So, this is something that has been on my mind for a long time, but I haven't really had much of a chance to really talk to people about it.
So, first of all, what is a "casual" player?
Casual is simply referring to the amount of time/money invested into the game, however many players use being a "casual player" as an excuse to play bad decks. And I don't just mean playing decks like Blackwings or Crystal Beasts, it's perfectly fine to play those decks and have fun with them. What I mean is that a lot of players build their decks very poorly. You can be a casual player and be very good at the game. I'm a casual player and I'm not total garbage. For instance, you can play Crystal Beasts and even go the beatdown/Rainbow Dragon route and build it well. But when you play really bad cards like Card Trader or Magic Cylinder, that's when you're just being a bad player. Magic Cylinder is awful in comparison to any other battle trap, and Card Trader just kinda sits there and does nothing other than swap 1 card for another every turn. The problem with Card Trader being; You might as well use the space that Card Trader is taking up for another card that you would actually want to draw rather than a slow card that just replaces a card you draw with another potential brick. If you are playing cards like that, and using anecdotal evidence where you won like a game or two with that card to support that the card is good; at that point, you aren't a "Casual player". You're just bad.
As for a "Competitive" player. Every good player, even if casual, is competitive to an extent. What is the opposite of competitive? A better way of wording this is "What is the opposite of wanting to win? Not wanting to win?". The objective of a duel is to win the duel, and you can have fun in doing so. You can have fun even if you lose. But the overall objective of a duel is to win, so overall, every player is "Competitive" to an extent. Stop throwing "Casual" around as an insult, or as an excuse to be bad in general. My boyfriend and I play casually, and we aren't bad at the game, and we sure as hell aren't bad at deckbuilding. Sure, we choose to play gimmicky or underpowered decks, but we build them WELL. We don't build them poorly. Hell, I even play a little bit of meta from time to time. What I'm getting at, is that I don't give a fuck what kind of deck you play. But when you throw "Casual" around as an excuse to be bad at the game, or as an insult to bad players, it shows that you're just an ass either way you look at it. Especially when you have a toxic mindset toward people who play meta or rogue decks. Play the deck you want, just don't build it terribly. I would actually say that the term "Elitist" suits the "Competitive" players better, because the Elitists are the ones that spend hundreds, and even thousands of dollars on their decks and to go to events, as well as spending countless hours constantly practicing and playtesting, which is the exact opposite of a casual player.
Anyway, I would like to know how everybody else feels about this constant divide in the community, as well as the lack of communication between the two halves of the playerbase.
