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.

One game i can think of is Blade of Darkness. Like GW2, each weapon had its own skills. Even the same kind of weapon (for example 2 1h swords) could have different attacks (and combos), and there were “legendary” weapons with their own skills too. One also had “enviromental” weapons like arrows for the bow (something like the Southsun Survival), weapons that drop from enemies, and even attack with the limbs of the dead enemies.

Taking that game as base, i think there is a lack of progression in the weapons’ attacks, since the player can unlock each attack very quickly in the game but after that, nothing. We kill 1000s of enemies but we dont get better in the use of a weapon? I think new attacks could be unlocked later, attacks that could be selected to make your own combat style. Could even be unlocked with weapon master’s achievements.

For example, the Sword Master could unlock one new attack each 1000 kills, making a total of 5 new skills, one per slot, when you hit the 5000 kills achievement. Maybe the achievement could even go to 10000 kills to unlock 2 skills per slot. And once the player make a legendary sword, they could start to rise the Grand Sword Master which ask 10000 extra kills to unlock 5 legendary attacks (one per slot).

This was just an example, but with all this a player could have a few attacks to pick in each slot and create their own combat style. I want to remark that the way in wich the attacks are obtained could be another one.

Also, if someone equip a 1h weapon without a secondary one, it should have the 5 attacks, creating a new combat style, maybe faster but with less damage.

A little off topic but the enemies could drop enviromental weapons (weapons they are using for example) which could be used to attack them or another enemy. One example could be the 2 bosses in Balthazar temple, one could be immune to dmg and the other one could have a hammer, when hit the one with the hammer it could drop it (once it lose x% of hp) and the players could use the hammer to hit the other one (to down its protection shield, stun it, dmg it or a combination off all). This idea ofc is taked from the last boss of the Cliffside Fractal (the one of the Colossus).

Sorry for the bad english.

I am very sceptical about the CDI so most likely this is unwelcome here in these nowadays very restrictive GW2 forum.
I mean, what I get from this is that an game developer basically asks the customer to develop their game.
This discussion should have taken place before release.
You are releasing ascended stuff and asking about character progression at the same time? I am sorry, but this smells like eyewash tactics.
And it just feeds the impression that there is basically no vision for the game as the developer themselves dont know what to do.
Its like an airplane constructeur asking passengers about how to make the plane they are in fly.
And if you really need help and input, just have a look at your “Manifesto” or even better….Guild Wars (1), you know, that game from that other Anet.

Otherwise give me a paycheck and two, three months and I rewamp the whole currency, time gate, once-per day per character or maybe account, customization vertical and some non-vertical, slightly horizontal whatever chaos for you with an overall concept, not this rag rug.

I believe all types of ascended gear should be able to be obtained through all aspects of the game.

Ascended armor, weapons and trinkets from dungeons
Ascended armor and weapons from WvW
Ascended armor, weapons and all types of trinkets from FOTM

Exotic armor was good, because it could be obtained throughout all area’s of the game, whether you were a pure WvW player or strictly a dungeon runner, everyone had a fair shot at getting exotic gear.

The same should be said for ascended.

Someone on the first page said to inform us, the player base, of future plans with respect to progression. I could not agree more. I would not be pumping cash into the game via micro transactions if there are plans for higher tiers. Of course, it makes business sense to keep such plans hidden, but it comes down to how much Arenanet values goodwill.

My view is that ascended gear contradicts the other developer posts with respect to build diversity. The fact that the developers have the audacity to mention build diversity in balance patches is appalling, when the severely time and gold-gated ascended gears pigeonholes players into one build.

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.

Aside from the pre-change GW1 skill capture (I posted earlier in this thread about how I think in-combat capture could be designed without the problems it had in GW1m and be a fun economic metagame) I think one of my favorite progression systems was base building and base raids in City of Heroes/Villains.

Sadly, the studio left the feature on teh cutting room floor after the initial pass decided that the rewards and PvP designs were less deserving of development time than adding raids and new PvE content (the community of that game was extremely PvP averse, and the PvP portions of the system were designed in an unrewarding manner and were plagued with building exploits that never got fixed.

Howeve,r the synthesis of customizable form and function in the bases in the game was extremely appealing. I mean I liked my old SWG housing, but it was largely cosmetic. The CoH “guild hall” system was equal parts cosmetic and functional. You had to build specific room types, find places to put things like shelves and machinery, defenses, deal with concerns like power and data processing limitations, etc.

Things took up a logical amount of space, which was really neat. For instance, in stead of having a tardis chest that held 200 items, you had shelves that held about 30 items, and they looked like shelves capable of holding about 30 items. This idea of “practical use of space” was very prevalent in this system. At times it became tedious (like when looking through 20 shelves to find the right crafting items) but it was extremely satisfying to look upon your racks of, say storage space, and know that all of these shelves actually hold items. You could fill several rooms with “practical appliances” in this fashion, and the result was a sysem that was more satisfying than purely cosmetic ones. When you visited your epic-huge vault, it actually LOOKED and FELT like an epic-huge vault, because the way the game was designed, you needed to BUILD one!

Not only that, but the base raiding PvP was extremely unique. You invaded other bases, which were custom layouts, with custom placement on traps and defenses, and custom placement of the power and computer equipment needed to run it. This meant that while the objective of the raids was always the same (steal an item of power) the execution was never stale, and the base raids were always posesses of a really tense first action of real and valuable intel gathering, followed by intense fighting and on-the-fly command decision making based on suprises and uncertainties about the enemy’s fortifications.

It worked a lot like a combination of SWG player housing and a really simplified game of simcity, and it allowed you to use your guild currency (very much like influence) to add nearly every useful noncombat element of the game, had amazing customization, and even had some unique content (kinda like guild missions) that you could only start from your base with the proper upgrades.

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.

Can you give us some insight on the steps which have to be done for said armor.
Right now they just feel like they were made for human size characters and then are stretched and slimmed down to fit the other races, which results in things like “bag heads” and the “Charr armor rage”.
While i do not denie that the creation of the art and the translation to a male and female model is not a small thing, the translation to the other races and then claiming that they are 10 different armors does not feel right.

Now to go for this topic i want to list off some areas where i think progression does suddenly stop right now (there is no never ending progress, i know, but sudden stops do have an effect on the perception of progress):

Crafting
Crafting ingame feels not like i progress. Crafting the first tier of items is the same as crafting the last tier of items, just with some better stats.
Now i know this is part of the product, however the only profession where we “see” progress is the armors, since every new tier looks actually different.
A big offender is beeing a weaponssmith, since every weapon from start to the end looks the same, with just a little diffeent tint.

The overall crafting experience is repetative and feels like i am just going through the motion. The actual feeling of progress is just too small, since there is little to addition with the progress, till 400, where things explode for a bit, before collapsing into motony).
This system can definetly be more diverse and expanded upon. Things like synergy and the option to customize certain things would greatly elevate this part of the game, as with your progress you gain access to more diverse options.

Armor
let`s face it. You added no new armor to the game that players can aquire by just playing the game, till the ascended armor.
Getting things from the gem-store does not really feel like your character is doing something to earn it. You do not ptogress towards the goal ingame.
You progress towards gold ingame to convert it into gems, or you progress in real life to convert your money into gems.
In the end you can say: “look i battled thousand champions to get my gem-shop-armor.” or “look i battled my paperwork ankitten ow wearing my gem-shop-armor”.

I am sorry, but i do not think that is how it should be and it pains me to see many assets beeing locked away behind the monetization system instead of beeing able to progress towards the desired items.

your character choices
When creating a character you have choices of how your character is able to react, which might open up some new dialog trees.
These rarely come into fruition in the game. We see the stats go up, but it has no influence on how we are able to play.
There is no difference between beeing flirty or a brute. We get down the same road everywhere we walk.

town clothing
now you implemented the “town clothing” as a immersion system. An additional system, however aside from the starter pieces this system was never used again (aside from some holiday gifts and gem-shop-items, which i do not count towards ingame progress)
In one and half a year you added zero town clothing to the core game. you added some to the gem-store, but player are not able to gain more while playing the game itself.
We cannot craft, we cannot earn, we cannot find any town armor in the game.
While a very little amount of people might care about them, they are still part of the game and your character.
If we were able to use them more, beeing able to have a greater ingame selection then the interest would be higher.
You can even use them in jumping puzzles, instead of the PvP armor at holidays. Since these are festivities without fighting, for example.

Archievments
The so called archievments do not feel really like archievments. they are mostly short term goals which drive up a number, which at one point give you some nice stuff.
There is progression here, but in the wrong direction.
There are not enough “archievments” which allow for bragging.
Looking back at GW1, the titles we got there meant something.
The more stuff we invested there actually awarded us with unique stuff here in GW2.
There was synergy, there was meaning, they were not throw away things.
The best thing was: We could show them off.

I am not talking about the titles. I am talking about the hall of monuments, where you could visually see what you have earned. You had statues, you had your rare weapons, followers, minis.
You were even allowed to show it off to other people by taking them with you.

Right now you see it in an not really immersive window like a to do list. Which is not as satisfying or feels like progress like something like a hall, a room or even a home which fills with your deeds.

The Orders
Well, their meaning justs stops.
I touched upon it in the first CDI, that your order choice is basicly meaningless the rest of the game. Here the post
Kudos to the implementation in the LS with the “Nightmare Ends” for the Order of Whispers, but other than that i do not feel any progress there.

I know there are a lot of others, but i have to think more there for now. I hope these thoughts will help in som way.

Sithaco.4673:

I believe all types of ascended gear should be able to be obtained through all aspects of the game.

Honestly, this is what we were told when ascended gear was released. All aspects of the game. But, again, these words were apparently mis interpreted by us because what was meant was that we would be able to obtain the materials needed for ascended gear crafting through all aspects of the game.. I feel, again, it was word play at its best. We interpreted one thing, what was truly meant was another. My interpretation of this was that I could sit in WvW all day and get my ascended piece. 3 dragonite per keep lord will take forever. I really would need to do some temple runs. Or what if I just wanted to obtain the materials needed through dungeons and alts in the open world? Not possible to create ascended gear on mid level alts, or from dungeon farming.

On top of that, we are then forced to craft, and many people do not like to craft. Im indifferent to it, I think crafting is done exceptionally well in GW2. And I guess I personally dont mind crafting an ascended piece, persay, but wish it wasn’t the only method of obtaining the piece.

And the drop rates for actual ascended pieces or skins or whatever might as well not even exist. They are as low and rare as precursors, at least for me. I havent seen a precursor or an ascended piece drop.

Faowri.4159:

The problem for me is that you saw this as a problem. Easy acquisition of max stat gear was touted as a benefit, pre-release, and that’s one of the reasons me and many other players bought into this experience. Horizontal and vertical progression simply do not work well side by side, and in my opinion, pandering to both very different goals has resulted in a very muddy character progression system that I feel I will never be on top of until it narrows its focus and decides which way it wants to go.

I almost feel like you guys need to decide who your audience is before you will effectively sort this out. A jack of all trades may shallowly pander to a diverse audience, but it can’t grip anybody the way that GW1 gripped its devoted audience.

I have to agree here. What bugs me most is that the developers considered exotics being easy to be a problem in the first place – it’s completely at odds with what we were lead to expect with this game.

Am I the only person who remembers them cheerfully doubling the token drops from dungeons because people complained about the grind for exotics shortly after launch? What the heck changed between that act and the release of ascended?

And if I can’t understand that exotics being easy was even a problem, is it amazing that I am completely baffled by the solution on offer? To me ascended gear fills no need that I can comprehend, not even for vertical progression. It simply isn’t; it’s supposedly a maximum tier, and vertical progression doesn’t work that way.

It’s a weird hybrid system. Vertical progression works because there’s continually a carrot that you can reach; once you do another carrot is put in front of you. Horizontal progression is another sort of carrot, that’s all, and there’s a field of them that you can choose to go after – they’re just broadly spaced so it takes time to harvest them all.

This system? There’s one carrot, and it’s so far that we’re going to burn more calories reaching it than eating it will give us.

Doesn’t work.

I also must reemphasize the need for certainty with the playerbase. This gear is hard work – we have to know if it’s going to be replaced mid-term, or even long-term.

One thing I want to say is simple. honestly I can say right now that I feel very displeased with the way GW2 is right now. Since my account on GW1 was hacked long ago and I couldn’t get back I just very recently went back to playing GW1 and I bought every kitten expansion for it. So, here is my problem, I am put off by this high extremely high grind gear for ascended armors….. GW1 does have that aspect but not to the point of leveling a crafting class to spend lots of time and money to make a single let alone a number of armor pieces… I miss hunting dungeons for amazing armor and loot like I did for my Obsidian armor. I miss hunting for my optional elite skills that I had to use Skill capture to get. I miss my kitten Ritualist class so much that I remember the freaken joy and pride I had playing this class! I miss the meaning full weapons that were preset on bosses so that I would know exactly what to hunt and where to hunt for what I wanted. I will say that I’ve spent a lot of gold, or I should say thrown away, into the mystic forge…. the problem I am seeing is that this game apparently favors different accounts more then others. a friend of mine has pulled over 80 black, abyss, white, and celestial dyes from the forge in less then 5 months….. EACH!…. I haven’t seen one precursor from the forge at all… another friend of mines pulled 3 dawns in less then 2 hours of mystic forging… you can’t tell me that’s not luck? the problem you have is that your releasing very nice content but it’s not enough for your player base to enjoy fully…. One thing I enjoy in GW1 as of right now is the title farming and how painful I know it will be once I get deeper into GW1 again. I did not play GW1 when nightfalls was out because I had quit it for guild reasons but I am seeing this new Hard Mode applied in GW1 and I am freaken loving it! really making me work for my loot and money arena net. that’s the stuff that your player base loved and enjoyed. I can totally see ritualists come back into play into GW2, I can total see you apply a hard mode into GW2, it’s simple, just make dungeons apply a hard mode to it or have a button to teleport a player into the hard mode version of GW2. I can totally see heros being come back into play into GW2 if there was a hard mode applied in this game. I have talked to many players within GW2 and they all agree that it would make this game that much more interesting instead of just going out alone and beating the crap out of everyone on your own.

Stick to your root of what GW1 made your games what it is. The fact that you are trying to keep a kind of togetherness with players to play with other players. make your content harder to kill and not weaker….

Ascended gear is expensive to make, for such a small stat boost. I feel like they should be able to change stats like Legendaries. It will allow people to try out different builds instead of feeling handicapped (I spent so much gold on this build, I can’t change now!). I am currently spending a lot of gold on Rabid gear as a Necro, even though I play mostly PvE, because it’s the play style I like. I sometimes see “No condition damage” or “No necros” in LFG because it’s just not good enough if you want to do a run quickly. At open world bosses I am even more useless because of the bleed cap. I think you should cut the line between PvP and PvE balancing, because it’s just not an even field in PvE.

Anyway, balancing aside, what if I get fed up like changing my build one day? My ascended gear worth hundreds of gold sits around doing nothing. Same with all the ascended gear from fractals, it’s junk, you can do nothing with it since it’s account bound (or even soulbound by this point).

Dungeons, the rewards are very uneven. You haven’t touched them since you added the daily gold. It’s naive to believe that the gold amount between all paths is balanced, but I believe before you can correct it you will have to fix skipping content, make not-skipping actually not a complete waste of time (maybe add something like vanquishing from GW1, with proper rewards, no more bloody crafting material) and actually fiddle around with how long paths take. As an example, Arah path 4 is lovely but there’s no way anyone will do it for the reward. Buying paths shouldn’t be a thing. Many paths are way too long or annoying. I feel like dungeons are really ignored. It’s easy to find out which paths are ignored by people, fix them!

Which ties in to progression again. Some tokens are better to have than others. The 70+ dungeons let you buy rares with Ectos in them for 30 tokens a piece (that’s a proper reward with current prices). I think all dungeons should offer something like that. Do people really use their tokens to buy rare gear for a few levels? I think it might need a bit of a redesign.

I feel like with all of Ascended, Fractals and Dungeons, you need to take a look at the time and effort spent, and see what you get in return. Some dungeons are better than others, some paths are better than others, some Fractals are better than others (nobody likes Dredge), and then if you manage to loot something worthwhile in Fractals you better hope it’s the correct stat, because otherwise it’s complete junk. One fractal might the the same time as a dungeon path, and with three of them + boss, that should not be just 1 gold in your hand. Unless you loot an ascended weapon or armor piece you need, there’s a way better place to be instead.

One thing I want to say about GW1 …

I hear people compare GW2 and GW1 progression systems a lot, although I have never played GW1. It does sound like a pretty fun game and I wish I had played it at its height (I was in WoW at that time chasing carrots). But kind of wish I was playing GW1, sounds like the game I was/am looking for.

I’ve played this game about 2 weeks this year and a couple of months last year. I still occasionally come here to have a look but in the end the game just didn’t work for me. Perhaps Anet wants to know why a player left especially because the reasons involve this very topic: vertical and horizontal progression.

For me a game should have vertical progression or not. Not something in between. I was very upset whe ascended gear came out and the looming level raise cap that has already been mentioned by yourselves just made it clear that this game will have some sort of vertical progression but also kinda not. Call it half-baked or whatever you want but to me that’s how it feels. I don’t really like this middle of the road approach. Sometimes you can achieve something great by having sort of the best of both worlds but in the case of vertical progression in GW2, my feeling is that it’s neither…nor…

Also more levels make no sense to me. Leveling over level 30 already has a big sense of pointlessness to me as you don’t unlock anything anymore. Just more skill points in a skill tree system that again, doesn’t feel exciting. Perhaps you used LEAN principles a little too much in your design philosophy to the point that things lose meaning or flavour.

Exotic gear is also a problem. It’s too easy to get. I leveled a toon to 80 this year in those two weeks and by the time I was 80 I could buy a complete set of exotic gear. I was done. And then the ascended stuff is just too much effort for too little gain. There is no balance in there. I really feel that ascended stuff should’ve been about looks and not stats. If there is to be stat progression it should be more accessible. Not just a fotm grind.

So if I then just say oh well, I will ignore the fotm dungeon and just stick with the game itself in exotic gear and ignore the odd vertical progression, then I need horizontal progression. And sadly there the game fails me as well. In GW2, different as the game may be, I enjoyed collecting armour sets. There were quite a number of elite sets and it meant something to me to have my characters in such armour. Why did it work for me? The armours were not too easy to get but most also not too hard. Vabbi was harder and FoW armour even more so. The collecting of armors and also weapons was fun, could be grindy but still felt worth the effort. In GW2 it doesn’t work that way. It’s grind but not so much fun and I feel the quality of the design team is lacking. It’s just not as satisfying as it was before.

To me GW2 feels how D3 feels, compared to D2. Sure the game looks better graphically but it misses the atmosphere and sense of reward for achieving things.

So what else does GW2 offer for horizontal progression? To be honest, I’m not sure. I will say I really enjoyed doing the jump puzzles (not the event ones with a timer) that are around the world. But it’s not something I would repeat.

What this game does have is lots of events. Every holiday and reason has an event. It’s too much. It’s like having cake for dinner 5 times a week. It gets old and it forces people to participate in fear of losing out on something.

I could go on but what this game lacks is stability and balance in its approach. It’s all just here and now or total grind or pointless.

Vertical progression should either be taken out completely or should be sped up significantly and have a set frequency like new level gear once a year and be attainable for most players within that year for multiple characters and availabe through various play modes. Not everybody wants to grind fotm all year long.

Horizontal progression should be expanded. Designs of armour and weapons should not be in the either ugly/boring category or the OMFG dat totalleee pwns!! category. Player housing is one way of doing that. My wife still logs in here and there and she likes the winter holiday event, walking around with her norn in snowscapes and cooking stuff. That’s it and that makes it that she only logs in now and again. Just a couple of examples of how GW2 just doesn’t feel solid but kinda like the holiday event jumping puzzle. That’s not ideal for long term play.

I am sure a lot of people here don’t see things the same way but this is just how it is for me. Perhaps the devs can do something with it. I am not holding my breath but I still feel sad that GW2 disappointed so much. I really wanted to like it after having such a great time with GW1 and I guess that’s why I secretly still hope that something might still change to make this game interesting again. If not, I’ll see if there will be a GW3 in a few years.

Isaiah Cartwright.8569:

As chris said going to be hard to keep to a 3 page summary with this one but I’ll get started

Topics
*Fractal Resets
*Ascended Gear
*Horizontal Progression
*Vertical Progression
*Grind
*Art Progression
*Alts
*Gates
*Map progression
*Ascended creation time

As long you don’t raise the level cap or introduce a new tier of gear
I’m fine with it ;-)

If you want good vertical progression make some armor/skins obtainable for the costs based on legendarys with nice visual effects. Also i think there are still a lot of lvl 80 maps missing.

Refering to the fractal reset, it would be nice to give everyone who was able to get to the final stage (level 80) some title to honor their work or maybe the fractal tonic since they spent most of the time there :-)

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.

Huh, other games…

Well one of my favourite MMOs was FFXI. While it forced you into groups to progress, its pace was that you were always progressing.

Best example is the crafting system there. With a combination of synergy and some fforts on how to aquire crafting items the implemented system there felt relevant. High level crafter were rare and highly in demand since they were able to create some otherwise hard to earn equipment or items.
These items were not only for your character or combat. These were items which allowed for different regions. Mostly in housing you could craft interriors with the right skill or buy them from the auction house.

Some classes needed special items to work. I leveled the ninja class to support my thief with dual wielding (yes, it had dual professions, which were awesome). However to really use a Ninja you needed coresponding items. These items were only available through crafting.
Creating a demand in a certain direction, since these items to create the product were not that easy to come by.

Then every class had it`s own story. At certain levels you were promted to a teacher, or class specific guild, where you could earn something character specific, like a whole armor set including special weapons.

GW2 right now is to broad. It is too fast, so every progress you implement feels naught, compared to what it could be.
Now with ascended it just feels like timegating compared to how easy the rest of the game is.

Another game you want to take a look at is: Warhammer Online Age of Reconing

While now beeing shut down, this game had a lot of cool things to have you character feel like he progressed.
The most prominent feature was its Tome of Knowledge (or so) which was you way to collect things.
And it did so in a big way: It counted how many enemies you killed, gave you lore about areas you visited, took care of your titles. It did alot.
It also felt natural. If you killed a lot of wolves, the journal entry grew, revealing more and more about these enemies till you got a title, which allowed you to do more damage against these enemies.
This was marginal but still satisfying, since you felt that you character was progressing with that type of enemies. Was able to handle them better.

Then there was Trophies. You could outfit your armor with trophies you unlocked by playing the game or finding certain places.
I do not say GW2 should emulate that, but you could give armor maker the ability to place your guild tag on your armor. giving them some kind of customizsation.

Adding to the Tome of Knowledge was the exploration aspect of the game. You were rewarded everywhere you went. You could find hidden extras everywhere, which even allowed for some interesting mechanics. i do not want to go into detail, since GW2 did something similiar, but WHO was on a bigger scale.
It was different to go into a desolated zone on the map, just to find a giant under a bridge whcih attacks you, just so you find a NPC in its belly who gives you an item which have to delver to his wife, which in turn rewards you with a hidden trophy or title.
You really want to check out some of these tasks on some wikis if they still exist, since they were some of the best times i had

Bart Weird.9671:

Isaiah Cartwright.8569:

As chris said going to be hard to keep to a 3 page summary with this one but I’ll get started

Topics
*Fractal Resets
*Ascended Gear
*Horizontal Progression
*Vertical Progression
*Grind
*Art Progression
*Alts
*Gates
*Map progression
*Ascended creation time

As long you don’t raise the level cap or introduce a new tier of gear
I’m fine with it ;-)

If you want good vertical progression make some armor/skins obtainable for the costs based on legendarys with nice visual effects. Also i think there are still a lot of lvl 80 maps missing.

Refering to the fractal reset, it would be nice to give everyone who was able to get to the final stage (level 80) some title to honor their work :-)

Not that it means anything as they can always change their mind but they already confirmed that they were planning on raising the level cap. They just never said when.

Here’s a link from last year http://www.gamefront.com/guild-wars-2-level-cap-raise-confirmed-for-future/

Why dont take the GW1 progression as an example? We had the HOM to fil, had titles that were “worth” something (God amongst mortals) and lots of different, mostly good locking skins.

There is no vertical progression (level and stat increase) needed in GW2, because one day it will be too hard for newcomers or returners to gear up to the newest level. Also for people who play different classes it is just boring and unnecessary grind to gear up so that they finally can do what they actually like about GW2.
Furthermore, most people won`t buy a 2nd gear with different stats for their char, because its just too expensive, and no experimenting on different builds is possible.

So how to keep players without vertical progression?
Give us the possibility to display some valuable weapons or armorsets in the hall of the monuments or in the home instance. Give us the opportunity to achieve titles that are worth sth. The only valuable title at the moment is the dungeon master.
Give us more legendary weapons (or even armors). One legendary for each type of weapon isn`t enough especially when there are some joke-weapons like disco-mace, that many players don’t like.
Make the way to get a legendary weapon as long as it is now, but less grindy. At the moment its all about farming gold. Create some legendaries that can be achieved by open world farming (for example for a certain component you need to complete a certain number of events in each area) and create some legendaries that can be achieved by passionate dungeon players in (new) elite dungeons (like tormented weapons or obsidian armor in GW1)
Also give us the possibility to change the sigils in legendaries (or even in ascended), which means you can insert all possible sigils in the weapon and then choose one sigil, that you want to be active at the moment)

So as a conclusion: Highest stats should be easy to get, valuable skins should require time or skill or both. And the most important thing: define those exclusive skins as end-game-content. If you create a new dungeon/elite-area where we can get those skins, dont just write it somewhere into the patch notes that most players don’t read, but make it clear to all players that these exclusive skins are the aim for the next three months (what doesnt mean that after three months the dungeon should be patched out, but only that in three months for example a new dungeon is introduced)

When people talk of vertical progression it should also be remembered that adding new skills, that increase effectiveness over previous skills is also a form of vertical progression. I.e powercreep

We saw this in GW1, when PvE skills came in and (after a period of ‘grind’) were so OP they became pretty much mandatory and thus restricted a lot of build and player diversity.

I don’t know what to say that hasn’t already been said in 10 pages.

I don’t like Ascended Gear in its current form. BiS gear should be easy to get. If the point of gear is to help you move along in the game and play the game, then it should be easy to get. It shouldn’t be time gated. It shouldn’t be mat gated. It shouldn’t be gold gated. It just shouldn’t be gated, period.

In its current form, Ascended takes far too long to obtain, and is far too cost prohibitive. Especially for a game where stats affect builds as much as in this game.

On the note of making the gear truly accessible: If you’re going to design something and say that it can drop from certain content, then it NEEDS to actually drop. None of this 1 in 1 million Rivendale’s Haunted Horse nonsense. If there’s the chance that a player questing after something will never see it within a year’s time, then the RNG in that instance is bad.

As for the best character progression system I’ve ever encountered? The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim.

No, seriously. It has been the best progression system I’ve ever seen in a game. Because the levels don’t matter. They don’t. No matter what you do, some of your skills will go up, and in turn you will level. You can beat the game in rags at level 1 if you want to.

But you won’t. Because better gear is guaranteed. And stats are guaranteed. Because you’re going to maybe sneak around. Or cut someone down. Or cast magic missile at the darkness. And in doing so, you will gain skill in that, and you will level. And as you journey, you’ll complete quests, or raid a temple, or kill a bandit on the highway, or become a blacksmith. And no matter, you’ll get better, or different gear.

And it won’t be hard or challenging. And for that part: That’s a good thing. I promise you, that IS a good thing.

Because the challenge is going to come from the rest of the game. How you decide to fight. Whether you decide to go in, guns blazing, or sneak around the back. How you’ve ultimately built the character. Whether or not you want to risk going into the group of 40 bandits. Because are you actually prepared to take them on? Are you ready to slay that dragon?

Maybe all you’re missing is that small boost to power. You need that +3 Rat Flail as opposed to your current +2 Butter Knife.

The best part about Skyrim is that you can get that Rat Flail. You’ll actually see it during your time playing the game. And it won’t be a hassle to do it. You might have to complete a quest to do it, but that’s all. And along the way, you’ll progress no matter what, because you’ll be using the skills you want to use.

I guess an easier way to put my feelings is this: If I wanted a time-gated, mat-gated, gold-gated gear game where I would never see BiS gear. I’d just go back to every other MMO that has ever been released before GW2 was a thing.

I don’t want vertical progression games anymore. I’m tired of them. They aren’t fun, and honestly, I now realize that they never were. I want horizontal progression. I want easy gear, and if I want a challenge, I want to get something shiny from it.

I want to raid the mayor’s house for his jewel encrusted sword because it’s jewel encrusted. Not because it’s +4 over my crusty baguette of frenchiness.

Apart from cosmetic looks on armors and weapons, I believe that the rewards from dungeons and fractals should be reworked.

Let’s say that a fully efficient and experienced group of 5 players decides to play some instances:

- Fractals lvl 49 – if they don’t get the dredge fractal, they can be done with that level in about 1 hour. Pure gold reward: 1.4.
– Any fractal from 0-30 can be finished in 30-40 mins. Pure gold reward: 1.2-1.3 g. Almost the same as above, requiring a fracture of the effort.
- The same group can complete the entire AC dungeon in the time it takes to finish fractal 49, and have a pure gold reward of 5.5 Gold + almost enough tokens to buy an exotic offhand weapon for the forge.
- In less than an hour the entire COE can be completed, a higher level dungeon but it gives only 3 gold.
- Honor of the waves – the most beautiful dungeon in game, the only one that includes underwater combat, also gives only 3 gold. Definitely not enough to make people do it regularely.

I would like to know:

- Why do we get the same gold reward for doing fractals 49 as for running a 6 minute COF path one? Not to mention that the reward is the same for the extremely horrible 43 and 46.

- What made AC harder than all the other dungeons so that it gives more gold per path?

- Why would players choose to do lesser dungeons (CM, TA, SE), if they take the same amount of time as the ones that provide better rewards and there is no real use for their tokens unless you want to forge some weapons?

Mark my words: legendary armors are coming.

Not going to bother with the ascended when if I get the legendaries I can change stats thus not need multiple sets of gears.

I don’t want vertical progression games anymore. I’m tired of them. They aren’t fun, and honestly, I now realize that they never were. I want horizontal progression. I want easy gear, and if I want a challenge, I want to get something shiny from it.

Here here.

And let me add that if I want a challenge, I want it to come from the combat gameplay itself – not chopping enough wood per day.

For me, GW2 snatched defeat from the jaws of victory with this impulsive decision to chase the vertical progression crowd november last. It honestly feels a bit like I witnessed my own personal NGE.

cesmode.4257:

While I agree that theres way too much crafting going on, and forced upon you if you want/need BiS gear… I do not think adding another currency into the game is the way to go. Theres way too much of it as it is. Have the items cost Karma instead, since its one of the universal currencies.

Karma absolutely does not get enough mileage for these basic elements of the game. I still think they should be incorporated directly into getting BiS gear. That way, no matter what I’m doing in the game and however many hours I can play, I’m typically gaining karma and I’m building up a pot of funds I can use for BiS gear. I don’t have to do forced crafting or participate in RNG to get something that should be a standard, based on the original vision of the game.

It might still take me a while if the karma cost was very high, but at least I don’t have to choose between playing the parts of the game that I enjoy while never getting BiS gear, and playing very specific, frankly unenjoyable parts of the game in very specific ways to achieve it. “Play your way” was a big sales line for GW2, too.

The Hall of Monuments map already exists in GW2. Expand upon it, bring it back to its former glory. It would add more charm to the acchievement system.

It would be very sweet if it could create a statue of our former hero in GW1, but that would probably be very hard to acchieve due to different graphical engines.

Also, give us a customisable “home” in the home instance district, and allow us to warp to the Hall of Monuments from there and vice-versa, perhaps through a magical mirror or a magical closet. It would feel very magical, surely, but also very personal.

Expanding upon the skin locket idea, many of the low/ mid game skins could be sold (= unlock) through karma merchants. This would give a new point to those NPCs, make exploration more interesting to completionists and cosmetic-seekers, and make newer players more exciting to try those skins out, especially under my suggestion that crafting and skin collecting should be tied to each other. It would create that exciting feeling of finding how the new skin looks like, and knowing that, once unlocked, you would be ble to use/ craft it anytime you wanted to any item regardless of level or rarity. Completionists wouls feel more satisfied by filling in their skin locket, and cosmetic seekers would have more motivation to plan their long-term goals for their looks thanks to a more streamlined and addicting cosmetic system.

thefantasticg.3984:

Mark my words: legendary armors are coming.

Not going to bother with the ascended when if I get the legendaries I can change stats thus not need multiple sets of gears.

Mark my words, this has already been comfirmed long ago.
There will be new legendary weapons early next year and soon after that, one new gear type except armor will receive legendary tier. Later on, armor will also receive legendary tier. This is however not vertical progression from ascended but horizontal.
Legendary doesn’t have higher stats, just more convenience in that you don’t have to change weapon to change stats.

Ascended Armor

Like others said, i think ascended armor should let us pick the stats like the legendary weapons do.

Skin Wardrobe

Also think they should “Skin Wardrobe”, not only to add the skins we collect or buy with gems but also to store the unlockable reward skins we get with the achievement points.

They could also add more unlocable reward skins with achievement points. For example, they could add a new category for legendary weapons, and each achievement could unlock a new legendary skin for that legendary weapon. They could also unlock new visual effects for those weapons.

And could be skins unlocked by reputation with an Order, race, city, etc.

Reputation

The reputation system could be an extention of the “Renown Heart” system.

-Map Reputation: each map would have its own reputation. This reputation could be won by completing “renown hearts”, killing mobs, completing events, etc. Once one reach the max reputation, an npc with some rewards would be unlocked.

-Region Reputation (Ascalon, Magumma, etc): is the sum of the reputation of the maps of that region. To have max region reputation, the players must have full reputation in all the maps of that region. If they do this they unlock an npc with better rewards.

-World Reputation: must have max reputation in all regions. This unlock an npc with very good rewards.

-Lose Reputation: the map reputation goes down over time if the player doesnt do events in that map. If the reputation goes down, the access to the special npc is locked.

-Order Reputation: this would be related to the daily and monthly goals. Instead of have a daily goal that ask, for example kill x amount of champions, each Order would ask their specific goals (the goals could be the same) or could be to complete specific events (help a village, etc). Win reputation with an order would unlock new armor and weapon skins.

Mikuchan.7261:

thefantasticg.3984:

Mark my words: legendary armors are coming.

Not going to bother with the ascended when if I get the legendaries I can change stats thus not need multiple sets of gears.

Mark my words, this has already been comfirmed long ago.
There will be new legendary weapons early next year and soon after that, one new gear type except armor will receive legendary tier. Later on, armor will also receive legendary tier. This is however not vertical progression from ascended but horizontal.
Legendary doesn’t have higher stats, just more convenience in that you don’t have to change weapon to change stats.

It’s been confirmed? Dang. I missed that memo. Hotness. So I know I need to go ahead and save for those instead of wasting any crap or golds on ascended. Need to save everything then for upcoming legendary gears as that is much more convenient to have the ability to change stats vs having multiple sets of gears.

Note

> – Horizontal Progression
^ – Vertical Progression

Looking to the Future

Personally, here’s my thoughts on the direction progression mechanics should take:

No Level Cap Increase

No More Tiers of Gear

Adjust Current Systems to Allow for Deeper > Progression

Implement New Systems for > Progression

That’s my take on some things that could be implemented to improve the horizontal progression while not completely negating the vertical progression up until now.

Now that we are at it, legendary equipment could also be unlockable account-bound items much like acchievement armor, so that the player could create as many copies of it as they would wish. Would that break the economy? I don’t think so, because by having no need to get a second skin of it, the player would instead dedicate their efforts to a new legendary skin. They will do that, because each build uses at the very minimum 2 weapon sets (two professions excluded), because many of the weapon sets consist of two legendaries (MH and OH weapon types), and because, later down the road, new legendary types will exist.

Likewise, I think ascended gear should also inherit some of those mechanics. Account-unlockable skins (via a skin locket system), changeable stats. Perhaps not to the extent of legendaries. Maybe changeable stats would require multiple copies of the same ascended gear, and a small material sink from crafting, unlike legendary gear, where you can change stats without creating a second copy. This would still maintain the extra convenience advantage that ANET wants legendary gear to have: in this specific case, it would free the inventory slots a bit, and it would not require a money sink nor being at a crafting station to do it.

Ultimately, I don’t even mind the fact that ascended gear offers better stats. I don’t even find the stat boost to be high enough, to feel satisfying. I’ve got my ascended staff, I don’t notice any difference in stats, and I don’t find the skin anything special. It didn’t excite me at all. However, I do mind how better stats clashes with horizontal progression, especially when it comes to build crafting, skin customization and alt playing.

With a skin locket system similar to what I mentioned, a player would be able to craft each piece of equipment with any skin unlocked of their choice with only a small extra money/ material sink. And in my opinion, the same should happen to create a new cope with different stats.

After working so hard for vertical progression, it shouldn’t come at the sacrifice of our personal, horizontal progression. So after each piece of ascended gear is crafted, the system should drastically ease the horizontal goals for that piece, skin-wise, stat-wise, and even alt-wise.

A skin locket, the ability to choose a skin when crafting, and an easy way to create multiple copies of the same item with different stats/ skins, would all greatly fix this issue, and suddenly, ascended gear would no longer be an obstacle to invest on ALTs, to invest on looks nor to invest on builds. THREE horizontal progression flaws fixed here.

Good morning everyone,

Reading the summaries and some common discussion points, as well as previous threads (primarily from the crafting sub-forum), I think one of the major disconnects in ascended gear is the crafting requirement itself, not necessarily the gating – the only gating issue is the additional time constraints on light armor sets, but that’s not a terrible burden. Personally, I think the gating is a good way to introduce ascended materials into the marketplace rather than having every aspect of it account bound – if the final crafting refinements (Damask, Deldrimor Steel, etc) were also account bound, then I think the gating would be a problem.

One problem that does exist however, is the fact that you kind of have to go out of your way to vertically progress – let’s face it, crafting isn’t the most popular activity in Guild Wars 2. I would wager that a lot of players avoid it altogether. There’s a discrepancy between playing the game doing what you love to do, and actually acquiring the gear. Vertical progression in other games that actually require increasing gear caps is doing it correctly because there will always be that next tier of content. Guild Wars is vertically progressing on a horizontal content plateau, if that makes any sense(?).

Vertical progression through skill acquisition and build diversity is something that Guild Wars 1 handled extremely well. There were (relatively) constant new additions to the skill bars through out the game’s lifespan. Coupled with the ability that professions had to wield any weapon that fit their build, GW1 was an unstoppable force of creation and build diversity, aside from flavor of the month that you can’t really avoid. It was by far my favorite system of personal progression in any game I’ve ever played. There are a few things in GW2, technically, mechanically, and by design, that stifle that creativity. At the risk of going off topic, I’ll save that for the class balance CDI

Horizontal progression has always been my preferred style of character progression. The peace of mind that comes with not having to race against a statistical tier of gear to achieve the look and feel that I want for my character is amazing. In other games I always felt like I was playing just to throw away my prior achievements. GW has always been a “jump in and play how you want” kind of game and that is what kept me with the franchise for the past 7 years or so. It is also extremely friendly towards new players and returning players, and makes it a lot easy for veterans to help new people, and include them in activities.

One trend that has been unimpressive lately with horizontal progression is that all new armor skins have been coming through the gem store, with the exception of a few back items (that by now are probably piling up in banks across Tyria). I understand the requirements of keeping a free to play game running, and like you mentioned it’s very expensive to create all of these armor sets, and I truly appreciate the cash shop’s effort to avoid pay to win (although I disagree with adding the collection expansions to the gem shop). We have had the same exotic armor in the game since launch, and it gets kind of frustrating to see so much going through the gem store.

One last note that might be more appropriate for another CDI topic, is the fact that not all builds are progressing equally through ascended armor – there is a serious chasm of difference that certain armor types have over others ( for example, the stat difference that ascended berserker gear gives when upgrading from exotic over the small difference say, Rabid gear gives when upgrading). I think if a push for vertical progression is going to be made, it should be made equally instead of further promoting the lack of build diversity through next to useless, expensive gear upgrades. But again, I think this topic would better suit build diversity discussions.

I quit playing gw2 over the summer, because of quite a few reasons, character progression was one of them. I don’t like the fact that the game doesn’t help you get to the level you need to be to progress in the story. You never had to worry about that in GW1. To me games are all about story first and foremost, and if you should just want to play characters through the story mode and do nothing else, then I should have that option without worrying about going off to do several events to get to the level recommended.

Speaking of the actual storyline, gw1 was better on one very specific level as well, the fact that each cut-scene was actually in game, in the environment. So much immersion is lost when every scene cuts to a painted background and two people talking.

I still to this day, because of character story and progression, pay and play Swtor and think it’s the best MMO out there. If I could pull anything from that game over to GW2 it would be the commendation system, which allows you to find and get planet commendations from quests and pve and exchange them for gear and other items that are actually really useful for your current level. The game rewards players like no other mmo out there does, and in a way that doesn’t detract you from what you’re already doing.

I would also like to see some incentive for playing regular pvp. Like in Swtor you can queue up for warzones and the new galactic starfighter, and you’re properly rewarded for it with Xp, credits, and commendations, which again you can use to actually get items for you pve experience. The amount of player choice in how you progress your character is what sets that game apart from others.

On a side note as well, the biggest reason I quite playing GW2 was because of the dungeons. There was no group finder mechanikittenil just recently, and I don’t even know how well it works, but not only that, but because I felt like every dungeon was just some trick or exploit to get through it. I mean really, stacking? What is this? How do let your game get away with something so unusual, and then it ends up being the norm on how to clear a dungeon, because if you try to get through it the “legit” way it’s virtually impossible without a well organized group? I like challenge, don’t get me wrong, but the challenge should come from people knowing how to properly play their class, not from knowing stupidly overpowered bosses that have terrible tells.

This to me all stems from the fact that the holy trinity was removed from the game, which I still to this day don’t think helped anything, as people still try to make Tank and healer builds with certain classes, as crappy as they may be to a truly dedicated healer or tank class.

With all that being said, still wish to see GW2 improve and I commend Anet for reaching out to their community to try and make it better, and I hope one day I’ll actually want to play the game again.

Oh and another thing about Ascended. Not only is it anti-alt and anti-build, it’s anti-transmog. Though I think the transmog system in the game generally is pretty bad, it’s even worse when you throw Ascended into the mix. If I want several “looks” to my gear, that’s just not going to happen with Ascended. I’ll have to do one look and that’s it. Because Ascended is too difficult to get so obviously I will only have one set of gear (per character if I am really lucky).

You need to create a separate PVE armor/weapon locker. Something similar to our HoM or how the achievement armors/weapons work. Oh and that is how the gem shop skins should work. It’s kind of BS that I have to go and buy it for one character and then it’s stuck on one set of gear. It should behave like HoM armor and always be available for me to pick up.

If you insist on keeping the silly transmute stone system at least merge it with the idea of the PVE locker. We get new armor. The pieces then “unlock” in the PVE locker forever. We can then unlock as many armor pieces or weapons as we want to the locker. To switch back and forth between looks we still need to use transmute stones. But you would never have to worry about losing a look and it would be easy to switch back and forth between looks.

(edit: I did forget about the transmute splitter. But I’ve never used one and to be honest I don’t know if it works to restore weapon or armor skins. Not to mention it’s still soul bound to one character. Gem skins should be account wide. And the splitter is overpriced I’m afraid. The convenience and organization of a PVE locker would be better.)

Another problem against personal progression (lack of challenge, lack of viable builds and skills) is BALANCE.

And I’m not talking about the balance done by the balancing skill team, but the broken pve design that nullifies almost any depth this game’s combat has to offer.

Seriously, just make pve mobs auto-attack inbetween their “slow” skills. Their auto-attacks don’t even need to be very strong. This solution won’t fix all problems, but it’ll make a significant impact. Suddenly, zerker geared characters won’t be able to dodge everything, and they’ll need team backup to survive. That’s the entire point behind such a high-rish/ high-reward gear, right? Suddenly, defensive stats will become more desired. Suddenly, those crappy heals, confusion, retaliation, auras, and the like will actually become relevant enough to mitigate or deal damage. Condition damage builds will indirectly become stronger because characters will have to kite more often when in danger.

I don’t want to turn this into a balancing discussion, but I feel that pve design needs to take some clues from basic pvp/ combat tactics if we can ever hope to get more viable stat combinations. Auto-attacking mobs is the first step. An AI that can kite and (sometimes) dodge some big skills will be another step.

The day a zerker geared character will want to KD, immobilize or cripple someone to burst them down, or will be at a serious risk of danger when they can’t kill fast enough unless they have party support, is the day support and control builds will become more desired, and so will some extra splash on defensive stats.

Put it this way, you could say that Ascended gear discourages me from buying any more of your skins in the gem shop. If you want to look at it from a money perspective.

If there were a way to permanently unlock skins into a skin locker – say, using transmute stones? I’d buy a boatload. As it is now gear appearances are so clunky to use, so destructive of the item in question, so wasteful of a person’s efforts to get particular stats, that I buy very few and only use them on gear I know I want.

But to heck with skins alone. Make my armor an account wide unlock if you’re going to make me craft it at this expense and grind rate. Craft it once, have it for all alts forever.

As long as your idea of progression are 43 stacks of silk scraps to make a single armor there will always be problems.
I’m already a foretaste of the time when they put out the next level of equipment, " you need 70000000 useless pieces of material to make the piece to be refined , but unfortunately , as some players have already prepared the materials , we decided to punish all putting all time gates ( 1 piece per month per account) .

What I do not understand is : given that the manifesto had said no vertical progression and that many people are gone because you placed it , why we are still here to talk about? To be clear horizontal progression that you have put ? 2 skill in character in a year? 3 fractals ? You do not even try to implement the horizontal progression with which you have attracted many customers.

A tired customer .

P.S. We could talk to the genius who decided to use bolt 100 for a single piece of silk damask ?

Yeah, it’s just a really clunky and odd transmute system in general. They need to move to a locker system.

Gw2 needs to take some pointers from games like Diablo and borderlands. A good portion of the mmo fanbase enjoy the loot grind feel. I want it to be viable to pursue both aesthetic and higher tier gear through running dungeons or farming DE’s. I want it to be viable for me to go to the fractals run it for a couple of days and have a chance to get ascended gear. Also GW2 should have new unlockable weapons for professions that require a challenge to acquire. ( NOT GRIND) A challenge, like a dungeon or boss fight. I personally enjoy aesthetic progression so I feel like its useless for me to play holiday events, especially this year( No new skins) . Achievements are NOT a proper mechanic to insensitive player participation. Instead of trying to get us to play updates for an achievement , perhaps you should have released an armor piece for every living story update. That way I an other players can get a " Living Story Act One Armor Set". Something that intices progression wise and instentivises me to play the living story. Also add an ARMOR SKIN WALLET. Make it a gem item just make it. I hate the fact that I have to throw away a skin if I want to try another one. You can still make trans stones necessary just allow players to progress through skin collections.

Add more traits for professions.
Add more skills some of which should be universal to all professions others should be profession based. Bring back the GW1 mechanic of running instances to obtain skills. Also I’m not to sure about this one but perhaps add more skills to weapons allowing us to further customize our builds by picking weapon skills out of a larger pool of skills.

I, personally, am in favour of horizontal progression. I am a person who has 3.5k hours in the game over the past year, which means that I have spent about a third of my life over the past year in-game, so I am really not a player who can be called “casual”, at least when it comes to game time. Yet, I do not feel even remotely tempted to start grinding the painful way towards ascended armour.

The main issue with ascended armour is how uncomfortable the road to it feels. The fact that the only way to get it is to farm for materials, followed by crafting a little piece of the total materials you need each day, just to deck one of your characters for one of their specks is hearth wrecking. The main issue is not the addition of the gear itself, but its implementation. Opening up more options for players to receive that upper tier of gear is key for keeping the enjoyment of the game.

This game was advertised as “grind-free”, and, at launch, for the most part – it was. The multiple ways to acquire exotic gear gave players breathing space, and a chance to deck out their characters with best-in-slot items, simply by doing what they like most – be it dungeons, WvW, crafting, or simply playing around the world, gathering karma. As it currently stands, however, players are forced into a ling, linear, grindy path necessary for the acquisition of ascended gear, without being given any alternative.

I understand that some people like vertical progression in MMOs, and I know that it is important for them to have a long-term goal, which gives them a reason to play. The issue for me, however, is that GW2 was supposed to be a game for the rest of us, who would like to play an MMO where they can just play, instead of having to engage in a “boring grind” for stats. The marginal stat bonus of ascended gear is nothing important, as it stands, but if further vertical progression is added, especially in the way Ascended gear was, I see this game losing much of its appeal.

The way to go, in my eyes, is to add many sources of ascended gear.

- Add drop chances in the open world – substantially larger than now, since as they are pathetically small in their current form.
- Make it acquirable via dungeon tokens – either add a “Hard Mode” to dungeons, which rewards people with tokens which are tradable for ascended armour, or make ascended armour purchasable with larger amount of the tokens from dungeons in their current form.
- Reward people who participate in the living world – add something along the lines of a token system for living world releases. Once you participate in enough releases, you can pick your box of ascended gear.
- Make it purchasable with karma – many people have millions of karma, with the game not providing a viable sink for it. Allowing people to throw a million or two for a set of ascended gear is a good way to drain the amount of stale karma from accounts, while giving people another option for the acquisition of this best-in-slot gear.

What A-net should –not- do, in my opinion, is add further tiers of gear into the game, add further levels, or add some sort of grindy upgrade system for existing ascended gear – such as combining two +5 power infusions to get a +6 power infusion, two +6 infusions to get a +7 infusion, etc. – something I felt they were testing the waters for with their new agony resistance system.

In conclusion, I would like to say that I have faith in A-net and the GW2 community. I am grateful that the company has created this thread and is willing to listen to our opinions, and I am looking forward to seeing how the game will evolve in the future.

I think a good way to offer a meaningful sense of progression but that would keep it horizontal is adding a second trait tree to each class. I will give an exact example of what I mean.

We can call it Trait Window “B”. You can only spend points in one or the other, but it gives more options and it’s easier to balance.

I would do the same thing with utility skills and weapon skills. "Utility Panel “B”. I would allow for utilities to be mixed and matched though from either panel. The same with weapon skills.

Give players more weapon options.

Bring new weapons to each class and also allow existing weapons be used on professions that haven’t had access to them before.

Nadesh.7953:

One game i can think of is Blade of Darkness. Like GW2, each weapon had its own skills. Even the same kind of weapon (for example 2 1h swords) could have different attacks (and combos), and there were “legendary” weapons with their own skills too. One also had “enviromental” weapons like arrows for the bow (something like the Southsun Survival), weapons that drop from enemies, and even attack with the limbs of the dead enemies.

Yes! Blade of Darkness is one of my favorite games of all time; the combat / weapon system was fantastic, engaging, and fun.

And thinking m ore on GW1, I agree that we need more primary weapon skills. CHOICE! Give us choice in our skills. I don’t need 200 greatsword skills; let me mix-and-match from a selection of 10 skills.

If you hate crafting and you don’t do fractals you pretty much are screwed for ascended weapons and gear. That’s why they need to come up with other ways of getting them. And I hate that they are taking so long to implement such things because you KNOW whatever system they will add will be something time gated like a new currency and it will take forever to get pieces. I’d like to at least start working on that now instead of waiting a few months for them to implement a new system and then you’re already way behind the crafters and STILL are stuck behind a time gate to get the gear. At least use a currency we already have instead of adding a new one.

First off all, ty for making CDI about character progression an i would like to add my input as a serious WvW player. Playing in WvW guild which raiding everynight, going GvGs etc. and probably WvW covers at least my %50 gameplay time atm.

WXP gain, rank and abilities
Making Wxp gain account bound was a huge right step, before i was avoiding using alts in WvW. My problem about ranks and abilities is, there is so few abilities to gain, increased numbers of choice would be nice. Second thing is, at some abilities line, powerful ones exist at start of that masteries. Best example for it probably Cannon Mastery, after 2 tier there is no need to go deeper i think. Also damage increases in respective sieges are so reachable, it causes "power creep" i think. They should exist at higher ranks.

Fractals and WvW
I have big problems here, since i love fractals but you can’t do it without agony resistance ofc, but it collides with my WvW success. Reason is, esp. after introducing ascended armor, stat containing infusions (+5 X stat ones) becomes more powerful, since now you can gain another 70 stat from them. But the problem is it forcing me to leave fractals completly because fine infusions (+5 X stat + 5 agony resistance) too expensive for someone like me.

Weapon skin profession
Many people here said they missed the chance of having old skins, maybe a proffesion for it would be nice. For example, lets say someone wants Sclerite weapon skin, make them collect x amount karka shell, x amount passiflora and 1 rare drop from karka queen. This way people can get their skin, but also that will be gated by that rare drop.

Stat distribution at traits
Gameplay is highly dependant on what trait you are using, but also the stat you gain from them. But sometimes they collide with each other. For example lets say im a thief and want to use Bountiful Theft, but i have nothing to do with conditions. So it will be either 200 stat for nothing or not use that trait line at all. My suggestion is make trait line and stats differen pointing systems, 70 point for traits and 700 points for primary+secondary stats. In this way i’m sure people will feel more specialized at their character grow.

I like the idea of non-gear/stat based progression through the acquisition of new skills and traits. The problem is Anet has dug themselves into a hole with the skill point inflation. When most players have 50+ and a fair number have 1000+ skill points, the idea of new skills is still enticing, but the idea that they are part of the progression plan doesn’t work. There needs to be another element (no matter how easy) to the acquisition of new skills and traits (such as the collection model from GW1.

Regarding equipment based progression, I think there are a few things that could change, specifically related to the acquisition of new legendary weapons/armors in the future (understanding that the current legendaries are what they are and probably shouldnt change) -

1. Reduce the influence of the trading post on legendary acquisition. It isnt legendary if someone can just buy it (or the precursor) on the TP. The Trading Post is the single biggest factor hurting character progression through acquisition in this game (because it essentially invalidates the idea of item progression).

2. Create a fun way to obtain the precursor that isnt dependent upon RNG or the TP – a series of herculean tasks specific to the precursor you are making. This would include all of the current requirements (map completion, T6 mat collection for gifts, specific dungeon tokens, etc). This should also now include dragonite ore and empyreal fragments, imo.

3. Use achievement points to gate acquisition. Simply require people to buy something with a token they get in their 20/40/60K/etc achievement point box before they can create one of this new class of legendary weapons.

4. The final step in crafting the legendary should feel legendary. There should be difficult single player instances (specific to the type of legendary they are making) that players have to beat before they can craft the legendary. For example, if you want a legendary flaming sword (name TBD), you should have to enter this final instance, work your way to the “legendary forge of (insert weapon name)” defeat the forgemaster and then dip your precursor (and other mats) into the legendary forge to finish making the weapon.

Keeping in mind that current legendaries would remain unchanged (giving everyone reasonable access to a legendary) a new system like this would give players something to strive for – and a way to progress their character without providing an unfair advantage – long term.

Isaiah Cartwright.8569:

Fractal Progression Reset

As we were looking at the fractal reworks we wanted to change the relative values of how hard it was to work through the fractals, because of this we wanted to bring everyone to a common starting point. We knew this was going to be controversial but we really wanted everyone to be on an even play field and once we got the feedback about it we started looking into ways we could mitigate this risk. This is a common practice we do with all releases and risks and sometimes like with this one we were not able to do anything due to time constraints and tech. It’s wasn’t our goal to devalue peoples time and effort and when reworking stuff sometimes these types of tradeoffs happen. We wanted to create a new scaling paradigm that would give us more room in the future for adding fractals and we felt the current systems was harder to scale. Our original design was for players to go past 50 but this wasn’t able to happen in time.

First off: “Our original design was for Players to go past 50” -> My scale 81 was perfectly legit that I got a year ago thanks for giving me some shelter against all the acusations of beeing an exployter!

Secondly: “We wanted everyone to be on equal starting Point”-> My question here that I really don’t get. Why didn’t you just reset everyones Progress to 0? I would understand this Argument if everyone would started again. So why reset just to Level 30?

Third: “This is a common practice we do with all releases and risks and sometimes like with this one we were not able to do anything due to time constraints and tech.” ->
Do you mean by this: We didn’t have time we look into it and reward Players retroactively? or This is a common practice and it can happen with all Releases again that some reset of Progress is gonna happen due to design desicions?

Last Words: I really see that you do things better than on fractured reset in the pvp section / wvw rank account bound section without getting anybody hurt even with pulling out some Special titles and stuff. What is the exact reason it was hard to give out a title or anything to People that aquired high scales before? I studied informatics so even a technical reason would be fine for me why this wasn’t going to happen. There are many People that could have farmed instead of doing fractals and would have made mutiple legendaries with the time they spent on fractals, on top of the rewards from fractals themselves(I played to 81 before january update so the rewards were way worse than after that update and scale 80 reward maw chest was worse than scale 1 maw chest of new fractals).

About Progression in new fractals itself: The main Idea might be great but there is a really big Problem with it:
- People can skip Levels with easier instabilities.
- The instabilities on scale 40,50 ect doesn’t exist! It’s now all just a gearcheck and since you Need the gear. Leveling up to scale 80 with doing those Levels with just the gear needed( wich is pretty moneybased since farming the Infusions is way to insane) Is easier than the old scales 40, 50 ect since agony is made obsolete because it won’t one shot you.
Leaderboards: Don’t have a meaning if:
- all sit on 50 and it is only decided who is first with who gets there first!( People we’re stuck on 37 cause of mai bug other bugs Fails ect)
- If the Progression is only doable with certain gear. If you Need several 100 golds to advance cause of a gearcheck, that doens’t make you a better Player than a Player who doesn’t have a gear. When you realeased fractals it was perfectly doable to go to 80 without having any AR at all.. now you implement These checks and there is no Workaround with skill for them. What is the design idea of making a geartrademill and don’t let People advance who have the skill because they can’t afford the gear? I already said this when I sat on 80 before the january 2013 update that this is a bad direction this game is going when People can’t go to 80 anymore because they don’t have the gear even if they have the skill to complete those fractals.

I really hope you can at least clarify some questions. And sorry for my bad english it just sin’t my main language.

Last question I forgott: Is there still a way to track on what scale People were before the patch that reseted them?

Greetings

Patrikan

Hello Chris!
I’ve just started to read the thread when suddenly a mention to FF tactics job system appears. I ran to post this comment and didn’t read anything more, so sry if I’m saying something that had already been sad.

For me, the right way to go for progression is via professions…I’ve played just a little of GW1, but something that I’ll never forget is the cross classing feature. After reading this page http://www.guildwars2roleplayers.com/home/m/3184109/article/1956182 I came to think: why we don’t have this is GW2? the dude from the page I posted said this : “(…) here was the possibility of cross-profession disciplines like Necromancer/Monk, which is an indication that the lines between the different schools could be blurred even then. In modern times, those lines are even more blurred (…)” I know this would mess up with balance in game (and there is lot of discussion about balance already) but would be nice if we had this. The “cross profession” could be implemented like the job system, you would have to lvl up each profession separately and them have access to both skill trees and the possibility to choose the weapon skills for those wielded by both professions… (just brainstorming know)

The weapon skills are the skills you will use the most, and they are the ones that will define you role in a fight. If you buy all the gear you can equip as soon as you create a character, you could unlock all the skills before lvl 10, this is very sad for progression =/

It would be nice to see a more important role for the profession masters too, they just exist to refund traits points nowadays. Some skill capturing challenges or quests could be implemented or just the way it used to be in GW1.

Well, summarizing, I think that features that make you feel that you character is becoming a more powerful guardian/ele/mesmer/etc is a right steep in progression. This could be done via more skills (I know Anet is alerady working on this) and better ways to acquire theses skills (chalanges, skill capturing in GW1) or even with a cross classing system.

I will post here my opinion about ascended gear.

Ascended gear have a few good thing :
– it provide a medium time goal
– it gives back value to T2-5 mats

But it has a few minor problems that can be solved :
– T2-4 cloth is realy hard to obtain as a lvl 80 character, we should have a way to get it more easily in low level areas.
– Ascended gear tend to lock you into one stat set. One solution would be to be able to add more inscriptions/insignas to an already existing weapon/armor to unluck those stats to the piece of equipement. Like this you could get other stats for a lesser cost.
– With the possibility of getting legendaries with the same stats as ascended, lots of people are tempted to skip ascended gear. A good way to solve this is to make the ascended version of the weapon/armor used in the crafting of the legendary version. Like this ascended will be a step toward the legendary.

I think I do not feel like I progress at all. I already have a great appearance I designed for my character and exotic Berserker gear. Since I am mainly a PvE player, I’ll never really need anything other than the Berserker gear. There are more skins I’d like to unlock and continue to grow my character and evolve is appearance, but they are so expensive I don’t feel it is worth it. The example I’ll single out is the greatsword FoeFire’s Essence; I’d like to craft this for my Guardian main but it costs almost 200 gold to craft! If I farmed for a couple hours everyday that would take me one month to get! and I would be playing repetitive content I don’t enjoy the entire time. And I want to have cool appearances for my alts too!

That is the design philosophy I don’t like about GW2. I’d like to have something to shoot for that takes longer than exotic gear to get, but not as long as Mystic-Forge crafts, reaching L500 in crafting, or crafting a Legendary. Another thing is that all these rewards costs gold, which means I can’t work towards them and something else at the same time.

It would be nice to have more rewards for Karma. Right now it feels like gold is the only thing that matters and this creates a mentality where if I’m not farming gold I’m wasting time, and that is not fun.

I’m not really interested in more Vertical progression at this time. Vertical progression is just “more of the same thing” which can hold my attention for brief periods, but really adds nothing new to the game to hold my attention for long.

Ascended crafting is a good example. I already leveled my crafting to 500, so the only thing for me to do now is craft time-gated materials until I have enough to make a piece. This vertical progression means I spend about 1 minute each day on crafting before going back to the game… where nothing has changed. Even when I get ascended gear, nothing has changed.

Horizontal progression is what interests me.

Cosmetic Progression is fun, but isn’t content-driven, so it only holds my attention for a brief period before I’m back to the same old content. While I enjoy being able to personalize my characters’ appearances, their style has no impact on how I experience in-game content.

Skill Progression is where the action is:

• New Skills
• New Traits
• New Weapons
• New Runes/Sigils

These game elements directly effect how I interact with content in-game, so introducing new elements in these areas can really revitalize my interest in all content, old and new.

I’m particularly interested in new elements that:

• Open up new Build possibilities
• Encourage Build diversity
• Support experimentation and play-style customization

There is literally nothing you can do that will engage me more than introducing new ways to design and personalize my build to suit my tastes.

As several other players have commented, we need a way to switch stats on high-end gear in order to facilitate build diversity and experimentation. The time and materials investment is currently too high to make crafting new gear sets a viable option, and that’s going to be a huge obstacle in the future.

TL;DR:

*No new vertical progression any time soon
*I like Horizontal progression that expands build options
*We need improved gear functionality that supports experimentation and build diversity

For me, we have to differentiatefirst in 4 different ways:
Direct Horizontal Progression (DHP) , Indirect Horizontal Progression (IHP), Direct Vertical Progression (DVP) and Indirect Vertical Progression (IVP)
The shortcuts in the brackets I will use from now on, so that people will instantly know about what I’m talking.

First I want to start about DHP, because its of all 4 sections the most obvious one, that also has from all 4 sections the most biggest influence on gameplay systems.

So what do I think are things in which GW2 should improve to improve the DHP in overall:

• Implementations of Sub Classes (3-4 per Class)
• Increase of the Level Cap from 80 to 100 as first step together with more Trait Points.
  This helps in rebalancing a bit the issues of the Base Max Health, increases Build Options and also gives the feelign of Character Progression.
  In GW1 we also had 2 quests, that gave us basically 30 Extra Attribute Points, doing those quests also felt like progressing with the Character. If we would have instead of 70 now 90 Trait Points, this would open up many new builds and it would feel really like some Progression.
  SPvP Charas aren’t affected from that Change, they get anyways instantly raised to the new Max Level, but PvE/WvW Charas would have to do somethign again and the Gear Problem could be solved simply with Transmutation Crystals anyway, that could receive a new function also to raise the Gear Level. Or incorpirate the Gear Improvement into the Craftign System and allow Lvl 500 Smiths, ect.to refine gear to let them raise the Gear Level that way.
• Redesign of the Trait System, by splitting it up into 3 different Systems
  - Trait System – responsible for passive Combat Alterations based on the Character, Movement, Defense, Healing and Elite-Skills
  - Talent System – responsible for active as passive improvements for class specific mechanics that a class is born with (their born Talents, like Stealing for a Thief)
  - Ability System – responsible for active changes on the weapon skill effects to alterate the weapon skill effects to the way, how we like to play with them, basically the way how the Trait System originally was intended to work like, similar to the System of Diablo 3, where you have lots of options to change the basic effects of all your weapon skills, like increasing the range of a skill for the cost that it is slightly less powerful, than normal and so on …)
  - Ability System
• Implement all over the World of Tyria new Teacher NPC’s of various ranks (Master, Grandmaster, Sage), which will teach us a huge load of new Skills, Traits, Abilities and Talents, that aren’t placed just permanently in 1 place, no, they CHANGE daily their locations, so that players have to search them.
  This gets us back to a similar system, liek how we had to collect our Elite Skills in GW1, we had to hunt down Bosses. Let us now hunt down in GW2 Teacher NPC’s that can teach us a crapload of new skills, ect..
  It’s fun, it gives us something to do, its character progression and it feels everytime you learn something new very rewarding, especially when all your efforts of learning everythign a class can learn only gets rewarded at the end with a title/achievement, just like in GW1 where collecting all Elite Skills was rewarded with titles of the various regions and one for having collected everythign in all regions of the game.
  It also improves somewhat the long term motivation of this game to improve GW2 alot more into this kind of direction.
• Redesign/Rebalancing of the Underwater Combat System. The ciurrent underwater skilsl are flat out said very horrible mostly.
  Underwater Combat needs its very own Traits/Abilities that have to change at the moment, the character enters the water. In that moment have to change the land traits/abilities for the underwater traits/abilities.
  Underwater Combat needs also more different Weapons, than only Spear, Harpoon Gun and Trident. Underwater Combat should also provide Daggers, Axes, Swords, Maces for example as also Magnesium Torches/Focus Items (Magnesium Fire burns under water!!)
• But in general also improving all Classes with new Weapons as also giving them more of the existing Weapons, like giving Thiefs finally the option to use also Offhand Swords for example to perform blade dance like moves with it or adding into the game weapons like Great Axes, Halberds, Whips, Cclaws, Quarterstaffs, Crossbows or Flails, as thats also a great way for character progression and to increase build diversity massively.
  —-
  That are currently the biggest points on my list for DHP, which would have by far the biggest influence on Character Progression.
  I’ll start here now with Sub Classes

I think I would quit the game if they raised the level cap. It’s so not necessary.