Guild Wars 2

“We don’t make grindy games” – said someone. What we see in reality ? The entire game, in fact, is a solid wall of grind . The local grind has 3 directions .
1) – standard grind, in order to accumulate something. Suppose you want to make a legendary weapon . You’ll need a few weeks to grind resources , then money , then karma, and so on. No options.
2) – grind of gold. Suppose you want to buy a suit or pets in the store. For that you need phenomenal amount of money. You go for weeks to grind resources, dungeon champions. Inhuman (and growing) prices for gems stimulates you to spend real money (which is allready easier to make in reality than in game =P (do you think this is normal?)).
3) – grind of achievements. Everything is clear and nothing to tell about it. Comes another patch. Comes another pack of achievements.

All in-game grind united by one fact – its uselessness. The basic idea is very clear – do grind not necessary, then the players who aspiring for nothing special will not feel offended. And wrong aboit it is –
deprived were those who exactly apsiring. People who are eager to spend more time in the game and collect gaming features, get as reward complete nonsense, which seems useless even to fans of such kind of game features.

Achievement points not impressive for anyon (as they all earned by simple accumulation of something but not by achieving the goals (stupid “get-x9999999-like” grind) and become completely useless after ~11k. So much of decorative skins that there is simply not enough characters and set tipes to apply it (take my word, I dressed 18 characters =P). About miniatures I’ll better keep quiet. More useless and unnecessary pets I have not seen anywhere at all.

Grind should(!) be well motivated. It is a quality grind keeps players in MMO. In fact mmo is a week of story, month of fun and year of grind. In GW motivation is virtually nonexistent. Here developers extremely mistaken. You can not pull out the game on one only innovative combat system. It become commonplace in a couple of months. Most promised things that dev-s advertised somehow neglected in the shadow. Like hears and explorations system instead quests, personal story (that rly made ??a noise) not developing at all. And so on. Now not about it.

I think it’s time for dev-s to think about the global system of unlocks. Something like the truth we see now in the rewards for achievements. I think all game skins and decorative thingss should work on this system. When you do not get a one single reward on whole account but unlock it for all your characters, so use at any time. Just so for minis. Need a special tab in the character panel(!) and not in the bank, which would be shared to all. The same theme with gathering tools too, etc. It’s creates a sense that you are improving your account. Otherwise, progress stops as soon as you collect all that you are comfortable in appearance and finish exploration achiev. Together with a sense of progress leaves interest to the game.

And, it’s time to think about PvE characters improving the system too, like the WvW ranks. Where skill points will involved. Level of fractals, which gives you access to exactly the same fractals but more difficult – it is not enough.

Also, I fervently believe that in the game should not be a temporary rewards. Everything should be available at all times. For example, instead of removing decorative gathering tools and minis from the game, just to sell them more much expensive after the completion of sales.

So.. fun is fun, but need to think about motivation, anyway.

While I get the point that most b-e-a-utiful things are hard to get….

…I personally don’t see the “need” for grind. People grind for what they “want”, not what they “need”.
People can be competitive without spending too much time farming. Your toon will be ugly as hell (which is still subjective), sure, but you’re competitive – your stat isn’t as far as the one on ascended.

So unless there is a required fashion show in-game, I believe nothing is “requiring” us to grind.

knives.6345:

So unless there is a required fashion show in-game, I believe nothing is “requiring” us to grind.

Except, you know, ascended gear.

knives.6345:

While I get the point that most b-e-a-utiful things are hard to get….

For example? 90% of the beautiful things you just need to buy in game store. Things from the dungeons just require yout to pass this dungeon ~25 times (“you do not have to grind the same dungeon over and over again to get something from there” © 3). Legendary weapon? Simple requires a huge infusion of money and time. I crafted and sold 17 legendarys at the time). I do not see any particular difficulty. Just… grind.

knives.6345:

…I personally don’t see the “need” for grind. People grind for what they “want”, not what they “need”.
People can be competitive without spending too much time farming. Your toon will be ugly as hell (which is still subjective), sure, but you’re competitive – your stat isn’t as far as the one on ascended.

Part of the truth, but the whole thought of my post just about it. Just a change of priorities. Instead grind something that improves your character, you just grind cosmetics. The bottom line is that this is not enough. Everything should be “decorated” differently. Give players the feeling that they grind for improve of account and not the skins that they do not need.

knives.6345:

So unless there is a required fashion show in-game, I believe nothing is “requiring” us to grind.

The point is this. However, it does not work. Most mmo players tend to get everything possible in game. So they feel the game progress. The argument “it’s just a decoration, you do not need it in fact” does not work here. Permanent wild gem price increase proves it. Players do not like it when they haven’t got something that other player have. They kept the whole economy of the game. They must be considered. People who really believe in the uselessness of grind in this game – just tens of the thousands.

^ For you, maybe. I feel no ‘need’ to acquire Ascended Gear. I have a plethora of laurels, but few pink items. I don’t find a real ‘need’ to upgrade my gear. I am happy, and viable, as is. This is not to say I won’t accept an Ascended drop, should one come my way, or should, some time in the future, have gathered enough materials to craft one…..but, it’s not something I am concerned about.

Ascended gear was the worst addition to the game(rivaled only by living story). It has caused the most controversery and has made many players question their faith in arenanet and their trust.

And yes, if you are going after ascended gear, it is a bit of a grind. A slow, slow grind, but a grind none the less like anything else.

MeGaZlo.9516:

knives.6345:

While I get the point that most b-e-a-utiful things are hard to get….

For example? 90% of the beautiful things you just need to buy in game store. Things from the dungeons just require yout to pass this dungeon ~25 times (“you do not have to grind the same dungeon over and over again to get something from there” © 3). Legendary weapon? Simple requires a huge infusion of money and time. I crafted and sold 17 legendarys at the time). I do not see any particular difficulty. Just… grind.

knives.6345:

…I personally don’t see the “need” for grind. People grind for what they “want”, not what they “need”.
People can be competitive without spending too much time farming. Your toon will be ugly as hell (which is still subjective), sure, but you’re competitive – your stat isn’t as far as the one on ascended.

Part of the truth, but the whole thought of my post just about it. Just a change of priorities. Instead grind something that improves your character, you just grind cosmetics. The bottom line is that this is not enough. Everything should be “decorated” differently. Give players the feeling that they grind for improve of account and not the skins that they do not need.

knives.6345:

So unless there is a required fashion show in-game, I believe nothing is “requiring” us to grind.

The point is this. However, it does not work. Most mmo players tend to get everything possible in game. So they feel the game progress. The argument “it’s just a decoration, you do not need it in fact” does not work here. Permanent wild gem price increase proves it. Players do not like it when they haven’t got something that other player have. They kept the whole economy of the game. They must be considered. People who really believe in the uselessness of grind in this game – just tens of the thousands.

Hence, I said “wants” not “needs”.

Technically, you do not need those shiny, flashy gears. You can live with the basic exotic. Heck, you can do almost all content using rares.

But people “want” those – whatever their reasons are. I believe ANet said grinding is not required because we will have equal power base(or close to, incase of Ascended, yeah, ANet messed with these). They did not mention anything about skins (Please, correct me if I’m wrong and put a reliable link which says so otherwise).

To sum it up, point is, those grindy things are “wants” not “needs”. We (yes, including me) are the ones creating our own dilemma.

PS:

I am against ascended because it’s a form of vertical progression, but it’s there, so I’ll just deal with it. Stat-wise, it’s not that huge increase for me.

Buttercup.5871:

knives.6345:

So unless there is a required fashion show in-game, I believe nothing is “requiring” us to grind.

Except, you know, ascended gear.

It can be a grind, that’s true, but the longest portion is the time-gated stuff which you can’t call a grind. Using myself as an example, I never grinded for an ascended weapon. I just played the game normally, did WvW, dungeons, temples, bosses etc. that I normally did before Ascended stuff. At this point, without grinding one second, I have enough mats to start and finish the Ascended weapon time-gated components.

That’s the hardest part really. Once I get my Ascended weapon (which will have been months later I realize) I will have gotten it literally without grinding.

So, no, Ascended gear is not a grind. It’s only a grind if OMG I WANT TO HAVE IT NOW CAUSE ITS MY MONEY AND I NEED IT NOW!

Everything is a grind if you want to accelerate the process.

If you don’t mind dragging it out over a long period, then it won’t be a grind.

The only problem with this thread is that no one knows what they’re talking about. It’s perfectly clear from Day 1 they were talking about games with the endless grind gear treadmill. You remember that, don’t you? Spend months grinding the same old raid over and over to max out your gear only for a new raid to come along and make you start all over again? Basically you were forced to endlessly grind to stay caught up with everyone else.

Newsflash: That doesn’t exist in GW2. The mandatory grind is not here! Yes, there are things that take a lot of voluntary grinding and time investment, but there’s pretty much nothing that will keep you from being able to progress in the game if you choose not to do it.

People are using the wrong definition of grind. You’re using the definition “anything that takes a long time”, and using it incorrectly. The proper definition, the one that has been eliminated, is as mentioned above, the endless treadmill of grind that continually wipes out your progression as higher tiers of items are introduced in the game forcing you to effectively start the grind cycle all over again.

(Disclaimer: That’s a very general “noone” and not meant in a personal sense to anyone in particular, except for those that it does apply to.)

The biggest problem with that quote is that it’s usually repeated out of context. Here’s the full sentence:
“Here’s what we believe: If someone wants to play for a thousand hours to get an item that is so rare that other players can’t realistically acquire it, that rare item should be differentiated by its visual appearance and rarity alone, not by being more powerful than everything else in the game. Otherwise, your MMO becomes all about grinding to get the best gear. We don’t make grindy games — we leave the grind to other MMOs.”

Anet never said there would be no grind in the game. They said grind would only be for cosmetic items. Legendaries, gem store skins, and dungeon armor all come under that category.

Yes legendaries and dungeon gear do have stats as well, but in both cases there are quicker and easier ways to obtain the same stats, so the grind is only for the skin.

Compare this to many other MMOs and RPGs where you will need to spend hundreds of hours just to level up, and your only option for getting the best gear is to run a specific dungeon over and over again hoping for it to drop (and then fight your friends for the “right” to keep it).

Obviously ascended gear is an exception to this, but it was added in response to 2 months of people who rushed through levelling and got their exotics as soon as they hit 80 complaining that they needed something else to work towards and Anet must add a gear treadmill for the game to survive. (Seriously, go and read topics in this forum from October 2012, there were a lot saying exactly that.)

Personally I think they’ve done a very good job of compromising by giving the content leeches something to work towards that doesn’t affect the rest of us. You don’t need ascended gear, even with a full set the difference in stats isn’t enough to make an impact, especially since the entire game was balanced around exotics being the top tier.

It’s only a grind if you don’t enjoy doing it.
If you don’t enjoy doing it than you shouldn’t be doing it.
No one should be grinding.

Also like someone else said getting ascended gear is only a grind if you want to do it ASAP.

I could have a full set of ascended accessories by now, if I hadn’t been spending my laurels on other things, and I don’t even do the daily every day. I think I’ve done the monthly 3 times.

Just by playing normally a couple of hours a day I got 500 bloodstone dust and emperyal fragments a few weeks after they came out and 500 dragonite ore not long after I started doing WvW. I could probably have over 1000 of each if I hadn’t started deleting the extras because I’m not going to bother making ascended weapons for a while yet and didn’t want them taking up space.

knives.6345:

While I get the point that most b-e-a-utiful things are hard to get….

…I personally don’t see the “need” for grind. People grind for what they “want”, not what they “need”.

Which is the whole game. We don’t “need” to play it after all, only “want” it.

Danikat.8537:

The biggest problem with that quote is that it’s usually repeated out of context.

This.

When people hear “no grind” – they tend to ignore the rest, then QQ about it later. People tend to hear what they want to hear.

And yes, compared to other MMO, GW2 is easymode.

Astralporing.1957:

knives.6345:

While I get the point that most b-e-a-utiful things are hard to get….

…I personally don’t see the “need” for grind. People grind for what they “want”, not what they “need”.

Which is the whole game. We don’t “need” to play it after all, only “want” it.

I don’t think you understand the point. You’re comparing it on a different context.

I’m talking about the content of the game and you’re talking about what we do iRL.

knives.6345:

Astralporing.1957:

knives.6345:

While I get the point that most b-e-a-utiful things are hard to get….

…I personally don’t see the “need” for grind. People grind for what they “want”, not what they “need”.

Which is the whole game. We don’t “need” to play it after all, only “want” it.

I don’t think you understand the point. You’re comparing it on a different context.

I’m talking about the content of the game and you’re talking about what we do iRL.

No, it’s you that don’t understand that the “want, not need” argument is absurd. If you can argue, for example, that BiS gear is “not needed”, then you can make the same argument against everything else in this game. There are people that do dungeons naked after all, so it is possible! And you don’t even need to do any specific content in game (and by extension, you do not ned to play any content in this game ;P)

There’s nothing in this game we need to grind, because there’s nothing in this game that we need. Only things we want.
But for things we want, we need to grind.

Astralporing.1957:

knives.6345:

Astralporing.1957:

knives.6345:

While I get the point that most b-e-a-utiful things are hard to get….

…I personally don’t see the “need” for grind. People grind for what they “want”, not what they “need”.

Which is the whole game. We don’t “need” to play it after all, only “want” it.

I don’t think you understand the point. You’re comparing it on a different context.

I’m talking about the content of the game and you’re talking about what we do iRL.

No, it’s you that don’t understand that the “want, not need” argument is absurd. If you can argue, for example, that BiS gear is “not needed”, then you can make the same argument against everything else in this game. There are people that do dungeons naked after all, so it is possible!
There’s nothing in this game we need to grind, because there’s nothing in this game that we need. Only things we want.

O’rly?

Please show me how 90% players faceroll 90% of the content using whites/naked…
Doing content is one thing, facerolling content is another. Gears help in faceroll, ugly gears are enough provided they have good stats.

There are certainly things you “need”. Skins, on the other hand, you “want”.

PS:

For the BiS, I already stated my disapprovement on Ascended, also said that stat-wise, there’s not much advantage.

And I’m exaggerating when I say facerolling, but you get the point (I hope)

Buttercup.5871:

knives.6345:

So unless there is a required fashion show in-game, I believe nothing is “requiring” us to grind.

Except, you know, ascended gear.

I’ve ignored ascended gear because to me, it’s worthless. Ugly with only a realistically small stat gain for the effort.

Never had to grind, and I’ve played since BWE.

I do however have some ascended trinkets and such, but only because I’ve built laurels over time not really seeing anything else I’d want to use them on.

knives.6345:

Astralporing.1957:

knives.6345:

Astralporing.1957:

knives.6345:

While I get the point that most b-e-a-utiful things are hard to get….

…I personally don’t see the “need” for grind. People grind for what they “want”, not what they “need”.

Which is the whole game. We don’t “need” to play it after all, only “want” it.

I don’t think you understand the point. You’re comparing it on a different context.

I’m talking about the content of the game and you’re talking about what we do iRL.

No, it’s you that don’t understand that the “want, not need” argument is absurd. If you can argue, for example, that BiS gear is “not needed”, then you can make the same argument against everything else in this game. There are people that do dungeons naked after all, so it is possible!
There’s nothing in this game we need to grind, because there’s nothing in this game that we need. Only things we want.

O’rly?

Please show me how 90% players faceroll 90% of the content using whites/naked…
Doing content is one thing, facerolling content is another. Gears help in faceroll, ugly gears are enough provided they have good stats.

Most of people couldn’t faceroll anything harder even in full exotic gear, if you haven’t noticed, so that’s no argument at all. Better gear helps. For some people it helps more, for other it helps less, but you can’t argue neither that it doesn’t matter at all, nor that it is necessary. There’s no cutout rarity level that is “enough”, with everything more being a luxury you don’t need to grind for.

knives.6345:

And I’m exaggerating when I say facerolling, but you get the point (I hope)

No. What we feel we need and what we want is completely subjective. Arguments based on wants and feels always forget about it, or try to assert some subjective “norm” on everyone.

That strange sensation you get when you look at hamsters and give that knowing nod, that is what is wrong with too much grind.
Back to my wheel!

Ascended crafting is the most boring and grindiest thing to ever hit this game.

Friends, you have not grasped the essence. I scold local grind not for it’s necessity or counts. I’m not against grind itself. The contrary, I want gring to become more important and meaningful. If you do not need it – wonderfully. People who believe that they need faced with problem of irrelevance of what they grind. I suggest to turn decorative things into unlocks. Like what we have now with Zenith things. This will turn the disposable skins in the collection. Give the meaningfulness and usefulness to their grind.

Grind generally has a negative connotation, but I use it more broadly to simply mean actions performed in the pursuit of a goal. To me, grinding is not bad as long as I’m doing it to pursue my own goals.

And, that’s the distinction I make; grinds are either optional or non-optional. Optional grinds are good; non-optional grinds are bad. Vertical progression, by definition, defines a non-optional grind. It’s surprising that so many on the forums argue that it is optional in GW2. Let’s suppose I told you that I was going to, by fiat, add 10% of fat to your body each year. Any rational person would understand that if they want to remain fit they would have to hop on the treadmill. This is what VP is, a non-optional grind and therefore ‘bad’.

Raine.1394:

Grind generally has a negative connotation, but I use it more broadly to simply mean actions performed in the pursuit of a goal. To me, grinding is not bad as long as I’m doing it to pursue my own goals.

I think this is the other part of the problem with any discussion of grind – everyone has different definitions.

To me grinding means having to do the same things over and over again in order to achieve a goal. For example I’m currently playing through one of the Pokemon games and recently got to a new gym, so the next thing I need to do is fight the gym leader (if you’ve never played pokemon think of this as an end of level boss battle). But my pokemon are about 5 levels too low for the fight and the only way I can level them up is to walk around and around the same small patch of grass outside of town, fighting the same few pokemon over and over again and slowly building up XP until they level up. That is grind to me.

So I look at GW2 and I’d say there is almost no grind and certainly no grinding required to progress. There’s never a point where you need to level up or need a specific bit of equipment and your only way to get it is to do the same few things over and over. Even things like dailies, yes you need to keep doing them to get laurels if you want ascended accessories, but you don’t have to do the same ones or do them in the same area and you can combine them with other activities. Plus you can carry on playing whatever without the ascended gear, you’re not stuck in one area until you get it.

Whereas people like you who define grind as pursuing a goal might say there’s a lot of grind in GW2 because most of the time you’re working towards something, but might also say that’s ok because without it there would be nothing to do.

Danikat.8537:

So I look at GW2 and I’d say there is almost no grind and certainly no grinding required to progress. There’s never a point where you need to level up or need a specific bit of equipment and your only way to get it is to do the same few things over and over. Even things like dailies, yes you need to keep doing them to get laurels if you want ascended accessories, but you don’t have to do the same ones or do them in the same area and you can combine them with other activities. Plus you can carry on playing whatever without the ascended gear, you’re not stuck in one area until you get it.

Whereas people like you who define grind as pursuing a goal might say there’s a lot of grind in GW2 because most of the time you’re working towards something, but might also say that’s ok because without it there would be nothing to do.

The problem is – here is no progress. You do not need ascended gear. However, it makes you stronger by 10+ percent. It’s like going to the raid on the clothing 1tier below needed. The problem – there’s no raids. Here, in principle, no content that demanded anything. You can walk through the dungeons even naked, u can go pvp on 40 levels below the maximum. You will be useless place holder, but no one will be able to show you the claims.
Hence the only progress that is in the game – is cosmetic. And for any thing that looks different from all the rest you need to grind. Grind – is grind. It has no philosophy. You’ll have to get either the tone of resources or tone of money. Neither the first nor the second is not incremented during the normal game process.

Grind is needing to repeat content so much to obtain something that the content itself no longer becomes enjoyable, and your only motivation for repeating the content is for whatever you are trying to obtain.

At least that’s my definition.

There’s a lot of things in GW2 that I view as grind.

Grind exists in GW2 for two reasons. It’s easier for ANet to implement than interesting new content, and it tends to push players into spending more time in the game.

By the way, a big LOL for the guy who said that it isn’t grind since it takes a long time to accomplish.

The way I see it there are two ways in making an item rare or hard to obtain. It’s either grind or RNG. For example, legendary falls under the grind route. BL weapons falls under the RNG route.

I don’t think grind is limited to repeating unenjoyable content. You can be doing a list of different tasks and still be considered grind.

I’ll give u a 4th reason for grind…
…. I’m grinding for community/friend ….

-. Got 4k+ ac token, which i don;t know what i gonna used it for… I never gamble anything because my luck’s sucks in all online game I played before lol,most of the time people open 20 box and get something and i’ll need to open 200-300 to get it… If i really want it, it’s better just to buy it using gold
-. Got some gold which no way in hell i’m gonna spend it on stupid skin (legendary)
Just enjoying everday chat with friend while doing dungeon Lol.

Show me one game without grind! You wont find one.

Shockwave.1230:

Grind is needing to repeat content so much to obtain something that the content itself no longer becomes enjoyable, and your only motivation for repeating the content is for whatever you are trying to obtain.

At least that’s my definition.

There’s a lot of things in GW2 that I view as grind.

I totally share this view…

Black Teagan.9215:

Show me one game without grind! You wont find one.

But those other games weren’t advertised as “grind-free”, you know? Just sayin….

STRanger – you should point out that it was 5 years of promises about no grind, easy best-in-slot gear, and that skill would always trump gear/time spent in game. Not one or two comments, but 5 years of drowning anyone paying attention in those themes, and then reversing themselves after 3 months of live release.

stale.9785:

STRanger – you should point out that it was 5 years of promises about no grind, easy best-in-slot gear, and that skill would always trump gear/time spent in game. Not one or two comments, but 5 years of drowning anyone paying attention in those themes, and then reversing themselves after 3 months of live release.

Yeah, I was sure someone would do it for me, thank you

Black Teagan.9215:

Show me one game without grind! You wont find one.

Warhammer online. Closed, unfortunately .