I used to think the game was a grind fest but then I realized that I don’t “have to have the next best BiS”. Sure to some people they want these things and Fractals and endless dungeon runs are the way to go. Most every piece of gear can be crafted (there are exceptions like the Khilbron armor for Condition-Mancers which I believe drop in Fractals) but I can gear my character up in greens and still outperform someone in full exotics because I have a better build and my play style is different.
Exotics and Legendaries are really for those people who do not mind endless hours grinding. Personally I don’t care. I’m content to have slightly less stats on my gear because I’m confident in my ability to outperform others and it’s not based upon gear stats.
Outside of level 80 gear the only real grind I see is crafting. Low level crafting requires three of X item to make an inscription and then you have to make several of them to get a skill point. It should be ONE skill point per item made. Not the way it is now.
But in order to get to the next level of crafting you need an obscene amount of materials. Just out of curiosity I leveled Tailoring up to 50 with mats I had picked up. My character made it to level 26 (thus out leveling any armor I could make for myself at that time). I have found it much cheaper to simply sell all my mats and buy what I need from the TP. Most often people just want to get rid of items to clear bag space up and they sell the gear/weapons for much less than the mats it took to craft them costs.
The thing I like about this game is the OPTION to either craft, use karma or tokens from dungeons to purchase armor. To my knowledge anything that can be crafted can also be bought with Karma or tokens, though you cannot salvage these last two.
So no, there really is no grind, unless you choose to have the very best equipment and understand that in order to obtain it you have to put in X amount of hours of work to get it.
Sort of like real life.
The only thing I would change is the amount of material needed to craft in the first place. I mean 30 Karka shells for ONE Apothecary Embroidered Insignia seems a bit much. I mean if the drop rates of the Karka shells were reasonable then sure no problem. But after the November 15, 2012 patch all drops were nerfed into the ground. So people instead opt for the Karma gear (unless they have oodles of gold because they bought Gems or are just really good at playing the market) or dungeon token gear. But with the right build and play style you really don’t need the BiS items anyway. Also Ascended gear seems to only be relevant in Fractals and no where else (unless that is changed in the future).
But as has been pointed out many of the nerfs came about because A-net needs to make money since this is a F2P game. A-Net can deny it all they want but to proof is in the game itself. There are many threads to show that this isn’t in our minds but a hard reality which the company refuses to admit to.
To openly admit they did this would alienate their consumer base and cause many people to simply stop playing or not buy gems any longer. So it’s good business to not admit anything of the sort on their part and just let the consumer believe that he/she is experiencing bad luck.
For a moment let’s compare World of Warcraft and Guild Wars 2 economies. WoW was (when I stopped playing after 4 1/2 years) $15 a month and most everything had a high price tag on the AH, but you could make a large amount of gold in a relatively short period of time if you simply farmed mats and sold them. I farmed herbs, ore and leather and sold them for huge profits. Blizzard didn’t really care how the economy fared so long as they got their $15 a month and at the time with 12 million subs that was a tidy sum.
GW 2 on the other hand doesn’t have half of those subs and is forced at the moment to control the economy directly by imposing nerfs so that the market isn’t flooded and prices go down. If prices go down then people won’t need to buy gems and convert them to gold, hence hurting A-Net’s bottom line. Remember A-Net has bills to pay the same as any of us and so if it means manipulating drops through stealth nerfs and how much gold you get for gems, then so be it.
I’ve only bought gems once and the exchange rate was so horrible I decided never to do it again. it was like handing the company a US dollar and getting a Russian Ruble in return. One US Dollar is equal to 30 Russian Rubles. Pretty good is you have many Dollars (Gold) but not so good is you bought Gems (Rubles).
Anyway I digress.
. You just have a perspective that not everyone shares. Maybe 50/50 at best, but even as a casual player as myself, I don’t feel the grind. That’s because there are content out there that I know will take a long time to get, so I chose to not grind and get it over a longer time period. And yes, I’m a casual player. Just because something takes a long time to get, that doesn’t mean it is a grind.
