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What are "casual" and "hardcore" in GW2?


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Kitty personally considers "hardcore" as optimizing efficiency and pushing the limits as far as possible at whatever thing a person is hardcore about while being competent about it. (though as a side effect, Kitty's found endgame hardcores of their respective gamemodes to be competitive to extreme extents, challenging anyone they deem competent to a competition to show their supremacy).For ex. a hardcore raider min-maxes their build for group dps and tries to clear the wings faster and faster. (and often blame the healer if they die to greeding dps)A hardcore PVPer optimizes the build for purpose, rolls most of the opponents and maintains very good W/L ratio. (these people have sometimes a tendency to whisper "1v1. Now.")Hardcore openworld farmer optimizes their farming routes for maximum profit.Hardcore achievement hunters often multitask completing parts of multiple achievements at once whenever possible. WP's Master Day streams are semi-doing that.

Meanwhile casuals usually have a more relaxed approach on how they do things. They may work on learning to play as well as they can but they're not very focused and competitive about being top-tier player of a gamemode like hardcores usually are.

And then there's players who don't really fit either type or have features of both types. For ex when it comes to raiding, Kitty's not much of a min-maxer but she does raid in excessive amounts (on multiple accounts weekly) and she's a hardcore buildcrafter/tester. Kitty's also always trying to be top dps in the squad and her boon output is top-notch, but the builds she tries to do those on are far from meta.

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@"maddoctor.2738" said:Google is your friend!

casual1.relaxed and unconcerned."a casual attitude to life"Similar: relaxed, friendly, natural, informal, unceremonious, unpretentious, easy-going, free and easy, uninhibited, open, laid-backOpposite: formal2.not regular or permanent.Similar: temporary, part-time, impermanent, freelance, irregular, occasional, intermittent, outside, outsourcedOpposite: permanent, full-time

hardcore1.the most active, committed, or strict members of a group or movement."the party still has a hard core of supporters that will always vote for them"

1.highly committed in one's support for or dedication to something."hardcore gamers"

I will tell you a shocking truth: A player can be both at any given time. I know it's hard to grasp for many as they like putting labels on others, or themselves. Spoiler alert: a lot of players are both, just not at the same time, obviously. A player that doesn't like playing the meta, doesn't like optimizing or reading guides, but parks as many characters as possible in Malchor's Leap, in order to gather wood daily on a rotation, to make their legendary weapon, shows they are dedicated, committed and active in the game. While they perform their heavy rotation gathering they are being hardcore by definition of the word. A player that enjoys min-maxing, heavy build optimization in order to participate (and win) in monthly PVP tournaments, might also participate in guild events where they meet, socialize, talk and role play, without even using character skills or gear. They are casual by every definition of the word at that time.

In short: you can't put a label because a player's attitude and playstyle can and will vary over the course of a play session.

I'll go with this, well said.

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So, it seems the bottom line is that the definitions are all over the map.

So, I'll rescind my original reason for starting this thread. Instead of defining the labels, I'll just say

Let's make sure we're talking about the same thing when we use a label of any kind. From now on, when I describe myself as casual, I'm going to say what that means to me (relaxed).

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I find all the attempts to explain Casual and Harcore much more interesting.I think, neither casual nor hardcore-players are active here in the forum. Most of them are doing their own thing. While the majority are neither casual nor hardcore players here now, and try to describe these players mostly in a very disrespectful way ^^.A casual can walk through the game just as stressed as the hardcore players described here and vice versa. Especially when I see the people here on the forums who call themselves casual and get so stressed out over other people or gameplay.

Just play the game the way you like it and let others play the way they like it. No one can decide for others how they have fun. And nobody should be told how to have fun.

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For me, hardcore includes those people who optimize their characters' equipment to the Nth degree, follow all the patches and make changes accordingly, as well as constantly challenge themselves in PvP/WvW and Fractals. When they play, it is a way of life to be perfected.

Casual gameplay is for those who play with what they have, however many hours a week they can spend. Choosing weapons due to cosmetics rather than kills and survivability.

Casual players chip away at goals and achievements, always having many options to work from. Hardcore players strike at goals with abandon until completed and move on to the next.

Both sets may have Legendary weapons; casual players are more likely to do it for the skins while hardcore players are looking for the attribute-swapping feature.

Hardcore players finish a new map/expansion/LW story in a day and then wonder what's next; casual players take longer and may never even finish the map at all.

On the whole, a player can be casual with one character, but hardcore with another (their primary).

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I'm a very invested player.

I've put in thousands of hours over 7, soon to be 8, years for GW2. Played across each game mode and each profession. I've participated in ranked PvP for the majority of my post HoT days, been through about 50 or so successful raids, but only cleared T1 fractals and am about halfway through T2 (I just don't dig fractals that much). I don't farm metas (though I used to), and I haven't actively raided in months. I play WvW as my go-to when I'm bored with whatever PvE hotness just came out; though, I do enjoy the story and maps.

I am in the very clear minority. A lot of players camp a single game mode of their choice. I have friends who never leave PvE or WvW. Some who will play Raids but not Fractals. Others who will play WvW and PvE, but are loathe to step foot in PvP, even unranked. A lot of run-of-the-mill competitive mode players will be naturally very good at anything PvE can throw at them. Some really good "challenging content" players in PvE will be really good at WvW. People mix and match, overlap, or fall short all over the place.

I like mastering my abilities and I like learning professions and playing the combat as fluidly as possible. Exploring off-meta builds as well as meta builds to see what's so hype about them. I do get frustrated when I see people playing in a way that makes it harder for them. Maybe missing a mechanic like break bars, not knowing what to do with them, but that's a very rare instance and I would need to be in a pretty foul mood to actively say anything about it.

The game does a poor job of exploring how far you can push yourself as a player and your profession of choice. It's very hands-free when it comes to the player learning curve and does little to reward player curiosity when they venture out of their comfort zone. Ideally, the game should make you curious about something, then you'd want to explore it and the rest of it comes from your own, personally generated momentum. That was my experience anyway.

But... I know there are people who do not look for anything beyond a bit of escapism, and there's nothing wrong with that. However, I can tell you... If I'm done with the story and don't feel like playing WvW or PvP, I'm playing something else or doing something else.

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if you're as casual as me you can call yourself an actual casual player.i never do group content.i can't stand anything PvP.i only do some stuff that i like and the rest can die for all i care.i do the story but don't give a fuck about achievements.the open world is all i care about.i have none of the legendary weapons.crafting is way to much of a bother.grinding is boring.

so if you have this list on all check then you can call yourself a casual player, anything else is just slightly higher.

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@"Daddicus.6128" said:So, it seems the bottom line is that the definitions are all over the map.

I think that's why seeking the definition is important, though. So that we understand that we, as forumers/redditors as a whole, don't have a consistent definition for these terms. Though the behaviors are on opposite ends, they cover such a broad range that a person could be "hardcore" about researching the metagame and "casual" in play time, or any other combination.At my most active in GW2, I never hit what I would consider "hardcore", because the realms of elitists didn't interest me, but I was still playing up to 4+ hours a night. I wouldn't pug for instance content, but I'd be all over open world throwing myself at quick-join content and doing my best to support it. Midcore, to spin the term.

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Going to drown in the thread, but I call myself casual, and what I feel differentiates me from what I perceive as the next step (I don't think casual and hardcore make up the whole spectrum, not sure if that has been discussed yet) the most is that I don't generally thrive to be efficient. I can grind for a thing for ages, and go for big goals, but I buy and sell instantly, and I got around 40% of the lucky envelopes I could have gotten (and got 15% less gold for them than I could have (more easily, too)) - I don't mind, I'm just happy to be here, doing whatever I find fun any particular day.

If I had to pick a metric to be used to define how casual or hardcore someone is, I'd go with competitiveness. "I want to be better, the best" versus my "this is what I am, how well can I do?"

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"One is a veteran of the game, that played many years, generally knows how to play, and understands the game mechanics. He never went out of his way to look for that info, though (and, specifically, practically never uses out-of-game sources), nor did he ever thought about, say, spending several hours at the golem practicing his rotations - everything he knows he picked up naturally, by playing the game. And while he may be aware that some builds/play styles may be better than others, he picks what he plays by what he finds more fun, not what is most effective (and, as such, he is not above playing, say, a bearbow). He plays the game for story and relaxation, and isn't really interested in stuff like "being challenged" or "proving yourself" - he just wants to have fun."

This describes me perfectly. However, I have spent 6,547 hours in the game since March, 2015 when I first switched over from Guild Wars 1. So, am I a casual or hardcore?(The answer may be in the thread already, I skimmed past most of the posts)

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Hardcore vs casual for me is mostly time investment.It is not really an indication of skill and success though in my opinion.I'm now a casual player, games are low priority in my life and only play when I have the time. I will not put game over most other stuff in my life. But I used to be a hardcore fps player since the 90's. I played quake and UT competitively, joined tournaments, regular practices with my clan. Put me in a fps game and I will do well from the start.It does translate also to other games. Mechanically I'm solid but lack knowledge and focus of a hardcore player.

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@"Endless Soul.5178" said:This describes me perfectly. However, I have spent 6,547 hours in the game since March, 2015 when I first switched over from Guild Wars 1. So, am I a casual or hardcore?For me, playing time doesn't decide that.

So, maybe you just have a lot of free time, or nothing better to do instead, or both. Who knows? Those things do not mean someone is suddenly hardcore (or even dedicated).

As an extreme example, i wouldn't call a couch potato a "hardcore tv viewer".

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@"Cynder.2509" said:I'm just sad that nobody plays games in general just for fun and enjoyment anymore. What happened to the old days when people actually enjoyed playing games and saw them as a way of relaxation? Why does everything have to be competitive these days? Why can't we all be nicer to eachother? This and a few other reasons are mainly why i like the time when the majority of games was singleplayer and the only co-op was on the couch. Even back then there were online games but nobody (or at least not everyone) was acting like an kitten towards others.Anyways, why is "casual" a bad thing? Not everyone can sink their entire life into a game. Some people still have a real life. I know plenty of people who played the game since launch and are being badly treated by "hardcore" players. Also I hate that you have to be a showoff to validate yourself these days or others might mistake you for something else despite playing for 7 years and not chose to cluster your characters with legendaries, other prestige items and infusion stacking.Just let people enjoy the game and not make assumptions about anyone based on what you see. You may never know the actual truth behind everyone. Even new players should feel "safe" and veterans should try to reach out and actually help new players instead of being rude towards them. That and many other things will lead to a healthy community which will spread outside of the game so that eventually more people will join and it will become bigger which would help Arenanet.I don't know, but I remember the community actually being much more friendly than it is nowadays. I know there were unfriendly ones even before HoT with the dungeon "elitism" and such but it was never as bad as things are today.Just let's have a nice time together.

It's a problem because casuals always pin the blame on us. And then, when content gets dumpster'd we're blamed again. Then, when your precious builds and classes get nerfed we are blamed AGAIN. You see the pattern here? You can have a completely chill, hardcore person making suggestions, and then the casual person can suddenly go off screaming about the fact they don't have time, they have a family, or insert some other overused excuse here.

Newsflash. We have jobs. We have families. We have other hobbies. Being hardcore is fun to US. So, the fact WE are always criticized and always slapped at and always screamed us tends to piss people off after awhile. All because raids/PvP/T4 fractals and whatever else is left is the falt gw2 is going downhill. Casuals say they want us to be kind, but you have to also RETURN said respect instead of simply demanding it just because your skills don't come up to par with the raiders/PvPers/wvwers/Fractalers

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You'll find just as many definitions of "casual" and "hardcore" as you will find players, everyone has their own personal definition and though I applaud the effort to get some kind of understanding amongst all the different players of GW2 I don't think that it's possible. I wouldn't even call your examples from Astralporing are entirely irrelevant but the last line, their personal definition is the closest thing you might come to as being spot on, but again, it doesn't apply to everyone and no definition of "casual" or "hardcore" will ever be able to do that.

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I think the biggest misconception is to divide players into either casual or hardcore, they are terms to represent the extremes not the average/every player. If I exaggerated and said that 10% of players are casuals and 10% are hardcore, then that would still leave 80% of "normal" players. And from my reading of this thread, I'd say those numbers would probably fit this discussion pretty well.

For the most part I just find the discussion of "casual vs hardcore" to be another "us vs them" in some variant, which means it usually goes nowhere.


If anything I think the "casual vs hardcore" is a detriment to trying to understand players motivation, humans have a bad habit of trying to compress things into two options "right and wrong", and force their own values on those. I think a more practical system would be to create a list of keywords for people to use to explain their "motivation" in-game. Examples: Self-improvement, challenge, rewards, achivement, story, etc (by no means a complete list, just some examples to set idea).

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@thepenmonster.3621 said:

@"Daddicus.6128" said:What are "casual" and "hardcore" in GW2?

Hardcore have no chill.

There are a lot of great points made about the distinction in this thread, but for me, this is pretty much it. It doesn't have anything to do with time spent, or skill, or dedication to craft or optimization, it's all, 100%, about attitude. The definition in the OP is a nice one in that regard, but I think it misses the mark in suggesting that a casual player cannot be dedicated to min/maxing, bc a lot of casual players might find that fun. For me, the distinction is sharpest in how players react to failure. A casual, even a dedicated casual, can still see a failed raid as time well spent if they had fun. A hardcore player will not. Casuals in a competitive mode will line up for another fight after they lose, while the hardcore will ragequit. This is bc for a casual playing the game is the goal, while for the hardcore it's all about 'winning' or 'beating the game'. I think that's where misunderstandings about toxicity and elitism come in. A casual might feel other players are behaving badly when they won't just let them have fun playing the game, while for the hardcore an important part of their identity is that there exist other players who are less skilled. It's easy to see how that could create conflict but in neither case is it really about the other players, it's just that the attitudes of players from the two groups don't mesh well . . .

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It's raiding in raid centric games historically that have muddied the waters. Raids requires a very particular playstyle which is heavy rote and simplifed/optimised roles (minmex dps for e.g in fight x). This in conjunction with content and gear races drove behaviours ie you must play to a schedule or your benched, or you can't join our team unless you commit to our schedule, your gear must be maintained at level x. This eventually bled into the concept of being 'hardcore'.. 'I'm a hardcore min maxer'. Says the player in his guild application.

Outwith raiding you will easily see players who minimax but over a period of years - skill wise they end up no different or better/worse than hardcore players who schedule aggressively and put the schedule ahead of much of the other things going on in their life.

That's what it boils down to, how do you prioritise the game against real life, and are you playing/forced to play where the schedule is paramount.

Gw pitched itself very differently, no gear race, and raiding is much more niche, so hardcore gameplay is not rewarded as much, hence its such a great game imo.

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@"Gop.8713" said:For me, the distinction is sharpest in how players react to failure. A casual, even a dedicated casual, can still see a failed raid as time well spent if they had fun. A hardcore player will not.True, but it's not as clearcut as you might think. A casual is not going to see a failed raid (even a training one) as a time well spent if they didn't have fun. A hardcore on the other hand might consider several hours of constantly wiping on boss as a time well spent, because it allowed him to learn the boss mechanic better, and "progress". While considering a single wipe on already "cleared" boss to be a bad experience he'd rather not have.That's because in both cases the source of fun is different.

A casual might feel other players are behaving badly when they won't just let them have fun playing the game, while for the hardcore an important part of their identity is that there exist other players who are less skilled.More like, for the hardcore, the less skilled players, by making mistakes or not being efficient enough, seem to be actively ruin their fun. Not all hardcores need to be better than others. Some just want to be better than "yesterday's themselves", or good enough to "overcome the challenge presented by the game".

It's easy to see how that could create conflict but in neither case is it really about the other players, it's just that the attitudes of players from the two groups don't mesh well . . .This. Like i said in the post Daddicus quoted at the beginning of the thread, the difference between casual and hardcore is in attitude - in the mentality and the way you look at the game. And those attitudes very often directly clash with each other.

In the end, it's often not a good idea for those people to be placed together in an environment where both sides' definitions of fun might go against each other.

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