Starting to feel the grind.

I bought the game the game the day it came out and have been playing it whenever time allowed. I've beaten all coop missions on a monk and unlocked aboud 50% of monk skills. Other characters were taken to at least level 10 and unlocked about ~30% skills from each class. That experience was very enjoyable. I've pretty much gotten the PvE fix and decided to start the best part of the game that I was saving for last-- PvP. When I bought the game, I figured the PvP would keep me busy for years, much like Diablo 2. With so many skills available, there are so many combinations to try.

I started to create a new custom PvP character and started trying out various builds I had in mind. My lvl 20 monk, with which I've beaten all missions, had some skill points left over so I spent them on skills I needed for my builds. Eventually, I ran out of skill points and was left with two choices; either farm exp to level and get skill points, or do quests. Obviously, farming exp would take forever, so I decided to see how questing goes.

I needed some mesmer spell so I started going from outpost to outpost looking for any NPC with a green exclamation mark. After a long search, I found one... but his reward was some wand. I searched some more but never found the guy with the skill I needed. I pretty much gave up on the idea of questing at that point. This method would work if someone compiles a list of all NPCs and their rewards.

So, I'm pretty much stuck. I have NO desire to farm exp for skill points, and I'm not interested in searching for NPCs that give quests for the skills I need. I want to be able to quickly create a PvP char, take it to an arena/team arena, see how it works, and start tweaking it. It's very difficult to tweak when you have to stop for HOURS to find a skill that might not even work for the current build.

Anyways, I'm all for UAS system. I don't understand why PvE people are complaining. Balance? You'll be able to make a PvP character just like everybody else. If you want to use your PvE char for PvP-- well then, YOU can sit there and farm your skills and gear to be competitive with the insta-lvl20 PvP chars.

http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...ad.php?t=16361

So you went through all the missions and skipped all the sub-quests that actually GIVE you the skills?

No wonder you guys are complaining. You're not even doing 3/4 of the game.

I guess I should've mentioned that I was looking for a mesmer spell on my monk, whose secondary was originally a warrior, but later (after ascension) was changed to mesmer. So as I was progressing my monk, I did do the monk and warrior quests if I found them, but for mesmer I couldn't... which is why I had to go back and look for NPCs.

As far as 3/4 of the game... yeeeeaah. 3/4 of the game is all 'bout sub-quest, eh? I want whatever you're smoking, buddy! PUT SOME OF THAT IN MY PIPE!

I guess we aren't playing the same game. Anyways, if you ever decide to try guild wars, you can buy an account from NCSoft.

I think PvP is 3/4 of the game. PvE is just an annoying side game I am FORCED to partake in.

Personally (when I first started playing a month ago) I BOUGHT all the skills I needed at the skill trainers skipping all quests for them. You know because I thought the game was about player skill not time spent grinding for skills.

Boy did I find out how WRONG I was when I ran out of skill points. =(

The sad thing, is that a character is basically gimped skill wise if they take the non grind route buying from the trainers instead of doing the quests because they end up running out of skill pts.

It really sucks how badly the box lied regarding there being no grind.

People keep talking about how the grind in the game was misadvertised. Well, "grind" is extremely subjective. It's just like 'fun', all games promise "hours of enjoyment" or something along those lines. If you dont like the game, that doesnt mean they were lying, it means you have a different oppinion than the person who thought it was fun.

Bottom line, what is grind to you is not to me, what is fun to me is not to you. Thats life, if this isnt your type of game then dont buy the expansions and stop playing.

Thank you. That's pretty much what I've been trying to say, just more concise.

Myself, I'm having fun. I don't have to have every skill in the entire game to have fun, I do it perfectly fine with a fraction of them.


If you want to straight PvP that's fine but you're leaving out at LEAST half the game.

Just because YOU see PvP as the main focus point of the game doesn't mean everyone does.


So basically I just re-stated everything the guy I quoted did.

I battled my way through the campaign, had fun, got my skills, and now I'm ready for PvP. Not once did I grind.

You speak for yourself in this one.

See other threads on this issue;

I've taken my lvl 20 through the entire game, he's been level 20 since maybe 5 or 6 days after retail. I've done just about every quest I've found for skills and bought the rest I wish to use.

As for elites, it's a damn treadmill grind, to capture them. Case in point, Well of Power is in Mineral Springs. You have to leave from the Citadell, fight or attempt to run your way to the actual Mineral Springs zone point. There you have to find the Necro boss, there are 5 bosses. So after fighting through an armada of self healing, nuclear arrow firing tengu, you get to a boss spot, that boss being the 1 out of the 5 you haven't checked yet, to find he isn't the boss you need, so you have to restart the instance and hope he spawns, "this time". Rense and repeat x10+ until he does respawn, and that's assuming you live and are able to capture the god damn skill.

I don't mind working for it, to use it in PvP, but damn man, when you have to devote multiple days of playing to obtain a single skill, then you know the current system is a tad unfair.

So when you say we haven't done the game, or tried, stop and think that some of us HAVE done the quests, HAVE sought out all the skill NPCs in those little far-off-tiny towns in the middle of nowhere (Maguuma, Citadel, Port Sledge...), and HAVE attempted hours apon hours of item and skill runs to get what we want for PvP.

The only "grind" in this game is if you go for full infusion. Other than that, its fun.

Yes, I wish you only had to do one infusion run to be fully infused.

So what do you call it when you've done all the missions and have less than a half-dozen runes unlocked, and want the rest?

Un-Luc-KEEEEE. Go farm! :P

There is no grind all skills (except elites) can be gotten via quests. If you didn't do the quest, it's your fault.

So doing FedEx quests for skills ain't grinding? Wha?

Actually, that is false. Not all non-elite skills can be obtained as quest rewards.

It's funny that a lot of my quests have led me to new towns that I would have otherwise ignored or passed by if I had just done the missions.

End game has about 1 of these quests.

Every game has grind. Even pvp is grinding: you play on the same pvp map over and over, same type of tournaments over and over. Try to name a thing in life that's not grind. Even life itself is grind: you weren't born with all skills or knowledge were you? Boy how I love to get to work without moving my legs.

Players are different , people evolve.

Key is not about grinding but how to make grinding fun. If there're more nice varieties of goodies drop, or different locations/baddies along the way, there are probably fewer people complaining. Like in D2 people get tiredless in doing Baal runs. That being said, I also hated those silly quests and opted to buy skills from trainers. Now I'm grinding to get more skill points through farming. In any RPG with leveling or xp involved, there's bound to be some grinding.

Like I said, I did play the game almost entirely and did enjoy it A LOT. Doing it again is not going to be fun for me-- it would be like a grind. I'd rather have all skills unlocked and play PvP without PvE interruptions. Why are people so against this? It's not going to affect PvE in any way. Do people just like to argue about anything, or what?

Tell me, why do you need every rune unlocked?

So you can create an ubar PvP character right off the bat, right? Same reason you want every skill.

IMO I would much prefer just having minor runes, not as big of a hit on your HP.


Everyone wants to be the most ubar 1337 guy in the game but not work for it.

Astounding, really. I've yet to see any serious game (Free servers excluded) out there that just gives you every item and skill in the game on a silver platter and I certainly hope Guild Wars isn't the first.



Gwden: Reason I don't want it is because they'd hit "UASaI" (Unlock All Skills and Items, which is what people are really wanting when they say UAS) and then they have every skill.

Well that's fine except when a level 1 is using Hundred Blades in the Charr missions.

I always thought the whole idea behind UAS would to give the PvP-only characters the ability to unlock all skills. I assumed the PvE characters would be left alone. This way the PvE can play though the game traditionally and PvP can jump into the 'endgame' without being forced beat all of those missions. If PvE people want to enter the PvP aspect, they can use their current PvE chars, OR just make new PvP characters with their PvE char's skills to grab the best gear if they don't have it yet.

Wasn't grinding doing the same thing over and over again in the hope to get the right drop or spawn?

Never saw anyone saying that: "do this, get that - guarantied" is grind.
Tho I don't read _all_ the grind posts for sure...

blah blah blah...
PvP players need to realize that PvE players enjoy the levelling, questing and exploring. It's NOT grinding.
PvE players need to realize that PvP players are being forced to play a game they don't want to so they can play the game they do want to. They MUST grind.

Why argue, we have to hit a common ground and figure out how to help each other.

Gwden: But as it is now skills are universal.

And letting PvP characters just create the best character with the best skills with the best equipment would give them a SEVERE advantage over PvE characters.

Besides if everyone would have the Best in PvP wouldn't that effectively make everything else useless? Why not do away with runes and bonus weapons and everything period and make everything equal? There'd be no reason to have runes or bonus weapons when everyone's using the same builds. They'd all be equally as good and thus lose their reason to exist.

It'd just make lesser items, ya know, purple and blue and heaven forbid, white, items useless.



I have an idea. Next time everyone logs in let's just let them scroll through the lists of items and they hand pick every item they want, every armor they want. They can even pick whether they want a 20% damage bonus when HP is > 50% or less than 50% on any item.

Gold, blue, purple it doesn't matter. You can pick ANY item, ANY rune, ANY thing.

How much fun would that be?

Majority of PvErs would say none.

Majority of PvPers would say a lot.


We're talking about two different worlds here and people like me (those who enjoy both aspects of the game) lose either way. They're guaranteed to have at least one aspect of their gameplay totally ruined.

lol... introduce a LAS (lock all skills) button?

What good would that do?

Let's just say the quests are so simplified, it may as well be grinding. Guild Wars biggest weakness in PVE is that it doesn't feel like your doing anything other then advancing. The places are static. About the only big place to change was tutorial -> ascalon which isn't reversible. The non-mission quests are usually very stale, with no open-ended outcomes. To be short, no one gives a damn about the diablo 2 world in pve. No one cares about those stupid gossips, the npcs, the walking people, because their not immersive. No amount of lore and crap is going to be cool to the majority of gamers if it does not intertwine heavily into the gameplay, which at the moment, doesn't. Your more worried about doing the objective, then about why, how, where, when, etc etc. You don't question your mission, you just do it period. You can't choose how you do it, you just do it period. All that adds to staleness.

Even WoW has a better fedex system then GW. At least when your done the quest, you get to choose your reward. In this game, it's set rewards. Oh how nice, losing to the game that came before you.

The game emphasizes skill over grind (or whatever the catch phrase was) so if everyone has the best then everyone will be balanced in terms of gear and the only way people will gain an advantage and win is through stragetic skill choices and team work.

Yes, PvP chars will have an advantage over PvE until PvE gets good gear and skills, but PvE players are not limited to PvE. They are still able to create a PvP character, select the skills they had on their PvE chars, and offset the gear disadvantage. This disadvantage exists right now.

I have a max level monk with all the skills I need, but I don't use it in PvP. What I do is create a new PvP monk to make sure my gear is good enough to make me competitive. Technically, I could spend my money and buy good gear and use my monk in PvP, but then I'll be missing out on fun stuff, like different names, character look customizations, different armors, free dyes, and unlimited refund points to play around with. The fact that there are four (or so?) different armor sets available in PvP char creation makes it even more unbalanced for PvE as I would never be able to afford all of those sets without resorting to some serious farming. And yes, there are cases where I'd want to use "+armor against elemental" over "+armor against phys" sets.

So why have all that selection?

Keep skills, do away with the rest.

Give everyone the same hammer, same axe, same wand, same helmet, same everything so that no one has an edge over the other person except in their skill usage.

The reason PvE doesn't have best everything right off the bat is because it would unbalance the missions. The game would become too easy if you were to kill lvl 3 mobs with max dmg weapons and wouldn't be much fun. To keep a certain difficulty level in the game, everyone is given weapons and gear that is appropriate for their, and mobs', levels. As PvE chars progress, they are given a chance to obtain higher dmg weapons, and eventually, a chance to get the same weapons that are available to PvP chars.

That's pretty much exactly what the PVP crowd wants. You should search for the old grind ones, most people like Nash already stated that's pretty much exactly what they want.

I don't see the problem with that idea, of course you might not, because you might feel that having some phat lewt makes you feel special. What, you don't like having that feeling where all that loot you got from arid sea isn't gonna help ya?

Remember, PVE characters can participate in PVP, PVP cannot participate in PVE. You aren't affected period. It's just that material status feeling you want. If your going to argue, at least use something better as your lead arguement, not something that has been beaten to death by newbies and gurus alike. Search is your friend.

Search is your friend too.

I've stated time and time again that I don't have those special items, nor do I need them or even want them.

I don't see how an extra +10% on a staff that does 20 damage will affect anything.

I get 2 extra damage, whoopty freakin do. I don't use my staff often enough to warrant such a small advantage.

The only 'phat lewt' I've gotten is a Gold hammer which my necromancer (which I rarely play, mind you) uses.

And by the way, I don't even know what the Arid Sea is nor why it has any significance (I suppose it was a farming ground?) so yah, try again.

Sorry, but you see that citizen status you hold? That means you probably haven't made enough posts for me to even know you, let alone search and remember your own personal history. Search is for the grind threads of the past, which will show you exactly how much people support a balanced pvp play. Alot.

Secondly, your looking at this from a PVE perspective. In PVP, all PVP characters are already created equal, max armour max weapons, it's only the item mods and runes and skills that are missing. You wouldn't see gold items ever. It'd be pure 100% PVP items.

Thirdly, I can already tell your a PVE player, so there's no point in going on. 5 months from now, check up again, see if you have the same response as you do now.

For those of you that ignored the link in the first post I made and are still complaining, you will be happy to know that there will be some decreased difficulty in obtaining elites. You can find it in the official Guild Wars website.

http://www.guildwars.com/news/gameupdates.html

Yah i did do a PvE character to get the storyline. I like that portion of the game.

But you act as if I've never played in HoH, never made a PvP character, never been in a battle with other players (correction, against other players...and no not the Academy mission either).


Oh and btw PvP characters can easily get gold items from their PvE counter parts.

So it's still unbalanced really.

Depends on the location, if they just shove 6 more in snake dance, that doesn't do a damn thing unless you like snake dance.

They claim that they will make it so that bosses will require less travel time to get to them.

This is a common PvEer misconception. PvPers simply want to play on a level playing field where no one has an artifical disadvantage or advantage.

That's why you only let UAS players play with other UAS players.

This is a logical fallacy. How is everything useless if everyone is on a level playing field in PvP? It makes absolutely no sense how the conclusion follows from the premises. You also make the false statement that everyone would be using the exact same build in a level playing field.

Helios, those changes do very little to ease the grind. It will still take literally (I am literally not making this up; I cannot emphasize this enough) hundreds of hours of repetitive, monotonous farming to get what you need to be on a level playing field in PvP. One can only hope the other unannounced changes actually help.