Experience vs. Skill

Ghull Ka, you're absolutely correct. The amount of time you put into the game will determine your success, especially since there is really no other game like Guild Wars on PC or console. It's not just the skills you have, it's how experienced you are at using them and at playing GW PVP in general.

The entire concept of "skill > time played" or "time played > skill" is completely off. In actuality, SKILL ~ TIME PLAYED. The more you play, the more skilled you are. You cannot expect to be as *skilled* as iQ if you don't put in the hours.

The skill acquisition for PVP is a bit of a problem, and something ANet is trying to adjust. If we have PVPX-level Faction rewards from here on out, acquiring anything and everything for PVP is no longer that hard!

As far as it taking any time at all, well, I have though of a partial solution that I'm not gonna bother to share (I might create a thread about it later). However, assuming we raised Faction rewards to PVPX level indefinitely, the amount of time it'll take you to get all the crap you want will also simultaneously serve to increase your skill. As you play PVP to get Faction, your battle tactics, improvisation, and even "twitch" skills will improve. Perhaps, optimistically, to the point that by the time you actually unlock all the stuff you want, you might even have the skills to use those things properly ^_^

Time is not the controling factor for skill, people are. Put the two people into a situation for the same amount of time and they will both gain something different from it. Time is a controling factor for any reference towards character gain or grind. There is a huge difference. It doesnt matter how adept you are at manipulating the character, but no amount of character manipulation or timing will mystically grant the character an ability to counter another character's ability on the fly.

IMO, after experiencing PvP for real with the PvPX weekend, two MAJOR faults with PvP are the lack of ability for a PvP character to unlock his/her own skills/items/etc and the inability to change things on a character.

First point... you need a PvE character to visit the Priest of Balthazar. Period. If you're pure PvP, you're hosed.

Second point... if I want to try a different bow on my char (but leave everything else the same), I need to delete and completely rebuild that character.

This is a royal pain the the red engine area.

Of course, the solution is embarassingly simple... put a Priest in the arenas, and put a weapon/armor locker in the area where your PvP chars (only) can access the same selection of weapons and armor available during generation.

That's just my opinion, though, I could be wrong.

I agree with Phades here, even if you got xtreme pvp faction points like this last weekend it's still going to take "time" to unlock everything even at this route. Now, what I did was make a list of the skills I wanted, I don't want them all because let's face it some skills are just plain ole crap, there's one monk skill that takes 10 energy for 66% dmg returned to the attacker, now who in their right mind would ever use that skill? Heh, I know I wouldn't 10 energy is a lot, maybe an ele/mo might use it but even so, it would deplete their energy pretty fast as well.

Time is always involved in everything we do, how much time we have to play being a key point. But, since this is a PVE AND a PVP game and the PVE game was designed to play to unlock skills for PVP except for the new faction point system, then time is just something one is going to have to be prepared to put in to get the skills they want, either PVE and/or PVP. Whatever GW's still allows for increased skill gains much faster than any other mmorpg out there that I've ever played. Being a vet of Everquest for 5 years, this game is FAST, VERY FAST compared to the "time" required to get things in everquest. So, I have no problems with the speed of gain in GW's at all.

If a game doesn't have goals, just becomes a pvp hack fest, it will pass away just like Shadowbane did. The goals presented from PVE and faction point game give this game some longevity beyond just a mere pvp hackfest. Ida quit a long time ago if everything came so easily.

Be nice if A-Net gave us some numbers of PVE players vs PVP players, be interesting to see the numbers and what is most popular afterall about this game.

@ Phades: Um, of course, skill wont grant you versatility, but time spent in the game will give you experience, which will increase your skill in turn. It's not really something you can refute, and it is all I was saying on that subject -_-

Experience still is dependant on the person. 2 people can also have the exact same build and the amount of time in game has nothing to do with how well the players can interperate the actions of their opponents or the choices of when to use the skills the character posseses. People do not learn at the same rate, nor do they make the same choices in every given situation. Its not about skill granting versatility, its more about the actual skill involved has less to do about the outcome in many situations. This is why people complain about the grind, in order to achieve versatility, as it is the direct byproduct from time spent in game. Not having that versitility limits what the player is actually able to accomplish with their skill in a given situation.

Wait are you serious in saying that the amount of time spent in game has nothing to do with how well one can use one's skills and interpret the actions of the opponent? There's no way that's what you mean to say, cause that's just insane. Sure, the amout of time spent vs. how much more skilled one becomes varies between people, but still that is NOT to say that you do not need to spend time playing the game to get skilled. I don't care how much raw talent you have, if you don't play the game, you won't know what to do. Time played lends experience which increases skill, no two ways about it. The rate is different for different people, but who ever said it was the same?

Nobody ever said skill grants versatility. I said several times that versatility comes from resources which come from playing the game and gathering them. I never said anything otherwise regarding the matter of versatility as you address it.

Believe it or not, but people have different apptitiudes in different areas. Sure some time is needed to learn the basic elements within the game, but beyond that it is solely based upon the individual. Skill is also not directly related to knowledge. There are also limits to what people allow themselves to know. An ignorant person can still do what they know well and even better than anyone else, but be defeated by what they dont know. That is the easiest direct corrolation towards situations found within gw in the character skill versus player ability. I think you are over rating the need for the amount of time spent learning versus the time spent aquiring things. A intellegent, or skillful user will know how to use or the reason for a skill without having the skill. Exploration does not grant ability.

Arguing for time played is basically the same as stating the need to deny versatility. While in other formats, skillful play grants a degree of flexibility. Forcing the time played in order to gain that flexibility is counter intuitive towards skillful players. Faction is the only current method that could be used to rate the player's ability and grant character abilities with, but it is too crude a method really and only helps augment the haves versus the have nots situation in terms of time played. This also slants the actual sucess against the have nots further. Speaking in a purely competitive sense, restricting only one side of players, while other players are unrestricted is not a good gaming environment.

The unlock system is good for the pve environment exclusivly though, as it allows the game challenge to be tuned against what the players are able to bring to the table. The problem is, the two formats do not work perfectly together and it is compounded by the lack of reasons to blend the two together in the game's current state. For example, why bring a pve character into the pvp areas, as it serves no purpose nor yields and real static gain unique to the character, which defines a pve environment. The closest it comes are the guild hall sigils, which are in turn, only used for more pvp endevors instead of pve ones. The unlock system just becomes a springboard to exploit elements within the pve game to try and rush through the aquisition process in order to pvp more effectivly sooner. This would be opposed to having world and mission elements throughout the pve, which causes a desire to replay through the game mechanics involving character manipulation and lasting world effects through changing environments such as pvp, but not segregated into a pvp only arena or a pve only arena. There is only one example of a blended environement such as this and it is in pre-searing unfortunatly.

This is starting to get off-topic, but again, are you trying to tell me that experience and skill are unrelated?

Think about what I'm saying: the more you play, the more experience you have, and the better you are at doing "your thing" as well as learning strategies used by opponents, etc. You talk about being "defeated by what they don't know." The more they play, the more they know.

If you were actually correct, then I could get my guildmates to duplicate some top-ranked guild's build and boom! we are pwning the GVG scene just as well as they are, since experience amounts to jack ^_^
Honestly, stop disagreeing with me on this and let met get back on track.

I dont want to be derogatory towards yourself or your guildmates, but communication and coordination are skills and knowledge of the game has nothing to do with that. There is nothing stopping you from doing so other than the time spent aquiring the character skills. Duplicating a builds and comparing performance is an indication of skill of youself, your team, and your opponents. Build setups are also knowledge based, which has nothing to do with the application of the build, which is skill based. Creating builds could also be argued as a skill, but that does not neccacarially make the creater the best at using the build. Game programmers and designers are not always the best players who play the game.

I have split out the posts that were veering off topic in another thread. This seems to be a topic of interest so the discussion can continue here.

Phades I believe there's a misunderstanding. When I say "experience" I dont' mean Knowledge. I mean the kind of experience you get from playing world-class players in Smash Bros Melee. I know all the moves in Smash, but I will only get the skills required to play well by competing and learnign from the best as far as strategy.

You may be talking about "book knowledge" maybe, whereas I am talking about more like combat experience.

Yes there is a fundamental difference between Knowledge and Experience. Neither is strictly dependent upon the other however. You can be experienced in something while having very little knowledge of it... many government employees come to mind. Just because I manage to hold a job at a bank for 10 years does not automatically convey knowledge of that profession. Of course we assume it does, but we all know what assumptions can do to you.

At the same time experience is not required in order to obtain knowledge. Knowledge can be gained in a relatively short period of time. For example, I took 3 semesters to complete a teacher training course and now I am a full time teacher. I have the knowledge, but I certainly don't have the same level of experience that many of my colleagues do. Of course that won't stop them from sticking me with a student teacher next year.

So does knowledge equal skill in Guild Wars? I don't think you can make a direct connection on that level. I can study builds, read strategy guides, and look over maps of the levels in the Tombs. Does that give me knowledge on how to successfully reach and hold the Hall of Heroes? Not by itself. As a famous general once said, "No plan survives first contact with the enemy"... or if you prefer Mike Tyson, "Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth". So all your planning, reading, and studying is valuable... but it does not equal actual combat time spent in the Tombs fighting it out. Then you can translate that knowledge into SKILL by adapting, changing, and learning what actually wins battles.

Uh someone who is skillful is skillful...someone with lots of expereince doesnt mean he is skillful...no otherway to put it then that.

Yeah, that is probably the most simplified way of stating it. Skill is skill, experience is experience, and knowledge is knowledge, some of it is learned while others are more inherent to the individual. Child prodigies, while rare, exist and not everyone is on the same intellegence level. While the intellegence aspect would lead towards more strategy and problem solving skills, contributes to knowledge gain, and helps with reaction time with critical thinking. Intellegence doesnt replace reflex actions and time to identify something occuring and respond. Experience, while important, i would list under the the skills as it is just a reflection on learning how to apply the skills a person has to a specific situation.

I have never expect guild war to be "skilled" over time...

Everything require training... even in real life. There isn't a single baby born to kick anyone's ass.

All the FPS also required you to train/play alot to get to that level of skill.

One thing you need to realize is... this game does not rely on stat heavily... That was the whole point. In other MMORPG, the higher level = win, the more you grind = win, the more you farm = win... While those does not apply well in GW. Therefore, they got the right to say CORPG.

I know some people who /age has 1500 hours on them, and still can't play anything properly.

I know some people who /age has barely 300 hours, and is rank 8, knows how to play most classes effectively.

In that sense, skill =/= time spent., but in general, Skill ~ Time spent is a correct statement.

The more you play, the more you see people using different skills, the more you can adapt to the other team's build, and his own build.

Hacks > Everything.

hack still require time to actually understand the program

oh... and the dev probably got a big head start on that one.

I agree pretty much with the OP... But if anyone makes a thread titled this again I will surely vomit

There are limits to what people can do, hence why gauging aptitudes becomes relevant. The training time is still just gaining experience to know how to apply the skills inherent in the person. Also, alot of training time has more to do with direct dna properties of the individual controling muscle growth and memory. For example, i have a very hard putting on weight muscle or otherwise and the harder i train the more weight i lose. I do however gain strength and endurance in the endevor, but i will never become as strong as some other people through training, so i have to use speed and timing to gain an advantage instead of raw force. Things like this are why various sports have weight divisions, because not everyone can achieve the same state of being.

If you have played starsiege tribes series as much as i have, you would know that statement does not hold. There are people who know how to lead and there are people who do not know how, regardless of how long they play. There are also people who are really good at rabbiting (being fast and evasive), while others are not. This is also not dictated by time played exclusivly. There is a base level of play that came with that game through experience, but it was the individual player skills that they had before walking into the game that seperated the different player styles and sucess. The games in the series managed to be hard enough that it didnt take much to foul up even a veteren player just in use.
Naming of the genre aside, you still need certain "stats" in order to overcome another set of "stats". The game is not as "stat" dependant as other game, but it still falls to the character "stats" dictating the basic outcomes and interactions between characters. A player's skill is not going to wipe away 6 hexes stacked on an ally, convert hexes does.

Surely success is both a factor of inate skill and amount time played? Sorry if that is too obvious and observation, but it's surely also the truth.

It is the skills that seperate the experienced from the truly adept though.

Many can teach, but not everyone can do.

As a teacher myself, let me say that not everyone can teach either. It ain't as easy as it looks folks.

Yes.

@Phades: You say "it is the skills that separate the experienced from the truly adept."
Well, experience playing will improve your skills. It's true of almost anything that involves "developed skills." Martial arts, video games, music, etc. People improve at different speeds (some have so little talent that they barely improve at all) from practice, but they still do.

Experience, as I refer to it, is akin to Practice/Training. As you play GW, you learn new things about how best you can implement strategies, how you can handle certain builds, etc. It's not something you can read on Guru and immediately know how to do. It takes practice to be consistently successful.

You don’t gain the skills through training or practice. The skills were always there and things like people who try to instruct or give insight merely make the attempt to cause the person to become aware of the skill. Then there are some things you just can’t teach. Taught or practiced behavior is something that is gained through experience, but does not dictate the amount of skill possessed within the individual. The idea that experience overrides or dictates skill involved, would suggest that everyone is also inherently equally capable. Sadly in practice, this is not the case and even at the upper echelons of ability that are compared, there are still those that stand above the rest. Experience is not something that can be easily transferable in terms of skill, otherwise people would have merely found the formula to what causes an elite athlete, fighter, musician, or whatever to occur every time. What happens instead is that the instructors involved place everyone in the same situations and from the people involved the individuals with the appropriate skills rise above the rest. Experience will create proficiency over time though. The ability to become proficient is different than what I am trying to illustrate.

My previous statement regarding teaching was not worded perfectly. I was trying to illustrate that understanding something does not translate into the proper skill.

Blah, sorry im drifting too far into philosiphy now.

You are confusing the words "skill" and "talent." They are not the same; look up "skill" in a dictionary please ;_; this is totally not what we should be discussing.

Again you don't know what the word skill means -_-
Go to Google, type "define:skill" in the search bar. Then please concede the point.

Then it's a good thing I never said "experience overrides skill." I said it affected it, which you will be hardpressed to disprove, seeing as you now know the meaning of the word "skill" ~_^

I apologize if I am being condescending; I really don't mean to be. But please look the word up and you will see what meaning I am using and how you are MIS-using it. It's a misunderstanding, as I've said before.

This is getting pretty semantic, but it was never far off from that to start with.

Phades, I disagree with your given definition of "skill", though the ideas are generally sound.

From dictionary.com:

Skill: "Proficiency, facility, or dexterity that is acquired or developed through training or experience."

Different people have different skill levels, obviously (just like experience, knowledge, blah blah blah). For nearly everyone, you can increase your skill level through practice or experience. On a related note, you pretty much can't increase your skill without experience. You can increase your knowledge, perhaps, but some kind of experience is necessary to improve your skill. (It doesn't have to be directly related: If you spend time learning to become a touch typist and don't need to look at the keyboard anymore, that will likely increase your skill in Guild Wars.)

What can't be improved is talent. Talent is regarded as something innate, and you cannot actually gain talent (or talents). You can certainly discover that you have talents you didn't know about, and you can develop your talents (which is largely the same thing as practicing to increase your skill).

Clearly, just because two people have both played Guild Wars for a thousand hours doesn't mean they are of equal skill. But each of them almost surely possesses far greater skill than they did a thousand hours of playtime ago. One of them might still be far, far better than the other. This could be because of increased knowledge (studied Guru forums more), natural talent, or just because of related skills they've used before (one of them never played a computer game before, the other has won money in FPS contests as well as Magic tournaments).

Of course, not all experiences are the same. If you are never challenged, or are somehow hopelessly outmatched (and therefore die within five seconds), then there is little chance to learn. The quality of the experiences may differ greatly.

This is all greatly philosophical in general, but the whole concept of comparing Experience vs. Skill is just weird. If you increase your experience with something, you almost always increase your skills at the same time.

In general, having more experience or skill is likely to lead to greater success. So stop reading forums and go play Guild Wars!


EDIT: And, of course, Sciros largely beat me to the punch. =)

Yeah talent was the word i was reaching for and i began to realize the error in the previous post, but to backpeddle and edit previous posts would have been bad form. I was too focused on the reason for the end result in the differences between people versus the terminology used for praise to stop and think about it. Talent with expereince would lead to the description of being skillful as only experience leads towards average ability common to many. The time required to gain the experience would also fall to talent as well.

Still, trying to disprove webster would be difficult to impossible.

Heh, it got interesting while I was away o.o

Anyway... I think it is settle...

GuildWars is a game that require training and the talent to use those training to the fullest in order to succeed.

Actually... hmm... now that I give it a 2nd thought... that is a little off... Getting a good team and a bad team can almost be a luck of the draw... The right place, at the right time, with the right people... Initially... Later maybe you can form a community or something, but how would you ever get a good community going if you luck are that bad and you were never at the right place at the right time with the right people? This aspect of GW annoy me alot.

Using hacks, not writing hacks. (Using hacks = 1 minute learning, unless you're slow) I use Signet Hacks ftw, insanely insane.