No Skill To Guild Wars?

READ THIS ALL PLEASE

I'm talking about skill in real life rather than the definition of skill in Guild Wars. Like there's skill to sports, drawing, writing, and to games that you actually do the fighting in rather than telling a character how to fight.

My terminology in this post:

GWSkill = The skills you have on the little bar at the bottom of the screen.
RLSkill = "like there's skill to sport, drawing, writing..."

Some people on Guild Wars started taking about there being no RLSkill in the playing of guild wars, and I don't know why they're playing if that's the case. I started to think, there must be some RLSkill to Guild Wars because some bits of it are easy and some are hard, even with great GWSkills and builds. Also if there was no RLSkill then everyone would have completed the whole of Guild Wars in months or less of hardcore playing.

The only skill to Guild Wars I can think of is:
Timing: Like interrupt GWSkills, miss the oppurtunity and you have to wait for recharge by which time you're screwed.
Moving: While farming, your builds aren't suited to every foe in the area, so it's important you avoid them.

I'm sure there's more than that, so what can I say to disprove them?
Oh and also my brother says Guild Wars is rubbish because there's no RLSkill to it, so what you say will come in pretty handy.

BTW, just to remind you, I believe there is RLSkill to Guild Wars, so don't start being horrible to me, because I'm asking about that, not denying it.

Thanks in advance

Um...I don't really get this. Are you talking about skill like hands-eyes coordination?

"Play PvP" .

Theres no skill in PVE, theres some skill in PVP

This is where most people fail when discussing player skill in GW.

If that's all you think about Timing and Movement, then you're a pretty bad player.

theres A LOOOOT of team work. I think thats a very important IRL skill

You are forgetting tactics, knowing your bar, knowing what the other player is going to do, knowing your way around, knowing your shortcuts, lightning reflexes for monks and mesmers (for mesmer this also means knowing in what order the other player is using his skills), knowing how to spike, when to spike, knowing how to counter certain builds, being able to make a build that bloody well works, being able to lead (party as well as guild/alliance)

I could just go on and on.

There is even skill in pve: knowing how certain npc's move and how they react, being able to work with those h&h, farming builds, as mentioned, knowing what to sell/buy and at what price, etc etc etc.

There is more then enough skill in GW, difference is between people that use it, and people who don't.

The main things are character control, battle awareness, and tactics. These can be broken down into a lot of smaller areas.

Character control:
Kiting, skill usage, proper targeting and timing (what to aim at and when, monitoring enemy skill recharge, etc), reaction time, e-management.

Battle Awareness:
Threat recognition (related to targeting), positioning, timing (for pushes, base res, etc), reading your opponent (skill prediction).

Tactics:
Ways to deal with opponent builds, map understanding, split/collapse plans, etc. You can have a lot of theory here but execution takes practice.

Then there are things like team synergy and such - you can have very skilled players without it and they won't do as well. I'm obviously missing a lot of stuff on this, it's just general things.

There's more to it then just movement and timing. Think about it in a wider view. You need to be aware of what everyone else (teammates and opponents) are doing, how to react, etc.

In PvE, skill hasn't mattered since ursan, although some players don't use it for whatever reason.

I think that is why some people don't like ursan... no skill needed...

I wouldn't consider interruption a GW skill. Predicting others' actions could be considered skillful (see quarter-knocking) but watching the skill warm-up and pressing a button is not much different to Whack-A-Mole which I played when I was 7.

Based on his definition:
this makes you:
wrong.

Edit:
It's about reflexes.
One is able to respond faster then someone else.
I'd consider that a skill.
(We're just to narrow minded to get past the fact that different people are good at different things. And some of those things don't even need to be useful.)

Explain. I don't see how using ursan takes skill. And if you are using anything besides ursan that isn't as good as or better (good and better as in faster at doing something) then that doesn't count, you are choosing to limit yourself and making a challenge where there isn't one. Sure you could say typing takes no skill, but I tie my hands behind my back and type with my feet, thats where the real skill is!

Anyone can interrupt. A good interrupter isn't someone who hits things, in the same way a good interrupt skill has a secondary effect. You need to be able to use your interrupts to disable as much of the enemy offense/defense as possible, by co-ordinating and interrupting key skills, by pleaking a target repeatedly and watching for them to switch into highset so you can knock them out entirely, by dshotting skills the enemy relies on, etc. You have to be able to clearly identify the build and tactics used by the opponent to get the greatest effect.

This also means you need to time in your head the recharges of your enemy's skills so that you can catch them on recharge repeatedly (things like DA, Aegis, Wards, etc). Sometimes this involves watching for cast animations so you can keep an eye on multiple targets at once. Then on top of all that, reaction time comes into play, and you have to be using the other skills on your bar as well.

You beat PvE. You have shown skill.
The simple fact that there are better players out there doesn't matter.
PvE isn't competitive.

First familiarize yourself with the definition of skill.

PvE takes skill.
PvP takes skill.

The only difference is, the only skill PvE takes is basic motor skills and maybe a little bit of common sense, while PvP, being competitive and your opponents unpredictable and theoretically of an equal mindset and capable of being of the same skill level or better as you and your allies, goes to prove more about your intuitive skills while actually playing GW.

I don't even know if that made sense and i'm not going back to check. It made sense in my mind...

PvP involves skill, but it's not because you play pvp that you got great skill, just to make that clear. You can play soccer at the local team or play in the premier league to explain this with a real life example.

It's the same for PvE but with different mechanics, microing heroes and their bars requires skill for example. You can play golf on a modest level or you can play versus Tiger Woods sorta speak. In GW pve however we don't have a sheet that shows in how less time or how many steps it took to complete the game.

The real life skill you need to play guild wars is People Skills, in my humble opinion, which i desperately lack :P~ lol that is why I hate pug! pug = people skill = talk , yuck!

That is also why, there are a lot of thread started just because player F thinks player P is a noob or players C thinks player R is a complete idiot for not knowing skill B or etc.... all without people skills! and lack of understanding lololol


i r going for some food ... hands and legs getting numb!

here we go... *sigh* another PvP>PvE thread.
FYI: not everyone likes PvP. Some like PvE. Actually most GW players like PvE. And there is skill involved. Sure, it might be easier than PvP, but there is still RLskill required. My gf can't even walk straight in GW, she keeps bumping into things (but she never plays games, so that's not so strange). And the timing and movement examples from the OP is also skill. Ever tried running droknar before the SF perma build when there was only Prophecies? That took skill.

Yes, there is lots of RL skill for PvE, if you choose to play it to the fullest. Even perma SF UW farming takes skill. Timing is a big issue there. See Avarres first post here. Says it all.

I don't think you can really argue that PvP takes far more skill to be successful in compared to PvE.

The major difference is that PvE is a static environment. You can empirically memorize every spawn point and mechanically replay it - one reasons why bots can perform in PvE. PvP requires the player to continually adapt during a match itself in order to remain effective. For that reason, the skill cap in PvE is a lot lower - once you're got general positioning and character control down, you're pretty much set, because the only major tactic is go from A to B and kill everything on the way.

While discussing the differences between skill importance in PvE and PvP is fine, if this becomes the usual playerbase witch hunt it will be locked.

Most of the skills for pvp are useless in pve due to crappy design where the monsters only thought is "kill , kill , kill ...". The challenge given in pve doesn't promote innovations like in pvp , since the only way to throw out a monster out of the fight is to kill him.
Also , pve doesn't award skill nearly as much it rewards speed , hence the opinion that there is no skill in pve.

Mesmer, play one, have skill, only class that really requires it.

Correction: it's pre-determined, versus the uncertainty of PvP. But it's dynamic, and not static, in the sense that you still have to battle the mobs. I know that you can come to the point where you understand the AI and thus all this seems pretty "fixed", but it's not static. Plus there's the positioning, even mobs are moving.

It definitely requires much more active thinking, but the little I've read on various PvP games apparently shows that the "openness" is not exactly what it looks like. There are well-determined role, well-know skillbars and almost-universally-agreed tactics (front/middle/back-line ... I guess people have structured around the military thinking) well in place. This comment is just to balance things, PvP is not as challenging as one may think at first, but it's definitely more requiring than PvE. I'm pretty sure that there even are GvG guilsd that are well ranked because they pretty much perform almost always the same things, with slight variations.

Yea i would imagine if you had to draw to use a skill at Guild Wars. Hehe, it would end up like that Naruto guy who draws something and it comes to life. My guess is that it would be very cool, having to draw little snakes or big tigers (some would take more than others).

Back to the topic:
Play against a mesmer and than with a mesmer. You will see that in each side you will need real skills to overmatch some things. Diversion, Backfire, Interrupts, Energy Burn. These stuff makes you go insane.

Mob movement is predictable, and their tactics never change. Battling the mobs is more a question of 'how long will this take' rather than 'how can we do this'. PvE zones never change, and for that reason you don't need to be able to think to clear them. You need general skill in terms of character control, as I mentioned, but that's about it. Hence why unmicro'd heroes can roll through PvE.

That's a pretty heavy simplification, and that's all I'm going to say.

Im more interested in the real life values skills of playing GW so kids show this to your parents if they say you play too much.

As far as game skills on the bar, that teaches imagination, planning, timing, experimentation of skill, research, alot of reading, communication skills, of questioning and finding out what others do, then the good stuff, that is obtained from GW like, manners, ( Ive met alot of nice people in the game how many always say after a trade TY or have a nice day enjoy the item or great job in the mission etc, Oh ya anyone playing this game should now be able to get a job as a used car salesman lol, alot of selling and pitching for a sale getting the best $ for the trade, compromizing,!!
Holding out, patience, These are all real life skills that this game is teaching and i dont care what anyone stays, its good, good for what it teaches, One young person i talked to said however like with the manners that if they used them in real life it wasnt cool, because there peers wouldnt think it was cool but he found so what and did it anyway a especially with his parents and so his parents saw the redeaming value of the game play and felt like i do. ANd so i vented on the values for of the skills that the game teaches in real life.

Are you saying that tactics is changing all the time in PvP? I guess not.

And my point still stands: PvE environment is not "static", except if you're hitting the practice targets...

And that's a misunderstanding on your part. I think you idealise too much PvP, I'm pretty sure that players with lowest ranks aren't the people you think they are.

Positioning changes, team builds change, player actions are entirely random. In PvE, not so much, and that greatly reduces the skill threshold required to play it. And while monsters do "move" is always on a set route, something else that is easily predicted.

The challenge in PvE is configuring the best team build to handle all of what you'll see in the area. You base it off of the fact that the mobs skillbars' never change, and seldom do the "tactics" they perform; you're not going to see a random chance of all the monsters going for a spike, going for one class, and the like.

It's hard to base facts off of Theory Wars. PvP is a much more demanding and requiring game, both in terms of having the skills and with player skill. You'll never know what build you'll encounter.

Nope, sorry. The game is just easy. There is no other option in this.

No, you just run a bunch of strong Warriors.

There can be skill in PvE if you choose to play it that way.

For example, I play 90% of PvE solo without heroes and henchmen, and I have to say that it involves a lot of planning, strategy and techniques...I feel I sharpen my "skill" every day.

If you play one of the "easy modes" (I won't go into that here), then obviously PvE has little to no skill. Unfortunately, since there are many players that choose the easy modes, I would say that their skill level (or at least their advancement of their skill level) is zero to none.

I edited your post to reflect my opinion. Yes, there is a very small amount of skill involved in getting the timing down, but otherwise, it's simply button-mashing. I've done the perma SF farm while talking on the phone, watching TV, etc...that kinda tells you the attention (and therefore skill) it requires.

It's that kinda arrogance, half-sarcastic half-serious comments, that gives a bad image to some of the community =|.

I've been trying to get a post done for over an hour now, something about on how PvE takes some skills to be effective, actually more effective than what's already effective. It probably takes more knowledge than skill, because if you know the area you're about to head into, its enemies, their bars, their weakness... you'll be more effective.

But take a look at Ursan groups. People say it takes no skills. Then explain me why people fail at it so much? They fail at making walls, at KDing at good times, at focusing on an enemy or taking off the leak out of the monk's aggro, in case the wall fails - either everyone rushes or no one rushes. How can you fail at making a wall?? HOW CAN YOU FAIL AT LINING UP??? But they do! Must take some skill at some point no? If a part of people can and another part can't... (I know it sounds stupid but trust me, a lotta people can't line up worth ****).

In PvE, it can take some skill not to aggro too many if you're a puller, targeting the right enemies, interrupting... but as I've said some people fail at it so horribly. I'm currently learning how to play mesmer, 'cause after 3 years it's about time I learn how to interrupt effectively >_>. I've barely played mesmer before, didn't appeal to me; but I'm getting better. I'm improving. My friends are noticing it.

The thing is that in PvE even if your bar isn't the most effective one, you'll still be able to go through it. But if you really wanna be effective, you'll put time in your bar, in your heroes'...

It's really hard to go to wiki.guildwars.com and type in the zone you are going to.

Is that just another argument that GW takes no skill?

Still doesn't explain why people fail. That's why I'm sure it takes some skill, because some people will look at wiki, will use the same bar as you and will still run it in a bad way. I couldn't interrupt worth crap a short while back, but I'm improving, as I was saying. Some people improve. So at some point it DOES require skill...

Pretty much that.

You don't need to be a good player to do well in PvE. If you have the map information and the bars to run, and marginal capability, you'll complete it successfully. PvE is getting out DPS fast enough to roll through an area.

The requirement of skill is extremely low because after a point, more skill doesn't matter. Ensign is not going to be a better nuker than your average ele player with the same bar who mashes skills on targets, because that is all nuking involves. It doesn't mean the players aren't skilled, but rather the format doesn't call for it or reward it.

Sure, there are some areas that take more, such as leading groups and such, but for the most part you only need one 'leader' and 7 buttonmashers. The benefit of having 8 genuinely skilled players in PvE is almost unnoticeable because it's zone familiarity and knowledge that play a larger role.

It's actually pretty accurate. Warriors do damage and damage makes you win.

When people say PvE doesn't take skill, they don't mean none whatsoever. To actually play Guild Wars without accidentally unplugging the monitor and throwing your inventory items on the ground while trying to press skills requires a general base level of skill (being able to move, knowing what your skills do, basic knowledge of mechanics, etc). The problem is that this is all that is really required, and no player development beyond the basics is needed. Unfortunately, a lot of players fail at having that general level of competence, and that is how a lot of groups die.

I'm not on the side of PvE taking skill. Heck, some of the stuff that has got GWAMM there would make me cry, but really, you don't need Wiki at all. It's not only that, but the predictability of the enemy. You will know their AI after time, and after that you'll know how to take advantage over them because they don't change at all. Wiki just speeds up the process of gaining that knowledge.

Or taking piss and still having time to wash hands and casually walk back to computer to continue SFing stuff to death.

Sadly, its not that I am so much badass at farming. Its just that easy.

Pve takes skills. It requires reading skills as well as info seeking skills (surfing net).

And if all fails, you can still fall back on "No" skills aka [ursan].

Oh I know warriors are good damagers, trust me. I kinda linked it to your average GW player's vision of a warrior: a tank'n'spank tank. He's not there to do damage, he's there to take hits. (And I prefer a damager war over the traditional GW view of a tank...)

Yeah, I assume too fast sometimes too.

Haha, what a complete simplification. And then you have the guts to say this:
When you don't even play/know anything about it?

Yes, there are well-determined roles, but they are played by different classes in different ways. Facing a Ranger who is interrupting you is completely different than facing a Mesmer who is interrupting you. They both interrupt you, but they both do different things to you for it. Facing a Monk healer, is completely different than facing a Ritualist healer. They both heal, but they both have different skills. Facing a good interrupter vs a bad interrupter. A hammer war (and going deeper, DH/Magebane/Earthshaker) vs an Axe War. These all fit your simplification, and yet I will laugh at you if you tell me fighting a Hammer War was the same as fighting an Axe War. They both have similar roles, yet they do things entirely different.

Yes, there are well known skillbars. How does this change anything? It isn't about the individual skills, but how your team uses them. Some teams favor splits A TON, some teams don't split at all (and fail a lot), some teams are ultra defensive (Y HELLOT THERE rawr), some teams run balanced all the time, some teams are ultra gimmicky to be gimmicky. Every skill bar is pretty much "well known", because anyone worth their salt knows the intricacies of the game engine and its mechanics, and what all the skills do. Ultimately that is the dividing line between a good player and a bad one. Who knows how things work, and sees the bigger picture. Working as a team and seeing 64 skills vs working lone wolf and seeing 8 skills times 8. Knowing what everything does and how it links together vs knowing how just you work. This is very much why a good interrupter knows the entire enemy team and how to interrupt best (watching high sets, etc), and a bad interrupter doesn't. They might both be good at interrupting, but there is more to it than that. A good monk will watch the enemy field and probably doesn't need to pay attention to red bars, weapon swaps for nearly every spell, and does this so they know how much to use their Guardian etc. A bad monk doesn't, and sees only what the red bars tell them. A good warrior will chiizu dance, quarterknock, target swap to pressure, etc. A bad warrior doesn't.

Tactics does not include team structure, which while you have mentioned the basics (frontline/midline/backline), you have failed to include split structure, of which there are many types (offensive and defensive, and included in each, many setups) and knowing when to split, and which type to do, to maximize advantages. Team structure is universally agreed on, because the game is set up in that way. You'd have to be a complete idiot to put your Monks to the front and Warriors to the back. One does not throw their King at the enemy in Chess, unless if they have a plan to do so, after all.

You forget the human element, something that PvE does not have on the other side. Well known roles, well known skill bars, well known team structure, is good and all, and yet all of that can mean nothing when you add a human to the mix. Or 8. Because humans are crazy, insane, and sometimes completely illogical beings. You might expect them to offensive split with their Ranger, and yet they send a Warrior and a Monk. Stuff like that. There is no guaranteed strategy. You send two guilds running the exact same build, with the exact same attributes, with the exact same level of strategy and knowledge, and one will lose, because of the human element.

I am barely even touching the tip of the iceberg here, maybe you should research these things before you post, there is plenty of guides and such for this stuff.