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

Many in the community are always ready to berate people. Example: Was playing an a/me build somewhere and decided to go to do some Tomb runs. Everyone in Tombs is A/E (currenly the fav build since the SF nerf), was not within 2 seconds of warping in I got A/Me????? flashing in chat. Give a guy a chance to switch over.

PVX/Guru is nice to get base ideas/information from and expand on if your so inclined. Take base build add X is it more fun, if so enjoy it, if not try something else.

Always glad to help people if they want help, what someone considers good or fun may totally suck and bore someone else. Play styles are a big part of the equation.

IMO: a normal community with diverse player types due to the nature of the game. Play the game how you want and have fun.

The thing i hate is when you have players who ask for help , you decide to give it a try and you explain how your build works - gd example was once helping a group do gates of kryta.I explained i was a 55 monk and i need to be in front attacking - all they need do is keep back and collect thier drops.
Now most ppl if told to sit bk and u do it for them will do that - nope the group decided to wander off and get obliterated then complained that i didnt heal nor res them - i even showed 55 build at start and stated i dont heal nor res.
They all rage quit - now that wasnt 1st or last time thats happened.
Its hard to show ppl when they cba to listen to simple instructions.
When u offer advice on their builds - eg a minion master going somewhere with barely any corpses - the responce is stfu noob.
Helping guildies out tho is a lot easier and somehow they do learn and listen so all the above problems are almost non existant.
i`ll rather go with h/h then a pug team - yes h/h ai may be bad but its better than a lvl5 warrior who thinks hes superman and runs into everything an dying , also h/h are more polite and dont answer u bk lol

Of course, it's the classic "Which came first, the chicken or the egg." Imo, the bad PuG came first." which is what I paraphrased leaving out the "Of course, it's the classic 'Which came first, the chicken or the egg.'" part. Maybe the OP should consider this being the reason why players suck so bad...IQ's <100.

- No personal attacks.
- Sun Fired Blank

The average shitty PUG player (sorry for the redundancy) thinks the wikis are "for noobs."

As it has already been said before, lazyness is the main reason for players being bad and not learning. There is this mentality of "teach me, feed me, i'm an invalid!" that is further reinforced by the existence of pvxwiki and guildwiki. Need a build? Wiki it. The newer players have this mistaken notion that the older, more experienced players have to somehow be their mentor, that they have to have their hands be held and shortcut their way to greatness by hanging on the coattails of more experienced players. Whatever happened to finding stuff out on your own?

When i first started, i didn't bother to ask questions, trial and error are my friends. Observation my teacher and reading posted articles by experienced players my eye opener. That was how i grew as a player. A lot of quirks and oddities as well as synergies of skills is only really realized and understood by playing with and experimenting with builds. Stuff you don't really become aware of by just copy pasting a wiki build.

This need to be "taught" is kinda like a computer ignorant guy posting on a experts hardware forum asking very basic questions. The experts might try answering him, but because of his utter lack of knowledge of computers, they might end up having to give him a whole course on computers. Its fine if its just the one guy and he understands, however, what if he doesn't? And what if there are a thousand more just like him, waiting to be spoonfed? What if there were more than a thousand? Argh, and you wonder why experienced players don't really teach.

To really teach someone, the one being taught needs to have a willingness to learn and have at least a base competence and level of knowledge. Yeah, you can "teach" quantum phyics to a 5-year old, but would he even understand a word?

Of course, not all blame goes to the "teach me, feed me, i'm an invalid!" mentality of newbies. The game itself is to blame. Heroes/henchies removing need to interact with others, as well as being effective enough that they can clear an entire area for you while you do squat. Other problems include pve skills, consumables, dumbing down of hard game areas, power creep, do i need to go on? All these serve to give the newer players an easier time and hence removes the need to improve. For example, pre-nerf, why think up a build when you can ursan through the entire game? When you really look at the big picture, its really all just a big vicious cycle of lazy players breeding more lazy players aided by bad game design and assisted by easy access to cookie cutter solutions. And people wonder why the majority of the community is bad heh.

For PvP, I don't think a lack of transitional content is the problem. There's a pretty fair amount of easy-to-find, high quality information onlinedespite a lack of transitional content, and it's easy to self-improve if you bother to self-analyze. The problem is that most people don't bother anymore. They think they deserve ranks on a silver platter and that ranks equal competence. They don't put in any legwork to be decent players, they find easy methods of obtaining their goals, and they think they're decent players once they have them. And, in a sick twist, once they get specific ranks, they determine that ranks don't equal competence since "they're easy to get," and anyone can get them. Those sorts of thinking and egos are hard to fight, and they perpetuate bad players remaining bad players. One of the reasons that Gladiator's Arena is a huge cesspool of useless or (even worse) misleading information is that you have too many of these people overrunning it. We really need people like Karla and Amazon who are willing to step up, but most people of that quality don't bother to post; the highest end players don't bother to read the forum, much less contribute.

The bottom line is that most people these days are not really willing to help themselves, and they're not really looking for people to help them. They're looking for people to give them something, and that masquerades as an appeal for help. For me, a surefire sign of this kind of reliance is when people ask me a more vague question instead of a more specific question, or if they experience the same problem over and over and don't ask whether it's a problem they can avoid.

I would like to agree that the biggest problem is people don't learn from their mistakes.

I speak from experience since I have been making the jump from PvE to PvP. A perfect example of this is a GvG we had the other night. We had a couple champ types guesting for us and I was one of the 2 mesmers. It was a new bar and position for me, which I told them, so I knew I was going to be off. In the middle of the match after the warriors had been screaming about being blinded all the time, someone asked why the BS ele wasn't shut down. At that point I though that should have been me as I was running a fast cast LC with sighum.

At the end of the match the 2 guests proceeded to explain how bad it was that I had to be told to use my sighum in which they were completely correct. I took this as a learning experience and studied the rest of my bar to make sure I understood what my main focus was in that new position. Basically I failed and learned from it.

The other mesmer was a Dom mesmer with diversion & shame. They also ripped on him for not diverting BS. He then quit the guild. These are the people that continue to suck and complain that no one will help them

There are plenty of learning guilds out there [Kisu} alliance for example. All you have to do is put forth the effort to find one then learn from criticism.

As I read these posts, I am reminded of the game I left to play this one. Some of you may know the game, Dungeon Siege.

I started GW about 8 months after its release. I started playing DS online about a year after its release. For both games, there were several veterans around to help me get a leg up on the games. As each game aged, the more experienced gravitated more to themselves, either solo or "exclusive" clans/guilds. By exclusive, I mean, X amount experience, certain basic knowledge needed, etc. to join.
As both games aged more, questions once answered directly, are/were being answered with, "wiki is your friend"(GW), or "go get the tutorials"(DS).
DS is dead and gone now, no longer supported online.
I played GW nearly 8 months before learning of the existence of these or any forum. Before I found the forums, the updates were just part of the game. Many times, the updates made me change the way I played a certain character or certain groups of monsters. I just "adapted" and went on. After the finding these forums and reading about the changes and why the changes were made, I started letting my opinion be known. (But that is another story.)
GW players bad? Who is to judge what is bad? The elite crowd? The ones that no longer play in PuGs? IMO, bad players are the players that have the knowledge to succeed in a given mission/quest, but chose to grief the other players in the group. E.G. goes into mission, takes off their armor, dies over and over, just to be a jerk.
Elite, great, good, normal, below normal, bad. Just a scale someone created to see how the rest of the world stacks up to themselves.

i in no way claim to be a "1337" player or anything but i would say that, coming from back when proph first came out and (after coming back from a 6 month extended vacation and giving away everything i had on the game) starting from scratch and being able to afford Obs armor within the first 2-3 months of playing again, i am resonable experienced. I have also not really done my part to assist the newbies to help change their build to something more efficient.

just recently i can recall a situation where i was starting a PuG FoW group (my guild mostly does UWSC so noone wanted to do FoW with me) and i encountered an E/R with an absolutely rediculous build that used mostly trash ranger skills. I kicked him immediately without much thought about it.

now though, looking back i remember using builds that were just as bad if not worse. when i first started i ran an ele "nuker" who based most of his attack power out the the skill "flare" and i got all the way to the southern shiverpeaks, where i realized just how terrible thie build was (i was doing about 15 dmg to these guys) and after all the work i had put into it i was just pissed off, assumed that eled sucked as a class and, if it wasnt for a bunch of IRL friends playing GW with me, i would have quit. I kept being a newb for a while before finally starting to get the hang of making efficient builds that utilize elites. but thinking back, back then there was no way to "ping" you build. if there was i would have never made it anywhere with all the 1337ist mentality that goes around these days.

a big problem IS that these guys dont KNOW anyone to help them with their builds. also if they go on the forums chances are all they will get is some sort of cookie cutter build. People need to learn from experience and experience players need to give them the chance to get that experience, whether it risks the success of the mission or not.

(i kinda rambled, sorry)

I think it is a combination of all things causing the problems.

Just a few I have seen:

• Casual players mixing with hardcore players.

• Runners allowing new PvE to bypass skill quests and quest that would teach them how to play the game a little better. When is the last time you saw a pve tank even attempt a body block?

• Too lazy to read the skill description. I see this a lot in pve.

• Give me now type of attitude. I am getting feed up with this problem.

There is a reason I H/H everything and when I forget that reason I only need to PuG one mission. I have felt sorry for people trying to find a party for the mission only to realize they shouldn't be that far into the game.

I am tired of game developers making it too easy just to satisfy casual players and at the same time I understand that game developers need those casual players. Maybe with the economy like it is they will realize only hardcore gamers are going to buy games now and up the challenge level.

I wish there had been a requirement for players attempting their first time through to do all quest in the game.

1) Are GW players really that bad?
-- No. Can't generalize a whole community. Different players have different objectives. With time, thanks to unnecessary high number of skills, Heroes, power-creep by introducing extremely overpowered areas, PvE only skills and by stacking underworld with all the goodies, GW reduced from a CORPG to OMFG (Online Massive Farming Game). People started playing in silos while being completely oblivious to their surroundings.

Also, over time, people bought into the idea that if they could get a build then they could play the game better as oppose to understanding the objectives and the battlefield to successfully utilize a skill. Hence, the BuildWars: New people taking a shot at rebuilding a Wiki-skillbar with no regards to skill-synergies or compatibility. There are countless times I have seen the following types of conversation happening in GW:

Person 1: I made this build. It Rox!
Person 2: Ping it.
Person 1: *pings*
Person 2: Noob! Its from Wiki ....lawl.
Person 1: NO. I made it!
Person 2: Nope. You suck. Its wiki build lol.
Person 3: hmm...why would you have GoH and WoH on same bar?
Person 1: Huh??

GW never fostered the idea of community. It was very objective to ensure everyone gets one's own piece of action. So, the quality of improvement in players slowed down drastically as more and more campaigns were introduced. It is extremely difficult, if not impossible, for people who started after factions to keep up with ever-increasing skills and skill-balances (huh!).

It still beats me why would one would nerf Ursan and promote Shadowform. I can guess the reason, but, that's a separate discussion. Sure as hell Shadowform does not foster team-culture of CORPG but, keeps OMFG alive.

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?
-- There was a huge gap between PvE and PvP from Day 1 of GW. And still there is. Also, heroes killed the co-operative aspect of the game and people started playing in silos rather than taking shit from 13 year olds who probably would have played better. The real issue is not the people but the demographics this game is catering to. If you want one game to address the needs of all the demographics, you will end up with OMFGs after the game is aged a couple years. People end up doing one thing and one thing only, i.e, farming whether its champ points or ectos.

** PvPers did not teach PvEers how to DoA. That build evolved over time. Somewhat similar concept was used in FOW to manage agro several years ago. Only difference in DoA was people took advantage of the monster-pathing and terrain more than what they used to do before in any elite areas. And yes, I remember beating Foundry after 7 hours+ struggle the day after it was released. After a few days it took around an hour. Just because someone posted something on a forum does not necessarily prove it was an indigenous effort. That's the reason when I posted a proven DOA build on GWO (not sure if linking to GWO is permitted on Guru) during early DOA days, never claimed it to be myself. Most builds or team setups aren't. They evolve.

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)
-- It's a game, not a school. Instead of Hotkeying Wiki, adding a menu item called "HelpWiki" might have helped. Also, like the emote battle in one of those NF missions, they could have done, identify the skill animation battles, interrupt important skills challenge etc. Observer mode was half good for many and little to no-good for newbies. Instead of match reports on GW website, if they allowed good players like Yue, Panda, Awowa etc. actually comment on the matchplay videos showing what went wrong where etc. would have been very helpful. Battleground movements are so much important but, there is hardly anything that explains how to.

But above all, its all about available time, personal interest and dedication.

1) Are GW players really that bad?

No but there are alot of beginners that have never really took off. They are casual players. This game requires a boat load of time to get mastered and lots of people don't have the time.

In my opinion its the good players that research and know the skills by heart. Implementing them is secondary

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?

I don't think its a matter of taught correctly. Its a matter of I am happy with how I am doing, or I think I am doing poorly so I need to research to find out if I can do better.

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)

Without the current Wiki or fan forums how many of us would still be trying to get masters on one or two missions. It is a valuable tool in any sense

Simply put the answer is no. GW is a complex game based on skill. The GW community for all its faults are the most skillful group of gamers ever assembled because the game made us that way. Even horrible bad GW players go on to other games and dominate with ease. That being said there is a gap within the ranks of GW players that is widening leaving many stranded at lower tiers unable to develop further.

That is obvious. ff someone was taught to be successful they would not choose to fail. However, people could be taught to be bad as well. Getting run around pve is bad, "tank and spank" is bad, and of course degenerate gimmick builds are bad. However people who use these methods become good at being bad thus start a cycle of perpetuating bad play. So the newcomer who aspires to learn the game runs into a successful professional bad player and tries to emulate this model.


False. Good players teach good technique 100% of the time. Its the veteran bad player who teaches other players to be bad that is the problem. Bad guilds full of weak players developing more weak players are also part of the problem. Urasan title crunching guilds and IWAY fame farming guilds are two examples from GW history.

The solution is in Anets corner. They must make bad play unrewarding. If they eliminate the possibility of bad play being successful it will go away.They make a noble effort in pvp , but in pve they neglect all too much the consequences of degenerate play.

Are GW players bad?
some are some aren't same with anything

however i think the problem lies not in the areas, not in the missions, the problem is not that. the problem is that people are not willing to play with other people any more, and why would they? you can complete any title with just sabway or discordway without ever needing to talk to anybody else. I remember in prophecies when, you had players, and you had henchmen, the difference was, you completed the mission or you failed miserably. People actually found missions HARD. yes hard. remember the days when people would spend days trying to get through thunderhead keep? there was no, "just take sabway" you played with players, and you played as a team, or you did not complete the mission. Now? heroes never leave, never go afk, never screw up and everything is easy with them. so why would anybody play with people?

this, i think, is the heart of the problem.

People come into nightfall, go into kamadan, shout "anybody wanna do X quest" a few times, the someone pms them and says "just do it with heroes". and from then on, they complete the game with heroes, they do not speak to other players, which means nobody ever gives them a good build, nobody ever says, "frenzy healsig = fail" or "try X build, it works better imo" becuase people never actually play with people. then the player gets to DoA, they get to EoTn, and they haven't got a clue about how to position themselves, what builds to run, which skills work best and how to follow instructions, and then they get yelled at for being noobs.

Anet clearly sees this problem, but what can they do about it? they've dug their own hole waay too deep. for a start, in nightfall, they practically DISCOURAGE you from playing with people by saying "must have X hero in your party for this mission", which is VERY stupid. its an MMORPG, the emphasis being on MULTIPLAYER, so why force people to use an NPC to get through the damn game?

When i first heard about heros, i thought great, when your in a team thats 7/8 and you need a monk, you can take a hero. but it has gone so much further than that. now, its impossible to find groups for things because everybody shares the mentality that things are easier, quicker and less likely to fail if you take heros.

the other thing thing that annoys me is sabway, granted it is a very good all purpose build, but i've seen people in alliance chat like "plzz help with X mission, tried it with sabway and it doesn't work, im stuck!!". I told the guy to try it with a BHA, an e-surge and a melee hero, he tried it, and y'know what? he completed the mission easy. Heroes would be less infuriating if people learned how to use them and how to look at an area, decide what you need, and run it. but no, if sabway fails its impossible with heroes, NOT true.

One last thing, i do not view wiki as a "crutch" i view it as a helpful tool. i am at the moment going for my skill hunter titles. without wiki i would not have the faintest idea where any of them were, how would you? there is no ingame guide to where they are, it would just be complete hit and miss. Wiki is ONLY a crutch, when you use it as a crutch. i have seen lots of players in missions, when you get to the stage of, "where now", say "brb i'll check wiki" and many times i have said "no, we can find our way, lets look at this logically. i like to think i do not use wiki as a crutch but i do agree that it is overused and people rely on it too much.

Rant over..

When I started playing, 3 years ago, I remember being one of those really bad PvE players, yes, I ran mending on a Warrior. Since it was a while ago I don't remember if I got raged at a lot or anything, I also don't remember anyone offering me any help. I tried HA once or twice with a friend who got had his r3 doing iway at the time. However I only made 16 fame and the consistent loses were frustrating so I gave up and went back to PvE.

However about a year and a half ago I saw a thread on this forum were a guy called Tiyuri was offering to take unranked players in HA and show them some of the ropes. This was a massive eye opener, the essential communication, the tactics, the feeling of winning with a balanced build was exhilarating. Sure I sucked but hearing players who were then, far far better than me helped my play immensely.

It was only after I started to PvP that my play started to improve. This could be attributed to my new motivation to become like those players I played with in HA, who seemed to know so much and were so confident in what they were doing or it could be attributed to the lack of requirement in PvE areas to be a skilled player.

I think this is one of the main problems. Players who have never played any sort of PvP are rarely good players. PvE does not demand you to be good, it does not demand adaption or many advance tactics. So bad and mediocre players can progress through the game being terrible without even realising that they are in fact bad players.

I'm not saying that you should make the normal game areas more challenging, that would not solve anything whatsoever, it's just the nature of that game mode. The player interaction in PvE can also be attributed a great deal to how skilled the players are. As there is no need for many advanced tactics or any competitive nature to PvE players have no need to criticize each others game play and the players don't even notice they are making mistakes.

The style of PvP however is completely different, it requires players to think, adapt and use different forms of communication such as ventrilo, also most importantly I think, it encourages criticism. Due to a teams desire to win, they will point out mistakes other players in the team are making and because they want to benefit the team, they will offer advice on how to correct those mistakes. It is then up to the individual players if they wish to listen to this advice and if they do, then they can progress as a player.

You can argue that if this is bad advice then the player will not progress but in reality this isn't really true. If you're playing HA or GvG and someone gives you bad advice that you take on board and say repeat with another team, they will correct that mistake and the more this occurs, the greater the amount of correct advice that will filter through. I mean for every 1 person that tells you to lineback 24/7 on a hammer Warrior, 20 others will tell you NOT to do this unless the occasion requires it.

As for me, I became a better player due to a desire to become better. I read guides on the internet which helped me immensely, I observed matches on obs mode and I listened to the advice that was given to me by team members. More often than not though it comes down to trial and error. If you can recognize your own mistakes you can then go about trying not to repeat them. If you think you're awesome and don't make any mistakes then you will never improve.

A lot of players seem to have the latter mentality and will not listen to advice given to them, they are usually among the worst players and generally do not improve much at all. Some players will listen but really don't have the will power or desire to become better players and so they don't improve either. Only the players who are both willing to listen and have the desire to improve will actually become better players.

I don't think you can attribute the fact that a lot of players in the game are terrible to one particular thing, rather it is a multitude of different things. I for one do not understand why any player would not strive to become better however a lot of players probably feel that they are good are do not have the need to become any better, this isn't really there fault, they need someone to first point out all the mistakes they are making.

I agreed Eddie

PVE is all about having the right skills and helps to survive. What I mean is, to complete most of the quests in GW. You only need the skills that work well for your profession, one or two healers, some AoE, and few melee or support units to help you through the quests. It doesn't take much to beat them. If you can get actual players versus henchies/heroes it can help out alot.

I remember having my guildies and alliance peoples help me on Cynd mission since it's hard to complete it using henchies/heroes who can't pick up the keg.

In PVP, everything changes. You don't get random AI to help you. You have actual players and the word teamwork plays vital part in success for PVP. But you can said the same about teamwork in PVE but for me, PVE doesn't require that much. Sure you can get some of your friends to help you in PVE quests/missions, but the same can be done with the right heroes or henchies. I haven't pvp much yet, but I seen how it's done. Peoples has to be coordinated and well organized to win a match.

To this date, Im still lost at what good builds are. Heck, I just make random builds for all my characters. Does it make me a bad player, maybe but I can get better as time goes by!

Seems to me the biggest problem in the community is the "veterans" of Guild Wars. I've lost count how many times somebody has asked a simple question in Lion's Arch or Kamadan, just to be ridiculed or called a "noob". People need to understand that not everyone has been here for 3+ years. Not everyone knows every mission inside out, or knows what the best builds to use in areas. Instead of teaching them, people just call em a noob then boot them from the party. The veterans need to be more understanding and helpful. We need to take the knowledge we have gained from out time here to help others in the community. The more knowledgeable players we have, the better the game will be for everyone. I tend to get impatient when i'm zooming from place or working on titles. Helping people more often is something I need to work on.

(I'm leaving out everyone who doesn't know mechanics and/or are new to the game. Instead I'll focus on skills.)

A lot of people are so much worse than me that I can't help but thinking that they are bad players. But truth is I am a good player at some points and a bad one at others. I have a different approach to the game than the people I think about as bad players. When a team messes up I don't think it's because I was surrounded by noobs, but instead I am surrounded by people, including me, who have totally different strategies.

That is why I always want to discuss the strategies with my team before I go in or in the second try. For instance I was in Urgoz Warren where my team failed miserably and everyone seemed noobish to me. We sat down when we lost, took 5 minutes of strategy, and during second try we owned the place. No skills were changed, only strategy

Agreed. Totally agreed.

Also people, especially veterans, tend to be very narrow minded about the possibilities in gw. I have often been called a noob for using Glimmer of Light on my monk heroes, or Rage of the Ntouka on my warrior, or even when I used Grenths balance on my Mesmer. I don't really get it. Instead of giving it a try or at least looking at the build instead of just that one skill, I'm instantly a noob who "doesn't know about the game".

There are other options for a Sin than Shadow Form, other options for a monk than WoH, Other fire skills than Searing Flames. Those skills are amazing I concur on that much, but that doesn't make other skills less useful. I am sick and tired of having to defend my builds all the time. Constructive criticism is ok, but noobifying someone for using a particular skill is what I would call narrow minded and insanely stupid.

Does the majority of the community suck?

No, not really. However, I could say yes for the few people who have told me "If you don't play PvP, you suck and you'll never prove to anyone you're even worth having on a team."

Last I checked, I never needed to prove anything, but as it stands, I don't play PvP due to, how I call it, severe restrictions...

I think its more the problem that there a less people playing together in the parts of the game where you learn the skills you need to succeed later on. If they arent playing with others, they wont get the advice that xyz works better, or its more efficient to do this or that. Not only that, but they arent actually seeing what builds work and which ones dont based on other players. When I started out, I pugged almost all of it, and learned from other people saying "bring this skill, it'll make it easier" etc. It all adds up and you quickly learn what works. Now though, with the lack of people teaming through the core of the pve stuff, they wont learn these things from other players, things that cant really be described on wiki without being shown, or things so are so simple to the more experienced that they just get flamed on here. In the end, they finish the game without much knowledge, or with a bunch of builds copied off wiki not understanding why they work so effectively. Of course there are other factors, but that the main issue imo.