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

[Urud.4925]

From your post and your comments, I'd say. stick to FFXIV, since it respects your time. GW2 is more or less the same of 7 years ago. The game doesn't give you a legendary weapon in 10 hours (if you start from scratch).

[Voltron.1043]

3 hours ago, reddie.5861 said:

lets be honest, even if u find legendary grindy. what u want to do in this game when let say it all is handed to you?
if there wasnt a time wall from stopping me id make ton of legendaries. this game isnt grindy at all. like i said if they would make it less grindy then i dont see no reason for any PvE player to stay. hitting the same kitten over and over again with the same pattern hows that fun? 😉

Everyone have different definition of fun, that's why I prefer to ask first before I jump in. I don't need time walls to keep playing a game, time walls is what make me not want to play games. Ergo I prefer to get stuff and then don't worry about getting it and just play vs needing to have stuff to get to keep playing.

Everyone are differnt.

[Kaltyn of Torbins Deep.294]

2 hours ago, Voltron.1043 said:

Everyone have different definition of fun, that's why I prefer to ask first before I jump in. I don't need time walls to keep playing a game, time walls is what make me not want to play games. Ergo I prefer to get stuff and then don't worry about getting it and just play vs needing to have stuff to get to keep playing.

Everyone are differnt.

But what are you playing?  No, seriously, you said earlier that you only come to MMO's for the fashion wars.  So what part of the game are you playing?  You could login tomorrow, swipe your credit card for gems, convert gems to gold and buy a pre-built legendary off the TP.  Or you could buy the pre-cursor (except for the Gen 2 legendaries) and all of the mats off the TP and have 99% of what you need to craft a legendary.  ON DAY ONE.  Or you can spend time in the game to get the gold to do the same, but, you'll actually have to go out into the game and do stuff to earn the gold.  For crying out loud there was a gold farm a couple of weeks ago that was netting 50 to 60 gold per hour just fishing.

You can get to level 80 - max level - instantly in this game.  You can train up any elite specialization in an hour or two following an HP train.  You can train up any crafting profession in an hour following a guide.  Gold practically falls from the sky just playing the game.  Oh, yeah, if life gets in the way and you have to go away for a couple of months, you get to come back and not have to worry that all your gear is obsolete and you have to start over from scratch.  Heck, there have even been raids cleared using only RARE gear, not even exotics or ascended.  And PvP, you can go play it naked because all your stats come from your amulet, not your gear!

[mythical.6315]

13 hours ago, reddie.5861 said:

this game isnt grindy

It actually is pretty grindy

[Khisanth.2948]

7 hours ago, mythical.6315 said:

It actually is pretty grindy

If you start wanting every non-essential thing sure.

[mythical.6315]

6 hours ago, Khisanth.2948 said:

If you start wanting every non-essential thing sure.

Define non-essential. 

Im not saying that grind is necessarily a bad thing but let’s not kid ourselves and say that this game is not grindy. 

Edited September 9, 2022 by mythical.6315

[Linken.6345]

17 minutes ago, mythical.6315 said:

Define non-essential. 

Im not saying that grind is necessarily a bad thing but let’s not kid ourselves and say that this game is not grindy. 

Anything above exotic.

[mythical.6315]

31 minutes ago, Linken.6345 said:

Anything above exotic.

Im not referring to just gear with stats when I say grindy. Grind isn’t just gear grind. 

Edited September 9, 2022 by mythical.6315

[Khisanth.2948]

20 minutes ago, mythical.6315 said:

Define non-essential. 

Im not saying that grind is necessarily a bad thing but let’s not kid ourselves and say that this game is not grindy. 

Recently there was a post complaining about the inconvenience of the city portal scrolls. Those things are fairly expensive for what they do. Those would be non-essential. Invisible shoes would also be non-essential. Various multi-thousand gold infusions? Also non-essential. Even if you consider stat infusions to be essential those can be had for much less.

In terms of just skins, legendaries are expensive but they are only around 1% of the skins in the game.

34 minutes ago, Linken.6345 said:

Anything above exotic.

ascended is essential if you do higher tier fractals but recouping the cost becomes very easy if you do fractals

[mythical.6315]

5 hours ago, Khisanth.2948 said:

Recently there was a post complaining about the inconvenience of the city portal scrolls. Those things are fairly expensive for what they do. Those would be non-essential. Invisible shoes would also be non-essential. Various multi-thousand gold infusions? Also non-essential. Even if you consider stat infusions to be essential those can be had for much less.

In terms of just skins, legendaries are expensive but they are only around 1% of the skins in the game.

ascended is essential if you do higher tier fractals but recouping the cost becomes very easy if you do fractals

In order to do high level fractals, a player would need to either grind enough fractal levels to get access to the LFG or get into a group outside of the LFG either through map chat or someone they know. 

The meta achievements have become more grindy as the game as gotten older and the achievements needed for them have also gotten more grindy. This became very apparent with IBS/LS5 but it has occurred since LS1. 

Legendaries have also become more grindy with the EoD ones being the grindiest so far. The extra re-colored skins themselves also are fairly grindy. 

Aside from Legendaries, the majority of rewards added in the game have gotten grindier. 

Just to reiterate it again, as I’ll probably have to do with every post since there will be that one person that misses it, I’m not against grind. Or at least a reasonable amount of it. The EoD Legendaries I took issue with but that was just me simply abandoning going for them. No big deal. 

The game is grindy and has gotten grindier over the years.  I find that something to be really difficult to disagree with. The game being grindy doesn’t mean that all areas or the game have gotten grindier or were even grindy to begin with either. For example, if you do the story and open world events for the sake of doing them then you won’t encounter grind. 

Edited September 9, 2022 by mythical.6315

[Cyninja.2954]

14 hours ago, mythical.6315 said:

The game is grindy and has gotten grindier over the years.  I find that something to be really difficult to disagree with. The game being grindy doesn’t mean that all areas or the game have gotten grindier or were even grindy to begin with either. For example, if you do the story and open world events for the sake of doing them then you won’t encounter grind. 

The game is grindy for achievement hunters and min/maxers. That indeed has increased significantly both in scope (total available achievements) as well as grind to complete newer achievements (even if there was occasional grindy achievements in the past).

The mastery system has added layers upon layers of additional "leveling" which too has increased grind beyond the original level 80 (which its self has been reduced in time to reach).

The game has become steadily less grindy in regards to gearing and actual access to content. Prices have dropped significantly, new methods to acquire gear, hero points, movement, etc. have continually increased and become easier. Access to ascended gear for example has been expanded upon, most gear levels sub exotic are meaningless by now. Fractal infusions have bottomed out. New farms are so high that it takes 1-2 hours to grind gold for most builds at most if having nothing available to begin with.

The continued additions of quality of life features to legendary gear have set up legendaries as a quasi "goal" for many players, increasing the "grind" to reach subjective/perceived bis, meanwhile actual legendary gear acquisition is far faster now than in the past. This perceived/subjective perception does not reflect actual necessities to access content. Ascended gear remains bis with exotic right behind, and both of those gear types are significantly easier to get now than in the past.

TL;DR:

The games core principle of requiring little to no grind to be able to access and play content remains true now as it did 10 years ago. The scope of the game has increased a lot and thus the amount of "optional" grind when min/maxing has increased significantly.

Edited September 10, 2022 by Cyninja.2954

[Voltron.1043]

19 hours ago, mythical.6315 said:

 

The game is grindy and has gotten grindier over the years.  I find that something to be really difficult to disagree with. The game being grindy doesn’t mean that all areas or the game have gotten grindier or were even grindy to begin with either. For example, if you do the story and open world events for the sake of doing them then you won’t encounter grind. 

Yeah, that's what I got from this thread, few more on reddit and logging back to the game (jesus...the amount of currencies..) to play a bit. In MMOs I pretty much love to get the (as someone said here) non-essentional stuff, like skins for example, dyes etc. But I see that nothing changed for that in GW2 and it's still grindy as hell to get those things, which is what stopped me from playing it years ago. For me It's just not worth my time to spend so much time to get one stuff. Some people need it to keep playing games - I get that, but that's what makes me not wanting to play the same games.

Thank you all for your responses and honesty, but seems game is still not for me and this is not what I am looking for to spend my time in. I wish you all great adventures in this and other games 🙂

Thread can be closed.

Edited September 10, 2022 by Voltron.1043

[mythical.6315]

6 hours ago, Cyninja.2954 said:

The game is grindy for achievement hunters and min/maxers. That indeed has increased significantly both in scope (total available achievements) as well as grind to complete newer achievements (even if there was occasional grindy achievements in the past).

The mastery system has added layers upon layers of additional "leveling" which too has increased grind beyond the original level 80 (which its self has been reduced in time to reach).

The game has become steadily less grindy in regards to gearing and actual access to content. Prices have dropped significantly, new methods to acquire gear, hero points, movement, etc. have continually increased and become easier. Access to ascended gear for example has been expanded upon, most gear levels sub exotic are meaningless by now. Fractal infusions have bottomed out. New farms are so high that it takes 1-2 hours to grind gold for most builds at most if having nothing available to begin with.

The continued additions of quality of life features to legendary gear have set up legendaries as a quasi "goal" for many players, increasing the "grind" to reach subjective/perceived bis, meanwhile actual legendary gear acquisition is far faster now than in the past. This perceived/subjective perception does not reflect actual necessities to access content. Ascended gear remains bis with exotic right behind, and both of those gear types are significantly easier to get now than in the past.

TL;DR:

The games core principle of requiring little to no grind to be able to access and play content remains true now as it did 10 years ago. The scope of the game has increased a lot and thus the amount of "optional" grind when min/maxing has increased significantly.

Funny how you ignored the part of my post about how players are locked out of high level fractals unless they grind out fractal levels are find someone that will invite them outside of the LFG. 
 

Shifting the discussion to gearing having become easier doesn’t refute what I said and neither does the attempt to lump everything else as just being towards achievement hunters and min/maxers. 

[Cyninja.2954]

2 hours ago, mythical.6315 said:

Funny how you ignored the part of my post about how players are locked out of high level fractals unless they grind out fractal levels are find someone that will invite them outside of the LFG. 

I did not ignore that part. That has not changed from the past. High level fractals (within the current reward system since around pre HoT, getting into fractals before that would take to long to differentiate and explode the scope) always required ascended gear.

The main difference to before:

- ascended is far easier to come by

- agony resistance infusions have bottomed out price wise

I mentioned all of that in an attempt to make clearer how and where things changed. So even in this case, the game has become less grindy than before and if compared to direct competitors, as well as factoring in the far higher gold/hour rates today possible, it is barely a grind at all.

2 hours ago, mythical.6315 said:

Shifting the discussion to gearing having become easier doesn’t refute what I said and neither does the attempt to lump everything else as just being towards achievement hunters and min/maxers. 

I merely specified where "grind" applies and where it does not. You lumping everything together and simply stating the game is "very grindy" does the game no justice when in fact: for attaining the ability to participate in every and all content, it is not grindy at all.

Far to many players move the goalpost as they engage longer and longer with the game. What used to be:"I can get in and have fun relatively quickly" in the past has become "oh this game is so grindy because I want every achievement and as many legendaries as possible". Turns out, moving the goal post from full exotic, to full ascended to full legendary to full legendary twice over does make the game grindy. Notice how this can change the subjective perception of a player while not actually changing how grindy the game actually is.

The game remains the least grindy by a large margin in the entire market IF one sticks to the base approach of:"what is needed to be able to play every and all content, even on a competitive level".

If one goes for completion, then yes, it has become grindy, as does every game which adds years and years worth of content. Considering GW2 more horizontal approach and content not depreciating as much as in other games, this can be more noticeable.

Edited September 10, 2022 by Cyninja.2954

[Cyninja.2954]

4 hours ago, Voltron.1043 said:

But I see that nothing changed for that in GW2 and it's still grindy as hell to get those things, which is what stopped me from playing it years ago. For me It's just not worth my time to spend so much time to get one stuff. Some people need it to keep playing games - I get that, but that's what makes me not wanting to play the same games.

 

GW2 approach was always:

let players play content as fast as possible, make cosmetics (even with thousands upon thousands of cheap skins) and quality of life more expensive.

This is in contrast to other games where usually cosmetics are either tied to item rarity, and the gear thread-mill makes sure those items are in constant demand while also getting depreciated on a regular basis or cosmetics are added on top of gear quality to distinguish even more.

It seems to be the exact opposite of what you are looking for. In this case, FF14 seems to be the better fit, given you care less about maximizing stats or performance versus having the cosmetics.

Edited September 10, 2022 by Cyninja.2954

[VooDoo.9014]

On 9/9/2022 at 2:22 AM, Khisanth.2948 said:

If you start wanting every non-essential thing sure.

Well excuse me for wanting 100% of what I paid for.

[mythical.6315]

1 hour ago, Cyninja.2954 said:

I did not ignore that part. That has not changed from the past. High level fractals (within the current reward system since around pre HoT, getting into fractals before that would take to long to differentiate and explode the scope) always required ascended gear.

The main difference to before:

- ascended is far easier to come by

- agony resistance infusions have bottomed out price wise

I mentioned all of that in an attempt to make clearer how and where things changed. So even in this case, the game has become less grindy than before and if compared to direct competitors, as well as factoring in the far higher gold/hour rates today possible, it is barely a grind at all.

I merely specified where "grind" applies and where it does not. You lumping everything together and simply stating the game is "very grindy" does the game no justice when in fact: for attaining the ability to participate in every and all content, it is not grindy at all.

Far to many players move the goalpost as they engage longer and longer with the game. What used to be:"I can get in and have fun relatively quickly" in the past has become "oh this game is so grindy because I want every achievement and as many legendaries as possible". Turns out, moving the goal post from full exotic, to full ascended to full legendary to full legendary twice over does make the game grindy. Notice how this can change the subjective perception of a player while not actually changing how grindy the game actually is.

The game remains the least grindy by a large margin in the entire market IF one sticks to the base approach of:"what is needed to be able to play every and all content, even on a competitive level".

If one goes for completion, then yes, it has become grindy, as does every game which adds years and years worth of content. Considering GW2 more horizontal approach and content not depreciating as much as in other games, this can be more noticeable.

Why yes. Because some areas of the game not having much grind must thus mean the entire game is not grindy. /s

You focus on equipment because that’s easier for you to argue against while you ignore everything else as if it doesn’t exist. 

Edited September 10, 2022 by mythical.6315

[Cyninja.2954]

1 hour ago, mythical.6315 said:

Why yes. Because some areas of the game not having much grind must thus mean the entire game is not grindy. /s

That's not what I said.

1 hour ago, mythical.6315 said:

You focus on equipment because that’s easier for you to argue against while you ignore everything else as if it doesn’t exist. 

No, I make distinctions between different goals/approaches players might have and different types of content. Some of which became more grindy, many less. Overall the game has grown and offers a far more variety and amount of content as well as attainable goals. The sum of which can be considered more grindy IF one decides to do all of it, none of which is necessary. That's a pretty luxury problem to have tbh.

Most singular areas, aka comparing the same content now to before, got less grindy. In case of gear pretty much all levels. Acquiring gear has decreased significantly compared to before, even when accounting for G3 weapons at their premium price in case of legendaries. It takes less time to complete a G3 legendary weapon even when buying all materials than it did to craft a G1 back when the game launched, or a G2 when HoT released for example.

Edited September 10, 2022 by Cyninja.2954

[Valisha.8650]

The grind still exists, a ton of time-gated or gambling-gated skins, and now they have nerfed a few gold farming methods.

Stay with FF14.

[mythical.6315]

5 hours ago, Cyninja.2954 said:

That's not what I said.

True that it isn't what you "said" but then there's the fact that you refuted my post by speaking about gear which was not something that I ever brought up as being grindy.  It's as if you thought that finding one thing in the game that wasn't grindy somehow negated everything else that is.

 

5 hours ago, Cyninja.2954 said:

No, I make distinctions between different goals/approaches players might have and different types of content. Some of which became more grindy, many less. Overall the game has grown and offers a far more variety and amount of content as well as attainable goals. The sum of which can be considered more grindy IF one decides to do all of it, none of which is necessary. That's a pretty luxury problem to have tbh.

Most singular areas, aka comparing the same content now to before, got less grindy. In case of gear pretty much all levels. Acquiring gear has decreased significantly compared to before, even when accounting for G3 weapons at their premium price in case of legendaries.

And here is the whole gear thing yet again.  Surprise... surprise...  I guess it is easuier to ignore everything else and instead focus on the one thing that one can easily argue isn't.  Well... except when it comes to some stat sets but whatever.

5 hours ago, Cyninja.2954 said:

It takes less time to complete a G3 legendary weapon even when buying all materials than it did to craft a G1 back when the game launched, or a G2 when HoT released for example.

No it doesn't.

 

 

[Cyninja.2954]

3 hours ago, mythical.6315 said:

True that it isn't what you "said" but then there's the fact that you refuted my post by speaking about gear which was not something that I ever brought up as being grindy.  It's as if you thought that finding one thing in the game that wasn't grindy somehow negated everything else that is.

 

And here is the whole gear thing yet again.  Surprise... surprise...  I guess it is easuier to ignore everything else and instead focus on the one thing that one can easily argue isn't.  Well... except when it comes to some stat sets but whatever.

No it doesn't.

Ignore what exactly? You only stated that the game is "very grindy" without making any distinctions. It's almost as though you are on a loop of "the game is grindy, the game is grindy, the game is grindy" without even taking a moment to think about why it might appear grindy to you.

Literally the very first thing you brought up about the game being grindy is fractal gearing, after your 1 liner of "the game is very grindy".

I talked about legendaries, the current ones are most certainly less grindy which one can notice by the amount of players left and right crafting legendary items every few days (and if taking a moment to do an actual break down of how expensive it would be to craft the items, every single legendary has become 50% cheaper than in the past by now).

I even talked about achievements and while meta achievements have been a thing of more recent years, since season 3 to be more exact, the amount of grind comes from the amount of content delivered and the amount of achievements available. Some of the IBS ones are more grindy or let's say on a similar level grindy as some other past ones (say Bioluminescent in Season 2 which is not even a meta achievement, some of the World Boss meta achievements also take a while even for past World bosses).

Mastery levels have been in  steep decline amount and time wise with HoT having had the longest "grind". In total though, given the increasing amount of mastery levels, yes it is more grindy because of 7 years worth of content delivered.

3 hours ago, mythical.6315 said:

No it doesn't.

Yes it does, because crafting 1 legendary per month with 1-2 hours of game play per day (without fancy trading post shenanigans) was never a thing until recent years. In fact we are up to 2-3 legendaries per month if not going for G3 for any one spending 3-4 hours per day on the game, more for players that do full bounty trains daily.

Edited September 11, 2022 by Cyninja.2954

[Linken.6345]

12 hours ago, mythical.6315 said:

True that it isn't what you "said" but then there's the fact that you refuted my post by speaking about gear which was not something that I ever brought up as being grindy.  It's as if you thought that finding one thing in the game that wasn't grindy somehow negated everything else that is.

 

And here is the whole gear thing yet again.  Surprise... surprise...  I guess it is easuier to ignore everything else and instead focus on the one thing that one can easily argue isn't.  Well... except when it comes to some stat sets but whatever.

No it doesn't.

 

 

Well if gear aint grindy how grindy is it to post looking for fractal 100 opener in lfg?

[Sobx.1758]

On 9/10/2022 at 8:02 PM, VooDoo.9014 said:

Well excuse me for wanting 100% of what I paid for.

You've paid to play the game, not to get instant rewards in your inventory. If that's what you want, you'll need to use gemstore.

[Khisanth.2948]

If playing fractals is grindy why would you care about unlocking to play more fractals?

There are stuff that could be considered grindy like the apple achievement or the kill 1000 mobs x 3 achievements but complaining about fractals unlocks makes little sense. If you don't like playing fractals then don't spend time playing fractals.

[T G.7496]

This is perhaps the least grindy MMO I have ever played.

Way too often people seem to confuse - or at least conflate - the pejorative notion of 'grinding' with the simple act of playing.