Guild Wars 2

papaiggy.1345:

The overall issue is that Anet like many companies before them have embraced the Everquest methodology that WoW refined. That being “Stupidly hard, almost completely impossible, equates to more fun”.

That’s partly to lay on the shoulders of players who demand harder or more challenging content. We see it all the time in the forums, and I’m sure you can find examples.

Though I find it hard to believe you really are cognizant of the difficulty of soloing in EQ vs soloing in GW2. In one game it is entirely legitimately possible.

I like the example of world completion, the first time you do it you get a rush of joy at the accomplishment you did it, celebrate party time come on… however, after doing it 8 times on 8 different characters that sense of accomplishment is greatly diminished and the only reason you are doing it is for the minor rewards. Did you have to do it on all 8 characters? No. Did anyone force you to do it? No. Was it a grind and boring as hell? Yes. Was the minor rewards worth it? Maybe, clearly to you they were as you put yourself through that grind.

Or, like me, you are doing it because you literally have no interest in doing any of the other offered activities available when logging in.

Seriously. When it’s all that’s left to do, and you still want to be playing the game . . . look, I hate PvP but even I turned to trying it in the last couple years of GW1. Because it was the last thing I had left undone.

(And I still haven’t seen the Hall of Heroes..)

That is what gaming is about right? Having fun? I think a lot of people are forgetting that. And every thing in the game that requires a grind optional or otherwise is a giant huge monotonous fun sucker. Tedious does not = fun.

All right, so what do you propose to fix it? I am curious as to what’s on your mind as a potential solution.

tigirius.9014:

Karma is plenty of effort, it’s a quick easy solid fix, they can do it in no time for Ascended and they know it but the gold buying is too good.

Well, there’s one issue – if the Karma purchase is too low, then why bother buying Exotics like the Temple Armor if you can just buy your way into Ascended by grinding Karma another day?

And yes, we are talking about replacing grinding Gold for grinding Karma.

Theftwind.8976:

Patch day fubar I can dig. The next two or three days post patch downloading fixes should not be.

. . . yeah, that happened too. All this tells me is your history must have been in different MMOs than me.

Again a shout out, this time to UO, which also had rather serious bugs going on for ages. Including an exploitable one which would crash servers on demand.

Theftwind.8976:

emikochan.8504:

It’s just normal in mmos, the systems are just too complex to fully test before going live. If you like the genre, better get used to it.

I am quite familiar with the genre as I have been playing MMO’s since the days of public dialports and BBS’s. Not all games suffer from the patch day blues as some do more testing before releasing the patch to live.

. . . seriously?

Every game I’ve spent time in? Patch day is FUBAR’d for getting anything done. Special mention goes to Kunark, where all the boats broke.

Look, just . . . admit you shouldn’t have told Jay about the tapes. Then this all would have been over already.

Jinroh.4251:

“Play how you want…but it must be this way or else!”

Yes, I know, I’m still miffed it won’t let me punt asura or set charr fur on fire.

Play how I want . . . pfft.

Devata.6589:

When looking at this thread I would think some of “defenders” / supporters of Anet are the biggest thread for the game. They come in here, dismiss everything without any real arguments, leave again to come back and do exactly the same a day later. If you really like the game you should try to participate but just trolling (as that really, is what it is) in a way to try and disrupt and ongoing discussion can at best harm the game.

What about trying to push people who just make that circular grind argument away to try to discuss what the heck to do about the grind?

Oh, wait, because I enjoy the game mostly as-is, I must be one of the threats. Nevermind.

Elestian.6134:

I also think you’re far too cynical about the heart of the discussion. Frankly, I’ve got a great inventory management system with my numerous ascended weapons with alternative sigils, so I’m otherwise content for things to remain the same. But in the same way it would be great to have build templates or gearsets, I could see this being an additional quality of life improve that I do think is deserving of the Legendary rarity. I don’t think this has to be perceived as elitist, and I hope I’m not.

No. No you do not.

But I will reiterate this is most likely a terrible idea to implement. It’s fine as a mental exercise but it really does drip the problem with “give a mouse a cookie” out of every pore. It’s an idea which looks like it should, in every way, function well and could conceivably be a great boon . . .

. . . for everyone who owns a Legendary. Anyone else? Why don’t you have one yet? Go get your Discover card and get Gems!

maddoctor.2738:

Those are the merits of the old school system over the purely random system we have in GW2

True, but there’s merits of the GW2 system over the old school system too. Such as not having to have four items drop off a raid boss requiring 20+ people to down. Or less than that . . . and then having to figure out how to divide it up.

Going further off on this tangent is almost off topic, and I’d rather not get tagged for doing it. It’s sufficient to say there are merits in both systems, and allowing “Account Bind on Acquire” to exist means it’s possible to let the item in question drop more often since it can’t be traded.

After all, if you create . . . for instance . . . a Dredge Commissar tonic which drops off that particular boss but is Account Bind on Acquire? Then you do not have to worry about its drop rate as closely as you would if it wasn’t. It would, in essence, remove a super-rare drop from being another high-ticket item on the Trading Post.

Which I think we all can sympathize with.

maddoctor.2738:

In the traditional system, there is NO RNG to get anything, it just takes time and patience.

That’s the cutest thing I read so far in this thread, it’s just so adorably losing track of what it says.

There is still RNG in the traditional system, you can just bypass it easier. You described exactly how there is RNG, and how it could be bypassed. And in the ancestors of MMOs? You might have had a point about how you could trade anything and it could still be okay. Ultima Online even went one better – you didn’t even have to trade. You could just stalk down the owner and kill them before they could get it safely into a secure location.

. . . when MMOs actually got big? EverQuest did not allow it to be bypassed quite so easily after the initial release. That’s why there was a “No Drop” flag attached to items which were deemed really powerful or quest significant. Heck, from what I understand even Destiny doesn’t let you trade anything anymore, except between characters.

So, when you talk about “traditional style”, I think it’s fair to say it’s more like “really old school” style. Tradition isn’t the same anymore.

tigirius.9014:

I always find these arguments funny because of that fact like seriously, how terrible would it be to actually be able to progress. You know what I was doing before coming back here and checking these replies?

If it’s anything like me, it’d be working a real actual job and grinding out money to pay off my college tuition bill, save for a car payment, and possibly scrape enough extra money on the side to afford to drop cash on some MTG.

But I’m guessing it was something not very integral to actual life . . .

I progressed in another title I’m playing right now.

Yup. Sigh. Sometimes I feel ashamed to actually enjoy playing games in my spare time.

Here’s the issue – Devata, our esteemed and infallible OP, has decided the grind in the game is heretical and needs to be purged. Or at least it needs to be shifted into a bunch of smaller grinds with specific targeted acquisition purposes. The concept of it not being a grind if it doesn’t fit into the single umbrella of “earn Gold, buy off TP”, for instance.

(Which is weird, because Luminescent is kind of a serious grind to go through. And it can’t strictly be purchased through Gold, only through doing things.)

Instead, it would be better if the grind was moved to “want item X, go farm in place Y or off enemy Z”. Which, well still kind of doesn’t solve anything about the grind. Even if buying it off the TP remains an option, it places the grind somewhere else and with only one option to acquire.

A while back I posted an option for working token-based acquisition systems into the old world to allow some of the items to be potentially earned through doing things in the areas but not strictly farming the same mob over and over. (Had that fill in EverQuest, thank you. Darn ghoul, no more Moonstone Rings . . .)

And I find your post interesting largely because you completely skirt one particular note – we’re not talking about actual progression so much as cosmetic progression. There’s a not insignificant difference between the two . . . I was of the opinion (still am) that cosmetics could be token acquired, or Karma acquired as they’re really only good or desired for personal use. (Oh I am so very wrong on that, seeing all the prices for “trivial cosmetic items” on the TP like Permanent Hair Stylist Contract….)

Anyway, if the topic really is about how to shift the grind (more likely to be good for the game), or to eliminate it altogether (more likely to be terrible for the game) . . . can we discuss that? Heck, even a case-by-case basis like I did earlier with Ascended is fine.

Elestian.6134:

My point isn’t that I necessarily believe these would be good implementations of such a feature, but that people here are unilaterally tossing the suggestion out the door because their specific vision of how it has to be implemented might have negative consequences. These claims are moot.

Moot as in they have no place to be discussed, or moot as in it doesn’t matter if it’s brought up because it won’t happen?

I am slightly hurt at the first, because it basically tells me to shut up with dissenting opinions because they’re not welcome. That’s not healthy for discussion of any kind. There has to be a dissenting opinion voiced, or objections raised to options if only to poke holes and check the presumptions of the people offering the suggestion.

Given the heart of the suggestion is basically “I’m tired of this and think I (and people like me) should have/be more special than others” . . . I’d say that’s a poor foundation to build any idea from which will affect the game as a whole.

tigirius.9014:

Here’s the end all solution for the argument of needing a new currency. Karma. It’s completely under-utilized and it needs to be used to directly purchase the items that are simply too expensive and growing in expense in the TP that are used for Ascended gear. Also people need to realize that not everything is equal in this game, some people do continue to experience problems getting any kind of meaningful loot right now! Whole accounts are cut off from it which adds to the frustration.

Interestingly enough, Karma might be a satisfactory solution so long as you can Account Bind things acquired with it. The reason? Karma is significantly easier to accumulate than Gold, and the potential to transmute Karma → Gold needs to be throttled very carefully.

Dragonax.6487:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Mourningcry.9428:

But yes, in regard to functionality, it clearly not a driving factor – which further goes back to undermine the OPs stance that they require more functionality to justify their price, as it isn’t even really a factor with respect to price in the first place.

I already said it.

The idea of just being able to swap sigils on Legendaries is bro-ken. Not just broken, but bro-ken.

It’s a great and awesome possibility; and it would work fantastically towards giving them better/more functionality. But it’s absolutely not the right thing to let past the design and development stage. For numerous reasons.

Can’t have a bigger disagree than this. Explain to me what make Sigil swapping bro-ken ? Pls note that if the impact is not as significant as having 20-30% more stat than ascended (that would make legendary worth their price though ) , I would consider your argument a load of crap.

I’m not surprised you don’t feel it is broken. The people who enjoy using broken things are usually not the type who feel it needs to be removed. After all, it’s in the game so why not make use of it?

Several people have tried to explain why it is broken. So far, you have ignored it in favor of continuing to call Legendaries overpriced for their function. This is the only point you and I will agree upon, because I feel they’ve been hiked up so far it’s ridiculous.

As far as I can see, it will make it slightly more convenient for players who use expensive Sigils on their legendary and don’t want to destroy them when changing their build, nothing more, nothing less. Otherwise, they would have to make another ascended to put the other Sigils on, that’s UTTERLY ridiculous considering they already paid 40 times the price of an ascended for 1 weapon of the same stats. U must be a very unreasonable and full of jealousy person if you think that’s enough to even be considered slightly much.

Thank you for trying to look into my soul. Yes, I am a very jealous person and I have no reasonable basis for my arguments at all. You caught me, very good, now do you want a gold star? How about a dollar? I know, we’ll get you a puppy since you’re such an astute young lad.

Let me lay it out for you.

Suppose you permit Legendaries to Sigil-swap without needing to purchase a new Sigil. That implies you don’t need to purchase them any more, if at all, which indicates all that money you wish to be saving for convenience isn’t going to circulate. This is a problem. But it goes deeper than that.

This gives Legendaries a distinct advantage over those who “merely” use Ascended. When including how it allows you to alter the statistic types out of combat as well, you have a weapon which is clearly Best-in-Slot in almost all aspects. Which means Legendaries are now what people will want to own. This will have two effects.

Firstly, there will be a significant price spike in all parts relating to Legendaries. Precursors, Lodestones . . . those are going to go up as more people try to snatch them up. It won’t get cheaper, which means the “value for the cost” is still going to move out of line . . . so your problem of it not being worth the Gold is still going to be an issue. That means the suggestion is broken because it will not fix what it is intended to fix.

Secondly, and I am guessing you weren’t here when Ascended was actually introduced, the players will riot. Not the tame “SAB or Riot” stuff either. No. This will irrevocably harm the players’ feelings about ArenaNet and their development team. Any designer or developer who signed off on this, something which causes so much damage to the brand, would very quickly be fired.

In both cases, it will be absolutely not in favor of the health of the game to do.

I’ve seen it done before . . . good ideas! Absolutely terrible to actually see used.

tigirius.9014:

From a business standpoint to not remove the grind would mean the game would remain at mediocre sales because not fixing it would mean that even if they have great sales for the expansion post sales gains would dwindle again.

. . . yeah, no. That’s not it at all, and it’s a very narrow view.

The sales are going to dwindle again because, and you should have thought of this, more people will own the game/expansion and it will reach saturation. Grind isn’t going to be the culprit there.

As well, worth saying again – there is a reason grind is in the game. It does serve a function. Without understanding that and putting something else in to replicate that function, removing the grind is damaging the game.

phys.7689:

Its not the perfect example, because ideally i would tie it more to doing things in the world rather than just items, but its just an example

Honestly, there are two problems with how Ascended was designed.

First, creating it renders your Exotic gear you formerly had obsolete. It’s my opinion it should not be its own creation but instead a growth of the lower-tier gear into something more powerful. It should feel like it was not a result of crafting it, but a result of living it. Infusion in Guild Wars 1 may have been a little lackluster but it absolutely did not render your gear obsolete. It was an extra quality which was added, in a sense of how it felt. (And technologically it was just a flag which could be triggered on your armor, to prevent Spectral Agony from eating you alive.)

So really, it should have been something else to acquire armor and weapons. The trinkets? Those were mostly fine – they represented icons from the past of the world which had transcended commonality into fable. The weapons and armor? They bear names, but it’s just not the same as knowing that Ancient Mursaat Token is a link to the distant past.

There’s the first mistake. It feels . . . lackluster, it doesn’t feel like you earn it. (Mawdrey, mostly, feels earned. The Tempered Spinal Blades feels earned. Ascended armor feels like a chore of steadily refining materials until you reach the breakthrough.)

Second mistake, and this one is much more grievous in my opinionated stance. Ascended gear should never have given higher stats than Exotic, or at least in the open world. They were intended to make it possible to dive higher into Fractals where things get tougher, but really that’s the only place they are needed. And only if infused for Agony Resistance. So what should have been done is more elegant a solution – Ascended Gear gets a bonus % to your stats while your are in the Fractals of the Mists, relative to what level of Fractals you have completed and limited by what level you are attempting.

(So just pulling numbers out of my rectal cavity, but you could have +15% at Level 30 Fractals, but if you went to a Level 5 run it’d scale down to where it wouldn’t be as powerful. And if you got in on a Level 40 Fractal, it’d still only be +15% maximum since 30 is as high as you went. Heck, tie Agony Resistance to how many pieces of gear you’re wearing relative to the highest Level you’ve run – no need to invent Infusions as an upgrade at all.)

So, in Fractals they’d be important . . . but in WvW? In general PvE? It’d be the same power as Exotics. Sidestepping the whole problem with them having a higher power level, so they’re only fully useful in one place . . . and players don’t feel the need to chase them as Best-in-Slot, they can chase them for the skins.

. . . and once more, for the heck of it? Render them dyeable. Not via dyes, use the limited palette of colors we have now and let it be through throwing the dye ingredients (off the Cook list) into the Forge with the weapon. Want to get a neat white greatsword? Throw in the Ascended Greatsword, some Crystals, Snow Truffles, and something else. No need to craft up more Deldrimor Steel Ingots and another Inscription.

Saiyan.1704:

Grinds for hours to find loot: All day
Magic find, boosters, food, bond fires spent: 5g

Random girl shows up. Kills an NPC. Finds epic drop. Walks away.

PRICELESS!

For your RNG bags, there’s Maize Balm.

For everything else, there’s epic luck.

It’s a pity, I was really hoping people could stop trying to get distracted and focus on discussing the matter and what fixes they had in mind. Instead it’s all about tearing it down, and not that much about building something better. Or just trying to score points again.

Someone poke me if there’s a serious attempt at discussing this.

Celtic Lady.3729:

Why do people do the whole maize balm farm, anyway? What are they all hoping they’ll get from it?

Stuff.

Honestly, I’m seriously considering selling mine if they each fetch 5g.

Mourningcry.9428:

But yes, in regard to functionality, it clearly not a driving factor – which further goes back to undermine the OPs stance that they require more functionality to justify their price, as it isn’t even really a factor with respect to price in the first place.

I already said it.

The idea of just being able to swap sigils on Legendaries is bro-ken. Not just broken, but bro-ken.

It’s a great and awesome possibility; and it would work fantastically towards giving them better/more functionality. But it’s absolutely not the right thing to let past the design and development stage. For numerous reasons.

Mourningcry.9428:

The price of Legendary weapons are determined exclusively by the player base. While you may not feel that their current incarnation justifies their current price, the market disagrees.

The market on that score is really less a matter of “does the function justify the price” and more “how much gold can I squeeze out of someone desperate enough to avoid making one themselves”.

The reasons Legendaries are so expensive is greed, plain as the fat on a quaggan.

Carlin Sanders.3587:

Behellagh.1468:

They dug too deep …

Guild wars 3: main antagonists – demons from MORIA

Dude, it’s not demons from Moria. It’s “Hidden Fun Stuff”. Just ask Ogden about it, he knows.

Serophous.9085:

When I log on:
“What do I want to do today?”
Silverwastes – is any requirement stopping me? No…
A dungeon – is any requirement stopping me? Well, finding people but no….
WvW – welp, nothing holding me back but a quick trait swapping…
Spvp – eh, if I’m in the mood, nothing stopping me but my own skill…
Fractals – well, I dont care about high end, i’m content on my position now so no…

Its like I can log in, and be ready to play without any restrictions because I didn’t meet some other requirement to do something….

That’d be the big reason I stopped a certain other MMO Finally. It was a bit Fantastic at first, but you know, after so long of having the guild tell me how much awesome endgame was and me having to keep slogging through stuff to get in striking range? Erf. No thanks.

At least I could walk to Orr and find out how awesome it was to run around Malchor’s Leap and Cursed Shore.

eithinan.9841:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

You can’t eliminate all of it, much like you can’t really remove all RNG completely and keep quite the same interest from players.

It’s better to shuffle those things into places where they do not affect the core of the game itself, and act more as flavor/seasonings to the experience as opposed to intruding on the central game itself.

Isn’t the core of the game going out and playing the content available? How is any of it locked behind a grind?

That’s a good question. Discussing it further would derail the esteemed Devata’s thread though.

. . . more dead quaggans.

Behellagh.1468:

So if you know that you will have no time to “fix” any perceived problem with the new trait system between now on ship date, what’s better. Talk about it now and get months of negative forum posts or just before it drops so the negativity is less likely to affect purchases?

You mean like the silence is affecting purchases negatively, from what I understand?

Leo G.4501:

I hate how rare these things are to come by though T_T
—says the very tight wallet of an Asura cook

Camp out Diessa Plateau sometime, harvesting wood, iron, and herb patches.

. . . you can actually turn up quite a bit of useful components.

Sorry, not going to get started on that again.

Absolutely everything I want to do got termed “grind” so, might as well accept that, hm?

:)

mesme.5028:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

mesme.5028:

I think the problem with some grind is there is no alternative which Colin said there would be.

Citation requested, please?

http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/19473-interview-gw2-qa-cd-projekt-conference/

Okay, I’m reading through, and I am having trouble picking exactly what you think he said out of what is listed in the question you quoted just before linking me. I’m not going to derail the thread about it (Six Gods know someone else will anyway) but I will note the following:

- There is only no current alternative to acquiring Luminescent Armor than building the collection. One of these methods is regulated by RNG – the Carapace Coat Box, but the rest are regulated through token-related purchases.

- Ascended gear currently has an alternative. It, however . . . sucks. It’s very rare in the RNG and thus the only reliable method of getting what you wish is to craft. For which you will need Silk, which is currently quite expensive compared to its companion Tier 5 materials.

There is a considerable amount of things which can be done, but these two stick out recently as major issues.

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

Hmm…. well, I spent 6 hours in SW today, just running around do events and gathering chests. Some people would consider “farming” the epitome of grind just due to it’s repetition. However, since I was neither bored, nor felt “forced” in a any way, it didn’t rank on my grind-o-meter personally. When I decided I was done, I stopped, and went about other things. At no point did I feel like I needed to absolutely be there for x, y, or z reason (which plays a big part in my feeling like something is ‘grindy’).

Been there. Especially some nights on WvW when it’s been fairly energetic, going “holy crap I need to be to work in 5 hours . . . um, gotta run!”.

mesme.5028:

I think the problem with some grind is there is no alternative which Colin said there would be.

Citation requested, please?

Cazamar.7148:

Why for the love of God would you continue a post that was going no where? Please make it stop.

Yeah, it’s not going to. This topic will continue to come up time and time again. I’m just going to count blessings it’s not overrun with the same semantics-arguing dolyak droppings as the last few topics.

Start at the top, agree there’s grind, then figure out what . . . if anything . . . should be done about it.

Or you can sit back and take bets how long until the next topic starts up.

phys.7689:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

phys.7689:

Anets goal was to make a game that doesnt feel grindy to players, if players feel what they created as grindy that is important.

. . . eh, I’m of two minds on this. First, I rather agree it’s an issue.

Then I’m reminded of the other game I’m playing more recently, and the words “Blue is overpowered and unbeatable.”

Then I start to laugh.

im assuming you are talking about magic, but i dont think its really mtgs goal to create a game people think is balanced. Their primary goal is to create an interesting game. MTG has had tons of imbalances which constantly change. And some times, they will design imbalances just to shake things up, or be fun.

Yeah, but there’s a lot about it which is important to the integrity of the game . . . balance isn’t one of them. They freely admit, often, they want it to be less a total balance (where there’s not much difference to what color(s) you play) because then it’s uninteresting.

. . . I’d say the same rules do apply to MMOs. Perfect balance is not as interesting as careful imbalance. Remember, chess is perfectly balanced and while it’s lauded so much as an intellectual exercise . . . how fun is it to play compared to, say, Pandemic?

The health of a game is an overriding issue to keep in mind when designing and developing. It’s why I say some grind is going to stay – it’s important to the health of the game. You can’t eliminate all of it, much like you can’t really remove all RNG completely and keep quite the same interest from players.

It’s better to shuffle those things into places where they do not affect the core of the game itself, and act more as flavor/seasonings to the experience as opposed to intruding on the central game itself. Which, mind you, is what we have right now.

But there’s still ways to alter what’s in the game, and some of these places the grind pops up can be dealt with and potentially not have an adverse effect on the health of the game. I think crafting is one place it can be worked on. (Such as enabling Karma trade for special materials like “Large Skull”, while making them Account Bind on Acquire but their completed weapons are not.)

Precursors, as we know, is already something which has been tweaked. (Though details on how have not yet surfaced.)

I’d say there’s precious few other places where the grind should be removed. It could be reduced, perhaps, or tempered to slide away from RNG. Of course, we come back to one question of importance:

Why does it exist in the first place?

phys.7689:

Anets goal was to make a game that doesnt feel grindy to players, if players feel what they created as grindy that is important.

. . . eh, I’m of two minds on this. First, I rather agree it’s an issue.

Then I’m reminded of the other game I’m playing more recently, and the words “Blue is overpowered and unbeatable.”

Then I start to laugh.

evanlegion.7680:

No P2W…and thats all for me

. . . that’s strange, I heard almost daily how it was P2W. From a lot of different people.

Celtic Lady.3729:

All the talk of grinding made me wonder something. What do you do regularly with your game time that some might think is grindy but you don’t?

Not so much anymore . . . but . . .

World Boss Grand Tour. Search out Cypress/Ancient trees or Orichalcum. Mess around in Silverwastes. Craft bits and pieces of components into various things. Chase down particular Wardrobe entries.

This is an example of one of those awesome ideas, which would work really well . . .

. . . which is a terrible idea to implement into the game.

tigirius.9014:

It needs to go. simple, and they’ve got the funds and the ability to make it happen now, the ball is in their court when HoT is released, will this grind still exist or will it continue?

That depends. Has the reason it exists changed? If it hasn’t, then no . . . it’s not going to go away.

Celtic Lady.3729:

Tomerant.2701:

This game has ZERO trolls in chat.

It does? lol Couldn’t resist.

It has tons who come out and play in Lion’s Arch. It’s a minor guilty pleasure of mine to practice my forum PvP with them

What attracts me? $0/month.

Otherwise I’d be in FF14 with some of my better friends grinding levels on the crafter classes.

Me, I wear it as a badge of pride . . . even if it’s only one I can see. “I did that puzzle with no mesmer portals” can’t be proven, but it still resonates within. Just like “I Grandmastered Blacksmith and Miner before Valorite existed.”

Timegating is a mechanic to alleviate other areas of grind, such as allowing the cost to be cheaper . . . but spread out over a long time as opposed to needing more up front. It also can be used to avoid RNG as a means of delivering rewards, or side-by-side – you know it’s eventually possible, but there’s a chance it might drop/pop anyway.

And nerfing events which break other aspects of the game . . . notably the economy . . . is important. Otherwise you run into serious issues.

It’s best to approach the topic less with the attitude of “well don’t do it then”. There’s no discussion potential there. Which is at least how this topic can be different enough than the other one to stay open and not get locked down.

Focus on what the grinds are and what fixes might matter, rather than trying to define it, educate/convert other posters, or scoring points in some game nobody’s paying attention to.

Celtic Lady.3729:

I’m sure it’s a complicated answer. I guess a lot of grind could be reduced simply by reducing the requirements to a more reasonable number, in cases where that could solve the problem.

Creates other problems when you do . . . except maybe for this one:

Achievement numbers could be reduced, such as in many WvW achievements. This would then reduce grind on those.

Are those even an issue, as they’re all vanity titles? Sure, we could reduce numerical requirements, as those numbers are completely arbitrary anyway . . . but what good comes of it? And what bad comes of it being so hefty?

For instance, crafting recipes that are particularly difficult to complete due to items dropping rarely in the world or even being impossible to get aside from the TP or simply having really high item requirements – the numbers of items needed could be reduced, thus reducing grind to complete or discover them.

Ah, crafting. It’s almost always designed in an MMORPG to be unable to generate profit as far as selling to NPC vendors goes. It’s pretty difficult to generate profit to other players, too, in a broad sense. I don’t think I’ve seen any MMO with crafting desirable gear also requiring no grind to reach the ability to do so.

A lot of times when people talk about grind, they mean the ability to make gold. Many people come from games where making in-game currency is much easier there than here, so it seems like a huge grind here. But any talk of making it easier to make a profit, say on the TP, also involves complicated discussions on the economy.

This comes from the link of Gold to Gems – it needs to be monitored, and runaway potential has to be anticipated carefully.

It’s also not a huge grind, unless we are talking about a particular set of options. Limited-access Skins, Precursors, Permanent Contracts, and Gathering Node items. These are quite simply the only things which are “overpriced”. Gearing up takes less than 50 gold if you’re only in it for the gear stats; a Precursor starts at 10x that amount at least before rapidly inflating.

Really there are two problems with the crafting system, and these are ones which can’t be solved without a total redesign (and complete disruption) – the lack of cloth/leather type acquisition except through salvage is a big one, especially considering the incredibly demand for Silk Scraps. (Or Linen.) The second problem is how it really doesn’t offer much reason to do so except for personal use, or the acquisition of Ascended Gear outside of relying on RNG.

Solving the first would create a massive ripple of disruption which may or may not settle down the economy into something at a lower mean value.

Solving the second just would require a lot of work redesigning for almost no gain other than “to do it”.

Celtic Lady.3729:

Serophous.9085:

One person finds something in the game Grindy. A second person does not. Is there, or isnt there grind?

This is the main problem with grind discussions. Everyone has a different definition so no one ever really agrees. For whatever reason, this game is what it is.

For me, aspects of it is the worst grind I’ve ever encountered in a game. But other parts of it is much less of a grind than other games. Basically, I do what I can to minimize the game’s grind while enjoying the parts I don’t find grindy.

And for the sake of the topic, let it be assumed there is . . . in fact . . . grind which cannot be avoided.

What should be done?

Serophous.9085:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

maddoctor.2738:

On another note, Guild Wars 1 had some of the worst “optional” grind ever seen in an MMORPG game.

Second worst I’ve seen. Also wasn’t an MMORPG.

You know what even funnier? Those posts complaining about the grind still exist on forums till this day. You can go back and find complaints about gw1, its just a bit harder cause its spread out, not centralized like gw2 is with official forum run by anet itself.

But hey, people love to wear those rose-tinted glasses

I especially love the exact same conversation about how the grind wasn’t optional, because we say so.

. . . because everyone needs top rank Norn/Asura/Sunspear reputation.

maddoctor.2738:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

maddoctor.2738:

On another note, Guild Wars 1 had some of the worst “optional” grind ever seen in an MMORPG game.

Second worst I’ve seen. Also wasn’t an MMORPG.

Sorry, not MMORPG, COOP RPG

For the record, the second sentence had double meaning. The worse I’ve seen was also not MMORPG but was online – a server running TerraFirmaCraft. There is nothing quite as grindy as getting Red/Blue Steel enough to make gear from it.

maddoctor.2738:

On another note, Guild Wars 1 had some of the worst “optional” grind ever seen in an MMORPG game.

Second worst I’ve seen. Also wasn’t an MMORPG.

Test.8734:

Because players always accept it. That’s why it will never change.

Oh it will change. And the first MMO that tries it is going to faceplant, along with possibly the second as well.

Probably because they don’t grasp why it’s there.

CureForLiving.5360:

Which is important. We cannot figure out how to address something unless we have clarity regarding what the problem is.

They know what the problem is. They know vaguely what they want to do to “fix it” . . . but it leads to two other problems:

First, the fixes usually just lead to other required tweaks and shifts until we’re at a state of total redesign. Easier to go try to make another game altogether. This is the “give a mouse a cookie” problem.

Second, and to borrow from someone else – good design isn’t always hand and hand with good development. It can be the coolest, least grindy game, but is it really what’s good for the game itself?

This is what happens when I listen to Drive To Work.

Devata.6589:

Vayne.8563:

Coffee.7058:

Celtic Lady.3729:

Oh, okay. lol I didn’t realize there are many trains left in the game. The only one that comes to mind atm is the Frostgorge Champ train.

Silverwaste, you have to logout and in a few times to get one or use group finder, but that is usually empty for myself.

The world boss train is still run too.

People grinding using the boss train, frostgorge champ train, EotM train and Silverwaist train. This mainly to be able to buy the (not required) items they want. But people who complain about the game being grindy are out of their mind, there is no grind because there are multiple choices of grind so all the grind does not count as grind.

Yeah makes sense. [/sarcasm]

Surely you realize it’s also likely they grind doing that because there’s literally (not practically, literally) nothing else to be doing once you’ve had a turn at everything else. Or, to be blunt, anything they care to be doing.

Sort of like how people would “grind” things in GW1 because it was potentially lucrative. Or fun, but since having fun is forbidden . . .