Seijin is Disappearing!!!

[Seijin]

Okay, so I've been thinking about this for a while now and GW just isn't keeping my interest anymore. It has nothing to do with the mental breakdown we all experienced after the meeting. I just can't stay interested in the game. I'm tired of grinding for titles (most of the time I fall asleep while doing so), I'm tired of farming (it serves no purpose except to get more stuff and waste my time I can be enjoying other things), and I'm bored most of the time. GWEN doesn't even seem fun to me anymore and I have almost no interest in going through it with all of my primary characters. It seems like ANet wants people to grind for titles, armor, and what not to try and keep people busy until they launch GW2. At this point, I might be done with most online gaming. I might just stick to console gaming. The other thing is, we just aren't that active in game (we have a roster of 90 people and maybe 1/4 at best show up and play regularly) and don't group together very often to do things as a guild or an alliance.

I'll still come around Saturday nights if you want to go through the game Hawk, I won't ditch you on that since we started it together. If anyone else wants to go through GWEN together or do dungeons PM me and we can try to set up dates to go through the game as most of my characters are around the Hall of Monuments or Gunnar's. Other than that I'll show my face here and there in game to see whats up or perhaps see if my interest in GW is rekindled in any way. If an alliance or guild event does actually happen, I'll do my best to be there. I'll probably also show up on AIM sometimes, so if you need another person for any PvP and I'm available, Wyrm can get a hold of me. And of course, I will still be checking the forums.

If anyone has XBox 360 and goes online, PM me and I can give you my gamertag and my AIM screen name if you want to IM me to do something in GW.

This is just a heads up on what my activity level is going to be like. I didn't want people to think I just up and left because i will be around, but don't be surprised if I'm only on once a week now.

[WarBlade]

It seems like ANet wants people to grind for titles, armor, and what not to try and keep people busy until they launch GW2.

Interesting assessment. I'm curious about how you arrived at it. Care to elaborate?

[Hawkmoon]

Interesting assessment. I'm curious about how you arrived at it. Care to elaborate?

Uhhhh...through noticing that the NPCs that craft armor and sell consumables won't even talk to you until you've achieved a certain rank in the relevant title track? How else would you interpret that?

Seijin - thanks for still being willing to accompany me in EotN. I'll hold you to it, because I'd miss your presence! I'll just have to work at being entertaining enough to keep you from falling asleep.

[KingOfPain]

The other thing is, we just aren't that active in game (we have a roster of 90 people and maybe 1/4 at best show up and play regularly) and don't group together very often to do things as a guild or an alliance.

I won't go into the other reasons but it's partly/mostly due to the instancing system GW uses; and it's going to be one of the main factor if I would buy GW2.

It really has little to do with how many people we have active as long as we have critical mass and we certainly have enough people playing GW to have fun, if... I have said it a couple of time recently - All we need is a few good men.
Seems we have a different crowd mentality in GW.

It's probably the best thing to do not to force yourself to play. We all slow down or quit, then come back to it later if there's something worthwhile doing. RB>RBGW

You are missing out if you don't even give HGL a try for 5 bucks ;p

KoP

[Sciros]

Seijin, take as big a break from GW as you feel like but be sure to add me and others in the alliance to your friends list and check this forum section from time to time so you can still take part in fun events ^_^

I totally agree that ANet made a mistake with the way they made EVERYTHING in Eye of the North linked to those title tracks (and at the same time didn't scale those tracks well enough to keep you from having to grind your ass off). If I want to grind for armor and monster farm and redo dungeons over and over, I'll do it where it's better done - World of Warcraft. ANet should have stuck with what they do well -- privilege skill over time spent, and EotN craps all over that initial mentality/approach.

Alphas, flex some muscle for all our sake!

[Seijin]

Interesting assessment. I'm curious about how you arrived at it. Care to elaborate?

Lets see, since most titles aren't account based and most people don't play just one primary character (those that play a fair amount of PvE at least) there's a lot of titles that take a lot of time to get.

These two cost a lot of money which means grind for money to get the items, grind for collectables during events, or buy money or the items (against EULA), to get them.
Candy title
Drunkard

Then there's the really stupid title tracks. I don't care how many lockpicks you break or save, those two title tracks are best gotten during the boardwalk events unless I've missed some other way to get them. Only grind required: Gold to buy the tickets. They are account based, but the amount of points needed is ridiculous.
Lucky
Unlucky

The really long title tracks that can be a headache:
Cartographer
Vanquisher

Just to unlock armor crafters and make PvE skills more useful: Rank 5 just to unlock the armorer really sucks. You can't tell me you get rank 5 just through regular play through PvE. I have rank 5 on Mune in everything except Vanguard. In each case I had to basically "vanquish" entire areas to get to rank 5.
Asuran
Vanguard
Norn
Deldrimor

Asside from the titles that you get from completing mission+bonus in the previous 3 campaigns, everything is basically a grind now for titles. And now if you want destroyer weapons you need special rare gem crafting materials...I got tired of trying to go after vabbian armor. Again, you either buy those materials for lots of gold or grind by going through dungeons in hopes of getting one from a chest. And there's no way I'm doing this with 10 primaries.

WB, maybe you like doing all that stuff. I personally don't right now. I also am just bored with the game. Probably if I wasn't as bored as I feel, I wouldn't mind going after titles and going through dungeons more often. Honestly, I have more important things to do than grind for things I really don't need. As I said, GW is just a game to me. When I get tired of it, I will leave it. I hold no huge attachment to it. And I by no means am saying GW sucks now and I'm going to move to its rival, WoW. I just have no interest in it or online gaming at the moment. I was thinking of trying HGL, but right now, I don't want to get into another online game. Like I said, I'm going to mainly be playing my console games. After all I have all 3 systems, and I've been neglecting them all.

[Lurker Wyrm]

I have 3 letters for you: GvG. Show up, help us beat up stupid people, sign off.

Honestly, in the time I've had GW:EN, I've played about 5 hours or so of the PvE and it's already pretty much lost my interest. Really glad I found it on sale and didn't have to pay full price for it.

[WarBlade]

Alphas, flex some muscle for all our sake!

Check out the update notes.
Update - Friday, October 12, 2007


PS. The part where "It seems like ANet wants..." (which was the intriguing part from my P.O.V) hasn't been effectively addressed. Keep trying.

Honestly, I have more important things to do than grind for things I really don't need.

That's the thing that really cracks me up about the title grind complaints. If people really don't need these things then why buy into the compulsion to keep grinding away for them? Sure, exactly 10K Kurzick or Luxon Faction might hit hard because that hurdle needs to be crossed to unlock a large chunk of the game, but do people really need to scrape a title track for a particular armour set? No, they want the particular armour as opposed to needing it, so that compells them to grind for it.

So ArenaNet goes and dangles a carrot for people to chase, hoping that the design is right and the chase will be fun, then people shoot back that the chase isn't fun. Some of the comments about "needing" things edge into the ridiculous and comedy ensues.

I find myself reminded of Diablo II where players always wanted the biggest and brightest, the particular chase items that would make their characters so much more efficient at killing monsters faster, and then when such items finally became available, "Diablo II is too easy. Make it harder BattleNet!" Then along comes Realms Beyond, who sets self imposed challenges that make Legendary Survivor titles look like a walk in the park, who carried on into this new game... and started complaining that the comparatively easy title prgression to rank 5 is too much... Cue "Double-U Tee Eff" moment right there people because I'm officially surprised to read these complaints coming from this guild!

Going back to the "ArenaNet wants" comment, I'm pretty sure that the objectively is quite simply they want the player to have fun. They might not get the design right every time, but they do a pretty good job at it from what I've seen. After all, we're still playing this game two years down the line so they must have got something right. 8)

[Sciros]

WarBlade, I think the main difference between the approach ANet took with EotN as opposed to the previous three releases is the fact that skills (granted, PVE-only) are linked to how much time you spend playing. Now, that's *akin* to raising the level cap in PVE, sure, but I preferred it when my skills were linked to how many points I put into something like Strength, not how many thousand Rampaging Aurochs I put down. The way it is now, the new skills didn't really give me too much more to do and too many new builds to try because I don't have the time to grind towards making them very usable IMO. So... that's my beef hehehe

But it seems they're addressing that somewhat. Good deal.

[Hawkmoon]

Then along comes Realms Beyond, who sets self imposed challenges that make Legendary Survivor titles look like a walk in the park, who carried on into this new game... and started complaining that the comparatively easy title prgression to rank 5 is too much... Cue "Double-U Tee Eff" moment right there people because I'm officially surprised to read these complaints coming from this guild!

I think you're confusing things a bit, WB - there's a difference between being hard and being tedious. We at RB have never shied away from hard challenges - I think the complaints you're seeing now are directed at the tedium of grinding. At least that's how I see it.