Jump to content
  • Sign Up

When did GW2 turn into a grindfest?


Recommended Posts

Disclaimer: I do not mind a bit of grind in an MMO. Seems part of the genre really. What I want is for that bit of grind to be disguised reasonably well.

I disliked HoT. The maps annoy me and the fights are insufficiently exciting, mostly, to make up for the maps. But, even so, even disliking the maps, I didnt find earning masteries to be particularly grindy.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Replies 169
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Top Posters In This Topic

@Obtena.7952 said:

@Obtena.7952 said:never? I mean, what are you grinding that you need?

You see, Anet never said there would be no grind because obviously that's dumb; there needs something you can grind to keep you interested in the game. Anet was specifically talking about needing to grind to get access to content, either with gear grinds or unlocking content. So far, they have delivered.

So let's be honest. The game never became a grind ... you're just finding things you want that require it. If you're going to define 'gilder masteries' as grinding, I guess you should stick with FPS games or something, because that's a pretty tame 'grind' that you can achieve simply by playing the game. I guess if you're not willing to play the game, then I can see where you apply that label to it.

never became a grind? Ummm, I played chaper 1-8 without ANY grind in personal story. The moment I switch to HoT I am met with a grind.

That doesn't make sense. If you play the story and through the content, there is ALSO no grind in HoT because you earn the masteries as you play ... JUST like you earn your regular levels as you go through the maps and your story. The suggestion to stick with FPS games is based on the fact that if you can't 'grind' out masteries by simply playing HoT content, then it's probably a more appropriate kind of game for you to play. Simply put, you don't have much tolerance if you can't earn masteries by just playing the game. If your mentality is that it's a grind, that's not a game problem.

Game devs are fond of slapping "RPG elements" on to games these days. Even FPSs require unlocks

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@Jotunhammer.7029 said:what can I say, when I started over the game with my necromancer, I was not met with any grind, sure I had xp potions and food etc and leveled quite nicely.but other than that there was no grind to speak of.Grab those xp potions and that food, and venture out into Verdant Brink. Gaining experience for Gliding rank 1 is no different than gaining experience for levels to unlock the next step of the personal story. You get xp through pretty much everything you do in game, including unfogging the map and exploring it's objectives (waypoints, points of interest, vistas ...)

You can get around Verdant Brink without gliding or mushroom masteries (although those do open a lot of new ways to travel through the map), certainly enough to unlock the mastery for the next story step.

If all else fails and you just can't bring yourself to explore the map and join in on events (no need to repeat them), then grab another character and start on the story with them. Unlike character levels, masteries are account wide, so several characters can contribute experience to the same mastery.

@Jotunhammer.7029 said:also, its not just playing the game, raptor long jump require 2 more mastery points, and those mastery points can only be done by doing quests within the raptor area, are there any NEW quests, no, it is a repeat of quests done over and over again to earn the achievement points.I think you are mixing up a few things here (which is not surprising, as the mastery system is different to most other games' progression systems and not quite intuitive to many). You need experience to fill mastery levels (the same as you needed experience to fill character levels pre 80), and you need mastery points to unlock a mastery once you've filled the experience bar. You do not need achievement points for any of this. The game does however use achievements to track a lot of objectives, including mastery points. Just view those achievements as your "available points" list.

The early PoF masteries (up to raptor rank 3) are indeed a bit tight, though there are still more available than necessary. You do get several of them simply for playing the story, while others are attached to map objectives or specific "quests" (that are also tracked as achievements). None of the early ones require content repetition though, and since there are considerably more points available than necessary in any of the three mastery regions you can very well skip all of the repetitive ones if you don't like them. I know I didn't do them (unless on accident), and I've been maxed on masteries for a while.

If you still feel uncomfortable with the system, try putting up a post in the players helping players section to get tips on what to do to advance your story and masteries, or even state your region and usual play times to find people to join you, show you how to get around, and even port you to mastery communes you wouldn't be able to reach yet to make things easier (there are several that require certain masteries to reach them, but you can easily get those masteries with the points available to you before).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Since the first episode of LS3 when they introduced map currencies to buy achievements.

Oh wait, earlier, when they had us grind exp for elite specializations instead of unlocking them with an enticing story.

No..even earlier, with the legendary weapons and dungeons in the core game.

Or even before that, when we had to grind money to buy the game

Link to comment
Share on other sites

A lot of new players and returning players have this need to reach end game immediately and have skyscale and all masteries and whatnot in a week. Why should you? And what's the hurry? People were on a break, missed entire seasons of living story, but somehow they want all new skills and features immediately unlocked when they finally log in again. And then they even complain about skyscale being a grind for example. Like seriously, why can't I complete an entire mmo game in a week, WHY!?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

In HoT it did bother me and it hurt the story. We were supposed to be on a rather urgent rescue mission, right? On my first playthrough I felt like the Commander had very weird priorities and was sidetracked by absolutely everything, losing valuable time by playing around and making new friends.The good news is: That was not an issue anymore in later playthroughs. :) Once the masteries are unlocked, they stay unlocked. All your alts can go through the story at your pace.Also, in PoF I think they reduced the EXP requirement. Levelling masteries there felt more natural and happened more or less on the side while exploring the maps and doing a quest here and there.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Half the story in HOT is in the zones themselves. Skipping those non-critical areas and running from instance to instance, only gives you half the story. You only think that stuff is no critical, but it really does tell the story of what happened.

When this game launched, several stories were above my level and I had to level to get high enough to actually survive in them. Not really sure how this is different. Also grind means doing the same thing over and over again. You can easily get all the masteries you need without ever repeating a single thing.

Finally make sure you're using boosters when you play to level masteries faster. Food and utility can give you 25% XP on kills. Those stack with other stuff including guild buffs, celebration/birthday boosters, XP buffs if you have any. If this is what you call grind, I'm not sure what to tell you.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I remember back in the day I was playing Aion and boy THAT was a grind. I never reached max level in that or even finished the story cause there's just so many "Kill 2000 monsters for a meagre reward" quests I'm willing to do. (And apparently it has gotten even worse since they went f2p) GW2 is a walk in the park compared to that so I don't understand the grindfest complaints.

I mean, you gotta keep in mind that all the content in GW2 that people call grind was initially designed to be unlocked in a relaxed pace while you play the game and explore the maps and figure out how all the new stuff works. Especially the maps in HoT all have their own story and you're supposed to explore them all to get the full picture. Of course that doesn't work of you're rushing past all of this cause somehow you deemed it not essential to the story even though it's anything but. In other words you're only playing half of the story and then complain you don't get the full rewards for it immediately even though the rewards are designed with the idea that players play the full story.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

What part of that is grinding? You don't really have to level masteries, I think for the story you need gliding 1 or 3, which is achieved by just experiencing HoT, doing the metas and just looking through some of the event chains. It's nice they're trying to get people to try out the events.

None of that I'd consider grinding, you don't have to farm the same group of mobs or the same quest for days or weeks.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@sevenDEADLY.5281 said:

@Jotunhammer.7029 said:there is always Fallout 76, at least there when you grind you can build something of the material your grinding.

Ironic, so you will go back to playing an FPS.

do investigate what a FPS means, Fallout 76 is not a FPS, its MMO, unless of then you can call WoW a FPS as well...being that you can go intoFPS mode and go around shooting around you.... there is much more to Fallout 76 than shooting everything...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@Obtena.7952 said:

That doesn't make sense. If you play the story and through the content, there is ALSO no grind in HoT because you earn the masteries as you play

what can I say, when I started over the game with my necromancer, I was not met with any grind, sure I had xp potions and food etc and leveled quite nicely.but other than that there was no grind to speak of.

What can you say? You can say you acknowledge that the grind for masteries isn't different than when you 'grinded' for levels, which you seem to have zero problem with. If leveling wasn't a grind for you, neither is getting masteries; it's the same approach for getting the XP; you simply play the game and you get the XP you need. IF anything, the limiting factor here isn't the 'grind' for the XP, it's getting the MP's.

Like I said ... if the 'grind' in GW2 is too much for you to handle, you got FPS games because you aren't going to find many MMO's where the level of tolerance you are showing for grinding would be acceptable to you.
  1. I never, NEVER did the same quest over and over again as levelling, not even one time. So the point of the whole thing is I do not want to get caught in hamsterwheel doing same quests over and over again into mindnumbing boredom. When I levelled it was natural, it was not doing the same thing over and over again. I maybe did the repeatable quests once per quest, ONCE, not over and over again....
Link to comment
Share on other sites

It turns into a grindfest in the moment your mind changes from "let run a around and see what's happen" to "if I repeat this and only this, I get XYZ fastest".

The good point about gw2 is still: you are not much faster, it's just your choice, if you prefer speed over fun.

I remember very well when HoT came out: a lot of player grinded exp in Flame Zitadelle to have their Pact mastery as fast as possible. I preferred to have it later: I did map-exporation in Tyria (let some time pass in HoT maps to get most bugs fixed) with my revenant. :) and that was not really much slower.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@Rasimir.6239 said:

@Jotunhammer.7029 said:what can I say, when I started over the game with my necromancer, I was not met with any grind, sure I had xp potions and food etc and leveled quite nicely.but other than that there was no grind to speak of.Grab those xp potions and that food, and venture out into Verdant Brink. Gaining experience for Gliding rank 1 is no different than gaining experience for levels to unlock the next step of the personal story. You get xp through pretty much everything you do in game, including unfogging the map and exploring it's objectives (waypoints, points of interest, vistas ...)

You can get around Verdant Brink without gliding or mushroom masteries (although those do open a lot of new ways to travel through the map), certainly enough to unlock the mastery for the next story step.

If all else fails and you just can't bring yourself to explore the map and join in on events (no need to repeat them), then grab another character and start on the story with them. Unlike character levels, masteries are account wide, so several characters can contribute experience to the same mastery.

@Jotunhammer.7029 said:also, its not just playing the game, raptor long jump require 2 more mastery points, and those mastery points can only be done by doing quests within the raptor area, are there any NEW quests, no, it is a repeat of quests done over and over again to earn the achievement points.I think you are mixing up a few things here (which is not surprising, as the mastery system is different to most other games' progression systems and not quite intuitive to many). You need experience to fill mastery levels (the same as you needed experience to fill character levels pre 80), and you need mastery points to unlock a mastery once you've filled the experience bar. You do not need achievement points for any of this. The game does however use achievements to track a lot of objectives, including mastery points. Just view those achievements as your "available points" list.

The early PoF masteries (up to raptor rank 3) are indeed a bit tight, though there are still more available than necessary. You do get several of them simply for playing the story, while others are attached to map objectives or specific "quests" (that are also tracked as achievements). None of the early ones require content repetition though, and since there are considerably more points available than necessary in any of the three mastery regions you can very well skip all of the repetitive ones if you don't like them. I know I didn't do them (unless on accident), and I've been maxed on masteries for a while.

If you still feel uncomfortable with the system, try putting up a post in the players helping players section to get tips on what to do to advance your story and masteries, or even state your region and usual play times to find people to join you, show you how to get around, and even port you to mastery communes you wouldn't be able to reach yet to make things easier (there are several that require certain masteries to reach them, but you can easily get those masteries with the points available to you before).

Thank you for explaining, however...in order to get 2 more mastery points, it says when I hover over the mastery points that I need to do quests etc in the area of the raptors. I done so, I dove every exploration point I could get my hands on, I even done some of the repeatable quests. The only thing that remains within the raptor area is to continue to do repeatable quests until I get the last 2 mastery points, because the storyline quest is over a sizable ravine that require the longer jump in raptors. So I am stuck doing that, which I detest, and honestly having being stuck there is causing me to play less because the moment I get into the game and I see I have to do same as I did yesterday, it gives me the "WoW chill" of having to do dailies ad infinitum and thats why I left WoW because they lock to much of the things behind "you got to get 3000 rep for your bodyguard in order to continue storyline". Thats not entertaining.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@Dayra.7405 said:I don't remember any situation where I am forced to repeat stuff over several days. Which one are you talking about?

Raptor area where you get to get to level 3 raptore to earn the long jump, just to get to the other side of the ravine. You say you got the 3 points without grinding. How?I done every quests, every hero challenge, every point of interest and yet, I am 30% into second achievment and I need to get to third.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@yusayu.3629 said:What part of that is grinding? You don't really have to level masteries, I think for the story you need gliding 1 or 3, which is achieved by just experiencing HoT, doing the metas and just looking through some of the event chains. It's nice they're trying to get people to try out the events.

None of that I'd consider grinding, you don't have to farm the same group of mobs or the same quest for days or weeks.

Alright so many asks where is the grind.Path of Fire part 4. Sacrifice, you have to get to the crystals. One crystal is beyond a ravine, you have to get raptor long jump in order to get thereand that requires level 3 in raptors. I done all the map, done all points of interest, but still I am lacking 1 1/2 level to get to achievement 3, so unlessthere is something I missed, which is unlikely cause I run around the map about as many times as I can remember it by heart, or there needs to bedone repeatable quests... thats the simple part of that.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Yes. HoT really has a getting started problem that can only be pushed through quickly if you utilize adventures (and liking them is required to grind them) and knowing that Auric Basin exists to avoid the pitfalls everywhere. Go there to worry about grinding Masteries instead of the constant threat of death from a single misstep.

Look up the necessary masteries you need to complete the HoT expansion story so you can get into Living World 3. Each chapter has dailies boxes and events that contribute to HoT Mastery. It will greatly help get the rest of the Masteries as painless as possible over time.

PoF has Living World 4 dailies, but PoF masteries aren't nearly as tough as HoT to complete.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@Jotunhammer.7029 said:

@Dayra.7405 said:I don't remember any situation where I am forced to repeat stuff over several days. Which one are you talking about?

Raptor area where you get to get to level 3 raptore to earn the long jump, just to get to the other side of the ravine. You say you got the 3 points without grinding. How?I done every quests, every hero challenge, every point of interest and yet, I am 30% into second achievment and I need to get to third.

Hm, I remember that it was difficult to get enough Mastery Points to get Lvl 3 Raptor on the first map, but MPs cannot be grinded, they are once per account. I don't remember that I had an EXP problem, maybe because I started to do PoF with several chars to get Hero Points (to get their new elite) for all of them.

Solution: You can pass to the other PoF (or LS4) maps and do stuff there. Or nowadays you can ask in map-chat for a friendly Mesmer with all mounts who can easily give you access to MP's you cannot reach with your current mounts.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Follow this video guide by dulfy to get mastery point needed to unlock them.

Dulfy have guides for the other pof maps too. Like other have mentioned, do various event and hearts on map to fill up your mastery level. Then follow the video guide to get the necessary mastery points to unlock mastery you want.It's the same thing with hot mastery too.Another good YouTube guide to follow is aiyinmaiden.

p/s: simply playing the story and doing some achievement will get you some mastery points too, good luck :)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@Jotunhammer.7029 said:

@Dayra.7405 said:I don't remember any situation where I am forced to repeat stuff over several days. Which one are you talking about?

Raptor area where you get to get to level 3 raptore to earn the long jump, just to get to the other side of the ravine. You say you got the 3 points without grinding. How?I done every quests, every hero challenge, every point of interest and yet, I am 30% into second achievment and I need to get to third.

iirc I followed the story line and got the three mastery points I needed for the raptor long jump. Then it was just a matter of getting the experience points to use them, which didn't take very long doing OW quests and bounties and whatnot.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...