Quote Originally Posted by Maye View Post
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Not every player is like this. I can understand that.
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and while I get along well with the more hardcore players there's a bit of a disconnect between me and our more casual player base... it happens!
Do you really understand?
By that I mean do you think that your way to play is better than their way?

How you immediately just interpreted the word "better" in the question above might be an answer by itself.

Browsing MMO forums, there is often one recurrent complaint from players matching your playing profile: that MMOs are becoming too much of "Theme parks".
Kinda like a place where there is no challenge and where you just mindlessly follows the attractions around.

But anyone who has ever been to a live amusement park, will notice people having fun all around.
It's not any different in MMO for some players. It's a social place to meet and have fun together, chatting or fooling around.
The game dungeons are kinda like the attractions. They just want an easy and fun ride. They're not seeking for the frustration caused by an undesired challenge.

"Theme park" players or more casual players do not care about min-maxing, rotation efficiency and the likes, simply because it makes no sense for them to do so, because it feels more like work to them, and since the only thing they mostly enjoy is just riding kinda effortlessly along the content proposed having fun.
They're not seeking any hard competition, they're seeking an easy entertainment.

Then you have the opposite kind of players. Players who enjoy competition, who get their fun for taking on difficult content, who attempts to optimize the way they play to be the most efficient during battles.
The kind that mostly finds unchallenging content boring.

Of course I'm over simplifying with these 2 main categories of gamers, as each player has its own different and subtitle motivations to play a game, but these 2 are kinda relevant to your post.

Obviously a conceptual problem might arise when these opposite kind of gamers share the same MMO. The game developper either have to pick a side, or try to please both sides. Is it possible and if yes how to do it, that's another topic all together.

But focusing on the subject of your message, the relational problem between "casual" and more challenge-dedicated players.

If you really understand them, then you really accept than your way to play the game is not better than their way. It's just different.
You may more easily complain there is not enough challenging content, while they may complain some content is too hard.
You may praise a Combat Log parser as useful tool to optimize your character, while they may not care at all or be annoyed by parser as it should not be necessary at all for the way they enjoy playing the game.

Neither is wrong or right, they're simply not seeking the same type of game, even not the same type of entertainment in the first place.

If you think that that the only better way to play a game, is simply being the most efficient during battles, then you will simply never understand the so called "casual players."
Of course it works both way. And sadly I notice more players who think their way to enjoy the game is the only way it should be, and cannot grasp (or simply won't bother trying to) that others may not play at all for the same interests. The worst being when one tries to enforce his way to play onto the others.

I don't think it should be so hard to connect between two types of player if each type accept that its way to play is not better than the other, but just different. To understand that they may potentially not be compatible to play with each other in some context, but that both are entirely legitimate in how they want to play.