The casual playerFollow

At least he hasn't lost his sanity and feeling of place like so many players who have all the time to play and become the high-level jerks they are. =/

But yeah, WoW is easy. -_-

If you can't play often or for long, you need to adjust your expectations of what you will accomplish in-game, and the game needs to be the right one for your 'interests'. I don't think you can ask the game to adjust for you - you just need to choose the right type of game for yourself and your restrictions.



I was rank 5 at level 25 AND I did just about all of it alone - and you can too! The bits I didn't do completely alone were the dragon for rank 3 (I was only level 18 when I got that - and, of course I had to have a group and I had to be a bit convincing to get people to let me go - took me weeks of trying to get a party for that one), and 1 tiny piece of the last mission for rank 5. Where I had someone to help me, the time to complete took all of half an hour. I did NOT ask for help either - I forged forward on my own and tried it over and over again till I figured out exactly how it could be done alone at that level. I would have finished rank 5 alone too but I just happened to die in a place that no one expected to find such a low level player - but quite a way along to where I needed to go and a kind stranger happened along, asked what I was doing and would not take no for an answer when he wanted to help me.

I say all this so you can see it can be done - the story itself is not that important - but the sense of accomplishment I got from the efforts was worth every hour and penny I have 'paid' to play this game.

You are probably looking at things the same way just about everyone else does - and that is the problem, I think. You have to be 'brave' and resourceful to attack problems differently in some cases - but, the tools are out there for you to solo any mission that does not require you to KILL higher level mobs.

(p.s. Hellecticweapon - You could NOT be more wrong. That was rude and untrue! Go to bed, sweetie - maybe tomorrow you will wake up a nicer person. To the OP - don't be too discouraged by these nasty kiddies. The fact is the game doesn't have to change though - your outlook does - if you want to play and enjoy it for a long time to come. You just can't complete the same things in the same way as the hardcore players do - but it can and will be a wonderful game for you too if you modify what you want and how you do it!)

Edited, Tue Nov 15 00:07:34 2005 by Alumni

Thank you for your post Alumni. You are probably right, I don't neccessarily expect solo play from the game. It was just a thought. That being said, you are correct about doing things the way hardcore players do. I think most of the advice you get in-game tends to say "you can't do this without 6 level 50000 players to do this that and the other". I'm on Bastok 3-4 mission to Delkfut but apparently I have to kill some really tough NM and need a 60+ character to help, I'd rather make a party and have a bit of a challenge. Maybe the problem isn't that there's no solo missions but more that there's no indication of the level required for a particular mission?

Great post by the way. Thanks for the input.

Don't give up hope, there is stuff for casual players to do ingame. I've been playing for over a year and my highest job is level 52 RDM (I can only play 1 or 2 days a week due to schoolwork).

Lessee, when I was level 32, I had to buy Dispel, so I spent most of my time farming (in Jugner Forest, if you must know). You can do that; it doesn't rely on anyone and it makes money. If you only have a few hours to play, you can go make money. I make most of my money from camping NMs; NMs with short respawn times are great to camp for a few hours if you're high level enough to beat them and you do a little research on them first. Oh, and if you need more money, you can do the tele scroll quests for Holla, Mea, and Dem solo at level 32 (might require some Sneak Oils/Prism Powders though) and sell the scrolls off. This is how I eventually made enough money for Dispel and some new armor for myself.

I also fished a lot. Fishing is a lot more fun now that they implemented the fish stamina system thing-- give that a try, but do some research on it first. And fishing requires minimal investments to start up. You can start fishing with a 1000 gil rod and a stack of bait that costs 500 gil.

Lastly, you can just ***** around with your friends for a few hours skilling up or doing fun stuff with them. My friend and I like to go around exploring high-level areas and /poking and harassing high-level monsters. Hope this helps.

As a fairly casual player myself let me just say one thing. As gamers we tend to have this "play it through twice, get and upgrade every item, unlock and complete every side quest, max every character" mentality with games. In my opinion, applying this mentality to an MMO is the seed-bed of addiction and the beginning of the death of your real life. I think it is very healthy to modify your expectations of the game and think about what you want out of it. It's perfectly acceptable to create your own predefined limit of the "end," work towards it and then be done. Will you declare "victory" after you get your AF? Maybe you just want to get close to level 50, and complete Rank 6 (this is the original storyline/content of the game after all), maybe for you it is learning the forbidden art of Summoning and getting the avatars.

Heck, I even knew a heavy role-player who played a red mage on a quest to discover who his father was. The first time I ever talked to him he swore an oath of fealty to be my pupil, and we role-played through his quest to find out how his father died in the great war. We ended up crafting this story about how his father had died a hero on the battle field and with his last breath willed his estate in Jeuno, and his prized sword, to his son. We role-played that I had used my Jeuno connections to find out about the estate and arrange for it to be passed on. For this player, just getting level 20 and making it to Jeuno for the first time was the "end-game." When he finally made the trek (alone) and logged into his Jeuno Rent-a-Room for the first time, he found a Bee Spatha +1 (that I had bought for him) waiting there. He cried tears of joy that he had finally discovered what had happened to his father. And that was it- he deleted his character and probably had a more rich and fulfilling FFXI experience than 90% of us. That guy remains one of the people I respect most in my time in FFXI- he really knew how to play an MMO.

Iniin ... too bad. Casual players will play what they want to play - and as Yoda said, most of us are the most polite and considerate people playing out there. You are lucky to have us - in a group or just in Vana D'iel. We enrich and expand your world more than you will ever know.

I play RDM (level 41 after 2 full years of play) - no need to play BST if you are a casual player. RDM gives you such a palate of spells, skills and abilities, it is ideal for a so-called 'casual player' to play.

Yoda - I agree. There is no written edict about what level you should attempt what rank mission so it can be hard to know what to try when. Many players don't get rank 5 till level 50 or so - you are NOT behind at your level! There is no real timetable there. Rank 5 is nice to have because of the ability to ride all the airships when you complete it - but, you can farm for a while and get the same airship pass without finishing your rank 5 missions.

And I also agree that the Delfutt's tower part is difficult without help - but, if you can get yourself up to the top (exhilarating to succeed at that part at a low level but it can be done), often there is someone up there already killing the mob you need who will let you loot the key. Or what about arranging with friends to come help you IF you can reach the top - you could keep trying that part and then if you get there, they can skip on up and help you with the final part which won't take but a few minutes for them. Believe me that would be much more fun than just getting people to basically do it for you - keeping you safe and doing all the work while you just watch and loot.

At any rate, please don't get discouraged. If you find yourself feeling as though all you can do as a casual player is farm low level zones, take a short break and research all the missions and quests you can do alone before you go back. There are so many soloable quests - some of them quite challenging but which don't require killing anything, just exploring higher level zones. Pick one to try and work on it. A few successes will put the wind back in your sails! And, when you reach the late level 30s, work on getting your npc friend. I solo'd the final fight at 39, scared out of my wits (but probably could have done it earlier - was easy).

You can make this game work for you and still be a casual player. I don't have much time during the week with my job, and a wife. On weekends I rarely spend more than 3 hours playing at a time, but I still manage to get most things I want done acomplished.

You just need to find a group of like minded people to surround yourself with. I have the advantage of having a wife who is rather hardcore. The majority of her in-game friends have also become my friends. We make it a point to get the big things done together.

Even when an allaince or more is required you'd be suprised how much easier it is to get rolling when you have a balanced full party to start with.

So, in other words find yourself a good LS. It makes a huge difference in your gameplay. Dull farming can become a lively conversation while you make a little gil on the side.

Also, judging from the interviews that have come out lately there's a lot more low-mid level solo/small party content on the way.

Edit: Rated everyone up after yet another series of random ratedowns

Edited, Tue Nov 15 14:49:01 2005 by SarrenValBst

I must say we are both very casual players. While we do log just about every day, most of the time it's only for an hour at the most: just long enough to check plants, check if the things we've been looking for are at the AH yet, say a quick hi to some friends, and that will be all the time we have for that day. While we would both love to play more, work, family, and other RL issues keep us from it.

I can say that we've only been in parties for 2 levels in our entire FF lives. We've done everything so far as a duo (and yes, a duo can beat the Rank 2 Dragon and the Rank 3 NM in the Tower). Not sure if finding just one like minded person would work for you, but it sure has for us.

That being said, because of our play style and the amount of time available to us, we did decide that BST is the best job for us. It's one of the only jobs that we absolutely don't need to wait for help with (until we hit LB2 from what I understand, but I'm not 100% convinced of that-they were the same people who said we'd never beat the dragon with just the 2 of us), and can do anything or go just about anywhere just the two of us. We never have to LFG, and if we're in the mood to go get exp, we can go for just as long as we want to, and log out whenever or wherever.

I guess what I'm trying to say is we don't have hours to spend, have found that we don't need High Level help, don't have to depend on others, and yet we still have fun and can play. It may take us years to hit level 75, but to us that's not the end all goal of the game. We play for entertainment and a way to unwind after a hard day or week of work. We've found a way to make the game be just that-entertainment.

Good luck on your journey, and don't forget to have fun on occasion. Remember: it's just a game, enjoy it...

I'm pretty much in the same boat as everyone else in this thread. If you work and actually like communicating with your family and friends (a.k.a "have a life") you are a "casual player". That doesn't mean you don't enjoy doing your job well when you do play.

People who have played this game long enough know of the time it takes to level a job and not jeopardize another players time saying "I g2g" half an hour into a party. The casual player wouldn't get into a party in the first place or at least would say how long they could stay. The casual player hopefully has figured out how to balance work with relaxation, which I admit is difficult with this game. But if you don't do your RL job right (i.e. spend half your day reading these posts at work *cough*) you won't have the dough to play the game anyway....

One idea would be to find like minded people who can play perhaps on weekends only and form a static party or weekender linkshell. It would be better if everyone was in the same timezone. Here is a site http://www.ffxiparty.com/ that can help you with that.

No one says you have to hit 75 in 2 months, but like everything else in life it's a competition for some, but for the casual player it's a pastime.

Play on "casual player", play on.

Edited, Tue Nov 15 16:57:03 2005 by Zeramont

Edited, Tue Nov 15 17:00:19 2005 by Zeramont

I'm a forever casual player.

I've been away from FFXI for 3 months now.

I've made many posts concerning casual playing. After going through many opinions, I still believe that EXP is what called 'main progress' in this game.

Let's not mention about farming, fishing, crafting, etc. I'll get straight to the point on 'how do we(casual player) make progress in FFXI'.

The solutions for casual players I collected from many people are...

1. Play BST.

"Switch to BST? and what about my dreams of seeing my DRG in full AF?" This phrase is taken from my friend's message log.

This is clearly not the solution but the alternative. Because you'll be giving up completely on what you are doing and start a new, 'different' game.

In this 'new game' there'll be no exp party(except BST pts). the rest is up to if you really like BST or not. Is it ok with you if you'll almost never fight in a 6 man exp party in your career? Try it and if possible get it to 35 before you decide.

2. Try soloing for EXP.

Again, if we play FFXI because of the great community and party plays, then this should be avoided. This is not possible for many jobs anyway.

I myself as a summoner have been getting around 40-50% exp/hour compared to 6 man exp pt. And even rivals exp party when combined with exp ring(as long as the dedication effect is still there).

http://img230.imageshack.us/img230/9573/img00097st.jpg

http://img83.imageshack.us/img83/9247/img00105ie.jpg

http://img83.imageshack.us/img83/1922/img00112xs.jpg

As a casual player this suit me pretty good because I'll only play til the ring's effect wears off then quit for that day. But after a while I realize that there's no point paying monthly fees just to cast Carby, run, recast, ...... It's not fun at all.

3. Farm 1st floor in promys.

Like #2. And it's difficult for some jobs to do. Besides, you combat skills will never go above what capped at lv 30.

4. Set up promy ENM hunting party. (or other events that need a pt to do, don't take too much time to do and rewarded with exp)

These seems to be the only ways to enjoy FFXI as a casual players.

- For some reason it doesn't take long to form the pt for promy ENM.(as far as I know @_@ someone can correct me on this)

- You get to play in a party. Which I believe is a fun thing to do.

- You get exp. Not as much as exp pt but what do you expect from casual playing anyway.

- Sure these event is limited to only 1 times per x days. But you are casual player right? Atleast you got 3 promy every 7 days.(or 5 days I already forgot)

Experienced people out there can give us more detail about other fun events that are rewarded with exp. :)

Good luck.

Edited, Wed Nov 16 02:55:14 2005 by lgmcben

mmmmmm, the force is strong with this one, thank you for the post yoda, i completely agree. For those of us who enjoy actual life, this game can be a little much at times. But i think SE is trying to help, w/ the exp rings and npc's, they are taking a hint, so perhaps in the future we will see some further developments.