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What does the word Casual mean to you.


wiilikekirby
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Hello, I wanted to go over a topic of discussion while doing a playthrough of FE8. The topic of discussion is the word, Casual, and the implications and applications that can come from it. It seems to me that the immediate ideas that come up when this word is used is to conjure feelings of defamation and negativity. More or less used as an insult but there are other ways to use it that are neutral or positive such as the phrase "Casual LTC" or simply "Casual playthrough. In Fire Emblem the Sacred Stones especially it seems to be the former as it's generally regarded as the easiest or one of the easier of all the games. However, what do you think of the word and how you you apply and use it.

Playthrough link: 

 

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14 minutes ago, wiilikekirby said:

However, what do you think of the word and how you you apply and use it.

Not going for lowest turncounts or max efficiency runs, meaning that the term "Casual LTC" is an oxymoron.

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A mode in which units do not die when they are killed.

Also just playing a game through without caring about meta, efficiency, and whatnot. Just playing "for the ride" I guess and not getting really serious and meta about the game.

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Even though I'm not fond of the casual mode I think to literally anyone it just means to have fun without trying too hard to excel, you know "I-just-came-back-to-work-and-I-want-to-relax" kind of easy fun.

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I just take the word casual to mean being more carefree when playing a game, or playing a game for the fun of it.

 

4 hours ago, wiilikekirby said:

It seems to me that the immediate ideas that come up when this word is used is to conjure feelings of defamation and negativity.

Ngl its been a while since I last saw someone use "casual" as an insult, not counting jokes of course. But yeah it does suck when someone uses the term to describe someone as being inferior to them or something.

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. . .uh, go advertise in your sig or something.

Anyway, off to General FE, since this isn't specific to Sacred Stones.

As for casual, depends on context.

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9 minutes ago, toxic1 said:

Someone who will get ridicule by their peers & why the worst thing they as a fan is interact with their fellow fanbase.

Do you speak from personal experience?

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In the latter games Casual became a bit of a technical term due to Casual mode, and I think having that technical meaning has softened the connotation of the term for FE when compared to other gaming communities. A casual play-through means to me playing the game as you want to play it, without letting others dictate through promise or comment or comparison the way that you play. A casual LTC makes me think of fast play, but without doing the tedious legwork of comparing your play to other LTC strats and finding ways of refining them, or surpass them, or justifying them.

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In Fire Emblem context it's like playing for fun, without a care in the world. At least in the new ones. In Sacred Stones I sometimes use Seth for most of the things, and don't really care about anyone else dying (except Eirika of course). I like to call this casual, as Seth can literally solo the entire game.

In general gaming context: relaxing, fun games, without competitive multiplayer modes, no levels which you have to complete under the given time limit, no impossible puzzles (looking at you TLJ, even though I love it I could never call it casual because of some of the puzzles)... For example, I love Rayman 2, and replay it quite often, as I grew up playing that game, and I think it is a casual game. There are fights, there are "puzzles", but it is just something (at least for me) that I can sit down and play in any mood, and it's guaranteed that I will feel better in a couple of minutes. I guess it's different for everyone else though.

TL;DR: I don't like when casual is used in a negative way, as I think it's more about having fun playing the game (for some it means a challenge, for some it means an old favourite etc.), and that's what playing a game should be about.

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I see being a casual as not trying too hard, much like IRL when in a low effort environment, you don't get too into the game, news or the community, I also think that casual includes only purchasing and never picking it up outside of that.

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It means "filthy"

Kidding, of course - My first thought was "for fun", but I don't think that is a good way of putting it since I think (or at least hope) that the majority of LTC-ranked-negative-growths-no-statboosters-no-promotion players are still playing for fun, even though I honestly can't fathom how a NSGNSNCNONENNENBB (*) run of FFX can create *fun*.

The best definition that I can think of would be "play on a difficulty level and in a way that doesn't require 100% brain power", which isn't necessarily synonymous with bad play or low difficulty settings. I'm sure there's people out there, even if I'm certainly not one of them, that can just effortlessly spank the Deity AI in Civ or have FE12 Lunatic so well memorized that they just know how they can get through the tricky spots (i.e. the entire game). For those, a "casual" playthrough would mean that they don't try to give every bosskill to Yubello or don't pull out a calculator to figure out the best choice in a certain situation.

(*) No Sphere Grid (no level-ups, basically), No Summons (which break most of FFX's gameplay in half and iirc grow based on the number of battles), No Customize, No Overdrive, No Escape, No "No Encounter" (which is a trait that some pieces of equipment can have), No Blitz Ball (which you can farm for good items). Yes, this is apparently a thing. No, I have not and won't ever even try it.

Edited by ping
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when i use that word, i mean someone who doesn't constantly do a specific thing and is not too much interested in getting informed about it, talking about it on the net and so on, because that's what it means: "a casual reader", "a casual gamer" etc

it could be considered as a more informal version of "occasional"

but since we FE players are special, this logic doesn't seem to work for us

Edited by Yexin
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Casual was the first mode I played when I was initially getting into FE, and that’s what I equate the term with in the context of FE.

People all have their own ways of playing games, and I could care less how they enjoy the games just as long as they’re enjoying them.

48 minutes ago, ping said:

NSGNSNCNONENNENBB (*)

(*) No Sphere Grid (no level-ups, basically), No Summons (which break most of FFX's gameplay in half and iirc grow based on the number of battles), No Customize, No Overdrive, No Escape, No "No Encounter" (which is a trait that some pieces of equipment can have), No Blitz Ball (which you can farm for good items). Yes, this is apparently a thing. No, I have not and won't ever even try it.

lmao, that’s one hell of an acronym.

I never even heard of folks doing any kinds of challenge runs for FF games apart from speed runs up until just now.  And having played FFX a bit, yeah, that sounds totally ridiculous, particularly the no sphere and no summons parts.

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For many FE fans it means everyone who doesn't complete every map in 2 turns. I kinda disagree on that because there are other ways to see how good you are aside from LTC, like routing defense maps, doing a run without promoting units etc etc.

For me it means someone who does stuff to have fun, sometimes going through self imposed challenges (like playing certain Rom Hacks) not to test thier skills but just to make things more spicy.

I can give you an example of this. Recently I got into Castlevania and to make things cooler, I played my second run of Aria of Sorrow with the code NOUSE that prevents you from using items to recovers HP and MP. Not to become a pro, just to see how the game would change.

Back in topic, I just play lots of FE rom hacks just to see how fun they can be instead of seeking for a challenge. Also I never play with efficiency in mind unless I find the map I am playing boring as hell.

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Casual to me means to do something without thinking to deeply about it. When I for example play a game casually I just want to have fun and don't think about things like game design, story-gameplay integration and similarities with other games(the same can also be applied to comics, movies and books). When I play casually my emotions play a way more important role so depending on my emotion I will enjoy very different sort of games (When I'm angry I enjoy something that is fast-paced and/or violent, when I'm sad something calm and relaxing and when I'm happy I try to play games with other people). I can also still have fun when I'm playing 'seriously' but in a different way (I often focus more on the goal then on the journey or enjoy analyzing the game). 

I don't think that casual play always means unefficient and vice versa . People who have a lot of knowledge about the games they play 'seriously' still have this knowledge when they play these games casually and will probably apply their knowledge if it increases their enjoyment. A good example for me is in fe6. I know a way to get treasure 100% of the time in the dessert without thieves. When I play the game casually I still apply this strategy. When my friend would play the game as quickly as possible he could play the game slower then when I would play the game because he doesn't know this even though he put much more effort in his playthrough then me. Someone who knows less about a game, and because of that doesn't play optimally, can still play the game very seriously. 

 

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The word Casual doesn't really mean all that much to me (most words don't, now that I think about it). In a literal sense, it's just one of the options for the gameplay mode, the other option being Classic. I like to think of it as one of the secondary difficulty settings, with the primary difficulty settings being the actual difficulty settings, which are Easy, Normal, Hard, Lunatic, etc. I appreciate the inclusion of Casual mode in FE as it allows for players to enjoy all of the story and characters without having to worry about the story being slightly altered because of a simple mistake on the player's part, which would kill a completionist run (not that anyone plays these games to 100% them, that would be absolutely ludicrous [I'm guilty of it]).

As a Casual player myself, it's a nifty inclusion that eliminates the need to restart a map because a unit died. I still reset anyway because I can't stand losing a unit, but the point still stands, I think.

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Many of you say it means playing for fun to you but question this, are people who play LTC not having fun or something? Seems like most of you is mssing something.

Edited by Critical Sniper
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5 minutes ago, Critical Sniper said:

Many of you say it means playing for fun to you but question this, are people who play LTC not having fun or something? Seems like most of you is mssing something.

That is a fair point. Some do find going slow unfun. And, there are people who enjoy intense and unintended challenges involving the breakdown of the most minute details and sometimes playing with maddening chances of success.

 

Sure it might sound very bizarre someone would appreciate such intense "fun", but in other contexts, we IRL do want people who love that stuff. Namely engineering, accounting, other fields involving massive collection and analysis of data.

Edited by Interdimensional Observer
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^True

Also cute video series you got there OP. I don't know how to describe it other than cute but it's kinda nice, seems like a podcast I would be interested in.

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