Guild Wars 2

Does “Survival Of The Fittest”- Only The Strong Survive exists among the Classes?

Without the passing of genetics or permanent death, I would say no?

When you consider that “survival of the fittest” refers to the most successful reproduction among members of a species in a given environment I’d have to say “no” as well.

Minor point but survival of the fittest doesn’t really exist in evolution either. It’s more death of the least fit. You don’t have to be the best to pass on your genes, you just have to good enough to get by.

And considering no classes are being removed from this game, and they certainly can’t reproduce to create new, better ones I’d have to say no.

There is an emerging meta-game with favourite/flavour of the month builds and classes (for example before Christmas necros were widely regarded as too squishy, too broken and generally useless, by about February they were the must-have class for WvW).

But that’s more of a rotation with slight variation in builds over time than any kind of progression.

You also have to remember that ‘survival of the fittest’ is an incredibly vulgar and gross over simplification. In most circumstances, for example, it is the social that are ‘fittest’. c.f. Peter Kropotkin Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution for those interested.

As for whether it can be attributed to something in game it cant. The game is designed by falible humans as a form of entertainment. The professions are subject to slight change over time based on the desires of the devs.

Afaik survival of the fittest does not mean only the strong survive. It means those who adapt to their environment the best survive. In that sense it is very true for GW 2 but doesn`t really depend on the class but the player imo.

I imagine the OP isn’t talking about applied evolution, which is really survival of the lucky, but something else. I’ve heard it talked about in various places that Arenanet monitors how many of each class are made, in order to keep track of which classes may be overpowered and underpowered. For example, if they take a sample and find that 90% of tPVP is made up of Guardians and Mesmers, then that says that either those two are overpowered or the other six are underpowered.

I don’t know if what they’re doing works, though. The only thing I’ve heard about is A-net monitoring how many classes are made, and most players make a ton of alts anyway, so this doesn’t accurately gauge how much the players like or hate any particular class. Even then, there are a lot of die hards that would stay dedicated to a class as it delves further and further into inferiority, as well as players who mindlessly hop onto the FotM train, so I doubt it could ever be an accurate representation.

If you look at how many dagger/dagger elementalists there are now, then yes, natural selection exists in classes.

I`m one of the shrinking number of staff elementalists and we have become very specialist animals within a limited environment (wvw).

Still, given any further worsening in our habitat or abilities, we will die out.

Definitely. I barely see any necromancer running around these days. A lot of warriors, guardians, mesmers, eles and thieves. Some engineers here and there but few rangers and necromancers

“Survival Of The Fittest” and “Only The Strong Survive” are inscriptions in GW1.

Still no idea what the OP is about though.

This game does have a form of survival of the fittest. You can apply it to the professions, traits and weapons. Staff ele used to be numerous. Now they are rare and most are dagger/dagger. Engineers are moderately common in low levels but infrequent in high levels. Warriors, guardians and Mesmers have beaten out other professions in dungeons.