Guild Wars 2

Heart of Thorns is NOTHING BUT A GRIND.

You can’t NOT GRIND if you want to progress in the maps. You have to MAX OUT THE GLIDER to use the edy currents in Tangled Depths! Unbelievable. Took a perfectly good game and turned it into a grinder….thanks a lot…and what sucks even worse is that you end up in Verdant Brink with everyone else who has to grind to progress because those are the fastest missions….thanks again.

Literally nothing of any immediate consequence requires leyline gliding. All the other masteries are more important and you’ll get them soon enough just playing the game. All the grind people keep complaining about is self-inflicted, because it’s all actually quite optipnal. You just don’t want to wait.

I knocked off 2/17 elites and gave up.

This game doesn’t cater for casuals anymore. I don’t care for anything other than WvW and PvP either.

Tentonhammr.7849:

You just don’t want to wait.

Key thing here.

HoT isn’t a game full of grind. It’s a game full of long term goals.

But people want things now, so they try to get those long term goals as if they were short term goals. This results in the sensation that the game is ‘full of grind’.

I am not a grind person I hate grinding. You are correct in that I do not want to wait. I want to get on a map and clear it and if I have to run around grinding before I can clear everything, it ticks me off. Justifiably so I would add especially since old GW2 did not have all of that mess to deal with. Also, you are FORCED to level up ON the Heart of Thorns maps..ugh. You should be able to use any event in GW2. That would make it not as bad.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

HoT isn’t a game full of grind. It’s a game full of long term goals.

- I don’t know what long terms goals you have for your own life, but there are people out there who aren’t actually happy to announce that playing some MMO is the thing they plan to do the next five years in absence of more fulfilling hobbies. Calling it grind puts the focus on the mind-numbing activity it is. Cook for 10k hours and you’re a chef. Play piano for 10k hours and you’re a pianist. Farm game for 10k hours and you’ve just wasted your life.

Zenith.6403:

Konig Des Todes.2086:

HoT isn’t a game full of grind. It’s a game full of long term goals.

- I don’t know what long terms goals you have for your own life, but there are people out there who aren’t actually happy to announce that playing some MMO is the thing they plan to do the next five years in absence of more fulfilling hobbies. Calling it grind puts the focus on the mind-numbing activity it is. Cook for 10k hours and you’re a chef. Play piano for 10k hours and you’re a pianist. Farm game for 10k hours and you’ve just wasted your life.

The grind that they were referring to would be the grind you would be required to do to do playable content. In other games, in order to do some of the endgame content, you would have to farm a tier of gear in order to even play that content. In this game you can do practically anything in exotics. This includes raids although you’ll have less room for errors. This includes fractals as it’s debatable as to whether increasing enemy stats and adding instabilities is considered content.

HoT was meant to be explored. If you take your time to do so and participate in all the content available, masteries are trivial. Only the first few masteries are actually needed, with leyline gliding being the one exception and only actually required at the end of TD and beyond. Adventures are an easy source of daily experience (~700k), or ~3 million your first time. Personally, that’s what I did and had everything before I needed it – no grinding at all for the ~1.5 weeks it took me to travel to Dragon’s Stand and finish up. I however spent ~24 hours just exploring each map, while participating in the events.

You don’t want to wait, but you don’t want to grind either … It’s almost like you’ve never played an MMO. I got nothing for you. If you don’t have patience, you better have gold or mad skills.

GL.

The best part is that it is account bound so you only have to grind once. I am still leveling characters to 80 on the main game so I have not yet even started HOT and I am in no hurry. They just fixed the original game and the leveling in it so its actually challenging now so I will give them a few years to “fix” HOT and then try it.

Ayrilana.1396:

The grind that they were referring to would be the grind you would be required to do to do playable content. In other games, in order to do some of the endgame content, you would have to farm a tier of gear in order to even play that content. In this game you can do practically anything in exotics. This includes raids although you’ll have less room for errors. This includes fractals as it’s debatable as to whether increasing enemy stats and adding instabilities is considered content.

- The numbers on the weapons and armor are meaningless. What does that 5-figure number measure? Rolling 6 on a 6-sided dice is the best outcome, but does 14,890 power mean you’re powerful or not? That’s nonsense.

Content means graphics, storyline, unique dialogue, music and so forth. Something that requires effort to create. Good games have generative mechanism that allows for variations with finite content (like Chess). MMOs have no such mechanism and they take repetition to absurd levels. Farming 1 wood log is the same as farming 10,000 wood logs. The experience doesn’t change, you just waste your time.

The grind really isn’t that bad. You get masteries by basically doing anything in HoT. It takes awhile, but unless you’re running around in circles killing the same 3 enemies, it isn’t a grind. You explore the map, check out the metas, maybe get parts of your collections done, and the next thing you know you’re nearly full on masteries and the whole world is open to you. No rush, either. The masteries are account bound, so once you have them you’ve got them for good.

sephiroth.4217:

I knocked off 2/17 elites and gave up.

This game doesn’t cater for casuals anymore. I don’t care for anything other than WvW and PvP either.

Caters to me just fine, I’m as casual as it comes. I’ve started most of the elites. I finished one, am pretty close on two others, and I’ll get to the rest when I do. That’s casual. If you expect to burn through all of them right away that’s the opposite of casual. If you’re a casual, be casual and you’ll get things done eventually. If you’re not casual, then you shouldn’t have any trouble burning through everything and getting things done right away.

You beat HoT when you beat the story. The rest is to fill in the gaps and…. give you your monies worth? I don’t want to blow through the content in 1 week. If you don’t pvp at all, what’s left? That’s when I move on to another game.

I played a Korean MMO and a Chinese MMO awhile ago. You do not know grind.

Zenith.6403:

Konig Des Todes.2086:

HoT isn’t a game full of grind. It’s a game full of long term goals.

- I don’t know what long terms goals you have for your own life, but there are people out there who aren’t actually happy to announce that playing some MMO is the thing they plan to do the next five years in absence of more fulfilling hobbies. Calling it grind puts the focus on the mind-numbing activity it is. Cook for 10k hours and you’re a chef. Play piano for 10k hours and you’re a pianist. Farm game for 10k hours and you’ve just wasted your life.

So you’re not a gamer, why are you even here? Playing a game for 10k hours seems just fine by me if I was willing to do it for 10k hours in the first place. There’s nothing in this game, though, that takes even remotely that long.

Zenith.6403:

Ayrilana.1396:

The grind that they were referring to would be the grind you would be required to do to do playable content. In other games, in order to do some of the endgame content, you would have to farm a tier of gear in order to even play that content. In this game you can do practically anything in exotics. This includes raids although you’ll have less room for errors. This includes fractals as it’s debatable as to whether increasing enemy stats and adding instabilities is considered content.

- The numbers on the weapons and armor are meaningless. What does that 5-figure number measure? Rolling 6 on a 6-sided dice is the best outcome, but does 14,890 power mean you’re powerful or not? That’s nonsense.

Content means graphics, storyline, unique dialogue, music and so forth. Something that requires effort to create. Good games have generative mechanism that allows for variations with finite content (like Chess). MMOs have no such mechanism and they take repetition to absurd levels. Farming 1 wood log is the same as farming 10,000 wood logs. The experience doesn’t change, you just waste your time.

in the 80’s we collected points and tried to achieve highscores, in the 90’s we tried to get to the end of the game. Now rpg player enjoy collcting and growing material wealth to support their avatar. so farming 1000 is not the same as farming 1 for many, in RPG its not all about the adrenalin rush ands new graphic models every 4 minutes. Some people didnt get trying to achieve high scores in the 80’s, some people didnt get trying to complete games by repeating over and over until they succeeded, some people dont get collecting and RPG’s. Content means many things inclusding having a persistent online world to play in.

One mans grind is another mans pleasure, but if you are fool enough to do something you dont enjoy and call it a grind, then more fool you.

it was annoying in the first week when we all wanted to play our elite specs and they were locked behind masteries, but that was quickly fixed, you should be able to unlock elite specs simply by doing the readily accessible challenges.

though i do have to agree that it all felt far too grindy, i played HoT for the first week and haven’t stepped back in the jungle since, theres nothing to do there except progress masteries, which requires doing things you’ve already done 10x over and yeah, thats grindy.

Zenith.6403:

Ayrilana.1396:

The grind that they were referring to would be the grind you would be required to do to do playable content. In other games, in order to do some of the endgame content, you would have to farm a tier of gear in order to even play that content. In this game you can do practically anything in exotics. This includes raids although you’ll have less room for errors. This includes fractals as it’s debatable as to whether increasing enemy stats and adding instabilities is considered content.

- The numbers on the weapons and armor are meaningless. What does that 5-figure number measure? Rolling 6 on a 6-sided dice is the best outcome, but does 14,890 power mean you’re powerful or not? That’s nonsense.

Content means graphics, storyline, unique dialogue, music and so forth. Something that requires effort to create. Good games have generative mechanism that allows for variations with finite content (like Chess). MMOs have no such mechanism and they take repetition to absurd levels. Farming 1 wood log is the same as farming 10,000 wood logs. The experience doesn’t change, you just waste your time.

Except you need grind for MMO’s. There’s also a difference between content and rewards.

Kal Spiro.9745:

So you’re not a gamer, why are you even here? Playing a game for 10k hours seems just fine by me if I was willing to do it for 10k hours in the first place. There’s nothing in this game, though, that takes even remotely that long.

- I am a gamer. I’ve played lots of games during my life. Most of them were good experiences. 20-40 hours of high-quality content for a fair price. It used to be that developers would strive create an experience or a challenge for players to face. These days there’s a talk of “player retention”. What a bizarre concept. It sounds like some drug dealer wanting to hook up his customers so they come back for more. All the “dailies” and achievements are just there to hook you up once the game has lost its appeal. Sometimes it’s hard to see what the core of the game is with all the fluff. What if there was no items? What do we need them for? The slot machine effect, that’s what. Reinforcement for player to keep on playing indefinitely. Minimum effort for maximal player retention.

Is this what “a game” means to you?

Chill out fella, the grind is optional…but if you’re really into min/max then i guess it isn’t…

EDIT: I personally enjoy min/max play, but my job and family circumstances don’t allow for me to become a “min/max nolifer” anymore, so I’m taking the ascended grind slowly…very slowly. You could do the same for your stuff, if your schedule is just as busy. It all boils down to patience and dedication after that.

The grind is optional. You only need to do it for ascended/legendary gear, skins, special abilities, and ‘some’ end game content. Most of us end up doing this stuff at one point though, pretty much right after hitting level 80, cause it’s something to do.

But some people just do pvp exclusively….which doesn’t necessarily require any grinding at all to go at it with full force.

I mean if you are level 80 and you finished the story….why do anything? You have to look at the number of reasons you can scrounge up and go from there. It’s easy to understand your frustrations and arguments, but the game is what it is. Maybe you’ve done all the valuable content and should move on? Or maybe there’s something else you can find?

Zenith.6403:

Kal Spiro.9745:

So you’re not a gamer, why are you even here? Playing a game for 10k hours seems just fine by me if I was willing to do it for 10k hours in the first place. There’s nothing in this game, though, that takes even remotely that long.

- I am a gamer. I’ve played lots of games during my life. Most of them were good experiences. 20-40 hours of high-quality content for a fair price. It used to be that developers would strive create an experience or a challenge for players to face. These days there’s a talk of “player retention”. What a bizarre concept. It sounds like some drug dealer wanting to hook up his customers so they come back for more. All the “dailies” and achievements are just there to hook you up once the game has lost its appeal. Sometimes it’s hard to see what the core of the game is with all the fluff. What if there was no items? What do we need them for? The slot machine effect, that’s what. Reinforcement for player to keep on playing indefinitely. Minimum effort for maximal player retention.

Is this what “a game” means to you?

Actually MMOs have always talked about player retention, though maybe not publicly. At least it’s been that way for many years Another term for player retention when referring to MMOs is market share.

You believe old games didn’t talk about market share? Yeah maybe in the 80s, that was true, but no time since.

People made games to get them to buy games. Now, the game market is far far more crowded and you don’t even have to go to a store to buy a game anymore. So the competition is fierce, thus market share comes a word every business uses at some point or other.

In MMOs your market share is based on player retention. Nothing really to do with this argument.

Games have gotten more expensive to produce. Far more expensive. Very few early games had to worry about voice acting, which costs a small fortune. They didn’t have a staff of 300 people to feed. They certainly didn’t have the level of competiion.

Take Guild Wars 1. It came out ten years ago at a time when it was the only non subscription multiplayer fantasy game. The only one. Now there are free to play games, and freeium games, and games with “optional” subscriptions that claim to be free to play. Every one of these games is competition.

What company in their right mind wouldn’t talk about player retention?

Kal Spiro.9745:

sephiroth.4217:

I knocked off 2/17 elites and gave up.

This game doesn’t cater for casuals anymore. I don’t care for anything other than WvW and PvP either.

Caters to me just fine, I’m as casual as it comes. I’ve started most of the elites. I finished one, am pretty close on two others, and I’ll get to the rest when I do. That’s casual. If you expect to burn through all of them right away that’s the opposite of casual. If you’re a casual, be casual and you’ll get things done eventually. If you’re not casual, then you shouldn’t have any trouble burning through everything and getting things done right away.

All through WvW on a dead end tier? Wow that’s actually impressive, if not then you should try it out lol.

I’m still casual, but it’s purely PvP now. In PvP everyone has equal footing, which makes the game fun to me.

Vayne is correct.

Many games make their money in a short time frame by selling tens of millions of copies that will be played for anywhere fro 20-100 hours. One of the GTA series sold $1bn in three days. If you assume $60 a pop, that’s 16 2/3 million copies sold in three days. Guild Wars 2 has not sold that many copies in 3+ years. If that’s the kind of game someone wants, there are plenty out there, but none of them are MMO’s.

MMO’s don’t sell multiple tens of millions of copies. They make money over time by recurring payments. That can be a model where all players rent access to the game (sub) or a model where the company sells virtual items to be used in game, where only some of the player-base spend money regularly. Either way, the company does better with a larger player base.

In such a model, player retention is an important statistic. Likewise, attracting new players is important — thus all the effort ANet put into addressing perceived issues for new players via the NPE. Since both the sub and store models figure their profitability based on player base size (which can also be used to calculate market share), the bigger the player-base, the better they do.

It is a no grind, if you don’t want the shinies.

Just play the aspects of the game you want to play…

Zenith.6403:

Kal Spiro.9745:

So you’re not a gamer, why are you even here? Playing a game for 10k hours seems just fine by me if I was willing to do it for 10k hours in the first place. There’s nothing in this game, though, that takes even remotely that long.

- I am a gamer. I’ve played lots of games during my life. Most of them were good experiences. 20-40 hours of high-quality content for a fair price. It used to be that developers would strive create an experience or a challenge for players to face. These days there’s a talk of “player retention”. What a bizarre concept. It sounds like some drug dealer wanting to hook up his customers so they come back for more. All the “dailies” and achievements are just there to hook you up once the game has lost its appeal. Sometimes it’s hard to see what the core of the game is with all the fluff. What if there was no items? What do we need them for? The slot machine effect, that’s what. Reinforcement for player to keep on playing indefinitely. Minimum effort for maximal player retention.

Is this what “a game” means to you?

A gamer would not consider 10k hours playing a game they like/love as a waste of time. So maybe you just don’t actually like this game, in which case the previous question stands. why stick around if you consider the game to be nothing but a chore? You’re not doing anyone any good by it.

sephiroth.4217:

Kal Spiro.9745:

sephiroth.4217:

I knocked off 2/17 elites and gave up.

This game doesn’t cater for casuals anymore. I don’t care for anything other than WvW and PvP either.

Caters to me just fine, I’m as casual as it comes. I’ve started most of the elites. I finished one, am pretty close on two others, and I’ll get to the rest when I do. That’s casual. If you expect to burn through all of them right away that’s the opposite of casual. If you’re a casual, be casual and you’ll get things done eventually. If you’re not casual, then you shouldn’t have any trouble burning through everything and getting things done right away.

All through WvW on a dead end tier? Wow that’s actually impressive, if not then you should try it out lol.

I’m still casual, but it’s purely PvP now. In PvP everyone has equal footing, which makes the game fun to me.

I don’t PvP, nor WvW, neither of those things appeal to me. Being on a dead end teir, though, is a different matter entirely and doesn’t really have anything to do with casuals or casual friendly anything. PvP, though, should not be effected at all by how casual you are or otherwise.

My point was entirely based on the statement of casual friendliness.

Only do what you enjoy, or can at least tolerate (and that doesn’t take you long, in the latter case).

If a part of a game feels grindy to you, don’t do that part.

I know that doesn’t help much, for now.

But, if you and others don’t participate, or don’t participate much, in those grindy activities, the devs should at least, hopefully, get the message for next time.

Kal Spiro.9745:

Zenith.6403:

Kal Spiro.9745:

So you’re not a gamer, why are you even here? Playing a game for 10k hours seems just fine by me if I was willing to do it for 10k hours in the first place. There’s nothing in this game, though, that takes even remotely that long.

- I am a gamer. I’ve played lots of games during my life. Most of them were good experiences. 20-40 hours of high-quality content for a fair price. It used to be that developers would strive create an experience or a challenge for players to face. These days there’s a talk of “player retention”. What a bizarre concept. It sounds like some drug dealer wanting to hook up his customers so they come back for more. All the “dailies” and achievements are just there to hook you up once the game has lost its appeal. Sometimes it’s hard to see what the core of the game is with all the fluff. What if there was no items? What do we need them for? The slot machine effect, that’s what. Reinforcement for player to keep on playing indefinitely. Minimum effort for maximal player retention.

Is this what “a game” means to you?

A gamer would not consider 10k hours playing a game they like/love as a waste of time. So maybe you just don’t actually like this game, in which case the previous question stands. why stick around if you consider the game to be nothing but a chore? You’re not doing anyone any good by it.

What is “this game”, though?

The game it was, when it first started, the game it was just prior to HoT launch, or the game it now is in HoT?

You could like, partially like, or dislike, one, two, all, or none of those options.

…and if you like one, or two options, you might still want to stick around, in a way, even though you don’t like the third.

So, it’s not as simple as saying “If you don’t like the game, leave.”.

I suppose the difference is that I truthfully see no difference between the game we started with, the one we had before HoT and the one we have now including HoT. There is just more content, some of which is harder than others and some of which requires more people. It’s all the same game that I enjoyed before.

I have all 9 professions to elite… I want my WvW fixed, That’s the end-game for me. Farm SW and HoT all you want, but I find it extremely boring.

Mastery is a grind when you want it to end in 1 day.

Kal Spiro.9745:

I suppose the difference is that I truthfully see no difference between the game we started with, the one we had before HoT and the one we have now including HoT. There is just more content, some of which is harder than others and some of which requires more people. It’s all the same game that I enjoyed before.

It seems different, to me.

I either like, or don’t mind, most of HoT, in small doses.

Partly because I’m in no rush.

But, I can see it’s different and has a different feel to the original game.

It’s definitely more intense and if you’re in any hurry, it must feel grindy.

Or certainly would, to me.

Kal Spiro.9745:

sephiroth.4217:

Kal Spiro.9745:

sephiroth.4217:

I knocked off 2/17 elites and gave up.

This game doesn’t cater for casuals anymore. I don’t care for anything other than WvW and PvP either.

Caters to me just fine, I’m as casual as it comes. I’ve started most of the elites. I finished one, am pretty close on two others, and I’ll get to the rest when I do. That’s casual. If you expect to burn through all of them right away that’s the opposite of casual. If you’re a casual, be casual and you’ll get things done eventually. If you’re not casual, then you shouldn’t have any trouble burning through everything and getting things done right away.

All through WvW on a dead end tier? Wow that’s actually impressive, if not then you should try it out lol.

I’m still casual, but it’s purely PvP now. In PvP everyone has equal footing, which makes the game fun to me.

I don’t PvP, nor WvW, neither of those things appeal to me. Being on a dead end teir, though, is a different matter entirely and doesn’t really have anything to do with casuals or casual friendly anything. PvP, though, should not be effected at all by how casual you are or otherwise.

My point was entirely based on the statement of casual friendliness.

Oh ok when you quoted me and made your point I thought we were still talking about WvW/PvP.

Yes, I’m quite sure everything is attainable at a reasonable level in PvE, I don’t know, it’s not what I play.

lol, nice sig tigaseye

Konig Des Todes.2086:

HoT isn’t a game full of grind. It’s a game full of long term goals.

That is some incredible mental gymnastics in defense of content gating through arbitrary numbers.

sephiroth.4217:

lol, nice sig tigaseye

lol, thank you!

I thought your comment was hilarious, when I read it on the Emperor’s New Shoes thread, so decided to add it.

I was thinking of asking you first, actually, but hoped you wouldn’t mind.

Vivien.6149:

Heart of Thorns is NOTHING BUT A GRIND.

You can’t NOT GRIND if you want to progress in the maps. You have to MAX OUT THE GLIDER to use the edy currents in Tangled Depths!

So what does being able to use the “edy currents” do?

Give you a 30 seconds area you can explore? Or 1 more hero points?

Just give it up. Wait for the next expansion. No one will care about the old area anyway.

Vayne.8563:

You believe old games didn’t talk about market share? Yeah maybe in the 80s, that was true, but no time since.

- I believe they simply talked about sales. How much sales a company needs to turn profit. Buying a game was like buying a book or a movie. Some games like RPGs were marketed for their higher content amount, but generally it was the experience everyone was after. Nowadays player experience doesn’t matter or it’s regarded side issue. The concepts of MMOs are those of operant conditioning. How often item should drop? For how long players should play this quest/zone/event?

Natural result of strong reinforcement and lack of focus on player experience is that these forums are filled with negativity and complaints. People are both invested and not satisfied. It’s not because “that’s how Internet communities are” like is often said, take a look at Civilization and other single player game forums. There is vast difference between developers who want to create a game in good faith and those who think fixing a game means more rewards.

Vivien.6149:

Heart of Thorns is NOTHING BUT A GRIND.

You can’t NOT GRIND if you want to progress in the maps. You have to MAX OUT THE GLIDER to use the edy currents in Tangled Depths! Unbelievable. Took a perfectly good game and turned it into a grinder….thanks a lot…and what sucks even worse is that you end up in Verdant Brink with everyone else who has to grind to progress because those are the fastest missions….thanks again.

I think you do not quite understand ANet’s definition of “no grind” – it’s meant to get to the highest level and to be competitive in the game. They kind of broke that with their Ascended Weapons and Armor (because that is a grind to get those things done) but as far as HoT is affected …

You will get by with Gliding up to updraft and the jumping mushroom – certain areas of DS are a no-go unless you also master the poison lore. So with about all traits unlocked with about 50% you’re still good to go. And if you use a bit of buff food, do the storyline and do a few metas on each map you’ll be there really, really fast.

Now go to ESO and start a new character – see how long you need to get to veteran rank 1. Go to your newly unlocked campaign and see how long it takes to get to veteran level 6 – and you’re now even there halfway! THAT is grind … spending a week in GW 2 HoT to max out masteries is not.

no that is not a grind, that is long term goals, ‘gind’ is a subjective term used by people who try to blame someting other than their own tastes for not enjoying the particular feature they refer to, but where they feel entitled to get the rewars with just the level of effort they can be bothered doing. If you dont like it can you skip it and enjoy all the other content – yes you can.

Tigaseye.2047:

sephiroth.4217:

lol, nice sig tigaseye

lol, thank you!

I thought your comment was hilarious, when I read it on the Emperor’s New Shoes thread, so decided to add it.

I was thinking of asking you first, actually, but hoped you wouldn’t mind.

No all good man, definitely don’t mind!

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Tentonhammr.7849:

You just don’t want to wait.

Key thing here.

HoT isn’t a game full of grind. It’s a game full of long term goals.

But people want things now, so they try to get those long term goals as if they were short term goals. This results in the sensation that the game is ‘full of grind’.

Actually, many people simply want to be able to use the Elite skill the HOT ads made a prominent feature of but failed to mention the huge time it takes to actually be able to fully use it.

The ads for HOT didn’t call this a “long term goal”.

ITT: People that think that working your kitten off and not having fun is exactly what the games should be about.

no i think people are saying is stop being self-entitles morons and accept that a game style may not suit you, if you dont enjoy it dont do it.

One of the main criticisms of GW Nightfall was the grind required for max level characters to enjoy the story. Other than that Nightfall was well received. And that grind people complained about was removed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guild_Wars_Nightfall#Critical_response

So what happened since GW2 to try and introduce that mechanic again?

Kerin.9125:

Actually, many people simply want to be able to use the Elite skill the HOT ads made a prominent feature of but failed to mention the huge time it takes to actually be able to fully use it.

Huge time? What huge time are we talking about? Even if you have no Core Tyria hero points, getting the 25 needed for full Elite from the HoT maps really doesn’t take long.

Vivien.6149:

You can’t NOT GRIND if you want to progress in the maps.

I must be playing another game them … I refuse to grind, and I haven’t perceived any need to do so in HoT so far. I’ve casually completed a couple of maps, played all kinds of events (but by far not everything yet), and enjoyed the new maps with several characters. I could’ve sworn I’ve progressed my account and characters a good bit since the release of the expansion.

If I hit a road block, I go do something else, and eventually I’ll find I’ve progressed to the point where the former road block is gone by itself. No grind required. It’s really not much different from me trying to run a level 20 elementalist to the Gates of Arah a while back. I tried to get as far as I could, then after banging my head against the wall (aka mobs beyond Fort Trinity in the Straits fo Devastation) a couple of times I turned to do something more fun. I’ll get back on the road to Arah with her eventually, just like I’ll get to pick up the mastery point in Tangled Depth that requires Leyline gliding one of these days … I’m sure it won’t go anywhere while I progress in other parts of the maps without grinding.

It’s not a grind like a Korean mmo.

But it is a grind, just not quite as bad.

IndigoSundown.5419:

Vayne is correct.

Many games make their money in a short time frame by selling tens of millions of copies that will be played for anywhere fro 20-100 hours. One of the GTA series sold $1bn in three days. If you assume $60 a pop, that’s 16 2/3 million copies sold in three days. Guild Wars 2 has not sold that many copies in 3+ years. If that’s the kind of game someone wants, there are plenty out there, but none of them are MMO’s.

apples and oranges——Sure GTA 5 sold lots, but $45 billion + were sold for consoles before the PC version was even released. PC sales were much less. Most games are driven by the console boxes.

Though I’m not a fan of HoT, it is not full of grind. I’m going there for two reasons,
1) to finish off elite specs
2) for the story.

I didn’t like SW all that much so I did other things, just like I am now.

Zenith.6403:

Kal Spiro.9745:

So you’re not a gamer, why are you even here? Playing a game for 10k hours seems just fine by me if I was willing to do it for 10k hours in the first place. There’s nothing in this game, though, that takes even remotely that long.

- I am a gamer. I’ve played lots of games during my life. Most of them were good experiences. 20-40 hours of high-quality content for a fair price. It used to be that developers would strive create an experience or a challenge for players to face. These days there’s a talk of “player retention”. What a bizarre concept. It sounds like some drug dealer wanting to hook up his customers so they come back for more. All the “dailies” and achievements are just there to hook you up once the game has lost its appeal. Sometimes it’s hard to see what the core of the game is with all the fluff. What if there was no items? What do we need them for? The slot machine effect, that’s what. Reinforcement for player to keep on playing indefinitely. Minimum effort for maximal player retention.

Is this what “a game” means to you?

I think perhaps you don’t understand the concept of an MMO. MMOs are supposed to be a mainstay game, the kind of experience you can spend thousands of hours on over the course of years. They typically have a story to beat, but that isn’t what the game is fundamentally about. MMOs use extrinsic rewards (e.g. shiny armor and weapon skins) which are only achievable after repeating content to keep players playing long after they’ve done everything.

So your evaluation of what GW2 is trying to do is pretty accurate. Your mistake is thinking that that’s a mistake. If you don’t like it, then perhaps this isn’t the right game or genre for you. There are plenty of other games out there you can play for 20-30 hours before moving on to another game. GW2 isn’t one of them.

I have no problems with grinding .. if i can choose what i grind and i have something
i can buy for that at the end.

However .. in HoT .. they force you to grind what they want you to grind and at the
end all you get is nothing or just an unlock for the next grind.

And really .. 3 total new armorsets in a fullprice expansion after a dev proudly
posted that we will get no more armorsets in the gemstore but instead ingame ?
Since we got only Carapace new in the last 1.5 years i really thought we will get
at least 15-20 new sets with HoT … but kittening whole THREE ????

At the moment i really prefer grinding in Marvel Heroes instead.