Guild Wars 2

Hi Anet,

The current player skill level of your game has been declining for some time, and this is making it less fun to play as a veteran player. It is more and more difficult on NA servers to find players who know their class, their blasts, movement skills, and positioning. I am not sure if the decision to move in the direction that you did for the HoT expansion has positively affected your bottom line and business, but from an experienced player’s perspective, it has made the game less interesting. I still have fun playing GW2 at the moment, but it might help your veteran player retention levels if there was more daily repeatable content created in the style of pre-HoT dungeon speed running. Possibly in fractals since you ended your dungeon team.

This is not the first time this topic has been brought up. I just still see the continuing decline in skill of the player base in these areas and the lack of interest in GW2 from other veteran players on my friend’s list who don’t play anymore. It would be good if there was new content where players could learn these skills that make GW2 more interesting and fun to play.

Thanks for the work you all put into GW2.

Then tie the design/balance decisions most of the better players left the game, most notably the majority of the ESL players.

The Player base is getting jaded and it’s most notable in the PvP and WvW gamemodes

Teach new players then.

I taught a new thief/player about leap stealth finishers not more than an hour ago. See a problem solve a problem.

saerni.2584:

Teach new players then.

I taught a new thief/player about leap stealth finishers not more than an hour ago. See a problem solve a problem.

Hi, I think you meant that as a question. Yes we do teach players that join our groups and I am glad to hear you do too.

As stated above, its largely due to decline of PVP and WVW. In those game modes there is a wide plethora of builds, abilities and combos being explored in various different ways (especially in WVW due to its diversity from different guild metas to group size vs group size and terrain).

PVE is indeed lackluster, only things that matter is might stacking with occasional prot and occasional single cleanse and occasional heal.

I have literally met warriors and guardians that didn’t know what stability and a stunbreaker is and why they can’t run past trash mobs in fractals / dungeons like other people do. That’s how bad it is.

The raids were supposed to help the game in this aspect and diversify the meta builds, but so far its just not even close enough to have an overall impact on this aspect of things.

I would also like things to change, but not holding my breath for it.

Nerf elite specs then. One of the reasons that people who primarily play PvE aren’t learning their class is because they don’t have to. Elite specs will carry them hard, because those traitline do everything.

Nerf elite spec lines, and people will no longer be able to rely so heavily on them, so people will start learning their classes better

Meiko Isamura.6352:

The current player skill level of your game has been declining for some time,

I can’t agree. There are always newbies, some who catch on quickly and some who don’t. There have always been veterans unfamiliar with basic mechanics.

If the skill level was going down, then I would expect to never hear about PUG raid success, nightmare fractal CM successes with PUGs, and I’d have a far, far easier time in WvW and PvP.

I am not a “veteran”, as I started actively playing GW2 only one and a half years ago. I have all nine professions and elite specs, but I still often discover new stuff about them as I play, especially with the professions I don’t play very often (for instance, I consider myself a complete “noob” in the Thief profession).

However, even I notice the aforementioned decline in player skill when it comes to basics like movement, when and how to use the skills you have equipped, heck, even simple stuff like upping a nearby player as soon as you can afford to do so (before they die, because rezzing takes a lot longer, and with many maps walking the distance in the meantime, from the nearest waypoint back to the destination, results in less DPS, boons etc. for the whole group of players). Some players seem to just don’t think that far and believe that it’s enough to keep pressing 1 (or any skill as soon as it becomes available, regardless of the current situation in the fight, their positioning, the target and so on).

cheese meta builds are killing the game , game started going down the drain ever since condi started becoming the meta and got more and more buffs without balancing countermeasures

theres no build diversity left anymore thus no need to get actually good

If skill level/knowledge is declining, it must be because there are so many new players. Which is a good thing, no? That, or the playerbase contracted a widespread case of amnesia?

Though, this seems contrary to what the Devs have stated, more than once: that the skill level of the playerbase is ever-increasing, and that’s why they are offering more challenging content. Of course, maybe that’s been misinterpreted. /shrug

Hi everyone, I am brand new to the game, I have a lvl 23 guardian ATM, and I love it.
I see lots of builds for endgame (which for a game this old is fair, due to most people being endgame), the posts I see for leveling are pick two weapon sets and just hit stuff.
So a new player does this to level 80, and then is told to change to a different spec to do endgame content.
So the new player has to learn a new way to compete, and this takes time. I have no issues with this, I like to challenge myself, but when leveling basically teaches you one way, then endgame teaches you another, I can understand everyone’s frustration.
i hope to find a mentor on my server (Ehmry Bay), and get better at guardian, and in turn pass the skills learned along.
Have a great day.

Meiko Isamura.6352:

The current player skill level of your game has been declining for some time

Really? I seem to remember differently. Comparing T4 fractal parties an year ago and now, I’d say the skill level of the players I see has definitely increased.

OriOri.8724:

Nerf elite specs then. One of the reasons that people who primarily play PvE aren’t learning their class is because they don’t have to. Elite specs will carry them hard, because those traitline do everything.

Nerf elite spec lines, and people will no longer be able to rely so heavily on them, so people will start learning their classes better

Nice meme there. If you dont know rotations even elite specs wont save you. Was the case before hot is still the case now.

I personally find the skill level is the same as when the game came out. Some will catch on fast, some won’t, some won’t even catch on even if you tell them how to play. The player base itself is very diverse, so you can’t expect them all to get better then avg. in a month or years. Perfect world sure but reality is no. Like my friend’s guild, they have an 80 year old they bring to raids. Will she ever be good to do the harder raids no. Does she die more then anyone else in it, yes. But is she and her guild mates having fun YES, they have a blast. If you really feel the player base has declined that much, then stop pugging and start solo/duo/trio things

zealex.9410:

OriOri.8724:

Nerf elite specs then. One of the reasons that people who primarily play PvE aren’t learning their class is because they don’t have to. Elite specs will carry them hard, because those traitline do everything.

Nerf elite spec lines, and people will no longer be able to rely so heavily on them, so people will start learning their classes better

Nice meme there. If you dont know rotations even elite specs wont save you. Was the case before hot is still the case now.

I can’t believe you just said that with the spam “1” meta. Spamming one existed before with the core classes and now with elites you can spam one smash your face on your keyboard and take down champion level mobs left and right. Even in pvp spamming 1 and mashing random buttons is much more effective with an elite than it is with a core spec.

Though don’t take me wrong spam “1” will and will always be good manners in this game. As it allows people time to get in and tag the mob and get rewards I’m only speaking in terms of trash mobs and not bosses.

It’s always hard to discuss about skills that are always lacking… Maybe you just need to just spam 1 or not, I don’t know. Concerning most map, the biggest skill-hole I see is the ability to do content by just joining a blob.

Anyway, I’m not sure it’s a matter of builds that are too cheesy or whatever (maybe in WvW) on the PvE scene, but there’s one thing related to lack of skill that I want to underline : find an ingame way to teach players how important it is, and how to break defiance bars.

There’re a lot of mobs, champions, legendary (Ignis and Aestus ppl ?) that have one, and it’s very sad to see that most players don’t know what it means when the bar gets blue, and what needs to be done. And the whole pack of players pays the price, and there’s so much toxicity after the event failed…

Dungeons have story mode, PvP has its own starting area, Fractals have that crew in the lobby and that little video, and WvW of course has that tutorial NPC staring you in the face the second you enter and that one tagged NPC whose name I forget who will actually go cap a tower with you.

Then we hit raids and raids have nothing the other modes aren’t even a form of preparation like they are in other games. I bring this up to make a point in that it’s Anets fault for the decline in skill level. Core was fine but then HoT roles out and they stopped making tutorials or even making simple tooltips the CC, breakbars, trinity, and so forth are never shown or brought up to the player. The only way they learn these days is from toxic aggression from people yelling at them about a mobs breakbar. Which is rather bad or being told the build(sigils/prefixes/skills) they’ve used since they started are no good to get into raiding and they have to change their everything.

The first two times I tried to raid I was flat out denied because because I was an asc wearing condi user who hadn’t switched to vipers yet. I also learned of certain mechanics from some very lets say enthusiastic people during the DS meta. Complete change from core and I can see how that could put off some vets.

There are much more complicated and difficult games on the market however those devs created robust tutorials to teach and nurture those players every step of the way so drops in skill are a none issue. The core game had these things but then with HoT they simply stopped and hence the reason your seeing the issues you see today.

The big issue is that its been years if your the type of player who can’t handle being chewed out for not knowing certain things then you’ve already quit the game and will probably never return. If your the type who doesn’t care and won’t change because some arrogant elitist gets angry then your never going to change at this point. The game has definitely gotten more toxic with HoT and player driven education does more harm than good with the current state of things.

I don’t know for others, but for me here is how can ANET improve MY skills in PvE :

1) Show “blue damages” for CC
Because I don’t know for all professions, for all traits, which attack does the most damage to the breakbar (if it does ?).

2) Make Combos more powerfull
Because Combos need good skill, good timing and it’s cool and fun.

3) Nerf the spam “1” damages
Because spam “1” doesn’t need skill, just a good coffee to do something while waiting to beat the mobs even in HOT or against Legendary.

Here’s an idea, how about we give this forum post some constructive direction….

1) Is there a way to measure skill level?

2) Does it matter?

zealex.9410:

OriOri.8724:

Nerf elite specs then. One of the reasons that people who primarily play PvE aren’t learning their class is because they don’t have to. Elite specs will carry them hard, because those traitline do everything.

Nerf elite spec lines, and people will no longer be able to rely so heavily on them, so people will start learning their classes better

Nice meme there. If you dont know rotations even elite specs wont save you. Was the case before hot is still the case now.

I read this as you saying rotations are necessary for content completion. I can’t think of anywhere in the game where having a “perfect rotation”, a term I hear alot, makes a difference between success and fail.

vifesprit.3514:

3) Nerf the spam “1” damages
Because spam “1” doesn’t need skill, just a good coffee to do something while waiting to beat the mobs even in HOT or against Legendary.

Nerfing 1 wouldn’t change anything. You’d still be carried by the zerg.

Warcry.1596:

zealex.9410:

OriOri.8724:

Nerf elite specs then. One of the reasons that people who primarily play PvE aren’t learning their class is because they don’t have to. Elite specs will carry them hard, because those traitline do everything.

Nerf elite spec lines, and people will no longer be able to rely so heavily on them, so people will start learning their classes better

Nice meme there. If you dont know rotations even elite specs wont save you. Was the case before hot is still the case now.

I read this as you saying rotations are necessary for content completion. I can’t think of anywhere in the game where having a “perfect rotation”, a term I hear alot, makes a difference between success and fail.

Raids.

Mashing random buttons won’t take you far. Yes, there’s a certain thief build who can literally only autoattack and be good enough, but this assumes the support classes do their jobs fine, which isn’t done by said mashing. You certainly don’t need to be perfect, but you certainly need to be familiar with your rotation.

all in all id argue that ppl got better overall in the game alot of ppl you knew prob quit so idk but deff a skill lvl increase.

Generally, the only time I might consider sharing OP’s opinion is during the Vinetooth event. -_-

Otherwise, it’s an awfully elitist wide brush to paint the community with. Bad form, yo.

I have been playing a little over 4 months and wish there was a way to learn Professions besides joining a Guild and learning to play Metas besides just getting in there and blindly fighting. There is a Guild called EVOS that does TT every day at midnite EST. They are a great example of teaching a Meta. They explain step by step what to do and give time for questions. I belong to four Guilds. One is a Fractal teaching Guild, SEAL, that teaches Friday and Sunday nights and the players are very patient. They explain what is going to happen, what to do and what not to do. They answer Noob questions on TS without out any problem like; what is CC, what is a breakbar, how do you stack might, and so forth. There are other Metas that I go in and just try. I have learned to watch the chat window because sometimes someone is screaming (in all caps) “stop attacking”. A good example is the first time I did Octivine in Tarir. I was East and while attacking the Octovine noticed nobody was around me, looked at the chat window and was being told to stops. Ooops.

As far as knowing my Profession, I started with a Mesmer and after getting him to 80 could not figure out how to do Continuum Split even after googling it, reading about it and watching videos. Something that I figured might be important. So I changed to Necromancer, a more forgiving Profession. So what do I do? I carry a Staff for AOE and a Scepter/Warhorn for speed and one on one fights. I pick traits that sound like they might work for me (i.e. keeping minions alive, automatically changing me to Reaper Shroud when I am dying which sometimes works against me when I accidently change back, passive buffs, etc.) and mash keys when fighting. I save “Rise!” and Well of Suffering for difficult MOBs or Bosses.

Am I having fun? I am having a BLAST and killed Mordremoth yesterday solo!! Half the time I think I am just getting lucky or that the AI realizes what a bad player I am and nerfs the instance. LOL Oh, and I learned while fighting Mordremoth that I do pretty decent damage while in a downed state and spamming “1”.

I come from a generation that had strategy guides, walkthroughs, GameFAQs and cheat codes. Now I have to google and wade through outdated posts. Most times I find helpful stuff, sometimes not.

I guess what I am saying is it would be nice if there was more help for new players but the Guild Wars 2 is still lots of fun and most players, at least in PvE, are helpful and patient with new players.

Feanor.2358:

Warcry.1596:

zealex.9410:

OriOri.8724:

Nerf elite specs then. One of the reasons that people who primarily play PvE aren’t learning their class is because they don’t have to. Elite specs will carry them hard, because those traitline do everything.

Nerf elite spec lines, and people will no longer be able to rely so heavily on them, so people will start learning their classes better

Nice meme there. If you dont know rotations even elite specs wont save you. Was the case before hot is still the case now.

I read this as you saying rotations are necessary for content completion. I can’t think of anywhere in the game where having a “perfect rotation”, a term I hear alot, makes a difference between success and fail.

Raids.

Mashing random buttons won’t take you far. Yes, there’s a certain thief build who can literally only autoattack and be good enough, but this assumes the support classes do their jobs fine, which isn’t done by said mashing. You certainly don’t need to be perfect, but you certainly need to be familiar with your rotation.

Not true at all =/. I’ve had plenty of groups do well with pretty sub casual players that don’t know anything about DPS rotations, let alone DPS builds. They have DPS equipment, and that’s about it, most groups don’t have trouble.

You can stop trying to make the content seem like it requires more than it actually does.

zealex.9410:

OriOri.8724:

Nerf elite specs then. One of the reasons that people who primarily play PvE aren’t learning their class is because they don’t have to. Elite specs will carry them hard, because those traitline do everything.

Nerf elite spec lines, and people will no longer be able to rely so heavily on them, so people will start learning their classes better

Nice meme there. If you dont know rotations even elite specs wont save you. Was the case before hot is still the case now.

Seriously?

Meiko Isamura.6352:

The current player skill level of your game has been declining for some time, and this is making it less fun to play as a veteran player. It is more and more difficult on NA servers to find players who know their class, their blasts, movement skills, and positioning.

Meiko, I think you need to accept the role that player elitism and the obfuscation of knowledge, both by players and Anet, players in this problem.

It’s a lot larger than people not knowing the precise details of their skills and skill interactions, too.

The fact is, a lot of players of GW2 have a very negative attitude towards anyone who isn’t both a veteran, and expert, and preferably in absolutely top-notch gear. They don’t want to teach people, they don’t want to explain things, they are unwilling to accept anything less than serious expertise.

That’s their prerogative. If that’s how they want to play, so be it. I won’t tell them they can’t. However, it impacts the playerbase pretty badly, because it means that when a skilled player leaves, as they inevitably will (no matter how good the content, churn is a thing, in all MMOs, always has been), they simply start picking from an ever-smaller pool of players, rather than steadily training people up.

This isn’t just in fractals/raids, either (though it is there), but also in meta-events and the like. I’ve seen people being screamed at plenty of times with those, and the people doing the screaming are not willing to explain or help people – they just jibber jargon at people who obviously don’t know what it means (and much of it isn’t even well-documented jargon that you can look up). Sometimes you see the exact opposite – someone who tells people what to do, helps, and so on, but nowhere near as often as say, three years ago.

On top of this, so much about the game is basically hidden. I came back recently after being away since before HoT. I’ve done that before with other MMOs, and I was always able to find the relevant changes and so on in a matter of days. Here’s it been weeks and I’m still turning up new stuff. There don’t seem to be good guides to really much, at all (as nice as the Wiki is, it’s very fragmented, and one often finds stuff out by stumbling across it). There’s lots of good efficiency-related and autocalc information, but finding out what you should be doing or what is possible is a lot tougher.

Agree with Eurhetemec…

You start to lose me when you separate yourself into a different cast “… I’m a veteran player…”

No one cares if you’re a new player or a veteran. ANet’s job is to make everyone’s gaming experience enjoyable. A lot of “normal players” were extremely unhappy with the way they’d go into a dungeon and all people [like you] wanted to do was skip literally everything and rush to bosses in record times. Not everyone wants to do that. The majority of people don’t want to do that. This is not Diablo III.

God forbid they died, or something. Expletives raining from the heavens. People rage quitting the group, etc. It was, and generally still is, awful. A lot of the decent people who were willing to put in the extra work quit because people like you made it impossible to play the game and enjoy themselves while learning what they needed to learn to “get better.” You expect people to watch YouTube Videos and read Wikis and then be near-flawless speed runners in dungeons. Maybe your expectations on “player skill” are completely out of line with what you really should be expecting from other players?

Additionally, how are they supposed to learn how to play the game better, if you’re skipping 3/4th of the dungeon content?

Lastly, I don’t agree that people should have to study up on a game to learn how to play it well. You’re free to put in extra hours watching YouTube Videos and Reading Wikis, but those days are over [for me, and many others]. There are other B2P games like ESO, where these people can actually have fun, while progressing, and actually get stuff done – without constant abuse from a vocal elitist population. Those games also have mechanics which are more suitable for them and their level of play, as well (i.e. no “Dodge or Die”).

I learn as I discover things while playing the game, while noticing other people of the same class doing things differently (in which case I’ll ask them), of when politely being helped by other players in the game.

At the end of the day, it’s a game. I’m not playing to be a “Pro Vet”; I’m playing to have fun. I have better things to worry about than the average skill level of other players. That’s what other games are for. To give myself variety and less reason to B. and Moan about any of the others I play.

Doam.8305:

The big issue is that its been years if your the type of player who can’t handle being chewed out for not knowing certain things then you’ve already quit the game and will probably never return. If your the type who doesn’t care and won’t change because some arrogant elitist gets angry then your never going to change at this point. The game has definitely gotten more toxic with HoT and player driven education does more harm than good with the current state of things.

THIS! ^^

OP, do you think perhaps it’s not that the overall skill level has decreased so much as that you have increased your own skill and knowledge so now what stands out to you are the mistakes rather than the masters? Sort of a confirmation bias?

I fenced in college. When I began, watching a bout gave me only a confused impression of rapid blade movement. After a few years, I could see each blade action as a separate thing, distinguish good foot and blade work from bad, notice stance problems, and tell who scored the touch first in a close bout (we didn’t use electric scorers back then, since they meant being tethered to a complex thing that reeled the line in and out as the fencer moved along the strip). I could really appreciate olympic fencing, and criticize people at or below my level. It’s not that the level of fencing skill in those around me had declined, it’s that I had gotten better and could see the mistakes that had earlier been outside my notice.

Could be what’s happening to your perceptions here.

Tren.5120:

Agree with Eurhetemec…

You start to lose me when you separate yourself into a different cast “… I’m a veteran player…”

No one cares if you’re a new player or a veteran. ANet’s job is to make everyone’s gaming experience enjoyable. A lot of “normal players” were extremely unhappy with the way they’d go into a dungeon and all people [like you] wanted to do was skip literally everything and rush to bosses in record times. Not everyone wants to do that. The majority of people don’t want to do that. This is not Diablo III.

God forbid they died, or something. Expletives raining from the heavens. People rage quitting the group, etc. It was, and generally still is, awful. A lot of the decent people who were willing to put in the extra work quit because people like you made it impossible to play the game and enjoy themselves while learning what they needed to learn to “get better.” You expect people to watch YouTube Videos and read Wikis and then be near-flawless speed runners in dungeons. Maybe your expectations on “player skill” are completely out of line with what you really should be expecting from other players?

Additionally, how are they supposed to learn how to play the game better, if you’re skipping 3/4th of the dungeon content?

Lastly, I don’t agree that people should have to study up on a game to learn how to play it well. You’re free to put in extra hours watching YouTube Videos and Reading Wikis, but those days are over [for me, and many others]. There are other B2P games like ESO, where these people can actually have fun, while progressing, and actually get stuff done – without constant abuse from a vocal elitist population. Those games also have mechanics which are more suitable for them and their level of play, as well (i.e. no “Dodge or Die”).

At the end of the day, it’s a game. I’m not playing to be a “Pro Vet”; I’m playing to have fun. I have better things to worry about than the average skill level of other players. That’s what other games are for. To give myself variety and less reason to B. and Moan about any of the others I play.

Hi, thank you for your thoughts. You make a few assumptions in your reply that are not correct or appreciated though. We do try to teach players tactics and some of the other aspects of the game I mentioned in my original post. There are many ways to play GW2 and we include in lfg posts what tactics we are playing, I hope other players do too. I agree that Eurhetemec and Doam make good points in their posts as well.

Not that this is anything new, but I will say, I had to use google and wiki to understand how combo fields work. And I still don’t have most of them memorized. That should tell you something about the game’s ability to teach people how it works without conscious player-to-player tutoring or studying a wiki.

I mean they put in a dodge tutorial with the NPE, I believe, in starter zones. Which is something. But understanding how to hit dodge and time it to avoid damage is the tip of the iceberg. It’s only one mechanic and in many scenarios, it doesn’t mean a lot, either because there’s something else you need to be doing, like dodging by running out of a bubble, or because you temporarily ran out of energy to do more dodges.

Tren.5120:

No one cares if you’re a new player or a veteran. ANet’s job is to make everyone’s gaming experience enjoyable. A lot of “normal players” were extremely unhappy with the way they’d go into a dungeon and all people [like you] wanted to do was skip literally everything and rush to bosses in record times. Not everyone wants to do that. The majority of people don’t want to do that. This is not Diablo III.

What complicates it further is that a lot of new player would eventually like to be that good, and able to skip content and so on, but they just can’t and don’t want to be thrown in at the deep end, as it were.

I mean, I’ve been playing MMOs since 1998. I’m familiar with skipping and wall-running and all sorts of exploits from all sorts of games, but if I get in a dungeon hasn’t even specified that it’s some sort of elite speed-run group and its’ GOGOGOGOGOGOGO and people are making crazy jumps, following elaborate paths, doing weird tricks and so on, I’m going to be pretty traumatized! Sometimes you can find groups which are noob-friendly, or start them, but even then the amount of hostility you have to deal with can be bizarre. When I start a group which says it’s noobs and learning and stuff, and someone joins and starts yelling at us – not explaining, just abusing, it’s like, what the hell? That’s not a one-off weird event either – almost every “noobs learning”-type group I’ve started has had at least one person join who wanted to turn it into Speedfest 2017 and was mad when it wasn’t.

And GW2 seems to have the elitism disease worse than any other MMO I’ve played, which is very weird, because it’s not a super-demanding game unless you make it into one. When people do talk you through stuff, what’s remarkable it is usually totally doable. Videos and stuff help, but they’re inevitably outdated, and often groups are using an entirely different methodology. Even nice people in nice guilds are often so deep into jargon and obscure knowledge and tricks and weirdness that they have difficulty explaining to or coping with people who new or even returning. Particularly they just often assume you know something that the game has made no effort to communicate to you – indeed that the game has actively hidden.

Money issues don’t help either – newer players have a huge amount of difficulty making the sort of money that steady/veteran players tend to take for granted. Building a suit of Vipers may simply be a time-sink for a Veteran player, but for a new one it can be a hideous combination of time and just money that you will not make in that time unless you play many hours a day or get incredibly lucky (or know some obscure money-making technique people intentionally keep obfuscated!).

I don’t agree with your assessment of the game currently. I see player skill increasing with everyone that I play with. It hasn’t been a speed increase but just coming with time and natural progression of playing the content. But I also don’t pug anything only play with friends and guild mates.

But in the open world content, I still see some players doing things that make me laugh, but I also don’t see as many players going down in the same content as before. So I can only assume(which I know is bad) that the players skill level, more so their understanding of the content, has improved.

But like you said in your post, you friends list activity has declined and you have started getting other players for your groups. There is going to be a drop off since these players may just now be trying harder content cause they are getting comfortable with everything. So the tactics you are employing may be new to them, not that the skill level of the player base is dropping.

Meiko Isamura.6352:

Hi, thank you for your thoughts. You make a few assumptions in your reply that are not correct or appreciated though. We do try to teach players tactics and some of the other aspects of the game I mentioned in my original post. There are many ways to play GW2 and we include in lfg posts what tactics we are playing, I hope other players do too. I agree that Eurhetemec and Doam make good points in their posts as well.

You do, Meiko, and that’s cool, but the thing – you’re not representative.

You’re unusual. That’s the problem here. That’s why skill levels are declining. Skills have to be maintained by passing them on to new/returning players when other players leave. You help with that. Most people do not. That doesn’t mean they’re bad people – they often the sort of people who will save you when you’re down or fighting something dangerous. But they’re not interested in actually explaining or the like.

Combine that with a game, that, itself, is deeply uninterested in explaining, and which actively hides a huge amount of stuff (just look at the number of gear recipes which are not found in the normal crafting list – many of them the most important recipes, it turns out), and you have a recipe for a situation where skills are going to get lost or aren’t going to be gained.

And what’s sad is, if Anet tries to help, tries to make the game clearer and so on, people are just going to scream that it’s been “dumbed-down”.

Re: including tactics in LFG, that’s good, but you get that a new player may not even understand the words/acronyms you’re using, right? And may just try to join your group because it’s for the content he wants to do. Now, I don’t know what you do, you’re probably nice, but I do know what most groups do, and that’s be rude/nasty with them, or at best, say nothing and just reject/kick them. And groups doing or claiming to do “expert” stuff are usually the majority of LFG entries for most content.

I’ve been playing for a few weeks. There is a LOT to learn that doesn’t seem to have been covered as I played through the game to lvl 80 on my first character, a warrior (personal story done and HoT story finished yesterday).

Here are the terms in this thread that I don’t understand yet:

blasts
stability
fractal CM
condi
T4 fractal parties
blob
defiance bars (checked the wiki, lots of info there but will take me a while to process)
breakbars
trinity
combo fields
bubble

None, or very little of this is mentioned in the Tips for New Players posted I searched for online.

Is there a good thread that lists some definitive or supremely helpful guides for new players?

Thanks!

Glimrac.2164:

I’ve been playing for a few weeks. There is a LOT to learn that doesn’t seem to have been covered as I played through the game to lvl 80 on my first character, a warrior (personal story done and HoT story finished yesterday).

Here are the terms in this thread that I don’t understand yet:

blasts
stability
fractal CM
condi
T4 fractal parties
blob
defiance bars (checked the wiki, lots of info there but will take me a while to process)
breakbars
trinity
combo fields
bubble

None, or very little of this is mentioned in the Tips for New Players posted I searched for online.

Is there a good thread that lists some definitive or supremely helpful guides for new players?

Thanks!

Stability – Sometimes Stab – Boon that prevents you from being knocked down, pushed, pulled, etc. See Balanced Stance, Dolyak signet, Stomp, and Shattering blow (for Warrior).
Condi – Condition or condition damage – 2 types of builds – power and condi. Power is raw smacking the bad guy with your sword. Condi is stacking damaging conditions on the bad guy – bleeds, burning, chill, etc. Condi stacks more damage over time, so the longer the fight, generally, the better your average DPS. Think of it as Power as (relatively) constant DPS, Condi as increasing DPS the longer the fight.
T4 Fractal Party – Fractals are arranged in Tiers – Tier 1 are fractals 1-25, Tier 2 – 26-50, Tier 3 – 51-75, and Tier 4 (T4) 76-100. Each tier increases the difficulty (including increasing Agony Resistance (AR)).
Blob – not sure where the reference is, but probably zerg, – big giant (for certain values) party running around killing/doing things. May or may not be led by a commander or mentor.
Defiance Bars – DB and Break Bars are the same thing. The greenish-bluish bar that a boss/champion/etc. has under it’s red health bar. These are affected by CC’s (crowd controls) and there are 2 types of CC’s – hard and soft. Breaking the bar will – most of the time – stun the boss for a bit or prevent them from doing some other mechanic. For example – breaking the bar on the Matriarch wyvern in the canopy during Verdant Brink’s night time will a) stun her and b) prevent her from flying off and strafing the area with her breath. Hard CC’s are things you do that damage the break bar RIGHT NOW, soft CC’s are like condition damage that does damage over time. For warrior, Head butt is your strongest hard CC, and your FEAR ME shout is your strongest soft CC.
Combo fields – Different classes can lay different fields – light, water, fire, etc. Certain skills can then be layered on top of those fields to change or enhance either the field’s effect or the effect of the skill. These are combo finishers and/or blast finishers. For example, thieves can drop a smoke field and someone else, like a Guardian, can blast that field to give everyone stealth. The wiki shows 9 combo fields and 4 types of finishers for each – Blast, Leap, Projectile, and Whirl. Look at the wiki article on combo fields.
Fractal CM – I think this is fractal Challenge Mote. Used to start a harder than normal instance of a fractal or raid.

And it takes time. I’ve been playing for a little under a year and a half, and I’m still learning – even with over 1000 hours on Warrior alone.

Is it really that hard to consider the plain and simple fact that many PvE players enjoy what they are doing in PvE and would move to a different game if this one gets any more difficult?
If maybe 5% of the player base is involved in raids then logic says most players don’t want a more complicated game. Perhaps you should look at what others want before telling us how the game we like needs to change to fit your likely minority opinion.

Tumult.2578:

Is it really that hard to consider the plain and simple fact that many PvE players enjoy what they are doing in PvE and would move to a different game if this one gets any more difficult?
If maybe 5% of the player base is involved in raids then logic says most players don’t want a more complicated game. Perhaps you should look at what others want before telling us how the game we like needs to change to fit your likely minority opinion.

Repeating the same non factual 5% raiders mantra, there is no indicator of large of the population are raiders, but keep repeating the baseless mantra. And it doesn’t take a hardcore player to know the basics of what skills and combo fields do you don’t have to look up anything, the game provides all the info you need. Most players now don’t know what CC skills are what’s Stability is or boons for that matter .

But in topic the majority of Skilled/knowledgeable veteran players have left and continue to keep leaving because of the design decisions of Anet, look at all the real players, all but a handful left, most WvW guilds left, a lot of the Hardcore PvE players left, when I went from a good 20-30+ player online at once in both Friends list and guild rosters to only 4-6 at any given time show the player base is dying

With the lack of a contrary statement from Anet, whats the difference?
That is not the point!

Your opinion is only your opinion, as is mine. Yours is not more important.

The expectation of ever increasingly difficult new content is not sustainable. That was proven with the first year story. It’s not that hard a concept really. There is no way to constantly put out this type of content without a huge staff, amazing creativity, stunningly coordination, totally structured and prepared and over funded.

So why try to force players who enjoy the game now to prepare for a more difficult game that they won’t play?

Tumult.2578:

With the lack of a contrary statement from Anet, whats the difference?
That is not the point!

Your opinion is only your opinion, as is mine. Yours is not more important.

If it helps, I believe an AMA or something similar revealed roughly 10% participation. Significantly more player investment in GW2 raids than most other MMOs that net 2-5%.
[citation needed, because I don’t care that much to look]

Tumult.2578:

With the lack of a contrary statement from Anet, whats the difference?
That is not the point!

Your opinion is only your opinion, as is mine. Yours is not more important.

I’m not trying to slap around baseless arbitrary numbers as facts unlike you.

Take another look.
I said “if maybe 5%..”

arbitrary baseless fact LOL

If YOU want to check, you will likely see the same results. A lot of players tried it and gave up pretty quick. Their rewards obtained from raids never increased.

And it’s still not the point.

ArenaNet (as well as we) can probably, and did, judge what the playerbase desires by the reaction to the last expansion, and adjusted the content previously released, and the subsequent releases. ArenaNet also provides the more challenging content for those seeking said challenges in the form of Raids and higher level Fractals.

It doesn’t seem like a terrible idea to cater to all different kinds of players, if possible. Something for (most) everyone probably sells better than just something for the select few. /shrug

Good luck.

It’s like in other areas, the majority just does it for casual fun, a minority decides to take it a little bit more serious or even to a professional level. It’s not bad or good, it’s neutral. The more people that get into the game, the more of the serious players will evolve.

Reading through the other thread here about using youtube, I feel like a lot of people have fun just by roaming around in Guild Wars, and that’s fine. Some people here seem to think that if people go less meta about the game, it’s somehow bad. Competition drives skill enhancement, and most people love this game because you can play it without competing.

You will always have people who get into the details because that’s how they have fun playing games. Don’t try to force this upon people who are casual players by making things harder in general, they won’t suddenly change their character or playstyle, they will just look for a game that suits their needs better.

And that’s coming from someone who thinks that numbers are more important than looks, and considers “just roaming around without goal” as a waste of time.

Faaris.8013:

It’s like in other areas, the majority just does it for casual fun, a minority decides to take it a little bit more serious or even to a professional level. It’s not bad or good, it’s neutral. The more people that get into the game, the more of the serious players will evolve.

Reading through the other thread here about using youtube, I feel like a lot of people have fun just by roaming around in Guild Wars, and that’s fine. Some people here seem to think that if people go less meta about the game, it’s somehow bad. Competition drives skill enhancement, and most people love this game because you can play it without competing.

You will always have people who get into the details because that’s how they have fun playing games. Don’t try to force this upon people who are casual players by making things harder in general, they won’t suddenly change their character or playstyle, they will just look for a game that suits their needs better.

And that’s coming from someone who thinks that numbers are more important than looks, and considers “just roaming around without goal” as a waste of time.

Hi, I think your post is well thought out, but it misses the point of this thread. The hope was to continue creating content in any one area of GW2 that allows for certain skills in the game to be used, and so continue to be relevant. The argument is that class and player skill progression make the game more fun and interesting to play and will help with long-term player retention. Players learning more of their class, different skills such as movement and blasts, fields, and positioning for fights make the game more fun for some players and it would be nice if there was one type of content done approximately in the style of core dungeons so players could continue to learn them. These are all skills and mechanics that existed in the game since launch and learning them was relevant and fun. Unfortunately they are now being lost from the player base as a whole, which you can argue is a bad thing and it would be an improvement for GW2 for Anet to develop content that helped players learn these fun skills.

Meiko Isamura.6352:

The hope was to continue creating content in any one area of GW2 that allows for certain skills in the game to be used, and so continue to be relevant. The argument is that class and player skill progression make the game more fun and interesting to play and will help with long-term player retention. Players learning more of their class, different skills such as movement and blasts, fields, and positioning for fights make the game more fun for some players and it would be nice if there was one type of content done approximately in the style of core dungeons so players could continue to learn them. These are all skills and mechanics that existed in the game since launch and learning them was relevant and fun. Unfortunately they are now being lost from the player base as a whole, which you can argue is a bad thing and it would be an improvement for GW2 for Anet to develop content that helped players learn these fun skills.

You are not “That Elitist Guy” that some made you out to be. You may be “That Overly Optimistic Guy” though.

HoT helped break me from my play-by-route style and I am grateful, but many people hated and left for the very same reason.

I think Season 2 meta maps that required organized play were an effort to bring that dungeon quality to PvE, but there again we saw players complain about the difficulty level. Pushing a player to increase their proficiency increases the retention rate of a subset of players. It has the exact opposite effect on another subset.

Aren’t those Dungeons still there? Were break-bars in dungeons? Do new players know dungeons aren’t relevant, if they are, indeed, not relevant? Are there no player skills to be learned in Fractals?

Just kind of reads like a ‘bring back dungeons – create new dungeons’ kind of request masked in a different topic. /shrug

Unfortunately, according to several Dev statements, that’s not likely to happen. Not to mention there are players that just aren’t interested in builds and traits and such. I suppose one might call them ‘casuals’.

Glimrac.2164:

I’ve been playing for a few weeks. There is a LOT to learn that doesn’t seem to have been covered as I played through the game to lvl 80 on my first character, a warrior (personal story done and HoT story finished yesterday).

Here are the terms in this thread that I don’t understand yet:

blasts
stability
fractal CM
condi
T4 fractal parties
blob
defiance bars (checked the wiki, lots of info there but will take me a while to process)
breakbars
trinity
combo fields
bubble

None, or very little of this is mentioned in the Tips for New Players posted I searched for online.

Is there a good thread that lists some definitive or supremely helpful guides for new players?

Thanks!

This is right here reveals the real short falls…….. Most of the game’s mechanics are NOT “deliberate” in usage, so many will operate without the player knowing what its doing. Also, the majority of the game’s content doesn’t really need them to know much….. that is until you get into Meta mechanics (primary Raids and Fractals), where the Math specifically exploits odd traits of the underlying mechanics.

Complicating this further is that Builds are highly conditional, and Force multiplicative in indirect ways….. no other MMO I know of does this kind system while still trying to use “stat boosting” gear, because they tend to run contrary to each other in concept. This creates a lot dissonance among new players, because its only “in” the intricate interactions that any of these values start to make sense. Knowing all the mechanics does jack-all if you’re build’s stats are matching…. and pure stats don’t perform at a fraction of their potential without the traits force multiplying it.

This is the entry point to understanding how the game work at its core….. and its been muddled over the years due to unfocused design choices, and multiple experiments in the live environment that were never cleaned up until HOT forced a design focus. Its not “one thing” thats causing that problem… but years of Accretion that have literally evolved the game beyond its original design. Although, I do want to put a huge amount of blame on sPvP, as the fall out of that game mode is usually the reason PvE balance stopped making sense. Looking at Especs, which were fundamentally about upping the power scale by a whole order of magnitude, eventually got driven into the ground in response to sPvP match ups. Even after the split, “this designed for, but not balanced around PvP” concept of skill design is usually why PvE builds rely on as few skills/traits as possible, since most don’t have the kind of impact needed for the HP/Dmg scales of things like Raids. PvP diversifies because the enemy can adapt…. Raids and PvE in general are about Min/Maxing, because theres nothing that needs adapting to once a specific rotation is set. With both of that in mind, its pretty easy to see why WvW has so many problems- because its the only game mode that needs to scale Defensively, but everything else about the game rewards scaling offensively. Just look at the last patch concerning all the Stab skills….. we need way too many stacks to be viable in WvW, but anything over 5 is almost invulnerability in PvP. And then PvE doesn’t even utilize it most of the time, except in boss fights that explicitly designed around it…. and to make matters worse, you have things like the feral mordrem that dish out hard CCs in half their attacks.

I can keep digging further, but it’ll take several hours to delve into how a series of design choices based on Player feedback, starting with Beta, eventually lead to where we are now. And to save people time… the diversity of the player base is half the reason they’re afraid to focus for too long, because it always seems to blow back on them. (See HOT and encounter difficulty, followed by Raids).