Teamwork rewarded over skill?

Why is teamwork rewarded over personal skill in this game so much. Everything seems to revolve around teamwork, and its rewarded as such. While I'm ok with this, why are there almost no rewards for high skill. Example:

Raids: oh I'm an insanely good player, but i dislike working with others, oh you get nothing no raids or pve content for u.

I love teamwork and have meadiocre skill, - heres legendaries, thanks for showing up this week and chatting.

Pvp - I have insane personal skill and destroy most players and hold most nodes.- oh you lose because someone is afk, no teamwork, 4v5 u lose.

-im an average player but I love team work and we're all on team speak- tiny modicum of coordination with others = automatic win.

Wvw - I have very high skill and solo kill small teams as well as run supply and escort dolyaks and scout = oh no reward for you, no wxp, karma or loot.

I enjoy teamwork but have very low skill and I follow in a zero and press 1 = heres a ton of wxp, loot and participation.

Would be nice if individual player skill was measured, mattered and was rewarded accordingly, like teamwork is.

Because it's an MMORPG.

Eh, I prefer it that way. I do not think someone should be enabled to play completely solo and dominate. Individual skill will certainly contribute to a larger whole and the smaller groups you work with the more that shows. Someone can be the backbone. Though it is true that largely bad players will drag someone down, but I think there is no resolution to that beyond trying to help others learn and bring up the standard of player quality as a whole. It is imperfect, but this is the very nature of team oriented play.

being able to function as a team is also a skill ...

Somehow you only complain about the (perceived) lack of solo content. Individual skill matters a lot; you can discern between a "good" player and a "bad" one within several seconds of watching them play.

Yes, let's complain about group content when literally 95% of the game is casual and solo friendly.

As to why team content gets rewarded better? Easy, if rewards were higher in solo content, the market would be flooded with stuff and the economy would go haywire. You might believe you are the be-all end-all of players but I guarantee you, there is many players who will be even better.

That and the fact that any time actually slightly challenging solo content gets added the forums light up like a Christmas tree during holiday season (there, even gave you a holiday reference).

@borgs.6103 said:Because it's an MMORPG.

The games moto is play your way, at no point does it say that playing solo isnt viable, I'm asking for it to be more rewarding and to that extent for personal skill to be more rewarded. The great equalizer of all games.

@Cyninja.2954 said:Yes, let's complain about group content when literally 95% of the game is casual and solo friendly.

As to why team content gets rewarded better? Easy, if rewards were higher in solo content, the market would be flooded with stuff and the economy would go haywire. You might believe you are the be-all end-all of players but I guarantee you, there is many players who will be even better.

That and the fact that any time actually slightly challenging solo content gets added the forums light up like a Christmas tree during holiday season (there, even gave you a holiday reference).

They need to add in permanent content that is extremely difficult and rewarding and does not require the help of others. Also others cannot help. Gw2 has catered to every crowd except this one.

@Jumpin Lumpix.6108 said:

@Cyninja.2954 said:Yes, let's complain about group content when literally 95% of the game is casual and solo friendly.

As to why team content gets rewarded better? Easy, if rewards were higher in solo content, the market would be flooded with stuff and the economy would go haywire. You might believe you are the be-all end-all of players but I guarantee you, there is many players who will be even better.

That and the fact that any time actually slightly challenging solo content gets added the forums light up like a Christmas tree during holiday season (there, even gave you a holiday reference).

That crowd is way to niche for this game and the player base here. If Arenanet believed this would draw many players, they would have already implemented this. They have not and any challenging content so far which the majority of players were exposed to was nerfed shortly after due to massive outcry. The only remaining semi challenging content is instanced and even that is getting flack in the dungeon/raid/fractal forums.

@Jumpin Lumpix.6108 said:Why is teamwork rewarded over personal skill in this game so much. Everything seems to revolve around teamwork, and its rewarded as such.

For two reasons:

1) 99.999% of players are not that insanely skilled individual. They actually vaguely resent that individual... and would scream bloody murder if he was given access to any rewards they didn't also have super-easy access to.

2) Anet plays to (and markets to) these sentiments heavily... The resentful, zero-skill bozo finds a home in this MMO that he couldn't find in any other.

Maybe a solo player game is better for you. I think it’s good that community is valued in this game.

@"Cyninja.2954" said:Yes, let's complain about group content when literally 95% of the game is casual and solo friendly.

I don't like that much playing on team, still i'm always finding something interesting to do. I believe that the game already give enough stuff to lonely players and let them realize that playing solo gets boring over time, i have no data but i'm sure that players who find a guild and start playing group content last longer in a game than the lonelies that want to do hard stuff and show to others "look how f*king good i am, i did this alone, i'm the best", if its true then is already a good reason to not focus on implementing hard solo content.Also, is not this reality on every MMO? I've played lots of them and the pattern is the same when u reach the end game stuff, get a group and do dungeons, raids, arenas or wathever and get stronger. Lets take WoW for example , the closest stuff to lonely that i recall is the 2v2 arena that altough u can even be good enough to handle them without nedding ur partner, this is not gonna happen once u fight better players.

Just to finalize, what are you using to measure an incredible player and a mediocre player? Raids aren't that easy as i see and need coordination and skill timing to not make a mess and wipe the entire squad so if a "mediocre player" is able to do all this and get the rewards i don't really understand what is an incredible player and what it can do better (more DPS maybe?).

dungeons = teamplayraids = teamplayWvW = teamplayfractures = teamplayPvP = teamplay

where is this 99.9% solo play ppl talk about?

It is an Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game and still very solo friendly but of course you need a group for group content.

@sorudo.9054 said:dungeons = teamplayraids = teamplayWvW = teamplayfractures = teamplayPvP = teamplay

where is this 99.9% solo play ppl talk about?

Dungeons = discontinued since vanillaraids = 1 per yearWvW = no content in agesfractals = 1-2 per yearSpvp = see WvW

All of this with a team of 5-10 people at most.

Meanwhile on the solo pve front:

• new Living World Episodes regularly (4-5 per year) with entire new maps

All of this with multiple teams working parallel on Living World Episodes.

You were saying?

Do you really want to compare developer resources between solo and group content for this game?

While I understand where you coming from. There is no game I played had a solo instanced PvE/PvP and didn't fail it miserably.

The foundation of the game is built on a cooperative style - it is something anet believes in very highly. What other games do is irrelevant. If they didnt want to reward teamwork so highly, thry would have made it a single player experience.

Teamwork is a skill.

Well, I guess you got adventures to demonstrate solo skill, if only the leader board would allow every player to see the top scores. Not every style/method/mode of play is as rewarding as the other so good luck with fixing that.

@Jumpin Lumpix.6108 said:Why is teamwork rewarded over personal skill in this game so much.

It is not. Teamwork is part of your required personal skills in this game.

This is an MMORPG, every player contributes to the result, so every player will share the rewards, especially for most of the PvE/WvW content ( including Raids). This is debatable on PvP, but in theory the best players end up on the top, so there is a part of personal skill.

The real question regarding rewarding personal skill in PvE should be on adventures however. Rollerbeetle is typically showing the problem :

• You hardly can notice the best players since leaderboards aren't explicit
• You have no special reward for being 1st, or for winning every single race in the game ( even the cars/computer items contest is kind of random)

At least one of the 2 should be indicated. In GW1, you could see the top100 best racers, and all of these received a unique miniature that could only obtained that way. Felt challenging. Similar thing to Cantha adventures, you explicitely saw daily/year best scorers.

@Jumpin Lumpix.6108 said:

@Cyninja.2954 said:Yes, let's complain about group content when literally 95% of the game is casual and solo friendly.

As to why team content gets rewarded better? Easy, if rewards were higher in solo content, the market would be flooded with stuff and the economy would go haywire. You might believe you are the be-all end-all of players but I guarantee you, there is many players who will be even better.

That and the fact that any time actually slightly challenging solo content gets added the forums light up like a Christmas tree during holiday season (there, even gave you a holiday reference).

I find soloing fractals to be very challenging.

There are plenty of solo games out there.

@Jumpin Lumpix.6108 said:

@"borgs.6103" said:Because it's an MMORPG.

You can play your own way. The studio has never said you can do anything you like and get rewarded equally; drop tables have always been tied to the type of content.

Further, soloing is extremely viable. There's all sorts of content top players can do on their own, including fractals (which then allows that player to sell spots, which is very rewarding).The "great equalizer" of games is teamwork, because that allows people with different approaches to band together to tackle things together.

It's great that you like to go your own way. It's not great to ignore the way the game was designed, the way it actually plays out, or the rewards actually available for group versus solo.

@Ashen.2907 said:

@Jumpin Lumpix.6108 said:

@Cyninja.2954 said:Yes, let's complain about group content when literally 95% of the game is casual and solo friendly.

As to why team content gets rewarded better? Easy, if rewards were higher in solo content, the market would be flooded with stuff and the economy would go haywire. You might believe you are the be-all end-all of players but I guarantee you, there is many players who will be even better.

That and the fact that any time actually slightly challenging solo content gets added the forums light up like a Christmas tree during holiday season (there, even gave you a holiday reference).

Yah but very unrewarding.