MMORPGs - Skill Vs. Time: which is better?

Ok, first of all let me clarify what this thread is about. This is to be a discussion on the two primary types of video games, namely those of the mmorpg flavor (this includes GW, despite arguments against its being a 'true' mmorpg).

To keep this concise let me explain exactly what I am aiming at:

WHICH IS MORE DESIRABLE, SKILL BASED GAMES OR GAMES WHICH REWARD THE AMOUNT OF TIME INVESTED?

This seemingly simple question is actually quite complex as I have recently realized. I currently have two games installed on my computer: Guild Wars and Anarchy Online. I assume you are all familiar with the previous and as for the latter, it is probably most comparable to World of Warcraft, though for the sake of this argument we will say that it strictly rewards players for the amount of time they have spent in the game, regardless of player skill.

Guild Wars is unique in that a player who has acquired every skill in the game, every title, every armor set, pet, mini-pet, expansion pack, maxed out gold, and ebayed 100,000 dollars U.S.D. worth of extra equipment still has the ability to be worse than a player who has only the original campaign, and only 8 skills.

This is assuming that both players are actually inputing information into their computers (via pressing buttons) and are trying (that is attempting to 'succeed' or 'advance') to play the game.

This is possible because of the large variety of skill combinations and the relative balance of every skill within the game (in GW that is). No eight skills are necessarily more powerful than another set (for the sake of the argument, let's assume this were completely true).

This is, of course, common knowledge to any GW player. What may not be apparent are the inherent disadvantages of said system. In Anarchy Online, I can return after 2 years of playing (which I recently did) and be better than any player of lower level than myself. This is because every skill that I possess as a higher level character is inherently more powerful than any skill a lower level character may have. So long as I am pressing buttons as fast as the next guy, I will always be a 'better player.'

Not so in GW. Were I to do this in this game I would immediately see the consequences of my lack of practice. Anyone with a full bar of eight skills and half a brain could out heal/damage someone who hasn't played in two years. Two cheers for GW....or ....what?

The inherent problem with this system is two-fold: firstly, a character that returns after a lengthy hiatus may appear to be a good player (high level titles, nice armor, etc) or a player that has simply spent hours upon hours playing the game may appear equally as good. This player however, in the world of Guild Wars, may actually be worse than a player who has just bought the game 2 hours ago due to a lack of practice or outright stupidity (among other things). It is impossible to tell the difference and any player may be of any skill level, regardless of appearances.

In a game such as Anarchy Online, you can rely on a high level character. If the character is level 215, and you are attempting a level 10 mission, you can bet your butt there will be enough healing power. The only exception is if the character A) dies during gameplay - irl, or B) leaves his computer or doesn't touch his keyboard. If the player in question so much as passes out on the keys you are guaranteed to succeed; so long as buttons get pressed, there will be sufficient healing/damage/etc.

This may seem a tad lame, but consider: the player has played the game. Regardless of play style, the player has put in at least some amount of effort to achieve a high level and has been rewarded for it. You can rely on said player.

In Guild Wars there is no guarantee. You could team with a rank 12 character and still be let down - it's happened to me. The advantage lies in the noobie's hands. If he can pick up the game quickly, he can be better than anyone, regardless of the amount of time spent ingame. The high end player suffers, because time spent ingame is not directly proportional to skill level and any lack of concentration can mean complete failure.


Sorry if this is too long, read it anyway; I demand it.

and to wrap this all up....which gameplay style is better?
/commense arguing

Kade.

I will stick to my statement that Skill = Time. Just as you do anything in life, the more you do something the better you get at it. You said you put it down and came back and lost a step and it took time to catch back up.

Now as far as relevance toward other high lvl cap mmo's, i think they both posses something that is good and bad. On a high lvl cap game, i always enjoyed constantly improving my characters stats and the higher content that keeps coming at you. On a low lvl cap game you can spread your time out between multiple characters and not miss too much of a step when you put the game down.

I have enjoyed GW over any other MMO out there. Its not because of the skill thing. More of the gameplay, better graphics and especially the linear story line. I cant stand too much freedom in a MMO. You feel like you have no purpose and your just grinding off side quests the whole time.

I agree with Gattocheese pretty much entirely. I don't play GW because of any skill that is involved in playing the game. I play because I like games with a plot. To me, a game without a plot is pointless (that said, I will occasionally play FPS, simply for a bit of excitement and adrenaline rush from time to time). I don't like just grinding through pointless quests that involve getting a certain amount of a certain item over and over again. I like a game that is something of an interactive book.

That said, I do prefer to see my character advancing past a certain point. Whenever I play Baldur's Gate, I remove the level cap, because I like the plot of the series but I also like to be able to watch as my character gets stronger. But there are a few problems with this. Firstly, I don't like games that require you to grind for levels. I think GW has this aspect perfect. You can just do the main storyline and a few side quests to get your levels. To me, if they keep this system in GW2, where I don't have to go kill the same monsters over and over again to gain levels, I'll be quite glad of the chance to watch my characters grow stronger as they progress.

I agree with cheese but of course if u have "talent" you can get skill in a short period of time.

Wich ones are more fun to play?
Well, they both have their good sides.With time investing you will always find a good group. And the skill games allow you to be a casual player.

Guild Wars system:
+Good for logging on, cracking some skulls, then continuing with life.
-Bad for hardcore play, lacks decent goals, and flawed difficulty levels.

World of Warcraft system:
+Good for being hardcore. Lots of different goals, decent difficulty levels
-Cost, requires hardcore dedication. Picking it up and cracking skulls doesn't work.

Im deffinately a huge fan of games that use a skill>time system.

But then I originally started (competitive) gaming with FPS. So the whole concept of everyone always being on the same level in regards to health, weapons etc with only the skill of players to decide who wins has always been with me.

Its also the way most competitive events are run. For example in the olympics, no matter how long you have been competing in your event you start on an equal footing with everyone else. You dont get a headstart, you dont get to throw a javelin of +7 meters. Its based purely on individual skill.



As an extra note, yes people get better by playing. But that doesnt mean time=skill. Some people can play and never improve. So skill should still be the "thing" rewarded not time.

Ideally a bit of both. Gattocheese is right in that there's some correlation there, generally. Skill doesn't occur in a vacuum, one gets better by playing. I think most people eventually reach a plateau, though. It's a tricky thing to balance, but I'm reasonably pleased with the way GW's handled it.

i would say intrisic skill and player talent can only get you so far.

Experience matters a lot too, and that only comes from time spent.

I really consider experience to be a part of that players skill.
Anything that actually improves the player is skill.
Anything that improves the char is time.

For example if a player was to start a new char he would retain that experience and do better than he did last time.
However he wouldnt retain his weapon that did extra dmg, or armour with +3 regen etc.


So while a more experienced player might beat a lesser experienced player, its because that player is more skilled. Not because of time.

This also assumes there is a reward for spending time. Such as bonus dmg or whatever. Obviousely when there is nothing like that it all comes down to skill anyways.

The majority of games do support skill>time. Its MMORPGs that tend to give rewards for time spent, mainly because most get more money the longer you play. So adding an incentive to those veteran players is great financially.

You know there is a real problem in time>skill games when 2 players switch, so the newer player gets the time bonus and the more veteran player has to win via skill. If the new player can beat the veteran that shows one hell of a serious lack of skill required for the game. When winning and losing is based on equipment or titles etc its not something that can be played competitvely.

I think people dont make enough of distinction between playing the game and getting better and grinding a mob for a 1337 sword so you can play better.

Yes time spent will make you play better in GW.. but that time spent.. is SPENT playing the actual game.. not grinding a dungeon.. or whatever the hell those Grindfest games have you do.

Thus, imo, Skill in GW = Individual Skill, Team Synergy and Experience (PLAYING THE GAME)

Skill > Time spent grinding.

Some interesting answers, personally I enjoy skill>time. However, after returning to a game that rewards players so greatly for time spent (strictly) ingame, it was a bit refreshing to know that I would always be on top because I had put in the time. If I wanted to sit back and relax a bit, I would still be better than lower level characters, for example. In a skill based game, you must be 'on the ball' at all times.

Now obviously a perfect meshing of these two gameplay types is ideal, but I am concerned primarily with which types players prefer, given a choice between the two without any 'in between' options.

While it is true that skill is (in most cases aside from luck or 'raw talent') simply a product of time spent in the game, for the sake of the argument let's say that time spent ingame has no bearing on skill level.

Let's assume, for instance, that in a perfect skill based game you are rewarded...how shall I put this...for the technique you use, or 'talent' displayed when achieving a goal. Take basketball for instance. Michael Jordan was rewarded in his games because he played more skillfully than most any other player. He displayed more 'style' or 'finesse' (according to many fans, anyway ) even though his competitors may have practiced longer in an attempt to best him.

This reward was related to the the time he spent practicing, certainly, but was perhaps more closely related to the amount of thought he put into the game, his passion for it, or his tactical observation of the sport, etc, etc.

In this way a game which rewards players strictly for their skill would do so regardless of time spent ( a game which we have yet to see made). While this is theoretically impossible as Lyra pointed out, for the sake of this argument lets pretend that it is, in fact, possible

To clarify, I am really asking whether a game which rewards you strictly for the amount of time which you spend playing it (regardless of unique ability) is 'better' (read: more desirable ) or whether a game which only rewards you for playing exceptionally well, to the best of your ability, or for the physical/mental talent which you posses is better.

Sorry if this is a bit convoluted, feel free to demand further clarification

edit: I am beginning to realize that this is more a "are all men created equal?" argument. So, if it helps anyone, should everyone be given an equal opportunity at greatness/success in the virtual world? Or should individual talents be allowed to shine just as they do irl?
(I'm sure I just opened a huge can of worms here haha).

Kade.

Very true. And this is an area where you are solely at the mercy of the game as to whether or not you are playing and getting better (either through AI, other players, skill combos, etc) or just grinding away.

I guess you have to allow for SOME bit of skill in a time based game (obviously a game which had you log in and sit for 35days to achieve level 3, then you could kill dragon boss A by pressing button F1, then log in for 45 days to get to level 4, etc, etc. would be absolutely unplayable).

However this is a very basic concept, and most roleplaying games are based off of chance, roll of the dice, DM storytelling, and very little true skill at all.

This truly is a matter of opinion and it is impossible to account for all possible combinations (also i suspect these forums will produce a rather biased report ) but keep the answers coming anyway

On your point about it being an are all men created equal type of thing. I really dont think it is.

When new players enter a game they start exactly the same in terms of time rewards. However even at the very start players will vary in skill. For example one player might have quicker reactions, another might be able to plan out tactics ahead.

Thats the great thing about basing games on skill. Everyone is always different.
In a game based on time when 2 players have the same time advantages and skill doesnt count they will always draw.

In games of time>skill you know before a fight if you will win. If you have better time advantages you are already ahead of your opponent.

However in a game of skill the outcome of a fight isnt decided until the end of the fight. This is because skill isnt lateral, it isnt a case of +1 skill, +2 skill etc.

You can be better at different things, for example in an FPS you might be better at reaction kills while your opponent might prefer to take cover and ambush you.

You cant measure 2 players on skill as there are just to many variables. Even if you win the first time doesnt mean you will win the second.

In a time based game the outcome will always be the same because nothing changes. The longer playing player will always have the advantage, no matter what the other player does.



Now very few games go the extreme of time only and no skill. There are a few but not many. Most either go skill only (such as FPS, RTS etc), then you get games that mix them. MMORPGs are generally the ones that mix them. Knowing what skills to use and when is skill based. But getting more powerful skill for playing longer is time based.

Sorry if I missed something, there are a lot of long posts and don't feel like reading them at the moment, but I said that exact same thing a while back when people were complaining about the "grind" in Guild Wars involving pve skills and got flamed terribly. But it is exactly true whether the anti-grinders want to believe it or not. There is a reason people only want rank 12+ in a HA group, not because they are better at Guild Wars than a rank 4 or 5 or 6, but because they have seen more, and thus know more, and can be expected to react accordingly. The way I explained it before was that Michael Jordan got cut from his high school basketball team, the talent was there then, but he didn't become good by just sitting around doing something besides basketball. He went out and practiced basketball and the time spent doing that made him better.

Skill over Time Spent is better for competetion.
Time Spent over Skill is better for PvE, getting more players to play your game, and having them all strive for a goal they'll never achieve.

I enjoy using skill. I like to think there is a part of me that cannot be replaced by a bot.

It is true that experience usually does lead to greater skill. It's probably more accurate to say something like ingame advantage (level, equipment, and the like) rather than out-of-game advantage (skill), but that's just not as easy as saying "time versus skill".

My distinguishing factor is quite simple: If you take away the top player's account and replace it with a completely new one, how long would it take to get back to their old proficiency? Do that in Guild Wars, and it's mostly just a question of recollecting their skills and a few days levelling if in PvE - and if in PvP, they're probably still going to be superior to a lot of players even with a prebuilt. Do the same to a WoW player, and being the best player in the world won't stop them from being cleaned up by even mid-level players.

Personally, I tend to be a bit of a dabbler. Instead of taking one character and pushing it, I tend to prefer to spread out my attention among pretty much all the options on offer (although, of course, I DO have preferences). Put me in a game which emphasises time, and... well, I don't think I've ever reached max level in ANY such game. Instead of trying to pump one character, I tend to work towards achieving a familiarity with all the characters on offer. I probably don't need to explain how this playstyle is more suited to an out-of-game-advantage-based game than an ingame-advantage-based game.

In games like WoW etc. It is expected that player push more than one character to max level, that why not making all to same level content has advantage. It is something what is quite missing from Guild Wars.

Example from how it can make game feel "longer and better".
Prophecies (level 1-20)
Factions (level 21-40)
Nightfall (level 41-60)
GW:EN (level 61-80)

Now player has reason to play one character to max level and start new one, because storyline is longer those all combined.

EXACTLY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

They're not mutually exclusive. You need both.

I disagree. A Lower maxed level means more time spent on the actual story developement and questing and less time spent on the gay ol' Final Fantasy Style Grind. 'I'm not quite strong enough to beat this boss, I'm going to hunt Malboro to make level up and become stronger to progress in the story.'

Longer isn't better.
Longer = More wasted time for the same thrills.

For anyone who's ever played Ragnarok Online, you know this;
Reaching lvl 99 on the iRO//kRO legit server 1x rates takes FOREVER.
Rebirth takes FOREVER. Hitting 99 again as a transcendant class takes FOREVER.

Those strategies of giving a player the better BANG for their buck don't work for everyone, me I'm impatient, I work fulltime, I hate playing by myself and try not to for longer than maybe 20 minutes. (EVEN in GW.)

I disagree.
Experience=skill.
But Experience not forcely = time.
If you grind say, farming grawls all day in Southern Shiverpeaks, you won't become better at the game. And it's true in PvP, gaining 9 mil balth faction in RA won't make you good at, say HB or GvG.
To gain experience (player's experience, that is), you need to experiment, test, practice of course, but to evolve constantly. If you stay farming grawls all day, you actually spend time in the game, but nowhere gain any player experience.
I prefer games rewarding Skill because I lack of Time. That's why I bought GW. But GW is becoming less and less grind-free.

I'm going to disagree with the "skill=time" folks.

If we all had the same ability, sure; but realistically people have different maximum skill levels, and learn at different rates. As well, time spent learning in one environment isn't the same as in another; one could for example become asymptotic playing withh one's current guild/friends etc, but begin learning agin by moving on to a group from who one can still learn; likewise, a group may be far above a player, and the player is unable to learn from them since the lessons they could impart are not accessible to someone of that skill level.

The equation for each person will vary, but will (under ideal circumstances) be of the form base skill+(rate of learning)(some function of time) approaching some limit for each person, based on their reflexes, ability to think in varying situations, tendency to panic etc.

As to which I prefer in a game, the skill based or time based approach, I'll wholeheartedly endorse SKILL.

As someone who came to GW from CS and DoD (FPS games) I have no patience for the concept that someone should do well because of time spent. Yes, even in pure FPS games there is a correlation between time spent and skill, but I've seen naturally talented folks and people who just never seemed to learn.

Generally, RPGs (and MMORPGs) have endorsed the gear-oriented/time spent approach. This is a solid choice for them for several reasons:

1) since the vast majority of these games are pay-to-play, it makes for money for them.
2) it panders to the lowest common denominator. No matter if you have crap reflexes, can't think your way out of an intellectual wet paper bag or are otherwise clueless - you too can be powerful and lord it over folks, simply by having played more.
3) since in MMORPGs the number of people online at any time determines the fullness of the world; encouraging folks to spend large amounts of time online then helps their world directly.

In short, I see no advantage save for developers in the "time has value" world. The skill>time approach is sensible, and still results in most cases with a correlation of skill and time spent.

I think many of the posters would actually say that Aptitude = Time rather than skill. Aptitude is learning to play the game and that happens over time.
Skill is being able to take the exact same char with the same skills as another player and accomplish something they can't or do it faster.

As for which is better or preffered? Everyone will answer a little bit diferently. I myself like both depending on my mood. When I log on to GW sometimes I want to just kill stuff and have fun, at other times I'm looking to be a little more competitive and want a challange equal to myself.

I can remeber the very start of GW, when it took the average casual player 3months+ to complete the storyline. I used to love taking my lvl 15 war back to Great North Wall and helping out a guildie that came to post-searing at to low a lvl, or at lvl 18 going back and doing Frost Gate just for some revenge on those blasted vamp dwarfs. Ascending was a rush and I so wanted a title to proclaim I had achieved this note worthy status.

It still is the case in some ways that time spent playing GW does give you a significant advantage over new players. Somebody that just bought the game will not have the easy access to all the skills weve unlocked and capped over the last 2+years. They won't know off by heart what monsters they need to face on every map or what skill totaly owns a certain boss.

In a way I really envy the new players as they get to explore and learn things, but at the same time I feel sad because it too easy to look up on wiki what builds to use or where to go or they join a PUG with a vet in it who tells them everything they would have learned before they get a chance to learn it.

In a long almost forgoten dream I can recall a point almost a month into GW when I was franticly searching for a place called Yaks Bend to purchase the elusive Expert Salvage Kit needed for crafting Ascalon Armor

The day GW goes to this sort of system is the day I quit playing. NOT having this is what makes GW so great.

I love having a character on the same level as everyone else, even though I can only play a few days per week. People that play more are more experienced and (probably) more skillful than me, which is cool.

Just to put it into perspective...LEGENDARY games like Magic the Gathering reward skill. Guild Wars is based off the Magic the Gathering style of skill>time played.

There is a distinction between skill and execution, however. Execution/twitch is inherent in Guild Was but not in turn based games like Magic the Gathering. Interrupts are an example of this, akin to FPS headshots.

And learning to get your group of real players to take down each boss in a dungeon is grind?
I think you should take a closer look at "such games".

/agree
One part that makes you advance in PvE another that keeps the balance in PvP.

I'm gonna be one of the many that says "becoming skill takes time", so there's always going to be time involved.

I will say that games that take no thought and just time (i.e. auto-attack, level up, win!) are pretty boring, though. I don't know a whole lot of those kinds of games anymore, however, so I think we're safe.

Levels don't mean much in Final Fantasy unless you want to just overpower your enemies. It is all about having the right spells. Look around the internet a bit and you will see that people have contests to see who can beat a certain game at the lowest level.

with more time, people will become more skilled. however, the RATE of which a player improves can vary greatly from person to person. sometimes a player's initial skillset that he brings to the game can greatly affect how fast (or slow) that player improves.

take for example, the guilds [Te] and [WM]. [Te] consisted mostly of FPS players, while [WM] consisted mostly of RTS players. it just so happens that high level gvg greatly favours those who have either A: really fast reaction speeds, and/or B: really good micromanagement skills. for those players, their prior skillset allowed them to become good at the game much, much faster than most of the playerbase.

of course, there are still those who have played since beta, and still slogging through pve with their mending wammos and absolutely insists that mending and healing breeze are the best skills in the game.

i guess the point to take here is: time played = experience, but experience does not always equal skill and in game performance. therefore, time played != skill.

I think it comes down to what you want to get out of a game.

GW does have a major roleplaying deficiency - your character just never gets very strong. Even at the highest level in the game, with maxed equipment, most of the monsters in the game are strictly stronger than you, even on a one-on-one basis. Many monsters are much stronger than you (don't you wish you could hit for 400 damage with a normal attack?).

Contrast that with, for example, Diablo 2. In D2, characters with the best gear and some stat/skill planning were essentially gods - you could easily go months without ever dying, and slaughter everything on the highest difficulties with relatively minimal effort. There's a lot of mindless fun to be had from this, as well as the nice feeling of being, well, very powerful.

Which one is more appropriate depends on what the player wants from the game. GW-style games are more appropriate for people who like the feeling they get from improving at something. D2/grind-style games are more appropriate for people who just want to sit down and have fun (read: be powerful).

One interesting thing to point out is that both games are likely to get old within the same approximate timeframe - but obviously for different reasons.

I meant like, doing a dungeon 100 times to get your uber leet sword drop from the boss at the end in order to progress (or in this case *get better*) is grind....

If it takes you a long time to figure out how to beat pre determined A.I... well.. I don't know what to say to that, sorry.

This is all my opinion.

I think both systems appeal to different types of people and every player should know the pros and cons of both.

A skill based system offers immediate rewards as a player is able to accomplish more in short sessions. The rewards may not make your character more powerful, but it's the thrill of successfully making it through challenging content that is the bulk of the fun.
However it requires a player to put themself into the proper frame of mind to figure out how to use their skills more effectively in order to accomplish such difficult tasks. If you aren't in that frame of mind, or not the type of player who cares about playing that way, challenges in the game can be quite frustrating and gameplay not as much fun.
Certain tactics will be found that can more easily get through content, lessening the rewarding feeling of accomplishment. Also the lack luster physical rewards given after each accomplishment often don't offer much incentive to invest much time with a particular character. Your characters don't noticeably become more powerful the more you play. Character's power potential is instead tied to the player simply becoming better at playing the game.

A time->power based system's enjoyment mostly comes from anticipation and physical reward. The gameplay is usually much easier and can often be considered trivial. It's intended to be doable with out too much emphasis in being as effective as possible in skill use.
However it's the anticipation of being rewarded in physical ways that make your character stronger which fuel the enjoyment of playing. It's much easier to feel rewarded in this system, if you have the time to invest, as the rewards are quite noticeable as your character grows more in power and can more easily breeze through content found earlier in the game.
Unfortunately it requires quite a bit of time to get things done. Short sessions usually see little gain. Also as characters grow stronger in power, content can become more trivial and the enjoyment becomes more and more dependent on more powerful rewards, which leads to what is called 'power creep'. There becomes more and more of a disparity in content as it scales to characters' power levels.
Starting a new character is far less fun as you are forced to replay all the old content in order to become powerful enough to see newer content. Longtime players eventually start complaining that there is not enough endgame content for their oldest, most powerful characters.
I've seen this happen alot in WoW and EQ2.

Honestly, I hate both systems.
But I hate the skill-based system less and I feel using the skill-based system as a base a new system could be developed that ensures that players will not only enjoy the thrill of getting through difficult tasks without the need to meticulously study skills' effects, but also offer incentive to continue playing with one character by offering fun rewards, that don't necessarily offer more power to a player, but instead offer more creative and interesting options.

The ironic part of the "skill/time" equation in GW is that not all time invested is created equal.

Essentially, the convertibility of time investment to skill has a lot to do with how much time a player has dedicated very recently, and how much time has been dedicated to the present meta. If you want to play at the highest levels, you have to play for ridiculous quantities of time (that I simply don't have) on an incredibly regular basis.

Further, large time investments in playing during a prior meta can actually be counterproductive. Unless I play a LOT, I fail at monking these days. Why? My instincts are all related to outmoded builds - off-heal/power heal (what most people probably thought of as WoH) in HA and boon prot in GvG/TA/RA. If I want to play well, I have to play enough to retrain those instincts. Given sufficient time away from monking, my instincts will revert to the baseline play styles - and that isn't a good thing. Energy gets used inefficiently, and, well, stuff eventually dies and I start swearing.

A significant part of the reason a lot of the top players left, IMO, is that the changes in the meta just became too rapid and uncomfortable for the top players of the day to keep up with.

I just finished posting my thoughts about skill updates in another topic.
I love the skill updates as I love the incentive it offers to experiment with different skills to find new effective builds to replace my old nerfed ones. But I recognize how incredibly frustrating it can be for some people and it's something I worry about. How do they do skill updates to make everyone happy?
I'm gonna go out for coffee and think about it some. lol

Nobody has mentioned youth as a factor.

The young have faster reaction times, nimbler fingers and all had a computer in their cradles. This contributes to what you call "skill". Also, the young have a capacity for grind that is unexcelled when they perceive a reward at the end of it. I doubt there are many players over 30 with a maxed out title.

Having said that, not everyone is a game player. There are a lot of youngsters playing games, because that's what their friends are doing, but in a couple of years time they'll grow up, get girlfriends, hang around in bars, get jobs and games will fall by the wayside. These are the kids who laugh at the concept of someone over 30 even playing GW, because they known inside they'll never get there. They may acquire a modicum of skill, or none at all, and they make up for it by calling people n00b.

The games players, on the other hand, are games players for life. The bug has bitten. The games will change, the skills will change, but they'll be in there, trying it out, finding out to best it. These are the players who will have, at the very least, a modicum of skills. They strategise, they analyse their mistakes and look for ways to solve in-game problems.

The measures for skill vary, of course. There was a young guy in our guild one day, playing on his dad's account, who told us he was a very skilled and experienced player because all his characters had black armor.

If playing games is really important to you, a life and death matter that you are the best there can be, then a thing called talent comes into it. But all the talent in the world doesn't help unless you actually train. Play. Learn from those who have gone before you.

You may like to read a book called "Ender's Game" by Orson Scott Card. This is a wonderful book on youth and games playing, though if you move on to the subsequent books you will discover that nobody could foresee the consequences.

Umm. Lots do. My guild is all mature players, many of us over 30 - I have 17 maxed titles at the moment, am over 30, have three children and work full time, and I only play when the kids are in bed - so it's quite doable, without even being insane and playing all the time - 2 hours at night once the kids are all tucked in is plenty of time.

Skill > Time. But the game mechanics should be such that by spending time practicing the game increases your skill.

Skill based is better. PvE isn't better when its rewards are based off the amount of time you spend in the game rather than the skill you have at playing the game.

A game that is based off of skill is more open. I can go and do anything I want at anytime. I don't have to do something I don't want to do in order to be able to do what I want, or be restricted in areas I don't want to play in instead of the areas I want to play in. A skill based game rewards real improvement rather than false ones, which makes a skill based game more rewarding.

Sometimes people don't want to really improve their skills in a game and that makes sense. It's hard and requires focus, patience, and dedication to get more skilled at something and sometimes you just want some relaxing fun. Time based games allow that, you still get satisfaction from improvement but instead of you improving its a character improving while you just brainlessly kick back and kill things. This something I think is more suited for an offline game because they don't have the inherent competition that an online game has which leads to several problems because competition ,even in a co-op setting, is meaningless if its just a game of who has more time.

I think most people want both at different times. I know I do. They are somewhat mutually exclusive though, to reward time is to not reward skill alone and vice versa, but it still works on a continuum of time reward vs skill reward. To ignore the fact that in a skill based game with time rewarded mechanics the time rewarded mechanics are less satisfying than a time based game (Guild Wars for example rewards cosmetic upgrades and titles for time but they're less satisfying then getting actual stat upgrades from time spent) this works the other way too. I think a skill based game with some time based mechanics ( in particular time based mechanics that don't effect the strength of a character) address both better than a game with time based rewards that at times rewards skill.

In someways I think it's best to try and make games that focus on either or, so that when you want that certain experience whether it be time or skill based you can play that. Unfortunately there aren't many good choices for the skill based enthusiast ( the kind of game I want to play most of the time and I've only found Guild Wars that really does it at all) when it comes to MMO's. Hopefully Guild Wars 2 will drop the level mechanic so we have more.

Skill

Skill can be learnt over time, but only through practice, however Time Spent should not be an indicator if its based on gear, only as an indication of your rising skill level