Guild Wars 2

ColinJohanson.2394:

A question to help direct the discussion a bit:

What are some of your favorite progression systems of all time in others? Be they horizontal, or vertical, just which ones really got you excited and were fun for you to continue to progress in?

For me, Final Fantasy Tactics is one I loved, where I was able to continue to unlock new jobs and advanced professions for my characters, as well as level up their abilities within those professions. It remains one of my all time favorite games, and one of my favorite systems of progression in any game. I’m also pretty darn fond of that Guild Wars game and skill collection.

+1 for mentioning Final Fantasy Tactics. <3 And yes, Guild Wars 1 was somewhat close to FFT in that regard. Which effectively makes GW1 one of my favorite progression systems in gaming too. MTG-esque deck-building (GW1), secondary professions (GW1, FFT), and “slots” for unique cross-class abilities (FFT – active, passive, reactive and movement abilities).

It was very fun to make, say, Ramza a Squire with Counter, Blade Grasp and Teleport-on-Move. Which reminds me, EverQuest next is going to have something “similar”, where each profession will have “slot types” (offensive, defensive, movement, utility) where they can equip abilities from other professions. It’s also rather similar.

One system worth looking at, is Final Fantasy VII’s materia system. That was excellent horizontal progression. And I wonder, could something like that be simulated in GW2, perhaps with a slight revamp to the way runes and/ or infusions work?

Like combining an upgrade that adds damage on critical with another upgrade that makes that damage AoE (similar to FFVII’s classic Magic + All materia combo). But, perhaps, that could be redudant with the trait system.

What I feel GW2 is giving me in regards of progression:

1st of all I’d like to make clear that 90% of my game time is devoted to PvE (dungeons, world bosses, living story, etc)

Cosmetic progression: At 1st this was quite well done, we had Dungeon skins, Legendary skins, and craftable weapons, at this point the Gemstore was very lacking, it barely had items for sale. 1 year later we still have the same starting dungeon skins, no new legendaries, no new craftable weapons, every patch brought us headgear or back pieces, but the gemstore flourished

The problem here is that cosmetic progression has not progressed since launch, all those event skins are tied to extremely easy and time limited way of aquisition, so that doesn’t really count as progression… now, dont get me wrong, we all know that having a healthy Gemstore will keep the game alive, BUT is your duty, Anet, to also keep the progression alive.

how to fix this? well there are many available options, personally I’d love to see some epic quest lines to acquire new skins, I’t doesn’t have to be easy but Quests are better than mat grind, also is kinda lame to get your legendary from the Mystic Forge, it has no sense of epicness.

I’d like to add that Ascended armor was not a good idea, not exactly the gear itself, but having such time-consuming crafting makes it go completely agains the build flexibility that GW2 offers as one of its strong points, now swapping a full crit build to a condition bunker is a nightmare! Exotic dificulty was fine.

If you wanna add time-sinks it has to be tied to skins, also, Skin wardrobe, it is quite needed for skin-progression, my idea of a wardrobe that keeps the Transmutation stone concept alive is:

you store every skin you acquire through the game in the wardrobe, now, whenever you want to access it you need to use a stone, much like the current interface, you place your item on one side and the other side shows you all the available skins for that piece

Skill Progression: well its just starting this, I believe, is very time-consuming for devs, there is the creative process, then comes the coding and balance and finally bug fixing… I have high hopes though, it will take some time, but more customization is good and keeps people happy

@DiogoSilva “One system worth looking at, is Final Fantasy VII’s materia system. That was excellent horizontal progression. And I wonder, could something like that be simulated in GW2, perhaps with a slight revamp to the way runes and/ or infusions work?
Like combining an upgrade that adds damage on critical with another upgrade that makes that damage AoE (similar to FFVII’s classic Magic + All materia combo). But, perhaps, that could be redudant with the trait system.”

Awesome man, I said something very similar to this a few post back. Loved the FF7 materia system.

I’ve read a good chunk of this CDI. I agree with most of it. But, I noticed a complete lack of comments in regards to sPvP progression. So, I just want to add some comments for the pvpers.

Existing systems.

• Be careful when adjusting existing progression systems. Some of those require intense grinds. Making them easier or resetting them without considering the current status of players is a mistake. You saw the backlash from the fractal reset. You heard the backlash in regards to ranks. Do not make the mistake of adjusting the system without taking into account the previous effort of players.
• Do not allow exploits to continue without repercussion. It undermines your entire progression system when someone can exploit it and you do nothing about it.

General Thoughts

• PvP could really use a progression system. Right now, it has two. One has been exploited and is being modified (but we don’t know how). The other (leaderboards) mean nothing. I mean that in a literal sense. You reward players for higher level fractals. You reward players based on WvW rankings. Yet, you don’t reward players based on MMR. It’s the most mind boggling thing in the world that sPvP is the one place where you don’t get rewarded for skill. It also destroys that form of progression.
• Consider progression that can be shared in PvE, WvW, and sPvP. Minis, tonics, and even XP could be shared between the three. Yet, sPvP doesn’t really have them. Yes, you’ve sort of added XP. There are others that could be added and I have some comments about XP below.
• Finally, consider account wide skill unlocks for sPvP if you’re going to add unlocks as a progression system to pvp please take the time and do it correctly. In addition, we shouldn’t have to dump massive chunks of our rewards to get them. Why can’t we have a little passive XP? Is it so crucial to gate pvpers out of the level 80 content?

Another thought, I think the acquisition of raw materials for ascended gear is too steep. If you assume I’m going to make 1 armor set (6 pieces) and 3 weapons (1 two handed, 1 main hand, and 1 offhand) then that 9 ascended items to craft. 4,500 dragonite ore which requires 150 temples. The Empyreal fragments require 225 dungeon runs.

Edit: or alternatively, make it so I don’t have to capture 550 keeps in WvW to get the necessary dragonite.

GEAR PROGRESSION WITHOUT A GEAR PROGRESSION IN THE MAIN GAME
For now we’ve got Exotic Armors, what’s great, cause thats the basic, what every person should gain, if that person want to be pretty good, and able to do some PvE/WvWvW stuff easier. Its ok. We can gain it in the different ways, what’s cool, cause IMO exotics should be just a set, which allows u to do some ingame stuff. We can get it from dungeons, wvw, bla bla… OK. In time, you guys have added ascended gear too, and its a good addition to these exotics – we’ve got better stats, but that’s still similar. It’s fine. And people who have these exotics, or even ascended armors ofc should be able to enjoy the most of content. Like… They should be able to do some dungeons without a problem, fractals, guild missions, story, WvWvW, and this all kinds of normal, fun content.

And at the same time there should appear a gear progression. Yeah, do not be afraid of it. IMO well-done gear progress can be really successful.
Dont u think, that it would be enough, if u create a huge mode called “RAIDS”, and then you’ll make special armors, that people can gain, and wear just there? They would use these armors only in this mode – like in PvP we’re using other items. But in this PvE mode called Raids players would progres items which have better, and better stats. Players would progress first raids, gain these items, and then they would be able to get next, and next – and lets give them a reward for it (exept items… like… titles, leaderboards etc). Let them progress it.
And what’s more, all this will not affect the main game content If some people dont want to play it, then they’ll dont – like right now, not every1 is playing PvP. They will not feel deprived, cause entire game will be free of difference statistics, and gear progression. But ofc u can ask how about people who want to raid, but they just cant do it well. That’s simple – they’ll work on it – maybe slower, but hey! They’ve got a challenge!
But what’s important – when we’re talking about raids, then you have to know one important thing: People must have a role there. Clearly defined role and if they’ll fail, then all raid fails. This mode must be well made. And whats interesting – when its going to be a separate mode like pvp, then ur able to make some changes there – like add some special skills, traits or smt (just for this mode). And what’s interesting – imo these raids would be a content for guilds. And let every member of a guild join there – dont limit it for some players. Just make any scaling system or smt. Then guilds would appear on leaderboards.

Then you’ve got professional made PvP, and PvE mode in your game.
And at the same time we’ve got open, fantasy world too, where we’re able to do a lot of things I think it could work. Think about it too.

Open world: story, dungs, fractals, guild missions, puzzles, wvwvw, etc, etc…
PvP: like right now – separate mode, where every1 is using gear with the same stats, and people have to practice. Leaderboards, seasons, titles, etc, etc…
PvE: separate mode, where people have got raids, where they can progres their raid gear. Also there should be leaderboards for it, titles, etc etc…

TooBz.3065:

I feel like I have to say, I wish you guys had come out with ascended gear before launch. It would have saved everyone a lot of angst.

honestly they probably would have jsut lost a considerable chunk of sales, with that said there’s no point looking back. We should look forward as to how to improve the game as a whole. Ascended gear included

ColinJohanson.2394:

A question to help direct the discussion a bit:

What are some of your favorite progression systems of all time in others? Be they horizontal, or vertical, just which ones really got you excited and were fun for you to continue to progress in?

I absolutely LOVED using GW1’s signet of capture to get elite skills, collecting “elite armors” (better looking version of easy to get max stat gear), and zone expansion that let me explore new areas, and experience new adventures (Cantha anyone?)!

Of all of the ones I listed, new skills were the most important!

Now if I talk about another game… then difficulty progressively increasing is also very nice. Vindictus was a fun game for quite a while. For a long time that game was ruled by player skill, where 1 highly skilled player could solo a boss that a 5 man group of unskilled players could wipe on. Unfortunately they got greedy, opted for super vertical progression (those with the newest gear level became gods compared to everyone else), and sold cash shop items which you basically had to use to realistically upgrade said new gear. Needless to say I dropped that game once that started. But that doesn’t stop me from remembering when it was super fun.

Turtle Dragon.9241:

Here is my opinion on Character Progression.
Be it Horizontal or Vertical progression, Guild Wars 2 has a fundamental flaw:
The fact that I have to discard almost everything I previously worked hard for.

I honestly dont mind Vertical Progression in this or any game. What I mind the most is discarding what I worked so hard for, or giving up something forever.
Here is a “how bad it could be” scenario:
You currently have Endure Pain equipped on your Warrior. You can replace Endure Pain by Dolyak Signet on your skill bar, but then you cannot use Endure Pain ever again unless you remake your whole character. Does Permanent choices of skill sound cool to you? No. It’s ridiculous, right?
I feel about the 3 above-mentioned examples are as ridiculous as this one.

This doesn’t make any sense. Skills are an integral part of the character that can never be “reset” in this manner; comparing that to equipment upgrading is just silly lmao. Dude, think about it. If you didn’t have to “replace” all that hard-earned exotic gear you have, it would make progression way too easy. Everyone would be laughing at how simple progression would be if you could salvage an exotic and get all the materials you spent making it back, as an example. That’s horrible game design and you would realize how flawed a game like that would be if such a system existed.

To those who think this dilemma about having to “replace” your hard-earned progression is bad, just think about the most popular MMO: World of Warcraft. That’s EXACTLY what all those millions of players do every time there’s a new freaking patch! So to say that having resets of your progression is bad game design is nothing short of laughably silly. Think about it. Every time there’s a new freaking patch in World of Warcraft, everyone has to replace ALL their gear from a new raid. And that game design has worked JUST FINE for Blizzard. I rest my case.

I don’t know how to make this any clearer, some form of a reset is an essential part of making progression meaningful. You’re welcome to keep your hard-earned goodies, that’s perfectly fine, but if you want to PROGRESS the only point is moving FORWARD. Hence progressing. Which would be meaningless if you could finish “progressing” in the time span of a Saturday afternoon, or if you could re-use every freaking skin you got for free. Skins would be meaningless because everything would be in infinite supply. = BAD.

Now that, sir, is horrible game design and would truly make for an unsatisfyingly miserable experience. Sigh. Ugh why do I even bother coming on the forums when there are just so many people who don’t even think about the implications of their own suggestions. Seriously guys, if you think something is stupid and you have the “perfect solution”, actually spend a few minutes thinking about what you’re saying. More often then not you’ll find gaping holes in these criticisms, just as I’ve pointed out.

I don’t know how you Arenanet guys manage wading through a bunch of nonsense on a daily basis, but for real hats off to you haha.

More on-topic and my own thoughts: the new healing skills in the recent update are amazing. And I dunno how you guys are gonna do it, but I hope you bring out the new traits and skills that were mentioned a while back. I think that would be one of the more interesting parts about character progression for a lot of people: experimenting with new builds, abilities, gear sets, that sort of thing. To that end, as far as I’m concerned, acquiring ascended gear really is in a good spot right now. Don’t see any huge need to change anything, except I must say converting the excess bloodstone dust/bricks into bonus moolah would always be welcome

Also in response to people upset about the Fractal reset, yeah honestly Arenanet the best middleground would be to raise your highest planned fractal level and start Fractal Instability at level 50. Or maybe make it optional at level 30, and between 30 and 50 if you choose to have instability you progress 2 levels of difficulty for each run or something like that. I’m pretty surprised you guys didn’t do something along those lines that would keep many more people much, much happier.

I am troubled that development is shifting towards one of the areas you promised to stay away from as a selling point of the game. Whether you mean it to be or not, ascended armor is vertical progression, and as a WvW player I feel compelled to grind towards it even though I do not want to, because more stats is more stats. Furthermore you stated that you did not mean to devalue peoples time with the fractured update, but you did. You keep saying you mean one thing, but you are doing the other, and this needs to change.

On the topic of horizontal progression I would like to bring this video up to give credit where credit is due.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=viVE6euuzDs
Having the flamekissed armor taken away was a real bummer but being able to upgrade the T3 armor to have particle effects would be amazing! I do not agree with using lodestones for this because the price for those are way to high already on top of the 100g needed to get the T3 armor in the first place but using dungeon tokens could work. Each dungeon seems to have some sort of elemental theme to it and those tokens would give the color you want like CoF would be red fire while AC would give something like a ghostly blue looking fire. An item can be purchased from the dungeon vendor for a certain number of tokens and that can be thrown in the MF with the armor piece along with a Bloodstone Shard or Eldrich Scroll and Globs or Obsidian Shards. It will get people doing dungeons that are basically dead right now and no new content would have to be designed or worse designed and taken away two weeks later. Let us work towards adding flair to our gear but don’t make it a terrible grind/money sink.

ColinJohanson.2394:

A question to help direct the discussion a bit:

What are some of your favorite progression systems of all time in others? Be they horizontal, or vertical, just which ones really got you excited and were fun for you to continue to progress in?

For me, Final Fantasy Tactics is one I loved, where I was able to continue to unlock new jobs and advanced professions for my characters, as well as level up their abilities within those professions. It remains one of my all time favorite games, and one of my favorite systems of progression in any game. I’m also pretty darn fond of that Guild Wars game and skill collection.

As much as I like FF Tactics, having that system would kinda put a wrecking ball into alts and character slots bought.

Path of Exile

• Skills are equipped via Gems into a weapon
• That weapon may also have additional slots that allow you to customize that skill. For example, you could slot a gem that increases the size of the AoE while reducing the damage, a gem that grants that skill the ability to produce multiple projectiles, or a gem that increases the effect of that skill.

This could possibly be modified by:

• equipping upgrades to skills, thus changing the skill. For example, the multiple projectiles upgrade attached to Fireball would turn the skill into Lava Arrows with does more damage, but over 3 hits, and has a greater range.

• Earning the upgrade through doing a task.

The game also has a Sphere Grid-like system, although that’d come more under vertical progression.

GW1

• Having to hunt skills down.
• The Infusion mechanic – get an item, take it to a guy, he infuses your gear against Spectral Agony. It’s not so much a favourite as it’s worth mentioning and would probably fit better as a process for Fractal runners.

GW2 – Initial Trait Design

• Having to hunt down traits, with the task being tailored to the theme of the profession. This could also be applied to hunting skills down.

Appropriate use of skills

I can’t say I’ve seen a game that does this, but what about unlocking skills and traits through appropriate skill use?

For example, using CC to interrupt X amount of times would unlock a weapon skill that, say, applies a hefty amount of Vulnerability or Blind to stunned foes? Or maybe it has the inherent effect that it doesn’t trigger Defiant?

Another point would be that less focus should be placed on traits for certain effects, and added to skills, thus encouraging better use of skills, but that’s another thing altogether.

ColinJohanson.2394:

A question to help direct the discussion a bit:

What are some of your favorite progression systems of all time in others? Be they horizontal, or vertical, just which ones really got you excited and were fun for you to continue to progress in?

For me, Final Fantasy Tactics is one I loved, where I was able to continue to unlock new jobs and advanced professions for my characters, as well as level up their abilities within those professions. It remains one of my all time favorite games, and one of my favorite systems of progression in any game. I’m also pretty darn fond of that Guild Wars game and skill collection.

Honestly I’ve never seen any progression system that fits my taste so far, I didn’t play FFT nor GW1 though xD

but a system I’d like would be(very roughly xD) : lots of skills, lots of traits… I want to have some degree of uniqueness, my experience with WoW made this very clear to me, they went through a complete redesign of their skill/talent system and it made all the “hybrid” build completely useless, ultimately every spec had like THE build you had to play and THAT was one of the main points that drove me away

I understand that vertical gear progression is the easiest way to make players come back, but the last thing we need is another WoW, where it’s essentially been the same game for 10 years, but every few months it gives you a new couple dungeons to do (which are fun the fist couple of times), but then forces you to grind them until you hate them, all over again. Also, please never do the WoW thing where with each new expansion, the stat/gold gap between the old max and the new minimum level is ridiculous.

Well, thats a nice topic.

please excuse me if i voice something that was allready said. I am a bit tired at the moment, so some thanks in advance for your patience with me here…

Overall i think progression is something we have to tackle on several levels. I have to say, while you strive and make big leaps in creating bringing content into the game, the core game itself does not really progress.

That is a fundamental problem. You add something every two weeks, maybe a month, but then you cannot aquire it later.
Why is that a problem? The things exist/ed, however new and returning players will never get this form of progress.

Everytime i see content going, it feels like regression, instead of progression.

Creating “special and rare” items like this is nice, however in my opinion it stalls the progression possibilities for many characters.

Furthermore, there is no goal, no satisfaction. You grind your archievments or your RNG in a hurry to get an item, just so you can do it again with the next release.
While you have the choice, the mere possibility to see something never again is a problem.

You did steps to remedy these factors and you get some big thumbs up for it, however the point where i think the game is totally stuck is the armors.

Right now, after one and half a year you released the first set of armor into the game, players can archieve by playing the game.
Something players can work for. Players can earn.

The stuff in the gem-store is nice, but it is NOT the game. It is nothing players can archieve or progress towards.
The only progression here is the conversation from gold to gem or progressing in real life to earn money to convert this into gems and then buy the stuff in the store.

So far we have a heavy increase in these items. The “flamkissed” is in my opinion the biggest offender in that category. (not because of the T3 missstep) I do not understand why it is there. We got no lore, no story connection, nothing. It is just some quick satisfaction for people who like fire armor.
While the overall placement of the fire on these allready existing armors is nice, i do not see any progression here.
I would see it, if we as players were able to apply these “effects” on armors themselves, though.

Which brings me to a point where i feel very little “progression” for my character:

Crafting:

Crafting feels the same up to level 400. There is no real difference between each profession, aside from the artificier, cook and jeweler, which just have a different unlock system.

While we are able to use two crafting professions and are able to switch them as much as we like, you do not feel like you are progressing through them.
You get nothing special.
The Ascended Tier is something that feels like i could progress, but after many people will have reached it it is just the meta step.

Why? because nothing changes. Crafting in the lower levels is the same as crafting in the higher levels. Crafting armor is actually the only thing where you can “see” and feel progression, as you can get new armor in every tier.

Weapons however just change color and are all looking the same till 400 (exept some special karma recipts along the way, which i do not count here)

The other crafting professions just offer updates to their products.

I have played different games over the years, so i can give some ideas to how to elevate this problem:

- Synergy. Why are we able to have two crafting professions at a time, if they do not synergyze? In fact if you choos to similiar they take from each other.
Implement items that use products from different crafting.

- Products that are desireable. You can not really get rich by crafting, exept you invest yourself. There are not really products people want and everyone is a high lvl crafter rather quick.
If we go into the “housing” territory, we have dozens of possibilities to create “interesting” items and even use the synergy to reate special items, like furniture.
Imagine a basic stool from wood, enhanced with silk from the tailor…
Characters who master certain items feel like they progressed in crafting that way..

- Customization: Okay, i am a “master crafter” now. Highest rank etc. Why do i not feel special?
Because everything is cookie cutter. I cannot give things my personal note.
How about we were able to unlook certain customization options for our products.
have weapon smiths be able to forge different blade designs, or handles and stick them together.
Give tailors the ability to enhance armor with little guild emblems on certain parts of the armor, however that is only possible if you have a certain level, which reflects the armor.

Again, this here is my first attempt. i sleep over it and try to create a better list of things.

ColinJohanson.2394:

A question to help direct the discussion a bit:

What are some of your favorite progression systems of all time in others? Be they horizontal, or vertical, just which ones really got you excited and were fun for you to continue to progress in?

For me, Final Fantasy Tactics is one I loved, where I was able to continue to unlock new jobs and advanced professions for my characters, as well as level up their abilities within those professions. It remains one of my all time favorite games, and one of my favorite systems of progression in any game. I’m also pretty darn fond of that Guild Wars game and skill collection.

Guild Wars 1 Skill Collection- Just loved being awarded for actually killing a hard boss (most of the time I solo’d them).

Guild Wars 1 campaign tokens- I always felt the gw1 story missions were hard. Not insanely hard, but they were a lot harder than Gw2. As a result of this when I received those tokens at the end it felt very regarding for me. In gw2 not only is it easy, but you can also just buy the pact weapon skins on the TP.

TESO- you unlock entire skill tress with passives and actives by doing certain things in game. Joining a fighters guild/mages guild, becoming a vamp, werewolf, etc. It is not to surprise most beta testers are saying that this games strongest point is the skill system.

Home/Land customization- Mods on skyrim that allow you to build your own home, Morrowind’s building your own home, Guild wars 1 guild hall customization. With the Skyrim and Morrowind example, NPCs were required to make the places feel alive. If they were empty they were not as fun building and interacting with. Guild wars 1 I liked because not only did you have an entire guild that could check out your progress on upgrading the hall, but you could also get people to come see it and guest inside of it. You could also guest inside others.

Fallout 3/New Vegas/Elder Scrolls- Faction standing. I always like the idea that there was progression in NPCs interactions with you. Sometimes you could bypass a lot of time by getting correct traits, other times you could gain special access to areas at NCR camps if you were in the NCR, but joining the NCR meant that you made enemies too. You’d also get a lot of secondary quest and sidequest lines you could do, however joining a faction sometimes meant you couldn’t do other factions sidequest. It really helped the replaybility of it. Now you have this somewhat with Orders, but it just doesn’t feel as important. I absolutely love the secret base in lornars pass for order of whispers members. I’d love to see this more with all organizations with the pact.

I didn’t really read any posts here other than the first two, so I’ll just say what I want to see in terms of character progression:

Vertical:

Addition of legendary armor (and possibly trinkets) is fine. Ascended is already rather expensive to get, but being able to swap stats on your entire gear would be worth the price.
NO more tiers after that, PLEASE. Getting a full set of legendary gear would take years anyway.

More underwater helmets, the best you can get at the moment is a masterwork one with some random stats with no way to replace them.

Horizontal:

Fill up gear holes in terms of stats, a player should be able to have access to an item with a certain stat set, of a certain quality (up to exotic at least) for each of his equipment slot. Back slots and previously mentioned underwater helmets are lacking the most, I think.

More ELITE skills, more utility skills, more WEAPON skills.
Elites are of highest priority right now, some classes (elementalist) are SERIOUSLY limited in choice there.

Weapon skills could be done in different ways, either allowing us to pick from a set of skills for a specific button (1/2/3/4/5) or just straight up add new weapons…. Or both.

Variety in how a skill is unlocked would also be nice (how about having to clear a dungeon, kill a world boss, get a specific achievement or something else instead of just dunking over 9000 SP on a skill?)

Bear in mind this is just my personal opinion about what the game needs, so yeah.

PS
Playable Kodan would be EPIC, anet pls.

As far as crafting ascended being part of vertical development for your character, it’s bogus. Min-maxing is only worth while if there is harder content to push toward. We haven’t seen any real girthy content in.. well, since the original fractals was released.

I don’t know, I’ve leveled 8 characters to 80, geared each one out in several exo sets with various ascended trinkets and weapons, and yet I still find nothing to do, and no real reason to do it.

I wvw and with my combined ranks I’ll be close to 1000 once they merge. I have no need to pve because I have all the current gear/skins I need. There hasn’t been any new skins that were available non gem-store until ascended came out, and frankly, it’s not my cup of tea.

There’s ultimately nothing to do, and no reason to min-max anymore.

Oh, I could farm the same world bosses I’ve been farming since pre-launch, same with the dungeons. For chests and drops of vendor trash. I could farm champions or stay on the same maps of WvW we’ve been on since pre-launch (even though bloodlust changed the map slightly, it’s the same bs as the orbs of power).

I could max all crafting, but why bother? There’s no “need” for better gear for the same old boring content. Living story is like a plate full of hors d’oeuvres and no main course, a poor excuse for an amuse bouche.

I need content, sustainable, permanent content. New wvw maps, new dungeons, more non-gemstore gear skins. I NEED more. Plain and simple.

I want to start off by saying that so far I have enjoyed the content of Guild Wars 2. I’ve played through game content, have done all of the events anet has added periodically. That being said, I now have 5 level 80 characters, all with exotics and a few ascended pieces, and have lost motivation to level any more characters. The game has become a bit repetitive for me, as far as leveling characters, and the lack of endgame content. I come from farming raids in WoW or suffering through punishing hours in pvp to obtain new gear. I’m not saying I would like for Guild wars to switch to this setup, but I feel like there needs to be some sort of developed endgame that offers reward. I feel like all there is left for me to do is to tirelessly farm dungeons or mobs for tokens and money, in hopes of what? One day getting a legendary weapon? Idk. I know guild wars 2 wasn’t aiming for endgame content, but a more “enjoy the journey” idea. For me though, the leveling aspect has become very redundant, and I am one who enjoys attaining new gear, aesthetically speaking, which is not really available until you reach 80, so it still becomes a sprint for level 80, to get “cool” gear, and then have nothing to do. I like guild wars 2 offers an independent experience, but I still feel like they should add some new dungeons, and possibly some raid content, even if it is only available to guilds, gettin people connected.

ColinJohanson.2394:

A question to help direct the discussion a bit:

What are some of your favorite progression systems of all time in others? Be they horizontal, or vertical, just which ones really got you excited and were fun for you to continue to progress in?

For me, Final Fantasy Tactics is one I loved, where I was able to continue to unlock new jobs and advanced professions for my characters, as well as level up their abilities within those professions. It remains one of my all time favorite games, and one of my favorite systems of progression in any game. I’m also pretty darn fond of that Guild Wars game and skill collection.

Hi!

I absolutely loved the system of progression in FFXI. It’s similar to the one you mentioned in that as you advanced in the game you unlocked new jobs (classes). Each of the these jobs had an exciting quest to unlock, some of which could be quite engaging. For example, the summoner job quest required you to visit an area of the game that experience different weather effects. The entire quest was driven by a strong story that tied in directly with the game world.

Within each individual job, there was armour that took on the “classic” Final Fantasy appearance of the job. White mages had the white robes with red triangles, summoners the green robes with the horn, etc. The quests to obtain these relic armour sets were amazing, as they were challenging and really explored the lore of the individual jobs, i.e. the summoner relic armour story focused on an insane summoner and that summoning magic was outlawed, white mages had to face a powerful undead.

It would be really neat if each class in GW2 had such armour. In some ways we do – human thieves can wear the T3 armour, and this is quite “thief-like”. Still, it might be nice if there were cross-racial class gear that had engaging quests to take part in, each of which could discuss how the class has shaped modern Tyria. Maybe thieves could explore how their class derived from assassins in Cantha, engineers could help develop some anti-dragon machine. There could be unique titles to be unlocked (I think titles are a great horizontal progression idea!). These quests could have challenging but not grindy content, like Liadri.

Also, I loved the housing system in FFXI. This was a mostly horizontal progression that doubled as a gold sink and a trophy display. Players with too much gil on their hands could buy some luxurious bed or table, etc, while more casual players like myself could build their own (cheap, yet practical!) bed in the crafting disciplines. There were activities like gardening. I think GW2 could use something like this (I know housing has been discussed), and this would be a neat prestige system. It would allow dedicated players to show off their accomplishments to their guild/friends while also not having more particle effects everywhere. The FFXI system also saw that each piece of furniture had a very small bonus, and you could only have one such bonus active on you at a time. Beds, for example, increased experience gain by some small percent.

ColinJohanson.2394:

A question to help direct the discussion a bit:

What are some of your favorite progression systems of all time in others? Be they horizontal, or vertical, just which ones really got you excited and were fun for you to continue to progress in?

For me, Final Fantasy Tactics is one I loved, where I was able to continue to unlock new jobs and advanced professions for my characters, as well as level up their abilities within those professions. It remains one of my all time favorite games, and one of my favorite systems of progression in any game. I’m also pretty darn fond of that Guild Wars game and skill collection.

Some of my favorite progression systems are:

- Skill Collection from GW1
- Personal “Lairs” in DCU Online
- The ability to enhance my crafting abilities/professions in order to make profit
- COSMETIC. I love being able to find and collect tons of different appearance options for my characters. The more unique I am able to make my characters appear, the happier I am.

ColinJohanson.2394:

A question to help direct the discussion a bit:

What are some of your favorite progression systems of all time in others? Be they horizontal, or vertical, just which ones really got you excited and were fun for you to continue to progress in?

For me, Final Fantasy Tactics is one I loved, where I was able to continue to unlock new jobs and advanced professions for my characters, as well as level up their abilities within those professions. It remains one of my all time favorite games, and one of my favorite systems of progression in any game. I’m also pretty darn fond of that Guild Wars game and skill collection.

Interesting choice; I love some parts of Final Fantasy Tactics’ system and despise others. I liked being able to mix-and-match qualitatively different abilities with interesting interactions. I disliked how they randomly mixed horizontal advancement, vertical advancement, and reduced-grinding options so that they directly competed with each other (e.g. “Gained JP Up” basically meant that the support slot never got used for real abilities). I disliked how you often had to spend a long time training at something you didn’t want to do before you could start using your “real” strategy (e.g. if you want to be a lancer, you first have to level as a thief, which has totally different equipment and tactics; the time mage “short charge” ability is practically mandatory for high-level wizards; etc.). I also dislike how using good tactics in battle is often at odds with gaining XP/JP and I think it’s got a TON of balance problems, but that’s starting to get off-topic.

A game I’d pick as a good example is Bastion. The spirits let you mix-and-match interesting abilities, the weapon upgrades offer tough choices between mutually-exclusive abilities, the idols let you customize challenge and reward levels in interesting ways without giving up interesting parts of your character build, and all of them can be changed frequently to play around with different options. (I was never excited about the secret skills, though.)

I have been playing GW 2 since day 1, only I stopped playing the game 2 months back. The main reason for this was that after doing all the dungeon path overe 60 times defeating every boss I could find and almost do a 100% thrice. I decided to step over to WvW, and so I did with the guild I was in. I actively played WvW, but when capping the same keep for the 100th time got boring, so I thought what else? The only thing that I still didn’t do or get was a Legendary weapon. But in order to get one I needed A: a kitten ton of gold
B: farm till i dropped

So I that was something I didn’t have or wanted to do. This resulted in my stopping to play the game. I didn’t feel like there was anything left for me to do or that was still challenging.

What I think needs to be improved in GW2 is the difficulty, and the feeling of accomplishment. Because currently I believe I have around 6500 achievement points. But I don’t feel like they are “worth” anything or that feeling of having accomplished something. I came with a suggestion on these forums sometime in the past about that it would be great to be able to build your own home. Which can be decorated with throphy, from junk to legendary throphies which will show off what beasts you have slain. Perhaps even make a Guild hall which can be decorates with throphies form other accompllishments (guild achievements). I mean it is guild wars after all. make it so you can fight other guilds. for example keep vs keep or jsut all out brawl.

This is what I hope to see in the future.
I wish you guys at arenanet the best of luck with GW2.

HORIZONTAL PROGRESSION

Skins
I must agree with the poster a few above me that transmuting has had it’s day; when the game moved to 1-1.5 ‘max. level’ appearances, my own good will towards transmutation stones did bottom out.
Assuming PvE skin-lockers aren’t a practical option and other skins cannot be dropped into the loot table as L80 exotics because of the auction house, I suggest:

1. Transmutation Stones function as Transmutation Crystals do now, and become available for karma/laurels/etc.

2. Transmutation Crystals be instead applied to put an item into a single-use ‘choose your stat’ state (soulbinding it in the process).

Visual achievements
As a huge GW1 fan, I’d really like to see the GW1 HoM reincarnated in any form – be it the home instance, the HoM itself, a trophy instance, whatever.
More lightly-functional things like the nodes we already have would be great, but even just static displays and fun stuff like Shing Jea Sherman (in GW1 he was a character who randomly shouted out comments for every achievement you had).

Skills & traits
As a sizeable GW2 fan also, I’m afraid the one thing that makes me fear it’s not going to be an ongoing hobby for me is when I visit the forums and see the skill & trait devs agonizing over +/-1 stack of Might on a trait I wouldn’t give a second look or +/-1 initiative cost on a skill that’s largely ignored.
It is great that the devs care so deeply, but at this rate it feels like there will never be a skill/trait expansion on par with anything from GW1…
I have had a ton of fun with my cleric warrior main (to each his own!), but seriously I designed his build before release and 15 months later the biggest change to it is 1 trait moved from tier II to tier I.
I appreciate that there a sacrifices to pursuing balance in PvP (massive, game-constraining, sacrifices), but I cannot judge if hamstringing skill expansion actually achieves perfect balance any better than throwing more & more skills in and seeing what settles – all I can say is that this model cannot sustain my own interest indefinitely.
What good is new content, if how characters play stays frozen in time?

VERTICAL PROGRESSION

Ascended gear
While I don’t particularly see why ascended gear needed to happen (GW1 roots showing again), I didn’t mind the trinkets – collected a full set myself, then overcome with “meh” and just buy amulets for the magic find infusion.
However; the appeal of weapon and armor completely eludes me…
Every build has 8-10 such items in it, every character has at least 1 build, my account has 8 characters = I’m never going to reach that objective, and it would be a Grenth-awful grind to even contemplate, so why bother spending everything I have taking the first step down that route?

I’m afraid that the appeal on the front page for feedback on “drop rates in fractals and other areas of the game” boggles me also – there is essentially zero drop rate for ascended gear, any more than the National Lottery (in the UK) organizers could ring me up and ask my opinion on the win rate of Lottery jackpots.
You’d have to put a lot of digits after zero for the rate, rounded to the nearest number to not be zero – I could continue at my hour-a-day gaming average for years and never see one such drop.
If one were to somehow drop for me, statistically it’s likely to be absolutely worthless to me anyway since across my whole account I favour just 4 attribute combos (cleric, rabid, berserker, rampager) – an ascended item for any other combination would harm my builds more than it helps.

I do have a few suggestions to follow the grumbling though, and it spans ascended & skins with a dash of gameplay too:

1. Follow the suggestion in this thread up to make ascended gear stat-adjustable like legendaries are – crafted ascended gear only, however.

2. Embrace the name “ascended” with a new method of acquisition that also addresses the skin issue…
Assign a special NPC and place of power (e.g. HoM, Divinity reach priests, reclaimed Orrian location), where players can go to prove their ascension worthiness:
> Pay xx laurels.
> Pay xxx honour.
> Pay xxxx glory-replacement.
> Pay xxxxx karma.
This opens up a window (like the forge) into which 1 L80 item can be dropped.
(Cue divine light effect.)
Out pops the item (soulbound) with ascended stats but the same attribute combination, appearance and upgrades!

Crafting-grind ascended gear retains an edge (in versatility, not power) and it’s unique appearance, but simply ‘ascending’ your characters’ favourite gear to remain competitive is just a matter of keeping on doing whatever you like doing.
Maybe with a few co-operative entry requirements thrown in, to make it feel more epic e.g. a quest chain (or full temple control?) to access karma ascender, control of a specific WvW location to access honour ascender.

Hi Chris,

I know that this may not be possible, but what really kept me dedicated to GW1 was how versatile the build were. Overall, I have spent over 2,200 hours in that game! I would spend countless hours, reading through all the skills of every profession and creating unique builds, where all the skills would have synergy with one another. My all time favorite was a spin-off the common Necro-bomber from FA and JQ. I revised it to the point where I would still be able to spike down opponents in less than two seconds, but still be alive afterwards. The lack of ability to make such versatile builds was what I felt was lacking in GW2. I feel that even though there are many types of builds you can play within a class, the play style themselves are relatively the same. Realistically, I understand that having cross-class characters (Warrior/Monk, Ranger/Ritualist, etc.) would probably not be possible in GW2. Despite this, I find myself wishing that at the very least, I would love to have multiple options for the weapon skills.

Many of my friends that I got to play Guild Wars 2 with me have quit because they felt there was absolutely no character progression at early levels due to lack of gaining new skills as they leveled up. As they gained more levels, that they didn’t feel any “stronger,” and that it was boring to use the same skills over and over again from level 1. They got bored of how repetitive the game play was, and after every level, it was doing the same thing over again. Although you gain slot skills, my friends said that they were more of a utility skill that felt very minor. If there was more progression with the weapon skills, I believe that would address the lack of “feeling” of character progression that many people experience.

On a good note, I love the aesthetic gear grind that is in GW2. Getting the best gear remains to be relatively simple, although time consuming. I love how I can focus on getting my characters the best looking armor rather than grinding for gear to be have the best DPS. However, I still miss being able to dye my weapon. There are a ton of weapons that I love the skin of, but the color clashes with my armor, so I would have to forget about it and look for something else. I even ended up crafting two ascended mace, just so I could get the right color I wanted. This goes to show how crucial color coordination is to me, and that I’m left disappointed that I have such a limited array of weapons skins I can choose from, simply because of color scheme.

The last point I wanted to bring up was end game content. I’m at the point where I’m ready to start working on getting my legendary weapon, but I feel unmotivated due to how far away the end goal seems to me. The minor parts aren’t necessary an issue for me, such as getting the crafting to 400, gaining enough skill points, getting world completion, etc. The way I see it, is that even if I work really hard and finish those goals, the precursor weapon is so expensive that it would take an immense amount of time simply gold farming just to buy it. I know that crafting your own precursor weapon is in the works of being implemented, but hopefully this anecdote will give it a push for it to be worked on sooner

Overall, I believe the state of the game is going well. Although there are a few points that need some improvement, all of you at Arenanet are doing a great job. Your involvement within the GW2 community is commendable and I’m glad that I’m able to express my opinions and know that it will be seen. Keep up the good work everyone!

P.S. I love the idea of an Armor Wardrobe, and am very excited to see that it’s a well received idea!

Keeping in mind that I have only read the first page of this discussion and skimmed the rest, my points may have been brought up in a previous post. However, I would rather be repetitive than unheard, so here goes:

Let’s start with the obvious conflict of interests. Players who have put in the time and effort to get items that require them want the items to remain difficult to obtain so that they retain their exclusivity. Players who have not obtained these items wish for them to be easier to obtain so that they do not feel weak or left out. There is no simple solution that will please both parties.

Having played since GW1: Factions, I was drawn to the game because it was easily accessible and required almost no grind except regarding cosmetic items. This had pros and cons, however: I was happy that I never felt weaker than other players in terms of stats, but I was not compelled enough by only a cosmetic to put in the effort to grind it. I was a big fan of the skill hunting aspect of progression, though.

My favorite element of GW1, however, was the fact that the game was designed so that a player’s ability was purely dictated by his/her personal skill and quality of build rather than equipment stats.

Let’s consider some facts:

1. Grind for purely cosmetic items is in-arguably fair, although it can lack appeal.

2. Large amounts of grind being required for marginal improvements only serves to encourage farming the game rather than playing it for enjoyment and leaves the rewards only to those who spend time not playing for fun.

3. Not rewarding players who have invested time and energy is unfair.

4. Stats and items are not the only kinds of rewards.

Taking these aspects into consideration, I have a proposal that could (potentially) please many or even most people:

1. Make ascended quality armor/weapons easier to obtain. Stats should not be a reward of heavy grind. (I do like the scavenger hunt idea mentioned for legendaries, for example.) This does not mean these should not be time-gated, but that they should not be affordable only by <10% of the online population. Perhaps require a larger laurel investment and less gold. Compensate players who have already made the initial investment so that they do not feel cheated.

2. Find a suitable dump for excess of any currency in the game. Any hardcore player worth his salt is going to have stockpiles of extra currencies with nowhere to put it. This means that new content is immediately ruled by these players, and even slightly more casual players will be ruled out by them. (i.e. Money only has value to those who don’t have it. New content becomes so immediately inflated by the rich folks that the poor folks won’t have access to it for months if ever.)

3. Introduce a new system of progression not based on stats or cosmetics. For example, legendary weapons are now worthwhile because of the added function to change their stats on-the-fly. They are not statistically better than ascended weapons and present no practical advantage, but they are appealing enough to warrant more grind than a basic ascended weapon. This system works, and another could be made to work as well.

My suggestion would be to add more progression to the skill system. I am not directly saying “add more skills” or “make the current skills require more skill points,” but I am saying that it is not very difficult to exhaust your options shortly after reaching level 80 or even before.

What if some skills (new or existing) had special requirements (possibly similar to achievements)? For example, we could have a dungeon reward for AC that was a Foefire-esque elite skill. Or we could have the current signets that increase passive movement speed require you to beat an NPC in a race. Not all skill should have requirements, but what if some did (within the realm of not making players jump through hoops just to get function out of their characters)?

These are just ideas, but I feel like the skill acquisition in GW1 was a great mechanic for adding progression without making players feel inept if they didn’t have every single one.

A game should never be about getting that next set of gear. It should be about discovering fun and exciting new things among friends.

I haven’t gone through every post in this thread (although I’ve read quite a few) so what I’m about to say may have already been covered.

I think one of the best ways to approach horizontal progression/cosmetics/etc. is to treat the various skins in the game as unlocks on a player’s account. Once you’ve unlocked a particular skin, that skin should always be usable on your account. You should be able to select the skin you want to use for each armor piece or weapon without having to transmute it. If there’s a small fee associated with applying the change to the armor that’s fine. It would give the choice some weight without being overly punishing.

I think the same should be true of stats with ascended gear. We should be able to select stats as we currently can with legendary weapons. Make it a reasonable Mystic Forge recipe if necessary to add that functionality to an item (by “reasonable” I mean make it so it takes a little work to do but doesn’t require stacks of hard to obtain or super expensive items). The armor and weapons take so much time and money to make that having to go through the same grind for every build you want to play is just ridiculous. I’m ok with some vertical progression (there needs to be a limit as far gear tiers go, though) but I think the current system punishes build diversity. That isn’t good for anyone and it certainly isn’t good for the long-term health of the game. It also seems to go against the design philosophy of the Guild Wars series, which has always put an emphasis on your build and your play style rather than raw numbers.

This core problem exists to some extent with every tier of gear. But it’s most apparent when dealing with ascended weapons and armor. I have more flexibility with exotic gear than I do with the super expensive high tier armor and weapons because they’re so easily obtained. Need new stats because of a major revamp in a trait/trait line/set of skills? Easy. Just craft or obtain some new exotic gear. This can be done in a matter of minutes to a matter of days depending on the methods used for obtaining it. If you apply this to ascended armor and weapons, any changes to traits or skills that render a particular build useless would require you to essentially start from scratch. You could be set back up to 25 days just because of skill/trait balances.

I think that’s a big problem. It’s needlessly punishing for players. Players shouldn’t be punished on that level for skill and trait balances. We should be forced to adapt of course but it shouldn’t be at the cost of potentially months worth of work crafting gear. That’s the kind of thing that can cause even the most devoted fans to abandon the game in frustration.

If I’ve invested that much time and money into a set of armor or a weapon, I shouldn’t be punished and lose flexibility for opting to go that route. It should feel like there’s some long-term benefit to crafting that armor/weapon beyond a marginal stat increase and the ability to put infusions on it. Being able to change its stats and its appearance at will would be a good way to accomplish that feeling without making it too easy to obtain or giving anyone too much of an unfair advantage. You would be rewarding time and effort with convenience rather than forcing people to grind just to try new things.

Ascended Gear Acquisition

Currently, ascended gear acquisition takes long enough, but it tends to be very tedious. As it currently stands, all ascended gear is time gated. This is the problem, not the fact that it takes time. Ascended gear -should- take a month or two to get a full set, but this should be from players completing certain tasks or some other means of crafting, not time-gating.

The process should be the same sort of thing as Legendaries. In theory, you get get one in a matter of hours or days, though in practice it takes months.

Furthet Verticle Progression:

I’d honestly say that the next form of vertical progression should be infusions, trait points, 4th non-elite utility skill tier, permanent potion effects (i.e. run coe 100 times to get permanent t1 pot buff) or something worth working for, that doesn’t feel meaningless. Currently ascended armour is a tiny stat boost for tonnes upon tonnes of effort. It feels like a tonne of work for nothing.

Progression through other means

Okay, so beyond the attribute point quests, your stats were pretty much set at level 20, but some people played for over 7 years. Why?

Title Progression.

It worked in GW1, so do it for GW2. Introduce proper titles that require effort to get. Some of the harder achievements to get (500 fractals) award no title, yet there is titles for pressing F 25 times (Finders Keepers). Add worthwhile titles and rewards thag are hard, but reasonable, to get. Nothing like the WvW ones, those are rediculous. Add a title for fractals, for soloing lupi, for getting 5k kills with a shield, for finsihing all the mini-dungeons with no armour on. For soloing a keep lord in WvW, for anything that is difficult but achievable, or that is a long term goal that has a sense of progression beyond ability points.

Do this and you’ll retain your hardcore community with titles and keep your casuals with the 2 week updates.

One of the great things about Guild Wars 2 was it’s horizontal progression. Is this going to be taken away?

Before I go on to explain my feelings on progression, I need to define what I think of when asked about vertical vs. horizontal progression. I will not discuss WvW or sPvP, because I truly do not have enough experience in those areas to know what I am talking about.

Vertical Progression

This to me isn’t going out and getting the BiS gear because it’s better than what I have. It is more the need to go out and get new gear because I can’t do the content without it. In this game, there is simply not much of that, and I hope that there never will be. Getting that extra boost by getting Ascended (or Legendary for that matter) is great for those who want it, but I am thankful that 99% of the content is doable without it.

I have played a lot of games that made you go get the best for your level because you can’t go on without it, and after a bit, it loses the “fun factor” because in order to progress beyond where you are, one is forced into spending a lot of time/energy/money obtaining (insert uber named item here) or it is literally impossible to go on. My time online is limited. I don’t want to spend months getting something for a week’s worth of content.

It’s the roller coaster effect. Wait in line for an hour for a 2 minute ride. Unless the ride is worth it, once will be enough, and I’ll go on to something else.

Horizontal Progression

I look at horizontal progression as gaining titles, skins, cosmetics, awards, and little extras that are unique, along with new areas to explore as I am now. No extra gear needed.

The Issue

In GW1, literally everyone was level capped and running in the best armor possible very quickly. Not only that, they reached top level long before the end of the story line. After that, everything was as I mentioned, cosmetics, titles, exploration and collections (and of course, GvG, RA, TA, and Arenas such as Heroes Ascent.)

I also look at horizontal progression as having new and exciting things to do that are geared toward the highest level players. Personally, I think this is one of the places that the devs (in general) got it wrong.

In the process of leveling, you blow through almost the whole world map before you reach level 80. This gives us no incentive to go back to “lower” zones except for events such as the ToN or world bosses (champ train in Q’dale doesn’t count.) Once you’ve gained level 80 in your cultural areas, the others are redundant.

Hindsight being 20/20 and all that, I think it would have been better if it were designed a bit more like GW1 in that we should have been at cap long before we reached Orr, Frostgorge or any other level 70-80 zone that exists now. There also needed to be cross-region (map related, and not in the NA/EU sense) quests or events that actually made you to go to another cultural area. (i.e. if you’re human, then there should have been “quests” to send you to the Norn homeland, or the Sylvari, etc.)

In both Factions and Nightfall, we were capped before we exited the “beginner” island or shortly thereafter. The rest of the game was all designed for top-level players. There were even story arcs that led you to the other chapters if you had purchased them all.

The Summary – a.k.a. the TL;DR version

GW2 has the potential to be the greatest game of all time, but placing us in the position of having to gain the next tier of armor isn’t the way to go. I don’t want to have to grind a new tier of armor in order to be able to complete content.

Gaining it because we want to is encouraged, but we definitely need more horizontal and less vertical progression, possibly in the form of new areas to explore, new stories, new skins, new titles, and maybe even new Dragons.

(Apologies for turning this into a GW1 vs. GW2 post. I truly wasn’t trying to say one was better than the other, just comparing the differences in GW1’s horizontal progression and GW2’s.)

As a long time GW1 player (and GW2 too) I have strong opinions about gear grind. I think ascended armor/weapons increasing stats is just plain wrong. I sort of get legendary weapons, but I think they should only have cosmetic changes.

Having a long term goal is great, but it shouldn’t upset the balance between players – either in gear or in other aspects of the game.

IMO:

-pvp: ascended = minor difference. more important factors (numbers, build, group comp, organisation, etc)
-dungeons=no
-fractal=gear gate but how much are you missing out? the new content (instabilities,higher lvl mechanics) and rewards (poor rewards) arent great.

suggestions

-i have seen people suggest the advantage of ascended gear be flexibility as in, able to reset stats like a legendary. I feel this is a good idea

-horizontal progression: the original plan from anet was to have skins be the reward. For me, nice looking armor is a much greater motivation than 5% stats (which i dont need in order to clear content). i suggest this as reward for new pve content. but it seems like they cant throughput enough new skins so perhaps infeasible. or theyre just going to the gem shop to try to get people to buy. which is understandable.

-finally PLEASE MAKE PVE ENCOUNTERS MORE INTERESTING. and not through some cheap mechanic. i rolled many alts to try to satiate my boredom but the playstyle on all is very similar. Just spam damage abilities and dodge. There is lack of variety on roles and lack of need for teamwork — most content can be completed with a pug. Pre-release there was talk of dps/support/control. the 2nd is weak and the 3rd is almost nonexistent. There are no rotations, boss phases, aggro table, situational abilities, resource management, build variety, required cc/interrupt etc etc to add complexity.

I think the limiting thing (apart from only 8 abilities – actually tbh this isnt it. most other games u will rarely use more than 8 ability/macro, it’s more the weakness of the abilties + long cd) is the pvp balance. Separate pve from pvp, could make pve abilities more powerful and interesting and allow more fight variety than ‘zerker and dodge the oneshot’. Seems like a lot of dev resources went into underwater combat which a tiny fraction of the playerbase uses or cares about when it could have gone into making pve skills different from pvp and so allow better pve encounters.

ColinJohanson.2394:

A question to help direct the discussion a bit:

What are some of your favorite progression systems of all time in others? Be they horizontal, or vertical, just which ones really got you excited and were fun for you to continue to progress in?

For me, Final Fantasy Tactics is one I loved, where I was able to continue to unlock new jobs and advanced professions for my characters, as well as level up their abilities within those professions. It remains one of my all time favorite games, and one of my favorite systems of progression in any game. I’m also pretty darn fond of that Guild Wars game and skill collection.

GW1 obviously got the horizontal progression right straight off the bat. The team should be applauded for their achievements there. No gating either. So good in fact, Secret World basically copied the skill system (didn’t quite get it as right mind you, but this style of mmo works rather well imo)

Anarchy Online had an excellent gear progression system where you could “twink” on higher lvl gear by laddering your stats. It’s quite iconic and synonymous with the game, but worked really well in my mind. It is however, a heavy vertical progression system and would put off many modern casual gamers.

GW2’s gear system I am fond of too. I have no issue with Ascended as it is, although an increase in mat obtainability would aid it, but I think that would come with a vastly improved reward system anyway. I’m also inclined to think it has too many tiers now and actually 3 would be optimum for this game (most people take a lvlling set, then equip rares or exotics until they work into Ascended. No need for more tiers as nothing is gained from it). As for the rest of the game, the only other concern is the time gating aspect. Time gating or limits have no place ever in an MMO in my opinion. The game is so open to players due to its lack of gating elsewhere, that time gating actually hurts it a lot.

Lotro arguably had the most accessible vertical system before it decided to pump up the levels and make its Legendary Weapon system a monstrous grind each year. If you look at it as a game up until just after Moria finished, it pretty much nailed it. Now, sadly it fallen into disrepair as it tried to emulate WoW and not focus on what it did best in previous years. It does however have an excellent wardrobe and social gear system. Something that would greatly benefit GW2.

And as you said, FF Tactics also nailed it progression wise.

Best part was leveling my first time. I didn’t have to force myself to have all the same stats on my gear to still be viable in PvE against creatures possibly two levels ahead of me. Later on, when I got to level 80, I learned how crucial it was to have a good armor set and had fun trying different builds and reading about them online.

The worst part is probably ascended gear. It feels like such a grind to get things due to timers and the amount of mats. While its the final gear type (as in nothing stronger will come out) I feel like its really hurting my alts. While I get that progression should be for each character (its the best way) I feel like I’m really having to push to get fully geared out. Being a WvW player, I feel like the longer I wait for prices to even out, the more I get behind and penalize myself for not fully gearing up. It might not sound or even be much to some people but I play Warrior and Guardian evenly and each of them have two sets of gear for what I’m doing in the game. Its hard to tell when I’ll ever be fully geared for each of them and I don’t even want to think about all my other alts.

This all sounds like QQ to me after writing it myself but I do wish it was easier to obtain the ascended gear. Getting full exotic gear only takes a few minutes, ascended takes at least a month.

ColinJohanson.2394:

A question to help direct the discussion a bit:

What are some of your favorite progression systems of all time in others? Be they horizontal, or vertical, just which ones really got you excited and were fun for you to continue to progress in?

For me, Final Fantasy Tactics is one I loved, where I was able to continue to unlock new jobs and advanced professions for my characters, as well as level up their abilities within those professions. It remains one of my all time favorite games, and one of my favorite systems of progression in any game. I’m also pretty darn fond of that Guild Wars game and skill collection.

For me,
I think a good progression system is unlocked or discovered. Not all progression needs to be about gear, and I hope we are all in agreement about that. Being able to discover new abilities while out in the game world playing and completing an event, or unlocking a a skill through simple game play is more rewarding than mundane materials gathering.

Or, take it a step further. Randomly stumble upon a skill unlock, and I mean random..not a “go to a 3rd party website and find a guid where all the skill unlocks are”, and be zoned into an instance(or not) and fight a mini boss(solo). Boss should be pretty unique, difficult, but not impossible and not littered with a thousand knockbacks or stuns…

Recap of things in people’s posts that have been very interesting
(not in any specific order, summarized with empty quotes added for credit, reference, and post character length)

1. Having weaknesses in Content that allow for more mindlessly gaining character progression diminishes the importance of that progression/reward (i.e. easy dungeon paths).

Deified.7520:

snip

2. Character progression is very focused around crafting and the mystic forge. More ways to progress that involve story/lore would be appreciated (i.e. skill hunting – helping a tribe of tengu and learning a new skill)

Deified.7520:

snip

3. Vertical cosmetic progression, i.e. Fractal Capacitor

Zyphent.2967:

snip

4. The path for progression should not be a narraow road towards one end. It should be many roads with breadth towards numerous ends.

VOLKON.1290:

snip

5. Mixin somekind of character progression with story progression for the orders, similar to luxons/kurzicks of Gw1

Savoy.6824:

snip

6. Unique particle effects for skills gain via profession specific challenges

Evee.2714:

snip

7. Gear could have swappable/unlockable stats or upgrades as unlocks to reduce demand/increase supply thereby making build diversity more available to the masses, but still require some time to unlock.

FeveredDreamer.2693:

snip

8. A great definition of horizontal progression.

Conncept.7638:

In my book horizontal progression means that you are able to continually expand your character in to more varying content; have more builds, explore more areas, experience stories which branch out; basically expand outward in variance rather than upward in scaling.

Recap of noteable improvement areas (not in any specific order)
1. Build diversity progression is inhibited by the difficulty of changing stats, as well as the limited number of skills

DiogoSilva.7089:

snip

2. Technical/artistic issues such as clipping take away from the want to work towards cosmetic goals. Also the large amount of dyes, them being soul bound, and the significant price of the good colors take away from the desire to work towards cosmetic goals.

DiogoSilva.7089:

snip

Other points (these are listed in order of importance, but all are important)

1. There’s a wonderful definition of horizontal progression above (point #8) by Conncept.7638 (he’d be a big picture guy on my dev team for sure having this mindset). Horizontal progression is not just creating grind towards cosmetics. It’s giving people cosmetics, cosmetic effects, combat effects, skills, etc. for going out and experiencing the games content. This is something that could be implemented so much better in this game, and the lack of it in combation with a lack of realistic progression for alts on par with mains is part of why the vast majority of the world is empty.

2. There is a right to be concerned about people’s feelings on the slowness/quickness at which rewards are obtained. More importantly different rewards should be added. Rewards should also involve skills, combat bonuses, and reduction of the time it will take to progress these things for alts. All concepts taken straight from Guild Wars i.e. skill hunting, title bonuses, and unlocking skills to obtained via tomes. It doesn’t have to be those exact things or if it is some of those things, done in the exact same way, but they worked when they were done.

3. Most if not all of the progression upon end game is based upon acquiring currencies. It’s all currencies, currencies, currencies. Provide people progression rewards for completing tasks, the example above of Helping the Tengu to obtain a skill is a great one. It also mixes in lore/story progression potentially.

4. Rewards/time rate significantly out of balance through various parts of the game. Normalizing the rewards/time rate would help everyone progress with gear at a similar pace, assuming similar play times.

5. Normalizing the rewards will not have a noticeable impact on the rate at which low time/low money players can obtain rewards. Introducing skill > time rewards would help some of these people (specifically the one’s complaining the most) bridge the gap, these people complain because they know they are in the top quartile of combat effectiveness but have real world limitations preventing them from having their character progression show it.

6. Alt progression should be more enjoyable and feel less like a grind towards being able to play content people like in a different playstyle.

tl;dr
If there’s any one thing that to take away from this post, I would hope every takes Other Points #1 with them. Own it, live it, breathe it, and apply it.

Hello peeps. I was directed to this thread by a fellow friend in my guild and have been reading about many common points. Several individuals have revealed problems while others have discussed solutions. I would like to be another player trying to come up with solutions to these common problems.

1. Horizontal Progression – I see many things in this game in the form of one-shot skins. I agree that for this kind of progression to work to the goal of vanity that new designs must be introduced, but its the implementation that causes some friction among players. With this line of thinking I’m focusing on the Living Story skin rewards. Those that have participated in those events can show off the game progression they have been apart of. Which is fine even for a late comer like myself to GW2. What I’d like to see is more development in the design space already in game. The meta achievements reward a skin for your account so why not utilize the account bound skin window on a player’s achievement page to allow those rewards to be used more than once.

2. Vertical Progression – Many MMOs look at vertical progression as a gear treadmill and more difficult content. Several posts within this forum have discussed ascended armor in detail, so I’ll spare going to far into the topic other than coming up with a solution. Like in the horizontal point about account-bounding skins, I want to focus on a design space already in the game. Pristine Fractal Relics. This currency is very under-utilized in my opinion and by using it towards the accumulation of ascended armor and weapons in a fair amount (determined by the average time of the game community to acquire them) you help another group of players. But wait there is more to this line of thinking… use Badges of Honor for the WvW-core players to acquire theirs. Then you create an environment more appealing to a broader scope of players than purely through crafting. But on the note of crafting (and since the market will determine values over time anyways) why not make ascended armor/weapons be available for sale. This would continue the flow of in game gold (which can become stagnate often because of updates), and yet allow another avenue of acquisition to the game population.

3. Acquisition – Even though this forum topic is focused on both horizontal and vertical progressions, I’d like to highlight one other point belonging to each of these – the acquisition of materials for the success of these progressions. With DR affecting loot drops, inequality of time to reward ratios across several forms of game modes and time available to a wide range of players (ie. hardcore vs casual players) I think that the collecting of material is daunting. Anyway you slice it players want a decent amount of this gaming portion to be fair. One way to accomplish this is by changing the dungeon rewards system. In addition to the raw coin awarded at the end of a dungeon, you can utilize yet something else in the game. From the laurel vendors there are the crafting bags. Keep this mind… when the reward prompt appears on the screen give players options. A simple reward could be choosing 20 Empyreal Shards, 10 Dragonite Ore or a Heavy Crafting Bag in addition to your raw coin reward. This allows players to better manage their time by targeting what they want to meet their personal progression goals. This system would be implemented using the daily dungeon model. Then you could use this same system for world bosses and temple events. Instead of rewarding the two rares in the chest above the mini map for completing these events, the reward prompt can offer a fixed rare plus a choice among say for example 50 silver, a Heavy Crafting Bag, 30 Dragonite Ore or 5x Champion boxes. All this is doing is creating an environment that is less alienating to more of the general game population.

In closing I hope these points are thought over and help both the game community in coming up with even more solutions and to also help the developers at ArenaNet with looking at already available game data to improve GW2.

There are only 2 things I care about when it comes to character progression: I do not want my hard work crafting something huge to become obsolete due to higher level cap and I do not want my hard work erased by losing levels or progress.

I always thought the game was about cosmetic progression and bigger challenges (like with the increasing Fractal difficulty sense). You go as far as you can until you can’t anymore. Then you practice and try harder, while making yourself look darn good!

I feel like this is becoming less and less the case…. Ascended crafting is fine, but when you have such disparities between classes it kind of stinks (11 more days for light armor, for instance or even 1-handed versus 2 handed weapons (vision crystals)). I feel like it wasn’t thought about much, and considering how much time and thought we put into it on the forums and on the game I guess that offends me.

I’m just going to agree with a lot of what has been said so far, and add that cosmetic changes have been implemented incredibly slowly compared to GW1. Some patch in the near future instead of adding better gear should just add lots of different looking gear. A good deal of the armor sets in the game I don’t like very much.

ColinJohanson.2394:

A question to help direct the discussion a bit:

What are some of your favorite progression systems of all time in others? Be they horizontal, or vertical, just which ones really got you excited and were fun for you to continue to progress in?

For me, Final Fantasy Tactics is one I loved, where I was able to continue to unlock new jobs and advanced professions for my characters, as well as level up their abilities within those professions. It remains one of my all time favorite games, and one of my favorite systems of progression in any game. I’m also pretty darn fond of that Guild Wars game and skill collection.

The systems introduced by GW:EoTN were incredibly brilliant. Scattering meaningful horizontal progression throughout the world (skills, moa chick scavenger hunt, Thackery scavenger hunt, etc.), providing multiple ways to progress, and giving a very shallow grind for vertical progression with a low/medium grind cosmetic progression that was achieveable by the masses, AND allowing for further progression for bragging rights and minor passive buffs via titles… dude someone on that team was brilliant!!!

Who came up with that idea Colin? Was it you?

Savoy.6824:

@DiogoSilva
Awesome man, I said something very similar to this a few post back. Loved the FF7 materia system.

If we look at it, the materia system does something similar to GW2’s systems with far more simplicity. And, perhaps, with potencially more depth too.

• Slotting materia on equipment? Runes, Sigils and Infusions.
• Red, green and yellow materia? Utility skills.
• Purple and Blue materia? Traits.

One system instead of three.

Not only is it simpler and easier to understand, but by being so, it prevents a few problems found in GW2 from existing.

• Too much passive play in pvp? That’s because almost the entirety of the trait and upgrade systems are tied to passive effects. In FFVII, slotting passive effects came at the cost of active effects, and vice-versa – and with blue materia, its “passive” effects won’t even work if they’re not tied to active effects.
• Lack of skill collecting? In FFVII, collecting materia was possible and part of the fun.
• Too busy/ complicated? If we look at ascended gear, we’ll see it overloaded with upgrade slots, which is not very elegant design, especially when most of them are for only for stat boosts.

In many ways, materia and GW1’s skill system were both simple, easy to understand, yet lead to plenty of different combos.

I remember the lead system designer Izzy talking in the last CDI thread about elegant/ minimalism design, and I would be interested to know what he thinks of GW2’s systems he designed, when directly compared to the two examples above (one of them which was also designed by him, I assume).

Why not fuse the trait and the skill systems into one? Traits offer way too many passive effects – 14. Do we really need that many passive effects? Meanwhile, the skill system is a bit too restricted.

We could get something like this:

• Progressing through traitlines cost skill points (so they don’t become useless);
• Some slots would unlock active skills (utilities), and at grandmaster tier, they would unlock elite skills.
• For some slots, players would have to choose between active and passive effects, or, if that’s a bad idea, in some slots, players would be able to enhance unlocked active skills with passive effects, or even with runes/ sigils/ infusions, effectively fusing all three systems into one.

Example of this:
Elementalist’s Fire Magic Traitline

• Adept tier: unlocks signet of fire and conjure flame axe.
• Master tier: unlocks cleansing fire.
• Grandmaster tier: unlocks conjure fiery greatsword.

And then there would exist slots inbetween:

• Attach choosen utility with a trait or a rune.
• Signet of Fire attached to trait that makes the signet’s active add an extra effect.
• Or attached to a sigil that would make the signet apply a lightning bolt on activation.

Just food for thought. ^^

Y’all know that legendary armor is eventually going to come out and have the same stat-changing ability as the weapons right?

I don’t care for the veritical progression at all. That’s why I’m not making any ascended gear what-so-ever. I’m buying with the laurels, because I don’t mind some grinding (infact I love to farm as it’s just relaxing mindless activity)… but the time gating aspect of the ascended crafting severely kitten es me off thus I do not take part of it.

Besides, I am not going to upgrade my exotics until there’s two levels higher than what I have. It’s like my photography hobby. Upgrading camera bodies every year is kittened because it is a small update, but wait two-three years and it’s a big update. Speaking of which, going to upgrade my camera body in late 2014.

PS: Talk is cheap. The CDI from the Dec 10th proved a PR move and nothing more as the two months of cheap talk was exactly that. Unless action is taken from these CDIs stop doing them. They aren’t changing the prespective of anyone with a three digit IQ.

It would be really nice if the Ascended Gates were altered to be once per PROFESSION, per account. At most, that gives you three items, so that you feel like you’re making actual progress.

=Vertical=
If I can’t feel a big difference in queensdale between all blue level 80 warrior and all blue level 15 warrior, why should I level? There should be no leveling if there is scaling.

The differences are 3 more somewhat useful skill equipped and almost neglectable stat bonus from traits. I don’t have the feeling of “oh that centaur slaughtered me when I was 6 and now I will make my revenge by one shoting all its family members”

=Horizontal=
If I could just buy the best armors on trading post by converting my real money in to gold, why should I go grind a week for them?

But exotic is a good point to stop since it can be guaranteed by doing normal dungeons, crafting, spending karma/badge, and buying on tp.

What about ascended? It is only guaranteed by crafting. Almost all other sources are purely RNG. People has also been complaining about the never-showing legendary scavenger hunt which you guys promised/said to release later this year but what they get now is this grindy ascended—I will say the grind level is even more than the “precursor grind”. In this way, introducing ascended equipment(with bad looks) is a very amateur idea.

I dont know why anyone cares about progression in this game. All the content can be completed in yellows, as someone that has no intention of getting ascended, I could care less what the guy next to me in the zerg pressing 1 is wearing. As for horizontal progression, in the past 1.2 years of patches, 90% of the horizontal progression added was in the form of black lion armor skins and weapon skins. This topic is a joke.

Wow, this thread is filling fast! I’ll just put my thoughts down briefly if I can.

Ok, let’s start with ascended. I have never liked ascended gear and up until recently I didn’t actively pursue it (except for a quiver, but that was for aesthetics). The reason was that I didn’t “need” it for any content. It doesn’t exist in PvP and no content in PvE requires it except for fractals, which I play very little of. That all changed with WvW season one. I do not want to lose fights in a competitive environment because I’m not geared. I’m fine with getting beaten because they’re better than me, but I’ll always have doubts if I lack best-in-slot gear. At this time I’ve decided that ascended armor is too much trouble to get and I’m not sure how that will affect my WvW participation.

As to vertical progression, I don’t mind a small amount of it, though my definition of small is probably much smaller than others. I believe the hero at the end of his epic tale should be twice the man he was before, not 1500 times. I really dislike the bloated progression systems in games today and I feel like level scaling is a band-aid fix, granted a necessary one. I’d rather see a level-less system, but I understand why we have it the way we do.

Horizontal progression is the best option, in my opinion and I would like to see that expanded. More skills and more traits are fine, but I’d like to see more versatility given to it. I’d start by separating stat modifiers from traits. This would add some complexity to building, but that complexity already exists by having stats attached to gear (PvE). I would additionally remove stats from gear and add that to the stat pool. So in my system, gear would only have gear values (the exception being runes/orbs) and traits would be only traits. Then there would be a stat pool so players could restructure their stats as needed for whatever build they want. Now, this would turn the whole gear system on its ear and I realize how heavily that would affect other systems, but in my opinion it’s the best system.

Now, I know my system is too much to ask for. So I guess the next thing I should mention is progression pacing. Progression in the first 15 levels feels great to me. You gain weapon skills at a good pace and even some utility skills and weapon swapping. After that the pace gets sluggish. Levels 15-30 you start to drag and get bored waiting to unlock a couple of skills. After that it drags miserably. It takes a long time to reach 80, and honestly I don’t really care about my traits all that much until I am max level. It really feels like a grind designed around feeding us traits at a snails pace.

As to Colin’s question of systems we liked, my favorite was Guild Wars. The system felt fairly simple and manageable. Vertical progression was minimal and the progression ceiling was low. It was easy to change builds and roles.

Ok, I’ll shut up now.

ColinJohanson.2394:

For me, Final Fantasy Tactics is one I loved, where I was able to continue to unlock new jobs and advanced professions for my characters, as well as level up their abilities within those professions. It remains one of my all time favorite games, and one of my favorite systems of progression in any game. I’m also pretty darn fond of that Guild Wars game and skill collection.

Man, advanced professions would be the coolest addition to GW2! I think a lot of the Final Fantasy “advanced professions” are my favorite progression systems as well. The ability to specialize and feel like I’m really fulfilling a role is immensely fulfilling.

Personally, I would love to be able to specialize into a specific trait line or perhaps even a specific weapon. Gain more skills/abilities specific to that trait line/weapon that allowed me to be more useful.

For example, a Guardian being able to specialize in Hammers could perhaps unlock even more powerful versions of the hammer skills. In addition the original 5, they would get skills like

1: Hammer Swing -> Hammer Bash -> Symbol of the Advanced Protection (Create a large symbol that gives protection, might and regen to you and your allies)
2: Cracked Earth: Crack the ground around you with a mighty blow damaging, Immobilizing and weakening foes around you.
3: Concussive Blow: Smash your hammer into your foe, crippling and interrupting your foe.
4: Zealots Fiery Embrace: Send a wave toward your foe that immobilizes and burns your foe.
5: Wall of Warding: Smash the ground, damaging foes around you and creating a line of earth that foes cannot cross and reflects projectiles.

New virtues!
Virtue of Wisdom: Remove conditions from allies nearby every 40 seconds. Activate: You and allies gain Protection and Regen.

Things of this nature would be great! Also, the opportunity to master new elite skills or even hunt for them as in GW1 would be a welcome addition. Ideas for new elite skills:

Guardian:
Symbol of Fiery Resolve: The ground around you erupts in flame, granting regen, fury, protection and might to you and your allies. Foes are set on fire and are weakened in the face of your resolve.

Mesmer:
Masquerade: Grants invisibility (3s) to you and summon 5 random illusions to distract and attack your foe. → Party Crasher: Shatter all your illusions at once, damaging and confusing nearby foes.

Those are just a couple ideas I had for more advanced skills.

A small point about skill progression, as it was implemented with the healing skills. This will not be helpful for new players trying to learn their class. 25 skill points is a lot for a skill they should be using frequently, and significant barrier to it’s use for new characters/players.

I would abandon the idea of making new skills a skill point sink, and implement something else to serve that purpose.

If the goal is to have players work for the new skills spread their acquisition out across the land. Keep the skill point investment normal, so that people have incentive to get them on alts as well to help further populate the land.

I think one small change that would help ascended armor crafting is the ability to “downgrade” materials from one tier to the other. Both for the generic materials (wool, cotton, etc.) and “fine” crafting materials.

Currently, it is an enormous cost to farm the midlevel materials, while silk, which should be second best, is over-farmed and dirt cheap since most people play in that level range. There is already a “promotion” recipe from one tier to the “next” tier, but not a “demotion” recipe for crafting materials. Of course, it can have some other cost / penalty for demoting; in the mystic forge, you pay dust and some skill points, or bottle of elonian wine, I don’t remember.

One other area that would help vertical progression, ESPECIALLY for cloth-armor vs. non-cloth, is a greater reliance on “leather square” crafting material in all areas of the game. The leather squares are completely overshadowed by the cloth and metal requirements (particularly because of insignias for cloth, and many uses of metal for weapons as well as armor), while leather is not used for anything important and thus is very cheap.

Progression-wise, when I salvage equipment and get a hardened leather square, I feel like I am being cheated by RNG and could have gotten a Gossamer worth about 20x more. I think small, QoL and “smoothing” changes to crafting – allow material tier demotion, and more emphasis/uses of leather squares – are two small fixes that will have larger effects at improving the system than I think is initially apparent.

I just wish there where more armor-pieces with cool effects on them, such as the Citadel of Flame light armor shoulders, or the Toxic shoulders & gloves from the Gem Store.

It feels like the armors are too static, too “realistic” in a world where magic rules. . . Why not be a bit more creative with awesome particle-effects and such?

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Really good start to this topic folks. Excellent discussion, and really good ideas.

I am blown away, thanks everyone you have made my day. I love the CDI and so far this is a really good example of how I imagine it should be.

I’m really happy that you’re so exciting about this! It feels like some people gives you a lot more crap than you deserve. You guys are the best! Keep on improving this awesome game!