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

So we know what the problem is; game companies prefer to cater to a casual difficulty level with shallow gameplay that is only difficult enough to keep them playing.

What is the solution? I think hard mode conceptually is a good idea; the company gets to re-use content that's already there, and just tweak some numbers. The problem is everyone wants the hard mode rewards too, without putting in any effort. Players will refuse to be denied their phatlewts.

One way around this is to continually introduce new content, that is very difficult initially, and then gets made easier over time as other even more difficult content is introduced, so that everyone can eventually see everything. However, only the people who beat the content when it was still hard would get the title from it.

Relationships with self and others don't matter? Read up on solitary confinement. Locking a person in room away from other people does harm to a human being. Shut the lights off, so he can't see himself too, and you have a situation that has been known to produce existential crisis under documented circumstances. This is based on the facts that an individual’s psychological definition of self is based on relationships with both self and others. The entire basis of science oriented towards understanding people relates to understanding their relationships with self, parents, and others. Those who aren't affected by solitary confinement have a stronger definition of self that does not require sight and other people. After all, most people would have a mental breakdown the moment they went blind, if they were used to seeing the world and having that connection with self.

Instead of explaining the other two, I’ll hint a few places where your argument goes wrong. A person in a coma is surviving, and only has the quality of life improvement of having machines control his bodily functions. By my argument, the person in comatose is being denied the things that matter. By your argument, he’s doing fine because he has what he is able to comprehend matters (which is being alive). Your quality of life is relative argument is a problem; because when the person leaves the coma (and doesn’t have amnesia) he has a different priority system again.

People can move towards a greater awareness of things, which changes what matters for them. Aside from leaving a coma, the final three things I listed bring a person towards a greater self-awareness; relationships (with self and others), application of knowledge, and commitment to learning. Survival is necessary to provide the time frame for improving self-awareness, that’s why it matters. People leave games because of increases in self-awareness more often than because of game changes, because game changes usually don't happen.

And, since you said survival was the only bulletproof: A pro-rights activist might be in a state of mind where his survival doesn’t matter as much as his work. This is considered by some to be an enlightened view point, but it goes to show that there are people out there who don’t think survival matters. I listed things that matter more than education in the objective sense (more people would agree with them), but everything would matter only relatively if your argument stood up. The point was, your GW statement was highly relative, even more so than the education one. I do not make the claim to understand what absolutely matters in the universe, but I can state that certain things matter because they will lead to that understanding. If you aren't putting the time into the advice you give, stop doing it.

As for the game sales argument, taken from an issue of Forbes with Activision CEO, top sellers for that company were Call of Duty, Tony Hawk, Guitar Hero, and World of Warcraft (I think they all grossed 1.6 – 2.1 billion each all time). Three years ago the top ten videogames took in 18% of all revenue; last year it was 28%. The more interesting statistic was that the breakdown of a particular game (I think it was Call of Duty); more money was allocated to testing and marketing than it did to development and designing. When I mention that, I think of what EA did, buying Madden exclusive rights to NFL players, to reduce competition. The sales results alone do not speak for what has been done, or whether the game content is enjoyable. Other pressures are at work, but it's good that people have already figured that out since I started writing this. I also assume most companies cannot outright throw money at solutions like big companies can.

that is a big problem...especially since anet listened and catered to these types of ppl
its also worth mentioning that hard mode in general is pretty badly implemented (read: broken)

in the current state of gw, i would be inclined to say that hard mode replaced normal mode
the key here being that its sposed to be an alternative, not a replacement

Again, I don't see us getting anywhere here except deeper into the semantic quagmire of what does and does not matter. But hey, I'm just as capable as you are of picking out a few words in someone's post and ignoring everything else. Here, watch me do it.

Inane philosophical exercise aside, the fact is that our dear majority currently believes that GW doesn't matter. GW doesn't matter to them; ergo, no drive to get better at it. Your stance is ostensibly that people don't need to believe that things matter in order to get better at them or to be taught (your example being the child entering school). The problem is, other people (teachers, parents, administrators, community at large, etc.) do believe those things matter and, more importantly, are in a position to make them matter. GW doesn't even begin to be a comparable situation.

As for giving advice, I think you're confused. I'm only here for the argument - and of course, to inflict my mental diarrhea on all of you. I don't care what Fril or any other would-be GW professor does with their time, because - you guessed it - it doesn't matter.

Again, I think everyone recognizes that the optimal solution is to make everyone happy all the time. I think it's equally obvious that if actually making everyone happy were as easy as wishing it to be so, people would be doing it already.

Then again, I think I've said that already. Today, in fact.

You talk about different difficulty levels (presumably user-selectable) in order to cater to everyone at the same time. This is a good idea for some games (see Devil May Cry), but if you hadn't noticed, Anet tried that already and it didn't work. I'm sure you've seen the threads from people bitching about how they deserve access to all of the content because they paid for the game, and that somehow playing a game is equivalent to reading a book and they should be allowed to read the whole book (I think it would take a rational person about five minutes tops to figure out the problem with that analogy).

The point is, people aren't happy with the divided difficulty system and "exclusive" elite areas. There's an easy way to call them out on their content bullshit though - remove loot as a variable. Imagine if DoA gave you no rewards, but was really freaking hard. How many people would bother with it (or be bothered by it) - and how many people would be exposed for the lying wimps that they are?

Congrats, you've pointed out a select minority of any game population who completely disregards a game's integrity for their own personal wants. These people are easy to single out based on a select two factors: 1. There is an easier setting, so if you're having a hard time in the harder mode go back to it, 2. Everything after max armor and weapons is overwhelmingly vanity-based.

This was part of ANet's problem, they actually listened to that minority and went "oh shit" when they realized it was too late. At least they had the balls to change Ursan.

Since you're always going to see these types of players, and since their arguments are easily discarded, I don't see how hard mode "didn't work". Even moreso when you consider the alternative: only being able to cater to one type of skill level. If it can be done in single-player games, it can be done in multiplayer.

The problem is that some of that effort requires to find 7 other people, have time analyzing the problem (if things are hard enough for it, like DoA was when was first introduced), go there, possible fail, tweak, go there again, fail, tweak and so on till you can master it.

That shift the game from skill to ability of gather friends. If you have friends with that kind of mentality you can do it. If you haven't you cant.

Lets face it, GWs PvP is (or was great) but very demanding (8ppl TT). But PvE is clearly a much more casual game - requiring 8 ppl is absurd. I remember when I was trying to do the desert missions the first time (started playing a bit after factions), it was impossible to find monks.

Heroes are nice, but they aren't as flexible as people. A team of people will trash everything that with h/h might be slighty challenging.

That's why Anet dropped GW and moved into GW2. GWs is still fun, but its RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GOed beyond repair.

it didnt work because the concept is innately flawed?...
or because anet didnt implement it correctly?

In one of their interviews, they did call out "buddy gaming" as being pretty important. A lot of people play with just one friend or their significant other, so perhaps the dungeons will have a special mode where they support only 2 human players, but they can bring a hero each to get the party size back up to 4 (so that you have enough skill diversity across the characters).

I tend to agree that 8 people is way too many for a dungeon party, maybe the normal party size will come down to 5-6. That's a pretty cozy size where it is a bit easier to make friends. I think them having a 2 player and 5-6 player version of the same dungeon is not a bad way to go.

If the GW2 endgame is 25+ man raids I am going to puke.

Another thing I am concerned about is GvG. I love GvG, it is the most fun PvP experience in any MMO I've played. However, getting 8 people together is supremely difficult (hell, even getting 5 people together for a WoW arena team was difficult). However, I'm not really sure GvG will be anywhere as interesting if it becomes 6v6.

What if there are areas that are simply impossible and no one can finish them? The designers can create that. What would be the point?

Why should people be ranked by their PvE play? If I do an area with 8 people and someone else does it with 1p+3 heroes + 4 henchmen is that fair?

The big problem is Anet wanted to create a complex competitive team game.

But they must have realized at some point that needing a full team to do stuff in PvE was absurd. Damn it is absurd. Imagine if there were no henchmen or heroes. You would have to PuG for every single quest/mission in game!

That created a dilemma - how to create a way to make PvE playable by 1player+h/h or even 2p+6h and still keep it hard for 8p teams?

Or we want GWs PvE to become a "If you have the required people you can do it, if not you cant?". I thought GvG was like that already and is also one of the main reasons the PvP community is shrinking opposed to games where the focus is on 1vs1.

I really hope so. Most of the time I play with my girl and 6 heroes. Sometime I add a few more players.

I'm short on time, so this is going to be brief.

Devil May Cry isn't comparable because there isn't any loot, and unless you're one of those players that records SB runs and posts on youtube, there's no e-peen to be had either. Most players can be perfectly happy beating Hold-My-Hand-Mommy mode and never touching the game again.

The point of the last paragraph in the post that you quoted is that I don't think people actually care that they can't complete DoA. The whole "I deserve the content" is a red herring. People just want an equal shot at the loot, and maybe the prestige (nevermind if the prestige isn't fairly won - e-peens don't wilt from lack of integrity). At the same time, I think most of the "challenge" folks are full of shit too - if DoA had no loot, how many people would bother to do it? And if you won't do it because there's no "reward" or recognition, you're not really playing for the challenge then, are you?

So how do these crowds differ from each other, really? Neither one is actually playing for the challenge. In reality, one group wants to be recognized or rewarded for being better than other people, and one group wants to be recognized and rewarded even if they suck. Now, my point isn't to pass judgment on anyone - my point is that these are mutually exclusive mindsets.

How do you figure out which is the bigger group? You screw with the game and see how many people leave, I guess. Better hope Anet learned as much as they claimed.

Very well put. I hadn't heard it put that way before. Anet really screwed up on so many levels IMO.

Meh...now you are getting philosophical and off topic. I could argue that nobody does anything strictly for the challenge, but it wouldn't be relevant to this thread. What IS relevant is that Anet screwed up by reducing overall challenge, badly implementing new challenges, reducing reasons for people to pursue challenge, and increasing reasons to stay unchallenged. This in turn caused the community to suck more just by sheer conditioning of the game and the players who play it.

I'll agree with DreamWind that this doesn't really focus much to the topic, but I'll bite (at least a bit):

What about the group of people who actually want the game to maintain integrity and depth?

For me, I put those for an easier game in the same crowd as those against but for the reasons of staying "elite". While it's a bit thoughtful that the latter wants the game to stay more difficult, it's for the wrong reasons.

In regards to which one is bigger: not really gonna matter, since both are dwarfed compared to the "carefree" majority of the playerbase. But you shouldn't be catering to which one is bigger, anyways.

But to go back to my point in my previous posts that is pertaining more to the thread: How come a difficulty setting wouldn't work in GW? It's worked in numerous RPGs, most notably WoW. Why not us?

In all fairness, the difficulty setting was supposed to be other players...which is the ultimate difficulty setting. But that would probably go off topic...

Obvious and very simple answer to this problem is to create HM by halving party size without any other adjustments.

Entitlement. Players feel that they should be able to steamroll HM. That they deserve to "win".

Add in fact that GW puts very little boundaries to entrance to HM: Players can enter basically with everything they have by time they reach L20 and after they beat campaign.

Not only that, NM is deceptively easy, meaning that there is huge jump in difficulty and failure rate for most of people who were doing fine in NM. That hurts egos. It seems unfair.

And last, but not least, 8 player party sizes mean that it is very well possible to get carried through game, without learning anything other than getting "pro party".

Most players that play this game are fairly casual players. They simply don't care to be effective. They rather play a build they "enjoy" playing than one that others use. After all, it's more "fun" to run a gimped bar than a good cookie-cutter one. Then you have your typical 14 year old, who is generally fairly bad but thinks they're the shit. Bad players who don't realize they're bad won't improve.

Even a lot of the RPG veterans suffer in this game. When you played in previous RPGs like Diablo, you were able to do everything on one guy (granted, you could play with others, but it's not necessary). You were able to do all the damage, all the healing, and all the support. GW is a new system, with the game being virtually unbeatable without other people/henchies/heroes. The do-it-all mentality still carries over, so you see warriors with lots of defense, good healing, and minimal damage.

See the RPG veteran argument from above. GW is a team game, and a lot of people don't realize that a character is simply unable to do everything by himself well.

Who are the good players? I've seen many who claim to be good, but are in fact terrible (even by my bad standards!). When you have a blood magic warrior call a mending wammo out for being bad and trying to teach him how to play, there's a problem.

The game has enough tutorials to get around. It's just hard for people to adapt to a different style of RPG.

That reply is sure one hell of an eye-opener, ouchies ANet.

The 'fact' that it's hard to get a full 8-person party is partly caused by the overall problem Burst Cancel pointed at: "Inane philosophical exercise aside, the fact is that our dear majority currently believes that GW doesn't matter. GW doesn't matter to them; ergo, no drive to get better at it."

In an online game, meeting and socialising with other people matters.
And to form 8-human teams regular you need to socialise a lot.
But we got this thing called guilds and when active enough they provide enough people to do things together.

But there is a catch here.
First of all, many players don't want to team up with others. Because on the box..... Or because PUG sucks. Or because they don't have time, have other commitments, whatever.
And, people don't always like to do what you want to do. I might be up for DoA but if most people in my guild want to go into FoW I have to find others who are up for DoA or just join FoW.

With titles, a new problem was introduced.
People started working on character based titles, reducing teaming posibilities.
Even if you find 8 human players to do something, they might not be able to because they can't make a solid team with their preferred characters.
Something I faced a couple of times is the lack of guildie warriors for Deep for example.

Back to the 'most selling game list'.
Look at it. Mario, Pokemon, Wii Sports (flawed, includes bundled sales), Sims, Tetris.
It's all single player games. But they ain't easy when looking at the group they are marketed for (6yr and above), with the exception of Sims (I think, never got into it).
Sure, they start out easy. But they require some serious time to beat. Getting a high-score in Tetris is easy at first, but gets more difficult since you always need to be better than last time. Pokemon requires getting and leveling the right creatures and beating the elite four (I think) would even require either very high level creatures or playing very smart. And if you put me on a later level of the Mario games, I can tell you it will be failure for me. So those games ain't as easy as they look at first.

But, one thing is sure. Except WoW all best selling games up to date are single player.
And the reason is simple, you can pick them up and put them away anytime you want.

Now let's get some true RL multi-player games. The first one is called chess. If you like to play chess, you have to arrange something with someone who can also play chess. Getting two people together is somewhat easy, but given a game of chess could take 1-2 hours this might be somewhat of a problem.
Now let's play a game of cards. Requires 4 players. Meaning even harder to schedule.
Want to play soccer (football for UK readers)? You need a team of at least 11 players together. And another team of at least 11 players. Meaning you have to do some serious scheduling ahead.

I think this is where part of the community fails.
They don't want to schedule and wait, they want to play now because they want to have fun and paid for the game.
Strange, people don't think that way when playing chess, a game of cards or soccer.
Take soccer. People get up early on saturday or sunday to play matches (and not only professionals do that) and many also train together during the week.
Maybe GW just attracted the wrong kind of players, the anti-social kind that doesn't want to play together unless they are forced to do so.
Or people who are highly unorganised. I've seen the arguments: "But I need to play solo, because my kids/job/husband/wife...." Well, this means you also can't play soccer or cards because they kids/job.... would also be a problem.

Think there should be a huge warning on GW2 box: "This game requires interaction with other players!"

Now this isn't only a community issue.
A-net messed up with the introduction of Factions. There were no decent ways of teaming except being at the outposts at the right time. And this didn't improve much, even with the new party window. I've been in empty euro districts where several groups were forming in US with no way of knowing except changing to US.
Things got somewhat better with NF (in this perspective I think heroes are a blesssing) but it made the game more 2-human + 6 heroes. The most time-efficient way of teaming outside organised parties.

This is also part of the learning problem.
The best way you learn is to play with others.
If I would go and play soccer, first thing they would tell me is to get in better condition.
Without improving it, I can't play a full match for sure.
Then put me on the field somewhere and see how I perform. Learn me some tricks.
And if I feel I don't fit there, they might assign another place on the field.
The team is at it's best when I play on the spot I play best.
The team can also tell me what I'm good at and how to work with that. Or which things to improve.

But it means getting involved, getting into a group willing to become better with you and playing with other people, preferably a fixed group.
But then, as Burst Cancel said: "GW doesn't matter to them"

Most of your points are correct, but i must point out that some of the above ones are so very wrong. if pokemon was not multiplayer, i guarentee you it would not succeed. wii sports is incredibly easy. maybe it is hard if you are crippled, have down syndrome, or are just plain old, but the game is incredibly easy.

The community as a whole is going to be pretty far behind the curve, but I think the masses are improving slowly. I noticed today that survivor inscriptions are actually worth more than radiant ones.

The catch with Pokemon is that owning only one version of the game doesn't allow a player to achieve the ultimate goal: "Gotta catch them all".
That's because some creatures only exist in one version of the game.
Sure this boosts sales.
But I don't consider this multiplayer (rather smart marketing) and I doubt that the true multi-player part (fighting against others) made the difference for pokemon players and contributed a lot to the success.

The Wii is marketed towards a huge crowd and it's only because of the bundled sales with the Wii that it could end with that amount of sales.
But just stating that it's incredibly easy is putting aside the people Nintendo wanted to sell their console to.
What's might be easy for you and me isn't easy for everyone.
When comparing the included games to full console releases of those games, sure they are easy. But then, the main target audience for the Wii isn't the dedicated console player.
And I think there is enough challenge for the once in a while player for a substancial amount of time. And that's not because it's easy

Read what Auron said on the first pace.

Buying GW is like bying a car whitout manual - but i love the game

..but still to many of us "old" players forget or dont give us time to learn new players basic things.

But GW is better place now for new players, then it was the first 1 or 2 years

regards
retcute but deadly
http://www.guildwars-RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GO/

Um, no. They are true multiplayer, have been since the beginning when you had to link two gameboys with a cable. Now you can battle around the world wirelessly with your DS.

There are websites devoted to the multiplayer battling strategies. There are pokemon players who know more about the game mechanics and "farming" strategies than all but most "133t" on guru.

Hell, the current Pokemon games even have a better marketplace than GW for whatever that's worth

No, actually, my point is central to the entire discussion. The original premise is that challenge = good. My response was that companies don't care about good, they care about profitable. The response to that was that you can have challenging and profitable at the same time, because you can cater to sucky whiners and challenge-seekers at the same time. And that's where my last response came in.

The argument falls apart because "challenge" is a red herring. People who actually want challenge will create it for themselves, so technically any game that simply gives players a sufficient breadth and depth of options caters to all challenge-seekers. Thus, GW already caters to the challenge crowd - you're free to play without PvE skills and consumables if you so choose. But you won't, will you? Nothing in it for you, after all - except the challenge, of course. And yet, people regularly do it in single-player games: speed runs, starting-equipment runs, solo runs, etc. What makes GW different?

Anet's supposedly great crime was to allow people to do what they want - those who want an easy game can play an easy game, and those who want a hard game can play a hard game. Not surprisingly, nobody is happy.

What does "maintain integrity and depth" actually mean? GW PvE can be as hard as you want it to be. Think there's too much power creep? Use Proph-only skills. Think PvE skills and consumables = easy mode? Don't use them. The depth of the game mechanics is the same as it always has been - adding cheat codes to Starcraft didn't make it any less deep.

You should be catering to which one is bigger, because the bigger group has more money, and money is the only thing that ultimately matters. It's pretty obvious that if there was only one hardcore gamer in the world, there would be no market for hardcore games, no matter how "good" those games are.

As for your last question, I refer you to the above.

1) a large majority of players are bad. Those that are good have been around for a couple years and even then that is no guarentee of quality.

2)GW isn't a game that u come into and just be good at. it takes time and newer players havent had the time while older players are dieing out. it is why there is a large majority of in-experienced people.

3)it's not that good players are bad at teaching the game, they just don't feel like it because there is so much to be taught and going through it all over again with a new person is exhausting and not exactly desirable

ummmm...theres a difference between cheating and using skills/items obtained thru normal gameplay means

Intentionally gimping yourself by not wearing armor, not using a full skill bar, etc., is not a way of "looking for more challenge" that players will find acceptable.

Anet nerfing everything isn't the way either , it's practically mass gimping.

The only thing that can bring challenge in pve is new content , and not "level 50 monsters with monster skills" content , but "more normal level monsters with better builds" content , something like the charrs and stone summit in eotn.

I have to say, I only know 2-3 players who are good from EVERYONE I have played with over Guild Wars.

Just going to guildwiki and having their bars doesn't make you good. You can actually construct bars that are better than them to fit not only your bar and the variables around you, but also your play style.

Since in order to be good you actually have to manage all three of your heroes and have them use there skills sufficiently, it's not really possible to be taught how to play effectively on less you can teach them either first hand or make a very picture heavy guide, which is currently unavailable.

Also, Guild Wars really isn't a game of skill, as much of grind and time spent playing. Since most of the rare items are achieved based on how long you play and how many times you complete the same set of obstacles (For example a dungeon or a vanquish) determines how much gold and/or titles a player will get. Similarly, these factors are the same with PVP.

Almost everybody in the PVP community will not take lesser ranked, or players who just purchased the game. Also, it doesn't take 16 hours of hands on practice a day on specific areas of builds in, for example, GVG in order to compete at the highest levels of play. It is really hard for a game without a professional scene to really have a lot of good players, because there is nobody to really research the game and how it functions using mathematical and deeper interpretations to really crack the game.

Also, Guild Wars is such a stationary game in the sense to where almost every team in competitive PVP use the same skill bars and don't really adapt their own styles of using these bars, with the exception of only a few Guilds. This deviation in play and change in the "Meda Game" are necessary for a game to keep good players, because otherwise they will move on.

Additionally, Guild Wars doesn't really stand out by itself. It can easily be interpreted as another MMO, rather than a game like World of Warcraft which is characterized more as "The MMO."

Furthermore, Starcraft has all of the characteristics described above which I have said Guild Wars lacks, and Starcraft has by far the most "Good" players out of ANY game in the world. I understand that Starcraft is an RTS and Guild Wars is an MMO, but these characteristics still apply since they are both video games.

That is why I believe Guild Wars doesn't have very many good players, and any constructive criticism is welcomed...
By the way, I can back up ANYTHING I just stated.

Uhm. No.

If everyone is equally weak, then you did not gimp yourself. Because everyone is at your level after the nerf.

Using 4 skills instead of 8 or no weapons IS gimping. Those are two different things, you know.

ur rite...farming plays a big part of a reduced skill level
and we all kno how much anet has catered to farmers (in both pve and pvp)
farming in pvp? wut? look at rank and zkeys

farming and mmo seem to have become synonymous wit one another


altho i wouldnt necessarily agree with starcraft having the most "good" players of any game in the world...

If everyone followed this logic, why do we even have difficulty settings? If all people would have to do is self-impose themselves we wouldn't need them.

Part of the reason is because a challenge should be something that tests *all* of your skills to the best of your abilities. Having to shelf some of your abilities and skill is not creating good challenge.

You put PvE skills on the same level of cheat codes. That pretty much speaks for itself.

As Snaek has stated, the normal gameplay means have gotten easier, and that's not good. Also, you just said "don't like, don't use".

Then why did Mythic make a game catering largely to those who like to ORvR? It just shows that there are indeed companies who do care more about the integrity of their game rather than big bux.

As for the answer to my question (which wasn't really answered), Zwei was able to provide that: ANet simply royally [email protected] up the implementation, because other games have shown that it can be done and done well. It's not a player problem, it's a game problem.

We could go on forever about why people play games, but I am talking about how the game itself plays. Of course companies care about profitable, but if they think that way and put it into their game, the game will be garbage. Good comes first and profit comes second. Of course...that then leads into "what is good"...

I think others have mostly answered this, but self imposed challenges are not what we are talking about here. If Mario started everybody off with infinite stars, the game would be garbage and not on the t10 list of all time. There has to be a GAME imposed challenge.

Now if Mario gave you the choice to start with infinite stars or not, we would have an argument. But we aren't talking about Mario, we are talking about Guild Wars where other people are in your game. The sheer existence of other people using Ursan means that my game is stupider because I don't think it should exist. Same with consumables or any other garbage. It extends to skill balances in PvP as well which is a whole other topic altogether (and one of the main reasons I don't really play anymore). "Don't like it don't use it" doesnt' work for me, because not using it makes my skill not matter compared to other less skilled players in a game that I bought because my skill was supposed to matter (as shown on the box). That is how GW is different from other games.

I personally don't care much that the game in itself is easy or hard or that people have choices (however poorly implemented). I think Anet's great crime was releasing a game with one intention, and then drastically changing their intentions over time.

It is a huge assumption on your part that Mythic cares more about "the integrity of their game" than making big bucks. I'm pretty sure EA (which certainly does care about the big bucks) didn't spend all that cash to purchase Mythic in 2006 just so that it could be the proud owner of a 200K subscriber niche game that is doing well below expectations.

Exactly. People want challenge as long the other are forced to the same challenge.

But if they can choose between challenge or profit, they choose profit cause if they choose challenge they will have less goodies and all the other kids will have... muah muah.

People say PvE skills and consumable are cheats... but the only way for them not to use it is if no one can - All are saying "If I can cheat, I will cause others will too!".

ok you have a point about the wii thing. however, i still think anyone with any sort of coordination, from sports to video games, can do wii sports with minimal effort.

anyway, i know that the majority of pokemon players who are 22+ play pokemon because of how strategic it is. single player and catching them all isn't even a factor as they can simply hack the file for the pokemon. it all comes down to how they use them. even younger children can simply trade with each other to simply collect them all, which they use to battle each other. try to find someone who plays pokemon who doesn't do it with other players.

You make a good point, but im going to have to say competitve fighting games require the most skill of any genre, simply because it requires both strategic thinking AND fast reflexes.

Derailing slightly, but so does SC, especially in mechanically intensive matches (TvZ) at the top-tier of play.

Both SC and the fighting genres, anyway, are much more developed competitively than Guild Wars. I think it had the potential to become a respectable e-sport, but the aforementioned lack of a professional scene pretty much crippled it.

The lack of a professional scene was strongly influenced by the decisions of Anet. The potential was certainly there.

People from each game genre define 'skill' differently, normally in such a way that it (conveniently) best represents the genre they play in. FPS players tend to say only manual dexterity can be called skill, while MMO players include other factors such as knowledge and adaptability.

On a somewhat related note, the famous Sirlin did an interview a year or so ago (that Izzy was also in!) and there was an interesting quote from Sirlin about 'skill'. I think at the time he was talking about aiming in FPS games. He said (paraphrased): "Suppose there were a More Skilled version of chess where, after each turn, each player had to juggle 3 balls for a while. If you can manage to do it, you get a small bonus, an extra pawn or something. Clearly this version of chess requires more skill than regular chess, and only unskilled noobs would want to play the old version." His point being, maybe it does require more skill, but it isn't a particularly interesting skill to test.

One other thing I want to add to discussion concerns PvP in That Game That Everyone Loves To Hate. Compare the PvP ability of the playerbase before arenas existed, with their ability at the end of season 1. I can tell you that there was a huge jump. Why? Well, when there was no competition, there was no incentive to get better, so everyone pretty much sucked, but didn't really know it, because there was no way to really tell. Once there was a ladder, people were punished for their mistakes with rating losses, and they got a lot better. People do respond to incentives to get better, at least in PvP.

If they really wanted to make the big bucks it would not be so centrally PvP focused. Granted there is some rather accessible PvP within it, but the main course of the game is open realm combat.

Long tangent back to the swimming metaphor:

This occurred to me partly as people suggest that the game has *gotten* easier, and that with that, come people who might even wish the game *gets* even easier; this occurred to me partly as the discussion veered into teaching and public schools and GW as a parallel to those environments (can't FORCE people to learn, blah blah blah).

So, anyway, swimmers. Competitive ones. They often specialize in several events, but excel in one or two. (OK, there are exceptions, but bear with me for the purposes of convoluted metaphor). So, would we say that the best "swimmers" can actually compete in "different events," as it were? And their swim "coaches--" can't we argue that they must have, somewhere along the line, not only learned the butterfly, but several other strokes as well?

So, our guild wars swimmers: Would we say that the "better" parts, the "coaches," the "teachers," the parts of the community who are arrogant and rude, humble and helpful--have learned to play an array of styles? In an array of places?

And then, if I'm going to teach someone (and lord knows I teach, every day, to collections of kids who do NOT share my interests), shouldn't I know an array of things?

I'm not good at GW, I'll admit that--but I am good enough to know a bit about a lot of the game. And I'm still learning, years in. Experimenting with classes and builds, movements and teams. I would say I know more than the breaststroke.

So: is the problem (in the lack of desire to learn, to play hard, to play out of the comfort zone) partly a problem of... diversity of experience, for lack of a better term?

That is, the parts of the community we're critical of: why are they bad? And if we say "It's because they don't understand x," then...why don't they understand x?

Easy example: I've been having a ball playing a Visions of Regret mesmer in AB-- cast it and watch sins and warriors kill themselves rapidly.
Why do they kill themselves (Why do they suck? in casual parlance)?
Is it because they lose "situational awareness," and fail to keep track of basic information, like hexes? ("Hey, what are these boxes in the corner of my screen? And who's killing me?")
(I'd say this is the most painfully common "noobness..."... how many FoW runs, how many AB and GvG and RA and TA battles are lost because some dude happily slams away through hexes like Spiteful Spirit?)
Is it because the guy's math is off? ("I can kill this dude before VoR kills me.... oh.") This at least holds out the hope that he understands the hex.
Is it because this hex is something that that particular player has not seen before? ("Hey, VoR. What's that do?")

As a PvP scrub, I can speak only lightly to this, but I might guess that some of the sucky PLAY we don't like comes from people:
a) playing a couple of classes almost exclusively, to the detriment of experimentation, thus never gaining a sense of the skills and strengths of other classes
b) limiting hero builds to efficient, scorched-earth teams rather than area-specific ones, thus limiting the sense of what classes can do
c) paying little attention to serious things like hexes and conditions when playing classes other than healers (the "I got a healer, I don't need to pay attention OMG why didn't you heal me you f%^k!" effect), thus never developing a real sense of the effects of certain hexes, conditions, and other spells
d) not being particularly interested in learning and playing outside the comfort zone, thus never experimenting and getting goofy.

Now, on the other side, do we have to encourage people to play all the classes and get less sucky? Nah. But if someone joins my guild, I might want them to suck less. If someone's going to join my PuG for something even REMOTELY competetive / difficult, I might want them to suck less. And while experience is a great teacher, it is also, as several posters pointed out, sucktastic in the extreme to lose a battle, get raped by a boss in HM, get stuck with the wrong builds 1/2way through vanquishes, wait and wait and wait for an AB to start only to see half your team get its shit kicked in because they can't figure out a simple hex, and so on and so on.

I don't hold out hope, as Fril, you seem to, for the larger community, but I also don't think "the community" of players is doomed. I'm not sure an all-inclusive community ever existed, except in our utopian (Utopia? did someone mention...) fantasies of how this game "could have been." Guilds, PvP arenas, 4 campaign areas, instancing, shrill community forums, consumables and Ursan Rank farming groups, Perma-sins and Cryers, RA syncing and anti-scrub elitism have all conspired to create a collection of sub communities with only their setting in common. GW is less like the United States, and more like the former Soviet Republics.