How GW has become a grind fest...

While largely I agree with you, you've missed the titles that affect the power of skills. The August update made them more powerful at lower ranks, but it is another material benefit... and, IMO, more important than pick breakage and salvage chances.

The only objective of GW is filling HoM? That's news to me since I filled it soon after the release of EotN and have had all kinds of objectives after that - and still have.

Also, that RMT prices have gone up is primarily caused by ANet's effectiveness in banishing bots, and that's a good thing.

Do HOM stuff or don't. Your choice.

GW has a huge amount of things to do. Set your own goals.

If you are not having fun with GW, then go play something else that is fun.

If you want the benefits of HoM/titles, grind. If not, don't. You can still play the game either way.

ANet knows people love grind, and they'll keep adding more.

im not sure when a monument is considered 'complete', if the 5 display slots are filled or if no more can be added

and what exactly is the required koabd level, 4 or 5?

I like the Hall of Monuments. I like to have certain targets for which I play. I like to collect trophies for achievements that were hard to reach or took quite an investment of time. I think the Hall of Monuments is the best addition that GW:EN brought.

Of course, everything should be optional. You can do it without grinding or the HoM and remain competitive. But for the players who like it, let them have it.

Evidence suggests that r4 is enough if you've got all the monuments filled, without that r5 is needed.

Of course, completionists cannot accept anything less than r6 and make preparations just in case r7 should be introduced (I certainly hope not, I wouldn't be looking forward to maxing Unlucky ).

It doesn't.

This I agree with.

No.
If it wasn't for grind and A.net wouldn't have put in better alternatives - people would have quit.
Grind is in the game because it's probably the cheapest option to keep people interested.

I wouldn't necessarily attribute the inflation of cash-for-gold to supposed "decreased drop rates." Rather, it'd be more likely because of the difficulty it is for bots and underpaid foreign workers to farm the gold and resell it. All the measures they've implemented now to end bot farming and gold selling have dampened their productivity. Loot scaling, repetitive farming penalties, 24 hour trade and drop limits. The good farming spots and builds usually require at least two campaigns if not more. In end, the less gold for cash there is to go around, the more expensive it becomes in real world cash. It's not an accurate reflection of the in-game economy.

And as others have pointed out, it's your choice whether or not you want to do the grind fests. Title and hall grinds are added there for the players who want it. You're complaining that it exists, but would you lose anything if it didn't exist? I wouldn't think so! I'd say be thankful that Guild Wars rarely forces any sort of legitimate grind on a player who just wants to play through the game normally, as many RPG's tend to do.

Most of the title grinds aren't that bad, either, compared to how some other games make the player grind.

@OP

Of course it has become so.

And the rationale is *very* simple. Imagine their product manager (or whoever takes decisions): "we don't want to spend any more money on GW1 at all, but we want to keep players busy while we work on GW2".

So of course they gave us the HoM to fill that would apparently give you some benefits in gw2. Which is the perfect idea: if you start filling it, even if you don't finish you'll have a ton of stuff to do (as you mentioned), and it is a perfect guarantee for them that if you have been filling the HoM you will buy their GW2.

However we have no clue what the HoM may unlock in GW2 (if anything interesting at all), and people that have spent the 4.5k of play hours to fill it up may find that they've done so for nothing really interesting in GW2... maybe just a hat or something.

So I find ANet to be really lame on this one, at least if they want people to constantly grind for thousands of hours, they should tell us what exactly it is that we get for it!

Knowing that may make you fill only parts of HoM that you find most interesting in the benefit you get in GW2.

Anyway... I am not much of a PvP-er, I like to play together with other people, not against other people. And as much as some people of this community refuse to see it, that aspect of the game is dead.

I am trying to find parties to do dungeons or missions, but all outposts are dead silent. The last thing I've done with a full human party was a DoA run, but now with the Ursan nerf they fixed that too. GoA is now just a dead silent outpost as all the others.

And on a side note, I don't care how good or bad Ursan was before, all I care was that I was playing with full human parties and now there's no such thing anymore. And I thought that GW was supposed to be encouraging human parties/cooperation... apparently they don't really understand the effects of their nerfs. Or at least, not on the PvE world.

This proposition completely ignores the fact that GW doesn't collect monthly fees. Busy players don't bring money to ANet, they only spend it through server maintenance and administrator salaries. It has been officially stated that ANet intended people to buy the game, play it for a while and then drop it, and that the experience should be fun enough to entice people to eventually buy the next installation as well. Grindy objectives were added to the game because ANet found out that a large portion of the population actually wanted to grind and the added grind was - and still is - a completely optional part of the game unlike in typical MMOs where grind is the game.

i agree thatts become very girnd orientated, but i dont think the drop rates are too low at all. If they were low there would be nothing to strive for.

I've never been problem with drop before LS!

Of course, grind has been added on players request. And we know that because there has been a survey asking people their opinions and 70% of them said they want to grind more. Right?

So cool how marketing departments can brainwash people.

Anyway the deal was to release new content each 6 months and that should have been how they make their money. Anyway I am not judging their financial results, which probably look pretty good...

But the fact remains. Grind was "introduced" to keep people busy to counter the lack of new content. And it wasn't even a new thing, it was there for a long time. Why did it surface just now?

Because there is nothing else left to do.

It's only a grind because you want everything NOW. Just play the game and a lot of the things in HoM will come, slowly (so to speak).

You want to max every title in the minimum time, it will involve grinding. Simple as that.

I had 4 elite sets of armour on one char before HoM was an issue. I don't feel any great urge to rush out and buy another set. I upgraded my heroes by doing challenge missions because they were fun. I don't really like destroyer weapons so I won't be buying 11 of them.

I have a pile of titles mainly beecause they were either fun (like vanquishing or guardian, or, oddly, cartographer) or because it was a mindless for of relaxation (still better than TV).

I'll probbaly hit 30 titles maxed by the end of the year and then what? I'll jump on one of my other 12 chars, do PvP or just stuff about. I can't imagine why anyone would play a game doing things they don't enjoy. Seems pretty counter productive.

There's absolutely no need to grind imho, its all optional.

all this stuff is pointless, it does not improve your skill nor your character, this is optional grind for self satisfaction

Here's a crazy idea: GW became Grind Wars when titles were introduced, and got even worse when massivley overpowered PvE skills were linked to title grinding. Remove titles, problem solved.

some day i will fill my hall. More grinding for me

Can you even begin to imagine what would happen in this community if Anet suddenly removed all titles completely?