Slave To The Grind

[KnightFalz]

Patient: It hurts when I do that.

Doctor: Stop doing that.

If you don't like grinding, stop grinding. You get to choose your own pace of advancement, so select one you can enjoy. If there is no pace you can enjoy, then the grind isn't the issue.

[Isp]

Patient: It hurts when I do that.

Doctor: Stop doing that.

If you don't like grinding, stop grinding. You get to choose your own pace of advancement, so select one you can enjoy. If there is no pace you can enjoy, then the grind isn't the issue.

Stop grind means to leave the game. Without grind you only can do dimensions & role play. People complain because they used to love the game, but currently you have binary choice: to grind or to move to something else.

[Clowd]

Stop grind means to leave the game. Without grind you only can do dimensions & role play. People complain because they used to love the game, but currently you have binary choice: to grind or to move to something else.

Grind is necessary, agreed. Grind should have variety to be fun. Without variety, grinding can get very boring very quickly.

[Samuraiko]

Someone in discord gave me a guestimation of 50-500. At that rate it might even be a decent planarite farm.

I really wish I had a picture of my face the first time I inadvertently spawned it. I have a habit of buffing the wardstones as I travel around the game, so I did it to the Shal Korva one right near the porticulum. And then suddenly hear that loud "THUMP" indicating something uber is happening in a zone event. I was like, "ooooookay, what'd I just do?" And then here come the masses of earth invasions and I remember thinking, "oh crap" just before I got buried.

What's even funnier is that as they camp on top of the ruined wardstone, occasionally one of the sheep around Shal Korva will wander into range and like 400 earth invaders just SWARM after it like hell on earth.

[BMX]

Stop grind means to leave the game. Without grind you only can do dimensions & role play. People complain because they used to love the game, but currently you have binary choice: to grind or to move to something else.

I really don't think that most peeps are playing Rift cause it's like playing Barbie dolls...

Grind in moderation is one thing. When it get to the point of requiring 40+ hours a week, another.
Remember the days of Torvan/Lycini? Was a grind, but a doable grind! You could then get essences without playing roulette or shooting craps. How cool was that! RNG wasn't an annoyance like it is today.

[Poshy]

Grind is necessary, agreed. Grind should have variety to be fun. Without variety, grinding can get very boring very quickly.

I think the recent update was an improvement on this already. We have a lot of options to farm intel: rares/caches, zone events, Raid Rifts, dailies, new raid. Personally I like all of these except some of the daily quests.

Essences are keeping LFR TD and T1 relevant with engine farming, I am all for anything that is group content.

Crifts are relevant again, not sure why some think this is a bad thing, I like doing these every once in awhile.

A lot of ways to farm planarite. NMRs are the most efficient, but you can also get these through a lot of other activities as well, I honestly appreciate the fact more people are killing nodes in VP instead of camping at the X Roads (as much, still an army there)

There is an event going on still with seasonal quests... I know a lot forgot about this, but this is variety. I like wardrobe stuff.

So to get the BiS gear you have to grind, some of this is unpleasant. This happens in every MMO. The recent update is a massive improvement on the gating mechanics of the eternal weapon quest. (kill x footholds, x rifts, x SPEs, x whatever, level a pretty bland minion) in that regard I totally agree, it was an extremely unpleasant grind, the grind now offers variety, people just want it quicker.

Where I see concerns is in catch up mechanics for new/returning players, and the possible storm cell gate on upgrading gear.

[Jotunn]

Someone in discord gave me a guestimation of 50-500. At that rate it might even be a decent planarite farm.

From what i remember from back then it was like this: 100 invasions if you didn't upgrade the stuff before striggering them and 200 invasion if you upgraded everything before you triggered the invasions. But definitely be well prepared if trying it solo.

You also have Onslaughts of every plane in the three main NMT zones. Those however only get to 100 invasions and i think no matter if you upgrade stuff around or now. At least these are marked on your map when you are in the zone, compared to PTW ones.

[LucKeyHoleInOne]

For the early invasion phase of the eternal (before Wicket) I spec'd some durability in my cabalist spec with legendary Bound Fate and afk'd at a wardstone in Cape Jule. It's cleric dependent, but it worked lmao.

[AtoningUnifex]

PTW invasions...did some of this as a group of 3 ppl today and we did not bad - I got almost 300 invasions downed in about an hour of effort and lots of that time was spent shardhopping or going to another potential spawn point.

Am curious what it would be like with a full raid group...or would it drop to quickly to be useful?

[LucKeyHoleInOne]

I tested with my brother and we didn't get credit across shards (one on Laethys one on Greybriar for example). I don't know if proximity plays a part, but you could feasibly have an entire zone pretty much swarmed at each wardstone with a full raid split up.

[Galarinn]

You will only get credit for invasions that you actually hit. So groups of more than three take the chance of not getting credit for every invasion. Although as a Healer you would get credit for every person you heal while they are attacking an invasion.
This has been my experience at least.

[Iphigeneia]

Remember the days of Torvan/Lycini?

I never thought I'd say this, but:
I miss that grind. Unlike the current grind for essences, rep, and currency, the Torvan grind had a finite end: You reached Venerated, you bought your cape and lessers (and ones for your alts), and along the way you looted essences that dropped into the chest. The grind in VP? not only is it character specific, but there's more of it, and there's no end, because by the time you've got your tank essences and your dps essences and your trinket oh! now you have to upgrade gear. And they just kept adding more grind along the way so everytime you thought you were done there just got to be more.

Trion, get rid of the stellar triggers and do SOMETHING to make this new player/alt friendly.

[Leocadia]

I think Iphigeneia hit it on the head. The grind in previous expansions had a definite end in sight. Most people can bring themselves to do something soul destroying for a brief period of time if they can see the end and the definite reward. This expansion, however, has added a grind with no end in sight. And not only does it have no end, but it also doesn't have a definite reward in some cases. So you get grind to RNG ad infinitum. This is not fun.

Also, I understand that people are expecting games to be grindy, which in itself is a problem. When did games go from something that people find entertaining and fun to something that makes you want to kill yourself. There's a distinct difference between doing tasks that take a long time but are fun enough so that you don't notice, and tasks that are so boring, pointless, repetitively un-fun, yet rather necessary if you want to enjoy all aspects of the game.

If you ask me, Trion missed the target by about a mile. It's like they did a 180 turn from the target before firing. And before the usual suspects come to say "don't do it if you don't like it" let me finish with this:

I LOVE meaningful and (moderately) challenging group content; which to me means raiding. I HATE that in order to be able to raid and not be a drag on my group these days I have to spent countless hours outside of raids camping VP crossroads and gambling with my wallet for more IRC for more chances at being disappointed in addition to all the other abominations this game now has (looking at you active upgrades / planarite / plat grind / gear suffix / silly upgrade paths / fragments / etc).

[sirddiggby]

I think the recent update was an improvement on this already. We have a lot of options to farm intel: rares/caches, zone events, Raid Rifts, dailies, new raid. Personally I like all of these except some of the daily quests.

Essences are keeping LFR TD and T1 relevant with engine farming, I am all for anything that is group content.

Crifts are relevant again, not sure why some think this is a bad thing, I like doing these every once in awhile.

A lot of ways to farm planarite. NMRs are the most efficient, but you can also get these through a lot of other activities as well, I honestly appreciate the fact more people are killing nodes in VP instead of camping at the X Roads (as much, still an army there)

There is an event going on still with seasonal quests... I know a lot forgot about this, but this is variety. I like wardrobe stuff.

So to get the BiS gear you have to grind, some of this is unpleasant. This happens in every MMO. The recent update is a massive improvement on the gating mechanics of the eternal weapon quest. (kill x footholds, x rifts, x SPEs, x whatever, level a pretty bland minion) in that regard I totally agree, it was an extremely unpleasant grind, the grind now offers variety, people just want it quicker.

Where I see concerns is in catch up mechanics for new/returning players, and the possible storm cell gate on upgrading gear.

what update are you talking about? nothing has changed the way to acquire intel is the same its always been, other than the new raid, and i hear thats pretty low and requires boss kills which not many are even going past one on NA.

adding intel to dungeons, now that would actually be a big change like that other thread asked for.

[LucKeyHoleInOne]

adding intel to dungeons, now that would actually be a big change like that other thread asked for.

But you'd have to use IRCs to get any!