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the grind for mounts needs to be toned down


KAipurge.2147

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I have been an avid Guild wars player since guild wars 1. Over time the mount unlocking in this game has become worse and worse to the point where even just unlocking the new mastery for one of the oldest mounts in the game has become a grind with the XP requirement. The world trek-ing the figure out where the clues lead was enough but tacking the extra XP requirement after all of that is just too much. I could understand if all the mounts were always of use but so many replace others making them useless that making such a grind for a mount that would be useless after another one releases that does its job better makes no sense to me. There are MMO players from Super grindy MMO's like WoW and BDO even saying that they would rather do crazy grindy things in those games than deal with the way guild wars 2 handles mount grinding.

And I know what people will say to this already. They will make the same tired excuses for why Anet decided to handle mount unlocks such as Griffon, Rollerbeetle, SKyscale, and even the new MASTERY(which isn't even a new mount)for the skimmer. I guarantee the next expansion will have a new mount that makes all those other listed ones that you spent all your time grinding for obsolete.

and then there are those that have them saying that you don't need them whilst they fly away leaving you behind in map runs because the Original 4 mounts cant keep up with the newer ones thus the game tries to force you into participating in the long boring several day time gated rng based grind for the newer mounts.

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I don't know why they had to introduce collections into everything. IMO the roller beetle and underwater skimmer collections aren't too bad, but I find the griffon and skyscale collections really boring. It seems as if Anet caved in to the craze of flying mounts and thought well if you want them, we'll see how badly you want to grind for them lol.

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You probably don't remember, but in the years since Path of Fire, there was a push on the forums to "make content mean something". tl;dr: They wanted the various skills learned and unlocks achieved to be attached to questing, have their own stories, etc., etc. to make better use of the Mastery systems and drive engagement in expansion content. Folks were unhappy that their skills and abilities just happened, with no cause or reason.

This is the result.

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I do Dragonfall. The meta is being run most of the time. It filled up half of my XP bar and that was with me getting lost and not knowing how to get to a few of the big events the commander is at. I was also only able to use borrowed skyscales the last time I did the meta.

If there is no commander, throw on a mentor tag and do something survivable like an escort mission and wait a mere few minutes for a pug to join. When you want to fight a champ, throw on a mentor tag.

Thing about Dragonfall meta is that there are always players around who want to do it, but if they don't have a commander, they need another hub to see where a group is most likely to be. Hence mentor tag.

Imagine how much XP someone who knows what they're doing and how to get around would get? I barely knew what to do and half my XP bar filled up!

Other choices are:

Hero point trains. Zerge through hero points. The XP rate is fast because an entire zerge is fast. It's also easier to keep up in some of the PoF maps.

Bounty hunting - throw on a mentor tag and call out bounty name and bounty location. Players will run across half the map to join in sometimes.

After playing games like RuneScape, I find the Guild Wars 2 system refreshingly fast.

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I remember what it felt like to go after the Griffon, the Beetle and the Skyscale; how bitter I had been by the cost and the strange and sometimes difficult nature of the collections themselves. But I also remember the sense of accomplishment and relief when I finally earned the mounts, how my friends and I helped each other, how it kept me anticipating the next day when I could get closer to my goals. Despite my protests and complaints, it had also kept me invested in the game. I daresay it was even a little fun!Objectively, the ultimate purpose of the requirements is to keep older content relevant, to bring players to side events and revisit maps they might have been done with otherwise. I genuinely do not see any purpose to making these things easier, or shorter, unless there is absolutely no one doing certain events to help unlock the mounts at all.I just helped my friend do the Elon Riverlands segment of their Gryphon unlock collection and there were still a strong group of willing people in LFG who were doing the same things.

Today, compared to when this content was new - you can earn gold faster, map currency faster, events are finished faster due to more experienced players. Unlocking these mounts is overall faster than it was. Just be a little more patient.

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@"Trise.2865" said:You probably don't remember, but in the years since Path of Fire, there was a push on the forums to "make content mean something". tl;dr: They wanted the various skills learned and unlocks achieved to be attached to questing, have their own stories, etc., etc. to make better use of the Mastery systems and drive engagement in expansion content. Folks were unhappy that their skills and abilities just happened, with no cause or reason.

This is the result.

Interesting. For me, no matter how much grind or "story" they bring to the mount unlocks, I would never become attached to a bunch of pixels in such a tiny part of 1 game. I don't think that getting mastery XP is that bad though, since you can get it however you like and whenever through different activities such as completing the game's story, events or exploration on different characters.

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Another thread complaining that they don't get their meaningless rewards for free? Sign me up.Sorry, but this was a gigantic step in the right direction. Masteries have felt meaningless since midway through HoT when you unlocked the different languages and had to actually progress towards something. Collections are a fantastic way of telling stories on top of the already existing systems and is a wonderful way of replacing what a traditional quest would be and fitting it into the game design of GW2, which generally strayed away from that concept. You get to do different things, see different areas and learn about more characters through them. Sure, at times they feel like nothing more than glorified fetch quests, but if you look at collections back then and now, especially with different tiered sub-collections, they have come a very long way. Every single thing being given to everybody for free and 0 effort was a mistake, there has to be a balance so people actually care about investing more time into it.

Mounts all have their own use and none of them are truly replaced by a "better version" existing. Even with the Skyscale, people regularly use ALL other mounts, be it only for their engage skill or because leaving the ground simply is less convenient. I don't understand how you can even say stuff like this. It makes no sense. What mount becomes obsolete? The Raptor? With an AoE pull and easy CC? Springer, with a 3 second AoE knockdown? It's still a very fast way of going up, compared to the Skyscale's slow ascend and only gated by ground to stand on, no resource. The Jackal? Sandportals are still a thing on some maps and the engage skill is awesome in bigger events where you can give everybody a burst of barrier when you join in. The Skimmer is now the defacto mount for anything water related, so it definitely has its place.People have been crying about the Rollerbeetle being useless since it came out, but it's fun and sometimes that's all it needs to be. It's gotten buffed like 4 times since then, you don't even have to wait for energy anymore when you mount up.Griffon is also fun and was groundbreaking when it first came out. Nothing is more fun than diving and picking up a lot of speed, before going all the way up again when you're riding one. The Skyscale is extremely slow compared to it, it has a frankly awful engage skill and can't pull off any of those moves. It can stay in the air and climb different walls. That's it. Nothing the other mounts couldn't do in their own way, yet it combines them in a way that makes it worthwhile to use. It's the ultimate convenience, because it gets you everywhere you need to go at the price of being slower than any of the other options, yet it doesn't replace any of the aforementioned mounts because they still are the best at their individual things.

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@KAipurge.2147 said:Over time the mount unlocking in this game has become worse and worse

Over time? What time? All mounts were released in PoF and LW4.

There hasn't been a new mount since then.

@KAipurge.2147 said:unlocking the new mastery for one of the oldest mounts in the game has become a grind with the XP requirement.

Oh... Well, too bad you can't get experience from doing literally anything in the game...

@KAipurge.2147 said:There are MMO players from Super grindy MMO's like WoW and BDO even saying that they would rather do crazy grindy things in those games than deal with the way guild wars 2 handles mount grinding.

As someone who has "The Insane" title in WoW...

There are much worse and far more tedious grinds with less reward in other games...

GW2's mount "Grinds" are not even really grinds. They're just a bunch of fetch quests and event participations. Nothing as bad as actual tedious grinding of trash mobs for literally months worth of playtime or scrounging up incredulous amounts of gold over months or doing dailies every day for the better part of a year. As has been the case for obtaining mounts in WoW over its life (Most of these things were just to get a cosmetic mount it was only the gold farming that was to obtain Epic Mounts back in Vanilla)

@KAipurge.2147 said:I guarantee the next expansion will have a new mount that makes all those other listed ones that you spent all your time grinding for obsolete.

I highly doubt that. Especially given that the one niche mount role that wasn't already covered and could have been important when interacting with a potential Deep Sea Dragon, was an Underwater mount, but now we have the Skimmer for that instead.

The fact they also put this ability behind a collection like they would a new mount also suggests that they're done with making new mounts.

Most likely we'll get a new gimmick entirely. One that they can sell cosmetics for like they have for Gliders and Mounts.

@KAipurge.2147 said:long boring several day time gated rng based grind for the newer mounts.

"Long" - I did the Skyscale in 3 days. Which funnily enough, is exactly how much it's timegated. Griffon and Beetle are only gated by having the events required pop (Which is at best an hour wait)

"RNG" - Uhh... Exactly what part of any mount acquisition is RNG?

"Grind" - It honestly sounds like you've never actually experienced an actual grind if you think that GW2's mounts require a "Grind". At worst, there's what? Getting the 250 of each LW4 currency? That's not even that bad can easily get it in a few hours depending on how many characters you have at level 80.

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Wait what grind? I don't recall any of the mounts in PoF being that difficult to earn exp for, and PoF mastery points were stupid easy to accumulate compared to HoT at its launch. Dear Dwayna, just because they can't have it "rite nao" people flip out. The only mounts I'd even consider "kinda hard to get" are the 2 flying mounts, and technically neither of which are actually required for anything.

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@Taril.8619 said:

@"KAipurge.2147" said:long boring several day time gated rng based grind for the newer mounts.

"Long" - I did the Skyscale in 3 days. Which funnily enough, is exactly how much it's timegated. Griffon and Beetle are only gated by having the events required pop (Which is at best an hour wait)

"RNG" - Uhh... Exactly what part of any mount acquisition is RNG?

"Grind" - It honestly sounds like you've never actually experienced an actual grind if you think that GW2's mounts require a "Grind". At worst, there's what? Getting the 250 of each LW4 currency? That's not even that bad can easily get it in a few hours depending on how many characters you have at level 80.

exactly. the "grind" for mounts or anything in gw2 is laughable... especially if you played mmorpgs from the early 2000's / late 90's, nothing was handed out like candy, you had to work for it (or be incredibly rich -- which you also had to work for) and it was rewarding if you finished.

so the "grind" in gw2 is fine. it's reasonable and it's not harsh compared to the grind of MMORPGs of the past (which is understandable as life/work/student/family/etc. demands have increased since the last decade, so people have generally less time to focus on many aspects in their daily life)

"grinding" is an inherent part of MMORPGs -- being able to unlock and clear all content within the hour is what makes people bored and stop playing an MMORPG because there's nothing to do. "grinding" in MMORPGs is also why Shooters, MOBAs and BRs, games that are easy to pickup and put down frequently, are popular with the younger generation of gamers (who are generally much more impatient) or people who have little time (because of family/work) since they are all games where there's no grinding at all and you start at a level playing field with everyone at every match/game -- instant gratification at the cost of meaningful persistence/progression.

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I'm struggling to see your point here OP..

Farming the EXP to fill the mastery bar was easily one of the easiest parts of this skimmer collection, specially for those of us who struggled to complete it due to the massive number of bugs that constantly screwed up our progress.Almost every core world event and NPC I had to interact with was bugged.. I had to group up and swap maps over and over again to get past some of them.. and after all that I had to beat the race without the diving skill because the adventure too was bugged.Once all that was done getting the EXP was almost effortless, just ran events and metas in PoF and LW4 maps.. it was that easy.

Honestly the only major criticism I have about unlocking some mounts/abilities is when Anet impose mandatory waiting times to slow down my progress.The Skyscale has by far been the most annoying one because of this, and while I appreciate that it has been improved over time and I get what Anet were trying to do by making it the way they did, it doesn't help those of us who were forced to wait so long to get that collection done because of those stupid and arguably unnecessary time gates.. it's just a game after all, just let us play it lol.

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What grind? The 2 million xp you needed for the new Skimmer feature? That took me like 30 minutes or so doing events and bounties with a group of random people I collected in the Crystal Oasis. I activated some xp boosters as well that you get plenty of in this game, too many if you ask me since it's cluttering up my bank. I also keep a fair amount of Casino Coins in my bank to top of the xp bar at the end. It's not a grind at all if you come prepaired.

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@Goettel.4389 said:I still need to finish the Skyscale because I hate collections, but I don't want it easy mode after so many have done it the hard way.So it's fine as-is IMO.

I am not the biggest fan of them either but there are enough people in game to help you out if you ask in map chat. There are also plenty of helpful guides if you get stuck somewhere.

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@Goettel.4389 said:

I am not the biggest fan of them either but there are enough people in game to help you out if you ask in map chat. There are also plenty of helpful guides if you get stuck > somewhere.

Exactly. And having used the rental one, I found I much prefer my griffon anyway.

I like them both and combined use via the Crystal Champion skills they extend each others abilities very well. I use the Skyscale to gain extra height, dismount while airborn, deploy glider and mount my Griffon so I have more altitude to use the dive.

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@Goettel.4389 said:I still need to finish the Skyscale because I hate collections, but I don't want it easy mode after so many have done it the hard way.So it's fine as-is IMO.

Yeah, I don't think changing it now would be good. It's not hard. The only slightly challenging part I found was the fight with the 4 djinns, but even that's not that tough if you separate the djinns in the hallways and rooms and have someone kite while the others take down the other djinns. If anything, I found the fight with the legendary corrupted facet to unlock the griffon more difficult.

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@Redfeather.6401 said:It can feel like a gimmick of the quarter treadmill with a tiresome grind gating each new addition.I might get the griffon, but probably not because I think it costs 250g as well as the other things. I definitely won't get the rollerbeetle and skyscale. And that wvw one costs 250g to unlock the xp bar too.

Although, the Griffon does cost 250G, it is in 25G increments, so you can take your time advancing.The Warclaw costs only 8G to unlock. You are thinking of the in-game special Warclaw skin, obtainable for 200G. Cool, but not necessary to obtain/use the Warclaw.

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OP, don't take this the wrong way, but you might not be doing the activities that make xp just fly by. These are bounties and meta events. If you're just running around killing stuff for your XP, no wonder it's going slow. I'd be complaining on the forums if I was trying to get 2 million xp killing sand eels in the desert.

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