Kurzick/Luxon Skills, an anti-grinding idea.

Hello everyone.

I have been noticing people complaining how grinding is annoying, but i never had the time/pacience to test it to see if they have been complainnig just to complain or if is really way too much grinding.

It has been i while i have dicided that i would do nothing but "farm" Kurzick faction in order to get good parameters with the Kurzick skills and use them.
I vanquished 4 areas at the hard mode to get faction, played whole day of Alliance Battle and finally, i ended up doing the famous "HFFF".
At the end of all of it, it came to me that it will be simply impossible for a player like me (i am that player who play 3 hours a day, not 18 hours) to reach the rank8, without spending the rest of the time i would be playing other stuffs like Dungeons, Vanquish, Random Arenas and etc.
It just takes too much time, time that should be spent doing other fun things

The "grinding" in order to get a skill seems to be focused at these titles (luxon/kurzick).

Comparing the Kurzick/Luxon with the new Norn/Deldrimor/Ebon/Asura/Sunsper title (not taking into consideration that one of them also includes pvp) we can clearly see that the number of skills that will provide you in time is much much bigger at the new titles.
The EoTN titles reach the maximum at 160,000 points.
The Faction titles reach their maximum at 10,000,000 points, considering you donate each faction point, you will need 5,000,000 points.
So, when i get to rank10 at ONE EoTN title, i will have acess to about 11 skills at their maximum parameters.
And by the time i get to this title, and have acess to 11 skills, i will be reaching rank2 at the Faction titles, and have acess to 10 skills at their minimum parameters

Now lets exagerate.
When i get all 4 EoTN titles at rank10, i would have accumulated 640,000 points and have acess to 48 skills (not to mention the forms).
If i donate 640,000 faction to my alliance, i will reach rank 6, wich if half!!! I will still have acess to only 10 skills, and they will not be at their maximum parameters.

Taking note: The Luxon/Kurzick skills are acessible to all your characters. But I, for example, only play with 3 characters. Even at the 'exagerated' condition i will have 30 skills at their medium parameters acessible to my charaters, wich still can tbe compared to 48 skills at their maximum. Not to mention that you can use 3 EoTN skills at the same time (because its the max) and you can only use 2 of the Faction skills.

The idea:

Make the Kurzick/Luxon skills reach their maximum parameters at rank 6.

or

Untie the Kurzick/Luxon skills to their original titles and tie them to orther canthan titles like Vanquisher or Defender. But you could only get these skills having at least rank1 at kurz or luxon skills, and the exchange method should stay as it is.

I would personally remove them from the title completely.

Even R6 is a huge ammount of time spent just to be able to have a skill do its max damage. A lot of people do not have the time to grind rep, why should they do less dmg than someone else?

just lower max of lux7krz titles from this ridiculöous 10 Million points needs, to a humanous amount of points, like 500000 Points ... or say only 1 Million Points for max rank ....

give factions the same way of reputaton farming, we have either in NF or in EotN ..
talk to npc and so more monsters <you kill, so better becomes the reputation u receive over time with NpC's at shrines, which give you every x kills bonus rep.

and give also titles like lux7kerz and ss/lb such reputation books too , with that you can receive bigger amounts of reputation point,s when you complete them ....

that would be naturally all missions for NF/FA, that would have to be done, to get the books full

and ya, it should give more skils imo, more lightbringer skills would be nice ...

I disagree

Before the Kurzick/Luxon PvE only skills were introduced the alliance ranks were far high in donated faction and harder to get.

With the introduction of the PvE skills for those two title tracks it has already been made simpler to get, with a reduction in faction donated required to gain ranks, the addition of new tiers to the ranks, and the introduction of getting double faction towards your title track when donated to your alliance along with faction towards title track for exchanging for scrolls/amber/jade etc.

I think they have gone quite far enough already to aid us in attaining decent levels for the Kurzick/Luxon PvE skills.

I've seen people argument that Luxon/Kurzick title limits's are higher than the others because they are account wide. The are account wide because they are considered PvP titles. (I know most people that have high ranks have not done this by doing AB, but by doing FFF runs, but that's besides the point.)

If the titles are considered PvP tittles, there is no reason why PvE skills should be linked to them. Removing them would actually please me. It's selfish, I know, I'm not losing anything because other poeple have it and I don't, but it still bothers me. Somewhere in the back of my head I have this idea I should do some FFF and get at least rank X so I get X% better skills...


Hmm. Better yet, make those skills PvP only that would make me roflmao.

honestly, i grinded to rank 4 kurzick JUST TO USE 2 SKILLS (save yourselves and spear of fury) on my paragon.

I wanted to die by midnight- this is not fun and just lame. Imo make them character based and reduce the requirements by 10, or change them to a new title track. Nobody with any life will bother maxing these titles out.

I agree, I think it's very inconsistent to tie some PvE only skills to a PvP title.

The title track of a PvP title is designed to require very long time to get high rank, normally 50-100 times the amount of hours required to maximize a PvE title.
All other PvE only skills are character based, and for each character the corresponding title can be maxed in 15-20 hours.
Kurzick/Luxon skill represent an anomaly to this model.


To all those who may say "you don't need the Lux/Kurz skills, if you really want them you must grind for endless hours bla bla bla ...":

As a pure PvE player, I like to get every skill, elites non-elites and PvE only, and possibly get a sufficient rank to make them usable.
This is one of my "goals" and activities I enjoy in the game, I like skills more than other things.

Getting a good level for those PvE only skills would require me to do PvP which I don't like at all, or give up because the required amount of time is absolutely not reasonable for a PvE player like me.

More than 500 hours just planting flags mean one and a half year considering the hours I normally play per day, it's something just for those who don't have anything to do in their lives but wasting 8 or more hours per day on a videogame.


Luxon/Kurzick PvE only skills should be character based, and linked to a different PvE track (or have duplicates in another title) and with the learning curve of a PvE title.

Even with the bit of help they gave us, trying to grind out the maximum of these titles is still a bit steep. When you compare the Factions to the EotN titles, I could grind out over 62 titles with the same amount of points it takes to grind to the top of a single Faction. Even with the double Faction from donating it to a guild, that's still 31 titles with far more benefits (location buffs, more skills, armor, weapons, consumables, ect...) than the Factions titles.

That's funny, because I AB'd until I got to rank 4, and had a blast doing so...broke some of the monotony of following the main storyline.

I like the idea of capping the title track at rank 6, but honestly, the target level for most grinders should be around rank 4, where many of the skills' breakpoints is.

and it isn't hard to level up, do AB during the double faction weekend.

I don't want to get them at a decent level by tomorrow, but also I don't want to spend 1 year for that.

And I should not be required to PvP to get a decent level for PvE-only skills. It's a clear contradiction.

I really don't see why we all have to have max Luxon/Kurzick skills. I'll be the first to admit it's a nice thing to have, but I just don't think simply wanting the skills is enough of a reason for us being entitled not to work as much for them. Making them max faster doesn't make AB more fun for anyone, people doing it for the skills would still consider it a "grind". Right now I see it as a nice little side payoff for those people who already invest a lot of time in AB, and plenty of them do partake in PvE enough that I don't think it's just a pointless waste.

I don't play AB very often but when I do it's for fun. So far I've only got rank 2 on the Luxon title, but I still find plenty use for Luxon skills on my bar. Would I mind having them stronger? No. But I don't think it's the case that it takes at least a certain title rank to make them "worth having".

As for making it more attainable through PvE, I think that idea makes sense but whether I'd really go for it or not would depend on how it was ultimately implemented.

As I said before, I like to get all skills in game, be elite non-elite or PvE-only.

If I decide that I like Necrosis on my necro, I can spend a reasonable amount of time (15-20 hours) doing some PvE activity to increase my rank.

Well, 15-20 hours are nothing in the luxon/kurzick rank, you need 40-50 times that amount of hours. This because the progression is designed like that of a PvP title.


Any PvE-only skill should be:

- character based
- obtainable only playing PvE
- require more or less the same or nearly the same amount of effort

Currently all other PvE skills meet those requirements, with the exception of luxon/kurzick.
It seems to me a more than evident contradiction and flaw in game design.

In my opinion, those skills should be removed from the PvP title.
Those who max a PvP title already have their reward for it, and it's the reward to be able to show their uberness in PvP.

PvE players should get the skills via PvE as every other PvE-only skills.

Just get a bot to run the FFF. It's what this title was designed for.

And yes, Faction allegiance is a PvE title, it has nothing to do with PvP.

Change the blessings to work like Norn, Asura, etc... but with higher chances to get rank ups, and done. You can easily get them.

I see two separate issues here: whether the grind belongs in PvE or PvP, and just how much grinding that should be. I don't feel that strongly on the first issue but I'd have no problem with it being a PvE grind. But while I can see your reasoning behind saying the title should be PvE character based, I don't think it's really feasible given how AB is set up as one of the main mechanisms by which guilds and alliances gain faction. Now as for how much grinding there is to do (which was the issue brought up in the OP so I'm mainly addressing that) I think what we have now works pretty well, especially considering how it used to be before the PvE skills.

As for unlocking all skills, I made a point of setting out to do that for my mes in PvE so I can sympathize. But you still only need a one-time only grind to rank 1 (which doesn't take that long) in the title to actually obtain them for all your PvE characters. Again, if you absolutely require that they're all at max rank then I think that's an ego issue (not meant in a negative way) because they're perfectly usable already.

/not signed

Many of people have done it the hard way and I think 2 people reached Max-Kurzick before the double point system that is now in affect.

If you want the title, then you will have to grind for it, don't want to grind=don't get the title.

It is not that hard to get rank 8 by casual play, I reached rank 8 by Faction farming once in awhile. There were days where I would donate 100k+ then there were weeks were I did not donate at all. Currently at 3 million faction, will I have to grind to get the title? Yes I will, but that is the price I will have to pay/play in order to get the title.

Wasn't the selling point of the game to be an MMORPG without the monthly pay to play or the grind? Make those stupid PvE titles account-based already and eliminate the grinding!!!!!!!!!

They're optional titles to optionally make pve a cake walk, more than it already is.

Keep QQing.

Seriously.

Pathetic.

/notsigned.

Try like 30. There's at least 400 people running around r8 and higher.

Better yet, remove all links between pve skills and titles and bring GW back to the skill>time paradyme that made the game great.

@People who say its optional.

If you dont grind them you end up with weaker skills than people who do. GW is ment to be skill>time, having to grind a title to be able to do as much damage as someone else is not skill>time.

Although I totally hated grinds, there are still something Kurzick/Luxon skills did MUCH better than the Sunspear, Lightbringer, and Grind of the North skills.

- The Kurzick/Luxon skills are account based. Therefore don't need to repeat that same GRIND for each and every single character that you have.
- The Kurzick/Luxon skills progression are less steep and start with a better base value. Even at the lowest level "Friends of Kurzick/Luxon (1)" the skills are still sort of passable for their function.

When joining groups, the title rank discrimination I faced for the Kurzick/Luxon track is much less compared to the discrimination I faced for the Sunspear, Lightbringer, and the four Grind of the North titles. Not that many people cared I only have "Friends of Kurzick (1)", but I've been frequently getting kicked out of groups due to not having as much Lightbringer/Grind of the North titles as the next guy.

The grind is there for people who want something to do besides beat the game again for the fiftieth time. If you look at the skills, you find that when increasing in rank in either Kurzick or Luxon titles, the skills last one second longer, remove one more point of energy, or do one or two more points of damage or heal for one or two more health. If someone is so horrible to FFF for 100+ hours to get a couple more points here or there to get them through while using these skills, they have other issues. I say consider yourself lucky. If the leader of the group is so horrible as to think that (s)he needs pve skills at a high rank and needs the entire group to carry pve skills at a high rank to beat a certain mission or dungeon, you are better off not going with that group anyways. They would probably have failed and looked to blame anyone but themselves for it.

Might as well add that even with those comments I would love to see this title made easier, just because that is what I mostly do these days is working on titles. I have the skills for the simple reason that I like to get as many as possible, but I never use them because they didn't seem to be that great to me.

/notsigned

There's no need for this. If you want to get the title, then you should have to work for it.

And in regard to the skill > time paradigm, you don't NEED the pve skills to kill a bunch of monsters in pve. You really don't, it's really not that hard, even in hard mode. -_-

The Faction/Kursick skills are far greater in value comparison than the majority of the GWEN PVE only skill list. Thus they should remain at 10 million and only the very ELITE amongst us will have them. So /not signed because some things should just have to be worked for much harder and longer than other things. All things are NOT equal in the world of GW and that's the way it should be.

That's fine and dandy for you to think that, but when I bought guildwars 2 yrs ago, it was advertised as an "anti-grind" mmo where the playing field was level so that new players could easily immerse themselves. Your kind narrow minded view is what drove the game to the misconstruction of Anet's ideals that it is today.

New players will be scared to join, knowing that they will be outright at a disadvantage and behind in the game, this same sort of idea is what prevents me from picking up WoW.

EDIT

/signed-

but only to the part of the kurz/lux skills reaching their max attributes at a lower title level. Thus, those who really care about the max title "leetness" can still go for it, while others will still have to work to some extent to max out the skills

1) Its not about the title.

2) You dont need max armour either, you dont need a max weapon, you dont need 8 skills. That doesnt mean you arent at a disadvantage compared to someone who does have them.


I quote the holy text of the guild wars proph box.

So yeah, it shouldnt be about grinding to be better than other players. Being able to play more than someone else should not result in them being more powerful. The skill of the player should be what counts, not how much time they spend grinding.

and contrary to popular belief, it still is

Guild Wars skill>time was describing PvP, if I remember correctly. In games like WoW, your level and gear are what is important, not your skill. GW was advertised as dependant on player skill.

Honestly, they're pve skills. Just be grateful you have them.

Again I quote the holy text of the GW proph box

Horrific monsters...hmmm, that screams pve to me.

Ok. fine

You don't need the skills. They won't make that much of a difference. I'm not kidding you. The difference between a 4 second Save Yourself and a 5 second Save Yourself is....1 second. Fancy that.

Have you realized no PvPer comes here whining about maxing out Champion/Glad/Hero title?

c wut i did thar? o shi-

i'm perfectly fine with the max being at 10 mill faction, in the last month i've gotten nearly 750k faction donated, so its easily with in reach. and i've done other things than AB too. got the black moa, helped a guildie beat prophices, ran around helped others, nearly clear FoW.. i think i might play gw too much.. that asside the 10mill faction limit is good, its way easy to get faction anymore. 1 win in the ancestral lands as a luxon is 2.5k faction.. a loss there is usualy 1k faction or more.

the pve skills are already pretty over powered, and i don't see the need to change them. triple shot+nearly any prep=bye bye half health on nearly any pve monster.

oh i should mention it took me about 2 months of abing to even get r2 luxon befor the title was changed. then i kinda didn't ab much for about 6 months.

Well there isnt much difference between 60AL and 58AL right?
So would it be ok to link max AL to a title?

It doesnt matter if the difference is only a few seconds of a skill, or a few points of dmg. What matters is there is a difference.

For a game that advertises as skill>time, you would assume that it was skill>time.

Because skills arent linked to PvP titles?

Im sure if you added skills to the PvP titles you would get more than a few complaints.

Its not about the titles, its about the skills linked to them.

i gain 2 levels during the last double faction weekend , try it, and not the whole day, probably 4-5 hours saturday and 4-5 hours sunday, totalling 10 hours during the last double faction weekend. I wans't counting, but I was level 3 then. I am now level 5. Has not done any AB since that Weekend so it must be 2 levels during that weekend alone. hence I said its easy.

eagerly waiting for the next double faction weekend, level 7 here i come!

Or say the difference between a 13^50 mod and a 15^50 mod. The damage difference is slim at best, just like the difference between different ranks in the kurzick/luxon tracks effects on the skills.

Yes its slim, but a difference is still there.

Removing the skills from the title simply means everyone gets them at the same level. No grind required to be able to do as much damage as the next player.

Skill>Time

Good Luck!

There's quite a difference between levels 3-5 and levels 5-7 you know

I also like the fact the Allegiance titles are account based. A while back I decided to try to get Rank 5 and it was nice to be able to swap characters when I got bored of one whilst playing AB. You're also right about the base value of the skills. Most are "ok and useable" at Rank 1, but with promises of becomming better if you want to make them so. An exception I guess would be "Save Yourselves!"...3 seconds at Rank 1...I never like that. Most others are pretty decent at low level:

Triple Shot: More often than not used with Nightmare Weapon I would think, which makes the damage it deals mostly useless anyway.
Elemental Lord: 30 seconds at Rank 1...not too shabby. At half way up the title track it's 1 second off covering itself. (we'll ignore the fact I don't like this skill for now.)
Aura of Holy Might: At Rank 1 it has a decent AoE holy damage, and I suppose is a non-elite version of Vow of Strength, allowing you to take another elite, or stack them.
Summon Spirits: It's primary use is to move spirits, which it can do at Rank 1. The only thing higher ranks do is to heal spirits, which, unless the spirits are designed to lose health, makes the health gain a little useless since a good Ritualist can place their spirits intelligently.
Spear of Fury: Decent +damage and with Adrenaline Gain on top. 3 strikes of adrenaline can be gained with mild investment in the title track.

Given most of the PvE skills work ok at Rank 1, and with mild investment (say, rank 4 or 5), become much better, I wouldn't say the title track needs to be made "less gindy". People should need to do some sort of work to earn a better skill. I hadn't even considered working on my allegiance track until these PvE skills came out, but not because I feel I must, but because it makes me want to. Every time I go up a rank, and see the skills getting better, it makes me feel all warm and tingly inside.

Thanks! yeap, i know, i am thinking happy thoughts regarding that. if I don't get it to 7 I'll wait for another double faction weekend.

The Kurzick/Luxon titles' linked skills, although having an enormous amount of points to max, really have a lot going for them. Key points:

1) Account-wide: Biggest point for me, you actually benefit more by having more characters with these, as opposed to all the other effect- and skill-linked titles. (except lucky, obviously)
2) Multiple ways of acquisition: Grinding is not the only way to get them, you can also earn faction through AB/FA/JQ.
3) Power of skills scale very minimally: There isn't a huge gap in power between level 1 and level 10, making most of them useful right off the bat.

For these reasons, I don't really mind them as they are. I still think it's a bad idea having skills linked to titles, but these are the least of my concern. SS/LB/Rep titles are my biggest beef, and will remain so until they fix them with at least 1 of the three key points listed above.

It's all been said already. Anet have bent over backwards to help PvE players with this title track.

If people are so unhappy with the situation, just remove those skills.