Guild Wars 2

So for a laugh, I fired up GW1 last night.
Yes, it’s clunky.
Yes, the combat is nowhere near as fluid as GW2’s.
Oh dear gods, how I missed being able to jump and climb over the scenery.

Yet immediately, I was struck by how my build wasn’t tied to my gear.
I could quite happily change my entire build without having to buy new equipment in order to be effective. My gear didn’t determine my core attributes.

First off, I’m wondering what made ArenaNet move away from this wonderful state of affairs.
Secondly, I’d like to plead that they change GW2’s gear system back to something more like the GW1 one. This is the only way to ensure balance without encouraging grind.

It moves away from encouraging unhealthy playstyles where players are funnelled into repeating particular content in order to ensure that they have the “Best in Slot” gear.

At the moment, it’s an abusive system, using cheap tricks to keep the user-base playing.

If nothing else, I’d love them to separate appearance and stat’s in Armor. Armor restrictions are simply that, restrictions. It’s annoying when you see appearance items and can’t have them. All this does is create frustration…

DeWolfe.2174:

If nothing else, I’d love them to separate appearance and stat’s in Armor. Armor restrictions are simply that, restrictions. It’s annoying when you see appearance items and can’t have them. All this does is create frustration…

This would remove the entire transmutation stone system and a major revenue source for ANet.

The OP would rewrite the very nature of the game nearly from scratch.

Sorry, none of these have any chance of ever happening, ever.

It may not have a chance of happening, but at least it helps highlight logically how exploitative their current rule implementation is.

Yeah, the current armor system is inelegant. The original GW system did have a beautiful simplicity to it. The new armor system probably wouldn’t be too bad except that the complexity gets compounded by the trait system. It’s kind of like the secondary professions all over again. In GW, they had a complex skill system that became cumbersome with secondary professions. By themselves, skill complexity or secondary professions would be fine, but when combined the complexities compounded and became a mess. That’s essentially what’s happening here. Either the armor system or the traits would be a fine way to build your character, but when combined the complexities compound and become very cumbersome, especially to casual players like my wife.

It’s a real problem, because no matter what people say, your build is utterly dependent on your gear, and gearing in GW2 takes a LOT longer than it did in GW1.
Let alone which, if you want to be flexible, you’re going to end up with 3 or more complete sets of gear in order to properly spec. In ecto alone, that’s going to cost you 180+ if you’re crafting.
This is prohibitively expensive, and downright unachievable for alts now that they’ve added ascended gear with even longer acquisition times.

Gear and gear stats are only important to those Elitist players that feel they need to be the best of the best and blah blah.

Gear is really not that important, you can be effective no matter what gear your in, you may not be AS EFFECTIVE but you can still be effective. The problem is to many people over the years have gotten this mentality from other games that gear means everything, in Guild wars 2 it doesn’t, it is only a small fact in the over all picture.

I ran a fractals level 6 at the time with my ele in level 50 gear, there were 2 people in Zerker gear and everyone else was in at least 80% exotics from dungeons or karma. Yet nearly every boss fight I was the only one to not die and usually I was the one resing people. One of the fights took nearly 12 minutes but I downed the boss by my self, Yes I could have made it in 8 minutes but the point is I could still do it. Skill is by far more important that gear.

So I guess to link this with the OP’s original statement, Gear does somewhat work like it does in Guild wars, the problem is not in the gear or the game, it is in the mentality of the player. I mean I guess if your a Numbers cruncher that needs to be the best of the best of the best sir then gear is your #1 priority. Although it is possible to be effective with basic gear.

“This would remove the entire transmutation stone system and a major revenue source for ANet.

The OP would rewrite the very nature of the game nearly from scratch."

Umm… yeah, no it wouldn’t. You would still need transmutation stones. You’ll either have one of two situation. You like the look or you like the stats. Then you’d simply purchase the new stat’s and STILL transmute them unto the existing appearance item. Or, you buy a new appearance item and transmute them onto the existing stats. Nothing changes….

A more elegant system would be to not list all the items by armor classes in purchase panels. Give us the choice of all appearance items and have the game check your armor class and give you the appropriate stat’s when purchased. Again, it’s separating stat’s from appearance.

How anyone can attempt to apply a logic argument to a game that has Dragon’s and magic in it, I don’t know either. A pair of undies can be “Heavy Armor” if they are enchanted

Kaimick…. if you go into any area that scales with blues or greens on, you’ll scale to the more than the equivalent 80 in greens or yellows. You’d scale more toward Rares/Exotics because blues and greens are the best lower level characters can have. A 50 in Rares would scale very well indeed. Especially an Ele with it’s inherent healing capacity.

Though yes, play style does make a difference too. But, you’ll also hit a hard ceiling in Fractals without better gear.

DeWolfe.2174:

Kaimick…. if you go into any area that scales with blues or greens on, you’ll scale to the more than the equivalent 80 in greens or yellows. You’d scale more toward Rares/Exotics because blues and greens are the best lower level characters can have. A 50 in Rares would scale very well indeed. Especially an Ele with it’s inherent healing capacity.

Though yes, play style does make a difference too. But, you’ll also hit a hard ceiling in Fractals without better gear.

True but that isn’t till fractal level 10 and above, Although where I did say that gear was not that important, gear still has an importance and that is one of the situations.
But even still you don’t need the best of the best gear, hell you don’t even need agony resist till level 15 fractals, although that isn’t because you need the ascended gear because of stats you need the ascended gear because of the infusion slots. If rare or exotic gear had infusion then ascended wouldn’t be needed.