Why is grinding okay now?

So, I remember a while back that everyone was complaining about there possibly not being a level cap in GW2... The complaints were that the game is based on skill, not time spent.

Now everyone's saying that to get the Kurzick/Luxon skills we should have to grind. How can the game be based on skill if someone can farm faction for hours on end and get uber-powered skills because of it?

Sunspear/Lightbringer isn't nearly as bad as Kurzick/Luxon. You can farm those in wurms, quick and easy. Kurzick faction title would take 1000 hours to farm if you make 10k an hour by FFFing. So even if you spend 10 hours out of your day doing this (which would be extremely boring)... You'd still take 100 days. That's nearly a third of a year. (Or 42 days of farming non-stop... good luck with that.) Has this sunk in with anyone else yet? Faction is horrible to farm, as it is currently.

Sure, ANet wants to keep the title as it is, in order to keep the prestige for those that already got it... But this is clearly NOT the title to link skills with if it takes 1000 hours of CHEATING to accomplish. That is, in essence, what FFF is. You just run to a place and die. I'm almost certain that's not what ANet had in mind when designing that quest.

In my humble opinion, ANet needs to take a close look at the Kurzick/Luxon title and decide if this is really the best title to link skills to. Heck, the Drunkard title doesn't even require this much time and energy. 7 days of being drunk... vs 42 days of faction farming. (If you go at the titles non-stop, without sleep.) That's 1/6th of the time.

I might get the Supporter rank for the Kurzick title... But I probably won't go much further. The title is simply horribly broken.

In any case, back to my main question... Why is grinding okay for this title? Now that I've shown the title takes an incredibly long time, (at minimum: ~1000 hours) can anyone tell me how this is any better than removing the level cap in GW2? I actually think removing the level cap is a great idea. Then again, I liked the Lightbringer title as well. It gives you an overall boost, not simply a few crazily-overpowered skills.

Shouldn't "new" players to Guild Wars (by "new" I mean players that haven't played for a year or two) be able to easily get all the same benefits that everyone else has in PvE? I just got GW a few months ago, myself. I thought it was a wonderful game when I started, but now I'm starting to wonder... With all the nerfs I've been seeing lately and these skills...

How's a newcomer going to feel when they're turned down because they don't have a high enough Faction-rating to maintain Elemental Lord on their Ele? This is something that I feel is very realistic for PvE... As Ele Lord is so powerful. Same goes for some of the other skills.

At first I thought that it seemed so cool that ANet still wants to encourage people to buy Factions and play it. Then I thought about it for a while, and these skills really don't encourage people to buy Factions... They simply benefit people that have Faction-farmed for ages, expecting nothing in return. Maybe that's a good thing for them... but for everyone else, it sucks.

Because teenagers, military wives and people with no set goals for their own life need an achievement engine to make themselves feel good.

In my opinion&PoV:

Grinding was taken out of GW so PvP would be balanced by skill, not time spent grinding levels and looting epic gear.

Grinding in PvE could remain, simply for the fact that it doesn't matter in PvE. Those monsters don't care if you beat them up with only [skill]Mending[/skill] on your skillbar and collector armor, or if you have Fow + max cristaline + all the pve skills. Simply because they're PvE skills, they CAN be so hard to obtain. I don't say I like it, but it's a choice that A.Net has made.

Optional grind.

None of this is required to beat the game, its just a little extra to keep people hooked.

ANet tries to go the grind route, as many players seem to like it.

They just forget that are literally dozens of viable modern MMOs out there that already cater to that formula - and much better than GW, to be honest.

Sorry, raising Aldor Faction or gaining Attunement for Karazhan and stuff is much more sophisticated than obtaining Kurzick and Luxon Faction:

1. Do AB's and get slowly Faction
2. Do the repeatable quests every 2-3 minutes
3. AFK in Amatz Basin


What is worse than the grind? The fact that PvE becomes dumber and more brainless with every new freaking IMBA PvE skill they add.

Ironically, Mesmers benefit probably the least from the new PvE skills, while other classes got funny crap that makes things too easy. "There is nothing to fear" anymore indeed!

pvp would be just fine if everyone only had [skill]Mending[/skill] and a start sword, too, right?

in all actuality: the FEATURE of not requiring grind was for BOTH PvP and PvE. It was a core selling point of hte entire game itself. Don't need to grind to beat someone in PvP, and don't need to grind to experience all content in PvE. Up until factions, both were upheld quite well.

Yup yup. Anything that is needed to stay competitive in PvP is made fairly easy to get, very little to no grind. Anything the players want for PvE can be grinded for, since it's not needed or doesn't work in PvP. I'm fine with that, considering it's not that much grind.

If the cookie cutter build for an area requires a title skill, then the grind is required if you want to pug in that area.

Yeah, it's optional. But so would be the "no level cap" thing in GW2. I recall reading that benefits would likely decrease as levels increase. Therefore, after you reach a certain point... You wouldn't NEED to gain any more levels. It wouldn't be required to beat the game, by any means. And yet, everyone was opposed to the idea of grinding for levels because it "makes the game about time, not about skill." Heck, it wouldn't even affect PvP since the PvP players would just be set to a specific level anyway. PvP would be balanced, you could complete the game without getting to level 5000... So what makes that any different than Kurzick/Luxon titles?

And... "a little extra"? I don't call 1000 hours "a little."

The little extra is the increased power skills.

And if I have to have pink armour to join a pink armour PuG, what is your point? You don't *have* to PuG.

The problem with the grind is simply the amount of grind. Grind can be really casual and it can be downright extreme. And as it is typical with GW (they love extremes) there is nothing inbetween. We have the Sunspear Title which is piss poor easy to get. Then comes the Lightbringer Titel, takes slightly more time but is still easy to achieve. And then we have "zOMGosh WTF KOREAN GRINDGAME" Kurzick/Luxon Title.

And this grind sadly is a necessity. Not because you couldn't complete PVE without those skills but simply because almost everyone in Guildwars thinks he is so much superior (PVP and PVE) to everyone else. This leads to real bad elitist attitude and makes certain ranks and titles a requirement that you now actually have to grind for, simply because PLAYERS make them a requirement out of Ego and E-Drama reasons.
It gives pleasure to them to turn down a player by throwing insults at him, simply because his title is lower than that of someone else. One and only solution for that person: Get a higher title. Grind it and here come the extremes again: Enjoy your korean grindgame grind. You know, playing several months no end for a gain that is so ridiculously low that you'll bash your head against a wall after wasting all those thousands of hours.

/edit:
Yeah unless of course you're a loner but then you should reconsider why exactly you're playing a multiplayer game in the first place. And don't get that "get a better guild" crap started. The search for it is about as hard and succesful as the search for the holy grail. Some claim to have found it though no one ever experienced a good guild first hand.

Well, yeah. I love the skills, but the grind is quite insane to make them powerful.

The real problem is that this title was never intended to have skills tied to it. ANet made a decision to do so, and now we're dealing with the outcome.

having the grind staring people in the face like that is probably gunna intimidate more casual gamers than it does get em hooked. the sunspear skills however were done right and have renewed my interest in the game a little as I play around with them. If the sunspear skills required as much grind as the factions skills do, I'd probably be playing oblivion or some other game right now instead of waiting on my group in guild wars.

Exactly my point. I feel that the grind required for sunspear is just right... It also fits in with the storyline. Oh, and one more thing... For each rank of sunspear you get HERO SKILL POINTS. You can unlock a skill for free with these. That's great IMO. Better than normal skill points.

There's just no reason for the Allegiance rank other than skills, unless you own a town.

Its not compulsary grind in PVE. Anet are keeping to their grind free promise in relation to no hardly any difference between players when it comes to PVP. PVE however has some grind in it in which some can rise above others. However mostly this rising is purely cosmetic and does not detract from anyone elses gaming experience.

The grinders get the benefits for their grinding. Its their choice and those that choose not to grind shouldn't go crying about not being as 'leet' as the grinders.

If you want something bad enough you will work hard for it. In RL or ingame its the same.

These skills work perfectly fine at supporter level you know

I dont all the fuss, so you dont get an extra 3 seconds of uberness

We did fine w/o these skills before, its not game breaking if your not a savior, even if you feel you need savior to actually d PvE (god help you) at least it'll bring more people to AB

So do you think that an ele that can't maintain Elemental Lord all-the-time will have the same chances of being selected for a group as one that can? (I use the ele as they're the ones that clearly benefit from higher levels.) Finding PUGs for Hard Mode is difficult enough.

And it's not like there's a small change from Supporter to Savior. Therein lies the problem. I'd be perfectly happy if the skills were the same for everyone, regardless what rank they have on their Allegiance track. However, that's not how it is.

So would raising the level cap be perfectly fine with you? I mean, people will obviously have to grind to get higher levels... They should get benefits, right? But wait, wasn't the level capped at 20 to prevent grinding and give everyone a fair chance at being selected?

As I've said before, this affects newcomers very poorly. Others will have skills that they won't have access to without hours of grinding.

And it's not so easy as "working hard for it"... As I mentioned several times, it'd take 1000 hours to get the max title (that's 42 days without sleep, if you wanted to do it all at once). Assuming you make 10k per hour by FFFing. And FFFing isn't "hard" to do either. You just run somewhere and die... over and over and over again. Or you stand by the door while other people run all over the place for you.

It's not working. In fact, they couldn't do much worse to keep me hooked.
Not just newcomers. Veterans as well. Of the 11 people in my guild, all long time players, no one has a single point in one of the allegiance titles. There was never a point to it in the first thirteen and a half months of the game's lifetime.

Agreed. At first I was like "Oh! Great! Factions skills!" Then I realized how big of a grind it'd be to make them very effective. I think I'll keep my skillbar as it is.

I agree it's too steep.

Of course it is optional... just like it is optional to buy FoW armor. However, black dye, FoW armor, crystalline swords and drunkard titles don't give you a skill advantage over another player who chose to spend his time on the defender title. LB and SS seem fine, because they are reasonably obtainable and part of the storyline from the start. May as well link it to the sweet tooth title makes just as much sense to me.

All i read is a whining individual who just wants anet to hand them these skills at maximum level without ever having to lift a finger. Quite frankly its pathetic. And im sorry to say that you are not on your own.

But looking at the discussion from both sides does have merit. Yes there are good points for both sides and i do believe the anet designteam will find a middle ground.

But I seriously doubt that they would be succumbed by whiners and moaners like yourself that would rather detract from other peoples gaming experience ( that have put / will put time into faction farming ) rather than putting in effort themselves, and all under the guise of the 'new players coming into the game' routine.

Yawn

wanting to get rid of the grinding aspect doesn't mean the same thing as wanting it to be just automatically given at level 1. the specific person may or may not want that, but I don't think you really have enough information to make that accusation without looking completely foolish... This "middleground" is actually what most of the people on the side you are opposing actually want... not instantly given without any effort, but given based on deeds that have merit without turning into a grind. sunspear skills do this perfectly. protector title basis would also work just fine.

Pink armor pug ?

You couldn't come up with a better counter example, such as one that might actually happen on a regular basis ?

Also I view completing the game as completing the main storyline, all side quests and all elite missions at least once. So for the players without guild mates willing to help (say a mainly pvp guild) how can they complete DOA without getting the cookie cutter builds ?

Purely cosmetic ?

How exactly are the faction skills purely cosmetic considering they directly effect how well your character performs, regardless of your skill ?

I was just about to say that. Anet missed the ball when they came up with that concept.

What's grinding? And why is factions so bad?

It's the only GW I have at the moment. I think its fun to play. I am planning on getting Prof and Night sometime later (maybe in the winter). But for now I just play the PvE for fun. Am I wasting my time with factions if the skills in this expansion are not as good as the others? I'm a beginner and I don't follow anything going on about grinding or spending time on titles.

Hiya and welcome

The above posters are referring to faction gained skills, not skills only available in the GW chapter called Factions. ie.. they are optional skills that can only be gained by trading 'faction' points.

Factions as a game is great, so dont worry. Yep, a lot of us end up getting all 3 chapters as it does allow a broader and deeper gameplay style if you like (as well as getting 3 times the gameplay.

Grinding is the term used to desribe going out and getting something..experience, gold, items, or in this case 'faction' points. Its called grinding because it is...a grind.. :P ie it can be tedious, long and boring and repetitive.

edit - also, check out GW wiki for lots of really handy info

^^DirtyDirty

Just ignore all that - what they're going on about concerns experienced players who've been playing a long time, not anything people new to the game need to worry about.

You made a good choice. Factions is the shortest of the 3 and the easiest one to get started in. Plus, it's a blast. I say that as someone who completed Proph with 6 chars, taken 5 of those thru Factions (with the 6th about 3/4 finished), plus finished it with 3 new Factions chars with 3 more in various stages of advancement.

Just kick back and enjoy the game.

I didn't tought much about it, since I play mostly Necro and none of the Kurzick/Luxons skills really appeal to me, however one thing that could be done to keep the middle ground between grinding and getting all the skills easily would be to do this, imho :

You need to be level 1 in the title to get the skills, maybe make it so they cost more to buy (like 10k per skill, I don't know), but once you've bought it, it comes with the same power no matter the title level.
People will still have to grind for the title, but it will be more manageable, like the sunspear and lightbringer title.

I don't really see the problem here, unless you pug constantly and all pugs require the top end of these skills,
I'm a title chaser at heart, I dont pug anymore becuase of the bias, time taken to do so, and the unreliablility. Most things i can achieve with my partner or with heroes and hench.
I do mostly PvE, but regularly do PvP. concentrating on Ab at the moment, but I don't have many faction points in either title, 335k in Kurzick and 118k in Luxon, i'm going for both and I will get the skills on all characters, if they become usable i will use them, but I don't think they are necessary to play the game.
If peopel want to max them out then do so if not then play differently, PUG's always find ways to exclude people if its not this then its going to be something else, If you could play the game before there release then I don't see how you can't after

I can't possibly quote this enough for truth.

If someone wants to spend endless hours grinding to get points on a kuzack, luxon or sunspear, etc etc title; then thats their choice.

Let them be!

Yes it means their special skill will be more powerfull, but have you seen all the new special skills? Their not all that amazing!

Granted the elemental one is, but im quite happy just getting 24% more damage on just level 8 of the sunspear title.

I still have one more guardian title to achieve, so Im not going to waste my time grinding until I have absolutely nothing else to do.

But alot of players have nothing else to do, so let them grind. But what MMO/RPG game online doesnt have grind? they all do! get used to it.

I feel the same way. The lightbringer title was just the first step. While you could argue that "they are optional grinds," a 40% damage boost and 8 damage reduction through Nightfalls endgame content goes a long way to separate one level 20 character from another without said title. If you want to even try DoA content, do you think the groups there will take the Brave Lightbringer (what I finished the game at) or the Holy Lightbringer (which is 50 times as much farming).

The addition of these is a bad omen in my book, and I've certianly been playing less lately. Grinding is just an unimaginative way of trying to make a game appear like it has more to do than there really is. There isn't more to do. Its just making people do the same thing far too many times.

I think they should rework the title. Sunspear was pretty good, you should reach rank 7 or 8 by the time you beat the game, which would give you a pretty strong Sunspear skill. However, faction farming will take 10 hours doing FFF (or something like 30 hours for people who don't FFF) just to get the skill at the lowest level. They should at least make the first 6-7 levels be reasonable to get and the final two or three levels be harder for the people who like the grind. I hope they rearrange the cutoffs for the titles so the first few levels are easier to get.

And I don't think the "optional" argument holds. What if the only skills you can unlock are hammer skills, frenzy, and mending until you grind for 100 hours? Sure, you can beat the game with no grind. It just makes the game pathetic. Stuff like 15K armor, FoW armor, black dye, etc are optional because they have no affect on game play, whereas having more skills does.

The lightbringer title already annoyed me a little bit, because on my primary character with level 7 LB, with +35% dam, margonites were a joke. Yesterday I was playing another character and found the mobs to survive significantly longer when I realized that my heroes and I had no LB title (thats 4 characters with +35%, essentially one and a half people). Having that extra invisible nuker changes things alot. But at least it is fairly easy to grind. You can hit rank 4 in under an hour farming in HM.

The Sunspear and Kurz/Lux skills seem to be the only concerning points. Other grinding doesn't make me a better player then others while these do.

I don't seem to have a problem with the other grinds. But the fact that it's the only endgame we get is what sucks.

In theory, title rank discrimination could be an issue for elite areas and HM. In practice, so few are playing that it simply isn't.

I think all this gameplay was added because GW never managed to gain a whole lot of pvpers like they originally wanted. I think this is because:

-The hardcore pvp crowd is loked in Starcraft and Countersrike for all eternity.
-Pure PvP is extremely elitist and that inevitably turns people off.
-Not all players are content to use the current mandatory overpowered build of choise and nothing else. Every single game.

No problem for me. I play games for fun, not to be flamed and kicked out because my build sucks.
The game only improved since i got in.Pve used to be horribly bland before we got heroes and titles.

Bottomline: The pvp-centric gameplay of GW is evolving towards pve because the pvp playerbase is too small.

The next phase of this will be the huge pvp situations in persistend worlds we will get in GW2. Sound juicy sweet i say...

And one more impression: Most pve ers just want to farm. My last guild was all about it,so i got bored with it.

As I see it, you gain Sunspear Rank as part of the game, lets face it, for a NF born character you need 2,500 to get past the Sunspear Sanctuary and are well into the title track. For foreign characters, you accumulate SS rank as well when you run through the NF campaign. So for Sunspear Skills, anyone playing the pve game normally has access to them.

Now lets turn to Kurzick/Luxon Skills, the starting point is 100,000 faction before you can access the new skills. The game content only requires 10,000 to befriend a particular faction. The casual PvE'er stops there, at the 10,000 mark, that’s all they need to progress in the game. Hit the requirement once on one character and you don’t need to do it again across the whole account. With the introduction of faction based skills we are now seeing the introduction of a "requirement" outside the normal PvE game.

Simply put, just by playing through the Nightfall campaign you will get enough Sunspear points to unlock the SS skills, in factions however you can not get the required level by playing through the quests and missions ordinarily, you have to repeat quests and farm in AB etc etc to be able to access them (let alone use them efficiently).

Every single one of my 11 PvE characters has access to the Sunspear skills on a per character title, simply by following the story line, not one of them can currently access the Faction based skills even though faction is account based (only banked 50,000 Luxon, and I'm now in a Kurzick guild where I've banked 5,000).

While I currently have 10,000 of each in hand to allow easy progression of new characters, that would still leave me woefully short of even being able to "see" the faction based skills without an element of repeat grinding. To unlock them all on one character would require what, another 50K to get to the 100k requirement on Luxon, and a further 30K for the skills themselves. A total of 80K for the first character to be able to get them, and 30K for everyone one after that. On all 11 characters that’s what? A need to farm an additional 380K faction for one side of the divide only? I’d then need another 95K for the Kurzick side to reach 100,000 as well as the 3K per skill per character. Someone tell me this is not going to be pure grind for the sake of grinding.

OK, so I'm a self confessed PvE'er, I've played many characters through each campaign, I have (and no big deal, pardon the pun) People Know Me, from protector, cartographer, LB, SS, and Skill Hunter titles. With all of these titles there was a goal in sight, with Faction titles there was no objective in getting more faction for any particular alliance.

Before people turn round and say well, you grinded you way to max titles on SS and LB, the SS wasn’t intended, it was a consequence of going for the LB title track, to assist my guild mates in the RoT (read: it gives an inherent bonus the higher your rank). There was a purpose to it in the game as released, not forgetting DoA when it came out. Faction, for over 12 months, was only relative to a guild owning a town after you befriended one of the two factions, it had no other inherent benefit.

Even within a guild that purely plays for fun, I can see the way this is going. All of us having spent the time and effort to get together builds for a balanced DoA team within the guild, now face the question, do you have the Kurzick/Luxon skill? If the answer is no, we face the prospect of not being selected for a team within our own guild, all because another player in the guild is better equipped to do so. It doesn’t take much to extrapolate this scenario to that of a general PUG does it?

I already hear the cry in response, "if you are in a guild, just AB the faction". well, it may come as a surprise to you, there are PvE only guilds out there, who don't care to AB it; that want to play the true PvE content for fun, as a group, on an even foot hold.

Oh, and before anyone says I'm just whining, take this on board, I fully appreciate that a-net has introduced PvE only skills. I actually like the majority of the latest update as a whole, but, and there is always a but, whilst I can understand the link of the NF skills to the Sunspear title as part of the journey through the campaign, I fail to see the logic in linking the Factions skills to Luxon/Kurzick faction, other than those are the only campaign specific titles they could use.

Sunspear Title always had a purpose, Sunspear Rebirth Signet anyone? Light bringer had a similar purpose with its own associated skills and inherent bonus against damage in RoT. As part of the game you would reach the required level to obtain these (and the new SS skills). The same is just not true of the Luxon/Kurzick. The only purpose to the majority of PvE'ers (before this week) was to befriend each faction at 10,000, or to get the crafting materials for your 15K armor sets.

Lets look at this from another perspective. You max out SS at 50,000, and say on average for a quest completion you got 100 SS points, along with the points picked up by killing the AI. So lets say 500 points on average per quest. That’s 100 quests before you max the title out. Just how many times do you need to repeat a quest to get to the Faction requirement of 100K to get the skills? After the first 10K, 90,000 is needed at what 400K a throw, that’s 225 times, more than double the grind. Utlimately, if you want these faction based skills, you are now almost forced to AB or repeat the challenge missions. This is simply not true for the SS based skills.

As Skuld said, none of it is required to either play or beat the game. Nor do you need to join a pug that requires you to have a specific skill. If you decide you wish to, the 100k faction to simply get the skill is not an insurmountable hurdle by any stretch. No need to level the skill beyond that point.

You know, i think it's more irritating that you have to infuse every new set of armor you buy in order to play in mursaat areas, then it is to get a few ranks.
If you play the game the way meant to be played (all quests, kill every mob you encounter along the way), every character you make is Sunspear castellan and mighty lightbringer when it beats Abbadon.