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

So what you do is make it so you can't abuse those "fails". The problem that comes with that, though, is what you classify as a "fail".

Ex: Tank-and-spank. This is much less a fail and much more an exploit. The procedure never varies, the set-up itself sees little variance, and it has the ability to work in every area.

After those fails are defined and exploits are cleaned out, you then look at the area itself: is it really too hard? Is there really nothing you can do? Is there an incredibly select number of skills you can use? If all of those start to add up then you can start toning down the area. Otherwise it's doing it's job, being difficult.

I'm pretty much 100% sure, though, that none of that was even tested. PvE skills came before HM. This pretty much provided us with another normal mode as opposed to just being stuck in a stupidly easy mode. If PvE skills make HM just as easy as NM, then what's the point? What's the point of PvE skills? None, zilch, notta. Due to that ANet may've just well have transferred all the titles you can get in HM to NM.

Uhhhhh...

PvE skills did not come before HM. Unless you mean Sunspear Signet and Lightbringer's Gaze, one of which hardly does anything, and the second is a tool meant to be used in a specific area, which was balanced with the existence of that skill in mind.

Those fails or exploits are an integrating part of the AI. If the AI acted different maybe they wouldn't require such stats buffs. But they act the way they act.

Level 20 charrs in EoTN are much more challenging and interesting to engage than any level 28 in HM in areas before EoTN.

And you don't need to exploit their AI - you can beat them by the rules.

Better builds and team composition are much more fun and challenging than "Stat" buffs that only make so many of the skills and mechanics either obsolete or just not efficient (interrupts, energy burning, disruption of key elements).

Harder annoying game is neither interesting nor requires game understanding, only AI natural weakness (it is static) or exploit if you prefer.

More interestingly, obsidian flesh and shadow form aren't the only "tanking" skills. "Tanking", that is badly viewed due to boring and repetitive game play, is nothing other than than aggro followed by body blocking. You have a plethora of skills that allow the front liners survive long enough, from spell breaker to bonds to protective spirit to shield of absorption to +armor skills from said front liners.


Wrong (unless you are talking about the lightbringer skills and the sunspear signet).

HM http://guildwars.wikia.com/wiki/Game_updates/2007_April

Pve-skills http://guildwars.wikia.com/wiki/Game_updates/2007_June

PvE skills were clearly introduced to allow PvP changes to skills without destroying PvE power. Example, armor stack got a cap in the exact same update save yourselves was released.

Congratulations - you discovered that the purpose of HM is to keep you playing instead of something else.

Would you be happier if they called it "PvE Part II - Title Grinding against the same old idiot enemies that are bigger than ever"?

I guess they call it Hard Mode to make people feel important and skillful. I guess it is efficient.

The most fun and challenging areas in the game aren't against huge mobs of the same stupid enemies under environmental effects, they are against Mobs that are balanced and give the illusion of working as a team.

Not going to read the pages and just address the opening post and whatever is on the last page as I post.

Not so much bad as they simply refused to get better. Hiatus onto other games are shown that as well; you have this group of players that simply expect the strategy/build to be hand fed to them with complete precise instructions. With Guild Wars however there generally would be a simple solution to most problems and it varied from scenario to scenario. What resulted was a population unable to find a solution and repeatedly fail until the only known strategy they were familiar with enough worked.

Gates of Madness, more specifically Shiro, still considered tough?

I would say the odds of finding a decent player who has never consulted a fansite or grouped up with knowledgeable bunch of people are slim. The sheer depth of some classes is insane.

Personal experience tells me a lot of people can't even read simple directions, and if something happens that they weren't warned about they panic and give up. Assume the fetal position and cry. Everyone's patience has a breaking point and the lack of common sense possessed by some people is enough to drive anyone into hiding.

Be hard pressed to find a group of players willingly handicap themselves purely for the sake of doing it. Restrictions aren't fun in a group scenario.

The question is: was it done at all?

I doubt it was done while the environmental effects were in place, but was it done after? Or is it even possible?

10 hours later if I remember the screenshots correctly.

As a GW purist I can confirm that the 4 main areas of DOA are very doable this way. It was done using using 6 hero teams that wouldn't be out of place in the lower pvp tiers. Builds used included a HEV mesmer, 2 WoH/hybrid monks, Blindingsurge ele, Splinter/Resto Rit - all builds that were in the PvP meta at the time. About the only things that weren't was the Spiteful nec played by my parner and the Searing Ele that we used to fuel ToF.

It was quite a while ago now (just prior to the HEV nerf if you can find that), so times are a bit fuzzy, but it was something like city+gloom 40ish mins each, veil 1.5 hrs, foundry 2 hrs (and 20+ attempts). They were done individually as we were running teams selected for the area.

Didn't manage to kill monkey-boy clean due to the no conditions/hex thing combined with the environmental effects. That was with us trying to use signet of whatever-the-mesmer-anti-spirit-thing-i-can't-be-bothered-looking-up-is, it didn't occur to us to use consume essense instead which might have made the difference.

I agree on the role of a good guild cannot be underestimated.
I wouldn't be the decent PvE player (I think I can say that by now) if I didn't join LotU about two years ago. Playing GvG for a couple of months and playing in somewhat high-demanding PvE areas together with skilled players using balanced teams made a huge difference.

We might need more guilds like kisu, but I don't know how well their concept works to be honest. When I look at the way I like to play it's with a small stable group of players, not teaming with new (as in never played with before) players every day. So for me joining a guild like kisu would be to network, not so much to improve. I believe in improving as team more than improving as individual.
I would not mind gathering 7-9 players around me and teaching them to play GvG if it wasn't for my huge lack of experience in organised PvP.
Sure, I know the basics by now, but that ain't enough to teach others.

I still have to focus too much on the basic stuff, it's a bit like learning to drive a car. You get overwhelmed the first couple of times and are only doing a few things an experienced driver does when driving. And most probably in an easy environment. After a while you can do certain things easier and you need to learn new stuff. And get in a different, probably more difficult environment. And when you got your licence the actual learning just started.

To put it in car terms, I know gas, brake, stearing and even shifting gear.
But I just got to the point where I don't have to think about that anymore and need to focus constantly at monitoring the environment. And my gas/brake might be a little rough sometimes. I might hit a sudden appearing car since I'm not scanning the environment well enough yet and can't interprete everything. I can follow the flow of traffic but will mess up when something unexpected happens. And I can't really judge certain kinds of things, like the speed of another car. Can I move my car in front of it or should I wait. I partly failed my first exam on that, a truck was going faster than I expected and I was in a new car (the car I learned to drive in was smashed in a traffic accident, not caused by the student driving at that time) and found out I could not accellerate fast enough.
Now it's ok for that to happen when you are learning, but not in RL traffic.

And that's a bit the problem with learning PvP atm.
For me several types of PvP feel like the German Autobahn with cars speeding at +250km/h. It just doesn't feel like I should start learning there.
But then, maybe I should just stop caring about others and put my car right on the highway. Sure, some massive crashes will happen and people will tell me that I'm a bad driver. But then, I need to start learning somewhere, and maybe the Autobahn is the best place to get experience fast (doubt that though...)

@the jos
i think that will go for learning anything new, whatever it may be. whether your learning how to pvp or whether your learning to drive a car. that means that yes, even fa/jq can be fast and confusing to a new player as well. the only problem is that while he will get accustomed to it over time, he wil get accustomed to bad builds/leechers/bots. there will be very little room for growth, unless he goes to a new arena like gvg. only problem with this is that there is no "transition" phase, there is only a "start all over again" phase.

tbh, i think your autobahn analogy is a little bit off. i never said to start out in high ranked gvg matches. starting out with casual gvg matches has a different feel to it, but it still allows much potential for learning and growth compared to starting out in pve or a "lesser pvp arena". of course theres also the ever useful scrimmage.

i think a more appropriate analogy would be learning music. sure everything starts out with good basics, but if your interested in jazz then take basic jazz classes. why start out with classical music basics if you have no interest in classical music?

Those are basically the times I do currently with heroes (Foundry a bit less). But my main defense comes from one imbagon.

Was the para using watch yourselves for additional defense?

The way I look at the situation in Guild Wars is this...most people aren't learning to drive at all (PvP). They would rather ride a bike (PvE/farm/etc). Now we can sit here and say that the PvE players are the more skilled bike riders, but who really cares when the PvP players are learning to go 10 times faster?

One thing I've noticed with my 3+ years of PvP that existed from the beginning, and even still exists now, is the formation of basically 2 communities within the same game. I'm sure almost everyone else feels this way, or has felt this way at some point. Yeah, PvEers do go and play AB and TA and all that jazz, and PVP players still do DoA runs or whatever just for sh!ts and giggles, mostly.

The thing is, the majority of PvEers are either people that don't use community tools (such as GWG, Wiki, PvX, etc.) and are almost blind to the systematic PvP side of the game, or they are the PvEers that look upon PvP in disgust as to how "elitist" everyone is there.

PvPers seem really clannish, to me, and like to do things in the game with people they know. They'd rather play with people who understand the game very well and people they can tolerate on Vent (with few exceptions), than people who are eager to get into the PvP scene.

Yeah, I know about the whole "Team Love" experiment, but, whenever I look at that, it was (was/is? I haven't seen them play in a while, so I assume they're defunct) mostly just DF players, and maybe some 1-2 players who were genuine novices to PvP. I don't recall any players actually coming from Kisu into any legitimately good guilds, as that place seemed to be almost a resume stain.

I've been playing off and on for the past year, so my view is probably skewed from most people's. But, I guess if I had to give a tl;dr, it would be: PvP is more about who you know than what you know, and PvEers either can't get involved, or just don't want to.

Ah, I stand corrected. Funny too since I went through a while to check when these updates were introduced, must've gotten them mixed up.

Subjectivity is beautiful. Be sure here to emphasize on "much more fun and challenging for me," because some people do in fact like being faced with ridiculous challenges - hell, that's the point of the hardest difficulties. They're not meant to be easy.

As I said earlier, the more appropriate method ANet should've done would've been to evaluate the difficulty of those areas: What's absurd? What's not? What's ridiculous? What isn't? What's intended? What's not? What scales in a difficult fashion? What scales in an easier fashion? What scales in stupid and mindless fashion?

All in all, it's what ANet wants to cater to. If they want HM to appeal to a very strict crowd then that's cool, there's still the NM. What we have now, though, isn't terribly acceptable.

If PvE skills were created to not be affected by PvP balance, why are some of them retardly overpowered?

Were they created so they could make PvP changes without affecting PvE, or were those skills called "PvE only" for a much more dire reason?

...Which could have been emulated just as easily by providing even more titles in NM rather than completely nullifying the point of a harder difficulty and introducing mechanics/tools/abilities that promote a largely mindless and much less careful playstyle which, all in all, makes for a much dumber game.

Again: ton of other routes ANet could've gone down to keep players playing more. This was one of the bad ones.

WY was run on my warrior. Effective use of earthshaker accounted for a big part of the defense.

To be fair a large proportion of the "split" ordinary skills are just as bad, if not worse than the "pve skills"... for great justice, shadow form, discord, the list goes on. The only saving grace is that at least the split skills are equal for everyone instead of favouring people willing grind out titles on all their characters.

When I play RA as a necro hexer, I play based on the assumption that people will be idiots. My whole build revolves around the notion that people are idiots and will attack me while i put insidious on them and maintain a block skill while I spam defile defenses and wand them to death. Can these people be taught? probably, but it's not like they can think for themselves how to get out of their mess and come out of bad situations. Sure they can copy paste a good build but when it comes down to it, I can exploit their lack of knowledge of how their build works and how skills work to my best advantage. Honestly, when I fight the same sin 4 times in a day and he repeatedly attacks me with way of the assasin while under insidious, I lose a lot of faith in people.

@Snaek,

The reason why I took the autobahn example is because it's both possible to have a 'normal' speed there and drive at 'insane' speeds.
And it's not only about GvG. For example, I was helping getting a guildie unlocking HA. He had played numerous TA rounds there and still no wins.
So I took him to Master of Damage to show the potential of his build.
He was kinda shocked that my build was hitting about 15pts average higher than his build (both warrior) and that my build had more utility.
In the end I monked for him and his son with a nice PUG mesmer player and we got the wins he needed. Win/lose rate 60/40 I think (we faced the same guild teams a couple of times).

The music analogy is nice, but it's also a little flawed.
One does not have to do extensive study of classical music to play jazz.
But a little insight and background education on the fundamentals of classical music makes it easier to play every kind of music, including jazz.
To take it somewhat different, look at an artist like Dalí. He's not really a classical painter but you can see a classical education and interest in his paintings.
Even a music artist like Mike Patton shows a lot of influence from classical music while his own music is .... well .... unusual.

@Dreamwind,

I'm not sure if pure PvE players can be compared to bike riders.
Driving a car isn't about speed, it's easy to drive 200km/h on a fairly empty road. I went to the UK a couple of months ago and even driving on the left side of the road is easy if you can follow the rest of the traffic.
The most intence driving is in low speed areas with traffic and pedestrians from from all sides and little overview of the situation.
The problem with PvE is that things never change. You take the same route every time and every time the same traffic is at the same junctions and the same people rushing the street almost bumping on your car appear on the same spot every time.
It's easy to do things right and fast when things never change and you can practice them over and over and over.
This gives the experienced PvP players advantage. They are used to suddenly changing conditions and adapting to them.

^yes, music is music no matter which genre you learn, but the point is that you'll learn the most about jazz music if you take jazz music lessons. likewise, if your interested about pvp, you'll learn the most about pvp if you do pvp. i'm not saying that classical music or pve will not provide any benefit to a jazz musician or a pvper, just that the jazz or pvp environment is a more suitable one.

yes, your right; the study of different genres is widely accepted and usually provide more depth to your musical ability. however, applying pve techniques to pvp gameplay is more often times a hindrance than a benefit, imo especially in the current pve situation of hm/pveskills/etc.

Ok, getting more on topic again

Well, I agree on applying PvE techniques to PvP is a hindrance.
But I don't agree that the 'current situation with HM/PvE skills/Consumables' has anything to do with that.

The current PvE situation is nothing more than a continuation of the old PvE playstyle called tank&spank. That play style has been in the game for ages now and was for a long time one of the most relyable ways to beat elite areas.
In that situation people were not learning to play their profession anymore, they were learning to play a specific build in a specific situation. And since that build was generic enough to use somewhere else people stuck to it.
Now this still applies only other, profession independent, skills are used.
But this is about a limited type of play, mainly farming runs.

The next problem is consumables.
Those allow for bad builds to beat stuff.
In my opinion that's bad, but I also know not everyone has the full insight in working team builds. The main abuse of those is again in farming teams, which do not affect the majority of the community that much.

One of the real problems is that many players understand their own profession (somewhat) but they can't really judge the build of another profession. I've been kicked from teams for having one skill different from the most used pvx builds. Well, I know why I picked that skill instead of the pvx one but clearly the leader doesn't understand the profession at all and just wants the pvx and only that (this was in PvP btw, but I've also seen it happen in PvE a lot). Well, next time I just load the pvx and pretend it's the best....
This makes bad players because they are encouraged to play generic builds instead of more efficient builds adjusted to the specific situation.

I understand that some builds are more efficient than others but that only matters in PvP and farming. Outside that every build works as long as it fits in the team and the total team build can succeed.

And here we get to the main problem with a lot of players (at least in my opinion). They take the game far too serious.
They don't want to learn, improve, get better because learning, improving and getting better means experimenting and failure once in a while.
For them the game turned into a job.

And here we get to music again (or any art).
If you make a 100% copy of one of the greatest songs or one of the greatest paintings it doesn't make you a great artist. It makes you a great copier.
Art, including music, is about expressing yourself.
But for some reason most people rather adjust to what the (vocal) majority thinks instead of developing their own unique style. Nothing wrong with that, most of society does that. Just look at music. A lot is more of the same.

But in case of Guild Wars?.... It's a game. You can do whatever you want to find out if something works. If others don't agree? Well, too bad for them. Convince them or just leave them and find people that are thinking like you.

Because, it's Guild Wars, not Clone Wars....


Time? Yes. But the higher end of PvE also requires a serious amount of time (not speaking about gimmic farming groups). And when playing PUG it also involves a lot of stress. It's just easier because things never change.

Well then those people are just going to have to accept that they suck at the game. It isn't their fault though, but for the purposes of this thread they suck. Also as has been said, I could argue that PvE requires more time.

Anything that promotes a skill-less style of play just promotes it. Anything that promotes it contributes IMO.

That is true for basically anything you do though. To be good at any sport it has to become less a game and more of trying to get better.

But if what you are trying continually fails and you refuse to change, then you will continue to suck. That is another problem with many players...they want to play THEIR way regardless of whether or not something is more effective. Even if you gather a lot of people who think like you, you will simply have a group of people who suck. It has created a big snowball of people who suck because they refuse to change and adapt. They simply use things like PvE skills and consumables so they don't have to deal with changing and adapting much (which goes right back to my promoting skill-less gameplay comments).

I think that unless you are making money with this game you suck.

What is the point of being skillful in something that doesn't turn into profit?

I guess that is why some players turn to elitists and shout at them "You have no life!".

And they have a point. You spending time at something, trying to become skillful, laugh at people that are just in for the fun, can't make a living from your skill with the game...

So what is the point?

Either you make money with the game or you suck.

I play the way I like to play. Just as I like to write poems the way I write them and the way I make pencil drawings is just mine. Others may think it sucks but it is my way of doing things.
Not only that, because I've drawn numerous eyes I can draw a convincing one. But up to the point that I drew a convincing one all eyes I drew before were sucking. Or take my poems (no, not giving them). You may think they suck but they are an expression of me.
I don't care that you think that I suck.

Now we have these 'drawing for dummies' and 'poems for dummies' books.
They make people think they can draw or make poems, at least when comparing them to 'real' artists.
Still, people buy those books because they think they will improve their drawing or writing. But buying such a book doesn't make someone a great artist.
You know what does? Practice, practice, practice, practice, practice, practice, practice. And being honest about yourself.

Now people who buy the 'dummy' books don't want to be great artists. At least, most of them. For some reason they feel they ain't good enough and hope to improve. And some do improve indeed to the level they want.
But most of those books teach some tricks, not the fundamental understanding of drawing or language needed to be a 'great artist'.

Which brings me to the following. Why do people think they ain't good enough. Either because they can't get something done (I can't make a sculpture) or because others tell them they ain't good enough.
Well, if I can draw a head and you understand it's a head and that's all I want to express, who cares it doesn't look like a portrait by Rembrandt. And if someone can't draw a head and with his book for dummies he can it has surved it's purpose.

Now we get another problem.
I have this person who can barely draw something that looks like a head and want to make this awesome painting but I 'need' someone else. Now I have a problem since this person can't really draw. He will be a burden to me, because I can paint like Rembrandt (well, I wish....) and he can't even get a normal outline on a piece of paper.

So if I want to make my piece of art with that person I just have to ..... make him feel I need him to get better.
And that will take practice, practice, practice, practice, practice, practice, practice. Since he has talent and I don't he can get at my level in about .... well, half the time I spend practicing. Which would still be months or years.
And if that person can't be bothered, since who the hell am I, he will just go his way and get along with his drawing for dummies book.
And probably forget about drawing because he only wanted to draw one somewhat decent head for his daughter.

This is the situation in Guild Wars.
Why the hell do people care if other players suck.
Oh, they can't accomplish whatever they want because of those players.
They team up with them only to find out those players ain't up for things.
Well, find a group of people who can and stick with them. PUG suck has been the word on GWG since 2006 and things didn't change.
And if people never team up with sucking players, well why do they care at all. Because of the economy? You mean that mechanic that made most non-trader stuff and even some trader stuff unreachable for starting players.
And if they wanted it they should 'shut up and go farm'?

That was the situation at the end of 2006, early 2007 and nearly made me quit the game. Not because I don't like farming, but because I think it's retarted that when I play the game the way it's ment (questing and missions) I would get not even 1/10 of the income a solo-farmer could get. And 'the community' aggreed that farming was the way to get the desired items, not regular gameplay. My way or no way.

I also like people to become better players. To start using more efficient builds. To stop relying on PvE skills and consumables.
But my reason is that I think it's more fun to play that way.
Just as I think that writing poems is fun or drawing a picture is fun. And with the right tools and knowledge it's easier to do and you don't have to worry too much about tricks you learned. You just know what works.
But again, here we go again, that will take practice, practice, practice, practice, practice, practice, practice.

And even if new players want to practice, where can they do that and how will they get 4 years of experience?
When I would start GW over again right now I see no possible way to regain my experience before the release of GW2 without seriously harming my social life and compromising my work.
And most active experienced players are probably playing high end content most of the time or playing other stuff in guild/alliance teams, so it will be hard to find someone who can teach you new stuff.

Now let's start again about sucking players.
Could it be that they don't suck as hard as you think?
Could it be that new players are facing a completely different playing field than the one you faced when you started?
And that it's only a small minority that really sucks and that most players just don't have someone experienced to teach them how to play? Because all those experienced players are too busy getting their titles, playing some form of PvP, became inactive or are moaning on GWG most of the time?

Sorry for not replying to your post entirely, due to shortage of time, but I want to disagree on this point: you have no idea what people really want when they get the For the Dummies books. I've learned a lot, even in fields where I have already a lot of knowledge, I was (like many around me) looking for structure, guidance, instead of the free flow of information I had before. Indeed a book is about "being better", but not better as Dreamwind envisage it (be like me!) but as you envisage it rather (I want to feel good).

My OP and this thread started from a few experiences I had where I would learn tiny bits of information (a build for RA, a place to look at in Obs, etc.) from a few helpful and knowledgeable people in the game that made me a happier player, through the path of learning the game. I still think that the game UI is not well understood, because it's overloaded with information for the average player (and this is the idea I'll develop from this thread).

Information overload requires guidance, the way we use the Google results to actually do our own sorting to find what we're looking for (which depends on who you are). This thread is about pedagogy, or the missing step between practice, practice, practice, practice, practice (I agree, and I said it before, it's essential) and the wiki.

(I may come back later with a wall of text to reply to yours if I find the time ...)

EDIT: I find your drawing argument, because I too did a lot of drawing years ago, and I love art (an important part of GW for me). It encompasses the subjective notion of "skill", but there's still a lot we can say, for example about body&face proportions, color arrangements, etc. This is where I'm heading: not to tell you "become better at drawing" but "learn a few tips that will allow you to become better, the way you want it to be".

It depends.

By "bad" you mean suck at playing, or simply being bad persons, like not nice?

I think that the second cause is irrelevant and idiscussable, because we can't change it. The first one, however, is a big problem which i can connect to one main cause, The exact opposite of question two:

Laziness

Once, in 2005, when I reached an area I couldn't pass, I'd change my build till I successfuly passed it. My build, that began by throwing everything I got in my skillbar (umm... The happy days of exhaustion till the end of my energy bar :P), is nowadays a decent nuking build (PvE, of course), only 1 or 2 skills different than what in PvX. Point is – I built it myself. Newbies (and especially noobs) simply have no idea how to construct a normal build that work, or are too lazy to test it the times required to get it to work…

So – basically I think PVX is one of the causes to players’ stupidity. Also, the community sucks. I was in lion’s arch yesterday, and there was a man there asking why he can’t apply a superior hammer mastery rune to his torso. After a while I helped him (he was a ranger…), and I was surprised to find he’s been waiting there 20 mins for help…

I’m sure at least 80% of the people there knew how to help him, but were either to lazy to help, or too selfish.

In my opinion...

(1) No, most GW players are not that bad.

(2) If players are having fun, they are playing the game correctly.

(3) It isn't anyone's responsibility to teach anyone else. There are plenty of resources available (wiki, etc.) for those inclined to learn more.

Not neccessarily. I know some unbelievable golfers who aren't on the pro tour due to various other factors in their life. And besides, using your standards there is less than 100 people in the history of the game who don't suck. It also means that everybody in the entire current community sucks because nobody can make money anymore.

I don't think you can compare art to Guild Wars. Art is art. Being good at Guild Wars is more of a science (with a little art thrown in) because we have methods for determining skill and directly comparing your work to others. I have no problem with people having their own "art" in Guild Wars...the problem is we have a bunch of wannabe artists and not as many good scientists.

I'd like to think so, but every trip into RA or AB tells me otherwise.

Yep...they are facing a playing field where sucking is more accepted because the consequences are nonexistant.

I bet if you did a study, you would find almost 100% that the "skilled" players didn't have anybody teach them how to play. I honestly find the "nobody is teaching me" response to be nothing more than an excuse.

So if I go play baseball and have fun striking out every time I am up to bat, I am playing the game correctly? Maybe I am, but if so I SUCK.

For fun, silly! We play because we find it enjoyable to go against numerous odds and find it insanely satisfying when we win against them. For us it's content, having to get better and better at the game, having to try new things, having to come up with working strategies.

You still haven't answered me about how many hours of fun you had in gws and how many hours of fun you had in those single player games you mentioned and that never suffered a balanced update.


Many still suffer the syndrome of PvP into PvE. Soon they will be saying that read the wind PvE is overpowered because it adds damage while read the wind PvP doesn't.

GW: /age brings up 2203

Mass Effect is closing in at about 3200 hours now (observe save game playtimesand count up). I recently started a Sentinel and am working on a playthrough to get him to 60. Pretty gimp, though, I'll be perfecting a playthrough on a Soldier afterwards.

KotOR? Not too sure. Last time I played it was a year ago or so. Got quite a few playthroughs in there, but still not too much.

Baldur's Gate? Can't even begin to count how many times I've been playing that...All I do know is you could probably multiply it by 20 to see how long I've been playing Doom.

Now, could you refresh me about how time played actually matters?

eh?

Time played shows value.

KotOR is great, but 1 pass through it is enough.

Your GW time will still give at least 10 hours+ played per euro/dollar paid. Not bad investment.

I, on the other hand, have 4600 hours in GW. Sincerely, 200 hours per profession is the bare minimum to develop a profession. Either you spent all your time on developing your 10 chars or you have still loads of untapped hours in GW to go.

I will have to look at the kind of gameplay of Mass Effect, but neither Baldurs Gate nor KotOR were great examples of incredible skillful gameplay or balance, with melee chars owning both games.

On the other hand I've, at least, 6000 hours of WC3 played in PvP and would sill be playing it if not from my GF not being in RTS.

Wasn't directed at you, but I bet if people weren't comparing play style between PvP and PvE and trying to "enforce" PvP play style in PvE, opinions would be rather different.

Additionally, I keep seeing in game, people "buying" HM missions and vanquishes, so apparently PvE-only skills and consets don't seem to be an enough of auto-win.

Eh?

So does that mean Portal lacks value? Likewise, does that mean if someone who puts a lot of time into a terrible game mean it has value?

You cant make any judgement off of time-played, and I just showed you that. One play through may be "enough" for one person but not for another. You found one play through "enough" in KotOR even though I did several. Replayability is very, very often times subjective, as is what can be content.

Value for money.

You can have great satisfaction playing short games, sure.

But if you are spending thousands of hours in a game it isn't because you aren't having fun with it.

And having fun with games is the most important feature of it.

Not everyone's going to find the same kind of "fun".

If someone told me there was hours of "fun" in getting GWAMM, I'd be pretty disappointed, because in actuality I don't find a whole lot of fun in hunting titles.

That's why I don't want you to look into ME due to me finding a certain enjoyment to it. Fun is always subjective and everyone's tastes are going to be different (as shown in this thread; you consider titles as content to go after, I do not).

Try it out on the basis that it's a good game, not that you may potentially spend days in it.

Just to correct you on this point as I think there's a prejudice going around that games is only mechanics/mechanisms. Content, and in particular in GW, is a lot more than what you and a few people here talk about. A lot more. You may not appreciate the graphics aspect as much as I do, or the storyline plus all its ramifications in quests, NPCs. But it's as much (and even more!) content as the game mechanics. I had much more fun going through the storylines, quests, BMPs, etc. than killing (big) stuff, winning matches (except when it involved a high level of cooperation), even if it contributed to my fun.

Winning is not the only valid goal, you can still have a lot of fun while not winning, being killed, just by playing, however imperfectly. On the other hand I do agree that getting better (which is not the same as "getting good", a topic I don't want to discuss here because it's utterly pointless) will mean for a lot of people a more pleasurable GW experience, but not when a "teacher" tells you "you have to have this level of skill or you won't get your diploma". As in RL, you get "better" because there are tangible benefits at the end of the road, not because it satisfies an academic discussion that a few "serious" gamers had on a fansite.

It's more a "learn this few things", "think about that aspect" or "look at that part of the screen" and then you'll have the tiny tools that will allow you to yourself transform your GW experience in the way you see fit (not the way other people see fit, unless you do that with a group of friends/guildies, or similarly minded people). To go back to the_jos's drawing example, it's like enabling apprentices to master the use of the pen, or understand how paint/ink interacts with the paper. You can then use these basic skills to do whatever you want with them, not be told that you should draw this or that because that's what people do. Power to the person, that's the moto of all good teachers .

I made the mistake to put in the title (and the OP, which many people didn't read carefully I guess) keywords that triggered common prejudices and misinterpretations. Players suck? Player skill? Teaching? And then there's been a deluge of off-topic (which, of course, were claimed to be on-topic because I'm the one who doesn't understand what I'm talking about) which goes back to the old topics debatted at length on Guru. Yeah, Guru is for toughies, and everyone know that when you're tough you're good, you're "in". The other ones are "out". And this is another part of the OP people missed: how do we create an inclusive community which "cares" about players, however good, bad, young, stupid, illiterate they are? A few of you here claim to have become good and even spread that around by helping newbies. Good, but my point is to move that to the next level, write a guide that will help a lot of people, make a tutorial on this aspect of the game where you're best at, gather online resources in a centralised and helpful way.

I've spent enough time attempting, without much success, to stir back this thread into its original direction, as I explained several times before. In a sense, this thread has taught me something about "vets", "experienced players", "skilled players" on Guru. I'm sure you'll reply to my post, and I'll actually leave you to chat, discuss, debate the topic you want (which is probably not the topic of this thread). Have fun.

I wasn't aware we ever gave off that we may be completely pushing-aside everything else, if that be the case then I personally apologize.

What we're doing is focusing on a certain type of content, one correlated tightly to gameplay - and it's changed greatly, and many here believe it to be for the worse. While it's understandable for ANet wanting to cater more to the needs of those not terribly experienced in the game, it was achieved through a largely harmful way. And it wasn't the only way by far. Just off the top of my head can I think of a hundred better ways to cater to those players.

In baseball a good player(hitter) fails 70% of the time.

Well, maybe the playerbase could change itself. This was the (unachieved) purpose of this thread, which obviously met the wall named "why would I change? I've got my own fun, to each its own".

Fril,

At a certain point in 2006 (I think) I became the primary person for Tyrian map compares. I even made a huge wall of text about spots that about everyone above 95% seemed to miss. Part of it is still in the sticky.
Texmod changed the need for this.
But....
Helping out, writing that guide (on top of the original guide by Numa Pompilius) cost me a serious amount of time and comparing of close to 100 different 90%+ maps.
And this is not something to underestimate.

I can write a quick guide on something I'm good at, sure.
But it won't show the fine details and that's what matters a lot of times.
It's a bit like the exploration thing. People can and should be able to get at least 90% right by themself. After that they might need help, just saying 'hug the walls' is a waste of time for them. They don't know where to look.
When I took over comparing I refused to do < 98% maps.
Because the amount of missed spots is huge, it's easy to find them as player with the right resources. And at the end I made my posting about the frequently missed spot, since I was finding the same missing spots over and over again. Those should cover the last 3% roughly and we all know the maps have more than 100% to explore.

To understand why people 'fail' and where they should look takes a lot of time or insight in players minds.
I can make a starters guide on how to play mesmer in PvE but the true challenge is making people understand the weakness of mesmers in PvE and work around that. And that's a lot harder to explain (past the basics).
The same for playing PvE monk. I know why certain builds work better for me than others, but they are for specific situations. There is no generic build that always works (well, as long as you don't play push-the-red-bars-up).
I rely a lot on my experience here. I know they work, but can't explain the way I play. It's a bit of my drawing of eyes example I used earlier. I can draw one because I've drawn a huge number of them and looked at many more.
Don't ask me how I do that, it's like a Millipede explaining how to walk with that many legs. The moment you think about it it doesn't work anymore.

You think I'm unaware of that? I'm experiencing it every single day in my job. Students (and all those that think "teachers suck and are a lazy bunch of socialist", ok a bit of caricature here ) see only the hours I'm spending in front of them, not the tenfold time I'm spending to prepare these hours. I wrote a short security guide for Guru, inspired from previous ones, and this also took me a chunk of time I could have spend playing the game.

To be slightly provocative (don't take it personally, this applies to all long posters here): just imagine we don't write walls of text here, but instead focus on writing guides. Similar amount of time and efforts for us, but spent towards "guiding" instead of simply "discussing". It benefits the community, and this comes back at us because we're going to meet, play with or against "better" players.

You know this works, because it has led thousands of players to use your (and Numa's) work on mapping. Don't look at the details, it's always a bad idea when you start thinking about big ideas.

That's not the point, the point is to help in a better way, not show perfection.

Yes it does.

It's like an artist trying to explain how he draws, isn't it? Perfectly possible, but it doesn't mean that it's "your thing".

I'm merely saying that there's little you can gather from hours played. People aren't going to find the same enjoyment as a game as someone else (case in point: person X plays hours and hours for the titles, person Y sees this, person Y finds out he hates it).

Eeew, laziness is a pretty bad excuse. What I've thought of isn't correlated to new coding rather lengthening what they've done already in a few select instances. Best example is DoA normal mode revamp.

In other words, just some reworking of areas in normal mode to make for an easier transition to hard mode/harder areas, and if required a tone-down of those harder areas. What we have right now is the duct-tape fix, the "lazy" fix, that doesn't help or address the issues at all - in general, it just makes things worse.

Again, all of this that's been done would be perfectly understandable if GW did not have two distinct and separate settings. But it does. I can't think of a single good reason besides wanting to cater to those who want everything handed to them ASAP, and those people are certainly not in the same boat as those that simply want to see all of the game's areas and dungeons - to just have some fun.

That's part of the problem: you don't just appeal to the largest portion of the playerbase. You try to appeal to as many play styles as possible. Otherwise you're not aiming for a good, quality game. And again, these changes are very less for the majority of the playerbase and more for the minority of gimme-gimme-gimme's.

We've already given several things they can aim for to make the game better. There were plenty other paths ANet could've taken to not degrade the game and give a better chance at improving the playerbase. Instead they choose fit to halt it and throw a huge chunk of the content the harder areas could've provided down the crapper.

In regards to "how", a resource they have plenty of at this point is time. But I'd hope that was a developer who cared about their product would do their best to keep it in great condition.