The majority of the community sucks (or does it?)

[DreamWind]

Originally Posted by Shadowmoon

Unless I have a completely bad memory, but i remember that this was right after they fixed the door glitch, and people were trying to kill him, but mallyx had a glitch where he used summon shadows every 3 seconds, which was confirmed then fixed. The guy you mentioned ended up winning using an imbagon and pre-nerfed 10 sec 20 sec recharge Seed of life. And this was in NM, not HM.

It doesn't matter what they used. It just matters that they beat it. 99.9% of PvE players were whining about these areas and Anet changed their game (made it easier/introduced overpowered skills) to make it bearable for these people who couldn't stand to fail. Instead of getting better skill (the original point of Guild Wars) they continued to suck...and now Anet supports it.

[Vel]

Originally Posted by DreamWind

It just matters that they beat it. 99.9% of PvE players were whining about these areas

Wow You know how 99.9% of PvE players reacted. You must be ANET Secret Agent! How silly.

Please let's not make this another PvP>>>PvE thread or who beat DOA first thread.

[Eddie Frenzy Spam]

Originally Posted by Vel

Wow You know how 99.9% of PvE players reacted. You must be ANET Secret Agent! How silly.

I don't think he actually meant you to take that literally...his general meaning in my opinion was that a large proportion were complaining. Which was true.

[pingu666]

i dont think 99.9% of the gw community was trying doa.
orignal doa wasnt hard because of hexes/conditions, it was because stuff hit really hard, bosslike damage from what i remmber

[Chabby]

Yes it does suck, but one of the reason is common to every interactive game.

I just played a Random Battle.

My team : Dervish (me), Warrior and two monks.
The opposite team : One mook, one ritualist, one elementalist and one Mesmer.

Right at the begining, one of the player resigned. I said that some people just resigned too fast...
I knew it would be one of these endless games, but I wanted to try anyway...

Then he told me to resign. I said no, I wanted to try. What did we have to lose anyway, except time? I'm the kind of person to play for fun, not really winning or losing...

...Then he called me a moron, idiot, a scrub, that I should look at his rank, that because he had a high one, he was brillant and I wasn't because I didn't resign...

I mean, come on... How can a new player feel with that kind of attitude? And it's common in any online game you play. There's always players who forget that it's a game.

[Dmitri3]

Originally Posted by Chabby

Then he told me to resign. I said no, I wanted to try.

Cool stuff, so you're forcing your team to do nothing for about 10 minutes. There's almost no chance you can kill a monk + rit with 2 monks and you'll just waste time. He's not having fun doing something that is futile, especially as a monk. You can try, but after 1 minute or so, resign... Really, you're not a victim here.

To original question:

It does, but it matters not because you can go on and let them suck somewhere else.

[Skyy High]

Eh, have you been in RA recently? Not every monk is pro, not ever rit is a healer. If you have a team of two monks and two heavy-hitting damage dealers (ie, a war and a derv), you can roll basically any team you come up against. Not even trying with a team like that is just moronic. Now, if it gets to be 3 minutes in and it's clear there's not a damn thing you can do (really, fat chance. Random pick of 4 healers in RA, one of them is going to blow), then you can talk about resigning. And even if it is pointless, what the heck is raging going to do? What the heck does having r6 (or whatever) glad rank have to do with whether or not you should resign? Not a damn thing, that's what, which is the point: the guy was an arse. Whether or not he was right, he should have explained why he resigned, and whether or not he should have resigned, he should have at least tried. He did neither, instead opting to rage at a random player for potentially costing him a minute of time he could be spending farming glad points.

It reminds me of my experience in RA yesterday. I was a mes, we had a scythe ranger, a war, and one other on our team. After killing the entire enemy team, we were left against one defy pain war, who now starts hitting me. I kite, ether feast, kite, etc, with my team in a train behind the war. The scythe ranger yells at me continuously to stop moving, which I a) didn't see, because I was too busy not dying, and b) wouldn't have cared about anyway. The war was easily hitting for enough to make me need to kite to stay alive, and yet this scythe ranger (who should have had no trouble hitting the bugger, given that he's running at +33% and the war had no speed boost and was stopping to hit me) raged at me for 3 consecutive games about how big a noob I was for...well, basically for costing them 10 seconds of time, in the interest of not dying and practicing my circle-strafing.

[Dmitri3]

Originally Posted by Skyy High

Eh, have you been in RA recently? Not every monk is pro, not ever rit is a healer. If you have a team of two monks and two heavy-hitting damage dealers (ie, a war and a derv), you can roll basically any team you come up against. Not even trying with a team like that is just moronic. Now, if it gets to be 3 minutes in and it's clear there's not a damn thing you can do (really, fat chance. Random pick of 4 healers in RA, one of them is going to blow), then you can talk about resigning.

If rit OR monk is good, it's auto lose. If they have blind surge or melee hate, if it's ever more failure, even if all of their team is bad.

I have no problem with trying, but after around 1 min without getting a kill, resign.

[Greedy Gus]

Originally Posted by Chabby

I just played a Random Battle.

My team : Dervish (me), Warrior and two monks.
The opposite team : One mook, one ritualist, one elementalist and one Mesmer.

Right at the begining, one of the player resigned. I said that some people just resigned too fast...
I knew it would be one of these endless games, but I wanted to try anyway...

Then he told me to resign. I said no, I wanted to try. What did we have to lose anyway, except time? I'm the kind of person to play for fun, not really winning or losing...

...Then he called me a moron, idiot, a scrub, that I should look at his rank, that because he had a high one, he was brillant and I wasn't because I didn't resign...

I mean, come on... How can a new player feel with that kind of attitude? And it's common in any online game you play. There's always players who forget that it's a game.

In fact, their reasoning is also based on it being just a game (one that they're trying to play for fun). If you pull back from your own perspective, you may see that to a lot of people, there's almost an entire sub-game to RA which is about minimizing wasted time and maximizing fun time (playing tough TA-like battles or winning a lot, depending on your goals).

[Trub]

Originally Posted by DreamWind

It doesn't matter what they used. It just matters that they beat it. 99.9% of PvE players were whining about these areas and Anet changed their game (made it easier/introduced overpowered skills) to make it bearable for these people who couldn't stand to fail. Instead of getting better skill (the original point of Guild Wars) they continued to suck...and now Anet supports it.

Ahhh..the year of the 100 page thread...
I wouldn't say the 'community' as a whole sucks, just the more vocal post Ursan/PvE skills only crowd.
ANet has dumbed down this magnificent game from it's origins of skill>time, into a 'insta-gratification' fest.
I do miss the guild hall meetings, the build discussions that would go on for hours, the experimental builds, that many times failed horribly. (owies owies)
All that seems to be lost to the 'zomg gib me faster, uber kill skills now!' attitude.
Meh.
I still play....but only when I feel the urge to test something out...

[Chabby]

Originally Posted by Greedy Gus

In fact, their reasoning is also based on it being just a game (one that they're trying to play for fun). If you pull back from your own perspective, you may see that to a lot of people, there's almost an entire sub-game to RA which is about minimizing wasted time and maximizing fun time (playing tough TA-like battles or winning a lot, depending on your goals).

And I have no problem with that, but from whoever perspective, there's no point to call the other a "moron" (or other names) and act like if I was superior to anybody because of my rank.

You explained, I understood...

But calling others with bad names is not only immature, but won't help new players.

It's only a game, but whatever my fun is, I will never treat the other players as trashes to impose my own fun. Maybe his was to minimize the time, but that's not a reason for not being respectful.

[DreamWind]

Originally Posted by Vel

Wow You know how 99.9% of PvE players reacted. You must be ANET Secret Agent! How silly.

Please let's not make this another PvP>>>PvE thread or who beat DOA first thread.

I knew somebody would take the number and turn it into something it wasn't. Let us just say that 99.9% of the PvE players ON THIS FORUM (and the other elite forums) were complaining. Is that better?

And we don't have to turn it into PvP>>>PvE (or vise versa), but PvP players beat DoA first its just a fact of life.

[Trub]

Originally Posted by DreamWind

And we don't have to turn it into PvP>>>PvE (or vise versa), but PvP players beat DoA first its just a fact of life.

/Agree.
And, as a huge undertaking of co-operation, and fun...several Pvp'ers and PvE'ers put our heads together to figure out the next steps to take after the glitch fixes to the door/priest/spirits/smash.
It wasn't OP skills...it was simple trial and error with a common PvP tactic....Weapon Swapping. oO
I just think GW players of late, have forgot how to co-operate with a team, or ask someone else with a different outlook, for advice.
The current GW player base(mostly guru posters) have gone down hill just a smidge.
There is no blame...no reason to point fingers.
You cannot be critical to players that have not had the opprtunities to enjoy this game the way it used to be, most haven't.
You can offer advice, and explain why certain builds work better in a given area.
That's the most that should be expected..

[englitdaudelin]

Do we suck? Some, I'm sure, as individuals. We're sarcastic, easily annoyed, talkative, combative, competitive, a little arrogant at times.

Who isn't?

I like the question about teaching, because that's what I found my experience lacked. I came to GW almost 3 years ago from sports games. I'd never played an RPG like this, never played fantasy games. So from the start, most of the mechanics were new to me. My very first character got as far as Piken Square before I sat back in frustration and deleted him. Why? Because at level 9 or 10, I could not solo the groups of Charr.

Why was I soloing groups of level 11 Charr and failing? Because I had no idea how to add people to my party--not even henchmen. I had no idea what WTS and WTB meant, scrolling up my screen. No idea what LFG meant.

When my ranger had to do the first "Over the Wall" quest, someone invited / added me--so I still didn't understand how that had happened.

Next character was a necro. I was still without a guild--didn't know what that meant, really. This is where I fell in with my first guild, a guild I was in through most of Nightfall. The leader of the guild picked me up in Ascalon City, and (as a level 20) rather sped up the killing process (and really, have you seen the skills that a Prophecies-only necro had available back there?).

Did I learn? Some. He taught me some simple things, like adding henchies, and a little about the levelling. I henched through most quests after the searing and had live guildmates help in most missions. I PuGged a lot in Kryta, the desert, and the Southern Shiverpeaks. I did not get a Droks run.

But I didn't fully understand the missions, or builds, for a long time. Some missions still confuse me, after several trips--because in many cases, I did not need to fail. I had a level 20, or a highly experienced player, guiding me through missions.

And I think failing--and then teaching and learning this game--is kind of lost. I'm willing to bet that some great players--some great PvP players, some great PvE players--got their asses handed to them in arenas, in missions, on quests.

And then they talked it through, tried again, failed, lost, tried again. And again. And again.

More recently, when HM came out, PvE players had great opportunities to learn about the game. Countering builds, exploring, reconaissance, balanced builds, and so on. What happened? A group of players did exactly that: created their own, and their heroes, builds, to use for specific situations.

But another group went for maximum simplicity, in several forms. And suddenly, vanquishing didn't require thought, or discussion, or analysis. It required rank. It required three necros. It required one elite skill on 6 bars. (It probably could have been done on 8 bars, no monk).

The guild I was in at the time loved the Ursan for vanquishing. We were all adults; many of us had kids; the idea of spending lots of time to fail was not high on our lists. So the core of this guild pretty much ran all Ursan, all the time. And as much as I could, I joined those groups and asked if I could NOT do that.

Now, these were good players. Smart players. Players who had been successful in high-end PvP play; who had led guilds which owned towns; who had explored far corners of the maps and capped esoteric elites with limited uses, and knew how to use them.

But did I, still figuring out missions, skills, PvP, learn much?

No.

And Whose fault is it when no one learns? Probably mine, for not asking more questions. Probably the fault of others, too, for stacking up the ecto the fast way instead of engaging the challenges that the game presented.

So whenever I can, in whatever polite ways I can, I try to suggest the proper course--for whatever is at hand, from whatever knowledge I have.

That might be about all we can offer, and hope that people can stop telling us to stfu, noob, but I'll suffer such slings and arrows if I end up teaching someone.

All that's left of our guild is 6 or 7 players who are willing to fail and experiment, and who don't care what's on the bar. We talk a lot, and we do learn something from each other quite frequently--mission tricks, quests, mob tricks, builds that work. Often, we even play fair in HM. We even fail in PvP sometimes.

[Red Sonya]

However, builds are cookie cutter for a reason; they are the most efficient for the task at hand.

herein lies the problem with THAT attitude about playing this game or any other game. Everyone has their own fun factor. Playing cookie cutter is not creative thought or play. It's robotic and many don't want to play like so n so or robotic. I came from the DnD tabletop games where you rolled up your character and HAD to take that and play it. Now everything is reroll reroll reroll until you get the ultimate warrior, same with GW it's turned into that gotta be ultimate warrior attitude and nothing else. Leaving out creative creations. And let's face it there are 100's and possibly even 1000's of builds that will work from the start to the finish in this game in normal mode and even in hard mode. So, there's no need to play cookie cutter builds unless you are just lazy or think everyone else is right and you're wrong for wanting to be different. People with the cookie cutter most efficient attitudes are probably the ones who make fun of and laugh at retarded people in real life.

[Fril Estelin]

Originally Posted by Burst Cancel

people don't like to fail, especially in this age of instant gratification, and if it happens too often they'll just give up.

The enemy of good game design has always been the player.

Bottom line, apathy is the killer. The problem is and always has been that people just don't give a shit.

Originally Posted by Valcion

So to answer OP's question. Does the community sucks? yeah it kinda does. But does that mean you have to go with the flow and not be that one random helpful person? No it doesn't. QQ doesn't make the community any better, go out there and talk to a random player, who knows, you might just find a new PvE buddy (or find a hilarious story to tell your other friends).

Originally Posted by Master Fuhon

Majority of the community does suck because of reason #2. Answers wouldn't have made sense without my reasoning:
1) Yes, they are bad. Just look at what they say.
2) They aren't missing resources, they are skipping ahead to the easy answers and not learning how to play.
3) Good players aren't as good at game mechanics as people think they are. Most dominant play styles can be traced back to 1-2 players developing them. If players were better, game mechanics would be learned at closer to the same rate for many people; instead of having to copy something that someone else was doing for weeks.

Originally Posted by englitdaudelin

That might be about all we can offer, and hope that people can stop telling us to stfu, noob, but I'll suffer such slings and arrows if I end up teaching someone.

Thanks to you guys for your great posts.

Short reply to "It's a game, not a school": you probably missed the double-quotes around the word "teaching" (I may have forgotten a few). I'm not stupid, I know GW is a game, yet that doesn't say what is "fun" because this is subjective. I was trying to raise a point here, ok I'll admit I failed again, but that was a very interesting discussion.

[the_jos]

A little while ago there was an item in the news.
A guy fell with his moped and was passed by several people (for over an hour) before someone decided to help and call emergency.
So don't expect too much from random people when playing an online game.

First of all, I'd say that there ain't many bad players and the main problem is experience. So many people are truely depending on help and unable to do anything themself.

Having said that, when someone wants to improve it's his/her responsibility to arrange conditions that enable that person to improve.
Inside guild wars, it's not that hard to go to a place with many players and just ask for some advice.

Now the real problem is what does one need to ask to get better.
Let's say I'm fairly new to PvP and created a monk. I came into this area called Random Arena's and for some reason each time I enter the area the opponents are all over me. Warriors knocking me down, assassins spiking me, mesmers casting backfire and shame on me and on top of that rangers interrupting and dazing me. And they always attack me first for some reason

So my question is: "I want to be better at PvP, help!".

As you can see, that question is not really covering my needs.
I'm a monk and playing RA and the main problem there seems to be individual survival.
So my question could better be: "I'm an RA monk, how do I prevent being knocked over, dazed and hexed?"

Well, there is a ton of advice to give, like pre-veil, kite, take a build that allows you to block melee and rangers and position on the field.
However, while this is all true, it's not easy to do this all at once while three or four people are pounding on you.

And this is where experience starts. Pre-veil and learn to monk with 3 pips of energy. Or take some secondary skills that allow blocking or moving away from damage. Or try to kite. Don't do all at once, focus on one thing, even if players are calling you a noob or bad monk. Because you ain't bad, you lack experience. And one day (some soon, some later) you will find that you can both pre-veil, block and kite at the same time. And people won't call you bad anymore. Because you gained enough experience.

Let's be honest, it's completely unfair to compare my RA-monking skills to those who have countless hours of PvP on their account.
The same with many other parts of the game.

And that's the problem with labeling players 'bad'.
Are they really bad, or are they just inexperienced?

I took RA for a reason, since people who don't sync get into random teams.
When talking about non-random teams, even PUG, things can be influenced more. But specially the PvE side is more forgiving for inexperienced players.
And doesn't push people to improve themselfs so hard.

That's the final part.
I think that within the game several levels of play are possible. And on each and every level there are good, bad and inexperienced players.
However, I feel that the PvE side of the game isn't pusing people to gain experience as it used to be. And I'm afraid that this is creating 'bad' players, players who are playing on a level they wouldn't be if experience would count instead of certain overpowered skills and consumables.
But that's an entirely different discussion.

[assassin shaun]

i have to agree that the majority of the gw community does suck but most of all they are lazy

they basicly use 1-2-3 kill builds they don't experiment themselves or anything

i mean i wouldn't say im the best player in the world, but i stuck some skills together to see how they worked and changed it / adapted it when i needed to.

so all in all its lazyness

[Fril Estelin]

Originally Posted by the_jos

Having said that, when someone wants to improve it's his/her responsibility to arrange conditions that enable that person to improve.
Inside guild wars, it's not that hard to go to a place with many players and just ask for some advice.

I just want to say a final word to try to make clearer the point I was trying to make (see Disclaimer 1 in OP, with "read all posts", this comment is not directed at you the_jos).:

yes, ultimately it's everyone's responsibility to improve, if they want; and if they don't, well it's not ours really ... unless, unless we realise we all have social responsibilities that go beyond our individual duties to ourselves. If you don't realise that, then do not complain that the game is dying, unless you contributed to its "health" (and I know people do, I read everyday useful comments everywhere on Guru, every single day, not only in Q&A). As I said at one point, there's even a good reason to pass on knowledge: it's going to make great teammates in PvE and nice allies or adversaries in PvP.

At one point I was wondering whether this question of "teaching" (double quotes intended) was slightly different in PvP, where you have to win over other human beings and your edge may lie in the knowledge you have (not only the "know how", which is not provided on tools like PvX, although you have more of this on the GW wiki for PvE content). Maybe PvPers want to keep an edge and the only way to teach for them is "self-teach" (RA, improve with a GvG group) or "join my guild" (once you're at my skill level)? I know from personal experience that it's almost uncomfortable when the frontier between politeness and unfriendliness is so blurred (if you can't take the vulgarity, gtfo or stfu, learn2play, carebear, n00b)

I remember when the /report feasture was introduced, I said that it was a unique opportunity for the community to start policing itself. It partially worked, but my point was to realise that as a community each can go beyond its own (little) self and contribute an epsilon (very little) to a good ambiance. And I'm not saying people didn't, because there are countless proof that they do. What I'm saying is that the ratio of these positive contributions to the negatie ones hasn't been enough, either because of lazyness/don't-care-because-it's-only-a-game/not-my-problem, or no one has really seen the "big picture". I'm not claiming I have seen it, but it's my feeling that the balance is not right.

At the core of this thread, there are ethical issues, and I'm not saying I'm "right", I actually created this thread to see where it could go "collectively", and it went nowhere. It built like a nice tree, then died and it's about to collapse soon. I'm not complaining, there'll be other opportunities like that, and some may even work better. All these long "walls of text" may put off people, so I'll shut up for now.

To conclude on a positive note, yes you're right, we can always ask people.

Ty all.

[Lourens]

1) Are GW players really that bad?

Many might be bad but it doesn't state that all are bad

2) Could it be that they haven't been taught how to play the game correctly? Maybe they missed resources like GW wiki, PvX and Guru (without even going into the "cookie cutter build" mentality)? Or they didn't have the time, given that it's a game and they don't want to invest much time in it?

Any player with an IQ higher then 100 will have no problem understanding a game as simple as this without those sites unless they're Chinese and forgot to set the language to Chinese.

3) Isn't it rather so-called "good players" that are bad at teaching how the game works? (not helped by lack of in-game good tutorials on many aspects of the game)

Its either you are not willing to teach or you don't have time to teach newbs