For Anet: Why is there grind? why restrict Skill points? Why create "WORK" in a game

onoez

Your logical argument and insight into the situation made me change my mind.

Would you want that people don't say anything and the game stays the exact same, groes extremely stagnant, and dies, instead?

No game is perfect. This game is no exception. And until this game is perfect, it will need vocal people to point out any inefficiencies that are in the game to help turn it into an at least better game.

rofl @ all the people complaining about a 'grind'. God dammit, you're all bloody lazy.

OMEG I WANT TO FINISH THE GAME AND HAVE EVERYTHING HANDED TO ME ON A SILVER PLATTER!

Seriously. You do the ascension mission, it throws you to level 20 immediately. Then all you'd have to do is run through the rest of the missions and boom, everything's unlocked, without any effort required. gg.

What will you be complaining about next? Oooohhh PvP is too hard, this Warrior knocks off too much hp from my weak ass Elemental. Warriors should be nerfed! And so on. And then the balance of PvP goes down the drain.

Why don't you shut the hell up and think about what you're asking for. Sure the game isn't REALLY grind based. You don't HAVE to go out and unlock all these elite skills and runes. Hell, I don't even think the major and superior runes are worth it. If you're complaining about skill points, go and bloody do the quests that give you skills, then you don't have to BUY as many. As for Elites, there's a reason why they're called ELITE. Yeah, go buy them from the shops and totally defeat the purpose of them.

As with making many different characters to unlock skills? There's some nice quests in the Desert where you can change your secondary proffession. Hey look, now you have access to another build's skills as well. Well darn, guess it means I only need to make ONE character to unlock everything.

Seriously people, settle the **** down. You don't NEED those ten elite skills for your build. For one, IIRC you can only use one elite in your skill bar. Two, You have eight possible skills.

Or would you rather Anet take out all grind in the game and make it so you have to fight one level 2 enemy per mission to complete it. BUT WAIT! OVER TWENTY MISSIONS OF THAT IS A GRIND TOO! Go back to counterstrike for gods sakes if you're gonna whine about a 'grind' in GW.

The UT2k* series of games is a perfect example of the competitive community becoming stillborn (and the game dying not long after), because the developers didnt give a **** about that part of the community (shitty maps, skins/models). And then you had the casual playing noobs calling us cheaters/hackers for wanting to use mods that only served to enhance "pro" playing. It also didnt help that the developers looked down on it also.

To be honest I dont think Anet gives a **** about pvp at all. They got our $50 already.


yeah but then not all of the quests are available to earn these skills when you switch secondaries. My Monk switched 2ndary to necro, I looked through all the outposts/cities/whatever and only found a handful of skill quests. Then you have to realize you only have a limited amount of skill points available to get the rest from trainers.

Flawless Victory.

They probably ought to reset the quests that have dual skill rewards for when people choose to reset their secondary class. A very large chunk of the quests in the early missions are not limited to one class and therefore would require that a freshly changed secondary be primarily bought with the scant skill points a person has. EIther that or make getting additional skill points a LOT easier

I think they should limit skill points to 10,000 xp each oneto earn and keep it at that level
or at least the amount of experience it took to become lvl 20 from lvl 19 that'd reduce the grind somewhat

Sigh...I would recommend to you another MMO with less or equal grind, but there is none. Killing the grind anymore than allowing "Just add water and microwave" PVP templates will make this game a FPS. Good idea, play an FPS. No grind whatsoever

I don't want to kill the grind, but reducing it is certainly viable considering how poor the drop rates for runes are.

THe thing is that the way the xp requirements are after Lvl 20, the gap between the skill points you would need to develop your character would take longer and longer to get..for only 1 at a time. THe problem with that is that there is no way to get more and more experience per kill since your level and the level of the mobs doesn't change.. It might go up in additions and expansions, but all in all the xp increase isn't likely to keep up with the inflation of the leveling requirements..

THis is another part of what has the PvP crowd in such an uproar. It's nice that you can switch secondaries but it gets harder and longer to replace the skill points you are are having to spend to not only get SoC's for elites, but now basic skills that you could feasibly quest for if they allowed you to go back and doo all the quests that would have given a fresh character skills in the new class.

Well, my line has been crossed. My tolerance exhausted. I am tired of all this non sense about "why cant we insta pvp" why do we have to play the game, cry whine blah. (Flame on, your opinion isnt valuble to me anyhow.) Its a game people, there was a concept, there was work now there is a game. In EVERY game I have ever played, there have been things I think could have been done differently. Do I constantly harrass the devs of the game though? Nope, I play the game because thats what you do with a game, play. You know, fun? If you dont like it, then dont play it.

Personally I think all of these "whiners" (yep, you just been labelled) are the same types of people who only played 'open' games in Diablo II because thats the only way they could find to hyper-cheat.

So, in case yall arent too bright, Ill say it one last time: there are alot of games, if this one isnt what you want, find one that is. I think the strong, overwhelming majority of us like it as it is. Fact is people are 90% more likely to critisize then compliment.

Commence your flames....

Thats fair, yours isn't to me either.

No, they don't care. Not about people that continuously whine like this. They're not aiming for those type of people. Yes PvP does need a bit of variety to maps and maybe a few more game types. But you know what? Does it make it any less fun now?

I repeat, they don't care, they have they're $50 from everyone and if you don't like it, there are many other games out there. They care enough to make people happy enough to buy the expansion and so on, but it's these whiners that they wont get any revenue from because there'll always be something else wrong so why bother?

UT200* is an entirely different game. First Person Shooter vs Role Playing Game. I don't care what type RPG or FPS it is, there really aren't many similarities.

In my experience, most game developers are very selective about which of their employees they want being involved in forums precisely because it is so easy to give the wrong impression.

Of course ArenaNet cares, to the extent they want people to buy and enjoy their product, it is in their own, rational self-interest to care.

With that said, they, like you or I or any other human on the planet, tend to tune out input that is more negative than warranted.

Add to this the fact that forums such as this tend to have their highest traffic in LURKERS, not posters, and understand that, in the grand scheme of things, ArenaNet is much more concerned with figuring out what the LURKERS want than what we, the regular posters want... (wry grin)... we are, all of us, a striking minority in every way.

I think we all know that they can't do it all for us. And I think if we're honest, we'll admit that we can't expect them to do something that they think will hurt their long-term position. In the absence of ArenaNet actually commenting on why they believe the current system is the best one, we speculate, as humans are wont to do.

None of us 'know' more than the sum total of what is published by ArenaNet. The rest is passing the time and lobbying as we may for the things that are important to us and hoping we manage to strike a credible balance between what we want and what is best for the health and longevity of the game.

If anything, these crazy threads are evidence that WE care... which, despite the mess at times, is something that draws ArenaNet here to listen. If they didn't care, they wouldn't be here, listening and selectively responding as they deem necessary.

On that note, it's time for bed. Man, forums are much more addicting than games, I think.

Meh, we should just put up a friggin' poll "Spoon feed everything to PvPers or not?" The two options "Yes" and "No". Then Anet can see who they SHOULD care about 'eh? Haha, oh wow. To be honest I'm kinda, laughing, reading all this.

If we don't give the PvPers anything more, they'll keep whining. If we do, they'll just whine about how their ub3r two person guild isn't doing so hot and how they don't instantly have a guild hall, then they'll start whining about how the PvE doesn't have any slight benefits for the player other than the fact that there is PvE, and they'll be angry about this because they now hate the fact that they're losing in PvP even more because everyone has everything and the l337 h4x0rs of CS are kickin' their asses now that everything is available, so now they want to go PvE where the monsters aren't as skilled as the players are. Then they'll begin to whine even more about PvE and the farming that goes along with some of it, and how they don't have 1,000 skill points even though you've got plenty already because any decent build should revolve around a certain set of skills which you can, problably, unlock most if not all of through quests, leaving you with 30 EXTRA skill points, but then they'll whine about having to group with PUGs because of their 2 person guild and how they aren't able to find that boss with that "greatest" elite skill that they need, with only 2 organized people.

People will never be happy.

Go figure.

Cheers.

The formation of a competitive community has almost nothing to do with what type of game it is, honestly. It's not something you can build into a game inherently and it's very difficult to purposefully prohibit it from happening.

The point he was trying to illustrate (for those of you who didn't come from the competitive 2k* community) is that if you build a game with a significant PvP portion, the people who play that game will expect you to listen to them if you want them to keep playing that game. People kept whining about some of the more blatant flaws in the competitive aspects of 2k3. Epic (makers of the game) did nothing to correct it, so the community died. IIRC, this resulted in 2k3 getting pulled from CPL, which was probably some pretty embarrassing PR.

Devs like people playing their games competitively. More competition = more likelihood of tournaments and events featuring your product = more (free) publicity = more people buying the game/add-ons/sequels = more competition. The goal is to get people outside of the community to want your product and get the people inside the community to stay in it. THAT is how this relates to Guild Wars. Having a loyal competitive community boosts sales of future products, so ANet cares (at least to some extent) about what the competitive community is saying.

Also, it's really cool to see other people like stuff that you made. It's most game devs' wet dream to see people playing their game on TV. Would people still play PvP even if the "hardcore" guys left? Sure, but they wouldn't be any good. Would somebody still be "the best" in the eyes of GW players? Yes, but nobody else would care.

Back to the original point of the argument, this is part of the reason the whole "n00b vs. 1337" arguments get started. It's very difficult to understand the opposing side if you don't have to live with their reality. PvPers don't see why PvEers want sigils and complain about having to pay so much for them. PvEers have no idea how much it sucks to have to grind out those skills or runes like PvPers do.

Sorry for double-posting...and for posting encyclopedias... enjoy

As far as I can gather, most PvPers aren't asking to be spoon-fed everything. They're just asking to have the amount of time required to grind out everything reduced. At the very least, they're not asking for anything that would be any kind of detriment to PvE players (except the opportunity cost of devs' coding time).

Let me try to phrase this coherently...PvE players complained about sigil prices, right? The devs took a reasonable action to correct this, and that was well and good.

Now, do PvE players NEED guild halls any more than PvP players NEED all of the runes and skills in the game? Not really. It allows them the same thing it allows PvP players with everything unlocked: flexibility. Sure, you don't need all the skills, but if you haven't ground out the easiest counter to your opponent's strategy yet, you are going to have a much more difficult time of it because you have fewer viable options. Do PvPers need all the superior runes? No, but if your opponent is hitting you with 20 more damage/second than you are hitting them with, you're going to have a harder time of it. Uber-grind is the kind of thing that allows less-skilled guild to win more easily. All the PvPers are asking for is a level playing field. Let everyone run through the game once with a character, then you can play PvP (on a level playing field) with a highest-level character of that profession from then on.

To hopefully encourage PvEers to understand what I'm talking about, let's do a time comparison. Their biggest issue of late has been sigils, as they felt that 100k was too much to pay. Reasonable, since that's a lot of gold. Let's be tightwads and say you can farm gold at a rate of 1000gp an hour. This leaves you with a total of 100 hours of farming time to split between your guildmates to buy a sigil. If you have 10 people in your guild, that's 10 hours per person. Quite a lot of time.

Now let's say you're a PvPer looking to complete your collection of superior runes. Here's the trick...even if we're insanely generous and say a superior rune drops every three hours of gameplay, there are 36 different superior runes. Emphasis on "different" Thus, in 12 hours (per person in your guild, as this must be done individually), you will have 36 different runes...but the odds of them all being unique are ridiculously small--something like 1/(36^36) if my math is reasonable. More realistically, I have read several posts from players with upwards of 200 hours that have unlocked fewer than 10 superiors.

Did PvPers complain when the sigil issue was fixed? Yes, and they should have. 200 hours is a very large amount of time to invest and still be less than 1/3 done with something. However, there are fewer PvPers than PvEers, which is why their issue was handled first.

I applaud ANet for fixing anything at all. I mean, heck, they've already got your $50, right?

(BTW, I am not actually a PvPer. I haven't even beaten the game with my first character yet. I just like to see people understand each other somewhat.)

Yeah I know what you mean, I just come in here late at night and post things like that, if for no other reason to lighten the mood. I'm the type of person who doesn't do something unless I know what I'm in for, so I'm not dissapointed a whole lot.

I personally didn't think 100k for a sigil was a lot, I also don't think 10 hours of gameplay is NEAR ANY sort of "grind" or excessive amount of time, I mean hell, you can easily get that much in on one day of the weekend, even if you're a casual gamer it'll take a couple days. Not a big deal by any means, and truth be told you can get 25k pretty easily, problably more in an hour, so money isn't really an issue at all.

People just don't get satisfied very easily is all. I personally believe people should do more research on a game, or know what to expect when they buy something, especially if $50 is a lot to them, because chances are they won't be able to buy something else. I can understand being tweaked if you were walking down the aisle and were like "Oh, Guild Wars, sounds neat, guess I'll try it." *get home* "Damnit. Ok, new game." I mean if this is something that really took a chunk of your cash...know a bit more before you buy it without knowing anything about it 'eh? That only makes sense.

Either way, I'm happy, others should be happy, but they aren't and never will be happy, so tough for us all I guess. We're all screwed in the end.

Happy Birthday.

I would like the amount of XP needed to gain additional skillpoints to level off at something reasonable. 20k perhaps at maximum. As it stands it's going to take me well over 25k to get my next one, and it's showing no signs of leveling off yet. (And before some brainiac says I should do quests; I have. I've done every quest with a skill reward for every profession there is that can be accessed with a single character that I can find, and I've been to every town in the game.)

I actually don't mind grinding (within limits). What I DO mind is that skill point gain just gets more and more difficult after 20. There is no good reason for this. Once you hit 20 you should gain skills at a flat rate.

You should also be able to gain skill points for helping out with certain difficult missions, even if you've already completed them yourself. Help folks with Hell's Precipice, or Thunderhead Keep, or one of the Ascension Trials say, and get a skill point for your trouble. Would also give more experienced players a little incentive to go help the less experienced folk still tearing their hair out in the desert.

As it stands the only thing I can do that gives me the XP I need to get more skills is Underworld/Fissure. There's only so many times I can do that before I just get annoyed with the whole thing. (Though admittedly finally getting the Forgemaster to the point where he'd actually deign to make us equipment for the first time last night was pretty neat).

Have you ever played Guild Wars?

If you had, you'd know that finishing 20 missions does NOTHING as far as unlocking skills and runes is concerned. Your reward for finishing the game is to get teleported back to Droknars. Thats it.