Why has Player Skill dropped Significantly?

Because people don't bother to learn , and those few who want to learn can't learn much because those who can teach them do nothing.

What is wrong with learning yourself? Its not a strange concept, and nearly all half-decent PVP players started by putting their own logic behind their builds and tactics.

The main problem is that either people are just plain stupid or they don't want to bother to learn anything. I've tried to HA multiple times with low rank pugs and every time it ends in disaster. Even when you tell someone exactly what to do.

The main culprit of all this is the incredible ease of PvE. It does not require a single thought to play through the whole game with ease. Not only can you use the most thoughtless builds and tactics, but you also get rewarded for it. Now with the PvE skills that eye of the north has brought forth, the player quality has degraded even more. Why this? Because its the base of the game, and where people get to learn the basics, and without a decent base you get horrible players.

And I'm afraid, with this pace, every PvP outpost except RA and AB will die out. There are just too little people of decent skill that you can play with. Sure you can play with people of low skill, but do you really feel like having to teach people over and over again just to play a game?

When people want things faster they will sacrifice many things to get them.

One of them is 'having fun while playing'.

^ Another vote for thread winner.

Boy was this ever a flame bait thread....

Agreed with pretty much everything you said.

Also, in regards to new players, the game is ridiculously easy compared to the old days. Fire imps, consumables, PvE skills and level 10 access to EOTN--essentially giving out the next 10 levels for free--are just a few examples. Whenever a game holds the player's hand for too long, the amount of skill required is drastically reduced...take 10+ hours of Fable II for instance.

Personally, I think that 'net mentality coupled with PvX is the biggest problem. A lot of players are probably scared to run their own builds for fear of rejection. This, I believe, this is incredibly disheartening. Many players, myself included, enjoy the game because of the wide variety of skill combinations and styles of play. With thousands of skills to choose from, it's sad that such a scant amount are actually used because the majority thinks otherwise.

I feel we could use a few more "monster skill updates" like in August...it brought some new cards to the table and made the game more interesting for at least a few weeks.

Oh, and--shameless plug--make Spawning Power useful!

OP: The problem is that this is a mature game. Individual play skill at the upper echelons of a game tends to reach a peak and then decline. The "best" players of a game early on share several characteristics:

1) fast learners
2) can (and do) dedicate significant time to the game
3) thrive on creativity

As the game becomes mature and strategies become defined, there is less room for theorycraft and innovation. Winning a team battle ceases to be defined by the amazing things each individual player can do, and more by each member of the team knowing its role and executing the role properly. Once that happens, you get a different breed of player at the upper levels of the game. The players that push the echelons of individual play skill get bored/frustrated, leave, and the upper echelons become dominated by people that can execute preplanned strategies most effectively.

It's the same way in the business world, actually. Nascent industries are dominated by entrepreneurs. The most successful of those entrepreneurs build large teams that out-execute everyone else once the industry becomes defined. Usually the skill set for building and running such teams is NOT the skill set that the most creative entrepreneurs have.

For GW specifically:

The watershed moment for the game was [iQ] taking down [EvIL] in Leipzig. This set off a whole different arms race in Guild Wars. Previously, the available strategies in the GvG environment were generally agreed upon. The locally optimal builds and tactics varied with changes to the skill base, but you showed up planning to 8v8 pressure, spike or split (and brought a plan for dealing with the third if you showed up with one of the first two).

The new arms race involved finding ways to exploit game mechanics for profit, and culminated in the recognition that hyper-defensive builds with JUST enough damage to clean spike targets were the proper way to game the AT system. The [rawr] players demonstrated (with a rotating roster) that a defensively-oriented, 8v8 balanced spike displayed the sort of high return, low variance behavior needed to consistently win monthly ATs.

That sort of concept doesn't really permit the demonstration of exceptional playskill; the caller, mesmer and backline are relatively complex jobs, but that leaves half the team in the uncomfortable position of doing repetitious task-oriented work. (Flagger only gets interesting when there's a capable split, which is a dying breed these days.)

Couple that with the reduction and eventual elimination of IRL incentives to compete at a high level, and the upshot is that many of the most skilled players left the game. They got bored, and the reasons to play on despite boredom were removed.

Take out the best players, and the bar isn't set as high any more for individual playskill. Then players don't have to push themselves as hard to achieve the same goals, resulting in lower standards of individual play. Iterate that for a couple of years, and you get the observed result. Happens to all games eventually; GW just had a perfect storm that caused the death spiral to unfold quickly despite an obvious external cause such as a major new MMORPG.

The amount of things to learn about in pvp has increased very much since the beginning of the game and some things just cannot be figured out by yourself.
But I agree that PvE is getting more and more easier leading to lower player skill both in pve and pvp.

Player skill hasn't dropped. It has increased. So now the people who never did a lot of RA or are new to the game have no chance against the experienced GW'ers.

I think one of the main reasons is Heroes. I liked the fact they incorporated heroes but I think they have helped some not so experienced players progress faster in the game than what they would have without. I have been playing for over 40 months and by no means am the greatest player but playing with a PUG and henchman it taught you some things that you can get by without in most cases when playign with heroes. A prime example would be pulling. Lots of bad pulling or no pulling happens now and I just think it is because many players have never really had to do it. Just my two cents.

It all seems like a lot of "I don't like dealing or playing with other people."

One day, someone is using Barrage and Crossfire.
The next day, that same person is using Barrage and Pin Down.
A week later, this person used Burning Arrow and <insert random Ranger spirit>.

Yesterday, I saw that exact same person complain that Barrage shouldn't be an elite skill, Crossfire needs a buff, Pin Down is lame, Burning Arrow needs to be nerfed and that Ranger spirit needs to cost less energy.

No, it's not the player skill that dropped, it's the "want, want, want" that seems to be returning back from the fifth dimension.

'Cause of gimmicks that allow incredibly sloppy and uncoordinated play, people not willing to learn because they want things effortlessly and skills that are so easy to use that even a braindead Monkey can use it with efficiency. At least what I think.

1. Skills are too stupid right now, no thinking process is needed.
2. Skills that require thinking, give too little pay off, and thus arent used.

What do we get from 1 and 2.
People use stupid,effective skills, and because of this, they can rely on that, and do not have to rely on themselves. Skill is for the most part...unneeded.

3. People who want to learn, have a hard time doing so, as people dont like to take inexperienced people in.
4. People who are inexperienced are too intimidated to go unfamiliar (pvp) places.
5. inexperienced people who are cocky, are disliked and thus shunned, and thus.....don't get experienced.

>.> IMO.

All the good people quit

This. My skill isnt decreasing just because I feel like taking a break from the cookie cutter builds and trying something fun like A hammer or dagger monk with smiting, or my epic new craze - Ride the Lightning Monk. I never thought of bow monk before though, I will have to try that along with a scythe monk too.

Well, mesmers, ellys, rangers, sins and dervs have been playing heal monk builds and no one complains, so why complain about my Ride The Lightning Monk? Teleport monkie says this build is epic fun. I dont need to win everysingle match to have fun, I really only find playing silly builds fun. Ooh, ooh, spirit strength and conjure lightning rit with a lightning wand and offensive weapon spells, go go pew pew pew wand spike. Dont complain, I do significantly more damage then a flare elly or wammo with a tank build does, plus lots of utility from 3-4 weapon spells.

There's a difference between trolling people and being bad at the game.

btw you can't troll people by running 'lulzy' builds when you're bad at running good builds.

TL;DR ENTIRE THREAD.

Player skill has dropped significantly because Heroes have allowed us to run around like retarded headless chickens and allowed to succeed without being successful.

I'm of the opinion that the player base has not decreased in knowledge, but that the gap in player knowledge between good and mediocre and bad players has increased. A good player now is much more complex, go to the pvp ghetto of GW (yes HA) roll a mesmer and see how not easy the job has become its like crap on the healer, be in on every spike and shut down the earth ele plus catch rezes and cry spikes whatever. Yet people do this every day like breathing air. Go do Rrangor's dungeon in HM to try to get yourself a dryad bow from the chest. You will find that the trip from Doomlore to the dungeon entrance is almost as hard as doing UW back in 2005 let along the dungeon itself. Yet people farm it 3 times a day. Players of a low level have a huge learning curve and some will learn and close the gap while others never will. But I think GW has a very skilled player base overall. Anet gave us a challenging game with lots of depth and the players are actually really good.
I pug HA a couple hours a week and pug HM missions and yea you see the occasional scubfest but most people I've PUG'd are decent.

perhaps having many of the old "hard core" players leave the game in the last 6 months or so may have something to do with it.

for PvE this isn't too much to expect...i mean seriously, it's not too hard to pop on a decent PvE build and follow directions.

for PvP, different story, but organization isn't too hard. You just need cooperative people

i totally agree here...prophecies is still my favorite pve campaign. a half-decent PvE proph player will always dominate at least one or two of the other campaigns because PvE does get easier. However, players are more spread out than in Proph days; there are 4 different "areas" for a player to go to and the concentration of players (especially skilled players) is very diluted.

I remember months back when I used to play GW, I noticed this. To do anything in PvE, I practically had to hench/hero it because there either weren't enough players at a mission outpost or I simply doubted the skill of a PuG.

coming back to GW though; want to remember how playing the best mmorpg was like lol

No, it's amazing how much people f'ing bitch and moan.

Just stfu and play the game. Who cares how bad other people are?

DON'T PLAY WITH THEM! Play with your friends that you think are "leetsauce" or wtf ever stupid as shit internet meme you kids are using now days.

Problem solved.

Seriously. It's pathetic what it's like now. It was never like this before... It use to be that only the really horrible people were "bad" --- now everyone in the damn guild is "bad." "You're bad." "He's bad." I mean wtf? Whoever started this shit needs a punch in the face.

Now days it doesn't even matter if someone is actually bad or not, they're just bad because some random guy says they are.

Then you have the fanboi nerd wagons where everyone wants to jump on some nerd's you know what cause they think they're "good" and honestly? They could be horrible. Someone just says they're good... Most these people never even played with them!

And whoever started the "whoru?" shit needs to get flogged.

You know what happened? THE GOOD PLAYERS LEFT. Now GW is left with the horrible kids that just sat around talking shit and saying people were bad. You know, those people you find in RA that are saying how bad the other people are, and you watch them and they are quite possibly the worst person you've ever seen play the game? Yeah, those are the ones that are the "good" players now.

Wow.

Well, I guess if you play GW 3 years and suck, eventually you're bound to not suck just because everyone that previously didn't suck ended up quitting and you're all that's left.

Don't go around blaming people, blame your damn selves. You're all a part of this, don't try to shift it to someone else.

I don't know what has happened, where now everyone became such snobs. A long time ago, it seemed like people were actually friendly... Now? It's mostly composed of internet memes and what all the little kids think makes them look cool to say in front of their friends, or a little ego boost for their epeen talking down to someone for no better reason than just to do it. All the "lolwut?"s and "whoru?"s and all the other useless crap people just spew out now days... It's sad watching it, because if you really think about it... These people would get the shit slapped out of them talking to someone in real life like that. But you know, I don't think the majority do. Somehow, there's become some barrier where people just go on the internet and act like some bizarre stranger to their real world self, then go back to their normal lives. What the hell is that? When did we stop being ourselves, and being everyone else?

That's not even the worst of it. Racism and other discrimination are at all time highs... It's completely separated from the real world. Nobody even has a second thought about calling someone a fag or calling something gay, or homo. When did having a different creed become such a bad thing? And it's horrible, especially the discrimination against homosexuals. To make matters worse, even the people who are complaining about racism then go on to make fun of homosexuals, with the same horrible bigotry that they themselves despise.

Nobody seems to care what anyone else thinks anymore. If it isn't what they like, which is most likely what their peers told them was the cool thing to like, then they can "get the f out" or a similar meme used a lot now days. Has it really come to that?

How sad.

And the worst thing about all of it, is this stupid shit has spilled into the real world as well. Comedians just openly make fun of gays, just for no particular reason. Just because they know people will laugh. Because someone will laugh doesn't make it right.

Like, I was watching Jeff Dunham the other day, and it was appalling how he constantly made fun of himself through his puppets as being gay, or hinting towards that sexuality, and it was perceived as an overly negative thing. Why has society come to this? Weren't we supposed to rise above that?

So, here now my country is finally getting a Black president. How long will it be before a homosexual president? Or a non-Christian president? How about another minority, like Asian or Hispanic? People think the world has come a long way... The truth is, we have a long way to go.

Anyways... In a nutshell, that's why I stopped GvGing about a week ago. I was in a couple guilds since I came back, and no matter how great people were, they'd still get called bad, just as random banter. Or a fag, or worse. I'm just a bit tired of all the negativity; I don't play games for that, y'know... It wasn't always like this. I may start again, but if I do it's going to be with people of my "time" that actually act like mature adults, rather than these.... things... that are everywhere else now days.

Pardon the rant. tl;dr I know.

Way OT, but: wow, you really fail at getting the joke mate. He's not making fun of homosexuals, he's playing on the "lol you have your hand up another man's arse all day" angle. He, and nearly every other successful comedian I've ever seen, makes fun of everyone; if you take a ribbing as "discrimination", you are too sensitive, period. It's not discrimination if everyone is a target. This is miles, miles away from immature asshats in GTOB yelling racist or homophobic slurs at each other.

EvIL (example) was pretty impressive with their tactical play, but these days almost every guild knows how to play like that to a degree. Yeah, the top players now weren't special back when 'the good players' were around. It's been a while. They've gotten better.

I would expect EvIL players in the prime to be trampled by a good portion of the guild ladder today. The game is understood better, and their kind of play simply isn't as effective. There's no one guild that stands out as dramatically better anymore because the playing field is more level, and people confuse that with there not being any good players.

I hear this argument a lot. It ignores the fact that the person being talked down to wouldn't act like such a colossal twit in public either - and if they did, they probably would be torn down just the same.

I'm not convinced honestly. The problem is that the game has undergone so many changes over the years, that is almost isn't even the same game anymore. Can we say players whos playstyles were better for yesterdays meta worse than the players who are better in todays meta? Personally I have more respect for the top players when the game was a top tier competitive game.

Currently I notice there are a lot of good guilds of similar skill, a lot of bad guilds of similar skill, and nothing else. There are almost no standouts anymore, which makes guilds that actually stood out in the past even more impressive.

To OP, maybe it's new players coming in who haven't played for 3 years? Although, people running here there and everywhere have taken a lot of effort from the game, probably a big factor in how 'Bob the Newb' is trying the endgame mission at lvl 6

Most GW players have always been horrendous because GW is too complex of a game for the average joe. That's probably why all indications are that they are considerably dumbing-down GW2.

The highly competitive good players for the most part stopped playing PVP in GW years ago (around the time when they changed Tombs to 6vs6 was pretty much when the last bastions of good players stopped).

In PVE all the good players starting using H/H exclusively, (and/or friends, and Guildies), ever since NF came out; since H/H are always 10 billion times better than a PUG party. Thus all players who still played in PUGs after that point were/are incompetent.

- But the best part is:

wow guess im not too sad i quit if pvp is gonna get dumbed down even further.

For these words, you deserve to be stabbed with a knife. Please, accept this reward. Otherwise we will be insulted.

Standing out is easier when the average is worse.

There are people who are new and willing to take constructive advice and listen. Then there are the truly bad players who think they're always right and use "Lol" at the start and end of every sentence. They don't adapt. They expect the enemy to adapt to them. When all else backfires and they're called out on it, they rage quit, cry and blame who they believe to be a defenceless target.

Besides, your roleplaying speech was good without the flaws. But with the flaws of it being a team game and you're expected to work with the team... That's what makes a good player after all. But I'm sure, as skilled as you are, you know this.

Good people stopped playing x)

Veterans have, over the past 2-3 years, improved a lot and learn't just about everything there is to know about the game. The problem is that these same people (me included) expect newer players to have at least a decent amount of knowledge (which they don't). So yeah, veteran player expectations have increased which is mainly why we isolate ourselves to our guilds and heroes.

Also, the young kids who play and cause trouble have always been around. The thing is, most kids don't stick around for 3 years, they are constantly replaced by more troublesome kids. Mature people stick around for a longer period of time. Most of the people on my friends list that have been around for >1 year are >20 years old.

QFT.....that is all!

I don't give constructive criticism to PUGlies anymore. In general the special snowflakes react so badly to anyone finding fault with their babies that they become utterly useless, standing way behind the group as they type abuse instead of fighting. If a build is horrendously bad I kick them or leave, and if it's vaguely functional but suboptimal I keep my mouth shut. Arguing isn't worth it.

That's when I PUG at all, which is vanishingly rare. Maybe once every two weeks the impulse will strike, if that.

Now guildies on the other hand are worth educating. I will party with them again in the future, so it's worth the investment of explaining why their build is bad and why some changes could make it better.

I agree with you man , I played some GW in the early days , back then just passing the mission was enough and people were a lot nicer , nowadays unless you do it flawlessly you are a noob , fag and other nasty things. But I guess that happened because the bar got raised a bit too high.

QFT.

I also really like Avarre's analysis of EvIL. When they were in their prime, they were THE best, and now, as of this posting they are 464th on the Guild Ladder. Granted, it is not their original team, and they did have quite a long hiatus, but they have had more than enough time to get the hang of things again. The level of skill to be "Good" has raised significantly as time has gone on. As time goes on, technique, level of comprehension and the way people see the game evolves, it is the same in almost all professional sports.

As for people being rude while pugging and instantly being a noob if you make one mistake, back when everyone was bad, nobody cared if you made mistakes or didnt have an intimate knowledge of the game, because they didn't either. Incompetence is relative.

I would agree with this except for the fact that unlike some other games or sports, Guild Wars has changed tremendously. Comparing todays game to the Prophecies or Factions game is not even comparing the same game. The way people see the game hasn't evolved...the game itself has evolved. This evolution caused a lot of problems, including many of the best players to leave the game thus causing a hoard of similar skill guilds to remain.

So we can't even compare the players on old to the players of today in terms of skill. If you know anything about basketball, it is like comparing Wilt Chamberlain to Shaq O'Neal. The game has changed tremendously, not because the players are necessarily better (many people would say Wilt is the greatest center ever), but because the game is completely different.

if u kno anything bout basketball
u would kno that it is quite a different game too
much has changed like allowing zone defense
and many other things

hockey too has changed greatly prolly even moreso than basketball
the two line pass thing
and removing the trap for faster pace
etc etc

and cmon helmets and padding
improvements in technology of skates and hockey sticks


these may not be as big as some changes in gw
but they can still be comparable