WHAT Grind?

This assumes there is even a slight advantage. So far I have seen no advantage in having the captured skills or farmed for equipment over the ones you get from a straight PvP character. But I'm only one player and this observation could be just the luck of the draw in the fights I've had so far.

However ArenaNet have always stated that this should be true. That the additional skills and crafted equipment give you more options for how you build a character, not that it makes you more powerful. In effect if you want to "collect 'em all" you can but it doesn't give you a straight advantage, just more replay value as you mix and match your builds.

Therefore, if the skills and equipment you gain through grinding does make you more powerful then I agree this needs to be addressed. So a better question to those who have played significantly is this:

If you PvP with a freshly made level 20 character using only the default skills and equipment are you more, less or as successful as your lvl 20 PvE character?

Wasteland you have said that very well. Also I need to clear up the reason I use the word "slight" in my last post was because I don't even really have problems myself beating people with runes.

Runes only give more options to the player who has them. Thats the "advantage" I was talking about. If someone is willing to put forth the extra effort they have a right to the extra options. In no way do runes decide who wins or loses a fight.

Believe it or not there is a large amount of people out there who like the fact that there are things to unlock after lvl 20. What you unlock doesn't make you win, but it is rewarding. Why change the way this system works? If you have one good reason please enlighten me.

And I don't want to hear any grinding excuses as an answer. As I said I have full grasp of the situation at hand. Instead I want to know how a person with runes has such an advantage over a player who doesn't, because as I said I have had no problem beating them. Until I get that my opinion stands.

It has already been stated that testing has gone on, by the alphas, that indicate that there is an advantage to runes and gear.

If you have beaten folks with such items it just rporves that skill can overcome the discrepancy in some cases, but the fact is that a good player with full gear has a n edge of a player without. Put this way: Since a superior rune of Vigor adds 50 health with no penalty, a player with this rune has an advantage. You cannot argue that 50 more HP is an edge. Minor runes give +1 to an attribute with no disadvantage - theis is clearly a dominating strategy - it is better to have higher skill if no disadvantage is incurred. Hafts and grips and strings on weapons can add advantages without a disadvantage - addingto bleeding time, cripple time, knockdown time etc is an advantage.

Given equal skill, these advantages can lead to a win. This is in contrast to the stated goals I quoted above.

You lie, rangers need it the most.

Unfortunately I cannot go into the details of the testing that my guild has done on regular characters vs pimped out characters due to the NDA. However, believe me when I say items do make a difference. If they didn't then we wouldn't be making such a fuss would we?

Exactly. I don't know how some people can say with a straight face that runes and Elites don't make a difference. Yet these are the same people who keep saying that not everyone should get these items except only by grinding and grinding meaning that they want to keep their advantage just because they happen to enjoy the mindless tedium.

Where can i go to farm runes i am lvl 20 and have nly gotten 5 or 6.

Also I now find myself grinding for skill points because i didn't realize that i was not going to be able to easily buy every skill i saw. Now i have 5 skill points left and only about 1 or 2 spells that are crucial to my build. The thing is that i also want to make a PvP monk and i am Mes/monk atm. In order to get the good monk heals i need more skill points which i don't have. THis is one of the few areas of the game that angered me but i guess it is my fault. I am just used to stuff like WoW where i had all my skills at the final lvl.

Are there any other ways for me to get some skill points because i dont want to raise a monk to lvl 20 just for the skills i cant get right now

Since you get experience from PvP..why don't you just use an rp character at the arena (or wherever) for a while?

Eventually you will gain new skill points so that you can unlock new skills for your character without the 'grind'.

You only get ~12 XP a kill in PvP (well if you're level 20 and your target is level 20). It's gonna take a long time to level that way. Plus you can't get runes in PvP.

Very good. I see why people can get upset about this one, but only in certain cases. I do have a suggestion slightly similar to my SP suggestion I made earlier in this thread and here it is:

Make it so all superior runes can be unlocked through a lvl 20 quest reward. This way no one gets any major advantages. However keep the minor runes the way they are. This way there is extra stuff to unlock and it solves the unbalance between skill and time played.

Sound good?

• You're ready for PvP even if you don't have every rune.
• I do believe that the difficultly you are having finding runes is supposed to be a dterrant to farming; ie it's so hard to farm that you shouldn't do it.

Okay. I've read a lot of arguments on both sides of this grind issue and I'd like to try and summarise what I understand of it.
There are some players who want to play PvP exclusively. These players don't like PvE at all and want to have a rich and interesting game experience in PvP. They feel that the PvP template characters, and the characters that can be built without having unlocked anything are lacking and that it is unfair and tedious for them to have to play the PvE side of things, just to unlock the rest of the content for PvP.
Short of an Unlock All button there is no way to satisfy this type of person. Any amount of grind will seem unreasonable to them, and rightly so when so much of the media about this game gives the impression that you can play a rich and interesting PvP game without playing PvE.

Players who don't mind playing the PvE to unlock things are annoyed because they are trying to unlock certain things to be able to create certain PvP builds.
With the way the game is currently structured, this is the wrong way to go about it and will indeed only lead to frustration.
What the game encourages, by the current gameplay dynamic, is for players to discover new builds, and strategies based on the things that they have found/unlocked in their PvE game, rather than trying to unlock the skills and items for some pre-conceived build.

I fear I may be rambling a bit but hopefully I'm making some sense here.

Now, in terms of trying to find a resolution to this argument, let me ask a question.
What objection does anyone here have against the "Unlock All" button for PvP?
As far as I can tell it would do no harm to anyone, other than injuring the pride of players who have already endured the grind to gain all those hard to get things.
The only reason I can think of that ArenaNet would have for not including such a feature is that it would allow players who only want to play PvP to do exactly that, without having to suffer through playing a campaign of mission and quests that they have no interest in.
I fail to see why ArenaNet would want to reduce the enjoyment for some proportion of their audience, when not doing so would have no negative impact on any other players.

Just for your information, I haven't played any PvP yet, and don't really plan to play much in the future. I'm not one of the PvP players I have been speaking of, but I'm trying to understand their point of view.

Is the point of PvE then only to gain rewards to use in PvP?
To me, the reward of playing PvE is the achievements in PvE. I'm not saying that the Unlock All button should apply to PvE characters.
If someone is playing PvE to unlock things for PvP, then I imagine that an Unlock All button would make them happier, since they wouldn't have to 'grind' for the skills they want. And if they only wanted to play with the skills they had unlocked in PvE they could manually restrict themselves to those skills.

Why not?

I agree that there should be some incentive for PvP, and some way to gain skills without having to play in PvE.
However, I don't think that players should be forced to play PvP either if that's what you're implying in the end of that sentance.

Is that aimed at me or just a general comment? I thought I was being fairly objective. I don't know what numbers could be of use in my claims, other than the number of players who want to play PvP without any PvE.

I read the first page, skipped the next three. :P Doing good so far.

Am going to make a simple point I have seen made before, by both sides of the fence, and both sides takes the paragraph and uses it out of context to further their statement.

Located on the main GuildWars website, under Game Info > Game Synopsis it reads, and I will bold the important parts:

Built for Competition

If you like Player-versus-Player competition, Guild Wars was made for you. In addition to building up a character by undergoing missions and quests, you can choose to create a character specifically for head-to-head PvP competition or guild warfare. The game is designed to reward player skill and teamwork, not time spent playing, so you won't need to spend hundreds of hours leveling up your character to compete.

In addition to: Not only can you play PvE and BUILD-UP your character by doing Quests and Missions, but..

You can choose: To create a PvP character that when used with,

Player Skill and teamwork: can be just as effecitve and competitive, though without the "built up" skills and you still don't need to

spend hundreds of hours leveling up your chatacter to compete.

I think that about sums it up. It very cleary states that there will be SOME grind, but you don't HAVE to do it to compete. People only WANT to because they think they NEED certain runes / items / skill, which is in fact NOT the case.

And to anyone who says "But to compete against other people who have these items / skill / runes, I NEED them too" you are kidding yourself, I mean really, and this is directed at no one in particular, but those type of people are going to most likely be in a Guild yes? Probably doing Guild Battles, chances are if THEY are that HARDCORE to get said items, you won't be playing them anyways I would imagine.

Inac

Im not going to cover all the grind points, such as kill the same creatures in the same locations over and over, my gripe is more about skill points, skills and Runes.

Ive taken a step back from Pvp simply because i want to use my Pve in Pvp..

Well i dont like the grind and yes not only is it grind but for runes its "chance grind" i dont want to play a necromancer or elementalist yet, maybe later thou, so why am i unlocking these skills while using a warrior/monk.

Ok so the lvl counter stops at 20, you still need more exp to unlock points for the skills (hey i want all the skills for my character), not to bad when in fissure or Underworld you can get 10000 exp for quest, hmm have to do that 50+ times at 2 hours a go, if ive got a good group or even find one, hmm sounds like a grind to me.

Now whats this, i need to find bosses to get the elite skills, your kidding me right, that means i have to redo stuff that took hours to do and hours to find groups to do it with.

Ok so i need to unlock the runes i need for that equal edge againts the oppsition in PvP, i know i can get a chance to get an item to unlock something in fissure if i complete some quests, i get 2 shots at a 1 in 8 chance of getting an item to unlock, then i have to pray its a rune i need, then i have to pray that its not a rune desguised as a load of tanned hides

Ok so there alot of grind to find the right runes.. well ive played alot so im pritty flush for plat.. hey ill try to buy them.. what i hear them say " naa, gold is getting pointless now", i would trade you this item for an item i need.. back to the grind.

Heh to be serious it seems like theres more grind here than in previous mmorpgs ive played and at least in them, i knew from spoilers what i would/could be getting for grinding/creature camping, because of this its a bit slim on the equality of Pvp.

Please in Fissure and the underworld make the quest bosses a bit harder and give out an item from the chest to everyone in the party !

Anyways made my points, back to my grind stone, all i want to do is finish this character off, so i can play Pvp.

Inacurate sums it up in my opinion really well.

They did not say you can win EVERY SINGLE MATCH with a fresh PvP-only character, they said you can COMPETE. And you can do just that, you CAN compete with a PvP only character, and sometimes you CAN win against those with better equipment. And even if you don't win, you can still give them a pretty good match. THAT is competition.

compete:

verb: compete for something; engage in a contest; measure oneself against others

You can measure yourself against those who've gone the extra mile, you can even win against those who've gone the extra mile.

You can not say that it's just the items that give the other team the edge, chances are...they're just better as a whole, chances are if you played them 5 times in a row, you'd win a few times just as they did. If you get entirely massacred then you're not up to their SKILL level, which they gained BECAUSE they played more. Their gear may have given them the edge, but they EARNED that edge by going out and getting what they wanted.

The game does just what it was supposed to, gives both PvP players and those who want more PvE as well a chance to play.

The best way to "fix" you guys problem would be to, as previously suggested by another, split the arenas between those with pure PvP characters and those with pure PvE characters. And leave the PvP options as is. Why? Because PvE is SUPPOSED to have extra benefits, that was stated on the website, they just said you didn't NEED to go PvE to win. And you DON'T need to, as we've seen from some people here. Why should the PvP only players get the same benefits as those who've played BOTH portions of the game? Those who bought the game for PvP only, and are complaining about "grind" obviously misinterpreted some statements about the game.

Here's a quote right off the box:

You'll prove your worth with every battle as skill, not hours played, decides your fate.

---

This is true enough, someone with a higher skill can by all means win against those who've played more hours than them. What about those who went out and got the extra items in PvE? Well, who said they played longer than someone who just played PvP all the time?

If you give PvP only players everything right off the bat you remove the rewards of going through the PvE portion of the game, I personally enjoy both parts quite a bit. I enjoy PvE because it's rewarding to finally take down that last boss, or because I like the feeling of charging through insane amounts of char with the rest of my team dead so I can get Althea's Ashes, it was hard sure, but I sure as hell feel rewarded because of it. When I move on to the higher PvP with my characters (I've played in it, just with other people's characters), I'm going to feel damn good that I went through all those mass amounts of char, and the fact that I completed the PvE portion of the game is going to feel great. When DON'T you feel rewarded when you beat a game?

At the same time you can just play PvP, and when you finally take down the team who had all the best equipment, then YOU'LL feel rewarded that you managed to do so.

You can compete, I regularly play stock PvP characters along with other PvE characters, and I've not the greatest of armor. If by compete you mean win every match you think you should be able to, then no I guess you can't. But if by compete you mean the possibility to win under the circumstances than yes, you can. You win matches, you lose matches, if you want to have the extra edge go out and get the rewards for playing the second half of the game.

If the devs are working on fixing the problem, then by all means, I'm fine with that. I like them as a whole, I like the game how it is now, and I trust they'll come to a solution that satisfies PvP-only characters while still rewarding those who feel like going the extra mile.

Ill say this 5 damn times no, no, no, no, no.


This is one game not two, and it needs to stay that way.

Sorry about the rune thing. I had a brain fart, and wasent realy in my right mind anyway.

(but then when am I in right mind? )

You don't understand. I have to farm because others will do it. I cannot compete on a level playing field if my gear is inferior to those I am playing against. Trust me I know what I'm talking about. I have more experience in Guild Wars than anyone here who is not an alpha tester so don't tell me I'm wrong. I've done testing that proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that items make a difference. Anybody who want's serious competition understands that items do make a difference and can be the deciding factor in a battle. Guild Wars is supposed to reward skill over time played. Right now it rewards those who farm the most. Why do you think top guilds such a us, The Fianna, Lotd, EvE, etc have not played a single ladder game yet? We're too busy farming to get the best gear so that we can compete fairly with each other, and everyone else.

As close as they may be please do not confuse "Grind" and "Farm"

Grind: The gradual achievement of a goal.
Farm: The mindless repetitive act of harvesting money or xp.

With that said, farm is usually short-term. One would "Farm" for an hour or so. Grind is a day in day out ongoing never-ending process. To ask for a lesser grind would mean the complete reworking of the game, making every monster give more XP and better drops.

You would be surprised what people would do for that one clinging advantage over their enemy. This is a game, and in every other game I have played the player (you) is usually rewarded for his time invested whether it be knowledge of the game environment (counter-strike) or better equip (Lineage 2). Guild Wars took a step beyond that and decided to combine the two rewards.

please begin all flames with a "*" so that I may ignore them.

I'm not sure if this would be a good solution but as a few suggestion:

Regular rewards from winning PvP battles in such a way that the items gained from winning in PvP can be used to obtain the runes you need (Obviously drop rate etc needs to be balanced so PvP only doesn't give an advantage over PvE)

I've never actually tried it, but I'm assuming you can't use signet of capture in a PvP battle. If you could that would give the PvP only players a way of obtaining the rare skills without having to do PvE.

Don't know how far these would address things though.

And your point would be what?

It's blatantly obvious that more items unlocked gives you an edge. I don't think anyone can reasonably dispute this, and I don't think anyone here has.

My point was that you are blowing the different out of proportion. Can items be the deciding factor? Sure they can. But if that's the case, then the two teams would otherwise have been really close to each other. So statistically speaking, you wouldn't lose that many more games becasue they farmed and you didn't. Which was my point: alkthough it can give you an edge to farm, you can still be very competetive without it.

I do think that PvP characters should have everything unlocked, but only as long as PvP characters with everything unlocked fight only other PvP characters with everything unlocked. The PvE characters (and PvP w/o everything unlocked, assumiong such a setting would exist) would otherwise get completely shafted.

My point is, that for a level playing field to exist, everyone must have access to the same stuff. That means everyone should have all the runes and items, or everyone should have none of them. As long as it's equal then we are happy. If you think that you can be competitive without items, then get a PvP team together and do the tombs and GvG and tell me it doens't make a difference. Please prove to me that having your main damage line at 16 does not make a difference compared to having it at level 12. We competitive PvP guilds are not asking for everything. We want everyone to have access to the exact same things without any conditions. Then and only then will a level playing field exist. The amount you farm should not impact your effectiveness in PvP yet it does. This completely goes against everything ANet was advertising about Guild Wars.

Now there's a good idea!
How about if also when you killed someone in PvP a a copy of an item of theirs dropped too, like when you kill a Charr and get their armour or whatever to salvage.
So then if you killed a player who had a rune you wanted you have a chance of salvaging it from their armour, likewise with the mods from their weapons.

They want a FPS, like it or not GW's is an RPG, which entails Character Development. true its not a common MMORPG, but it still EASILY qualifies under the RPG genre. Which means some kind of development process aside from "what gun do i use?" Now i love FPS, and i love RPG's but for completely different reasons, if you were to give everyone everything from the start, all items, all runes, all of everything. That would even it, true. But it would make it boring. Im playing RP right now to build up some strong characters later for PvP, i enjoy the CREATING of these, not simply clicking a button and having it done for me. If i want everything equal thats pretty much what all other genre's do RTS, FPS,most everything aside from RPG is a totally equal playing feild. RPG's are about the journey, not the destination, along the way you get better and stronger you earn new skills and weapons, to simply have everything open from the beginning is taking the very RP elements out of this RPG. Now a compromise for this(yes i do have a solution this isnt just a rant) is to have seperate PvP brackets for RP and PvP ill stick with the RP portion the PvPer's can have everything unlocked for all i care so long as the people im faceing are also RP characters..

Perhaps, and this a bit of a strech, i know - hurts my brain just writing it; but perhaps the people are looking for a game that has customizable classes (which means you change HOW you play at your discretion) a balanced skillset, real decisions in combat...
and not the character advancement? *gasp*

Blasphemy.

Laz

Man, this guy came from L2, no game, save perhaps sim ant, had such a mindless and dull grind for pointless things. Don't even get me started on drop rate for good items. You could consider yourself lucky if you got one thing a WEEK.

Agree with your first point disagree with the second.
I see no point at all to having any power derived from PvE. I do want to take away rewards through PvE. I see no benefit in giving them ANY edge because they choose to invest time having fun. The PvE is a fun exploration, the PvP is a serious competition. Those don't mix well - if you want fair/even playing field to have a respectable PvP environment where rank REALLY means something, drop any PvE-PvP connection.

There is no grind. It is EASY to get to level 20, and it is WAY too easy to get the items you want. You don't want to farm for runes? Then use the gold (wich is sooooo easy to get in this game) you have and buy some runes. You can get a max damage rare sword with PERFECT mods for 2.5k if you're patient. Gold is the currency and gold is VERY easy to get. This game isn't item dependent enough, and you should be able to level above 20.

Epinephrine I totally disagree with you. If you work hard at building your char and putting all sorts of effort into it you should be a billion times better then stupid pvp chars. They should take pvp chars out of the game totally. You can do everything with a pve char as you can with a pvp accept you're WAY stronger with a pve char becuase of the skills, runes, and weapon peices you've obtained. If you play through the pve campain you probably know how to handle yoru char and manage yoru skills alot better also. This is the only game that offers max lvl chars without having to play through the game and I think it's rediculous. Competing in pvp events with other lvl 20's should be a privelige earned by actually leveling your character to 20. But if people want to play pvp only let them play with their weak pre fab chars that have only one stat on a weapon, no runes on armor, and no skills. Real pvpers have played through the game anyway.

You arn't listening to me.

Items clearly effect your performance. However, Items are not the end-all, be-all. A team with good Runes and a team with no/poor runes can still play together just fine, although the former will win more often.

And that is his point.

People still can't stop trying to make GW like any other grind based MMO. It should NOT be more item dependant and NEVER should have the level cap raised.

Yes Anet has really dropped the ball. The grind may not be as obvious or as bad as in other online "MMO's" but it's still there. A lot of it is cleverly hidden...but in a lot of instances still not fun.

The greedy people could always tell us where you get those superior runes now after the new patch :P provided there is any place that can even have a 1/10th chance that riverside had.

Thank you for proving my point.

I want to farm runes so I can unlock them. This way I can create PvP characters as I need them and they'll have the equipment that I need when I need it. Yes gold is easy to get, but I should not have to spend time preparing my PvP characters by spending hours farming gold. When I need to make a new build to counter a team we just faced I need to do it right away, not in 5 hours time. This game is based on counters. If my team was using paper and the other team was using scissors, then we should be able to bring rock into the next battle as soon as possible. Any guild that's worth a grain of salt is able to identify the weaknesses in their build and make changes to better prepare it for the next fight. I am sick and tired of wasting my time in PvE grinding away and hating every second of it when I could be doing high level PvP and having fun.

Cain's saying we need a Pindleskin :P

No it's not.

His point has been "You HAVE to farm endlessly if you want to be competetive."

Which is untrue.

Farming helps, but you can do just fine without it. Put another way: the number of hours you have to put in to get all the runes you want isn't anywhere near worth the benefits.

And Cain and BlackAce say it's definately worth the benefits. So far they seem to have better backing then you. Do you have a guild that can defeat theirs without runes while they use runes?

Their not asking unlock button. Their asking for a consistant way of unlocking everything, not luck. RPGs like Final Fantasy series had linear drops. You had X item in Y box no matter what game you played. The PVPists are simply asking for this, so that everyone has an equal chance to be competitive. You still have to earn it, just that you earn it by your skill, not by luck.

I don't think anything compares in grindage and camping to EQLive and EQ2 (though I admit having never made it past Beta in Lineage2. One of the few games I didn't follow from Beta to going live cuz I didn't like it from the get-go). And EQ2's quest system.... Yea, they have kazillions of quests....almost entirely made up of "Kill X amount of Z Monsters" over and over and over and over. They call it a quest. Feels like chores to me.

Quests and missions in GW is nothing like the comatose boredom of EQ2 grindage.

Yes farming is necessary. If one guild farms then every other guild has to farm as well to stay on a level playing field. Whoever does the most farming sets the bar for everyone else. The only time you don't have to farm is when nobody else is and unfortunately that is not the case. People will do anything to win and therefore will farm the best gear, forcing everyone else to.