Remove the Grind Factor

Personally I hate grind. That's why I'm playing Guild Wars instead of World of Warcraft. That's why I was a little miffed when I bought Nightfall and started playing.

There are a few things that are driving me crazy about Nightfall.
1. The ten thousand necessary side quests. That's just a way to lengthen the game in a cheap fashion. Personally I hate that. I'd like to play through the missions and advance the story. True the side quests advance the story, but there are just too many in Nightfall. I had to do around a dozen side quests to get from one mission to the next, maybe more.

2. Hero requirements. Doesn't seem like grind at first, but then you look at your hero's level and realize, oops, he's level 10 in a level 20 zone. Personally I don't like using Koss. Just my preference. But I constantly have to use him to advance the story, and he wasn't exactly my highest level hero. Acolyte Jin, Tahlkora, and Dunkoro were all my preferences over Koss. So his level was low and I had to do a bunch of sidequests to level him before he could actually survive, and it messed up my team combos a bit which sucked too. This is more of an annoyance than grind factor, but there is some grind in it hence the reason for its inclusion.

3. Sunspear Points. Possibly the MOST annoying of all, I have to gain thousands of points to advance the storyline? What kind of idiot thought this up? What is the point? To force us to do a thousand side quests before we can actually play the game? To me side quests are a diversion, optional and most of the time useless. If you want people to do side quests so badly, don't force them, entice them. Offer something up like rare materials, weapon mods, or keys. Those are all things that people would jump at to gain. I can guarantee that that is a better solution than adding in grind and forcing people to do something they really don't want to do. Oh, and high amounts of gold would be nice, considering that 200 gold can be gained by selling 4 or 5 pieces of junk to a merchant.

All three of these things are extremely annoying. I'll probably play through Nightfall once and refuse to do it with another character. Unless I come across armor I want or something. But here's my simple suggestion. Make it more like factions. I know factions was more pvp based, but they did a bang up job on pve as well. Admittedly the quests aren't as diverse as the ones you find in Nightfall, but the fast paced pve more than makes up for it. I'm in love with the get to level 20 in 4 hours idea. Of course it has always taken me two days because I like to take breaks, but you get the idea. I think that factions had the concept right in making it so that it was easy to get to missions, and then making some of them really hard (that statement is open to debate, but for some people, me included, there are hard ones).

I've talked our ears off I'm sure. Any thoughts on this?

Grind in Guild Wars? What have you been smoking, and can I have some?

Necessary side quests? Wtf is that? how can it be necessary if it's a side quest? Sure you need to do a quest to get your 15k sunspear, but the quest takes all of 10 minutes to do, and 15k armour is far from necessary.

Hero requirements make sense. Your point about having a level 10 hero at a level 20 area is moot since they made it so that when you bring a non-Elonian character over all heroes are at least level 15. And really, all the missions before the Realm of Torment are quite easy. For an elonian character, you should be leveling up your heroes along with your character if you want to be using them.

Your point about sunspear points is again, moot. Non-Elonian characters don't even need to have any sunspear points to do the campaign. Also if you have an Elonian character, you should have been gaining sunspear points while playing through Istan, and you should have at least 1,000 sunspear points by the time you reach the mainland.

So really, all three of your points really, don't have any real backing.

1. The side quests make the game enjoyable and add depth to the world. You immerse yourself in the land of Elona and its people.

2. Heroes are, indeed, a requirement for some quests and missions, but they do not necessarily have to be lvl20. You and six other lvl20 henchies/heroes/PuG can make up for this.

3. Sunspear points are only necessary until you reach First Spear. After that, you stop noticing the quests that require a certain level in Sunspear, due to the fact that you gain points so frequently and easily.

I think Nightfall has some great things included in its contents. I also think that it has more "good" things than "bad" things. I only planned on making an Elementalist for Elona, but my I want to get my Monk and possibly my Assassin through the Land of the Golden Sun as well.

If you look at the good things, they usually outweigh the bad.

Well, I'll agree that there are a lot of BORING side quests that u need to do in the beginning to get the sunspear title up. I also noticed a lot of primary quests between missions. And i just hate heroes period. I dont want my minion master necro to be replaced by some cheap "mm hero".

Well I'm not nearly as pissed off about it as the original poster :-P

But I do agree that adding mandatory grinding to GW was a really bizarre decision on ANET's part.

And this isn't something that there's any room to debate either... The sunspear rank requirement in order to advance makes grinding compulsory, especially with characters from other chapters.

I also agree that the number of arbitrary quests does indeed seem like a cheap way to add extra hours, probably in response to criticism of Factions short play time (which I personally didn't mind).

Before NightFall grinding is something that ANET always did a good job of supporting but keeping separate for the people that were into it. Which was a great policy.

Hopefully future chapters will learn from NF's mistake.

actually, i have a different sort of peeve.
you know how they dont put important npcs in town? and say, if you needed to see kormir you have to walk outside town and meet her right outside? and then there are STUPID primary quests which make you do this OVER and OVER again. all that loading in and out. and when you have several characters ~_~. this seems to happen mostly in elona though. too much 'story' kinda spoils it methinks. or rather primary quests in general which should be thrown into a tutorial section like 'Command Training?'

Prophecies= No Grind (YAY!)
Factions= 10k Faction Grind (BOO!)
Nightfall= Sunspear Point Grind (BOO!), Hero Grind (DOUBLE BOO!)

Gind= LAME.

LAME= Word of the week.

So I presume it's just coincidence that the OP is from the guild [LaZy]?

I agree the quests in NF and Factions were tedious and meaningless to the story. I always liked prophecies because you can skip through the most boring parts of the story (up to the desert). I guess Anet just doesnt like people running through their games.
Power level them at your local wurm spoor.
Probably the flavor development team, oh I'm sorry I didn't realize that question was rhetorical. Go on
That's a great idea! Anet needs to do that. My monk also has 200 unfinished quests from each chapter that I will never care to do until they add a title.

What are you talking about? I have a character that's half way through Vabbi, and is still only a Sunspear Captain. They removed the requirement for non-Elonains over a month ago.

The whole thing boils down to this. A.Net promised different things to different types of players. Or, at least, they unwittingly said that they would meet certain expectations that different players wanted. So, in order to accommodate as many people as possible, mainly the RPG camp and PvP endgame camp, they have had to make many compromises that they wouldn't have had to otherwise.

Even though they don't always get the balance quite right, they do listen to their player base. Trust me, I've been here since before launch (prophecies) and I've seen them listen time and again. That doesn't mean that they do everything that we want them to do (*ahem* auction house). But they do listen and make changes.

One example was just given in post #10 by Curse You. And such changes are hardly a rarity. So, if you want something changed, here are a few tips.

1) Don't be a jerk about it and whine like a spoiled child. (I've tried that, it really doesn't work.)

2) Realize that in order to accommodate everyone, everyone has to make some compromises.

3) Keep asking and keep posting on the subject but don't squabble or whine. Persistance is important. I realize that we live in an "on-demand" society but most real changes do not happen at the push of a button.

4) State your case clearly remembering that your reasons should move beyond the concept of "I don't like it" because the only answer you will get to that is "I don't care."

5) Your post is a hundred times more likely to be taken seriously if you offer up solutions rather than just complaints. Those solutions may be as simple as removing a requirement, but they need to be present to garner any dev attention.

Now, I will attempt to adress the issues that the OP has. I am not a GW rep, and I'm not even all that bright but I've been around long enough to know a little bit about a little bit.

1) Factions was released as a PvP oriented expansion. I am not making a statement on the success of that release, just stating a fact. When Nightfall came around the premise was that it would be a PvE oriented expansion.

Whatsmore, the storyline was supposed to be woven into the world more than in Prophecies' and Factions' mission to mission style play. This was all as per the RPG camp's suggestions.

So, I really doubt that we will be seeing any major changes to the Nightfall storyline. Hopefully the next expansion will be a little less repetitive and lengthy but we'll see.

2) I have run 2 toons through parts of nightfall and have had little difficulty with the game. My heroes seem to be high enough level to get the job done with little trouble. There are times early on where certain required characters are a bit too weak and I hope that will be adressed at some point in the future but I don't see it as a high priority. And I don't think A.Net does either.

3) I experienced the problem with sunspear points at launch myself. And I'm not going to lie, it sucked. But fortunately they've already changed it so that elonian and canthan characters don't need them to move on.

I hope that those answers and the aforementioned advice helps in your future GW community interactions.

Firstly, if you don't want a xp grand, buy Factions, make a charcter, ship him to Elona and ta-da lvl 20 in days.

Second, if you dont want a hero grind, level 3 or so heroes (what i did) and then hope other people have heroes which you didnt level. (worked for me)
I leveled:
Koss - he does LOTS of missions.
Olias - Tyrian
Dunk/Tahl - Guess Why

i even managed to train up Melonni, i did it early game when im around Ronjok. and Master of Whispers, in Vabbi. So, in total, i managed to train up 5 heroes + Morghan to 20 before game's end. No Hassle Required. And if you don't like doing Secondaries, or merely avoid them, your missing out on lots of fun

Really?! By Balthazar's sweaty bunyons! I bought NF on release and started playing, then stopped playing (as soon as I got the "collect this many sunspear points" quest) and unlocked skills for PvP characters instead.

If that's all gone, I'll be off to play Nightfall now. Although, just for the record, I still hope there isn't even mention of a desert zone in the next expansion.

Since this is the case, I must agree that there doesn't seem to be much of an argument left. I'm sorry, but I'm quite fond of my mountain o' quests. I uhh, spend alot of time here.

~Mitsuki~

When was that then as only last week I had to farm sunspear points on my tyrian necro to get to general so I could continue the storyline.

As much as people have been going on and on and on about grinding, I still don't get it.

I've never had to expend a huge amount of energy or time leveling or grinding. Or, maybe it's just that I enjoy playing rather than rushing through, so I don't even notice. Grinding unconsciously!! OMG

Henches and heroes complement each other very well; the lower level of heroes is made up for by being able to choose their skill sets. I've never gotten to that point I saw one poor monk complaining in the RoT: "Help me with x quest my Dunkoro is only level 6!!" Because even if my Dunky were stuck at level 6, I'd have no trouble bringing him along for an easy corpse.

Where's the problem? There is no grind, it's just playing.

This game=no fun grind, which a lot of people consider good.

Grind in MMO means:

Required active gameplay time:
A normal skill: 50 hours
An elite skill: 150 hours
Basic armor (armor rating 50): 75 hours
Advanced armor (armor rating 100): 175 hours
Epic armor (armor rating 500): 2500 hours
Leet armor (armor rating 1000): 5000 hours
Next level: 2 hours ^ sqrt(previous_level) - level 2 = 2 hours, level 30 = 41 hours
Dungeons: see "Next level"
Advanced zones: see "Next level"
Using stuff: see "skills", "armor" and "next level"
For everything else, there's mastercard (or whatever eBay accepts).

In other words, these are the times required to do stuff. No more, no less. In GW, you can start playing on a new character, and be through the NF storyline in 30-ish hours. None of that is spent on grind of any kind.

Grind means you need to perform a certain irrelevant task sufficient number of times, before some counter allows you to progress.

And no, FoW is not grind. It gives you no benefits, it doesn't open any doors, it doesn't enable you to do anything whatsoever, it serves no purpose except being a money sink..
Levels in GW are not grind. If you honestly believe that levels are preventing you from progressing, then it's time to look under Monk/Protection Prayers. Levels are irrelevant, it's skills that matter.
Lightbringer/Sunspear ranks. Irrelevant. You have to try really really hard to *not* gain those as you progress normally through storyline.
Storyline a grind? Uh... Don't play PvE then. Because story is all there is. It's especially funny when players complain that story is a grind that's preventing them from getting a character to a later area where they could farm. Irony at its best.

But nothing at all will ever require you to spend time doing something just to advance. You do not need to raid an instance for 3 months to finally get the item that will allow you to enter an area or craft a better (stat-wise) armor.

Damn you! I came on here to pip in with my "enforced grinding is bad, mmkay" stuff and you say this. This is a rare thing on these forums. This is a VALID POINT. The only grinding we have is on noob island really (sunspear points aren't needed past sergeant and playing the nf campaign from the start gets you that anyways) and LB points are also un-needed (at a level 2 LB i finished the game really quite simply). Foreigners dont have sunspear grinds anymore and heroes start at level 15. If you are playing from the beginning in NF, your heroes will level along with you. To help them along, give the non-20 heroes your quest rewards from mainland cantha. 4,000 exp a quest will soon have them shooting up. It's how i have all level 20 heroes on all my pve characters.

Te grind has been all but taken out of gw now. If anything, the only real grind left is for titles and as they are for mainly prestige (and a testament to lack of social life) the grind is completely optional.

There is virtually no grind at all in GW and the only restriction you have in the game is favour. And personally, I think that's pretty groovy.

/signed at stupid amounts of grind such as gaining sunspear and lightbringer points

But I wouldnt personally say its a huge amount of work to gain the required sunspear rank to proceed in the game. Thats the easy bit. Its grinding once you reach that level and you want to get the next one. Especially as there is no way to do it.

Lightbringer is even worse, because you can reach the highest level but only after mind numbing grinding and boredem.

Anet makes statements that they dont like excessive farming in the same place, and then gives us grinding titles like this which required us to basically farm in the same location.

Logic?

I wouldnt mind grinding for points if it was fun. If you look at Factions and Fort Aspenwood. Its not perfect and it does get boring, but thats a fun way to gain faction points. Not just by repeatadly killing the same creature.

But thats part of playing an online game isnt it.

This game has no serious grind.