A plea from a casual gamer

[katastrophy]

I might seem harsh in this, but I want to say now at once that I am a casual gamer now too (used to be hardcore raider in other games) and I must say... if you don't raid then you don't need raidgear!

Should they really nerf the game so that casuals can get the gear meant for higher end PVP and raiding when they're not even intending to play that part of the game? Its like sitting on Diablo raging you're not getting Inferno legendaries when you're on normal mode. It just doesn't work this way.

There is a lot of grinding to get gear, especially in PVP, but that is top notch part of the endgame. The part where the hardcore gamers go. Why deprive them of their way of playing, when you're not even intending to really join them?

Perhaps some adjustment in farming can be done, but I never want to see it nerf-stomped so hard into the ground it becomes a laughable casual-dance.

Well said. I raided for many years in other games before moving on. In particular, I saw what making everything accessible to even the most casual player did to WoW. Easy loot sounded fun, until you have it all within a week of hitting max level, and have nothing left to do, other than move on to raids. Then the 'normal difficulty' raids got nerfed because super-casual joe schmo couldn't clear it with his misfit band. Then the "hard mode" raids got nerfed because the difficulty jump between 'normal difficulty' and 'hard' were too great for entry level guilds, and now they've got a nerf countdown on all new raids, where a buff is increased every few weeks until everyone can clear the content (so by the time a new raid is released, everyone of your class has pretty much the same gear). And just in case all of that is too challenging, "LFR" was added to create a "stupidly-easy" mode, where people literally place other raid members on follow, and afk between rolling for loot.

[Xiahoudun]

Hello Trion,


I understand this my small band of friend and my opinion, and the forum is not the place to bring up this type of inforamtion as this is normaly where the more die hard Rift fans are. But I would like to point out a few things.

Me and a few friends are casual gamers, jump on do some heroics, events, a little pvp here and there. But what we find is the task is very daunting at end game and here are a few things that overwhelm new level 50's.

1. PVP Grind- Terrible... just terrible, we play guardian and lose MOST of the matches, its an insane pvp climb, you need well over 1,000,000 favor to get good gear, plus hours and hours, weekend upon weekend to get prestigue and favor, it needs to be toned down. Players that play more then 2 hours a night and DONT play on weekends (family stuff) will never get bonus weekends.

2. PVE Dungeons/Token cost. 1 5-man was put into the game, but countless raids have been added. Where is the love? The cost to get the T2 token gear (the gear that doesnt change in looks!!!!! and has a FEW stats more but costs 3x +the old item) is just way too high, we dont understand it, you work your tail off and spend countless nights doing the heroics to get a few stats and the same look... dissapointing.

3. Planarite Gear- This is by far the biggest slap in the face, the sheer amount of epic sourcestone to get this gear is just absurd!! I dont understand the design behind the token system, raiders will raid pvp'ers will PVP, but you will find more causuals out doing little things here and there, chasing the events around but 1,000+ sourcestones to get T1/2 gear is crazy, and its not even a full set its a few pieces.

4. Crafted Gear- This is another one that is mind boggling, the sheer price to make this stuff makes it not affordable to a typical gamer who only spends 2 hours a night 4/5 days a week playing.


I think that if you made a few changes you will not have a game that goes the way EQ has gone, and that is chasing off your casual player base.

I know what you mean, i'm a casual player myself. In fact, i run a guild FOR casual players. What i notice is that the one thing you could use is patience.

Concerning point one,two and three you have no choice other to accept that people who have more time will get stuff sooner. And if that werent the case, the game would be very unfair to the people who spend more time in the game.

Crafted gear is not expensive to make depending on how you do it. Personally i play the auction house to finance the guild with the blue recipes i get from daily quests and notoriety, our guild is small (about 10 people) but we efficiently share and use our resources to make ourselves gear and to make items to auction. Anything we want, we get. And we can afford to buy it if we can't make it. So my advice to you: Patience + Right people/Proper guild = win.

[Flimble]

...DONT play on weekends (family stuff) will never get bonus weekends.

Whilst I agree the bonus WF always being on a weekend is not particular good for anyone that can't play much at the weekend, it actually starts on Friday afternoon and ends Monday (around noon).

[Sariina]

This game could not possibly IN MY OPINION, be more casual friendly, without losing every player that isn't remotely casual.

ISS and plat fall from the sky, you can get from rank 1-40 in as little as 5 weeks, anyone can craft, anyone can harvest, nothing is hard. NOTHING.

Charilce and I have disagreed on pretty much everything we've ever said . . . except this. 5 Weeks for the PVP grind is a little hardcore, but 10-12 is completely reasonable for an MMO.

ISS literally do fall from the sky. You get them from every EI event, from instant adventures, from rifts, from dailies, from weeklies, every level 50 zone mainland event . . . You can literally make about 20 an hour easily, so 1000+ is simply 50 hours of play (stuff which you are probably doing anyway). So guess what that works out to at 4-5 hours a week? Yeah, 10-12 weeks.

Raids are pretty PUG friendly, and are thrown together pretty much every night as far as I can tell. Every week you get at least 50 marks of ascention and the 20 man raids are generally under 2 hours, and under an hour for the 10 man raids. You can probably get 50 marks of ascention a week if you really wanted to go the raiding route . . . so how long does that take again? Right, 10-12 weeks.

What's funny is OP looks at it all and thinks "Holy grind, will it ever end?" and I look at it and think "Interesting design, it's nice how no matter what you choose to do you can progress your character's gear in the end".

[Saeleth]

jump on do some heroics

Sorry, I haven't heard of heroics in Rift, are they something new?

[Vherkin]

Im a somewhat hardcore gamer for now, im also a airhead and a roleplayer so let just say i do not spend my time wisely.

The only point people will give to you is that sourcestone stuff are useless because of their price. Even more for hardcore diehard player. Having a t3 pants the price of a full end-game fully stuff planar focus is madness. They are just for show if nothing else.

But for the rest, maybe it's because i was an Eve-Online player but i got used to the fact i would never access or need to access some part of the gameplay. That probably your problem too, you don't need to be r40 or have t5 stuff. I don't need either. I just need something to do that is fun and still be able to progress, even if a little, here a there.