Gods walking amongst mere mortals: an analysis

Got the title March 2008 - however - before the titles were introduced I had just one character (shared account with wife and kid!!!!) I had nearly all elite skills capped from Tyria, mission and bonus completed and most of the map. In addition the titles were drip fed as the different campaigns came out - I had KOAB before nightfall!

As for time and concepts of how long it takes forget trying to map it out play the game because you enjoy it and do things incrementally.

Some other points! I vanquished about 70% prior to URSAN (including a crazy train from ToA all the way east clearing everything!) and I had fun fun fun using UB with consumes to beat the rest and yes it was like God Mode and could be done easily with hench/hero.

As for "grind" I am an older gamer I truly do not understand the concept of "grind" in a video game.

Let me explain!

I was raised on a diet of Space Invaders, Pac Man, Defender, Mr Do, Galaxian- endless levels of more of the same where variety was faster aliens or ghosts.

If you don't like it don't do it -

ps - wife and kid have their own accounts now mwhahahahahaha!

Whenever anyone puts up hard numbers on something as fuzzy as this, the whiners will crawl out of the woodwork in force to nitpick them, while missing the big picture altogether. You could increase the OP's figures by an entire order of magnitude and it would still completely trash the idea that you need to give up your soul to get r6.

Consider that people who have families and real jobs can get this title in their spare time, whereas many of the whiners are kids that don't have families, jobs, or the title. Shocking, I know.

I've played this game since May of 2005. I'm not a hardcore player that sits in front of his computer for 2-4 hours a day playing GW. I just can't bring myself to grind for anything, let alone titles in a game. To me, doing the same thing over and over and over is just plain boring.

Now, that being said, I never once thought that someone who has grinded out 30 titles has no life. I can see how it could easily be done in a moderate amount of time. It's just that I play this game for fun, not for epeen. I do have one character that I play more than others and who is actually working towards gwamm, but I don't do it because I want the title. It's just that I enjoy playing my necro, it's fun and I get a kick out of it. If I happen to be in an area that has an elite I want to cap (only 9 left yay me!) I'll cap it. But I won't go out of my way to get it. Not always. Because there are exceptions for me, like this past weekend for example. Mind you my ss/lb were already up decently high just from playing the game. So I spent an hour or so here and there this weekend to cap them both out.

People will play this game however they want to. Telling them that grinding for a title makes you have no life is irrelevant. Telling them that grinding for a title take little to no time is irrelevant. Just play the game and have fun! 'Cuz people are people and they'll do what they want. Regardless of whether it's to call someone a noob or to help out said noob for free.

Although I do think that if you manage to get GWAMM that shrine bonus' should be free. That's right free! (nudge nudge wink wink anet!)

That plus if things get boring I can always go play some old school Commodore 64 games like Zork or Ultima 3 or even Ghostbusters. Yay for emulators and games that are now freeware! Yay!

This about sums it up for me.

I think Holymasamune didn't figure in the "can't be arsed" factor, which just about sums me up!

GWAMM would be nice to have, but I'm not going to make any effort to get it as fast as I can, and I'm not going to beat myself up over it if I never achieve it. I think the numbers quoted in the OP are...reasonable in themselves. Cartographer will add a little more time onto the Vanquisher title...you don't need to edge walk to complete Vanquisher. It doesn't factor in time creating and tweaking builds. Some zones will require going into multiple times in order to cap some Elites on secondaries, and therefore not entirely "free" with Vanquisher and Guardian. I'm wondering if you're starting from scratch how you manage to get the money purely by playing the game in order to get GWAMM in order to find things like Skill Hunter, Drunkard and Sweet Tooth - does the time holy lists account for the fact you need to obtain money, does it assume you have it already, or does it assume you have another character to farm for you? Does it include for buying the alcohol and sweets from other players, or do you assume you already have these items? To reiterate what Burst Cancel says - the whole thing is a wee bit "fuzzy".

Still, it would be fun to see someone attempt GWAMM in the shortest time possible. Perhaps ArenaNet could create a leaderboard and dish out prizes for those who manage to beat the current GWAMM record in order to provide an incentive!

Holymasamune's estimate of time doesn't need to take into account what happens outside of the game really...game hours are game hours, they're not still counting up when you're offline, so even if you only get to play for 1-2 hours every fortnight it will still take the amount of in-game time to obtain the title.

It's an interesting analysis to see listed anyway.

Personally I think it's not about the time factor at all for most people.

For some it is mindless grind they can't imagine doing and for other's it is something to do while keeping in touch with online friends waiting for news from Anet.

It wasn't until after I passed 20 titles that I decided to go for the whole thing ... now I can't seem to stop, so I'm working on titles 31-33 atm.

this "analysis" is completely wrong on sooo many points.

Free Survivor and 44 months mentioned togeter is a complete nonsense.

Skill Hunter (4) - free (with vanquishing) - maybe should have been: free (just money)... if you don't plan on getting most skills from elite tomes then capping must take extra time.

You're completely ignoring the time required to find/form teams or even get the money for all money titles.

Vanquishing times are much longer, you can't guarantee a perfect run everytime, unless you did all those vanqs a few times before or have always perfect experienced teams.

Even cartographer with texmod hax takes some significant time and isn't just completed freely during vanq.

And for everything else like Guardian or Master of the North you also assume perfection, zero failures, always perfect teams on demand and zero time required for practicing, testing builds or just reading tutorials...

or you counted everything on Ursan on consets all the time?

I'd estimate realistically at least 1500 hours for GWAMM, including making money which is practically the only thing that could be done in the first 12 months (or maybe lv20 in pre but that always took alot extra time).

my warr =3k hours, spent more than 1k hours pvping, got 29 titles and 9500000 kurzick pts, so less than 2k hours for the gwamm..i'd say u need ~750 hours for it..

You can hero/hench nearly everything on normal mode, and a lot on hard mode. If you have a friend who's willing to help you, you can 2man 6hero nearly every hard mode mission and vanquish every area. It's not that hard. And by just playing through the game you can make quite a bit of money from picking up drops which you can use to fund your other titles.

I agree on the cartographer title, but doing it while you are vanquishing saves you a LOT of time. It basically means you don't have to go and visit every single area again.

And of course you will fail a mission every now and again, but if you just use your brain and pay attention, look up some stuff up front... it isn't hard at all. You really won't be spending hours and hours reading, prepping and testing builds.

The OP is basically a god walking amongst mere mortals trying to convince people and himself that he is not a geek?

Titles did not exist for a long time, people were already bored before the title achievement craze, and it is not that people beeline for a title and minmax everything they do. There are also some quite optimist assumptions regarding how much time some titles take.

I think it is up for everyone to decide if he really wants to spend so much time playing one game when there are many more games and other things out there to do.


The matter is that nobody should wonder if people envy him the title, despite the hard work he put into it. I would call it hard work, as doing all the stuff necessary to max certain titles is no longer fun in my book. People never think how much better they were off doing something else that could easily have been even more fun. Nobody tells me that playing GW over and over is the only thing that is enjoyable.

People accept the hard work athletes put into serious sports, but if people do the same in computer games, they get the nerd badge attached, be it justified or not.

i think it was the eye of the north titles which put me off, endless farming for rep points, and i didnt dig the high rises in sunspear/lightbringer to max them (80-100 wurm runs ffs!) and the poor quest reward to killing ratio with the points you get (not applicable to sunspear unless u going for max)

I think that people who like to grind are not grinding. They are having fun, that's it. Besides, I never understood people who whine about stuff like this? How is it helping? How is whining over something like this worth it? I say people who get GWAMM spend their time alot better than whiners. Now a whiner is someone who has no life.

Take me for example. I stopped playing two years ago, and just recently got back in the game. I have 1 title maxed (Tyria protector), and I have friends with r5 on to r6. So what do I do? Do I envy them for playing the game? Do I think they have no life? No, because I would rather play the game with them, than beach about it. I do envy people with fow armor in the game, but that doesn't mean I'll whine? I never whine about something that other people get and I didn't because I'm lazy. I play for fun, and titles are fun. They give purpose. People who got GWAMM really did just about 95% of what the PVE side game has to offer. And those who got more, well, that is called getting the fullest of what you paid for. And it also feels good I imagine.

I salute people (nice people) who get this far instead of whining.

In terms of money, it is much harder for newer players. I didn't start playing GW until most of the things had devalued, and skins didn't mean much. It's very hard for players to get "lucky breaks" if they are brand new. The last time some things meant anything was when NF came out two years ago, but it dropped off quickly from there. GW:EN brought us hardly anything. And farming for income has been greatly reduced, too.

I joined a little while after Factions was released, and at that point Sup Vigs were 30k, and Sup Absorption runes meant nothing. I don't know of the "good ol' days" where money did grow on trees, and where alot of peoples' current wealth stemmed from. I made my money from selling what I did have, being conservative financially, and just doing high-end PvE.

That's the only suggestion I have for people who don't have the money but want GWAMM. Save your money from things like HM and do some end-campaign stuff or dungeons. By the time I felt like title hunting, and realized there wasn't anything expensive that I wanted, I bought the tree consumable titles and filled my HoM. You just have to save!! And sell!! Also, if HM is too hard for you to hack, you probably shouldn't be thinking you deserve to have GWAMM.

QFT

On topic: numbers are well messed up, would take no less than 1000 hrs to do even with level of experience you would have after 44 months playing imo

The time needed is definitely underestimated, sweet/drunk/party (10 000 points ea) = money (3 000 000) = time (at 30k/h) : 100h (that is assuming you already know where what and how to farm... so you can add another 50h easily) But even with that it is not that much time, I spent more in PvE than what is needed for gwam (and I don' have gwam).

It's a fun analysis, nowever, it does make some assumptions that are kind of funny.
Most important, having a ~4 year old character with survivor title is, well, not so common.
So one needs one other title and most probably this will take longer.
Furtermore, it's about efficient play and that's not always possible.

Having said that, many of my guildies were somewhat amazed because I reached 25 titles (ages ago). Because they say: "you never hunt titles, you just play with us".
True, I just joined others hunting their titles, being guardian, vanquisher or whatever. And it helped me progress my titles, slowly but steady.

However, the last titles are grind titles.
It's easy to say that party and sweet are only money titles, however, I don't get 1M+ gold for each of them by doing nothing. I somehow need to get it somewhere.
Sure, predictions is a way, but other than that it's farming or powertrading.
That's time you need to spend in the game, either farming or trading.

Pure titlehunting means someone does everything only once.
Or the least possible times. I've seen these kind of players way too often.
Not that they are bad, but I like players I can team up with regular instead of constantly hearing: "I've already done that, but need xxx".

So in the end: GWAMM is very doable with time and dedication.
But it's the dedication that also takes away some of the fun in the game.
I've seen several players quit or become very inactive when they achieved GWAMM. Or reached a title level where the next would require a lot of grind.
And I'd say titles are not worth it to take away the fun.
It's a game, not a job....

I think most quit afterward cause they reached a goal they wanted to reach.. Let's face it, it's nearing 4 years..

I can count games that kept me occupied for that long on one hand

100g per point is a bit too optimistic, imho.

A guild mate and I got the title in just under 1 year. We weren't going for titles at first (so no Survivor or LDoA), and having a lot of farming builds out there helps immensely if you're in need of cash. We did vanquishing and HM missions mostly with heroes (pre-ursan nerf), though some were a lot easier with real people (Dzagonur Bastion for example). Like others have said, time and dedication is key.

You completely missed my point. I'm not saying that non-game time matters to the OP's analysis; this is plainly obvious to anyone. I'm saying that the analysis and hard numbers don't matter.

The argument here is that you don't have to give up your life to get r6. The easiest way to prove this isn't by conjuring up questionable and largely arbitrary statistics, it's by pointing to people who have both lives and the title. The reality is that veteran players who actually wanted the title should have it by now - "I don't care about titles" is fine; "I don't have the time" is not.

You can argue about the numbers all you want; they're completely irrelevant. Hey, maybe r6 takes 2000 hours. See, I can pull random numbers out of my ass too!

...making a 55hp monk cost me around 60k, which was all of my money few months after release. I had to sell everything I had to make one. And I've ended up with 80k after hours and hours of farming. Now I can just farm holiday events for 100k+ in a day or two, or get 100k without even playing the game from Xunlai house. It's much easier to get money now, even if you start from beginning

And for ontopic: if I could be a teenager with lot of spare time again, I'd probably had my GWAMM by now. But I'm not, so I am only at R1

You people are all missing the point.

The details are in the eye of the beholder...

Anyways, started playing GW with Nightfall, played PVE for about 1.5 years, achieved 26 maxed titles in about 1000 hrs, casually at first, grinding a bit at the end. Right now I don't have the patience to farm anything anymore, so no more cash to buy titles nor allegiance points to get the 30th (using zkeys from 4 accounts predictions). I might do it slowly by the time GW2 is out.

I was not saying that 55 hp monking was the only source of income "back in the day." My intentions are quite the opposite, actually. But think of the days where ectos dropped in piles, or uninscrable crystalline swords, dwarven axes, etc. dropped. Remember when the very rare minis were introduced to the game and you could pick them up for a mere few hundred ecto (with ecto being <10k), which are now worth several thousand. It was easier to get lucky back then, and it meant a hell of a lot more back then if you did (for things like sup vigors).

Bottom line--if you really want GWAMM--it doesn't matter how much time it takes. You either enjoy doing the things required to reach that title or you don't. If you want it, go for it. If it's an annoying grind, then don't work on it. Do something you consider more fun instead.

I dont have leg. survivor on my main toon

I played so much on her while I was noob (starter armor in tahnnakai temple ftw) so yea...I'm gonna have to get max kurzick title, and THAT is going to suck.

You enjoy grinding?

Yes.. don't you?

Divine has the title, as well as a host of PvP titles that probably took more time.

He still has a life, or at least, I think.

One thing OP didn't remember.

1. Survivors pre-Factions.
2. Making titles before Factions was pointless, as there were no titles back then. Except for Hero.
3. You couldn't have done EotN and Nightfall titles pre-Nightfall, no? So if someone did all titles (except for Lucky and Unlucky, as they were impossible to max back then), his progress stopped moving until there were more plausible titles to do, like Sunspear, Lightbringer and Campaign-related ones.
4. You are ignoring holidays, during which most of the people don't play the game or try to relax... Unless you really live to make titles. I can already imagine this: "NO, MOM, I'M NOT GOING TO THE BEACH, I GOTTA TITLE TO MAX!!".
5. Misc. unrelated to GW stuff, like getting bored with game for 2-6 months or more and more random causes (intensive studies, PC problems - I've had a broken graphics card for 6 months, so I couldn't play anything using Directx 7 or higher).

Not particularly, unless there's some sort of benefit to it like maxing EotN titles to increases the strength of skills etc.

To bad account wide title would kill this:P, know at least 2 people with all 6 pve account titles. Once you have that, you can make a r6 with no consumable titles.

So: kurzick/luxon/sunspear/lightbringer/treasure/wisdom/4eotn

can add drunkard too if you count the 'being-drunk-skills'

That doesn't mean I like the grind associated with them. To be honest the only title I've actually grinded for was my Norn title, it was the only one I went out of the way to max via farming Norn points, for Ursan farming. At the time it had a use and purpose of doing it.

The point being it feels at least there is some point to grinding the titles if you get a benefit from it. There's still alot more titles to max that have no benefits whatsoever after maxing out the nine you mentioned (I count Luxon and Kurzick as one because there's no point in maxing both for the purposes of maxing skills) other than to show of the fact that you've done it, something which I'm really not bothered about.

I find it somewhat amusing how some people refer to the titles as grind.
Sure, some is, however, not all is.
I was already exploring before the titles were introduced, just to see places I'd never seen before (4). Played the storylines without runs and stuff, even helped in PUGs from time to time for fun.
Then titles were introduced. I didn't care back then and even now don't really care.
Got max LB in DoA when having fun with guildies (5).
Got max EotN titles with alliance teams doing dungeons and quests (10).
VQ and Guardian? Mainly guildies or alliance members who asked for some company (21).
Skills? Well, was usefull to unlock them for heroes, so why not cap them on just one character (25).
Oh, did somewhat grind SS, but that was because VQ's didn't max it completely (26).

Now, one grind title in 26 total.
Let's look at the remaining titles.
Sweet, Party. Cost a lot of gold, so I didn't max those yet (don't want to farm for them). Just do some event quests, I will get there sooner or later.
Drunk? I'm not sure I will play my mesmer that often anymore. So might not max it.
Luxon? Getting some faction from AB/JQ, but will take a while.
My luck: I help guildies with vanquishes from time to time, which now also give additional faction.
Treasure/Wisdom. I still play with guildies, so just bring lockpicks and ID stuff.

It will take me ages and I'm not determined to max them, but it seems that GW2 is still ages away so I have plenty of time.

Grind?
If playing with some RL friends (whom I've known for over 6 years) is grind, then life must be grind.
Now that I think about it, it is.

Go out of bed, go to work, work (and post GW stuff once in a while), go home, do some shopping, do household, cook, play GW, go to bed....
Once in a while you do something else. Get drunk, stoned, laid, on holiday, whatever.
But most of the time it's just 8-10 hours of work, 8 hours of sleep, 2-3 hours travel and some 'free time' where you also have to fit in obligations like family and stuff.
Welcome to this thing called real life, the biggest grind you will ever find...

Anything required repetitive, boring actions over and over is called grind.

All reputation titles are considered a grind.

Survivor and Protectors, Guardians (because you probably didn't complete every mission in NM the first time you did them), VANQUISH (the ultimate grind),

Sweet tooth and all other buyable titles is a pointless grind, as you must grind money, buy and then click over and over. With alcohol, you can do it while playing, but you must be a machine to do it all the time.

Treasure/Wisdom - hahahaha.

Lucky/unlucky - Dear God. Afking titles are so bad it's not even funny.

So basically your saying that it's boring.

But what would the game be to (some) people today if it didn't have titles? Boring is subjective. Fun is subjective. You can argue semantics all day long and it will still be subjective.

And so is this thread.

See, that's the problem, subjectivity. These titles were the reason I played GW PvE for so long - they were fun to attain!

Survivor, when attained playing the game normally, and not farming, is incredibly exciting and fun. I keep my chars playing "Survivor" even after getting the Rank 3 title.Same for missions and vanquishes, they can be very fun with the right Guild/friends.

Actually, Divine is closer to the truth than anyone else in this thread. It seems most of you are the type of people he mentioned, the bad players who assume it takes a billion years to achieve.

If I was to make a new character today, and had a couple other people to play with consistently, I imagine I could get GWAMM in 400 or so hours without much trouble, but I imagine much faster if I had a team of people constantly.

VQ is not that hard if u have a partner to do discord build.
IMO it is a good way to get relax from day job by killing things and chat with friend in vent.

You'd have to have everything you needed to get it in that amount of time.

As for OP.

I'd agree on the mission thing around 70 hours and 120 hours Vanqushing.

Skill Hunter is something you could do during vanqushing taking away over half of the time it'd take you to get it otherwise. I'd gesture you'd have to spend around 3-4 hours getting the skills you couldn't get while vanquishing. That's a rough estimate, not counting the number of times you'd have to re-enter an area. You could spend up to another 2-5 hours in Abaddon's Mouth if you weren't lucky. So 3-10 hours for that.

Grandmaster Cartog, if you were to clear out (map wise) each zone you vanquished, would take an extra 15-25 minutes, if you have a run skill. Add another 5-15 minutes if you don't. Not counting if you missed some. So that's over 12 extra hours. With another 30 minutes for the missions you have to re-visit. If not longer. So 130 hours for vanquishing instead of 120 hour average.

I'll stick with the about 63 hours for Master of the North. I'd say 40 hours for the rep titles.

Sweet and Party assuming you had the items needed, would take around 30 minutes for both with clicking, maybe 35 unless you had one of those handy turbo things. If you didn't have the items and had to buy them, but had the money...add anywhere from 1-20 hours looking for the items. If you didn't have the money add anywhere from 10-60 hours farming the money for them. So Sweet and Party take anywhere from 35 minutes up to 40 hours.

Drunkard is the same in the money department.

Survivor wouldn't take more than 3-4 hours at the most if you did it separate.

So overall that's about 320hours minimum if you do have all that you need and up to 600-700 hours if you don't have the money. I'd guess the average player would get it in about 700 hours, seeing as the average player wouldn't be able to stand farming money for more than 1-3 hours a day if that, and wouldn't have the money needed.


But yeah the Skill title is something that is going to kill time for you whether you want it to or not. Same with map title although it's a lot faster now than when the title first came out. Good thing Jade Quarry is played now, which means you also don't have to wait up to a week to get that going.