People who don’t buy the expansion won’t get to play with most of the features of the expansion.
It’s like people who sort the Hobbit and paid to see it, don’t get to see the second Hobbit movie until they pay again. It’s not like the story finished with the first movie. They’ll never know what happens if they don’t pay to see the sequel.
Naturally some people will wait a longer time until it comes out on video, or comes on cable., but they’re still paying to rent it then, or paying for cable every month.
Every NORMAL player wants and needs best stats.The dmg increase and % dmg recived due to faster killing rate is more then NOTICABLE.For greatsword increase of weapon DPS is 52.5 + all the power and crit dmg is closer to around 20 or more dmg then 5% hehe.only builds that dont have noticable gain from Ascended gear are condi builds,but they never were good anyway…
I see forum “you dont need ascended gear” trolls are as active as ever.Which is no surprize because they dont realy play the game…
Every normal player. Best line ever.
There are no normal players, at least not as you mean average. But I’d wager more than 50% of the population doesn’t care about best stats. I have no idea why you’d think they do. Hell, probably 50% of the population has never been to a Guild Wars 2 site, doesn’t know what the meta is and they just log on and kill stuff.
I’m a hard core player and I don’t particularly care about the best stats. People who min/max have always been a minority, not a majority.
It reads to me like there are several things you can do, but you have to choose which you want to do, in the order you want to do them. I don’t have a problem with this.
For example, if you put points into lore and get some new area you explore, then you haven’t put points into hang gliding and you can’t get to those areas.
There is a down side of course. It’s the same down side you have when someone wants to run a story mode mission with you and you’re not up to their story.
But I’m not really sure how a game can progress with no choices and a game without those choices is poorer for it in my opinion.
Another example from Guild Wars 1. During the story, you had to stop at one point and farm 10,000 Kurzick or Luxon points to continue to the next mission. It wasn’t particularly grindy but it did require you to stop moving forward until that was done.
It reminds me a bit of Eye of the North (as I said elsewhere). You could do any of the three story paths in any order, but you had to do all of them before you could do the Deldrimor story.
I’m not terribly worried from what I’ve seen so far.
Ever hear of the knife of phaedrus. You make it sound so cut and dried, but it’s really not.
I’d like to see you take a party of 20th level guys into Arah and beat it. I don’t think you can. I’m not even sure it’s possible.
At any rate, you can’t even attempt the 70th level personal story without having to get to the level 60th personal story. It’s linear.
Now we don’t know that this stuff is gated in the sense you’re suggesting. It simply could be unlocked in linear fashion. That is you have to do certain things before other things.
In Guild Wars Eye of the North, you could do the Ebon Vanguard, Asura or Norn path in any order you liked…but the Deldrimor path was always the last one. That content was gated by having to finish the other content first.
Until you see what is going on, this sort of thing is meaningless.
“Once I leveled to 80,” that is. However I could level by doing (almost) anything in the game – be it crafting, exploring, gathering, or killing. I didn’t have to go and do PS chapter 7 to move from lvl 70 to 71 – for which in turn I also had to do chapters 1-6. Fun fact: I finished my personal story almost 1 year after I started playing the game, simply because I found it boring… and no content was restricted from me during all that time (I even killed Zhaitan!), the only content PS was gating was PS itself.
There is a point. The point is in raising awareness before it’s too late and everything is set in stone. Because I really want to enjoy HoT the same as I enjoy GW2, and I don’t want to sigh and ignore the expansion because it becomes the same “grind or stay behind” as all the other MMOs out there that I refuse to buy, and mastery points which replace my level become the new Gear Score.
Hot isn’t going to change that drastically before it’s released. That kind of change would set the game back months if not years. It’s never going to happen. Anet is talking about it and showing it. If this is how it pans out, then your words at this point won’t change it.
But my Eye of the North example STILL applies. You couldn’t do the Deldrimor story until you did the other 3. It was gated at max level.
Even the Living Story within each chapter right now is gated.
This might very well be a type of progression that’s linear, rather than what you’re implying it is. That is to say it’s easy to get the stuff you need to do it, but you have to make choices about where you want to go first.
Getting people up in arms when it’s not out yet, and when it’s not going to change anyway at this late date, I repeat, pointless.
What you’re really saying here, if it’s this then it’s bad. Maybe. But we won’t know until we see it, and when we see it it’s too late.
The problem I have with self-identifying as a role-player is that the definition of what role-playing is within the context of MMOs anyway, has changed quite drastically. There’s a page for roleplayers in Guild Wars 2, an entire domain and nothing that goes on there has anything to do with my style of play. Using the words role player to describe anyone not engaged in that activity is unnecessarily confusing.
I’ve always considered myself an immersion player and immersing myself in the world and lore…and even having my characters alive in my head is quite normal for me. But I resist using the word role player because of the existing definition. I don’t want to give people the wrong idea.
Role-player is too old a word, with too many ideas attached to it to really be useful for this kind of conversation.
I think a new word is needed to differentiate us.
Can you link me to the part that says obtaining masteries will be grindy?
Also, if there’s no long term goal for players, what’s gonna keep people playing?
You don’t get it!
What if I have to play the new content and earn mastery points by doing basicly ANYTHING that gives me XP? Doing anything is super Grindy! Give me mastery points in log-in rewards!
Jump on the Grind-Worry-Train! (what?)
You can earn mastery levels by doing basically anything that gives XP… on those 10 square meters which are not locked behind new mastery levels!
You can earn mastery levels by doing basically anything that gives me XP… once you’ve grinded that adventure for a month, succeeded and unlocked the mastery which gates the rest of content!
But I just remembered you, Bubi. You’re the one who taught mesmers the mesmer basics in that LS thread, told Miku to L2P, and then linked his own video.
Seriously, we need to be able to assign tags/groups/notes to forum users so that we know what kind of reasoning we’re dealing with once we meet on the forum again. It will save time in so many arguments.
I don’t believe there could be an MMO without grind and there haven’t been so far.
No offense but you should leave MMORPGs and play single player games instead because there haven’t been a single MMORPG that wasn’t grindy and there probably never be.
Fun fact: there was! It was called Guild Wars 2.
I could level to 80 and experience all content in the game, including Arah and all the Fractals from lvl 1 to 9, which featured all the existing fractal maps.
Will I be able to in HoT? No.
Why? Probably because “casuals” didn’t stay long enough to pay enough money to let the game stay as is. I’m afraid some people cannot cope with getting instant freedom and setting the goals themselves – they need to be restricted, constrained and gated, and only then they will stay and fight for freedom they could’ve enjoyed straight away. That’s a weird psychological phenomenon, but it’s here.
Ever hear of the knife of phaedrus. You make it sound so cut and dried, but it’s really not.
I’d like to see you take a party of 20th level guys into Arah and beat it. I don’t think you can. I’m not even sure it’s possible.
At any rate, you can’t even attempt the 70th level personal story without having to get to the level 60th personal story. It’s linear.
Now we don’t know that this stuff is gated in the sense you’re suggesting. It simply could be unlocked in linear fashion. That is you have to do certain things before other things.
In Guild Wars Eye of the North, you could do the Ebon Vanguard, Asura or Norn path in any order you liked…but the Deldrimor path was always the last one. That content was gated by having to finish the other content first.
Until you see what is going on, this sort of thing is meaningless.
Content gating and a gear score dressed up as the “mastery” system, I won’t be buying!
Gear score and the mastery system are worlds apart. I’m not sure how anyone can compare them.
Gear score specifically adds up all your gear to give you a number. This is not really any different from achievement points which are already in the game.
Basically anyone who parties with you can see your achievement points right now. So I’m not really sure what you’re on about.
Often enough it was stated, that you will not be able to overcome the challenges in HoT until you unlock a certain amount of mastery skills.
So the content is gated behind your mastery score which is sort of just a replacement for a gear score.
It is an artificial gating which has nothing to do with personal skill but with the system behind it.
So this means:
Game A: Not high enough gear score = you can not complete the content
Game B: Not high enough mastery score = you can not complete the contentThere is a difference in how to aquire the scores, but the result is the same. A bit like old radiance in LotRO.
While I understand that gating makes sense in MMOs for it will make the content last longer than it would without, I am still not happy about potential progress blocking for more casual players.
Edit: Proof from IGN interview
“With combat, it’ll be more like a reveal like you might see in a game like Zelda where there’s a feeling like wow, I got this tool and now I remember when I was trying to fight this creature before I couldn’t get past this one ability; this tool clearly tells me this is the key to that lock and now I’m going to open it,” adds Mastery design lead Crystin Cox. “That feeling is one of the things we’re really going: now I have more power, not because a number went up but because I can actually do this thing.”
The problem with this system: A really skilled player can overcome the gear score, but you have no chance against a mechanic that is required to beat an encounter that is locked behind a mastery.
In this regard, the mastery system is worse of a gating than a gear score.
An interview isn’t proof of anything. Because the words you take absolutely literally may not mean what you think they mean. We’ve seen it time and time again, even with just the word grind in the manifesto. What Anet said they were saying wasn’t what everone assumed they were saying.
It’s entirely possible that this is something to take literally. It’s entirely possible that it’s not impossible to beat the odds if you’re a very skilled player. We simply do NOT have enough info at this point.
Until we have enough info, I’m not going to rely on a couple of words in an interview which might be literal and might just be there to give you an idea of how hard the content is.
But we do know that there is one thing that is gated. There are going to be areas you can’t reach if you don’t have mastery points.
By the same token, the level 70 personal story is gated, because you can’t get to it until you do the level 60 personal story. It means that that content is linear.
Linear content is always gated. You must do X before you do Y.
It may mean nothing more than that.
Some of the most devestating changes during the past 2 years were suggested by players INCLUDING the addition of ascended gear.
Bullkitten. It’s one of the continuously returning misconceptions, but it’s simply not true. People at the time were asking for more content, but the idea of gear grind was attacked even more savagely than it is now. Ascended gear is something Anet did completely on their own.
And lot of other problematic changes were not due to the player ideas, but to the modifications Anet tagged on top of those.
This is true. Very few people asked for gear progression in this game. Far far more people were against it. Anet knew this when they introduced ascended gear. So why did they do it? There has to be a reason to kitten off your core fan base.
In my opinion, they felt, rightly or wrongly, that they didn’t have a choice.
But you can’t really pin this one on the fans.
Buying gems with real money mmm
I play ranger and it’ s a totally broken class compared to other classes.
when they fix ranger and bring joy among ranger community..
I’m sure I
will be the first cash shopper in this game. But till then…I won’ t spend a cent
My ranger does pretty well. Not sure why yours would be broke.
Fractals was designed to be the one place in the game for people who like that progression to play. That was the function of Fractals. It was always meant to be a progression and it was always meant to be a grind.
The thing that they did was, the left the rewards pretty much the same after level 10 or so, so you could get fractal rewards, just at a lower percentage chance. You could experience every fractal.
Saying that the fractals are going to become a grind is rich. They are already a grind. They were made to be a grind.
People say that this game was created to give people of all “walks of gaming life” something to do. Some people want to grind. Anet gave them fractals.
Can I do fractals without grinding. Absolutely.
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”.
Will the Fractal progression be more pronounced? Of course. But them saying we dont have a level cap increase is true in word but not action. Some of the enemies in the expansion may as well be level 100 because you aren’t killing them until you get a certain number of mastery points.
The amount of assumptions in your post is pretty staggering…and not just by a little. I’ll wait and see before I make those assumptions.
In a sense this game always had some gated content. I couldn’t do Arah at level 20.
There’s gated and there’s GATED. Until we see what’s what, it’s a bit premature to say anything.
Content gating and a gear score dressed up as the “mastery” system, I won’t be buying!
Gear score and the mastery system are worlds apart. I’m not sure how anyone can compare them.
Gear score specifically adds up all your gear to give you a number. This is not really any different from achievement points which are already in the game.
Basically anyone who parties with you can see your achievement points right now. So I’m not really sure what you’re on about.
Vayne, if you persist in deliberately misinterpreting people I may as well misinterpret everything you ever said back at you.
You know, if you read english, that isn’t what I said or implied.
I wasn’t deliberately doing anything. That’s what I got from what you said. If that’s not what you meant, it absolutely wasn’t clear to me.
GW1 had plenty of grind with its faction grind and grinding for ectos. Then grinding the same mob over and over again for its rare drop.
But there were also many title tracks that were not so grindy. Legendary Vanquisher, for example. Also, I got full sets of BiS end game gear by simply playing through story lines. We didn’t hit level 20 only to discover that we were going to be collecting silk for the next year or so before being able to craft our BiS gear. Plus, there were tricks to reducing your grind in GW1. Soloing high end mobs was feasible with certain builds, and three-manning eight-man content was often effective as well.
Because some elements of not so grindy doesn’t mean there isn’t grind. Its still grind. There are tricks to reducing the grind in gw2 as well. But its still grind.
there is a difference between optional grind and progression grind, GW1 has pretty much no progression grind but plenty of optional grind, GW2 is the exact opposite.
Well that’s not true. Guild Wars 2’s progressive grind is gear progressive grind. Guild Wars 1’s progressive grind was rep grind for skills as well as grind for better chances to salvage and retain lockpicks on chests. All of that is progressive, even if it’s a different kind of progression.
I feel like I have to have ascended armor less than I felt I had to level save yourselves to max level on my imbagon paragon. What you’re stating is an opinion, not a fact.
i don’t think you know what optional grind is, to make it simple for you, it’s when you don’t need it to play the game.
anything lockpick is optional, anything rep is optional.
you don’t need PvE skills to win in the game, better yet, in PvP you can’t even use them in the first place.in GW2 you NEED a certain armor tier or you’re useless in high/max level areas, you NEED a higher weapon tier or you’re practically useless, you NEED to get your traits or your character is useless.
that’s progression grind, something you can’t avoid.oh and FYI, that’s a fact, not an opinion.
what you see as needed is beside the point, what is needed by game design, that’s what matters.In Guild Wars 2, you can finish 90% of the content in greens. You’re not useless in high level max areas, things just take a little longer. People beat liadri naked.
That’s a fact.
That’s a completely facetious argument. The developers do not intend people to stop when they hit green gear. They did not design the game to either encourage or require that kind of behaviour.
But go on, you can say anything is optional. Hell, playing this game is optional. Leveling is optional. You can stay at level one and just pvp, can’t you? It’s a challenge.
Okay so everyone here’s the deal. I’m saying getting a character decked out in greens is not an issue. This guy is saying it is an issue. Feel free to make up your own minds on this matter.
I’ve never once heard anyone before claiming that getting greens at max level was a grind of any kind.
Fractals was designed to be the one place in the game for people who like that progression to play. That was the function of Fractals. It was always meant to be a progression and it was always meant to be a grind.
The thing that they did was, the left the rewards pretty much the same after level 10 or so, so you could get fractal rewards, just at a lower percentage chance. You could experience every fractal.
Saying that the fractals are going to become a grind is rich. They are already a grind. They were made to be a grind.
People say that this game was created to give people of all “walks of gaming life” something to do. Some people want to grind. Anet gave them fractals.
Can I do fractals without grinding. Absolutely.
There are, and have always been, two types of people playing these games, or two poles which people find themselves between. This has been true since the early days of pen and paper games, before computer games were even a thing.
The people I used to call simulation players and now call mechanics players are interested in the mechanics of the game. To them, everything is a system. This is how I get the most damage. This is how I maximize my efficiency. This is how I get through this dungeon fastest.
Then there are role players who use weapons that they think are cool, even if they’re not the most efficient. My character doesn’t like swords, even though swords are the most efficient weapon I can use. Some people don’t even know what works best.
Some people play healers not because healing helps the team, but it’s because they want to play. And as long as they play with other people playing that way, there’s usually no hassle. It’s when people who play their characters as characters come into contact with people who see the game as a bunch of systems that problems erupt.
And of course, you can be in the middle. I’m more for a person who plays characters, but I am mindful that some things just aren’t effective. I assume my characters are smart enough to want to be effective. But that’s not the same thing as saying MOST effective or most efficient.
At the end of that day most people are somewhere between the two poles, but they lean to one pole or the other.
I can very much get behind that last sentence. I just really don’t want to have GW2 turn into the same feeling I get in other MMOs where it’s like “kitten… I can’t even do this because I took a couple months off and now I’m behind a months work in older content people aren’t doing as often” That’s my fear and why the entire idea of vertical progression annoys me, because again that’s one of the big things I love about this game is the escape from that.
This is horizontal progression, as horizontal as creating a vertical progression graphic then asking people to lie down on their side and watch it again.
Well anyway we still don’t know how much time it will be required to collect points, but when they said they see this system as a long term goal I can’t help worrying about it.
See I don’t get this. What is worrying about something taking a long time.
People play MMOs to be there a long time. If there are no long term goals, then people stop playing. Not all people but enough people. If enough people stop playing, there is no MMO and you have to find another one.
All any MMO ever is is a list of things to do. Guild Wars 1 was even like that. Once there’s nothing left to do, people leave.
You stay with or leave an MMO based on how much you like the list of things to do.
I just hope that the acquisition of the new progression does not involve the Mystic Forge and/or the need for a spreadsheet to keep track of excessively long lists of the stuff needed to “make” them. There are already too many incremental rewards that require too many different types of increments in the game for my taste. There is also too much collect-virtual-things to eventually get reward in the game for my tastes.
One of the worst parts of the trait system (for me) is the level-gating of the content needed to unlock traits. The slot opens at level 36 but the event needed to unlock trait Y is a L60 champion, for instance. That should not be a problem with HoT masteries. I’m expecting the new content to be L80, and many players already have L80’s. Of course, the Revenant that everyone is likely to make will need to reach L80, but unless HoT features level-up areas, that will be taking place via the normal leveling means. I’m expecting at least some people will save up Tomes and Writs and have an 80 Revenant as soon as HoT launches, anyway.
Sounds to me it’ll be like the PvP reward tracks, which keep track of themselves.
GW1 had plenty of grind with its faction grind and grinding for ectos. Then grinding the same mob over and over again for its rare drop.
But there were also many title tracks that were not so grindy. Legendary Vanquisher, for example. Also, I got full sets of BiS end game gear by simply playing through story lines. We didn’t hit level 20 only to discover that we were going to be collecting silk for the next year or so before being able to craft our BiS gear. Plus, there were tricks to reducing your grind in GW1. Soloing high end mobs was feasible with certain builds, and three-manning eight-man content was often effective as well.
Because some elements of not so grindy doesn’t mean there isn’t grind. Its still grind. There are tricks to reducing the grind in gw2 as well. But its still grind.
there is a difference between optional grind and progression grind, GW1 has pretty much no progression grind but plenty of optional grind, GW2 is the exact opposite.
Well that’s not true. Guild Wars 2’s progressive grind is gear progressive grind. Guild Wars 1’s progressive grind was rep grind for skills as well as grind for better chances to salvage and retain lockpicks on chests. All of that is progressive, even if it’s a different kind of progression.
I feel like I have to have ascended armor less than I felt I had to level save yourselves to max level on my imbagon paragon. What you’re stating is an opinion, not a fact.
i don’t think you know what optional grind is, to make it simple for you, it’s when you don’t need it to play the game.
anything lockpick is optional, anything rep is optional.
you don’t need PvE skills to win in the game, better yet, in PvP you can’t even use them in the first place.in GW2 you NEED a certain armor tier or you’re useless in high/max level areas, you NEED a higher weapon tier or you’re practically useless, you NEED to get your traits or your character is useless.
that’s progression grind, something you can’t avoid.oh and FYI, that’s a fact, not an opinion.
what you see as needed is beside the point, what is needed by game design, that’s what matters.In Guild Wars 2, you can finish 90% of the content in greens. You’re not useless in high level max areas, things just take a little longer. People beat liadri naked.
That’s a fact.
green is a higher tier……i have a name for this but it’s not a nice one….-_-
Sure, but it’s also easy as hell to get. It doesn’t matter if a tier is higher if everyone can have it pretty much at 80. Hell, if you’re leveling a new character now and doing your personal story you’ll have some rares and exotics by the time you’re done.
Non-issue is a non issue.
I’ve never liked ascended gear, but the only real complaint here is that I can’t have it NAO!
There are so many ascended mats floating around that Anet had to make special things to eat them.
Yes, at first it seems like it’s very hard to make. After a while, you can make at least ascended weapons almost at will. I made one today just because I didn’t have an ascended torch on my guardian and I use a torch sometimes.
GW1 had plenty of grind with its faction grind and grinding for ectos. Then grinding the same mob over and over again for its rare drop.
But there were also many title tracks that were not so grindy. Legendary Vanquisher, for example. Also, I got full sets of BiS end game gear by simply playing through story lines. We didn’t hit level 20 only to discover that we were going to be collecting silk for the next year or so before being able to craft our BiS gear. Plus, there were tricks to reducing your grind in GW1. Soloing high end mobs was feasible with certain builds, and three-manning eight-man content was often effective as well.
Because some elements of not so grindy doesn’t mean there isn’t grind. Its still grind. There are tricks to reducing the grind in gw2 as well. But its still grind.
there is a difference between optional grind and progression grind, GW1 has pretty much no progression grind but plenty of optional grind, GW2 is the exact opposite.
Well that’s not true. Guild Wars 2’s progressive grind is gear progressive grind. Guild Wars 1’s progressive grind was rep grind for skills as well as grind for better chances to salvage and retain lockpicks on chests. All of that is progressive, even if it’s a different kind of progression.
I feel like I have to have ascended armor less than I felt I had to level save yourselves to max level on my imbagon paragon. What you’re stating is an opinion, not a fact.
i don’t think you know what optional grind is, to make it simple for you, it’s when you don’t need it to play the game.
anything lockpick is optional, anything rep is optional.
you don’t need PvE skills to win in the game, better yet, in PvP you can’t even use them in the first place.in GW2 you NEED a certain armor tier or you’re useless in high/max level areas, you NEED a higher weapon tier or you’re practically useless, you NEED to get your traits or your character is useless.
that’s progression grind, something you can’t avoid.oh and FYI, that’s a fact, not an opinion.
what you see as needed is beside the point, what is needed by game design, that’s what matters.
In Guild Wars 2, you can finish 90% of the content in greens. You’re not useless in high level max areas, things just take a little longer. People beat liadri naked.
That’s a fact.
There are plenty of people who play for hours a day and don’t get bored because they mix stuff up. Sure I could play (and have played) other games. But the bottom line is, your post is needlessly judgemental, because some people experience things differently than you do.
The whole point that I apparently failed to make is that everyone experiences things differently. Perhaps my post was colored by a previous post that I had recently visited where someone was calling for waypoints to be abolished. Maybe I should have posted these thoughts in that thread instead. I could see how, if I was bored and retired, I would want more grind in my game. However, most of us are not retired, and many of us are past college. I’m actually about 20 years past college, and I recently reached that phase of my life where my kids no longer demand so much attention. Heck, I practically have to force it on them these days. But I digress. I’m not opposed to grinds for new skins, minis, and hats. What I don’t like having to grind for is end game gear. Some argue that you don’t have to grind for end game gear because you can redefine your end game to be champion trains or silverwastes farming. Based on statements they made in the past, I don’t think ArenaNet ever intended for players to have to redefine their end game to avoid a grind. Unfortunately, that’s exactly what we’re having to do right now.
The argument here is grind for end game gear. Do you mean BIS gear? They’re not necessarily the same thing.
The getting there 2 hours before a open world event and then shuttling in your guild mates in just so you have a chance at hard content is no fun either.
Before GW2, I have never encountered a game that made me (the paying customer) wait around for 2 hours+ just to play some specific content. Can you imagine if shops said that, sorry you after wait 2 hours to buy that tv.
Stupid.
Content should revolve around the players and they should be able to trigger it whenever they want. Its okay with me if you after complete certain steps/events to trigger it but those should take no more than 20 mins or so.
Today everyone works different times. So games should revolve around people, not people revolving around the game.
I guess you never played a game with 1 week lockouts on raids then.
Don’t know which games you played, but LotRO had raid lockout, yet we were free to pick our day and time to run it. No timer attached telling us that missing it at 6PM meant waiting for midnight for another chance, and no need to wait for 2h at the dungeon door just to avoid being locked out on the wrong megaserver.
I remember raiding in games, where you had to farm rep before you raided to get the mats you needed to make the consumables you need to succeed. And sure you could raid any night you wanted. But if you beat that raid you had to wait around again for a week. If you didn’t get that single piece of armor that you needed to progress, your progress was off for days. You couldn’t go back in. You couldn’t do anything.
Waiting around for 40 minutes while organizing hard raids was pretty standard anyway.
Point taken on the wait for repeat after a win.
In regards to the waiting/organising, i don’t find it comparable personally. If there was any preparing involved then fine, but at the moment big events are very very straightforward, meaning that it’s pretty much just waiting there just to avoid logging on to an empty map.
With the exception of the Triple Threat, I get in ten minutes before Teq and still do him. I came to the Karka Queen yesterday two minutes after the hour and still did it with ease.
I’d like to see this fixed too.
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.
6300 hours. That’s 262.5 days. And the game has only been out for about 890 days. You have literally spent over a quarter of your life playing this game since it came out. I don’t think your perspective is typical. I’m glad you enjoy the game, but you can’t seriously expect everyone else to be as devoted to it as you are.
The same might be said for people who post on forums. I’m pretty sure people who post regularly on forums have hundreds of hours on forums. It makes them a pretty small percentage of the population in general. Their perspectives are probably not typical, because they think more about their gaming experience than a lot of people who just log in and run around.
Not everyone is devoted to this game as anyone. Not everyone who posts on the forums that has problems with grind will represent the average person. Does the average player care about ascended gear at all? Who knows.
That’s the problem really. We don’t know what percentage of the players bothered to make ascended gear at all, or what percentage of those players feel they need it. If you don’t need ascended gear then the grind is for cosmetics.
One women in my guild farms tons of black lion keys. That’s 50% of her game time. That’s what she likes. She finds it relaxing. She doesn’t see it as grinding. To me, that would be the most boring thing imaginable.
A MMO is not a source of accomplishment; it’s a source of entertainment. Accomplishments happen in the real world, not in an online one. After I’ve spent my day accomplishing things I like to come home and escape to an online world for a couple of hours. I don’t want to spend those hours engaging in simulated commutes or artificial drudgery. I’ve gotten plenty of that already in real life. Demanding that entertainment be entertaining isn’t “lazy” or “entitled.”
In an ideal world, that would be true. However, in the real world, what’s so is that some players demand that MMO’s provide that entertainment over the course of many thousands of hours of game time.
Maybe that’s your world, but I speak from experience when I say that most of those players are disabused of that notion when mommy and daddy quit paying for their schooling and/or housing. That’s the real world that I’ve experienced. The most hardcore players I knew in college barely even play anymore, if they play at all. Besides, those players have plenty of other games to play. The Guild Wars franchise has always been targeted at a more casual audience. A couple of hours a day is pretty much all that my guild mates and I generally tolerate. Players who genuinely find joy in performing the same repetitive tasks day in and day out should spend a little time away from the keyboard to regain perspective. I want to spend my time in game doing stuff, not re-enacting my real life experiences.
Life is always so black and white when you’re young. Then there’s the other side of it. People who work so hard in life, or worked hard for so long, they don’t really want to do stuff at all. Not in the sense of challenging content.
Some of us are older and tired, and sore and we just want some down time exploring a beautiful world. Maybe our memories aren’t so sharp that we remember every thing we did and so it’s not as repetitive. Maybe we’re looking at something other than mechanics and it really is different for us often enough.
There are plenty of people who play for hours a day and don’t get bored because they mix stuff up. Sure I could play (and have played) other games. But the bottom line is, your post is needlessly judgemental, because some people experience things differently than you do.
I have this experience with all my friends from college. Well my kids are past college by some years now and stuff they used to say like that has changed over years. They used to talk just like you.
Kids just out of college isn’t the whole world and different people do enjoy different things. Are they more casual. Depends on how you find casual. They certainly like doing different things than you do.
The name of the game is progression. There are more than a few people who feel the need to progress somehow.
With vertical progression numbers get bigger. With horizontal progression, the skill pool gets bigger.
Whether you prefer one or the other, I believe most people want to see their characters progress. They want to see them get new skills. Getting a skill point every time you ding 80 again isn’t enough for a lot of people…maybe even most.
There’s an excitement for people in working toward new things. Right now, we can work toward new skins, and we can work towards achievements, but none of those really make our characters more powerful.
Yes, there are upsides and downsides to being more powerful. But I believe most people want their characters to be more powerful.
It’s a mixed bag, no matter how you slice it.
As for the topic of grind, if it sets up so each unlock is a different thing you’re doing, I don’t know that I’d classify it as grind…but some people will.
The OP is wrong and the OP is right. Skill grind COULD be worse than gear grind, but that’s really just an opinion anyway. So…
Objectively one is not likely worse than another, it’s subjectively that the question needs to be stated. Those who played Guild Wars 1 and enjoyed it probably prefer skill grind to gear grind. Those who played other MMOs if they enjoyed gear grind and seeing their numbers get higher might enjoy that.
Either way, we have no way to know if the skill grind in hot is worse than gear grind since we don’t have enough details to judge it (and I suspect we won’t until we play it).
Speculation is fun, but that’s all it really is. Speculation.
I’m sure you can pull a number of grindy achievements out of your hat. But taking the grindiest PvP achievement out of your hat and trying to use it as an example? Probably not the best way to phrase an argument.
There are grindy achievements, but they’re the exception, not the rule.
Giant slayer isn’t a PvP achievement, what you on about?
Typo. Change the PvP to PvE and you get the meaning. I’m pretty sure most people figured that out.
The getting there 2 hours before a open world event and then shuttling in your guild mates in just so you have a chance at hard content is no fun either.
Before GW2, I have never encountered a game that made me (the paying customer) wait around for 2 hours+ just to play some specific content. Can you imagine if shops said that, sorry you after wait 2 hours to buy that tv.
Stupid.
Content should revolve around the players and they should be able to trigger it whenever they want. Its okay with me if you after complete certain steps/events to trigger it but those should take no more than 20 mins or so.
Today everyone works different times. So games should revolve around people, not people revolving around the game.
I guess you never played a game with 1 week lockouts on raids then.
Don’t know which games you played, but LotRO had raid lockout, yet we were free to pick our day and time to run it. No timer attached telling us that missing it at 6PM meant waiting for midnight for another chance, and no need to wait for 2h at the dungeon door just to avoid being locked out on the wrong megaserver.
I remember raiding in games, where you had to farm rep before you raided to get the mats you needed to make the consumables you need to succeed. And sure you could raid any night you wanted. But if you beat that raid you had to wait around again for a week. If you didn’t get that single piece of armor that you needed to progress, your progress was off for days. You couldn’t go back in. You couldn’t do anything.
Waiting around for 40 minutes while organizing hard raids was pretty standard anyway.
I think it’s disingenuous to compare GW1 rep grind with WvW mastery. The GW1 titles were a very apparent grind. WvW mastery is achieved by participating in general WvW. If you’re claiming that WvW is grind then there is just a problem with your definition.
GW1 reps were only a grind after you got enough levels to be useful for story/mission purposes. The first few levels came pretty easily before the curve got steep, but top level was pretty much unnecessary for anything but bragging rights (titles, armor, or whatever). You didn’t need to be top tier Lightbringer to take down Abaddon, or top tier Norn/Asura/Vanguard to take down the Great Destroyer.
If mastery works the same way, I’m not sure I have a problem with it. If the stuff you really need comes easily but the higher levels for bragging rights become a long-term project, is that so bad?
Group looking for Rank 8 Ursan. Only rank 8 or older please.
You try playing an imbagon Paragon with a low level Luxon or Kurzick Paragon. It didn’t go so well. lol
The getting there 2 hours before a open world event and then shuttling in your guild mates in just so you have a chance at hard content is no fun either.
Before GW2, I have never encountered a game that made me (the paying customer) wait around for 2 hours+ just to play some specific content. Can you imagine if shops said that, sorry you after wait 2 hours to buy that tv.
Stupid.
Content should revolve around the players and they should be able to trigger it whenever they want. Its okay with me if you after complete certain steps/events to trigger it but those should take no more than 20 mins or so.
Today everyone works different times. So games should revolve around people, not people revolving around the game.
I guess you never played a game with 1 week lockouts on raids then.
Can’t we fairly easily have enough non-grindy, grindy, and super-grindy stuff to keep everyone engaged and rewarded and entertained whether they play 30 minutes or 13 hours a day? People sometimes talk as if we have to choose between high-grind and low-grind rewards so we need to argue about which are better. How hard can it be to shrink existing game models to make more minis (or make rare minis that are slightly larger), add super rare vanity dye colors, make up new titles, add a glow to an extra rare version of an existing item, etc???
The real trick is balancing it so the more grindy stuff feels worth doing and sufficiently rewarding without making the non-grindy stuff feel 2nd rate.
I don’t think this is as easy as you think.
Let’s say some stuff is massively easy to get. Then it’s attained very fast. There are a couple of examples like this in the game. The faster something can be attained, the more of that stuff you need in the game. So the slowest, hardest to get stuff there can be less of, because it takes so long to get it. That means the stuff you need to have the most of us the easy to get stuff, because everyone gets that stuff super fast.
It would mean more content, much more content, was needed. By making everything take some time to get, you slow down the rate at which you need to provide content.
The problem is, content takes time to make and gets consumed much faster than it’s made. That’s why these slow down mechanisms exist in the first place.
I really don’t get people. When Crystin Cox left Nexon, she left Nexon. She was no longer working for Nexon. Nexon doesn’t have a hold, or input into this game, or at least there is zero evidence that is the case.
People go from company to company all the time. I’m not sure why someone going from one company to another means that that company has input. Hell, Guild Wars 1 was found by people who came from Blizzard. Does Blizzard have input in Guild Wars 1?
The only fact we have to deal with is that Nexon purchased 15% of NcSoft. It means they have some influence on who ends up on the board of directors as part of a block of votes. That’s ALL the influence they have.
We don’t know how much influence NcSoft has over Arenanet even. It’s true they own Arenanet, but that doesn’t mean they automatically choose to exert influence.
So we don’t know that NcSoft is that influential in Guild Wars 2’s design and Nexon, only owning 15% of NCSoft’s stock probably has no say at all.
/conspiracy theory
It’s not just titles. ~snip for brevity~.
Seems you have skipped the other XY ways of obtaining (un)lucky points (you gain pts when opening chests with locks, when using clovers, when salvaging …). Perhaps you should have done more research. And I suppose I’ve just been ‘lucky’ than that my test sample of 100 tickets didn’t drain all that fast. However I am not interested in maxing out either of those titles, which is why my sample might have been too small to judge…but my overall track record shows I’m considerably more unlucky than lucky, so hmm.
And even then I only maxed unlucky and not lucky. ~snip for brevity~
I’m not buying the talk how hard/expensive it is, especially not with repeatable double point weeks and so many alternative ways of gaining them. I doubt the wiki accounts for those though.
I’m pretty sure the wiki page is more accurate than your memory. It matches my memory pretty well.
And it doesn’t match mine at all. Perhaps it’d be diff if I had chosen the ring afking as the only source of pts, but concluding from the few attempts I did, I usually had a slightly higher ticket gain than loss.
True, you can earn points doing that. ~snip for brevity~
I didn’t even bother doing the math for ascended, because crafting the cook title alone got my jaded enough to vow I’d never go down that rabbit hole again.
At least AFKing doesn’t fry your brain in the process..unless you wish to observe the scenery. But in that case, you might as well go watch paint dry .Yet it was still there, so it counts.
It counts as evidence of how GW2 decreased the quality of game experience on GW, if anything, because you could see a significant shift in the general approach to the game in both pvp and pve. Since the shift involved adding a load of grindy zero-content titles and skill balances which are extremely similar to GW2 style of balancing, I cannot see it as anything but redundant and not added to the original for its own sake.
You’re going to need to explain how 75k per prestige armor set wasn’t something which bogged you down. Or the need for Jadite/Amber.
I think you’ll first have to explain how the farm for kurzick/lux elite armor is comparable to the grind for ascended. For starters, the former isn’t 1) time gated; 2) demanding massive amounts of basic materials (the amounts are reasonable and obtained rather quickly from salvaging alone); 3) requiring significant amounts of rare material (again, jade/amber are obtainable directly from many diff sources which ranges from quest rewards, monster drops, JQ and FA in pve and AB in pvp); 4) does not require you to max out a craft proffession which will be mostly useless outside the particular purpose; and 5) does not raise your stats above the cheapest BiS obtained at droknar’s.
(to be continued in 30min)
I didn’t skip anything. I have 15,000 hours in Guild Wars 1, actively went after the lucky title and still don’t have it. I did get the unlucky title. I got GWAMM and 50/50 and still don’t have the lucky title.
Everyone that I ever played Guild Wars 1 with spoke about how grindy certain titles were including that. I think you’re deliberately trying to mislead people.
Even people who don’t generally agree with me will tell you the lucky title was grindy as hell. Nor have I met anyone who didn’t think the Luxon/Kurzick titles were grindy as hell.
You can insist, you can quote, you can try anything you want, but those that actually played Guild Wars 1 know the truth.
I won’t answer you any more on this issue, because I’ve already proven it with links to the wiki.
@Devata.6589
There’s a difference between someone saying the level of grind is unacceptable and saying, how can you claim this game has no grind. Those are two completely different things. This thread is saying that Anet’s claims are wrong. It’s an excuse, a target for dissatisfied people to rally together to a banner.
But many of those same people are misrepresenting the grind that was in Guild Wars 1, which was indeed vast. They’re not exactly they same, but they’re enough the same that anyone from there should have expected it. I did.
You say maybe Anet made the wrong choice. I’m saying Anet may not have HAD a choice. By the time they reacted, they needed to do something quickly. We could do X in 90 days, we can do y in 30. That could have been their choice.
And because you like what you like, to you that’s the wrong choice. But it might well have been the right choice for the business. You and I both have a personal stake in things coming out that we like. But Anet has a financial stake in making sure this game succeeds. I’m not sure your likes or my likes get to supercede that.
Sure, maybe Anet got it wrong. Maybe you got it wrong though. Maybe I got it wrong. Anet made a decision based on information they have, and I still maintain, their information is better than ours.
There’s no way I’m going to convince you that ascended gear was their only real option, or something very much like it. Anything else would have taken too long to implement.
It was meant as a stop gap measure and it apparently worked. If you think it didn’t work, that’s fine. I believe it worked and if it hadn’t, Anet would have likely been laying off some people when NcSoft West went through its reorganization.
This game has met expectations and it’s been successful. Maybe Anet got it wrong, but if they did, this game is successful in spite of what Anet has done. I’m not sure why anyone here is so confident, so sure of themselves that they think that it would have done better doing it there way.
Maybe you’re right. Maybe it would have been more sucessful your way, but we’ll never know. And as it stands now, it’s one of the most successful MMOs to come out in the last five years.
Well since you don’t want to look and I know what I’m talking about, you’re the one missing out on the truth. It doesn’t surprise me though, because you’re only interested in venting.
Translation: I’m right just because I said so! And you’re wrong, also just because I said so!
The fact,. and it is a fact, that there are people that like this system better), means not everyone is complaining. And many of the people who complained originally didn’t even try the NPE and said so. And then Anet DID make changes to it based on feedback and a few people that had complained originally changed their tune.
Well yes, I’m sure someone, somewhere out in Tyria actually is liking this system better. Congrats on stating the obvious. And several other people did not change their tune after the 9/16. Heh, we’re back to the original point.
But none of this matters to you. You only to vent. Go ahead. It’s easy enough for anyone to go and see that some people have liked the new system.
Meh, if it makes you feel better to dismiss people who disagree with you as “only liking to vent,” go ahead. The rest of us will have a discussion about changes to make to the NPE.
I love how, in every post I’ve made to you on this thread, you focus like a laser on a side-point, and manage to draw the conversation off-topic.
Grasping at straws indeed.
The translation is that the evidence is right here, in this thread and you refuse to look at it. Who’s problem is that?
Convo over.
You’ve got it in one. Seven people complaining over and over again does not a stampede make. You named people who have posted dozens of times in this thread, while ignoring the drive bys that say I’m fine with it, or it’s not as bad as people say, or even I like it better.
I’m not going to do your work for you. Look at the thread and start putting marks next to people who complain about it multiple times such as yourself and people who don’t have a problem with it.
It’s closer than you think.
Nope. You were the one who brought up the “my side has more forum supporters than yours” argument (which had nothing to do with the original post, but w/e). You make the claim, you prove it.
Also, you may not want to include drive-by posts, as you might be surprised.
BTW, compared to one person complaining, seven people complaining is a “stampede.”
Well since you don’t want to look and I know what I’m talking about, you’re the one missing out on the truth. It doesn’t surprise me though, because you’re only interested in venting. The fact,. and it is a fact, that there are people that like this system better), means not everyone is complaining. And many of the people who complained originally didn’t even try the NPE and said so. And then Anet DID make changes to it based on feedback and a few people that had complained originally changed their tune.
But none of this matters to you. You only to vent. Go ahead. It’s easy enough for anyone to go and see that some people have liked the new system.
The only real complaint I have about it is what they did to the personal story in the last installments. Other than that, I prefer it to the old system.
And yes, I’m not the only one.
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.
You do need a lot of gold. I play a lot of hours. I tend to tick away at things a bit at a time though, rather than hard core farm.
One of the things I do is salvage all yellows for ectos if it’s not profitable to sell them. I use the ectos and skill points I get to mystic forge clovers which gives me a start on my t6 mats as well.
With the first precursor I got lucky during the karka event. Two of my other precusors are cheap ones…the underwater ones. Fortunately I really like those skins. I bought those. One of my guildies got a drop of the shortbow and I got a reasonably good deal on that back quite some time ago. And the last one I get a very lucky drop from a black lion chest that I opened with a story key. I got a permanent hair style kit, which I promptly sold and bought Frostfang.
So the last one and the first one required luck.
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.
You’ve apparently missed the posts where some people came back and said they liked it better.
Really? Where? The only one I see who is regularly saying it is better (not is, not drive by posting like the person I quoted above) is, well, you. On the other side, I see shadow, myself, Ashendale, phys, Nilk, BlueOcean, and Tachenon, and possibly others that I’ve missed. So I don’t know if you really want to bring up which side has more forum supporters.
I started a brand new account with the sale just to try it. For an experienced player, it was no issue for me to level through it, or very little issue.
Still not reading the posts. I asked (rhetorically, yes) if you were a new player. Since you’re not, thinking that new players will think the NPE is no big deal just because you don’t is sort of missing the point. New players won’t be speedrunning through the starting zones in order to level up as fast as possible.
This point was explained to you earlier in this very thread. (pages 14-15 IIRC) The fact that you’re still trying to repeat it is rather telling.
For a new player, they’re not all going to be in the same camp. Very experienced MMOers will probably not like it as much. By the same token, very experienced MMOs will likely figure out how to level through it pretty fast.
Then what is the point of having the NPE in that case? Seems rather pointless to force experienced players through the NPE if they’re just going to get annoyed and/or use workarounds to skip it (which is, you know, the point we’ve been trying to make since day 1)
New people to MMOs, which there are probably more of than experienced MMOs, at least at this point coming in, may not have that same experience. And those same people are probably less likely to post on forums.
Merely you guessing.
You’ve got it in one. Seven people complaining over and over again does not a stampede make. You named people who have posted dozens of times in this thread, while ignoring the drive bys that say I’m fine with it, or it’s not as bad as people say, or even I like it better.
I’m not going to do your work for you. Look at the thread and start putting marks next to people who complain about it multiple times such as yourself and people who don’t have a problem with it.
It’s closer than you think.
This isn’t some big huge thing that huge numbers of people are complaining about. This is a pet peeve of a small percentage of the population who got riled up because Anet used the word grind and said the game wasn’t grindy. If that hadn’t happened, this thread wouldn’t even exist.
Yes, yes it would.
I have utter and complete faith it would still exist in some form. We might not be complaining about the same things as far as grind . . .
This thread is specifically about the no grind philosophy which was brought up at the launch. If the word grind hadn’t been mentioned in the launch people would be talking more about HoT and less about this.
Also there are a lot of things that people post in grind threads that aren’t about the grind itself.
Time gating is not grind, if anything it’s anti grind. It’s an alternate way to slow down progress. If something is time gated, you can’t grind it.
RNG – RNG is not grind. It’s a way of slowing down how fast you get something. You can grind the whole world over and over for a precursor, but what’s being complained about there is the random element…not grind.
Not getting good enough drops – This is not grind either, it’s people complaining they somehow have unlucky accounts and they don’t get the stuff other people do.
There are some grind complaints on these forums but they’re generally few and far between or have been for the last year or so anyway.
Time gating can certainly be a grind. Grinding is any repetitive task you need to do a lot of times to achieve some goal. Just because it is time gated does not mean you aren’t doing a repetitive task. The grind is spread out over a much longer period of time. Did I want to log in and do the daily? Heck no! But I needed that laurel and a lot more in order to get an ascended item. So every day I logged on to grind out the daily to get a single laurel towards my goal.
RNG is certainly a part of grinding. If it makes things harder to get that means doing the repetitive task more, thus more grinding. If an item has a 1/10 chance of dropping it’s not going to take nearly as much grinding as a 1/2500.
Poor drops- this is the same as RNG. If you get poor drops then you’re going to be grinding more in order to get whatever it is that you want. Not to mention that GW2’s reward system is terrible since most of the time you get trash loot. This helps reinforce the feeling of grinding since you never get a feeling of accomplishment. This is diablo 3 at release, at least Blizzard learned from their mistake.
In the last year or so the forums have slowed to a crawl as people have left or simply don’t care anymore since the devs ignore us. Grind has always been a big topic in GW2. Do you not remember the dungeon grind at launch that people complained about? Pentinent grind? The fractal skin grind? The ascended mats grind? The precursor grind? Champ grinding? The T6 grind? The Lodestone grind? Silk grinding? Ecto grinding? I mean there is very few aspects of GW2 that haven’t been associated with grinding and then complained about.
Time gating is NOT a grind. It prevents grind.
In the old days, you could do dungeons over and over again to farm tokens. They time gated those tokens. After that people didn’t talk about grinding tokens. If anything time gating is a measure to PREVENT grind. Anyone who calls time gating a grind isn’t using any definition I’ve ever heard.
Yes there has always been a low undercurrent of people complaining about those things, but it’s dwarfed by the number of threads about mounts.
There will always be people complaining about lots of stuff, but it’s not prevalent and hasn’t been in a long long time.
This isn’t some big huge thing that huge numbers of people are complaining about. This is a pet peeve of a small percentage of the population who got riled up because Anet used the word grind and said the game wasn’t grindy. If that hadn’t happened, this thread wouldn’t even exist.
Yes, yes it would.
I have utter and complete faith it would still exist in some form. We might not be complaining about the same things as far as grind . . .
This thread is specifically about the no grind philosophy which was brought up at the launch. If the word grind hadn’t been mentioned in the launch people would be talking more about HoT and less about this.
Also there are a lot of things that people post in grind threads that aren’t about the grind itself.
Time gating is not grind, if anything it’s anti grind. It’s an alternate way to slow down progress. If something is time gated, you can’t grind it.
RNG – RNG is not grind. It’s a way of slowing down how fast you get something. You can grind the whole world over and over for a precursor, but what’s being complained about there is the random element…not grind.
Not getting good enough drops – This is not grind either, it’s people complaining they somehow have unlucky accounts and they don’t get the stuff other people do.
There are some grind complaints on these forums but they’re generally few and far between or have been for the last year or so anyway.
Everybody doesn’t have to. For people repeating the content it should come quite naturally. Getting to level 15 in under two hours takes almost no effort at all. For new people, they might take longer, but as they’re learning and exploring, it won’t seem the same for them…at least I don’t think it should.
Are you a new player? That is, first account, first character? If not, then your leveling experience with the NPE isn’t really relevant to a new player’s leveling experience, as the early leveling experience, as atrocious as it currently is, was designed with brand new players in mind.
Also, you appear to have missed the posts where people have said that they were bored early on with there being nothing really to do in the early zones. So apparently it doesn’t “come naturally” for them.
And you didn’t even address my point at all…about if it really is appropriate to have to speed lvl to 15+ as fast as possible in a game that one of its major selling points was “being able to play however you want, whenever you want.”
You’ve apparently missed the posts where some people came back and said they liked it better.
I started a brand new account with the sale just to try it. For an experienced player, it was no issue for me to level through it, or very little issue.
For a new player, they’re not all going to be in the same camp. Very experienced MMOers will probably not like it as much. By the same token, very experienced MMOs will likely figure out how to level through it pretty fast.
New people to MMOs, which there are probably more of than experienced MMOs, at least at this point coming in, may not have that same experience. And those same people are probably less likely to post on forums.
That same vocal minority that did say people where leveling but they were wrong, they were just a vocal minority (until Anet came with the statement they where losing to many people even before they where max level).
Can’t really say why they left, you could if so desired express why you left and other can express that same sentiment in this thread, and I suppose you could voice those by proxy that you know, but even that as a singularity given the scale of the number of people in this forum wouldn’t be enough data to draw a complete conclusion, you would have to ask all of those that have true left the reason why?
And those reasons could be far and wide, from “I didn’t like the business model for the game” to “My pet hamster ate my CD”.
I’m a big fan and support of ideas that expose truth so too that end, an >in game< voting system that cannot be bypassed would be a great idea, as relying on game meta data isn’t a good way to see what people ‘feel’ about things, you have to get into the dirt and play in there sand pit and ask them “all”.
But it’s not an option to ask them all so we have to use some common sense, open our ears and so on. Then we see ‘grind’ is a much complain you hear and so it might be wise if Anet did try to do something about it.
In stead of trying to end every argument with the ‘you do not have the exact numbers’.
Suppose Anet listens to you though, and eliminates some of that grind and those people who left left because they didn’t have enough to work for that meant something to them and what they really wanted was more grind.
Maybe every time someone leaves, Anet should add more grind to the game,. because it might be what they wanted.
Bad thought process is bad.
I am not saying ‘listen to me’, I say, look at what people say on the forums and all I try to provide is some idea’s to think about. Showing at least how I do think about it.
The option to grind does not disappears in my suggestion, it just becomes exactly that.. an option.
And as I do not see a lot of people asking for more grind but I do see many complains about grind you are right.. Bad thought process is bad. and with all we know that would indeed be a bag thought process.
At the time when ascended gear was added to the game, there were a whole lot of posts about people leaving because they had nothing to do. The only way Anet could have added something to do in a timely manner, was to add something time gated that helped people stay in game longer toward that goal. I didn’t like it but I got why they did it. The forums were a zoo. Every day there were posts about people who ran out of stuff to do. Anet made a decision based on forum posts. Yet you dislike their solution.
The solution of providing more and more content wasn’t an option because the content your’e talking about takes too much time to implement if they needed to head off what was quickly becoming a stampede.
But more to the point. we hardly see grind complaints, UNTIL Anet brings up the words no grind. And then we get threads like this.
Before this thread, I think you could count on one hand the number of times a month that anyone said they had a problem with the game being grindy.
This isn’t some big huge thing that huge numbers of people are complaining about. This is a pet peeve of a small percentage of the population who got riled up because Anet used the word grind and said the game wasn’t grindy. If that hadn’t happened, this thread wouldn’t even exist.
That same vocal minority that did say people where leveling but they were wrong, they were just a vocal minority (until Anet came with the statement they where losing to many people even before they where max level).
Can’t really say why they left, you could if so desired express why you left and other can express that same sentiment in this thread, and I suppose you could voice those by proxy that you know, but even that as a singularity given the scale of the number of people in this forum wouldn’t be enough data to draw a complete conclusion, you would have to ask all of those that have true left the reason why?
And those reasons could be far and wide, from “I didn’t like the business model for the game” to “My pet hamster ate my CD”.
I’m a big fan and support of ideas that expose truth so too that end, an >in game< voting system that cannot be bypassed would be a great idea, as relying on game meta data isn’t a good way to see what people ‘feel’ about things, you have to get into the dirt and play in there sand pit and ask them “all”.
But it’s not an option to ask them all so we have to use some common sense, open our ears and so on. Then we see ‘grind’ is a much complain you hear and so it might be wise if Anet did try to do something about it.
In stead of trying to end every argument with the ‘you do not have the exact numbers’.
Suppose Anet listens to you though, and eliminates some of that grind and those people who left left because they didn’t have enough to work for that meant something to them and what they really wanted was more grind.
Maybe every time someone leaves, Anet should add more grind to the game,. because it might be what they wanted.
Bad thought process is bad.
Wombats are cool as hell. That is all.
Yeah, I don’t see any Australian server ever coming (sadly).
And he’s also claimed to have kitted out several characters in full ascended. Which was not introduced entirely 2 years ago, you remember, so he hasn’t had 2 years to do that.
I’m not drawing this conclusion from one datum. Vayne plays a lot.
I reserve the right to filter anything he says about the lack of grind in this game and the accessibility of ascended through that conclusion.
I only have 3 characters decked out in all ascended. I could have a lot more but I don’t because I don’t feel I need it. I wouldn’t likely have three characters decked out in ascended armor if there hadn’t been a collection for it. It was one of the collections I could get without buying stuff on the marketplace. That’s why I have three characters in ascended armor.
The odds are, I’ll never make a piece of ascended armor again. Because I don’t grind for stats and never liked doing so.
You have the right to filter anything I say anyway, because everyone does that, regardless in much the way I filter everything Karla or Devata says based on their posting history and their pet peeves.
But let me tell you this. I don’t grind because I don’t enjoy grinding and I’m quite happy NOT to get stuff or finish stuff if I don’t want to, no matter how much I play. Take Liadri. I could have beaten Liadri if I spent the time to do it. But as much as I play I don’t find that type of challenge fun, so I never tried. I mean I tried a couple of times to see what I’d need to do and said screw it. This isn’t fun. So I never got the liadri mini and I probably never will.
Do I want it. Sure. But not enough to repeat that content over and over.