When do game activities become grind? And how much grind is too much grind?

Here we go again:

Just by completing the game and vanquishing on a character you can get 20 titles (legendary Guardian, vanquisher, cartographer, skill Hunter, and master of the north) The next 5 titles require some more effort but can easily be done without a terribly boring grind. This mean you can get R5GWaMM without a significant investment in grinding.

What we have here are people who want the highest tier of something without having to put in any effort. Sure I would love it if my wisdom and treasure hunter were maxed out but fact is I haven't dedicated any time to these 3 titles. The whole idea of the title system is to have something that shows off effort you put into something. I think Anet did a great job creating a system that will let someone get pretty far along the title track through normal game play. That last tier is for the dedicated Obsessive compulsives who feel the need to max every title out there. I don't understand why this is a problem. Why the hell do people feel entitled to everything (this is just a pet peeve of mine as it seems no one feels they need to work to get ahead anymore). Just because it is available doesn't mean you should just get it.

Real life example - electrician, before you can even take you test to get become licensed you need XXX amount of hours. This means you have to go out everyday and do the same thing over and over and over again (grind if you will) before you can even achieve a certain level of recognition as an electrician. You can't just walk in say yeah I put in a ceiling fan today make me an electrician.

Now back to the game world - why should someone who goes out and opens a chest occasionally be recognized as a treasure hunter, let alone a master treasure hunter. Master Treasure hunter implies that that person has dedicated a serious portion of their time to finding treasure (opening chests). is 10,000 chests all that much. I have over 5000 and maybe a couple hundred of those are from chest running.

Anet did a great job of balancing the PVE skills so that you don't have to max out title to get the benefit of the skill. If you want to max a title that is your choice and you have to decide whether you want to put in the time and effort required. We shouldn't have to dumb-down the game because some self-entitled gamers feel that the need to be recognized for insignificant accomplishments.

Lets really break this down to the basics - I want to have the best ranking but don't want to do anything extra to get it.

I love your name, Johny Bravo, heheh.

But I wholeheartedly disagree. I disagree because you need to be obsessive compulsive to even max one of the EotN titles.

And the "lazy" argument is still wrong, no matter how many people say it.

Yep. You can even see it, the playerbase is losing interest in the game. I think a lot of it could be solved by making the grind more reasonable.

Someone said there's more grind than content. That's unfortunately true.

I don't want busy work. I want a video game.

Why not ask Anet to provide us with cheat codes so we can instamax all titles at will. Than we can all uninstall and go home. Hell, Anet better provide this for GW2 also upon release or i wont buy it; so i can save myself 5000 hours of play; and move on to diablo3 right away.

No matter how you put it; You are:
-Lazy
-Unskilled
-Both

I'm done arguing. This shit will never fly anyway.

Tip: buy a first person shooter. No grind!

LOLFAIL. I've invested thousands of hours playing the game, and have no where close to GWAMM on ANY of my characters. In fact, my MAIN is one title away from r2.

I think many would say that "scraping" the edge of every map would qualify as farming (area farming), hunting down EVERY elite skill on one character makes absolutely no sense (when is a Warrior ever going to use Locust's Fury for example?) etc., etc. It could even be said that the introduction of Hard Mode was a copout by ANet for poor balancing and the power creep they introduced.

Lets see if you comprehend this. ITS... A... GAME! No one should have to "work" to get ahead in a game. That's why so many people are put out by the massive amount of grind involved in maxing PvE titles. And its NOT optional anymore, especially with powerful PvE skills tied into grinding out faction titles that are more or less required by guilds and PUGs to play any high end PvE content!

Real life example - Monopoly. You can set it up in a minute, play for hours, and and no game is ever the same twice, depending on random rolls and the people you play with.

Here's a hint - Guild Wars is not a job. Its not a career, its not work (at least it shouldn't be), but unfortunately the high level of grind makes it so.

Again, its people like you that ruin the spirit of games in general. Not everyone in GW at this moment has had the game since release, nor has the enormous amount of free time to dedicate to title grinding, in a game that was advertised to be free of such.

While you don't HAVE to max out some titles, to even be accepted in a group requires other titles be maxed or nearly so. I.E. Norn for Ursan at one point, Fame for getting into HA matches, etc. One could H/H the entire damn game, but then that would defeat the whole point of this being an MMO in the first place.

Nowadays, every time a kid moves up a grade, they have a graduation. Yes it may be silly to celebrate mediocrity, but at least everyone feels good about themselves. And really, in a GAME, there shouldn't be exclusionary practices, if I wanted that, I'd watch Donald Trump say "you're fired."

And if you even play the game anymore, you'd know that your assertion of not having to max PvE titles is a bald faced lie, since most groups require r10 in various PvE and PvP titles, such as Asuran and Luxon/Kurzick. The Faction titles not so much, but it still requires a LOT of grind to acquire maxed faction titles in EoTN.

The basics is, people want to play the game for fun. ANet screwed this up by designing PvE titles that gave advantages, which of course then ranked players not by skill but by time invested. Its the age old problem of being underqualified, you don't have the experience, and can't get a chance to acquire the experience.

If ANet wanted it the way you describe, as a job and boring and pointless, then the way they've gone about it is a pretty good attempt. Basically causing the entire playerbase who don't have the ability to sink 16 hours a day on a game grinding titles to H/H their way through the game. They've wrecked PvE, thanks to chumps such as yourself, and giving in to elitist garbage and exclusionary practices.

This is SUPPOSED to be a friggin' game, not Wall Street or some corporation. In further discussion please recognize this and dispense with any notion or comparisons to work, thank you.

Because that's not what's being argued.
And with some basic reading comprehension skills, you'd see that.
All you are doing now is making dumbass assumptions and then building your arguments on those assumptions.

I've thought about this, and I think I can now provide my personal answer the original question:

Grind is fine when it involves thoroughly exploring the available content. Grind is unacceptable when it requires REPEATED* thorough exploration of the available content with little to no incentive.

*How often repeated is certainly open to debate


Take an example: Although getting the cartographer title is grind, its ok because it involves you having to go and see every pixel in all of GW. Being asked to do the cartographer for a 2nd time, is acceptable, as it will also grant the 2nd character the ability to go anywhere in GW and have a completely uncovered map. (Good for those who want to play this character or farm with it).

Alliance titles, on the other hand can only be maxed by repeatedly doing the same things over and over and over (and over....). Even if you have done all of vanquishing, all the quests and played a decent amount of AB on a character from every class (even of every gender!) you will not be close to actually maxing the title. Thus I say any account-wide title in PvE that requires more than 10 (the number of classes in GW) times the number of available points for doing every point granting opportunity is excessive and should be changed.

For those who want to be set apart by their excessive grinding, I suggest making things like GWAMM require only certain levels (reasonably chosen using the above constraints) of titles to be fulfilled, and simply remove the level cap on all titles. You want to show us how great you are? Get that rank 100 survivor. Just make rank 3 be good enough for GWAMM. They've already done this with many titles in the HoM, which is at the moment better set up and friendly to those of us who want to play more than 1 character.

Now, yes I realize my definition up there is fuzzy about consumable based titles. My reply is that there shouldn't even be titles for eating sweets, staying drunk or lighting things on fire and making loud noises.

Also, please keep in mind that I intend this only to apply to PvE focused titles... PvP titles are quite different (though some of those should probably be changed in more intelligent ways as well). Good hunting.

Your right. But this shit still wont fly. So save your breath.

mouse left click broken = too much grind.

I'd politely suggest you take your own advice. You've had your say. For here on, either be constructive or STFU and GTFO.

This whole thread is about grind, but seeing that we might each have a different opinion of what grind actually is. Please define grind.

From the official wiki:

"Grind is a term used in video gaming to describe the process of engaging in repetitive and/or non-entertaining gameplay in order to gain access to other features within the game. In Guild Wars, these features are usually optional and include titles, armor (through crafting materials or gold), or other prestige items. Since the level cap is relatively low, level-grinding is uncommon; however, the Survivor and Defender of Ascalon titles do involve grinding in order to level up and gain experience points.

While some of these features do not provide a gameplay advantage to players, there are exceptions; for example, some Factions, Nightfall, and Eye of the North titles improve PvE-only skills and allow the buying of armor, consumables, or weapons."

Twice as fast- that's already meaning it's 50%. Half the cost, another 50%(from the already cut down 50%). How did we get to 25% of the title exactly? Think before you type. You can always press Backspace or Delete.

The bolded is very subjective and will differ from person to person.

Considering how too much grind is pretty much the core of all PvE issues it would be advisable for A.Net to finally look at this.

Hence why I asked.
But instead of resorting to an abstract definition of grind, I would suggest that we define grind with real examples so if anyone form A.Net happens to look at this, they see what are the issues that are bugging us the most.
As I have said - personally I find the consumables-titles, titles which have a PvE effect (outside of Sunspear) and Unlucky to be way to much grind-focused. And of course - LDoA, but that's the one I always forget about due to being Pre-only.

EDIT:
IDing golds also.
In my mind I just put it into the "has an effect on PvE" with Chest, Lucky, PvE-skill lines, but since I explicitly named Unlucky, this one deserves to be listed also.

If ANET sees this they owe me a new mouse from double clicking all the consumables.

LDoA was NOT grind.

Pre has it's own economy, and given that the bosses were the highest level mobs in there, you were basically endgame farming and producing wealth for a large part of it.

Once the death leveling came in... it's really only an hour of work per day. Spend 30 minutes in the evening doing the setup, 10 minutes in the morning killing off the highest level group, and then 10 minutes 8 hours later killing the rest.

The process didn't have a chance to get tedious because by it's very nature, you could only spend about an hour a day on death leveling related activities.

The only pure grind in the game are the terrible 3 consumable titles, as well as those batsh*t insane chest/gold based ones.

If they see this and do something about it, "I" am getting you a new mouse!

Totally agree, very, VERY poor rewards for the grinding. Hell I grinding my r3 hero just so I can have the /rank emote. Nothing else, I stopped HA as soon as I got what I want. Why not have exotic weapons, emotes or exotic armor only available to those with high titles. A special hero for max GWAMM, almost like titles were tossed at the last second.

when that activity becomes no longer mentally stimulating. each activity has a certain amount of difficulty or challenge factor. initial playings, one has to overcome that challenge. once that challenge is overcome, that is when grind begins--however only a light grind. it is not a "full grind" until that user has mastered a near 100% success rate in that activity, and that is when i draw the line and no longer want to play.

To that I say...

Costs way less than half, takes way less than half the time to finish...what was your point again?

You don't really have to experience EVERYTHING in the game, that's no way mandatory. There is indeed some (lots) content that implies grinding, but nothing is required to play. You can choose what to do tough. Getting r7 Unlucky is boring for you. Just don't max it. Done.

Some of you are taking this way too personally. Put your egos aside and realize that if this happened, everyone would benefit, including the ones who are adamantly against it. Also realize that spending your time grinding unreasonable titles does not make you better than anyone else; that whole idea is silly.

I think it's perfectly reasonable to double title points or make them account wide this late in the game, especially with GW2 on the horizon.

But that's my say. Upier, I /sign, and if I could /sign a thousand times, I would.

ANet has titles that are essentially "Click X 20,000+ times to max." ANet also has rules forbidding bots or automation. I do not see how double clicking 20,000 times for each title on each character is a rewarding or fun game play experience. It's a choice between an auto-clicker or ignoring all of those for me, because the alternative is unreasonable.

You seem to forget anet does not give a shit. With a bit of luck however they will add this in the next update which is 18 months from now.

/agree (and not just because Upier will get me a new mouse )

I am not bothered by the lack of rewards. Actually I like the fact that there are no rewards.
For that matter, my favourite title in the whole game has to be the Unlucky track, not only because the ranks are superbly named, but also because it has no effect on the game whatsoever!
So a more appealing reward would not justify the amount of grind that this content demands. A good reward isn't even a factor when I decide what I consider to be grind and what I don't.

Expecially with GW2 so FAR on the horizon, Anet's interest is in keeping the current game alive the longest they can. So, since there's really nothing more in GW than titles, why would they care?

You are right it is a game and games are meant to be played. To become better requires repetition and practice. Therefore to get a higher rank some repetition and practice is required. As a result the more you play it the more you are rewarded. The scale on the PvE titles is set at the low end so that the last 2 ranks, which are the ones that require some grinding, have a insignificant effect on the end result. Take By Ural's Hammer for example
At R1 its effect lasts for 7s at R9 it lasts 10s. At R6 you get it for 9s. You should be able to get to 40K by doing dungeons and turning in your books as part of the EoTN title track. The same for the rest. Just going through the missions in HM and NM should get 2 of your title tracks if not 3 to R6. So again it comes down to people whining about wanting to be recognized for putting in minimal effort.

I ruin the game, I simply believe that in order to acquire a TITLE you should have to put effort in. None of the PvE skills require a significant amount of time put in outside normal game progress to acquire a decent rank to be useful. Maxing is for e-peen and nothing else. The issue here is people want to show off their title but don't want to put any effort into getting it.

Yeah I am sure when Magellan's crew was the first to circumnavigate the world they didn't really have to go all the way around, I figure just getting halfway and coming back would be the same.

I posted these in the previous thread so why not post them again. Are these titles acceptable to you and the rest of the people who think it takes to long to max titles QQ..... That way you could run around saying look at me, look at me

Grandmaster Cartographer - Map to every town in all 3 campaigns

Grandmaster Treasure hunter - Find a chest and get a gold drop from it while retaining your lockpick (I know having all these things happen at once may take more then one try but you know we can't just give you a title for nothing)

Oracle Of wisdom - consume an complete Superior ID kit (for those who can't afford a superior ID kit, ANET will consider your case if you submit a letter explaining why you shouldn't have to grind out enough gold to purchase said kit)

Savior of Kurzick/Luxon - Win at AB while simultaneously telling the other team they suck.

Blessed by Fate- Throw a 10000 sided dice and guess if the result will be higher or lower then 10

Cursed by Fate - Get the above wrong

Legendary Skill hunter - Find every skill trainer in every campaign (If you can't find them all there will be an NPC to unlock them in the Great Temple of Balthazar)

Legendary Survivor - Maintain SF for 21 Seconds for 45 seconds. (If you can't find SF you can watch somebody else do it.)

While these are ridiculous, so are all the cries from people who say this or that title is no obtainable. I don't play that much, maybe an hour on weeknights 2-3 over the weekend if that. I managed to get my GWaMM and had fun doing it. I never felt like it was a grind as you can change the ways you work on them. Kurzick was a mix between DTSC, AB, FA, rep titles were a combination of dungeons, missions, and vanquishing. I may have done some books (not speed books) to finish them all up but those were done helping other people through the same mission so while I was ruining the game for everyone else I was also working on mine and their titles. Drop were sold for money which was used to by consumables, some farming and power trading was done to complete those but again I did state you should have to put some effort into obtaining the highest tier of the final title(GWaMM). I guess in your world you should simply type /sugar for sweets although that is probably too much effort as well as it would take forever to do that 10000 times. Maybe you should just be able to type /sweetx10000 for the title. Oh yeah I didn't have to grind out drunkard either as I just drank as I vanquished and did mission and dungeons and farmed.

I do agree with you on the issue of titles. I play an account full of different characters, though my warriors has gotten through the most. I start new characters when I see a particular build that looks really fun, and I go out and hunt those skills, hunt down a good hero team, beat a few missions, and suddenly I just really have no urge to play the game. It's not that it's too easy, it's just that Faction titles (kurz/lux, EotN), although not technically necessary, are in fact nearly necessary to maximize effectiveness of your character. Most builds use PvE only skills, and that's pretty much a fact.

I would not complain in the least if PvE only skills were given a set, solid stat, and unlinked to your character when you get them. NOT linked to a title.

However the topic of game grind is a LOT more important to me than title grind. To observe such, It's almost impossible not to bring up other games. The grind associated with GW's actual PvE game sucks completely. Why does it suck? Look at the rewards.

Skill points are fine and dandy, but once you hit level twenty, you really stop caring much about how much experience your getting. Tomes also counter-act the necessity of Skill points themselves, however I may be bias because I had purchased the PvP unlock packs just to get all the skills for my heroes, thusly, skill trainers are useless to me past a certain point.

Gold is good. Everyone can appreciate gold rewards for quests, but farming beats questing for gold any date, and I'm not saying that's a bad thing either. I like farming.

Gear is the most useless. It's so easy to get max gear in this game once you hit twenty, unless your one of those 'cosmetic' players, special rare skins and end game weapons are just absolutely pointless.

Thus, the problem with the grind in PvE is that it is ALL the wrong kinds of grind. Prophesies days actually kept me interested because there -was- a certain level of level and weapon grind, and it was FUN. It made you complete quest that weren't necessary to the storyline, it made you frustrated as hell when you finally got to the desert and things were kickin' your ass left and right. the game was definitely harder back then.

For instance, WoW. Yes, I brought it up for good reason. WoW, arguably, has all the kinds of grind that a casual MMO should never ever have. Level grind and gear grind, although fun, is incredibly pointless if taken to the extreme that WoW does.

D2 is always an example I use of a game with all the right ammount of grind. You don't have to grind to the best gear and best setup to beat the game, but it is incredibly fun to try and deck your character out in all the best gear. Level grind is incredibly fun and rewarding, but do you have to grind to level 99 to beat the game? certainly not.

In the same respect, you can't dangle these nifty PvE only skills in peoples' faces, skills which are used in the best of builds and go "well this grind is ok, because you don't need to use them to beat the game. No, technically not, but I guarentee you most of the people playing this game feel that they need to grind out these titles at least to a respectable level so that they can actually compete with other players. In D2, unless you PvP, there is no competing with other players, there's competing with the environment. This takes the 'need' to be among the best, and thusly the stress.

Enough of that though, I've babbled far too long. I'll end with saying that my buying GW2 depends greatly on the -type- of grind involved in the game. The right or wrong kind.

You and I have the same appearance for our toons, Gill, haha. What a handsome guy!

I disagree, though. There's more to GW than spending a month doing the same thing over and over to get an r10 Ebon Vanguard rank.

When you nay-sayers grind for your titles, do you really want to do it? Or do you accept it? Why do you accept it? Do you really have fun? Maybe for the first hour or two, but after? Don't you want to have fun? I think we've all paid our dues and deserve fun, not busy work.

The bottom line is, the majority of us seem to be very jaded gamers who have spent a large portion of their "gaming" lives grinding for ultimately meaningless stuff.

At the end of the day, you don't have any meaningful experiences from grinding. You have a huge epenis. That's how I feel. If you disagree, feel free, but that's where I'm coming from.

Thank you for proving my point. So; before all you had to do was zone in...run up to the skills trader.... pay 1k; and presto you were permaalled. Now however with the SF nerf comingup; you'll need to work a bit to get something; you however feel you have a right to. Meeh.

Funny how the same people here never whine about the endless ecto farming grind; but when it comes to titles: "Its not fun. Its to hard. It takes to long."

To me, game activities become a grind when you can't max a title with six months of very hard playing. By hard playing, I mean "playing normally". For instance, anybody can fast-faction farm with a correct setup and running the vanquishing run hundreds, if not thousands, of times. But you could say that about any game, and those are criticized as being grind. I.e., you can get (x) item in WoW if you are willing to do the raid hundreds, if not thousands of times.

Guild Wars is no less grindy than any other MMO. The only difference is that titles, and not loot, are the items that give some kind of bonus to play, thus encouraging people to farm them for no reason other than to get the bonuses. In addition, with the promise of bonus content in GW2, I know that is the only reason why I'm title grinding anymore. The game isn't even that fun anymore, but you keep hoping in vain that all that work will turn into some kind of legendary armor in GW2 for all that work. And I bet that it won't.

Even better, the way that the title system has worked has basically punished the veteran players the most. For instance, I was playing Guild Wars two months after launch. This was the game before lockpicks and keys were invented, and there were no titles at all except for the Hero title. I played Factions back when it was under the old system and the faction rewards just about sucked until HFFF was discovered. I bet that I lost a million faction easily for all the stuff that I did the game before things like doubling faction for titles when you donated, massively increasing rewards for competitive missions, Priest blessings, and storybook rewards. In other words, it would have been better that, instead of me buying the game via pre-order, I should have waited a year or more since beating the game a minimum of two times for mission titles would have got me two complete storybooks, not to mention that killing just about any monster in the Jade Sea or Echovald Forest could have gotten me 10 (or more) Faction per kill.

This game seems to support gimmicking your way to a title, and ArenaNet seems clueless about how to encourage people to play a little more varied. Why not put in something like: "If you have Kurzick/Luxon Vanquisher title, then the corresponding Kurzick/Luxon Faction rewards for kills/vanquishes from shrine blessings double." Wouldn't this encourage people to shoot for a vanquisher title, and at least encourage a little more variety in the game play instead of MQSC and DTSC?

Thanks. My warrior looks a lot like me.

No, wait, I'm not fat...

Absolutely agree. So, simply... Don't. Or do it if you feel like doing it.

If you feel like working when playing GW, simply stop repeating the same task.

Grinding is NOT mandatory. The desire of being "competitive" is NOT caused by grinding itself, but by people's attitudes toward this.

As I said in some other thread, GW players are absurdly obsessed with efficiency, and that's the core problem. People stopped playing for the fun of going around with friends, help guildies or just idle chit-chatting. They're not interested in anything not giving some form of reward. That's... sad to me.

I got all the possible PvE titles in the game bar Lucky and Unlucky with Gill, my main. I have 15 more toons, 3 of them are even r3 KoaBD themselves. I prohibited myself to get ANY PvE-only skill with the other ones. I would probably be kicked from ANY PuG for this. Well, their loss, I've much better people to play with: those with a brain.

LOL! And so very true..

To a point, it is actually mandatory. I noticed a big difference between 4 seconds of SY and 5 seconds of SY, even though on paper it doesn't seem like much. That's just one example.

The problem with some of these titles - and this is why I'm in this thread in the first place - is that they have too great of an impact on gameplay, and so even though you can say, "You don't need to grind those titles," and you're correct, by the same token, you really kinda do when everyone expects you to run SY + Brawling Headbutt, or SY + EBSoH.

Skills like SY, Asuran Scan, AoHM - they're all critical parts of many builds. To not have those titles maxed or at a really high rank is doing your group a disservice and really gimping your character.

So no, you don't need to. We are pressured to in a big way, though, and I don't much appreciate that.

To me, the only thing gimping your character is playing with people that feel a difference among 4s SYS and 6s SYS.

My friends are going to play with me whatever my bar, and together we got anything in this game done, had heaps of fun and hardly got bored of it yet. My friends rate my SKILL, not my SKILLS. They know how I play, and they probably find my presence valuable in their team, even tough I could run a 6s SYS and I chose not to.

Sure, I'm probably lucky I have good friends in the game. That must be because I cared more about relationships than I cared about farming for shiny pixels and grinding for non-existing titles.

Yeah, but none of that means anything. Mine do too. Even when I pug, I could honestly run Healing Hands and no one says anything, but just because you can, doesn't mean it's the most fun or effective.

My point is this: If you want a huge epenis, go for it. If you want to parade around with it, shove it in my face and prove how much bigger yours is than mine, be my guest. But it's annoying when I have to grind for titles for months just to get some use out of certain important skills. Skills that I find to be the most fun to use.

I'll admit, I absolutely adore using SY and Brawling Headbutt in my Dragon Slash bars. I love it to death. But I'm hard pressed to grind to get my Brawling Headbutt to do respectable damage.

Edit: Let me just get one thing straight here. No one here is saying we shouldn't work for our titles. We're saying titles that require hardcore grinding shouldn't have such a huge impact on the gameplay. It should be less tedious to grind the dwarf/asura/norn/ebon titles, and maybe the Kurzick/Luxon ones too, since those are already messed up.

There should be separate titles for elite status, and titles for gameplay purposes.

Probably not the most effective. So?

As I said: the problem is with people obsessed with efficiency.

There's no difference. By sporting a maxed, say, Vanguard Title, you're basically telling the crowd your Vanguard Skills are at best.

To me, it's when there's nothing else to do aside from being a completionist. I don't mind a little grind, but when it gets to the point where I start to question why I would want to do this in the first place, I stop and do something else. I wouldn't mind if the grind reduced, but at the same time I don't want things handed to me on a silver platter.