Guild Wars 2

fixit.7189:

Just wait, I expect raids will require participants to have most HoT specific MRs at max.

ie. ley line gliding.

Also expect raid leaders to only invite people who have combat boosters and revive orbs…fun (and expensive) times ahead!

That’s a point. If raid people are going to demand ascended armor for its small stat boost then they are going to want the combat boosts for the same reason.

I see a new meta forming, and it’s not going to be pretty.

All MMOs utilize techniques to slow down consumption of their content. They have to. This often feels like grind to players, mostly because of how they choose to do it. It’s for the most part repetitive-type stuff and so gets boring after a while.

seems like the op is wanting pay to win of some sort. Not sure how paying is going to win in a mmo rpg tho.

Ape Ghosting.7396:

seems like the op is wanting pay to win of some sort. Not sure how paying is going to win in a mmo rpg tho.

Guess you read what you wanted to read in my posts and not what’s actually there. I said nothing about wanting p2w elements in the game.

Not sure why so many are getting defensive about it, but I guess a few have a secret horse in the fight that I don’t know about.

Wrong genre period if you complaining about grind people seem to like to toss that word around without knowing what it really means.

Wut, HoT has been perfect IMO aside from the lackluster rewards from Fractals. The HP nerfs were more than enough already.

HoT is indeed grind-ier but it is nowhere on the level of Asian MMOs.

Arenanet’s concessions on mastery gating & elite spec are a good step back.

Is there anything wrong with PvE-only people finishing their storylines and leaving til Living Story / expansions come out? I don’t think so.

Gonna have to join the bandwagon here and say that Asian MMO grind and GW2 mastery earning do not compare. I played Perfect World where max lvl 105 required 4,263,108,185 EXP. They introduced some easier ways of earning that amount, but doing it the hard way meant grinding for MONTHS to get half a level, if you weren’t hardcore dedicated and had several hours’ worth of playtime per day, something which people with out-of-game responsibilities like jobs/family/other hobbies simply do not have. And don’t get me started on how EASY it is in GW2 to get decent endgame armor. Even Ascended is a joke compared to some of those other MMOs ( Rank 9 PWI, anyone? ).

That said, I can KIND of understand where the OP is coming from. Getting to lvl 80 on the base maps is a no-brainer: explore, do the quests, view the vistas, find the POIs, snag a few events here and there if you’re passing through the area. Heck, if you have the money to spare, buy a bunch of keys and open BLC for tomes ( or do the PVP thing I can’t comment on, because I don’t PVP ).

HoT…requires more planning, more coordination, and more teamwork. Now, before anyone jumps down my throat, I’m not saying that’s a bad thing. My main gripe with GW2 is that I’ve made absolutely no friends here casually as I did in other games, simply because you DON’T have to group up for anything that gets you to lvl 80. You don’t even have to join a guild. You can play the game like single player and still get lvl 80 without breaking a sweat or grinding for months just to reach that sweet spot called endgame.

And then suddenly HoT comes around with ( at first glance ) its massive gating behind HP ( already nerfed ) and EXP requirements. That can put a casual player off like whoa, especially if all you did before was log in for an hour or two per day, explore a new section of the map, and do some hearts/events.

I don’t understand a single word from any of the comments in this thread or what is the focus topic here…
Are people talking about grinding or Chinese people or…

But I will just say, I love the gliding in HoT.

Samnang.1879:

I don’t understand a single word from any of the comments in this thread or what is the focus topic here…
Are people talking about grinding or Chinese people or…

But I will just say, I love the gliding in HoT.

The gliding is super fun.

It’s never been the “grind” itself that was the issue. It’s the idea that they gated really fun stuff behind arbitrary horizontal walls and nobody likes to wait to have fun.

A segment of the community asked for this, in one sense… they asked for horizontal progression. Masteries are that horizontal progression. Elite specs are that horizontal progression.

But something went wrong with another segment of the playerbase. Either this segment never wanted horizontal progression and got it due to the desires of another segment. Or they never actually understood what horizontal progression might look like and thought, “Ooh, shiny, yes, I want,” without understanding the time sinks it would entail.

That said, some of the masteries are far too vital for getting around the complex zone design and should never have been masteries in the first place. Glider basics should have been handed to you after completing the first story mission in Maguuma. Bouncing Mushrooms should have been handed out like candy, same with Exalted Markings and Nunoch Wallows. Even Updraft Use… it’s questionable whether that should have ever been a mastery.

Parts of map completion should never have been locked behind masteries, period.

In fact, while I’m on this subject and got some steam going, here’s a quick and dirty list of my opinions on the masteries and their order (setting aside the ones I already mentioned above):

Lean Techniques – Perfect for a first mastery. XP cost could have been as is, with Basics and Updraft handed out.

Stealth Gliding and Ley-Line Gliding next because they are the most auxiliary. THEN you get Advanced Gliding at the end with the endurance bar thing to show that you are a master of Gliding.

And finally, you add in a new one: Expert Gliding. Doesn’t even use endurance for lean techniques.

Itzel… first one, Language. Then Poison Lore, Blazing Speed, Adrenal, and finally, you challenge the champ with Leadership, capping it off with a sense of Mastery of Itzel stuff.

Exalted… acceptance, then Gathering, Purfication, and finally Assistance, sine you’ve now proven you can beat their champ.

Nuhoch… language first. Rest of the order is prob fine.

General idea is… focus coulda shoulda woulda been more on 1) fun (yay) and 2) the feeling of becoming more powerful, even though your power isn’t necessarily in the form of combat prowess. They sorta did that, but dropped the ball on things like turning basic navigational stuff into masteries.

Mastery, imo, should be MASTERY. As in, you are more powerful, more strong, at something, even if it is a horizontal kind of strength. It is little more than a magic trick to create a so-called “mastery” that pretends like it is making you more powerful, but is only making you average because it’s a basic ability that you need to get around. Even the language masteries are a cheap joke, since every other zone in the game allows you to buy from relevant zone vendors without an arbitrary gate. If the language masteries opened you up to MORE stuff beyond what you can see at a basic level (which you are provided with from the start) that would make it actually worthy of being called a mastery.

Perhaps there’s a lesson to be learned here. It is probably too late to fix this stuff now. And I know I’m being a bit arrogant about this, but I do believe that being only a player of the game puts things in perspective in a way that being a dev fails to do.

Honestly, the need to ‘grind’ for certain masteries is beyond annoying. It’s simply a delaying gateway to prevent players from rushing through the game. That’s my biggest complaint so far . . . gatewaying certain achievements and accomplishments behind a requirement of some mastery like Poison or some other nonsense.

It’s not a ‘Chinese’ influence, but more of a ‘slow them down so they don’t gobble up the limited content there is’ influence.

It doesn’t help that meta completion on certain maps, to gain access to other parts of the map, is required as well.

And no, that’s not casual friendly either.

fixit.7189:

Just wait, I expect raids will require participants to have most HoT specific MRs at max.

ie. ley line gliding.

Also expect raid leaders to only invite people who have combat boosters and revive orbs…fun (and expensive) times ahead!

I have a commander tag…

What I have understand from Anet devs is that Raids is no PuG content.

The only request I will have is that they have joined my Guild, behave and that they are prepared to change builds to adept to the content. I do not care for 5-10% more stats or doing raids in 10min or having best boosts. As long as we are having fun while trying I am all for it. The more we try the better we get.

Isn’t this alittle of topic? Anyhow…

I have never fealt that GW2 has been grindy atleast never as grindy as other MMOrpgs. But with HoT Guild Halls and Scribing is totally flunked, it is a massive grind and for small, medium Guilds and Guilds with low ammount of Donators this is totally wrong from what I remember the devs promiced us in the stream about Guild Halls. In one Guild I have on my Guild list only one player has been able to buy his guild up to level 12 and will continue to do so becouse the only thing gating him is aetherium. He has more than 2500g and more comming from TP. It’s really sad that my Guild will have to go out to farm for coarse sand 24/7 in SW and Dry Top or farm gold to buy it… Never did I think that this would happen in GW2.

A Legendary is just fluff with an extra small bonus, not needed, Masteries is something you will get rather fast by just playing, Elite spec with the lowered ammount (250) is now almost handed to you and other fluff is just fluff it is nothing that makes you better. But Guild Halls gives you discounts, exp buffs, banners, more content like the Guild Arena and more but this is locked behind a massive farming for some Guilds.

Dunno if this is a racial stereotype (racist) thread or just poorly phrased. OP you just assumed the entire western player base echoes your opinions by saying ‘we’ as western players, and also assumed that the entire Chinese/Asian player base likes to grind. Lol until you really know the opinions of every single player playing guild wars 2 I think you should refrain from opening such poorly phrased threads just to make yourself and your opinion seem larger than they actually are.

Prototypemind.4026:

Ape Ghosting.7396:

seems like the op is wanting pay to win of some sort. Not sure how paying is going to win in a mmo rpg tho.

Guess you read what you wanted to read in my posts and not what’s actually there. I said nothing about wanting p2w elements in the game.

Not sure why so many are getting defensive about it, but I guess a few have a secret horse in the fight that I don’t know about.

Probably because of your poorly worded thread. Nobody likes to be misrepresented by some stranger who thinks he knows what everybody else wants. What do you expect when you use ‘we as western players’ and than go ahead to bring up Chinese players finishing the content too fast because you stereotyped them to like grinding. Maybe you’re too young or just too ignorant to see the flaw in your post but if you anger a bull you gotta take its horns.

DaShi.1368:

Vayne.8563:

I’m a western player. I have no idea what you’re talking about. And players saying it wasn’t what we wanted? How many players? Have you not noticed every time someone complains about too much grind in HoT, roughly half the posts in the thread are by people who don’t mind or even like it?

I think you’re over-estimating your opinion as something that is some sort of majority opinion. I think it’s probably a minority opinion. Of course, I think my opinion is probably a minority opinion too. I think most people don’t think deeply enough about their gaming experience to register much of an opinion at all.

A good thing Vayne is here to tell us what everyone else is thinking.

You’d be a lot better off sticking to the topic at hand instead of continuing your personal attacks against me, as you’ve often done in the past.

You see the OP was the one who was talking foir Western audience, but you’re not calling him out, are you? Nope. You’re calling out my response.

If you weren’t so busy trying to disprove what i say, you’d realize the irony here.

But each post like this you make only makes my posts look better, so thanks.

I don’t get why there are so many players calling this game grindy.

I remember spending evenings healing our group of 7-9 killing thousands of mobs over and over. Turning on a bot when we all left to bed. Logging in 3 accounts so my friend could log in 4 and we leveled up our whole group on auto while people were at work/school sleeping.
Took me over 1 year to get to level 95 out of 99 despite several BIG nerfs the game had to experience needed to level up.

And when I didnt tell the guys Im auto-healing and going afk for a while, Ive been shouted on, because dying meant loosing xp worth up to several hours of grinding.
And open world pvp makes it hard to avoid deaths.

I dont agree with every decission Aned did in regards to new content and progression, but calling GW2 grindy makes people look clueless and spoiled. Wanting everything right away.

Zach.2618:

Prototypemind.4026:

Ape Ghosting.7396:

seems like the op is wanting pay to win of some sort. Not sure how paying is going to win in a mmo rpg tho.

Guess you read what you wanted to read in my posts and not what’s actually there. I said nothing about wanting p2w elements in the game.

Not sure why so many are getting defensive about it, but I guess a few have a secret horse in the fight that I don’t know about.

Probably because of your poorly worded thread. Nobody likes to be misrepresented by some stranger who thinks he knows what everybody else wants. What do you expect when you use ‘we as western players’ and than go ahead to bring up Chinese players finishing the content too fast because you stereotyped them to like grinding. Maybe you’re too young or just too ignorant to see the flaw in your post but if you anger a bull you gotta take its horns.

Again, what he replied with was nowhere in my posts. As to the stereotyping, the only place that I mentioned Chinese players was in regards to the specific complaints from that market as a whole about this game. Get over the SJW mess. It is pretty accepted that eastern MMOs still focus on grinding as a means to keep players tied to a game and that western MMOs often use cash sinks so you have ‘something to lose’ if you quit. There’s nothing sinister about saying this, and there’s certainly nothing derogatory about it either.

IndigoSundown.5419:

Anyone who has even dabbled in games like Rappelz

This a thousand times. Even when purchasing Stamina Servers (a thing basically required to level in the game in question, they’re bought from the cash shop) you could spend hundreds or even thousands of hours of pure grind (that is, killing mobs in certain level-appropriate areas, no quests, not hearts, just killing things).

You people do not know what a serious asian grind is if you think this is it. Not that I don’t somewhat agree ANet’s philosophy seems to have changed to be more inclusive towards non-casuals (I’m casual myself), but silly hyperbole is just silly.