Casual TW gamers vs. TW fan / enthusiast?

Creative Assembly had made in various manifestations, a distinction for TW players between casual gamers and fans / enthusiasts.
This distinction is correct in itself, because in fact both differ in some matters. This Discern lie firstly in the behaviour of both and the demands for the game itself, on the other hand, they are actually just 2 different groups of buyers.

This distinction made by CA is increasingly taken over by the community, but in an unacceptable manner!
Sure, a casual player deals usually not so intense with the game and everything that goes as it makes a fan. Is that why the casual gamer is bad or unimportant? Unfortunately, yes, if you read here and on other boards some comments and views. It is also true that the term "casual gamer" is almost taken like a dirty word or an insult to others!

Of course, the casual gamers are the much larger group of customers and ultimately Creative Assembly needs to make a balancing act between the two groups. If this balancing act is acceptable in its result or not, must be decided by everyone himself with his own personally answer to this question!

It can not be, here and on other boards that players who

a) are satisfied and happy with ETW and NTW as it is
b) have not interested in modding or for mods
c) accept the DLC system, or say it is a good thing

will be reviled as evil, unimportant or in general named / blamed to be only a casual gamers. In other words, true fans of the TW games can not have such a view, so these people can not be a serious player.

Modding is undoubtedly important, and from ETW on modding is not really possible and that is a big mistake CA did, no doubts! Anyone who sees this as well, is quite right and a well and critics to the address of CA are correct. This must be respected in the community, because many players still only like mods!
But here are also a lot of players who do not care about modding and who are with "Vanilla" more or less happy. Their opinion and view must be respected too!

There are players who are due to the problems in and with ETW very deeply angry with CA and there are players who have no problems with ETW and this goes on now again with NTW. Both have the opinions of the other to respect! Who has problems with the game because it constantly crashes, for example is angry and rightly so. Of those where the game is running so well don't says this to intend or insult the other one!

A mutual respect in our dealings with each other, and therefore what the opinions and views of other concerns, is often missing here and I think that is wrong!
There are no more valuable and better players than others! Anyone who says this or arguing so in his comments is only a liar!

Sorry for this post, but these words I had to get rid of it!

Greetings
Mandelus

P.S.
All players of TW games are one community and don't let them split in 2 ore more groups, nomatter which different opinions we all have!

agreed

The dichotomy of the situation is that most "casual players" are casual for the simple reason that they do not have a lot of free time.

This fact then leads to another: which is that because they do not have a lot of free time, they do not tarry on message boards like the TWC.

The "Hardcore Fan", on the other hand, tends to have more time to spend. That this is them simply making the time because they are, after all, fans, can be posited.

Therefore, when a generic person looks on the message boards, they will see, by and large, posts by and for the hardcore fans.

This is not a reason to do anything other than scratch your head in bewilderment at the wonder of it all.

Good day.

It is good that CA is reaching out for a larger audience. It keeps the product in a growing market.

But to think of casual gamers and fans as two different types of players is fundamentally flawed.

The players on the forums have only taken an extra step in looking deeper into the game. Something you would want if you want to sell more games.

Something about a particular game sparks that extra bit of interest to make just a gamer into a fan who actively follows the game and the company.

Usually those making the step are looking for more insight into the tactics or techniques of a game and find the community boards.

When your product sparks that interest it usually means you have a winner. People go that extra step to see what is coming or how to get that extra from the game.

Most of these show up around the time of a game release play until something better comes along and drift away.

The real Hard Core stick around and offer tips to new users and build the fan base. They should be worth gold to the company they help promote. And they are free...so long as you don’t try to chase them away.

If that happens then you have created negative advertisement and no one in there right mind want that...at least not deliberately.

Making games with wider appeal is one thing but an add department that tries to snow its fan base should be replaced. You are paying for your own destruction.

I do my best to remain civil, but I do see a lot of "virtual attacks" on others here, calling each other noobs, unintelligent, least common denominator, etc. I would say that I lean towards being more of a hardcore gamer, but it largely depends on how much time I have available at the moment, just like was pointed out earlier. I tend to play Paradox games for the hardcore fix, TW for a middle ground, and something like Toontown Online with my young son for an easygoing game. I'll admit that I enjoy all of them. I have no idea what sort of gaming bucket that puts me in, but I'll do my best to try and not offend people with personal attacks. And if I do cross that line, please call me on it immediately. Hey, I'm human and as prone to error as the next person.

Originally Posted by Rotaugen2009

I have no idea what sort of gaming bucket that puts me in, but I'll do my best to try and not offend people with personal attacks. And if I do cross that line, please call me on it immediately. Hey, I'm human and as prone to error as the next person.

hehehe gets me thinking about AA now...

"Hi, I'm The Nanny. I'm a lifelong nerd. I have been nerdfree for almost 10 posts, but I struggle with it every thread."

(collective) "HI NANNY."


[crap...I think because of this post, I'm off the wagon again...]

I think this is the same issue with any game, any platform that has depth...hardcore vs casual. There will be some who think the hardcores to be snobs...and those who think casual gamers are destroying XXX (insert game title HERE). I don't think there is anyway around it...I remember the heated debates when Civ left the flat 2D look, offending many purists.

The community will always be divided...but what is too bad is when personal poo gets thrown at each other. Perhaps those at the extremes can bring themselves to see value in the other side. For example, I like being hardcore, esp with TW games (and with WWII sims). BUT BUT BUT I will say that the needs of the 'casual' gamer have brought improvements, and not insignificant ones. For example, NTW has brought charm back into the game (I admit that I am highly entertained by the soldiers comments) and that improved eye candy and little extras make my TW life happier. Sorta like my wife...I love her lots like she is, but would it be superficial of me to say I'd be happy if she looked like Jolie? Maybe, but it would be honest

Mandelus, you are describing two different visions of what the game could be. I don't think that can be helped. What people CAN do, however, is help make something positive out of all that creative diversity. People like Brig General are trying to do something organized and formal about it. For those not involved in that, even just helping keep the threads with personal attacks in check...keeping comments about facts and not personalities, ripping people for being out of line, or, sometimes, just knowing when to STFU.

Cheers mate,

Nanny

Originally Posted by The Nanny

I remember the heated debates when Civ left the flat 2D look, offending many purists.

[Begin Hijack]

And now Civ 5 is going to a hex-based map rather than squares. Purists be damned.

[/End Hijack]

well said mate

could not have said it better myself...thank you

Originally Posted by Mandelus

Creative Assembly had made in various manifestations, a distinction for TW players between casual gamers and fans / enthusiasts.
This distinction is correct in itself, because in fact both differ in some matters. This Discern lie firstly in the behaviour of both and the demands for the game itself, on the other hand, they are actually just 2 different groups of buyers.

This distinction made by CA is increasingly taken over by the community, but in an unacceptable manner!
Sure, a casual player deals usually not so intense with the game and everything that goes as it makes a fan. Is that why the casual gamer is bad or unimportant? Unfortunately, yes, if you read here and on other boards some comments and views. It is also true that the term "casual gamer" is almost taken like a dirty word or an insult to others!

Of course, the casual gamers are the much larger group of customers and ultimately Creative Assembly needs to make a balancing act between the two groups. If this balancing act is acceptable in its result or not, must be decided by everyone himself with his own personally answer to this question!

It can not be, here and on other boards that players who

a) are satisfied and happy with ETW and NTW as it is
b) have not interested in modding or for mods
c) accept the DLC system, or say it is a good thing

will be reviled as evil, unimportant or in general named / blamed to be only a casual gamers. In other words, true fans of the TW games can not have such a view, so these people can not be a serious player.

Modding is undoubtedly important, and from ETW on modding is not really possible and that is a big mistake CA did, no doubts! Anyone who sees this as well, is quite right and a well and critics to the address of CA are correct. This must be respected in the community, because many players still only like mods!
But here are also a lot of players who do not care about modding and who are with "Vanilla" more or less happy. Their opinion and view must be respected too!

There are players who are due to the problems in and with ETW very deeply angry with CA and there are players who have no problems with ETW and this goes on now again with NTW. Both have the opinions of the other to respect! Who has problems with the game because it constantly crashes, for example is angry and rightly so. Of those where the game is running so well don't says this to intend or insult the other one!

A mutual respect in our dealings with each other, and therefore what the opinions and views of other concerns, is often missing here and I think that is wrong!
There are no more valuable and better players than others! Anyone who says this or arguing so in his comments is only a liar!

Sorry for this post, but these words I had to get rid of it!

Greetings
Mandelus

P.S.
All players of TW games are one community and don't let them split in 2 ore more groups, nomatter which different opinions we all have!

Have you played Napoleon?

Originally Posted by M2TWRocks

Have you played Napoleon?

Yes I have and also I played weeks before release at an Sega event in Munich and also I play TW games since 2002 and yes, I'm a hardcore player and the number of posts shown under my avatar does mean nothing, becaues my early account was lost from TWC side some years ago ... and also I'm staff member and moderator in the 3. biggest TW Board in world with more than 10.000 members!
So long about my "TW"live" ... but what has it to do with the point of that theme?

Well, let it me say this way:

If I now say I love NTW and how it is and I didn't see problems named here or I have not this and that bug(s) and I disagree with the critics against NTW, what I am at least then?
A noob = "only" casual player or must be one and I can't be serious with my opinions?

And if I say NTW is totally crap and not 1 Cent worth, hell on CA because no modding support and ETW was a desaster at all and so on ... what I am then? A serious TW Fan or at least a hero?

Sorry, that is the point of this theme dude! Think about respect to others with their opinions. Because only to have an other opinion than myself dosn't mean that the other one is a fool or troll and this is adressed to both sides on this and all boards!

And btw ...
believe it or not, ETW is for me much more worth in it's Vanilla version than this dammed crap M2TW in its Vanillaversion. The most stupid AI of all TW games can be found in M2TW. This is my personal opinion and now some can call ma an unserious troll and fool or whatever ... but then they missed the content of my opening post: respect to each other and the opinions of each other.
We can discuss about it, but to insult an other one, only because he has an other opinion, that is the only kidding "peep" done!

@M2TWRocks: I don't think he stated whether he liked or disliked Napoléon: Total War.

And I agree with his post, although I see that there is no way to avoid the splitting of casual and hardcore.

Originally Posted by Greve Af Göteborg

@M2TWRocks: I don't think he stated whether he liked or dislikes Napoléon: Total War.

And I agree with his post, although I see that there is no way to avoid the splitting of casual and hardcore.

I guess I'm confused. Lol. Is he stating we should be more civil? If so, I agree.

When someone shows up here they have already taken the first step to becoming “Hard Core”.

It is not exclusive and it is in your own interest to treat them as you would like to be treated.

Just because someone doesn’t have 40,000 posts doesn’t mean he/she had nothing to contribute or is inferior in abilities.

Give them a chance.

Originally Posted by Red Hue

When someone shows up here they have already taken the first step to becoming “Hard Core”.

It is not exclusive and it is in your own interest to treat them as you would like to be treated.

Just because someone doesn’t have 40,000 posts doesn’t mean he/she had nothing to contribute or is inferior in abilities.

Give them a chance.

Says the person with less than 200 posts. Oviously has nothing to contribute or is inferior in abilities.

Right about here is where someone with 40,000 posts will tell me to shut up.

I doubt a high percentage of TW players will ever post on boards. I myself didn't start posting until ETW, even though I had visited the site since RTW days. There are many opinions out there we won't hear. CA will probably hear them in sales figures though.

Originally Posted by Mandelus

Creative Assembly had made in various manifestations, a distinction for TW players between casual gamers and fans / enthusiasts.
This distinction is correct in itself, because in fact both differ in some matters. This Discern lie firstly in the behaviour of both and the demands for the game itself, on the other hand, they are actually just 2 different groups of buyers.

This distinction made by CA is increasingly taken over by the community, but in an unacceptable manner!
Sure, a casual player deals usually not so intense with the game and everything that goes as it makes a fan. Is that why the casual gamer is bad or unimportant? Unfortunately, yes, if you read here and on other boards some comments and views. It is also true that the term "casual gamer" is almost taken like a dirty word or an insult to others!

Of course, the casual gamers are the much larger group of customers and ultimately Creative Assembly needs to make a balancing act between the two groups. If this balancing act is acceptable in its result or not, must be decided by everyone himself with his own personally answer to this question!

It can not be, here and on other boards that players who

a) are satisfied and happy with ETW and NTW as it is
b) have not interested in modding or for mods
c) accept the DLC system, or say it is a good thing

will be reviled as evil, unimportant or in general named / blamed to be only a casual gamers. In other words, true fans of the TW games can not have such a view, so these people can not be a serious player.

Modding is undoubtedly important, and from ETW on modding is not really possible and that is a big mistake CA did, no doubts! Anyone who sees this as well, is quite right and a well and critics to the address of CA are correct. This must be respected in the community, because many players still only like mods!
But here are also a lot of players who do not care about modding and who are with "Vanilla" more or less happy. Their opinion and view must be respected too!

There are players who are due to the problems in and with ETW very deeply angry with CA and there are players who have no problems with ETW and this goes on now again with NTW. Both have the opinions of the other to respect! Who has problems with the game because it constantly crashes, for example is angry and rightly so. Of those where the game is running so well don't says this to intend or insult the other one!

A mutual respect in our dealings with each other, and therefore what the opinions and views of other concerns, is often missing here and I think that is wrong!
There are no more valuable and better players than others! Anyone who says this or arguing so in his comments is only a liar!

Sorry for this post, but these words I had to get rid of it!

Greetings
Mandelus

P.S.
All players of TW games are one community and don't let them split in 2 ore more groups, nomatter which different opinions we all have!

The problem is that there are way too many people that takes all the good and innovative ideas that they see in games for granted, and don't realise that they are being taken advantage of by game companies who wanted to remove those features in their future games.

It makes it hard for me to respect their actions because I find that they are doing a lot of harm to the gaming community. They allow game companies to remove more and more features because those game companies wants to maximise their profits, while at the same time, increasing the price of games (for some company anyway). They also give game companies a message that they can get away with making a buggy game and making tons of money, and essentially give them an incentive to do something similar again.

I'm not saying that there is a need to boycott the games or something like that ( because some people just want to something simple to enjoy, and boycotts of computer games rarely work), but at the least, listen to some people who desired a better quality of work.

I think the key difference between the supposed hardcore and casual gamers when they approach the series is that the former fundamentally misunderstand the focus of the games. They were never supposed to be a medieval/feudal Japanese/18th Century version of Close Combat or a similar game that aspired to be an accurate depiction of historical warfare, they were always intended to distill battle tactics to their most basic elements; manoeuvre, combined arms, morale and position and at it its best the series does this extremely well. A great number of TW's supposed "hardcore" fanbase want the game to be something it was never designed to be, and when it comes to discussion of the AI they should accept at least a degree of culpability when any honest assessment of the diplomacy, battle and campaign AI would acknowledge that these elements were all functional if lacking in imagination in their original forms and most of the problems actually started when they were altered to make the AI behave in a more aggressive manner from patch 1.2 of Empire onwards. I would agree that criticism of the CTD's when Empire was released were justified, but this was hardly a universal experience, I myself could count the number of CTD's I experienced on the fingers of one hand. I might not be totally satisfied with either Empire or Napoleon, but then no game has ever completely satisfied me. I can understand people being dissatisfied with the game and not wanting to play it, what I can't understand is why these complaints are so frequently framed in the terms of them being a "hardcore" player, why should this matter, and if you don't like the game why do you care about the future of the series or the quality of the game? Just forget about it and play something you do like, rather than constantly reiterating your opinions.

Even casual players don't like watchin the enemy's armies 'form' into blobs...

Maybe I am naive, but I thought this distinction was provided for in the game itself. Casual players generally do not have the time to become expert players, and so the devs have incorporated the "easy" difficulty level. Hardcore gamers can play on "hard" and "very hard".

I agree that this distinction is applied in an unacceptable manner by the community. Too much trolling and flaming on this site.

But I must say that the distinction is also applied in an unacceptable manner by CA/SEGA. Instead of providing a rich game experience for the grognards and providing an easy difficulty level for the newbies and casual gamers, CA has watered down the gameplay and instead focused on the graphics. Of course hardcore gamers will protest, when their favourite strategy/tactics challenge becomes just another arcade game.

What I do not get is the fanboys' protests. If they are afraid that the game will be too difficult, they can always play on "easy". To me, "easy" is a walkover, but I respect that some people want an easy game. Why can't the fanboys respect that some of us wants a bigger challenge?

Okay, I am just passing by, trying to determine if NTW is worth buying or not. And after reading Mandelus' preview from Munich and Darth Vaders review here I have decided not to buy.

PS Wonder how they do it Germany? The discussion on totalwar-zone.de seems to be a lot more civilized. Kudos to you, Mandelus.

From my experiences with the John Madden Football forum, half the people who call themselves hard core don't even really understand the game of football. I would imagine the same can be said here. Hardcore may mean you have played the game alot but may not really have a good functioning understanding of warfare from that time period.

Now there are some knowledgable people on this forum, but I also see alot of posts from long time members of this forum and it leaves me scratching my head. Its even worse on the main board.

Total War is unique in the fact that it supplies so many more possible gaming hours of entertainment than your average game. Most games take about 40 hours to complete. I had that in the Road to Independence alone. I fight every battle so My France campaign that is around 1760 has taken me weeks.

I really don't see how this game could be targeted to the casual gamer. I don't really see how anyone would have enough time to play anything but this game. You can put a few hours into it a day before you know what hit you.

I may be rambling, but I would say that most people who play total war consider themselves hardcore. However, there is a wide range of knowledge level amongst the fanbase.