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

But it's totally okay to force less challenge on other people when those experienced already could make it easier for themselves, via staying in normal mode?

???

Whether cheat codes are "readily accessible" or "meant to be used" is irrelevant - the fact is that they are accessible. Would it make any difference if you could activate cheats by pressing a button instead of typing in a code? What if the code were longer, harder to remember, etc. "Less accessible" ... but irrelevant. What matters is that it's entirely up to the player to use them or not - just like any other tool.

You just know (maybe "feel" is a better term) that there's a difference between cheat codes and "legit" game mechanics, but you can't seem to point one out.

Making fights longer tests more than just patience; there's endurance, consistency, etc. In more complicated games, like DMC, limiting your weapon choice limits more than just your damage - your abilities (in-game abilities, not player skill), range, speed, etc. can all change. Taking away the grenade launcher deprives you of an safe ranged knockdown tool, and some fights are going to change as a result. Even damage alone can make a difference - in DMC DMD mode, for instance, enemies will DT after a certain amount of time. Killing those enemies before they DT may be much easier with normal weapons, and actually impossible with starting weapons.

To what degree these things apply will depend on the game. So, maybe you're right about Doom - maybe learning the shotgun really doesn't matter, because it doesn't change the game in a way that forces you to learn anything or do anything differently. How about GW? Is it closer to my DMC example, or your Doom example? Given what you and I think of PvE skills, I'd say it's closer to DMC: limitations make you better at the game.

As for Epic, yes, I think my idea is more likely because fewer people are good at the game. If enough people aren't good, even a small fraction of them caring about rewards will outnumber the hardcore players that care about rewards. How much more likely? Who knows? I don't think either is a "safe" assumption by any means.

Isn't HM harder than NM? Is Anet forcing you to use PvE-only skills and consumables?

I can see it - there you go out with ur character and then BAM - 3 PvE skills coming from nowhere and Essence of celerity just pop up - "NOOOOO DAMN YOU ANET YOU DID IT AGAIN!!!".

omg burst cancel...stop talkin bout cheat codes...

cheat codes serve 1 purpose...to break the rules of the game
wuts the point of playin a game if ur gonna break the rules?
yes, playin god can be fun for kicks...but its unrealistic to expect all the time

fact is, things like godmode prevent u from being able to lose at all
how is it a challenge if no matter wut u do, u win every single time???

plz...jus stop...

next i bet ur gonna get into hackers and how they r the best at every single game ever made because they can cheat at any game they want cuz they kno how to modify game code...

and wut after that...in a lan tournament, u get out of ur chair and kick over ur opponents pc causing a crash and instant lose?

oh i kno...lets take a gun and shoot ur opponent wit it...no way he can beat me in the game now if hes dead!!!!

Um, I'd assume it has something to do with the word "cheat" in it. They want you to have fun with the game but they also want you to understand that it's not a fully intended form of function.

More devs are also starting to make the lines more clear: In Rock Band 2 you don't earn achievements if you have things like "No Fail Mode" on, in Fallout 3 you earn less experience points the easier the settings at, in Mass Effect you won't get the Insanity achievement if you ever lower the difficulty from Insanity even once.

I'm not in much of a position to say this, I'll admit, but the only instance in which limitating myself has made me a better player has been for PvP. In PvE, team configurations are usually filled with too many quadruple shotguns too notice. It's also puts a huge emphasis of the skill in the build.

Correct, because we also don't know how many of those "bad players" say to themselves "ouch, I'm not good enough" as opposed to "ouch, this game is too hard". Beyond that the only thing that's going to fuel which side we believe is bigger is simply belief.

If you want to know my beliefs, part of it has been working in a LAN center for a numerous number of years and hearing customers often say "I'm not too good at this game." Most of it, though, has been seeing Blizz from the start constantly be going against those who "WANT IT NAO" and still be a raging success. Comment if you'd want more on that last bit.

Yes, HM is harder than NM. No, ANet isn't forcing me to bring anything.

Now let me ask you this: Isn't NM easier than HM? Is ANet forcing you to go into HM?

I'll even answer it for you: Yes, NM is easier than HM. No, ANet isn't forcing anyone to play in HM.

Now what's gained in what we have now? What's lost? How have these changes helped the casual player base who were actually having trouble?

Actually to play starcraft anywhere near the competitive level requires between 10-18 hours of practice per day, 7 days a week.

http://www.scforall.com/sctv/sc_tv01...s03&movNum=248

And those guys are not even good enough to be B team professional players, and I can name multiple foreigners who can compete at there level.

Now give me a list of fighting fame players who have that much commitment and talent.

What we have gained:
- DoA NM can be done with 2ppl+heroes now;
- HM is more challenging than NM for parties with 1 or 2 players.

For the casual player:
- Revert of the AoE scatter (although some parts of prophecies are still all messed up).

A decent chunk of players out there aren't able to do missions like Jennur's Horde, Venta Cemetery, Aurora Glade, Hell's Precipice, Nahpui Quarter, desert missions, Boreas Seabed, Dzagonur Bastion, Ruins of Morah, etc in NM.

Most of them can't do them even with PvE only skills now that you can't take 6 ursans there.

Basically the game is quite broken for 8 player parties with PvE skills and/or consumables, but its nicely balanced for 2 player parties.

^sowrie noneedforclevernames, but that was a pretty ignorant post
first of all 10-18hrs a day is not a complete indication of the amount of skill level required

second of all, jus because the scene may be smaller
it doesnt mean that it doesnt exist

last of all lets not forget that korean gamers also play mmorpg's 10-18 hours a day, 7 days a week...non-competitively mind u...

wait...jus one more thing...
oh look...koreans playing 10hrs a day in gw

Haha, touche. Don't take my comment the wrong way, I happen to share your sentiments.

Why does calling it a cheat matter? The examples you gave of, for instance, not being able to earn achievements with "no fail mode" (ironic name for that, by the way) actually removes it as an option for people who want to earn achievements. Since using PvE skills doesn't prevent you from getting any in-game rewards, the kinds of "anti-cheating" penalties that you're talking about aren't an analogous situation - i.e., irrelevant.

You've never been to any of the big JP arcades, have you?

calling sumptin a "cheat" matters a lot
a game is defined by its rules

by a developer giving us a cheat readily available to use in-game does not make make it any less of a cheat than a user-created cheat
it is fun yes, but as long as the user knows that he is breaking the rules by cheating and only doing so for fun


now how that relates to anet
anet gave us skills with the characteristics of a cheat, however did not label them as "cheats"
this leaves us with is all the fun u get by breaking the rules without actually breaking the rules

bryant again used a good word earlier in this thread, "integrity"

by labelling these skills with cheat-like characteristics as "fair-play" instead of "cheats",
u break the integrity of the game

thats why hard-mode and all the supposed "impressive" titles r laughable in todays gw
how can u take a broken game seriously?

yesh, i admit to using them too

like i said in a previous post...some players r in a predicament
do they use these cheat-like skills and not have fun?
or do they not use them, thereby gimping themselves and not have fun?

i dun think there should be any shame at all in using pve skills
but on the other hand, it cannot be recognized as being a great challenge either

You talking about the cheat of mobs having one extra pipe of energy regen? Or you talking about the cheat of mobs having Monster only skills? Or are you talking about the cheat of mobs in HM having faster everything?

I think the only thing wrong is people wanting PvE to be a place "for great deeds".

Until AI is adaptable, any game against AI is a joke game compared to Human vs Human.

i've already stated in a previous post that i dun think hard mode was implemented in the best way
and i've already stated in numerous threads that i dun think titles r good for the game

that said, theres nuthin wrong wit wanting pve to be challenging to the point where it requires great skill to be good at

r u saying that pve should -only- be looked at as a joke?
and that if one does want challenge, the -only- respectable place to find it should be in pvp?

That sounds like a lot of loss to me.

What I meant more, though, is what was gained by making HM just as easy as NM (and generally toning down the whole game) if in regards to the casual player.

In regards to monsters having "totally OP skills": I used to think them ridiculous as well, until I realized how exploitable and stupid AI always ends up being.

In my opinion, for what it's worth, PvE skills are the least of the problem.

Skills are like tools. To get a certain task done, people might need some tools to do that. I would be a bad hairdresser without scissors or comb.
Couldn't build a house without hammer and screwdriver.

Now in Guild Wars, people don't start out with PvE skills. They start out creating a certain profession. And they could become craftsmen after a while. Mastering their tools and knowing how to perform their job with great skill.
When one of that tools is 'overpowered' it doesn't matter for a craftsman. He knows it is and uses it to his advantage. However, it doesn't mean that he can't use any other set of tools.

Now let's look at some of the more visible 'problems' in the game.
Perma-sin/Cryway/SY.
The perma-sin isn't a real problem at all in the 'sucking player' discussion.
If the perma-sin would be nerfed the game won't be flooded by bad assassins. Most players would find the next best tank and start learning to play that build.
Next one is Cryway. It's partly connected to the perma-sin, since the best way to play it would be Tank&Spank (T&S).
T&S has been around for ages now in PvE. It's a way of playing that works because of the way AI works. If CoP is nerfed people won't stop using T&S, they will find the next form of it.
T&S is a caused by the design of GW. I played Ooze Pit HM last evening with guildies and it's no fun having those earthquake and exploding Oozes all over the team. It's easier to ball them on some kind of tank and just nuke them away. We played balanced, so had some party wipes because at some points only two copies of PS were not sufficient....

Next to SY.
Going back to Ooze Pit, if we had a SY para/warrior we probably would have finished without any wipe. Maybe the E-surge/Spiritual Pain mesmers would have done some damage since it's armor-ignoring, but most of the damage would have been migrated. Make sure the the SY is protected and it should be easy.

Now the difference between T&S and SY is that T&S offers players a limited way of gaining experience while SY could actually be teaching players bad habbits. To put it into 'tools' perspective, T&S teaches players that there is only a limited set of skills and professions needed to achieve goals.
Tank/Nuker/Healer. We've seen that before in about every farming group in elite areas. Only exception was Ursan, but hey, those were tank and nuker combined in one player.

But SY teaches players that about any tool could work as long as they have a SY para or warrior.
The same with Consumables. They also teach players that almost anything will work as long as consumables are used.

However, SY, Cons, Cryway and perma-sin are 'advanced' problems.
The main problem lies far before this point.
It's people not learning and mastering their profession in the first place.
I've seen countless Ele players who could only play fire.
Warriors with combo's that don't work (for example Sever/Gash when no flesh foes in the areas). Monks who could only play a HB build.

It's not only the player's fault. Sever/Gash works in 90% of the game, so someone might not be knowing that it fails against certain foes.
Elementalists who team up with others will most likely be asked to take some fire build. And many elementalists can play that role rather well. Just don't ask them to run a warder or water snare. They lack skills or experience.
And HB monks... Well, that works in most part of the game. Just push red bars up. It's the best way to play till far into the game. And when it fails, we take a tank and PS and .....

Using PvE skills or consumables doesn't mean people are bad players.
They also make life a lot easier for experienced players.
It's only that those skills and items have the potential for teaching bad gameplay that makes them somewhat problematic.

That's because the two opposing sides always improve, use the best skills at their disposal and have brains.

Pve has challenge when you play it the first time. After you beat all the campaigns at least once the game loses it's challenge, that's natural. Stop thinking that the pve part of GW or any game can or must be challenging for a long time without a major overhaul of the game or new content.

Maybe I am a bit crotchety in my advancing years

However, my point still stands. It's not that I don't care about players being good at all, it's just that you're all blaming the game design and that is not the issue.

You're either a GAMER or you're not. I start new games just so I can let the game wash over me, infuse my imagination. I want to see how all the elements come together, what design choices the creators made, how they synergise, what works, what doesn't. I all but live for the experience of mentally dissecting games (which makes balancing the wife and kids into a game of its own ).

Most people are not gamers in this vein and, as the saying goes, you can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink. That goes for double for something as complex as GW. I can't tell you as a newcomer to the game how amazing the "/wiki <term>" command was in game. There it was, an answer to almost any question I had with a few seconds of typing, or how invaluable the archived information on boards like Guru and others were. Just about anything I was curious about was there to find out with ease.

The point is that I and my friends got good at the game because we wanted to get good at the game. With the exception of some of our farming builds so we can grab holiday drops, I don't think there's a pure PvX cookier cutter build on a single character or hero between us since we all know the game well enough to make our own builds or at least tweak someone else's ideas to suit our own playstyles. And while I may still cringe at my brother's fetish for pets on heroes where it makes zero sense, if that's the worst sin in our group, we'll live. We've always been around consumables, PVE skills, heroes, etc., but we still learned the game because, well, that's what you do if you want to play a game in our books.

Then you compare that to the local chat of someone repeatedly asking where he gets armor or where to go next or can anyone sell me a good sword or can somebody ping me a build for my dervish or...

The information is there and I don't think it could be any easier to find out. If you look across all three games, you'll find something the designers put in there to make sure you grasp the basics of the game, e.g. the little tutorials on snares and condition removal in Factions. There' the F10 key which hotlinks to the wiki for just about anything you can think of relevant to your character, quests, and missions. What the game designers can't do is take the thousands upon thousands of people who may play games but could hardly be called gamers by my reckoning and turn them into gamers. It's just not in their "DNA" and no amount of wishing from the "real gamers" will change that.

It's much the same reason some people, like me, have a graduate degree, and around a quarter of the population have some college degree, but over half quit after high school, and another 20% didn't even get that far. While yes, financial and social issues play some role in these figures, the largest part is individual desire as to where you stop wanting to get better (and for myself, I can say that's with my Masters - those PhD people are nuts ). I'd be willing to bet those same percentages are probably pretty reflective of the community. Probably around a quarter are competent to outright good players, a bit over half just get by and inspire this thread, and another two tenths just got lost and frustrated by the "difficulty" of the game and never even finished one campaign. The community reflects humanity and all the game design polishes in the world won't magically make everyone into good to great players because those game design polishes aren't going to change their very nature.

thats not wut we're discussing here

i am a pvp player...not a pve player
theres no debate that pvp takes more skill and is more challenging

wut we're discussing here is whether or not pve should be laughable, period
-not- compared to pvp, but as a standalone product

pve should be challenging within its own rite
not "who cares bout how hard pve is when pvp is harder so lets jus make pve one big push of the easy button and ur done"


thats exactly why skills r a big problem...
but all other broken skills included, not jus pve skills

performance level = skill of player + effectiveness of tool(s) (among other variables)

a player of great skill can overcome underpowered tools (which is basically wut gimping urself is)
but its generally pointless to do so in most cases...
nascar race drivers should drive nascar race cars
gw pve players should use pve skills


but since the effectiveness of certain tools in gw r clearly overpowered
it can compensate for the lack of skill level for players
and that results in them relyin on their tools rather than feeling the need to develop any skill

how is this not a problem?


so ur saying that no matter which college/university i go to, i will receive the -exact- same quality of education as anywhere else?

people need to stop thinkin in absolutes
these r not 1 solution problems here...

education = environment + teacher + student + many other variables

yesh, a good student will compensate for the lack of a good teacher
that does not mean that the teacher can not be pointed out as to having very little effect


and while it may seem that im biased towards one way...
im arguing from the perspective of wanting to change the game
because its easier to change the game, rather then to try and change every single player of the game...
perhaps if i could, i would ~___~

wrong, we're debating whether the community fails at this game

and we deviated to the influence of pve only features on the level of pve players


wondering whether pve is challenging enough is not relevant here

run a balanced build in doa (hm or not, as you wish), without imbagons, and have fun


as others have said, pve only features (consumables, skills...) are tools you choose to use to be more efficient

but saying that people fail at the game because of them is a total nonsense : if the game was so easy, they'd use them all the time and succeed everywhere, and this thread wouldn't exist

people who really fail at the game do not use consumables regularly, have bad builds (maybe a few pve skills, but bad builds are bad) and a poor understanding of the game mechanics

NO! This is not the topic of this thread, so can you please now go back on-topic and stop derailing this thread? Next I'll ask a mod to clean this mess.

I'd suggest you learn to read better but doubt it would do any good, although I enjoyed the irony of being taken to task about the relative merits of the educational system from someone who considers not touching the shift key or using all the letters in a word some sort of virtue.

At any rate, that's not what I'm saying at all. I'm saying that when you look at humanity as a whole that most people will not successfully complete a university level education because it's not in their make up to do so. Their personal nature leaves them wanting to get by and avoid the stress, hard work, and time required to do something like that. The same applies to GW.

To use your not exactly on topic subject as an example, I would suck at PVP; not because I lack the understanding of game mechanics, not because I'm too dumb, or lack the reflexes, I just don't care enough about the sort of skill required to excel at PVP. You can rig the game however you want, but someone like me will never be "good" in your eyes because it's not a question of if I'm technically capable or if the information is out there for me to get if I want to, I simply do not want to, and since it's a game, I'm not going to no matter what you do.

One of the more interesting things about humanity is no matter what our absolute capabilities, we generally tend to see ourselves as competent. This has been particularly highlighted with victims of traumatic brain injuries who, even when left with significant mental handicaps, almost always report they think they're functioning about the same as before their injury. If somebody is able to get through this game on brute force and ignorance, and, in general, they can, without a lot of personal initiative and analysis they're simply not going to pick up the sort of insights the elitists think they should have.

Financial and social issues play the only role in being able to complete high school and introductory college education. Some people do not complete college because they have no knowledge of what to specialize in, or they believe they would have better work prospects getting experience outside of academia. The game is different because if might fail to considered on a person's priority list.

"Individual desire" is an ideologically-biased term that has no merits on its own. I already had an argument on how 'not caring' has never had an effect on the results of teaching. The whole 'not desiring' argument is a self-fulfilling prophesy; those who believe it will not put in the effort required to get someone to learn and blame them for it (blame is counterproductive itself). There is no permanent state of human beings 'not caring' or 'not desiring'; these are transient states that are corrected on a daily basis by altering the self-awareness of people (whatever words you want to use, maturation, etc.). People do not permanently not care, they might be highly resistant, but some of the most extreme examples of people have been taken from a non-caring perspective (murderers) to a state where they show concern for the actions they have committed.

Look, if anyone harbors a resentment or contempt for people, they shouldn't be involved in any type of help process involving them. If you think the situation is dire, hopeless, or the world is full of apathy and evil; you are doing considerable harm trying to put your stamp on things. Leave it to the people who have both the skills and the optimism to do something. The most damaging thing that gets done to a fellow human being is the affixation of a label. It makes them play the part, when you treat them like how you label them.

I understand this type of thread attracts the type who want to rant about other people based on its naming, but I don't think people needed another platform to just rave about other people. And going from this, providing further platforms for negative stereotyping would set any attempt to improve game quality backwards.

Edit: To clarify on one point, those who are the most resistant to ever caring about something are adults. Because once a bad habit is learned, a new habit must be learned and the old one replaced (like playing starcraft, learning/unlearning takes a lot of time when you have a huge time base preceeding). This is the closest you find to permanence on this subject, and mostly it comes because adults who have not learned emotions and empathy have trouble picking them up without good models to follow (like how parents treat young children, nurturing).

well if ur not gonna bother to keep up wit the thread...it may seem so... o__o

sooo heres a quick recap:
-does the majority of the community suck?
--yes, because of many reasons
---one of these reasons is because of the game itself
----pve skills among other mechanics make pve too easy hence lowering the amount of skill required
----(rebuttal) but pve is not supposed to be hard... go to pvp if u want a challenge
-----pve should be able to provide a challenge seperate from pvp (my last post)

so really...r we supposed to jus say "yes" or "no" and then move one without any real expanding of the discussion? -__-'

if an aspect of a game takes no skill to play...and a large portion of the community is involved wit that aspect...
it may be very likely that that portion of the community has very little skill...
and if that portion makes up the majority of the gw, then it is very relevant to the discussion


@channum
no, obviously u didnt say that...and i never said u did either
u said that gw isnt to blame that ppl suck at it
which exactly the same as blaming a school as to why its students arent smart (which is wut i loosely said)

unless u think that a school system cannot be improved so that the students will be more smart
its hard to argue the fact that gw can be improved so that its players will be more skilled

Someone did hit that one hard on the head. If you are going to pay for a game once, you are going to play it until it stops amusing you, and you can pick it up whenever. If you are going to pay for a game once and then again, say every month, you're going to push as much as you can out of it.
Guild wars is not as active as it was, no one can argue that. Go to HA, and go to (insert nearly any pve mission here). So it is natural that some of the more hardcore players will leave.
Learning about the game originally came from either from other players or from testing things out. I do not blame the wikis for adding more options to learn, but it does get out of hand and that is when build dominance comes up, people do not want to experiment. This is enforced by the community, which either does not want to deal with the hassle of teaching everyone that comes along how to play (which is understandable), or simply has to much of an elitist view to remove their heads from their anuses.
And so people do not learn, because they are pushed out or refuse to try things themselves. When something harder comes along, they piss and moan until someone listens. And so things become easier, and reinforce that nothing need be tested out.
And while most of what I've just said applies to pve, one key part does very much to pvp. The community in pvp either does not want to deal with the hassle of teaching everyone that comes along how to play (which is understandable), or simply has to much of an elitist view to remove their heads from their anuses. And while there are a good deal of people who fall into the first category, the second is more vocal. If I am in PvP, I may not want to play with an r3 or less, because they don't have the experience, and I don't want to teach them. It may be sad, but that has become the overwhelming feeling in GW. And as the newer players learn to play, they come in seeing this, and that becomes the way they play.
The majority of the community sucks because the most vocal players are either the ones that QQ or the ones that believe they are golden gods.

What is the worse thing it will happen to you if you don't care enough about the game?

You suck at it. WEEEEEEEE. Really important.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
These threads spawn of varied misconceptions and interests.

First, some people consider that PvE should remain challenging, but PvE is pretty most a static environment. 4000 hours of GWs ago, I hated those axe charrs - man those dudes were though. Now I will laugh at them and they die.

Second, some people complain that everyone and their mothers can do the elite missions and obtain all the rewards, when they shouldn't because they didn't attain enough skill. Guess I'll have to differ - if they can do it, it is because they have enough skill - regardless of how much or less they actually do compared to other people.

Third, those same people will state that the players can only do it because the game was made easier with PvE skills and consumables, otherwise they wouldn't. While this point is true is also irrelevant.

That point spawns from the misconception that PvE is supposed to rank players - you look at a random player armor/weapons/titles and should be able to tell if he is a good, an average or a mediocre player.

Everyone that has a brain knows that most of those titles/armors have 0 correlation to skill - most of them can be obtained by exploiting the game.

So what is the point of titles and elite skins then? They exist as personal goals for the players - otherwise you would finish the game with one or two professions and be done with game.

So, titles and elite skins are just added value to the game.

When people realize that fact, they can, if they are interested, start to self impose challenges to make PvE more fun to them. You know, PvE-only skills and consumables are like support wheels for bikes. They let you ride your bike but it's more satisfactory riding it without them.

"But why should I impose myself challenges when others don't and get all the titles and elite skins faster than me?" If you have fun, why not? The main goal of the game is having fun, right?

"So can I have a auto-win button?" Yes. If that is what makes you happy and fulfilled. Just be prepared for other people not caring about your titles and elite skins.

"So what is the point?" Personal satisfaction. If your personal satisfaction comes from adulation from other people you are in the wrong game. And grow up please.

In conclusion, if people realize PvE is just a game and so no one gives a damn about what titles and elite skins they have, they can start having fun.

Again, no one, but you, gives a damn about your titles and elite skins. So you better have fun getting them.

Once that part hits people brains, they will understand how ridiculous it is to try to impose skill on other players IN A GAME.

I've helped one or two people. Why? Cause they were fun to play with and they were interested on improving their game. If they aren't/weren't interested in that, was I supposed to beat them with a club till they decided they would have to spent their time getting skill?

When someone that isn't interested in improving their skill wants to do something hard, I simply won't play with them. If it is simple enough, I can play with them.

I prefer to play with a noob that is a nice person then to play with a gozu jackass person.

Where the frakk do you get his from? I stated a pretty objective set of facts about human nature, there's no value statements there at all, it IS the way the world is - regardless of era, regardless of social status, regardless of culture, we are a bell curve of a species for just about anything there can be a gradient for and all the feel good (or feel bad) spin applied to it is just that. As the counselor my parents made me go to as a teenager opened my eyes to: no matter how far you lift people up, half of them are always going to be below average. After that bit of irrefutable truth sunk in, I stopped worrying so much about how good/bad people were at stuff that didn't matter, and that is certainly the case for the "community" of GW.

^
i'll admit that i can sound blunt or unrefined...even pretentious
but imo u sound pretty cynical ^__^

the philosophies of human nature is pretty debatable
even if u stated "objective facts" about human nature, it does not mean that it will hold tru in the so called "real world"

to be honest, i looked at this thread as, "how can we find a solution to this problem?"
not jus as a "lets sit back and enjoy this predicament as its the natural order of things" o__o

Singling this out because it's the point I agree with the most. I believe the original design of the game was to somewhat strategize and think about the builds enemies were using in an area, and to do odd things like shutdown key characters and prot weak characters. My original comments about people being bad reflected this, that we were using aoe bunching and tanking techniques that abused AI, and in other cases, we had powerful skills (shadow form/pain inverter) that allowed us to use poor tactics to beat things. For that reason, I noted that most of the community was bad, although I regret giving them this label as if I was intending to blame them for it. They are not achieving potential because of an easy route that is available.

Each man's view of the world is relative to himself. I brought up a view of the world taken within the circles of the teaching/counseling professions. If you watch news and surf internet, and you try to confirm that the behavior that goes on out there is the proper view of the world, you are bringing a sabatoging element into this domain. Everything a human being does is learned, if you stop teaching people to act a certain way, it can slowly work it's way out. Furthermore, you bring in a kind of ideology that has never bred results on fixing things.

The advice you listed is actually a play on words, possibly even a cliche, and for that matter I would read it as someone telling me a joke. Saying there will always be half below average is a statement that can be taken literally. I'm surprised you are trying to apply it to this case like it will provide me some kind of insight on this.

Take this for example: you raise anyone, you raise the bar that determines average. You raise the top, you raise the average but you increase the gap between the bottom and the average. You raise the bottom, you raise the average and you close the gap. Take this literally, or try to apply it. It means more than the advice you are restating.

Most psychological advice that you receive is based on where you are relatively. If I went up to a murderer, and told him the world wasn't a violent place, the information would obviously be false to him. A murderer becomes like so because he fails to grasp the pain other people feel over his own, and because he has been taught that positive results come from violence. For that reason, the advice you received was valuable for you at the time, but not enough to get you through every phase of life. I don't know anyone who is capable of giving the type of advice that is capable of lasting you through eternity, if that's what you are indicating you expected from advice.

However, getting through life and crossing the line into understanding and teaching other people requires a massive step up. One of the first things I had to realize is that there were only two kinds of people I had trouble dealing with. First, there were people I had been abrasive to and I was not self-aware enough to know how I had been. Second, there are people who's behavior is consistently bad with everyone or certain types of people, so there's no reason to take it personally. If the behavior isn't so personal, you shouldn't complain about it (maybe only inform people about it to watch out for it, so they don't fall into the same traps). There was no third group that had it out for me; I was only filling a stereotype for them that they had a problem with. People were very transient based upon my ability to act differently around them, not fixed as many claim they are.

As I would say, based on a past time when I was having problems; that was the worst time for me to try to help people. Perhaps that would have been a better counseling message, focus on fixing yourself instead of believing others are what needs to be fixed. That is what I think would have been a better message for this thread, you do not improve player skill directly; you improve yourself and it should rub off.

Strangely enough, yesterday I re-read the "Nightfall Quick Reference" small card you get with the collector's edition and it's exactly that kind of idea I want to propose. But this card is too sketchy, and I think a more direct approach would be suited, where players see a pic of the UI and each part is described so as to point to the relevant concepts.

As the 2 fellow (experienced PvE) players were telling me at the GW community day in London yesterday, there are still people who aren't probably even looking at all the skill icons that appear in the top left corner of their screen (why is my health bar brown? what's a backfire?), or the aggro bubble.

It's a shame this wasn't proposed earlier, but it seems we're going to have another 1 or 2 years of GW1 (well, obviously not everyone!) .

I don't know where you pulled that 18 from, but you do know a day is comprised of 24 hours and 6 hours is the bare minimum one can sleep to be perfectly awake and healthy the day after, right? Also, we're not taking eating or other "pressing matters" into account (discarding any kind of school, work or social life is granted).

So if, theoretically speaking, players practicing this much would be only B ranked, how much would A+ need to practice a day? Wouldn't they, like, die? Even if they are koreans, they are not immortal.

Most Proteams train for 8-12 hours per day. Besides the A and B level professional SC players, there are a number of amateur training houses where players pay to live and practice together for similar hours per day.

The fact that S class players can be so overpoweringly dominant in such a competitive field is practically mind-boggling.

Ye, I know, everyone who's into SC and everyone who has to endure the stress of SC fanboyism knows that. I was just nitpicking on 18 hours a day, which is an absurd number for any human being.

I wouldn't be surprised if they did regular hand excercises for faster mouse clicks. They likely do.

I'm sorry, playing 10 hours a day may be fun for some people a couple times.

But every day? That is just really pathetic...

Some people think working 10 hours a day is also pathetic, but many people do it. If I was getting money I'd rather be playing games than doing anything else.

As for this thread, it got so far off topic I didn't care to respond anymore. All I got out of it was that the majority of the community still sucks. The reasons behind it is what is debated.

In regards to the first point, just because it's static doesn't mean you can not give a shit about it. Other solid games are static, too, but we don't see *them* getting dumbed down.

To the second point, that doesn't make a whole lot of sense any which way you put it. If a player isn't good, they shouldn't be able to complete the content - and providing tools that make that content easier for the unskilled player is not good (this makes the third point relevant).

The question I would ask in regards to "imposing challenges on oneself" isn't in regards to having to do so when others "get dah loots" with less effort, it's why I have to impose myself period - especially since what is now considering "imposing" used to be "skilled". The more I have to impose myself the less challenging the content actually is, and if all we had to do was simply gimp ourselves for a challenge we wouldn't need difficulty levels.

And still, I've yet to see an answer to the question I asked a bit ago: why introduce PvE skills and the like to make HM just as easy as NM?

Ermz.
DreamWind brought up work already, so I'll skip that.

But let's talk about sports now.
How much time do you think someone training for the Olympics practices a day? And not only that, he or she is also on diet and has to organise personal life around practice.
My niece was swimming at high level when she was young and her swimming practice started at 6AM so she could do that before she went to school.
After school she either went swimming again or to the gym for strength practices.
I have similar stories from other sports if you like to hear more.

It's only because we have the idea that people achieve something with sports and think they don't with games that one is considered pathetic and the other is considered worth pursuing.

Well people DO achieve things with sport, they earn far far far more than you would earn competing in these gaming tournaments (if they are both at a similar level in terms of ability).They get well known and (in the case of brits) can get things like Knighthoods and personal recognition.

However you guys have provided some good reasons and justified it to some extent, i guess it's just because i see games as a hobby...

A puzzle might be very hard to finish, but if you do it a few times, each time will be easier. Just because it is easier to you that have done it a few times, it doesn't mean it will be easy for someone that is starting.

Additionally Anet needs to be concerned with those players that only have one of the campaigns (lets say prophecies or factions). Some of those skills were nerfed and without them the game isn't easier - for example [[watch yourself], [[protective bond] and [[spirit bond] among others. It is only when you look the big picture that the game is easier nowadays.

About the second point you are still stuck at the concept that PvE is about ranking skill - it isn't. PvE is about going there and defeat the game. Most single player games have different difficulty settings - varying from very easy to some that are almost impossible. Not using PvE-skills and consumables in HM makes some areas of the game quite HARD.

The copy of guildwars you running is mostly yours - no one preventing you to make it challenging. If you have the ability to not use consumable and PvE skills, not using the titles, or use smaller parties and don't, preferring to have an easy game instead of a challenge, it is because you aren't interested in challenge.

You can choose to not use consumables. You will only not use them if everyone can't. You complain about the game being to easy.

I don't use consumables. Period. I may be slower, but I've fun.

That is true, which is one reason why pros spend so much time on their games. In South Korea the SC players aren't much different though. They have regular big tournaments that give out hundreds of thousands of dollars (US converted) and many players are very well known over there.

Many people do. I wish more countries (particularly America) had a more active and widely known professional gaming scene, but they don't.

In regards to this thread, I think GW had that potential. When Anet was running tournaments for the best guilds, I thought that was the best Guild Wars has ever seen. We are long removed from that.

Funily, the "teaching" aspect of this thread (well, I should say, "what I originally intended it to be" because now we're in a totally different territory...) works in the exact opposite way, people consider "teaching" (even "guiding") as a burden, something too "serious" for a game. Yet winning money is not "too serious".

Just imagine if the GW community's average "skill" level was 5% higher than it is now, which probably means quite a lot of people at the same level, a certain number now in some sort of "average" and a few starting to get good. (I'll reiterate a point I made earlier: this is not a discussion in absolute terms, these notions are somewhat relative, but there are really skill "levels" where you can see people aware of the field/placement, with a relatively good knowledge of professions and roles, etc.; the point here is NOT to classify players, just acknowledge that there are things to do collectively in order to "improve" the skill level) Suddenly, you start seeing a bit more life into certain areas of the game, less boring discussions on Guru , new PvPers eager to learn a lot, etc.

Remember the "XXX for the dummies" guides when they were created? (Zwei2stein mentioned another example earlier) People laughed at them, because they could laugh at a "dummy" reading a book, instead of realising the actual amazing benefit of these books (as a very solid starting point). There's never been a "GW for the dummies", even the basic manual given with the GW box is so basic and outdated, it lacks significant details about the UI, not to mention the game mechanics. F10 won't help much unless you're willing to spend the time (and if you don't know the basics, you won't).

I even thought at one point that given the length until GW2, we (I) may be left with only players of relative qualities in the game, making impossible to play stuff like HM elite zones with "fun". Experienced players left and are leaving, because of the inherent GW philosophy of "play it, put it aside and come back to it". Providing the first few steps to self-teaching GW skills may start with the idea I hope to be able to implement. I may even try to experiment with that with a new young player that joined our guild.