Casual Gamer Thoughts

[Aidlock]

My son and I play on the same account (he's 11 and really likes star wars). We take turns and have been playing the new content since it came out. The game has it's fun spots. However it also has some negatives. Our thoughts:

Groups will quickly let you know that you're a noob (or other very 'pointed' remarks) that you're doing something wrong. or you need to spacebar through content or you're pretty much anything which is not common or more veteran players.

 

We found 2 companions which require PVP or World Boss kills to be acquired. We both hate PVP - we die quickly, not fun and we gave up. World bosses are tough, we can't play together and getting a group is next to impossible.

 

This game was fun up until you start doing some of the more advanced missions. Until more 'casual' content is released, we're going to hold off. Bioware, if you do read this post then please consider the casual player. There's a lot of us.

[rasputein]

My son and I play on the same account (he's 11 and really likes star wars). We take turns and have been playing the new content since it came out. The game has it's fun spots. However it also has some negatives. Our thoughts:

Groups will quickly let you know that you're a noob (or other very 'pointed' remarks) that you're doing something wrong. or you need to spacebar through content or you're pretty much anything which is not common or more veteran players.

 

We found 2 companions which require PVP or World Boss kills to be acquired. We both hate PVP - we die quickly, not fun and we gave up. World bosses are tough, we can't play together and getting a group is next to impossible.

 

This game was fun up until you start doing some of the more advanced missions. Until more 'casual' content is released, we're going to hold off. Bioware, if you do read this post then please consider the casual player. There's a lot of us.

 

While is sucks that you and your son didn't have a good experience with the game, I can assure you this game has been dumbed down so far that's its loosing its player base, its beyond easy now. And the 2 companions from pvp, well it really dosnt matter if you get those or not, all companions are the same. I joke you not when I say that my 4y old son made a sentinel on my account to mess around (I read and let him play on my lap) he made it to lv30ish before I canceled my sub, he didn't die a single time, and he was only using 2 attacks, just turn your companions on heal mode and face roll everything with the basic attack, worked for him.

[Warrgames]

My son and I play on the same account (he's 11 and really likes star wars). We take turns and have been playing the new content since it came out. The game has it's fun spots. However it also has some negatives. Our thoughts:

Groups will quickly let you know that you're a noob (or other very 'pointed' remarks) that you're doing something wrong. or you need to spacebar through content or you're pretty much anything which is not common or more veteran players.

 

We found 2 companions which require PVP or World Boss kills to be acquired. We both hate PVP - we die quickly, not fun and we gave up. World bosses are tough, we can't play together and getting a group is next to impossible.

 

This game was fun up until you start doing some of the more advanced missions. Until more 'casual' content is released, we're going to hold off. Bioware, if you do read this post then please consider the casual player. There's a lot of us.

 

4.0 is all about the casual player. The created solo mode for all the story FP so you can still there and enjoy them without grouping at all.

 

PvP companion is easy to get you don't need to win or do anything you just half to be in the WZ.

The WB companion you don't need to kill WB to get it. You can farm a specific mob and get it.

[Klarick]

While is sucks that you and your son didn't have a good experience with the game, I can assure you this game has been dumbed down so far that's its loosing its player base, its beyond easy now. And the 2 companions from pvp, well it really dosnt matter if you get those or not, all companions are the same. I joke you not when I say that my 4y old son made a sentinel on my account to mess around (I read and let him play on my lap) he made it to lv30ish before I canceled my sub, he didn't die a single time, and he was only using 2 attacks, just turn your companions on heal mode and face roll everything with the basic attack, worked for him.

 

Yes, I believe that your 4 year old Son, adorable I have no doubt, made it to level 30ish and not one time ran into a group of mobs and aggroed the entire zone and didn't die once. Come on Dad.

[Storm-Cutter]

Typing In group chat that you're new and would like to watch the cut-scenes in FPs, and have any mechanics explained would go a long way, OP

 

- But there's no need for the rest of the community to be so toxic. People hide behind their anonymity, - but there are some fine people out there too, you just have to gain their trust.

 

If you want to continue, OP, find a few like-minded people, who just want to cruise through the game. - But as others have pointed out, the basic game is already on easy-peasy mode. There is masses for someone who is new to try and to experience, some things are more challenging, some not. You'll just have to experiment to find a level you're comfortable with.

[rasputein]

Yes, I believe that your 4 year old Son, adorable I have no doubt, made it to level 30ish and not one time ran into a group of mobs and aggroed the entire zone and didn't die once. Come on Dad.

 

aggroed the entire zone? how the mobs don't move, they stand in 1 spot waiting for you to attack them, no I am not kidding, you shouldn't die lving up in this game, before 4.0 it had some challenge, you could die to a gold mob if you didn't pay attention, after 4.0 you can pull a couple golds, couple silvers, and a few normal mobs and hardly have to work to win the fight, its a joke now, so much so that I was using this game to get to sleep instead of my sleep aids, its a snooze fest....

 

now pvp that's a different story, the people that are pvping in this game have been doing it for so long that its a steep learning curve with very little forgiveness, BUT its soo easy to earn the pvp gear that you can be in the top tier gear, fully optimized in under 2weeks.

[Oldsailor]

We found 2 companions which require PVP or World Boss kills to be acquired. We both hate PVP - we die quickly, not fun and we gave up. World bosses are tough, we can't play together and getting a group is next to impossible.

 

Actually there is a way around the companion for the World Boss. There are other things to kill (Jagganaunt sp?) and there is a guild on Dulfy.net to find them. Have to kill 20 so there might be a wait for them to respawn, but not many folks doing it so not really that bad.

 

Agreed on the PVP one though, as many have written in other threads. Since there are so many others companions, I'm skipping that one on most of my alts.

[kjfett]

OP, you define yourself as casual, but I don't think you understand what that word really means.

 

Your initial post tells me that you are a minimalist. That is fine, but the problems you are having are minimalist problems, not problems a typical casual player would have. I, as a casual player do not have these issues.

[Aidlock]

OP, you define yourself as casual, but I don't think you understand what that word really means.

 

Your initial post tells me that you are a minimalist. That is fine, but the problems you are having are minimalist problems, not problems a typical casual player would have. I, as a casual player do not have these issues.

 

Being a minimalist or a casual player is most likely semantics. Maybe casual to one person is not casual to another.

I play 2-4 hours a week and my son plays 2-4 hours a week. We stick to story missions and leveled 2 characters to lvl 65 (1 each).

[KyaniteD]

While you're waiting for more story, I highly recommend the audio books accompanying this game. You can enjoy them together and they're really great.

 

-

 

You call those mission "advanced" yourself, and you realized that others have no problem doing those missions because they spend more time playing and learning the game. If you want to spend more time in the game than the casual content covers, there's going to be a learning curve that involves failure and repetition. I think it's basic game design economics, because content repeated for 3 hours is cheaper to develop than unique on-going content covering 3 hours.

 

But you will also find that this basic structure is true for pretty much any hobby or game. There is a basic, casual level without any requirements or prerequisites, and if you want to do more, you have to start to invest (time, effort, money, etc.).

 

Finding a family-friendly guild may help. They still exist and are usually helpful and understanding as long as you're honest with them and don't try to sneak your unprepared son into an HM ops (happened to me).

Edited December 17, 2015 by KyaniteD

[iacon]

There are 3 things that I think would be a benefit.

 

1) Find a good guild to join so that you have known people to ask for help and what not. There are many that are casual friendly and it will save you the headache of dealing with people that rub you the wrong way (for whatever reason). It will also give you a place to ask questions without opening yourself up to the trolls that live in general chat. Having guildmembers available to group with for missions lets you learn stuff without being insulted or verbally abused for not knowing things. Don't be afraid to switch guilds if you join one that doesn't click with your play style.

 

2) Dulfy.net has many class guides that are easy to read and gives a good place to start with learning what skills and abilities should be used. It really does not take a huge amount of time to skim through rotations. A little bit of research does go a long way in making the game more fun.

 

3) Based on your post I'm not sure if you have issues with area of effect (AOE) attacks so I'll just include it as general advice since it is a common problem that many players ignore even when they know about it. It is a point of irritation for people that play the game more often and see people die to avoidable things.

 

Situational awareness is something that takes practice. A lot of more experienced players call it "staying out of stupid". When in a fight, be mindful of the areas that light up indicating an AOE attack is coming and move away from it. It will keep you from taking damage from the mob you're fighting as well as insults from group mates that lack patience. For the leveling and solo mode flashpoints, your healer companion can heal through the damage, but as the difficulty increases (to the point where groups are required) so does the damage so it is probably best to practice avoiding AOE attacks as a general rule.

 

Take it or leave it. Hopefully it was helpful. Good luck.

Edited December 17, 2015 by iacon

[branmakmuffin]

Pretty sure it's against the TOS to share an account.

 

Yes, I believe that your 4 year old Son, adorable I have no doubt, made it to level 30ish and not one time ran into a group of mobs and aggroed the entire zone and didn't die once. Come on Dad.

It's the internet. Mom is no doubt a Senegalese supermodel.

Edited December 17, 2015 by branmakmuffin

[teclado]

In it's current state, the story content is certainly much easier to play than it used to be, and it is much easier than most MMOs. The gap between story content difficulty and flashpoints / operations / pvp difficulty is huge. I never thought that it was a good idea to simplify the story content so much. It just sets up the new players for failure when they try other things later on.

 

Aidlock, this has been the source of much frustration for many players since 4.0 came out. Hence, you see individuals making derogatory remarks. The term "casual" has been used to mean a great number of things. I consider myself to be somewhat casual, but you may view me as being super hardcore. KotFE was designed to appeal entirely to what BW viewed as the casual player, much to the neglect of more typical MMO content such as operations (no new operations planned anytime soon - they are banking entirely on this being a story driven "casual" game). So, asking for more "casual" content (as if that is not already the main focus) is 100% guaranteed to draw the ire from many individuals.

 

Regarding pvp, well yeah, you are supposed to die a lot. If nobody is dying, then it gets really boring. I quite enjoy it, but some don't. Yeah, I think that locking Pierce and Forex behind pvp was not a good idea. Then again, I doubt that BW expected everybody to get all of the companions. You can't use more than one at a time. If you don't want to get one of them, it doesn't affect your gameplay at all.

Edited December 17, 2015 by teclado

[KyaniteD]

Pretty sure it's against the TOS to share an account.l.

 

Nope, sharing itself isn't against TOS. TOS just state that the account holder is solely responsible for any illegal or improper use of their Account by someone to whom they have given permission to use their Account

[Frenesi]

So, you don't have time to actually play group content? So what? There are 8 class stories to see. Stick to them, and don't complain about having to put more effort into other parts of game. Edited December 17, 2015 by Frenesi

[LordTurin]

Being a minimalist or a casual player is most likely semantics. Maybe casual to one person is not casual to another.

I play 2-4 hours a week and my son plays 2-4 hours a week. We stick to story missions and leveled 2 characters to lvl 65 (1 each).

 

If I may make a quick suggestion, try leveling a toon from level 1 (presuming you used the instant 60s). Using the instant 60s for your first toons means you will lose a lot of the experience you got from leveling up, you'll just be thrown into the deep end as far as abilities are concerned so you won't really know what buttons to press when since it's kind of overwhelming.

 

If you are interested in just story, and you did in fact level those toons from level 1, then just start another character. Each toon has a completely different story leveling up, its only once you get to Makeb/Shadow of Revan/KOTFE that the stories are the same. So if you like the game but want to do more solo stuff, you have 6 or 7 more stories you can play that will be totally different from what you've already done

 

Also, as I think someone else mentioned, letting people know when you start that you are new does go a long way. A lot of people would be fine with watching the cutscenes actually, but skip it out of habbit. And once you've skipped the cutscene, you are stuck staring at a frozen image for 2 to 4 minutes while other people finish watching, which isn't really fun, and then they get impatient, and then it all goes down hill from there.

 

Letting people know you are new will also have the more experienced members know they need to explain fights and mechanics. Dying isn't fun, and what usually frustrates people and leads them to acting like a jerk isn't because you have a bad rotation or something (especially on SM stuff, no one will notice), but because you did something that got everyone else killed. Will you still find jerks who will yell at you for that? Absolutely, but they aren't worth the time. And the vast majority of the time people will be friendly and helpful. But again, only if you tell them ahead of time. Pretending to know the fight and then getting everyone killed is a fast way to get people really annoyed with you.

 

Cheers, and Happy Holidays!

[Katahn]

Pretty sure it's against the TOS to share an account.

 

 

It's the internet. Mom is no doubt a Senegalese supermodel.

 

It is indeed against the TOS to account share. Get your son a free account and then you guys can play together on separate computers.

 

You don't need to master your class or spend any significant amount of time reading guides offline in order to qualify for higher level group content.

 

1. Don't stand in the stupid - glowing circles on the ground range from "really tick off your healer" to "you're going to die now" - get out of them.

 

2. Let the tank start the fights (also known as "let the tank pull") - assuming there is a tank in the group (identified by the purple shield icon on their group unit frame) it is their job to start combats.

 

3. Don't break CC - CC stands for "crowd control" - these are abilities that break on ANY damage but can remove one enemy from the fight for up to a minute. They're a great way to reduce incoming damage and make a challenging fight easier.

 

4. If you are a damage dealer (aka "DPS") your "to kill" list should be from weakest enemies to strongest. Most fights have a swarm of normal and silver mobs, stuff we all can easily solo on. Kill those first so the healer (if present) doesn't get destroyed for healing the tank while the tank keeps the strongest stuff busy until you can get to it.

 

If you are new, say you're new and want to watch the cut scenes. Also remember most flashpoints have a solo/story mode option. It would be nicer for you to go in and do those solo if you want to watch them. The game is four years old and many have been playing the entire time and really aren't interested in watching them yet again. Yeah they should be nicer/more patient about it, but that's where that's coming from and you do have a solo option to see them yourself.

 

Lastly PvP does kind of suck, but it isn't the end of the world either. You could always choose to ignore the alert or mission (I'm somewhat OCD about it, so I just grind my teeth and suffer through it, enjoying not one minute of the PvP experience). You don't need to win, just be present and suck up 20 losses. Do try to participate, if nothing else run out and attack red-name players and otherwise ignore objectives. That's probably what about 90% of low level and even 30-50% of high level PvPers do anyway.

[Avalyssia]

Have you considered getting your son his own account? My son and I (he's 12) do some tacticals by ourselves depending on time but he prefers to pvp more.

[Kaedusz]

4.0 is all about the casual player. The created solo mode for all the story FP so you can still there and enjoy them without grouping at all.

 

PvP companion is easy to get you don't need to win or do anything you just half to be in the WZ.

The WB companion you don't need to kill WB to get it. You can farm a specific mob and get it.

 

/thread

[Aidlock]

While you're waiting for more story, I highly recommend the audio books accompanying this game. You can enjoy them together and they're really great.

 

-

 

You call those mission "advanced" yourself, and you realized that others have no problem doing those missions because they spend more time playing and learning the game. If you want to spend more time in the game than the casual content covers, there's going to be a learning curve that involves failure and repetition. I think it's basic game design economics, because content repeated for 3 hours is cheaper to develop than unique on-going content covering 3 hours.

 

But you will also find that this basic structure is true for pretty much any hobby or game. There is a basic, casual level without any requirements or prerequisites, and if you want to do more, you have to start to invest (time, effort, money, etc.).

 

Finding a family-friendly guild may help. They still exist and are usually helpful and understanding as long as you're honest with them and don't try to sneak your unprepared son into an HM ops (happened to me).

 

Thank you!!!

[Aidlock]

Have you considered getting your son his own account? My son and I (he's 12) do some tacticals by ourselves depending on time but he prefers to pvp more.

 

Would be ideal, but I only have 1 laptop.

[ZanyaCross]

My son and I play on the same account (he's 11 and really likes star wars). We take turns and have been playing the new content since it came out. The game has it's fun spots. However it also has some negatives. Our thoughts:

Groups will quickly let you know that you're a noob (or other very 'pointed' remarks) that you're doing something wrong. or you need to spacebar through content or you're pretty much anything which is not common or more veteran players.

 

We found 2 companions which require PVP or World Boss kills to be acquired. We both hate PVP - we die quickly, not fun and we gave up. World bosses are tough, we can't play together and getting a group is next to impossible.

 

This game was fun up until you start doing some of the more advanced missions. Until more 'casual' content is released, we're going to hold off. Bioware, if you do read this post then please consider the casual player. There's a lot of us.

 

Sorry you and your son aren't having fun, OP, but 90% of the new content is geared toward casual players. Getting mad because every single thing in the game isn't tailored to your likes isn't exactly a great lesson to be passing on to the next generation.

[KyaniteD]

It is indeed against the TOS to account share. Get your son a free account and then you guys can play together on separate computers.

 

It's exactly the other way around. Sharing per se is not against the ToS, but accounts for minors under 13 is against ToS. So he did it right.

Edited December 17, 2015 by KyaniteD

[branmakmuffin]

Nope, sharing itself isn't against TOS. TOS just state that the account holder is solely responsible for any illegal or improper use of their Account by someone to whom they have given permission to use their Account

Read the EULA (which is not the TOS, I grant you). Language in there arguably makes it a violation to share an account.

[Aidlock]

Sorry you and your son aren't having fun, OP, but 90% of the new content is geared toward casual players. Getting mad because every single thing in the game isn't tailored to your likes isn't exactly a great lesson to be passing on to the next generation.

 

Not mad. You completely missed the point. I'm just waiting on more story content. Taking a break.