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How to close the knowledge gap for new players?


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One simple solution is to tell them. If someone asks a question or clearly doesn't understand something let them know what they're missing - nicely, it'll be much better recieved that way. If it's a simple answer you could just type it out, if it's more complicated send them to the Wiki.

A lot of the time they might not even know there's something they don't know. Defiance bars and CC for example, I once saw someone ask what the bar was for and the first reply they got was that it's just a random mechanic, sometimes it goes orange and the boss stops moving, sometimes it doesn't but you can just ignore it. The person saying that genuinely thought they were being helpful because that's how it had always appeared to work to them, they were very surprised to learn that grey "junk" conditions on the boss were what made the bar go down.

Other times it might just be that they're afraid to ask because of the reaction they might get if they out themselves as an 'idiot noob'. The first time I asked why we'd sometimes attack doors in WvW and sometimes stand and let the siege do it I waited until I was ready to stop for the night in case I got kicked from the squad or ridiculed until I decided to leave. But I got lucky and actually got a few helpful, informative answers. (If anyone's wondering it's because siege doesn't trigger the orange swords that let the enemy know the location is under attack - sometimes you want to keep it secret, and sometimes the scouts have told the commander it doesn't matter so there's no reason to hold back damage and delay getting in.)

No it's not a universal fix, it still requires you to encounter people who don't know what they're doing, and then to take some time to try and sort it out. But it's something anyone can do, to address any misunderstanding while waiting for Anet to come up with another solution.

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It would be nice for us to live in a world where this was even on Anet's table.But it isn't.Those that want to learn to do. They ask questions, read the wiki, watch videos and generally improve.

Others post on the forums about:

  1. How they just want to chill and relax after a hard day of work and how the "game shouldn't be a job"
  2. How they are entitled to "Play how they want" because they devs said so
  3. How they shouldn't have to be a "meta-slave" just to get over in open world PvE

This game does zero to ask players to improve. It develops S3.2 with massive incentives to learn to break a defiance bar and then lets players completely skip past it if they never want to do the content. It craps out the biggest rewards for the lowest skill activities and generally protects a player from being aware of their low skill cap.

And now it's time to face the reality.Anet has been making this game progressively easier to satisfy these players.The last two releases (the prologue and ep1) have offered laughable OW challenge, gutted any form of difficulty from story missions, and replaced raids and fractals with Strike missions so easy you can get every relevant achievement on the first pull with a group of pugs.The company has made it's choice.While almost every other game I have ever played gets harder as you progress, Anet has chosen the reverse. It's not going to make the game harder. It's not going to incentivize players to improve. It's going settle in delivering content to the lowest common denominator.

We've given our feedback and Anet has moved in the opposite direction. Time will tell is chasing the easy money was the right choice.

But those of us arguing for incenting those not up the the challenge to improve?We're just tilting at windmills and it's time to realize we are no longer the target market of Gw2.

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@"otto.5684" said:For me, the leveling experience was educational enough. You learn all the basics. I think the combat in GW2 requires you to learn to use your skills effectively, since you have to evade damage and heal. More than most MMOs that I have seen. PvP is a different beast. Especially that GW2 does not have a lowbie PvP.

Go to the raid golem (https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Special_Forces_Training_Area). Do a basic rotation and see where your dps lands. Make sure to set it up correctly with boons (give yourself all boons, warrior strength+discipline banner and empowered allies, ranger spotter, sun spirit and frost spirit) and conditions (just give the golem all conditions, most important 25 vulnerability) for yourself and it. That's truly the only way to make sure your assumption is correct.

I guarantee you, your leveling basics are worth squat unless you actually went out of your way to hone them in challenging group content or with outside help. Usual benchmarks are around 30k dps minimum on nearly all classes btw, if you can hit 25k you are better than most PUG raid players. Leveling in this game does NOT prepare players to perform in any way decent. That's one of the problems which unfortunately is to late to tackle now.

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I seriously doubt there is that much of new players these days, and that it's worth of investment to build a brand new tutorial when wiki does a good job explaining it all already, and there are tons of tutorial videos on youtube. Anet struggles to push interesting content on time as of now, nothing big is planed (like expansions) for any near future, game engine is old, visuals are pretty mediocre by today's standard - etc etc etc I seriously doubt that tutorial is THE solution to fix things up, in that state ))

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People who want to learn actually do some small effort because they are interested in it. They go to the forums, know about the wiki, maybe look up some builds or watch some vids about the content they are interested in. But GW2 has become a game of participation rewards, instant gratification or pure RNG luck. So players who are not interested in "getting better" will never be forced to because everything is just as obtainable to them as it is to others. And if it isn't they cry and whine and complain until ANet changes the game and makes it even easier. Lazy ppl will stay lazy and the game enables the behavior. It has been proven that you can have your ranger pet beat the game for you and when the bar is that low you basically invite low effort players to your game who spread the "gimmegimme nownownow" attitude.

How to improve this? Well, I think at this point ANet can't make the game apeal to different players so we basically have to deal with what we have. What I do is, rather than tell ppl what they ask for I show them the easy things like the /wiki-command or point them to a website that has decent builds or guides. Instead of carrying players through content I try to teach them how encounters work. And you know what, I still get yelled at in mapchat whenever I tell ppl about /wiki et when chat fills up with "meta when plox?" questions.

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@"Zexanima.7851" said:I know open world PvE is kind of hand holdy

Except it really isn't. Sure, there's a "content guide", which helps lead you around by the nose, but there is nothing to really impart important combat mechanics. The little blurbs spaced throughout the leveling process are just momentary words. They don't show players what effects come from what fields. They don't show players how to use CC (and good grief, do we need to teach that), and there's maybe one little dodge tutorial that doesn't apply it in active play.Dodge, the more important damage mitigation tactic available to every player, is left at a dodgeroll-to-this-chest 'tutorial'.

Compare to XIV and The Smith that opens right around the time players start getting to dungeons, and it has a series of tasks for the role of each class. And the rewards for doing it are pretty worthy.Similarly, GW2 needs something like that. Let it be a game area without a need to squish it into lore. Or, heck, if you desperately need lore, there's always Moto. But GW2 needs a full, proper tutorial.

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Even if you want to learn, GW2 refuses to cooperate. Reasons:

  • so much GFX bling I can't see shit
  • even if I am really solo(so less GFX bling), I have no bloody idea what monsters is doing and when
  • you can pick 1st utility skill at 11, 1st specialization at 21 ... why? Really, why?
  • Oh, and 3rd spec tree is at lvl 71. So for most of leveling I am not allowed to learn how to make a build.
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@mindcircus.1506 said:It would be nice for us to live in a world where this was even on Anet's table.But it isn't.Those that want to learn to do. They ask questions, read the wiki, watch videos and generally improve.

Others post on the forums about:

  1. How they just want to chill and relax after a hard day of work and how the "game shouldn't be a job"
  2. How they are entitled to "Play how they want" because they devs said so
  3. How they shouldn't have to be a "meta-slave" just to get over in open world PvE

Those two are not mutually exclusive, I do both. I've literally gone between the Wiki's attribute combination page, build calculator sites and my own spreadsheet with formulas built in to show me the end result making builds for my character...because I didn't want to just follow the meta as I find those builds boring or too much hassle or I want to use a specific weapon or whatever, so I made my own.

@mindcircus.1506 said:This game does zero to ask players to improve. It develops S3.2 with massive incentives to learn to break a defiance bar and then lets players completely skip past it if they never want to do the content. It craps out the biggest rewards for the lowest skill activities and generally protects a player from being aware of their low skill cap.

And now it's time to face the reality.Anet has been making this game progressively easier to satisfy these players.The last two releases (the prologue and ep1) have offered laughable OW challenge, gutted any form of difficulty from story missions, and replaced raids and fractals with Strike missions so easy you can get every relevant achievement on the first pull with a group of pugs.The company has made it's choice.While almost every other game I have ever played gets harder as you progress, Anet has chosen the reverse. It's not going to make the game harder. It's not going to incentivize players to improve. It's going settle in delivering content to the lowest common denominator.

We've given our feedback and Anet has moved in the opposite direction. Time will tell is chasing the easy money was the right choice.

But those of us arguing for incenting those not up the the challenge to improve?We're just tilting at windmills and it's time to realize we are no longer the target market of Gw2.

I feel like this is similar to that time players on the forum kept saying they didn't want to look like a walking light show but Anet forced it on them, so Anet made a weapon set with no glow or particle effects and then players complained until they made them glow. They did make the game harder, repeatedly. At release Orr was much harder than other zones, but players complained that they couldn't run past everything so Anet fixed it. They made HoT significantly harder than base game zones and players complained they couldn't do it all solo so they made it easier. They made raids because players kept on about wanting them and then only a tiny minority played them and refused to let anyone else join their groups unless they could prove they'd already done it 50 times.

You can't expect a company to listen to players feedback and give them what they want and ignore players saying what they don't want.

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@Aaralyna.3104 said:When the warclaw got introduced, and even a bit before I found a lot of help from coms that were on the map leading wvw squads in both borderlands as edge of the mists. So I guess the way to go would be the coms. Content creators could also explain how everything works but in my experience you learn it better if you can immediatly apply what you just learnt. Also since you can then ask questions on spot.

I think I saw some WvW comms complaining about the excess of PvE players due to the new mount. Their main solution was to teach PvE players the basics, help them finish with the warclaw, and bid them farewell ;)

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I have felt things are porposely done this way for quite a while, and especially after most of the basic mechanics were removed from all of the low level areas. They most likely assume anyone willing to to learn and improve will be able to do so by themselves with all of the sources avaible outside of the game and by talking to people in the game. This allows them to keep any actual gameplay complexity far away from all of those who might be discouraged by it. A constant wave of tutorials and guides would make them feel like they can't just "pick up and play how they want". As much as some of us enjoy the combat system with all of it's nuances, others couldn't care less about that part of the game.

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@Ol Nik.2518 said:I think I saw some WvW comms complaining about the excess of PvE players due to the new mount. Their main solution was to teach PvE players the basics, help them finish with the warclaw, and bid them farewell ;)I still don't have mine and now after all of this time, I'm rather timid about going into WvW and asking for help obtaining it at this late date. =/

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@"Danikat.8537" said:l like this is similar to that time players on the forum kept saying they didn't want to look like a walking light show but Anet forced it on them, so Anet made a weapon set with no glow or particle effects and then players complained until they made them glow. They did make the game harder, repeatedly. At release Orr was much harder than other zones, but players complained that they couldn't run past everything so Anet fixed it. They made HoT significantly harder than base game zones and players complained they couldn't do it all solo so they made it easier. They made raids because players kept on about wanting them and then only a tiny minority played them and refused to let anyone else join their groups unless they could prove they'd already done it 50 times.

You can't expect a company to listen to players feedback and give them what they want and ignore players saying what they don't want.I'm not saying that at all.I'm saying that over the past year. Anet has full on switched course and started making the game progressively easier instead harder.I'm saying the feedback of "I just want a chill press 1 experience" and abandonment/completion data is of greater value to Anet than creating a compelling experience now.

And I am saying that everyone asking for Arenanet to tutorialize breakbars forgets that Ember Bay exists....but that the content is easily skipped. Threads like this that ask for Anet to tutorialize the experience better are a waste of time because Arenanet isn't going to raise the average player's awareness and skill, it's instead going to deliver content at the average player's level.

I'm not saying it's the wrong choice.It's just reality that when Anet tells us only 65% of premade squads successful complete the Fraenir strike mission, it doesn't mean they are going to try and tutorialize the game better to bring that number up.They are just going to make the next strike easier to "satisfy customers" rather than "entertain and engage players".

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@kharmin.7683 said:

@"Ol Nik.2518" said:I think I saw some WvW comms complaining about the excess of PvE players due to the new mount. Their main solution was to teach PvE players the basics, help them finish with the warclaw, and bid them farewell ;)I still don't have mine and now after all of this time, I'm rather timid about going into WvW and asking for help obtaining it at this late date. =/

Don't worry. From my experience ppl are willing to help you get started, find stuff and so on. Just don't expect a zerg of 30 ppl to take that fortress/tower NOWNOWNOWNOWNWONWONWONWONOW just because you need it for the collection and all will be fine. Best case, ppl are willing to help in hope of getting a new teammate for abandoned content; worst case, as Nik stated, ppl will help you just to get you out of "their" game mode asap.

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@"Pirogen.9561" said:Even if you want to learn, GW2 refuses to cooperate. Reasons:

  • so much GFX bling I can't see kitten
  • even if I am really solo(so less GFX bling), I have no bloody idea what monsters is doing and when
  • you can pick 1st utility skill at 11, 1st specialization at 21 ... why? Really, why?
  • Oh, and 3rd spec tree is at lvl 71. So for most of leveling I am not allowed to learn how to make a build.

What do u mean by" so much GFX bling I can't see kitten" ?

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@t sakacs.7568 said:

@"Pirogen.9561" said:Even if you want to learn, GW2 refuses to cooperate. Reasons:
  • so much GFX bling I can't see kitten
  • even if I am really solo(so less GFX bling), I have no bloody idea what monsters is doing and when
  • you can pick 1st utility skill at 11, 1st specialization at 21 ... why? Really, why?
  • Oh, and 3rd spec tree is at lvl 71. So for most of leveling I am not allowed to learn how to make a build.

What do u mean by" so much GFX bling I can't see kitten" ?

Assuming he means visual clutter from effects, flashes and beams caused by skills or the environment.

As the discusion about the aureate weapons has shown it is impossible to please everyone. Each opinion, each end of every spectrum has it's vocal minority these days.

  • Game has down to earth graphics - "I want to be a shiny pink unidragon with a constant lightshow around me to rival a rave, where's my fantasy stuffz?!?!?!?!?"
  • Game has flashy effects with glitter and all - "All these effects really destroy my immersion. I want some down to earth graphics that seem at least somewhat realistic. 0/10"
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Playing and asking people questions is how you learn. Other than assisting when someone asks for knowledge there is nothing to do. I never did ask many questions in WvW when I started, mostly I just figured out what to do by either watching others or looking it up for myself, I did not require some kind of formal training to figure out what to do in WvW.

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@Rauderi.8706 said:

@"Zexanima.7851" said:I know open world PvE is kind of hand holdy

Except it really isn't. Sure, there's a "content guide", which helps lead you around by the nose, but there is nothing to really impart important combat mechanics. The little blurbs spaced throughout the leveling process are just momentary words. They don't
show
players what effects come from what fields. They don't
show
players how to use CC (and good grief, do we need to teach that), and there's maybe one little dodge tutorial that doesn't apply it in active play.Dodge, the more important damage mitigation tactic available to
every
player, is left at a dodgeroll-to-this-chest 'tutorial'.

Suffice to say that I started to play the game as Elementalist (one of the weakest and "glassiest" profession out there), and even without understanding a thing about how gear system works (I was wearing some crappy gear I was finding in events and buying from basic vendors, without paying much attention to its stats) and what are meta-builds I still was efficient enough to advance through openworld. I believe I really started to look into these things about time I got to lv80 and landed to PoF map (skipping HoT). After I switched to berserk exotic gear and adapted some meta-build to my style of playing, and leveled my Weaver to max, even PoF maps became an easy boring mess for me in a few months, as there was little challenge there, except for a few elite local mini-bosses and bounties.

In short, I'm not exactly sure this game needs to tend casuals even more, by explaining them every bit of the mechanics forcibly right in the game )) You may happen to rob even them of any joy in this game, in the end ;)

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@lokh.2695 said:

@"Pirogen.9561" said:Even if you want to learn, GW2 refuses to cooperate. Reasons:
  • so much GFX bling I can't see kitten
  • even if I am really solo(so less GFX bling), I have no bloody idea what monsters is doing and when
  • you can pick 1st utility skill at 11, 1st specialization at 21 ... why? Really, why?
  • Oh, and 3rd spec tree is at lvl 71. So for most of leveling I am not allowed to learn how to make a build.

What do u mean by" so much GFX bling I can't see kitten" ?

Assuming he means visual clutter from effects, flashes and beams caused by skills or the environment.

As the discusion about the aureate weapons has shown it is impossible to please everyone. Each opinion, each end of every spectrum has it's vocal minority these days.
  • Game has down to earth graphics - "I want to be a shiny pink unidragon with a constant lightshow around me to rival a rave, where's my fantasy stuffz?!?!?!?!?"
  • Game has flashy effects with glitter and all - "All these effects really destroy my immersion. I want some down to earth graphics that seem at least somewhat realistic. 0/10"

The UI is minimal, the devs wanted people to read mobs animations in order to know when to dodge, block, cc, etc. The graphic overload contradicts this design, its pretty frustrating.

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@Hashberry.4510 said:

@"Pirogen.9561" said:Even if you want to learn, GW2 refuses to cooperate. Reasons:
  • so much GFX bling I can't see kitten
  • even if I am really solo(so less GFX bling), I have no bloody idea what monsters is doing and when
  • you can pick 1st utility skill at 11, 1st specialization at 21 ... why? Really, why?
  • Oh, and 3rd spec tree is at lvl 71. So for most of leveling I am not allowed to learn how to make a build.

What do u mean by" so much GFX bling I can't see kitten" ?

Assuming he means visual clutter from effects, flashes and beams caused by skills or the environment.

As the discusion about the aureate weapons has shown it is impossible to please everyone. Each opinion, each end of every spectrum has it's vocal minority these days.
  • Game has down to earth graphics - "I want to be a shiny pink unidragon with a constant lightshow around me to rival a rave, where's my fantasy stuffz?!?!?!?!?"
  • Game has flashy effects with glitter and all - "All these effects really destroy my immersion. I want some down to earth graphics that seem at least somewhat realistic. 0/10"

The UI is minimal, the devs wanted people to read mobs animations in order to know when to dodge, block, cc, etc. The graphic overload contradicts this design, its pretty frustrating.

Lots of visual noise/clutter, the “read what’s in the screen” was a manifesto thing that died during the 1st year of gw2.

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@Aeolus.3615 said:

@"Pirogen.9561" said:Even if you want to learn, GW2 refuses to cooperate. Reasons:
  • so much GFX bling I can't see kitten
  • even if I am really solo(so less GFX bling), I have no bloody idea what monsters is doing and when
  • you can pick 1st utility skill at 11, 1st specialization at 21 ... why? Really, why?
  • Oh, and 3rd spec tree is at lvl 71. So for most of leveling I am not allowed to learn how to make a build.

What do u mean by" so much GFX bling I can't see kitten" ?

Assuming he means visual clutter from effects, flashes and beams caused by skills or the environment.

As the discusion about the aureate weapons has shown it is impossible to please everyone. Each opinion, each end of every spectrum has it's vocal minority these days.
  • Game has down to earth graphics - "I want to be a shiny pink unidragon with a constant lightshow around me to rival a rave, where's my fantasy stuffz?!?!?!?!?"
  • Game has flashy effects with glitter and all - "All these effects really destroy my immersion. I want some down to earth graphics that seem at least somewhat realistic. 0/10"

The UI is minimal, the devs wanted people to read mobs animations in order to know when to dodge, block, cc, etc. The graphic overload contradicts this design, its pretty frustrating.

Lots of visual noise/clutter, the “read what’s in the screen” was a manifesto thing that died during the 1st year of gw2.

Yep. C'est la guerre.

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@Astralporing.1957 said:You can't. The only way you could close the gap in effectiveness between top and bottom players would be not through teaching players, but through completely changing the game mechanics.

Basically, the game is way too complex - complex enough that any attempt to educate a majority of the players will be ultimately futile. The only people that would learn enough would be the people willing to learn - and those people are already learning all they can anyway. You can't really make players learn more than they already have, so all you could possibly do is to make it so they'd need to learn less to accomplish the same result (basically, you'd need to simplify the game).

And that's not going to happen.

I kinda disagree, an extensive tutorial can always prove useful and bring the gap down sagnificantly.

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@Odinens.5920 said:LOL, knowledge gap in in GW2 consists of learning how to dodge and weapon swap effectively....and it's exactly because a lot of people think so, that we have such massive knowledge gap

@zealex.9410 said:

@Astralporing.1957 said:You can't. The only way you could close the gap in effectiveness between top and bottom players would be not through teaching players, but through completely changing the game mechanics.

Basically, the game is way too complex - complex enough that any attempt to educate a majority of the players will be ultimately futile. The only people that would learn enough would be the people willing to learn - and those people are already learning all they can anyway. You can't really make players learn more than they already have, so all you could possibly do is to make it so they'd need to learn
less
to accomplish the same result (basically, you'd need to simplify the game).

And that's not going to happen.

I kinda disagree, an extensive tutorial can always prove useful and bring the gap down sagnificantly.Yes, it would help a bit, and could shorten the gap. So, instead of, say 10x damage difference between the
average
player and a top one, you'd have 5x difference.

That's it. Anything more requires learing things that cannot really be supplied by the game (because the game cannot teach you specific builds and rotations, nor it can teach you actually executing those rotations if you have trouble with them) and must be learned outside of it.

Notice, by the way, how Anet had a chance of at least doing something in that department with build templates, but completely blew that by trying to heavily monetize those. An easy (and free) to use template system could have done wonders for at least spreading the knowledge of proper builds among those that do not go out of the game to look for that kind of information. Still nothing to be done about rotations and learning execution of those, but at least it would have been something. Instead, Anet went out of their way to insure that nothing of that sort will ever happen.

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To all those who outright dismissed the idea of a better tutorial because "players dont want to learn." You are part of the problem.

This game is terrible at explaining things to those who want to get -better- at the game. Some things are straight forward, but others are not, i spent the first two years running around in soldiers armor because hurr durr toughness lets you stay alive and do more, right? f you ask in game You either get told to go look up a meta build which does -nothing- in teaching one how to play, or outright ignored. None of these players who have issues with the difficulty are going to get better unless that knoweldge is forced into their brain.

when one gets to level 80, make them do a one time mandatory, in depth tutorial on how the least explained mechanics work, what the different stats mean, how they work, what CC is in this game(its not explained, and ive seen alot of people confused when they come from other games.), how break bars work, how ley abilities work, etc.

@Astralporing.1957

5x more damage difference is way better than 10x damage difference, think about how much easier alot of those metas would be that suffer from a lack of dps.

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