Good Morning, Wizard101 had harder mob Bosses and mobs in general before they, made them less of a challenge. So this argument, it not significant. As you said old wizard101 was not as easy as it is today, plain and simple. Note: if you really want constructive feed back, it would be wise to ask the devs in KI Live or, try to contact a, advanced combat content creator for the best possible answers. Please note that, it's important to get all pieces of the puzzle right and not just a small piece.
The game is really kicking the can down the road in regards to it's storytelling and lifespan. People MIGHT think "I am going to stop after Dragonspyre/Novus/(x) and that is that!", when that is not reality. The game is fun, but players do seek mental stimulation and engagement, and this game does provide it. They eventually buy the new world and start questing. For a game to provide engagement (and stimulation), it must be difficult, provide an accomplishable challenge that doesn't frustrate nor bore a user. It isn't a question of "is it anti-casual?", it's a question of "how do we make Wizard101 casual"? Players seek satisfaction in this game by obtaining items (stitch, the tier 1 best gear, pets, castles, etc), or optionally PvP which is more engagement and challenges to a player. The quality of the gear depends upon the difficulty and (unknown calculation) of drop luck, and determination If it helps you, once W101 has a new world; the idea of "casual" is thrown out of the window. A new world means new enemies, which requires new gear. Casual wizard101 has already existed (technically just bear with me here), Karamelle was considered a "useless" world as the endgame gear was WORSE than Dragoons gear for all classes. Lemuria came out and then Dragoons gear was gone. Then Novus came out and Lemuria gear was out the window. You get the idea for even Waterworks/Malistaire/Hades/Exalted Duel gear with Darkmoor. Short answer is, it's not a question of "is or will W101 be casual?", it's a question of "how do we make w101 more applicable to casual playstyles?". There's the obvious choices of: just help in the Teamup Kiosk, do fishing or pets. Every single option w101 has for casuals, always requires the best and highest tier gear, giving players an ultimatum, get the best gear or not have the best experience. W101 isn't like Team Fortress 2, where players feel obligated to compete in a game with no rewards for competition. You just have fun in Team Fortress 2, no money (besides their weapons which can be crafted or randomly dropped BOTH for free at the expense of time. Or you could just by the normal weapons for pennies and dimes each). Wizard101 is a game that eloped into a massive competition of who has the best gear. No one wants an undergeared wizard in a Hades run especially if they are a hitting class, but shooter games don't have this issue frequently. Shooter games rely on abilities and mechanics, not gear and so much w101 'strategy' (unsure if it is a "real strategy" game). There's no point playing a shooter game if all you can do is use reaction time, then you get destroyed by a player who uses a shield ability or a ghost ability. Wizard101 corrected itself into being a "dps check", as the game hasn't changed the META. Storm->Fire->Death->Myth->Balance->Life->Ice in terms of DPS check. This hierarchy will guarantee the likelihood of the respective class being bladed first, with storm being most likely. Roshambo is a great way to run a game as that is how Wizard101 works to being with. Pokemon is just a really large game of Roshambo and bug collecting and it is fun. Players just don't enjoy the fact they have to fork over considerable money to a game just to get some gear and stitch it.
I would say that Wizard101 doesn't really touch on its side content a lot, people play the game to experience the story and that's it and when the story is done, there is nothing left to do. They need to create more seasonal events like the Lost Pages event or the Nosferabbit dungeon that opens in Halloween. FFXIV keeps doing new stories for their Halloween, Christmas, New Years and other holiday events so those events never get stale. You may be helping a reindeer learn to use magic in one Christmas event, and the next year you could be helping a yeti reconnect with his brothers for the holidays. There are some boring repetitive events(like the Dragon Quest crossover which too small and too unrewarding to be done more than once) but other repetitive collabs like the Yo-Kai Watch one are fun). I want to see another Lost Pages type event where you have to hunt down Spellwrit monsters in Marleybone, Zafaria and Khrysalis. Come on, KingsIsle, don't let the writers of FFXIV show you up! ;p
The fear was a significant upgrade to waterworks. All of the best robe hat boots and wands was all in one place. If you wanted athame and ring you could farm the Olympus secret bosses or Morganthe. Only issue was pets. If you didn’t know someone with good pets you would miss out on stats. Now the PVE is too complicated. Some of the best gear is gate kept because if you don’t have a guild you can’t do raids. And the gear is too spread out.
I'm part of that group 2. Been playing since the game came in when I was in like 3rd grade. It really sucks not being able to do those harder activities especially being in college and working (not to mention no one I used to play with plays anymore). I wish they made more content for my group of people who have been so loyal to the game. I find myself logging on, checking out a couple things, getting bored and logging off.
I wouldn't say it's necessarily anti-casual/average but making content (raids) that is only realistically accessible to influencers and old gatekept friendgroups is extremely irritating to average players.
This video perfectly encapsulates why I stopped playing wiz about a year ago. I used to be a casual, and then I was an average when I spent an entire summer grinding to get to max and having fun with friends along the way. I was a Life wizard and I went super in depth on the game and tried to mega-optimize my progression. I got my revered wand, farmed dragoon amulet and darkmoor, hell I even got into couch potato farming and pet optimization. I was loving it all... until Novus. Until balance patches heavily nerfing the lore spells I spent money to get. Pivoting my entire school to over-time healing. Dual-classing being forced upon me, sacrificing the class identity i loved so much about old wiz(especially since there's literally 0 benefit to single-schooling nowadays). Pivoting the entire gameplay experience around NEEDING to be in a guild, NEEDING to do raids, and making most updates and changes and new cards EXTREMELY pvp-centric. After all that mess, midway through Novus, I just... dropped the game. I am done. Kingsisle has filtered me out. Because they're not only gatekeeping me from doing endgame content by not being able to be in a guild, I also just... don't like advanced combat. It's a bastardized Yugioh at best and forces you to use schools outside of the one you chose, which is anti-player-choice and makes me lose that power fantasy of being a powerful wizard controlling a certain element or magical aspect with total mastery.
I didn't get as far as you but I stopped playing for the same reason, game just felt way too grindy. If ur up for an alternative I think pirate101 is great. The only time you should is literally at max lvl and since it doesn't get many updates you won't need to keep grinding later on or at least in the near future. Even at max you don't NEED to grind, I have some mac lvls and I haven't farmed for any hear at all, of course I'm at a disadvantage to those who have but I still have fun without it
Just today, doing standard mode in team up took 2 hours to complete. Before this it took an hour to get a team of 4 to not leave in the middle of it. I'm part of the hardcore community so I attempted challenge mode and regularly raid with Squad III. I had to explain to a casual player about the dungeon and walk them through the maze. It took so long to do the dream water because one of the players was afk at Malus and the casual player was completely lost. By the time we got all the dream water, the casual player was soloing the dragon. I had them flee, then I guided them to the Malus. Imo, KI does not put enough effort into EXPLAINING the game to the average player, rather than relying on content creators to test everything and make tutorials. Average players don't watch wizard101 guides the moment they drop. I personally find spellemented spells and gambits easy to understand but average players do not. I understand how raids work and advanced combat and stat caps, average players do not. The problem is that there is too much to explain to someone in-game. KI needs to invest into tools and systems to explain this to new players. The raid guide in the guild hall barely explains anything. It doesn't explain stat caps, it doesn't explain advanced combat well enough, it doesn't explain how raid gates operate. There are just not enough easy to find and in-depth systems to explain the game.
My wife and I used to be steady players. We dropped off because they made the game in upper levels so hard that it stopped being fun. After a 5 year lapse we have come back to find out that they have nerfed spells to a ridiculous level, only to come out with spellaments which makes you have to grind or spend crowns to get your spell strength back, and it's not even a full return of the spell strength, just a portion of it. raised the cost of pet hatching to a ridiculous level, and still refuse to make the first story arc free to play. New players are still met with a pay wall after an extremely smart portion of wizard city. The main gist of what I'm seeing is the people at kingsisle are catering to the people who have the ability to dump large amounts of cash in the crown shop. Nuff said.
Love the vid and agree with everything you had to say! I wonder if KI has been catering towards the hardcore players more cause they give KI more money? Then that opens a whole new flood gate of issues.
Because of stat maxes, unless you’re a min maxer or hardcore player other gear should be fine for you (mire or aeon gear), you don’t need the reaver gear for an extra 2 pierce. You can also do jewel combinations and pets to compensate other stats. That being said the nightmare standard shouldn’t be as hard as it is. There should’ve been something other then raids that prepared casuals for the nightmare dungeon, (leading up to darkmoor we had Tartarus prior to that). Looks like ki is going in the direction destiny 2 is going with their raids and content. If there was a casual version first and then pushed out the nightmare (tweak it down a notch) I’ll be fine with is. Also PVP only spells should not be locked behind PVP it makes the krok fight way more annoying in standard mode.
each nightmare run takes about an hour or 2 for casuals. Just do the math how many hours they wasted in their life in a single dungeon for 25 clears. Thats a problem.
People say you have to basically be unemployed to be a sweaty on this game, sorry but I work 40 hours a week. I play video games as a hobby I don't want an endless grind that becomes invalidated quickly when a new world or pack inevitably drops
I beat the game when i was 12 when the cap was 50 and when it was raised to 60. The game was extremely casual back then. I even made it to warlord as a child. Idk what says casual more than that.
I think an interesting concept would be to create a system of 4-man group content (little to no comms needed) where your team fights a couple/few bosses and each fight drops endgame reagents / chance of gear (both of your choosing and of course at a rate of the devs choosing). The rates would obviously be slower than the main story content / raids but not painfully slow (*cough cough* dragoon). This system would be ever expanding so there would be more content added each update / major update. There should be bunch of different dungeons with their own sceneries and not just one boring-looking room like the rematch fights were (Think lemuria themed dungeon or Marleybone theme etc). Throw in some minor mechanics/cheats here and there. Throw this content onto a sigil that rotates what dungeon you do every every 30 min - 1 hour or so. Put it into the Arena and put crafting/potion vendors there for convenience. Teamup would obviously have to be enabled. Pre-formed groups would of course be able to run it much faster but its not required. If you really want to go crazy then add level scaling so low levels will scale up to current max levels (stats would scale too of course) and let them gain EXP from this and unlock spells from story content so you're not required to play months of story quests just to play max level content, but that's a topic for another time :D Gives the more casual/average players a system to use that isn't just fighting a single boss over and over. I guess standard mode was supposed to be like this kind of, but I think doing the same dungeon over and over again + badge locking + low drop rates of the actual gear + non-school locked drops = lame (IMO) Curious what others think of this concept :)
I miss getting a gear set roughly every thirty levels. Zeus to waterworks to darkmoor. Now we're getting a new best gear with each world, and they never feel impactful
I resonate a lot with the average player, I have seven maxes and I dual box (5 on one acc, 2 on other) so I usually play solo. Based on that and I used to live for pvp I might've been considered a hardcore but these days the time commitment bar has been raised so high I really don't think I can say I'm anywhere near hardcore. When raids came out I was initially interested but when I saw that time commitment and what was required I quickly lost interest and used other ways to get gear. Now with wallaru I renewed my membership for a month and then canceled it. Waiting for the new dungeon with the latest news that dropped on that. I probably won't renew and will simply wait until they change things or a pack drops to be honest and if that doesn't happen then I'll just keep waiting and not play until then
As someone who just came back from a few year break my highest accounts are lvl 83…all this new raid stuff is a shock 😂 definitely having to relearn the game!
To preface, I'd say I'm in group 2 possibly looking to get into group 3 (though it is daunting lol): I don't know if the patches changed your mind, but if they didn't then I don't think the dungeon is that difficult. I do agree that it is extremely tedious, and having to use team up can make it even more rough, but the difficulty didn't seem to be the problem for me. I also agree that 25 completed runs for the badge is way too much, so I'm grateful they lowered the requirement.
I was a member of group 3 but I pivoted to group 2 when raids came out, and pvp getting worse. There’s no need for me to have the 100% best gear anymore since pvp isn’t worth playing to me anymore.
They are 100% anti casual they arent even acknowledging the fact that nightmare standard is hard (at least what i can tell from ratbeards reactions) I think this is the death of wiz for me for good unless they redeem themselves which they never will with how big their ego is
the most annoying part to all this is wiz keeps making us do obstacles with this laggy delayed movement pad and do a maze AND THEN BEAT A DUMB CHEAT BOSS 25 times 😂😂😂😂
These updates really made me lose interest in questing and farming, I still have a month of mem left I bought but it is just gonna go to waste cause I don't feel like torturing myself so now I just beastmoon XD
Hey so I’m in group 1 and haven’t played in awhile and am wanting to become a group 2-3 player is there any videos you’d recommend to catch me up on the best gear and basically what I should be doing at every level?
As a casual group player I agree completely, I usually only play for a month or so only when they add a new world other than that I usually don’t login at all last time I played before now was back when empyera pt2 came out
As someone who’s been playing since the start but never had the available time to grind to max I’ve noticed the goal post getting further and further away.
I agree actually. In fact, I have entertained the thought of ditching W101 in favor of P101 again, simply because in Prate 101, I can become max level in less than a month if I play every single day that month, in Wizard 101.. I have been playing my death as a main wizard for little over 3 years now and I am only level 103, yeah, no thanks. I enjoy the game, I love the game, but the dreams of becoming max-level in Wiz, have kind of faded, and honestly, my new characters really only quest up to the end of Dragonspyre and then I'm out. I must say that I prefer Pirate 101 at this rate because I feel it respects my time as a player and as a human being in a far more superior manor that Wizard 101 every does, or has done in the past. EDIT: and I will add, that I know players have been asking for an update to Pirate 101 for years now, but I honestly think it's for the best if KI leaves that game as it is, and just continues to run the servers for the game. Maybe they make minor convenience tweaks, but on terms of adding new worlds, I would HATE to see Pirate 101 turn out to be as much of a time-hog as Wizard 101 is. Prate 101 really is the better alternative for casuals, and I think it should remain this way. If Wiz caters to the try-hards, than Pirate needs to cater to the casuals.
As someone who would like to play more (maybe even be a hardcore player), I just don’t have the time. From what I’ve observed, a lot of average players want to play more, but some of us are bounded by our jobs. In my case, being a full time manager at my job and a full time college student just makes it impossible for me to farm for any good gear. I’m functioning with Aeon, and some of my characters still have Merciless gear. If it wasn’t for the Fairy Kei Hoard Pack and my unfortunate willingness to spend quite a bit of money on getting the gear, I don’t think I could realistically ever get the newer, farmable sets. I think Kingsisle has slightly improved at listening to their fanbase, but they still have a long way to go.
i did the nightmare dungeon once (i consider myself an average player) and instantly thought "yea i won't be doing this another 24 times". just went and got plot armor instead. if you played wiz 8 hours a day it would still take you 3 full days of grinding, and i would think you'd need a good team to do that. most people it would prob take 8 hours a day for 6 days, since many runs don't go well, bc people don't know what they're doing.
Yeah I have to agree I'm usually casual and average and try to get the best gear to breeze through the game easily but at the same time one of the best gear to have me at good damage is blocked by raids and it hurts me to do it because it's so stressful and I never really went to one so yeah it's becoming less casual and I hate it.
I’ve just recently returned to Wizards, after watching this video and reading some of the comments, I’m wondering if I should even bother. You can’t even join a guild unless you are max level! I’m level 72 life. So I guess I’m soloing (well..what I can anyway. That.. yay.. there are raids. And the best gear is locked inside. Another yay. What is the point in playing if I can’t get in, if I can’t improve?
I wasn't active on the game when raids and challenge modes released, so I was very confused coming back to all of it with no explanation (along with gambits, archmastery, spellements, etc.) Once I finished Wallaru I was going to wait for the standard mode of the Nightmare dungeon to release, but it doesn't seem like there's much incentive at this point. I was excited to jump into a difficult dungeon since I haven't done any since Darkmoor ages ago but everything seems so exclusive now. I don't stick with the game for long enough periods of time to feel the need to join guilds or discord servers to be able to do any of the new high level content. Maybe at some point I'll try a raid or Nightmare, but I'm not going to farm it for gear if it's only a slight upgrade from aeon which is far easier to farm.
I'm now in the first group. First started 2014. Did cards for crowns first two years before getting membership. Don't do PVP, raids, beast moon, ect... because they are to toxic for me. I just do the main questing. I have 6 max wizards and just got tired of only one new world a year. Each new world would take 2 or 3 months to max my 6 again and grind new gear. I would then just help others for 8 or 9 months. It gets boring 4 or 5 years of just helping. My membership ran out February 2024 and I didn't renew it. Most people there questing are great and friendly. I stil play some to help but the last world I got with crowns was Celestia. Not much fun at lvl 170. I still love the game.
The nightmare dungeon is a literally a public raid ppl that play the game not Aton have guilds and don’t do raids so it’s probably new to most or some players
Only just started wallaru after a 3 year wiz break and i have to say cheating bosses are the sonlge worst thing ive come across. They arent fun. Id so much rather have the power creep original azteca had back. Give the bosses 100k hp and just make us grind the health down. Dont make it so if i miscount a round they become invulnerable. Literally impossible to first try 75% kf the bosses inless you look up a cheat list
Hello Pluto, this is the first time, I am watching one of your videos. Thanks for your advocacy for us average players (no raids for me - I don't even have 12 friends). However, I respectfully disagree. The standard mode is not too hard, once you know what you are doing. But we had to learn that for Darkmore too, yes? And consider this: The next world comes out whenever, there is no harm in working on that badge 3-5 times a week. What else would I do (well, Beastmoon and a bit of pvp) and it's actually nice to have a fixed goal. The only bad thing is that sometimes I get into a team with a hardcore player, who constantly complains about others not being faster, smarter... but that is a community problem and not KI fault. Mostly, people are super nice and helpful. I had players, who offered to have me follow them through the maze, when I had problems at first. In turn, I do this on my Myth where I can super support every fight and hitters can totally rely on me. So, I do get mad, if a bad dream throws me back - again -, but the fights are challenging and fun and I met some nice peeps. Nothing wrong with that😊.
Only found this video just now. I have played many MMOs and MOs (mostly F2P types) in my time and the worst mistake every single one has made is being anti average. You can absolutely have content for the hardcores but it should never become the main focus or you push out the vast majority of players and on the opposite end you should NEVER pander to the casual player lest you DESTROY whatever sense of a challenge the "game" is supposed to provide leaving nothing to get actually engaged with. Going to use examples from my experience with PSO2 back when it was Japanese exclusive and before the release of NGS. PSO2 was a perfect balance of casual/average/tryhard content. Casuals could play however they wanted they can roleplay build their characters and do whatever content at whatever difficulty they desired since you can just pick the difficulty from easy to ultra hard and there was no hard "enrage" they needed to meet so even bad players can EVENTUALLY clear those big fights. Average players were given the deeper mechanics to learn to play however they desire, they can actually engage with the game and go however hard they wanted without sweating too much and gearing decently cause there were MANY options. Tryhards were also pandered to rather well back then in that BiS gear was the same gear average players were commonly getting BUT you could affix stats onto them (like gems but with RNG) and the rare actual tryhard content DID rarely exist and had some rules to make the content actually difficult and by clearing that content they were given their exclusive flex cosmetics or being given early access to the BiS weaponry, AND say tryhards absolutely do NOT want to interact with casuals while grinding out their gear drops. Well SEGA of Japan accounted for that and had an "Expert Matching" system in which if you earned a certain title you can choose to match ONLY with your fellow tryhards leading to faster clear times since you are filtering out the "unskilled" masses. Now we can look at how after NGS released and it ULTRA pandered to the casual audience and it absolutely KILLED all interest the tryhards and average players had in the game leaving it to be a pathetic fashion simulator with nothing else to do cause theres no deeper systems to engage with nor is the content ever truly difficult. Games like these NEEDS to stay balanced with their audience its just a simple fact that to truly pander to a general audience you need to account for every type of player equally or you risk losing sales or subscription numbers.
I'm not a wiz sweat by any means, but I've always had 2 or 3 maxs before the next world comes out and have always been completely geared for current best in class. that being said i have cleared nulity like 23 times but haven't touched the crying sky or cabal raids. I think the raids are fine and Guild finders are massive so not partaking in raids is a choice. I think harder end game content is fine and having stupid good gear as rewards for completing harder content is such a good thing. that being said i think the current wallaru gear grind is TOTALLY absurd. 25 malus clears before you can access drop pity is beyond cringe. Also with such a diluted drop pool on top of trash pity has made me just not care about the upgrade from aeon to reaver. In my honest opinion we should go back to only getting school specific drops from new content, This would encourage maxing more wizards and then you can use the pity system to get gear for other schools if you feel like farming on only 1 character. ALSO i think the pity system should be account wide instead of character to character. All that being said tho I think current wiz has realized that their player base is no longer children like we used to be but adults who have grown playing the game and they are trying to make new stuff with that in mind, and honestly its just the life cycle of a MMO that lasts more then 10+ years to eventually become more complex because it has to or no1 would still be playing it.
I am a average player and Walaru has turned me completely off at trying to get to max. I really don't care if I am max or not anymore and I suppose I will end up quitting after a while.. I am level 167 and can't get any further and don't have the time to keep searching for help to advance. Sorry Wizard 101 but you are losing me.
I guess by your definition I would be considered an average player. Before cancer and other life events I was in the first group. I will just play as long as I can and do what I can in the game. Not going to sweat the small stuff. At the end of the day it is still just a game.
Pluto I completely disagre with you on this matter, as a matter of a fact the so called casuals that you mention are the minimum and the hardcore players those literally only pvp, most of the time you see people that play the game to level up and jump on other things like fishing or pet making. I had played this game since like 2009 and always see the same thing a few that are hardcore and hang around the commons, almost nobody does raids and a hard dungeon is done at minimum as well, from my own experience all I see most of the time are people that have no clue what they are doing, either under power or with a deck full of unnecessary cards. The reason wizard101 still alive is cause people pay their monthly that's usually parents like us that play a few hours a day and enjoy just jumping in the game and do things, nobody got time to be hardcore and grind for gear etc, we either open packs and run a dungeon a few time to unlock the feature to buy things, its that simple. I would say this though, if you can't pay do not play this game you be stock and frustrated just finishing wizard city lol. You need crowns to even upgrade your bags so yeah.
They're working as intended. Dont bother with it its not for you. You're expected to do one run and check it out then not bother with it. You getting gear at this point only makes you better at taking on the final raid anyways with no content after it. Wait for the next content patch and you'll have a new world to explore and get new gear. Frankly you telling me you bothered with 15 clears of the same instance was insanity to me. Its clear they put this stuff in as padding while working on new content then nerf it later.
I don’t think Wizard101 is anti-casual. As someone who plays the game in what can be best described as “ahh-backwards troglodyte style” where I won’t go to the next world without 100% the current area and am level 80 by the time I started Avalon, and try to one-shot nearly every single enemy* by stacking up an unnecessary amount of blades, traps, wards, etc. before doing 10x the damage necessary, I still find the game relatively enjoyable, despite usually soloing most of the time and being possibly the casual to end all casuals. (*except Belloq, who I was able to solo by sufficiently spamming an alternating mix of 0 pip wand spells and ship of fools because I REALLY disliked being Ra’d every single round)
As soon as you said you play with "sauce" I lost ALL RESPECT FOR YOU. He is one of the BIGGEST CHEATERS in PVP. Always CRYING about people cheating when he ALWAYS has someone in his ear telling him what card his appointment about to play. Watch his videos and PROVE ME WRONG!! He should have a LIFETIME BAND FROM PVP!!
People say you have to basically be unemployed to be a sweaty on this game, sorry but I work 40 hours a week. I play video games as a hobby I don't want an endless grind that becomes invalidated quickly when a new world or pack inevitably drops
Do you guys think Wizard101 is becoming Anti Casual?
Good Morning, Wizard101 had harder mob Bosses and mobs in general before they, made them less of a challenge.
So this argument, it not significant.
As you said old wizard101 was not as easy as it is today, plain and simple.
Note: if you really want constructive feed back, it would be wise to ask the devs in KI Live or, try to contact a, advanced combat content creator for the best possible answers.
Please note that, it's important to get all pieces of the puzzle right and not just a small piece.
The game is really kicking the can down the road in regards to it's storytelling and lifespan. People MIGHT think "I am going to stop after Dragonspyre/Novus/(x) and that is that!", when that is not reality. The game is fun, but players do seek mental stimulation and engagement, and this game does provide it. They eventually buy the new world and start questing.
For a game to provide engagement (and stimulation), it must be difficult, provide an accomplishable challenge that doesn't frustrate nor bore a user. It isn't a question of "is it anti-casual?", it's a question of "how do we make Wizard101 casual"? Players seek satisfaction in this game by obtaining items (stitch, the tier 1 best gear, pets, castles, etc), or optionally PvP which is more engagement and challenges to a player. The quality of the gear depends upon the difficulty and (unknown calculation) of drop luck, and determination
If it helps you, once W101 has a new world; the idea of "casual" is thrown out of the window. A new world means new enemies, which requires new gear. Casual wizard101 has already existed (technically just bear with me here), Karamelle was considered a "useless" world as the endgame gear was WORSE than Dragoons gear for all classes. Lemuria came out and then Dragoons gear was gone. Then Novus came out and Lemuria gear was out the window. You get the idea for even Waterworks/Malistaire/Hades/Exalted Duel gear with Darkmoor.
Short answer is, it's not a question of "is or will W101 be casual?", it's a question of "how do we make w101 more applicable to casual playstyles?". There's the obvious choices of: just help in the Teamup Kiosk, do fishing or pets. Every single option w101 has for casuals, always requires the best and highest tier gear, giving players an ultimatum, get the best gear or not have the best experience.
W101 isn't like Team Fortress 2, where players feel obligated to compete in a game with no rewards for competition. You just have fun in Team Fortress 2, no money (besides their weapons which can be crafted or randomly dropped BOTH for free at the expense of time. Or you could just by the normal weapons for pennies and dimes each). Wizard101 is a game that eloped into a massive competition of who has the best gear. No one wants an undergeared wizard in a Hades run especially if they are a hitting class, but shooter games don't have this issue frequently. Shooter games rely on abilities and mechanics, not gear and so much w101 'strategy' (unsure if it is a "real strategy" game). There's no point playing a shooter game if all you can do is use reaction time, then you get destroyed by a player who uses a shield ability or a ghost ability. Wizard101 corrected itself into being a "dps check", as the game hasn't changed the META. Storm->Fire->Death->Myth->Balance->Life->Ice in terms of DPS check. This hierarchy will guarantee the likelihood of the respective class being bladed first, with storm being most likely.
Roshambo is a great way to run a game as that is how Wizard101 works to being with. Pokemon is just a really large game of Roshambo and bug collecting and it is fun. Players just don't enjoy the fact they have to fork over considerable money to a game just to get some gear and stitch it.
eh, honestly, not really. It seems relatively casual. Although you bring in great points.
I would say that Wizard101 doesn't really touch on its side content a lot, people play the game to experience the story and that's it and when the story is done, there is nothing left to do. They need to create more seasonal events like the Lost Pages event or the Nosferabbit dungeon that opens in Halloween. FFXIV keeps doing new stories for their Halloween, Christmas, New Years and other holiday events so those events never get stale. You may be helping a reindeer learn to use magic in one Christmas event, and the next year you could be helping a yeti reconnect with his brothers for the holidays. There are some boring repetitive events(like the Dragon Quest crossover which too small and too unrewarding to be done more than once) but other repetitive collabs like the Yo-Kai Watch one are fun).
I want to see another Lost Pages type event where you have to hunt down Spellwrit monsters in Marleybone, Zafaria and Khrysalis. Come on, KingsIsle, don't let the writers of FFXIV show you up! ;p
Wizard101 was fine when darkmoor was hard and you wanted the darkmoor gear but recently the grind has been too much.
I think the darkmoor gear was a significant upgrade from waterworks and hitting that level 100 milestone. Nightmare don’t give the same vibes.
The soft cap on stats is so stupid in pve
The fear was a significant upgrade to waterworks. All of the best robe hat boots and wands was all in one place. If you wanted athame and ring you could farm the Olympus secret bosses or Morganthe. Only issue was pets. If you didn’t know someone with good pets you would miss out on stats. Now the PVE is too complicated. Some of the best gear is gate kept because if you don’t have a guild you can’t do raids. And the gear is too spread out.
I'm part of that group 2. Been playing since the game came in when I was in like 3rd grade. It really sucks not being able to do those harder activities especially being in college and working (not to mention no one I used to play with plays anymore). I wish they made more content for my group of people who have been so loyal to the game. I find myself logging on, checking out a couple things, getting bored and logging off.
I wouldn't say it's necessarily anti-casual/average but making content (raids) that is only realistically accessible to influencers and old gatekept friendgroups is extremely irritating to average players.
I agree. They need to cater to the average player. Not casuals and not sweats.
This video perfectly encapsulates why I stopped playing wiz about a year ago. I used to be a casual, and then I was an average when I spent an entire summer grinding to get to max and having fun with friends along the way. I was a Life wizard and I went super in depth on the game and tried to mega-optimize my progression. I got my revered wand, farmed dragoon amulet and darkmoor, hell I even got into couch potato farming and pet optimization. I was loving it all... until Novus. Until balance patches heavily nerfing the lore spells I spent money to get. Pivoting my entire school to over-time healing. Dual-classing being forced upon me, sacrificing the class identity i loved so much about old wiz(especially since there's literally 0 benefit to single-schooling nowadays). Pivoting the entire gameplay experience around NEEDING to be in a guild, NEEDING to do raids, and making most updates and changes and new cards EXTREMELY pvp-centric.
After all that mess, midway through Novus, I just... dropped the game. I am done. Kingsisle has filtered me out. Because they're not only gatekeeping me from doing endgame content by not being able to be in a guild, I also just... don't like advanced combat. It's a bastardized Yugioh at best and forces you to use schools outside of the one you chose, which is anti-player-choice and makes me lose that power fantasy of being a powerful wizard controlling a certain element or magical aspect with total mastery.
I didn't get as far as you but I stopped playing for the same reason, game just felt way too grindy. If ur up for an alternative I think pirate101 is great. The only time you should is literally at max lvl and since it doesn't get many updates you won't need to keep grinding later on or at least in the near future.
Even at max you don't NEED to grind, I have some mac lvls and I haven't farmed for any hear at all, of course I'm at a disadvantage to those who have but I still have fun without it
Just today, doing standard mode in team up took 2 hours to complete. Before this it took an hour to get a team of 4 to not leave in the middle of it. I'm part of the hardcore community so I attempted challenge mode and regularly raid with Squad III. I had to explain to a casual player about the dungeon and walk them through the maze. It took so long to do the dream water because one of the players was afk at Malus and the casual player was completely lost. By the time we got all the dream water, the casual player was soloing the dragon. I had them flee, then I guided them to the Malus.
Imo, KI does not put enough effort into EXPLAINING the game to the average player, rather than relying on content creators to test everything and make tutorials. Average players don't watch wizard101 guides the moment they drop. I personally find spellemented spells and gambits easy to understand but average players do not. I understand how raids work and advanced combat and stat caps, average players do not.
The problem is that there is too much to explain to someone in-game. KI needs to invest into tools and systems to explain this to new players. The raid guide in the guild hall barely explains anything. It doesn't explain stat caps, it doesn't explain advanced combat well enough, it doesn't explain how raid gates operate.
There are just not enough easy to find and in-depth systems to explain the game.
to be fair when i started 60 was the cap looking at the spikey waterworks gear as a literal child like it was the beezneez
My wife and I used to be steady players. We dropped off because they made the game in upper levels so hard that it stopped being fun. After a 5 year lapse we have come back to find out that they have nerfed spells to a ridiculous level, only to come out with spellaments which makes you have to grind or spend crowns to get your spell strength back, and it's not even a full return of the spell strength, just a portion of it. raised the cost of pet hatching to a ridiculous level, and still refuse to make the first story arc free to play. New players are still met with a pay wall after an extremely smart portion of wizard city.
The main gist of what I'm seeing is the people at kingsisle are catering to the people who have the ability to dump large amounts of cash in the crown shop. Nuff said.
Love the vid and agree with everything you had to say! I wonder if KI has been catering towards the hardcore players more cause they give KI more money? Then that opens a whole new flood gate of issues.
Im an average player, and now Im like too exhausted to even want to play anymore; too much grinding lol
Because of stat maxes, unless you’re a min maxer or hardcore player other gear should be fine for you (mire or aeon gear), you don’t need the reaver gear for an extra 2 pierce. You can also do jewel combinations and pets to compensate other stats. That being said the nightmare standard shouldn’t be as hard as it is. There should’ve been something other then raids that prepared casuals for the nightmare dungeon, (leading up to darkmoor we had Tartarus prior to that). Looks like ki is going in the direction destiny 2 is going with their raids and content. If there was a casual version first and then pushed out the nightmare (tweak it down a notch) I’ll be fine with is. Also PVP only spells should not be locked behind PVP it makes the krok fight way more annoying in standard mode.
each nightmare run takes about an hour or 2 for casuals. Just do the math how many hours they wasted in their life in a single dungeon for 25 clears. Thats a problem.
People say you have to basically be unemployed to be a sweaty on this game, sorry but I work 40 hours a week. I play video games as a hobby I don't want an endless grind that becomes invalidated quickly when a new world or pack inevitably drops
I beat the game when i was 12 when the cap was 50 and when it was raised to 60. The game was extremely casual back then. I even made it to warlord as a child. Idk what says casual more than that.
I think an interesting concept would be to create a system of 4-man group content (little to no comms needed) where your team fights a couple/few bosses and each fight drops endgame reagents / chance of gear (both of your choosing and of course at a rate of the devs choosing). The rates would obviously be slower than the main story content / raids but not painfully slow (*cough cough* dragoon). This system would be ever expanding so there would be more content added each update / major update. There should be bunch of different dungeons with their own sceneries and not just one boring-looking room like the rematch fights were (Think lemuria themed dungeon or Marleybone theme etc). Throw in some minor mechanics/cheats here and there. Throw this content onto a sigil that rotates what dungeon you do every every 30 min - 1 hour or so. Put it into the Arena and put crafting/potion vendors there for convenience. Teamup would obviously have to be enabled. Pre-formed groups would of course be able to run it much faster but its not required.
If you really want to go crazy then add level scaling so low levels will scale up to current max levels (stats would scale too of course) and let them gain EXP from this and unlock spells from story content so you're not required to play months of story quests just to play max level content, but that's a topic for another time :D
Gives the more casual/average players a system to use that isn't just fighting a single boss over and over.
I guess standard mode was supposed to be like this kind of, but I think doing the same dungeon over and over again + badge locking + low drop rates of the actual gear + non-school locked drops = lame (IMO)
Curious what others think of this concept :)
25 times just to CRAFT GEAR?!?!?
Chances they drop a new gearpack that will magically have alt gear in like a month or two?
they are in a weird place of wanting to cater to casuals, but also extreme sweats with the pvp spell hieroglyphics that even the sweats hate
I miss getting a gear set roughly every thirty levels. Zeus to waterworks to darkmoor. Now we're getting a new best gear with each world, and they never feel impactful
I resonate a lot with the average player, I have seven maxes and I dual box (5 on one acc, 2 on other) so I usually play solo. Based on that and I used to live for pvp I might've been considered a hardcore but these days the time commitment bar has been raised so high I really don't think I can say I'm anywhere near hardcore. When raids came out I was initially interested but when I saw that time commitment and what was required I quickly lost interest and used other ways to get gear. Now with wallaru I renewed my membership for a month and then canceled it. Waiting for the new dungeon with the latest news that dropped on that. I probably won't renew and will simply wait until they change things or a pack drops to be honest and if that doesn't happen then I'll just keep waiting and not play until then
As someone who just came back from a few year break my highest accounts are lvl 83…all this new raid stuff is a shock 😂 definitely having to relearn the game!
To preface, I'd say I'm in group 2 possibly looking to get into group 3 (though it is daunting lol):
I don't know if the patches changed your mind, but if they didn't then I don't think the dungeon is that difficult. I do agree that it is extremely tedious, and having to use team up can make it even more rough, but the difficulty didn't seem to be the problem for me. I also agree that 25 completed runs for the badge is way too much, so I'm grateful they lowered the requirement.
as an average player who solos on the death school and soloed 85 percent of this game, i felt this video down to the core of my soul XD
I was a member of group 3 but I pivoted to group 2 when raids came out, and pvp getting worse. There’s no need for me to have the 100% best gear anymore since pvp isn’t worth playing to me anymore.
I'm in the same boat, all this min Max stuff is just for the elitists or pvpers. If you're not in those groups there is a wide margin for stats
They are 100% anti casual they arent even acknowledging the fact that nightmare standard is hard (at least what i can tell from ratbeards reactions) I think this is the death of wiz for me for good unless they redeem themselves which they never will with how big their ego is
the most annoying part to all this is wiz keeps making us do obstacles with this laggy delayed movement pad and do a maze AND THEN BEAT A DUMB CHEAT BOSS 25 times 😂😂😂😂
These updates really made me lose interest in questing and farming, I still have a month of mem left I bought but it is just gonna go to waste cause I don't feel like torturing myself so now I just beastmoon XD
Hey so I’m in group 1 and haven’t played in awhile and am wanting to become a group 2-3 player is there any videos you’d recommend to catch me up on the best gear and basically what I should be doing at every level?
As a casual group player I agree completely, I usually only play for a month or so only when they add a new world other than that I usually don’t login at all last time I played before now was back when empyera pt2 came out
As someone who’s been playing since the start but never had the available time to grind to max I’ve noticed the goal post getting further and further away.
I agree actually. In fact, I have entertained the thought of ditching W101 in favor of P101 again, simply because in Prate 101, I can become max level in less than a month if I play every single day that month, in Wizard 101.. I have been playing my death as a main wizard for little over 3 years now and I am only level 103, yeah, no thanks. I enjoy the game, I love the game, but the dreams of becoming max-level in Wiz, have kind of faded, and honestly, my new characters really only quest up to the end of Dragonspyre and then I'm out. I must say that I prefer Pirate 101 at this rate because I feel it respects my time as a player and as a human being in a far more superior manor that Wizard 101 every does, or has done in the past.
EDIT: and I will add, that I know players have been asking for an update to Pirate 101 for years now, but I honestly think it's for the best if KI leaves that game as it is, and just continues to run the servers for the game. Maybe they make minor convenience tweaks, but on terms of adding new worlds, I would HATE to see Pirate 101 turn out to be as much of a time-hog as Wizard 101 is. Prate 101 really is the better alternative for casuals, and I think it should remain this way. If Wiz caters to the try-hards, than Pirate needs to cater to the casuals.
As someone who would like to play more (maybe even be a hardcore player), I just don’t have the time. From what I’ve observed, a lot of average players want to play more, but some of us are bounded by our jobs. In my case, being a full time manager at my job and a full time college student just makes it impossible for me to farm for any good gear. I’m functioning with Aeon, and some of my characters still have Merciless gear. If it wasn’t for the Fairy Kei Hoard Pack and my unfortunate willingness to spend quite a bit of money on getting the gear, I don’t think I could realistically ever get the newer, farmable sets. I think Kingsisle has slightly improved at listening to their fanbase, but they still have a long way to go.
i did the nightmare dungeon once (i consider myself an average player) and instantly thought "yea i won't be doing this another 24 times". just went and got plot armor instead. if you played wiz 8 hours a day it would still take you 3 full days of grinding, and i would think you'd need a good team to do that. most people it would prob take 8 hours a day for 6 days, since many runs don't go well, bc people don't know what they're doing.
Group 3 is the minority, but they spend the most amount on money with packs to have the best gear, spellements, ect.
This, they also fall into the whale group
Yeah I have to agree I'm usually casual and average and try to get the best gear to breeze through the game easily but at the same time one of the best gear to have me at good damage is blocked by raids and it hurts me to do it because it's so stressful and I never really went to one so yeah it's becoming less casual and I hate it.
i just want pvp to be accessible to any of these groups
I’ve just recently returned to Wizards, after watching this video and reading some of the comments, I’m wondering if I should even bother. You can’t even join a guild unless you are max level! I’m level 72 life. So I guess I’m soloing (well..what I can anyway. That.. yay.. there are raids. And the best gear is locked inside. Another yay. What is the point in playing if I can’t get in, if I can’t improve?
I wasn't active on the game when raids and challenge modes released, so I was very confused coming back to all of it with no explanation (along with gambits, archmastery, spellements, etc.) Once I finished Wallaru I was going to wait for the standard mode of the Nightmare dungeon to release, but it doesn't seem like there's much incentive at this point. I was excited to jump into a difficult dungeon since I haven't done any since Darkmoor ages ago but everything seems so exclusive now. I don't stick with the game for long enough periods of time to feel the need to join guilds or discord servers to be able to do any of the new high level content. Maybe at some point I'll try a raid or Nightmare, but I'm not going to farm it for gear if it's only a slight upgrade from aeon which is far easier to farm.
I'm now in the first group. First started 2014. Did cards for crowns first two years before getting membership. Don't do PVP, raids, beast moon, ect... because they are to toxic for me. I just do the main questing. I have 6 max wizards and just got tired of only one new world a year. Each new world would take 2 or 3 months to max my 6 again and grind new gear. I would then just help others for 8 or 9 months. It gets boring 4 or 5 years of just helping. My membership ran out February 2024 and I didn't renew it. Most people there questing are great and friendly. I stil play some to help but the last world I got with crowns was Celestia. Not much fun at lvl 170. I still love the game.
Blaze left because he is not that crazy to be playing and producing for a 15 year old kid game
The nightmare dungeon is a literally a public raid ppl that play the game not Aton have guilds and don’t do raids so it’s probably new to most or some players
Only just started wallaru after a 3 year wiz break and i have to say cheating bosses are the sonlge worst thing ive come across. They arent fun. Id so much rather have the power creep original azteca had back. Give the bosses 100k hp and just make us grind the health down. Dont make it so if i miscount a round they become invulnerable. Literally impossible to first try 75% kf the bosses inless you look up a cheat list
Hello Pluto, this is the first time, I am watching one of your videos. Thanks for your advocacy for us average players (no raids for me - I don't even have 12 friends). However, I respectfully disagree. The standard mode is not too hard, once you know what you are doing. But we had to learn that for Darkmore too, yes? And consider this: The next world comes out whenever, there is no harm in working on that badge 3-5 times a week. What else would I do (well, Beastmoon and a bit of pvp) and it's actually nice to have a fixed goal. The only bad thing is that sometimes I get into a team with a hardcore player, who constantly complains about others not being faster, smarter... but that is a community problem and not KI fault. Mostly, people are super nice and helpful. I had players, who offered to have me follow them through the maze, when I had problems at first. In turn, I do this on my Myth where I can super support every fight and hitters can totally rely on me. So, I do get mad, if a bad dream throws me back - again -, but the fights are challenging and fun and I met some nice peeps. Nothing wrong with that😊.
Thank you and of course :) ❤️
Only found this video just now. I have played many MMOs and MOs (mostly F2P types) in my time and the worst mistake every single one has made is being anti average. You can absolutely have content for the hardcores but it should never become the main focus or you push out the vast majority of players and on the opposite end you should NEVER pander to the casual player lest you DESTROY whatever sense of a challenge the "game" is supposed to provide leaving nothing to get actually engaged with.
Going to use examples from my experience with PSO2 back when it was Japanese exclusive and before the release of NGS. PSO2 was a perfect balance of casual/average/tryhard content.
Casuals could play however they wanted they can roleplay build their characters and do whatever content at whatever difficulty they desired since you can just pick the difficulty from easy to ultra hard and there was no hard "enrage" they needed to meet so even bad players can EVENTUALLY clear those big fights.
Average players were given the deeper mechanics to learn to play however they desire, they can actually engage with the game and go however hard they wanted without sweating too much and gearing decently cause there were MANY options.
Tryhards were also pandered to rather well back then in that BiS gear was the same gear average players were commonly getting BUT you could affix stats onto them (like gems but with RNG) and the rare actual tryhard content DID rarely exist and had some rules to make the content actually difficult and by clearing that content they were given their exclusive flex cosmetics or being given early access to the BiS weaponry, AND say tryhards absolutely do NOT want to interact with casuals while grinding out their gear drops. Well SEGA of Japan accounted for that and had an "Expert Matching" system in which if you earned a certain title you can choose to match ONLY with your fellow tryhards leading to faster clear times since you are filtering out the "unskilled" masses.
Now we can look at how after NGS released and it ULTRA pandered to the casual audience and it absolutely KILLED all interest the tryhards and average players had in the game leaving it to be a pathetic fashion simulator with nothing else to do cause theres no deeper systems to engage with nor is the content ever truly difficult.
Games like these NEEDS to stay balanced with their audience its just a simple fact that to truly pander to a general audience you need to account for every type of player equally or you risk losing sales or subscription numbers.
I'm not a wiz sweat by any means, but I've always had 2 or 3 maxs before the next world comes out and have always been completely geared for current best in class. that being said i have cleared nulity like 23 times but haven't touched the crying sky or cabal raids. I think the raids are fine and Guild finders are massive so not partaking in raids is a choice. I think harder end game content is fine and having stupid good gear as rewards for completing harder content is such a good thing. that being said i think the current wallaru gear grind is TOTALLY absurd. 25 malus clears before you can access drop pity is beyond cringe. Also with such a diluted drop pool on top of trash pity has made me just not care about the upgrade from aeon to reaver. In my honest opinion we should go back to only getting school specific drops from new content, This would encourage maxing more wizards and then you can use the pity system to get gear for other schools if you feel like farming on only 1 character. ALSO i think the pity system should be account wide instead of character to character. All that being said tho I think current wiz has realized that their player base is no longer children like we used to be but adults who have grown playing the game and they are trying to make new stuff with that in mind, and honestly its just the life cycle of a MMO that lasts more then 10+ years to eventually become more complex because it has to or no1 would still be playing it.
Farm everything else and skip the nightmare dungeon. You dont need it if you already have aeon gear.
Best in slot end game gear should be earned . I like the game the way it is.
I am a average player and Walaru has turned me completely off at trying to get to max. I really don't care if I am max or not anymore and I suppose I will end up quitting after a while.. I am level 167 and can't get any further and don't have the time to keep searching for help to advance. Sorry Wizard 101 but you are losing me.
I agree with you 💯
Gardening, PVP, questing, crafting, house decorating, rate my stitch, pet hatching, there's plenty of casual fun in the game I'm confused?
@@dollors1 pvp is the opposite of casual lol
I guess by your definition I would be considered an average player. Before cancer and other life events I was in the first group. I will just play as long as I can and do what I can in the game. Not going to sweat the small stuff. At the end of the day it is still just a game.
I am so sorry, i hope you get better ❤️
How can you practice using gambits?
Wdym?
@@Wizheadpluto i think he means like testing out the roshambo spells i think
@@sinjoklassie1649 yea pretty much
@@TyreeMinorpractive pvp i suppose lol
Pluto I completely disagre with you on this matter, as a matter of a fact the so called casuals that you mention are the minimum and the hardcore players those literally only pvp, most of the time you see people that play the game to level up and jump on other things like fishing or pet making. I had played this game since like 2009 and always see the same thing a few that are hardcore and hang around the commons, almost nobody does raids and a hard dungeon is done at minimum as well, from my own experience all I see most of the time are people that have no clue what they are doing, either under power or with a deck full of unnecessary cards. The reason wizard101 still alive is cause people pay their monthly that's usually parents like us that play a few hours a day and enjoy just jumping in the game and do things, nobody got time to be hardcore and grind for gear etc, we either open packs and run a dungeon a few time to unlock the feature to buy things, its that simple. I would say this though, if you can't pay do not play this game you be stock and frustrated just finishing wizard city lol. You need crowns to even upgrade your bags so yeah.
They're working as intended. Dont bother with it its not for you. You're expected to do one run and check it out then not bother with it. You getting gear at this point only makes you better at taking on the final raid anyways with no content after it. Wait for the next content patch and you'll have a new world to explore and get new gear. Frankly you telling me you bothered with 15 clears of the same instance was insanity to me. Its clear they put this stuff in as padding while working on new content then nerf it later.
MMOs aren't for the hardcore or the casual. They are for people who like to hit both extremes.
The sweat are the whales soooo
I‘m an average player
I don’t think Wizard101 is anti-casual.
As someone who plays the game in what can be best described as “ahh-backwards troglodyte style” where I won’t go to the next world without 100% the current area and am level 80 by the time I started Avalon, and try to one-shot nearly every single enemy* by stacking up an unnecessary amount of blades, traps, wards, etc. before doing 10x the damage necessary, I still find the game relatively enjoyable, despite usually soloing most of the time and being possibly the casual to end all casuals.
(*except Belloq, who I was able to solo by sufficiently spamming an alternating mix of 0 pip wand spells and ship of fools because I REALLY disliked being Ra’d every single round)
Belloq made me sad.
I just got to Khrysalis after a total of 4-5 months of solid gaming
I unironically use dr Von’s monster and other low-tier spells simply for the funny(tm)
You are all average players compared to me. Alia dragonwalker
I stopped playing. Their updates over the last few years really show just which players they value. Pass. KI is trash.
As soon as you said you play with "sauce" I lost ALL RESPECT FOR YOU. He is one of the BIGGEST CHEATERS in PVP. Always CRYING about people cheating when he ALWAYS has someone in his ear telling him what card his appointment about to play. Watch his videos and PROVE ME WRONG!! He should have a LIFETIME BAND FROM PVP!!
People say you have to basically be unemployed to be a sweaty on this game, sorry but I work 40 hours a week. I play video games as a hobby I don't want an endless grind that becomes invalidated quickly when a new world or pack inevitably drops