Guild Wars 2

Sorry, mods, but this might be an important post for the devs. This is why I reposted from general. You might want to sticky or save for personal use.

All aside, to solve the issue of vertical progression that has plagued many a game developer (if you want the TL;DR version skip to the bold below):

To begin,

By the way, I made a post on the WoW forums a long time ago, concerning level scaling. I’m glad that ANet has incorporated this into their game thus far. But I believe it can be stretched even further than just an enjoyability factor for older content. Older content can give renewed loot and purpose. The higher level you are the more it scales to give you better chances to kill easy mobs to get higher-end loot matching your level. This plays on dynamics very well.

I think the idea here is to perfect the game.

If higher health bars are needed, to give it an Everquest grind feel, then so be it. If it makes the game more stable and enjoyable to have mobs that take forever to kill, then so be it (especially if it gives the entire world scale and grandeur).

After this game has fulfilled what Everquest couldn’t do in its time, then we would move on.

This is the type of model all MMO development companies should take, and it is a correct approach.

When ANet has enough money and resources to work on Guild Wars 3, that’s when they can start pumping out a new Everquest type game with massive worlds, scale, and a long-long time to hit level cap just like in the original EQ. Until then I highly doubt they had the resources to do this in the beginning with GW2.

But agreed, I think it’s a bit easy to level and it doesn’t feel like an achievement, they need to stabilize that by factoring in skill adjustment. Scale how much additional damage can be done when a highly skilled player exploits all his skills to the max. This way there’s an ultimate balance with lvling speed. Not only this, but the leveling pace overall is a bit too fast, it needs to go back to EQ roots. EQ’s leveling system was very flat all-around and slow, when combined with gw2’s skill-based rewards system, it will be a good match. It’s just that the skill-based rewards to be tweaked down a little

As to how much additional vertical progression is actually needed, to perfect the game, that is up to the developers to decide on in the future.

In this vast universe of space and time, it’s hard to say whether things are limited or unlimited, but anything can definitely be perfected. Very zen and hard to swallow, but just my personal philosophy.

It’s also hard to analyze WoW’s future, as they are relying on the fact that they will be able to hold onto veteran players who will just keep doing the newest endgame content. This might be harmful in the end though, as it prevents new players from coming in.

If you want a game that will continue making money even way into the future, and not have an early sugar crash, then you have to follow moderation.

As it stands, Blizzard Entertainment has lost all respect and reputation from its players if you check the forums.

As for solving the issue of vertical progression, there are always new ideas you can try. For instance, for new content patches, xpacs, and ultimately dungeons: it has always been about the newly introduced and difficult mechanics has it not? So what can be done about this here, let’s think: you can keep your items/stats/lvl at the fixed cap and keep it remaining there. But, you introduce new and difficult things you have to do to beat the encounter.

The key aspect here also to maintain the difficulty involved when you face a new encounter with same level gear is to scale down that gear just as they scale down your levels in lower-lvl areas. Also, the primary element to new encounters is the challenge and all that acquiring new and more stat-heavy loot does is to give a sense of power or to be able to beat the next level. It is all skill-based in the end, and introducing new dynamics to challenge the players is the way to go. When you’ve beaten the same boss enough times, then you earn points to scale your armor gradually back up as a lootable drop, and this is a customization system in and of itself because you will have to choose which stats matter more. This is essentially a simple reverse engineering approach to WoW’s lackluster vertical progression approach. In the end, it’s also about a feeling of power and cosmetics, so as new content pushes old content back, old content can still be doable by introduction of horizontal development cosmetics or enjoyability loot. This way the level cap remains forever fixed, and no tearing occurs. This way the artificial difficulty can be introduced in a safe and natural way without introducing vertical progression. This is true horizontal progressive development.

There, your vertical progression problem is solved both on an abstract and discrete level

Enjoy.

There is also a small trick here, if you want content with an even more vertical progressive feeling, then simply apply this reverse engineering and down-scaling to a more extreme degree.*

What people don’t realize about my post here, is that this reverse engineering is just for stat-based items that you normally see in WoW, and all those do is just apply a higher tier of stats. You can still introduce new loot with interesting dynamic applications, but the idea is not to make the loot more powerful.

The key idea here to increase the power of said character is not to endlessly and vertically progress, but once having achieved said amount of vertical power (of which I believe GW2 still has room to work on such as more stable/larger health pools), perfect the smaller dynamic aspects to give said character increased versatility in a minor and balanced way. However, GW2 still needs to work on creating a game that’s not as “twitchy” in a sense by scaling down how much damage can be done by increasingly skilled players.

Vertical progression is not wrong, however the ultimate purpose when it comes down to vertical progression is merely to find the correct lvl at which to cap things and give the entire game enough staying power. After that, it’s all about horizontal progression and introducing new dynamic elements to increase interest or to push the buttons of skilled players. Increasing the power of the character even further would do nothing and would be a repetitive development direction. Giving a character more power can also be done by increasing effects.

The ultimate ideal goal for any dev would be to create a situation where perfect skill/stat calculation/depth planning or whatever you want to name it is required to beat the ultimate endgame boss. This is ideal.

This is true horizontal progressive development.

Why people can´t move on this kitten about vertical progression? It´s only a 3 month game, not an 10 year old game that totally changed his mechanics and give better gear every month.

It´s just some mechanics, they can´t have the time to put in the game on the launch (a lot of other games do the same and i don´t see everyone vertical kitten about this). If they put this on the launch like they wanted you never know about vertical progression.

And given some time they will have new ideas about new mechanics that will need new gears, and it will start again.

Stop here. A game that play the same mechanics forever is boring and stagnant. they said that the ascended gear is the most powerful and will be the last, so there´s no vertical progression, only something to get.

If the gear before ascended wasn´t so easy to get I at least can agree with some of your arguments. But no, exotics is easy as leveling a player. So you can spend more time trying to get your ascended gear.

Wow, you’re mumbling and I have no idea what you’re saying, pls read my post before commenting as it already answers all of your questions. Thank you.

My ideas actually expand the mechanics range, and not limit them, if you read my post the point to horizontal progressive development is to expand diversity. Vertical progression is the exact opposite and just raises the bar on stats every now and then. If you just “want something to get” then read the bold text I posted above as that also answers your question. The feeling from getting more powerful loot can be easily achieved without the need for vertical progression. Horizontal progressive development stresses a new direction and “feel” for powerful loot (a simple outfit change is an example and would match similar outfit changes found in new WoW raids without the need for the actual stat increases) instead of just increasing stats blindly which accomplishes nothing. The key here is to play on dynamics and mechanics like you said.

As for your final comment, that I can agree with, but I already talked about that also in my original post (OP). They need to stabilize and draw out the lvling time span so that it’s similar to Everquest. But by doing that, you’d need a world at the same size and scale as well. For now, a simple fix solution would be to implement a system where highly-skilled players do less (in other words, scaled-down) damage to your character. The more skilled they are the more the diminishing returns on the effective increase of damage they do. This way highly skilled players are still rewarded for being skilled and they are allowed to do more damage, but then it’d also be moderated and also slow everything down and stabilize it so that the skilled player won’t be one-shotting you (or you one-shotting your way to lvl 80).

Pls note, this is not gating, and gating is a wrong concept for the most part in and of itself., except for special circumstances. Gating is something artificial and undesired and does not stress freedom for skilled players to show-off in a sandbox environment. What is ideal is to allow skilled players to progress more rapidly, but also to account for the skill factor by balancing it out accordingly and giving increasingly skilled players diminishing returns on their actions.

Ascended gear is a wrong concept, and to answer your question, you don’t solve the lvling issue by introducing ascended gear. You solve it by balancing out the actual lvling issue directly by making it slower.

And by vertical progression will be what?

There is a level cap at everything and will be like this for a long time I presume. for me if a game don´t give nothing more powerful than what we have at almost from the beginning of the game I can´t see any vertical progression to talk about.

GW1 had some weapon and armor gear improvements in the past. People don´t start vertical kitten about that. It´s logical for some that they will need some new gear.

Making this another two year to get cap level is not make something better, is just making players play wow with another name.

They already downscale not only your stats but your weapon and armor stats when you go to lower locations. My p/t/c engi can´t solo champions from 1-15 áreas without a good amount of work from my side. Even some events I can´t kill mobs 1hitko. It´s just more easier. And I have a 40lv mesmer full rares. I don´t notice great difference in a 25-35 map than my full exotics eng.

And will aways have players who have full playerskill and can beat the kitten from some boss. And if they make everyboss uberpowerful, the mid level, the begginer and casual player will just be disencouraged from play this game. It will be just a elite game.

So there´s no vertical progression to talk about, just people that want a vertical progression or just want people whining about this for loooong time. Solving the vertical issue when there is none is just kitten. No extend the time to get level cap, casual players level up fast enough to enjoy the game and power levelers will always be like this. Changing the skills so elite players will level slower is making slower people (casual and mid players) just telling this game to kitten off. You must never balance a game because some people have fingers and know how to use them, they are a minority and will always be. The boss encounters isn´t for only elite players, if you want that ask anet for hard mode like GW1.

And what I see in a resume in the end. Skilled people must act like kitten because if they don´t do that they will get less rewards and will be scaled down… lol.

And I see you never played GW1. If it was necessary to change an abused skill they always change and rebalance. Even on GW2 there is a lot of skills rebalanced.

From this quote:

By the way, I made a post on the WoW forums a long time ago, concerning level scaling. I’m glad that ANet has incorporated this into their game thus far. But I believe it can be stretched even further than just an enjoyability factor for older content. Older content can give renewed loot and purpose. The higher level you are the more it scales to give you better chances to kill easy mobs to get higher-end loot matching your level. This plays on dynamics very well.

Furthering the abilities of the lvl-scaling innovation:

In order to renew and provide continued interest in older/lower-lvl mob areas permanently:

For instance, the drop rates would be modified so that they would be extremely low, however if a character is able to chain dynamic skills very well he could take advantage of those low lvl areas as a lvl 80 and gain more than the steady rate of drops offered by regular lvl 80 mobs. This is a generic play on dynamics. And it is also quite balanced. Skillful players will be rewarded accordingly, and less-skilled players will suffer a bit more, but this is generally how it is. As with any design work, the devs will balance such skill discrepancies out themselves so as to prevent balance from going through the roof. This is the concept of depth-design. The idea presented with “evening the playing field” as found in some previous game designs such as Starcraft 2 was incorrect because it eventually didn’t allow for skill progression at all. The way you even the playing field for more skilled and less skilled players is essentially just an ordinary balance problem, if highly skilled players are rewarded too much and it generates too large of a gap, that is just a mere balance problem. This is not really an issue.

The idea you have is basically the same as vertical progression but in a more grindy stale way. Gear in itself already provides small advancements in power as you progress, along with traits. Not only that but if you think of GW2 as a teaching tool it actively reinforces the idea of vertical progression as you play throughout leveling and has a base type of gameplay already in place. Smaller power gaps is a design choice Anet made that I really agree with though. If ascended was in the game at launch along with the other ways to obtain it that would certainly of been better as devs have also mentioned to promote more equality for the different play styles and lessen the whole vertical progression arguments.

Actually, it’s less grindy, because you’d be doing the same thing for each individual new encounter or content release. Isn’t this what people want anyway, just more content to do? Think about what I’m saying, because it’s the truth. If those raiders really wanted the levels upon level and stats upon stat increases it’s more of a glory points issue isn’t it? So ultimately, if you think about it, my ideas offer an entrance to a whole new method for dealing with vertical progression, while still giving it the same essential quality.

This isn’t artificial at all, it’s essentially the same. I don’t think my ideas are all too bad, they offer some insight into a new direction. So don’t just take them word for word superficially.

Ascended is wrong, I’m not sure what you’re trying to get at with your last few words. Vertical progression is wrong period, the only way to promote more equality for the different play styles is to have it intrinsically built-in from the start. All that increasing levels upon levels would do is make it so that lower levels can no longer catch up, also you would be one-shotting older content eventually. This is highly unstable and ruins things. Well aside from just talking about vertical progression which I think a lot of people realize the extreme wrongness of.

How about this, for every additional level they would’ve gained beyond the fixed level cap, they get a new stat called Phantom Accumulated Level. The effective level would be the fixed level cap or the effective level at which they have been scaled down to match the new boss encounter. The accumulated or true level assignment would be their total accumulated levels that would’ve happened over time and this can be capped too and is merely cosmetic.

The idea is that increasing stats upon stats is wrong, and it does nothing but destroy things, literally. I hope you understand what I’m saying here, because it literally does nothing to bolster gameplay. If you want the same stat feeling it can be shown and even hovered over your character, however it is completely wrong to reintroduce vertical progression and continue developing on that premise as an mmo dev.

The way to make a character still have progression, but have a stopping point would be to
stress the issue of power development as a means not to increase power for the sake of power but to balance the game ultimately
This acts like a slope, early on you play more, you get more increases you become more OP than the other guy who plays less, later on it gets more and more slight but you still get power but it serves not to throw the game out of balance but to balance it. Also this slope mixes well with skill because by then you’d have a lot of practice.

adding dynamic skills to balance out the game while intentionally making some things early on imbalanced, serves as a process to not only balance out the game for the future, but to make it so that character progression can serve to enhance the power of said character and also to progress it. But these would be slight changes that favor balance rather than strictly for adding power, the power is fixed, but the idea is to intentionally put in some imbalance early on, to allow for character progression later on which ultimately serves to balance the game through slighter and slighter changes with dynamic loot.

This also acts in the inherent nature of horizontal development.

The idea is that character progression serves to balance and perfect the game. This has to be planned out somehow though I don’t know how it’s going to be done honestly, but I have a feeling this is the way to do it.

You’d have to plan out some sort of initial imbalance, so that in-between this and the final balance point, you’re constantly improving the balance by tweaking it. The balance changes would go from being major to minor over the course of a long period of time. Thus a person who comes back into this game say 10 years later still can play it but only have a moderate disadvantage compared to his opponents because they’ve collected wealth for PvP (not minor or major, but moderate which is bad enough).

This is essentially also the process for character progression and power improvement (sense of power based on small changes rather than OP ones). Of course, in the beginning the changes would be a lot bigger.

For example, a dynamic skill called flamesword, allows you to swing a particular enchanted sword initially at a preset level of 150 radius without actually making melee contact which is different from a projectile or a nova because it would be instantaneous and it would also be different from mere increased range of said weapon which would still require a swing (the radius is already initially balanced), with the first major “meta-depth” balance and power improvement process change it would swing to 155 (i’m saying 155 to show the slight change, but in reality it’d be more like 200) radius. Someone who hasn’t played a long time thus has to catch up.

But here’s the awesome thing: people who have played equally long as the character with the new and improved flamesword 155 would be able to loot a stat called reduction of flame-sword 155 radius to 150. Thus that would be the counter-play and you wouldn’t have to increase the power of the guy trying to counter the flamesword 155 as well which would be vertical progression and throw things out the roof eventually since he’d have to increase his range as well and eventually everything would be blown out of proportion. Instead you simply keep the #’s fixed once again.

But for the person who hasn’t played in a long time and comes back and sees the veteran who’s accumulated the flamesword 155, it is still only a slight shift in OPness for the veteran, and it really wouldn’t be breaking any balance, since the balance could be corrected by playing a bit more and accumulating the “reduce flame-sword 155 radius to 150”. The radius is small enough to provide a small advantage but still not make the person want to drop the game because he can’t catch up. Of course, you could make the radius eventually as large as 300, or shift it to any # down the line, and it wouldn’t matter because eventually you could acquire a stat drop to “minus” or “subtract” that advantage.

Edit: correction, a melee weapon that insta hits from a distance isn’t correct, how about just a regular nova. That way 1v1, there wouldn’t be as OP of an imbalance, but in a group it might for instance do very minor splash damage in a large radius. I think this is a better example of freedom of allocation.

Thus, the initial balance was there, and the balance will forever be there no matter how much depth and how much expand you put into the game through horizontal progression development 10 years down the line.

This is the metric of true horizontal progression, without vertical progression, while still adding depth, power, character progression and even improving the balance in a slope and eventually perfecting the game.

It is paradoxical, but it is possible, to progress vertically without vertical progression. It is up to the devs to assign the timeframe in which it takes to “catch” up to veterans 10 years down the line. And it’s really up to their freedom of choice what to set it at. The way it works is to once again make it so that the time it takes to loot something the veteran has that the guy who wants to catch up doesn’t eventually goes from taking a long time (lvl 1-80), then eventually less and less in a downwards slope so that he can still catch up and not feel sad (lvl 80 fixed meta-game). So this works for loot tables too. This way the catching up process becomes more moderate.

Once again, there’s no limit as to which the radius can expand to, it can expand all the way to 1,000 radius and hit people half way across the map for all the devs care. That is to give the said player who’s played 10 years longer the wealth advantage to someone who dropped the game 10 years ago.

This is because you can just subtract that radius to balance things out once again.
But there probably would be a limit, because you don’t want the guy being blasted away halfway across the map.

Of course, this would all have to be done in a downwards slope, so that eventually the person who dropped the game 10 years ago, can come back and still play for awhile and eventually catch up significantly with only slight disadvantages remaining.

This linear-diagonal downward slope ( and not a flat linear one) is the correct metric for horizontal planning instead of vertical linear progression.

Subtraction to keep #’s fixed and level (or in other words moderate) is also key instead of adding power to match/balance power.

Of course, the lvling process from 1-80 would still be just like ANet has it now, flat and moderate and linear in order to make people have to complete a character and spend time on it and also feel a sense of achievement (This flat lvling process is the perfection of previous lvling models, wherein for some reason they preferred to make it so that the higher levels took exponentially longer to lvl up to. I could probably figure out why but I’m done.)

the idea that the game starts at lvl 80 (honestly I think it should be capped off at lvl 100 because round #’s are always better), is the correct idea, the lvling process is just a means to get out to that branch-off, which ends up in a slope direction. The hardcore players will get more wealth, but it goes down in a linear slope (think diagonally). Eventually after some time, the wealth accumulation will be miniscule.

This makes it take a short amount of time, to get things the hardcore player has gotten within the span of say 1 year, within 2 years it would take linearly longer, but the gains for the hardcore player would also be equivalently shorter (due to this diagonal line). Within 5 years, it would be even more miniscule (but the key word here is moderate), within 10 years the gains by the hardcore player would be miniscule enough so that only small power changes would make him slightly more OP (but the key words here are perfecting the game’s balance). This also ties in very well with player-skill level which as a result of 10 years will have been practiced upon and trained very well (by then).

Also, this means eventually number-crunching will be reduced to next to nothing. It’s a process of solving, the player solves the bigger # issues, then he works down in a slope, and it’s satisfactory that way.

The general idea behind depth design is to eventually balance the game, the game starts out flat and 2-dimensional and in the process of adding more depth you’re also balancing the game by growing it. Instead of breaking balance, adding depth seeks to perfect the game while also adding layers upon layers of depth.