Why is grinding okay now?

It's just A-Net's logic I think

Grinding and farming is good in A-Net's point of view, as long as you're NOT rewarded for it.

They nerfed monster farming in the ground. You can still do it, but the time-effort balance is gone.

And now, with the Kurzick/Luxon faction, the time-effort balance is gone again. A-Net indeed doesn't hate farming, they just hate to reward players that do it for rewards.

I think this is the only way to keep people playing. If they rewarded us enough, A-Net is afraid people would have nothing to accomplish, and quit.

Just live with it, and enjoy the little fun you have, before it gets nerfed even more.

More content, more often would help. Failing that, grind really is all there is to do in one form or another. It might be title aquisition, farming, bringing more characters through the game. Its all grind so pick your poison.

The reward to time ratio in the game has sunk dramatically. Ironically, while on the one had it can be argued that it keeps people in the game and playing, it drove at least as many people away. I really enjoyed playing HM missions for the Guardian titles. The reward for me was simply in the doing. More and more this sort of outlook is what is needed in the game else you fall into complaining about grind and nerfs endlessly.

As reetkeever said, find the things you enjoy to do in the game as I dont see this dynamic changing for the better either.

Quite right.

What people are complaining about, however, is the new Kurzick/Luxon PvE only skills tied to the allegience track.

Playing through all the missions, quests, not running, etc, will net the average character ~17k faction earned, or roughly 1/6th of the way to the very first rank. Compare with what you said about SS, where simply playing through the game in anything but 'run to next mission' will get you to at least R7.

So, the 'casual' player (of which most of the PvE base is, they just seldom post here), a char getting through the chapter can get all the SS skills they want, and use them at 70% of the 'max' power. After completing Factions, they are still only 1/6th of the way to even being able to look at the similar skills.

The idea I've sported on a different board is that they need to take all the new levels they added, and put them at the bottom, not interspersed. That way, a normal player can get to a decent rank without too much trouble, and thus make the skills available and usable, and leave the higher ranks for those passionate about FF.

Dayum. That's a good sentence.

Over a few months of casual AB and FA I bagged 250k Kurzick faction for the first rank of the Friend title, and now that the ranks have been doubled I'm actually rank 2. Just at this rank, the skills work perfectly well.

Unlike the Sunspear and Lightbringer ranks, all of your characters can help each other because the title is account-wide. I earned my faction over 6-7 characters or so

Lol, these skills might, paradoxially enough, turn out to be the nail in the coffin of PuG's.

Some are bit on the uber side, there is for instance a skill that effectively gives a non-stop 33% IAS and +20AL, another adds +2 to some attributes.

the sunspear title is ok, u can get it to a decent level with just a few quests, and story progression.

lightbringer title is basicaly a farming title, as the average quest reward is 10 lightbringer points, or none. thats pretty pitiful as u could just kill a few margonites and get that

kurz/luxon, add a really low first rank (10,000 to 25,000) that u can display, so u can use the skills (at a reduced rate), and let those without the title atleast view the skills.

What's with this attitude that you have to "work" for your skills? It's a game. I don't work in real life to have fun, I do it because I have to. If the game was like a job I sure as hell wouldn't play it.

Should skills just be handed to me without me doing anything? No. But they should be obtainable by doing things as part of completing the campaign. I can get all the sunspear and lightbringer skills (and regular skills) by just playing through the storyline. And I'm willing to do some extra work to make these skills effective. I have 10 characters, of these, 8 have r10 sunspear and the other two are very close to it. And I have one r6 lightbringer, seven r5 lightbringer, and two r4. Generally I feel that vanquishing lightbringer is more than good enough considering I don't do anything in DoA.

The problem with the kurzick/luxon titles is that you don't even obtain the first level by going through the campaign. I don't want to grind just to have the priveledge of buying skills that I may not like once I try them, or may end up getting nerfed after I get them. Yes, it's account wide, but it's still a grind to just access skills, and for people like me with two accounts, that's an unacceptable amount of grind to just have access to the skills with all my characters.

Do I need the skills? No. Would they make my characters more powerful? Yes. I have a hard time believing that my ele could do as much damage as an ele with perpetual elemental lord. And it's not just something that's only useful in RoT or DoA. These skills will be useful in gw:en, too.

And what if the devs think "well since we gave them these overpowered skills, we can make pve much more difficult in gw:en"? Or what if these skills were introduced so that they could properly balance pvp (eg. nerfing SF)?

Even if that doesn't happen, the point is that those who grind a lot are more powerful than those who don't, in every area of the game. Pve never used to be like this. If I wanted a game where I could grind to be better than others, I would have gone to WoW like soooo many people I know did. But I stayed because I don't want to play that kind of game. I want to play through the storyline, doing the quests and the missions, and maybe with some minimal grind, and have access to all the skills of my class. Since gw was always that way before, I don't think that's too much to ask.

And what's next? Supposedly in gw:en we are going to get a large number of new pve skills. Probably linked to titles. If these titles are anywhere near as grindy as the faction titles, I want nothing to do with it. Grinding for skins or titles to show off? That's fine. Grinding for access to skills (which in gw:en will be a large chunk of the number of new skills) is NOT ok.

See the "Optional" in effect? Can't please all people all of the time. You're one of the "other" guys.

I'm not gonna grind. I'm going to play as I normally would, and make the skills more powerful (they are already more than useful, just from regular play.)

It doesn't make sense to just call anything grind. People seem to love to complain about "grind", when they don't have to do any of it at all. Repeated PvP is grind if you don't enjoy it.

Grind? no...

For as long as I've been playing GW the whole paradigm has been "time spent doesn't give you an advantage- your skill at the game gives you an advantage." These Luxon/Kuzick skills seem to be a major reversal from that paradigm. The amount of grind required to reach even rank 1 of the required title is immense, and I cannot imagine that I would ever be able to/want to accomplish it. I really, really hope that these new skills are not indicative of the direction ANet is taking with GW2.

+ and free_fall
Thanks guys. I was all screwed up with the Factions game-skills and the 'faction-skills'. And maybe it's my beginner's ignorant-bliss... but I think it's fun to just log in and go out and kill stuff. It does make me feel better to know that GW:F is the easier of the 3 and that I started with the chummy one out of random chance.

Anyways, this game is fun. And like I said in the other thread...
"On my first mission, I went running behind trees so the Kappas wouldn't see me..." [/classic]

The problem is, a.net is trying to cater to the "grind crowd." Unfortunately, this game doesn't have nearly the amount of customization options that make such grinding worth it as do other MMORPGs.

The alternative is to find another game.

For those of us in the middle -- where we want a challenging game, but don't want to waste time on grinding -- GW is not the only game in town.

Now that ANet has changed to time > skill, the only really strong "hook" for GW is its lack of a monthly fee. And for some of us, paying a fee isn't a problem. I'd rather pay a fee, and get better service, than play a game that's no longer interested in my kind of player.

So yes, we should find fun where it exists -- and in this case, it isn't GW.

I think this is the outcome, but what's the cause? Why cater to grinders? I think the cause is money. They can't afford to make free content, so they make titles and grind paths instead. This way instead of making content, they can work on new games instead.

What I am hearing from a lot you is that you don't like it that someone who is willing to put in the work is getting rewarded when you don't want to put in the work and still want the reward. Frankly I hope none of you are over 10 years old because if that is your attitude and you have a real job it would be awful to be your boss.
"Boss, John Doe got a raise. Why didn't I get one?"
"Well Mr. Smith, John actually worked hard and all you did was play solitaire."
"That is so not fair! Either I get a raise or I quit!"
"Well, goodbye."

Well you have to remember that titles and additional skills from titles are only optional. It is really up to you if you want them or not but please keep in mind that there are alot of people who play GW1 who love getting titles and don't mind putting the extra effort in to attain these.

For me it is not about the reward. It is all about enjoying the game you like to play and having fun with it and I'll feel the same way when GW2 hits the stands.

fixt imo

EDIT:

LOL you may want to check the thread polling the average age groups of people in GWguru playing GW.

back to topic. Yeah I agree with most of people here that the requirements for SS skills are fine as they are attainable just by playing through the game. For the Faction PVE skills, after completing the campaign, you still have to gind sleeplessly just to get title 1. I may never be able to actually see those skills in game if their requirements are kept as they are now.

You've got it wrong, I can play solitaire for 42 days straight while being a doorman at fff. Heck, I bet I could even run bridge and play solitaire. Nobody here said they wanted maxed rank for free, that's not the point. I think everyone understands we need to work towards a reward, we just think that doing fff for a thousand hours to obtain it is a little dippy. Alliance Battles? You've got to be kidding me? Alliance Battles are PvP, and shouldn't even be a topic in working towards PvE only skills.

The problem with that argument is that GW is a game not a job. The problem I have is not that other people are getting rewarded, but simply that it takes 1000 hours to get the full reward.

Someone on GWOnline suggested that these were meant to be Lightbringer skills instead... but after ANet saw how few people were participating in AB they decided to link them with the Faction title. If you look at the Luxon icons (which ANet cleverly did not use in their update notes) you can easily see how closely they look like the Sunspear skills. The Kurzick skills resemble neither. IMO, they made the Luxon icons for the Lightbringer title and then made the Kurzick ones after they decided to link them with the Faction rank.