Since ‘casual’ and ‘hardcore’ are terms whose definition changes from player to player, I’ll preface my thoughts with my definition; the investment someone puts into something. This investment doesn’t necessarily mean time, but it doesn’t exclude it either. It’s more the fervor that they pursue the activity with.
Let’s take Angry Birds, as an example.
A casual player might play the game while riding public transport while their body delivers much needed caffeine to their brain first thing in the morning, or during a quick break to pass the time. Their investment comes down to ‘beating the level’.
Where a hardcore player differs is they don’t just aim to beat the game; they aim to get the best possible scores, beat the levels with the most efficiency possible. While their aim is ultimately the same as a casual players, the amount of investment they put into beating the level is so much more, because it’s not enough to just beat the game.
Bringing it back to GW2 and dungeons. A casual dungeon-runner’s aim is to ‘beat the dungeon’ while a hardcore dungeon-runner’s aim is to continuously chip away the excess to improve the efficiency and speed of the run.
On to the topic:
It is not about easy casual = easy content, its about content accessibility. The problem with difficulty in GW2 is the core promise that you don’t have to wait to have fun.
I don’t think that’s quite it.
If you look at the current dungeons, there aren’t any challenge gates to the player accessing the content (outside of levels, needing 5 people in most cases and events for some of them, although that has no bearing on difficulty).
You can go to AC and try it any time you like; however, there’s no promise that you’ll complete said content.
However, this is where I think people go wrong when talking about accessibility.
The content should be accessible; however, accessible =/= instantly complete-able. Players should be free to try the content without some arbitrary gate, but it shouldn’t be expected that, without a certain level of play, they’ll complete it.
As for ‘waiting for the fun’, the fun should be in the content, and in terms of interactive media, the ‘fun’, for the most part, is generated from engagement. Of course, as always, this is down to the player as to what level of engagement is needed.
Generally, a casual player is going to need lower levels of engagement (read: less depth) to find something fun. On the flip side of this, if a hardcore player plays content with little depth, they make their own engagement (read: efficiency and speed).
I’m not saying only produce content that only caters to hardcore players, but I’d say well designed content doesn’t cater to one or the other; it finds a way to please both.
That’s my theory and thoughts on it, anyway
Life is a journey.
Time is a river.
The door is ajar.
