Guild Wars 2

ArenaNet has stated on multiple occasions that they hold a philosophy of little to zero grind in their game. Since the concept of what constitutes a grind is subjective, this leads me to wonder what they think of Dungeons, Dungeon Tokens, and the Dungeon Token Rewards.

Let’s take Ascalon Catacombs as an example piece, as it is the first available dungeon. For a full suit of Exotic Armor, you require 1200 tokens. A single path run will net you at minimum 60 tokens, with an additional 3-12 tokens from extra bosses killed. For running all three paths, you could gain a rough estimate of 207 Tokens per day (9 extra tokens from bosses, plus 180 from each unique path run). At this rate, it would take you six days of running the dungeon to get your set of armor, not counting boss ‘farming’ at 3 extra tokens per boss.

Does ArenaNet consider this a Grind? Do you consider it a Grind? If so, how much grind is this in comparison to other games that undeniably DO support and encourage grind? For those of you who do not enjoy grind, is this acceptable to you?

I have not done the math on other dungeons such as Arah or Fractals of the Mists. If anyone else has the equivilant math on how to attain a full set of Exotic armor from the other “Original” dungeons, or attain the minimum full set of trinkets/backslots from FotM, I would welcome that information and commentary on it.

Addendum:
Would you support a LFG or instance finder system similar to the Structured PvP (sPvP) battle menu? How much would this improve the quality of dungeon running for you? Do you think this would significantly impact the grind, particularly by cutting down on the time required to get ready to do a run?

Anything repeated to the point where you no longer inherently enjoy the activity you are participating in must be considered a grind (to me).

NaughtyProwler.8653:

Anything repeated to the point where you no longer inherently enjoy the activity you are participating in must be considered a grind (to me).

A flexible yet accurate description of grind. I like that definition, but how would or could a game developer fine tune their highest tier rewards while avoiding grind? If everyone’s concept of it is different, how do you avoid it while still ‘enforcing rarity’?

I make the assumption that this is why you need 1200 Tokens for a full suit of armor, instead of… say… 300.

6 runs of each instance (AC has 3 explorable instances) doesn’t sound like a bad grind to me. And that’s if you want a full set of armor from just one dungeon. If you want a mixed set from dungeons, then you could be doing even fewer runs of each instance to get your pieces.

Dungeons can be a grind if you don’t enjoy them, tbh I love running dungeons so for me, no they’re not a grind. Wv3 however is a grind since my cpu is horrible and my framerate bottoms out in zergfests

The only reason I don’t enjoy dungeons is the effort put forth to sometimes open a dungeon via event, and the effort required to get a group. A real LFG system must be made.

Volomon.9147:

The only reason I don’t enjoy dungeons is the effort put forth to sometimes open a dungeon via event, and the effort required to get a group. A real LFG system must be made.

This, the dungeons which require events are a bad idea the events frequently glitch and people just want to run a dungeon not have to spend 15 minutes opening the dungeon.

As for the OP yes its a grind but its arguably an acceptable one. It used to be a lot worse.

Volomon.9147:

The only reason I don’t enjoy dungeons is the effort put forth to sometimes open a dungeon via event, and the effort required to get a group. A real LFG system must be made.

Would you support a LFG or instance finder system similar to the Structured PvP (sPvP) battle menu? How much would this improve the quality of dungeon running for you? Do you think this would significantly impact the grind?

I find getting a standard set of dungeon armor a grind, yes. I consider getting the weapons from the dungeons a grind too.

Why? I don’t find the same content fun after the 2nd or 3rd time I do it. My “omg this is a grind, eff’ this” switch flips earlier than many people’s it seems. If I’m going to be spending my leisure time doing an activity, I want it to be enjoyable.

Counciler.7438:

NaughtyProwler.8653:

Anything repeated to the point where you no longer inherently enjoy the activity you are participating in must be considered a grind (to me).

A flexible yet accurate description of grind. I like that definition, but how would or could a game developer fine tune their highest tier rewards while avoiding grind? If everyone’s concept of it is different, how do you avoid it while still ‘enforcing rarity’?

I make the assumption that this is why you need 1200 Tokens for a full suit of armor, instead of… say… 300.

Enforcing rarity?

Nothing in an MMO is going to be rare, if you can stand in line to get it by doing the same activity over and over.

Legendary weapons might be rare right now, but if the game goes on long enough, they’ll be common things to see.

Counciler.7438:

Volomon.9147:

The only reason I don’t enjoy dungeons is the effort put forth to sometimes open a dungeon via event, and the effort required to get a group. A real LFG system must be made.

Would you support a LFG or instance finder system similar to the Structured PvP (sPvP) battle menu? How much would this improve the quality of dungeon running for you? Do you think this would significantly impact the grind?

Your talking a massive improvement, some servers don’t have a ton of players so you could sit there for 30 minutes to an hour looking for group. In fact originally I was going to quit because of this, but then a Full server opened up just enough to let me in and the game was playable again. A LFG system that spans all the servers and would not require you to spam the chat…oh man why isn’t it already in is the question that hits me.

It would lessen the feeling of grind because you would at least minimize the grind time.

Going have to plug this then since it seems not enough people are aware or are spreading it around, there’s a third party website, http://www.gw2lfg.com/ very useful for finding groups since it’s not server specific and you can search for a specific dungeon or a specific server location, for example search north arah to get arah dungeon runs for north american servers, or europe flame for european citadel of flame runs.

I use it in combination with the 4 guilds I’m in for finding dungeon groups and it’s extremely effective, at most I wait 20 – 30 minutes to fill a group.

I think this is a question of perspective — does the end justify the means? If I want to take an extended vacation on some secluded Pacific island and need $5k to do it, and I really would like to go, then I’m going to have to put in overtime at the office, cut other expenses, etc., so that I can save up the funds needed for that vacation. Is that vacation necessary? No. But I’d realllllly like to take it. And while I’m chilling on that beach with drink in hand, all that OT will have felt worth it.

Same applies for dungeon armor — is it necessary to play the game? Not at all. It’s a luxury item, so if there’s a particular set you want, I don’t see anything wrong in needing to work for it, and for it to take time to earn it. In GW1, if you wanted the Obsidian armor set, it cost around 100 ectos, 100 obi shards, assorted crafting material and around 60k. So you’d go wandering around FoW, the UW, etc., to farm the ectos, obis, so you could get it … I don’t remember hearing half as many folks deem it “grinding” in GW1 — I don’t remember hearing anyone call it “grinding” — it was just what needed to get done/obtained to get a set of armor you wanted … which was no more necessary to play the game than dungeon armor is in GW2.

Now that’s changed slightly with the FotM, since as I understand it, in order to progress through further levels of the dungeon, you need the ascended gear. But that being said, if you don’t intend to journey into the FotM, the fact that you need specific gear to do it is completely irrelevant and doesn’t change the game at all.

Again, this boils down to a question of whether or not the end justifies the means — if there’s a specific armor set you want, or if it’s the best kitten stats on an armor set possible, or something similar to that, than just like anything else in life, it may take hours of mind-numbing OT …

As my own opinion I find that with a decent group, three paths a day for an armor set you want is relatively light on the grind compared to other games. It’s an argument of semantics of course because some people will say that running that kitten more than once is a grind, while others don’t consider it a grind unless the gear is RNG and the dungeon is on a timer.

Edit: P.S. I used to hate the idea of an LFG tool in this game. Now I have fevered day dreams about it while I plead in map chat for more people to join my Ascalonian Catacombs group.

If they really wanted some idea of when something becomes grindy they could poll their playerbase. It wouldn’t be %100 accurate, but it would give some indicators.

Honestly, though, as rabid as I’m sure devs are about their own games, surely they should at least notice during their own gameplay that something has reached the level of grind.