11:54 pm, September 30, 2013
281
Casual, End Game, Grind, Tilapia, and You: A story of Friends
SEE BOTTOM FOR TLDR.
"This game is for casuals, It's too grindy, this Tilapia is too wet".
These are the things I see on this forum, and hell, even on the official forums. If you ask anyone who spouts such non-sequiturs, they more than often have nothing to say but "lol ur a fanboy".
So what is Causal and Hardcore?
General consensus is that a casual player is someone who is generally less skilled and do not min/max or care about the nuances of the meta-game of ANY GAME. Whereas a hardcore player is someone who tries to find the most efficient way to play the game and tend to be more knowledgeable and better skilled than causal players.
This couldn't be anymore wrong.
A casual player is simply someone who does not dedicate as much time your average player, and a hardcore player is someone who dedicates more time than your average player.
What does this mean?
Gaming performance has two components Time investment and skill/mechanical factor. A person with more time investment knows more about the nuances of the game and have honed yourself to be the best as you can. Whether it is Street Fighter and knowing how to frame cancel/interrupt, or Pacman and knowing what the Ghost AI is like before/after running through tunnels, simply playing the game more than someone else will give you an advantage over them. Player performance is also determined by a skill/mechanical factor, where your reaction time and reflexes must be honed to take advantage of the mechanical component of the game. The limiting factor of this relationship in most games is the mechanical component: there comes a point where no matter what you do/think, there's nothing the game can do to translate that into a performance advantage.
Games themselves need some level of performance and competition. Even Co-op games require a level of performance, because your ability to play can effect the enjoyment of others, and human beings REQUIRE that in a game. Every gamer at some point has kicked *** in a single player game and wanted to show the world (Just look at all the "Let's Play" Youtube videos). All games, no matter how simplistic or complicated, are designed with different levels of performance in mind.
RPGs by design have always taken the skill/mechanical factor out of the equation and focused solely on time investment. You know mob strengths/weaknesses, you have more skills, better equipment and higher leveled characters. This is the same for MMORPGs, except with a skill/mechanical factor added, albeit a small one due to latency. For the most part, anyone who can operate a mouse and keyboard can play an MMORPG, but Time investment is still the limiting factor.
So a hardcore MMORPG player is simply a person with more time to invest in the game. They will have access to more skills, more resources, higher level, and more knowledge of the game. To do this in an MMORPG, you had to play for hours on end to farm, meet people, do group content, level up, and get equipment. Games ilke EQ and FFXI had such a great time investment factor that it required hours upon hours of time continuous time investment (4 hour exp parties anyone?) in order to reach minimum performance.
With the advent of WoW, the time investment necessary to gain this has shifted dramatically. Time investment in WoW does not become a performance factor until the end game. You could log on for half an hour and play and make progress, which in other MMORPGs was the amount of time necessary simply to form a party to attempt to do ANYTHING. However, Upon hitting max level, the time investment rears its ugly head and becomes a HUGE factor in determining player performance in the form of gear. People with end game gear are simply stronger than people without it, and some content requires a certain level of performance to complete.
What does this have to do with Guild Wars 2?
So people call Guild Wars 2 a casual game. They are correct.
What does that mean?
It means that Guild Wars 2 is not a game where your performance is primarily determined by your time investment. The strongest gear does not take large time investment and only provides a 13% increase in statistical performance. So someone who plays for 8 hours straight will not see much of an advantage over someone who plays for 30 minutes occasionally.
This does not mean that Guild Wars 2 lacks a performance factor. While Guild Wars 2 isn't a super twitch game, it has a much greater skill/mechanical factor than your average MMORPG. Having a limited skill bar but a large number of skills for each player to choose from makes combat a balance of proactive and reactive decision making. Dodging allows you to mitigate damage based purely on reaction time. Players have access to all possible skills at level 30 minimum as well, making leveling from 30-80 all about honing ones use at those skills.
In competitive PvP, all players have equal gear from the get go, so time investment in PVP is based solely on knowledge and experience and not resources gained.
End Game
So we've determined that time investment in MMORPGs is generally the determining factor for performance. In a world where time = money, the average human being wants to make the best use of their time. So if one needs to invest time in a MMORPG to increase their performance, they need to make sure that the time the spend gives them the most lucrative reward.
In MMORPGs all things are not equal. In order to display progression, the value of rewards increase with level and difficulty, so higher level characters who do the most difficult content are promised higher level rewards. That being said, high level content will give more lucrative rewards than doing low level content which requires the same time investment. So in order to make a more efficient time invest in the game, you would realistically spend more time partaking in the most rewarding and difficult content in the game. In the Average MMO, this is your end game content.
What does this have to do with Guild Wars?
ANET tell us that the entire game is the end game. How is this possible? Obviously the max level content gives more rewards than lower level content. There is no disputing this. But in the Average MMO, when you out level content, you get NO REWARD. Other than low level enemy drops, high level character cannot gain experience from low level content and in some games, drop rate and resources are reduced dramatically and generally do give little to nothing which can contribute to your performance progression (Read: end game gear)
In Guild Wars 2, you can still get adequate experience and resources from lower level content Though it is not as much as if doing level appropriate content, it still will contribute to end game rewards. Level 35 and up dungeons give tokens and gold which can be used for exotic gear. Events give money and karma which can be used for exotic gear. None of these require you to be level 80 in order to start partaking in, and none of it requires the most powerful gear to complete. So when they say "the entire game is end game" it means that everything you do will affect your performance progression.
Grinding
So we know that MMORPGs require time investment for performance, and that End Game content provides the most rewards for the amount of time spent and require the highest player performance to complete. So what would a smart person do? They will partake in the most reward content over and over until their time investment pays off!
Well, everyone knows that doing the same thing over and over and over gets boring and tedious. We refer to this as a grind. The closest definition for the word grind as a noun is "A laborious task, routine, or study". The closest definition for the word grind as a verb is "To produce mechanically or without inspiration".
So in an MMORPG, your grind could be a number of things. It can be your activities itself, such as doing raids, dungeons or quests, or it can be how you approach those activities, such as circling a zone from point to point, farming the same mobs and picking the same resources.
Why is Guild Wars 2 so grindy?
Guild Wars 2 can be a grind because of the limited amount of content that is at max level. Frost Sound Gorge and the Orr zones are the most rewarding zones with gathering resources and event rewards, so without variety in the most rewarding content, the content gets repetitive and laborious. The events in said areas are pretty much go from point a to point and **** everything that is in red. If a player wishes to get the most efficient time investment, they will spend all of their time in these zones.
Tilapia
Tilapia is a fresh water fish and is widely available. It is a versatile fish that can be baked, broiled, grilled, sauteed, but sometimes it can be a little moist.
I personally recommend not doing dry rubs on tilapia, especially when grilling, as it tends to trap in most of the moisture. I recommend a nice citrus marinade to take advantage of the naturally moisture of this fresh water delight, allowing it to cook evenly.
Broiled Tilapia with Asparagus. - Serves 2
4 tilapia filets
1/2 cup of lemon juice
2 tbsp spoons of olive oil
1 tsp garlic powder
1 tsp black pepper
1 tsp seasoning salt
2 garlic cloves, whole
1 dozen asparagus spears.
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F
Mix the lemon juice, olive oil, black pepper, garlic pepper, and seasoning salt in a sealable plastic bag and allow to marinate for at least 30 minutes
Place 4 cups of water and the garlic cloves into a pot and bring water to a boil
Blanch the Asparagus in boiling water and remove both the garlic and asparagus
Mince the and separate each garlic clov
Place 2 Tilapia filets and half of the marinade into a foil wrap and top with 6 asparagus and one minced garlic
Cook in pre heated oven for 30 minutes or until marinade has mostly evaporated.
Serve with potatoes or wild rice pilaf
BUT WAIT!!!!!
We have determined that your time investment in Guild Wars 2 is not a large determining factor in your performance. If you spend 8 hours on average than another player, the most you can get over them performance wise is a whopping 13% statistical advantage, ONLY in PVE and WvW.
In PvE, a fully exotic Guardian with Vit/Toughness can STILL get one shot if they don't react in time to enemy attacks. In WvW, a single person, even in full exotics, cannot take on a keep of enemies alone.
So What the hell are we getting at here?
So we know that as far as Time Investment, the cap on return as far as individual player performance is 13%, and that even this is not required to complete any content.
So a pose a question to you all.
Why do you wish to maximize your time investment in Guild Wars 2?
Guild Wars 2 is a casual MMO. This does not mean the game is easy, and it does not mean it is a throw away game. It simply means that Guild Wars 2 is not a game where you will not get a noticeable return from a huge time investment. You can grind all you want, but you neither need to or have to. Even more so, you'll get less of an experience from the game by doing so.
When people tell you that when you rush through the game and grind that you are playing it wrong, they are saying you're missing the point of the game. This game is more of a sandbox game than it is an on-rails theme park game. Imagine playing GTA or Skyrim by only doing the main storyline. Can we not agree that these games are boring without their side quests?
Sure, we can agree that all of the events, no matter what zone, is more of the same, so doing events in Gendarren Fields is no different than events in Mount Maelstorm. But whats the difference between healing as a Shaman in ICC than it is in SLAB? What's the difference between fighting Talbot in the lost city than it is fighting the goons in the bar in the Prologue? What's the difference between fighting Magus than it is fighting Yakra XIII? What's the difference between shooting noobs on Blood Gulch than it is in Assembly?
Guild Wars 2 is no different. It's a game that you play for fun. Sure being competitive and the best as you can is fun and rewarding (that's why I play), but Guild Wars 2 is simply not a game where you pump hours of hours of play time for a performance advantage.
"This game is for casuals, It's too grindy, this Tilapia is too wet".
These are the things I see on this forum, and hell, even on the official forums. If you ask anyone who spouts such non-sequiturs, they more than often have nothing to say but "lol ur a fanboy".
So what is Causal and Hardcore?
General consensus is that a casual player is someone who is generally less skilled and do not min/max or care about the nuances of the meta-game of ANY GAME. Whereas a hardcore player is someone who tries to find the most efficient way to play the game and tend to be more knowledgeable and better skilled than causal players.
This couldn't be anymore wrong.
A casual player is simply someone who does not dedicate as much time your average player, and a hardcore player is someone who dedicates more time than your average player.
What does this mean?
Gaming performance has two components Time investment and skill/mechanical factor. A person with more time investment knows more about the nuances of the game and have honed yourself to be the best as you can. Whether it is Street Fighter and knowing how to frame cancel/interrupt, or Pacman and knowing what the Ghost AI is like before/after running through tunnels, simply playing the game more than someone else will give you an advantage over them. Player performance is also determined by a skill/mechanical factor, where your reaction time and reflexes must be honed to take advantage of the mechanical component of the game. The limiting factor of this relationship in most games is the mechanical component: there comes a point where no matter what you do/think, there's nothing the game can do to translate that into a performance advantage.
Games themselves need some level of performance and competition. Even Co-op games require a level of performance, because your ability to play can effect the enjoyment of others, and human beings REQUIRE that in a game. Every gamer at some point has kicked *** in a single player game and wanted to show the world (Just look at all the "Let's Play" Youtube videos). All games, no matter how simplistic or complicated, are designed with different levels of performance in mind.
RPGs by design have always taken the skill/mechanical factor out of the equation and focused solely on time investment. You know mob strengths/weaknesses, you have more skills, better equipment and higher leveled characters. This is the same for MMORPGs, except with a skill/mechanical factor added, albeit a small one due to latency. For the most part, anyone who can operate a mouse and keyboard can play an MMORPG, but Time investment is still the limiting factor.
So a hardcore MMORPG player is simply a person with more time to invest in the game. They will have access to more skills, more resources, higher level, and more knowledge of the game. To do this in an MMORPG, you had to play for hours on end to farm, meet people, do group content, level up, and get equipment. Games ilke EQ and FFXI had such a great time investment factor that it required hours upon hours of time continuous time investment (4 hour exp parties anyone?) in order to reach minimum performance.
With the advent of WoW, the time investment necessary to gain this has shifted dramatically. Time investment in WoW does not become a performance factor until the end game. You could log on for half an hour and play and make progress, which in other MMORPGs was the amount of time necessary simply to form a party to attempt to do ANYTHING. However, Upon hitting max level, the time investment rears its ugly head and becomes a HUGE factor in determining player performance in the form of gear. People with end game gear are simply stronger than people without it, and some content requires a certain level of performance to complete.
What does this have to do with Guild Wars 2?
So people call Guild Wars 2 a casual game. They are correct.
What does that mean?
It means that Guild Wars 2 is not a game where your performance is primarily determined by your time investment. The strongest gear does not take large time investment and only provides a 13% increase in statistical performance. So someone who plays for 8 hours straight will not see much of an advantage over someone who plays for 30 minutes occasionally.
This does not mean that Guild Wars 2 lacks a performance factor. While Guild Wars 2 isn't a super twitch game, it has a much greater skill/mechanical factor than your average MMORPG. Having a limited skill bar but a large number of skills for each player to choose from makes combat a balance of proactive and reactive decision making. Dodging allows you to mitigate damage based purely on reaction time. Players have access to all possible skills at level 30 minimum as well, making leveling from 30-80 all about honing ones use at those skills.
In competitive PvP, all players have equal gear from the get go, so time investment in PVP is based solely on knowledge and experience and not resources gained.
End Game
So we've determined that time investment in MMORPGs is generally the determining factor for performance. In a world where time = money, the average human being wants to make the best use of their time. So if one needs to invest time in a MMORPG to increase their performance, they need to make sure that the time the spend gives them the most lucrative reward.
In MMORPGs all things are not equal. In order to display progression, the value of rewards increase with level and difficulty, so higher level characters who do the most difficult content are promised higher level rewards. That being said, high level content will give more lucrative rewards than doing low level content which requires the same time investment. So in order to make a more efficient time invest in the game, you would realistically spend more time partaking in the most rewarding and difficult content in the game. In the Average MMO, this is your end game content.
What does this have to do with Guild Wars?
ANET tell us that the entire game is the end game. How is this possible? Obviously the max level content gives more rewards than lower level content. There is no disputing this. But in the Average MMO, when you out level content, you get NO REWARD. Other than low level enemy drops, high level character cannot gain experience from low level content and in some games, drop rate and resources are reduced dramatically and generally do give little to nothing which can contribute to your performance progression (Read: end game gear)
In Guild Wars 2, you can still get adequate experience and resources from lower level content Though it is not as much as if doing level appropriate content, it still will contribute to end game rewards. Level 35 and up dungeons give tokens and gold which can be used for exotic gear. Events give money and karma which can be used for exotic gear. None of these require you to be level 80 in order to start partaking in, and none of it requires the most powerful gear to complete. So when they say "the entire game is end game" it means that everything you do will affect your performance progression.
Grinding
So we know that MMORPGs require time investment for performance, and that End Game content provides the most rewards for the amount of time spent and require the highest player performance to complete. So what would a smart person do? They will partake in the most reward content over and over until their time investment pays off!
Well, everyone knows that doing the same thing over and over and over gets boring and tedious. We refer to this as a grind. The closest definition for the word grind as a noun is "A laborious task, routine, or study". The closest definition for the word grind as a verb is "To produce mechanically or without inspiration".
So in an MMORPG, your grind could be a number of things. It can be your activities itself, such as doing raids, dungeons or quests, or it can be how you approach those activities, such as circling a zone from point to point, farming the same mobs and picking the same resources.
Why is Guild Wars 2 so grindy?
Guild Wars 2 can be a grind because of the limited amount of content that is at max level. Frost Sound Gorge and the Orr zones are the most rewarding zones with gathering resources and event rewards, so without variety in the most rewarding content, the content gets repetitive and laborious. The events in said areas are pretty much go from point a to point and **** everything that is in red. If a player wishes to get the most efficient time investment, they will spend all of their time in these zones.
Tilapia
Tilapia is a fresh water fish and is widely available. It is a versatile fish that can be baked, broiled, grilled, sauteed, but sometimes it can be a little moist.
I personally recommend not doing dry rubs on tilapia, especially when grilling, as it tends to trap in most of the moisture. I recommend a nice citrus marinade to take advantage of the naturally moisture of this fresh water delight, allowing it to cook evenly.
Broiled Tilapia with Asparagus. - Serves 2
4 tilapia filets
1/2 cup of lemon juice
2 tbsp spoons of olive oil
1 tsp garlic powder
1 tsp black pepper
1 tsp seasoning salt
2 garlic cloves, whole
1 dozen asparagus spears.
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F
Mix the lemon juice, olive oil, black pepper, garlic pepper, and seasoning salt in a sealable plastic bag and allow to marinate for at least 30 minutes
Place 4 cups of water and the garlic cloves into a pot and bring water to a boil
Blanch the Asparagus in boiling water and remove both the garlic and asparagus
Mince the and separate each garlic clov
Place 2 Tilapia filets and half of the marinade into a foil wrap and top with 6 asparagus and one minced garlic
Cook in pre heated oven for 30 minutes or until marinade has mostly evaporated.
Serve with potatoes or wild rice pilaf
BUT WAIT!!!!!
We have determined that your time investment in Guild Wars 2 is not a large determining factor in your performance. If you spend 8 hours on average than another player, the most you can get over them performance wise is a whopping 13% statistical advantage, ONLY in PVE and WvW.
In PvE, a fully exotic Guardian with Vit/Toughness can STILL get one shot if they don't react in time to enemy attacks. In WvW, a single person, even in full exotics, cannot take on a keep of enemies alone.
So What the hell are we getting at here?
So we know that as far as Time Investment, the cap on return as far as individual player performance is 13%, and that even this is not required to complete any content.
So a pose a question to you all.
Why do you wish to maximize your time investment in Guild Wars 2?
Guild Wars 2 is a casual MMO. This does not mean the game is easy, and it does not mean it is a throw away game. It simply means that Guild Wars 2 is not a game where you will not get a noticeable return from a huge time investment. You can grind all you want, but you neither need to or have to. Even more so, you'll get less of an experience from the game by doing so.
When people tell you that when you rush through the game and grind that you are playing it wrong, they are saying you're missing the point of the game. This game is more of a sandbox game than it is an on-rails theme park game. Imagine playing GTA or Skyrim by only doing the main storyline. Can we not agree that these games are boring without their side quests?
Sure, we can agree that all of the events, no matter what zone, is more of the same, so doing events in Gendarren Fields is no different than events in Mount Maelstorm. But whats the difference between healing as a Shaman in ICC than it is in SLAB? What's the difference between fighting Talbot in the lost city than it is fighting the goons in the bar in the Prologue? What's the difference between fighting Magus than it is fighting Yakra XIII? What's the difference between shooting noobs on Blood Gulch than it is in Assembly?
Guild Wars 2 is no different. It's a game that you play for fun. Sure being competitive and the best as you can is fun and rewarding (that's why I play), but Guild Wars 2 is simply not a game where you pump hours of hours of play time for a performance advantage.
TLDR
- Guild Wars 2 is a casual game by design
- Casual games are not automatically simplistic games
- Grinding the same content over and over does not give you a performance advantage
- Don't dry rub your tilapia
References
1. http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/70437-casual-end-game-grind-tilapia-and-you-a-story-of-friends/
