Old player thinking about returning: Did game became less grindy towards stuff?

[Voltron.1043]

Brief story: me and my wife started to play this game on release with whole "horizontal progression" and "once you get best gear you never have to worry about getting better gear" stuff. Game was really fun until we got to "endgame" where everything was pretty much about farming CoF for gold as gold was needed for everything and getting "prestigue" skins like Legendary items were taking long weeks/months on top of having to farm gold to aquire mats/precursors (also it was time where people who uses exploit on release stacked a lot of precursors and forever destroyed market back then). It was like second job. By the time we both got preqursors we were bored to death thinking that every cool skin requires grind like that. Then Fractals came it with "have X gear or kick" and since we were few weeks behind we couldnt progress at all. So since we decided game doesn't respect our time - we dropped it and never came back. 90% of our day time was spend trying to progress the grind towards anything in this game if we wanted to get something cool. It wasn't what we thought GW2 will be.

Now we settled for playing FF XIV in last 2 years where there is pretty much no grind, stuff is easy to aquire and even hardest grind (relic weapons or Eureka armor) don't take more than week or 2-3 weeks while still doing all the stuff game has to offer and nothing is time-gated or you can easy gets tons of end-game cosmetic stuff in no time. Since we are now both adults with job and family - we like that it respects our time. Plus you can have all jobs on one character so no need to get new gear/new chars for anything. Not to mention story is great but that's irrelevant for this post.

So it's been very long time since that in GW2 and I wanted to ask if this game is still grindy as it was back then and requires long weeks to even get one "endgame" cosmetic item and if farming for gold is still a thing you spend a lot of time doing instead of enjoying a game. I know there has been a lot of changes in dev team so I am just looking for honest opinions as money is not an issue to even buy all expansions, but we want a game to respects our time and don't expect us to play it like second job to get anything cool in this game as we love fashion in MMOs.  It's our passion in FFXIV to make new fashion sets etc. and get prettiest glams (cosmetics) for characters.

To comapre I needed 10 relics weapons (Legendary equivalent in GW2) for some fashions in FFXIV I have and it took me about a month and half to get all of them.

I am just honestly stating here my expectations so thank you for your honest opinions.

Edited September 7, 2022 by Voltron.1043

[kharmin.7683]

You may want to look in this forum as there are several other returning player threads which may address your points/concerns:

https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/forum/25-players-helping-players/

[Voltron.1043]

1 minute ago, kharmin.7683 said:

You may want to look in this forum as there are several other returning player threads which may address your points/concerns:

https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/forum/25-players-helping-players/

So I should repost it there? I thought it's more about general state of game then specific help from players as I didn't even start to play the game yet - trying to make my mind if I even want at this point.

Edited September 7, 2022 by Voltron.1043

[kharmin.7683]

No, I've already used the report function to ask the mods to move it.  No need to re-post  😉

[Zaret.1450]

the game revolves a lot around gold, skins gems legendaries, there are lots of things that require gold or in wich gold is an alternative to luck, like pres and infusions.

Now with that said, there are lota of ways to make tons of gold in a few days, fractals, raids, open world metas, strikes, you get a fair bit of gold just doing daylies and weekly things, and equipment is fairly easy and in some cases cheap to get if you know how.

As for metas and balance and finding groups... well it depends on you mostly, if you dont mind leading and rising tag yourself you can do fracs and raids without much worry, maybe youll need more time or you might find some, well, non patient people, but you can play almost anything, power builds are a bit in decay and only recently theyre getting buffed, cof cof anet please buff more the poor powers, but suports are decently balanced(fb and mec are gods but well others are usable) and condis are OP, if you dont realy mind wich build and class to use youre good, if you want a specific class and build... well maybe youll find a couple problems to actually feel comfortable.

Get in and try, youll never know till you do that, ^^

[RadiantWolf.2058]

As a fellow returning player who left like...a week after the initial launch... The game does still require grinding to get those juicy legendaries and to get gold. But it's fine as long as you don't think about it too much. I basically just collect things I need and work on legendaries semi "passively" in the background while I do other things. I am relearning the game at my own pace, getting through the story, trying out different professions and builds etc.

 

Maybe people wince at me saying basically that it's fun if you play casually but...yeah, kinda? Endgame content in GW2 remains endgame content forever. You don't need to rush into it to get into it while it's relevant.

 

If you want to do endgame, though, you can. You just might have to make your own groups so you can set your own requirements. Groups fill pretty quickly.

[Sobx.1758]

1 hour ago, Voltron.1043 said:

Brief story: me and my wife started to play this game on release with whole "horizontal progression" and "once you get best gear you never have to worry about getting better gear" stuff. Game was really fun until we got to "endgame" where everything was pretty much about farming CoF for gold as gold was needed for everything and getting "prestigue" skins like Legendary items were taking long weeks/months on top of having to farm gold to aquire mats/precursors (also it was time where people who uses exploit on release stacked a lot of precursors and forever destroyed market back then). It was like second job. By the time we both got preqursors we were bored to death thinking that every cool skin requires grind like that. Then Fractals came it with "have X gear or kick" and since we were few weeks behind we couldnt progress at all. So since we decided game doesn't respect our time - we dropped it and never came back. 90% of our day time was spend trying to progress the grind towards anything in this game if we wanted to get something cool. It wasn't what we thought GW2 will be.

Now we settled for playing FF XIV in last 2 years where there is pretty much no grind, stuff is easy to aquire and even hardest grind (relic weapons or Eureka armor) don't take more than week or 2-3 weeks while still doing all the stuff game has to offer and nothing is time-gated or you can easy gets tons of end-game cosmetic stuff in no time. Since we are now both adults with job and family - we like that it respects our time. Plus you can have all jobs on one character so no need to get new gear/new chars for anything. Not to mention story is great but that's irrelevant for this post.

So it's been very long time since that in GW2 and I wanted to ask if this game is still grindy as it was back then and requires long weeks to even get one "endgame" cosmetic item and if farming for gold is still a thing you spend a lot of time doing instead of enjoying a game. I know there has been a lot of changes in dev team so I am just looking for honest opinions as money is not an issue to even buy all expansions, but we want a game to respects our time and don't expect us to play it like second job to get anything cool in this game as we love fashion in MMOs.  It's our passion in FFXIV to make new fashion sets etc. and get prettiest glams (cosmetics) for characters.

To comapre I needed 10 relics weapons (Legendary equivalent in GW2) for some fashions in FFXIV I have and it took me about a month and half to get all of them.

I am just honestly stating here my expectations so thank you for your honest opinions.

https://ffxiv.consolegameswiki.com/wiki/Relic_Weapons

From my understanding relic weapons aren't really the equivalent of legendary weapons in gw2, since relic weapons still follow the gear treadmill pattern. If you farm up every new legendary weapon, you don't get additional power on top of the previous ones or even the very first ascended gear, since they all have the same stats. From what I see that's not the case with relic weapons and then subsequentially released new relic weapons.

If you're just interested in fashion, you might want to just look into different gear obtainable ingame or straight up focus on getting gold to trade into gems. Making leggy gear easier/faster to get would pretty much invalidate the purpose of ascended gear.

Edited September 7, 2022 by Sobx.1758

[Voltron.1043]

13 minutes ago, Sobx.1758 said:

https://ffxiv.consolegameswiki.com/wiki/Relic_Weapons

From my understanding relic weapons aren't really the equivalent of legendary weapons in gw2, since relic weapons still follow the gear treadmill pattern. If you farm up every new legendary weapon, you don't get additional power on top of the previous ones or even the very first ascended gear, since they all have the same stats. From what I see that's not the case with relic weapons and then subsequentially released new relic weapons.

They are equivalent of legendary weapons in GW2. There is nothing else in FF XIV that is closer to it. They are also usually the best looking epic cosmetics. Yes, they have better power when new ones are released but people just get them for skins since many of old relics are still best looking ones and people use it for transmog (called Glamour in FF XIV).

That's the closest thing you can get in FF XIV. Basically - most epic looking weapon  = relic ones.

[Sobx.1758]

5 minutes ago, Voltron.1043 said:

They are equivalent of legendary weapons in GW2. There is nothing else in FF XIV that is closer to it. They are also usually the best looking epic cosmetics. Yes, they have better power when new ones are released but people just get them for skins since many of old relics are still best looking ones and people use it for transmog (called Glamour in FF XIV).

That's the closest thing you can get in FF XIV. Basically - most epic looking weapon  = relic ones.

From my understanding they're absolutely not the equivalent, since there are new released with expansions and every new relic weapon "set" is STRONGER than the previous one, basically turning the previous one into almost useless other than for the use of skin and nothing else. This is not the case in GW2. That's exactly the reason difference in time and effort it takes to acquire makes sense and I think having that understanding is crucial before you try to put them as equal (or anywhere near equal).

If you're only interested in skins then might as well farm other ones or even focus on farming gold, turning to gems and then buying the skins. (or even just buying the black lion's skin sets off trading post 👉 https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Category:Black_Lion_Collections )

Edited September 7, 2022 by Sobx.1758

[Gibson.4036]

I was a player that loved the idea of horizontal progression, and was really put off by ascended armor. I left shortly after HoT launch, and came back after PoF was being offered half off with HoT included.

From my perspective today it is much easier to make gold and craft Ascended gear by just doing things I enjoy than it was before I left. There's a lot of endgame stuff to do now, and a fair amount of easy things you can do regularly to get a steady stream of gold without having to specifically "farm" it.

So many players are at endgame now, the mats you need for crafting ascended gear are actually cheaper than mid-tier mats. Ectos build up fast just salvaging rares the game gives you left and right if you are doing most level 80 content.

The most direct way to ascended trinkets is still a little grindy, as it involves farming LW3 zones for mats, but you get enough pretty quickly. If you just play in those zones, you'll build them up as well.

Even legendaries are much more in reach. You can get a legendary amulet through a long, but diverse achievement that takes you through all the LW zones so far. Legendary trinkets Aurora and Vision have their grindy parts, but mostly also have a diverse exploration through LW3 and LW4. If you make sure to unlock the achievements for them first, you may even get a chunk of them done just doing the Amulet Return To achievements.

The generation 3 legendaries weapons (Aurene themed prismatic) are also much cheaper to reach than previous legendary weapons as long as you are willing to wait through the time gates like Antique Summoning Stones. Buy your A.S.S. once a week, go about your business, and in 20-25 weeks you'll have enough A.S.S. You'll have other work to do as well, but definitely more attainable than previous generations.

Edited September 7, 2022 by Gibson.4036

[Voltron.1043]

6 minutes ago, Sobx.1758 said:

From my understanding they're absolutely not the equivalent, since there are new released with expansions and every new relic weapon "set" is STRONGER than the previous one, basically turning the previous one into almost useless other than for the use of skin and nothing else. Is that not the case there?

eh.... no it's not. They do not turn previous ones useless because THE SKIN is the real deal. In FF XIV unless you do savage raiding and ultimates (content that only 7% of playerbase do, hardcore ones) you don't need Best In Slot for anything. Just finishing story always give you gear so you can do all new end-game stuff aprt from what mentioned which is not needed for anything but challange since majority of FF XIV community is casual. Relics are first and foremost: cosmetic skins for fashion.

Again, they are not exact (different games) but they are equivalents of Legos here as they require the longest (for FF XIV) grind to get them and they look most epic and are coolest skins in game.

Edited September 7, 2022 by Voltron.1043

[Sobx.1758]

8 minutes ago, Voltron.1043 said:

eh.... no it's not. They do not turn previous ones useless because THE SKIN is the real deal. In FF XIV unless you do savage raiding and ultimates (content that only 7% of playerbase do, hardcore ones) you don't need Best In Slot for anything. Just finishing story always give you gear so you can do all new end-game stuff aprt from what mentioned which is not needed for anything but challange since majority of FF XIV community is casual.

Again, they are not exact (different games) but they are equivalents of Legos here as they require the longest (for FF XIV) grind to get them and they look most epic and are coolest skins in game.

So like I said: "every new relic weapon "set" is STRONGER than the previous one, basically turning the previous one into almost useless other than for the use of skin and nothing else"

They are not the equivalent, FF simply doesn't have the equivalent of gw2's legendary gear. And claiming they're anywhere near each other just because "this is the highest tier in this game and that is the highest tier in that game" while they clearly are different and one is still subjected to being trampled by the new sets in good old gear treadmill race while the other isn't doesn't make much sense to me.

 

Again: If you're only interested in skins then might as well farm other ones or even focus on farming gold, turning to gems and then buying the skins. (or even just buying the black lion's skin sets off trading post 👉 https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Category:Black_Lion_Collections ). Other than that, the overal acquisition of legendaries is similar as it was with the exception of it being easier to farm up the required materials/gold.

Edited September 7, 2022 by Sobx.1758

[Voltron.1043]

10 minutes ago, Gibson.4036 said:

I was a player that loved the idea of horizontal progression, and was really put off by ascended armor. I left shortly afte HoT launch, and came back adfter PoF was being offered half off with HoT included.

From my perspective today it is much easier to make gold and craft Ascended gear by just doing things I enjoy than it was before I left. There's a lot of endgame stuff to do now, and a fair amount of easy things you can do regularly to get a steady stream of gold without having to specifically "farm" it.

So many players are at endgame now, the mats you need for crafting ascended gear are actually cheaper than mid-tier mats. Ectos build up fast just salvaging rares the game gives you left and right if you are doing most level 80 content.

The most direct way to ascended trinkets is still a little grindy, as it involves farming LW3 zones for mats, but you get enough pretty quickly. If you just play in those zones, you'll build them up as well.

Even legendaries are much more in reach. You can get a legendary amulet through a long, but diverse achievement that takes you through all the LW zones so far. Legendary trinkets Aurora and Vision have their grindy parts, but mostly also have a diverse exploration through LW3 and LW4. If you make sure to unlock the achievements for them first, you may even get a chunk of them done just doing the Amulet Return To achievements.

The generation 3 legendaries weapons (Aurene themed prismatic) are also much cheaper to reach than previous legendary weapons as long as you are willing to wait through the time gates like Antique Summoning Stones. Buy your A.S.S. once a week, go about your business, and in 20-25 weeks you'll have enough A.S.S. You'll have other work to do as well, but definitely more attainable than previous generations.

20-25 weeks?!!!!! 

[Voltron.1043]

7 minutes ago, Sobx.1758 said:

So like I said: "every new relic weapon "set" is STRONGER than the previous one, basically turning the previous one into almost useless other than for the use of skin and nothing else"

They are not the equivalent, FF simply doesn't have the equivalent of gw2's legendary gear. And claiming they're anywhere near each other just because "this is the highest tier in this game and that is the highest tier in that game" while they clearly are different and one is still subjected to being trampled by the new sets in good old gear treadmill race while the other isn't doesn't make much sense to me.

 

Again: If you're only interested in skins then might as well farm other ones or even focus on farming gold, turning to gems and then buying the skins. (or even just buying the black lion's skin sets off trading post 👉 https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Category:Black_Lion_Collections ). Other than that, the overal acquisition of legendaries is similar as it was with the exception of it being easier to farm up the required materials/gold.

Ok, I won't repeat myself since you obviously totally don't listen to what I try to say about them in term of skins.

[Gibson.4036]

2 minutes ago, Voltron.1043 said:

20-25 weeks?!!!!! 

That’s spending 30 seconds a week visiting a vendor. So not a grind, just a time gate.

You can shorten it up with gold if you want.

And if you don’t want the legendary, you can make an easy chunk of gold each week selling your A.S.S.

Edited September 7, 2022 by Gibson.4036

[Voltron.1043]

35 minutes ago, RadiantWolf.2058 said:

As a fellow returning player who left like...a week after the initial launch... The game does still require grinding to get those juicy legendaries and to get gold. But it's fine as long as you don't think about it too much. I basically just collect things I need and work on legendaries semi "passively" in the background while I do other things. I am relearning the game at my own pace, getting through the story, trying out different professions and builds etc.

 

Maybe people wince at me saying basically that it's fun if you play casually but...yeah, kinda? Endgame content in GW2 remains endgame content forever. You don't need to rush into it to get into it while it's relevant.

 

If you want to do endgame, though, you can. You just might have to make your own groups so you can set your own requirements. Groups fill pretty quickly.

Thanks for insight. How hard is to get gold now when you reach max level? I remember in COF it was like 6-9g per hour back in my days.

[Sobx.1758]

20 minutes ago, Voltron.1043 said:

20-25 weeks?!!!!! 

👇

36 minutes ago, Sobx.1758 said:

From my understanding they're absolutely not the equivalent, since there are new released with expansions and every new relic weapon "set" is STRONGER than the previous one, basically turning the previous one into almost useless other than for the use of skin and nothing else. This is not the case in GW2. That's exactly the reason difference in time and effort it takes to acquire makes sense and I think having that understanding is crucial before you try to put them as equal (or anywhere near equal).

 

 

19 minutes ago, Voltron.1043 said:

Ok, I won't repeat myself since you obviously totally don't listen to what I try to say about them in term of skins.

Don't listen? They're far from being "just skins" and I repeatedly explained that fact to you. I'm not the one who doesn't want to listen here -FF's relics are not comparable to gw2's legendaries for the reasons I -hopefully clearly enough- stated multiple times now. I also already told you what you can do if you just want to farm up skins for fashion, but you also repeatedly ignored that. Oh well, good luck.

Edited September 7, 2022 by Sobx.1758

[Beast Sos.1457]

1 hour ago, Voltron.1043 said:

Brief story: me and my wife started to play this game on release with whole "horizontal progression" and "once you get best gear you never have to worry about getting better gear" stuff. Game was really fun until we got to "endgame" where everything was pretty much about farming CoF for gold as gold was needed for everything and getting "prestigue" skins like Legendary items were taking long weeks/months on top of having to farm gold to aquire mats/precursors (also it was time where people who uses exploit on release stacked a lot of precursors and forever destroyed market back then). It was like second job. By the time we both got preqursors we were bored to death thinking that every cool skin requires grind like that. Then Fractals came it with "have X gear or kick" and since we were few weeks behind we couldnt progress at all. So since we decided game doesn't respect our time - we dropped it and never came back. 90% of our day time was spend trying to progress the grind towards anything in this game if we wanted to get something cool. It wasn't what we thought GW2 will be.

Now we settled for playing FF XIV in last 2 years where there is pretty much no grind, stuff is easy to aquire and even hardest grind (relic weapons or Eureka armor) don't take more than week or 2-3 weeks while still doing all the stuff game has to offer and nothing is time-gated or you can easy gets tons of end-game cosmetic stuff in no time. Since we are now both adults with job and family - we like that it respects our time. Plus you can have all jobs on one character so no need to get new gear/new chars for anything. Not to mention story is great but that's irrelevant for this post.

So it's been very long time since that in GW2 and I wanted to ask if this game is still grindy as it was back then and requires long weeks to even get one "endgame" cosmetic item and if farming for gold is still a thing you spend a lot of time doing instead of enjoying a game. I know there has been a lot of changes in dev team so I am just looking for honest opinions as money is not an issue to even buy all expansions, but we want a game to respects our time and don't expect us to play it like second job to get anything cool in this game as we love fashion in MMOs.  It's our passion in FFXIV to make new fashion sets etc. and get prettiest glams (cosmetics) for characters.

To comapre I needed 10 relics weapons (Legendary equivalent in GW2) for some fashions in FFXIV I have and it took me about a month and half to get all of them.

I am just honestly stating here my expectations so thank you for your honest opinions.

The different here is that once you get Legendary gear you're set for life in gw2. With FF14 you have to keep grinding the new gear score when new content comes out. Also, exotic gear is enough to do all content except fractals since you need agony resistance which can only be put on ascended gear. A full set of ascended gear will take you a few weeks at most if you do the right content without getting ascended drops. Ascended is the equivalent of legendary stat wise. 

 

Gw2 being a horizontal progression game makes it so that Legendary gear is a huge factor in its reliability. MMOs need people to play them for a while and thats why most MMOs have you traditional gearing systems. New content comes out, item level goes up. Gw2 doesn't have that. 

 

I have 4k hours in the game and only have 2 legendary weapons, a backpack and a amulet. Doesn't stop me from doing all the content I want to. 

[Voltron.1043]

2 minutes ago, Gibson.4036 said:

That’s spending 30s a week visiting a vendor. So not a grind, just a time gate.

You can shorten it up with gold if you want.

And if you don’t want the legendary, you can make an easy chunk of gold each week selling your A.S.S.

how much and how would I shorten it with gold or how much gold I would need for that?

[Voltron.1043]

2 minutes ago, Beast Sos.1457 said:

The different here is that once you get Legendary gear you're set for life in gw2. With FF14 you have to keep grinding the new gear score when new content comes out. Also, exotic gear is enough to do all content except fractals since you need agony resistance which can only be put on ascended gear. A full set of ascended gear will take you a few weeks at most if you do the right content without getting ascended drops. Ascended is the equivalent of legendary stat wise. 

 

Gw2 being a horizontal progression game makes it so that Legendary gear is a huge factor in its reliability. MMOs need people to play them for a while and thats why most MMOs have you traditional gearing systems. New content comes out, item level goes up. Gw2 doesn't have that. 

 

I have 4k hours in the game and only have 2 legendary weapons, a backpack and a amulet. Doesn't stop me from doing all the content I want to. 

I think about Legendaries only as skins, I don't really care about them being BiS (FF XIV) or that you can modify them for different builds (GW2) as I usually stick with just one class/role as I don't like to level up multiple stuff. Lego weapons in GW2 I want for skins, skins is all I care in MMOs.

Lego armors also do have epic skins like weapons?

[Voltron.1043]

4 minutes ago, Beast Sos.1457 said:

The different here is that once you get Legendary gear you're set for life in gw2. With FF14 you have to keep grinding the new gear score when new content comes out. Also, exotic gear is enough to do all content except fractals since you need agony resistance which can only be put on ascended gear. A full set of ascended gear will take you a few weeks at most if you do the right content without getting ascended drops. Ascended is the equivalent of legendary stat wise. 

 

Gw2 being a horizontal progression game makes it so that Legendary gear is a huge factor in its reliability. MMOs need people to play them for a while and thats why most MMOs have you traditional gearing systems. New content comes out, item level goes up. Gw2 doesn't have that. 

 

I have 4k hours in the game and only have 2 legendary weapons, a backpack and a amulet. Doesn't stop me from doing all the content I want to. 

Again - you don't have to grind for relic in FF XIV for new gear score, pretty much nobody does that for that. The difference between gear you can get from other stuff is like 5 points (615 vs 610 for example, which still gives you 610 overall iLvl). 99% of us in FF XIV do relics they like just for skins. They pretty much offer no power increase for noone apart from pharsers.

But I am not here to explain FF XIV :D.

So how fast you can get Legendary weapon now if you put your mind to it?

[Freya.9075]

If you want good skins, it depends on your taste. I like a few legendaries, but there are so many other nicer skins. If you like the shiny skins, black lion chest skins are in that genre. And many of them are quite cheap on tp. Only thing you wont get is the footprints and special skill effects. 

For example I transmute my ad infinitum as I dont like the skin. But others might like it and keep it. It's all subjective

[Bladestrom.6425]

lengendaries are simply premuim skins with convenience attached that has a long objective chain to get the item. they are not BIS.  re opening question.  GW2 has never been grindy.  'Grind' is a term often used as a negative my someone who does something they feel they have to force themselves to do.  The reality is that GW2 offers endless short/mid/long term objectives and you pick what you want and at what speed,

Edited September 7, 2022 by vesica tempestas.1563

[RadiantWolf.2058]

9 minutes ago, Voltron.1043 said:

Thanks for insight. How hard is to get gold now when you reach max level? I remember in COF it was like 6-9g per hour back in my days.

I haven't done any gold grinding so I can't say but for what it's worth I have 150 gold after being part way through Path of Fire with many maps not unlocked on my account yet and 0 minutes spent actively gold farming. So I'm sure people are right when they say if you actively go out and farm you can make a decent amount pretty quickly.

[Voltron.1043]

2 minutes ago, Freya.9075 said:

If you want good skins, it depends on your taste. I like a few legendaries, but there are so many other nicer skins. If you like the shiny skins, black lion chest skins are in that genre. And many of them are quite cheap on tp. Only thing you wont get is the footprints and special skill effects. 

For example I transmute my ad infinitum as I dont like the skin. But others might like it and keep it. It's all subjective

Since I was considering playing Necro I really like Zhaitan skins.