People group like crazy to get stuff done on hard and elite. They group on Korthos to learn the game, and group in the harbor because their characters aren't built to solo. For new players, grouping will continue to be a huge asset.

And there are casual players who cannot, even in a full group, complete upper level quests on normal. It may sound sad to you, but it is true. Now all players can experience all content, and at a price of -50% experience and lower loot, I think it is still worth it for more competent players to run things on hard and elite for the xp.

Turbine has encouraged grouping in other ways at the upper level. For example, although you will now be able to solo the Inpiration Quests, it is much more fruitful to group up and combine shards for Mindsunder. I hope that this is their philosophy in the future as well.

I know it's hard for many of us who have been playing the game for a long time to grasp this mentality (from the scores of scathing responses in the official thread I know I'm right). But the MMO community has gotten much broader in recent years, and as a company Turbine has really begun to understand this.

And let's face it, many of those who are most "disgusted" by this change are the same people who exclude new players from their groups and raids anyway. So in the end, this won't affect you AT ALL unless it really angers you that more people are running content that previously was very hard to run without an established guild (the Amrath quests are a big example). You think Turbine didn't notice the VAST disparity between players running Inspiration/Dreaming as opposed to Amrath? I daresay the proportion was something like 100 to 1. Turbine has now stepped up to the plate to reduce that proportion.

Sorry for the wall of text, but just wanted to voice my opinion since there are so many naysayers.. .

Thanks,

Holgar

[MrWizard]

this game gets better and better

[Cedrica-the-Bard]

Great post. My perspective is very much in line with yours on this. +1 for you! :)

[Dirac]

I agree and have directly observed many of things you mention. As always, a good game will attempt to produce content for the large distribution of players. We are seeing that with IQ/DD being easier vs. Amrath being harder. Epic quests added for elite vets and casual settings for the other end of the spectrum. These are all good things.

It is tough now, because the demand for new content has been so high for so long among vets, the same people who will burn through content faster. However, it is shortsighted to flame Turbine every time they cater to a part of the distribution one is not in.

[Hafeal]

Well said, rep for you.

[bandyman1]

I do have some concerns.

Mianly stemming from the fact that it was already easy to cap toons in this game, without learning a basic skill set, tactics, or how to play them effectively. And the absurd amounts of XP in the game, XP-pots, ect. already available, are not going to make the -50% XP a big factor with this.

That's why you hear so many horror stories about Joe-random the Harbor Noob joining an endgame LFM. " How in the hell do you get to 20th level without learning how to effectively play your class ?". Look familiar??? It should, because it's showed up on these boards time and time again.

That said; I hold officership in 3 guilds at present. AM and PWNY are endgame elite raiding guilds, but Lightbringers ( while having some membership who are very skilled and interested in all game content ), is for the most part, made up of much more casual players who just enjoy socializing with each other. Getting them into Amrath is like pulling teeth, for most of the reasons you mentioned, so this tech will work wonders for them.

So, I can kinda see the good and the bad coming from Casual mode.

[Arculea]

I have to partially agree with the OP and add one more point...
casual miht especially good for "learning dungeons".

While I like to join PUGs to do dungeons, they usually involve zerging through the dungeon. On the one hand this is nice, as it gets you more loot / XP in less time.
On the other hand it makes it very difficult for you to "learn" the dungeon, if it is your first time you entered this quest. Most of the time you will be busy following the group (or group leader) in high speed from one place to another.
So the new casual difficulty level, where you might be able to explore almost every dungeon solo (or with 1-2 friends), might be a good step towards getting new(ish) players more accustomed to the dungeons in ddo (probably also enabling them to better contribute to the group success, when they group with veterans)
:)

[Dark_Helmet]

I am not a casual player. I am not uber-leet, but certainly I have my fair share of good gear and effective builds.

But I have friends who, quite frankly, are never going to have time to run the Shroud a gajillion times to gear up their toons. Most of them are running 28 point builds with substandard gear. And now I will get to share content with them.

Heck, I rarely see PUGs running any of the Amrath content, and I would love to experience those more frequently without abandoning the friends in my guild. Now we can all run it. Or I can even solo it.

The difference between 28 point and 32 is.... 4 points. That is a +1 to hit or damage maybe? I know a lot of people who don't run around with raid twinked gear and are successful in the non-raids. Casual won't be used for raid dungeons, so I think that argument is irrelevant.

As for Amrath, that isn't due to the complexity: I think it is just due to the reward which is the slimest of chances to get a part of a boot to qualify for a raid vs. doing the newer harbor content that is friendlier for the non-twinked and drops better stuff. I think the answers is doing the newer content is the way to go casual or not!



With Dungeon Scaling, I recently soloed the Bastion of Power all the way to the end, beat the first boss (after two failures), and then finally got hammered by the final boss and her 8 million cronies (although I got her down to half!) It was a fun experience, but really, I wanna another crack at it! I build solo-able characters, but I like the occasional PUG too, especially at upper levels. Now I can play however I want whenever I want.

Dungeon Scaling = CASUAL. only the elite should be able to solo a dungeon in the first place. This is (was) a team game - otherwise, they should just release a boxed game to play off the network.


People say there will be a lot less grouping among new players. I will believe that when I see it. People group like crazy to get stuff done on hard and elite. They group on Korthos to learn the game, and group in the harbor because their characters aren't built to solo. For new players, grouping will continue to be a huge asset.

There is a lot less grouping. I was looking thru the listing and seeing unguilded people - not in groups - hanging in dungeons a lot more at the lower levels.

With dungeon scaling, I find all of those Hard / Elite groups failing due to the changes not just for being hard/elite but due to the fact dungeon scaling is also lessened.

It is like taking a driver ed course to drive in Nascar. That ain't preparing you for what is going to happen when you get in there with the others.



And there are casual players who cannot, even in a full group, complete upper level quests on normal. It may sound sad to you, but it is true. Now all players can experience all content, and at a price of -50% experience and lower loot, I think it is still worth it for more competent players to run things on hard and elite for the xp.

That is because the ones who are experienced don't want to group with the people who can barely make it on solo level (see above). They need to learn how to crawl before they walk. Lack of tutorials, guidance (RTFM), and actually playing normal content that isn't watered down is making them less capable of grouping with more than 3 people in any meaningful manner.

[grandmasterlogic]

this game gets better and better

Seriously, I'm pretty impressed with the decisions Turbine makes in regard to this game.
I feel like i've been battered and abused by Blizzard.
Turbine, you scare me.

[Phidius]

...Heck, I rarely see PUGs running any of the Amrath content, and I would love to experience those more frequently without abandoning the friends in my guild. Now we can all run it. Or I can even solo it.


There's a reason PUGs aren't that common in the Amrath content... it's because it's become easier to solo than run with a bunch of unknowns. And sometimes, it's easier to solo than running with people who you know.




With Dungeon Scaling, I recently soloed the Bastion of Power all the way to the end, beat the first boss (after two failures), and then finally got hammered by the final boss and her 8 million cronies (although I got her down to half!) It was a fun experience, but really, I wanna another crack at it! I build solo-able characters, but I like the occasional PUG too, especially at upper levels. Now I can play however I want whenever I want.



There you go - why would you PUG if you can almost beat the thing by yourself? It will only get harder if you bring someone else along...




And there are casual players who cannot, even in a full group, complete upper level quests on normal. It may sound sad to you, but it is true. Now all players can experience all content, and at a price of -50% experience and lower loot, I think it is still worth it for more competent players to run things on hard and elite for the xp.

...

And just imagine their surprise when they go into raids for the first time, having dominated the quests up to that point.