Sometimes I worry.

Actually, the Guild Wars the game was named after are historical events predating the Searing.

It has nothing to do with GvG at all. The Guilds we can join are nothing like the Guilds involved in the wars. If anything, they can be considered a mere kickstart for the whole PvE story in Prophecies.

It is really ignorant to think that the game was called after a PvP format, or PvP side of the game in general. Guild Wars is a catchy name - and that's good enough to choose it, especially that it made sense in terms of the game's lore. I think that the old lore, like guild wars from Adelbern's times, were much more important when the game was initially developed, but then the add-ons and expansions went down a completely different road.

My thoughts also. MMO Developers seem to forget that everything they create is eventually funneled through a pipeline that frankly is not keeping up with them. All of the computing muscle in the world on your desk does not matter when all of the whiz bang effects, customizations, etc are packets being shoved through the same old pipe. Connectivity and packets will be the biggest problem people see in large scale anything, as it has been in all mmos, particularly pvp, to date.

The old, lower reqs had the side benefit of sending less info. We have all experienced issues of just NOT being where our screen said we were. Add in real time dodge and move to target.. people are going to be raging.

That aside.. I will not be purchasing GW2. I have RA. 2 fingers of my left hand are permanently clenched. WASD..no. They have gone from one of the most disabled friendly games I know of to a model that just won't really allow successful play with limited hand movements. I know, Im not target market. Just sayin.

While I don't have anything that bad, I have a hard time with WASD also at this point. I have a Logitech G13. I replaced the thumbstick inside it with one from a Logitech PS3-style gamepad (it's just a simple swap), and I drive with the stick. Due to the odd angle of the keypad (For some reason Logitech STILL thinks people want to drive with WASD, so the stick is designed so you move your hand over to it to move the map around instead of driving with it, even though just about everyone on the forum drives with the stick.. baffles me), I find you're left only able to use 10-15 of the buttons on the keypad (depending on your hand size), instead of the full compliment. But with macroing and such, you can play most games.

I also use a USB foot pedal for things like PTT and auto-run. It gives me time to pull my hand off the pad and flex/relax my arm.

This is why the current MMO style of "make more skills!" always feels dumb to me, both from usability and good design. Instead of making the game more interesting and complex in design, they make the UI more complex. Yes, it accomplishes the goal, but it does it in an unfriendly way.

AION had the right idea by putting skill chains in. It was at least a nice start to taking what people like about fall-through macros and making them more usable.. but no. we just get games now with larger stacks of macro bars and mice with 35 buttons on them.

I just segued over here from the official support forum thread "From an old disgruntled mmo player" and can't find the difference in tone more stark. That thread is from veteran players who have tried GW2 during the BWEs and are reveling in it. Okay, Brightsides, I admit to more than a little trepidation re certain aspects of GW2 (so long 20th level max) myself, and I too have noticed the emptiness in the farther reaches of GW. I love GW and still play it, and I can wish it was more populated -- and I know no game will ever fully measure up to those early halcyon days when I thought Pre-Searing WAS the game, and then I learned differently ....

But GW2 has much to recommend it. Anet is really trying to get back a sense of civil community. It has been heartening to see players travel considerable distances during the BWEs and take no few risks just to rez a total stranger. There really has been a sense of helpfulness and "we're all in this together" during the dynamic events. Strangers will answer a map-wide call to arms, group and then disperse, or continue onto the next dynamic event. It all has a casual ebb and flow, at least up to this point. It will be interesting to see the effect guilds will have when they gear up on release. It's no GW1, but then nothing ever will be. But Anet took huge risks in its gameplay in GW and it's doing likewise in GW2. So far, I have found the game mesmerizing. Let's keep our fingers crossed that it will at least approach the standard that GW1 has set.

Don't worry and just enjoy it while you can. Even 1 year of enjoyment is worth the price of the game.

uhhhh yea it is. The game was named Guild Wars because of the present events, guilds created by players fighting each other. The lore is just there because every rpg type game needs history.

Sorry man, that sucks.

We were all different people when GW1 was released. I had recently graduated from college and my "job" was being my Nana's caretaker. Since she slept alot I had tons of free time on my hands and GW was there to fill the time. Soon I was suggesting it to my Magic:the Gathering buddies and we even formed a guild. It was a great time and simply impossible to recapture. I remember running to different places so I could get certain armor pieces(before insignia armors had specific functions). I died alot in the Crystal Dessert and even on Drok's Run(never go afk!). I defeat that foul fiend Galrath and beheld the floating Wizard's Tower. ^_^ I have infused 6 armor sets and killed the Eidolon simply because it was there.

Now I'm just a bored old Necro. I spend alot of time making up awesome stories about Vala as a captain of the Ebon Vanguard and prance about the Charr Homelands sticking it too those filthy curs.

To quote myself :

Then to quote Gill :



Oh, and tl;dr : you're wrong, or you're right and Anet are idiots....

GW1 had aesthetic grind from day one. Rare weapons? Hell, getting any kind of useful weapon that wasn't a collector's weapon was a pretty big deal. 15k armor was a big deal. Obsidian armor was just insane. We have guaranteed aesthetic rewards for beating campaigns and certain content now (think Oppressor weapons), but back then if you wanted a reward, there was nothing to do except grind, because you sure as hell weren't getting rewarded with one for just playing.

Actually, it had power grind too, a heck of a lot more than we have now. Perfect mods were difficult to find, perfect weapons (that weren't collector's weapons) were even more difficult. Unlocking gear and skills via PvP was incredibly difficult (IIRC, Balthazar Faction wasn't even around at release, so you HAD to PvE to PvP, and the initial rate of faction gain was pathetic). Leveling was slow and boring enough that powerleveling was a decent way to make money. I made hundreds of platinum running people around the desert on my ranger in the first year of the game.

The only thing that's changed now is that more people are interested in doing the aesthetic grind, because a) it's transferring to GW2, and b) there's not much else to do. People just have rose-tinted glasses about the early days of GW1; the skill > time policy has never been applicable to aesthetic rewards.

GW2 was made on computers that weren't exactly top-notch when they started, and that was years ago. I don't think you can seriously claim that GW2 is only being coded for high end computers. My 3 year old laptop chugged like hell in the first BWE, particularly in WvW, but this past weekend I played WvW with a decent framerate, and PvE was completely smooth. I think performance issues have far more to do with the fact that the game isn't optimized yet than the fact that they aren't coding the game with older tech in mind...because they demonstrably are doing exactly that.

Gah. All the negatoryisms of doom. I love the grind. The grind and the highend areas only. Man, the shit's fun. I love running my accounts through dungeons and hoping to get nice loot. It's like chest running in 07 hoping for that r8 to drop, or farming in 05, 06 hoping for that r7 to drop. It's the new aspect of the old ideas and I'm ok with it. Gw1 has tons of active guilds, tons of things to do, and more than enough diversity to keep you or anyone occupied. Those who say it's "dead" or that it sucks or that it's broken. W/e. It is broken, all games are broken, but it still works half decent. It still has a shit ton of things to do, and a lot of areas of the game have been forgotten. I see everyone whine and complain about the same old shit. Figure out what you want to do in the game, no matter how bizarre it is, and find others with like minds. If people would give up their holds and just join other guilds that suited their desires over the prestige of a certain cape or guild tag.... DOT DOT DOT.... ... W/e. GW2 looks sick, is fun to play and will be a fantastic game. Gw1 is sick, is fun to play, and is a fantastic game. My 452 cents.

People have been saying this just pretty much since day one. I remember my first forum debate on that topic. It was in September....2005!

Dude, if you are going to quote me, don't snip to make some unrelated point. My post was about connectivity, the net, the "pipeline". It will effect large population activities, as it does now, always has, and will continue to. Wake up and realize that a pretty high % of the population is not on fiber optic, not on DSL, and is chugging along on Broadband. Increasing the number of packets sent along with real time mechanics is not going to work well for a lot of connections, and yet MMO Devs seem to ignore it.

I don't think many here think it's that big a deal at all, personally I won't be going for any of it, but it certainly merits debate and discussion when considering it's actual effect on the game as a whole as was seemingly the OP's theme.

Anything else it purely subjective opinion.

Imagine for a second being a new player trying to complete the game on NM with just PuG's and henchies.Urrgghhh.

Sure the game has aged but players have been specifically directed towards certain goals and styles of play.It's about more than the reward at the end of it.

Agreed.

I never said it did'nt but compare the effect of grind back then to it's effect on the game now?

Exactly.

Honest mistake, I thought you were talking about the development pipeline, and I didn't read your post closely enough.

Well, I just went through a comparison of the effects of grind then and now, but since you didn't seem to recognize that...

Then: if you want to get ANY weapon skin that isn't completely outclassed by a collector's weapon, you need to grind. If you want to mod ANY weapon to perfection, you're going to need a hundred platinum, at least.

Now: 95% of the weapon skins in the game are below 20k for a perfect, near perfect, or inscribable weapon. Mods, including inscriptions, are about 1k each, and the most expensive are 20k each.

Then: grind your little eyeballs out for ectos to make obsidian armor, or buy them at 15k each.

Now: same, except drops rates are up, there's an end chest with guaranteed ectos, and ectos are about half the price.

Then: collect as many skills as possible, because your power relative to the monsters was much lower, and build optimization before every area was a necessity. Areas would be filled with mobs that were resistant to certain effects or damage types, and "resistant" here could easily mean "will kill you before you can kill them".

Now: PvE skills, power inflation, and 7 heroes means that you can pretty much stick with one bar of 8 skills through the vast majority of PvE. PvE skills at one point required a bit of grind (but honestly, not really. Grinding to max Slayer so your Finish Him! does an extra 20 damage wasn't really necessary), but even that's gone now, since you'll max (or close to it) these skills just finishing the campaign you get them in.


Grind hasn't changed. It hasn't even gone up. What has changed is that a) little new content is coming in, so more and more players are piling up at endgame with nothing to do and little else to look forward to, and b) GW2 is coming out, and so the HoM is all that a lot of people care about. It's not like these people are grinding in place of playing; if they weren't grinding, they'd be shelving GW.

Ergo, the mantra of "skill > time" hasn't changed. It's just a fact that aesthetic grind was never a component of that mantra, and now aesthetic grind is all that's left for a lot of people. There's no "hypocrisy" here, is what I'm saying; there is nothing different between the HoM of today and the titles and rare weapons and armors of years past, except that more people care about the HoM because that's all that's left moving forward.

Of course it has.

Choosing to argue the relevancy of grind based purely on aestheic reward just detracts from the actual topic in order to make yourself sound correct.Just a couple of examples of what's changed since the "good old days":

Firstly:Many skill potencies are directly related to repetition of content and grind.You stated as much.I don't care how shiny someone's sword is but I do care if we are using the same skill yet theirs is vastly more effective and potent merely because they repeated the same mission 500 times.

You may right that off as "tiny" or link the mechanic to a one skill example.Many don't.Being subjective about that does'nt change the mechanics involved.

Secondly:Many areas, be it PvP or PvE, have preferential treatment based purley on rank/title.Unless you have repeated the same level/PvP area, etc 500 times and have the right tag beneath your name good luck getting into a group or even getting a look in.

As such reward from grind can be directly related to how a new player is treated/accepted and what areas, levels or PvP they can access.

Both points are imo valid and dictate that...


...is now totally incorrect.

Sure the "old game...all that's left is HoM" is a totally sound argument.It's fact.The point being is what if the game had'nt changed it's philosophy and mechanics in such a way.Anyway I think the tangent is pretty irelevant if you re-read the OP.

lol

That's akin to saying:"No offense....but....".Then again I've been around here long enough to recognize your skill at cyclic debate so I'm happy to agree to disagree.

Good luck to you.

You should check skill updates.

They have reduced so much the title requirements in PvE skills that you get the max effect in a single playthrough of the game, without dungeons, challenges, secondary quests or hard mode.
Just playing the plot.
And well, you should at least play the plot to get the benefit from the skills. As opposed as just farm it and buy the skills like you can do with the PvP ones.

Now all of my characters have the max effects in all of their skills, and they were way under the max before the update.
It took them over 4 years to make as it should have always been, but hey, they did it.

See, now the only places that has any real relevance are speed clears or PvP.... and if you're bitching that you have to grind titles to be able to make it into speed clear groups.... how to put this nicely..... screw you? Yeah, seems about right.... the whole point of SC's is to be fast BECAUSE you've spent the time elsewhere grinding titles...you could always have loaded a Spirit Spammer and farmed UW instead.

As for PvP, that's the people you're trying to group with requiring a certain title level as an indication of experience. If you have R8 and you suck, they'll kick you when you get back to town, title or no title. The barrier isn't part of the game, it's imposed by the players.

Oh, and I've done no speed clears at all, because that shit doesn't interest me. On the other hand I'm working on GWAMM for 3 accounts and the only pvp I do is JQ. And that has nothing to do with rank, I just lack the situational awareness and twitch reactions needed to be really decent at PvP, imo.

lol that's pretty much how I feel. Been playing since almost the beginning and still play it. It's true that there is just something about it.

So when GW2 goes live I'll be playing both

Great point.

Same could be said for 7 heroes I guess but any excuse to dumb the game down and let everyone c-space to GWAMM.The real hardcore "Grindwars" vets in my guild left ages ago exactly for such reasons.I recall one commenting that they should just give everyone a million ecto, automatic GWAMM, 50/50 and be done with it.

lol

Exactly.

Direct cause and effect on both gameplay and the communities direction and motivations.

You're ignoring the point I was making which is that if you choose not to grind those hours for those titles, you could spend them grinding for the ectos instead. The grind is still entirely optional. It's not like 50/50 or Gwamm is required for anything in-game.

It's not Anet's fault that people are retards. News at 11, people are f**king stupid... always have been, always will be.

Imo the only real problem with the game is H/H and the builds people use, mainly due to PvE skills. They should both be removed from the game imo.

So, how would players who cannot log on euro evenings be able to do anything ? That's what happens in PvP... all organized formats are empty 90% of the time because of that

If i don't disagree about builds used( although i think it has more to do with the lack of reactivity from IA), heroes/henchs are for sure needed, else the game will get empty and PvE will look like PvP..
Why do we have so many threads called " bring hb back ".. it's not any form of troll or sarcasm, it's just that it's the only format that would be fun and playable today( besides all forms of abuse that can happen in any format)

I worry that I will never be able to find a guild that doesn't act like this 24/7:

Check the wiki, and come back and tell me which skills require grind to be useful. Even before the recent rebalance, the only example I can think of was SY!, and even that now gives you 4 seconds (out of a max of 6) for simply turning in 2 NM books or 1 HM book. Every other PvE skill is now maxed out by just beating the required campaign in NM, sometimes even before that.

How is this ANet's fault, exactly? Rank discrimination (where it exists) exists because there is a huge population of veteran players who aren't interested in teaching new players, they're just interested in doing the content as fast as possible, which means if you're playing with a PUG you need to identify experienced players quickly. This results in rank discrimination, or "show stones", or whatever else. There is precisely one area in the game where rank or title grinding actually has an effect on performance, and that's DoA, and even then you can get to an acceptable rank without what I would call grind. It is, at best, the exception. Blaming ANet for rank discrimination is asinine; players will and have always discriminated, it's just a bigger problem now because the population is so low in some of these PvP modes that it's literally impossible for non-ranked players to get a group together. On the other hand, it's often impossible for ranked players to get a group together...

Nothing has changed. New players still need to learn the game. That's not "grind", that's just a fact of PUG grouping; I don't want to play with someone who's going to do something stupid and cost me an hour. The only way that that could ever be considered "grind" is if the new player had to grind up some meaningless title in order to ever be excepted in a group, which as I just went over, is only relevant in DoA, HA, and UWSC groups. The first is a design choice that I never really agreed with, the second is only a problem because population density in HA is negligible nowadays, and the third is a completely player-created discrimination policy that has absolutely NOTHING to do with ANet's philosophies, and just goes to prove the point that, even without titles, players will find a way to discriminate against new players. That's not the game's fault, nor is it anything new.

In short, the things you're correct about (new players having trouble getting into PvP or SC groups, DoA groups requiring high LB ranks) are nothing new, they've just been exacerbated by recent population declines. The things you're wrong about (like player power and PvE skills being dependent on grind) you're demonstrably wrong about. People have turned to grinding because there's nothing else to do, not because ANet has been suddenly decided to reward it more. The cosmetic rewards for grinding have always been there, people just care about them more now because they have the time to do so.

I used to love getting to a new town and seeing the people you grouped with in the previous town, knowing you both had made it that far. It was rewarding..loved 55 Monks, loved playing Tombs, farming Sorrow's Furnace, and just having a good time with friends staying up late on Ventrilo playing a blood spike in HoH. Seeing people advertise for a run in Droknar's Forge to bipass waiting to get that new shiny armor.

Never again will I have the same amount of fun that I had here.

I never said "useful".I said "effects skill potency".Again your re-wording my comments to suit your rebuttal.

There are a fair few used in PVE be it for general play, especially in certain hero builds like "discordway" for example, or for farming builds, especially for build genres like tankers or runners, which involve repetition of content to maximise potency and overall effectiveness of said builds.

Going into skill by skill analysis is merely delving into semantics.

I totally agree things are much better since the update but that does'nt change the fact that for several years grind had a direct relationship to PvE skill potency.

I never said it was Anet's fault.It's basic human physcology that if you introduce a hierarchical structure to a game you will get sub-classes and discrimination.The point is at release and for several years afterwards, especially before titles, this was not the case.Not only that it was what bought many to the game originally.

So people grind for fun?Ok then.

Theres heaps to do in this game.It all changed with HOM and titles.That's the point.

Again my friend, I suggest a re-read of the OP.It's not about "right/wrong".It's about discussing why and how the change and focus happened to the game."Nothing more to do...." just totally avoids the topic and kills discussion.