Thoughts on Grind, Guild Wars, and Everything

I've decided to write another thread about the state of Guild Wars because 1. misconseptions are abound, and 2. the last was such a great success I just couldn't resist

Not suprisingly, some of the issues that are around now are the same as the ones seen in the past.

Problem #1: UAX
UAX stands for Unlock All X (where X is the unlockable in question) UAS was present during the Beta events of Guild Wars and its popularity has seen it through to today. UAX is the main point of argument for all debates for two main reasons. 1. It is a solution, perhaps not the best solution, but it is one and we've seen the effects of it already. 2. It is an extreme. Extremes are always easier to argue due to the contrast of ideas. Straying from black and white and into the grey areas always gets messy and much more complicated. I believe this causes a lot of strife as most people are in the middle somewhere on this topic rather than the extremes.

I for one am in the middle. I support UAX and think it would work, but I am sure there are better solutions. As far as I can see most people would be satisfied with a method to ease the pain of unlocking but not have it simply given out with a mouse click. Keep these points in mind when reading and responding to UAX discussions.

Problem #2: Grind

This age old problem is the reason behind the UAX arguement but it carries a number of problems of its own. Grind is the act of doing this more often than a sensible person would deem necassary to have fun. Unfortunately, the products of these activities are typically accpeted as necassary to be truely competitive. For full understanding a brief recount of grind history is in order.

Beta: UAS button was implemented and essentially removed all grind unlock skills for PvP characters. Skill trainers carried a wider variety of skills and skill charms were available to get more powerful skills. This method made it easy to tune your PvE character and do whatever you wanted with your PvP char.

Retail: Removed everything mentioned in Beta. Power Gamers farmed Riverside for runes with great success.

Retail +1: Arena Net nerfs Riverside but it is still viable. Power Gamers have most runes unlocked. Giant farming hits high gear.

Retail +2: Nerf Riverside again along with Sanctum Cay, still viable but only a fraction of what it once was. Power Gamers who missed the first farming spots head to Fishermans Haven.

Retail +3: Arena Net drops the nerf bomb. 'rebalances' completely kill viable farming. Most Power Gamers have everything they need.

Retail +4 (present): ANet released PvP unlocks patch

Basically, if you think of Grind as a slider bar on a scale of 1 to 10 (least to most) Beta was about a 1 or 2. Retail hits and Arena Net pushes it up to the 5-6 range, but since farming is so bad they nerf some places (twice) moving the grind bar up to 7-8. Somehow people are still unlocking stuff so ANet nerfs the entire land of Tyria moving the Grind bar up to about infinity. Sure, they got rid of farming, but by doing so they made it impossible to get upgrades. Realizing they mistakes (publicity stunt theory here) ANet implements PvP unlocks. It is argueable wether or not this is as effective as it should be (by a factor of 10 usually) but it shifted the grind bar back to about a 9.

This figure of '9' means that it takes roughly 400 hours (PvE route) or 635,000 faction (PvP route) to unlock all skills and infinity hours or several hundred thousand faction to unlock all runes and weapon upgrades. For a complete unlock this comes to about 400 + infinity hours (PvE) or roughly 1,000,000 faction. (infinity is used because its practically impossible currently to unlock all runes and perfect weapon upgrades within the lifetime of the universe.)

There is some agrument on whether or not all those upgrades and skills are actually needed. Generally the weapon upgrades will save your butt in certain close situations but you can probably get by with out most of them. Runes will easily increase the efficiency of your build and your character is probably gimped if you don't have at least a major in your most used attribute. Realistically, superiors are icing on the cake, but that goes back to the weapon upgrades situation. Skills on the other hand, are extremely important. Having acess to more skills allows you to make more unique builds that are in turn not as readily countered. If you really disagree on the skills, you can start your own thread

So with the above mentioned things taken into consideration we can modify the numbers to this: 400 + infinity hours (PvE) or roughly 800,000 faction (PvP). Sounds like an awful lot for a minimal grind game, especially that infinity number. These numbers generally not for a casual gamer who will typically only play with one or to classes but a complete competitive gamer who needs to be able to play various combinations.

One major problem with the grind is how the amount of it needed has varied. (I'm suprised more people haven't complained about this) This is not such a big deal now with the PvP unlock system in place. The way its looking right now is that all the power gamers (myself included) got a farily easy ride by farming before the nerfs. I unlocked almost all the runes by farming for about 20 hours over the course of a week while you guys have to slave away for faction points. It should also be noted that the farming generated large amounts of gold that is being stockpiled in storages

Problem #3: What to do!?

The title poses a great question. The PvE section of the game is balanced ok, though increased drops of valuable loot would be grand. (lets move that infinity number into something I can comprehend!) However, the rune trader does a lot to make grinding for PvE obsolete. What probably needs to happen is the amount of faction rewarded should be worked entirely. Arena gives to low and GvG gives to high (in comparison to the alternatives). If you need 1000 faction you can spend a week in arenas, a few days in tombs, or 1-2 hours in GvG. However, if the faction amount is increased to far there will be some PvE fanatics screaming about how its not fair because PvPers don't have to work as much. Rergardless, something should be done to alleviate the time that one must spend to acquire the skills and upgrades that are needed for true competitive game play.

-Tuna, member of Dark Horizons

Nice evaluation, but it carries a few flaws.

My main counterpoint is that while your math is correct, your assumptions are wrong. No one needs to unlock every single item. Sure, they COULD do it, but chances are, much like skills, there are useful items, there are not so useful ones, then there are indespensible ones.

Unlocking every single skill, and every single weapon modification, is simply for bragging rights. Not everyone uses an Axe. Hardly anyone uses water skills. Not every single profession skill is useful - in fact, a lot of them appear to be simple filler. Some skills are designed for early PVE play while others are redundant, the same skills but more/less/different powers.

To compute the reduced item list that the vast majority of people would realistically want to unlock would be impossible, but it's a far cry from your extreme of "Infinity".

For a normal player that knows how to play the game, getting a character the main skills they want (excluding Elites) is relatively short, a few days. That's probably 25-35 or so skills, until ascension. It can be done even faster, a few hours, if he is rushed. When you combine the two (faction unlocks versus normal PVE play) it's actually very fast and efficient.

And of course, there are no "Godly" items in GW that warrant relentless grinding to get them.

Ah, I understand:
Easy way to farm -> less grind
Easy way to earn things by playing the game -> more grind

got it

People fail to take into consideration one little fact - the game has been out for two months. We won't get an expansion pack for almost a year. That means, from now until the middle of 2006, we're stuck with what we currently have.

In the two months I've owned this game, I've been able to set myself up to play the following roles:

Smiter Monk
Healer Monk
Protection Monk
Sword Warrior
Hammer Warrior
Spiker
Nuker
Warder
Spirit Spammer
Interrupter
Shutdown Mesmer
Minion Master

And others I haven't even bothered with. I have unlocked most of the superior runes, including vigor, and if there isn't one I have, I can buy it for 2K (or sometimes much less). I've also unlocked lots of stuff, most of which I'd never use. Sundering, Furious, Fortitude, Cruel, Poisonous, Ebon....the list is endless. A guildmate of mine was bragging that he was able to unlock a 30 health staff head via faction points - and I told him I had unlocked a 28 health one though normal play.

I have a total of four different characters, all at least to the ring of fire, if not outright finished. I can do just about anything anyone wants me to do for PVP. Want me to make a PVP character that is a smiter ranger? No problem. Oh wait, switch to a Smiter Earth Elementalist? OK. Whatever, dood.

In two months.

Just wtf is going to challenge me, for the next 9-12 months?

That +21 Health staff head is statistically no worse than the +30. When I have 450-500 HPs, the difference of 9 HPs is meanlingless, when I'm facing a group of three spikers all sending about 600+ elemental damage my way in two seconds. Yet people will spend 60K MORE for those 9HPs?

That's stupidity, and reinforces the fact that people are paying for the novelty of an item, not it's intrinsic value to you as a player. Why are Items farmed from the UW or FOW worth more than the same exact item farmed in a drake run? It looks different? Just how does that 25K you've spent in black dye helping you win in the HoH?

People confuse rarity with usefulness. If people want to spend their stupid money on crap like that, be my guest, but don't drag that into a discussion about game balance.

By the time they come out with a real solution to the problem I'll problably have moved onto DoD:S (I can't wait ), and then I'll play scarcely until the next expansion.

To be honest I don't give a rats ass about having everything. If I want a rune I'll go buy it, if I want a skill I'll go unlock it. I sure as HELL don't want all the weapon upgrades. I've unlocked most everything I want. I have all the skills except a few elites that I never intend to use for all but the monk class, I've got the weapons I want, the runes I want, etc. What's more in the game for me? I've been playing for about two months, just a few times in the betas...but there just isn't anything more to do. PvP in this game for me at least, is extremely unmotivated. I feel absolutely no reason to go do it. It's just little tiny skirmishes that never last more than half an hour, and even then it's the same tactics and builds over and over in the same arenas. All for what? Some text saying you won?

Cool...I guess...

At this point in the game I'm not too concerned about what they let available. If they allow UAX I won't be too concerned about it, there isn't enough motivation for me to PvP anyway. It would be nice to fool around with my builds more, but I don't want to delete any of my beloved PvE characters to do so. Prices of ecto and shards increase daily, if you want to get the high priced armor you're almost screwed unless you've had the money by this point, drops are getting nerfed by the week, and I'm all but burnt out.

Something needs to really wire this game up. Whether it be a UAX, new maps for PvE, or a new PvP system as a whole, I'm up for it. Whatever will put some life back into the experience for me.

you and me both, I paid for HL2:Silver a long long time ago (before hl2 came out) and it is taking them ages to get the game out. Garry's mod is entertaining me though d=

How very true. While I play a lot of PVP - just about every evening I put in an hour or two, it gets extremely tiring running into the same lame tactics over and over. Is playing for 30-40 minutes against a spirit spamming build FUN? How could it? Even if you beat it, you're so burned out from the sheer boredom of it, you have little energy to face the next spirit spamming build. Sure, if my guild WANTED to make a spirit spamming build just like all of the other lame guilds using one, we could, but in our hearts we don't want to simply because of the lack of a fun factor to it all. And in a HoH's run, unless you're lucky to get dumped to the HoH right away, you are almost guaranteed to face at least one or more getting there.

Didn't want to turn the thread into a mini rant against spirit spamming, but such is life.

Grind/Farming that is still happening although A-net is trying to nerf out area so that people don't get good drops or make the monsters so tough that it required a huge group of players to kill (ie. level 20 or above monsters)

I almost consider this game a single player game. There's just not enough immersion/community to keep me interested aside from the actual quests.

I got lots of money but I don't need anything (and I'm not going to paysomeone to help me get endgame armor) really so farming is almost meaningless. I don't know what people are complaining about as far as drops because I get lots of purples, ect whenever I do missions. I've gotten through almost all the game with henchies.

So I figure when I'm done with this I'll probably stash it away til an expansion comes out...I got plenty of other games to play.

Dax, I agree with you. who know what kind of new weapons or armors await us at the expansion, so far every town im been to (lion arch, yak bend, etc) doesn't offer great armors for me to spend my golds, i don't even think about spending it for a 15k armors. And most of these drops im getting, i can either sell it or keep it for the future expansion.

I do upgrade armors when I get a chance to, but there are only a few styles and far between. I hope to someday get 15k armor, but why rush to get it?..sorta defeats the fun. Unlocking skills is fun, but I certainly don't need all of them...many don't really make that much difference. I'd rather have less skills that actually do more unique things.

It's just too bad though, little things- ways of interacting with people such as a Auction House or crafting probably would have made this game more appealing over the long term. It just doesn't seem enticing enough to make millions of gold ...for what?

just as a little thought to throw out there to all the complainers of grinding or to anyone else.

grinding is universally known doing something over and over, repetition. (usually something you dont like to do over and over). Or as tuna so prefectly put it "Grind is the act of doing this more often than a sensible person would deem necassary to have fun"

One thing you should everybody needs to realize is the so called Grind is this is totally opinionated. For Example you have somebody who love quests and getting items from them. Of course they're not going to think this is grind, becuse this is where they have fun. Now on the other hand you have a PvP star who love the thrill of the kill in arenas. He's never going to think PvP and killing monks over and over is a grind, because this is where he has fun.

So, instead of saying grinding is this or that, we should know that grinding is what you personally dont like doing more than a few times. You cannot name anything grinding in the game (unless on a personall not universal note) because everybody has their own prefrences, and will decide for themselves what is grind and what is not grind.


PvP is just as much grind to some and PvE is to others.
Chasing chests and barrels is just as much grind to some as chasing HOH is to others.

Get the point? Grind = your opinion of whats not fun.

And for a body block to the flames that are on their way... I'm a PvP fanatic. I find if fun to Grind my way to HOH. I dont find it fun to Grind my way through the many monsters in Perdition Rock

why should flames be coming to you over that?

no flame from you just simple truth with no insults at all

grind is truly in the mind of the grinder and seen in many different ways

My concern, is on what they will bring to the table in the next chapter. If they don't have higher levels, better weapons, better armor, more elites, possibly more slots for skills(I'd like to see just two more) Then what good will PvE be? Grind for naught!

PvP? They need more types of matches than they currently have, and a lot more lanscapes/scenerios to house those matches in, IMHO. How long can one play 2-4 differing match types with a handful or so arenas?

This next chapter will make or break GW, I think. Many will buy it out of loyalty, but if it doesn't deliver, then that will be about it.

I, personally, have enjoyed the PvE immensely. But I also see a limit of it's charm unless they do more than add new places to explore. They promise us that there will be. I hope so.

Also, I have a major gripe, and I almost never post anything negative about this game. I hate them nurfing the good spots. Stop bots, absolutely, but please let us who want to farm, do so!!! Some of us losers like to grind/farm. I have a guild family to feed, ya know!

*edit* Please give us more areas to explore like the catacombs!! Please???

I've said it before and I'll say it again... I support anything ANet does to put a stop to cheaters, hackers, and botters. If nerfing drops makes their life miserable, but means I have to look a little harder for runes, ok by me. I have no problem with those who farm legitamately, and I'm sorry that ANet's modifications have hurt them. But I can't stand cheaters, period

no higher levels but...........


and i would love seeing a post searing version of the catacombs along with a tunnel system going back to the original catacombs as well

As long as people buy it, there's not monthly fee they need to depend on. Most MMORPG's need to be conscious of their numbers to make money, but all GW needs to do is sell the chapter. I'm not sure how much they care about people playing through in a month and getting bored as long as they buy the next chapter...and the next.

I enjoy farming myself but I wish there was something to spend my gold on.

Yes, more gold sinks are needed as well. But, I don't just want useless things just to have things. I want the sinks to improve the gaming experience of the normal player. Dwarven ale does nothing for me..... Not dising those who do buy it, it's just of no value to me. I'm 37 years old. If I wanted alcohol I could buy it by the boatload, not just play pretend!

ya well if i wanted to kill people i could kill them by the boat load too, not just pretend


jk... hehe but you do have a good point. i myself find it a lot more fun going to the grotto and ice scating than it is downing a ale or 5.

maybe they should charge us to get in there :P


mwahahaha!

Quite a few people complain that the economy is "broken". I disagree. I would call it "stupid".

It cracks me up when anyone refers to anything as "Godly".

It cracks me up to see a person spend 100K on a max dmg 15/50 vibrating dildo of sundering.

It cracks me up to see someone spend 25K on black dyes for their armor.

It's hilarious to see a guild with a guild hall with exactly one person in the guild.

Do a search on ebay for "Guild Wars" and note how much 100K of gold sells for. Also note how many times the word "Godly" is mentioned in item sales.

Dwarven Ale was cool....once.

Seeing a level 4 anything at Droknars Forge is a joke. It's even funnier if they paid someone to get there.

The only thing I think is interesting are the folks that have found their niche running people through missions. It's a valuable service, especially in the better places where a player can become incredibly frustrated. I watched one person solo elona reach for donations. As most of you know, Elona Reach is one of the more irritating missions in the game. Everyone (not being run from Yak's Bend) has to pass it to ascend. One moron in a party can cause the whole party to fail - repeatedly. I've gotten 4 different characters ascended, and had to do those ascension missions so much I want to puke. But running for profit is a unique way for someone to get money, and provide a service to the community. The only BAD part is that intentionally or not, the ascension missions were a tool to force people to learn how to work better as a team. If they hadn't gotten the memo about monster aggro, and working towards a goal, having to do the same mission 20-30 times certainly drove it home. When you remove that very obvious filter, you're subjecting the higher areas to more idiots. But, considering how many morons still inhibit the upper reaches of the game, I don't think this will have much of an effect on gameplay.

Anyway, GW's economy is more geared towards epenis inflation than actual gamechanging mechanics. It would be nice if more items were actually introduced into the game that did have some use (like the XP scrolls, very nice idea!) other than act as a gold sink with no tangible return.

The sad part is that the devs made their balance completely aimed at the hardcore pvpers in terms of grind. The casual pvper, i,e the people who don't have access to knowledge about farming spots and can't earn much faction at a time, really can't play more than 1 class effectively unless they devote huge amounts of time. This makes building up a guild from scratch extremely difficult because in addition to having to teach the newer players how to pvp effectively and make good builds, you also have to make bad team builds because people are too inflexible to play good ones.

I wish the devs had made balance adjustments from the perspective of the casual player, rather than the hardcore player

they have kinda made it that way with the low level arenas, and the 4v4 arenas after lvl 20. but, ya it's true just like any other game... the more you play the better you are, and the easier it is to stay better than everybody who tries. often it comes down to time played in the game.


if they wanted to assist that they could make arenas for rank 1 player, and 2, and so on... or however, so that you'd always be playing with people of you same rank or close to it. but... even though i say that, i also should say i dont really care. i like the way they have it set up now. it's challenging at time, and at other times, it's bloody suicide (which is fun too)

speaking of suicide... we went up against a team in tombs yesterday that had 6 ele's and 2 monks. :P they each hit the same target with chain, and killed 3 of us in like 2 seconds... lmao! that was awesome... freekin awesome timing i'd say. anyway the rest was history... but needless to say that build would get waisted in hoh.. and they did. kinda funny though i think hehe!

You ran into a poorly designed spiker build. Six Elementalists is overkill, you only need at the most 4. Three is even ok. Three air spikers can do 500+ damage in 1 second, enough to kill anyone if done right. With six air elementalist, it's simply overkill, you're wasting a lot of damage points that just hit an already dead player.

Problem with spiker groups - if the fight lasts longer than five minutes, the elementalists start to wear down due to exaustion. They simply can't sustain that kind of damage dealing over a long fight.

I didn't bother to read on so apologies if someone has already mentioned this.
We're all people and are behaviour in 'normal life' is often reflected in the way we play games (most notably RPG's and in particular these type of MMORPG's). People go out of their way to buy 'novelty' items, things they dont need, things they feel will identify them as more unique etc. (this is the point of western culture - capitalism=individualism (or we'd like to think, but im not getting into that)) with real, hard earned money.

So to call people stupid for that makes u a hypocrite - you are attacking the one aspect of the game that asserts your uniqueness (your bragging rights if u will). I admit it is a rather limited way of doing so, but it still seems to me a very important aspect of the discussion that must be taken into consideration.consideration.

I have the distinct feeling that ArenaNet never intended for people to play this game so quickly, I assume they were expecting people to ascend every month.

I love PvP, I find it fresh and anew each match, always challenging me, and always rewarding me for victory. I find PvP itself, perfect. However, PvE is the problem. It slaps PvP and dumps a truck load of grind all over it.

I would love for more PvE content to release, just as long as it doesn't contain skills. That's just more grind.

--Ginko

I think a few new races, more than one storyline you can do (I mean drawn out ones, not little quests, and still a main storyline), a few new professions, and alot more explorable area will be Heaven in a package for the next chapter.
That, and allowing us to go up to level 30.

If I can have a level 30 Elven Druid I will be happier than a pig in sh*t.
And if my monk gets further divine abilities I will be so grateful to the Gods.


On the note of professions, recycling quests between classes is kind of lame. Different professions should have different quests, like in presearing.


As a personal rant, I really wish they would allow us to explore the far South of post searing Ascalon. All that gray haze covering where my guild's guild hall is in a roleplay we're doing pisses me off.



One of the drawn out mini-storyline ideas I have is some detective work... hunting down old secrets of Tyria. I saw the catacombs mentioned in this thread. Another part of a roleplay I'm doing with guildees explains that the Necromancers created the catacombs - an underground labyrinth, to house one of the greatest secrets of Tyrian history - a century or two before the guild wars began. They populated it with the dead as guardians.
A brilliant storyline would be that one of the Necro-cult tips off your party that whatever is hidden will be needed soon. So you have to travel to the mouth of the catacombs, get your ass kicked, then find out that an artifact in one of the Kings' vaults can turn the undead back. So you go get that, then you go back to the catacombs and navigate the maze... maybe have a point in the catacombs to use as home base... it shouldn't be like 10 minutes to find the "secret", it should take you an hour or so navigating, maybe several tries would do.



I realize the next chapter is well in the working, but some form of sub-storyline is great. Completely independant of the main plot... but not a trivial thing like a single quest.
Perhaps, tying in the different professions have different quests to a larger subplot is good. Give everyone in the party a reason to get to the starting point. The lay-up quest would be a good thing to draw people together (friends, not PUGs, as not all professions have that quest).

Forgive me for being lazy and not reading all of this thread, but here are a few of my thoughts.

About the same time I was getting the endgame areas such as Ring of Fire, I either didn't have as much time to play or couldn't do anything successfully without my Guildmates. Random and 4v4 arenas seemed o have no benefit and and didn't want to waste 3 hours in Tombs for 1 measly Fame point. It also still seems to me that there isn't too much to do when you only have 10-15 minutes to play. Then I discovered farming, with finally gave me both something to do in my spare time and provided me with a potential income. I enjoyed it, as it something that I could idly do in my spare time, or when waiting for other Guildmates to finish missions before grouping up. Now I feel that it has been made pointless because instead of getting a few decent drops in 15 minutes, I could work for an hour and get a purple drop that isn't unidentified. Or, in the case of the oh-so-rare gold armor drop I get a nice shiny Major Rune, which are now worthless with the Rune Trader. I guess the point behind my ranting is this: there are two things I would like to see: a way to make money and get unlocks without unspeakable grinding, and for it to be true that you can actually play and enjoy the game no matter how much time you have to play (unless you enjoy walking to he Rune Trader and seeing that you're Major Rune now sells for 128g instead of 125 and calling that fun. Woo!)

really good point by kyy there. if these drops are so bloody rare (ie. major, even superior runes) why are they so cheap at the rune trader and why does she not buy them for a better value. basically, why can a level 5 ranger pick up a superior rune of wilderness survival for something ridiculous like 300g whilst regular gameplay from a level 20 takes ages - the value does not reflect the effort.

and for those who mention unlocking, yeh good point, but personally i'm not as bothered about unlocking cause i enjoy using my pve char as a pvp.

ps. may sound wierd but i like to farm elonas reach - does that sound crazy?

Because it isn't that rare to get a rune drop, its only rare to get one you, in particular, don't have and want. So all the other runes end up on the rune trader. There isn't a huge demand for Ranger runes, but there is a supply, so it turns out their price drops through the floor. I don't really get why people are so angry. The previous price imbalance was only there because of the effort required to sell a rune. It wasn't due to any inherent rarity in them. And who cares if you don't get as much money from farming. Money at the high end is largely irrelevant, and it will give you a long term goal to work towards. So you still can 'get things done' in 10-15 minutes by farming.

I find gold (in game) almost irrelevent, I wish there was more emphasis on raw materials and crafting rather than jusr runes and uber items. I'm starting to hate the term 'gold sinks' because it's just infers something to waste money on. I rather have feeling that all the stuff I pick up runes or not actually is worthwile and of some interest.

Amen!

I'm lost , but then again I always am.

this is over a year old with nothing you added.

reported for closure

A part of me dies every time someone bumps a year-old thread and doesn't understand or disagrees with a post. Closed.