Player mindset vs Character mindset

So are you telling me that everything in Guild Wars is mandatory? I dont quite understand this perspective.

If i can play and enjoy Guild Wars without having to play certain parts of it, I do not consider those sections mandatory.

For example, Getting to Dragon's Throat is mandatory, since the pre-requisite to play Dragon's Throat is having that location in the first place. However, the mission itself is not mandatory since it is not a prerequisite for anything (at least the NF challenge missions reward you with hero armor).

If i wanna play in UW/FoW, i need to be ascended (and its factions/nf equivalents). Being ascended is the pre-requisite and mandatory. But UW/FoW itself is only mandatory if you want the rewards (XP/Items/HoM monument) specifically from just those areas. Beating those areas do not unlock more quests or features.

Anything that is required to unlock or access portions of the game such as new outposts and areas of gameplay (and not superfluous rewards like items/XP/titles/monuments) is what i consider mandatory.

Challenge missions are most certainly not mandatory in the game.

I don't see the PvE skills as imbalancing the playing field since I see no competition in PvE.

You're still measuring yourself against other people. This is a human design. It is YOU who is creating this competitive environment, not the golf course.

If you take this mindset, EVERYTHING becomes a competitive environment. Walking down the street, eating, sleeping, baking cookies, scanning pictures, whatever.If two people do the same thing, and one person considers it simply a task, while the other person considers it competition, Is it really a competition? The competitive mindset is all in the person's head.

This mindset is irrelevant to the difficulty and design of the course.
Your performance in PvE is against the environment, not against people.

Even i the competitive missions, its still monsters who spawn and fight you.

If I die in a mission, its pretty obvious that I've failed.
If I cannot beat a mission, its obvious that I've failed.
If I beat the designated time limits that the game challenges me with to gain Masters, then I consider that a success.

I don't need other people to tell me if im a success or a failure, since the game has forward progression. I'm competing against the game design.

I'm not denying that PvE can be quite a competitive environment. I do understand that people have different mindsets of how they play and choose to play based on those mindsets.

But their mindset doesn't change how the game mechanics itself behaves.

You can keep beating a specific mission and consider it a competition and you want to be the best at it, but that doesn't make it a competitive mission except in your head since theres no validation of anything.

The titles are nothing but proof of a completed task. You can use these as measures of competition, but its nothing but a competition to see who can complete a task.

Actually I can do that very easily.

Golf is a sport. It can be a competitive sport.
You can play a round of golf by yourself and not compete with anyone.

Soccer is a sport. But it is a competitive sport by default.
Soccer by its nature always two opposing sides trying to outscore each other.

Me, I snowboard and I do Capoeira.

Snowboarding is a great sport. By its nature, its a person on a board riding down a snow covered slope. Success is reaching the bottom in one piece. ;p Failure is...well...obvious and painful (ive had the concussion to prove it).

We can attach all sorts of competitive things to snowboarding like fastest times, highest jump, best trick, etc. But in the end of the day, the mechanic of snowboarding is still between the person against the mountain (not withstanding actual side by side racing).

We can contrast this to Capoeira. In the roda, in the game, you are with a partner/opponent and by nature a competitive game.

The person is your competition, but at the same time, this person is your partner. You are supposed to help as well as hinder each other. You work your game and attack, as well as defend and counter-attack. You want to show to everyone in the roda that you are better than your partner and at the same time expose the weak points of your partner so they can defend or escape better next time. The only way you become stronger is with a stronger partner so you want your partner to progress just as you are progressing. More combos, faster kicks, slipperier esquivas, quicker counter-rastieras.

Two sports, one is naturally competitive vs a person, the other is competitive vs an environment.

No, I consider every area of the game equally optional.

As for the rest of your post, I wrote a long point for point rebuttal, but most of it is arguing back and forth about analogies (which I admittedly started), so I opted to delete the lot and just point out the following.

I'm trying to explain to you that PvE is played competitively and the people doing so need a level playing field, and you acknowledge it and deny it in different parts of you post. Which is it?

The mechanics of the game are totally neutral. The environment that characters are in its neither competitive nor non-competitive in itself, it is the people that using it give the game its purpose as either a competitive sport or a non-competitive hobby. Unless guildwars wants to alienate one sector of the community or the other, it needs to accommodate both methods of play - PvE skills don't do this.

Missions are designed to be easily achieved by the average 12yo. In order to receive meaningful measures of success gamers need to turn to each other. Take Unwaking waters for example, it has a 15 minute limit for masters - compare that to the 1-3 minute times that people actually achieve.

Its a nice read, really top notch topic. I personally don't feel an urge to contribute though like I may have a few months ago. It just seems an aura of inconclusiveness always envelopes these kinda threads. Lots of thinking, but does it really get anywhere? Sorry to be negative, it just seems that topics like this don't have the game changing potential like they used to have. By that I mean, back in the "day" a good handful of topics got some serious attention from Anet and were addressed. Hidden Cape/Helmet, Upgradeable Guild Halls, Storage etc. etc. and not all of those came with new campaigns, many were in large updates. Now it seems the only things we'll be updated on is some unexpected skill update or an exploit being fixed. Maybe I'm being ignorant, I just don't see Anet ever really changing the title system in any drastic way.