I'm going to rephrase this question, see the following.

Which in game mechanics and/or metrics do you think CCP should use to define "Casual" and "Hardcore" such that the most rewarding and long lasting play experience in Dust 514 is promoted?

The key to this is finding traceable elements within the game that can be used by CCP to identify "Casual" and "Hardcore".

Post back with your sense of what they should be and why. Please be detailed.

Cheers,
Cross

The following topics were discussed by the dev team this week regarding gameplay issues in the beta:

Casual vs. Hardcore players in DUST 514

Player concern on how will casual players be able to keep up with hardcore players who might spend more time playing and gaining an advantage in SP and ISK.

Planned resolutions
- A revamped reward system will narrow the gap between casual and hardcore players
- Match Making system (introduced soon) will help put players into fair matches
- Dropsuit HP will be more consistant to avoid some becoming overpowered

Hmm. Casual/Hardcore=how important is playing games to you when you have free time? I'm playing Borderlands 2, DUST and XCOM right now. I think many would consider this hardcore. But at the same time I play much less than other players because I work 48-60 hrs per week. If I had more time I would definately play more. To me casual doesn't necessarily mean playing less.

Pretty much.

Casual: "Weekend Warrior" - 8 to 24 hour a week gamer (typically on their weekend, when they don't have anything better to do).
Casual: "The Hobbyist" - 4 to 12 hour a week gamer.
Casual: "The Occasional" - ??? hours a week (Dust 514? Yeah I'm in that beta. No, I haven't played any matches yet this week.)

Hardcore: "The College Student" - 20 to 30 hour a week gamer (whenver they can fit it in and they don't have anything better to do)
Hardcore: "The Professional" - 40 hours a week gamer.
Hardcore: "The No Lifer" - 80 hours a week gamer

Here's my opinion. It's all about the mindset.

Casual: Play to have fun. If it's not fun anymore, stop playing. Winning is nice, personal/corp stats are nice, but not the primary focus of the casual player. Most people in almost every game fall into this category.

Hardcore: Win at all costs. Win for personal stats, win for corp stats, win every metric you can think of. A side effect of this is that they're typically more driven to play more so that's what happens. You can still be hardcore and only play 5 hours/week, it's all in how you play and where your focus is when you do play.

enhanced matchmaking my arse, will it scan and read every players skills and possible permutations for every possible possition that player might play and pit them against an equal and opposite team? NO you **** off then dont try.

tell that to me when there 2 fully skilled fully kitted tanks on the other team and zero av on mine GG CCP. if your going to make such an unique game follow it through ffs.

ccp have so far used the packaged respawn mechanics, the ones where epic take the **** out of developers that buy the engine/kit by spawning people in the opposite base, at least till they work it out. my next logical guess is that they use the crap matchmaking too.

and enhanced matchmaking (still a work in progress currently).

For game balance what is the proper number of hours per week for Dust 514 to balance around?
With the intent of balance being;
A) Providing a rewarding play experience for a diverse group of playstyles
B) Not having "casual" gamers be totally outpaced to the point of losing a reason for playing.

7 hours a week is definitely casual. Not sure where to draw the line between casual, semi-casual, and hardcore though

Can't get to that right now, but it would be an interesting exercise. Keep in mind that we probably don't have anywhere near the number of skills that will exist in seven years so the number would come out low if not negative.

You could reverse that using the existing cap to calculate the projected skill tree cost.

I'm not convinced I support the binary division of the player base (casual/hard-core), but I'll have a bash anyway.

The simplest metric I can think of is to create content with different levels of "hardness", balancing rewards to the difficulty level. Hardcore players will be the ones who only play the hardest content. Casual players are the ones who are happy playing the easier content.

Right now the beta only has one level of content, with essentially a random hardness level because it depends on who you spawn against.

Expecting a game to be able to balance things so that casual and hardcore players can both be happy playing the same content is a bit unrealistic, imho.

What would "easier" content would look like?

For PvE (against drones, for example), difficulty is easy to assign. Do the drones have 100, 500 or 2000 points of armour?

For PvP it will be harder, but not impossible. Having battles with lower ISK/SP rewards and with certain modules & weapons banned would be a start. Matchmaking algorithms incorporating K/D ratios, etc. might also help.