More discrimination? Read here

At first, i though joining guildwars and guilwars factions pvp would be a great idea, how wrong I was. Throughout the merging of the PVP system it has come to more discrimination, the people that can afford guildwars factions compared to the normal guildwars player. The faction players gain an unfair advantage over legit guildwars players, new skills is one of the biggest things. FOr example I was in random arena with my ranger spiker, i see a trapper and im like "alright traps arent a problem as long as they are interrupted" BUT when i see him trapping and about to shoot he uses the new skills which gain great advantage over me because I do not know what they are and what they do, so I think "Ill stay back untill they run out because i do not know these skills" now while im standing there a warrior runs up, I think "warriors are easy i got troll and whirling" I use whriling and start spiking warrior. He gets to 1/4 of hp and uses some new skills that makes him hit ALOT harder! Now I am at a complete loss, I lose the match and I start thinking on what can improve the disadvantage. And now, it seems all ANET wants is to pump out the most discrimination for pressure to buy guildwars factions to get even, this is NOT good. The rich get richer and the poor get nothing. SO what is there to do for me? Im rank 5 all skills uinlocked, so I think ill go to HA, and what do I see? A new kind of rank discrimination! YAY.
I try to get in group, and they ask me "do you have <new skill>?" I say "No, because I havent bought factions yet." and what do they do? They kick me out. This is complete discrimination, and now I want to buy guildwars because of the PRESSURE TO KEEP PLAYING, this is exactly what ANET wants, they arent nice, they are just money fiends. DOnt expect any improvement anymore from them, no I dont. The only solution to this is a "Non-factions" district in HA and RA and TA. It wont take much to make me happy ANET, so please do =)

~Killyall

Problem 1 is that the Halls also has to be factions free. And favour, does it need to split up too then?
Besides that, i have the same "problem". Im still waiting on my factions because my shop is slow, but they just blame anet for not delivering the Collectors edition.
But i managed quite well in team arena's even without factions. I still get all the titles etc so im ok. Just learn the skills a bit and see what counters it.

And here I thought this topic was about sterotypes or racism. Silly me.

I have factions, and I don't know what any of the skills are either. Trust me, you'll get used to it.

Just do some research and try to memories each skill.

These new skills dont make classes from merged accounts impossible to beat, its not like you are facing lvl 30 characters. Learn the skills and counter them. Everything here has a counter.

As Factions was just released, some of the skills are out of balance, but that will soon be fixed. Besides that, the only advantage owning Factions gives is a greater skill selection, NOT greater power. It should be extreamly simple to learn what they do, and how to counter. Once done, your still good.

But its not about that, its about the unfair advantage, I can now ask "What balance?" there is suppose to be balance, everyone has the same advantage to win, all depends on skill. But now, there is no balance, the one to win is the one who has factions and the new skills, before release of GW factions it was more or less balanced with a few nerfs to builds that deserved it ex.IWAY, but now as i said there is no balance, the one with factions is the one that wins. This is what sickens me, the fact that anet did this on purpose to get people to buy factions. And i can visualize the 11 year olds in this gamer now begging their parents to buy them a copy of factions which is horrible. Ive lost all respect for anet it seems, but this can still be fixed.

None of the new skills are more powerful than the old ones. I believ that Anet once comparisoned Guild Wars to Magic: The Gathering. You can buy the latest cards if you want, and if you do you have a bigger selection of cards to play with, but that doesn't mean you're always going to win. If there is a new player to magic who owns all the cards in the world, it still doesn't mean hes going to beat a better player who only has a few cards.

It's always going to be that if you don't buy the new chapters you have less skills, but the skills in themselves are all equal. As for not knowing about the new skills, most GW fansites have a skill section, go through and look at the new skills and find counters to them.

Ok, I can deal with that. But then there are other problems, tell me, what would you rather want? A trapper who has the new skills like trappers stance and snares or a normal trapper? Thats what I though. A SoD bonder with the old skills, or a brand new bonder who uses that skill that evades + give hp when u evade. A new monk skill based, or an old monk without the new skills, I still see flaw in this. I still think the balance has disappeared.

my opinion:

Your first point about unfamiliar skills. Yeah, true, but us factions players have this exact same problem you know. Fighting monsters I don't know what to interupt. You'll learn them eventually. And just coz you can't get them you can still learn about them; i've barely touched necro profession but i know which of theirs to interupt... mainly coz i've died so often

Second point... well thats not anets fault. People are morons. People will kick you if you don't have an exact build set up.

Marketing Technique - makes you want factions so you can fully understand and have access to the new skills. Its cheap but there's nothing we can do and anet don't care for us players much. After all they are a bu$ine$$.

You cannot expect to play a game that releases expansion packs on a regular basis and constantly evolves and then have everyone get it all.

Name an MMO that has released FREE expansion packs for everyone so everyone gets the same thing.

WoW, the biggest of all MMO's, is releasing an expansion pack soon (I think?), but they aren't doing that for free either.

It should come as no surprise, that the people who are too cheap or don't have the money to buy Factions, won't get what Factions has to offer.
If I were you I'd either play Prophecies and stop whining or wait till I get Factions and be happy that I don't have to pay a monthly fee to play the perfectly alright Prophecies campaign.

I totally understand where you're comming from, but it sounds to me like you lost a PvP match, got really, really angry and now you're gonna bash everything that somehow worked against you.

Guildwars is an MMO and it WILL change; constantly. If you can't follow the change, pipe down and either play Prophecies or start going with the flow.

well... come on now any decent retail developer will encourage people to buy their newest product... That's how the gaming business works... But I do see your issue. The problem is its not really a balance problem as long as you buy chapters for the game. And things like Favor and such are noticeably being exchanged more as new builds are being introduced. its going to get more exciting as the faction line moves back and forth across the board I think inside of factions itself.

I knew there is going to be a few people that will insist on this cookie cutter build or that. but the beauty of the added combinations is those builds are drastically increased over what we had before. Now instead of just barrage pet or Iway, or Specific Spike teams... there is all kinds to choose from...

Of course the more chapters you have the more options you have. No one can fault Arena Net for doing business first. thats what its all about... that how we get new material and content. we dont have subscription fees and we dont have outragious update schedule. 2 a year is not that bad... And its mix and match able too. Say you have 1 and 3. well that may be jsut as good as having 2 and 3. never know... but not going tobe as good as having 1 2 and 3. or even later say you have 1, 2 and 5. that could be jsut as well as having just 5 and 4... so who knows. its still an emerging business model. so we will see....

The discrimination will eventually stop as the total options out there will be so vast it will be hard to decide what constitues a new cookie cutter buiild. So the options for Pugs will increase as time goes by...

If that's how it works in your opinion, you don't understand what balance is. Balance is not simply limited to "everyone has the exact same 8 skills to use." Balance is simply making sure that skills do not become so powerful that all other options are rendered inferior. This has not changed with Factions.

If you think simply that having 10 new skills gives an unfair advantage, you never understood the concept of balance to begin with. If you think that new skills that can counter your current build gives an unfair advantage, you never understood the concept of balance to begin with.

Study, get some creativity, and get some skill. This won't be a problem for you once you do.