Guild Wars 2

I would just like to clear something up for some people. It seems like in every other thread you see people complaining “I thought there wasn’t supposed to be grinding in this game” or “UHG, I can’t believe I HAVE to grind for this”.

Firstly, ANet never said there would be no grinding, they said that you would not have to grind. That is, in order to get a set of gear that would allow you to complete any content in the game, you would not be required to grind.
This is true. Getting a set of full exotics for your armor is easy and not very time consuming. If you were to run every exploreable dungeon path all of TWICE, you would have more than enough tokens to get a full set of exotic gear. This is not to mention the exotics that can be obtained from spare karma you might have or the exotics you could but for fairly cheap off of the TP is you were frugal with your money.

Second, legendaries and other such things that people complain about grinding for are COSMETIC. You do not need them to be able to play the game and you are not entitled you have them. As such you do not have to have them and so any grinding that you do to obtain them is your choice. You could just be playing the game for fun, but instead you are CHOOSING to grind for a cosmetic item. ANet has said that they expected legendaries to take a lot of time to obtain. It is well within their expectations that the could take well over a year to complete and that some players will NEVER complete one. You can argue all you want about whether this makes them “legendary” or not, but it doesn’t mean you are “forced to grind”.

Thirdly, some people actually WANT to grind. I suspect this largely why ANet added fractals. They wanted to give people who want vertical progression somewhere they can vertically progress. But because you will be able to obtain ascended gear elsewhere, you are under no obligation to grind fractals if you do not enjoy them.

I think that most people’s issue with the legendary grind has more to do with the RNG precursors than anything else.

And before you say “buy one from the TP,” personally, in game, I would much prefer to dive for sunken treasure than to buy a doubloon from the gift shop.

I have noticed that what one player calls a “grind”, another player calls “farming”.

Really, it all comes down to “you can’t please everyone”.

Except the RNG stuff. I have yet to meet a single player who likes THAT :p

I think you might of misread some things.

Anet actually said “We just don’t want players to grind in Guild Wars 2. No one enjoys that, no one finds it fun.”. They never said you don’t have to grind and grind is optional. They straight up said we don’t want you to grind. Which is exactly what we are doing regardless if it is cosmetic or not.

They also said “Our games aren’t about preparing to have fun, or about grinding for a future fun reward.”. Which is stating that GW2 is not about grinding for fun (cosmetic) rewards. Which again, is what we are doing.

Yet everything in the game goes against those statements completely. We are grinding for fun rewards. And if they didn’t want us to grind like they said, then why do they keep implementing grinds? It is the complete opposite of what was said.

They state that they don’t want us to grind and that GW2 is not about grinding for fun rewards. Yet they keep adding grinds whether cosmetic or not. It goes against everything they said, thus why players are complaining.

Grinding in GW2 doesn’t give you an advantage, that’s what’s important. They created the fractals for the people who want to grind, but it doesn’t hurt anybody else. The stat difference through ascended items is negligible so far and they’ll be available for everybody by other means in the future.

SpyderArachnid.5619:

They also said “Our games aren’t about preparing to have fun, or about grinding for a future fun reward.”. Which is stating that GW2 is not about grinding for fun (cosmetic) rewards. Which again, is what we are doing.

“fun” means useful to me in this context. If you don’t want to do anything in the game at all, what would the game be about? No developer can create enough content to satisfy somebody playing 10 hours a day. Also, if you don’t want an item now but see it as a long time goal, you’ll automatically fulfill the requirements sooner or later. You just don’t have to grind to keep up with others who grind. Which was the case in WoW.