Guild Wars 2

Serophous.9085:

Orpheal.8263:

The game has alot more grind, than many people think .

Other than ascended gear, name one other thing that is a grind in this game. Colin even gave their definition of what grind is to them. So by his definition (as everyone is just ignoring it and submitting their own), name one other.

there is a ton of grindy things in this game, but you will say most of that is cosmetic. Ascended however is in bounds in the discussion on required grinds, according to colin. He said something to the effect that is not considered a cosmetic goal.

in order to communicate well, you generally have to be on the same page with your terminology. If he defines grind of having only one possible choice of repetive tasks, he is correct. However, for most people having two choices or thee choices of repetitive tasks doesnt really change the feeling of grind.

lets say in order to get something you want you can.

A) write i want X item 10,000 times
B) Walk on a treadmill for 20 miles
C) put in 10,000 batteries in remotes

all of those options are grindy, having the option to do 3 grindy things barely lessens the actual feeling of grind.

now lets say they throw in more interesting things, but reduce the effeviency

D) skateboard for 1000 hours
E) draw 2000 illustrations
F) dance the samba 30,000 times

while those options are more interesting, they are not real options due to how ineffecient they are, also, even if you enjoy these things, given those numbers, they will, for most people begin to feel grindy.

so really, i would say what makes something feel grindy, is how interesting it is, and how many repetitions you have to do to achieve a certain goal.

Varying the methods of aquisition is one good way to lower the feelings of grind, but the methods of aquisition have to be compareable, and no matter what if all of them have a huge amount of repetitions, it will feel grindy as long as you are focused on the goal. Now, yes, everyone has different feelings/definitions/thresholds for grind. Still there is some common points, between people, and somethings that you just have to look at the numbers to know, this will be grindy.

You have also to into account that you can’t make the game less grindy. There is nothing called hard content as it will become a walk in the park after 2 days. There is nothing called enjoyable content because it will be done in a week. The solution is to twist the reward system so it feels more rewarding as grind will always be there.

nGumball.1283:

You have also to into account that you can’t make the game less grindy. There is nothing called hard content as it will become a walk in the park after 2 days. There is nothing called enjoyable content because it will be done in a week. The solution is to twist the reward system so it feels more rewarding as grind will always be there.

i disagree here, many games combine scaling difficulty, with certain styles of reward and enjoyable gaming to achieve an excellent balance.

For example basketball, is easy on a low level, but challenging at a high level, the rewards are rare, but act as a good encouragement for people who seek a reward for it. Most of the games that have been around for a long time (not just video games) find a good balance.

Now of course having pvp can help a lot in doing this type of thing, but creators also find ways to come up with enteraining things. Of course they will have to keep creating content, but that is the nature of the beast

I would say the key to reducing the perception of grind,
less required repetitions
more interesting means
more varied methods of obtaining

anet has tried a bit of this, but generally they are really poor with required repetitions, and generally the most interesting content is not the most rewarding content.

phys.7689:

ColinJohanson.2394:

~

I get what you are saying, but the big flaw in your reasoning, is assuming that multiple avenues are not also grindy.

For example, in general, the other avenue is to earn gold. Like you mention in traits, or in ascended, you could try to get 100 silk a day, or you can buy it.
but the reality is that once you enter the earning gold system, there will generally be a meta, or most effecient means to earn gold. Though in theory people can do anything, most people are going to do what is most effecient, the more the difference in effeciency, the less options you have. for example, doing jumping puzzles is not a viable alterantive to EOTM, Completing random dynamic events througout the world, likewise cannot compete.

Also, with the price thing, you have to realize, that if you set something at an equivalent value of say 2-3 hours worth of a players work (like getting 100 silk, 40 linen, 30 cotton) then people will roughly sell it for what they feel is a similar value. aka 2-3 hours work. This means the only way that you get to do these things without a large amount of work, via gold, is by being much more effecient at obtaining it. Which, will lead to grinding the most effecient gold earning mechanisms.

I get that you have options, but like you guys said with skills, bad skills are not real options, likewise alternate methods, that are highly ineffecient are not going to make the game feel less grindy.

Also, if you set something to take a large amount of grind in order to get, that will generally translate to a large grind in whatever form you want to play to earn gold that is equivalent. Having like 2 options doesnt change the actual feeling of grind on the streets.

True and not only will people automatically just go for the optimal thing, by doing other activities you are basically punishing yourself. The JP’s are a great example. It’s something I do like to do but I will never get the gold to buy any of the cosmetics I like by doing JP’s.

In WvW I preferred to stay at a keep, upgrade it and so on but that even cost me money (Great that that gets fixed in HoT!!) while brainlessly running with the zerg would make me money.

In addition it also devalues the items from a game-play perspective. I mean I could have done a JP for a year to get the gold to buy an item I like while other guy did some brainless champ training for a week and also got that same item. So what is the value of that item? It would be much more fun if the JP directly rewarded the item, maybe with an 1/50 drop rate or something. Make it not account bound and people still have the grind option but at least it’s more viable and a little more linked to that content. Account-bound items would give the item even more value from that perspective as it showed you completed that JP.

Now Anet might not care very much for cosmetics being a boring grind, probably wanting people simply to buy them, but I think that is a mistake. Like I said, this people gets the attention from people who like cosmetics, maybe gets them to buy a few things from the cash-shop but then also scares them away again. It would be better if the game could hold them. (And likely make money on them another way then gems like expansions. Then there would also not be the need to have this grind)

Lishtenbird.2814:

I am more confused by the Masteries. It totally looks like instead of gear grind, we will get skill grind. But on paper? Yes, “no gear treadmill”.

Test.8734:

Ascended = grindy as hell.

YMMV. “I should get everything tomorrow” =/= optional long-term goal.

Some people can solo dungeons naked = No gear required = Everything is optional = There is no grind.

Reminds me an awful lot of this quote:
“These are not the Droids you’re looking for.”

slamfunction.7462:

“Grinding” is perception. You can get a majority of the materials you need for ascended armor, just by going through each of the maps on your toons or even doing the LS content.

No you can’t, not due to the sheer volume required. To get the mats in any sort of timeframe requires grinding for the mats and gold.

Brahmincorle.1264:

You are comparing 5 man dungeons with raids dude that is not fair.

No, I’m using the subject of raids, since that’s what ANet, if the CDI is anything to go by, will be working on, and open world raids are where we’ve been seeing increased difficulty and gear requirements, and are where said requirements would further show up in the future, if anywhere, since ANet doesn’t do dungeons anymore.

So quite frankly? I don’t care if people are soloing old dungeons while naked. It is completely irrelevant to my point that newer content is going to get harder and harder, because that’s what progression junkies want. And in doing so, Ascended isn’t going to be “optional” one day.

Aside from that, Obtena said people were soloing team content. That’s all they said.

Maybe they should have said people were soloing dungeons instead. Either way, though, like I said: I don’t care. I’m talking about raids cause that’s what ANet is working on.

As for your romp through WoW, soloing dungeons in epic gear at level?

Solo it in greens at level in a non-tank spec, then tell me of your great success and maybe I’ll consider it relevant, since you guys are trying to make the argument that the “epic” gear isn’t needed at all.

Obtena.7952:

Real game vets would think this game is a joke in terms of grind level.

And again, who decides who a “real game vet” is?

You?

No. I still don’t think so.

Obtena.7952:

Devata.6589:

Obtena.7952:

Nothing .. those are content meant for many teams, not a single team. The content you mentioned isn’t balanced around gear, it’s balanced around co-operation and player volume; those are RAID content, not instanced (re. dungeon/fractals) content.

Point still stands … in the industry, GW2 is not grindy by traditional definitions. Maybe in 10 years it might be considered so, but for now, only the most noob players would QQ about grindy GW2.

If you have no real arguments just start naming people you disagree with ‘Noobs’.

Not to mention that those ‘noobs’ are asking for something more interesting than the grind there is now. The defenders seem to like the brainless grind (or are not interested in the collecting (also mention as one of the important things for GW2 in the presentation!) those thing). So now wanting challenging content makes you a noob? But being fine with brainless grinding makes you a pro?

Makes sense!

My real argument is that people need a minimum perspective to be able to comment about what grind really is. They also need to consider Anet’s definition, which is genuine and realistic. Finally, they have to consider the target market of this game; it’s the casual player market and grindy activities are NOT endearing to those people. YOu don’t need to look too far to convince yourself this game is pretty successful with the casual players, indicating that the things they want to see and appeal to them, the game does deliver.

It offends you that I label those people as noobs? Too bad; that’s what people QQIng about grind tend to be because they have little MMO gaming experience. Real game vets would think this game is a joke in terms of grind level. It’s targeted at the casual player market an enables that level of player to obtain gear they can compete in very easily by simply BUYING it. To boot, you can get gear with karma, or gold you earn, or gold you got with gem exchange. Seriously, perspective, get some.

“They also need to consider Anet’s definition” Why? If Anet says ‘well we are not going to have x type of grind’ people are not allowed to say ‘thats great but I (still) dislike y type of grind’? Sure they can.

“Finally, they have to consider the target market of this game; it’s the casual player market and grindy activities are NOT endearing to those people.” Indeed, and what do you think ‘casual players’ might be more interested in? Highest stats or cosmetic items. If anything I think with the casual crowd the percentage of people preferring the cosmetics stuff and not caring so much about the stats is much higher.

“YOu don’t need to look too far to convince yourself this game is pretty successful with the casual players” Yeah and they have also been losing a lot of players, income has been dropping since release so maybe, just maybe this has something to do with what just said? Maybe they want to go for those cosmetics but then find that wall of grind they don’t like and maybe in stead of all of them buying it or grinding it many of them leave?

“indicating that the things they want to see and appeal to them, the game does deliver.” But then why do the eventually leave again? Maybe because the game delivers it, but in a way they don’t like it?

“Real game vets would think this game is a joke in terms of grind level.” No not ‘real vets’ but people who like to go for BiS gear. Those people think this game is a joke in terms of grind. I did play multiple other games and then this game is the most grindy of them all, but that is because I did never go for BiS gear but for special items, for nice looking skins, for cool mini’s. And if you compare that with multiple other games (also as a vet) you will see it very much is a grind in this game, much more compared to those games in fact.

" It’s targeted at the casual player market an enables that level of player to obtain gear they can compete in very easily by simply BUYING it." And then you forget about all the ‘casuals’ that don’t care about that gear but just like the cosmetics. But heey, don’t complain, you can get the gear you don’t care for grind-free.

“Seriously, perspective, get some. " I did. You didn’t as you are fixated at gear, as if that is what everybody cares about (I don’t, tent to forget upgrading it when leveling, running around with ‘to’ low gear all the time. So much I personally care about it). Your fixation on that one element results in you forgetting or seeing there are also other things other people might care more about and (especially those casuals) it happens to be that those things are extremely grindy in GW2.

morrolan.9608:

slamfunction.7462:

“Grinding” is perception. You can get a majority of the materials you need for ascended armor, just by going through each of the maps on your toons or even doing the LS content.

No you can’t, not due to the sheer volume required. To get the mats in any sort of timeframe requires grinding for the mats and gold.

not only that but this is on a daily basis, lets say you figure out the best way to get these items, and it takes 1-2 hours a day. You will have to do that same thing for 28 days. Now imagine if this technique is also not very interesting, like killing the same mobs over and over again in a cave.

now one could say, hey! just do it with gold, but then you are faced with picking the highest gold meta,

I think the biggest flaws as i said, they pick a high amount of repetitions, and generally the best way of achieving X isnt that entertaining.

morrolan.9608:

slamfunction.7462:

“Grinding” is perception. You can get a majority of the materials you need for ascended armor, just by going through each of the maps on your toons or even doing the LS content.

No you can’t, not due to the sheer volume required. To get the mats in any sort of timeframe requires grinding for the mats and gold.

And what timeframe are we talking about here? It’s so stupidly easy to make gold, buy mats, or get mats from doing events, it’s ludicrous.

GRIND IS SELF-IMPOSED WANT. There is nothing you NEED in this game, thus nothing you have to GRIND for.

It’s amazing how easily things come to you, if you just log in, play the game, do a variety of things, and after a month, see how much loot you’re swimming in.

I’d like to add it took me THREE MONTHS in Everquest to GRIND for my legendary, because I NEEDED it/was REQUIRED to have it for raids.

Stark.1350:

morrolan.9608:

slamfunction.7462:

“Grinding” is perception. You can get a majority of the materials you need for ascended armor, just by going through each of the maps on your toons or even doing the LS content.

No you can’t, not due to the sheer volume required. To get the mats in any sort of timeframe requires grinding for the mats and gold.

And what timeframe are we talking about here? It’s so stupidly easy to make gold, buy mats, or get mats from doing events, it’s ludicrous.

GRIND IS SELF-IMPOSED WANT. There is nothing you NEED in this game, thus nothing you have to GRIND for.

It’s amazing how easily things come to you, if you just log in, play the game, do a variety of things, and after a month, see how much loot you’re swimming in.

there is a daily craft limit, one can assume you should be getting enough materials to do this once per day.

how much loot you are swimming in is irrelevant, its what you can do with said loot. I ll tell you that a month of 1-2 hour per day play will not give you enough resources to craft full ascended, unless that 1-2 hour per day play happens to be the most effecient farms in the game.

Devata.6589:

“They also need to consider Anet’s definition” Why? If Anet says ‘well we are not going to have x type of grind’ people are not allowed to say ‘thats great but I (still) dislike y type of grind’? Sure they can.

That’s not the argument here … the argument is IF the game is grindy according to Anet’s definition. It’s clearly not. People can complain about certain kind of grind, but I haven’t seen anyone demonstrate there is a massive portion of the game that goes against the definition that Anet has for it.

Devata.6589:

“Finally, they have to consider the target market of this game; it’s the casual player market and grindy activities are NOT endearing to those people.” Indeed, and what do you think ‘casual players’ might be more interested in?

I could venture a guess, but I don’t see the relevance. Casual players don’t like grinding content, period. The game is targetted at those players. It wouldn’t exist after 2 years if the game didn’t give casual players the experience they are after.

Devata.6589:

“YOu don’t need to look too far to convince yourself this game is pretty successful with the casual players” Yeah and they have also been losing a lot of players, income has been dropping since release so maybe, just maybe this has something to do with what just said?

Maybe, maybe not. You don’t know the cause of those things; it’s probably not the grindy nature of the game, since the game isn’t.

Stark.1350:

I’d like to add it took me THREE MONTHS in Everquest to GRIND for my legendary, because I NEEDED it/was REQUIRED to have it for raids.

btw, they already said you will need the new masteries to succeed in the new challenging content. which im not saying is horrible, but welcome your required progression to advance back

phys.7689:

Stark.1350:

morrolan.9608:

slamfunction.7462:

“Grinding” is perception. You can get a majority of the materials you need for ascended armor, just by going through each of the maps on your toons or even doing the LS content.

No you can’t, not due to the sheer volume required. To get the mats in any sort of timeframe requires grinding for the mats and gold.

And what timeframe are we talking about here? It’s so stupidly easy to make gold, buy mats, or get mats from doing events, it’s ludicrous.

GRIND IS SELF-IMPOSED WANT. There is nothing you NEED in this game, thus nothing you have to GRIND for.

It’s amazing how easily things come to you, if you just log in, play the game, do a variety of things, and after a month, see how much loot you’re swimming in.

there is a daily craft limit, one can assume you should be getting enough materials to do this once per day.

how much loot you are swimming in is irrelevant, its what you can do with said loot. I ll tell you that a month of 1-2 hour per day play will not give you enough resources to craft full ascended, unless that 1-2 hour per day play happens to be the most effecient farms in the game.

If you can’t get enough stuff to craft ascended and you play 1-2 hours per day, you’re doing it wrong. And if you consider yourself a casual player, which is fine, there’s no need for you to get it anyway unless you’re doing level 30+ fractals.

So again. Want is a self-imposed grind/source of frustration.

phys.7689:

there is a daily craft limit, one can assume you should be getting enough materials to do this once per day.

how much loot you are swimming in is irrelevant, its what you can do with said loot. I ll tell you that a month of 1-2 hour per day play will not give you enough resources to craft full ascended, unless that 1-2 hour per day play happens to be the most effecient farms in the game.

To add to this, people need to remember that before you can even start thinking about making Ascended Gear, you also have to get through reaching 500 in your Crafting Skill.

But hey, if people are going to come in and claim it’s so easy to make gold and such, then they can feel free to mail me 500 gold.

phys.7689:

Stark.1350:

I’d like to add it took me THREE MONTHS in Everquest to GRIND for my legendary, because I NEEDED it/was REQUIRED to have it for raids.

btw, they already said you will need the new masteries to succeed in the new challenging content. which im not saying is horrible, but welcome your required progression to advance back

If they’re setting up masteries similar to WvW masteries, getting them will be easy.

ColinJohanson.2394:

Hey folks,

I just want to take a second to address this topic, because it’s something we state as one of our key philosophies – but don’t often clarify exactly what we mean we say it. And because everyone and their mother has their own unique interpretation of what grind can mean, it’s very simple for this to feel like we’re not following our own guidelines when we build and implement content.

When our company president said we have an anti-grind philosophy way back before Gw2 shipped, and when it has been repeatedly reinforced since then, our statement is simply: “We don’t think you should need to grind to get the best gear and stats in Guild Wars 2”.

So what exactly does that mean:

[…]

I would like to chime in here because that is the part where my interpretation of grind is diverging from your interpretation if grind.

First of all, I think it’s pretty cheap to say that you don’t want the player “to grind for stats”, since GW2 isn’t about stats but about skins. It’s like, to put it hyperbolic, the devs of Tetris saying they’ve aimed for the best possible story ever told in a videogame.

But we can see how your motive influenced the game:
Nearly all rewards are given through RNG. You have the chance to get everything from nearly everywhere and if you don’t you can atleast buy it from the traiding post.
Now the problem is that this design creates new issues, funny enough, those issues lead to feeling the need to grind.
As I’ve said, the RNG lets you get everything almost everywhere. This has two consequences:

• First, the player is never able to say “I am going for X”. You are not able to say at the moment: “I am going for a precursor right now.” or “I am going for tier 5 blood”, you can just say: “I am doing this activity and hope that I get what I want.” This creates dissatisfaction for the player because he can’t control when he gets the items he wants, other than rolling the RNG dice a second, third or fourth time.
• Second, the player is creating items he can’t use. He is selling them because he want atleast to get some gold for those items. This creates another two issues:
  • If the item is unwanted, the traiding post gets flooded with it. The devs then can’t use this item for new possible uses, because their metrics tell them that this item is way too common, unless the increase the quantity you need for the new use. this happened with ascended gear. And what is the complaint about ascneded gear? That it feels too grindy.
  • If the item is listed in the traiding post, it’s most of the time easier to get the gold to buy the item instead of playing the game to get the item as drop. So the average player of GW2 will start to get gold. To make more gold, he’ll start to look for the best way to make gold. Once he has found it, he will do it over and over until he got enough gold to get what he wants. And that repeats for every item he wants. And what do we call doing the same thing over and over? Grinding.

So in the end, by not giving the player a special way of obtaining an item reliably, so this special way doesn’t get grinded, you’ve created a grind for the only option left to obtain an item reliably: Buying it from the traiding post.
And I’ll go out on a limb and say that acquiring an item yourself feels more awesome than running to the traiding post with all your savings to buy it.

morrolan.9608:

slamfunction.7462:

“Grinding” is perception. You can get a majority of the materials you need for ascended armor, just by going through each of the maps on your toons or even doing the LS content.

No you can’t, not due to the sheer volume required. To get the mats in any sort of timeframe requires grinding for the mats and gold.

You’re confusing grinding with farming. Not the same thing. Grinding would be doing the SAME thing to get gold and mats. Anet has fixed that; you can do ANYTHING to give you gold and mats.

Stark.1350:

phys.7689:

Stark.1350:

morrolan.9608:

slamfunction.7462:

“Grinding” is perception. You can get a majority of the materials you need for ascended armor, just by going through each of the maps on your toons or even doing the LS content.

No you can’t, not due to the sheer volume required. To get the mats in any sort of timeframe requires grinding for the mats and gold.

And what timeframe are we talking about here? It’s so stupidly easy to make gold, buy mats, or get mats from doing events, it’s ludicrous.

GRIND IS SELF-IMPOSED WANT. There is nothing you NEED in this game, thus nothing you have to GRIND for.

It’s amazing how easily things come to you, if you just log in, play the game, do a variety of things, and after a month, see how much loot you’re swimming in.

there is a daily craft limit, one can assume you should be getting enough materials to do this once per day.

how much loot you are swimming in is irrelevant, its what you can do with said loot. I ll tell you that a month of 1-2 hour per day play will not give you enough resources to craft full ascended, unless that 1-2 hour per day play happens to be the most effecient farms in the game.

If you can’t get enough stuff to craft ascended and you play 1-2 hours per day, you’re doing it wrong. And if you consider yourself a casual player, which is fine, there’s no need for you to get it anyway unless you’re doing level 30+ fractals.

So again. Want is a self-imposed grind/source of frustration.

uhh sure you can, if you do the most effecient repetive activity with that 1-2 hours, and thats all you do. But i thought your point was you could just do normal ineteresting fun content without a care, and you would have enough to get this stuff.

ill tell you some content that will not help allow you to get ascended mats in the time frame we speak of.
random dynamic events in non crowded places.
jumping puzzles
fully completing the hardest dungeon paths (without massive skips)
regular non EOTM WvW
defending/upgrading things in WvW
opening treasure chests.
high level fractals
spvp
mini dungeons

you see when you said you are doing it wrong, yup, you hit the nail on the head. If you play properly and do the most effecient things, repetively, of the course of a month, you will achieve best in slot. which is what i also said.

Just by looking at the mats required for full ascended gear with +5 power +5 agony resistance excluding the mats required to level up crafting from 0-500… this is by far the grindiest BiS gear I can think of. I had BiS gear in WoW (both PvP and PvE – this one on 2 characters from T4 to T8) and SWTOR.

You either have to farm certain materials, farm gold or pay with real money (yes, pay to win is an option in this game)….. instead of having fun with friends in dungeon :-/

Stark.1350:

phys.7689:

Stark.1350:

I’d like to add it took me THREE MONTHS in Everquest to GRIND for my legendary, because I NEEDED it/was REQUIRED to have it for raids.

btw, they already said you will need the new masteries to succeed in the new challenging content. which im not saying is horrible, but welcome your required progression to advance back

If they’re setting up masteries similar to WvW masteries, getting them will be easy.

which they arent really, because wvw masteries are not required for anything. they said masteries will be required.
Now im not saying this is a bad thing, that entirely depends on
how interesting it is to progress with masteries
How many repetitions you will have to do to build them up
how varied the activities which allow you to build them up are.

Obtena.7952:

morrolan.9608:

slamfunction.7462:

“Grinding” is perception. You can get a majority of the materials you need for ascended armor, just by going through each of the maps on your toons or even doing the LS content.

No you can’t, not due to the sheer volume required. To get the mats in any sort of timeframe requires grinding for the mats and gold.

You’re confusing grinding with farming. Not the same thing. Grinding would be doing the SAME thing to get gold and mats. Anet has fixed that; you can do ANYTHING to give you gold and mats.

yeah and somethings will take you 2-10 times as much time to achieve the same goal.

illusions of choice are not real choices.

Obtena.7952:

Devata.6589:

“They also need to consider Anet’s definition” Why? If Anet says ‘well we are not going to have x type of grind’ people are not allowed to say ‘thats great but I (still) dislike y type of grind’? Sure they can.

That’s not the argument here … the argument is IF the game is grindy according to Anet’s definition. It’s clearly not. People can complain about certain kind of grind, but I haven’t seen anyone demonstrate there is a massive portion of the game that goes against the definition that Anet has for it.

Devata.6589:

“Finally, they have to consider the target market of this game; it’s the casual player market and grindy activities are NOT endearing to those people.” Indeed, and what do you think ‘casual players’ might be more interested in?

I could venture a guess, but I don’t see the relevance. Casual players don’t like grinding content, period. The game is targetted at those players. It wouldn’t exist after 2 years if the game didn’t give casual players the experience they are after.

Devata.6589:

“YOu don’t need to look too far to convince yourself this game is pretty successful with the casual players” Yeah and they have also been losing a lot of players, income has been dropping since release so maybe, just maybe this has something to do with what just said?

Maybe, maybe not. You don’t know the cause of those things; it’s probably not the grindy nature of the game, since the game isn’t.

“That’s not the argument here … the argument is IF the game is grindy according to Anet’s definition. It’s clearly not.” That is the argument, for me at least. Maybe not for you? Besides Colin even did say the grind (I am talking about) is there so it does fits there definition of grind as well. All they said is that, that grind is not part of the ‘no grind philosophy’ they talked about. What is nice but does not make the grind irrelevant for those disliking it.

“Simply playing the game for a few hours here and there. Casual players don’t really target short term goals like ‘STATS’. Maybe they want to look a certain way, but that’s simply purchased for most looks you can get, for little money.” Oow so we agree that cosmetics are very likely a goal for those players. Is it then also possible that hunting those items down is content they like? Also don’t forget we are talking about playing the game here. How is buying your way out of the grind playing the game or how does that make the grind go away. What if I suggested Anet could have removed the BiS gear by selling that. (what many people consider P2W) Thats what you are suggesting here for cosmetics. If cosmetics is your goal that is just as bad as P2W is when BiS gear is your goal.

“Maybe, maybe not. You don’t know the cause of those things; it’s probably not the grindy nature of the game, since it’s not.” Or maybe it is. Oow now it’s not grindy anymore. Wasn’t it so that it might be grindy but that suddenly wasn’t relevant, what was relevant according to you was Anet’s definition. That basically what you seem to say in the first part of your comment. But now you forget about that and it’s just not grindy again.

Well fool yourself as much as you want, it is grindy, even Colin agreed that that par was grindy and there are many casual players who like that part of the game wasn’t it for that grind.

I believe the problem people having is not that the game has a grind. It’s the fact that the developers keep saying it doesn’t have a grind that bothers people.

Wuselknusel.4082:

ColinJohanson.2394:

Hey folks,

I just want to take a second to address this topic, because it’s something we state as one of our key philosophies – but don’t often clarify exactly what we mean we say it. And because everyone and their mother has their own unique interpretation of what grind can mean, it’s very simple for this to feel like we’re not following our own guidelines when we build and implement content.

When our company president said we have an anti-grind philosophy way back before Gw2 shipped, and when it has been repeatedly reinforced since then, our statement is simply: “We don’t think you should need to grind to get the best gear and stats in Guild Wars 2”.

So what exactly does that mean:

[…]

I would like to chime in here because that is the part where my interpretation of grind is diverging from your interpretation if grind.

First of all, I think it’s pretty cheap to say that you don’t want the player “to grind for stats”, since GW2 isn’t about stats but about skins. It’s like, to put it hyperbolic, the devs of Tetris saying they’ve aimed for the best possible story ever told in a videogame.

But we can see how your motive influenced the game:
Nearly all rewards are given through RNG. You have the chance to get everything from nearly everywhere and if you don’t you can atleast buy it from the traiding post.
Now the problem is that this design creates new issues, funny enough, those issues lead to feeling the need to grind.
As I’ve said, the RNG lets you get everything almost everywhere. This has two consequences:

• First, the player is never able to say “I am going for X”. You are not able to say at the moment: “I am going for a precursor right now.” or “I am going for tier 5 blood”, you can just say: “I am doing this activity and hope that I get what I want.” This creates dissatisfaction for the player because he can’t control when he gets the items he wants, other than rolling the RNG dice a second, third or fourth time.
• Second, the player is creating items he can’t use. He is selling them because he want atleast to get some gold for those items. This creates another two issues:
  • If the item is unwanted, the traiding post gets flooded with it. The devs then can’t use this item for new possible uses, because their metrics tell them that this item is way too common, unless the increase the quantity you need for the new use. this happened with ascended gear. And what is the complaint about ascneded gear? That it feels too grindy.
  • If the item is listed in the traiding post, it’s most of the time easier to get the gold to buy the item instead of playing the game to get the item as drop. So the average player of GW2 will start to get gold. To make more gold, he’ll start to look for the best way to make gold. Once he has found it, he will do it over and over until he got enough gold to get what he wants. And that repeats for every item he wants. And what do we call doing the same thing over and over? Grinding.

So in the end, by not giving the player a special way of obtaining an item reliably, so this special way doesn’t get grinded, you’ve created a grind for the only option left to obtain an item reliably: Buying it from the traiding post.
And I’ll go out on a limb and say that acquiring an item yourself feels more awesome than running to the traiding post with all your savings to buy it.

And the RNG, in it’s current state, completerly excludes some players while giving many to another group of players, so I have GRIND to make gold, it will be the only way I will ever get a specific item. Colin is now ready for politics—- sorta like a former President saying what was not sex.

Blude.6812:

Wuselknusel.4082:

ColinJohanson.2394:

Hey folks,

I just want to take a second to address this topic, because it’s something we state as one of our key philosophies – but don’t often clarify exactly what we mean we say it. And because everyone and their mother has their own unique interpretation of what grind can mean, it’s very simple for this to feel like we’re not following our own guidelines when we build and implement content.

When our company president said we have an anti-grind philosophy way back before Gw2 shipped, and when it has been repeatedly reinforced since then, our statement is simply: “We don’t think you should need to grind to get the best gear and stats in Guild Wars 2”.

So what exactly does that mean:

[…]

I would like to chime in here because that is the part where my interpretation of grind is diverging from your interpretation if grind.

First of all, I think it’s pretty cheap to say that you don’t want the player “to grind for stats”, since GW2 isn’t about stats but about skins. It’s like, to put it hyperbolic, the devs of Tetris saying they’ve aimed for the best possible story ever told in a videogame.

But we can see how your motive influenced the game:
Nearly all rewards are given through RNG. You have the chance to get everything from nearly everywhere and if you don’t you can atleast buy it from the traiding post.
Now the problem is that this design creates new issues, funny enough, those issues lead to feeling the need to grind.
As I’ve said, the RNG lets you get everything almost everywhere. This has two consequences:

• First, the player is never able to say “I am going for X”. You are not able to say at the moment: “I am going for a precursor right now.” or “I am going for tier 5 blood”, you can just say: “I am doing this activity and hope that I get what I want.” This creates dissatisfaction for the player because he can’t control when he gets the items he wants, other than rolling the RNG dice a second, third or fourth time.
• Second, the player is creating items he can’t use. He is selling them because he want atleast to get some gold for those items. This creates another two issues:
  • If the item is unwanted, the traiding post gets flooded with it. The devs then can’t use this item for new possible uses, because their metrics tell them that this item is way too common, unless the increase the quantity you need for the new use. this happened with ascended gear. And what is the complaint about ascneded gear? That it feels too grindy.
  • If the item is listed in the traiding post, it’s most of the time easier to get the gold to buy the item instead of playing the game to get the item as drop. So the average player of GW2 will start to get gold. To make more gold, he’ll start to look for the best way to make gold. Once he has found it, he will do it over and over until he got enough gold to get what he wants. And that repeats for every item he wants. And what do we call doing the same thing over and over? Grinding.

So in the end, by not giving the player a special way of obtaining an item reliably, so this special way doesn’t get grinded, you’ve created a grind for the only option left to obtain an item reliably: Buying it from the traiding post.
And I’ll go out on a limb and say that acquiring an item yourself feels more awesome than running to the traiding post with all your savings to buy it.

And the RNG, in it’s current state, completerly excludes some players while giving many to another group of players, so I have GRIND to make gold, it will be the only way I will ever get a specific item. Colin is now ready for politics—- sorta like a former President saying what was not sex.

missed the post you quoted, it shows one of the reasons why the gold standard still leads to grindyness.

ColinJohanson.2394:

Legendary weapons have components to them that fall into this category, though we’ll be doing work in HOT to make this much less the case. We feel these are optional choices players don’t need to do, but can if they want, and because they are optional are acceptable within our statement that “Gw2 doesn’t make you grind to have the best gear/stats”. That doesn’t mean we can’t make those activities more fun as well, but when we say “no grind philosophy” we’re not including optional things you can do, but don’t need to do, in our definition.

First of all I want to let you know how much I appreciate not only you responded to our concerns in great and well-phrased detail but also your dedication to continuing the conversation past just one post. That’s huge and something developers rarely do well (if at all).

If you can comment on this topic, I’d like to hear your thoughts. It’s related to the exert quoted above regarding legendary weapon ‘grind’ in particular world completion.

Exploring the world the first time through or later at your leisure is excellent, and arguably the best part of PvE in the game. However the second run through the ‘check-list’ is exceptionally tedious.

In particular Hearts (which I honestly think is one of the more archaic systems you guys have implemented, since they are little more than glorified quests) are more of a chore to repeat than most can stand. That belief is compounded by the fact that Hearts are very close to the exact opposite of Events. By that I mean: group effort is not only disregarded but it’s actually often times detrimental to have others around as it makes gathering 5 piles of hay and killing 10 rats take longer. Which is very much against my understanding of the games core philosophy. I know the intention was to help new players learn the ropes, but that gets old after 20 levels much less the 2nd or 3rd run through to obtain more Gifts of Exploration.

My question is: Have you guys taken these concerns into consideration with the new iteration of Legendary acquisition?

This was a bit of a rant, I apologize about that. And I know you could say that world completion is optional, but since cosmetic upgrading IS the end-game for PvE players I honestly don’t think it is. And honestly the issue is deeper than just obtaining more Gifts, but is reflective of some of the plights of the average GW2 player in regards to repetition and ‘grind’ as some would say.

Thanks for your time!

There seems to be ‘sort-of’ grind in ascended gear, in that it takes a lot of time to obtain, but there isn’t a set way of doing it. Apparently that’s a design decision, which doesn’t qualify as strict grind because it’s merely a time investment rather than repetition. It only becomes repetitive if you convince yourself that there’s only one real way to do it – but there simply isn’t. Personally, I don’t care if WvW isn’t the most “efficient” way of putting together ascended equipment – I’ve finished four sets that way just fine.

What I’m more concerned about is casual players who just won’t have the time to complete ascended sets and thus find themselves at a competitive disadvantage in WvW through no fault of their own. I see two possible solutions to that – levelling out the rewards between game modes, so that they don’t have to know exactly where to go to gear themselves up with their limited time; or just capping gear stats for WvW to provide a fair experience against other players without requiring any time investment. Considering it’s effectively a PvP environment, I’d lean toward the latter. It would also help to address some of the ridiculous builds in WvW lately that focus entirely on inflicting or alleviating conditions.

In terms of whether the game is too grindy or not, other MMOs aren’t really relevant. They may provide good inspiration, but nothing can decide whether GW2 is fun except GW2 – if I’m supposed to find GW2 fine because it’s less grindy than Everquest, that’s just a MMO player’s Stockholm syndrome. It doesn’t actually solve any problems that may still be there.

phys.7689:

Serophous.9085:

Orpheal.8263:

The game has alot more grind, than many people think .

Other than ascended gear, name one other thing that is a grind in this game. Colin even gave their definition of what grind is to them. So by his definition (as everyone is just ignoring it and submitting their own), name one other.

there is a ton of grindy things in this game, but you will say most of that is cosmetic. Ascended however is in bounds in the discussion on required grinds, according to colin. He said something to the effect that is not considered a cosmetic goal.

in order to communicate well, you generally have to be on the same page with your terminology. If he defines grind of having only one possible choice of repetive tasks, he is correct. However, for most people having two choices or thee choices of repetitive tasks doesnt really change the feeling of grind.

lets say in order to get something you want you can.

A) write i want X item 10,000 times
B) Walk on a treadmill for 20 miles
C) put in 10,000 batteries in remotes

all of those options are grindy, having the option to do 3 grindy things barely lessens the actual feeling of grind.

now lets say they throw in more interesting things, but reduce the effeviency

D) skateboard for 1000 hours
E) draw 2000 illustrations
F) dance the samba 30,000 times

while those options are more interesting, they are not real options due to how ineffecient they are, also, even if you enjoy these things, given those numbers, they will, for most people begin to feel grindy.

so really, i would say what makes something feel grindy, is how interesting it is, and how many repetitions you have to do to achieve a certain goal.

Varying the methods of aquisition is one good way to lower the feelings of grind, but the methods of aquisition have to be compareable, and no matter what if all of them have a huge amount of repetitions, it will feel grindy as long as you are focused on the goal. Now, yes, everyone has different feelings/definitions/thresholds for grind. Still there is some common points, between people, and somethings that you just have to look at the numbers to know, this will be grindy.

Sigh…when I said “other than ascended gear”, it means its already admitted its grindy. I personally don’t view it as needed, and have only acquired pieces if I felt like it.

Throughout my gameplay in gw2, I never felt like I was grinding. Not. Once. But what you described there, and what everyone is confusing it with, is FARMING.

The champ FARM trains, the FARMING of Orr, the FARM in Silverwastes, is just that, FARMING. I didn’t see forum topics of nerfed grind spots, they were nerfed FARMED spots.

You FARM something that is optional and actually not needed to progress in content.
You GRIND for something that is REQUIRED to progress. In other words, you are prohibited from content you paid for. The only thing I see that with IS the ascended gear which is REQUIRED for higher level fractals. But at the same time, I don’t care for high level fractals, so I don’t feel its a grind for me at least.

If people would start saying " wow, gw2 has a lot of farming in it". I would agree, a lot of optional farming. Now how bout that main story though? Isn’t it great we don’t have to grind in order to progress through it?

Phys makes an excellent point in how something that isn’t grindy in theory becomes grindy when you take into account that all the “other” choices you have are far away from the most efficient.

It’s interesting, Anet worked on this already when we take a look at dungeons. They changed the gold-rewards so that it’s not very rewarding to repeat the fastest dungeon path over and over again.

I think it’s difficult to balance ALL activities to reward the same amount of gold/rewards in a specific timeframe because of the fact that people could easily exploit those options.

just naming 2 examples:
-) a jumping puzzle which has much better rewards: guilds will have their Mesmers port hundrets of people in a very short timeframe which breaks this time-reward szenario.
-) defending in WvW… would lead to tons of AFK farmers who just stand around and wait for their gold / also discourages active offensive play

I guess it’s really difficult to balance required time / effort with rewards because of all the ways people could exploit that options.

Wuselknusel.4082:

since GW2 isn’t about stats but about skins. It’s like, to put it hyperbolic, the devs of Tetris saying they’ve aimed for the best possible story ever told in a videogame.

But we can see how your motive influenced the game:
Nearly all rewards are given through RNG. You have the chance to get everything from nearly everywhere and if you don’t you can atleast buy it from the traiding post.
Now the problem is that this design creates new issues, funny enough, those issues lead to feeling the need to grind.
As I’ve said, the RNG lets you get everything almost everywhere. This has two consequences:

• First, the player is never able to say “I am going for X”. You are not able to say at the moment: “I am going for a precursor right now.” or “I am going for tier 5 blood”, you can just say: “I am doing this activity and hope that I get what I want.” This creates dissatisfaction for the player because he can’t control when he gets the items he wants, other than rolling the RNG dice a second, third or fourth time.
• Second, the player is creating items he can’t use. He is selling them because he want atleast to get some gold for those items. This creates another two issues:
  • If the item is unwanted, the traiding post gets flooded with it. The devs then can’t use this item for new possible uses, because their metrics tell them that this item is way too common, unless the increase the quantity you need for the new use. this happened with ascended gear. And what is the complaint about ascneded gear? That it feels too grindy.
  • If the item is listed in the traiding post, it’s most of the time easier to get the gold to buy the item instead of playing the game to get the item as drop. So the average player of GW2 will start to get gold. To make more gold, he’ll start to look for the best way to make gold. Once he has found it, he will do it over and over until he got enough gold to get what he wants. And that repeats for every item he wants. And what do we call doing the same thing over and over? Grinding.

So in the end, by not giving the player a special way of obtaining an item reliably, so this special way doesn’t get grinded, you’ve created a grind for the only option left to obtain an item reliably: Buying it from the traiding post.
And I’ll go out on a limb and say that acquiring an item yourself feels more awesome than running to the traiding post with all your savings to buy it.

Indeed!

Knighthonor.4061:

I believe the problem people having is not that the game has a grind. It’s the fact that the developers keep saying it doesn’t have a grind that bothers people.

No, the grind bothers me. If you look 2 pages back Colin does say the game has grind. So they don’t say it does not have a grind. But I happed to dislike that grind that they seem to find acceptable.

phys.7689:

Obtena.7952:

morrolan.9608:

slamfunction.7462:

“Grinding” is perception. You can get a majority of the materials you need for ascended armor, just by going through each of the maps on your toons or even doing the LS content.

No you can’t, not due to the sheer volume required. To get the mats in any sort of timeframe requires grinding for the mats and gold.

You’re confusing grinding with farming. Not the same thing. Grinding would be doing the SAME thing to get gold and mats. Anet has fixed that; you can do ANYTHING to give you gold and mats.

yeah and somethings will take you 2-10 times as much time to achieve the same goal.

illusions of choice are not real choices.

I would argue that is less relevant to the guy who’s not dedicating too much time to the game or doesn’t care about their time spent in game, simply because they like playing it. These are the same people I believe the game is targeted to. I don’t care what MMO you want to talk about. The general trend is that players grind for BiS, or get really lucky. The thing that makes GW2 stand out from this trend:

1. You don’t need BiS everywhere to compete, even in WvW. There are exceptions to that but those are due to player choice or even POSITIVE implementations (Ascended trinkets are rather easy to get for anyone)
2. You don’t need to repeat the same content over and over to achieve gear or cosmetic goals. That’s a significant departure from MANY games. You can argue that some things will take longer so you pick the fastest one; that’s a GOOD thing. It means if you DO burn out on a specific content, you can try something else and still move forward with your goals. How that isn’t seen as a positive is beyond my comprehension.

It’s not that the game is grindy that people should really complain about. It’s that Anet has tied everything to a gold standard and targeted a larger demographic of average players.

Serophous.9085:

phys.7689:

Serophous.9085:

Orpheal.8263:

The game has alot more grind, than many people think .

Other than ascended gear, name one other thing that is a grind in this game. Colin even gave their definition of what grind is to them. So by his definition (as everyone is just ignoring it and submitting their own), name one other.

there is a ton of grindy things in this game, but you will say most of that is cosmetic. Ascended however is in bounds in the discussion on required grinds, according to colin. He said something to the effect that is not considered a cosmetic goal.

in order to communicate well, you generally have to be on the same page with your terminology. If he defines grind of having only one possible choice of repetive tasks, he is correct. However, for most people having two choices or thee choices of repetitive tasks doesnt really change the feeling of grind.

lets say in order to get something you want you can.

A) write i want X item 10,000 times
B) Walk on a treadmill for 20 miles
C) put in 10,000 batteries in remotes

all of those options are grindy, having the option to do 3 grindy things barely lessens the actual feeling of grind.

now lets say they throw in more interesting things, but reduce the effeviency

D) skateboard for 1000 hours
E) draw 2000 illustrations
F) dance the samba 30,000 times

while those options are more interesting, they are not real options due to how ineffecient they are, also, even if you enjoy these things, given those numbers, they will, for most people begin to feel grindy.

so really, i would say what makes something feel grindy, is how interesting it is, and how many repetitions you have to do to achieve a certain goal.

Varying the methods of aquisition is one good way to lower the feelings of grind, but the methods of aquisition have to be compareable, and no matter what if all of them have a huge amount of repetitions, it will feel grindy as long as you are focused on the goal. Now, yes, everyone has different feelings/definitions/thresholds for grind. Still there is some common points, between people, and somethings that you just have to look at the numbers to know, this will be grindy.

Sigh…when I said “other than ascended gear”, it means its already admitted its grindy. I personally don’t view it as needed, and have only acquired pieces if I felt like it.

Throughout my gameplay in gw2, I never felt like I was grinding. Not. Once. But what you described there, and what everyone is confusing it with, is FARMING.

The champ FARM trains, the FARMING of Orr, the FARM in Silverwastes, is just that, FARMING. I didn’t see forum topics of nerfed grind spots, they were nerfed FARMED spots.

You FARM something that is optional and actually not needed to progress in content.
You GRIND for something that is REQUIRED to progress. In other words, you are prohibited from content you paid for. The only thing I see that with IS the ascended gear which is REQUIRED for higher level fractals. But at the same time, I don’t care for high level fractals, so I don’t feel its a grind for me at least.

If people would start saying " wow, gw2 has a lot of farming in it". I would agree, a lot of optional farming. Now how bout that main story though? Isn’t it great we don’t have to grind in order to progress through it?

Isn’t farming going for a specific item while grinding is more like going for a currency grinding away. Well those champ trains where there for the gold, the items they got where to sell for gold. That makes it grinding, not farming. But whatever, people dislike it and it’s there. No mather if you call it grinding or farming.

Test.8734:

when the same Colin said, “We don’t want players to grind”.

Colin should listen to the ppl, the comunity what wants, and implement what the ppl want, not what he wants.
Who is “he” to say “We don’t want players to grind”.
Some kind of Communist dictator or?

Terrahero.9358:

VodCom.6924:

Edit : I’d also like to remind you all that ascended tier items were added because a vocal minority (not pointing fingers here) asked for something to grind for once they’ve finished the game.

Ascended was planned before the game even came out. The first public announcements were relatively shortly after launch.
Make no mistake, it may have taken a long time before all the slots got an ascended variant but it started very early.

http://www.pcgamer.com/arenanet-guild-wars-2-ascended-backlash/

Note the date. November 15th, not even 3 months after release, and they were about ready to push out the patch that was going to add the first ascended gear. Not just talking about it, no it was ready, done.
Ascended was planned well before the game launched.

I can guarantee 100% that Ascended wasn’t planned before launch, it was only within the first month after release and people were already getting Exotic gear that it was decided to come out with another gear level.

Devata.6589:

Serophous.9085:

phys.7689:

Serophous.9085:

Orpheal.8263:

The game has alot more grind, than many people think .

Other than ascended gear, name one other thing that is a grind in this game. Colin even gave their definition of what grind is to them. So by his definition (as everyone is just ignoring it and submitting their own), name one other.

there is a ton of grindy things in this game, but you will say most of that is cosmetic. Ascended however is in bounds in the discussion on required grinds, according to colin. He said something to the effect that is not considered a cosmetic goal.

in order to communicate well, you generally have to be on the same page with your terminology. If he defines grind of having only one possible choice of repetive tasks, he is correct. However, for most people having two choices or thee choices of repetitive tasks doesnt really change the feeling of grind.

lets say in order to get something you want you can.

A) write i want X item 10,000 times
B) Walk on a treadmill for 20 miles
C) put in 10,000 batteries in remotes

all of those options are grindy, having the option to do 3 grindy things barely lessens the actual feeling of grind.

now lets say they throw in more interesting things, but reduce the effeviency

D) skateboard for 1000 hours
E) draw 2000 illustrations
F) dance the samba 30,000 times

while those options are more interesting, they are not real options due to how ineffecient they are, also, even if you enjoy these things, given those numbers, they will, for most people begin to feel grindy.

so really, i would say what makes something feel grindy, is how interesting it is, and how many repetitions you have to do to achieve a certain goal.

Varying the methods of aquisition is one good way to lower the feelings of grind, but the methods of aquisition have to be compareable, and no matter what if all of them have a huge amount of repetitions, it will feel grindy as long as you are focused on the goal. Now, yes, everyone has different feelings/definitions/thresholds for grind. Still there is some common points, between people, and somethings that you just have to look at the numbers to know, this will be grindy.

Sigh…when I said “other than ascended gear”, it means its already admitted its grindy. I personally don’t view it as needed, and have only acquired pieces if I felt like it.

Throughout my gameplay in gw2, I never felt like I was grinding. Not. Once. But what you described there, and what everyone is confusing it with, is FARMING.

The champ FARM trains, the FARMING of Orr, the FARM in Silverwastes, is just that, FARMING. I didn’t see forum topics of nerfed grind spots, they were nerfed FARMED spots.

You FARM something that is optional and actually not needed to progress in content.
You GRIND for something that is REQUIRED to progress. In other words, you are prohibited from content you paid for. The only thing I see that with IS the ascended gear which is REQUIRED for higher level fractals. But at the same time, I don’t care for high level fractals, so I don’t feel its a grind for me at least.

If people would start saying " wow, gw2 has a lot of farming in it". I would agree, a lot of optional farming. Now how bout that main story though? Isn’t it great we don’t have to grind in order to progress through it?

Isn’t farming going for a specific item while grinding is more like going for a currency grinding away. Well those champ trains where there for the gold, the items they got where to sell for gold. That makes it grinding, not farming. But whatever, people dislike it and it’s there. No mather if you call it grinding or farming.

Going for a specific item and getting the currency to buy it are both two ways of grinding… or farming, whatever you want to call it.

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

Phys makes an excellent point in how something that isn’t grindy in theory becomes grindy when you take into account that all the “other” choices you have are far away from the most efficient.

It’s interesting, Anet worked on this already when we take a look at dungeons. They changed the gold-rewards so that it’s not very rewarding to repeat the fastest dungeon path over and over again.

I think it’s difficult to balance ALL activities to reward the same amount of gold/rewards in a specific timeframe because of the fact that people could easily exploit those options.

just naming 2 examples:
-) a jumping puzzle which has much better rewards: guilds will have their Mesmers port hundrets of people in a very short timeframe which breaks this time-reward szenario.
-) defending in WvW… would lead to tons of AFK farmers who just stand around and wait for their gold / also discourages active offensive play

I guess it’s really difficult to balance required time / effort with rewards because of all the ways people could exploit that options.

“I think it’s difficult to balance ALL activities to reward the same amount of gold/rewards in a specific timeframe because of the fact that people could easily exploit those options. " Then don’t.. let them all rewards there own thing in stead of all rewarding gold and other junk people sell for gold.

"
-) a jumping puzzle which has much better rewards: guilds will have their Mesmers port hundrets of people in a very short timeframe which breaks this time-reward szenario.
-) defending in WvW… would lead to tons of AFK farmers who just stand around and wait for their gold / also discourages active offensive play
"
Funny enough you name the two thing I like best. (well this and guild-missions)’

“I guess it’s really difficult to balance required time / effort with rewards because of all the ways people could exploit that options.”
Yeah so again, rewarding rewards for specific content might be the solution.

Obtena.7952:

phys.7689:

Obtena.7952:

morrolan.9608:

slamfunction.7462:

“Grinding” is perception. You can get a majority of the materials you need for ascended armor, just by going through each of the maps on your toons or even doing the LS content.

No you can’t, not due to the sheer volume required. To get the mats in any sort of timeframe requires grinding for the mats and gold.

You’re confusing grinding with farming. Not the same thing. Grinding would be doing the SAME thing to get gold and mats. Anet has fixed that; you can do ANYTHING to give you gold and mats.

yeah and somethings will take you 2-10 times as much time to achieve the same goal.

illusions of choice are not real choices.

I would argue that is less relevant to the guy who’s not dedicating too much time to the game or doesn’t care about their time spent in game, simply because they like playing it. These are the same people I believe the game is targeted to. I don’t care what MMO you want to talk about. The general trend is that players grind for BiS, or get really lucky. The thing that makes GW2 stand out from this trend:

1. You don’t need BiS everywhere to compete, even in WvW. There are exceptions to that but those are due to player choice.
2. You don’t need to repeat the same content over and over to achieve gear or cosmetic goals. That’s a significant departure from MANY games.

It’s not that the game is grindy that people should really complain about. It’s that Anet has tied everything to a gold standard and targeted a larger demographic.

“The general trend is that players grind for BiS” What a complete nonsense. Lets use a game that known for it so called gear grind.. WoW. What did wow do for it’s 19th anniversary. It gave everybody who logged in a mini (cosmetic), and it opened a PvP map that rewarded a title (not gear) and it opened a raid that rewarded two things. A mount (cosmetic, it was a ground mount so stat wise not much) but it also rewarded a hat piece stats. No guess what all those people care about.. the mount or the hat?

All those players where not going for the BiS but for the cosmetics. Are there at the same time people likely doing other content for BiS sure but notion that this group would be the biggest is imho just false. And this is an example from a game that is known for it’s gear grind.

Now in GW2 that is knows for the cosmetics the percentage of people wanting to go for skins is likely even higher. And let also not fool each other, that is likely exactly why they make that part grindy and sell it in the cash-shop. They know people want that so they sell it. That worked in the long run but eventually people start leaving because buying and grinding gold for those items simply is not fun.

Devata.6589:

Yeah so again, rewarding rewards for specific content might be the solution.

Please, no. This is quite possibly the worst solution we have EVER seen, already demonstrated in many existing MMO’s. If you think GW2 is grindy, just wait until you need 100 raids of something to ‘win loot’ or ‘get tokens’ to buy things (Nightmares of Anarchy Online all over again). People aren’t thinking of what they are asking for here. These ideas are a huge step backward in the evolution of the industry.

Devata.6589:

“The general trend is that players grind for BiS” What a complete nonsense. Lets use a game that known for it so called gear grind.. WoW. What did wow do for it’s 19th anniversary. It gave everybody who logged in a mini (cosmetic), and it opened a PvP map that rewarded a title (not gear) and it opened a raid that rewarded two things. A mount (cosmetic, it was a ground mount so stat wise not much) but it also rewarded a hat piece stats. No guess what all those people care about.. the mount or the hat?

I’m made a general statement that games make you grind for BiS and you refute that by talking about an EXCEPTIONAL case in WoW gave out some hats and a title once upon a time? I didn’t know hats and titles were considered BiS items. >< I think you’re just trolling me now.

Devata.6589:

That worked in the long run but eventually people start leaving because buying and grinding gold for those items simply is not fun.

BUT … those people are going to stay in a game if they do repeated raids to get things, which is what you are suggesting could be a solution? You need to take a step back and THINK about what you are talking about here. Gold or items, it’s the SAME THING with the exception that you can only get raid-won items from a specific raid. Gold can be obtained anywhere.

nGumball.1283:

Devata.6589:

Serophous.9085:

phys.7689:

Serophous.9085:

Orpheal.8263:

The game has alot more grind, than many people think .

Other than ascended gear, name one other thing that is a grind in this game. Colin even gave their definition of what grind is to them. So by his definition (as everyone is just ignoring it and submitting their own), name one other.

there is a ton of grindy things in this game, but you will say most of that is cosmetic. Ascended however is in bounds in the discussion on required grinds, according to colin. He said something to the effect that is not considered a cosmetic goal.

in order to communicate well, you generally have to be on the same page with your terminology. If he defines grind of having only one possible choice of repetive tasks, he is correct. However, for most people having two choices or thee choices of repetitive tasks doesnt really change the feeling of grind.

lets say in order to get something you want you can.

A) write i want X item 10,000 times
B) Walk on a treadmill for 20 miles
C) put in 10,000 batteries in remotes

all of those options are grindy, having the option to do 3 grindy things barely lessens the actual feeling of grind.

now lets say they throw in more interesting things, but reduce the effeviency

D) skateboard for 1000 hours
E) draw 2000 illustrations
F) dance the samba 30,000 times

while those options are more interesting, they are not real options due to how ineffecient they are, also, even if you enjoy these things, given those numbers, they will, for most people begin to feel grindy.

so really, i would say what makes something feel grindy, is how interesting it is, and how many repetitions you have to do to achieve a certain goal.

Varying the methods of aquisition is one good way to lower the feelings of grind, but the methods of aquisition have to be compareable, and no matter what if all of them have a huge amount of repetitions, it will feel grindy as long as you are focused on the goal. Now, yes, everyone has different feelings/definitions/thresholds for grind. Still there is some common points, between people, and somethings that you just have to look at the numbers to know, this will be grindy.

Sigh…when I said “other than ascended gear”, it means its already admitted its grindy. I personally don’t view it as needed, and have only acquired pieces if I felt like it.

Throughout my gameplay in gw2, I never felt like I was grinding. Not. Once. But what you described there, and what everyone is confusing it with, is FARMING.

The champ FARM trains, the FARMING of Orr, the FARM in Silverwastes, is just that, FARMING. I didn’t see forum topics of nerfed grind spots, they were nerfed FARMED spots.

You FARM something that is optional and actually not needed to progress in content.
You GRIND for something that is REQUIRED to progress. In other words, you are prohibited from content you paid for. The only thing I see that with IS the ascended gear which is REQUIRED for higher level fractals. But at the same time, I don’t care for high level fractals, so I don’t feel its a grind for me at least.

If people would start saying " wow, gw2 has a lot of farming in it". I would agree, a lot of optional farming. Now how bout that main story though? Isn’t it great we don’t have to grind in order to progress through it?

Isn’t farming going for a specific item while grinding is more like going for a currency grinding away. Well those champ trains where there for the gold, the items they got where to sell for gold. That makes it grinding, not farming. But whatever, people dislike it and it’s there. No mather if you call it grinding or farming.

Going for a specific item and getting the currency to buy it are both two ways of grinding… or farming, whatever you want to call it.

Going for a specific item can be farming (if it’s RNG) but still less boring because for this item you do this content and for another item you need to do other content. Not to mention that it makes the item itself more interesting because it’s a reward for doing that content (much like a title is).

Of course going for a specific item could also mean something like completing a quest-line (as far as they exist in GW2 Event chain?) or completing some specific hard content (think liadri) and then it not farming and not grinding.

So the currency way is always grinding while the direct way can be farming will not always be farming.

But even more important, it’s more fun. At least to me completing specific content to get a specific item is more fun then grinding some random brainless content all the time to get money to buy the thing. And ‘fun’ was also one of those pillars.

Wuselknusel.4082:

ColinJohanson.2394:

Hey folks,

I just want to take a second to address this topic, because it’s something we state as one of our key philosophies – but don’t often clarify exactly what we mean we say it. And because everyone and their mother has their own unique interpretation of what grind can mean, it’s very simple for this to feel like we’re not following our own guidelines when we build and implement content.

When our company president said we have an anti-grind philosophy way back before Gw2 shipped, and when it has been repeatedly reinforced since then, our statement is simply: “We don’t think you should need to grind to get the best gear and stats in Guild Wars 2”.

So what exactly does that mean:

[…]

I would like to chime in here because that is the part where my interpretation of grind is diverging from your interpretation if grind.

First of all, I think it’s pretty cheap to say that you don’t want the player “to grind for stats”, since GW2 isn’t about stats but about skins. It’s like, to put it hyperbolic, the devs of Tetris saying they’ve aimed for the best possible story ever told in a videogame.

But we can see how your motive influenced the game:
Nearly all rewards are given through RNG. You have the chance to get everything from nearly everywhere and if you don’t you can atleast buy it from the traiding post.
Now the problem is that this design creates new issues, funny enough, those issues lead to feeling the need to grind.
As I’ve said, the RNG lets you get everything almost everywhere. This has two consequences:

• First, the player is never able to say “I am going for X”. You are not able to say at the moment: “I am going for a precursor right now.” or “I am going for tier 5 blood”, you can just say: “I am doing this activity and hope that I get what I want.” This creates dissatisfaction for the player because he can’t control when he gets the items he wants, other than rolling the RNG dice a second, third or fourth time.
• Second, the player is creating items he can’t use. He is selling them because he want atleast to get some gold for those items. This creates another two issues:
  • If the item is unwanted, the traiding post gets flooded with it. The devs then can’t use this item for new possible uses, because their metrics tell them that this item is way too common, unless the increase the quantity you need for the new use. this happened with ascended gear. And what is the complaint about ascneded gear? That it feels too grindy.
  • If the item is listed in the traiding post, it’s most of the time easier to get the gold to buy the item instead of playing the game to get the item as drop. So the average player of GW2 will start to get gold. To make more gold, he’ll start to look for the best way to make gold. Once he has found it, he will do it over and over until he got enough gold to get what he wants. And that repeats for every item he wants. And what do we call doing the same thing over and over? Grinding.

So in the end, by not giving the player a special way of obtaining an item reliably, so this special way doesn’t get grinded, you’ve created a grind for the only option left to obtain an item reliably: Buying it from the traiding post.
And I’ll go out on a limb and say that acquiring an item yourself feels more awesome than running to the traiding post with all your savings to buy it.

I just wanted to say this times a million. I think people are mainly comparing apples to oranges when they talk about grinding for BiS in this game versus others. That is because of the reasons stated directly above, this game isn’t designed around BiS but Cosmetic upgrades.

I can use most of the stale arguments being thrown out AGAINST making changes. You don’t actually NEED ANYTHING, having a weapon, a trait, a this or that, or whatever is all a WANT. Even the desire to succeed in raiding in other games is A WANT. You don’t NEED to go out and finish raids and kill world bosses, you can run around any game naked and explore, sure you might die and be super ineffective and what not but that IS an option. And I kind of feel that is the same argument many of you use here, “You don’t NEED to do X or Y, you can just settle for Z.”. But why should people have to settle?

It’s inherent in our nature to strive for things, to set goals for ourselves. That’s how games are designed, we are given a carrot on a stick and we want to achieve some form of it. In essence that’s how this game is designed. However, the way it’s handled, turns how you chase after that carrot into a pretty boring grind.

Obtena.7952:

Devata.6589:

Yeah so again, rewarding rewards for specific content might be the solution.

Please, no. This is quite possibly the worst solution we have EVER seen, already demonstrated in many existing MMO’s. If you think GW2 is grindy, just wait until you need 100 raids of something to ‘win loot’ or ‘get tokens’ to buy things. People aren’t thinking of what they are asking for here.

Devata.6589:

“The general trend is that players grind for BiS” What a complete nonsense. Lets use a game that known for it so called gear grind.. WoW. What did wow do for it’s 19th anniversary. It gave everybody who logged in a mini (cosmetic), and it opened a PvP map that rewarded a title (not gear) and it opened a raid that rewarded two things. A mount (cosmetic, it was a ground mount so stat wise not much) but it also rewarded a hat piece stats. No guess what all those people care about.. the mount or the hat?

I’m made a general statement that games make you grind for BiS and you refute that by talking about how WoW gave out some hats and a title once upon a time? I didn’t know hats and titles were considered BiS items. >< I think you’re just trolling me now.

Who is talking about 100 raids or getting tokens (that btw already is in GW2, but is NOT directly rewarding specific content for specific content). Besides why the dislike? As long as those items are not account bound (I think some should be and some should not be) there is still the option for you to do the brainless grind if that is what you like. It might not always be the most effective way anymore but it’s still an option.

“I didn’t know hats and titles were considered BiS items. >< I think you’re just trolling me now.” The hat was gear with good stats. All the other where not indeed. That was the point.. People there where there for the cosmetics.. not for the stats. While you said “The general trend is that players grind for BiS”. As if that is what people are most interested in. Well that example did show that is not the case. There are also many people more interested in cosmetic stuff then in BiS stuff.

“Gold or items, it’s the SAME THING with the exception that you can only get raid-won items from a specific raid. Gold can be obtained anywhere.”
That exception is what makes the gold way so boring, devaluates that reward so much (an item you can simply buy after some brainless grind does not have the same value as an item rewarded for challeging content) and does not give the thrill of ‘will it drop’ in case of RNG but in stead just a boring number (gold) slowly going up to the point where you can then buy the item.
It is also what causes the trend of grinding whatever rewards the best gold in stead of sending you over the world to do all types of content.

And I say it again, for the items that are not account bound you still have the brainless grind option. So don’t be afraid you will lose your favorite way of earning the rewards. It just adds another option to obtain them. Sure there will also be account bound things but thats already the case in GW2 with multiple items so that won’t change that much eater.

Definitely GW2 hasn’t a grindy philosophy.
No one farm million mob to gain a 0.017%/day in the exp bar, with an Orr Level 80 locked.

I’ve done the game with masterwork equip ed everyone can enjoy pvp and wvw with a low level pg.

nGumball.1283:

Devata.6589:

Serophous.9085:

phys.7689:

Serophous.9085:

Orpheal.8263:

The game has alot more grind, than many people think .

Other than ascended gear, name one other thing that is a grind in this game. Colin even gave their definition of what grind is to them. So by his definition (as everyone is just ignoring it and submitting their own), name one other.

there is a ton of grindy things in this game, but you will say most of that is cosmetic. Ascended however is in bounds in the discussion on required grinds, according to colin. He said something to the effect that is not considered a cosmetic goal.

in order to communicate well, you generally have to be on the same page with your terminology. If he defines grind of having only one possible choice of repetive tasks, he is correct. However, for most people having two choices or thee choices of repetitive tasks doesnt really change the feeling of grind.

lets say in order to get something you want you can.

A) write i want X item 10,000 times
B) Walk on a treadmill for 20 miles
C) put in 10,000 batteries in remotes

all of those options are grindy, having the option to do 3 grindy things barely lessens the actual feeling of grind.

now lets say they throw in more interesting things, but reduce the effeviency

D) skateboard for 1000 hours
E) draw 2000 illustrations
F) dance the samba 30,000 times

while those options are more interesting, they are not real options due to how ineffecient they are, also, even if you enjoy these things, given those numbers, they will, for most people begin to feel grindy.

so really, i would say what makes something feel grindy, is how interesting it is, and how many repetitions you have to do to achieve a certain goal.

Varying the methods of aquisition is one good way to lower the feelings of grind, but the methods of aquisition have to be compareable, and no matter what if all of them have a huge amount of repetitions, it will feel grindy as long as you are focused on the goal. Now, yes, everyone has different feelings/definitions/thresholds for grind. Still there is some common points, between people, and somethings that you just have to look at the numbers to know, this will be grindy.

Sigh…when I said “other than ascended gear”, it means its already admitted its grindy. I personally don’t view it as needed, and have only acquired pieces if I felt like it.

Throughout my gameplay in gw2, I never felt like I was grinding. Not. Once. But what you described there, and what everyone is confusing it with, is FARMING.

The champ FARM trains, the FARMING of Orr, the FARM in Silverwastes, is just that, FARMING. I didn’t see forum topics of nerfed grind spots, they were nerfed FARMED spots.

You FARM something that is optional and actually not needed to progress in content.
You GRIND for something that is REQUIRED to progress. In other words, you are prohibited from content you paid for. The only thing I see that with IS the ascended gear which is REQUIRED for higher level fractals. But at the same time, I don’t care for high level fractals, so I don’t feel its a grind for me at least.

If people would start saying " wow, gw2 has a lot of farming in it". I would agree, a lot of optional farming. Now how bout that main story though? Isn’t it great we don’t have to grind in order to progress through it?

Isn’t farming going for a specific item while grinding is more like going for a currency grinding away. Well those champ trains where there for the gold, the items they got where to sell for gold. That makes it grinding, not farming. But whatever, people dislike it and it’s there. No mather if you call it grinding or farming.

Going for a specific item and getting the currency to buy it are both two ways of grinding… or farming, whatever you want to call it.

Sigh…OK, please actually read and try to understand….

You GRIND for something the game requires you to progress. Ex. Needing tier 1 gear to do the next dungeon.
You FARM for something optional that in no way impacts your progression or denies you content.

What’s next? Gold Farmers being called Gold Grinders?

If that one item prevents you from continuing on to content meant to progress you, its a grind. If that item does none of that, that if you ignore it and it would have 0 impact in doing so, its a farm

If you guys want to know what a grind is you should have played Star War Galaxies back in the day when their idea of content was mission terminals. I remember spending months killing lairs of the same critters to unlock holo professions, then force XP, then once I unlocked Jedi did months of spin group XP grind on Dantooine all while trying to avoid being killed by player Bounty Hunters that if they killed you would leave you with a huge XP debt that would take weeks to regain.

Yes there are some things in gw2 may feel grindy, but grindy and advancing tend to go hand in hand. The real question is are the goals and rewards balanced and achievable in a time frame that is fair? I would say yes in most cases, and the things that were not, have gotten better (cough* ecto drops from salvage).

I imagine they will only get better as the game moves forward. If you are feeling winded from farming gold or mats find something else to do. If anything take a break from the game for a bit and come back after things improve in your favor.

Roquen.5406:

I can use most of the stale arguments being thrown out AGAINST making changes. You don’t actually NEED ANYTHING, having a weapon, a trait, a this or that, or whatever is all a WANT. Even the desire to succeed in raiding in other games is A WANT. You don’t NEED to go out and finish raids and kill world bosses, you can run around any game naked and explore, sure you might die and be super ineffective and what not but that IS an option. And I kind of feel that is the same argument many of you use here, “You don’t NEED to do X or Y, you can just settle for Z.”. But why should people have to settle?

That’s why I dismiss all the “It’s just optional!” arguments.

Some people can solo dungeons naked = Gear isn’t necessary = Everything is optional = There is no Grind! I’ve now proven that there never was, is or will be grind in this game.

“There is no grind.” Sounds like: “These aren’t the Droids you’re looking for.”

Serophous.9085:

nGumball.1283:

Devata.6589:

Serophous.9085:

phys.7689:

Serophous.9085:

~

~

Sigh…when I said “other than ascended gear”, it means its already admitted its grindy. I personally don’t view it as needed, and have only acquired pieces if I felt like it.

Throughout my gameplay in gw2, I never felt like I was grinding. Not. Once. But what you described there, and what everyone is confusing it with, is FARMING.

The champ FARM trains, the FARMING of Orr, the FARM in Silverwastes, is just that, FARMING. I didn’t see forum topics of nerfed grind spots, they were nerfed FARMED spots.

You FARM something that is optional and actually not needed to progress in content.
You GRIND for something that is REQUIRED to progress. In other words, you are prohibited from content you paid for. The only thing I see that with IS the ascended gear which is REQUIRED for higher level fractals. But at the same time, I don’t care for high level fractals, so I don’t feel its a grind for me at least.

If people would start saying " wow, gw2 has a lot of farming in it". I would agree, a lot of optional farming. Now how bout that main story though? Isn’t it great we don’t have to grind in order to progress through it?

Isn’t farming going for a specific item while grinding is more like going for a currency grinding away. Well those champ trains where there for the gold, the items they got where to sell for gold. That makes it grinding, not farming. But whatever, people dislike it and it’s there. No mather if you call it grinding or farming.

Going for a specific item and getting the currency to buy it are both two ways of grinding… or farming, whatever you want to call it.

Sigh…OK, please actually read and try to understand….

You GRIND for something the game requires you to progress. Ex. Needing tier 1 gear to do the next dungeon.
You FARM for something optional that in no way impacts your progression or denies you content.

What’s next? Gold Farmers being called Gold Grinders?

If that one item prevents you from continuing on to content meant to progress you, its a grind. If that item does none of that, that if you ignore it and it would have 0 impact in doing so, its a farm

I did hear many definitions of grind vs farm but this one is completely new. If it’s ‘required’ it’s grind and if it’s optional if ‘farming’. You do know thats something you made up. your personal definition?

I am willing to agree that there are multiple definitions of grinding and farming but really.. your version is completely new.

Also Colin referred to grinding for cosmetics as grinding, just saying.

Anyway, going back to the ‘Needed’ part. I did never feel this ‘need’ in any mmo. I could always just play the content I wanted. Maybe because I was not interested in the hardest raids but for the content I liked it was never a grind. Then that means you can consider that ‘need’ optional. If you want to do that hardest raid dungeon then you need it.

But by those standards cosmetics are just as needed. If you want to have that look you need to get that item.

Reality is of course that it’s both a choice.

I will also use the WoW example again. A game being used so much to point out this so called ‘required grind’. I never grinded there and did reach max level. I never grinded and got my goal of getting the most special hunter pets, I never grinded and achieved other goals I had like getting some specific mini’s and mounts. So that definition of ‘need’ is really based on what you like to do in those games and for that you need to grind… well just like people who like to get cosmetics have the same problem in GW2.

ColinJohanson.2394:

Hey folks,
- The best gear/stats: This means to have statistically the best abilities in the game, you shouldn’t need to, by our definition of the word, grind. This goes for leveling and getting top gear (by our definition that’s ascended gear, legendary being an optional extra thing you can do, but don’t need to do.)

- Grind: To us, grind means being required to do the same boring activity over and over again. In particular, the biggest reference we’re talking about here in traditional MMO’s is having to kill the same creatures over and over again to farm for levels or gear. In Gw2, you can gain exp and levels from a massive variety of game play, game modes, and content types. Same goes for the ability to acquire the gear to build up your characters. Similarly, ascended mats can be acquired from a wide variety of content types and game modes to allow you choice and options so you don’t need to grind to complete those goals. Our new mastery system continues to this promise as well, which we’ll go into more detail on soon.

See, this is the part of your quote that kind of rubbed me the wrong way, and kind of makes it seem that you’re either a bit jaded in how you see the game, or simply don’t want to actually admit to the fact that, yes, grinding Ascended Armor is just that, a grind.

You’re absolutely right, you don’t NEED to farm World Bosses, Champions, and Jumping Puzzles to get the drops that come from them…But then what are your other options then? Wait a month to get stuff from the Monthly Reward Track? Grind PvP Reward Tracks for them?

The other options are there, but they are so mind numbingly slow by comparison, that people feel obligated to farm the same Champion Train, World Boss rotation, and quick Jumping Puzzles to get the materials you need for your Ascended Armor, and that by it’s very definition goes totally against what you just tried to say.

I don’t have to kill the same World Boss each day for a hope at getting a piece of Ascended Armor, but I certainly did need to kill them each day back when I was working on it to get the Dragonite Ore needed to make the Ingots, just as I needed to the same for Empyreal Fragments and Bloodstone Dust.

Saying “You can do it in multiple ways doesn’t make it a grind” doesn’t work, when those multiple ways are either so unrewarding as to not be worth doing, or simply doing the same content each day to get the same rewards.

Honestly, if you really want to stand by the mantra of “You don’t need to grind to get Ascended Armor”, then there should actually be ways players can get the armor outside of crafting or paying to RNGesus that they get an Ascended Chest that has the armor type they need. Take a page out of your competitors, and let players by armor through Laurels, or offer more inventive ways to get the Armor though long quest lines or what not.

Because right now, yes, getting Ascended Armor is either a very expensive endeavor, or a very long grind of doing the same mundane tasks to get the materials needed to make the armor. Hiding behind the arugment of “But we have more then one way to get those materials” doesn’t work either, as like I said before those other methods are either just as repetitive (replacing World Boss grinding with Guild Mission grinding for Dragonite Ore, as an example) or so unrewarding (PvP Tracks), that there’s very little reason to actually do it.