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

[Ec]-[oMaN]

4thVariety hit the nail right on the head. Easy to read and concise. Well done.

[snaek]

Originally Posted by kostolomac

Can you give your definition of a balanced game?
I'll give you mine: a balanced game offers the same options/tools to all sides, their choice of tools and how they use them decides who wins. By that definition Guild Wars would be very easy (look at proph, it's easy even without pve skills and cons), the only way to make the game harder is to break the balance.
It seems to me that you are thinking that a hard game=balanced game which is far from the truth in player vs AI games.

by your definition, 8 human players vs 200 enemy monsters is imbalanced. what your asking pve to be is really just pvp vs ai.
sorry to burst your bubble, but we already kind of have that in ha and hb (unfortunately).

my definition of balance is simply for both sides to have the balanced tools to defeat the other side with an equal chance.
i understand where your coming from, in that if both sides have exactly the same tools, then obviously they have to be balanced because their exactly the same! this is the easy option, but it is not the only one. and generally i find it to be one of the more boring options--because its basically pvp gameplay vs ai.

but the problem pve skills created, is that instead of re-balancing existing skills to fit pve. they instead left those skills crappy, and gave us a new overpowered set of skills. this causes internal balance problems within player skill selection.

also, yes gw has many broken things on the monster side of the equation as well, which is what called for pve skills and consets in the first place. but you have to remember that these things came from hard mode (i.e. its supposed to be hard).

i will agree that hard mode was badly implemented, but pve skills were not a good fix and only made things worse.
pve skills...consets...hard mode...titles...they all have to be redone imo. of course in the current situation, this is impossible.
all we can do is just hope for the best in gw2. anet needed a fresh start, but if they don't understand the problems of gw1, then they are very likely to repeat them again in gw2.

Originally Posted by 4thvariety

As I said: Skill Selection, Skill Execution, Tactics

how hard is it really to choose and use pve skills... really?

Therefore we need good skills and bad skills.

i disagree. we don't need good skills and bad skills--we need skills for situation a, skills for situation b, skills for situation c, etc.
when a pve skill dominates in every single situation, there is no need for any other skill at all.

Sometimes you might be so good in one department that it compensates for shortcomings in the other two.

exactly, but the current gw situation hinders this.
one player might make a good scout, one might make a good sniper, one might make a good spy. in gw, however, we're all forced to play rocket launcher soldiers.

[kostolomac]

Originally Posted by snaek

by your definition, 8 human players vs 200 enemy monsters is imbalanced. what your asking pve to be is really just pvp vs ai.
sorry to burst your bubble, but we already kind of have that in ha and hb (unfortunately).

my definition of balance is simply for both sides to have the balanced tools to defeat the other side with an equal chance.
i understand where your coming from, in that if both sides have exactly the same tools, then obviously they have to be balanced because their exactly the same! this is the easy option, but it is not the only one. and generally i find it to be one of the more boring options--pvp gameplay is usually the most fun when your playing against real people.

but the problem pve skills created, is that instead of re-balancing existing skills to fit pve. they instead left those skills crappy, and gave us a new overpowered set of skills. this causes internal balance within player skill selection.

also, yes gw has many broken things on the monster side of the equation as well, which is what called for pve skills and consets in the first place. but you have to remember that these things came from hard mode (i.e. its supposed to be hard).

i will agree that hard mode was badly implemented, but pve skills were not a good fix and only made things worse.
pve skills...consets...hard mode...titles...they all have to be redone imo. of course in the current situation, this is impossible.
all we can do is just hope for the best in gw2. anet needed a fresh start, but if they don't understand the problems of gw1, then they are very likely to repeat them again in gw2.



how hard is it really to choose and use pve skills, really?


i disagree, we don't need good skills and bad skills. we need skills for situation a, skills for situation b, skills for situation c, etc.
when a pve skill dominates in every single situation, there is no need for any other skill at all.

I already said that a balanced player vs AI game is almost always easy, but ANet could have made it harder just by changing the builds. zwei2stein made some nice suggestions (if I may say so) that could make the mobs much more challenging without breaking the game. However pve skills are needed (not the OP ones ofc) to balance the classes internally. And I really don't see the need for cons except the powerstone.
But to be honest HM isn't here for more challenge or to improve the playerbase, it's here to lure us to replay all the content again.

[Master Fuhon]

Originally Posted by 4thVariety

Choosing eight skills is an elemental part of the game experience. So much that the attribute refund points were removed in a patch to even play more to that gameplay.

But for this selection of skills be meaningful, the choice has to make an impact in the match. Therefore we need good skills and bad skills. If they were all the same, their selection would no longer be of any meaning. We would be back at Diablo, where you just pack it all into one skill and keep spamming that. One is as good as the next really with minor differences so late in the game that 95% of players will never notice.

Players can sort of skip this phase and adapt a build from another player. if he is #1 with this build, then I can be #1 with this build is the argument. Just like evolution, the community is a big DNA computer, which over time gravitates heavily towards one direction from time to time [DNA did the same with Dinosaurs as top species on the planet, later mammals took over].

The consensus of a skill's superiority and the training most people put into it, leads to an imbalance in build distribution. Not a bad thing, but usually that's when Izzy shuffles it up a bit and rightfully so. More than nerfing a skill, he is giving the "selection of skills gameplay" back its meaningful part in the overall match. Searing Flame was originally considered too strong, got nerfed, look where it is today.

As I said: Skill Selection, Skill Execution, Tactics
Those are the big three things you have control over. Sometimes you might be so good in one department that it compensates for shortcomings in the other two. But that is part of the successful whole as well. We should not prefer one factor over the other when we want to know who is the best. As an online game we thrive on people being the underdog and winning by using the one strength they got. Too balanced and the same guys will win over and over, frustrating all other people out of existence. That's why each factor is allowed to be strong, but no single factor is allowed to get too strong.

What you appear to be saying is that the definition of the game resembles "selection of skills > time practiced" instead of "talent > time spent". Players don't know that and they might not agree with it, they use the consensus definition of skill (which is closer to talent) when they want skill to be rewarded. In the real world, that kind of skill only comes about by a commitment of time perfecting a craft. People want to be rewarded for becoming very good at something, not feel like someone is reshaping the world every time they come out on top. You gave the right explanation, it's not a friendly world to be a dinosaur, did we really want every part of them to die off?

A skill shakeup is like teaching someone to paint, and then taking away the brush and expecting them to use a pencil. Some parts of the transition can be kept, but others have to be relearned. If the skill shakeups are working effectively, they would be promoting skill in that they would be forcing someone to become well-rounded. However, if periodic skill shakeups aren't being effective at getting people to relearn, it's like someone choosing to make paintings worth 50 times the price of a pencil drawing. So the pencil drawers are compelled to quit because the market does not support their skill. But they still do not have access to the resources to adapt to the desired talents, so they all become bad painters because they are forced to make a living that way. All they do after that is sit around complaining about how terrible painting is to do. But most importantly, society loses all pencil drawers whether they wanted to or not!

So in that way, game design already functions as an arbitrary skill value determination (like all games in any genre). Each and every shakeup is taken as an attack on each persons talents to express to them that the work they have put into developing them is worth less. If each skill change were instead crafted to equalize we would have less complaints about things being unfair (non-subjective definition of balance).

Instead, skill crafting is interpreted as "If you play in this manner, we have a big reward for you. If you didn't play in this manner, here is further punishment." That happens because the tools are so powerful. If you don't understand what that is, that is a pressure to conform and not be yourself. For people who want to be themselves (and aren't harming other people in the process), that's going to result in them considering a new game. Pressure the deviants to conform, not those who have done nothing wrong. People are going to choose the game that lets them be rewarded for being themselves (whether they are friendly or hostile anyway).

If you need to see where this goes a step further, people do not quit life because someone else is at the top all the time. They quit life because they are so far from being close to that point, and without the resources to get out of the very bottom. They perceive that they have taken a very large and hopeless fall from where they want to be.

[Ec]-[oMaN]

Originally Posted by Master Fuhon

A skill shakeup is like teaching someone to paint, and then taking away the brush and expecting them to use a pencil. Some parts of the transition can be kept, but others have to be relearned. If the skill shakeups are working effectively, they would be promoting skill in that they would be forcing someone to become well-rounded. However, if periodic skill shakeups aren't being effective at getting people to relearn, it's like someone choosing to make paintings worth 50 times the price of a pencil drawing. So the pencil drawers are compelled to quit because the market does not support their skill. But they still do not have access to the resources to adapt to the desired talents, so they all become bad painters because they are forced to make a living that way. All they do after that is sit around complaining about how terrible painting is to do. But most importantly, society loses all pencil drawers whether they wanted to or not!

It's more like Skill selection is also an understanding of what skills do what, and how they are effective.

It's not so much taking away a paint brush and totally replacing it with another tool. It's this paint brush can do x pattern(effect), and provide so much paint on surface z(damage).

While skill alterations sometimes make a certain paint brush pattern current customers or era no longer wants/requires/desires(relating to said skill being less powerful). You just move on to another paint brush that will provide you with similar patterns and amount of paint like the last being used, but is currently in style(power/effectiveness).

Originally Posted by Master Fuhon

Each and every shakeup is taken as an attack on each persons talents to express to them that the work they have put into developing them is worth less. If each skill change were instead crafted to equalize we would have less complaints about things being unfair (non-subjective definition of balance).

Only if they don't understand what makes an effect skill for said situation. Relating back to their ability to paint overall. Skill/understanding.

[4thVariety]

GW is supposed to be a game of skill, however, right now the game is not supporting ultra modern complexions of skill display. Certainly the set of skills in the game has grown to huge proportions and is catered to a variety of people. Purist get just as happy as grinders. It is very hard to unite them, one side has to make concessions if they want to group together, especially in group farming efforts taking place in PvE. Guilds have less problems finding the right middle ground. But PuGs tend to move towards optimized speed runs, therefore to power and therefore to using skills and consumables other players might not find that entertaining. And it's always entertainment they seek! No guild, no pugs -> player stops playing the game.

Psychological speaking, they just need the right carrot. GW can't offer that. We have two game modes, normal and hard, that's it. The Hall of Monuments might track some things, but it is in no way as complex as the achievement system of a console game. Like it or not, that is where we need to go.

Imagine the UW, but now it would track if you completed it
a. with all means available
b. without PvE skills and consets
c. while using PvP balance rules
d. Condition a. on HM
e. Condition a. on HM
f. Condition a. on HM

You can see that by mixing up the rules, we acknowledge the existence of all groups of players. Each player prefers one of the six options over the other. Seeing them, he might feel inclined to go after multiple ones, or feel challenged to do it the hard way and not just the cheap way only. Peer pressure among the community will lead to people showing off their ability to master condition f.

Knowing all these settings exist, the game could modify the drop rate for each mode to reward those more, who really go for broke, instead of breaking the game with combos other might perceive as cheap.

We agree that we want skill driven gameplay. Some of us also want time investments to be viable on some level. We can have both, but it requires the game to be more configurable. GW is instanced, that is one huuuuuuuuge advantage. Play an fps with your guild against a group of bots and you have all those intricate methods of configuring them. Often down to accuracy with individual weapons, which one they prioritize and the style of gaming they display. GW is a very similar game (see Diagram1) yet the options for setting up the amount of resistance monsters put up are very rudimentary.

Type 2 games (Diagram2) might be able to recycle content by dynamically generating new stats for monsters. Type 1 games (Diagram1), such as GW, have to be able to "mix up the rules". That can be intricate difficulty setting, that might also be user created content.

After four years we might reached the point where we consider all of that good ideas, but the GW Live team might be too small to implement changes of that magnitude. All we can hope is for GW2 to get that level of refinement when it comes to challenging the skill of the player and have the game driven by it.

[Improvavel]

Originally Posted by snaek

by your definition, 8 human players vs 200 enemy monsters is imbalanced. what your asking pve to be is really just pvp vs ai.
sorry to burst your bubble, but we already kind of have that in ha and hb (unfortunately).

Of course it is imbalanced, especially considering the 200 enemies in GW are stronger. They should win all the time, but they lose the big majority of the time.

my definition of balance is simply for both sides to have the balanced tools to defeat the other side with an equal chance.

Sorry to burst your bubble but that is GvG.

but the problem pve skills created, is that instead of re-balancing existing skills to fit pve. they instead left those skills crappy, and gave us a new overpowered set of skills. this causes internal balance within player skill selection.

Yes it did. But that happened too because Mobs became stronger and regular skills became weaker due to PvP constrains.

also, yes gw has many broken things on the monster side of the equation as well, which is what called for pve skills and consets in the first place. but you have to remember that these things came from hard mode (i.e. its supposed to be hard).

Sincerely after beating the Veteran difficulty of CoD4, and now Veteran difficulty feel quite easy, I either do PvP or I leave the game. I left the game.

When I started GW, those level 6-8 axe charr were tough. Now if I start there in prophecies, without PvE-skills and consets, they are laughingstock.

So in GW, you either go to PvP once you feel HM is easy, you leave the game or you farm/collect stuff.

i will agree that hard mode was badly implemented, but pve skills were not a good fix and only made things worse.
pve skills...consets...hard mode...titles...they all have to be redone imo. of course in the current situation, this is impossible.
all we can do is just hope for the best in gw2. anet needed a fresh start, but if they don't understand the problems of gw1, then they are very likely to repeat them again in gw2.

While I agree with you, I don't think you will like the solutions.

how hard is it really to choose and use pve skills... really?

How hard is it really to choose earth shaker has the hammer elite for pve, dragon slash has the sword elite for pve? Choosing the axe elite is a bit more trickier.

So it isn't only PvE-only skills that have that problem.

i disagree. we don't need good skills and bad skills--we need skills for situation a, skills for situation b, skills for situation c, etc.
when a pve skill dominates in every single situation, there is no need for any other skill at all.

Right, but that isn't exclusively Pve-skill problem.

[Master Fuhon]

Originally Posted by Ec]-[oMaN

Only if they don't understand what makes an effect skill for said situation. Relating back to their ability to paint overall. Skill/understanding.

The knowledge of which skill to pick and how to use it can get passed on to everyone, yet not everyone can do what the best do. The unconscious mind runs physical processes; some people have to relearn just to breathe properly while someone else has it done automatically.

Twitch interrupting, attack target selection, and pre-protting are distinctly not the same skill, nor are they related functions of intelligence. Obviously they all have some combination of anticipatory skill along with memorization and battlefield analysis. But the best warrior is not the best monk is not the best mesmer. Only if someone separately commits oneself to learning that many skills would make that true. At that point, that person deserves to be earning a living off it.

However, the best warrior already has an advantage playing monk, in that he understands how the best attacker is thinking. Over an extended duration of time, it's possible that the very best player becomes the best at everything given an ability to demonstrate near limitless brain capacity. Even given purposeful skill imbalancing, you won't be able to challenge this person. He'll always come out on top.

My comment is that it's not really a game to a person under the circumstances we would be discussing. But I do believe a generalist can display superiority over any specialist, confirming what you are describing.

Oh just needed to add. When this theoretical game expert exists, he will master skills at a much faster rate than a monthly skill balance. Near his peak his tool selection will be done in hours, trimmed down to minutes. If the game were just balanced alone, his rapid acceleration of skill mastery would not be impeded. I think I would also say, the skill balances have more of an effect on shaping the general populace than they would on an expert; they can cripple an ordinary person but only slow an expert.

Won't have a chance to analyze what 4thVariety said right now, but my greater point in what I said was that with all this focus on impeding the top player, it might just mess with the development of everyone else and prevent them from reaching their own peak.

[Gigashadow]

I think most players' attitude is: "I'm a good player, so if I lose, it's because of class, gear, lag, or the game is imbalanced."

[Ec]-[oMaN]

If we impose on removing PVE from discussion, we can further move onto which skill falls under the different categories 4th brought up. Relating to higher tiered complexity and skill level regarding the game and PvP. Overall you really can't dip into much, in detail otherwise. The easiest way to see things clearly is in 4th's post with the graph and PvP being that endgame that so much of the GW community hasn't even found the paint can yet, and is extremely behind on touching a paint brush let alone attempting to splatter a wall.

[Master Fuhon]

Originally Posted by 4thVariety

Imagine the UW, but now it would track if you completed it...

Edited my original post from the afternoon.

Forget my comments on those design constraints if anyone saw them: I couldn’t really follow where those went to meet the discussion at the point where I was thinking about it. Actual design is quite a bit ahead of where I had been thinking. But I don’t know how six distinctions would work; social pressures encourage people to jump in over their head, first time players might even choose to stretch their capabilities based on the reward increases. All that effort might just go unused compared to the minimalist approach of normal mode/hard mode.

As far as console achievement goes, it works better because the achievements are a variation of distinctly skill based (beat x level hardest difficulty once) or grind (kill 1000 monsters). But the title systems are so new in gaming; I can’t decide whether players like them as much as designers do. It’s good for players in that it’s an achievement kind of thing that doesn’t increase their power levels.

The only thing I could currently follow was the comments on PuGs. To discuss the PuG mentality; the PuG is optimized to automate the task for any number of reasons. At any time there may be people in a PuG with two distinctly different goals: either to get the objective achieved or to present some social opportunity.

Actual complaints about PuGs resemble complaints about people more than they resemble comments about difficulty related failures. There are comments about max level characters not knowing what to do, misbehaving, not listening; and most failures are related to this. Even when people have access to the right skills, it’s the human element that makes the largest contribution to the failure. You could have vastly powerful skills and a person might not have studied the game mechanics enough to use them. One of the most common things I see out of a poorly played damage or healing class is that a player isn’t using the powerful skills as often as they should be, but I can’t explain why aside from guessing they are not truly engaged in the activity alone.

When people are of the same performance level, no one seems to question whether someone is there for reward or to talk. Even at an easy difficulty people still do not reach the same performance level. These kinds of disruptions make people aware of all their differences and flaws.

However, the separate pieces of the typical PuG are all essential to game life. The person who puts forth the organizational effort to form the group would not do so if he was not reliant on other people. Certain other people would not join if they could not confirm with social proof that the run would not be a disaster. That’s where typical MMO uses both gear, levels, and titles: social proof of likely success from someone new.

As far as important design constraints, all I can think of right now are: ways to keep team activity alive (because farming doesn’t really need boosts, people do it anyway), ways to filter people to be amongst the people they want to be around, and ways to grow the people no one wants to be around so that they aren’t disruptive. To do that, a bit of a difficulty curve is needed to produce both the reliance on team and growth opportunity.

[Gigashadow]

Speaking of PUGs, can you look back at previous PUG experiences in MMOs and find any good experiences? Could new games duplicate this?

For my example, I had a lot of fun in EQ2 when I played it for about 4 months or so in early 2006. I was on the PvP server (Nagafen), but had a lot of fun playing a tank and doing dungeon crawls (they are non-instanced in EQ2) with PUGs. I found the community extremely friendly. It was amazing how different the attitude of players was from Guild Wars PUGs.

For whatever reason, GW's community seems to be the worst out of any game I've played. WoW players in early retail, when servers had a real community, were also much more polite than GW players --that completely changed when they added server-transfers, character renames, and cross-server battlegrounds.

You just need to make the community small enough that people care about their actions and their reputation. However, since in GW2 you will be able to transfer servers at whim, I have my doubts that it's going to get any better.

[Karate Jesus]

Wow.....tl;dr doesn't even get close to covering how I feel about this......

[snaek]

Originally Posted by improvavel

Sorry to burst your bubble but that is GvG.

no, an 8 man team can be balanced to fight a 200 man team, i.e. the 8 people having relative power to that of the 200 people. it works very similar to a boss fight, where it becomes 8 humans vs 1 huge ass boss; you give the 1 boss relative power to that of 8 people.
pve skills and consets i believe tried to achieve this, but failed due to poor implementation.
hard mode is pretty broken and imbalanced without pve skills and consets, but with them it is still very much broken and imbalanced. not to mention that now normal mode is greatly imbalanced.

Originally Posted by kostolomac

ANet could have made it harder just by changing the builds. zwei2stein made some nice suggestions (if I may say so) that could make the mobs much more challenging without breaking the game. However pve skills are needed (not the OP ones ofc) to balance the classes internally.

i agree, proper builds would help a lot. however i disagree that pve skills are needed, theres no reason that it cant be done based on the balancing of standard skills. pve skills imo were just the so-called "easy fix".

Originally Posted by improvavel

So it isn't only PvE-only skills that have that problem.

your right. in my first post in this thread, i mentioned skills in general. the thread eventually lead into pve skills, because those ones are the most obviously broken.

So in GW, you either go to PvP once you feel HM is easy, you leave the game or you farm/collect stuff.

thats the problem...pvp isn't the next step. you've went down a totally different path. in order to get into pvp, you'd have to backtrack and start almost all over again. gw has pretty much boiled down to grinding/farming.

[Improvavel]

Originally Posted by snaek

your right. in my first post in this thread, i mentioned skills in general. the thread eventually lead into pve skills, because those ones are the most obviously broken.

Another update that once again hit the skill viability and variability in PvE due to PvP concerns, and now they have PvE/PvP split...

I guess they only split it when they are going to hit skills that are actually used like wow. All the tactics skills that are pretty much crap in pve already were nerfed even more due to PvP...

thats the problem...pvp isn't the next step. you've went down a totally different path. in order to get into pvp, you'd have to backtrack and start almost all over again. gw has pretty much boiled down to grinding/farming.

The thing is GW is now 2 games: a PvE game and a PvP game. If you removed all the titles/grind and whatnot, the size of the PvE community would just dwindle, not affecting at all the PvP community.

Players interested in PvP already play PvP, except for those that want a PvP guild and can't find one - I know of a few cases.

And that is due to poor design of PvP - you have basically crappy PvP like HB, Arena and AB, where due to the team size limitations you can't expect to encompass all the aspects of GW; than you have HA that due to its nature its prone to elitism and FOTM builds; and finally you have GvG, where if you want to be serious about competition you need to find other 7 similar minded persons, that want/can spend the time required.

There is no middle ground. Pitty nobody commented on a random GvG format I suggested, where 2 teams would be using builds pre made by Anet (information about those builds could be shown in the site) and people would be randomly distributed by each team, pretty much like that festival game where you use disguises or whatever its called.

Players that are grinding titles aren't going to play PvP regardless.

[al_capowned]

I love the passion for the game I've seen in this thread. I haven't witnessed this kind of passion for GW in a few years. It sucks that balance at this point is out of the question but I love seeing a new GW base meshing with an old GW base and hoping for the best...and hopefully we'll get it in GW2. You've all made wonderful points in your arguments(some right some completely wrong) but argued well and with due respect. I hope I see you all in GW2

[4thVariety]

Originally Posted by al_capowned

I love the passion for the game I've seen in this thread. I haven't witnessed this kind of passion for GW in a few years.

You are looking in the wrong places. The guilds are still there, fansite pugging still somewhat works.

Of course if you go to the farmspots, such as UW, DoA, etc, you will find people there who are mainly interested in the pursuit of wealth. Which is not the crowd of highly skilled players really. I used to farm some money at least, now I kick back and do Xunlai betting, very relaxing alternative to casual grinding I have to say. Gives me more money than I really need.

PuGs in certain places (i.e. where the build counts) are more than ever motivated to go there in the pursuit of money. Greed and inexperience are a violent combination people should stay away from.

[Bryant Again]

Originally Posted by Gun Pierson

The second diagram prooves skill is low no matter what, so it also prooves the removal or nerf of pve only skills, cons and heroes is pointless like I suspected. It will only decrease the fun factor which has the opposite effect on the playerbase.

You can still have a "fun factor" (which is an insanely subjective term, btw) without eradicating the integrity and depth of the game.

Originally Posted by Improvavel

Of course it is imbalanced, especially considering the 200 enemies in GW are stronger...

...Except their thinking capabilities are greatly limited.

That's why CoD4 never pitted you against a single opponent (because that would be fair, right?) rather several upon several waves of baddies.

Originally Posted by Improvavel

How hard is it really to choose earth shaker has the hammer elite for pve, dragon slash has the sword elite for pve? Choosing the axe elite is a bit more trickier.

So it isn't only PvE-only skills that have that problem.

Results from underpowered skills are far more different than results from overpowered skills.

[DreamWind]

Originally Posted by 4thVariety

Of course if you go to the farmspots, such as UW, DoA, etc, you will find people there who are mainly interested in the pursuit of wealth. Which is not the crowd of highly skilled players really.

PuGs in certain places (i.e. where the build counts) are more than ever motivated to go there in the pursuit of money. Greed and inexperience are a violent combination people should stay away from.

Which is why I wouldn't mind if skill was the only determining factor in how much wealth people have. Maybe then we would have a lot more people trying to be skilled. This grind/farm mentality is the complete opposite of skill.

Also Improvavel you didn't respond to my last post. How many people here would be fine if a 10 billion damage skill and god mode was in Guild Wars?

[Fril Estelin]

Originally Posted by DreamWind

Also Improvavel you didn't respond to my last post. How many people here would be fine if a 10 billion damage skill and god mode was in Guild Wars?

They wouldn't mind, because it's exactly like in RL: if I ask you to solve a Maths problem (not an artificial one, one directly in line with your job, see this video at 0:35 for an example of what I'm talking about), you're very likely to take your calculator (how many times have I seen that in my tutorials?) and try to calculate the solution with it. This is your 10billion damage skill and there are so many more examples from RL where the tool removes the need to get the "skill".

My point is: "player skill" is a very relative/subjective thing, if you mean "time to beat the game" you're going into the farming/pure performance aspect (meaningful big numbers where you master the art of controlling particular game mechanics), if it's "overcoming difficulties" you wouldn't beat the people that have crazy "skill ideas" (play without armor and weapons, or with only 4 skills), and so on, PvE and PvP player skills are even somewhat different (I guess if you only play against players, you're unlikely to play well agains AI, although I agree it won't take you long to adapt if you want to).

If you're not narrowminded, you can even jump one "level" up in terms of skill: how well do you know the GW universe storyline? Its inhabitants (characters and their stories)? Visual landscapes, scenery and sounds? There are more than one facet to games, and you should know it from your gaming experience, but most people who consider themselves "serious gamers" will only see the first side of "player skill".

Going back to the example I know best, Maths skills are not taught anymore, we have imba tools (yes, I know perfectly well that GW is a game and this is very different from a RL job, I'm only borrowing the core idea, not the reason why people do it) that make people "stupid" (from a Maths point of view!). The majority decided that it should be like that (because most people don't like Maths, and a significant number hate it), despite the need for it. So, now going back to the (off)topic you were discussing: you (and other people like Bryant Again) consider one facet only of a very rich game (I bet that less than half of Anet employees are devs, more than half are artists, story writers, world builders, etc.). You simply can't make it important in the absolute while ignoring the fact that the majority has a different view, you have to try to go from their viewpoint towards yours.

Hence the OP (which is far off the current discussion): how do we teach them? Yes individually, good, no collective progress is made here (or shall the vets have a "duty" to help newbies, but not noobs?). Collectively, as a GW community, how do we change the situation? Wiki, not really very pedagogic (but useful). PvP tutorials? Not a good transition from the average low skill to the PvP entry point. We need more of the "basic tutorials" you can get here on Guru, from time to time. Other ideas?