For those of you who don’t know or aren’t familiar with this concecpt both gw1 and gw2 are a sideways progression game for endgame content. It’s very different than most other mmo’s so a lot of people don’t really understand it so thought I would make a post defending anet this time on the grind issue (I have other posts criticizing stuff too so I do see both sides on things)
I’ve seen a lot of posts whining about grinding lately, anet you said no grind etc, that sort of thing, and just wanted to explain what grind is and what sideways progression is so as to not confuse the 2. Grind is repetitively doing the same thing over and over again, usually for something marginally better (ie: A very small stat upgrade in a raid from wow, but raiding for hours several days a week for several months, for 1 piece of rare loot) Or farm reputation points forever for a mount that sort of thing. Or killing mobs over and over again for experience.
Then gw2 came along with their amazing manifesto. Yes in some areas they need to go back to their creed but overall its still there. Now nowhere anywhere did they ever say there is no grind in gw2. They said play how you want to play and gave us options. You could pvp at max level right away even at low levels. You could level up in wvw or pve or crafting.
So what exactly is sideways progression then. Sideways progression is progression that goes sideways, not vertically. Say for instance you get to 80, now what? Exotics were max level gear and very easy to get, in a lot of ways (gold, karma, wvw badges, dungeon tokens, and crafting) This is what anet meant when it said no grind and fulfilled their manifesto philosophy (play how you want to play) Now there was still grind in this game. If you wanted that legendary you still had to earn it and farm lots of gold and karma and do your map completion. That’s an example of sideways progression. Skins. This idea goes back to the classic known as Guild Wars. Greens with max stats were easy to get but if you wanted a rare weapon skin with low req requirement you had to be prepared to cough up stacks of ectos for it. But mathematically it gave you no advantage. It just looked nice.
This is both amazing and/or horrible depending on your point of view (mostly if you like or dislike other mmo’s with a strong focus on stats) For pvp purposes this was awesome because it put everyone on a level playing field and skill was all that mattered. Say in wow you had resilience (now pvp gear ilevel, i believe) If you had that stat and you versed someone who just started pvp’ing and had non pvp gear, it was an auto win for you… It didn’t matter how good of a player he was skill wise. Now a new pvp’er can come in and have a decent shot of winning skill wise (unlikely b/c he’s new to pvp but theoritically it could happen) But again its skill not stats that decides the outcome.
Now what confuses people and why so many people cry “no grind” is this new mastery system. If you actually played the beta and read the interviews they said several times it was a new system of progression. To level up so to speak without having to level up and worry about stat balancing and that sort of thing. To me its just another way of sideways progression. Your levels may not go higher, but its still an experience bar that you fill up by doing events just the same as “leveling up” would be. If people leveled up to 90 instead of fulfilling new masteries I’m pretty positive all this no grind feedback wouldn’t have happened. The 2 “big” things that most people were upset about was the misunderstanding of the new elite specialization because people wanted to play it right away and in the beta you could, and the itzel poison mastery for an early mission that didn’t even use it, both of which anet listened to feedback and quickly fixed.
Again I’m not saying gw2 has no grind, it does. But their manifesto about playing how you want is still there and exotics are still easy to get. But if you want nice skins, legendaries etc be prepared to grind a little bit. Just know that skins and the mastery system is a form of sideways progression. Are there things they need to go back to their manifesto and fix, sure they are. Personally I believe ascended weapons/armor should be easy to get in several ways like pve, karma, wvw etc like exotics were to fulfill their manifesto philosophy (playing how u want to play to easily earn max gear for endgame content) since at first ascended was only intended for fractal use and now almost a requirement for raids(endgame content) and i’ve already coughed up the money for it.
Hopefully this helps clear up some of the confusion about grinding and sideways progression. Not saying its perfect but overall its still a very good system especially compared to many other games.
(edited by Chrono.6928)