Guild Wars 2

Pretty much. I got better things to grind than forum PvP.

I leave this in your capable hands, people. And I swear, if one of you causes a revamp as bad as Traits, I will find a way to channel Liam Neeson . . .

nGumball.1283:

Alot of people don’t even know what they want in the game. People don’t want content to be repitive, it should be challenging but it shouldn’t be hard, it should be fun but it shouldn’t be grindy, it should be new but it shouldn’t be finished too quickly. Well, good luck finding this game that has content that is fun but no grindy, hard or repitive and yet it will make you play for a long time.

I hear Super Mario Brothers 3 still gets a lot of play for that.

But when it comes to fun, non-repetitive, difficult games? I’ve only got one in my closet.

Lheimroo.2947:

‘two nights ago I never even logged in.’

Tobias, for you to speak like that might be a shocking twist in your routine says a lot.

You’re not getting me. Everyone seems to assume I play every day, and commented on the routine like it was something I never varied from. That goes to show telepathy is BS, or you all need remedial courses in it.

I play often, of course. This is really the only game holding my interest currently. Of course, three months ago I was instead playing Etrian Odyssey Untold like it was the only game in the world. During Wintersday I barely was here because I was spending most of my free time on another project.

I posted how many hours I have. Just under two thousand hours since the pre-release early weekend. Realize that includes pretty hefty play time in the first three months and several months of basically “log in, spend an hour getting Daily, log out”. There are people who have played considerably more than me who also have said they don’t feel they’re forced to grind.

Which is my point – I do my routine because I find it entertaining. Not because I have to, not because I need gold or loot or anything. If it’s not entertaining I go do something else. Gasp, quelle horreur!

There are often several days in a row I don’t log in. And when I do, I don’t go for a two hour farm fest ever.

Hey, what do you know, neither do I. According to you it’s grind not farm. Fancy that.

Can you please try to sympathize with how mountainous a task ascended gear is for somebody who plays GW2 in the cracks between other rl things and other hobbies, and who doesn’t enjoy ‘farming’ at all?

Sure I can. And just there you have proven you aren’t paying attention to anything I said before I posted my “routine” for how to make 2-10g in a night without resorting to dungeons or TP play.

I have a full time job, where I have literally been pulling overtime for two weeks. I have three other hobbies which I attend to, one of which is laughably worse than GW2 in terms of RNG. I have family work which requires my attention most of my days off so I don’t have infinite time to spend online. I’m trying to madly get my D&D group back together so we can finish a campaign three years and counting (on hiatus for eight months due to RL really hammering us all in turn).

I do not have full Ascended gear, nor am I particularly chasing it with pressing need. But I’ve agreed, not less than four times, it’s got a hefty set of requirements. I’ve also pointed out, ever since its inception, it’s not particularly necessary save for Fractal running. It’s the Obsidian Armor grind of GW2 – only like much comparison between the two games, it’s bigger and more imposing on the appearance side of things.

Honestly, and all snarking aside?

Yeah, some on-theme legendaries would be nice. One which comes to mind is a shortbow “Storm Bow”.

You know I just ran through this boss last night, and while in theory it was interesting and varied, a couple things reared up and made me rage.

- During the tendril phase, it was likely to have a tendril knockback you into falling rocks or other damage rings . . . get downed, and then chewed up. I know I specifically had this happen trying to avoid the pattern of circles in the outer area by moving to the center. Once downed in those rings, you die due to having self-healing interrupted.

- During the fire part, it is entirely possible to be bounced around the bomb plants until you die.

- During the vulnerable phase, the head is out of the field of view and auto target will home in on the shadows once they spawned. Blessing? Ranger shortbow shaved half the life bar in one sequence.

Big Tower.5423:

Thing is, an average girls like things that are beautiful- and typical boys like things that are kitten and cool. Rainbows and uicorns are NOT kitten.

. . . they do? Man I must be around a ton of non-average girls.

. . . heck if you really want a “challenging content” adventure? Model it after storming Castle Ravenloft.

Devata.6589:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Bernie.8674:

How are you getting 5g in two hours? I might get that on guild mission nights, by doing dungeons, or by engaging in concerted farming, but I’ve never gotten anywhere near that by playing casually the way you claim. I must be playing wrong. I’m stagnant somewhere between 20 and 25 gold right now.

World Boss Grand Tour. Log on, find which boss is up next, and do the circuit for an hour. Sell the Ecto from salvaging the rares, sell Silk if I really want to make the money, and sell all the blues and greens.

Drop into Silverwastes if it’s before 1am PST and generally will find an active map. Do events, and sell proceeds much like with the Grand Tour. This one moves faster and can be more lucrative.

Harvest any trees I see there, and then take a moment to go to Pagga’s Waypoint and find the motherlode of Cypress to the west – sell Foxfire Clusters.

I think the lowest I hit was 3.8 g on a night where I forged rares instead of salvaging and selling Ecto.

You gave a pretty accurate view of how many people play this game… Actively grinding gold. You just proved the reason for the existence of this thread.

It’s only a little strange that you do post in in an attempt to show how there is no need to grind, or you would not consider it grind.

Yeah but I don’t do that every night. I don’t want to keep repeating myself here. I have plenty of other options of stuff to do. Heck, two nights ago I never even logged in. Four nights ago I spent the whole time in WvW just messing around.

And it’s not about the darn gold. It’s about things to do. I happen to make gold doing it, which was what my point was about people claiming you had to sacrifice doing what you want to make gold. You don’t have to, and you don’t have to do dungeons or get super lucky instead of being super poor.

RoseofGilead.8907:

McWolfy.5924:

Btw i cant realy imagin a charr ash legion thief with a legendary unicorn shortbow

And that is why you’re not in the Ash Legion! The Ash Legion know how to party.

It’s just they kill the witnesses.

. . . anyone else notice the architecture resembles slightly what the Eye of the North had going for it? Large open space from the archway buried in the sand. Lots of angled cuts around? I wish I’d seen more of the place but I have some terrible pop-in going on inside the cavern.

PariahX.6970:

When I hear the word adventure all I can think of is Bilbo running out of Hobbiton yelling “I’m going on an adventure!” and nothing so far is sounding very hobbit adventure caliber yet so yeah trials might be a better term if it wasn’t for that awful stigma of DAoC Trials of Atlantis. icky Maybe what about peril or feat?

Bear in mind, “adventure” is what he said but “trial and feat of willpower” is what he got.

I chose to main a ranger.

This is still coming back to haunt me today.

Donari.5237:

Nice as always, Shriketalon, but I’d like something to explain how Mai Trin had an army that wasn’t a known factor. No one had heard of the Aetherblades before they first attacked, but they were far too sizable a force to just camp in the woods undetected for the months/years it would take to recruit and train them. No deserters? No loose lips in taverns? No rangers out hunting and going zomg it’s a fracking army out here? No sightings of non-Pact airships? No odd caravans of supplies going out into the wilds?

Maybe I’ve read too much SM Stirling but I really do crave realistic logistics in things like this.

The problem is, thanks to scaling and repeatable events, it’s hard to say exactly how large the force of the Aetherblades are. Or the Vigil alone for that matter, or the Priory, et cetera.

We can count NPCs all we want but when there’s generic enemies which just spawn in to fill an event-scaled quota? It’s literally impossible to get a precise fix on just how big these organizations are. Big enough to have two hangar bases, and to dispatch enough people to be dangerous.

Realistic logistics get in the way of the game part of the MMO. You have to toss some of it out or you wind up with impossibilities. For instance . . . if the Pact was supposed to field enough people to take Orr, a place Zhaitan had fortified with whatever corpses were lost in the catacombs there or lost at sea around there . . . how many people would be needed? Realistically, I’d say roughly three times the number of soldiers accounted for D-Day.

. . . Tyria doesn’t have that.

RoseofGilead.8907:

JSemar.5821:

He’s right. Played ranger since gw1 released but the legendary weapons for them are just stupid. Thus my transition to engineer. Also cut the political correctness crap out Jesus you guys kill me with that. Hard to take anything you all say serious when you get upset because he said he doesn’t think rainbows, unicorns, and flowers are fit for a man.

I’m more upset that every class got a serious legendary and rangers got “toys”.

Yes. Moot is a very serious legendary. As is Quip. And Meteorologicus. And the chicken focus. Very very serious indeed.

I’d like to note the two greatswords look like people taking paintbrushes to the world when they swing. And so it brings me to the problem of – is painting manly enough to make these swords count?

Or do I have to Dali it up?

I’d say if you want an “Adventure”, let’s milk that name for all we can.

First, it opens at a set point where it can begin from. For the sake of argument, let’s say it’s happening on a Pact survivor camp and needing to help them out. Everyone starts from this point, but maybe some Masteries can open different options once you have them. (Like, you have Combat Masteries present so you can opt to dig in and survive the night rather than make a run for shelter. Or you have some other Masteries which let you offer a different route to safety.)

Secondly, diverging paths. Not just like Dungeons do, but a series of branching choices which govern what happens. In this case, say you’re going to dig in and have X minutes to set up the defenses. You can go scavenge for turrets, or get scrap to set up barricades secure against the Mordrem. Or you can find other potential survivors to get more help and expand the options you have. Say you opt to make a run for it. Do you try to follow down into the root tunnels, or try to climb towards some canopy level walkways? Different dangers each direction, and different potential actions you can take. Maybe you actually can get lost because the area is actually a maze of paths and you need to make it to a defensible position when nightfall comes, rather than an exit?

Thirdly, give it some reason to be played more than one way (the easy way, or the loot-heavy way…). Set it up so completing a particular branch type (getting lost/successful rescue/defending dusk til dawn) will earn you a trophy which goes to a Collection, can be sold for some cash or whatever exchange you need in the area, and builds to something people would actually want.

Iason Evan.3806:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Chameleon Dude.1564:

Even the oldest of MMOs have realised arbitrary gating is a bad thing, and Anet’s planning to move forwards by reintroducing it? Oh boy.

I dunno, is it arbitrary gating? Or is it very specific gating of some few extra goodies like jumping puzzles? (Considering how often I hear they shouldn’t be in this game, gating them seems like . . . well, nobody would care.)

“As you keep progressing in the lore with the Itzel they’ll start giving you access to special combat abilities that will help you overcome obstacles that you absolutely could not defeat before.”

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/external?l=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ign.com%2Farticles%2F2015%2F02%2F03%2Fhow-guild-wars-2s-mastery-system-could-change-mmos-forever

That’s arbitrary gating in that quote.

That seems more like “designed” gating rather than arbitrary. But then, what do I know about proper definitions of things?

Bernie.8674:

Tobias’s gold making routine involved killing the same set of creatures, running the same set of events, and farming the same tree clusters every single night. It is exactly the definition that ANet gave. The only debatable aspect is whether or not you’re required to do it. If you want a full set of ascended gear in under a year then I’d say the answer is, “yes.” Many disagree with me, but I have yet to see a convincing argument to the contrary.

Who said it’s the same set of creatures and events? Better question: Who said I do this every night? I didn’t say that. I very clearly did not say that, because I don’t log in every night. Some nights I crack open Settlers of Catan and sit some friends down for a game, or we bring out our MTG decks and go for a three-player free-for-all, or we play one of the other games I bought.

Some nights I just go straight to bed, as I need to be up 7 hours after I get home.

The nights I do play? I’ll do the routine I described if nothing else comes up. If the guild does something like dungeons I want to play? I’ll do those. If they want to run a Fractal run? I’ll swallow a nice big glass of wine to get myself willing, and then go do it. If they feel like doing world completion? I’ll grab an alt and tag along, if I need it.

I got lots of stuff I could be doing. Why, oh why, does it have to be a grind no matter what I describe I want to do? It really starts to smell like someone looking for an excuse to call things grind.

. . . but that could be the leftover Risen parts in my boots.

Chameleon Dude.1564:

Even the oldest of MMOs have realised arbitrary gating is a bad thing, and Anet’s planning to move forwards by reintroducing it? Oh boy.

I dunno, is it arbitrary gating? Or is it very specific gating of some few extra goodies like jumping puzzles? (Considering how often I hear they shouldn’t be in this game, gating them seems like . . . well, nobody would care.)

azurrei.5691:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Travel is too expensive? It’s the value of one to three greens per trip, depending on how far you go.

Who vendors greens other than the crazy people who spent 1000’s of gold maxing luck? Let me just put it this way – spending 10-15s to do the “complete 4 events” daily is not even remotely worth it. WP’s should be free within a zone and bring back armor repair – I would accept that compromise.

Heh. I vendor greens because they’re worth on average 2 silver each when I do. I vendor blues to make up the difference and because I can’t be bothered sometimes to salvage them. (Except for light armor.)

In contrast to your proposal, I’ll throw mine in – WPs should be free and each piece of armor to repair should be 3s individually.

Lheimroo.2947:

Bernie.8674:

And you effectively clarified this argument by describing a two hour grind. That’s not so convincing.

Tobias’s routine wouldn’t count as a grind by the definition Anet has given in this thread.

It would count as one for you, and for me, and seemingly for many others. Which is why Anet’s definition is so troubling; it’s quite self-servingly limited.

I don’t count it as a grind, mostly because I could be doing anything else if I decided not to earn Gold that day. I often do, because I’ll drop into WvW for two or three hours. I’m not doing it now because . . . well, SBI. Nuff said. Silverwastes pretty closely scratches that itch for WvW, though I only sit through maybe one and a half cycles.

I barely care if you consider it a grind or not, really. It was asked how I do it and I answered. It’s a routine I use because it’s what I find interesting enough to do instead of going “meh, log in – log out, call it a night”.

I don’t need to Gold, I don’t need the components, all I need is something to do. This fits the bill.

Travel is too expensive? It’s the value of one to three greens per trip, depending on how far you go.

Rognik.2579:

I think this here is your problem. My main is a ranger, and I charmed a wolf some time while I was finishing up my map completion. What I didn’t do was run there immediately, but just came across the den as I was running around actually doing PvP content. And I’m not even one of those people who hop onto a “zerg”, running from tower to tower.

Of course, there is the 3rd skill on longbow that gives you stealth for a bit. Maybe that’ll help you get close to a pup long enough to smuggle him away.

Oh, no . . . I went and I got mine the old fashioned way. Wait for a SBI reset time and jump on EB. It was almost trivial after that to split off the zerg and get it.

Rylen.2147:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Seera.5916:

And how many pets do the WvW only players have to go into PvE to get?

Most of them.

And how many PvP only players have to get their pets from PvE?!?!?

Oh…wait…

We still have PvP only players?

darkace.8925:

BilboBaggins.5620:

And they said that once you’ve started masteries your nameplate will show your mastery score, sounds like WoW gear score to me.

That bit definitely caught my eye. I really don’t see how displaying a player’s mastery score is going to bring anything but trouble.

You mean like displaying the AP causes trouble now?

Stars.2179:

There is a treadmill coming from the expansion. Now before you jump the gun, please read:

Mike O’Brien said at Pax South that your top gear today will be top gear tomorrow. I am afraid not.

Today blog article:

“Master Fractals: Uncover new depths in the Fractals of the Mists to gain powerful new abilities to overcome difficult fractal challenges, garner greater rewards, and unlock more powerful infusions”

So, this will make our hard earn (even more so than ascended gear) become obsolete. This is a gear treadmill.

And before you start start saying that technically the infusion is not a gear. Argue semantics all day if you want, it IS a treadmill.

A full 14 slots mighty infusion set costs about 2600 powerful blood, i.e., 1300g give or take and a few hundred more golds in passion flowers and a few hundred skill points. Please don’t tell me that it is inconsequential.

Let’s catch the treadmill now before it gets release.

You know, there’s no telling what exactly “more powerful Infusions” means. Could be simply having them drop at +2 instead of +1 Agony Infusion.

I’m going to wait and see. And since I don’t do Fractals anyway, it matters precious little to me.

Iason Evan.3806:

Maguuma in the expansion says, “Hello”.

Wanna kill that boss over there? You only need 10 more mastery points. Wanna get to that ledge with the chest on it? 2 mastery points. It isn’t just fractals anymore with a grind. It’s “gear grind” being replaced with “mastery grind”.

Can I have that future machine you have which can play the content already? I wanna try it.

Wanze.8410:

Where did I admit to have a lucky account?

See your user name? It’s not his. Therefore you have a lucky account.

/micdrop

Devata.6589:

Grinding gold is usually also based on RNG (not the dungeon version but basically all other version people use in GW2) because depending on the drops you earn money. It’s just a little bit more predictable because higher numbers makes percentage more accurate.

I don’t think so, there is a bare minimum which can be earned without relying on RNG to give you something valuable. I listed my method earlier, and so far it’s worked. I can feed my crafting habit and still keep going upwards in funds steadily. Not quickly but steadily.

For anything except the big-ticket items (Precursor, permanent contracts/access, nodes) . . . I could get it if I wanted it. I just don’t see a reason to, much like I still don’t see a reason to break your back earning Ascended.

aerial.7021:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

You vendor them, not TP. I thought that was an obvious choice since most blues/greens you can’t profit on much anyway.

You can on some ‘selective’ items, just open the TP and evaluate the price on the item vs what TP will instant buy for, or you can list if you want a few extra silvers.

Not worth the time, seriously. Also not worth the fees which eat into the profit. Vendor and move on. Or if you’re feeling sassy, break it into crafting components and move on.

Lheimroo.2947:

Honestly, the problem back then wasn’t that GW2 had launched with no gear progression. It had launched with no progression of any kind, let alone the horizontal stuff we were expecting. Anet did get one thing right when they claimed the ‘effort gap’ between easily accessible exotics and legendaries was too large to motivate people.

The problem back then was a lot of stuff was plain broken and getting fixed through September. Arah was not even working when it pre-launched for those who preordered. That’s just one case – there were plenty of events which were not triggering properly (some of which are still breaking down… ) and some other things which were just . . . ergh.

Progression wasn’t the elephant in the room on launch. If I recall, it was “dungeons too hard, nerf plz” more. With Ascalonian Catacombs bearing the Mark of Cain on that front.

It’s not that ascended exists, necessarily, that’s my problem. It’s the fact that they had to make it a vertical progression rather than a horizontal one. It did and always will seem like a cop-out to me.

Masteries may end up fixing that.

I wouldn’t have ever designed it that way, I would have designed it as a gear set you get through Fractals – and is only used in Fractals. But that would have kittened absolutely everyone off at the time it was released, so naturally . . . I couldn’t have done it that way.

Seera.5916:

And how many pets do the WvW only players have to go into PvE to get?

Most of them.

I’d like the wolf to be available outside WvW too, or can it at least be available in other places in WvW so it’s not a mad dash from the far swampy corner to Umber?

Tachyon.5897:

As a Ranger, I hope that they also include the ability to permanently stow your pet too.

I have three hopes:

- Perma-stow, or a better stow so my wolf doesn’t jump out when I take fall damage doing a JP and stand on top of me.

- Lock target, so I can send pet to harass something and target something else without the wolf bee-lining away to my new target. This is perhaps more useful with Silverwastes events.

- Some way of progression on pets as there was in GW1 with “Hearty/Elder/Dire”.

DavidH.7380:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Bernie.8674:

How are you getting 5g in two hours? I might get that on guild mission nights, by doing dungeons, or by engaging in concerted farming, but I’ve never gotten anywhere near that by playing casually the way you claim. I must be playing wrong. I’m stagnant somewhere between 20 and 25 gold right now.

World Boss Grand Tour. Log on, find which boss is up next, and do the circuit for an hour. Sell the Ecto from salvaging the rares, sell Silk if I really want to make the money, and sell all the blues and greens.

Drop into Silverwastes if it’s before 1am PST and generally will find an active map. Do events, and sell proceeds much like with the Grand Tour. This one moves faster and can be more lucrative.

Harvest any trees I see there, and then take a moment to go to Pagga’s Waypoint and find the motherlode of Cypress to the west – sell Foxfire Clusters.

I think the lowest I hit was 3.8 g on a night where I forged rares instead of salvaging and selling Ecto.

I never even considered trying to sell blues and green since I couldn’t imagine there was much much market for them at or near the level cap. I’ve just been salvaging them. I assume you mean sell them on the TP, but maybe you are selling to vendors? Do you have any idea who is buying them or why they pay for items that aren’t useful and seem to be in endless supply?

You vendor them, not TP. I thought that was an obvious choice since most blues/greens you can’t profit on much anyway.

Bernie.8674:

How are you getting 5g in two hours? I might get that on guild mission nights, by doing dungeons, or by engaging in concerted farming, but I’ve never gotten anywhere near that by playing casually the way you claim. I must be playing wrong. I’m stagnant somewhere between 20 and 25 gold right now.

World Boss Grand Tour. Log on, find which boss is up next, and do the circuit for an hour. Sell the Ecto from salvaging the rares, sell Silk if I really want to make the money, and sell all the blues and greens.

Drop into Silverwastes if it’s before 1am PST and generally will find an active map. Do events, and sell proceeds much like with the Grand Tour. This one moves faster and can be more lucrative.

Harvest any trees I see there, and then take a moment to go to Pagga’s Waypoint and find the motherlode of Cypress to the west – sell Foxfire Clusters.

I think the lowest I hit was 3.8 g on a night where I forged rares instead of salvaging and selling Ecto.

And I had to wipe something like 5 times in a row for the DP in GW1 for it to matter. (Hard Mode, an automatic kick.) And all I’d need to do is kill something and earn some XP to offset that.

It didn’t always come into play . . . except on vanquishing attempts. There it kind of made a big deal. Oh, and Rotscale would usually get me to -60% without much effort going solo just for edging a little too close.

It’s a mechanic to keep people from just ignoring death, which already has very little consequence aside from lost time. You can ignore up to nine strikes on your equipment as you say, before using an anvil. But that means you do have to think “gee, I really need to hit an anvil quickly before jumping back in”.

Not “oh well, doesn’t matter . . . oh wait, I just broke my chest armor” . . .

No, you fool! You should have claimed you have special voodoo RNGeesus connections where you can switch your luck for his and it’ll only cost 100 Gold.

The point is many people would consider gw2 to be grindy. Even the people defending it dont disagree that it is grindy, they just say it isnt grindy if you ignore all of the things that are grindy, and only focus on the things that are less so.

Let’s get something straight – I’m not defending Ascended as not grindy or as an entity at all. I think it was a big unnecessary step . . . which can rightfully just get shoved in a closet and ignored by anyone who finds it too onerous to deal with. As I liken it to chasing Obsidian Armor back in GW1. I think it’s a little pricey to just buy your way through the materials, but if you’re patient and work on them it’s more likely you can make it work in a timeframe which is expected.

btw 5 gold a day isnt a lot of money, just to meet the 100 silk requirement per day for crafting, which would take you about a month, you would need 5.94 gold. Thats just the silk, doesnt include the linen, cotton, etc.

See, there’s your problem! I get my silk off salvage Especially easy with Silverwastes now pouring low-end loot into my inventory faster than I can salvage it.

Its not about “requiring ascended to progress” its about the goals the designers set for the players, and how what/how players would have to do to get it.

keep in mind if most the goals designers set for players are grindy, most players will tend to feel the game is grindy.
whether they put a metaphorical gun to your head or not, its the truth.

Well, if you’re going to agree grind is subjective – which you have – then claim it’s the truth – which you did – . . . you’ve got a problem. You see, truth isn’t subjective. Truth is something which an objective fact which can be proven.

I also say it’s probably the quintessential right of players to refuse to do the grinds which they neither wish to do nor need to do. I’d go so far as to say it’s their duty if they ever wish to try to change it.

Assumedly, it worked with regards to Precursors.

2/2

phys.7689:

I know you choose to see it as a pointless task.

Because it sort of is a pointless task, since it’s only really useful in areas close to level 80 thanks to downscaling . . . it’s also not something you need until you try Agony.

. . . which is easier to solve by just getting your Accessory slots (five of them) and infusions.

How do any of the post 80 goals that are supposed to serve those purposes feel?

Well, I don’t like PvP that much, WvW is an uneven grab bag depending on the time of day and how the week is going, so I’d say post-80 my goals don’t align at all with what the developers expect me to do.

Of course, they didn’t align in Prophecies either and I didn’t have people trying to browbeat me into feeling ashamed for not going into Heroes’ Ascent.

and as for the whole oh thats subjective, i told you before. There is a great many things in life that are subjective, and yet people are expected to still be able to know/ be responsible for subjective things.

Except for the first two, everything there is pretty much quantifiable – too fast or too slow driving is a legally defined thing. Try arguing to a cop “I wasn’t going too fast, you just don’t have the same definition of fast as I do”. I double-down dare you.

you can be like omg subjective is impossible to speak on as much as you want, but we have to do it every day, we have to communicate and try to understand other peoples perspectives,
If you refuse to speak on subjective matters, you may as well stop talking to any other human ever again, because there is more subjective than there is objective in our worlds.

Not really, no. There is much objectiveness in the world, much in the realm of concrete fact as opposed to opinion. And it’s perfect to speak of subjectiveness but if I say “I really liked reading that book” and the other person says “oh my god that book was garbage” . . . guess what I’m not doing?

I try to see where other people are coming from when I discuss matters with them. That’s been growing thin lately the longer this whole thing goes on, because it’s going in circles and getting nowhere. People want to complain about the grind, and refute the idea it’s unnecessary. People want to compare the grind here to how GW1 didn’t have any. (A concept which makes me laugh, every time. Ditto for how RNG wasn’t an issue there either.)

Just because I can see your point doesn’t mean I have to agree with the conclusion which follows. I may, at my leisure, agree there is a point there. But seeing your side of things, or someone else’s side of things, doesn’t require me to take their side.

1/2

naiasonod.9265:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

I see it as Death Penalty like in GW1. Sure, you could remove it by setting foot in town, for free, or carry items to mitigate it (which had gotten pretty cheap and easy to get by Year Five).

It was, however, an incentive to not play sloppy to avoid wasting your time. After all, if death has no consequence, there’s no motivation to change your behavior and just run headlong into the same obstacle until luck smiles on you in pity and lets you progress.

My big plan to win everything by beating my face against it until it dies has never worked out because of systems like this.

ANET Y U NO LET ME WINZ WIFF MAH FACE?!

Three simple steps.

Play a warrior. Find a zerg. Faceroll anything in your path.

naiasonod.9265:

A Wild Gaile draws near.

Forumer uses Master Ball!

Failure!!! Could not capture Wild Gaile!

That’s because she’s already been caught and is not wild anymore. And a Shiny too, what’s more the pity!

Aidenwolf.5964:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Please don’t ask to switch luck with me, it’s bad enough as it is sometimes. I make it by perseverance and patience.

I’d like it if RNG for “big draw items” was mitigated in HoT so it was possible to either earn through RNG or buy through farming something up (not Gold) to get a guaranteed buy chance.

Well I’d roll the dice and take your luck as it couldn’t be worse than mine.

Yes, it could be. What’s worse, it sometimes has a sense of humor.

Please don’t ask to switch luck with me, it’s bad enough as it is sometimes. I make it by perseverance and patience.

I’d like it if RNG for “big draw items” was mitigated in HoT so it was possible to either earn through RNG or buy through farming something up (not Gold) to get a guaranteed buy chance.

naiasonod.9265:

Serophous.9085:

Time = value. People want to put a value on their time, even if its in a game. They then want something to show inside the game to others their time spent, or at least be towards something that they can show off later.

What makes me smile though, is that people complaining about rewards have NO IDEA how scarce they were when the game launched. Again, when i was going back through the forums, people were whining about having only 5g once they hit 80. Or not enough karma to buy a full exotic set from the temple vendors.

Course then, the november patch came out, and then drop rates were affected by a bug they anet wouldnt respond to until a french forum mod finally replied, then we posted data for months, and finally anet caved and helped rebalance drop rates and give us the boss chests.

I know I absolutely do respective to the bolded sentence, though I personally get very little out of the ‘showing off’ part. As to the rest…I’m inclined to agree. I was here at launch. I’m pretty sure my first 80 got there with roughly 6 gold to his name, and I promptly spent all of it crafting my exotic heavy armor.

I saved Karma instead. I already knew you could get them from the Temples, and I was given an Exotic L79 Longbow from Fireheart Rise. Or was it Frostgorge Sound? Dunno, I knocked those out in the same evening. I wound up getting the armor on my first successful Balthazar win, instead of Obsidian Shards.

Blind Goddess it was pretty dreadful before champ bags . . .

phys.7689:

you guys are taking grind out of hand, probably on purpose to debase the point.
Tetris had no grind, first of all high scores werent hard to reach
they generally reset the machines everyday.
The top scorer in say tetris, probably played for what, 10-20 minutes conescutively?
Tetris had increased speed, and different initial block placements, making each level unique.

so a game you have to play well for 20 minutes, to get the top score, or 5 minutes if you are early in the morning, which has different levels the fiurther you get is a grind?

yall are just being ridiculous

So’s the argument about “requiring” Ascended armor to progress. TTS doesn’t even do that despite posts saying they do. The only thing which requires Ascended is high-tier Fractals. And there’s little point to doing those.

But then, we’re circling back to this point. Again. And I have yet to have someone point out why spending countless time and energy getting the Ascended gear they want is significantly more important than spending countless runs of UW/Fissure for Obsidian Armor.

(Because both Ascended Armor and Obsidian Armor look ridiculous to me.)

There’s no reason to really go for it except . . . to go for it. Which is why I compare, ceaselessly, the Ascended grind to grinding your titles in GW1 – there’s really not much of a point.

As such, if you want to go stuff your hands on to the Ascended Grind third rail, I’m not going to get behind you crying about how you need to do it. Could it be easier? Sure as skritt love shinies. Should it be easier? Not my call; I’d like it to be easier but it’s easing up anymore with the tons of materials salvaging my Silverwastes loot has given me.

Do the drop rates stink like Risen in tropic heat? Sure seems to, but as I got my Wupwup Longbow off the first WvW Season midway? What kind of hypocrite would I be to say it needs to be better after already winning “the lottery” once?

Do Precursors need a review? Apparently they got one. I’m patient to wait to see how HoT handles it.

Does Yakslapper require too much work? I think so, but then I’m not a dedicated WvW player. Ask one of them.

Is gold a grind? I find it hard to say yes when two hours a day will net me roughly 5g without sticking my head into dungeons. If I did dungeons or spent longer, probably could up that to 20g. And I’ll lay out exactly how I do the 5g to anyone who asks – it’s not a secret, it’s not hard, it’s just working with what you have to do.

Certainly affording a Precursor from farming would take forever. Again, HoT may fix that to be easier. Certainly it’s not easy to do Gold-to-Gem; that’s by design and intentional, by my book.

Is it too much grind? That’s for the individual. Blanket statements about how much is too much, or whether it’s “not really all that much” sit on that nice subjective grey area where it’s impossible to qualify universally.

Which is why this topic got so big in the first place.

DavidH.7380:

Assuming you’ve been playing since launch, that is an average of roughly 2 hours a day, every day.

I feel like such a failure…. I’ve only played roughly 30 mins a day for two years. What have I been wasting the rest of my life on???

Slightly before launch, and there were several periods I wasn’t playing every day. More like once or twice a week, and usually that was WvW. (Dem bags.)

I didn’t actually have an approach to earn a Precursor I wanted, mostly because I view having an approach to beating RNG is like expecting to beat a Vegas casino and not wake up in the alley with a lump on your head and a surly guy telling you not to come back.

aerial.7021:

Allisa Wonderland.8192:

Grind?

Go play Pac Man, Space Invaders, Donkey Kong, or pretty much any of the video games that introduced the world to computer gaming. That is what grind is.

Woefully incorrect, Pac-Man, Space Invaders, or Donkey Kong in fact any old game in the era you are talking about on the whole was NOT about grind at all! it was about who could get the highest score, because those games do not have an end-game at all period they if anything loop and you just keep playing for as long as you can stay alive, more importantly they where developed for Arcades Halls, the 2 cannot be compared at all there in different eras, let alone genres.

You’re right. It was only a grind if you cared about the prestige of seeing your name on the leaderboard.

So . . . self-inflicted grind.

. . . I’m having a sense of deja-vu . . . nah, wait, that’s just my Tetris flashbacks.

Lamir.6702:

It’s very possible that she’s referring to Dark Reverie, where being in combat is fairly common due to the seed mortars. Armor taking damage there is not unusual.

Yeah, I hated that place. Never anyone around to pick me up, and I didn’t want to burn Revive Orbs so I would trek BACK through the Spiral (tedious and also punishing at the top even with traits to reduce fall damage) and then into the cavern of Dark Reverie . . . down to the floor and then up again where the last . . . five? . . . jumps were at terminal fall height.

There are only three jumping puzzles I hate more: Clock Tower, Winter Wonderland (even before the latest incarnation) . . . and Grendich Gamble. Not because it’s difficult, but because it’s got very little reward at the top.

I see it as Death Penalty like in GW1. Sure, you could remove it by setting foot in town, for free, or carry items to mitigate it (which had gotten pretty cheap and easy to get by Year Five).

It was, however, an incentive to not play sloppy to avoid wasting your time. After all, if death has no consequence, there’s no motivation to change your behavior and just run headlong into the same obstacle until luck smiles on you in pity and lets you progress.

Dante.1763:

Vayne.8563:

Allisa Wonderland.8192:

Grind?

Go play Pac Man, Space Invaders, Donkey Kong, or pretty much any of the video games that introduced the world to computer gaming. That is what grind is.

If you feel you are being forced to grind in this game.. You are either looking for grind, or just outright doing it wrong. With so much to do, I see this argument as insane.

I grind when I want. I “non-grind” when I want.

Like life, the right mantra may be:

“Play smarter, not harder.”

6300 hours
7 world completions
13 legendaries
3 ascended armor sers
one 30g random drop precursor (rage)

And I keep having fun every day by mixing it up.

You have 13 legendaries? GAH! Gratz. lol I have five, and I’m debating a sixth.

I only have one T.T How do you both have so many!! Like really, please tell me your guyses secrets, cause as it is, im looking at never getting another till the expansion because of how much gold ineed for the pres.

See, I don’t have any. But I only have 1530 hours.

Fernling.1729:

CMM.6712:

Fernling.1729:

I would rather see dueling open to just about anywhere in the game world. It’s typically when I’m waiting for an event to start that I would benefit most from dueling. As of now I just tab out and forget all about the game and miss the event I just waited 30 mins for. Dueling would give me a reason to have the game up when waiting.

Keeping you from alt + tabbing is not a valid reason to add something to a game.

That’s just one of many reasons. The number one reason being that I find it enjoyable. It would be enjoyable to duel while waiting for a boss to spawn.

I suppose you’re right. It’d also be enjoyable for me to drop Healing Spring and Spirit of Renewal, and load “Search and Rescue” while you’re trying to duel too.

That’s the number one reason I could see allowing duels into the game. Number two is so I can accept and Point Blank Shot you off a cliff.