Curse

Div · Apr 21, 2008, 11:12 PM // 23:12

Remember when you load into HA, wanting to experience how fun it is? Three hours later, you're still there, because everyone is spamming "LF r5+ monk" or "LF r9+ ele."

That sucked.

The hero title is one of the biggest symbols of grind (with a little skill), and Anet knows it already killed entry to higher end PvP. It turned players who won't accept someone of a lower rank into "elitist PvPers."

So why are they doing that for PvE now, with all these grind-necessary PvE skills? Are they wanting to turn those same people who cried about "elitist PvPers" into hypocrites when they go out and advertise "LF r8+ ursan" or "LF r3+ SY"? Because that's what happened. One minute, Bob Random posts in Riverside crying about how elitist PvPers are because they won't accept him into their HA groups since he's only rank 2. The next, he goes into DoA and rejects r7 norns because his group is a r8+ ursan group.

If Anet wants to be like WoW, at least they should make a point of it. You simply don't go out advertising that this is a grind-free game, and when a new player buys it, they find they can't play a large portion of the end-game because their lack of grinding makes it impossible for them to find groups. Sure they can join good guilds running balanced builds, but how likely is that given a very casual player? The direction GW (and GW2) is changing into is one that'll attract more players in general, but with their goal changes, they should also change their advertising.

Stormlord Alex · Apr 21, 2008, 11:17 PM // 23:17

To add on to your awesome insight, holy, is that the grind 'needs'* to be done on every PvE character you play if you want to get into PuGs and shit.

I'll take your analogy of getting to RX in HA, and remind people that instead of grinding just once you need to do it all over again for every toon you have - making having multiple characters a pain in the ass for more casual players hoping to get into elite mission PuGs.

*bad word, but the best I could think of... I'm aware you don't 'need' to grind

Winterclaw · Apr 21, 2008, 11:17 PM // 23:17

Quote:

So why are they doing that for PvE now, with all these grind-necessary PvE skills?

So PvEers can feel the pain as well because, being willing to discard heroes and take your chances with PUGs isn't good enough.

Quote:

If Anet wants to be like WoW, at least they should make a point of it.

Good point, I thought it was just GW2 that Anet was making a point of copying WoW.

"Get ursan noob" must be what ANet was aiming for because that is what they got.

If not, they would have at most have one pve skill title that works for all pve skills.

Fog Accomplice · Apr 21, 2008, 11:22 PM // 23:22

Someone's cranky...

You're missing a huge issue here: grinding in PvP by yourself is impossible. Fame can only be acquired by doing HA, and since they already have high requirements, it's next to impossible to get any entrance. Kind of a catch 22. You NEED fame to GET fame.

With PvE, however, you need to grind and familiarize yourself more with the game in order to get into the harder levels. Yeah yeah, sure, you beat the game, whoop-dee-doo. If you are about to go into the DoA, however, I'd be feel much safer with someone showing the R8 Norn title versus Protector of Elona.

The difference is that you can advance in PvE ON YOUR OWN and thus meet the high requirements for "elite pve'rs(??????)" for more difficult areas.

It makes sense, it's an MMO, synonymous for grind, deal with it.

Snow Bunny · Apr 21, 2008, 11:53 PM // 23:53

I agree completely with this.

Rank discrimination exists in PvE and has evolved into a beast much like PvP rank discrimination.
"LF R8-10 Norn" fills the chat log of DoA and other elite areas, much like "LF R9+ RC" litters Heroes Ascent.

Neither title was ever truly indicative of skill, but experience and grind. Rank doesn't matter to teams composed of alliance mates/guildies/friends, because the members of the group are familiar with each other and their respective playing styles.

I am a good monk, both PvP and PvE, but I can't get accepted into DoA pugs because my Lightbringer rank is only 6. I've been rejected from SS/LB title farming groups because of my low ranks in those titles. It's not upsetting, just highly amusing that the hypocrisy Divine speaks of has manifested itself fully.

Linking the titles to PvE skills was a tremendously bad idea. The emote, before the advent of titles, was useful as an indicator of experience. Now, it's simply linked to a title and contributes to grind.

Imagine if the Champion title were linked to the amount your spells dealt in damage or healing or otherwise, and gave you a damage bonus. It'd be absurd.

And grinding PvP by yourself is possible. I have a R5 Glad friend who farmed RA to death from R0-R5 glad. That's solo farming

Bront · Apr 21, 2008, 11:58 PM // 23:58

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fog Accomplice

It makes sense, it's an MMO, synonymous for grind, deal with it.

Why?

There is Grind and there is Grind in GW.

The Sunspear points? It's fairly easy to get any character up to R6 just by playing the game normaly. In fact, it's benificial when getting your Elonian character up to L20 to get every bounty you can because of the double XP, and many of the quests have you running around anyway, so why not earn the Susnpear points? Now, admitedly, the higher levels are a little more grindy by needing Hard Mode, but getting to rank 7-8 though fairly normal play isn't hard, and ranks 9 and 10 aren't that much of a big deal for the Sunspear skills.

Lightbringer points? Don't have as much experience with those, but since the only benifits are in Elonia areas, it's less of an issue as well. From what I've heard, they're a bit more grindy than Sunspear points.

These grinds can be semi-explainable, and I don't think are truly atrocious. If they were the only grinds in PvE, I don't think many would complain, as they are either limited or fairly synergistic with normal play. On the other hand, you have:

Luxon/Kurzick faction. You only need to grind 1, but the grind is just nuts! 100,000 points before you can even get your first skill at rank 1? Sure they accumulate faster than Sunspear points, and you can get them in PvP, but the monumental number you need to get a high rank in them is just nuts! Of course, it fuels FFF (which favors the Kurzicks since it's easier to do for them), guilds fighting over town ownership, so i guess there is at least a point beyond cool skills, and the title is at least account based, which helps reduce some grind, but the raw numbers are just nuts!

The EoTN points are truely the obnoxious grind ones. There are several broken PvE skills in them, and the best way to grind points is to beat the game 3-4 times with each character for each race! While I can understand to some degree why they weren't account based, it would certaintly reduce the repition of the grind if they were (at least you can swap characters on occasion to work on Faction grind).

As for the PvP grind for titles, I can understand both sides. Players what a trophy for playing and winning in PvP. However, because the title deals with total wins, and not winning percentage, performance, or anything else, the Rank itself isn't a large indicator of anything more than time and number of wins. It also does exclude new players to PvP, because players can be more concerned with earning the title over teaching new players, as that's what the system rewards (And honestly, teaching new players is hard to reward through any kind of reward or tracking system).

I guess my point is that purposeful grind that doesn't require too much work beyond normal play is fine, but grind grind realy hurts people who don't have the time, and honestly, the ability to be a casual player in PvE was one of the things that I like about GW.

Grind is usually a mechanic to keep players paying a monthly fee (or back when they did it, hourly fee). It's even more pointless in the GW model, where there is no extra money made with grind.

zling · Apr 22, 2008, 12:12 AM // 00:12

grinding is just something to do for people who have absolutly no real life... the problem starts when this grinding is showing as titles which are linked to certain skills and thus affects gameplay. the fact that it's meaningless doesnt stop people from discriminating due to it.
take HA as the classic example, where it all started... look at R8+ today, most of the new ones achieved it by going R/D Sway over and over again... so the fact that they have R8 shows skill? does it show adaptability? ability to play different builds and strategies successfuly? NO! it just shows you spent weeks and weeks in HA and farming the Randomway and other Sway N00Bs in the first few maps.
so why do people discriminate rank? because the only thing it does show is experience, even bad players gather experience from weeks and weeks of playing the same area, same maps with the same build over and over again...
is it fair? NO! but unfortunatly life isn't fair and Anet doesn't seem to want it to be...

Savio · Apr 22, 2008, 01:09 AM // 01:09

Quote:

Originally Posted by holymasamune

The hero title is one of the biggest symbols of grind (with a little skill), and Anet knows it already killed entry to higher end PvP.

Even without the hero title, people would discriminate against less-experienced players. The bigger problem is that with the way Guild Wars is, it's difficult to make a successful PuG, PvE or PvP. Additionally, there are few good places a casual player will enjoy; RA and AB suck, and casual PvE is boring and lacks rewards.

I dislike title discrimination like any player, but without it how would anyone make groups without a Rolodex of good players?

cellardweller · Apr 22, 2008, 01:25 AM // 01:25

Grind for cosmetics does not bother me in the least. I would say that requiring grind to pugs is unfortunate but given that it requires a desire to pug in the first place, it probably only affects a tiny percentage of the GW playerbase.

The big issue I have is that it completely kills any form of comptitive PvE. It is now impossible to get the level playing fields that we used to have, making it nigh impossible for PvE players to get any meaningful measures of success or failure.

MisterT69 · Apr 22, 2008, 01:35 AM // 01:35

Why not have some grind? PVE is still > PVE. Besides, it's not that hard to increase your SY time by a second or two by abing a little bit, or by making TNTF a little more powerful with some LB/ss runs. And UB? Lol, max norn takes 3-4 days to max. Just turn in one handbook, one HM handbook, one HM dungeon guide, and like two norn runs, and boom, you're at spot numero uno in DoA

Savio · Apr 22, 2008, 02:05 AM // 02:05

There are two types of grind. There's optional grind like shiny weapons, sure keep that in the game. Necessary grind that you must do before you can play the game for fun is bad and should be eliminated. That's what this thread is about.

Winterclaw · Apr 22, 2008, 02:22 AM // 02:22

Quote:

Originally Posted by Savio

I dislike title discrimination like any player, but without it how would anyone make groups without a Rolodex of good players?

Is the rolodex necessarily a bad thing? The value of titles in determining a player's skill in cases like this because even the worst player can grind for a long time. At best, it can get your foot in the door, which is all a good player really needs. At worst, it can lead to elitism and be viewed as a substutite for skill (mainly by the elitists).

Savio · Apr 22, 2008, 02:35 AM // 02:35

Having a good network is great, but it shouldn't be the only way to get good groups aside from elitism. Part of the problem is that Guild Wars is a team-based game, the other part is that Guild Wars has only a few tiers of gameplay in both PvE and PvP.

FoxBat · Apr 22, 2008, 05:21 AM // 05:21

I don't think lightbringer rank was ever as big a deal as Norn rank has become. Ergo, kill ursan parties through rebalance, problem solved.

Tyla · Apr 22, 2008, 03:17 PM // 15:17

/Agree.
Another epic thread from the Divine Ambassador.

The Meth · Apr 22, 2008, 04:51 PM // 16:51

A Timeline of titles in guild wars PvE:

Prophecies: No titles, everyone is happy.
Factions release: Ok, we start getting titles, but Anet gets us to accept them because "Titles have no effect on gameplay and are just meant to show accomplishments."
Nightfall release: Titles start getting effects. At this time noone really cared that much though because sunspear's effects were practically nil and Torment didn't have DoA, so lightbringer was useless.
DoA: Oh shit, now lightbringer makes or breaks parties. BTW you have to get 50k points to max it.
PvE skills: God damn, now you add skills based on the other two most grindy tracks in the game (sunspear and factions titles).
EotN release: Horray, 4 individual title tracks to grind, with the skills being practically required in any kind of PuG group.

Just raising the max level to 25 for pve would have been better then this much crap (downleveling PvE characters and items for PvP of course). On the plus side, it sounds like they will be doing that for GW2.

Eru Valenehtar · Apr 22, 2008, 07:05 PM // 19:05

I know I'm probibly going to get flamed for this statement, because I know how passionately people are against Ursan and the other grind titles. And, also, before I get started I would like to mention that since I can remember there has been something to grind for in Guild Wars. Even in prophecies, there was the FoW armor which took lots of time and money to get ahold of. Through factions there is faction farming. Nightfall had sunspear and lightbringer. Although I have to agree that Ursan is a powerful skill that has fallen to the "elitists" of guild wars, I don't feel that it needs to have so many hate threads against it. There are so many people that dislike the skill that there shouldn't be a problem with finding a group.

This is just the same when you would go to do underworld, and everyone was just "Pro SS" or "Pro 55."

I'm not for or against anything here, I'm just stating an oppinion on the matter.

Racthoh · Apr 23, 2008, 04:41 AM // 04:41

Quote:

Originally Posted by Eru Valenehtar

And, also, before I get started I would like to mention that since I can remember there has been something to grind for in Guild Wars. Even in prophecies, there was the FoW armor which took lots of time and money to get ahold of.

Equipping obsidian armor doesn't allow you to steamroll areas though. It's just for looks or a sense of personal achievement. I've never seen "looking for warrior, must have FoW armor" in local.

Quote:

This is just the same when you would go to do underworld, and everyone was just "Pro SS" or "Pro 55."

Not entirely, get to level 20 with 200 attribute points and you're good to go. For Ursan to work, get to level 20 with 200 attribute points then grind 160k norn for your skill to be as strong as possible. Then you're allowed to play. It's not a matter of having the right profession it's a matter of whether or not you've dedicated yourself to the necessary grind.

Shyft the Pyro · Apr 23, 2008, 05:33 AM // 05:33

Grind, title grind included, is entirely contrary to GW's model. The game's lack of monthly fees was elevated into a marketing pitch, which claimed that GW could be picked up and put aside at will. If you got bored, you could move on; if you got nostalgic, you could come back. You did not have to keep playing, however.

The introduction of grind can have only one purpose: to keep people playing. If GW is a game that doesn't care how long you stay glued to it - as evidenced by the hourly reminders, AI parties to compensate for declining player population, and the same-old lack of monthly fees - why put in grind that some will (rightly) see as a deviation from the initial philosophy?

The answer, I think, is marketing. Apparently, someone at ANet must be getting increasingly more paranoid about losing the player base for good. Consider this: we hear about the millions of copies sold, but not about play statistics. Obviously, releasing these would be tantamount to commercial suicide, because the numbers would never even be close. But ANet does see them, and has made every effort to drag its customers back - with weekend events - and to hold their interest, keeping them playing (grinding) - with titles. If you don't believe that ANet is betting its survival (and yes, I mean GW2 sales here) on titles, I need only refer you to the Hall of Monuments and the current favor system.

Do I like it? Hell no.

Can I do anything about it? Hell no.

"Welcome to GWEN. Today is either the first or the last day of your Guild Wars life."

bj91x · Apr 23, 2008, 06:13 AM // 06:13

Another thing I want to mention (sorry if it has been mentioned but I'm busy at work for the time being so didn't really read much of this thread), is that unlike other chapters where you get tons of stuff for what you pay for... for GWEN, you pay money, then HAVE to grind to get your money's worth.

Being able to get more skills is half the reason I buy a new chapter. Unfortunately, with GWEN, paying for a chapter wasn't enough. For me to be able to use the skills that I paid my money for, I had to grind for hours and hours and hours... for each rep that I wanted to use... for each character that wanted to use these skills with...

That's not what I bought this series for.