Guild Wars 2

As much as I enjoy the new content I am beginning to feel the tired grind effect that back to back constant updates from the living world events plus dragon bash thrown on top has reaped.

We went from Flame & Frost to Southsun Cove in a very short time. Then we got Dragon Bash moments later and now we are informed of another update for Sky Pirates in a matter of days… not weeks, days after Dragon Bash closes.

Every single one of these seemed to me to be achievement grind led. I feel like I have done not much else for a couple of months but grind… whether it be fireworks, pinatas, supporter or consortium events, flame & frost portal mobs, audio caches, repair signs. It has been grind grind grind.

When I get to what i think is the end and think great now I can get to other content I want to finish in game or work on alts… you launch more content with more achievements to solo grind.

As I have already said I love new content and want to play & enjoy it. However I think your break neck spam speed of constant updates every week is over whelming and turning what should be an enjoyable gaming experience into a never ending solo grind. I am thankful I am not a new player because in my opinion I don’t see how any newer players would be able to level, gear, map & find anytime to enjoy the new time limited content.

I would like to ask that Anet possibly steps back and thinks about how quickly they are throwing living world & event content at us. I really feel it needs to slow down back to back solo grind spams are not my idea of fun. Give us a breather please.

Constant living world updates are not the probem here. Your obsession with getting the achievements is the issue, and that’s really a personal problem and not game related.

I do agree that having like 2 weeks between the updates would be nice though, because they can use those 2 weeks for some quality assurance effort and additional polishing. F&F was well done in this regard, I assume because it was a more drawn out chapter and they had the time for QA. But the chapters since then have been released back to back and only lasted a few weeks each, and QA and polish have been lacking.

Its not an obsession I am playing the game as intended by Anet. To play the living world content the way they have made it you have to grind the achievements. If you hope to collect or enjoy the new items rewarded from the events and living world you have to meet a certain number of achievements completed.

If they were not one time events or story it would not be so bad but the fact that most are one time occurance leaves you with little choice but to grind it out as you will never have another chance to experience it.

I have no problem with working towards this I just simply feel that putting Living World & Events back to back for months is a bit much. A slight gap would be welcome.

Ive played a few hours a few nights this last week and got the shattered wings, plus a jade skin and all the mini’s, I wouldn’t exactly call that a grind.

You also have several weeks to do it in, easily achievable by even the most casual player.

If you don’t want to do it then don’t but seriously I can’t believe you are complaining about having too much to do.

Jam.4521:

Ive played a few hours a few nights this last week and got the shattered wings, plus a jade skin and all the mini’s, I wouldn’t exactly call that a grind.

That’s awesome for you, but as per the recorded drop rates, the average player had to open ~2000 coffers to get a ticket.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Dragon_Coffer/drop_rate

A coffer seems to drop every 4 or 5 mobs. So on average that is 8000 to 10000 kills for a weapon ticket.

Yes, some people were extremely lucks, and others extremely unlucky (such is RNG) but the average says: yes, this qualifies as grind.

In response to Jam.4521:

Your focusing on dragon bash and missing the point… I am not complaining there is too much to do so try re-reading my original post and digesting that information. I am actually saying to clarify, that the living world and events are achievement led. No one can deny that. They do require grind unless your lucky and drop what you want immediately. So would it hurt to space these events a bit more apart than by a few days…

Playing it the way Anet intended… do you have a step-by-step list of things to do that they intended? They provide a variety of activities in each update, but that doesnt mean you have to do any of them, and especially not all of them.

You can get the dragon bash wings easily, you could get the Southsun backpieces in one day. I dont see the constant grind you’re talking about. It is intended by Anet that you pick and complete the activities/Achievements you enjoy and skip the others. That is the reason you did not need every single achievement for the holo wings or the tentacle backpack. It’s pretty clearly intended that way.

So you are doing that, picking your favorites and skipping the rest as intended by Anet’s design? Because frankly, I dont believe you do .

I believe you try to get every achievement just to get the achievement. And yea that’s more effort, but it is also your personal choice. Nobody forces you to do it, nobody can even see your achievement page except yourself. If you are unhappy with and feel pressured by your personal choice on how to play the game, I suggest you change that instead of trying to get the game changed for everyone else to suit your personal preferences.

That said, I support the request for slower updates for other reasonsthat I mentioned above and also in the other thread on the same topic thats also in this subforum.

Pixelpumpkin.4608:

Jam.4521:

Ive played a few hours a few nights this last week and got the shattered wings, plus a jade skin and all the mini’s, I wouldn’t exactly call that a grind.

That’s awesome for you, but as per the recorded drop rates, the average player had to open ~2000 coffers to get a ticket.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Dragon_Coffer/drop_rate

A coffer seems to drop every 4 or 5 mobs. So on average that is 8000 to 10000 kills for a weapon ticket.

Yes, some people were extremely lucks, and others extremely unlucky (such is RNG) but the average says: yes, this qualifies as grind.

My point was that it doesn’t HAVE to be a grind, if you don’t like doing it then DON’T. You won’t get the item but you are not entitled to it, nor should you be, go work for something else then. Yes I was lucky, I wasn’t grinding for it, I just got it on my 250th(ish) crate.

I think its good that some stuff isn’t that common, if you don’t get it then hard luck but there will be another update along soon so go do that instead, you should get the wings easily enough, they just require the achievements.

As for the OP, as far as I can see you are saying that there is lots to do to achieve certain things i.e. the achievements that result in certain rewards, if you don’t want to do the achievements, then don’kittens as simple as that. But bear in mind that you are complaining about the pace of things which is an entirely relative thing depending on who you are, as I said I was lucky BUT I did get all story done plus enough to get the wings in only a few hours play, and this has easily been the most intense update yet, some people have it done in a night and are then bored. What about those people? Shouldn’t we speed it up for them?

I guess my point is that the fact thakittens too fast for YOU is not a good enough argument to base a complaint on in an MMO. Me and all y guild are loving the pace, even though most of us are casual player. I’m not saying I don’t see your point but try backing it up with some arguments that aren’t entirely self centred.

“Try backing it up with some arguements that aren’t entirely self centered” that is how you ended your post in response to me.

And your attitude of “don’t like doing it then don’t do it”. So your answer is to not take part in the Living World or Events? Not something I would be promoting if I was Anet for very obvious reasons.

Well let me point out that in this thread it has already been proven by statistics that it is a “Grind” something I do not mind doing I value working to earn something. I am a 7 year veteran of GW1 and believe me I know about grinding for rewards, armour & titles.

I invite you to watch the Guild Wars 2 manifesto video and see for yourself what Arenanet says about grinding: “We just don’t want players to grind in Guild Wars 2”

I am happy to grind and work for items and rewards. I appreciate there is always going to be some element of grinding. I was commenting on the constant spam of new content back to back. Which is leading directly from one grind to the other. Something which i do not think Anet intended and certainly stated was not in their vision for GW2.

The discussion is taking a hostile direction so I’m out, but let me say that whatever they said a year or longer ago has little bearing on the game we play now. The early wishes and dreams of the team have been replaced by the cold reality of managing a live game, and it shows.

Wiara.4236:

“Try backing it up with some arguements that aren’t entirely self centered” that is how you ended your post in response to me.

And your attitude of “don’t like doing it then don’t do it”. So your answer is to not take part in the Living World or Events? Not something I would be promoting if I was Anet for very obvious reasons.

Well let me point out that in this thread it has already been proven by statistics that it is a “Grind” something I do not mind doing I value working to earn something. I am a 7 year veteran of GW1 and believe me I know about grinding for rewards, armour & titles.

I invite you to watch the Guild Wars 2 manifesto video and see for yourself what Arenanet says about grinding: “We just don’t want players to grind in Guild Wars 2”

I am happy to grind and work for items and rewards. I appreciate there is always going to be some element of grinding. I was commenting on the constant spam of new content back to back. Which is leading directly from one grind to the other. Something which i do not think Anet intended and certainly stated was not in their vision for GW2.

Look I understand your point, I’m just pointing out that time scale (your main point I believe was about it being rushed, not the grindy nature) is a relative thing, and I felt that the 3-4 hours of play it took me to complete the story and get 8 achievements was entirely reasonably, if not a bit short for a 2 week long update. THAT is what I meant by self centred, your argument is about YOU, not based on any sort of evidence that people are having issues with time, just how YOU felt. That is a self centred argument.

The only ‘statistics’ are in relation to the jade weapon skin which is ANets way of making money, so the only other option is really for it to be a direct cash skin. Is that what you would prefer?

Although have you seen the next update news? New dungeon which will hopefully be as good as F&F, plus chests that aren’t drops but appear to be in hard to reach places which sounds interesting. But you still have until after the first week in July to compete the current achievements so you have plenty of time.

Also as for the manifesto, I wouldn’t bother with that any more, its been pointed out hundreds of times by now that ANet was talking absolute crap when they came out with that. Which I am annoyed at too.

Ill back off now, enough forum arguments for one day, I will agree though that I would prefer to avoid any form of grind, but I’m curious as to how to do that, I’m always slightly dismayed by just how quickly someone like Dulfy has everything completed when its not got any form of grind. And I feel that stretching the updates out won’t alleviate that.

Something to note:

The Dragon Bash isn’t ending when Sky Pirates starts – they’re concurrent (or you could view Sky Pirates as the final phase of Dragon Bash). The Dragon Bash stuff doesn’t go away until Sky Pirates has also ended, and there’s stuff that’s probably part of the Sky Pirates content that we’ve been told is part of the Dragon Bash stuff.

Remember that the Dragon Bash is replacing the Dragon Festival as the 4th of July holiday standin (Independence Day for the US), so they’re going to want the peak of the event to be around then, rather than cutting it off prematurely.

OTOH, though, the achievements themselves have been pretty grindy in nature. Half of them are basically “do something X times”, of which only two are asking you to do something that’s even moderately challenging. To be fair, most of them are things that are relatively mild if spaced out over the month or so that the DB is supposed to run for, but this batch of achievements certainly has demonstrated a… certain lack of imagination.

draxynnic.3719:

Something to note:

The Dragon Bash isn’t ending when Sky Pirates starts – they’re concurrent (or you could view Sky Pirates as the final phase of Dragon Bash).

Actually we just discussed this the other day: the transition seems so fluent this time, if not for the Dragon Bash achievements being “done” now, I wouldn’t even identify the next part as the start of something entirely new.

It’s very fluid, I like it. (Hasn’t always been the case.)

Pixelpumpkin.4608:

draxynnic.3719:

Something to note:

The Dragon Bash isn’t ending when Sky Pirates starts – they’re concurrent (or you could view Sky Pirates as the final phase of Dragon Bash).

Actually we just discussed this the other day: the transition seems so fluent this time, if not for the Dragon Bash achievements being “done” now, I wouldn’t even identify the next part as the start of something entirely new.

It’s very fluid, I like it. (Hasn’t always been the case.)

Thats a fair point, maybe if they didn’t parcel the achievements up into their little batches it would seem a lot more fluid.

I for one particularly enjoyed the investigation that panned out over 3 days, the actual story could have used some work but I liked the style.