WHAT Grind?

This thread is once more veering away from people discussing things and back into the "tell everyone else what to think" territory. And I am most certainly not amused by that development

You can number me amongst those who agree with Cain and Blackace when they say that items and the farming that must be undertaken to obtain items is a decided advantage - but I've been saying that for months now.

Take, for example, something as innocuous as a minor attribute rune. Attribute hats are available to everyone but that +1 from a rune is enough to turn a 11/10/10 build into a 12/12/11 build. That's 56 free attribute points thanks to items. That means your Warrior is not just swinging a nice weapon, but a weapon doing its full listed damage, and dozens of other small but concrete advantages that build up over the course of time.

Or, for example, what if your caster is using an item with the "Quick recovery from Dazed" modifier? Normally on of the best ways of shutting down a caster is to tag them with the Dazed condition which makes it nearly impossible for them to cast. But with quick recovery you've just nullified one of the greatest threats to you as a caster because your opponent's efforts will be wasted.

Or the Vampiric weapons that increase your DPS. Or the elemental weapons you need to play a Conjure. Or the Zealous upgrade that makes a lot of builds possible in the first place. Items make you better and as long as they make you better you need to have access to the best weapons in order to assure yourself of a balanced playing field.

Remember that a balanced playing field does not mean that you'll never lose. It's not assuring you of victory. Far from it. A balanced playing field is just that. All things being equal between you and your opponent, when the field is balanced each of you has a fair chance of winning. That means a 50/50 split. You'll win half, they'll win half, because you're equally matched and in this imaginary, hypothetical mirror match neither of you has an advantage over the other. That's what's wanted, that's what's needed for fair competition. The ideal of one sports team facing the other. The field is regulated, tended, watched, and it's assured that what's going to decide the contest is what takes place on that field - it's the team and not the rules that are going to determine who wins and who loses - one team doesn't get to play with a half inflated ball, after all. It's when the field is unlevel, when one side or the other starts with an advantage already that competition becomes unfair and the winning percentage begins to shift.

Teams work for, find, and seek advantages from many sources all so they can squeeze just one more little percentage point out of that winning margin. The most competitive teams scrap and fight over every little advantage, seeking smaller and smaller returns not because it's exactly the best way of spending their resources but because everyone else near their level is doing the same. It's the Red Queen race - running faster and faster just to keep apace of everyone else. At the highest levels, you fight over the smallest things because that's the difference between winning and losing consistently. You'll never be at a 100% victory rate. There are too many factors involved. Even if it's just pure dumb luck. Someone makes a great play on the other side. Someone on your team screws up. Someone's house catches on fire and someone disconnects. It's all a factor.

And the question here is not whether items and skills are a factor in determining that success, because they are. You can win if you lack them, true. But you cannot win as reliably as you will with them. All other things being equal those who have put in the work and effort to find them are going to be much better off than those who haven't. The question then, is just how hard one has to work to obtain that advantage - if, in fact, the advantage favors one group or outcome too much - and how much of a factor they are in that success. And kind yourself not, skills and items play an extremely important role in just how well you'll do. The very design of the game tells us this because skills and items are our rewards for completing our various tasks and our main mehtod of improving our character long after any sort of leveling has fallen by the wayside.

Rex, I must say that post of yours prolly persuaded a lot of people for whatever reason, but in your last paragraph you said it yourself: "You can win if you lack them[items and skills], true."

Which is, according to the box, all that matters, as far as I think anyways.

Again, as per the box, Guild Wars was never advertised as not having to do ANY work to get your rewards. Just not as much as the other games, though..people don't like comparing other games and I find that kinda silly, since the whole idea of farming is really from other games.

Player skill is the deciding factor in this game, that is my opinion and I stand by it. I went thirty-three( 33 ) straight wins in a random 4v4 PvP fight in Yak's Bend earlier. Had a WarNec, NecWar, and two MonkEl's for my party, I was one of the MonkEl's. I think I have one rune on my character, no clue what the other people had, point being is once we got to know each other and learn the style of play the last 15-20 fights were flawless or near so! And you know what? When the WarNec left for some reason, the three of us still put up quite a good fight, took them two or three minutes to kill our three party team, after the other team kindly offered their condolences at losing our fourth.

The same is going to hold true for strictly PvP characters. Player skill will dominate a large majority of the time.

Look at Counter-Strike( only game I can compare to for this type of discussion! )

You have( had Pre-Steam ) people STILL playing on 800Mhz CPUs with 32MB Video cards and 256MB of RAM running 98SE! And they could 0WN it up( sorry! :P ) on such older equipment, due to their skill even though the other person can have a Alienware FX375986239872347( You get the idea... )

I truly think, the same can be said bout Guild Wars. With the right skill selections, in the right hands anything is possible and I think Guild Wars was marketed as such.



Inac

P.S. Besides, sort of a side note here, as I have said somewhere else..if the "other player" is so "hardcore" to get these rewards that will make or break a match. You( generally speaking, not pointing a finger at anyone ) too, must be "hardcore" else you wouldn't really be playing them to begin with, since they would be traveling in different circles than you to begin with.

I know you weren't addressing me, but yes you CAN win even if you lack the items and skills except you're confusing that statement as something that is constant. Yes you can always have a CHANCE of winning without those items but when you get those items/skills you have a much better chance of winning against someone of equal playing skill.

It does NOT mean you don't need items/skills at all. Things are not black and white here.

Again you're speaking in terms of black and white. Not everyone who hates the grind is asking not to do ANY work to get rewards. And ANET has been touting all this time about how the game is all about skills and less time sink. Well as it stands right now, a huge part of you success depends on spending a lot of time unlocking skills, runes, equipment etc etc just to get on equal footing in PVP. Or just simply to play certain builds.

Travelling in different circles? If you're playing PVP you'll always be in the same circles, whether you're hardcore, casual or whatever. There are no different circles.