Guild Wars 2

So right now i have a serious issue. By now we already know that GW 2 alienated most of the GW 1 playerbase.

I wonder tough and i might get a ban for wording this so hard. What the kitten went trough the dev teams brains, when they implemented better gear that you cant get for a certain time period.

The charm of GW is and was that you could swap builds on the fly. Here? Oh you want to use the best gear with your build? Well you have to farm for at least 20 days now. And nope cant get it faster because there is a limit on how many laurels you can get per day. So if i grind an amulet for 20 days and at the end i want to swap my build, well guess what another 20 days, lets not even think about gearing a second character. I wouldnt mind it if those were only items that looked better, but no, these are items that have plain better stats.

I never really got into WoW because of this gear threadmill, but atm, it feels like it would be better to go play WoW as they handle the threadmill better at least.

If you are grinding you are doing it wrong.

I rather grind for 1 day, than wait for 20 every time i want to change my build. Or do you really think i should not be able to change a build or character for 20 days.

There are many threads of this kind futher down, it would be easier to look at them if you genuinely want a contrsuctive answer to your question.

To say that “we know” GW2 alienated most of the GW1 playerbase is based on speculation. I played GW1 for years and am very happy with GW2 as are my current GW2 and previous GW1 guilds – there’s far less grind here for me than there was there or in other games like LOTRO. The key being (and is stated in those other threads) is that grind isn’t forced here it’s a choice. You don’t need the uber skins or the better gear to be good at the dame.

I do understand what you are saying about it taking 20 days to get the stuff you want, but 20 days to get your gear is nothing. It’s a bit of work every day – but not really a grind. You have to expect to put time and effort to get the perceived good items otherwise you might as well just start with it.

I agree with your sentiments about gearing alts though

Bruxae.4526:

If you are grinding you are doing it wrong.

I had a good chuckle at that

As for the OP, sorry mate, I don’t know what the answer is. Many people (myself included) don’t see where the Manifesto jives with reality. Well, without mincing words and lawyering, and knowing for sure what the definition of “is” is.

I don’t like it either. I agree with you. I really, truly, preferred the spirit of Guild Wars, where I could focus on playing the game, instead of focusing on getting ready to play the game because I need gear.

My hope is this: they said “No more tiers of gear in 2013”. I hope that they change it to “no more tiers of gear, EVER.”

If not, well, there’ll be lots of new games to play by the end of 2013; hopefully ones that are refreshingly different from traditional MMO’s.

Time will tell.

Strange. In GW1 people spent hours and hours in FOWSC and UWSC to get ectoplasm and obsidian. But nobody said that GW1 was pure grinding….

PiSquare.2904:

What the kitten went trough the dev teams brains, when they implemented better gear that you cant get for a certain time period.

They listened to the forum. This forum has a vocal minority of grinders, farmers, addicts and exploiters who do not understand the concept of playing a game in order to have fun, and who need something to give them their grindy fix. ArenaNet should have ignored them and listened to their real playerbase, but the fact they were (and are) very vocal together with the typical loss of players seen a few weeks after a new MMO has been released made ArenaNet panic.

So, my suggestion to you is: keep posting in this forum how much against this kind of thing you are. I was hoping ArenaNet would understand how obnoxious the most vocal part of the forum community is and don’t listen to most people here, but it appears they are willing to listen to the vocal minority to the detriment of the game – which, to be honest, they also did in GW1.

Because you HAVE to have an ascended necklace right? Exotic just doesn’t cut it.

We all know those extra 6 stat points are totally game breaking.

Randulf, actually i said that GW 2 alienated most of the GW 1 playerbase is based off my knowledge, my friends, and the players i talked with. The overwhelming majority disliked the path GW 2 is going down.

And yes, you do good dmg, but someone with the ascended gear will outdamage a equally skilled player. Im a min maxer, i look at the numbers, and the numbers tell me that ascended gear will make me stronger and thats pretty much a fact. So tell me why shouldnt i rather pick someone with ascended gear over someone without? In GW 1 if someone had to switch roles and was playing GW for longer than a couple of months, he could do so in a matter of minutes. In GW 2 its a matter of months now.

Lets say i just geared my warrior with full prec pow crit% gear. And now someone wants me to play a condition dmg tanky build. Well i have to do dailies for 20 days and 1 monthly and 20 lvl 10 fractal runs just so i can swap the gear.

And no, im not satisfied with , its just a minor boost. Its flat out better gear.

Wasabi kitty yes, i need those extra stats. As in berserk gear the step from 2 exotic rings and exotic amulet to all ascended would mean 33 power 24 precision and 5% crit damage.

And i havent even considered the infusions into this.

PiSquare.2904:

And yes, you do good dmg, but someone with the ascended gear will outdamage a eqLets say i just geared my warrior with full prec pow crit% gear. And now someone wants me to play a condition dmg tanky build. Well i have to do dailies for 20 days and 1 monthly and 20 lvl 10 fractal runs just so i can swap the gear.

You will be outdamaged by what ? A tenth of a percent ? A whole percent ? Will it makes someone complete dungeons notably faster or more easily ? Not convinced, here…
I even run in Orr armorless, sometimes, for kitten and jiggles. I can’t see a mere +6 stats doing anything worthy of farming for.

I was told that during development there was a commercial decision made as a result of a buyout of Anet, its parent company, or something; I cant quite recall. Anyway the new influence demanded the game take a more transactional approach ie money making and turned away from alot of the great concepts we were told about by the developers. This is pretty consistent with what has happened – Anet have gone back on a number of things, not implemented other things and the game strongly encourages you to buy gems for items or conversion to gold. This has been quite successful as most of the people I know who have legendaries have bought part or all of them. GW2 is going to be a very non-friendly game for newcomers as time goes by and while the hardcore gamers will pay, its going to demotivate alot of people. GW2 has already peaked and will come crashing down to earth next major MMO release.

PiSquare.2904:

Wasabi kitty yes, i need those extra stats. As in berserk gear the step from 2 exotic rings and exotic amulet to all ascended would mean 33 power 24 precision and 5% crit damage.

And i havent even considered the infusions into this.

who care’s me and my guild still Crush content in this game without ascended and i still kill planty of people in WvW.

as for Spvp gears not a thing.

Sablin.8071:

I was told that during development there was a commercial decision made as a result of a buyout of Anet, its parent company, or something; I cant quite recall. Anyway the new influence demanded the game take a more transactional approach ie money making and turned away from alot of the great concepts we were told about by the developers. This is pretty consistent with what has happened – Anet have gone back on a number of things, not implemented other things and the game strongly encourages you to buy gems for items or conversion to gold. This has been quite successful as most of the people I know who have legendaries have bought part or all of them. GW2 is going to be a very non-friendly game for newcomers as time goes by and while the hardcore gamers will pay, its going to demotivate alot of people. GW2 has already peaked and will come crashing down to earth next major MMO release.

how so? max gear for content is easy cheep and fast. and by playing the game you get all the gold you need to keep going. could you pay to look better faster yeah but its cosmetic EXACTLY what we were told it was going to be. legendary = cosmetic.

and you cant buy ascended.

ZOMG i cant get in game rich to grow my E-junk what ever will i do………..

The funniest thing about this thread is that people are complaining about grind and cursing the ‘forum minority of grinders’ without realising that they’re the ones needlessly grinding content and going into the game with the grind mindset.

Currently I’m exploring areas with my Alt and naturally completing dailies, I have limited time in-game with my job and other responsibilities so for me the game has been improved and the grind which was killing my enjoyment drastically reduced, you guys are the problem here, not Arenanet.

Erasculio.2914:

They listened to the forum. This forum has a vocal minority of grinders, farmers, addicts and exploiters who do not understand the concept of playing a game in order to have fun, and who need something to give them their grindy fix. ArenaNet should have ignored them and listened to their real playerbase, but the fact they were (and are) very vocal together with the typical loss of players seen a few weeks after a new MMO has been released made ArenaNet panic.

So, my suggestion to you is: keep posting in this forum how much against this kind of thing you are. I was hoping ArenaNet would understand how obnoxious the most vocal part of the forum community is and don’t listen to most people here, but it appears they are willing to listen to the vocal minority to the detriment of the game – which, to be honest, they also did in GW1.

Translation: Anet should listen to me and me alone! I alone am a real fan and play the game as it was intended. All the other players that don’t conform to my views are doing it wrong. I will continue to kitten about it and make posts until Anet does what I want.

This game is no longer fun, its just frustration and hassle every time i login to find more friends left, maybe i should follow them, i really have no idea why i stay in this bad game..

In answer to OP’s question, it went out the window with loot.

In all seriousness though, I am going to reply the same way many others have with similar questions. You do not “have to” grind in GW2, it is an option you choose to do. For instance, you don’t need dungeon gear or legendary to play end game. The only place where grinding is mandatory is fractals, and that is only if you want to do high level fractals where you need to grind to get ascended gear, which is not needed for any other part of the game. But again the fractals option is a choice, you don’t need to do it.

Lukhas.1962:

Strange. In GW1 people spent hours and hours in FOWSC and UWSC to get ectoplasm and obsidian. But nobody said that GW1 was pure grinding….

True. But it was for vanity purposes only. Elite armor was just a skin. Now we have to spend hours and hours in Fractals, and now do dailies for weeks on end, to get better gear.

Grinding for skins = optional for those who like to do that kind of thing.
Grinding for gear = gear treadmill, Pavlov, and all that. No fun.

PiSquare.2904:

Randulf, actually i said that GW 2 alienated most of the GW 1 playerbase is based off my knowledge, my friends, and the players i talked with. The overwhelming majority disliked the path GW 2 is going down.

And yes, you do good dmg, but someone with the ascended gear will outdamage a equally skilled player. Im a min maxer, i look at the numbers, and the numbers tell me that ascended gear will make me stronger and thats pretty much a fact. So tell me why shouldnt i rather pick someone with ascended gear over someone without? In GW 1 if someone had to switch roles and was playing GW for longer than a couple of months, he could do so in a matter of minutes. In GW 2 its a matter of months now.

Lets say i just geared my warrior with full prec pow crit% gear. And now someone wants me to play a condition dmg tanky build. Well i have to do dailies for 20 days and 1 monthly and 20 lvl 10 fractal runs just so i can swap the gear.

And no, im not satisfied with , its just a minor boost. Its flat out better gear.

This +1.

I can honestly say that I’m extremely dissapointed in the direction that Anet took the Guild Wars Franchise. I was the biggest fan boy of the worst sort and now I’m extremely frustrated. Every person I started playing with from multiple guilds has quit this game and most likely will never return. We were promised one thing then delivered another. Most of the support in the podcast community has quit as well. There’s one great video podcast that still airs weekly but the remaining audio podcasts are WoW kids who are into Progression and are calling for more of it.

Here are some of the most stupid comments I’ve read: “No one is forcing you to do it!”, “You don’t HAVE to do anything you don’t want to do”, “You can get everything you want and need just by playing the game”. Clearly the individuals who spout such non-sense just don’t get it. These types of players don’t understand the original Guild Wars philosophy. Being able to change your build was a part of the game. It was a core design and the same thing was promised to us in Guild Wars 2. Getting the max stat level gear is something that should take under an hour for max level character. And I mean for every single max level item in the game. The only thing that should take time to acquire are the unique skins that you desire. But the skins should offer no statistical advantage over the easy to obtain ugly max level gear.

In Guild Wars 2 acquiring the max level gear for your build is a major time and money sink. Now imagine you’ve finally got everything you want for one specific build and then decide you want to change it up and switch from a Power and Condition Spec to a Power Precision Crit Damage Spec or a Tougness Vitality Healing Power Spec. Whether you care to admit it or not you are 100% committed to a specific set of stats and switching it up isn’t going to be easy. If you honestly think that you can compete in Greens and Yellows over Orange and Purples you really don’t understand the difference that it makes. I’d love to see a group in all Greens and Yellows in WvWvW go up against the same size build/group that’s decked out in all Purples and Oranges. Or a Yellow and Green geared group attempt to complete Arah Path 4. It’d be a joke. If you still don’t think it makes a difference I’m willing to meet up in EB for a 1v1 with the only difference being our gear and I’ll show you first hand just how big a difference it makes.

At this point in the game I am 100% commited to a certain stat base of: Weapons, Armor, Earrings, Amulet, Rings, Backpiece, Runes, and Sigils. I cannot switch these out with other max level stat items without grinding. Regardless of how you feel about progression beating your opponent or winning a boss fight should never ever under no circumstances come down to player gear. It should always be about player skill and or team coordination. If you don’t understand this you are part of the MMO Grind Mentality problem and should go back to WoW or LoTRo or Eve or EQ or wherever it is you came from. And while you were off “progressing” your toons in those other games many of us were giving our money, time, and support to ANet and Guild Wars and having a blast doing so only to have them sell out and turn on us for quick buck. Without us there never would have been a Guild Wars 2.

Yeah, we got a weeks long grind for the best gear now. No way to cover it, and I don’t think anyone working at ANet cares anymore about their manifesto.
It is a dead horse by now, and you should stop beating it.

That said, I don’t care too much myself anymore too, just play for the bit of fun I can get out of it. I got so many other things to do, that I am sort of happy that this game is no longer too addicting… ^^

Theplayboy.6417:

Or a Yellow and Green geared group attempt to complete Arah Path 4. It’d be a joke.

My guild has plenty of groups in Yellow/green gear that complete Arah Path 4 with out it being a “joke”.

Also the chances of there being an all green/yellow group vs an all Purple/orange group in WvWvW is very very small, let alone it being all real 80s vs all real 80s, it is not even worth mentioning it because it is such a small chance.

New Achivs and Laurels come with grind. If we want that Gear we are forced to do that, for example must do 5 dungeons this month for the laurels, thing I hate but I must.

Grind is that, and it’s here. They don’t give us much alternatives to get the things we want, then we must grind doing things we don’t like sometimes for get them.

Oh well, maybe there is a market for “Guild Wars Reloaded”.
It’s not like ANet has a patent on grindless mmo, do they?

Most of the players in my guild are from Guild Wars 1. Most love Guild Wars 2. There is a vocal minority that quit. There are people who really believe that these few stat points make a difference. They apparently don’t know what gear grind is. Let me explain it to you.

What makes gear grind in most MMOs is that you NEED (as in are required to have) specific stats to do specific content. You can’t even queue for a dungeon in Rift if you don’t check the right stat boxes. That’s it. You can’t even queue.

I can run every single dungeon in this game in greens if I please, and in rares, well, you could do pretty much anything. The content here isn’t gated by stats. People’s minds are gated by stats.

There’s a difference between wanting ascended gear and needing it to play. Well, I don’t have a single piece of ascended gear…not one. And you know, I still got all my kills in WvW last month, pretty much as fast as I got them before ascended gear was introduced. I still play the same dungeons I used to play and get through them pretty kitten fast.

I’m relatively sure that the half a minute in a dungeon the ascended gear might save me won’t affect my enjoyment of this game.

Gear grind has an actual definition. This ain’t it.

helladoom.4317:

Oh well, maybe there is a market for “Guild Wars Reloaded”.
It’s not like ANet has a patent on grindless mmo, do they?

If you consider GW2 a grinding game, then Anet has in fact never made a grindless MMO since GW2 is in fact their very first MMO they have made.

So no, Anet doesn’t have a patent on a grindless MMO. The grind in this game is completely optional and is not needed to complete or even compete in anything.

OP, it’s a question I’ve asked myself many times after 11/15 and especially before the AMA when we didn’t really know what ascended gear meant. I don’t know what they were thinking and that aspect is still a mystery. My guess is that got spooked by all the no endgame threads and thought they better give them something to do. But, it really is a mystery. Adding a gear grind to GW is one of the larger non sequiturs in my gaming experience. And, even after they saw the negative impact on the game, they seem committed to continuing down the path.

So, there’s the fact that the grinding culture is here, which is sad, and there is also the issue of the nature of the grind. I don’t think Anet is very good at making a grindy game. In WoW the grind is relatively fast. When you are grinding out your PvP and PvE sets it’s basically what you focus on. Once you have the level of gear you want you can relax and most of the expansion is relaxed. Here it seems there will always be a sword over your head and a need to grind. Not a very good way of designing a grindy game if you ask me. (I cut them some slack here as they are new to grindy games.)

Theplayboy.6417:

I can honestly say that I’m extremely dissapointed in the direction that Anet took the Guild Wars Franchise… And while you were off “progressing” your toons in those other games many of us were giving our money, time, and support to ANet and Guild Wars and having a blast doing so only to have them sell out and turn on us for quick buck. Without us there never would have been a Guild Wars 2.

I couldn’t agree more. I think many, many Guild Wars fans feel this way. I don’t think we’re ArenaNet’s target audience any more , though. I get the feeling that they’re just trying to find ways to make a buck, and don’t really care about quality, devotion, philosophy, and attention to detail any more.

Yeah, we got a weeks long grind for the best gear now. No way to cover it, and I don’t think anyone working at ANet cares anymore about their manifesto.
It is a dead horse by now, and you should stop beating it.
That said, I don’t care too much myself anymore too, just play for the bit of fun I can get out of it. I got so many other things to do, that I am sort of happy that this game is no longer too addicting… ^^

To be honest, you are right. I don’t know why I’m beating this dead horse any more. I’m certainly not going to play Guild Wars 2 for years, like I did with Guild Wars. I doubt I’ll make it past the release of the next MMO (you know the one I mean – not allowed to mention names in these forums because they appear to be afraid to actually compare Guild Wars 2 with other games).

Vayne.8563:

Most of the players in my guild are from Guild Wars 1. Most love Guild Wars 2. There is a vocal minority that quit. There are people who really believe that these few stat points make a difference.

I see your point, and would like to agree with it, but I have some reservations: How do you know those few extra points aren’t the difference between skill and just numbers? What happens when you get enough extra points, after a few of these gear tiers are implemented, and running around in the open world becomes a faceroll because it’s now imbalanced? Sure, maybe a few extra points are essentially meaningless – but that begs the question: if they are mostly meaningless, why bother putting them in? I think it’s a cheap, easy copout. It’s so much easier to just add some gear with more points than it is to add really good, fun content.
So to me, this indicates that ArenaNet aren’t all that interested in making a really really good game. They’re trying to make a buck (which I completely understand), but it seems like that’s the only thing they’re trying to do.
Fair enough, but while you may make some money doing that, you’re not going to win very many hearts and souls like you did with Guild Wars.

Chuo.4238:

Lukhas.1962:

Strange. In GW1 people spent hours and hours in FOWSC and UWSC to get ectoplasm and obsidian. But nobody said that GW1 was pure grinding….

True. But it was for vanity purposes only. Elite armor was just a skin. Now we have to spend hours and hours in Fractals, and now do dailies for weeks on end, to get better gear.

Grinding for skins = optional for those who like to do that kind of thing.
Grinding for gear = gear treadmill, Pavlov, and all that. No fun.

You need ascended items only to make fractals from level 10. And wvwvw is zerg vs zerg. So, you’re not forced to grind fractal/dailies constantly to get ascended items.

Unless you want to reach level 100 in fractals …

The Manifesto was a means to pre-sale the game, once they had our money all that went out the window. Anyone that tells you the Manifesto is still being followed is a fanboy.

Lukhas.1962:

Chuo.4238:

Lukhas.1962:

Strange. In GW1 people spent hours and hours in FOWSC and UWSC to get ectoplasm and obsidian. But nobody said that GW1 was pure grinding….

True. But it was for vanity purposes only. Elite armor was just a skin. Now we have to spend hours and hours in Fractals, and now do dailies for weeks on end, to get better gear.

Grinding for skins = optional for those who like to do that kind of thing.
Grinding for gear = gear treadmill, Pavlov, and all that. No fun.

You need ascended items only to make fractals from level 10. And wvwvw is zerg vs zerg. So, you’re not forced to make fractal constantly to get ascended items.

Anet confirmed in the AMA that the stats introduced in FotM will be required in other parts of the game over time. They are just moving the grind out of one dungeon and into other parts of the game.

I think people get confused because the don’t understand vertical progression. It’s the element of game design that defines or creates a gear grind. Anet confirmed in the AMA that vertical progression would be in the game going forward. Consider the words that make up the well understood gaming concept. Vertical: the power level increases. Progression: it periodically and continually increases. By definition it’s a non-optional grind. Because we are talking about the power level of the game there will be a point at which you must grind to continue to play the game.

I think it would make forum life a little easier if more people understood the concept of horizontal vs vertical progression. It’s fine to like or dislike vertical progression and a gear grind treadmill. It is, however, not optional to say that GW2 has an optional grind. Once they added vertical progression, they not only introduced a gear grind; they made it non-optional.

I see your point, and would like to agree with it, but I have some reservations: How do you know those few extra points aren’t the difference between skill and just numbers? What happens when you get enough extra points, after a few of these gear tiers are implemented, and running around in the open world becomes a faceroll because it’s now imbalanced? Sure, maybe a few extra points are essentially meaningless – but that begs the question: if they are mostly meaningless, why bother putting them in? I think it’s a cheap, easy copout. It’s so much easier to just add some gear with more points than it is to add really good, fun content.
So to me, this indicates that ArenaNet aren’t all that interested in making a really really good game. They’re trying to make a buck (which I completely understand), but it seems like that’s the only thing they’re trying to do.
Fair enough, but while you may make some money doing that, you’re not going to win very many hearts and souls like you did with Guild Wars.

I think you miss the point. Anet was placed in a position I don’t particularly envy. They have a bunch of players like me, who are happy to play for just cosmetic differences. Then they have a million or so players who play other MMOs who aren’t. So what should they do? After investing five years and however much money, there are two schools, incompatible and neither of them alone is big enough to support your vision of the game. You do what Anet did…you compromise.

You don’t introduce gear grind. You introduce a meaningless upgrade that has some numbers that don’t affect too much. Then the grinders will stay locked away in the fractals (and still maybe spend some money in the cash shop, and do some open world stuff or WvW) and the explorers can ignore it if they don’t want to grind. I truly believe this was done as a compromise.

You can’t please everyone. But you can create an illusion that will please most people, or at least let them keep playing. The fractals, screwed up as the introduction was, kept lots of people playing who normally would have left. I don’t see this as a bad thing.

I’m not convinced Anet wanted to introduce that stuff. Anet’s not a person. It’s a company with you know, 250 plus employees, many of them devs. You don’t think they discussed and argued about this, and some guys lost and some guys won? Cause I do.

In the end, they didn’t betray anyone. They made a necessary compromise. And as more content comes out and the games grow, you’ll see that that’s all it was.

Randulf.7614:

To say that “we know” GW2 alienated most of the GW1 playerbase is based on speculation. I played GW1 for years and am very happy with GW2

To be fair, you’re only getting half the story. The players who did not like GW2 obviously won’t be posting on the forums anymore. They’re gone. The only people left are people who either love the game or still tolerate it. And people like me that haven’t played since November and come back ever so often out of morbid curiosity.

There’s no content outside of fractals that requires ascended, and you get ascended in fractals.

I don’t see what the problem is. If you want to try a new build, try it with exotics, if it works you’ll be able to upgrade your exotics and make your build a couple percent better.

If some item give 1% more stats you need it in WvW.

Wasabi Kitty.8247:

Because you HAVE to have an ascended necklace right? Exotic just doesn’t cut it.

We all know those extra 6 stat points are totally game breaking.

Yes, because people LOVE to have a subpar character.

Ascended gear. that’s what happened.

Bruxae.4526:

If you are grinding you are doing it wrong.

Not when it comes to the dailies :P And ascended gear is the problem. If it only had exotic level stats and the agony resistance it would not be a problem.

Junkpile.7439:

If some item give 1% more stats you need it in WvW.

No you don’t. WvW is not about skill or the gear, it literally is about the number of people. The chances of having a group full of max stat gear going against another group full of Exotic gear is extremely small, so small it is not even worth mentioning as a possibility. You have a better chance of having real level 80s vs real level 80s, but not by much considering that everyone can start heading to WvWvW at level 1 and literally stay there to level up

emikochan.8504:

There’s no content outside of fractals that requires ascended

Yet. they already said they’ll update world content for ascended eq. And once the level cap raise gets here, every area in the game will be recalculated for people in lev 90 ascended eq.

Lukhas.1962:

Strange. In GW1 people spent hours and hours in FOWSC and UWSC to get ectoplasm and obsidian. But nobody said that GW1 was pure grinding….

FoW and UW farming did not improve your stats — though it could improve your bank balance. Once you throw better stats in, people want them. Oh, and need has little to nothing to do with that want. The only reason I threw in the word little is because some people perceive that they “need” the better stats, though strictly speaking they are wrong.

People keep saying that they don’t think many people left the game.

Well, to add to the growing mound of anecdotes and hypothetical setups here, out of my guild of ten friends (including me), most of whom have been following this game as closely as me since it was announced years ago….only me and one other friend still play the game on a regular basis. The others went back to other MMOs, or only log in once in a while out of curiosity to see if the game’s gotten its act together. The other much larger guild I’m part of? Just kicked another twenty people from its roster of nearly 500 because they hadn’t been playing for a long time, and they’ve had to do this regularly because of how many people keep leaving.

So I’d hope that people aren’t seriously gonna try and tell me that the game hasn’t lost any players. There’s no way you can argue that case, since the only data that exists about player count is these hypothetical scenarios, and nearly all of them suggest that we’ve lost a significant number of players.

Elidath.5679:

You will be outdamaged by what ? A tenth of a percent ? A whole percent ?

By about 23% actually. That’s the statistical difference between a full set of Berserker Ascended gear (trinkets + armor + weapon) and a full set of Berserker Exotic gear, assuming that the Ascended gear is roughly 10% more powerful than the Exotic gear. Which is a fair assumption since the devs themselves said they were aiming for between 5-10% more power on this new tier.

I do like how there’s still people out there who pretend that the difference is going to be small, though. That’s precisely why the devs’ deception here works: because they release the gear slowly over the course of months, and claim that it’s “only 5-10%”, so people naturally take them at face value and don’t want to engage their mathematical skills in verifying those claims. I did, and I found that the power jump is actually rather significant.

And just wait until they raise the level cap. It’ll start all over again. But I’m sure by then, we’ll be hearing a new excuse about how it’s really not that bad, since you had so long to get to Lvl 80 that you have no right to whine about the game’s cap going up.

no way! do not like I do, stop grind!

buy gems, sell them to get money, get your legendary to show-off, play 3-4 hours per day at weekend, be happy!

sorry to be sarcastic, wanted GW too much, got (see above).

I never claimed people didn’t leave the game. A percentage of people leave games all the time. Every game. WoW probably lost more people in the past two years than all the people playing Guild Wars 2 now. Shrugs.

But there are also players coming in. A big influx of them since Christmas. My server is busier. I see more people around. I have new people in my guild (not from other guilds but people who just started playing).

People come and go from games all the time. That doesn’t mean the game isn’t building an audience.

Sorry, but I have a really hard time accepting that the amulets are a ‘grind’. You get laurels simply by playing the game. The daily doesn’t even require anything special outside of just doing what you’d do every day(outside of maybe daily crafter. But it’s pretty kitten easy to go craft 10 of the lowest refinements).

Grinding isn’t about how many days it takes you to get it. If that was the case, using a transmute on WoW was a grind because it had a multi-day cooldown! -gasp-

Logging in for 20 minutes a day to do your daily so you can have a pretty amulet is /not/ a grind.

They seem to be sticking to it OP. Haven’t had to grind at all and I’ve been playing for months. As a former GW1 player I gotta give props to anet for learning from there mistakes and making a game 100x better than the original!

Nov 17 update, that what happened to the no grind philosophy. Anet tried to make a horizontal progression game, they didn’t make good gem sells from it, they changed it to a wow clone.

Rhysati.4932:

Sorry, but I have a really hard time accepting that the amulets are a ‘grind’. You get laurels simply by playing the game. The daily doesn’t even require anything special outside of just doing what you’d do every day(outside of maybe daily crafter. But it’s pretty kitten easy to go craft 10 of the lowest refinements).

Grinding isn’t about how many days it takes you to get it.

You’re right, grinding is not defined as “how many days” it takes to obtain.

Grinding is defined as repetition of a task for the sake of loot (rather than the often-used-but-completely-subjective definition of “how you feel as you repeat tasks”). Oh hey, look….that still fits the description of laurels.

Yes, I know what defense you’re going to use here, it’s the same one everyone else uses. Please don’t bother. The question is never about “does a game have grinding?”, it’s about “how much grinding can I take before I get tired of it?”. And that’s entirely subjective. Personally I find that laurels aren’t as bad of a grind as other aspects of the game, myself, but I’m not thrilled that it costs a month’s worth of laurels for one amulet either.

Shadowmoon.7986:

Nov 17 update, that what happened to the no grind philosophy. Anet tried to make a horizontal progression game, they didn’t make good gem sells from it, they changed it to a wow clone.

I highly doubt that is what happened, just wasn’t enough time to create Lost Shores stuff based on “gem sales” Highly likely that Lost Shores stuff was being worked on even before the game released.

Kinda funny how these threads go especially with the uninformed or preconditioned people pointing out that there was grind in GW1 (forgetting the only for cosmetics part) and that GW1 was not an MMO because MMOs must have a gear treadmill/grind forgetting what MMO and RPG really stand for. Here s a hint: its not gear and stats but numbers of players and roleplay.

No wonder this game went sour if ANET is listening to people like that. Must really every single MMO be turned into a WoW (EQ) clone nowadays so the locusts can have their fun, get bored and then leave? Apparently yes.