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

It's not the responsibility of good players to teach other players. The only party that has responsibility is Arenanet for not designing a better method of transitioning players into PvP. There is no moral or ethical reason why players should have to go out of their way to help others, though it may be good to do so.

On the other hand, there have always been ways for a willing player to get into PvP. It's just that many don't try and make "i could be good at pvp if ranked groups let me in" or "omg pvp players are so mean" threads instead.

Extremely good point that'll allow me to make a useful parallel: the amount of knowledge and experience of vets/experienced PvPers is quite astonishing (some do know the whole game in almost all its details, as said in post #2. although I don't like the PvE bashing) and it seems impossible to a newbie to assimilate this.

It's like Mathematics with its 2000years+ of accumulated knowledge, people don't know what it is anymore and it's badly taught at school. Of course GW is a game, but at the "high end" it doesn't look like one. It's ruthless, without much empathy and sympathy for failure (although it's civil, if not polite). I'm very sad when I talk to the very nice PvP vets (we have a few here, hi Divine, Ensign, Billiard, darkNecrid, and I'm sorry for not quoting all of you guys!) and see their knowledge slowly disappearing.

I understand perfectly well that they, like we, have a life and can't just take this responsibility of "teaching" (please note the double quote), especially if it's not fun to them. I still think it's a very healthy habit to have, this makes sure the PvP community (we could say the same about elite PvE, but there are a lot of elite PvE guild and I guess they're "teaching" a lot, even if it starts with mimicing?) diverse, with new ideas and players coming regularly. Of course in this case, imbalance has removed the will of many PvPers to continue, but (again, sorry!) let's leave this argument aside.

I take my job of teaching as something very seriously (by creating this thread, I believe I'm trying to teach a bit of sociology, not that I know a lot!), because it makes sure people have the right tools to have a life in modern society. Again, GW is a game and doesn't have to have that kind of mentality, yet I see it as a possible revival and a way forward, rather than lobbying here for Anet to make more of this, that or these.

I came in after Factions was released as well, and like you, didn't know pvx or wiki or guru existed. I had friends who gave me advice and turned up if I was short a player, and that was it. I don't believe you have to have 'played from the very beginning' - just that it takes more dedication and effort now to get better. There are more skills, more classes, more crutches. To get better, you have to be willing to kick aside the crutch.
That includes overpowered builds.

And I forgot to add one point: bad players, in the strangest ways, are by far the best teachers. You learn what not to do, and you have to compensate for them. Which stretches your limits. A good player makes up for a mediocre/average player, which cuts the less good players some slack. A bad player makes you work for your objective.

Yes and no. Expectations have risen, player skill scaling just goes all over the place and people have been given more crutches.

PvE skills, consumables and skills that don't even need to be retricted from those fields go beyond the faded line - it's a mistake past its "fix" date, because people like them too much now. These crutches are so favourable that people will quit if they disappear. All of this allows carelessness and the ability for people who are even the worst of players to complete certain areas, nobody learns from it, but you're still gaining some bonus that's cheaper than it should be from all three of the above.

Expectations rising and the scaling of player skill and areas of the game go hand in hand, lesser skilled players will resort to crutches after failing a few times because they're inexperienced or use them straight off, and experienced players would do it anyway because of the speed - inexperienced players will care, but experienced will shrug it off, as demonstrated within several skill balance threads and in-game chat. It's probbly got something to do with the fast easy-hard switch too. Expectations rising mostly comes from those who are experienced, but with all of the above you'd see people just shake their head and give up, but I guess I don't blame them, considering I'm one of them unless I see someone who isn't in the 13-year-old mentality of screaming "pwnd" at everything.

Personally, I didn't touch Wiki, PvX (I mainly got my shit from other players) and Guru. I got sugar coated advice that wasn't very par, and that's it. I never even had D-Shot on my Rangers' bar until about 2 years into my gametime. Guess it's partly because of the teaching, because I never really leared any "higher" shit until 2 years 6 months into my gametime.

Possibly that, possibly attitude of people they want to teach.

pvx didn't, at that point

It makes you with that GW wiki and PvX didn't exist. Maybe that's part of the solution...

I disagree, you can still learn properly, unless you mean "alone"? I don't believe it's manageable unless you have tons of time on your hands, and there are a lot of "tricks" very difficult to find by yourself.

I never said there was an ethical reason, also I'm trying to show that there's actually one: healthy community, with constant flow of new players. "Teaching" (again, with double quotes) is part of the feedback loop that ensures liveliness in real-life, and virtual worlds are not so different with that regard. It's one thing to say "PvP is dying" (or PvE for that matter), but another to find ways to change this other than "Anet: do your job" or "people: become good at it".

Or maybe I'm wrong in thinking that and people should simply left alone and my thread close?

With PVXWIKi the mentally is, if i go to pvxwiki, download some #5 rated build, il pwn. You can give them a build, but you cant teach them to understand it, how eachh skill compliments another. So then they get through easy PVE, rejected from elite PVE, thus turn to pvp, where they get annhilated, and then immencly insulted with statements like "Go back to pve noob!" So the pvp newbie gets up, dusts himself off, and then turns back to pvx, enter the palm strike assassin build, all of a sudden every game seems to be fludded with people with the exact same build, and they kill one foe and all of a sudden they believe theyre leet, and now theyre the people saying "Go back to pve noob!" they can read the skills, they can see what they do, but they dont understand the skills, and thus they cannot advance and make their own build, so now people are comming up with counters to PVX builds quite easily, palm strike being barely effective now, specially if they take the exact builld of pvx with no healing...So now theyre getting destroyed again, so they go back to pvx, and get the new flavour of the month, with no taste of their own success.

People who still use palm strike don't bother flaming because im not interested, also i congratulate you if your one of the guys who downloaded the pvx build and actually put a healing skill in, i still love to be ganked by a sin and then he discovers he cant kill me or heal himself so he just sprints the hell away.

Guru is also like that: whenever someone comes with a new idea, he's automatically put into a box (pve, noob, etc.) and there's very little progress made, unless the post can "teach you something" (build, farmspot, how to get in beetle top100, etc.), but this is very limited teaching.

To be more provocative: people are lazy, yes, but lazy at teaching the game. Thus we have an unhealthy community that will undoubtedly die, due to the lack of new blood and the impossiblity to continue the long chain of knowledge started since GW1 Prophecies and culminating in the very bad wiki tools.

P.S.: teaching is not fun?

I'm afraid people just aren't that altruistic. Teaching anything in GW to a random person is not fun. You might do it for a friend, or a friend of a friend. However, trying to pull up the standards/playing ability of one bad player can be frustrating. They may not listen, or worse, they may perceive you as someone to leech off whenever they need help.

The prevalence of PvX and wiki also means that people feel less inclined to teach, because there are already solutions out there.

Your hypothesis assumes that there's some untapped source of PvP players in the current playerbase, but there isn't. The reason there aren't new PvP players is because GW's PvP isn't good enough to keep existing players, let alone draw in new ones.

You bring up some nice points. The key to this thread can be summed up with one word though "Competitiveness". Players who possess it are usually the ones willing to learn. For anyone who wants to strive to be better than the next guy, will learn, through any means given to them. You just don't pick up Counter Strike or Street Fighter and pwn any long time player.

I think it's pretty safe to say that any long time semi successful PvP'er wasn't solely taught how to play. It was through much trial and error,(actually playing the game) playing in different Guilds, taking in and processing feedback from Guild members, throughout matches in all manners possible. Being able to sit down with a few guys in obs mode after a match you have just played and start to analzye things should be a learning experience for everyone involved.

If we go with bad players being unccoperative/unwilling to learn/selfish/not caring etc ... then community can't be blamed because teaching those players to play would be basically parenting them to be better humans. People who just lack knowledge can be fixed by any passerby, and if they played for 3+ years they already were enlightened.

It we go with players being bad because they play weak build X instead of most effective Y, well, they are not really bad per se, they just play game differently, and since game does not require perfection (not by far), it shouldn't bother other players. It does (It is very uncomfortable feeling to play if you know that weakest link of your party could be much much better off with as little as single skill swap.).

And then there is issue with game being playable with several strategies, and there is knowledge lag. If newbie can taught by someone who believes tank-n-spank is good strategy, is he bad player? Is someone is lagging behind "current best build" and uses yesterdays best build, is he bad player?

This.

Last time I checked, GW was a game. Lots of players simply don't care about improving and learning. For them, this game is just a pastime and they play with no goal in mind other than pure fun.

So, players are bad? No. Getting better takes time and commitment. A lots of players are just not passionate enough about this game to invest time improving their skills to acquire the superb ability some seasoned players now have. Occasional fun is what they're after. As long as they get it, that's enough for them.

To me, there's nothing wrong with that. People are free to make what they like out of this game. Newcomers who really want to learn something from veterans now can count on so many players still around, if they want. I just wonder if there's enough patient and dedicated teachers among them, tough.

I never said that, or even implied it, but I believe that there is enough resources to undertake such a feature. It actually doesn't require much active work from a lot of players, if most of the players put themselves in the right mindset. "Teaching" was between quotes so that people can see beyond the scholarly and academic artefact, it's not about sitting somewhere and listening. It's about the whole approach and beyond the "here are 2 great resources for you: GW wiki and PvX" (this thread is NOT about PvP, it's about the whole community, since I don't believe that there's a fundamental divide, only players putting themselves into boxes/categories).

I perfectly understand why the PvP community is mad, and supported their complaints when they expressed it in a civil manner (you also have to agree that there's too much bad language from a lot of PvPer, such that to decode what they say you have to try to understand their personal situations and go past the vulgarities, but that's another discussion!). As I said above, Anet clearly has a responsibility in this state of affairs. I can't understand Izzy is the onle one looking at PvP balance, and in his "free time".

But I'm looking at the problem (or the more general problem, since PvE is plagued by other problems than imbalance, which could be solved by the same "approach") from a different angle: what can WE do? If we can do something of course, because if everyone agrees that we're here for fun and that shouldn't go beyond that from a personal viewpoint, thus saying that teaching is out of the question in MMOs (do it if you want, not my problem), then we go back to my provocative statement: we're doomed, the community won't survive because knowledge can't be passed on.

PvX doesn't pass on knowledge, only information on builds ("Usage" provides guidelines).

i believe alot of players are terrible because of their ego

lose a bit of your ego and suck up to the better players, ask for help and listen to what they say.

i'm not good but at least i know im moving in the right direction

What I've seen is that heroes made it so that most experienced/skilled players simply don't group with anything that has a pulse. 99% of the time anyway.

Once we had heroes good players no longer had to find groups, and inexperienced/unskilled players could no longer group with vets and learn from them.

Personally, I learned a TON about how to play this game effectively back in the day when there was only Prophecies. I got to watch skilled players draw, spike, pick targets, know when to flee, use certain combos, and many other things. After I was grouped with people doing these things I began doing them myself and then eventually being the veteran player who leads groups and teaches the newer folks.

Ever since the introduction of heroes, the only people LFG are inexperienced/bad players. So they end up grouping only with each other, learning nothing, and often getting worse as they pick up on each others' bad habits.

I think I'm going to have to disagree with that. Heroes were introduced because no one wanted to PuG, because PuGs are terrible.

Of course, it's the classic "Which came first, the chicken or the egg." Imo, the bad PuG came first.

whut?? I do DoA alot, just curious what you are talking about.

it obviously took all of your mental capacity to come up with that incorrect paraphrase.

One could say the entire framing of this thread is tied to a specific viewpoint. There are different types of players out there. What kind are you?

http://www.gamerdna.com/quizzes/bart...mer-psychology

And whatever happened to "fun"?