I remember back in the days I had dial-up and installed a Tetrinet server. I could beat anyone, except this one girl who was competitive with me. People came and went. I could slack a bit, get on their level, yet still win. Then I got DSL and my ping improved, making the game easier. OTOH, some people (mostly, good ones) sticked around, and ultimately improved. I had to play better. Until, at some point, we had multiple competitive players. Competition makes people (play) better, its one of the thriving forces behind capitalism (which, arguably, also has its flaws). Did we all play Tetrinet a lot? Oh yes.
My experience with gaming is that at a certain percentile, there's no-lifers, some of whom are pros. I don't want to look up at no-lifers, so I care about the amount of effort put in to reach the goal. Without knowing the amount of effort, I don't care about the result. Its meaningless to me. Whereas in a sports competition with sponsors and everything you can assume they give it their everything (their life's work), we don't know how it is with non-professional gaming. Ergo: meaningless.
Except that's not what I argue, at all. I have seen people in gaming who put in a lot less effort than I did, yet are far better. I've seen people adapt to new mechanics quickly. That's productive, in a way. I've also seen the opposite of that.
I never said that my own gameplay is the way to go though. Just that I observed people who put in less effort being better, and people put in more effort being worse. Its why I went with a more casual approach, which meant half of what was the standard as structured group play... except for one thing: they added M+ dungeons in that expansion, and that forced players to play more structured group play than raiding.
Also, there's this thing where you give up. There's no shame in such, either. Its just that you decide to not spend time trying. As the saying goes: Quitters never win. Winners never quit. But those who never quit, and never win, are losers.
My experience with gaming is that at a certain percentile, there's no-lifers, some of whom are pros. I don't want to look up at no-lifers, so I care about the amount of effort put in to reach the goal. Without knowing the amount of effort, I don't care about the result. Its meaningless to me. Whereas in a sports competition with sponsors and everything you can assume they give it their everything (their life's work), we don't know how it is with non-professional gaming. Ergo: meaningless.