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

[Arkantos]

1) The majority are, yes.

2) The resources are good and bad. For example, wiki and elite fansites are good because players can find answers to their questions. Need to know the skills an enemy has? Check wiki. Want to ask a general question? Ask on guru/GWO/etc. Now, pvx is a good and bad resource. Sure, it gives players good builds, but it poorly teaches them how to play the builds. So now we have hundreds of bad players who got good builds from pvx, but have no clue how to play them. And yes, some people don't do research because they just want to play.

3) You can't generalize players like that. You can't simply say that good players are bad at teaching people how the game works. Some can explain it well, some can't.

[Darth Durgason]

1) Are GW players really that bad?
No, the majority is average. Some good, some bad, most average. Its in the defenition of "average".
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?
A) Teaching come from 2 sides, the teacher and the student.
B) New players have a lot of catching up to do. 3 to 4 years of experience is not catched up fast.
C) not everyone got equal time to invest in the game. A generalisation on this is out of place.
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)
A) Depends on the student. Some people learn fast, some slow, some are good to learn fast people, others are good to learn slow people...
B) You can't expect anyone to learn weeks/months/years of experience with a mere 5 lines of explenation. There is also a diffrence between theory and putting it in practice.
C) Most teachers use the line "use wiki" or "wiki knows all" to questions. Its 3/4 of most answers one see when someone asks a question. I do not take into account "you noob" as an answer.
C BIS) when you force people to use wiki rather then find it out themselfs/telling them got it consequences. Just like fiinding it out for yourself does and telling them does. In perfect situations its a balance. However the balance depends on each person
D) Some people learn from there own mistakes, others needs to be told. Teaching is entirely up to the people. Its not a science, though containing some "best practices".

Sidenotes:
-Good teachers to me are people that can give critisism without hurting people.
-Good players can motivate other players and get the best out of other players. Another meaning of pushing one to its boundries, but in a good way.
-Bad players to me come into diffrent gradations:
1. People not willing to look up there boundries. Not the boundries themselfs.
2. People bringing other people down, with no other purpose then to bring them down to hide there own failure: not able to bring out the best of people.
- Often people are not given the chance and directly put under the banner of bad player. It took ages to build rome, it also takes some time to put your boundries further. Don't let your own boundries be the same of the others.
- Nobody is perfect. We all make mistakes in this game. Just diffrent ones.

[DreamWind]

Originally Posted by Red Sonya

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.

Run a cookie cutter build in a "robotic" and "lazy" way and go try to survive in higher level PvP. Good luck....that only works in PvE. The reason the majority of the community sucks is because they choose not to think about why certain things are being used and they probably aren't using them correctly. The other reason is because it is almost impossible to learn anything in Guild Wars PvE anymore...everything has already been learned and once a person figures that out then there is nothing more to learn.

Besides, if build is an established build, your "creative" build is strictly worse anyways. If you are using a worse build that is less fun for me. There is a reason why almost every cookie cutter build in the history of the game was invented by PvPers.

[Burst Cancel]

Originally Posted by Fril Estelin

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.

You're not going to get through to casual gamers on that point, because they've never understood (and likely don't want to understand) the play-to-win mindset. To a lot of people, games are things that shouldn't take any effort - learning is something they do in school and on the job, not when they're "just having fun". I'm not sure why people think that fun necessarily = brainless + effortless, but that's how it is.

What's particularly curious is that these same people will claim that they actually do care whether they suck or not (the general response is, "hey, nobody likes to suck!"). Yet, despite allegedly caring, they don't actually care enough to do anything about it. Hey, they might care about not sucking, but actually learning how to play? Hell no - they're too busy "having fun"!

In reality, what they mean is that they want to believe they're good, and more importantly, they want everyone else to believe it too. But since they aren't actually willing to put any effort into being good, they want the game to be so easy that you can't tell who sucks and who doesn't. These are the kinds of games that are successful with casual gamers - games of socialist-style "enforced equality" rather than games of actual merit. That's why you don't see casual gamers playing solid competitive games - they spend most of their time losing (read: sucking), and they hate having their ego stomped on.

Teaching, therefore, misses the point. These people don't want to learn, because they only care that people think they're good (read: prestige, e-peen, etc.), rather than actually being good. With all of the GW information resources available today - wiki, obs mode, forums, etc. - people who actually care about getting better will get better, even all on their own. You'd be surprised how many players can't immediately recognize skill effects from just seeing the icon - that's a fundamental ability that doesn't require any teaching at all.

[shoyon456]

Eh, gaming communities are always asses. Especially when they've been waiting for...2 years for news on a product they've only heard whispers of so far?

Plus, guildwars was from the beginning geared for solo play (henchies) in pve. That only increased with time.

PvP is coop, but in exchange you get the elitism and competitiveness that is associated with it.

[Bryant Again]

Originally Posted by Fril Estelin

1) Are GW players really that bad?

Yes, but that can be said of every game. Ain't a problem. Most just play for fun.

[DreamWind]

Originally Posted by Bryant Again

Yes, but that can be said of every game. Ain't a problem. Most just play for fun.

Why do you have to be bad to have fun? Personally if I was bad I wouldn't be having fun.

[Bryant Again]

Originally Posted by DreamWind

Why do you have to be bad to have fun?

No, rather you don't have to be good to have fun. I wouldn't have fun if I wasn't terribly good, either, but that's just us. That's why we - us - have Hard(er) mode and more challenging content, why there's ever increasing difficulty levels for numerous games.

▼ Not what I'm saying, and not an easy question to answer. I see the players less as "bad" and more "inexperienced": just because you can't beat Doom on Nightmare doesn't make you bad. Improving may require a drastic transition in their gameplay they may not be comfortable with.

[DreamWind]

Originally Posted by Bryant Again

No, rather you don't have to be good to have fun.

But why are there a large amount of people who must be bad to have fun? Trying to be good reduces their fun.

[Fril Estelin]

Originally Posted by DreamWind

But why are there a large amount of people who must be bad to have fun? Trying to be good reduces their fun.

In your case, "fun" and "good"/"skilled" are strongly correlated, in most cases they're more or less correlated, and for "noobs" they're not correlated at all (don't care about skill, fun is all).

In essence, it's a bit what I was trying to say: "teaching" requires to get out of your viewpoint to get into the one of others (obviously, people who are not "too far" from you, yes "teaching" is a 2-way process). If you keep the discussion into one well-delimited playground, you can't really see the problem of making people "jump" from one system of evaluating the game (storyline, big numbers, etc.) into another one (skills, task, etc.). It's the essence of social networking, or more precisely when social networking works.

[DreamWind]

Originally Posted by Fril Estelin

In essence, it's a bit what I was trying to say: "teaching" requires to get out of your viewpoint to get into the one of others (obviously, people who are not "too far" from you, yes "teaching" is a 2-way process). If you keep the discussion into one well-delimited playground, you can't really see the problem of making people "jump" from one system of evaluating the game (storyline, big numbers, etc.) into another one (skills, task, etc.). It's the essence of social networking, or more precisely when social networking works.

I understand what you are saying. I find a big problem in most cases though...you just can't change peoples' minds. If a good player tries to teach a bad player to be good, it will NOT work if the bad player has fun being bad. A bad player who is already having fun will never be good because they don't care and won't do what it takes to be good. This in turn annoys the good players who actually care about being good. That is the problem and the reason why good teachers are a rare find.

This is kind of my problem with the direction of the game as a whole....there is no reason at all for people to not be bad and not enough reason to be good. This is fine for most games, but I just don't think this is the way Guild Wars was supposed to go.

[Fril Estelin]

Originally Posted by DreamWind

you just can't change peoples' minds.

Very not true. You'd be amazed. But that's not really difficult, it may require a bit of efforts depending on players lack of knowledge and willingness to "teach".

The really difficult challenge is to change a community. Of course if you start by saying that it's impossible at the individual level, the question at a community level does not make sense.

A bad player who is already having fun will never be good because they don't care and won't do what it takes to be good. This in turn annoys the good players who actually care about being good. That is the problem and the reason why good teachers are a rare find.

No, good teachers are not rare. And the "bad" player (double quote) may simply discover a new kind of fun, either from the improved skill level or the new friends he can have.

This is kind of my problem with the direction of the game as a whole....there is no reason at all for people to not be bad and not enough reason to be good. This is fine for most games, but I just don't think this is the way Guild Wars was supposed to go.

As I said before, you're right, but it's off-topic. Other thread have discussed this at length, and you know it because you were right in the middle of these discussions . Sometimes, to reach one's goal, you have to stop focusing on one aspect and try others, in the end we're holistic beings and rarely react to only one side of the argument (even if Anet changed the game, the community may not move by one inch).

[Apollo Smile]

Experimenting with different skills is part of the fun. If people don't like that because it "isn't the most effective" or isn't a carbon copy of *insert popular build; well, thats just too bad.

[Dmitri3]

Originally Posted by Apollo Smile

Experimenting with different skills is part of the fun. If people don't like that because it "isn't the most effective" or isn't a carbon copy of *insert popular build; well, thats just too bad.

Nah, lots of experienced people run stupid bars in arenas such as RA, AB, JQ, FA just for fun... In fact, getting 10 consec in RA with Echo+Mending is FTW!

But there are those who run a stupid/inefficient bar and think it's good. That they lose only cause their team sucks or other team cheated. Those people aren't worth being helped, taught or even talked to, just let them have their "fun" in RA. Also they often give me a good laugh, so it's not all that bad.

[Burst Cancel]

Originally Posted by Apollo Smile

Experimenting with different skills is part of the fun. If people don't like that because it "isn't the most effective" or isn't a carbon copy of *insert popular build; well, thats just too bad.

This line of argument is and always has been completely idiotic. Where do you think those "most effective builds" came from? Why aren't we all still playing builds from three years ago? Do you actually think the good players started the game with all of the best builds already implanted in their head? Or could it possibly be that top players experiment with builds also?

The difference between the casual player and the good player in this instance isn't that one is willing to experiment and the other is not. The difference is that the good player has a solid grasp of the game mechanics, and therefore is able to experiment with builds in a deliberate and rational way. The casual player is clueless, so their experimentation results in idiocy like Meteor Storm rangers.

Re: Dream - sorry, but the problem isn't the game; the problem is the players. As I said before, Anet can't make the game harder because people will leave. It's pretty clear even from forum posts that people feel entitled to all of the rewards just because they paid for the game; daring to think that people might actually have to be good at the game to succeed is considered "elitist". The "elitist" label is, as always, a red herring - casual players start throwing it around at random when they feel threatened by people who are simply better than them.

I'd go so far as to say that complex challenges and financial success are inversely correlated in the gaming industry. To make the mega-bucks you put out hand-holding, ego-stroking casual games with "good stories" rather than smash-you-in-the-face competitive games that actually take thought and skill to play. The best ones are sheep in wolves' clothing - they present the illusion of difficulty (thus allowing players to feel good about themselves when they beat it), but don't actually have any real difficulty to speak of (example: pretty much any JRPG).

Re: Fril - changing the community requires shifting the huge base of casual players to equate play-for-fun with play-to-win. This is an insurmountable task in any game (heck, even fighting game communities can't really manage this, and they're the epitome of play-to-win). Don't be fooled into thinking that this is a gaming-specific problem either; it's actually an extension of people's attitudes towards life in general. You can see it all around you - at work, on the road, at the gym, etc. Why are there so many drunks, cellphone users, makeup artists, etc. on our roads? Because they don't think being a good driver matters, so it's not worth putting any effort into being a good driver (this is the answer straight from the horse's mouth). If they cared, they wouldn't even have the stereo on or talk to passengers lest it distract them from the actual task of driving. The problem is called not giving a shit - it's absolutely everywhere, and affects everyone to varying degrees.

In short, you're not fighting ignorance and stupidity here - you're fighting apathy, which is a lot scarier. "Teaching", in the sense of "imparting knowledge", is the easy part. It's getting people to even care in the first place that's hard.

[Fril Estelin]

Originally Posted by Burst Cancel

In short, you're not fighting ignorance and stupidity here - you're fighting apathy, which is a lot scarier. "Teaching", in the sense of "imparting knowledge", is the easy part. It's getting people to even care in the first place that's hard.

I agree to a certain extent with what you said, but: 1) I have a more "enlarged" vision of what "fun" is, i.e. storyline, landscapes and music are also a great part of the fun; 2) I'm optimist (some will see it as naive), you can change people and communities, it's probably not going to happen for a variety of reasons, but it's no reason for not trying; 3) I think the responsibility is shared between a variety of players, not only the one that "should be learning" (yes, indeed, learning by playing is the most important, but given the 3years+ of GW1 experience, you can't blame people that can't devote the several dozens of hours of reading+failing&improving necessary to "master the game mechanics", I know that personally).


Great challenges go far beyond beating DoA HM or the GvG mAT 8 times in a row (not to say that these are not "valid" challenges of course!), it's not because they're difficult that "we" shouldn't do it.

No illusion here, great discussion but going nowhere, alas :/.

[Burst Cancel]

Let's refocus a bit.

Fun means something different to everyone, that's the heart of the issue. People who have fun while sucking aren't going to understand why they should bother getting better at the game. They aren't here to beast the game or their friends, they're here to unwind for an hour or two before doing something that matters to them. In the greater scheme of things, there's nothing wrong with that - games ultimately don't matter, so the fact that a lot of people suck at them is actually okay. But in the context of wanting a skilled playerbase, it's a serious - and likely insurmountable - problem.

Most games address this by not worrying about skill in the first place. Final Fantasy doesn't take any skill to play, but millions of people all over the world have fun playing it anyway. Company makes money, gamers have fun, everyone goes home happy. Strictly skill-based games like fighting games have a harder time - casual gamers generally don't like having their skill measured, because although they don't really care about games, on some level they also don't want to be told to their face (over and over again) that they suck. You resolve this problem largely the way Anet handled GW, and the way Blizzard handled Starcraft: make the game easy for everyone, leaving the competitive gamers to create their own high-end.

That's how pretty much how all skill games end up: you have a small core of serious gamers one-upping each other on the tournament ladder, and a huge crowd of casual gamers playing the single-player campaign and the occasional match on Big Game Hunters (to continue with the Starcraft analogy). The competitive players are the ones that push the envelope and drive the evolution of the game - they're the primary (sole?) source of high-end tactics, because they need those tactics to win. The casual players are just there for their monetary contribution - they're the ones that fund the top players by making the game a commercial success.

GW isn't any different. Some people care, and they'll get better all on their own. Most people don't care, and all Anet needs to do is take their money and throw them enough bones to keep them interested. That's why the PvE (and casual PvP) situation will never change.

[Fril Estelin]

You're wrong on two accounts Burst Cancel:

1) people's notion of fun is not fixed, it can change; imagine if the PvE guy sucking at PvP because he's been destroyed/annihilated/ridiculised can be "guided" (or "taught") a few basic skills and suddenly starts not being so bad with a few wins (but still failing/loosing); this can, in a just few moments, change he sees as "fun" (on the other hand, that's not sufficient in the long term);

2) there's no simplistic dichotomy "serious gamer" vs "casuals"; plenty of PvErs enjoy "light PvP" such as AB, JQ and FA, although they won't/can't (possibly "not yet") jump into more serious/organised form of PvP. I bet a lot of people playing on the PvP ladder don't play "seriously" (ty gimmick builds). This is a very important point for this discussion, without it there's no hope of transforming "white" into "black".

Tbh, I'm willing to start gathering resources for a "GW Guide on how to get better at the game" which coud may be be a "teaching"/"guiding" tool (I know that there are already a lot of very nice guides, articles, and the wiki, but nothing central which guides you through all this vast content). Maybe like a step-by-step guide which can progressively (re)introduce the game mechanics (I should get paid by Anet if I'm doing it j/k). But I'm very short on time (hey, I want to AB a little bit ) so I'll stop here and use my time for this.

EDIT: this reminds me of one of Billiard's great blogpost:
http://teamlove.us/guildtracks/?p=70

[Burst Cancel]

The problem is that you're approaching the problem from an individual's standpoint, which is completely different from the situation at the macro level. I agree that the perception of fun can change - but unless it changes for hundreds of thousands of people at a time, it's completely irrelevant. Plenty of people like their suckage just fine, and will resent you for trying to point it out to them and "educating" them. Take a look around you - what popular skill-based game has a play-to-win majority? Think about all of the mainstream fighters, RTS, FPS, etc. Starcraft is definitely For Serious (I mean, there's nothing more serious than playing for cold, hard cash), but there are still far more BGH scrubs than tournament-level players.

And there is a dichotomy, it's just that you've incorrectly identified the dividing line: play-to-win. That's it. It doesn't matter what types of GW you play - if you play GvG but you don't have the play-to-win mindset, you're still not a serious player. The fact that some PvEers dabble in "casual PvP" doesn't make them any less scrubtastic. There are plenty of "PvPers" who have no more clue about the game than PvEers, because they don't give a shit either - they're just in it for the lulz. There's no such thing as "kind of playing to win" - you either play to win, or you don't (note that wanting to win != playing to win).

[Gigashadow]

Skillwise, players in this game aren't any better or worse than players in any other game. In the popular MMOs, the designers created fully fledged character classes with skills that make sense, but Guild Wars doesn't, and gives you a lot more rope to hang yourself with. Bad players in WoW, for example, will still keep mashing their nuke spells and get something done. In Guild Wars, they might not even have brought something even that useful.

Community wise, though, Guild Wars has the worst community of any game I've ever played. This is partly because everyone is on one big world, so you'll never see the same person twice, and never recognize guilds from some random 4 letter tag either. If you've played on any of the classic MMOs, you'll know who the prominent guilds are and which guilds and players have a good/bad reputation. Players can't really build up bad reputations in Guild Wars, so they have no incentive to be nice. Also, almost everyone solos with heroes and henchmen now, as you don't need other people to play the game.