GWEN...new title GRIND!

isnt it a little naive to think that a mmo is going to be completely grind free?

imo, guildwars provides enough variety in repetitive tasks to keep things interesting.

if you dont want repetition, dont play mmos as all mmo rewards are tied into time invested. or you can just play through the main story line and stop playing.

Strange, I've done nothing but normal gameplay yet I was far back from rank 5. A huge problem that comes up in these threads about grind is that people have different opionions of what "grind" and "effort" are.

You know what the problem is? When you repeateadly "vanquish" areas and get more points than you would doing quests/dungeons. Now since some people like you expect people to "work" for their armor, would adding a major increase in quest/dungeon reward points bother you? Since they would then able to do different activities without grind and still get lots of reward points, would that be considered "working for the armor"?

Again, people's different ideas of grind make threads like this turn into sloppy arugments. I spent about 5 hours clearing out Magus stones multiple times....it wasn't fun...I did the same thing over and over again. After a while, I minimized GW and let the heroes/henches do the work for me while I did other stuff. Now one would argue "stop boring yourself and do something else for asura points"....that's where the main problem is: you get more points through grind than you do by playing the game normally. 5 hours of grind might seem like nothing to some people, but it's still grind....boring and braindead. I wanted my armor now....I'm not gonna spend ages getting it by doing those quests and dungeons that barely give any points.

I have a better suggestion for "working" and "earning" armor.....add Hard mode in Eotn and instead of rank, make it so you have to beat a few dungeons in HM to view the armor crafter. Now you got the complete opposite of grind - make the dungeons hard, then there's little room for messups and lame builds...only then would getting your armor take true "effort".....hen we'd have new complaints - "this dungeon is too hard to beat"......we'd also have a new common counter argument - "stop using crappy builds....Guild wars is a team game". A few idiots view grinding for armor as "earning it and putting in effort". Braindead grind = effort?

On a random note, just about every dungeon and random quest I have in my log doesn't have any faction reward points.

That would be brilliant as it would make it so there's still a good challenge to get them, only the challenge is fun instead of boring.

Please, for the kittens, stop crying about this light grind. The titles are fair enough and are nothing compared to PvP ranks, FoW requirements and Kurz./Lux. allegiance ranks.

You don't get everything for free here. If you want the armor, go work for it. Take the time if you don't want to grind. Just get the points by playing through quests under the blessings. If that's too much to ask, go with one of the standard armor sets from Prophecies, Factions or Nightfall.

@Hyper.nl

I totally agree, you must work for your armor.

BUT!

The problem is , that the most people think or realy know IT!, that the armors are pure re-skins and nothing new. Take assassin for a sample: Fishy Armor, 15k Kurzick with less spikes on the armor ? (Norn) Dwarves looks like a Newbie Assassin (And it's a max armor !) the Ranger 10k with those big glove's ? ever saw a ranger walking in the forest with those huge Glove's ? come on, they need to pay those Art designers more, or kind like that, to get ORGINAL armors, like the Prophecies campaign.

And of that Grinds, i think it's not grinding it's more WORKING for your title , if you dont want to grind don't do it plz!(Like members said before here) but yeah i really was dissapointed when i saw that Droknar's Blades daggers, same skin as the Forgotten at the Nightfall campaign AND! same stats. I taught a cool big blade with chains or ? more REAL daggers, not a reskin dagger. And they looked colored with PAINT, to make it DIFFERENT, between the 2 campaigns.


Nightfall: (Same stats like the Talons of Forgotten)


Droknar's Blades (End Game Daggers EotN)


(Sorry for mis-spell)

But yeah, it was more worth 15 bucks, than 40, but that's me.
I hope they can make it better with a UPDATE

Proof? I've read numerous press releases and watched interviews but this doesn't come to mind. Don't get me wrong, I'm not fond of grinding, but to blatantly come up with lies just because you're upset is somewhat low of you. I'll be one of the first to admit, I hate this grinding for the sole reason I want my armor here and now. So when I think about it, that sounds immature and I don't mind working a bit for it anymore.

My fissure was bought with gold/ecto made from trading. High End trading is hardly grind, it requires time, but I could do other stuff in between.

Incorrect! You need to grind to raise your rank to increase the power of the new PvE skills.

Bang on the money imo. One of the biggest complaints levelled against prophecies pve was the lack of any endgame. Once the storyline was completed, pve'ers had 2 options: make a new char or farm your balls off for fissure armour.

None of the titles are required to complete the game, yes they give an advantage but you could still finish the game without them. In that respect they are optional, just as the new armours are. If you don't want to invest any effort to get new stuff in the game then just finish the game and shelve it.

Another thing I don't understand is that many players are more than willing to farm/trade for hundreds of hours in order to get fissure armour, but the idea of farming for 15-20 hours for a few fringe benefits horrifies them? Where is the difference in grinding for gold and grinding for points? Oh I forgot, it's required grind... except that it isn't.

Right, but your decision to use the PvE skills since they are once again unnecessary. If you want them to be better, use them in your grind. People want but are unwilling to give in return.

Let it be known, people who don't speak out, will be left with a crap hole, people that protest, get results so those who are saying stop whining, you stop moaning to the protesters n go live in your crap whole -_- it gets annoying seeing that Red engine crap...thats pathetic....

We're speaking out, but you don't want us to because why? So you're doing what we're doing basically. Telling us to stop whining, as we say the same back about the people that don't want to work for what they want. Interesting, isn't it? I think I'll keep telling them to work instead of whine because it gets results as your model shows us. It's not like it's even that hard to gain rank for the titles. I only see Vanguard being troublesome at all.

Unwilling to give in return? Sorry. I thought I gave $40.

TBH I can't see anything prestigious about FoW/Odsidian armour or any armour/weapons for that matter and thats with having a set of FoW on my ranger - the only reason I got it was because it was the only male ranger armour I actually liked the look of in chap 1 and I wanted extra energy and thought male druid looked stupid, I'd quite happily swap it for new armour but imo all the male ranger apart from FoW looks stupid, especially the ones with great big overcoats. The same thing happened with my warrior - I only liked male FoW warrior, but that was only untill Primevil which I prefer to FoW (and it's chest piece crumb catcher) so I ditched the FoW for it, my other characters have 1k and 1.5k stuff (Necro, Derv, Ele) as I prefer the look to more expensive stuff. Same with weapons - I'd rather have my purple req 9 inscribable bow with a skin I like, than an expensive gold version or an expensive daft looking weapon just to pose - I don't care what others think, I choose stuff because I like the look of it.

Oh and to answer the question - getting FoW didn't seem like a grind as it was re-doing high level quests and hoping for good drops (ecto/shards or a nice rare sellable gold) with a full party rather than mindless repetative solo farming the same things all the time.

Now I dont really mind the playing for points, but they really really need to add in more quests that give Asura point rewards. Not nearly enough secondary quests that give Asura point rewards where as the other branches have more. =/ Oh well.

Maybe I just got lucky, but I was r4 from quests (Asuran + Asuran primary) and just cleared Magnus Stones twice to get to rank 5. Granted, on my way to the quests I did do a lot of map clearing. Why? I wanted to take in the scenery, I didn't rush any of it and got some lovely screenies as a reward for my slow pace.

In Magnus Stones I got lvl 2 bodyguard and hunt rampage quickly. Rampage is EASILY maintainable on this map because the foes are nice and close - my party had no speed buff and I managed to keep rampage up for the majority of the map. It took me less that 2 hours to make up the final points that I needed for armour that I really wanted. I didn't consider it grind except for my general complaints on guild chat that I couldn't do a dungeon with them because I wanted my points for armour.

To be perfectly honest, the points do seem to go slowly when you sit around looking at them, not understanding how the hunt bonuses work. Yes, I probably got lucky, but compared to the 10k faction needed in Factions to continue the main mission, the final 10k I needed happened MUCH more quickly. Compared to standing around trading highend items (which had to be farmed in the first place) it was much quicker. Compared to 55'ing UW for ecto for FoW I found it much quicker.

Dont grind if you dont like it is too simplistic

If you are dealing with one toon then its sort of a viable comment, however I play all of them and some of them I would like to give treats to.


My particular problem is I dont mind earning something but if you want to do that on 12 characters or more its just too much of a pain in the arse and not worth it.

Everyone could probably be satisfied simply by making it that once you have GROUND one toon through all the trash to get armour or whatever, that the facilites then become available to the other toons on your account.

I have 3 accounts with 15 toons on each of them , I am only upgrading one because the grinding is stupid and a waste of time , I will still play but in other areas I like, however the point is this is PVE and we shouldnt have to grind and grind on every single character to get certain rewards on each one.

They are gonna lose money from me, and Ive been there from the start.

I really think they can satisfy all by having it so that once the grinding item (whatever it is ..includes that stupid faction grinding in factions) is completed on one toon , the others on your account can have it.


Ill still take some toons through the story line but no way in the world will they be doing the stupid grinding.


IMO,,,,,,,,the stupid grinding is there to keep you occupied till GW2, Ill continue to play the areas I like and look around for a replacement

After reading this thread, I am glad I waited to buy GWEN. I have a total aversion to grind and I would not have been happy at all.

$40 buys the game, not the complete UAX pack. Every game in existence requires some effort to be put in for the rewards - from FPS, RTS through RPG and MMO it's one of the fundamental concepts of gaming.

The title is hardly a grind, these people are complaining they can't reach Rank 5 in just 4 days since the expansion released, it's absurd. High-end contents are not meant to be purchased right off the bat! Everybody's so sensitive about their elite status, that they can't wait to get the bestest best stuff right this very instant!

Well for one, asking for less grind isn't asking for a game where everything is handed to you on a silver platter.

It wouldn't be a problem to me if, while playing through the storyline, I could earn enough points for rank 5 in the titles, but that is not the case.

Had the game been advertised saying, "You can get 40 new armor sets, but, you'll have to spend ~10-20 hours bored out of your mind grinding the same area over and over again." then I wouldn't have bothered buying it.

I was under the assumption that games were supposed to be "fun." Grinding for the few armor sets I do like, isn't that fun at all.

If this is the route ArenaNet plans to take with GW2 then I know now that I won't be buying it, especially with all of the other online games coming out that look good.

There is more to rank than just armor. Did everyone completely forget about the dozens of new PvE skills? I know I sure didn't and grinding sucks!

We did not forget about the dozens of new PvE skills, in fact we've been using them. At rank 3 or 4, they're already very effective. They may not be as powerful as rank9, but then again, nobody is suppose to become "elite" overnight.

If grind was fun, no one would be complaining much if at all. But here we are with titles to grind to get whatever the factions are hoarding. Sure you can do the story like normal, but its not that long and it takes atleast rank 4 for anything special.

The title grind was a bit different in Nightfall since by the time you get to Vabbi, the Sunspear Rank was very high and the Lightbringer rank was usable by the time you got to the Realm Of Torment.

Honestly I've played games with waaaay more grind than this, but its the same almost wherever you go. Grind is just not fun when its obvious and mundane. And it can be insult to injury when you work so hard to get to something that isn't all that it was cracked up to be(Dungeon loot).

So there are pretty much two options, Find another game to play(lots of blockbusters just came out), or set a goal while you are out grinding a title to take your mind off of it. The way I do it is to explore corners of a map that I've never been to. The grind usually happens on the way there.

The problem is that it's only been 4 days, and people are trying to achieve ranks that are obviously beyond them for the time being. There is nothing wrong with being at rank 3 or 2, or even rank 1 at this moment... it's just that people have been making this race-for-top-tier-titles their only goal, going out there and killing the same mobs over and over again, feeling the grind more than ever when they should just do the quests and follow the story.

If they come back in 3 weeks, and still complaint about not being able to achieve rank 3, THEN maybe it is a grind...

4 days or 10weeks won't change the fact that my ranger has completed every single quest in the game and still has slayer of nightmares. He's completed every non-grind activity so his title won't go up any further, hence he'll never see the armourer and his skills will always be half as effective. My second and third characters through the game will have the same problem. Skill over time indeed.

Perfectly achievable by just farming the rare material trader, you don't even need to trade with players.

You either forgot to pick up some bounties on the way or had a runner. I'm barely halfway through and I'm already at the same rank as you, and I skipped alot of side quests as well. That is unless you have higher reputations with other race. It's just highly unlikely that you can complete every single quests/mission/dungeon for the norns and pick up all your bounties on the way and still end up with less than rank 5.

As for second characters, this issue is no different than Sunspear/LB titles, which I would agree it does become repetitive, but I would rather they just make titles account-tied.

I concur with this. The majority of titles in the other games can be maxed through actually playing the game, not needless repetition. Vanquisher, Cartographer, Guardian, Skill-Hunter and even Sunspear can be maxed just through playing. Some might argue that Sunspear takes grind, but I maxed it before I even finished Vanquishing Nightfall without once farming Sunspear points (ie: all points were achieved while in the act of Vanquishing, or through questing and mapping prior to said Vanquishing act), so they have no leg to stand on.

This is how titles should be achieved, through playing, not constant repetitive action. I have maxed Lightbringer, and it took hours upon hours of doing the same quests over and over again. I cringed when I saw that Eye of the North would have four more titles that would require me to do this. This, for me, is not fun. Yes, I want to max titles. I find that fun. I work for it. I don't have to grind the same area over and over again to farm points to achieve the Vanquisher title. Sure, I may fail and have to redo an area here and there, which can be frustrating, but that is part of the challenge involved. I do not understand why there are these reasonably achievable titles that simply require playing, while there are the completely rediculous titles that require either endless grind, or simply throwing money at them to achieve (money which needs to be grinded for). The worst is the Lucky title, because not only does it require a ludicrous sum of both money and time spent AFk, it also is one of the few that gives an actual benefit. You gain benefit by sitting around doing nothing, while you gain nothing for spending hours clearing areas in hard mode, or beating all of the missions in both difficulties. Am I the only one who sees the stupidity in this?

Point grind isn't challenge, it is monotony. I feel very sorry for those of you who cannot see this one plain, simple truth.

Diablo: How do you feel the rep grind in GWEN compares to the Sunspear title? I am on the fence about the game, but I might be able to stand it if the grind was slightly less than Sunspear was.

Do you estimate that if you completed all of the quests once you would reach one of the highest ranks, or do you have to repeat stuff over and over to get that high? Thanks...

Nobody reached the highest sunspear rank or lightbringer rank or any rank by doing the standard quests/missions/activity.

The highest tier in any rank is reserved for those who deliberately devote large amounts of time for it. Naturally this would seem like a "grind" for casual players... it should. Thats what it means to Max a title. But in terms of required ranks, like for armors and skills, the reputation points are no different than sunspear/LB points. It takes a few weeks, just like it did for Nightfall.

The highest tier for these reputation points is rank 10, and there are people already at rank 8 in just 4 days!!! Tell me this isn't a bit absurd. That's more than a rank a day! It naturally makes the rest of us feel a bit inadequate, and makes us feel like we need to get our asses out there and grind grind grind just to catch up with these lunatics...

Let the lunatics be lunatics. I'm going to play at my pace and have fun.

Everyone else should too.

Why is everyone in such a hurry, anyway? The armor's not going anywhere.

Reality disagrees with you. Doing all quests gives you 6700 faction and will take you into all 7 zones about ~3 times each - assuming you kill about 50-60 enemys each time, you'll get around 150 faction per instance after bonuses.

This will give you a total of total of 9850 faction, just enough for slayer of nightmares, and nowhere near slayer of wurms.

Well I didn't ask if it would get you the absolute highest, I asked if it would get you ONE of the highest. Personally, I feel that r7 is one of the highest ranks. But I also feel like you shouldn't need to grind things over and over to get rep either. I think by finishing all the quests you should be able to hit r7 or so. Vanquishing or clearing dungeons to get the rest of the rep doesn't sound too bad to me either, especially compared to killing the same monsters over and over.

I agree with this completely. It's the reason why none of my characters are higher than rank 4 LB. Once again I agree with the fact that SS can - more or less - be maxed with ALL quests and a full Elonian vanquish, but to be honest the idea of vanquishing the entire map on more than one, maybe two characters doesn't appeal to me, at this point in time. The idea of vanquishing doesn't appeal to some people at all.

I reached rank 5 Asura VERY EASILY. I would not consider it to be grind to get it. What I find difficult to understand is that people have claimed to have done the main quest line and ALL the side quests in an area and are NOT EVEN CLOSE. I am not a farmer. I'm not a grinder. I don't have the time to grind. I'm a very casual player. I like to take my time going through the game, I like to see the sights, read/see/experience the lore. After nearly 2.5 years of playing I STILL have not managed to get all the ecto for a set of FoW. I don't farm and trade high end I just can't be bothered with the time and tricks people try to pull, I've not solo'ed or duo'ed FoW since Factions came out - preferring to play instead. So yes, MAXing the title will be grind, but 26k was NOT difficult to get.

That would mean everybody is only 3 ranks away from top tier, just by doing the missions and quests, diminishing the achievement status of the title. But at this point its just a matter of opinion in terms of numbers, you think the quests and missions should yield rank 7, someone else will think it should yield rank 8, others will think it should just yield top tier.

In anycase, wherever the missions or quests leaves us in terms of rank, shows how hard we tried. Not enough? the rest is up to you, have a cup of coffee, whack some monsters, go watch tv, but just don't think you need it by tomorrow... because you don't. There are plenty of other fun stuff to do.


Good math, except i do believe I kill at least 80-90 monsters per explorable area, the minimum was 72. Considering that most explorable areas contain an average ove 300 monsters, 50-60 enemies is is almost 1/6th the amount, that would mean I've only explored 1/6th of the map.

Also, you can get 4000 norn points just for wiping out Varajer Fells on a single visit, it's more than enough to boost me up to rank 5 if I wanted to.

You can have all the ranks in the world if it make you happy, people are complaining that unless you grind to them you can't access armour and have less effective skills. If you want to make people happy, keep 10 ranks there, remove the grind for armour and have pve skills single tiered.

Is this an admission that there the game is forcing compulsory grind on casual players?

Just because it needs to be requoted

It already is. PvE Skills are already potent at r2, and achieving r5 is a walk in the park. This is how it feels for me at least...

Hardly compulsory, and certainly no grind. Wiping out a single explorable area? Too tough? Well then it sounds more like a capability issue. Any poor player can say killing 5 monsters is a "grind".

I whack 100 monsters on my way to do a quest, I didn't break a sweat, didn't take that long, and it was a breeze. If you can manage to skim by all the explorable areas by just killing merely 50 monsters on the way, dodging all the baddies, you're actually making an effort to kill LESS. In that case lower reputation is the only logical result.

Killing 3000 enemies and getting a bazillion reputations is only a grind if you're trying to do it in 4 days. It's not how much you're trying to do, it's how fast you're trying to do it... it's time to slow down.

This is not really accurate. Skill-hunter requires plenty of grind. Having to go into the same exact zone/mission multiple times in most cases because you are only allowed to make one cap at once (possibly two in some cases, but not usually - and even then it's only 2 of 6 or 2 of 8; so that doesn't reduce grind much). That's presuming the boss you need actually spawns, which in some cases, it doesn't --- which just adds additional grind on top of this. Having to kill the same exact mobs/bosses in your way multiple times with much grinding-induced agony going along with that.

Carto is also a grind, just a grind consisting of hardcore pixel-hunting. Hardcore pixel-hunting is definitely not equal to "playing".

Original poster has a completely valid point too. All the grind-based titles in GW, which is the vast majority of them (maybe only Guardian and Protector aren't) should be account-based. The grind is already ludicrous enough with them being character-based.

A better way to reward players would be based on completing hard areas, ie: getting a Guardian title type of thing. Rather than repeating the same easy task several thousand times, aka GRIND, which is how it is presently.

"Finish Him" does 36 damage lasts 9 seconds for R3 and 68 damage and 17 seconds for R8... improvements of 89% for grinders over casual players.
"I am the strongest" does 65 damage at R3 and 126 damage at r8... Thats an improvement of 94% for grinders over casual players.

and these are just the norn shouts with progressions listed on wiki.

Trying to attack my playing ability does not score any points.

If I'm at point A and I need to get to point B I'll kill everything in between, I'm not going to cruise around mindlessly slaughtering the natives. Killing things for the sake of some virtual carrot on a stick = grind. You've already said that the minimum you've killed is 76, which means you are going out of your way to kill things for the sake of it - there are <10 jotan between sifhalla and the sepulchre of dragrimmar.

You're missing the point, there is only 4 days worth of quests to do which get you to rank 3, after that nothing gets killed unless you're grinding for points so you'll never get any higher than rank 3 unless you grind.