Guild Wars 2

I see GW2 trying to cater to a multitude of individual players across the board and to some extent I find that admirable. Each person wants to play the game in a specific way whether the rest of us deem it good or bad. The issue for me is that I came to GW2 to get away from the standard MMORPG’s that I have played for years. The promises and philosophies that were expressed by Anet for GW2 painted a picture of a game that would offer you a multitude of ways to experience the game and enable the progress of your character. Once you reached maximum level you’d then have content in the form of crafting, exploration, hearts, events, sPvP, WvW, Dungeons, etc. You would also have Exotic Armors as your final armor to work on and at that point you’d be on even footing in all situations. The Legendary Items implemented would simply be graphic upgrades to show off on your character.

With the recent patch/event we are given a new set of equipment (Ascended) that is supposed to be a bridge between Exotic and Legendary. A bridge I might add that was from our knowledge supposed to never exist and not needed as we saw in GW1. The addition of the Fractals was content for those PvE players who felt there was not enough “end-game” to keep them busy, when GW2 had never promised them a traditional end-game grind like you would find in WoW, EQ, etc. The increased stats on items added and to be added make them a must for those who wish to remain competitive in PvE or WvW. Yes, you can argue that skill beats out increased stats, but with the + Stat % we are seeing currently becomes a full set (Ascended/Legendary) your skill threshold will vanish rather quickly.

For those who enjoy sPvP as their main focus in the game they are untouched by these changes. Gear is Normalized to create an even play environment. This way it has the potential of really helping them push into e-sports once they get Spectator Mode and other bells & whistles added in.

WvW like sPvP is a main focus for another large contingent of us. Whether you say it doesn’t require skill to PvDoor, zerg people down, etc is not the argument. This is a large scale version of PvP (Which unfortunately also has PvE implements that create other issues such as Vista/Puzzle camping and the such) where we coordinate efforts to obtain objectives. You also send solo/duo scouts, small skirmish teams, etc to obtain various other easier objectives or to cause your enemy to break apart to deal with multiple attacks. It’s not always Zerg V Zerg as small scale fights are still quite plentiful. We go out and we fight for server pride, personal status, or simply to kill the opponent. The majority of us have no desire to run dungeons and we farm just enough (if needed) to purchase gear or siege.

My proposal: Just as sPvP has an Exotic threshold it would be nice to extend this to WvW as well. You can leave all of the PvE aspects in WvW and allow new players to come in auto-leveled to 80 to gain experience and such, but Normalizing the gear would keep things in an even footing for all involved. Now I am not asking that you give us the sPvP armors, full skill sets, and freedom to pretty much act like an 80 without the effort. I am asking that you put a Standardized/Normalized Exotic Maximum of stats on our gear when we are in a WvW environment when equipped with Exotic or better gear.

TLDR: When in WvW zones the stats on your gear never exceed Exotic stat limitations or abilities no matter what equipment you are wearing.

But www was not intended as an equal-playing ground. It was supposed to be dependent on your PvE gear.
And capping the stats to exo ones would go against what they said www will be.
Oh wait… We saw that before!

Amen, you might actually get back half your leaving customers if you do this, including me.

You’re going to have to decide on one of two paths:

A) Make WvWvW incredibly casual to the point of being a joke, since pvpers will NOT gear grind every expansion or

B) Do what the OP says.

hell no.
WvWvW is an inter-server battle where you go in with everything you achieved so far and duke it out with your opponents. Why would you want to put limitations to that? I don’t play sPVP because:
-I don’t like playing with stuff I didn’t work for, so for low lev chars, it’s a no-no.
-I don’t like playing without the Stuff I DID work hard for, so for high lev chars, it’s also a no-no.
And the second line is the whole point. Who in their right state of mind would want to normalize a big free-for-all-anything-goes-brawl? Gear is overrated anyway but I sure as hell do not want everyone running around with the same standardized stuff. Leave that to the sPVP geeks.

No,
If I grind my Butt off as a dedicated player I deserve the advantage of better stats. If you cant keep up I suggest you take that up with Anet. Maybe ask them to put it in the shop or something but you wont touch my leetness.

Narkosys.5173:

No,
If I grind my Butt off as a dedicated player I deserve the advantage of better stats. If you cant keep up I suggest you take that up with Anet. Maybe ask them to put it in the shop or something but you wont touch my leetness.

http://www.arena.net/blog/is-it-fun-colin-johanson-on-how-arenanet-measures-success

“Fun impacts loot collection. The rarest items in the game are not more powerful than other items, so you don’t need them to be the best. The rarest items have unique looks to help your character feel that sense of accomplishment, but it’s not required to play the game. We don’t need to make mandatory gear treadmills, we make all of it optional, so those who find it fun to chase this prestigious gear can do so, but those who don’t are just as powerful and get to have fun too.”

Seems a couple of you are missing the point as it would not be putting everyone on the exact same footing as you and would not be awarding them anything they hadn’t already earned. If they were level 8 in Fine gear they’d be adjusted to Lvl 80 in the equivalent stat Fine gear. If they were level 80 in Exotic there would be no change and lvl 80 in Ascended/Legendary would be treated as Lvl 80 Exotic for sake of equal footing.

Also, this is taking it up with Anet. Hence the post on the Official forums. As for some of the rest it’s just basic trolling/sarcasm so not responding to it.

I share the same view, it would be better that WvWvW had a similar system to sPvP. a) Not only would it solve the problem of gear grinding that may be going to cause Ascended gear. b) Not only would let the players who like WvWvW to play it without having to go uncountable hours to do a given dungeon to get that Ascended gear (as it seems it will be that the case). c) Not only would it put an end to making players who like to play WvWvW to have to stay for a month or more leveling to prepare to have fun. It would also end with the very unfair problem of newbees entering WvWvW with law level (no-traits, no skills) and law level gear to fight against expert players with full traits, skills and gear.

Thank you to the OP.

100% Signed, an addition of progression to PvE should not affect WvW which was balanced around the fact that there was a top tier items easily accessible to all

As soon as more ascended gear is added to the game, it’ll also be available from WvW they said. Problem solved. Also, WvW was never meant to be completely balanced or fair. It’s just a large battlefield. It would be as unfair for people who don’t have the time to get an exotic set as is, but nobody complained about that so far. Only difference is that you can exotics in a variety of ways – which will be true for ascended too soon.

WvW Ascended gear doesn’t solve the problem because we all don’t use Soldier gear. Pow/Tou/Vit gear is heavily in the minority of gear used in the game for the vast majority of sPvP/WvW builds.

There was no complaint on Exotic because it was understood to be your endgame set and it has a multitude of avenues in which to procur it. Now WvW specific Exotic gear is quite hard to get legitimately because of poor badge drops. The majority who actually use the set got it via abusing the jumping puzzle.

Iruwen.3164:

As soon as more ascended gear is added to the game, it’ll also be available from WvW they said. Problem solved. Also, WvW was never meant to be completely balanced or fair. It’s just a large battlefield. It would be as unfair for people who don’t have the time to get an exotic set as is, but nobody complained about that so far. Only difference is that you can exotics in a variety of ways – which will be true for ascended too soon.

False premise: people complained. There have been so many complaints that exotic gear from dungeons about tripled in tokens and they’re account bound. And yes it is a problem for the reason I stated: the people who are actually interested in WvWvW are not going to be playing into this gear grind. And you need a LOT of people for successful WvW. Have fun playing an empty format.

The more we have to farm or grind dungeons, then the less WvW we get to do. This makes us lose in WvW and that is not acceptable to us who work at trying to control EB and the BL’s as best as we can.

I agree. Gear grind in this game is not hard, and I will max it out, but i like the idea of skill based PVP. i guess the people that disagree just want to roflstomp everyone? where’s the fun in that?

i don’t have any problems with gear tiers in PVE and in fact, want them badly, but PVP should never rely on gear. give everyone the same stuff and see who is actually good when they don’t have an advantage.

I very much agree vesper and wish more people did. It grew tiring in WoW having the top players usually wind up being those who had the guild links in order to get the latest epics.

I dont have a real big issue with pve stuff being in wvw. But there should be a way to buy it with karma.

If you are going to allow PvE gear into WvW then you have to allow wvw to enable the ability to purchase it with karma

I have np with pvp items having the same stats but different skins.

Actually I really like the idea. I am usually a strict PvE person, but WvW was kind of fun and I entered a few sPvP matches and they were really good.

Now I find myself in a strange spot, I think sPvP is better thought out than WvW so now I am doing PvE and sPvP but I can’t get myself to play WvW. It feels like worst of both worlds. So yeah WvW in PvP armor looks like a good idea.

You could even put the WvW gates to the Heart of the Mist. So you cold just hop into WvW, since you are geared up for PvP anyway. So yeah I would really like to see that and I would probably never leave the Heart of the Mists again :P