Guild Wars 2

I have been attempting to build up a presence in GW and GW2 in my guild. I played GW from beginning to end and spent hundreds of dollars on the first game. (OK, it was mostly for mule characters because there was never enough storage.) So, to grease the skids I have been, well, strongly suggesting people buy and try GW and frankly pushing GW2. I even bought some keys to get people started in the game.

I know there will be people who disagree with the opinion of my guild members who are playing GW2. Great! ANet has you for support. I am dealing with the expansion of that support among those that are not yet so enthusiastic.

So, what is the first report I get concerning the Halloween Event? That it is a grind fest and not worth the effort. That one has to obtain a thousand bits to make a bite – and unless you do this several times there is nothing interesting for which these trinkets will trade.

I will never understand why grinding for points somehow confers status as if this makes one a better person, which is (IMO) the only way to be a better player. I will never understand why dev.s think grind equals enjoyment. The race may not be to the swift, but in a world where it is an hour commute to and from work/school, 9 hours at the job (including breaks), 6-8 hours of sleep, time for hygiene and meals, dishes, dusting, sweeping and vacuuming, mowing, cleaning the gutters, weeding, checking/doing homework, HS sports, or even just maybe some quality family time … entertainment is the sitcom not days of grind fest.

It is just an idea, but perhaps video games would seem less of a social negative if they weren’t setting up accomplishments that can only be achieved through a massive devotion of time for grinding. The goal should be ‘Busking’ – to entertain a targeted audience such that they donate what they can during those minutes between the things they have to do.

To be fair to ANet, they actually listened to us and made the “grind” this year MUCH more bearable. Halloween mats drop like rain in the Labyrinth; requirements for old stuff like the Mini Bloody Prince and the Halloween Pail got massively reduced. (It’s actually worthwhile now to buy the Pail as a cheap 20 slot bag if you need more storage!) I spent just under an hour in the Labyrinth last night and I walked out with more than 1500 Candy Corn, plus loads of other loot.

Finally, you also get 3 Candy Corn Cobs for completing the meta and the story, which is enough to get the Hexed outfit for free if that’s what you like. (And if not, spend it on the aforementioned Halloween Pail or just sell the Cobs.)

I have to go with Zaxares on this one, though I can see Fitz’s point. Although the devs added 6 more dailies and I can play only 1-2 hours tops every day, I did manage to finish them all -except the WvW ones I admit :P – and got a truckload of mats (pretty much a Cob + other stuff) in 1 hour or so of labyrinth. Might be that it’s “new” content (ok, not really new, but we havenìt played it for a year now), I didn’t even find it boring :P

The reduced costs is a plus too, items are actually affordable now, when they didn’t feel like it last year.

Zaxares.5419:

To be fair to ANet, they actually listened to us and made the “grind” this year MUCH more bearable. Halloween mats drop like rain in the Labyrinth; requirements for old stuff like the Mini Bloody Prince and the Halloween Pail got massively reduced. (It’s actually worthwhile now to buy the Pail as a cheap 20 slot bag if you need more storage!) I spent just under an hour in the Labyrinth last night and I walked out with more than 1500 Candy Corn, plus loads of other loot.

Finally, you also get 3 Candy Corn Cobs for completing the meta and the story, which is enough to get the Hexed outfit for free if that’s what you like. (And if not, spend it on the aforementioned Halloween Pail or just sell the Cobs.)

I agree that the increased drop rate and reduced costs makes the event much more entertaining. The rewards for the event this time around definitely feel more worthwhile.

And I don’t know if it was my recently acquired Ascended gear along with familiarity with the Prince Thorn fights from last year or if the content was actually adjusted, but this year it felt MUCH less tedious and annoying. This time I actually had fun rather than getting ticked off by the reinforcement spawns.

IMO this is how boss battles should be in storyline instances. Thorn had unique mechanics but the fight was not needlessly stretched out to the point of becoming tedious (like what I found in the first two chapters of Season 2, I still haven’t been able to bring myself to play the rest of the chapters, the fights were just so annoying)