Where the hell is this Time> skill factor you all talk about?

Sigh.

Here's how it is.

You want to be an elite player? Fine. Then prepare to spend some time on it.

You don't want to spend time but still want to be elite? Stop whining.

You're all talking about grind, but here's something to consider. RPG(or MMO, whatever) = GRIND. Has always been so, will always be so. From Runescape to Maplestory to Diablo to WoW to Guild Wars. Every single RPG has some sort of grind in it. And you do not, and this has been repeated like 1000 times already, you do NOT HAVE to grind. It is your own choice if you choose to kill a mob 100 times to gain money/exp whatever. If you don't like it stop grinding and play the game normally.

In the beginning I was a nub. Everyone was. I played like, 2 hours a day, sometimes more, sometimes less. Hi, my name is average Joe.

Then one day Joe sees this shiny elite armor and thinks hey, that's what I want! And Joe starts looking for a way to earn cash. Joe goes farming. Joe starts playing 3 hours a day.

So Joe has his elite armor and is really happy. And his eye catches Obsidian Armor, the most 1337 Armor of All. So he wants it, he really badly does, and he needs a way to get it.

He can either farm his ass of, or go trading, or buy gold on ebay. Joe is a fair player though, and starts farming. Boring as hell. Does Joe start whining? Nope, Joe starts trading. Or looking for other farm spots. Because killing mountain trolls for 4 hours a day 4 weeks long starts to get boring.

My point being the following. If you choose to grind and you hate it - don't do it. Of course time = skill. You want 100 ecto's, you gotta work for it. You want r10 fame, same story. Just don't expect it to happen automatically. If something isn't working your way, adept and improve.

Real Life isn't different. You want that new car, then work for it! You don't earn enough each month? Find a new job, or get it out of your head. Don't start whining to everyone around 'I don't have enough money and I want this car and it's taking me so long and that sucks and they should make the car cheaper bla bla bla bla bla.' That doesn't help A BIT.

Just stop whining about grind, stop whining about how some mechanics suck, or you suck, or whatever. Play the game, think logically and you'll see nothing is impossible, nothing is necessary, and you'll also find the game a hell lot more fun if you just don't QQ about everything.

From observation in PvP, you indeed don't have to sink huge amounts of time to be useful. Being a better player has far more value than having maxed-out gear or obsidian armor.

In fact, reading that, ArenaNet never stated GW would not have grind - they simply said you wouldn't have to grind to get along just fine. I agree. Even with Ursan Blessing - you don't have to grind Norn reputation all the way up to maximum for UB to work.

You may have to grind a bit to get the Norn/Dwarven/Monument armor. But uh... you don't have to have that to compete either!

All it really means is that GW doesn't penalise you for not being able to dedicate much time to the game, as long as you still have enough time to be some good at it.

Personally i don't think it was ever titles being needed. It was that a player could choose to max out reputation and lb/ss titles. They may not be skilled as a player, but by maxing those titles their skills are stronger than the person who doesn't grind. That is where time > skill came from.

There is no skill.

Everything involved in this game is about TIME. It takes TIME to learn skill and tactics. Skill does not happen 2 hours a week. Doesn't matter if TIME is required with title grind or not it will always be TIME invested that wins the day. Same holds true for pvp or pve you dont install the game and become a genius at it. It takes a considerable amount of time invested to become good at the game no matter what aspect you are talking about. I do not understand why this argument always comes up. If you bought into the skill>grind bs from the start of gw .. sorry you were had. The current QQs is about titles actually giving benefit to those that put more TIME and work into making them higher levels .. *GASP* oh noessssssss reward someone for putting effort into something .. how dare they! Get used to it .. GW2 no level cap.

a lot of us here point out that maxing the titles takes no grind if you just play normaly through the game was just wondering what most ppls idea of normal is
1: just picking up the primary quests and doing those getting to the end and moaning that they have no titles maxed
2: pick up all quests collecting shrine blessings actually clearing the areas between you and your target doing your dungeons as and when you unlock them getting to the end and finding that hey i have almost maxed my titles

We don't have to get to level 70.

Lately, there's been more cases of time >>> skill, especially with LB rank, SS ranks, GWEN ranks and even Kurzick/Luxon ranks.

Too bad AN tried to make skill > time game and failed. They've done it in Prophecies and later it was only worse.

some people still have no idea why we got pve skills

G32: Why the introduction of PvE only skills?

Ben: In Nightfall we introduced skills that we're tied to title tracks. We felt it was a really important thing to do that helped extend character profession past level 20. These skills are also more tied in with the PvE story. Moving into Eye Of The North we were able to really have some fun with these skills because they were bound to PvP balance. It really gave us a chance to really make the player feel like they were kickin' ass. A good example is a dwarven skill that gives you a regular bonus when used but its potency is increased while you are drunk. Things that wouldn't have made it onto a PvP skill because it would have been superfluous in competitive play, but its that kind of that helps make the PvE game fun and immersive.

It isn't that you can't win without grind, it's that you win more efficiently if you put in a great deal of extra time. Yeah, you can win without Ursan, but with it, you can't lose.

/thread

Ursan WAS a novelty. It is so boring to just press C+Spacebar and mash 1,2,3,1,2,4...next target rinse, repeat.

That's pretty much how you play Guild Wars.

If you're going to go there then it's like Ursan giving you an instant 20 levels.

It's cool to have character progression, but it's pretty hard to stay true to the skill > time motto with that.

The main "time > skill" element of the game is with the GvG ladder, but I hear that will be different for the future so GG.

Not time played but skill.

This is very true.

PVP, a few hours to get faction to start off with, and you could in theory become the best player in the game. Of course a good guild/friends are required to really make this happen, but its possible, and with a PVP char you could easily overthrow in the PVP world if you knew what you were doing.

In PVE this still holds strength. Armor dosen't mean anything, people saying 15k armor is skill, its not skill its vanity. I know, i have many sets of 15k. The hardest bit of the theory is you need to hit 20 and purchase max armor to be the best, however thats not that hard, and in factions your on your way!

This theory is true, definitely for PVP, and in PVE it still holds some ground.

Had to stop reading there. There is no competition in PvE. Having said that, I'll just not read anymore as I know where this thread is invariably going to go.


People use UB, wahhhhhhhhh.

Agreed with the OP, although just from reading the beginning I could tell what this would turn into.

I think Guild Wars is actually very good at emphasizing skill over time spent. Claiming Anet's stance on rewarding "skill > time" invalidates giving any non-cosmetic reward at all for more time spent is a much too popular fallacy behind the "nerf grind" rhetoric. Keep in mind the game has to be fun for the "non-skilled" too. But if you dont have to spend hours grinding up a title skill in order to beat a particular part of the game, then that's how it rewards you over the guy who has to spend hours on a grind.

Let's say we are able to monitor the respective in-game benefits of a "skill player" and a "time player" over a consistent window of 20 hours gameplay. It should be obvious that the skilled player will make his way through more missions and quests, while the time player will achieve significantly less as most of his play will be spent on the grind to help him get there. Both get the reward of whatever they want to accomplish, but who is ultimately more rewarded for his time investment?

there has to be grind in RPG's .

not true, before grinding based skills therewas no requiered grind in the game
you can say "you dont need .... to ...."
and it may be true ,for example i dont need an elite skill to beat the game, so should i accept ppl with no elites in my team? i certainly wont.

The time player invests several dozen/hundred hours up front. After that initial investment, the time player gets far more out of his 20 hours of normal gameplay than the skill player. The time player will be able to accomplish things faster and will be able to complete areas that the skill player wouldn't be able to finish as reliably or as well, if at all. Even if the skill player can accomplish the same things as the time player, the skill player still has to put much more effort into winning, while the time player just hits 1-3 on recharge.

actually you are quite wrong - heroes ascent, you need to grind for your ranks

You're excluding the grind hours from the 20 hour window, which defeats the whole purpose of measuring payoff in terms of a consistent time investment. If you get through a tough mission by grace of UB at max rank for example, then you invested not only the time spent in mission but the hours you spent grinding the title for the skill. Meanwhile, a more skilled player who didn't need the grind invested just his time in the mission. Payoff vs. investment, he wins.

If the skilled player can't get through the mission, then obviously he doesn't have enough skill. But since he is still more skilled than you, he can invest maybe 5 hours in a grind against your 30 or so, and still reap the same benefits for less investment.

In response to OP, this symbol:

>

Does not mean need.

I am seeing it more and more common for people to say "you don't HAVE to do this/that". Well, yes, I suppose that is true - you don't have to do anything if you don't want to. However, these components were placed in the game for people to do, not to look at and decide not to do. I think they deserve the right to be judged.

its funny to read people saying "you max titles naturally". Naturally my butt. I played over 4,000 hours and the only title I have max is 1 Legendary Survior Assassin and its through XP farming.

The longest grind so far has to be Kurzick title which I got r9 after 4,5 months playing AB exclusively. Thinking of maxing it just makes me sick. No way will it be possible for me.

There should not be PvE skills linked to Kurzick/Luxon titles. It makes no sense at all. Especially since they were introduced after people finished factions so they would not get any points naturally. Since they were playing nightfall at that point.

If you were not part of a faction farming guild when playing factions (that goes for most casual players) then there was no incentive for donating faction to your guild.

When they introduced the Luxon/Kurzick skills I had finished factions on 6 characters, including all possible side quests on one of them. I had rank 0 with 0% progressions towards the tittles.

It did not make me happy at all.

I wish we have to because other games actually has the joy of raising your integers every time you grind and KNOW YOUR CHARACTER GOT STRONGER. This just raises a title that you show in town (which are mostly empty). YAH!

Worst idea ever. Ever wonder why they are doing higher level cap in WOW 2... I mean GW 2, that's why.

If you're measuring it by a single 20-hour window, then yes, the skilled player saves time. However, people play more than 20 hours, and the dozen or so hours that you spend for a max/sufficient title is more than worth it. Over time, the player who grinds wins out.

Skill doesn't make title grind go faster.

PvE = Grind.
PvP = Skill.

This does not mean that no skill is involved in PvE, just that the main purpose of PvE is time, not skill. You don't start a PvE char at level 20, you grind your way up to that. You don't start with all skills or any pre-concieved build, you have to trial and error to grind out the builds that work. You have to play a map at least once inorder to discover what is in it and how they fight, what skills they have and what skills work best against them. This is all "grind" in the sense that it takes time and effort.

As for titles they were added to extend the grind for players that had completed all of the missions/quests in the game and had no other real reason to play PvE. They are a visible display of your efforts to play the game beyond lvl 20 and all missions/quests.

The fact that some players choose to level up these titles before they have completed all of the missions/quests available is on the players, not the titles themselves.

MOST PvP =skill :P
dont forget those easy-to-run builds that are widespread such as zergway...which is easy to beat anyway but gains fame still

That doesn't sound like grind to me, that sounds like playing through the game naturally.