Guild Wars 2

How many times are people going to come in here and call the game grindy as if anything that isn’t instant gratification is grind?

The only things that you could argue are grind are optional bonuses and rewards that aren’t necessary. Those are there for the people who want to be hardcore.

It’s okay for hardcore players to have things you don’t. It’s okay to not have every new feature unlocked after 2 days of playing the expansion.

zinkz.7045:

zombyturtle.5980:

Actually ive been here since launch and mostly only do dungeons these days. Just because you dont like something doesnt mean its a grind.

Being forced to spend countless hours playing content you dislike in order to be able to fully play the content you do like is grind.

No. Grind is doing repetitive tasks with no variation in gameplay or strategy. With an emphasis on repetitive.

Just because you dont like doing something does NOT make it grind. Unless you have to repeat it multiple times to achieve your goal, it is by definition not grind. It may be unpleasant or boring for you personally however.
If we accept your definition then literally anything could be taken as grindy as there will always be someone who doesnt like the actual content but wants the rewards.

Now despite that masteries may be a grind. If you have to do events on the new maps over and over to gain enough exp then yes it is a grind. If you only have to do each event once , and complete each map once, it is not.

Azure.8670:

you guys cry so much.

you guys just want everything instantly. this is an mmo. I cant even… lol

^what Azure Says.

And i tough this game gave so much stuff w/o much effort already, players still say it is grindy…

MMO’s were good becouse they required time / team work / a bit of dedication, GW2 is nothing like that, Anet already dumbed the game over the roof i cant imagine the game getting worse than it is atm….

Masteries are the new leveling system.

Can you go to Orr when you just start? NO, you are “gated”. XP is charging the mastery bar so you are really still just leveling, except now they combine it with Mastery Points you must earn in game to progress.

Can’t unlock all your traits and utility skills one second into the expansion? Just like when you started the game originally? So instead of getting “free” HP as you level, since there isn’t “true” leveling anymore, you have to do a bit of content.

Don’t know if the hate is coming from BETA players who simply enjoyed having elites fully enabled and now find out they have to start from the beginning. Or from players who roll alts and level them via tomes and finding out they need more HP to unlock the elite fully.

I can sort of understand that feeling because it feels like you “lost” abilities you were looking forward to. Or if you are a WvW specialist where excess HP would have required PvE play, which is why they added a means, although slow, to get HP in WvW.

But as a PvE player, I’m not disappointed so far. Maybe because I avoided the BWEs because I didn’t want to spoil myself either story or the new elites because for beta, they want players to test the elites fully so players get full access to the specialization. And now you don’t and have to pay for it. And that sucks if you weren’t expecting it.

TL;DR – although there is no level bump, we are still leveling which means maps, skills and traits are need to be earned.

Dude, it’s been ONE day. :P

Suinz.5968:

This expansion really reinforced the fact that everything is about GRINDING, GATING, and GOLD.

What “grinding” means.. doing the same event over and over again to attain something you desire, you really dont need to grind any event over and over again to attain something in the expansion, there’s way too much content, you can freely go from event to event when you suddenly notice u’v finished xp for mastery.

“Gating” – if you go by the literal meaning without why it’s used in games, u can go by “levels are in itself gates” why play an rpg? rather play a fps. more examples of gating? here you go – levels, ilevels, once per day or once per week(that includes everything inc raid loot) etc etc etc

Not to mention a lot of the items are locked behind RNG and gated by GOLD

What does this even mean? gated by gold? o.0

I can’t believe it took me this long to realize that once you reach 80, all you can really do is GRIND just to prepare yourself FOR the FUN stuff! Everything is pretty much GATED!

What do you have to “grind” to have fun? and what is gated? it’s unfortunate that you feel bored.. but pls dont use words that dont fit what you’re trying to explain.

It’s only been 3 days. If you haven’t unlocked all the masteries it’s not the end the world. Just play the game guys. You can finish it in a couple of months and that’s the idea. And yes some people have finished unlocked all core masteries and most of HoT masteries.

Thank you ANet for not making contents that can be done in one day (for the vast majority of the players).

TheBlackLeech.9360:

bigbobpataki.4796:

Not having everything day 1=impossible grind?

You are literally attempting to use your own misunderstanding of the topic as a rebuttal against a 100% vaild point that has been expressed for several months now

This “expansion” is just Living World Season 3 behind a pay wall…. stretched out with gating and grinding in an attempt to get “expansion size gameplay hours”.

Didnt know LS 1 and 2 had new WvW maps, new massive world maps, Guild Halls, a new class and new sub classes, a new PvP mode and PvP leagues.

Cmon anet, where you hiding all that missing content?

I’m not sure really why anyone expected to have all of this stuff done after playing for one day. Heart of Thorns is an expansion, it’s not supposed to be over with quickly. Consider that you may have gotten half of an elite specialization done yesterday. So now you need to work on some masteries, it might take you a week to get done with one class. That seems like a long time, but keep in mind that now since you’ve done masteries you can just fly to the hero points, channel them, and move on. This might take you a day per character. I have 11 level 80 characters, so this might take me a little over two weeks? Now you’ve got elite specs done on all your characters, and you have a bunch more content to go work on for months afterwards. I think this is pretty fair, two weeks of working towards something after we waited 270 days for an expansion since its announcement.

Oh and how long did it take you to originally make those level 80 characters of yours? Probably a lot longer than it will to unlock an elite specialization.

Seera.5916:

On how many characters have you unlocked more than half of your elite spec?

The majority of the players complaining either have a fair number of alts or primarily only play WvW.

One day, no, scratch that, 6 hours, that’s how long it took me to unlock half my elite spec and that’s not knowing the map at all and figuring out how to get to each hero point which took forever.

Once you know the map, it’ll probably take you a few hours to unlock all the hero points needed, itzel and gliding masteries included.

And.. people want it even easier..

fireflyry.7023:

Weird you don’t get your the minority op.

You have no idea what you’re talking about. Just because you say something doesn’t make it true.

I’m sure you know how this process works, but doesn’t hurt to remind you.

There’s always a vocal minority for everything, and they’re gonna pop up whenever they don’t like something and spam spam spam while most of the people that are enjoying it sit quiet and enjoy it.

If you make the game easier another group of people will get angry about it and you’re gonna get even more complaining.

You’re finally making the right changes, I already unlocked more than half of my elite spec just by having fun in the new maps and honestly it didn’t feel grindy at all, now I finally have something to work towards as opposed to last week, thank you so much for this expansion.

Hexalot.8194:

I’m talking about the masteries though, which… at millions of exp per line… is bordering on Korean grind. And you need to get those out of the way before you can tackle the Hero challenges on the map.

I thought you could get masteries by doing anything that granted exp? If im wrong I apologise and please correct me.

zinkz.7045:

zombyturtle.5980:

Can someone please explain to me why sooo many people have such a huge problem actually playing the content they paid for in order to progress their characters. I mean why even buy it if you are so against playing it. I just dont get it x.x

Seriously you are that unaware that you think everyone plays the game the same way? Guess what some people do not like the tedious open world content in this game, but until now that hasn’t restricted you actual gameplay, if you were levelling a character and weren’t keen on open world PvE you had plenty of other options – EoTM, WvW, crafting, PvP, tomes, dungeons, etc.

With this people who for example enjoy fractals, dungeons and raids, but can’t stand open world PvE, are forced to go grind these tedious PvE zones as that is where the hero points are.

Maybe you are new, but this game was sold on things like “lack of grind”, “play your own way”, the way getting these new specialisations is handled is contrary to those philosophies.

Actually ive been here since launch and mostly only do dungeons these days. Just because you dont like something doesnt mean its a grind. Game content is not only limited to ‘things I like doing’.

If you want specializations though, yeah you will have to put some effort in and play the game content you paid for. It was marketed as, and designed as, character progression which requires work and effort, not instant gratification, otherwise it wouldnt be character progression.

Play your own way has always referred not being hard locked out of content due to your build or gear choice. Not I should get all the rewards for doing only a tiny part of the game. You can still take part in every single piece of game content without the elite specializations.

If you have such a problem with PVE maps hero points will be coming to wvw too so you can progress your character through those means. So there is an option.

And yes my reply is snarkier than usual but thats because you seemed to think it was ok to insult me for asking a completely reasonable question.

Hexalot.8194:

Sure, many people (including me) were initially drawn to GW2 because it marketed itself as being “not another grindy” game. Yes there was some grind involved …notably legendaries… but that didn’t really affect the vast majority of the player base since such gear is merely optional. But now ?

LOL.

Its not exactly grind though as you only have to complete each hero point once. Grind is doing the same content over and over to progress. You just have to do the content on the new maps once time per character, which you would probably be doing anyway right? Otherwise why buy the exp.

Can someone please explain to me why sooo many people have such a huge problem actually playing the content they paid for in order to progress their characters. I mean why even buy it if you are so against playing it. I just dont get it x.x

Northstrider.2456:

Just reached precursor rank 1 mastery and unlocked the collection. First look: nope. Not this time. Karka queen, tequatl, ascalon fractals and all that stuff on rank 1 already wtf.

what did you expect? they said it would be a grind. its a friggen legendary, its supposed to take months

you guys cry so much.

you guys just want everything instantly. this is an mmo. I cant even… lol

First if all, the precursor scavenger hunt was supposed to be an alternative to buying the precursor or obtaining through RNG. The point WAS NOT to make them easier to obtain.

Second, the reason Anet wanted masteries to take so long to obtain was because of what happened at launch. They DO NOT want people to breeze through all masteries in a week or two, complian that the expansion was too short, and leave the game. If they had created the masteries to be done that quickly, no doubt many of the people complaining now would be complaining about it being too short.

The reason Anet made the masteries require experience is because they want to encourage people to do the events in the new maps and actually care about leveling. The reason Anet gated parts of the map behind masteries was to stop people from just face rolling through all 4 maps without actually seeing what each map has to offer.

Overall I feel that people will always look for a reason to Q.Q over something. If you’re going to leave , then leave. You won’t be missed.

Having the time of my life in the expansion. The game is a blast. I do, however, have trouble grinding through some of these forum posts.

HoT is amazing and was totally worth my money by so far. I see nothing to grind for – you can do anything you want and still get it, as said. And if you mention the time it might take… well, they are MASTERIES. You need to learn hard to be the very best, that’s the whole point of it. Now you’re just crying you can’t get the black belt in one day and have to work for it and get better? Wtf

Grinding? What grinding are you talking about? This expansion has been a blast so far. Playing the game is getting me xp without even thinking about it. So many different things to do and see …. I keep getting upped without realizing it. There has been no grinding at all needed.

“boring”

I see that word being used by a lot of impatient kids these days.

I’m having a blast in the news maps, but maybe that’s because I’m playing for fun and not really paying attention to any sort of grind.

Another couple of people who want to be handed everything at once, and then would run and create threads ‘I don’t have anything more to do in this game’. Lol.

Or orrrrr, here is a fun idea. Play for fun not grind. Masterys are going to happen eventually.

Bryzy.2719:

Levi M.7428:

So you want to be handed everything correct? That’s what ur asking for? Cause that’s what it sounds like.

Nice strawman fallacy.

He never said he wanted everything handed to him, he said the amount of work required to get the Espec is ridiculous, which it is. Most people knew that they had to earn the specs, but the sheer amount of hours this will take was NOT advertised.

The fact that legendaries will take a long time to create WAS advertised.

If the Espec had required a total of, say, 200 HPs to unlock, that would still require an amount of work and mastery gain but it would be much more fair than what is currently required.

Your right. Let’s just get everything at launch right away. It’s only fair cause that’s what we “paid” for. Yeah I change my mind. I to want to throw a fit because the game is making me work towards something rather than mindlessly running around the silverwastes all day. You changed my opinion completely. Thanks man! :/

I wont even bother reading the whole thread:

The personal story has level requirements.
The new story for the expansion has mastery requirements.

SAME DEAL!

Stop complaining just because you want to rush everything.

Kristine Heath.1483:

SimBilly.8047:

Grind, you say?

i dont think YOU know what it means.

this game is a textbook grind.

Your post made me LOL in RL

Grind, you say?