WHAT Grind?

omg level 19 lol, keep going youll find something

I think the main problem here (from my view at least) is that people...care too much about winning all the time. Play for fun people, I spent 4 hours last night playing PvP with an off-the wall character I just created, and used one of the selectable builds. And I had a great amount of fun, and I lost more than I won, but the more I played, the more I won, as I was getting better at it and more used to it. Did I CARE that some guy had better equipment than me? ...no? He worked for his, he should get it. And besides, I killed him several times anyways, so what's the big deal?

The playing fields ARE level, everyone has the oppurtunities to get the same things as everyone else, yeah, you have to go out and work for them to get stronger maybe, but in what game DON'T you have to play for a while to get decent at it?

For all you FPS peoples out there (including myself, huge fps fan), who're used to having everything unlocked, you may have everything unlocked, but you're still going to have to work at it to get really good and be able to just entirely murder everyone on the field, it takes some practice normally.

And also...you play those FPS games for many many weeks, over and over again right? I know damn well that you guys who don't like grinding play the games with no "grinding" hundreds of hours anyway. So what's the difference? Here, you're getting better the more you play, in the other games, you get better the more you play.

Also, I don't care where you're from or what types of games you play, the game is considered an RPG, and like all other RPGs, you have to actually do something to get stronger, that's the point of "role playing".

Now...I see where the other people are coming from, complaining about having to search for hours to get one skill from a boss and what not, and trying to get all yer runes, that makes sense, I can see how that can be frustrating. But every game has it's frustrating moments where you find yourself unable to do something, even all those games that hand you everything. Also, would it really be any fun if everyone had the EXACT same armor states and the EXACT same runes and you NEVER had to work for ANY of it? Everybody would be the same, you create a PvP character, you and the other warrior will be able to do all the same moves, if you have a face-off, it's going to be who gets the first hit in who wins, since you'll just be swinging back and forth.

What's that? You use your skills and your brain to outsmart the other guy and use skill from that point forward? Well why don't you do that when the guy has an extra rune?

People care too much about winning, play the game, have fun. I understand about being angry to wait around, but how fast you get the items, also depends on your skill (to an extent).

I've been playing the game for about 6 days now, and I'm still only lvl 13 right now on my second character, the first I only used for one day. I know of many people who got to 20 in a day. And they played for less time than I did.

Is he going to beat me in a battle? Absolutely. Is it because he played longer than me? Absolutely not. He's just better at the game right now and knows more, so he got their faster than I did. The game DOES go by skill, not time played.

We've been saying over and over that the grind ISN'T fun. So thanks for making our point for us. And you're making a big generalization saying that people care too much about winning.

Yeah, I am. But from what I've seen in this entire thread, the reason they hate the grind so much is because they supposedly need to do it to win. This being why I felt it was safe to make that generalization, if you don't care about winning so much you won't care about grinding so much. Some people play to win though, and I guess that's just the way they do things. I personally just play when I get time and have as much fun as possible doing whatever I feel like doing, whether it be ditching my character for a simple off-the-shelf lvl 20 pvp character and messing around for 3 hours or simply working my way through the world, makes no difference to me. If ever I get to a point where I hate it too much, I just go play another game, then come back. Not a big deal. There isn't anything in the game I couldn't predict by reading, and even looking at the box on the shelf.

You're missing the point. Some of us don't like the grind not strictly because it takes too long but because it's simply not fun for us. The capture system, for instance, forces people to repeat missions and that really isn't fun. It's really not about people wanting to win, everyone wants to win. But people want to have fun most of all as you pointed out.

The reason is kind of what Xellos has already stated, I like it how it is. Therefore if Gaile comes and reads this she will know that where are upset, other are content. Yes, we will defend it as it stands.

I however dont like the "get off your lazy ass and do it" argument. I have given many different ideas on how to make everyone happy, and i dont feel like typing them all over again. (I feel like there 973465 threads on this same damn issue)





Edit: "We've been saying over and over that the grind ISN'T fun. So thanks for making our point for us. And you're making a big generalization saying that people care too much about winning."


What you call "grind" isent what i consider "grind", so you are generalizing right there. Challenge does not = Grind in my book.

I for one am glad that it's been out two weeks (oh my gosh, have I really been addicted that long?) and I'm not close to 'having it all'. Who would want to pay $50 for a game and be done with it that quickly? I like getting my money's worth!

Here's the real problem: This game whether you like it or not has item dependency.

So you either quench the thirst, starve it, or just plain fix it.

Quenching it would be giving back a place to farm quickly, so that in a year from now, all the competitive teams can have all 450 skills unlocked and can work on advanced strategies/tactics more then running around praying for their superior air rune. Newcomers are also given the advantage, as within a month, their first build would be set for competitive PVP, which gives a fair chance. So as long as it's reasonably quick, it's all good.

Now you go "but Xellos, you said frame of reference is a no no". Well let's use a universal one. Most of us here probably have school or jobs right? But let's be lenient and pull to the school part, because they have more time period compared to a full time worker. A kid has like what? 2 months for summer? 1 month for winter? 2 weeks for spring break? Those are the numbers you want to cater to then. You want them to be able to be competitive for at least a week by the time those numbers are up. As for which number? Up to Anet. But anywhere longer then a summer is just being hypocritical. It's already harsh on people who have families, and such, but they are older, and probably understand that they are going to get left out of the loop on these things. But teenagers and young adults? Oh your going bankrupt if you screw with this.

Starving it is currently what this game is doing now. Gaile may come in and defend it, but I don't care how she puts it, unless I gain a yellow rune every instance past the desert, this is not even 1/50th of the speed people were putting in Riverside. Now that the wealth is "distributed evenly", we can't even at least have luck on our side. Now it's whoevers going to win the 649 jackpot has a chance to get all those runes or maybe even half unlocked by the end of this year. The only people who are getting even half or maybe if their lucky all the superior runes would be the guys who grind in the first place. They'd grind the explorables. Calculate loot drops and what not.

I'd also like to mention starving makes EBAY oh-so-more lovable. I hope Station Exchange doesn't come in here. /pizza.

Lastly, you can FIX it.

Hardest to do, for sure. I expect fixing it to be a long term goal. I wouldn't have the audacity to ask for it within even by winter. But pulling off would truely make this the starcraft of online rpgs. How do you fix it? Well this forum is GWG for a reason. There's tons of general consensus on things. Elite skill system for one. I personally think the runes and item mods are too huge of a difference in the first place. Some of you might agree. I'm not going to suggest how you fix it, because that takes way too much consideration, and like I said would be like the 1.10 patch for diablo kinda big.

You wanna know what Anet did right when it came to PVE rewards? 15k Armour set. That's right. Some of those things look damn awesome (necro bone lace? nice), and are well worth your PVE grind if you care for it. But will it make you an unstoppable monster? No. Another thing about PVE > PVP that no one has failed to mention is that it DOES give VERY small advantages to PVE characters.

Take this mod for example:

20%+ damage
-5 energy
or
-10 armour
or
-1 degen something
or
I forgot the rest

Some of you might think it sucks, but on things like a warrior with gladiator set, that's gold. Shatter enchant? No problem, still 20% up. On barragebots? Not golden. Platinum.

These innate mods aren't available for PVP characters. So you shouldn't complain that your time is wasted. There are VERY little but still considered advantages that you can get that won't break the game already. You just haven't grinded long enough to get it. Or you weren't lucky. See how it feels?

Again, I hope I'm not offending anyone. I'm just trying to point out that PVE already has benefits, and should expand on the things that Anet has done right, not expand on the things they have done WRONG. You don't want to end up having an HONOUR SYSTEM in guild wars two years down the road just to please people who want some phat lewt for their arena kills.

Starcraft comparisons? Well I guess your name is Xellos for a reason

But yeah with the whole theme of GW being placed on choice and ability having such strong items being so rare is kind of silly. If there are good rare items (runes for example), someone in the competitive PvP scene will do the grind needed to get them. And once they do, eveyone else will have to follow suit in order to stay competitive (11/10 expertise/marksmanship ranger compared to a 13/12, there's a world of difference for example).

And besides, PvP folks aren't the only ones affected. I don't have a good PvP guild atm, so I'm just playing the regular PvE game. However, I'd like for my characters to be as efficient as possible even in just that because I'll have the most fun with them then. That means spending hours looking over skillsets and seeing what will work best for my goals. That's fine. That also means getting the tools necessary for that; for my Ranger, runes for exp/marks and Barrage. If there was a quest for Barrage, I'd gladly do it. If there were quests for those runes, sign me up. If it was hard and long, so be it, at least there would be no randomness and I knew I had a reward when I finished it. But having to find the correct boss that uses it (still don't know), and then replay the mission over and over, owing up for the times that the boss doesn't use the skill, is the wrong profession, or dies too fast. The randomness is a huge part of the grind that is hated. The same with item drops.

Saus proposed an excellent system for skills in the other thread around here that emphasized choice over pure playing time. He also had a non-random way of getting runes through quests, though imo that could take awhile to put in. A quick solution for that would be as Xellos said, improve rare drops in certain places enormously so we don't have to waste so much time looking for random occurances.

Besides the little modding community remark, I'll just say for fun that starcraft comparisons make sense. It was done by the same company in a way I guess, and was at the time and still today considered the most balanced PVP game that isn't symmetrical (shooters don't really count, since their almost symmetrical). You don't make a tennis game without comparing it to pong.

There are no "uber" items in this game. Even if a guy happens to have all of the "uber" stuff, he still only has an edge. An edge is not game deciding.

Xellos you are right, this game is item driven. Not for their "uber" stats, but for purly cosmetic reasons.

Actually, you just disagreed with me. I stated that items SHOULD be cosmetic with minor boosts at most, which I gave examples to. Superior Runes for one, is a giant leap in item dependency. Take away Superior Expertise, and rangers are suddenly not exactly wanted.

Zealous is a big modifier. And so is elemental ones. Their NEEDED. Which is a bad thing.

I'm suggesting they fix this. Or quench it. Currently they are starving it.

The superior runes do give a good boost, but they have thier down sides.

EDIT: and I didnt mean that you where right in your thinking, just that your statment was right.

Like what? -25 hp after Superior Vigor? Oh Noez. I'd give it up for my 2 mana barrage, oh which with my zealous, gives me back 1 if I just hit one guy. Let's see your upside counter my versatility of superior runes. You can't.

Currently, not all builds are based on superior runes. But a significant amount are. There's a reason guys like Ensign scramble to buy any superior up for sale. It's that damn good.

Honestly don't believe me? Try getting a Superior Air Rune then knocking a lightning orb. The damage is orgasmic. 230 from one shot to a monk? You'll never get anywhere close with clean templates.

75- hp is hefty, but versatility ultimately is what this game is about, and hp is only one aspect, where as runes give you almost 10x as much aspects in advantages.

You can even do the math. By using Superior Expertise, you can use 10 expertise, put the superior and mask together and reach the magic number 14. Let's see you do it with a minor rune and mask. That's 2 more attributes. Big fat hefty attributes. Around 13-16 or something. So let's just say 13 and 16. That's 29 skill points. You could've used that to further your beast mastery, further your shock sniper, further your wilderness. It all adds up.

And if you think that only applies to range think again. Even with a major rune, I can get 1-2 second difference in killing speed when it comes to priest ganking in tombs. I go from 20 to 25 or something around there on monks when I use major swords. 5 damage per swing increase? That's exponential. In fact, it increases my most powerful skill. 100 Blades. Indirectly too. Whereas HP is not.

Oh let's add a little snipe at grinding while we are at it. The 20% increase is only if your lucky enough to unlock a perfect one OOOOOHHHHHH :P Otherwise your stuck with 10% or something. Ho ho ho.

Just a note who dont think there is grind:
I'm done all the missions, i have 100 hours played. I've unlocked MOST skills on my primary and secondary profession (mes/mo). I spent the last 25 or so of my gameplay hours farming runes and skills. I switched my secondary profession today and bought 5 skills, I now have only *1* skillpoint remaining. It takes a huge amount of xp to level, and that gets me 1 additional skill. Now that riverside is fixed, getting any runes will take a miracle. I pity those who didnt farm it while they had the chance.

The end game now in pve is 100% grind. At this point i've given up on unlocking runes or item bonuses, i'll likely just have to grind xp and just hope for the best. The only people who have this stuff unlocked going forward are people who farmed riverside nonstop and those who were lucky enough to farm wreckages in the desert for item bonuses right after retail went live. Everyone else is screwed. So much for a level playingfield eh?

there is plenty of grind in Guild Wars. just because some other games have more grind; that does not mean that Guild Wars' relatively shorter grind somehow magically ceases to be a grind.

since you have not seen any grind in Guild Wars, let me point out some for you:

1. having to travel through the same areas millions of times, and fight the same enemies that you've already killed billions of times yet again, with a new mob popping up every 10 seconds. of course you get zero experience or reward for all of this (once you are a few levels higher than the enemy).

2. by the same token as point (1.), having to kill the same enemies that you just killed 5 minutes ago, because they respawned when you ran into a load screen that loaded a new zone. a new zone which you only needed to walk in for 2 minutes in order to talk to the NPC there. then as soon as you go back out, it's back to the agonizingly tedious torturous grind of killing those same mobs over and over again ad nauseaum

3. having to walk everywhere to get town markers. Guild Wars tries to be like Diablo II in a lot of ways, but in this way it really fubared everything up really bad. Guild Wars needs a Town Portal esque system so that you do not have to manually walk to new towns (and while doing so, encounter the endless respawn grinds mentioned above) in order to get to them. if your buddy has been to a town, he should be able to teleport you to that town. just like in Diablo II

4. the party-finding grind. for a game based around parties, Guild Wars really drops the ball here. finding a party takes forever due to the fact that you can not form a party other than with people in the exact same instance of the exact same district as you. it means only people who need the exact same quests as you will party with you, thus greatly limiting your ability to find recruits. it means you have to scrounge around with the few players in your instance and invite just about everyone you see just to get a full party. and if you are lucky enough to even get a full party, chances are it won't be a competent or well-balanced one. of course going through this aggravation the first few times is not so bad. but then when you realize that you have to go through this party-finding grind every time you ever want to do a new quest or mission, it dawns on you that the party-finding grind in Guild Wars is horrendously bad. Guild Wars needs to let you form parties with anyone, anywhere - no matter what district they are in. as it stands, Guild Wars has the absolute worst party-making system ever.

now in rebuttal to point (4.) i'm sure two things will come up, so i shall address those now:

1. form a Guild. well sure that's great, but even with a Guild...not all of your Guild members will be online at the same time as you. and they won't have the same amount of playing time as you. so you will either be further ahead, or further behind in the game than them. in which case, having a Guild does little to address the party-finding grind. and even if they are at the exact same quest as you, having to manually tell everyone where to go to meet you (district number, and then where you are standing in the district itself) is still a mind-numbingly aggravating grind

2. use henchmen: to that the simple response is, henchmen suck. not a viable option.

Can you explain to me which side you are on? Against or for grinding? Your post seems to be very confusing grammarically to me, so I'd like you to ask for a enlightenment.

Second, in competitive PVP, grind is what makes or breaks you.

That makes no sense. This game promotes competition. It is one of those games that might make it into the world cyber games. Why shouldn't it be up with shooters or RTSes? It's just a different genre, the core design though, aims at strategy, tactics, skill, and loads of other factors based on the player himself/herself rather then some digit value in the game that determines the winner. So if I said Marvel vs Capcom was less balanced then Counter-Strike, it's invalid? How so? Balance is balance.

Which is why I said "We find the grind isnt fun" I made no generalizations. I was speaking for the people who don't like the grind. I didnt say "grind isnt fun" But why are we even arguing about petty things like that?

The nature of online RPG's makes it tough to EVER create the truly level playing field... I think the rareness and the difficulty of elite skills and runes creates a very rewarding experience when all is said and done. Frankly, this game needs rare items of SOME kind and skills that are tough to get to cater to the RPG crowd, and maintain replay value. Personally if getting all my jazz was simple this game would most likely fizzle out considerably quicker than it would if it does not.

This all seems like a frame of mind issue here. You seem to take it as some sort of burden to grab a necessity... I find that it is more of a trial to reap a reward of some kind... something that seems monumental to my development despite having a little more than minor stat ups.

Stop arguing the FPS issue as well, even they do not have a true level playing field. Some players start closer to power weapons than others... In CS the money issue arises and the terrorists and CTs have different guns and starting places. The people who play the game more tend to be better at it. Look, you can cry out about an even playing field all you want but when all is said and done why would you want it? You can't argue how good it feels to finally find that great skill or rune, and if everything was as even as you wanted it to be we would all have weapons with the same damage, range, and every match would end in a tie.

and please PLEASE stop arguing that these runes are some kind of necessity. With a lower level charecter of mine I was playing in the ascalon arena with all my starting armor... did I get a booting? Hell yeah... but did I win any matches? Of course, and damn was it rewarding. Nothing good could come of abolishing rarity of items... all it will do is alienate the hardcore MMO crowd (I am not a part of this... guild wars is the first/only online rpg I have ever played) and make what used to be fun exciting items mundane and boring... runes would become what the healing icon is now.

Don't make any assumptions about how much time I have either. I work 7 days a week and almost have to put my friends aside if I want to play this game.

6 hours of normal gameplay then 3 of PvP gets tiring, it's 5:02am, and for some reason I've not slept. Didn't much feel like sleeping, so I decided I'd look over the forums and spread good nature to everyone because doing anything else isn't much worth my time, with the exception of explaining my actions. I just didn't see the debate going anywhere and when you get to the point of repeating statements two or three times, you know you've covered pretty much everything.

Goldfinger's got the right idea, just play for fun, you can't get around this little side note that items matter and what not, they'll always be there.

Now about the issues raised:
An FPS is about skill, and it is a level playing field for several reasons. For one thing, when I have a match against another team it is done by switching sides at the halfway point, so any argument about weapons for each side or distance to objectives is moot, as we have exchanged positions. Having FPS as a background isn't an excuse for complaining about grind, but it does influence my perceptions of it. If the point of the PvP in the game is to pit equal opponents against one another in tests of skill, it fails that test. You may argue that only an "edge" is conferred by the items, but an "edge" is all it takes to determine a winner in tight races. In the olympics hundredths of seconds determine gold/silver; in FPS a ping imbalance of even 50 milliseconds is noticeable - I can't even snipe against another good sniper at 100 milliseconds - a tenth of a second is way too much time for him to have as an edge, and I can notice and find even a twentieth of a second to be a disadvantage/advantage when the players are of equal skill levels. Granted, this might not be quite as fast paced, and uses a very diffferent set of skills, but the fact is that for some people it is about level playing fields, and that is not available in this game without a significant investment of time into making the skills/items accessible.

You would like some suggestions, right? Saus has made some in the parallel thread, which are quite well thought out. Other suggestions would be the equivalent of "booster pack" matches in Magic the Gathering and duplicates play in bridge (I play both).

How about this for a nice ladder competition that doesn't interfere at all with the standard PvP: Each team starts by being handed a list of 4 or 6 or 8 (depending on the format) class combos. they then have 30 seconds to decide who takes which class combo. Once selected they have their skill choices revealed, with a selection of skills from the various attributes in front of them. They then build their character as well as they can from the (let's say) 60 or so skills presented to them - this occurs with a few minutes to discuss things, albeit quickly, with the other team members. Then you go to fight your opponents, who started with the exact same lists as you did.

The same is true for many other players out there - they were all given the same build list, and you move on to the next round. You are stuck with the same characters but are given X minutes to reallocate skills and attributes and items, as are the teams making it to the next level, and so on.

To me, that's about skill and knowledge - you benefit from being able to build a solid character from a list of skills, but even better, you learn to throw cohesive teams together from what you are presented with. And no grind. And when I saw a game that had action and strategy, using skill selections and teamwork, that's the kind of thing I really wanted.

I know from first hand experiece that runes and item mods make a huge difference. I've run builds with no runes and mods, then ran the exact same build pimped out with the best gear and did way way better against the same teams. I play GvG to win. I don't start up a guild battle thinking well it would be nice to win, I'm thinking of how bad I'm gonna tear up the other team. If I wanted to play just for run I would do unrated battles, tombs and arenas. Those areas are for run. GvG is about competition. For competition to be level everyone must have access to the same stuff. If runes are in the game, then we need all of them. If they are not, then I'm happy too as long as everyone has the access to the exact same equipment. I should not have to spend 100 hours pure farming just so I can stack up to the guilds that do. This is the point that people don't understand. Grind is not fun for PvP serious people.

The best solution I can think of and that I've seen suggested here would be to chop the game in half. Make the PVP characters only able to PVP with other PVP characters. And the PvE characters can only PvP with other PvE characters. A kind of separate but equal solution. Kind of like having 2 games in one but the 2 games don't interacted and have no affect on each other. That would be an acceptable solution, that way if you never make your pvp character and unlock everything you never have to face someone that has.

A few comments:

1. Some of you seem to think "grind" means any time you do something that you don't find particularly rewarding (travelling to a new location is a "grind"? That's a new one on me!). I think for this discussion to have any meaning the word "grind" should be objectively defined and that definition agreed to by discussion participants.

2. Do "grinders" necessarily dominate "non-grinders" in the PvP arena? If yes, how much of that is based on items obtained through grinding or the fact that "grinders" are inherently more experienced and skillful players having practiced for sometimes hundres of hours?

3 months? I played for like 6 months before I could pvp.

I ranked up about 70 days of playtime in that game in the end, I cant believe I ever grinded that much. But that was also my first mmorpg.

The only thing was, once you did get to level 50, PVP was fun as hell. Taking forts and such was great.

Mountain Man did you ever post over on PlanetBlack&White?!

Doing missions is not grind as it's part of the story and you character is developed as you go along. Quests can be seen as grind as they are very time consuming, but are completely optional if you only want the skills you need for PvP or PvE for that matter. You don't need all the skills, just the ones that make or break your builds. Unless of course you're good enough to play all 30 class combinations with every possible skill combination.


If two evenly matched players meet up and one has runes while the other one doesn't then the person with runes will win. This isn't an assumption this is a fact. Unfortunately I cannot go into the details of the testing I've done and others have done due to the NDA but if two evenly teams match up then items will be the deciding factor which is unacceptable.

Example: We both have 50 life. I hit you with a stick for 2 damage and you hit me with a stick for 3 damage (2+1 becuase of a rune). We both hit each other repeatedly at the exact same time starting at the same time. Guess who will die? Me becuase of your +1 to stick damage rune. You didn't win becuase you had more skill, you won becuase of an item. This is the problem with runes. Now I am forced to go and kill 230130382 squirrels so I can find the +1 to stick damage rune just so I can compete on a level playing field with you.

Yes, but that was years ago!

Thanks for answering my questions, but I have a follow-up:

How "real world" have your tests been? Sure, if you put two players in an artificial match-up where they're just mindlessly attacking each other with one doing slightly more damage then of course he'll win. But how often does that sort of match-up actually happen in game?

We have to remember that: Hours Played=Skills Learned

The main problem here is "attitude" people. Look upon the so called grind as an adventure; this will go a long way in reducing your neurotic fixation of having to uber dress your virtual doll in the fastest time possible.

Heh, another one...

I think the biggest problem people seem to have on this board is the inability to see the other side's perspective. Everyone is comparing their experiences of other games from MMOs, to RTS, to FPS. However, how many have actually "beaten" the pve portion of the game and how many have actually played "high level" pvp? For those that have never seen the extremes of both pve and pvp, it's really easy to question the experiences of others and dismiss them as baseless or exaggerated.

To be clear, I personally believe Guild Wars has too much grind, not compared to other MMOs, but too much grind to get to the end game of competitive pvp. I'm a very competitive pvper. I play with and against top guilds everyday and am privy to many of their stories and experiences because my guild shares a vent server with Fianna and all the other top/alpha guilds on that server. Runes and weapon modifers makes a huge difference. If every player on an 8 man team has 8 superior runes of vigor and maxed their respective priority lines, they are far more powerful than if they weren't. Here's a case study:

Lightning Orb 10 = 70 damage
Lightning Orb 14 = 94
Lightning Orb 18 = 118

A coordinated offense with 4 air eles at 18 air would kill someone at full health even before the best monk in the world could react. How likely is someone going to do this you ask? Well, a guild called Down Fall ran that build and they finished 6th last BWE.

Ok, to prevent this from getting too long, it's the skill grind that's most disheartening to this pvper. Currently, I dislike everything about it, the elite capturing, the exp grind to get skill points, and even the fedex quests to get skills. That's not the point of pvp and doing those missions don't make me a better pvper. Like others have said, we should spend our time practicing pvp and testing builds rather than leveling 2-3 chars, running missions, and spawning bosses. Many members of my guild feel the same way and don't have 50 hours a week to grind for skills let alone runes. So we're pretty far behind other top guilds and not sure when we can truly be effective with the builds we want to play. I'm afraid that some of my better players will quit before they even get a chance to have fun...

To be quite honest, I've never played PvP.

Yes, I'm aware that certain characters can have a theoretical advantage in specific situations. What I'm asking is, are these theoretical advantages having a significant or even noticable impact on the actual game? In other words, are guild battles dominated exlusively by grinders with non-grinders not even having a chance?

I'd have to agree,and that what leads to the flaming

My main question still remains though, and that is WHY is it such an emergency to get the skills and runes and everythings else right NOW, why does it seem that the devs haven't even had a chance to catch up issues that were in play before release and after only 15 days somepeople are throwing the noose up and over the tree limb. I do understand that you do need the skills and runes to compete but just because player x has no life and can play for 180 hours in 15 days so that he or she can be uber and what not and player B can only play for 75 hours and only has a few items that makes he/she just above average. So when playrs B and X go into battle X has better stuff and so then gets the win. Now whats to say that in a month or maybe two player B has now put in over 220 hours of game time and has gleened all of the items, skills and upgrades needed. Now he goes back in vs the dreaded X and proceeds to win this battle and many, many others.
Yeah I know "cute" story but it not "real", why not, why isn't that accecptable. I just don't understand the urgency, this is NOT a beta weekend, there is no time limit, what IS the rush?

For skills, requires Time.
Same as in real life, if you wanna do something you use time

Let's take two players, A & B. Both just leveled their W/Mo to level 20 and then player A bought all the best gear in the game off Ebay.

Yes, Player A will have an advantage but how much of an advantage is it?

Assuming even "skills", can player A watch the newest episode of Charmed and easily destroy player B?

I've got to be fair here: What if people don't really want to play the PvE... at all?

So far I have seen a fairly decent number of people who's complaint was that they bought Guild Wars as a kind of FPS-to-RPG crossover game. They like the strategy and character building, but really only want to use it to out-wit and out-manuver in PvP. I like both aspects of the game, but for the people who only wanted to do PvP this can be a big deal.

Maybe they will decide to do PvE a bit later on, but isn't unreasonable to ask that they be able to make PvP characters without going through all of that PvE content if they don't want to.

It is, naturally, up to the devs to decide what kind of game they have and if/how they will alter it for the PvP-only crowd. But I certainly recognize the issue, and I've got to say that I support them in this.

I have read both sides of the argument and I see where both sides are comming from. In the end I have to say that the grind is fine as is.

The game is skill over time played. You get a slight advantage if you do the grind BUT you can still win with no problem if you don't and use good strategy. It is in how you fight not what you fight with in this game.

Runes don't make you uber, but they give a SLIGHT advantage. Unlocking runes is a perfect example of a reward for doing the grind. It is NOT something you need but it is enough to feel good about what you EARNED. You don't need runes, but if you want them you have to earn them, which is how it should be. Runes are something extra and if you want them you should have to earn them.

Every RPG has a grind of some sort. If you don't like it play other types of games. The grind in GW is for the most part optional. If you do the grind of course you get a prize of some sort. Thats the whole point of it being there.

Now there is one part of the grind I can see being changed. It doesn't need to be but it would be nice. Getting skills post lvl 20 is nothing but a grind no matter how you go about it as you need SP to buy them with. Perhaps when you change your secondary at lvl 20 you get about 1/3 of the skills already unlocked. That way you have enough to work with and you don't have to do all the extra SP grinding.

Just my 2 cents

for me, it's because pve bores me to tears. well, the first time was all good and fun, but i've ran every mission at least 5+ times because i'm helping my guildmates run missions as well. granted, i don't have too, but I can't gvg w/o them. My guildmates and I only want to do pvp, but we can't and the grind is making some if not most of us starting to lose faith in this game. So we might not even get off the ground...

No, I'm sorry, that side of the argument keeps making the claim that it is only slight. If two people are equally skilled and one has a "slight" edge it isn't equal anymore. That's why there is an objection; because to prevent losing due to a "slight" disadvantage you must PvE like crazy, just to ensure that you are actually getting a fair shake at it.

Statements like these from arenanet

from FAQ, guildwars.com:
from Game Synopsis, guildwars.com:
from interview with RPG Vault:
from an interview with GameZone.com, Gaile Gray:
are what leads people into thinking that it would not have the kind of repetitive farming and hunting for elite skills and so on that are in fact necessary to compete in PvP on a level field. Kudos that they have managed to make it so that a level field is possible, but it still takes too many hours of investment just to get the gear and skills with which to do so.