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