Guild Wars 2

Read the first page but it got a bit tl;dr for me, so if I’m rehashing stuff read it as a +1 for those people.

Regarding character/gear progression, things that I appreciate:
- Upgradable gear. It’s been said earlier, the Fractal Capacitor and Ascended Rings are amazing in this respect. More fractal play means better fractal gear. I don’t really have inventory space for yet another set of armor, so upgrading the current lv80 exotic gear seems to make more sense for such a small (yet noticeable) boost in stats.
- Trait/skill reworks and expansions. I find that more potential variety with skill builds makes for a more enjoyable game. The vast potential of meta and off-meta builds was what kept me in GW1 for 6 years.

Regarding character/gear progression, things that bother me:
- Gear improvements tied to the game economy. In my view, this encourages an over-reliance on gold and gold farming in the market, which would go against the idea of a player being rewarded for gameplay.
- Nonsensical crafting progression. I stopped at 489 Weaponsmithing because I have to discover 5-8 more exotic weapons I will have no use for. Why not have a method that lets me improve the gear I have rather than crafting items I won’t use?

As far as ascended materials, there’s very little problem in obtaining any of it in PvE, but again, in WvW Dragonite Ore can be a rare commodity. Maybe add a chance for it to drop from Tower champion bags as well?

Isaiah Cartwright.8569:

Art Progression
Art progression! It’s horizontal why not do it more!!! Well we do this a lot all ready and a lot of it’s constraints comes down to costs. Every single piece of art we make is not liked by everyone and so the amount of art you have to make to give everyone a smooth art progression curve is very high. The cost of making some pieces of art is also very high (Armor especially) sense very pair of gloves = 10 pairs of gloves due to race/sex. We think art is a great horizontal progression system but not something that can stand 100% alone due to constraints of creation.

What about Weapon Skins? Is that just as costly? Considering the lack of weapon dyes in the game, could you not work with that? Maybe even add in Animations for certain weapons on top of the existing skins. Examples like an ecto glow, or a pink mist. Here’s one, change the color of skill animations like arrow/bullet trails. Even simpler maybe unique weapon names like GW1.
Just some thoughts.
And thanks for the discussion.

I think that you guys at Anet did not have a right perception of time-gating wrt ascended armor…. It doesn’t mean having enough stuff in stock and enough money to buy the mats on the trading post. You can craft a full set of ascended armor in a few days, just need to order bolts of damask on the tp, and have laurels and 12 of each refined ascended. Why u made bolts of damask, deldrimor steel and elonian leather tradeable? I mean seriously you made the first step of refinement account bound and the second step unbound…
To me ascended armor is not a sign of progression, it’s just a matter of materials and gold piled up. In my opinion you really understimated the impact of the trading post.
PvE-wise the biggest part of progression both horizontal and vertical now can be just substituted by “in which way i can get gold faster”?
Lodestones, t6 mats, precursors, bolts of damask, heck even legendaries.
When i see someone with a legendary i don’t feel like he has achieved something more than me. He’s just more wealthy, spent more time or was more efficient farming or had the rng on his side for the precursor drop.
Wvw rank is a good measure of progression, fractal level could be aswell but it doesn’t feel that meaningful right now.

On the other hand tons of laurels are being wasted for ascended, since it’s a time gated and account bound currency if u want to craft 2 different sets for 3 chars each light medium and heavy you’re going to spend much more than what would be reasonable (5×6×2x3=180). With 45 laurels x month being more than large you need 4 months, and that’s if u don’t spend them on anything else.

Karma and dungeon tokens also feel left out in the new ascended landscape.
Adding new trading options for those would be a good thing.
You could have karma allow to get bags of t6 mats like laurels and dungeon tokens be tradeable for specific cores+chance of lodestone (the theme should be pretty easy since u already have gifts tied to specific dungeons)
I mean trading an account bound currency for a component of a legendary would feel better than farming 100 gold and buying what i need on the tp.

I also feel like the work you’ve done with Twilight Arbor had a sad end. Tequatl feels hard but it fits into the context of ascended gear, but why should one try any harder path in a dungeon while he can just farm the easiest/fastest one?
You could add bonus challenge events (for the whole dungeon or on boss fight) with added ascended mats and chance for unique rewards, that are not good to do just to get the 5-10 achievement points and be done with it.

Well, you should already know how I feel about vertical progression. I still feel strongly that Ascended gear should never have been added to the game. They promised no gear treadmill and then gave us a gear treadmill. Now they said it was just to fill in a “gap” between getting exotics and legendary items. Ok, fine. It’s too fill in this mythical gap. But that only means that they better not EVER add another tier of gear after this.

So as far as vertical goes. NO MORE tiers of gear. Absolutely no raising the level cap and starting this treadmill all over again. Go the GW1 route and add lots of prestige sets in the game instead. Sets that are the same stats, but look great. As for the current Ascended gear, please add more ways of getting this gear (particularly weapons and armor). Right now it kind of sucks that you either must pray to the RNG gods in fractals or craft to get ascended weapons. There should be a way to get these pieces through laurels, karma, honor or guild commendations. At the very least you should make the Ascended mats NOT account bound and trade-able. Many people in GW2 have alts and right now this ascended system is not alt friendly, nor build friendly.

So what do I want? Yes, to more skills being available. More skills per weapon, more weapon types per class and more utility skills. Yes, to prestige armor. You can make it hard as hell to get, but the stats should not be better. Yes, to adding new zones to explore. Yes, to adding more dynamic events in old zones.

I’d love to see an elite area the equivalent of Underworld. I’d prefer something instanced that scaled so you can go in with a few people or many. It would be nice to have something more large scale for guildies to do together like that. Add more missions in the open world for guilds as well and add more rewards for guild commendations.

For the open world I want to go to the Far Shiverpeaks and fight Jormag. I want to cross the Crystal Desert into Elona. I want to cross the seas and see what the isolated Cantha is up to. Drop this odd stuff with the Living Story and go back to your roots. Either pick up the Dragons again with the norn trying to get their homeland back, bring back the Mursaat, or take us back to Cantha and Elona.

The Scarlet story has been rather underwhelming. I look forward to seeing it end and hopefully getting something that actually grabs my interest.

For me, personally, exotic gear is still something I feel like I have to spend a bunch of gold on. Because of this, Ascended armor is a series of items I don’t even think about. It presents a huge grind for me.

As for rewards… While most of the time I swear Anet put me on a list of “let’s see how far we can push someone with unluckiness before they quit the game”, I feel like drops are somewhat in balance. Even though I hate RNG.

What I miss regarding progression: My own place like Hall of Monuments was in GW1.
I LOVED tracking my progress through dungeons, minipet collection, armors, weapons, etc. I loved taking people in there and show them my progress. Arrange the statues. I LOVED IT. It showed off my time in the game.

Right now I don’t feel like I have anything to show visually. I don’t even shoot for a legendary, seeing that any time hanging out in LA I will see every other person run by me with a Twilight or Sunrise or Bifrost.

Another little sore spot for me is alts. I find it horribly tedious to level up my 5th character to 80, when all I want to do is to play with it already.

I wish we had some kind of account XP bonus, for example 50% XP bonus on characters until they hit lvl 80, if you have 1 lvl80 on your account already.
100% bonus if you have 2 lvl80s, etc.

The game is not very alt friendly at the moment, and this really holds me back from enjoying all the various aspects of different professions and races.

Oh yeah, bringing back the Hall of Monuments would be nice as someone mentioned above. It could be all a part of the next big Living Story (or better yet expansion) where we head to the Far Shiverpeaks and fight to retake the norn’s land. Have us fight our way up to the Eye of the North and take it back and restore it. Then players will have a new GW2 HoM like the one GW1 (though you would keep the guy with the HoM rewards there of course).

Giving us real player housing might also be something fun. Or a guild hall.

Isaiah Cartwright.8569:

Sytherek.7689:

Excuse me, which “tradable level up books” are you referring to?

I mean account bound level up books, the tomes of knowledge.

Ah.

Those books should be tradable. The drop rate is terribly low.

I guess the only thing I want to add is please don’t ever time gate vertical progression.

Someone here said one of their favorite games, especially in terms of progression, is Final Fantasy Tactics? That’s an absolutely phenomenal game and you have great taste. One of the best things about the progression in that game is that you are allowed to progress as much as you can for however much time you spend towards that goal. That game doesn’t tell you that no additional amount of playing today will get you any closer to your goal and to just come back tomorrow. That’s great. I get to continue to play that game and develop however I see fit.

However, with laurels and their connection to vertical progression as it is in GW2, I can no longer make any progress towards the best stats in certain categories after having achieved my daily limits. This is incredibly frustrating especially to people who play multiple builds or multiple characters.

I hope it’s not like midnight where you are, Isaiah. Go nap!

I’m going to be that guy and bring up the idea of a skin locker here. I think having a skin locker in a very similar fashion to DC Universe Online’s costume system would be a great way to promote individual character progression for mains and alts. Being able to unlock these skins in a similar fashion to how they’re obtainable now would be interesting, especially for karma based skins, because it would bring back interest in some of the community in doing map completion on alts.
Meta event rewards can also be a chore because I find that I have so many skins left over that I don’t know what to do with them. I want to save them because they’re exclusive skins, but I often delete them because they’re just sitting in my bank or inventory for months. I like the idea of being able to stick them in their own area almost like a trophy for participation until I find a use for them. I understand this can be achieved with bank tabs but it doesn’t have the same effect when it’s surround by bloodstone dust and boosters. It is also unreasonable to do with banks as the living story goes on and more and more skins are released. This would also allow for account-wide progression with the locker other than what we see with skin unlocks through the achievement system.
I have 9 characters total so gearing is a lot of work. I have to decide on a build that I like and then skins that I enjoy and stick to those for as long as I possibly can until I can’t stand looking at them anymore or balance changes tamper with my build. Changing those skins+stats feels really punishing, especially on alts, because I know that I worked hard to obtain them and used cash to transmute them. I’m reluctant to change my builds because of the fact that I feel stuck to them. This is especially true on my main character when it comes to using new builds as I really enjoy the way I look, but I’m not sure if I want to go through the trouble of coming up with another look that I enjoy or if I should try to get the same exact skins that I already have.
I’ve noticed a similar issue with ascended armor as well because quite a few people don’t enjoy the way the armor looks and like the way their character looked before the release of the new tier. However, if they transmuted their armor no one will know that it’s ascended. The skin is a status symbol; a sign that you worked really hard for something for your character. Having the ability to toggle those skins on and off would be a life improvement for the majority of players.
The locker would also be an interesting feature if it allowed town clothes to be implemented into it and utilized while taking damage. The community has called for town clothes to be used in combat in the past and I’ve heard some claim they won’t bother with the feature until it’s usable 100% of the time.
I realize that this idea is an overhaul of the way skins are used in the game with pve and wvw and what I’ve mentioned doesn’t account for stat acquisition aaand that if it were implemented it would take a long time but I do think it’s worth looking into!

Only one part of this has been on my mind that much lately – I’ll have to think about the others more. That’s the ascended crafting stuff (of course).

It mostly just confuses me; how much time/money is supposed to go into them? Not all GW2 players are filthy rich – I suspect I’d have to blow half my bank just to finish levelling one of the professions to 500. For something that actually gives a gameplay advantage that’s not what I expected – it reminds me of trying to kit out characters in Diablo 2, which was really quite a chore.

GW1 took the “skill over time” approach and made sure you didn’t need to spend that much time in game to be on a level playing field (materially at least, player skill is always a different matter, that’s OK). I figured this was carrying over into GW2 and it generally appears to be true – which is why Ascended items are hard to reconcile with that. They actually do take a LOT of playing to earn.

Is that where they’re supposed to be?

Isaiah Cartwright.8569:

Weapon skins are not as hard as Armor which is why you see more of them, but there are still 19 weapons and we’ve found partial sets are not everyone fav thing. We do think there is some fatige to a slot. For example if we added a weapon skin every week the number of people who would care about each new weapon would go down quick. Which is why we try and rotate which slots new art comes out.

Gloves, Boots, shoulders and Helms are easier for armor but still take a while, Coats and Leggings are the most expensive.

Back items and weapons are faster to make but you need to make a lot of them

Hi Isaiah, would like to know If you guys are considering thing like new animation packs (changing the way playing your character feels) and, summonable pets reskins.

For gameplay progression, do you guys consider adding new runes and sigils that will actually change the way you play your character in and out of combat.

And lastly what do you think about character development through choices (like in personal story), affecting the way the game is played. An example with the order: introducing an order hierarchy system, players would be able to buy order exclusives consumables (soul/Account bound) they can use in open pve, and also start some specific events, participate in some order bound assignment and scavenger hunts.

Of course all this would also require a change in the way the game try to spread the player through the entire open world, but this would probably be the subject of another CDI.

Well, I’d be happy to put in a résumé if you’re looking to hire more 3D character/texture/VFX artists, but you always seem to need them darned programmers! Who needs programmers, anyway? In my experience, they’re the guys always emptying the coffee machines and going to the bathroom (see: correlation).
Getting them jobs would be my ideal solution to the armor crisis, but I won’t sell myself all day here. ;D

(Will edit with an eloquent and well thought out statement on other types progression)

/thread contribution

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.

Hence why I bought Guild Wars 2.

Bummer.

:(

As a little background, I pre-purchased GW2 primarily based on the manifesto and pre-release discussion regarding focusing on prestige-based rewards instead of power-based rewards. At this point in my life, I have neither the time nor inclination to play a game that is heavily focused on vertical progression, and I was hoping that ANet could deliver a mostly horizontal progression focused MMO based on their track record with GW1’s low power curve. To say that I think GW2 needs more horizontal progression and less vertical progression would be an understatement at best.

That said, I truly believe that vertical progression can coexist peacefully (and possibly even improve upon) the goals established by the manifesto and other pre-release media. In order to do so, you need to start following these three rules:

1. Vertical progression should not interfere with horizontal progression.

Right now, this is one of the biggest issues with ascended gear IMO. If I spend 100 hours farming a full set of ascended berserker gear, I am essentially locked into berserker gear indefinitely. Even if you buff alternate playstyles, such as condition damage or support, I am strongly disincentivized from trying the new builds because I would have to downgrade my gear. This does not promote horizontal progression.

Instead, vertical progression and horizontal progression need to play nice together. For example, a title that gives +5% damage against dredge would provide vertical progression without locking the player into any one specific build. Regardless if I equip rabid, berserker or soldier’s gear, I still get the same benefit from my vertical progression.

Lastly on this point, the legendary gear stat switching is another tool that allows vertical and horizontal progression to interact cleanly. If you allowed ascended to switch stats, I would be farming my behind off to acquire a full set, simply because it provides both forms of progression in one swoop.

2. Vertical progression should be available via all game modes to which it applies.

One of the most common complaints of last-gen MMOs was that if you wanted vertical progression, you had to participate in one specific game mode to acquire better gear. You want better PvE gear? You must collect X number of people and raid. You want better PvP gear? You must participate in PvP mode X, but not modes Y or Z. Unfortunately, GW2 has also fallen into this pattern with most of the ascended releases.

Instead, why can’t players progress vertically while playing the specific game modes that they enjoy most? This would fit directly in line with the “play the way you want to play” design intent for GW2.

IMO ascended amulets and laurels was the best ascended roll-out we have seen to date. Regardless of your preferred game mode (PvE, WvW, or sPvP), you will collect laurels and steadily progress towards your next ascended piece. On the other hand, you have ascended acquisition methods such as fractals, guild missions, and crafting, which force players into specific game modes for power-based rewards.

Power-based rewards tend to compel people to acquire them, especially when they affect competitive gameplay such as WvW. When someone is compelled to engage in an activity for an extrinsic reward (i.e. loot), instead of the intrinsic reward (i.e. fun), it becomes a grind. However, if the power-based reward is gained through the game mode the provides the highest intrinsic reward (fun), the progression does not feel grindy.

Note that if vertical progression only applies to one specific game mode, it is generally acceptable that it can only be acquired within that game mode. For example, Agony only affects fractals, so Agony resist only being acquired in fractals is OK. Stats that affect all game modes only being available in fractals would not be OK.

On the other hand, I feel that horizontal prestige-based rewards (such as skins, titles, etc) are perfectly reasonable to limit to specific game modes. If I want a specific dungeon-themed armor, it makes sense to play that dungeon to acquire it. Likewise, awesome WvW finishers should come from playing WvW. In short, vertical progression should be available via all game modes to which it applies; horizontal progression may be limited to specific tasks or game modes.

3. Vertical progression does not need to take forever to achieve.

When GW2 first launched, I thought the time investment to get a full set of exotic gear was just about right (my first set consisted of a mixture of crafted, dungeon purchased, karma purchased and TP purchased gear). Needless-to-say, I think the time and cost requirements needed for a full set of ascended gear is wildly over-the-top.

However, since then, I have happily spent far more time and gold farming up different dungeon sets and crafting named exotics in the mystic forge. Not for increased power, mind you, but for specific skins (prestige-based rewards). And it all goes back to vertical power-based rewards versus horizontal prestige-based rewards. While legendaries are also significantly costly to acquire, they do not give a competitive advantage over other players, and as such, are justified in the very high prestige investment. I know we all recall the pre-release quote from Mike O’Brien (?) about items that take 1000 hours to acquire and their relative power to other items.

Many other MMOs have linked their power-based rewards and prestige-based rewards via raids or what-not, but it does not need to be this way. Imagine the following scenario:

What if each release of the living story had included the ability to upgrade one piece of your gear to ascended via an ever evolving quest line that took about 1 hour per release. Over 16 releases or so, each player would have upgraded their entire kit to an ascended status. At the end of the LS season, the LS would be remembered for an evolving quest line where you character progressed throughout to become ever more powerful. This type of vertical progression would create a bonding experience with your characters, fond memories of the events involved, and not require hours upon hours of tedious farming or crafting for power-based rewards.

Lastly, this rule applies to alt-friendliness as well. To date, ascended has not been very alt-friendly, due to time gating and high costs. Vertical power-based rewards should be developed in a fashion that allows players who want to maintain multiple characters the ability to keep all of their characters up to par. Prior to ascended gear, character bound fractal levels, and character bound WvW levels, GW2 was the most alt friendly game I had ever played. You are already correcting 2 of the 3 above. Moving forward, vertical progression should be alt friendly as well.

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.

If I may say, one area of progression, both horizontal and vertical, which I consider to be a complete failure is crafting.

I’m a craftsmen in real life, though I’ve moved in to the digital age and an currently studying to be an animator, modeler, and concept artist, my mother was a classical portraitist and landscape artist and my father was a carpenter. I can work to some degree with pretty much anything but metal and glass. And I have hated, HATED, every single crafting system in every game ever, except one.

DarkCloud 2, it was just amazing and fun.

That is the only game, ever, out of the thousands of games I have played over my life, in which I ENJOYED the crafting system. If you made gw2s crafting like that, or even took it as a base and improved upon it, you wouldn’t have to force me to craft by putting me at a severe stat disadvantage if I don’t, I would craft willingly and likely frequently.

I think before we talk about solutions, we have to be clear about the problems and that not everyone agrees about what is grind vs what is inherently enjoyable. For example, getting to max level in GW1 was easier, but getting to max stats/abilities (e.g. skills) was much grindier in my opinion — and yet, we see people in this thread arguing the opposite.

I think, though, we can agree about some things:

• Time gating & account-bound crafting conflicts with running alts and swapping builds.
• Gear/stats aren’t progressed as much as it’s replaced: you can’t resell or reuse masterwork, rare, or exotics when you upgrade to the next level. Heck, when you decide to junk PVT for something else, you also can’t reuse or recycle.
• A lot of people like constantly improving their game in-game (e.g. levels, new skills, gear), but a lot of people who drank the GW2 kool-aid (including me) prefer maxing in-game abilities quickly and challenging ourselves in-game to improve our playing abilities. Both groups will see the same activity or challenges completely differently: the first group is glad there are 80 levels; the second group is not.

For me personally, I don’t like any sort of vertical progression. Leveling is a burden to me. It wasn’t hard in GW2 to reach L80, but I didn’t feel I was really playing the game until I had all skills unlocked for each profession, an activity that became increasingly dull for me with each alt. I also don’t care much about horizontal progression: I like attractive armor and weapons as much as anyone, but I don’t care much if I have it.

What interests me is personal progression: I want a game that always presents challenges for me. I liked this about GW1 and GW2: no matter how good I thought I was, there were always things I couldn’t do at first, but only after mastering other aspects of the game. GW1’s short-lived version of the Living Story (GW Beyond) added such challenges and gave the game new life for me.

yes to horizontal progression
- each gear can unlock and change stats
- each gear can unlock and change skins

no to vertical progression
- max level 80 (please do not increase any further)
- max tier ascended (please do not add new tiers)

thank you.

My opinions on the topic:

I think that Ascended Armor currently (as well as Weapon) are way too expensive to make, time wise.

If everything was available from everywhere, it would greatly improve the player experience, kinda like the Ascended Trinkets.

- If a player enjoys farming random mobs in the map, he can choose where and farm. He’ll earn gold from the drops, buy mats, and level his crafting skill to get his Ascended gear.
- If a player only plays casually, say a couple hours a few days per week, he can eventually earn his Ascended gear from Laurels.
- If a player enjoys running dungeons and/or bosses or fractals, he can also get the gear from the dungeon vendors.

This kind of “option” gives players a choice to play whichever way fits their playstyle the best. Currently, via crafting only, players are limited to farm materials/gold and level expensively their crafting so their BiS gear.

And about the time constraint on the crafts: I think it’s good on theory, since it gives players reason to log in everyday and it’s something they look forward to, but in reality, it becomes a chore. And chores aren’t fun in games.
“I have to log in today to craft another piece or I’ll lose the day…” – this kind of thought should never be allowed, it ruins the fun of the game.
Players would slowly lose interest as they get more tired/bored of it.

Also, since it’s expensive and time consuming to make a single piece, it’s unthinkable at the moment to craft multiple sets for your characters.
Exotics are easy to get and in my opinion this was one of the greatest selling points of the game. I always invited friends saying “you don’t have to raid or farm PvP for months for the best gear. You can get it in about a month if you play regularly”
And then we’d be able to get multiple sets, weapons, for various builds. With Ascended gear being so exclusive, not to mention the upgrade isn’t really game-breaking (thankfully!), I really prefer to keep my multiple Exotics for various situations in the game.

Someone mentioned about Ascending a “slot” instead of gear, that’d be a nice thing for players, but I think it could be better somehow. Maybe making gear more customizable, since they’re so expensive, you’d pay a small fee to change their stats at will (kinda like reseting traits).
After all, after crafting a whole Ascended set… the last thing I think I’d ever want is to craft ANOTHER set. Not to mention alts…

So in short, I think that either leaving the time/cost as it is but opening more customization in the stats so we don’t have to craft multiples for various builds, or make it a kitteneaper closer to what Exotics was when the game was released so it’s easier to make multiple sets.

Here are my two biggest complaints with the current ascended gear.

1) Exotic gear could be acquired by playing any facet of the game – be it dungeons, open world PvE, crafting, WvW, or purchasing. Admittedly, ascended gear was very, very esy to get a full set of, but this is one thing that it did a lot better than ascended gear. Right now, for a full set of ascended gear, there are a few “options” for different slots (i.e. laurels or guild commendations for accessories), but ascended gear is not by any means accessible equally throughout different content. This hits WvW players especially hard, as they are under pressure to have best-in-slot gear and have no reasonable way to obtain any of it through WvW without dipping pretty heavily into PvE.

Suggestion: Make WvW ascended items, but remove the infusion slots from them. That way, the pure fractal PvE crowd won’t be looking to WvW to gear up, and the pure WvW crowd couldn’t care less about agony resist anyway – they just want to be able to fight other characters on equal footing.

2) Time gating. Gearing up a single character, the time gating isn’t that bad, but gearing up a second, third, fourth… it gets overwhelming fast. Also, for players newer to the game who weren’t around to start collecting materials earlier, it presents a wall that they cannot reasonably scale in anything but what the time gate allows. There is nothing more incredibly frustrating than wanting to join your friends in whatever they are doing and not being able to advance towards that goal because of some arbitrary timer, and it’s a massive turn-off to new players and altaholics alike.

Time gates do serve a purpose when content is released – to slow down the most hardcore players and allow everyone a chance to keep up. However, months after content is released, they only serve to discourage people from playing alts and frustrate new players who weren’t around to ride the first wave to the top. The worst offender for this is ascended accessories – where no matter what you do, you have literally no way of amassing more than eight guild commendations per week, and the alternative method for acquisition (laurels) takes even longer.

Suggestion: Fading time gates. Over time, slowly reduce the number of time-gated materials or tokens needed for ascended gear. For instance, with ascended accessories – on release, they cost 5g and 12 commendations. Maybe a month later, they cost 5g and 10 commendations. Keep doing this so that maybe two or three months out from their induction, they cost 5g and 4 commendations. This way, players on the cutting edge pay a premium to be on the cutting edge, but down the line, new players and alts don’t have to get stuck playing catch-up for what feels like ages.

—

For the record, my favorite progression system has been that of Team Fortress 2. New skills, new titles, new emotes, new weapons and character animations, even new areas to explore and new gameplay styles. There are tons of ways to make players feel like their characters are growing besides stat enhancements, and I’d love to see GW2 go in the direction of unlocking more character customization options and additional playstyles rather than the endless pursuit of higher-level gear that I’ve endured as an MMO player for so many years. When I log into TF2, I’m excited to go after new rewards and try out new weapons and toys, but I never have to log in being afraid that I’ve somehow been left behind and can’t compete anymore. I’d love to be able to feel the same way here.

Wow! So many responses I can’t read them all so I don’t know if this has been already said but here is my contribution:

“Horizontal” and “Vertical” “Progression” are the same thing in my view. Both are “cheap” excuses to keep the players busy or to “force” them to do unwanted content over and over.

The problem is not having to get a better/stronger armor/weapon or chase more skins/skills. The problem is how is this implemented in games.

If we want the new stronger armor, we need to grind the same JP/dungeon/world boss/champ almost daily for months.
If we want an armor with a specific skin we need to grind the same dungeon for days, even months.

The rest of the game is either get lucky or grind gold/mats/dailies to buy/craft what we want .

There is not a real reward for playing the game. Excluding the RNG change to get something good, Dynamic Events/Hearts/Map Completion rewards next to nothing.

WvW is another RNG-fest. There is not reward for killing players or taking Keeps. If you get lucky, you get lucky. If not, well, good luck next time and sorry for the hours you wasted here.

Now time-gated to get better gear is probably the worst thing I ever seen! There is no reason to have it. Having to grind mats/gold/ for days is more than enough to make ascended weapons/armor undesirable.
The only thing time-gated does is punish players for missing a day. Not to mention what happen if we can’t play for several days.

So, if you really need add a better gear every couple of months, do it in a way we all can enjoy and not only those who love doing the same thing over and over.

Now about level/skills.

More levels for what? Levels are pointless, specially in GW2 where your lvl 80 is lvl 5 in a starting zone. Raising the cap 5-10 levels at the time is beyond ridiculous.
Besides, people always find a way to rush and get the max lvl as fast as possible. Why punish people who hate leveling or don’t care?

Now, I’m not against more skills but again, for what? Some of the newest healing skills are far from being useful. Some of the old skills are useless too.

People will always use the strongest/useful skill. So unless you make older skills useless, then new skills are pointless (in GW1 necromancers had 142 skills a yet, few use anything beside SS/MM).

Again, I’m not against new skills but first, make sure all the skill we have already are balanced and especially, useful.

Hello!

I’m an old player of GW, I played GW1 for over 5000 hours and I’m a great fan of GW2

Everyone are saying really important stuff, so I would like to refer a little to the changes beteween the games, and gaps that I think that should be filled.

- GW1 title system was somehow much more apealing. People grinded for hundreads of hours for titles, in GW2 it lost its magic. I believe that if you find a way to make titles more relevant to the player, you will open a brand new area for people to advance and enjoy. For example: you can say that if the player wears the title of Charr hunting, he will get +5% damage VS Charr oponents.
The idea is, of course, to make things a little more similiar to the Lightbringer title track of GW1.

-Skill and trait unlocks –
I suppose you noticed your last update, with the new healing skill, was amazing. Many people finally found a solution to their healing skill. But what about traits? weapon skills? slot skills? and most importantly the elite skill which is Almost Never Useful?
My idea is: add quests for defeating enemies and through that “Absorbing their essence” or something like that, to unlock new skills and elite skills.
also you can add a new trait track which will have uniqe bonuses, such as power/toughness but each point invested in it will cost 1.5 or 2points.
this will add A LOT to the veriaty of builds.
Also you can make titles relevant to skills, such as: once you reach max title of rifle kills, you unlock a special riffle only elite skill.
Another idea is to unlock a new type of combo finisher, for new abilities.

Lore:
The stories are great, truly, new ones and olds. However many of them stay as stories, never explored.
We saw you adding southson cove and that other area where the sky festival apeared, can’t remember its name. I’m sure that many players will be happy to go back to explore the crystal dessert, visit the corpse of glint, or go to the Elon river and search for secret Order of Whispers passages, or invade the flame ligeon home lands.
Also, the Cursed Shore somehow fails to match the story of the character after defeating zhaithan, If you could create a new exploreable Kingdom of Orr, and give access to it only for players who defeated zhaithan already, that will be nice.

I have three more things I want to say befor summering:
1) please add duels, and make sure to make it possible to duel another player in any PvE explorable area.
2) The way magic find and agony resistance advance are amazing, I would even dare say perfect. You never feel the grinding of it and you always feel progression. Add more stuff like that.
3) I recall a promise to make recipe for precursor legendery items, which have grown WAY too expensive, just a reminder

now to summerize:
– Make titles more relevant, such as Grawl slaying will advance your damage against grawls and Sword slaying will advance your skill with a sword and unlock paths to new skills.
– Don’t just give away access to new skills, make us fight for the right to use them.
– Watch the “Arena net manifesto” and notice what is Ree saying about the character being the hero of the land, then look at the Cursed Shore and take notes of how the entire nation of Orr is in desperate need of an update.
– add new, more uniqe trait tracks, that could even be more or less expensive on the trait points, or add quests to gain more trait points, also feel free to add trait abilites. All should be very difficult to unlock, don’t just give us easy access to things like you did with the healing skills.

Thank you very much for the attention and your time!

Isaiah Cartwright.8569:

Ascended Gear
So then why did we add ascended gear, well the reason is we wanted sometime between the transition and what we shipped with was very little time turns out global trading post has a lot more effect on this then we had original thought which made us need a non-tradable gear step. We still have some progression to smooth out around the rare -> exotic area as mostly you just jump from leveling greens to exotics and rare is really only used for salvaging into ecto. We have been spacing out adding each slot of ascended gear to make sure we don’t make our original mistake again and I’m sure we’ll need to continue to evaluate the time to gain this gear like we do all things.

snip

Ascended creation time

We had a lot of discussion pre-releasing ascended armor to make sure the time to make ascended doesn’t blow out, We pull a lot of data and are watching how long it takes players and like we do with everything we will keep and eye on it but with anything with progression there are always a lot of tradeoffs when you make changes but we’re always looking at it.

Ok so that was a wall of text and clearly needs a cool story bro, but I wanted to get my thoughts out there before I head home for the day. Thanks everyone for posting we are reading it and maybe I’ll jump on after dinner if I get some free time.

To me the mistake wasn’t how easy it was to obtain Exotic gear. In fact so what. I geared my characters and was done. I could spend my time where I wanted without being pressured into doing things I do not want. A common reply to this is just don’t do it. you don’t need it for anything. Well if that is true than it is pointless to have it in game at all.
The mistake was implementing ascended gear. Ascended gear does not in fact have a reason to exist. It has only and still does polarize the community. The stats are not enough for the vertical gear grinders and to much for the horizontal ones. You can’t serve two masters and expect to be able to give both what they want. It isn’t possible. Coupled with how over the top bad the acquisition is through massive timegating.
I have 2 characters with full Ascended Trinkets, but only because I used both for fractals and needed the agony resistance. Due to that fact I have 9 characters with ascended rings, because they dropped anyway. I have laurels and commendation to buy more, but I won’t because I vehemently disagree with the need for the extra tier.

What I would like to know is why did you really think Ascended gear was needed. Simply saying people got decked out in exotics to easy really isn’t a good reason, because again so what. To me the introduction of ascended gear was an extreme panic attack from your side. Basically it was Corporal Jones shouting: Don’t Panic, don’t panic. On and on, google it if you don’t know the reference. I can only speculate what the reason to this panic was, but I suspect naivety being the most common reason. As most developers can’t seemingly grasp the fact that they need to cut their projecting playtime by 75%. Meaning if something is expected to take a 100 hours, it will be done in 25. Couple this with a shallow game and yes GW2 is a very shallow game. The Living Story basically prevents any depth to be added to the game. Nothing wrong with that unless you try and force depth that is unnatural into the game.

As for creation time, drop it down to Exotic level. Yes I’m saying to completely and utterly make Ascended gear untime gated and extremely easy to obtain. You say you are monitoring acquisition time, but metrics will tell you nothing other than some people are getting it and others not. You will never get the why the reason it is done or not from metrics. To be honest delete all metric related data and start over. The why is infinitely more important than the acquiring or non acquiring.

Idea: Let my main buy tomes of knowledge from a vendor for, say, 5 skill points — which I can then use to level alts?

The main reason why vertical progression shouldn’t be in GW2 is that the stat system is designed to reward players for using the right gear more than the strongest gear.

This has the result that someone could spend ages of time gating and power-grinding for mats to make a set of ascended gear and find that because they didn’t entirely perfectly optimise it there’s someone else using the same build more effectively in exotics, rendering all that effort worthless.

My concept for a horizontal gear progression system is as follows:

Using the mystic forge, players would be able to fuse level 80 exotic items together to add selectable stat-types, selectable skins or, with a more expensive recipe, both at once. Players could also use similar systems to add upgrade slots and an infusion slot, being able to add more agony resistance as well once an item is infused.

Items that have been fused in any way gain a fusion bar that fills up the more times you add skins/stats/slots/infusion and once full the item is designated as ascended. Once ascended, an item can then serve as a legendary precursor and be combined with the relevant gifts to make that item type’s legendary.

A legendary would be much the same as they are now but with the addition of gaining a new selectable upgrade slot any time a rune or sigil is slotted to it, rather than having to use fusion to add one.

I guess you could also partially address the “whoops my ascended item has a bad stat combo for my build” problem by having some ability to replace the insignia at lower cost, perhaps by throwing the armor/weapon into the Mystic Forge in combination with the new insignia.

That only works if insignias are reasonably priced though; I have a suspicion they aren’t.

sirius a good way to use inscription in lower cost is use major inscription with mystic forge items with the armor or weapon piece.
also they could tell us “buy the superior inscription, use it on the piece in the mystic forge, and you get to keep the inscription”

Hey, Chris, I have tried to end this on a really positive note, so if you could please bear with me, I would really appreciate it.

Gingelyr.3648:

Isaiah Cartwright.8569:

Art Progression
Art progression! It’s horizontal why not do it more!!! Well we do this a lot all ready and a lot of it’s constraints comes down to costs.

You already make a ton of Art progression… but you pour all that effort into cheap and easy stuff that doesn’t bring a lot of pleasure to me.

It’s obviously cheap for you to make a backpack, but everyone knows that now, so backpacks are pretty dull.

It’s easy for me to earn the backpack-of-the-month, but everyone knows that too, so no one oohs and ahhs over my shiny backpack because everyone has it already anyway.

So you’re spending a lot of artist time on this stuff, for relatively little player-happiness payout (from me, anyway). Try reassigning the artists to pour their time into something more substantial (like armor sets), and put it behind a more impressive achievement than “mess around in the LS for two weeks”.

I’d get more satisfaction from that, even if these more substantial art rewards couldn’t come every two weeks and replaced some backpacks-of-the-month.

Quoted for truth. I’d also like to point out that adding a new complete armor set into the game (not via the gemstore) would likely buy goodwill enough to balance the cost. I initially found the gemstore to be very well-balanced, but seeing all these floods of weapon skins and then the four sets per armor class- it’s starting to chafe a little. Combined with the rising costs (some whole sets of armor are 500gems; a dagger was 600 gems- the single pieces were also 600 gems each… it’s weird and inconsistent), it’s breeding some ill-will.

It would be awesome if the living story meta rewards built a set, in fact, rather than tossing out disparate pieces here and there.

Character Progression For Engineers

Engineers do not have access to the same cosmetic character progression everyone else does. This should not be news to any of the developers reading this, but just in case, here are ways engineers are excluded, including a couple of vertical progression issues.

• Build diversity is limited by how few weapons we can use. Anyone who says kits aren’t a core mechanic of engineers has obviously never played one. Without equipping kits, there is no weapon swapping, and the only weapons we have access to are pistols, rifles and shields. That’s it.

• Any attempt to customize our look is utterly compromised if we want to use kits, which are our “version” of weapon swaps. They replace any back item with the hobo sack themed items, which also replace any weapons we might have equipped.

• Our ugly version of weapon swaps, which remove any weapon diversity, also remove at least one utility slot for our actual skills. (Yes, we get an F skill to somewhat compensate. This means even less diversity, since we can’t customize how we build our utilities, though.)

• Those kit weapons will not scale to the damage output of our weapons. (They only scale as far as exotic)

• We’re the only class without access to Aegis on demand in fractals.

• There are pages of reported bugs that have not been addressed since release.

Chris, I am feeling like there really isn’t a future in even having an engineer. I want to be positive, going forward. But I don’t feel like putting any effort into character progression while my main profession is so hindered. You guys have proven me wrong before- pulling the recent reskin of T3 human cultural armor off the gemstore, and changing gathering tools to account bound, notably. I’ve seen some effort in armor design toward Charr. I am a fan, and I’ve gotten into trouble over my heated defense of GW2. I am not among those who believe this initiative is to placate; I believe we have entered into this in good faith, on both sides. There are MANY things that GW2 gets right, for me. But I hope you will add broken class mechanics to your list of topics to ponder within the umbrella of character progression.

Let’s talk it out then.
We need 3 things.

• Better Character Customization (Gears & Base)
• A real L-B-World
• Something to do with joy every day

I’ve already made the system that capeable of minimalising the major problems with the game; the lack of end-contents. Read it up in the right topics:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/iR-Redesigns-Main-Discussions/

Game would be about to fight for your own world then be constantly well-rewarded just by doing that, not to fight for your own dirty little pocket. Farmtrains only lead players to greed.

Anyway, Maps & Cities should be redesigned also. The current versions aren’t next-gen like. (Map design is a hard point, it is a core of gameplays. Once made good, there wouldn’t be more issues comming up like lagg and unenjoyable/boring contents, which are more serious problems to deal with but cames from a “single” defisn flaw.)

Characters:
We need more hairs and beards with dual-colors, all with SLIDER SCALING lenght.
Age bumpmap scaling, dirt/scars addon, more realistic body options (muscular is very unrealistic)
And some additional bonus details, maybe Tattoos, or something else.

A Hall of Monuments – like area like someone said further up would be very welcome. I really miss displaying my achievements.

Level-up books/tomes purchaseable with skill points would be VERY good for helping to level alts.

I would love to see a salvage kit that works like the Perfect Salvage Kit did in GW1.
This would go a LONG way in allowing people to play around and experiment with different builds and play styles.

Currently, no matter what salvage kit I use, my armor will be destroyed. I am one of the poor GW2 players, since I only have maybe an hour to play a day. Buying exotic gear is a big deal for me.
I cannot afford to put a sigil or rune into an armor piece, then having to salvage the sigil/rune back out and destroy the exotic piece simply because I rather have a different upgrade in it, as my build changes.
(EDIT: I know I can overwrite an upgrade, but again, affordability issue… imagine you have a set of exotic armor with Traveler runes that doesn’t work for your Necromancer. I want to salvage out those runes [worth ~ 10 gold right now], keep the armor, and put a new set of runes in there!)

In fact, I am extremely surprised that a perfect salvage kit is not a thing yet.

This would also help SO much with alts.

I feel like the late game has become the grind that I loathe about other mmos. I loved the consistent level ups and new gear that the early game offered, but once I hit 80, I hit a wall. After watching videos on getting a legendary, I instantly told myself I should never commit that much time to obtaining one, despite how cool they are. And once I got my exotic armor set, I didn’t touch that character for months. The challenge of character progression is absurd amounts of time doing mindless grinding, not enjoying the great dungeons or the massive world the game has to offer. When I see somebody with a Legendary, I don’t think how much of a traveled or skilled player they are, I see somebody who just grinded for weeks or months on end to get it. I feel like portions of the game are barred off to me since I can’t play the game as much due to other responsibilities in life. I really respect how competent gear is easy to get, but after you get that gear, its a grindstravaganza for everything else in the game, and that’s no fun. I bought this game on the premise that it doesn’t waste your time, and I feel like that isn’t the case when I try to obtain an ascended weapon or armor set.

In summary, Grinding has become the late games focal point, and there is no real challenge to obtaining Legendary and Ascended gear, only time commitment. As a result, players with moderately busy lives are mostly incapable of obtaining these items.

cheezwhiz.9517:

…
- Nonsensical crafting progression. I stopped at 489 Weaponsmithing because I have to discover 5-8 more exotic weapons I will have no use for. Why not have a method that lets me improve the gear I have rather than crafting items I won’t use?

Just want to sound off this particular issue as it is another thing ANET said you would never have to do as a crafter. Making throw away items just so there can be another gold/mat sink in the game is not fun.
I have not bothered crafting past 475, 450 or even 425 in some crafts as the whole thing just feels like a giant waste of time and money. You could at least lower the crafting for ascended weapon components like hilts/blades to 475.
Also still keeping refining of items like soft wood logs at 4 per plank is ridiculous at this point.

greetings, let me add my opinion and sorry if it matches with someone’s else i couldnt read all the posts.

PvE>WvW in terms of progession
well i feel that there is missing a balance for progression in WvW and PvE. when Anet introduced the ranks in WvW i was enthusiastic that this will be related with item progression, but i didnt noticed something like that. i would like to had more chances of getting materials for every rank or better gold in order to be a connection with the PvE and the WvW, at them moment if i stick in WvW i wont be able to craft an ascended armor, i will get mats like Empyrean Fragments (in very low rates) but for other types of materials like the lower tiers its impossible to get them, only with gold…
by the way i would like to agree that the rewards for the 1st season were almost a fiasco : (

economy + crafting driven only by Legendary and Ascended
that’s makes these features of the MMORPG, boring and dead for someone who loves crafting and considering that i am fan of the expendable armors. I would like to see such armor sets/weapons which would boost the economy, maybe if you add expendable sets (or also foods) with slightly better stats but with limited usage and crafted with little amounts of t6 mats which stacks in large numbers around… the satchel packages could turn into that easy if you changed the cost of crafting one.
by the way i would like to “complain” that there isn’t a legendary fitting for engineers : /

skill progression ?
i love some skills but they are weak in order to keep them in line with the sPvP, which is good, but how about a skill level up ? can i make my turrets to hit harder and also get a greater skin or get some leg implants and follow me ?

progression is only items on your toon/s ?
Well you have made an excellent world with the voices around which offer a great immersion and other MMOs looks so silent/dead after GW2 with all these NPCs talking around etc. But still there is missing something from every MMO gamer, its his marks on the world not only for his toon.
Back on release you introduced the home instance which would change based on your decisions in the personal story, and i hoped we would see great changes and maybe later we would be able to change it. To be realistic these promises never reached their goals, after one year the only noticeable change in home instance is 2 gathering ores and one charging spot… It is really sad cause you have ready an instance for every player and you don’t let them to “play” with them. There are tons of opportunities to give life and make important such places:
-be able to parameterize the home instance adding new buildings/NPCs or removing others based on your choices in the personal story and the achievements in PvE or WvW or even sPvP,
-so someone who chooses to be in Blood Legion, would be able to see in his home instance only Blood Legion NPCs,
-or someone who is farmer through some achievements got some gatherings nodes,
-or someone who focuses in WvW through ranks unlocks some NPC who offers free trait reset,
-or some who is into crafting to have there special crafting stations with chances for better crafts(?) and the list can go on…
-finally the ideal would be to add or remove items like in the Rift’s dimensions or the homes of Wildstar…

anyway that’s a short of my ideas about progression and immersion inside the limits of the world of GW2 as it is in this state.

There is not enough skill-based rewards/armors/weapons in the game. Difficult to obtain ones, not dungeon speed-clear token ones.

I remember when you guys said Legendary weapons will be testimony to a player’s skill and journey.

Then I remember when I first saw them on the Trading Post. When I first realized the RNG of the precursors (my friend has been playing since betas, has ~2000 hours clocked, and hasn’t seen a single precursor).

I can only hope that more content like Liadri (getting the mini as reward for beating her was the best GW2 moment for me) will be added, where your journey and character progression is based on skillful play, not grind, farming, or RNG.

A big change for achievement progression

Allow ‘golding’ all individual achievements (pick a better name). Golding would be to get more in that category of achievement than any other player, since the last time the achievement had been golded, and hold the top spot for 24 hours.

Ex: Someone golded their Krait Killer achievement, all counters reset. I kill 400 Krait, this is more than anyone else. I hold it for 12 hours, but someone else kills 400 Krait, and continues up to 650 Krait. The timer is reset. I kill 251 more Krait, the timer is reset again, and I have to wait another 24 hours. Since no one gets up to 651 Krait in that time my achievement is golded, the background is permanently changed, and I’m awarded 5 APs.

This small feature would change the whole picture for AP competition. Now every category can be competed in, and AP hunters can really theorycraft about how to get gold achievements. Since it is a competition the satisfaction will be far higher. And because it has no real rewards except for AP hunters, normal players need never worry about it.

The resetting timer means some categories may rarely gold, and getting such will be a real prestigious achievement.

Watching people compete to gold their legendary weapon achievement would be a real joy to me.

Achievements: Currently shallow

*Most achievement categories serve as counters instead of achievements
*Over 50% of achievement are now from dailies or time gated content
*Most counters end well before the 2 month mark, even the highest counters will be capped after a year of casual play
*Many playstyles have zero achievements (no crafting discovery achievements, no mob hunter achievements, no trading post achievements)

Essentially the problem is that achievements as they stand are mindless and don’t encourage either a broad or a focused playstyle.

Achievements could lead people to new playstyles in dungeons if spec-specific achievements were added.

They could encourage a Custom Brawl revival if achievements were added for highest rank (instead of cumulative rank).

They could encourage exploration more if more mob catagories were added to the slayers.

Also since dailies are so disproportionately rewarded, and time gated, most AP hunters quickly realise that the best stratagy is to knock out the dailies and log off. The soft cap for achievements is simply too low for permanent achievements. And missing one day is the equivalent of killing 500,000 dolyaks.

What can be changed

Add more permanent achievements, a lot more. There should be 30 more for every patch. If this is silly then say so, but counter achievements don’t seem that problematic from a developer-time-to-benefit perspective.

Add uncompleted dailies to the permanent category, no longer rewarding chests but able to be completed for APs. Don’t punish people for taking a break, and stop restricting new players from having a chance at the leaderboards.

The armor is fine as is, it is only 64 stat points total with infusions. For character progression I would like there to be actual achievements that get some form of recognition through character housing or home instances.

Mainly WE NEED HARD PVE CONTENT because at the moment it is all about dodge rolls, this would have been good intro content but now there needs to be other mechanics like passing the plague around on putricide, or toggling switches, or focusing certain mobs before they wipe the group. There are so many awesome dungeon mechanics that you guys could draw from to create actual rewarding content.

Liandri was a good start, I’d rate her as a 4/10 on a scale of challenging pve encounters (killed her in 5 attempts first day with melee weapons/no condis), 8 light was probably a 6/10.

I know you guys are probably working on a new dragon fight for the next living story, maybe make a story mode for the dungeon that requires more than 5 ppl, do the separate paths thing like the deep. Then add hard parts to it where you collect an item from each path and you combine them to make new legendary armor sets or legendary jewelry .

Random Wish List:

-Mini games like snowball mayhem in custom arenas so friends can play together in teams. (can keep it seasonal)
-Guildhalls
-dueling
-legendary left and right side (change stat sets for everything and rune/infusions at will) for legendary armor maybe make it absorb runes and infusions then once you unlock it you can swap back whenever.

I am not sure if my ideas are on track to the main topic but I will try my best. I will tackle this focusing on character story and character presence within the game ( I apologise if this would be out of point).

Taking into consideration character progression by story and character presence in the game:

- I strongly believe (as suggested by someone else) that a hall of monuments replica, storing personal achievements and artifacts among others, would enhance character progression and gamer experience. This gives a sense of belonging, pride and continuity of the game, giving each character a stronger sense of existence and presence.

- perhaps professions can be given more importance with regards to the story line. I feel that professions have sometimes lost their essence. Do not get me wrong I love them, all of them, but being a Guild Wars 1 player, I enjoyed the idea of a pre-searing environment were characters gradually enhance their professions step by step, one skill at a time. Professions seemed more important at that time, choosing particular skills to suit different environments. Again I do not wish to disagree with the current system as I love the way each profession is built (and having pre-set skills helps me as I am not that much of a pro!). What I mean to say is perhaps we can give professions more meaning, more presence. Perhaps the reason why a gamer chose an elementalist over a thief can be shown in-game. Perhaps having a pre-searing type of environment which is more evolved and more refined, creating a space were the story at that time would focus on why, how, when and where did a particular character become a guardian, elementalist , mesmer and so.

The ascended weapons and armor are too costly in time, laurels and money as well as too restrictive for builds and alts for the value, the small stat advantage, you get from them.To make them worthwhile and so that a patch doesn’t trash a whole build worth months of work, make the stats selectable on all ascended items. Otherwise it will be too painful when particular builds are nerfed.

The way ascended gear is set up now it discouragers creativity and experimentation and encourages ‘cookie cutter’ builds. It encourages staying with what is safe and known. I can’t imagine that the Devs are trying to set up a game that discourages innovation and encourages conformity, but this is exactly the game they are setting up now with ascended gear.

I’ve personally decided not to do ascended armor, even though I have sufficient gold to do so. It would be too disheartening to have to discard a set of armor that takes so long and costs so much because of circumstances beyond my control.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

snip

Hi Illconceived,

I really like a sense of personal progression to through challenge and we will be continuing to move in this direction.

Chris

So in my orignal post I really wanted to get across that the reason the original currencies didn’t hold up in terms of horizontal progression was because they were so easy to get and didn’t feel as satsifying. I feel like if you put in more things that challenge the players ability to play the class it will help the game out in the long run. The community and the whole fights with the queens gauntlent was the most fun I had in this game since release. Players helped me and I them. We talked strategies, discuss classes strong points and how to use them. Now you may be saying the forums blew up with complains about how hard it was. This is true, it was hard. However, I think a big issue with it was that it was on a time limit. Players only 2 weeks to do and they felt rushed. If you put something of that difficulty level back in the game and make it perm content players can work for I think it will do the game a great good.

Awesome, great we have devs ears on the subject:)
I have 7 things to say on the subject, hopefully it’ll be your lucky 7;)

1. Be brave - i know no one likes flames in their thread, but as a dev you gotta be though like John Rambo. Forums are usually half the unsatisfied people (satisfied ones are ingame!) wanting change be it through discussion or flames. Some shells will be fired, but escaping community contact has been a downfall of many a game. Hopefully not this awesome one:)[/b]

2. Horizontal progression = good I really love that you made ascended the “top tier” less through stats, and more through ulitity (account bound and not soulbound). I also heard legendaries are to have dynamically changeable stats. YEAH! That’s the way to go A-net!:) New builds, trait improvement and skills are the way to go!

3. Fractal wepons Word is they are extremely rare, unless you’re looking for a trident. I’m no fan of RGN loot with 1 in 10000 chances. Time and effort put into running them should be met with sure reward even for the less lucky of us. Adding a fractal weapon box for “number of run fractals achievement” should even the score. Box lets you pick one fractal skin you want, kinda like box with ascended gear.

4. Gear looks Yesturday i spend 5 or so hours on hardcore….mix & matching armors for my necro. Not exactly a role model for posterity, but making my character look unique is a huge part of the game, and there’s room for improvement.

Why can’t i dye my weapon?
Where are all the non-chubby looking swords?
Asian weapons?
Why some legendaries look awesome, while others are a clear joke? I mean sure, i have lotsa sense of humor, but i’d like to have a choice if i want to wield a kitten looking legendary pummeler, or a disco ball, and not be trapped in “you want a legendary mace? Hope you like to boogie!”

Less important but more personal – i could not find one dedent looking light short sleeved chestpiece to match dungeon inquest pants + inquest gloves. The inquest top is bland and makes my character look like “lotsa on bottom, little on top”. Arah one has the right idea – the scarf around sides and back, but the textures are just horrible and in no way match inquest’s orderly, world-explorer design.

Profession tweaks There’s a lot of make or break in there. Good balanced skills & trait set with lotsa tempting options and builds is a huge horizontal progression factor and good reason to stay and play..and experiment!

Nedless to say what the opposite does. Right now you’re in the middle with that. There are professions with interesting skillls, traits and many builds, and there are some that are severely lacking in anything meaningful save one, maybe two options (necros!).

Listen to player feedback, i’ll b glad to help and give you my opinions on what and why, as long as i know there’s a dev ear listening to that. Please remember – you guys get payed for it, we don’t, and it’s no less of a job to make trait/skill/ improvement ideas or invent new ones.

6. gem store Ah the gem store, this is another huge topic to discuss. To sum it up shortly here – just like with traits you’ve made some good and bad.

Good – account bound harvesting tools – excellent idea. Convinient, beutiful, doesn’t break the game balance. And lets us support the game without looking stupid while doing it.

The skins – marjory’s dagger was epic (too bad i didn’t get it)..

Bad – instant retrait item in gem store. That’s P2W starting to rear it’s ugly head. If i can retrait in dungeon, then that gives me advantage over my teammates who can’t.

The prices – aren’t we a bit too expensive NcSoft? I mean it’s simple economy (which i have master’s degree of) that teaches that if something is cheaper more people will buy it (given it’s attractive to them) and the number of purchases will often outweigh the loss in price. Looking at other mmos i recently played i can certainly say your prices are way above the optimal pricing line.

Skins – it’s epic we’re starting to get good skins, but doesn’t that mean that those go into gemstore instead of ingame? And now people who could get new and cool looking customization options are stuck behind a pay-gate?

Time limited stuff – you would have a marjory’s dagger and axe profits on me had you not made it time limited. I just told you about your pricing, right? Well yeah…i couldn’t muster enough on time to get the dreamcleaver axe AND marjory’s skins on time..

7. New professions? Well nothing is more clear horizontal progressions then new profession! Seems gem store took off the need for expansions off your shoulders, but that doesn’t mean we don’t expect you to deliver new BIG content asides current world polishes. Ofc it’s your game your rules and you didn’t start with mmo classic “3 starter classes”, but you know;)

im disappointed its taken this long for this to be posted:
http://www.penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/the-skinner-box
http://www.penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/power-creep
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Zn81sY7pqI

props to Lheimroo.2947 for mentioning skinner boxes on the first page

negative reinforcment

using this type of psychological manipulation is just cheap and lazy development, i think everyone would rather you implemented an engaging game play experience through deeper immersion

i think im just going to ignore you guys on the reason for ascended gear as you seem to contradict yourselves whenever you talk about it, just re-balance it to be on par with exotic and have some other functionality and remove agony, maybe use infusion slots for appearance customization ie purchase fire infusion from gem store apply to Armour get flamekissed effect and so on.

there is a reason resist gating was removed from other mmos the better part of a decade ago, it’s ridiculous that you seem to have learned nothing from other mmos or even the original guild wars. where difficulty increases were not tied to stat increases or resistances such as Frostmaw Burrows where you started with fewer wurm bosses and as you went deeper you fought more at the same time and were higher levels or came in larger groups with multiple healers.

in terms of vertical progression guild wars actually did it well, with title tracks ( why cant i progress towards sweet tooth or party animal or drunkard in this game?) any title based skill was usually effective enough with the progression gained through completing the story, without having to grind further. atm the only good vertical progression in this game is ranks which you were going to remove… it seems theres a massive disconnect going on where you cant even grasp basic elements of which parts of the game design are good and which aren’t, so ill make it simple

grinds are fine so long as they are optional; BIS isn’t optional for competitive content

in terms of games with good horizontal progression im going to actually have to go with WoW, collecting mounts/ pets/ appearances/ dungeon specific items/ toys available from crafting or quests, new crafting professions/ classes it implemented a lot of horizontal progression over time in addition to the gear tread mill which also gave you visually distinct item procs, which is something this game could do with more of

in comparison this game has gone from initially being fairly horizontal to being narrowly vertical you are locked into one build on one character, better hope you dont get hit with a balance patch that ruins your build and means another 6+ months to re-gear with no guarantee it wont happen again.

endgame has devolved into grind the living world content before its gone then farm gold as that’s now the games major currency and only way to to mitigate the crippling diminishing returns and rng to farm ascended materials so you can craft bis if you want to be competitive or dont play those areas of the game, to an extent it feels like your design is based mainly around monetization ie removing non gold currencies so everything can be bought by converting gems to gold and focusing your art time on skins for the store.

finally, how are new players meant to compete given the time gating required by the current vertical progression, they are basically free kills in wvw till they hit 80 and gear up and wvw rank up, because scaling sucks atm, are you going to give out free boosts so they can catch up? nerf requirements so its easier for them to catch up? how are you going to sustain this long term? more progress resets? you seem to be doing that more frequently these days.

ps. will jewlecrafting ever be relevant again, it obsolete atm given the ease of obtaining ascended jewlery and artifice making infusions, when will we see this?

pps. please stop with the bait and switch tactics

Chris Whiteside.6102:

To clarify I am looking forward to hearing the communities thoughts on speed of acquisition such as how long crafting time takes? or drop rates in fractals and other areas of the game etc.

I hope this adds some clarity.

Chris

Well, for me EXOTICS already take too long and too much effort to acquire.

That’s a pretty extreme position, so let me clarify.

Expectations

I do not want to play this game for stats. If I want to play a stat game, I play WoW, and Guild Wars 2. Guild Wars 2 was heavily marketed around “If you hate WoW, GW2 is something for you!”, followed by promises how there would be no vertical progression at all and the only thing you do is chase cosmetic items. In my opinion, stats should be given away in PVE just as they are in PVP. I come from GW1, and GW1 was the perfect system for me (max stat items immediately available everywhere, play if you want nice skins). GW1 focused completely on having highly customizable characters (your skills are your most important asset, not your gear!) I hold similar expectations for GW2.

Shallow Mechanics, No Choice

To me, GW2 offers extremely shallow progression in terms of gear. The primary reason for this is the simplified and imbalanced stat system, in which Power is the superior stat in almost every situation.

In my opinion, GW2 needs to have a fundamental review of the character’s core game mechanics. In my opinion, stats can and should be removed from the game completely. Instead, gear should have situational bonuses on them similar to some of the special rune effects and the bonuses offered by some traits.

Why?

• The stat system is fundamentally flawed and focussing heavily on power,
• Stats offer no creativity or meaningful decissionmaking, its a straightforward, that you just want to raise as high as possible,
• Stats are just cold numbers that unable to offer synergy with specific builds. They’re not situational and do not facilitate tactical gameplay or anything,

Once that is done, many more skills should be introduced to the game. So we can really be creative with our character builds.

Gear Progression

So, I don’t want any stats on my gear? But how to progress then? Well, in fact I really like ArenaNet’s solution with legendaries: You can change their properties on demand. This is a convenience that would be in serious demand if ANet would do the right thing to remove stats and add more conditional/situational bonuses on gear, and more skills which can synergize with it. Since players would go creative with their builds once more, they’d need many sets of gear. Unless they have legendaries, which they could change on the fly. So they progression would still be there, it just wouldn’t be for better bonuses, but for aesthetics and convenience instead.

Other Progression

I’d really like to see a lot more skills (including variable weapon skills!) added to the game so we can really create diverse characters.

Also, a lot of the cosmetic progression could actually be done through the Home Instance. We have had some items we could apply there, but I personally really want much more customization there. Different layouts, different locations, trophies and furniture, etc. Once such a system is in, it’s far cheaper to produce new items (artwork) for than character art is.

Astral Projections.7320:

The ascended weapons and armor are too costly in time, laurels and money as well as too restrictive for builds and alts for the value, the small stat advantage, you get from them.To make them worthwhile and so that a patch doesn’t trash a whole build worth months of work, make the stats selectable on all ascended items. Otherwise it will be too painful when particular builds are nerfed.

The way ascended gear is set up now it discouragers creativity and experimentation and encourages ‘cookie cutter’ builds. It encourages staying with what is safe and known. I can’t imagine that the Devs are trying to set up a game that discourages innovation and encourages conformity, but this is exactly the game they are setting up now with ascended gear.

I’ve personally decided not to do ascended armor, even though I have sufficient gold to do so. It would be too disheartening to have to discard a set of armor that takes so long and costs so much because of circumstances beyond my control.

Not to mention the multiple sets per rune setup and cost of transmuting all your armor to preserve your armor skins. It is waste of resources for what you get. A few stats and no additional functionality for a months work and a ton of lost gold. For one set.

I just put the 4 damask up I crafted so far on the TP. I realized I couldn’t make more weapons as deldrimoor is shared with armor. What you get for it is a bad joke and with the amount of gear sets I have across 8 80’s it’ll take me a year and 3 months to get the armor I currently use upgraded (If I log in everyday) not to mention the 84 transmute stones Anet thinks I’ll buy. Seems like an opaque attempt at wringing money out of players to preserve their previous purchases and in game progress. It isn’t happening.