Guild Wars 2

People say " gw1 dont have grind" but i saw a big skill grind in Gw1.

GW1 had title grind, which increased your skills’ power and took FOREVER to max, and every new expansion required a different title to grind.

No it didn’t feel like a grind at all. It felt like you were a hunter or a traveler exploring the world looking for rare items or something, it didn’t feel like a grind. You were on a journey.

In GW1 I played the first 2.5 years after release. I have no idea what you are talking about, must have come later.

Unless you are talking about elite capping, which wasn’t a grind at all.

There were alot of ways to acquire skills in GW1, I dint feel it was a grind at all.

GOSU.9574:

In GW1 I played the first 2.5 years after release. I have no idea what you are talking about, must have come later.

Unless you are talking about elite capping, which wasn’t a grind at all.

Did something new like this come out with GW:EN? I played GW1 up until this and there was never any titles that I knew of that increased power.

Yes, there were a lot of titles that required a lot of work and getting all the elite skills required killing a lot of bosses…but this wasn’t repetitive work and is night and day from the champ farm runs that are all over GW2.

The only grinding in GW1 was really to get a very special armor design that had the same stats as all other max level gear and the areas you farmed for this were challenging…which is the complete opposite of constantly farming ridiculously easy content to get armor that makes you more powerful.

^ GW2 started off so well, but this is where they are going wrong.

GW:EOTN had some titles that required you to farm. That’s true. But you didn’t have to complete those titles. Most are cosmetic or just doesn’t make a difference, unless you wanted any of the armor sets, which are cosmetics.

Zoid.2568:

GW:EOTN had some titles that required you to farm. That’s true. But you didn’t have to complete those titles. Most are cosmetic or just doesn’t make a difference, unless you wanted any of the armor sets, which are cosmetics.

and skill grind ?

There were some faction specific titles in Eye of the North and Factions, that when maxed made PVE skills stronger. But I wouldn’t really call that a grind.

Grind? In an online game that requires developers to provide content for players who out-play the newness in the developer’s offerings within days of release, when it takes months to develop? Say it isn’t so!

Sure, it took time to max out certain faction skills and titles like Lightbringer. These were even viewed as required for certain speed runs. The power curve was shallow, as is GW2’s. Unlike GW2, it was possible to max out the effectiveness of most builds while avoiding this grind completely. The faction skills were also not available in any form of PvP.

I’ve seen the word ‘grind’ thrown around a lot, but a lot of people are trying to counter the complaints on grind by talking about something different.

Not all grind is inherently bad. Having some extra cosmetic options such as skins and titles that require a grind is fine.

However, when you require a player to grind one aspect of the game in order to perform well in another area of the game, this is when the grind becomes a problem

Ex: Requiring players to grind open world champions to get crafting materials for gear needed for instanced Fractals or to stay competitive in WvW.

Do people really not consider maxing the Kurzick and Luxon titles grind?

Both have skills tied to them that get stronger as you increase in rank and it’s only relatively recently, years after they were introduced, that they were changed so you don’t need the max rank to get the maximum effect from the skills.

Yes you got points from pretty much everything in the relevant areas but you need a lot of points to max them. Doing every quest, getting masters reward on every mission in both normal and hard mode and vanquishing every map will get you to something like rank 5. Of 12. And the number of points required goes up every map.

The only way most people considered viable to max either title was by speed clearing a specific map over and over again. And if that isn’t grind I’d love to know what is.

There are a lot of other titles in GW1 that required a lot of grind too, (Lucky/unlucky, treasure hunter and gamer for a start) but generally they didn’t give any benefits so it didn’t matter much.

OP is a common attack on GW1 based on ignorance to mislead people who are not familiar with the latest state of the game in GW1 long before GW2 was even released.

You can already get max stat on your skills at rank 5 out of a max of 10 for ALL PvE-only skills (rank 6 out of max 12 for Cathan PvE skills). Furthermore, they purposefully made the power increases per rank to be very gradual until you hit max stat at mid rank, so you hardly even feel it while leveling up.

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/List_of_PvE-only_skills

It is easy to get mid rank just by playing normally so it doesn’t feel like a grind to max out your PvE-only skills. And every new expansion you buy, you would play it normally, otherwise why buy the expansion if you don’t intend to play it right?

So it is easy to get mid rank and thus, max out your PvE-only skills for that expansion, by playing normally.

It really depends on how you do it and what you define as a grind.

When I was getting my legendary, I wanted it ASAP, so I grinded like a madman. Even map exploration and player killing in WvW felt like a grind because I wanted my loot now, and was basically watching the numbers instead if enjoying the process. That was an insane grind.

When I was getting Ascended stuff, I didn’t care when I got it. I just did temple runs with guildies, and ran dungeons whenever I felt like it. Didn’t feel like a grind at all.

Zoid.2568:

No it didn’t feel like a grind at all. It felt like you were a hunter or a traveler exploring the world looking for rare items or something, it didn’t feel like a grind. You were on a journey.

That’s what happened when you played through it. Endgame was a grind. You ground for skills, titles (that gave skills and whose power increased as it went on), zkeys, faction, mats for tormented weapons, ectos and such for obby armors, orrian thingies for booze, holidays for sweet points, vaettir and raptors for faction and wisdom title, FA for faction (especially when they changed it so you could convert points) etc.

I don’t think most of us minded this.

Sylv.5324:

Zoid.2568:

No it didn’t feel like a grind at all. It felt like you were a hunter or a traveler exploring the world looking for rare items or something, it didn’t feel like a grind. You were on a journey.

That’s what happened when you played through it. Endgame was a grind. You ground for skills, titles (that gave skills and whose power increased as it went on), zkeys, faction, mats for tormented weapons, ectos and such for obby armors, orrian thingies for booze, holidays for sweet points, vaettir and raptors for faction and wisdom title, etc.

I don’t think most of us minded this.

But these end games grind in GW1 are merely for more gold and cosmetic items. And the desirability of cosmetic items are always subjective. Some people like obsidian armor on their characters while others consider them ugly. At least you don’t have to suck during gameplay for not having max stat gear since you can get those so much more easily in GW1 by playing normally.

In GW2, however, you grind for more effective gameplay powers (e.g. max stat ascended/legendary weapons/armors/trinkets) which is the big difference here!

As a GWAMM, I am shocked at the ability of people to forget the crazy amount of farming required to get max level in titles to increase the effectiveness of PvE skills and resistances to certain effects.

Hero (Fast) Faction Farming (HFF or HFFF), Lightbringer and Sunspear point farming, EotN title farming…all of which gave a statistical advantage for endgame content…all of which (besides faction farming) was CHARACTER bound.

Nostalgia through rose-tinted glasses.

DarkSpirit.7046:

OP is a common attack on GW1 based on ignorance to mislead people who are not familiar with the latest state of the game in GW1 long before GW2 was even released.

You can already get max stat on your skills at rank 5 out of a max of 10 for ALL PvE-only skills (rank 6 out of max 12 for Cathan PvE skills). Furthermore, they purposefully made the power increases per rank to be very gradual until you hit max stat at mid rank, so you hardly even feel it while leveling up.

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/List_of_PvE-only_skills

It is easy to get mid rank just by playing normally so it doesn’t feel like a grind to max out your PvE-only skills. And every new expansion you buy, you would play it normally, otherwise why buy the expansion if you don’t intend to play it right?

So it is easy to get mid rank and thus, max out your PvE-only skills for that expansion, by playing normally.

Look at the effects under the lightbringer title.

Vorch.2985:

As a GWAMM, I am shocked at the ability of people to forget the crazy amount of farming required to get max level in titles to increase the effectiveness of PvE skills and resistances to certain effects.

Hero (Fast) Faction Farming (HFF or HFFF), Lightbringer and Sunspear point farming, EotN title farming…all of which gave a statistical advantage for endgame content…all of which (besides faction farming) was CHARACTER bound.

Nostalgia through rose-tinted glasses.

I am a GWAMM too, on both my accounts. Like I have already proven, you only need mid rank to get max stat PvE skills, you don’t have to max your title.

GWAMM and maxing titles are only cosmetic, it doesn’t grant you more power in gameplay.

Vorch.2985:

Look at the effects under the lightbringer title.

Your build is more important than that title. Furthermore lightbringer is probably the easiest PvE title to max (only max rank of

8)

GW1 skill grind would’ve been great. As long as I didn’t have to go back to town to equip the capture signet.

Tiger.7506:

People say " gw1 dont have grind" but i saw a big skill grind in Gw1.

GW1 had title grind, which increased your skills’ power and took FOREVER to max, and every new expansion required a different title to grind.

So what? Is that the “let’s go full whiteknight and defend GW2 with the first make up argument that crosses my mind” moment of the day?

And just for the record… Every expansion came with TONS of new content… In GW2 we keep grinding old content, in order to get better stats to… Keep grinding old content!
It’s brilliant, isn’kitten

I’ve got lots of posts about the title progression impact on skills from Guild Wars 1 in conversations I’ve had with Vayne.8563.

You could grind out the titles if you wanted to, but very early in the title progression the title rank grind stops impacting the power of most skills.

Additionally many of the skills are great as soon as you get them without having title ranked at all.

Shockwave.1230:

I’ve got lots of posts about the title progression impact on skills from Guild Wars 1 in conversations I’ve had with Vayne.8563.

You could grind out the titles if you wanted to, but very early in the title progression the title rank grind stops impacting the power of most skills.

Additionally many of the skills are great as soon as you get them without having title ranked at all.

Yeah, but you know, since Vayne first came up with that story about GW1 grind, it has become the first line of defense for GW2’s grind…

Valanga.5942:

Shockwave.1230:

I’ve got lots of posts about the title progression impact on skills from Guild Wars 1 in conversations I’ve had with Vayne.8563.

You could grind out the titles if you wanted to, but very early in the title progression the title rank grind stops impacting the power of most skills.

Additionally many of the skills are great as soon as you get them without having title ranked at all.

Yeah, but you know, since Vayne first came up with that story about GW1 grind, it has become the first line of defense for GW2’s grind…

Then it is misleading. Also GW2 grind affects how much you “suck” in gameplay by gating max stat ascended/legendary gear while GW1 grind only applies to cosmetic effects.

The luxon and kurzick max title was a grind indeed. But doing the deep or urgoz, or vanquising the areas are by no means a grind for me. I did those for fun, long after I got both tiltes maxed.

Not really. You could cherry pick which skills you wanted and weren’t limited by pre-made weapon sets or even by professions. The only grind in the game was entirely optional.

aspirine.6852:

The luxon and kurzick max title was a grind indeed. But doing the deep or urgoz, or vanquising the areas are by no means a grind for me. I did those for fun, long after I got both tiltes maxed.

Sure but like I have said, you can already max your allegiance skills at mid rank (rank 6 in this case) and maxing the title itself is only for cosmetic purpose and for working towards GWAMM, which is also a cosmetic title.

GW2 grind, on the other hand, gates your max stat gear (ascended/legendary) which directly impacts your gameplay effectiveness.

You forgot the part where a lot of these PVE skills were useless and those that were not were only really useful/nescessary if you did speed runs. Also you would aquire most of them and a descent rank in your titles by just playing the campaign, so yeah, way to make a stupid argument.

Tiger.7506:

People say " gw1 dont have grind" but i saw a big skill grind in Gw1.

GW1 had title grind, which increased your skills’ power and took FOREVER to max, and every new expansion required a different title to grind.

People are right.

GW1 skills were not a grind at all for me.

Rank 6 Kurzick took 1,200,000 faction to earn.

The most optimal Kurzick farm earned you like 40,000 an hour.

That’s approximately 30 horus STRAIGHT of doing a repetitive task over, and over, and over again. For one title track. How is this NOT a grind?

And these PvE skills are the bread and butter of PvE, especially in high-level content. IMBAgons were a huge staple, and completely relied on 2 PvE skills (Sunspear and Kurzick) which you had to grind out. Look at PvXwiki, skills such as Asuran Scan and the Ebon Vanguard battle standards are pretty common.

I mean seriously, if you want to talk about how these PvE skills weren’t “necessary,” then can’t the same argument be applied to Ascended gear? Nothing requires Ascended gear, just like it’s possible to do DoA without LightBringer. It’s going to be a lot more inefficient however, and this is the exact same across both games.

GW1 definitely had a grind.

Ursan.7846:

Rank 6 Kurzick took 1,200,000 faction to earn.

The most optimal Kurzick farm earned you like 40,000 an hour.

That’s approximately 30 horus STRAIGHT of doing a repetitive task over, and over, and over again. For one title track. How is this NOT a grind?

And these PvE skills are the bread and butter of PvE, especially in high-level content. IMBAgons were a huge staple, and completely relied on 2 PvE skills (Sunspear and Kurzick) which you had to grind out. Look at PvXwiki, skills such as Asuran Scan and the Ebon Vanguard battle standards are pretty common.

GW1 definitely had a grind.

You forgot that farming is not the only way to gain allegiance title points? You can also get lots of allegiance title points by simply playing the game.

You can get also get allegiance title points by playing:

- PvP like Allegiance Battle, Jade Quarry, Fort Aspenwood
- Performing all the quests and missions in the Luxon/Kurzick areas (both normal and hard mode)
- Completing Shiro’s Return book by completing missions (both normal and hard modes)
- Completing Young Heros of Tyria book by completing starter missions (hard mode)
- Completing Competitive Missions
- Playing in the faction’s challenge/elite missions.
- Killing monsters while under the respective faction priest blessing (both normal and hard mode)
- Vanquishing in the Luxon/Kurzick areas (hard mode)
- Exchanging faction points for kurzick/luxon skills
- Exchanging faction points for passage scrolls to Urgoz/deep
- Exchanging faction points for amber/jadeite
- Donating faction points to your guild
etc.

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Allegiance_rank

With all these, it should easily get you to rank 6 for max stat skills just by playing the game.

Ursan.7846:

GW1 definitely had a grind.

What you guys tend to forget while trying to defend GW2’s grind, is that there is different kind of grind, and not always is bad.

In GW1, and in every single MMO ever released, grind and new tiers of gears, armors, weapons, skills, whatever, ALWAYS comes with new content to acquire them, and new content to put them to use!
As i said earlies, GW2 is the only MMO ever who makes you regrind old content in order to get better gear to keep grinding the old content…

Ursan.7846:

Rank 6 Kurzick took 1,200,000 faction to earn.

The most optimal Kurzick farm earned you like 40,000 an hour.

That’s approximately 30 horus STRAIGHT of doing a repetitive task over, and over, and over again. For one title track. How is this NOT a grind?

And these PvE skills are the bread and butter of PvE, especially in high-level content. IMBAgons were a huge staple, and completely relied on 2 PvE skills (Sunspear and Kurzick) which you had to grind out. Look at PvXwiki, skills such as Asuran Scan and the Ebon Vanguard battle standards are pretty common.

I mean seriously, if you want to talk about how these PvE skills weren’t “necessary,” then can’t the same argument be applied to Ascended gear? Nothing requires Ascended gear, just like it’s possible to do DoA without LightBringer. It’s going to be a lot more inefficient however, and this is the exact same across both games.

GW1 definitely had a grind.

I don’t think anyone is saying you couldn’t grind in Gw1 just that there wasn’t a grind for power progression. There was so little power progression that the Gw1 co-founder and current CEO said power progression wasn’t in GW1, even though it technically had a slight existence.

DarkSpirit.7046:

Sylv.5324:

Zoid.2568:

No it didn’t feel like a grind at all. It felt like you were a hunter or a traveler exploring the world looking for rare items or something, it didn’t feel like a grind. You were on a journey.

That’s what happened when you played through it. Endgame was a grind. You ground for skills, titles (that gave skills and whose power increased as it went on), zkeys, faction, mats for tormented weapons, ectos and such for obby armors, orrian thingies for booze, holidays for sweet points, vaettir and raptors for faction and wisdom title, etc.

I don’t think most of us minded this.

But these end games grind in GW1 are merely for more gold and cosmetic items. And the desirability of cosmetic items are always subjective. Some people like obsidian armor on their characters while others consider them ugly. At least you don’t have to suck during gameplay for not having max stat gear since you can get those so much more easily in GW1 by playing normally.

In GW2, however, you grind for more effective gameplay powers (e.g. max stat ascended/legendary weapons/armors/trinkets) which is the big difference here!

No, you also ground (grinded?) for more, and more powerful skills. In PvP, it was to unlock skills; in PvE it was to unlock more powerful tiers of PvE-only skills.

Sylv.5324:

DarkSpirit.7046:

Sylv.5324:

Zoid.2568:

No it didn’t feel like a grind at all. It felt like you were a hunter or a traveler exploring the world looking for rare items or something, it didn’t feel like a grind. You were on a journey.

That’s what happened when you played through it. Endgame was a grind. You ground for skills, titles (that gave skills and whose power increased as it went on), zkeys, faction, mats for tormented weapons, ectos and such for obby armors, orrian thingies for booze, holidays for sweet points, vaettir and raptors for faction and wisdom title, etc.

I don’t think most of us minded this.

But these end games grind in GW1 are merely for more gold and cosmetic items. And the desirability of cosmetic items are always subjective. Some people like obsidian armor on their characters while others consider them ugly. At least you don’t have to suck during gameplay for not having max stat gear since you can get those so much more easily in GW1 by playing normally.

In GW2, however, you grind for more effective gameplay powers (e.g. max stat ascended/legendary weapons/armors/trinkets) which is the big difference here!

No, you also ground (grinded?) for more, and more powerful skills. In PvP, it was to unlock skills; in PvE it was to unlock more powerful tiers of PvE-only skills.

Like I have already said, you can easily gain max stat PvE-only skills by playing the game normally because you already gain max stat PvE-only skills in mid rank. You don’t have to max your rank to gain max stat PvE-only skills.

As for unlocking PvP skills, it is so easy. You can unlock PvP skills through Balthazar Factions that you gained by PvPing, or you can gain it through PvE normal game play or buying it from a skill vendor or just get a skill tome.

To get max level GW:EN and Factions skills, you absolutely had to grind them. To unlock a skill via a tome, you had to have the skill unlocked already via PvP or on an alt.

Edit: You also had to grind out those title skills on each alt.

Sylv.5324:

To get max level GW:EN and Factions skills, you absolutely had to grind them. To unlock a skill via a tome, you had to have the skill unlocked already via PvP or on an alt.

Edit: You also had to grind out those title skills on each alt.

Ok, that is because I have unlocked all the skills in GW1 already, if it is so difficult how did I unlock all of them on both my accounts?

A skill can be learned by
- Completing certain quests which reward the player with a skill.
- Purchasing a skill from a skill trainer (except for PvE-only skills).
- Purchasing a skill from a Hero skill trainer (except for non-Sunspear PvE-only skills).
- Capturing a skill from a boss.
- Switching secondary profession, which adds the set of default basic skills for each profession.

You just need to look at all your options.

Ursan.7846:

Rank 6 Kurzick took 1,200,000 faction to earn.

The most optimal Kurzick farm earned you like 40,000 an hour.

That’s approximately 30 horus STRAIGHT of doing a repetitive task over, and over, and over again. For one title track. How is this NOT a grind?

And these PvE skills are the bread and butter of PvE, especially in high-level content. IMBAgons were a huge staple, and completely relied on 2 PvE skills (Sunspear and Kurzick) which you had to grind out. Look at PvXwiki, skills such as Asuran Scan and the Ebon Vanguard battle standards are pretty common.

I mean seriously, if you want to talk about how these PvE skills weren’t “necessary,” then can’t the same argument be applied to Ascended gear? Nothing requires Ascended gear, just like it’s possible to do DoA without LightBringer. It’s going to be a lot more inefficient however, and this is the exact same across both games.

GW1 definitely had a grind.

It was only a grind if you grinded it. What you’re forgetting is by the time the kurz/luxon skills came out, people had been playing gw1 for years. I was rank 6 long before those skills ever came out, anyone who did CM’s/AB was too.
Logging in now, I’m at rank 10: 6,152,000 points. I never rank speed clears. I never vanquished. I just played AB/Competitive missions on occasion for fun.

And what you’re forgetting is the most important thing, kurzick/luxon rank was meaningless in pvp. You couldn’t use the skills in pvp. You couldn’t get armor or weapons that were more powerful than everyone else’s armor/weapons from the PvE you’re talking about. The only difference was the skin. You couldn’t kill people with your luxon rank.

You can with ascended gear in WvW though. Like said, its not the same.

This does not include faction skills, which are acquired via grinding Factions PvP (Kurzick/Luxon skills), or PvE (GWEN skills and Kurzick/Luxon skills). Higher points in those titles resulted in more powerful skills. You keep ignoring them, but several of them are essential to various PvE hero and player builds. That absolutely was grind = more power, but what GW1 did was tie it to skills instead of equipment.

In practice, it meant a lot of doing FA or JQ over and over for Factions ones, and killing lots of stuff for bounties for that and the others.

Enokitake.1742:

You can with ascended gear in WvW though. Like said, its not the same.

You are shifting the goalposts.

Also, it was not possible to ever get rank 10 luxon or kurzick or deldrimor or norn or asura or ebon vanguard or lightbringer, etc, etc, through casual play, let alone quickly.

Sylv.5324:

This does not include faction skills, which are acquired via grinding Factions PvP (Kurzick/Luxon skills), or PvE (GWEN skills and Kurzick/Luxon skills). Higher points in those titles resulted in more powerful skills. You keep ignoring them, but several of them are essential to various PvE hero and player builds. That absolutely was grind = more power, but what GW1 did was tie it to skills instead of equipment.

In practice, it meant a lot of doing FA or JQ over and over for Factions ones, and killing lots of stuff for bounties for that and the others.

It is not a grind if it can be acquired through normal game play and those can be acquired through normal game play. It only takes 3,000 factions to acquire a Kurz/Luxon skill and you can’t possibly proceed through the campaign without at least 10,000 factions, so how can it be a grind? Furthermore, purchasing such skills increases your allegiance title even further.

Sylv.5324:

Also, it was not possible to ever get rank 10 luxon or kurzick or deldrimor or norn or asura or ebon vanguard or lightbringer, etc, etc, through casual play, let alone quickly.

And why do you need rank 10 luxon or kurzick or deldrimor? For the stupid cosmetic titles? You only need rank 5 (6 for kurz/luxons, 4 for LB) to get max stat versions of those skills.

As a long-time player of GW 1, I can definitely see a lot of defensive arguments. If anyone is saying there was no grind in GW 1 then I would hold them very close to their arguments and dismiss a lot of “grind” in GW2, for no other reason than you don’t “need” this or that to play and enjoy the game.

The most notable point of contention is the PvE skills (the strength of which is tied to titles). Nowadays you can earn the maximum benefit by mid-rank; this was not always the case. What made it frustrating was that, upon embarking on the new content, your titles (and thus, new skills) were non-existent or very ineffective. That’s not so bad with dwarve skills, but norn and ebon vanguard begged to differ, and you absolutely did need to push into high ranks to get superior benefit, which would be necessary depending on your build.

I’ll note that I’m neither reinforcing chants of death to grind nor shrugging it off. There was some grind in GW, though it is relatively one of the least grindy games I’ve ever played, to the point that any serious discussion about it in video games should refer to GW 1 perhaps as the ideal way to go about it (in that it’s nearly transparent and doesn’t affect most of the game).

But don’t flat-out state that GW 1 contained “zero” grind. If you need to perform tasks to reach the same goal (pushing titles), even if there are different paths to do so, you’re still grinding away to raise a number on a bar.

Sylv.5324:

Enokitake.1742:

You can with ascended gear in WvW though. Like said, its not the same.

You are shifting the goalposts.

Also, it was not possible to ever get rank 10 luxon or kurzick or deldrimor or norn or asura or ebon vanguard or lightbringer, etc, etc, through casual play, let alone quickly.

Then how did I do it through casual play? I played guild wars casually for 7 years because I hardcored other games (Aion, Ragnarok Online, TERA). GW was my “take a break” game when I was tired of grinding in actually grindy games to keep up with PVP.

1) The skill grind was only needed if you wanted to be a super high end PVE hero.
2) It wasn’t effective in PVP at all.
3) Casuals did not care about even being super high end PVE heros.
4) By the time those skills came out (they came out between nightfall and eotn) most hardcores had maxed the kurzick/luxon/nightfall title ranks for God Walking Mortals title, and casuals (like me) were easily over the 1.2 million mark.
5) You didn’t even need max level versions of the skills to be effective in a group. My imbagon used to get taken to DoA at rank 4/5 sunspear. I eventually got enough to max it but many of those points came FROM Domain of Anguish.

The fact that it took you seven years of casual play to get max level in one skill shows that it took a lot of work. If you wanted it sooner, you had to grind it out, because just playing the game through and doing so casually did not get you anywhere near them.

If you are that knowledgeable about GW1, you KNOW that most people got theirs by grinding, and you’re playing dumb to me now to bolster your argument instead okittennowledging that GW1 did have a steep grind for many things in general, and faction-based skills that did have an impact on your performance in PvE in particular.

OrianZeta.1537:

But don’t flat-out state that GW 1 contained “zero” grind. If you need to perform tasks to reach the same goal (pushing titles), even if there are different paths to do so, you’re still grinding away to raise a number on a bar.

No game contain zero grind, ever… But i said said earlier, not all grinds are the same, nor are bad.

OrianZeta.1537:

But don’t flat-out state that GW 1 contained “zero” grind. If you need to perform tasks to reach the same goal (pushing titles), even if there are different paths to do so, you’re still grinding away to raise a number on a bar.

There are always opportunities to grind if you want to grind. But just because someone decides to go for GWAMM and takes the route of maximum grind for the cosmetic title, doesn’t necessarily imply the entire game is all grindy. And that’s the problem with people who are effectively claiming oh I decide to go for GWAMM so I have to max 30 titles, therefore the entire game must be grindy for everyone since they all need GWAMM to complete this game, which is totally untrue.

There are many people who can complete the game and all its expansions without needing to max a single title. I am one of them since I completed the game long before maxing a single title on my characters.

Sylv.5324:

The fact that it took you seven years of casual play to get max level in one skill shows that it took a lot of work.

The fact that he lasted seven years in the game, playing casually, without getting bored… Speaks volumes on the differences between GW1 and 2…

Sylv.5324:

The fact that it took you seven years of casual play to get max level in one skill shows that it took a lot of work. If you wanted it sooner, you had to grind it out, because just playing the game through and doing so casually did not get you anywhere near them.

If you are that knowledgeable about GW1, you KNOW that most people got theirs by grinding, and you’re playing dumb to me now to bolster your argument instead okittennowledging that GW1 did have a steep grind for many things in general, and faction-based skills that did have an impact on your performance in PvE in particular.

I didn’t max it. Because I didn’t care to.

I played casual, and like said: Casuals don’t care about maxing it. Casuals didn’t care about doing DoA in 35 minutes. Those were elite zones for a reason. And they only dropped skins which were different.

I didn’t say it had no grind, I said this: The grind was no where near as required to be effective as you’re pretended it was to make a point. The people who chose to do it, did it because they wanted it for God walking among mere mortals not because it was absolutely required to be effective in important areas of the game.

Valanga.5942:

Sylv.5324:

The fact that it took you seven years of casual play to get max level in one skill shows that it took a lot of work.

The fact that he lasted seven years in the game, playing casually, without getting bored… Speaks volumes on the differences between GW1 and 2…

Indeed. I’m was tempted last week to go back to gw1 and actually finish GWAMM just to have the title in GW2, but then they announced ascended armor.

YAY TIME TO GRIND FOR WvW. -_-

GW1 had skill or ability progression which is a key element in horizontal progression as opposed to vertical progression. VP is known for being grindy, while HP is known for being non-grindy. Because VP is periodically raising the power level of the game it is non-optional, while HP at it’s best can lead to class diversity and more interesting playstyles for everyone. The titles, achievements, and gear which were sought were purely optional. And, that’s the key distinction around grinds. If they are purely optional the game doesn’t feel grindy. If you have to grind to keep up with the power level of the game, it feels grindy.

Because GW2 has gone with VP, it can correctly be said to be grindy; GW1 was the very essence and definition of a non-grindy game.

Yeah. There’s a huge difference between grind you have to do to be able to keep up in WvW, and grind you choose to do because you want this pretty item with no performance difference from the guys next to you (which was the point of maxing out PvE build title skills).