Guild Wars 2

I feel like these kinds of tutorials should be profession-specific to a degree. Guild Wars Factions did it great.

In factions, you were a student that had to learn the aspects of your chosen professions through actual teacher NPCs with them telling what is happening, what you should do to counter things, and also giving you the skill to counter that thing. Like mesmer students were given Empathy against a warrior trainer, or assassins were given an enchantment stripping attack against a protection monk trainer. All that was semi-wrong with it was the occasional break of the 4th wall.

Like-wise Necromancers in GW2 wouldnt need to learn about reflects because they dont have any skills that produce the effect. But they must learn the basics about fear. Elementalists wouldnt need to learn about poison and its healing reduction, but they should learn about fire fields.

Tying the tutorial and knowledge to such aspects of the game to professions would deepen the very lacking RPG aspect of the profession choice in the game (as today there is nothing different between the story of a mesmer and an engineer and an elementalist).

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

experience gain?

It’s quite interesting that you pick up on Experience Gain. You listed questions you’re always being asked. One I am always asked is “what’s the fastest way to level up?”. One week later, by the same person, I’ll be asked the same thing, then again after another week, and again, and again. Each time that player might have only increased 2 levels, or not at all. I’ve never considered GW2 to be a game that you need to rush to L80 for as conventional leveling through maps, story, and dynamic events is much more enjoyable than any other MMO I’ve played. As such, I’ve never cared what the fastest way to level up is – I’ve done whatever I enjoyed

On the subject of combo fields, can I propose that the clue is in the name? Is it just me that, during the betas, applied common sense here? Are so many players really lacking this? Combo implies you put something with it to make something happen. Once you, as a player, find out that a combo finisher exists – that’s all the clues you need right there to figure out the very basics, is it not? I know there’s an added complexity when you realise there are blasts, projectiles, whirls, etc, but people asking what a combo field is rather astounds me, even if they’ve only just picked up the game.

YouTube might also have a lot to answer for in all this. Need a build? No problem, there’s no need to think it through, just YouTube it and find someone who’s done the work for you. There’s no problem with this as such, if that player was to learn why it works. Too many, however, pick up a build, and assume they’ll be superawesomepro because they’ve seen someone else play it on YouTube.

This is a good post OP and highlights a lot of the flaws in the game as it stands now. I think that you tend to categorize people too much and pull a couple of percentages out of nowhere, but over all I agree with a lot of what you say.

The game does need to teach people how to play better. I spent a lot of time telling people why this isn’t quite like other MMOs.

The game needs more visibility particularly in big dangerous fights. You have to be able to see stuff to dodge it.

I think the game could benefit from a color blind mode as well, since many males in particular suffer from it (I think it’s more than 10%).

There are lots of things that need work. Anet has always been better at implementing cool stuff than explaining the cool stuff they implement. It’s often been an uphill battle to explain to people why you shouldn’t just use bows as a ranger, or pretty much any single weapon. There are always reasons to switch out weapons.

Just like there were always reasons to switch out major traits but many people didn’t do it.

The game has a lot of potential, but there are a few things holding it back. How it handles teaching new players is definitely one of them.

I was very much against enemy cast bars in the beginning for aesthetic reasons, but, now, I think adding them would alleviate many issues – and possibly bring interrupt playstyles closer to being viable in PVE.

As far as colorblind mode – as a colorblind player, I think this is something EVERY game developer should do day one. There are alot of us out there.

I’ve thought about that, too (cast bars) I was in a vast fight in Orr yesterday, & the idea of ‘watching for the tells’ is just laughable. I saw white streaks mixed with occasional purple & I don’t think I ever spotted the actual boss. Just – are my numbers showing up? Good! I must be hitting something! I really didn’t like the ‘idiot lights’ that show up saying stuff like ‘Oooh, he’s going to cast something really mean! Interrupt it!" But without something along those lines, I do not notice that he’s shifting his weight slightly to the left, because I can’t see him at all. (this was on my guardian, so I was close, which meant moving, dodging at the right time would be nice. On my thief, I try to get behind the boss, but in places like that – sure…)

One of the most entertaining and most informative threads I’ve seen on here in years. I agree with pretty much everything the OP has said.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

So, in response, I made a couple of video guides on youtube detailing how to go through each of the trials. You can still find them on youtube, what with their low presentation and somewhat clunky cuts between sections (I got better…). This encountered another problem: No one watched the videos. Sure, I got a few hundred views on each, but this was only a small portion of the population.

Tangential to this, we all know resources like Dulfy’s site are out there. And it’s a great tool, but some people want something different. They don’t want the hint guide, necessarily. Some people do want to figure it out on their own.
Worse, some people, instead of learning the mechanics to where they can explain it (or they simply get tired of doing so), just say “go to Dulfy/etc.” That involves going externally for the information, and builds resentment against the “jerkface elitist” who obviously doesn’t seem to care.
And that’s hurtful to the community. GW2 really should focus on putting facts and guides into the game where players can access them properly rather than depending on third-party sites and wikis.

Out of curiosity, where does the ? button fit into all this. I’m pretty sure it has at least some explanation of all the things that where said are missing as far as tutorials and information. It even has an achievement associated with it. I would think most people would actively go through it, if for no reason but to figure out why they haven’t filled it out yet. While in there, shouldn’t they then realize the answer to some of their questions are handled?

Personally I’m going to agree with Hannah and say, some people are just stupid. It’s a thing.

Kal Spiro.9745:

Out of curiosity, where does the ? button fit into all this. I’m pretty sure it has at least some explanation of all the things that where said are missing as far as tutorials and information. It even has an achievement associated with it. I would think most people would actively go through it, if for no reason but to figure out why they haven’t filled it out yet. While in there, shouldn’t they then realize the answer to some of their questions are handled?

Personally I’m going to agree with Hannah and say, some people are just stupid. It’s a thing.

To that regard I’m going to pose a question for you (and anyone else reading this).

You just get home from work and want to do something entertaining. You are presented with two options. Reading an encyclopedia or playing a game you really want to play. Which do you do?

If you are a gamer chances are you want to play that game. There’s a few games out there that suffered a lot from having “all the information in game” but they had it in such a way no one bothered to use that. The most notable one would be EVE, but then given what you normally did in EVE reading an encyclopedia could be deemed as more entertaining to a degree.

The point is if the information is presented to you in a more visual manner you get better results than if it is just written. The only time I ever go check my achievements (nearly 12.5k atm) is when some random achievement pops up and I missed what it said. Also for a very long time that “hints” tab was bugged and nearly useless.

I think the point would be to not make it like an encyclopedia but rather bake it into early game play. Perhaps a couple of the early heart events could have an NPC create a combo field and you would have to blast/whirl/leap/projectile finish it and/or have yourself create a field that an NPC would finish. Then another heart where you would have to clear conditions from certain area NPC’s or give them boons. Then maybe another where you would try on armor with different stats to do things to training dummies (e.g. apply condition dmg, number of critical hits, etc). I think if you can add some early events that explicitly force you to use core concepts you can learn a ton in the flow of the game and not feel like you are reading an encyclopedia.

This game has so much depth and complexity to it that it is legitimately hard to know everything (I have been playing for almost a year now and learn new things constantly). I think there is very little “people are stupid” going on out there and much more “this is a complex game”. Coming from non-MMO gaming to this as my first MMO I can tell you that there were and are so many things that seem so basic to people that have played a lot of games like this, but just aren’t intuitive to those who haven’t (I tried for weeks to solo the CM story because I thought story mode dungeons were just like the personal story). The whole idea of complimentary game play and how to truly integrate teamwork is fairly unique to the MMORPG world. I think hitting players with in game challenges that force some of these concepts would go a long way to making people understand the whats and whys much better and improve the player base.

Sarie.1630:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

experience gain?

It’s quite interesting that you pick up on Experience Gain. You listed questions you’re always being asked. One I am always asked is “what’s the fastest way to level up?”. One week later, by the same person, I’ll be asked the same thing, then again after another week, and again, and again. Each time that player might have only increased 2 levels, or not at all. I’ve never considered GW2 to be a game that you need to rush to L80 for as conventional leveling through maps, story, and dynamic events is much more enjoyable than any other MMO I’ve played. As such, I’ve never cared what the fastest way to level up is – I’ve done whatever I enjoyed

This reminds me of the n00b train days in RS. Of course, the question in that game was more of a “how do I gain money?” thing. The game has a thriving trade market where materials are gathered, bought, and sold en mass, but whenever I’d tell players to gather materials and sell them to other players, it just didn’t “click” with them. So, on a daily basis, I’d get asked “how do I make money!?”. The scary part was, that these guys would tell other people to just ask Blood, so I’d get random n00bs I never met asking me stupid questions, like how to win fights.

The defining feature of these players were their young age. Many of them were elementry school kids, and thus didn’t have a spirit of independence. So, they’d go in game and find the first person they latched on, and were too attention deficit to remember anything other than how to beg for money. It was a strange thing where, for some reason, people couldn’t pick up on the whole “kill cows for leather, sell leather” thing. I called it “n00b train” because they would use the follow command, and in one instance I had 3 people following behind me.

This is, in part, why I think a game manual isn’t a sufficient on its own. It is also one of the reasons why I think color coded combo fields are a good idea, enemies should utilize field combos starting at the mid 20s, and there should be instanced tutorial missions, probably part of the personal story or living story. The ideal situation would be that, as a player plays through the game, they would pick up on these not-so-subtle mechanics in the game, either by being shown through NPCs or by being subject to them via enemies. Then, when a player gets to later levels, the game mechanics aren’t so much an encyclopedia of knowledge they have to read up on, but second nature.

Anyway, the thing with experience gain in this game is that, while it is really easy to gain experience via crafting, gathering, exploration, dynamic events, etc, a lot of people come from a different gaming background. In this different background, killing the same 3 mobs for hours on end is the only way to level. These players need to actually be told that “Yeah, pretty much everything you do in game gives experience, especially exploration, so just go nuts”. Not only for better player retention, but also because if all of our teaching tools are scattered about the open world, then players need to actually see them to learn from them.

stachekiller.2591:

I think the point would be to not make it like an encyclopedia but rather bake it into early game play. Perhaps a couple of the early heart events could have an NPC create a combo field and you would have to blast/whirl/leap/projectile finish it and/or have yourself create a field that an NPC would finish. Then another heart where you would have to clear conditions from certain area NPC’s or give them boons. Then maybe another where you would try on armor with different stats to do things to training dummies (e.g. apply condition dmg, number of critical hits, etc). I think if you can add some early events that explicitly force you to use core concepts you can learn a ton in the flow of the game and not feel like you are reading an encyclopedia.

This game has so much depth and complexity to it that it is legitimately hard to know everything (I have been playing for almost a year now and learn new things constantly). I think there is very little “people are stupid” going on out there and much more “this is a complex game”. Coming from non-MMO gaming to this as my first MMO I can tell you that there were and are so many things that seem so basic to people that have played a lot of games like this, but just aren’t intuitive to those who haven’t (I tried for weeks to solo the CM story because I thought story mode dungeons were just like the personal story). The whole idea of complimentary game play and how to truly integrate teamwork is fairly unique to the MMORPG world. I think hitting players with in game challenges that force some of these concepts would go a long way to making people understand the whats and whys much better and improve the player base.

This is what I’ve been saying. Visual teaching is far and above easier to teach than reading teaching. I was talking about the encyclopedia thing because someone mentioned the in game hints thing. This is NOT a good method to teach complex mechanics.

As for the cleansing conditions, they had this very thing in GW1. Showing how you could do that, difference being you could target cast spells on things. We can’t do that here. All we have is splash spells.

The armor type thing you mentioned would be kinda tedious though. It would be easier to do this in a form of a “bundle” like ele conjured weapons. Mainly because at low levels you only have 1 stat type on armor. You start getting 2 stat at around 20 if I recall and 60 for 3 stat.

As someone pointed out earlier in this thread you don’t want a tutorial to “hold your hand” through the whole thing. That will just make the player annoyed and want to get through it as quick as possible and will potentially forget anything of value because they are to annoyed to care.

Calys Teneb.7015:

Guild Wars 2 is the only MMO I’ve ever played that didn’t have a tutorial. No, there’s a story intro stage that teaches players absolutely nothing but how to use 1, and that red circles are bad. From there, players are put into the wide open world, where we can do amazing things like learn about norn totems or help out on various farms with menial tasks. Players are left on their own, and if they aren’t theorycrafters like the top 5% of us, they aren’t going to know squat about how to play the game.

I stopped here because, no offense, it doesn’t sound like you’ve played many MMOs at all. Most of them are more or less the basics and then crowd sourcing knowledge. That’s intentional to push the social aspect. It’s been done since WoW and god help you if you didn’t know something in Everquest.

In EverQuest My FIRST MMO I learned the HARD way to NOT click the A key without the chat bar up if targetting an NPC.

EverQuest seemed to take a perverse pleasure in denying you basic knowledge, and expecting you to Look elsewhere… websites… other players, your Guild. And …

It worked. Back then we WERE more social. we also took a LOT Longer to hit level cap… remember Hell levels? XP Loss on death, Corpse runs…etc…

As I seee it One of the problems Not Just with Gw2, but with MMO’s in general… especially those without a devoted following is… the desire to cater to the casual player.

It leads to a dumbing down of content, and a simplifying of game mechanics.

I fear that as things are… The MMO’s of the future will have One class called “Hero” and 3 skills. " Punch" " Kick" and " Dodge".

phys.7689:

hannah mee.7925:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Players are left on their own, and if they aren’t theorycrafters like the top 5% of us, they aren’t going to know squat about how to play the game.

I stopped reading right here and I will not read further because this sentence alone makes me think the rest of the OP is going to be bad.

Amended statement:
Players are left on their own, and if they aren’t theorycrafters like the top 5% of us, they aren’t going to be as skilled as the top 5% of us.

This is going to blow…your…freakin…mind…

But the game’s easy. People don’t need to be “Top Ten” and theorycrafters to do the content because the content is that menial. Much like other games, the challenge comes from self-deprivation and personal goal setting. I’ve played a gratuitous amount of games (granted I’ve only touched three MMOs in my entire life, but I digress) and in every single game I can tell you there’s a challenge that emerges from personal handicaps.

What you think is “people knowing how to play the game” is, in fact, an outline of the learning curve – a phenomenon that exists far outside of just Guild Wars 2. As far as most of those examples go, they seem to just be shy of not understanding a certain boon or mechanic, which happens a lot when people are new or they are visually limited by stacking and having a narrow field of vision.

A classic example I’ve always used is the game of BioShock 2. I ran around in Free-for-All multiplayer mode with Slugger and often went 20:0. That didn’t mean I knew any more about the game than other players, it just meant I was better at Sluggering than them and I went further up the learning curve.

Against what some people like to believe, some people really can’t progress up the learning curve because they are incapable. It only seems to echo loudly throughout GW2 though…I guess because the forums on the website allow people to be a bit more vocal.

you should have read the rest, although it was long, i think it wasnt super boring.

Basically a lot of what he is saying is accurate.
yes the game is easy, and they had to set it this way because they didnt teach people how to play the game. Better they cruise through everything than they die repeatedly. But if they trained people how to play better, they would play better.

And its not all sluggering, there are somethings that are just knowledge based. Like how to do blast finishers.

Gw2 really suffers from lack of clarity, and a lot of this came after the game came out, they have messed with a great amount of numbers/aoes special properties, without adding any tells.

Basically everything he says is right, however correcting it would probably take them forever.

I would say the priority would be to create clear tells for whats going on.
They also (its too late now) should have probably used the low level trait system as a teaching tool.

oh wells.

When will we leave Open Beta then?

phys.7689:

Harper.4173:

I could have sworn I posted this before. Something must have gone wrong.

OP – what I believe is that you can’t really fix bad players because they won’t put in the time and effort to get good.
How do you fix the " it’s just a game man, doesn’t matter if I’m good or not, I play it for the lulz" mentality?

You are far underestimating the human ability. The key to what he is saying here, is many people just have no idea at all whats going on.
Is a combo feild really hard? no its not, however learning about a combo field, isnt something that would easily happen in game.
most finishers are hidden information, or have no tells
some fields have poor tells
much of what they do isnt clearly represented.

point is, you are right many people arent going to go out of their way to learn, thats why you teach them without making them go out of their way. Or you make it so that they must learn in order to succeed.
FFXI had like 2 million players? something like that, you couldnt get past like level 20 without learning how to play at a level that is higher than is required to play GW2 level 70 content. I will say that FFXI would probably now be placed in the hardcore game category, but i didnt think so at the time.

point is,
people would play at least somewhat better if the game was A) clearer oractually taught them game mechanics through play. Wildstar does a very good job of both. My guess is the same exact player will be much better at playing wildstar at cap than a GW2 player at cap.

I do agree with you. So I Post this….

Because Extra Credits is Epic at explaining stuff…

http://extra-credits.net/episodes/tutorials-101/

Lyralei.5920:

Conveyance is important.

Megaman did it so well that you didn’t need a tutorial level because the entire thing was integrated so well into the first level that you didn’t even know it was a tutorial.

Its something that’s sorely lacking in GW2 and sadly many other games today. It is not so much the knowledge that’s critical but rather the delivery of the knowledge that makes or breaks the game.

In the olden days of MMO’s it was called " Newbie island"

Right off this whole thing made me think of Dark Souls/ Dark Souls II, what people often consider a decently challenging game. Quite a lot harder, per enemy, than GW2, or most MMOs. What makes it so satisfying though is you know up front it’s going to be hard, and generally you can tell what you did wrong when you die. That also means you can work on getting better and its immensely satisfying when you do.

Its sort of the opposite of how GW2 is being described here. Hopefully the dev team spent all their time off playing Dark Souls 2. :P

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Sarie.1630:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

experience gain?

It’s quite interesting that you pick up on Experience Gain. You listed questions you’re always being asked. One I am always asked is “what’s the fastest way to level up?”. One week later, by the same person, I’ll be asked the same thing, then again after another week, and again, and again. Each time that player might have only increased 2 levels, or not at all. I’ve never considered GW2 to be a game that you need to rush to L80 for as conventional leveling through maps, story, and dynamic events is much more enjoyable than any other MMO I’ve played. As such, I’ve never cared what the fastest way to level up is – I’ve done whatever I enjoyed

This reminds me of the n00b train days in RS. Of course, the question in that game was more of a “how do I gain money?” thing. The game has a thriving trade market where materials are gathered, bought, and sold en mass, but whenever I’d tell players to gather materials and sell them to other players, it just didn’t “click” with them. So, on a daily basis, I’d get asked “how do I make money!?”. The scary part was, that these guys would tell other people to just ask Blood, so I’d get random n00bs I never met asking me stupid questions, like how to win fights.

The defining feature of these players were their young age. Many of them were elementry school kids, and thus didn’t have a spirit of independence. So, they’d go in game and find the first person they latched on, and were too attention deficit to remember anything other than how to beg for money. It was a strange thing where, for some reason, people couldn’t pick up on the whole “kill cows for leather, sell leather” thing. I called it “n00b train” because they would use the follow command, and in one instance I had 3 people following behind me.

This is, in part, why I think a game manual isn’t a sufficient on its own. It is also one of the reasons why I think color coded combo fields are a good idea, enemies should utilize field combos starting at the mid 20s, and there should be instanced tutorial missions, probably part of the personal story or living story. The ideal situation would be that, as a player plays through the game, they would pick up on these not-so-subtle mechanics in the game, either by being shown through NPCs or by being subject to them via enemies. Then, when a player gets to later levels, the game mechanics aren’t so much an encyclopedia of knowledge they have to read up on, but second nature.

Anyway, the thing with experience gain in this game is that, while it is really easy to gain experience via crafting, gathering, exploration, dynamic events, etc, a lot of people come from a different gaming background. In this different background, killing the same 3 mobs for hours on end is the only way to level. These players need to actually be told that “Yeah, pretty much everything you do in game gives experience, especially exploration, so just go nuts”. Not only for better player retention, but also because if all of our teaching tools are scattered about the open world, then players need to actually see them to learn from them.

I don’t agree with you. Learning is a long and tedious process. It is pointless to spoon fed people information if they unable to learn on their own. You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink. If they don’t actively apply what they know and seek out new knowledge to improve themselves, they will just remain stagnate.

I also do not agree with you if you think the responsibility of teaching players lies with the developers. Developers only need to teach them the basic, players need to explore the game on their own. I am not sure what their view on this, let see if we can see some of their comments on this.

Nerelith.7360:

Calys Teneb.7015:

Guild Wars 2 is the only MMO I’ve ever played that didn’t have a tutorial. No, there’s a story intro stage that teaches players absolutely nothing but how to use 1, and that red circles are bad. From there, players are put into the wide open world, where we can do amazing things like learn about norn totems or help out on various farms with menial tasks. Players are left on their own, and if they aren’t theorycrafters like the top 5% of us, they aren’t going to know squat about how to play the game.

I stopped here because, no offense, it doesn’t sound like you’ve played many MMOs at all. Most of them are more or less the basics and then crowd sourcing knowledge. That’s intentional to push the social aspect. It’s been done since WoW and god help you if you didn’t know something in Everquest.

In EverQuest My FIRST MMO I learned the HARD way to NOT click the A key without the chat bar up if targetting an NPC.

EverQuest seemed to take a perverse pleasure in denying you basic knowledge, and expecting you to Look elsewhere… websites… other players, your Guild. And …

It worked. Back then we WERE more social. we also took a LOT Longer to hit level cap… remember Hell levels? XP Loss on death, Corpse runs…etc…

As I seee it One of the problems Not Just with Gw2, but with MMO’s in general… especially those without a devoted following is… the desire to cater to the casual player.

It leads to a dumbing down of content, and a simplifying of game mechanics.

I fear that as things are… The MMO’s of the future will have One class called “Hero” and 3 skills. " Punch" " Kick" and " Dodge".

People now a day need their hands held till about 40. If they arent told what the walk key is they wont ever look in options for key binds. They wont even ask ingame. Check the forums. use google its there.
Reading? For cats. Learning from words is for the real nerds; we are the cool nerdshipsters.

And they wonder why games are so closed off and linear.

DonQuack.9025:

Nerelith.7360:

Calys Teneb.7015:

Guild Wars 2 is the only MMO I’ve ever played that didn’t have a tutorial. No, there’s a story intro stage that teaches players absolutely nothing but how to use 1, and that red circles are bad. From there, players are put into the wide open world, where we can do amazing things like learn about norn totems or help out on various farms with menial tasks. Players are left on their own, and if they aren’t theorycrafters like the top 5% of us, they aren’t going to know squat about how to play the game.

I stopped here because, no offense, it doesn’t sound like you’ve played many MMOs at all. Most of them are more or less the basics and then crowd sourcing knowledge. That’s intentional to push the social aspect. It’s been done since WoW and god help you if you didn’t know something in Everquest.

In EverQuest My FIRST MMO I learned the HARD way to NOT click the A key without the chat bar up if targetting an NPC.

EverQuest seemed to take a perverse pleasure in denying you basic knowledge, and expecting you to Look elsewhere… websites… other players, your Guild. And …

It worked. Back then we WERE more social. we also took a LOT Longer to hit level cap… remember Hell levels? XP Loss on death, Corpse runs…etc…

As I seee it One of the problems Not Just with Gw2, but with MMO’s in general… especially those without a devoted following is… the desire to cater to the casual player.

It leads to a dumbing down of content, and a simplifying of game mechanics.

I fear that as things are… The MMO’s of the future will have One class called “Hero” and 3 skills. " Punch" " Kick" and " Dodge".

People now a day need their hands held till about 40. If they arent told what the walk key is they wont ever look in options for key binds. They wont even ask ingame. Check the forums. use google its there.
Reading? For cats. Learning from words is for the real nerds; we are the cool nerdshipsters.

And they wonder why games are so closed off and linear.

people are getting too caught up in the learn it mentality, that simply is not the best way to learn anything. If your goal is to increase the general/knowledge or skill of a wide variety of people the best technique is education. Very few people would learn to read or write without education, and now many people learn, this allows the world to raise the level OF EVERYONE.

Even the people who dont particularly like reading or care about it know how to read, that allows us have things like forums, the internet, wikipedia, etc.

Point is, if people know the rules better, you can raise the level of the game. When everybodies minimal tool set is higher, you can get deeper content.

The other thing you are ignoring is clarity, there are some AOEs which dont match their animations, their are some cones that dont match up. Some enemy swings hit in areas that are not suggested. Some blast finishers say no where that they are blast finishers. Some projectiles say that they are proccing, but in fact are only proccing 20% of the time that the info appears on the screen. most attacks hit farther than the animations show.

Its not just about look and learn, its also about learning that you have very little actual cues for.

phys.7689:

Snip &…. Some blast finishers say no where that they are blast finishers. Some projectiles say that they are proccing, but in fact are only proccing 20% of the time that the info appears on the screen. most attacks hit farther than the animations show.

Odd on the proccing 20% of time ….. Clearly the game didnt tell us this. There must be a tutorial level where they give us all bows and we have to fire 5 times but only proc once then onscreen in large sparkling letters it will say PROJECTILE FINISHER!!! ONLY HAPPENS 20% of the TIME but only for this skill because this skill is different! Now lets practice proccing with all the different projectile abilities because we believe you are too stoopid to mouse over your abilities and put 1+1 together.
http://s4.postimg.org/gncn2531p/uwut.png
http://postimg.org/image/5cekrilk9/
http://postimg.org/image/637axanxl/
http://postimg.org/image/t5xtwgpex/

How much can you teach someone who cant be kitten d to mouse over a skill on their bar? Rather
How much more do you need to teach them? At that point youre also going to have to give a tutorial saying teaching how to open the Guild Menu how to open Options dont forget to show the shortcut keys for said things too.
Oddly enough when pressing some items in upper left dont show shortcut keys… There must be some poor legendary weapon holder with 32 lvl 80’s who clicks the icons because he doesnt know the shortcut keys. Game is utter crap at teaching now.

Also “All over the U.S.A. 30 million (14% of adults) are unable to perform simple and everyday literacy activities.”http://nces.ed.gov/naal/kf_demographics.asp

As a person who volunteers a lot. Unless you ask a person to read something to you. You arent going to find out if they can or can not read/read past a primary 2 level.

I do agree on them not saying what kind of finisher it is. They should put that as text when it pops up. Also they should remove that funny stuff around numbers that crit and put the words Critical Hit. I dont recall them ever teaching that or make a tutorial saying that.

This way I can sorta play The Typing of the Dead!

The Problem with Gw2 is… it asks so little of it’s players before level 80, and dungeions, that players feel NO need to learn anything other than….1…1…1…1..w..w..w…dodge….dodge.

Players need to be presented with Mobs that will Pound their skull in for that strategy IN the open world, by level 15 latest. By then they have full weapons Unlocked, and a few utility skills to use.

As long as people can faceroll Open world mobs… they will feel no reason to learn.

Water flows downstream and takes the path of least resistance. Most players are the same. If they do Not need to learn how to use combos…. they won’t.

The dev needs to make then NEED to learn more than auto-attack 1. The issue seems to be this would chase away the UNDEVOTED casuals.

Nerelith.7360:

As I seee it One of the problems Not Just with Gw2, but with MMO’s in general… especially those without a devoted following is… the desire to cater to the casual player.

It leads to a dumbing down of content, and a simplifying of game mechanics.

GW1 had “simplified” mechanics for an MMOG of its time and that’s part of what allowed it to actually throw interesting stuff at you. MMOGs that hide the relationships between elements and make you play Spreadsheet Wars to figure out what your stats actually do are just using obfuscation to create fake difficulty.

One thing I think you missed, which really can change how gamers play is:
“How is the player rewarded for learning the game?”

Woah, woah, there…I’m not talking about loot drops, i’m talking about rewarding the player in other ways for learning the game, or at least (when a tutorial is put in) for when a player succeeds in applying something from the tutorial beyond just damage dealing. (Getting a boon that lasts for a quarter of a second is hardly rewarding, and if boons aren’t explained properly, then it’s kind of pointless. This is where DPS is a big thing. The game in centralised around being offensive – in PvE at least)

Get into any fight, solely focus on damage = Gold award on dynamic events, get loot drops from champions, kill quicker.
Get into any fight and solely focus on support = Bronze on dynamic events, if you don’t tag the champion with enough damage you may not even get loot, kill slower.

In the end, really “learning to play the game”, becomes counteractive because they’ve set it up to be that way.

I agree with all you’ve said, but I think a lot more probing needs to be done on the implications of GW2’s “learning” system.

Saylu.8271:

I don’t agree with you. Learning is a long and tedious process. It is pointless to spoon fed people information if they unable to learn on their own. You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink. If they don’t actively apply what they know and seek out new knowledge to improve themselves, they will just remain stagnate.

I also do not agree with you if you think the responsibility of teaching players lies with the developers. Developers only need to teach them the basic, players need to explore the game on their own. I am not sure what their view on this, let see if we can see some of their comments on this.

Well, one of the points of making a topic like this is to get the devs attention. However I digress.

As part of my short stint in education, one of the classes I had to tutor the most was remedial math. The most interesting thing about my students was that they weren’t incapable of doing math. The hardest part of teaching fractions and order of operations was conveying the notions, or the idea of what was going on. They didn’t “get it” and once it clicked, suddenly fractions was second nature.

In contrast, the people who didn’t get it and attempt to memorize it had that nervous, lost, lack of confidence. They resolved to just memorize things, and I feel sorry for many of these people, because they would have to memorize everything up through chemistry, calculus, and advanced algebra. The biggest problem being that, no one could convey the concepts in a manner that they readily understood.

The point is, learning is only long and tedious if you don’t “get it”. There must be a certain level of understanding of what is expected, what the environment is, what the goal is, and most importantly what the tools mean. In the case of RS, these players didn’t understand economy, so they were stuck in a perpetual level of poverty. But, if they “get it”, suddenly the entire world opened up to them. Everything stops being memorization, and suddenly becomes exploration.

The players suddenly became enthusiastic, and gain far more knowledge than they ever could be taught by being eager and open. But, to get there, you need the first step. The “get it” step. Until then, the world is at best apathetic, and at worst hostile.

The vast majority of people can’t take this first step. With no direction to turn, no inspiration to drive them, no goal in sight, and not even an indication of an impending issue, people won’t take the first step. Because of this, someone has to be responsible for instructing the players on what to do. As much as I’d like to just make a high quality tutorial video mandatory viewing and accompany it with a quiz, the fact is that as a player I do not have these resources.

But Anet does. Because it is their game, they have the right, and the means, to program the instruction into the game. Currently, The game doesn’t even teach the basics. The most it does is give players a tooltip, then tells them to get creative with vague terms and no relative scales.

nethykins.7986:

One thing I think you missed, which really can change how gamers play is:
“How is the player rewarded for learning the game?”

Woah, woah, there…I’m not talking about loot drops, i’m talking about rewarding the player in other ways for learning the game, or at least (when a tutorial is put in) for when a player succeeds in applying something from the tutorial beyond just damage dealing. (Getting a boon that lasts for a quarter of a second is hardly rewarding, and if boons aren’t explained properly, then it’s kind of pointless. This is where DPS is a big thing. The game in centralised around being offensive – in PvE at least)

Get into any fight, solely focus on damage = Gold award on dynamic events, get loot drops from champions, kill quicker.
Get into any fight and solely focus on support = Bronze on dynamic events, if you don’t tag the champion with enough damage you may not even get loot, kill slower.

In the end, really “learning to play the game”, becomes counteractive because they’ve set it up to be that way.

I agree with all you’ve said, but I think a lot more probing needs to be done on the implications of GW2’s “learning” system.

Now I feel like a moron, because I forgot that there is a carrot on the end of that stick. You are totally right here.

As far as I can tell, in GW2 there is two forms of “reward” for the players. The rewards are as follows:

#1: Success. Not merely loot, but the essence of accomplishment. Currently, this is extremely lax, since many activities in the game are designed to allow any composition of any gear and clkittenout, so success can be quite easy.
#2: Loot. This is the reward for an activity. Gold/karma/drops/tokens, these work as little pellets for players to om nom up.

Now, the current way GW2 works, greater skill encourages greater rewards in both of these factors, however there is an issue. The greater rewards in these factors are a bit abstract. For #1, players usually impose new challenges on themselves, like soloing content, or speed running content, or beating content with novelty setup. For #2, more skillful players do receive more rewards, but only because they can complete more content in the same amount of time. This is abstract, in that “capable of doing more stuff” doesn’t immediately seem like greater reward, but mathematically it works out that way.

This may be one of those issues that is dependent on other MMOs. Some MMOs have raid content on weekly or monthly resets. So, the prospect of “faster = doing more = rewards for more” is completely lost. As long as the raid is done once a week, there’s no rush to do it 10 minutes faster.

In many games, the “skill” is synonymous with getting higher tiered gear, and sometimes content is gated behind having this gear. Growth in skill becomes about growth in gear, so many players will assume that having open content means that they have all the skill they’ll need, even if it is just hanging back, pressing 1.

Incentives is a complex topic, especially since it delves into the “chicken vs. egg” territory. You can say that the reason why we don’t have challenging content is because players aren’t informed, but you can also say that the reason why we don’t have informed players is because content is easy, or not properly rewarding. I favor the former, since just making stuff harder won’t change player expectations and difficulty dissonance and the disconnect between GW2’s game design vs. other MMOs. A hard part of changing incentives is doing it “The GW2 Way” as the devs have said before. Sure, the devs can make tiered gear requiring beating difficult content for exponentially growing statistical advantage, or the devs can make content locked behind specific challenges and achievements that further gates more achievements, but this would just tick off players and ruin GW2’s identity.

But I can’t say that changing how some incentives work is a bad thing, either. I’m totally for dungeon gambits.

DonQuack.9025:

phys.7689:

Snip &…. Some blast finishers say no where that they are blast finishers. Some projectiles say that they are proccing, but in fact are only proccing 20% of the time that the info appears on the screen. most attacks hit farther than the animations show.

Odd on the proccing 20% of time ….. Clearly the game didnt tell us this. There must be a tutorial level where they give us all bows and we have to fire 5 times but only proc once then onscreen in large sparkling letters it will say PROJECTILE FINISHER!!! ONLY HAPPENS 20% of the TIME but only for this skill because this skill is different! Now lets practice proccing with all the different projectile abilities because we believe you are too stoopid to mouse over your abilities and put 1+1 together.
http://s4.postimg.org/gncn2531p/uwut.png
http://postimg.org/image/5cekrilk9/
http://postimg.org/image/637axanxl/
http://postimg.org/image/t5xtwgpex/

How much can you teach someone who cant be kitten d to mouse over a skill on their bar? Rather
How much more do you need to teach them? At that point youre also going to have to give a tutorial saying teaching how to open the Guild Menu how to open Options dont forget to show the shortcut keys for said things too.
Oddly enough when pressing some items in upper left dont show shortcut keys… There must be some poor legendary weapon holder with 32 lvl 80’s who clicks the icons because he doesnt know the shortcut keys. Game is utter crap at teaching now.

Also “All over the U.S.A. 30 million (14% of adults) are unable to perform simple and everyday literacy activities.”http://nces.ed.gov/naal/kf_demographics.asp

As a person who volunteers a lot. Unless you ask a person to read something to you. You arent going to find out if they can or can not read/read past a primary 2 level.

---

I do agree on them not saying what kind of finisher it is. They should put that as text when it pops up. Also they should remove that funny stuff around numbers that crit and put the words Critical Hit. I dont recall them ever teaching that or make a tutorial saying that.

This way I can sorta play The Typing of the Dead!

what exactly do you gain by keeping people ignorant? I mean really other than you getting to insult them and tell them to l2p when they fail marrionette, and die on grenth. What would you lose by actually getting a greater % of players to know the game basics?

You seem to be adamantly for people not being taught anything, but there really is no gain for that.

DiazKincade.2891:

Kal Spiro.9745:

Out of curiosity, where does the ? button fit into all this. I’m pretty sure it has at least some explanation of all the things that where said are missing as far as tutorials and information. It even has an achievement associated with it. I would think most people would actively go through it, if for no reason but to figure out why they haven’t filled it out yet. While in there, shouldn’t they then realize the answer to some of their questions are handled?

Personally I’m going to agree with Hannah and say, some people are just stupid. It’s a thing.

To that regard I’m going to pose a question for you (and anyone else reading this).

You just get home from work and want to do something entertaining. You are presented with two options. Reading an encyclopedia or playing a game you really want to play. Which do you do?

If you are a gamer chances are you want to play that game. There’s a few games out there that suffered a lot from having “all the information in game” but they had it in such a way no one bothered to use that. The most notable one would be EVE, but then given what you normally did in EVE reading an encyclopedia could be deemed as more entertaining to a degree.

The point is if the information is presented to you in a more visual manner you get better results than if it is just written. The only time I ever go check my achievements (nearly 12.5k atm) is when some random achievement pops up and I missed what it said. Also for a very long time that “hints” tab was bugged and nearly useless.

I’m not going to read an encyclopedia. But this is also a terrible analogy, because the help menu for GW2 is nothing like an encyclopedia.

What I will do, if I’m playing a game and don’t know how to do something, is go check out any help menus it has. Because when I don’t know how a game works, I find them to be informative. I do this all the time. I just did it yesterday in a completely separate game because I got stuck and couldn’t figure out how to make something I needed to happen to happen.

Now, I’m not saying that the hints tab is great, nor necessarily super informative, but there is information there that would fall under tutorial in other games.

Rukh.9287:

Right off this whole thing made me think of Dark Souls/ Dark Souls II, what people often consider a decently challenging game. Quite a lot harder, per enemy, than GW2, or most MMOs. What makes it so satisfying though is you know up front it’s going to be hard, and generally you can tell what you did wrong when you die. That also means you can work on getting better and its immensely satisfying when you do.

Its sort of the opposite of how GW2 is being described here. Hopefully the dev team spent all their time off playing Dark Souls 2. :P

Dark Souls has good conveyance in that matter. I do think about this a lot, and I think Dark Souls can afford to be harsher because it is more straightforward.

I remember playing it myself, for the first time. After the basic tutorial teaching controls, everything was pretty simple from there. Figuring out parry times was a real pain, but most of the learning that had to be done in the game was based around learning how your weapon moved, and learning how enemies moved. Extra credits would describe this system as simple, but deep. It could be reduced to “don’t get hit, hit it until it dies”, and the variety of ranges, windups, aftercasts, momentum, and endurance management meant that there was a million ways to “don’t get hit, hit it until it dies”.

But it was essentially one concept. The most complicated thing was the poise/encumbrance mechanics. GW2, however, has equations and inter-class mechanics, along with more cluttered and faster paced combat. There are a lot more unique forms of support, and more styles of play.

GW2 is lacking in the feedback or “conveyance” department. I think one of the reasons is the UI.

By design, we only get so many skills, locked to weapon type, and also locked to a specific slots on the action bar.

I would more readily “know” my active skills a lot better if I could arrange them myself according to their purpose and use.

Yes, I do know what my abilities are, but they aren’t organized in a manner I would choose. And, yes, I use key binds but the placement of UI buttons do matter and help complete the feedback loop.

This is a subtle thing but the generic treatment of the UI in regards to abilities removes but one more facet of player familiarity with their abilities.

Kuldebar.1897:

GW2 is lacking in the feedback or “conveyance” department. I think one of the reasons is the UI.

By design, we only get so many skills, locked to weapon type, and also locked to a specific slots on the action bar.

I would more readily “know” my active skills a lot better if I could arrange them myself according to their purpose and use.

Yes, I do know what my abilities are, but they aren’t organized in a manner I would choose. And, yes, I use key binds but the placement of UI buttons do matter and help complete the feedback loop.

This is a subtle thing but the generic treatment of the UI in regards to abilities removes but one more facet of player familiarity with their abilities.

I know how you feel. I tend to put my Most often used attacks, and attacks that lack any special abilities to the left. And heals etc to the right. I would Put the elite sklill on the 1-5 area… unless it is a Pure utility, and leave the basic self heal on the #10.

it is how My mind works, and How i have always played.

N0ot being able to decide what goes in skills #1-#5 without learning to macro just… grrrrrr…. but that’s just a pet peeve.

ASP.8093:

Nerelith.7360:

As I seee it One of the problems Not Just with Gw2, but with MMO’s in general… especially those without a devoted following is… the desire to cater to the casual player.

It leads to a dumbing down of content, and a simplifying of game mechanics.

GW1 had “simplified” mechanics for an MMOG of its time and that’s part of what allowed it to actually throw interesting stuff at you. MMOGs that hide the relationships between elements and make you play Spreadsheet Wars to figure out what your stats actually do are just using obfuscation to create fake difficulty.

Whether it was simple can be debated, since it had hundreds of interchangeable skills, that were modified by player controlled traits. all without even looking at the effects of player purchased runes On armor.

So if that was simpler than games of it’;s time it was a lot more complex than gw2.

That says something.

Add sub-classes to the mix, and elite captures.. etc, and you are beginning to have a " simple ( according to you) game…with a LOT of depth."

The problem is…Gw2 lacks this depth as well.

And every time I ask why… the Gw2 fanboiz all repeat… " The devs looked into it, and dropped it because…. it would be hard."

Why have proper tutorials when u can have a cash shop?

………priorities

/sarcasmoff

Just a few thoughts from me. I think many posts in this thread focus to much on a theoretical learning. I personally think that it is way more important to teach people strategies how to solve problems. To exagerate it a bit: you dont need to know what a combo is, you have to know how to produce one and which is important in which situation.

That way learning should teach people how to do things how it is usefull and why it is good to use it. It should teach strategies. by encouraging someone to experiment with that strategy. But more important from that point on you should have to use that strategy from time to time to memorize it until it becomes a part of your problemsolving tools. And if this strategy is successfull it feels rewarding because it helps you to solve problems. Good tutorials shouldn’t funnel people into one way of gameplay but they should provide them a variety of tools to cope with the gameplay world.

I think tons of written tutorials don’t help to improve, even though they should be somewhere as a knowledge base.

Pirlipat.2479:

Just a few thoughts from me. I think many posts in this thread focus to much on a theoretical learning. I personally think that it is way more important to teach people strategies how to solve problems. To exagerate it a bit: you dont need to know what a combo is, you have to know how to produce one and which is important in which situation.

That way learning should teach people how to do things how it is usefull and why it is good to use it. It should teach strategies. by encouraging someone to experiment with that strategy. But more important from that point on you should have to use that strategy from time to time to memorize it until it becomes a part of your problemsolving tools. And if this strategy is successfull it feels rewarding because it helps you to solve problems. Good tutorials shouldn’t funnel people into one way of gameplay but they should provide them a variety of tools to cope with the gameplay world.

I think tons of written tutorials don’t help to improve, even though they should be somewhere as a knowledge base.

I don’t Like help files. I believe that one should never " tell, but show." And that is what a tutorial is for.

Another issue, is, I played from 1 – 80 On a few of My Professions, and I never felt I NEEDED to use a combo or the mob or mobs would not be handled. I happened to know about CVombos because i knew they would be in game before I played it. Nothing in the game outside of Looking at the skill, and seeing " Combo:Field" or " Combo:Finisher " told me anything about it.

I went and found a website that explained How the different fields and finishers Interacted.

So you have a situation where NO player NEEDS to know about this, to get to 80, or handle any content on their way to 80.

and even if they needed it, NOTHING in the game explains it…or suggests anything about it.

I Just do Not understand how this is not seen as a failure in the game. Maybe it’s theGw2 brand? I Know if some No name generic MMO tried this, it would be panned all over for it’s " Lousy tutorial system" and " lazy developers".

I rather tried to counter arguments like “When I come home from work I don’t want to read an enzyclopaedia about the game.” I think not many people want to read difficult manuals about a game (ofc there are always a few, who know every theoretical aspect), but that’s not only way things can be taught. Learning stuff can be fun if things are taught in an entertaining satisfying way.

Nerelith.7360:

I do agree with you. So I Post this….

Because Extra Credits is Epic at explaining stuff…

http://extra-credits.net/episodes/tutorials-101/

Interestingly enough they mentioned that episode in the current one about fighting games.

Kal Spiro.9745:

DiazKincade.2891:

Kal Spiro.9745:

Out of curiosity, where does the ? button fit into all this. I’m pretty sure it has at least some explanation of all the things that where said are missing as far as tutorials and information. It even has an achievement associated with it. I would think most people would actively go through it, if for no reason but to figure out why they haven’t filled it out yet. While in there, shouldn’t they then realize the answer to some of their questions are handled?

Personally I’m going to agree with Hannah and say, some people are just stupid. It’s a thing.

To that regard I’m going to pose a question for you (and anyone else reading this).

You just get home from work and want to do something entertaining. You are presented with two options. Reading an encyclopedia or playing a game you really want to play. Which do you do?

If you are a gamer chances are you want to play that game. There’s a few games out there that suffered a lot from having “all the information in game” but they had it in such a way no one bothered to use that. The most notable one would be EVE, but then given what you normally did in EVE reading an encyclopedia could be deemed as more entertaining to a degree.

The point is if the information is presented to you in a more visual manner you get better results than if it is just written. The only time I ever go check my achievements (nearly 12.5k atm) is when some random achievement pops up and I missed what it said. Also for a very long time that “hints” tab was bugged and nearly useless.

I’m not going to read an encyclopedia. But this is also a terrible analogy, because the help menu for GW2 is nothing like an encyclopedia.

What I will do, if I’m playing a game and don’t know how to do something, is go check out any help menus it has. Because when I don’t know how a game works, I find them to be informative. I do this all the time. I just did it yesterday in a completely separate game because I got stuck and couldn’t figure out how to make something I needed to happen to happen.

Now, I’m not saying that the hints tab is great, nor necessarily super informative, but there is information there that would fall under tutorial in other games.

Just thought I’d point out the fact that the Hints tab is horrible in the information being portrayed. This is what NOT to do with complex mechanics. (See 1st Picture) Read the combo’s portion. Does that tell you anything about combos aside from “Hey you can do this by yourself or with friends!”? It doesn’t tell you what or why you should combo. There is so little information being stated in the hints tab I’m surprised people still bring it up. It is bad. It is very very bad. Stop bringing it up.

On top of that my analogy is perfectly fine. No one wants to read an encyclopedia when the information can be effectively portrayed to the player through visual aids. If you don’t believe me take a look at the second pic from GW1. How many people knew what “in the area” meant? This gives a fairly exact model of the ranges that were available for skills in GW1. This explained so much more than a wall of text ever could have. That line “A picture is worth a thousand words” is exactly what this diagram represented. Something as simple as this training ground would go a long way to helping players understand the mechanics of the game. There is a simplified variation in PVP but that area is not always where pve players are going to be going. It also misses several key elements such as combo fields and finishers. Most of the training grounds are just dps test dummies (which are limited to the pvp stat types and sigil/rune sets). The npc class test dummies are also relatively generic and don’t teach you much about the classes that are available. On top of that not everyone who goes there even knows about the different things in that area. If they were to break the testing grounds away from the PVP lobby and make it a separate thing, or even just clone that and make it available from a pve location that would help people find the information without having to leave the game and search for “outside” help.

As nice as the testing aspect of the pvp “realm” is its horribly inaccurate for pve stats and effect tracking. If they were to allow a testing like element similar to pvp (something only available in that area) it would also help players understand the different types of gear and what roles they can potentially play.

@Diaz:

What’s worse about the in-game ‘hints’ is that you have to unlock the sections.
So if you started this game out fresh, you’d have no understanding of any of the more complex actions until you do it first, THEN it appears in your help, and when it does it’s extremely vague.

So yeah…that’s completely backwards.

That GW1 test area was so good (comparatively, at least).

In addition to the range-tester thing there were DPS dummies and NPCs with example builds themed around a particular strategy (as opposed to just a class), including stunlock, condition overload, and even a guy who just runs away from your compulsively. Not a substitute for PvP testing, of course, but it was a pretty good way to get a basic idea of the strengths and weaknesses of your particular build.

same go for living story too. In the first hours when marionete was on, no one knew what to do or even how to start the event? Many question where that hour: We need to start it? it starts by default? Are we in the right place? mabye is bugged. mabye it starts the next patch and now is just the map.

wrum too. on my server they start to do every event possibile in that map just in case. Some one read that they need to escort “something”. I dont think any events on that map where so heavy escorted since game launch

In some boss stacking instances where I don’t need to move or dodge, I hide that sparkling firework blur with my inventory or hero tab, and I look only on nameplates and cleanse conditions or support in other ways… and of course spam DPS skills rotation.

Those shiny effects are really annoying. Can’t we turn them off, ANet? Please please :o)

phys.7689:

DonQuack.9025:

snip

what exactly do you gain by keeping people ignorant? I mean really other than you getting to insult them and tell them to l2p when they fail marrionette, and die on grenth. What would you lose by actually getting a greater % of players to know the game basics?

You seem to be adamantly for people not being taught anything, but there really is no gain for that.

Its less about l2p and more l2r. r being read. its something I want to scream at the top of my lungs as I walk to the subway and back. I guess Im stuck in my ways.

I guess its how I was raised? Never really watched tv as a child it was reading and more reading. I would read textbooks months before I actually started class.
As an "adult’ I dont own a tv. I have 2 bookshelves full and a maxed out gen 1+2 kindle(none of that video Fire crap)

I dont know. Maybe I feel its better they complain when they fail and they dont have something holding their hands rather than having something hold their hands and still complaining.

Case in point bf4. My first BF since 2. my first games I was utterly dominated. Im talking 2-40 12-50. I backed out. I found symthic. I spent an evening between gw2 and reading symthic. I learned. Watched levelcap- learned he was somewhat fos stopped watching him. Ingame I found the good squads and joined them. Watched what they did. Emulated. and now I can say I am somewhat good atleast better than the average bf player. I am consistently called a hacker, attempted bans/kicks are atleast once daily tried against me. Did I mention I play laying down on a bed with my cheap satin sheet as my mouse pad?

Conversely my friend he only plays when he is “blazed”.(supposedly) He is generally quite horrible at the game. Thankfully it is bf4 multi-player there-for he can call hacks or bf4 net-code “aka every bad players convenient excuse”. He can be very good but he doesnt want to. I tell him things. Give advice. Generally ignored. I get upset trying to educate a person that doesnt truly want to. He wants to hop ingame press W left click a few times and hopefully kill people.
——-
About 4 weeks ago I was put on a small team to train new hires in our policies and such. A young woman complained to TL that I didnt give her the same attention that I gave the others. I was confronted and I said " Sit in during class and watch".

I asked everyone a basic questions. Hospital wide policy questions that everyone without question should atleast have the basic gist of if not be able to repeat it verbatim. She was the only one who didnt know it. ANY of it.
Mind you all new hires get a folder with that written down and are told to know it. But that is not what I was teaching I was teaching R&R for L&D.
TL understood me fully. I know I didnt see said young woman since then. I can only presume she was fired.

I forget my point. Or rather the point is in my head and I dont really deem it important enough try and figure out my thoughts on this so I can properly put it down.

tldr crap players with no desire to learn will always be crap players so why cater to them in the blind hope they will somehow be somewhat better?

DonQuack.9025:

phys.7689:

DonQuack.9025:

snip

what exactly do you gain by keeping people ignorant? I mean really other than you getting to insult them and tell them to l2p when they fail marrionette, and die on grenth. What would you lose by actually getting a greater % of players to know the game basics?

You seem to be adamantly for people not being taught anything, but there really is no gain for that.

Its less about l2p and more l2r. r being read. its something I want to scream at the top of my lungs as I walk to the subway and back. I guess Im stuck in my ways.

I guess its how I was raised? Never really watched tv as a child it was reading and more reading. I would read textbooks months before I actually started class.
As an "adult’ I dont own a tv. I have 2 bookshelves full and a maxed out gen 1+2 kindle(none of that video Fire crap)

I dont know. Maybe I feel its better they complain when they fail and they dont have something holding their hands rather than having something hold their hands and still complaining.

Case in point bf4. My first BF since 2. my first games I was utterly dominated. Im talking 2-40 12-50. I backed out. I found symthic. I spent an evening between gw2 and reading symthic. I learned. Watched levelcap- learned he was somewhat fos stopped watching him. Ingame I found the good squads and joined them. Watched what they did. Emulated. and now I can say I am somewhat good atleast better than the average bf player. I am consistently called a hacker, attempted bans/kicks are atleast once daily tried against me. Did I mention I play laying down on a bed with my cheap satin sheet as my mouse pad?

Conversely my friend he only plays when he is “blazed”.(supposedly) He is generally quite horrible at the game. Thankfully it is bf4 multi-player there-for he can call hacks or bf4 net-code “aka every bad players convenient excuse”. He can be very good but he doesnt want to. I tell him things. Give advice. Generally ignored. I get upset trying to educate a person that doesnt truly want to. He wants to hop ingame press W left click a few times and hopefully kill people.
——-
About 4 weeks ago I was put on a small team to train new hires in our policies and such. A young woman complained to TL that I didnt give her the same attention that I gave the others. I was confronted and I said " Sit in during class and watch".

I asked everyone a basic questions. Hospital wide policy questions that everyone without question should atleast have the basic gist of if not be able to repeat it verbatim. She was the only one who didnt know it. ANY of it.
Mind you all new hires get a folder with that written down and are told to know it. But that is not what I was teaching I was teaching R&R for L&D.
TL understood me fully. I know I didnt see said young woman since then. I can only presume she was fired.

I forget my point. Or rather the point is in my head and I dont really deem it important enough try and figure out my thoughts on this so I can properly put it down.

tldr crap players with no desire to learn will always be crap players so why cater to them in the blind hope they will somehow be somewhat better?

you read, you analyze, your brain has a certain optimal way of proccessing, and intellectual curiosity. But not everyone works the same way. There are different ways that different people learn more easily. The number of people who are incapable of learning/improving is lower than you think.

Yea I think Im just mean or insensitive as the head nurse once called me.
I think everyone is capable but Im not sure it worth it. or rather I am not presumptuous* enough to assume that it will have the desired outcome.

• a bit condescending sounding but cant think of a better word right now

If one doesnt have intellectual curiosity can one learn?

I posted a link but post was deleted because I insulted someone (supposedly). iirc it said 14% of adult Americans were functionally illiterate. … I would continue but this thread bores me. Gemini LIFE That and I really should be doing my charts right now

Read the OPs (and some responses) and I have to agree with the OP. I’ve been playing since beta, and it’s hard to go back and figure out where/how I learned all that I now know about GW2. I’ve been reading the forums, watching gameplay videos, researching the wiki, and rolling alts since day 1. Actually, before day 1 since I too was watching all the Yogscast stuff in anticipation.

My best friend started playing the game a couple months ago and it’s becoming more obvious to me just how little the game explains things to new players. He’s asked me questions that make my head spin. Things like what combo fields/finishers are. I think to myself that by level 30 you should certainly know that. but then I realize that he should but won’t because nothing tells him. Nothing tells him about event scaling, the TP and economy, gear stat importance, class roles, condition caps/stacking, and damage avoidance. He asked me what dodging is at level 25!!

The game doesn’t need to be dumbed down by pushing traits back. It needs a better tutorial to at least explain things like dodge and stun breaks and cleanses and how conditions work and ya know, combat.

FFS!!!!!! I knew I called it out! I did say dodging would be next! I DID I DID I DID

Im also going to predicting pressing W to walk forward. someone made it to 80 only using the mouse to move and click skills.

Ok now charts

DonQuack.9025:

Conversely my friend he only plays when he is “blazed”.(supposedly) He is generally quite horrible at the game. Thankfully it is bf4 multi-player there-for he can call hacks or bf4 net-code “aka every bad players convenient excuse”. He can be very good but he doesnt want to. I tell him things. Give advice. Generally ignored. I get upset trying to educate a person that doesnt truly want to. He wants to hop ingame press W left click a few times and hopefully kill people.

That itself is fine, no? If he complains it can get annoying but just wanting to play a game how he wants is fine.

maybe he is an absolute expert on other games he deems more worthy of caring about?

I know some mechanics of GW2 but I couldn’t be bothered to learn everything inside out, the game doesn’t offer me enough if I do so, quite simple.

What I can do, is quickly ask a friend what I should bring for a dungeon and why.

I would agree with you though, in another game.

//edit
You can learn without that curiosity but it’s going to be slower. I left out intellectual on purpose because it sounds like it is an indication for intelligence, learning an arbitrary combat system behind a game…

Most people start learning things when they either are interested in it or are forced to do so, since games aren’t mandatory to begin with what is left is the interest in a game, if that isn’t present either you don’t_want_to learn.

Michael Walker.8150:

snip

Ofc I have no problem with him playing like that. Its the complaints about other players, the hackusations, his own anger. the rage quits, the game, the netcode.

Its strange to me. If I fail the fault ultimately lies on myself and my inadequacies So I tend to keep my mouth shut. If he fails its points above and such.

To teach someone who doesnt want to learn wont you need to force them?
F charts! Lies I do at same time. So Protessional!

A picture is worth a thousand words.

Right now the game requires reading to learn. This has several problems that I can see.

One is that not all people can read. There are large numbers of functionally illiterate people out there. However if they plunked down the money for the game then they are entitled to the same care and consideration as the fluent readers. Which means a method of teaching that isn’t reading base.

Intellectual incuriosity. A person can be intellectually incurious and yet still learn if the game teaches as you play, the same way thay people will learn that fire is hot without looking it up. Life taught them this without requiring them to research it.

Different brains are wired differently. Some people learn easily through reading while others require a hands on approach to learning. These people can be intellectually curious and look it up yet not have the information sink in until they do it themselves.

Many people “just want to play, not do research”. There is no reason that the game should fail to teach them. The designers should be well aware that this is a subset of their players.

Lack of understanding that there is even something to look up. Or not knowing where to look it up.

Truly, to learn how to play a game, at least the basic information should be taught in game. If there are people who get to level 80 and ask then what a combo field is, then the game is relying to much on outside research.