{"id":39775,"date":"2017-08-14T03:00:03","date_gmt":"2017-08-14T07:00:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=39775"},"modified":"2017-08-13T09:15:49","modified_gmt":"2017-08-13T13:15:49","slug":"the-schizophrenic-nature-of-gamer-complaints-over-guild-wars-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2017\/08\/14\/the-schizophrenic-nature-of-gamer-complaints-over-guild-wars-2\/","title":{"rendered":"The schizophrenic nature of gamer complaints over Guild Wars 2<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"I’ve been playing Guild Wars 2<\/em> from the very first demo weekend, but I’ve never really become an “expert” player … I’m just another one of the huge mass of “filthy casuals” that the really good players complain about. And people do complain about GW2<\/em><\/a>:<\/p>\n

It’s long puzzled me that GW2<\/em> can both have a reputation as one of the most casual mainstream MMOs, demanding a low level of player skill and little in the way of dedicated discipline and organization, while simultaneously being castigated for the unforgiving difficulty of almost all of its high-level open world content.<\/p>\n

As soon as the first cohort of players started to trickle into Orr, five years ago, the complaints began: the mobs were too tough, there were too many of them, they didn’t play fair. Orr got a good few thumps with the nerf bat and the complaints quietened down, only to return with just about every new piece of max-level content or large-scale, open world set piece event we’ve seen since.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I haven’t played many other MMOs, so perhaps I’m taking the nature of GW2<\/em>‘s combat for granted:<\/p>\n

Talking about whether a particular MMO is or is not “casual friendly” isn’t going to get us far when we can never agree on a definition of “casual”. That’s always been a stumbling block to my own understanding of why it should have been that I, playing with what I would self-identify as a casual mindset, experienced Heart of Thorns<\/em> [the first GW2<\/em> expansion] as a liberating, exhilarating explorer’s paradise, while others, similarly self-identifying, found it a constraining, frustrating turn-off.<\/p>\n

UltrViolet, returning from a long sabbatical from the game to give the demo a run, found it confusing and frustrating in a whole number of ways, most of which I heartily endorse. As an advertisement for the game it has all the welcoming warmth of a poke in the eye with a sharp stick. What I found particularly interesting, however, was his description of the combat experience:<\/p>\n