Guild Wars 2

Progression in Dungeons

I think dungeons are currently lacking a proper progression like we do have in Fractals. Many of the dungeons are way too harsh and unforgiving to new players, and they don’t teach players what they are doing wrong, which results in a lot of repair bills (not exactly fun). But there’s also the problem that they are way too easy on experienced players. They will be looking for greater challenges. So some form of fractal/difficulty system could work here (not saying it is ideal).

This would also solve the problem of people having to spend a lot of money just to gear them selves up for one area of the game (fractals). I think the system should be more universal. This could solve two problems at once: It adds a steady difficulty curve to dungeons, and gives your fractal gear some use outside fractals.

Progressive rewards in dungeons

I’d like to see a system similar to what was used in Eye of the North, where treasure gets better the more you find of it during one run. I like the idea of exploring in dungeons, and finding progressively better treasure chests (like in EotN’s dungeons), but I also like the idea of doing the same for champions. So the more champions you don’t skip, the better their loot gets.

Gearing up

One of the big problems with the game, is that it is so utterly gear-focused. And gear is expensive. If I want to quickly swap out some of my equipment, I cannot do so. And where am I going to store all the alternate armor sets? So there are a few ways I see that this could be solved:

• Allow us to swap out unlocked runes on armor for free, so we don’t need to buy an entirely new armor just to have something other than zerker.
• Move the primary stats/abilities of the rune to one piece of the armor, like in GW1, where you could essentially just swap out a head piece.
• Provide some sort of an armory where we can store additional armors.

Another problem with the gear is ascended crafting. Oh boy. This part of the game basically requires us to buy Transmutation Crystals. There’s not any way to get these things in game, but they are absolutely required to gear up your character. Please give us a way to craft/melt normal transmutation stones into crystals. Because those useless transmutation stones are piling up in our storage, and it is starting to look like kind of a cheap way to lure people to the gem store. I don’t like it.

Crafting

Arenanet has always said it is against grind, but ascended crafting is just that, it’s grind. Because all of the ascended materials require obsidian shards, which can only be gathered with karma if Bathazar’s Temple is open, buying Orrian Jewelary Boxes, or buying it with fractal relics. And perhaps worst of all is the 15s you have to pay for Thermocatalytic Reagent just to make one Bloodstone Brick. It just costs a lot of money. And personally I think the time gated crafting is just inconsistent with the rest of the system, and a cheap mechanic to draw out the progress. It’s not like there’s anything interesting to do in between level 400 and 500.

What I would like to see is the time gating removed (people can just buy the ascended materials to get around it anyway, and poor players get punished basically). And for more recipes to show up in between the crafting levels. So at 450 and 470 I’d like my crafting level to be useful too. Why do the Grenth and Dwayna backpiece have to be exactly level 500 again? It takes so long to get there, and it’s not a lot of fun.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Ok another brainstorm idea.

What if certain pieces of ascended gear could be crafted and sold on the TP such as gloves and boots?

Chris

No one deliberately sells at a loss.

All you end up doing is chaining that part of the system to gold, making it vulnerable to the Gold Farm/Gold Seller work-around of the moment. Having the ENTIRE GAME hinge on how many times you could stomach running CoF1 over and over was not a good time for the balance or gameplay of Guildwars 2.

I think you could make a fairly non-intrusive change just by making all Ascended gear Account Bound rather than Soulbound (Legendaries becoming account bound on first equip).

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Yep this is definitely a valid concern. If the drop rate was higher though and it wasn’t just crafted then supply could be more deterministic in terms of demand.

Chris

Don’t increase the droprate, people can’t stand RNG. Just leave the droprate as it is and add Dragon-Scales that drop guaranteed after each battle. With (random number) 50 scales you can craft the weapon yourself.

Something people can work towards to.

Skill progression

I don’t really like the way we earned new skills so far and how much they cost (buy buying it with 25 skillpoints). First of all I’d like to do something to earn new skills. In GW1 you had to go out and cap new elites, and quests awarded you with new skills, and that was fun. Also, a skill should be worth it’s 25 skillpoints. If you make them cost that much skillpoints, then the quality of the skill better be on par with an elite skill. But if it turns out the skill is in fact completely useless (I’m looking at you Signet of Vampirism), then the players feel cheated. We don’t want to pay that many skillpoints for a skill that was just really poorly implement. It is the equivalent of not getting a new skill at all, but still losing the 25 skillpoints. I think it is important that any new skills added to the game, are useful enough that at least a modest number of players will find a use for it. So that requires proper testing and balancing BEFORE adding the skill to the game.

Bosses

I’d like to see bosses in dungeons get progressively harder. What the game’s combat currently lacks is depth. Most bosses just repeat the same behavior for the entirety of the fight, and that gets boring quickly. So I think if a progressive difficulty was to be added to dungeons, then bosses should progress as well. I’d like to see more phases to boss fights, and new moves on the bosses as you do dungeons at harder difficulty levels.

Ascended items

I think all exotics, legendaries and prestige items should be of ascended quality by default. Why is something as expensive as The Crossing not ascended, or not a legendary for that matter?

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Ok another brainstorm idea.

What if certain pieces of ascended gear could be crafted and sold on the TP such as gloves and boots?

Chris

Sellable ascended can be a good thing if people can make profit by selling them (because of the dragonite/empyrial/bloodstone requirement) if it became like exotics was with no real profit then it’s a bad thing.

If there is profit associated with it, it make possible for people to became crafters, and a choice for other, craft it with all the collection of mats, or buy it for more gold.

The thing is it’s hard to predict what case will apply.

We talk a lot about progression, yet all we do in the game remains the same.

We started on day one, with Foreman Flammum’s loyalty bar slowly growing as we killed monsters. We are now at day 475 and we watch achievement bars slowly growing as we kill living story monsters. Bars must fill up, it’s the law; then and now!

It is not a question of hitting the sweet spot of how to apply easily produced reward progressions. How to drop loot, how long it takes to get it, how long to unlock this and that. The core game has to progress, not the cheap motivational tricks surrounding it.

FourthVariety.5463:

It is not a question of hitting the sweet spot of how to apply easily produced reward progressions. How to drop loot, how long it takes to get it, how long to unlock this and that. The core game has to progress, not the cheap motivational tricks surrounding it.

This is an important point. This daily and monthly achievement grind is not enough to keep players playing. A lot of players are starting to get burned out by the Living Story achievement hunt that pops up very 2 weeks. I would like to gradually work towards something, and without hearing a whip crack in the background. I don’t want to stress to get it, but be allowed to take my time, without missing out on anything.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Randulf.7614:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Here is a crazy brainstorm idea, not in anyway indicative of our direction.

What if there was vertical progression in the Fractals with gear that increased in stats but when outside of the fractals defaulted back to BiS numbers?

I am asking this because it is going to generate some left field conversation not because I think it is or isn’t a good idea.

Chris

For what purpose or benefit would said proposition bring? Currently Fractals works very well as it is because of how it is currently set up. How would the idea improve fractals? (ie can you expand a little more on the idea?)

Well let me be devil’s advocate then and give one example. Make it easier to play through earlier fractals when playing with lower level friends.

Chris

There’s not really a need to make it easier. When you go to lower levels fractals, the difficulty is already way below what you are used to. There were times when I was called to help guildies which were stucked at a low level, and I could have pretty much solo the boss, because the fight is easier (boss has less life, less adds spawning, etc.).

Better stats as you increase your personal level would therefore make it even easier… When I go in low level, I’m already not playing to the best of my ability (there’s no need for me to concentrate that much, as almost any mistake I make will not have dramatic repercussions). Let’s say it frankly: I don’t play those levels often (only when asked to help friends), because it’s so easy it’s quite boring. Like on low-level grawl shaman, you see the adds spawning and it’s like: “what? only that ? where’s the rest of the adds ?”

That was about lower levels. Now, better stats to help you challenge higher levels. If you augment the player’s stats, you’ll need to augment the mobs stats too to get a content as challenging as before. Therefore, the player relative power is not increased, only the numbers he see. Quite pointless.

The goal I have with progressing through fractals is to go to the highest I can, to find the point where I won’t be able to go further, the limit of my abilities. I know quite a few of my friends who have the same goal. But, because of the level cap, we can’t challenge ourselves like that. That’s part of the reason for all those people trying to challenge themselves, like doing shaman naked, with only 2 people, doing archidiviner solo, etc.
If you increase the power of the players (let’s say you increase it more than the increase to mobs), you’ll need to progress through even more levels to find a challenging difficulty.

Verticallity as it was in fractals before (AR) was really good. It was something that was not absolutely needed: a very skilled player, who knew the fights, could manage by dodging, positionning. The skill-cap component to the fights was kinda high.
The main utility of AR was to be a “safety net” for those players, to enable them to recover if they made a mistake. For less skilled players, AR was a way to compensate for numerous mistakes, and to progress through fractals anyway. Their progression was at a lower pace than skilled players, because they needed more AR (making mistakes more often call for more AR to compensate).

As I said in a previous post, the change from Fractured patch changed that, and to progress now, the “skill component” required is now less than what it was, but the “stuff component” is way higher. Before, a skilled player could compensate low AR by playing really well. That is not the case anymore. If you don’t have enough AR, you can’t do it, even if you played perfectly. That’s especially true with the levels x0 instabilities. I really hate that change, which goes from the skill-gating it was before to a gear-gating.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

What if certain pieces of ascended gear could be crafted and sold on the TP such as gloves and boots?

The problem would be the price of such items, due to the numbers of ressources required to craft it. Even if the price may lower a bit over time, it would still stay pretty high, mostly unaffordable for most players (you can look at that with John Smith data, I think he knows how many players have over XXX gold).

Chris Whiteside.6102:

If the drop rate was higher though and it wasn’t just crafted then supply could be more deterministic in terms of demand.

This is a prerequisite. If we don’t have that, putting it in TP would just favor the rich players.

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Yep this is definitely a valid concern. If the drop rate was higher though and it wasn’t just crafted then supply could be more deterministic in terms of demand.

Chris

Don’t increase the droprate, people can’t stand RNG. Just leave the droprate as it is and add Dragon-Scales that drop guaranteed after each battle. With (random number) 50 scales you can craft the weapon yourself.

Something people can work towards to.

Progression instead of slot machine?

Yes, please!!

(I’ve always found the dungeon tokens one of the better reward mechanisms/paths to various cosmetic goals – I always know exactly where I stand in the process and how to proceed.)

personally I’d like to see a possibility to get the things from the trading post ingame. These are some awesome horizontal rewards, but there is no exitement in getting them since you just need a big wallet or rich parents.

On the other hand, the currencies in the game need much more sinks imho. People accumulate skill points en masse, tons of karma because we have no idea where to spend it, and so on.

What if…

• exclusive mini: 200 skillpoints
• Finisher xy from the Trading post: 50 skillpoints
• 18 slot bag: 40 skillpoints

• Mini XY: rare drop from the same enemy-type → world exploration

• Level Up book (+10 levels): 50.000 karma
• Dye XY (accoundbound version): 20.000 karma

Trading post systems bring along a lot of problems imho, just use different currencies for your “special” rewards. You’ve got enough of these that need sinks anyway.

If this would go live, people would spend their big numbers and new rewards could be sold for these currencies without having everyone get that reward on day 1.

What sort of vertical progression would I be happy with? None once a maximum level has been reached.

Vertical inherently means obsolescence,

One thing I have noticed that has not been bought up in all the talk of rewards is that of fun.

Whatever happened to fun,challenge and doing stuff together with your friends and guildies being it’s own reward?

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Brainstorm statement.

I am assuming that you wouldn’t want a progression system in which new skills and traits superseded/replaced existing skills and traits.

What’s wrong with this? IMO this is the way to go: regular introduction of new skills and expiration of old ones — exactly like Type II/Standard play in Magic: the Gathering.

• The game stays fresh — even old content, as they can be revisited with new skills.
• Balance is possible as the number of skills remains fixed.
• Only egregiously OP skills need to be nerfed as they’ll be rotated out anyway.
• Interesting mechanics can be experimented with — if they’re no good, they rotate out anyway. If they’re good, bring them back in the future.
• Skill releases can be themed to tie with the current LS.
• Dev team creates more skills more regularly, making them better at balance over time.

Of course this means people will be changing builds regularly, which means gear grind needs to completely go away.

I’d really like to know why you prefer not to go in this direction.

I know I’m late, but I’d like to express my idea about the acquisition of Ascended gear.

Personally, I think this tier of equipment should be obtainable through different ways, not only crafting (and I see lot of players agree with me).

My idea is very simple: through Badges of Honor, Glory and Guild Commendations, because each of these tokens represent a different part of GW2. Players would be able to obtain Ascended gear by playing the part they enjoy the most.

ex: Random Ascended Sword:

• 200 Badges of Honor + 5 gold
• 20000 Glory + 5 gold
• 10 Guild Commendations + 5 gold

Now, why is “random” important?
Because crafting gives the opportunity to choose the type of set the player wants (Zojja, Tonn, etc.), but it’s a long method and way more expansive than the “token + gold” method I listed above.
There is a total of 18 Ascended Sword, so it’s very unlikely that the player get the exact sword with just one try. But, at the same time, he get the opportunity to equip all the alts he has.
ex: I want a Zojja’s Greatsword for my warrior -> I spend 20000 Glory + 5 gold to buy “Random Ascended Greatsword” -> I get Tonn’s Greatsword instead… too bad, BUT I could give this weapon to my guardian! (of course these weapons should be Account Bound ).

Sooo… what do you think?

I’ll give my opinion about Horizontal Progression when Mr. Chris gives the green.

Thank you for reading!

Imho if people could collect gemstore rewards ingame, much more people would buy those in the gemstore when they want their collection completed. If you have 0 finishers, I doubt that you would buy gems in order to finish that completion.

BUT don’t diminish the players effort. Things which you got for skilled play shouldn’t be in the gemstore (at least not exactly like that). I loved the idea of different colours for rewards of higher difficulty (SAB).

you could do it like this:

• finisher X is available in the gemstore
• finisher X is also available in the world, but with a slightly different look.

OR

• finisher X is also available in the world. There is an achievement: collect finisher X, Y, Z in the world to unlock an exclusive new finisher.

Thighum.7295:

Septemptus.7164:

Chris Whiteside.6102

3373369

Solutions

• Separate the concept of (ascended) gear crafting from the concept of equipment stat customisation. Make it easy or easier to change stats, or at the very least, to craft new copies of the same gear with different stats.

There are some good ideas here which I would like to see us discussing as a group.

What do you all think about these ideas?

Chris

I have kinda a problem with this.
I know that there is or soon will be in gemstore an item that allows stat changing. (datamined)

So I kinda see it like this: We get extreamly money consuming armor and istead of making another copy of it we can do a one time stat change – so you just kinda created yourself a market for new item that was already datamined like 5 months ago.

It looks really bad for me.

I kinda would have a nice solution to back it up:
Make an item (gem shop item of corse) that will one time add another stat combo to an item.
How should it work.
I will craft berserker gear but I will think “wait on WvW I would use soldger” so I buy that new item and add soldger to the item and I will get list of 2 stats I can change on the item. I will then think, Carrion or Rabid could be also nice for come builds, so I will buy that new item 2 times and I will have ascended item that can choose stats from the list of 4. (or make them have choice ot 2 stats and add more to the list with gemstore item?)

That would be something I could place my money on and if it was only doable for ascneded those would be kinda (limited legendar like) and so they would have some meaning in making with the cost of them, because now they are way more like an eyesore.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

I have read the posts. And I will specifically comment on them why I get to them in the order I am parsing through the thread. My point was for everyone to have a focused discussion around this. The point of the CDI is for us all to brainstorm not just Devs and single participants. I hope this makes sense.

Chris

It sure does.

I like this idea A LOT. Then I wouldn’t have to get multiple ascended armor sets for 1 character every time I want to run a different build. This would also cut down on armor taking up way too much room in storage. I would definitely be willing to buy this item. In addition, since it would cost gems per stat combo option, people who have legendary weapons shouldn’t complain as much about this.

This suggestion
1 reduces grind if you want multiple stat sets
2 gives ANET an incentive to make it (gems)
3 wouldn’t be a requirement, but would be convenient

Yes it is really nice idea. If it wouldn’t cost gems worth 100g or i wouldn’t have to buy one for every single item it would be great :-)

Jandopo.2107:

ex: Random Ascended Sword:

• 200 Badges of Honor + 5 gold
• 20000 Glory + 5 gold
• 10 Guild Commendations + 5 gold

Now, why is “random” important?
Because crafting gives the opportunity to choose the type of set the player wants (Zojja, Tonn, etc.), but it’s a long method and way more expansive than the “token + gold” method I listed above.
There is a total of 18 Ascended Sword, so it’s very unlikely that the player get the exact sword with just one try. But, at the same time, he get the opportunity to equip all the alts he has.
ex: I want a Zojja’s Greatsword for my warrior -> I spend 20000 Glory + 5 gold to buy “Random Ascended Greatsword” -> I get Tonn’s Greatsword instead… too bad, BUT I could give this weapon to my guardian! (of course these weapons should be Account Bound ).

Sooo… what do you think?

I don’t like this idea because some people would get the item they want in 5 tries, others need 20+. It’s just more RNG which people obviously can’t stand. Why not make the costs MUCH higher but people see their progress at any time.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

cesmode.4257:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Ok another brainstorm idea.

What if certain pieces of ascended gear could be crafted and sold on the TP such as gloves and boots?

Chris

I dislike this idea. Its similar to allowing legendaries to be tradeable on the TP. People with thick wallets to turn $$ into gems into gold can purchase their way to BiS…or people with loads of time to farm materials to sell can purchase BiS.

It solves nothing, unfortunately. For me it would be more of salt in an open wound than helping alleviate the problem.

Doesn’t it allow another avenue for players to work toward the gear if they don’t enjoy crafting? Initially prices may be prohibitive but i would see them dropping.

Chris

I actually am for monetization of hard to get crafting products, like ascended armor etc.

However, for this to happen the whole crafting system has to be revamped, so there are actually items people would buy and thus allow profit for the crafter.

Right now becoming a high level crafter is far to easy and then suddenly ramps up for 500, while aside from a “statboost” we get nothing “special”

In my opinion we need a broader more desireable product pallette, since right now low level crafter a laughed at more or less on the TP and high lvl does not really gain much money for their effort.

If the core system gets a revamp with synergy between crafting professions, hard to get items, customization of items etc… then we would have a reasonable base to work from and create a more diverse economy, which favours crafters and buyers.

Weapon Skill progression
- problems:
- always the same skills for more than a year…
- some weapons at some profession are barely used
- traits give some bonus to weapon you are currently using = it could be a problem with adding new types of weapons
- ideas:
- make some progression in weapon skills? if im using staff, allow me to get more skills and allow me to choose which i want to use
- each skill from weapon slot could have 1-2 alternatives (tier2 and tier3) that you can learn by doing some set of events, by achieving mastery in weapon that you are using
- base skills can be achievable in the way they are now, but tier2 and tier3 of these skills could be achievable after lvl 80
- this would make a lot of diversity in builds and play style and would let you use current weapon skill system as a base
- introduce more weapons types and make new types avaiable to more professions
- Crossbow
- Sling
- Throwing Spear
- Halberd
- Rapier
- Scyth
Armor progression
- problems:
- Ascended is long term thing especially for our alts… but lets say that is fine for now.. what will we have next year ?
- adding more armors = constant grind…
- ascended armors looks horrible… apparently ANet designers have no more ideas to create an armor set that ppl will put on and will go for, armor that will have better visual look than these we have already in game
- armor sets are too easy to get – which makes them common (only thing which makes more trouble to get is arah set….)
- ideas:
- more coloring options – sometimes 4 is not enought…
- let us achieve some cosmetic progress on our ascended gear
- something like enchanting in Lineage2 but do not enchant stats of the weapon/armor but allow us to get nice glow at +5 but superior glow at +25
- add glow if all 6 peaces of armor are enchanted for more than +5 or something
- Extend current 6 peaces armor set by 7th part – let say BELT or UNDERWEAR or even both!!!
- Introduce Ascended Runes and Sigils which will have 7th bonus coming with BELT or UNDERWEAR
- BELT/UNDERWEAR could have consumable slots (0 till rare type, 1 at exotic, 2 at ascended) which allow us turn on auto food usage without constant clicking every 30/60 minutes on it (especially for WvW when you are in fight)
- introduce boss jewelery which will have some additional bonus besides standard stats
- something like Celestial ring of Shatterer or Berserker Amulet of Zaithan
- and finally – legendary armor set – something which we will go for for next 2-3 years to complete the whole set, which will be the final armor progression in game, but it must be long term, and possibly, not related to luck of dropping precursors….
- introduce some effects that can be set to weapon, which will not make it overpowered, but make it more usable in more situations
- add pernament +10% dmg bonus vs undead
- add pernament -10% dmg from undead etc
- WvW specific armor set with awsome looking skin, something like Phoenix armor look at Human female elementalist
- introduce special vendor to buy them
- link this system with wvw ranks (example: at rank 100 allow to buy helmet, rank 300 – boots, 500 – gloves etc)
- make wvw ranks system mean more
Character progression
- problems:
- easy to get to lvl 80 – getting to lvl 80 means nothing
- what to do at lvl 80? farm to get better armor, farm to get gold, farm to get legendary?
- my alts never ended personal story because i didnt have to do it to progress to lvl 80
- ideas:
- bound lvl progress to something more than just exp…
- introduce some level transfer quests, or trials… at lvl 20,40,60,70,80
- Maybe some subclass system ?
- Or Grand Class system which will allow to achieve some greater specialization for example: Elementalist could go into one of the 4 elements specialization and become grand master in water or fire getting some power full spells

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.

I’m pretty sure if you would do a design contest, maybe even with ingame reward for the winners, you would receive tons of nice stuff! You did this once in gw1 and, no offense, but the weapons that were coming out there, where the best looking weapons in the game! Bone Dragon staff, Emerald Blade,… All the high end dungeon rewards!
I think such a contest would give you excelent feedback AND would also lower your costs for designing a weapon/armor.
I also like the concept of cultural armors, a huge amount of players the t3 is the best looking armor. I love the Norn, and the curltural armors are just way better, than all the other armors, because they fit into the norn “feeling”.
And i think the most players want a armor that fits to their character and to the gw2 world, rather than a good looking high tech armor from a science fiction film, which does not fit at all into the gw2 world.

Just try a design contest

Just to add two things:
First:
The bone dragon staff skin! I know soooo many people that want this skin to return… you already got the design… i read your previous post where you wrote “we cant put out new skins every week”, i undersand this, but so many people are also unhappy with the current legendary items… just give us a second set of legendry weapons! Bone dragon staff could be one of them.
The problem with the existing legendrys os, that if you want a mace, you a forced to craft this redicoulos disco stik… imagine this on a serious norn warrior… NO WAY!
Maybe do a cultural set of legendary weapons?!

I think progression is to muched tied to LUCK (rng), for example the tequatl skins.. I killed him more than 50 times and got NOTHING! Then i stoped killing him, its just no fun if you receive nothing… no progression at all at this point
Then a few month later i killed him again, rather because a friend wanted a skin, then me hoping for one. But as rng is… he got nothing and i got the skin, which is acc bound… yeah. So i got finaly something i wanted in the past…
But it is way to much rng! Maybe also add tokens per kill, maybe one token per kill and for 50 tokens you can exchance a weapon. So rng is still there, the drop, but you also have something you can work with, the tokens.

BEFORE I FORGET!
THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR ALL THE FEEDBACK “ANET OFFICILALS”!
You are doing a great job right now, this really feels like a discussion

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Here is a crazy brainstorm idea, not in anyway indicative of our direction.

What if there was vertical progression in the Fractals with gear that increased in stats but when outside of the fractals defaulted back to BiS numbers?

I am asking this because it is going to generate some left field conversation not because I think it is or isn’t a good idea.

Chris

Interesting but i think it would do more harm then good. We fractal players are already forced to vertical progression becouse of infusions. This wouldn’t help it at all it would just add another reason why ascendeds are requirement for fractals.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Reesha.7901:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Reesha.7901:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Ok another brainstorm idea.

What if certain pieces of ascended gear could be crafted and sold on the TP such as gloves and boots?

Chris

Yes please, or even better:
All pieces could be crafted and sold on the TP.
All pieces could change stats.
All pieces could be obtained outside crafting without relying on RNG.

Personally and note this is not the opinion of Arena but I like the idea of uniquely skinned BiS items dropping in challenging content. My opinion as a player is that the current drop rates could be tweaked.

Chris

That will not remove the RNG factor…. Look at it this way:
Say you increased the drop rate on Tequatl. That means a higher change to get a weapon. But it is still RNG.
Some people will get several drops, others will get nothing, most will get items with the wrong stat combination. Please, please, please: No more RNG!

What if you could sell them? Thus complimentary to other forms of acquisition?

Chris

Selling of “rare” items is allways a tricky thing. It depends on how good the players are able to provide the goods.

See the molten facility jetpack. It is not beeing “produced” anymore, such it is very expensive to get and puts off a lot of people.

If we say “tequatle weapons” were buyable it would certainly help, since we are able to still get it, however since the event is so hard it is still a slow “production” since it is governed by RNG and the difficulty of the event.
Two factors which really limit the supply of the product.

I do not mind the system at all, however you have to govern the economy. Some things might have to have a limit on how high it can rise in price.
There is reasonable and unreasonable rise here and if you notice something like that, then you might want to cut in and raise the drop rate, or give us other ways to aquire it, so the field is broad again…

Lord Kuru.3685:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Brainstorm statement.

I am assuming that you wouldn’t want a progression system in which new skills and traits superseded/replaced existing skills and traits.

What’s wrong with this? IMO this is the way to go: regular introduction of new skills and expiration of old ones — exactly like Type II/Standard play in Magic: the Gathering.

• The game stays fresh — even old content, as they can be revisited with new skills.
• Balance is possible as the number of skills remains fixed.
• Only egregiously OP skills need to be nerfed as they’ll be rotated out anyway.
• Interesting mechanics can be experimented with — if they’re no good, they rotate out anyway. If they’re good, bring them back in the future.
• Skill releases can be themed to tie with the current LS.
• Dev team creates more skills more regularly, making them better at balance over time.

Of course this means people will be changing builds regularly, which means gear grind needs to completely go away.

I’d really like to know why you prefer not to go in this direction.

I play my characters with their choice of skills because I like it- if tomorrow those skills suddenly got rotated out or made obsolete- I would quit the game.

I haven’t invested time and money and effort since the betas building my characters to have it invalidated.

You can easily keep the game and skills fresh by adding specializations to classes.
it would make multiples of the same class a lot more meaningful than it is currently.

That is meaningful progression to me- wiping my skills in favor of other skills for no reason other that because- is not progression at all.

I like the current dungeon token system and the current laurel system and WvW badge system in this game most.

• specific non generic things you’ll have to do (WvW badges aside)
• you see your progress instead of RNG
• special rewards for high costs (mini-wolf, legendary gift)
• a big variety of rewards – nice sink

WvW-badges could use a bigger variety of rewards though, imho. And those special rewards for high costs as well.

I’d love to see a token system for exploration also. And for zones as well. People finish the zone-completion once and leave the zone for good. Rewards could be new skills as well, as alternative of spending big (not small numbers like 20) amounts of skillpoints.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Ok another brainstorm idea.

What if certain pieces of ascended gear could be crafted and sold on the TP such as gloves and boots?

Chris

This would put away from us some huge part of grind. But it would be for sure very expensive so we would still have to farm a lot of gold.
It is not perfect but things would be better.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

cesmode.4257:

Im simply amazed at the amount of people that are opposed to vertical progression being confined to FoTM. If you think about it, it is the only place ascended gear is required(currently). So why does a stat increase even need to exist outside of it?

If ascended stats were confined to fractals, then the rest of us who may not want to step foot into fractals would not need to worry about power creep or a treadmill in the open world.

Im very much in favor of this and again, Im amazed that people are against it.

Yep and kudos to you Cesmode for offering the counter argument.

Chris

Yes but on for fractals would have to also mean obtainable only thru fractals. For fractal player it is not fair to do non fractal stuff to equip himself for fractals.

Faowri.4159:

I don’t think it’s a question of casual vs hardcore, although it does somewhat depend on your definition of the terms. Some people define it as easy (casual) vs difficult (hardcore), but the game can have easy content and it can have hard content – that isn’t the problem, or wouldn’t be, if players could easily achieve a statistical level playing field and content difficulty was matched by skill instead of gear level.

Yuri.5810:

The Raids you’re talking about are already in the game: fractals. The problem is that people that like vertical progression stat-wise want it in every content. People that dislike it don’t want it.

IMO player sometimes is casual, and the same player sometimes is hardcore one, cause people sometimes have more time to play, but sometimes less. And its great in GW2, that open world is free of hardcore stuff and typical rat race. This is healthy. We’ve got no situation here, where a player login, and this player is far behind the other players.
However note that in this open world of GW2 u’ve got PvP mode too, and there’s alot place for PvP hardcore players, but even if u want to play less, then u dont feel bad if u lose something there, cause its only one of GW2’s modes. In the main game ur still great. Same with WvWvW – u can play this mode like a hardcore one, but when u’ve got less time or desire, then u can do it more casual – then ur not going to make new ranks there, but hey – ur still welcome to the game, cause its only one modes of it – main game is free of these ranks, right?
Problem of many games was that, they pulled gear (or something similar) progres to the main game, which thing had an effect on main game. For example, you earn great armor (by raiding), and u can use it almost everywhere, and ur 3x better than people who dont have them. So u force every other player to gain these items too (start raiding) – its bad. Its better, when they can choose how they want to get it.

That’s why im talking about separate modes for every solid mode in this game. Like: PvP, WvWvW (these two we’ve got already), and PvE! We’ve got no professional PvE for this moment, guys. We’ve got so many cool PvE stuff, but i would like to see something really decent that is not constrained by main game. This mode should develop on their own unique way – as PvP, and WvWvW. Is the whole world talking about fractals as a challenge in the MMORPG world? NO. Noone is talking about it. That’s just a part of open world content – interesting pve stuff to do, like a dungeons, guild missions etc. We really miss professional approach.
Yeah, so many people can tell, that we’ve got fractals, and that’s something like raids, and ofc they’ve got some rights. Fractals are great, but that’s still a dungeon, not raid, or something like that. We’ve got guild missions too, whats a really great thing, but thats good one just for a “normal” content, that we love – but not solid, demanding, progressive pve.

Note that if u’ve got dungeon, fractal, or even mission – then they simply just cant reward, as many players want – and these things just give us a substitute of progression. And i understand that, cause then it would be like a WoW’s bad way – reward people by doing fractals with strong, progression items, while they prefer to play other stuff in this open world, right? Its not good, when people are forced to e.g play fractals to get much better, and better items, that they can use in other game places too. That’s why ArenaNet have to reward people with same rewards in many things. People can get exotic’s in many ways, and they feel enough strong by having them.
And all of it just limit devs, when they want to make a solid PvE content, that many people waits for. And that’s IMO best way is to simply create “PvE mode” like we’ve got PvP and WvWvW. Put there new builds for this mode, armors with stats, and widely understood progress! Which progress not adversely affect the entire game. There will be still other mode for PvP – with no-stats items. WvWvW, where we’ve got ranks, and maybe something more in the future. Open World, where every1 is not forcing to do some things (like raids) to be “good” Fractals are great, but do not get me wrong – fractals are still something like a dungeon, and fractals are in the main game, where gear progress shouldnt exist. Thats why im talking about separate mode.

On the topic of Horizontal progression:

It might be nice to see Runes (and possibly Sigils) have their own slots on the character sheet.

Runes have a lot of potential for Horizontal Progression, but they make a bad situation worse when you either have to destroy them by overwriting or pay substantial Gem-costs to extract them when you’ve reached the point that you have some Ascended Armor but certainly don’t have multiple sets with the same stats just to carry your different rune-sets…

Its possible that if creating Ascended gear added it to a locker like the Zenith Skins, then this probably would largely go away without having to re-work the Hero page UI – once you’ve unlocked it you could pull out an additional set of armor and load it with your alternate Rune array. This would also be readily expansible to Weapons/Sigils: Once you know how to make an Ascended Wupwup 1-handed sword, you can withdraw as many of them as you need from the “Ascended Locker” to carry the different Sigils you’ve acquired. An ascended locker would take advantage that Ascended gear is not sellable/tradable.

Yeah… Upon consideration, craft once/unlock forever would be a LOT cleaner on the UI, addresses many issues with gearing up alts, and I feel would be a more reasonable return on effort required by the current crafting recipes.

(Ascended weapon and armor chests would also permanently unlock that item for your locker)

Anyone here have a huge complaint against the idea of being able to buy Ascended Weapon/Armor Chests with some of our account-bound currencies?

Maybe~

Guild Commendations – 150 commendations, any stats
Badges of Honor – 800 badges, any stats
Dungeon Tokens – 1,000 w/ stat combinations matching the each dungeons’ existing flavors
Fractal Relics – 1,500 w/ stat combinations matching the current capacitors

((all quantities subject to change and offered only to inspire thought))

Tranassa.4968:

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.

I’m pretty sure if you would do a design contest, maybe even with ingame reward for the winners, you would receive tons of nice stuff! You did this once in gw1 and, no offense, but the weapons that were coming out there, where the best looking weapons in the game! Bone Dragon staff, Emerald Blade,… All the high end dungeon rewards!
I think such a contest would give you excelent feedback AND would also lower your costs for designing a weapon/armor.
I also like the concept of cultural armors, a huge amount of players the t3 is the best looking armor. I love the Norn, and the curltural armors are just way better, than all the other armors, because they fit into the norn “feeling”.
And i think the most players want a armor that fits to their character and to the gw2 world, rather than a good looking high tech armor from a science fiction film, which does not fit at all into the gw2 world.

Just try a design contest

Just giving my support for this idea, I really like it.

I would love to draw armor design for this game, because unlike some older MMOs, the armors in this game are not just texture reskins so I feel that you can really be creative. I remember a thread on the Sylvari forums there the players were exchanging Sylvari hair ideas with Kristen Perry and there was some high-quality art in there, so I’m pretty sure that there would be some some really cool stuff if there was a design contest… or just a forum post asking for suggestions.

I like the idea of progressing (skill-based, thus not crafting/buying/gemstore) the gear you already acquired. For example the flame legion armor set with blue flames instead of the usual color, etc.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

What if there was vertical progression in the Fractals with gear that increased in stats but when outside of the fractals defaulted back to BiS numbers?

It is a way out, but in my opinion fractals are good, as they are right now.
Just let them be Fractals – an improved Dungeon.
People can to simply grind it, they’re not somehow constrained to progress it slow – that’s just normal rat race, not progressional mode. 30-50lvl in 1 day, right? To make some gold, and rewards that we can get in the other places too. Cool stuff for open world, where we’ve got dungs and stuff like that… But thats not Raid or solid PvE mode.

Do you think, that fractals cause such emotions in people like in this video below?
http://youtu.be/bMRAox_qCUU?t=11m43s
Nope.

Many people just simply want to see these emotions in GW2, and while we’ve got many good (and bad >;p) emotions in PvP, or WvWvW, then we’ve got no solid PvE at all. That’s why I give you an idea of ??how to do it – without affecting the entire game. Simply create PvE/Raid mode which has its own rules, and own map (as pvp have).
But do it once and properly, and dont change it severely. Think of it, and make it really well, and then just upgrade it and make better, and better.

Bearhugger.4326:

Tranassa.4968:

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.

I’m pretty sure if you would do a design contest, maybe even with ingame reward for the winners, you would receive tons of nice stuff! You did this once in gw1 and, no offense, but the weapons that were coming out there, where the best looking weapons in the game! Bone Dragon staff, Emerald Blade,… All the high end dungeon rewards!
I think such a contest would give you excelent feedback AND would also lower your costs for designing a weapon/armor.
I also like the concept of cultural armors, a huge amount of players the t3 is the best looking armor. I love the Norn, and the curltural armors are just way better, than all the other armors, because they fit into the norn “feeling”.
And i think the most players want a armor that fits to their character and to the gw2 world, rather than a good looking high tech armor from a science fiction film, which does not fit at all into the gw2 world.

Just try a design contest

Just giving my support for this idea, I really like it.

I would love to draw armor design for this game, because unlike some older MMOs, the armors in this game are not just texture reskins so I feel that you can really be creative. I remember a thread on the Sylvari forums there the players were exchanging Sylvari hair ideas with Kristen Perry and there was some high-quality art in there, so I’m pretty sure that there would be some some really cool stuff if there was a design contest… or just a forum post asking for suggestions.

This totally has my support as well- player created assets are a great idea- naturally Anet has veto about what makes it into the game

My husband mentioned to me that DOTA 2 has a system that allows players to create cosmetic content and apparently it works really well

Even just spitballing design ideas like in the Sylvari hair thread, can give a lot of inspiration to the creative teams

I am strictly against any vertical progression. But if it has to be, anything that even only slightly increases the power level of player characters needs to be easily obtainable (I’m talking days here, not weeks or even months). This remains true for a skill progression system. More potentially powerful skills mean more build diversity and more power for the player. A stable power curve is especially important in PvP (namely WvW) where imbalance created by more powerful items or skills destroys competitive play.

That said, progression should only be driven by cosmetic or convenience concerns. Weapon and armour looks, mods and sigils that you can change on the fly outside of combat, customizable weapon effects (make it glow pink or green, make it drop footprints or leave a cloud, etc.), bank tabs that you can unlock through quests or other means (limited to 1 or 2 tabs, I can see people go out of their minds for even only a half one), an increased wardrobe space unlocked by the same means (if we ever get one ), heck why not even “omni weapons”: a dual wielded “omni weapon” can become any dual wielded weapon in the game, some for single handed weapons, etc.

Anything that increases the power level becomes mandatory and forces the player to grind for the item with the better mods.

Personally:

• Progression has focused waaaay too less on personal character progression in:
  - story missions
  - guild missions
  - affilitation in factions
  - class professionalisation: where are warrior, thief, engineer guilds (NPC-foundations), with special missions per class?
  - skins acquisition through hard content

• It has focused to much on:
  - leveling (which is totally redundant)
  - zone progression (endless repetition of hearts, not enough dynamic events)
  - gear (stats should never have been bound to armour and armour should never have been level-specific)

Xar.1387:

Do you think, that fractals cause such emotions in people like in this video below?
http://youtu.be/bMRAox_qCUU?t=11m43s
Nope.

Many people just simply want to see these emotions in GW2, and while we’ve got many good (and bad >;p) emotions in PvP, or WvWvW, then we’ve got no solid PvE at all.

The reason there’s not as much emotion is the difference of challenge.
On your video, there was only a few players alive at the end of the fight. This fight was probably really hard, and they wiped numerous times before finally being able to down it.

On Gw2, we don’t have that kind of challenging content. The hardest fights we had was fractals lvl 80, but even that was not hard enough for good groups, who could do it without problem at all.

IDEAS FOR HORIZONTAL PROGRESSION:

Colored titles
Make titles have colors like item rarity (white, blue… pink, purple). This would actually make rarer titles mean something and make them a better goal for players to work towards. A legendary title should be really difficult to get.

More emotes
Like the zaishen emote in Guild Wars 1. As you keep progressing your emote gets upgraded to look cooler.

New rune sets
Like runes of perplexity, but account bound. Add ascended runes for pve? (They dont need to be better than exotic they could just have a visual effect)

Dungeon progression
Right now you can do all the dungeons whenever you want to. If the dungeons were gated from easiest to most difficult there would be more incentive for players to do all the dungeons.

cesmode.4257:

Its not a bad idea. I think I like it.

Wondering if it would be possible to turn off the new skill’s effects and go back to the old one..vice versa. If I got tired of that bull after bull charging so many times, could I go back?

That’s how I imagined it yea. You could go back anytime, it would be as simple as swapping a skill.

Lord Kuru.3685:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Brainstorm statement.

I am assuming that you wouldn’t want a progression system in which new skills and traits superseded/replaced existing skills and traits.

What’s wrong with this? IMO this is the way to go: regular introduction of new skills and expiration of old ones — exactly like Type II/Standard play in Magic: the Gathering.

• The game stays fresh — even old content, as they can be revisited with new skills.
• Balance is possible as the number of skills remains fixed.
• Only egregiously OP skills need to be nerfed as they’ll be rotated out anyway.
• Interesting mechanics can be experimented with — if they’re no good, they rotate out anyway. If they’re good, bring them back in the future.
• Skill releases can be themed to tie with the current LS.
• Dev team creates more skills more regularly, making them better at balance over time.

Of course this means people will be changing builds regularly, which means gear grind needs to completely go away.

I’d really like to know why you prefer not to go in this direction.

However, it removes any progression the player has made in terms of unlocking skills if they were to disappear a month later.

Estriella Faerie.4029:

The reason there’s not as much emotion is the difference of challenge.
On your video, there was only a few players alive at the end of the fight. This fight was probably really hard, and they wiped numerous times before finally being able to down it.

On Gw2, we don’t have that kind of challenging content. The hardest fights we had was fractals lvl 80, but even that was not hard enough for good groups, who could do it without problem at all.

Yeah, i know the reason. This is simply the real difficulty, where people have to train it few/many times, and when they can finaly do it. I also played this game. However, this is precisely the problem: create a real hard content – not artificial difficulty.

And yeah, we dont have it in GW2, but that doesnt means we can’t – IMO its possible to do it here. I remember Liadri boss, where they’ve made it really well, but they simply just cant expand this even more, cause they’ve got no a clear division: normal, and hard pve content. And both groups will not be satisfied – even I like to see division in content. If I want to make something easy, and fun – then im going to make dungeon – I dont want to get excited there… When i want to do something hard, then I’ll go to do some raids – that’s simple. Let us choose what we want to go, and let us expect what we’re going exactly to meet there. And do not give us the main content once harder, and once easy as hell. Its weird. Separate normal PvE stuff (story,dungs,fractals bla bla) than hard content, as PvP, and WvWvW is separated.

BTW. AR boss (with these lasers) was really great! Anyway last, new dungeons like AR, Molten, etc was pretty good, and these bosses showed us, that ArenaNet is able to do good PvE here. But that’s still dungeons, that many of us want to make pretty easy, just have a fun there, know the story. When we want to make something hard, then we’ll choose raid mode. Like when i want to play PvP, then i go to the PvP browser – thats simple.

Also – when we’re talking about pve progress stuff, then we have to know one thing – people must have their Role.
When we’ve got no important role, then we dont feel that unique in this boss fight.
And even, i understand it as:
Raid : boss fights, almost nothing more.
Dungeon etc: bosses are just a part of it.

Should just remove extra character slots/alts and let us have just one character that can freely change and level each job (as they do in Final Fantasy 11 & 14 online), character progression not account progression. -shrug-

Chris Whiteside.6102:

I think it would be cool if we can get a proposal together for treatment of stat based evolution as it currently stands in the game and then concentrate on Horizontal progression ideation.

Chris

You can make statistical horizontal progression. I have posted few ideas previously. Gear progression does not need to be locked with increasing stats. First thing that could be done is to add more stats on items:
1. Class specific stats.
1a. Stats that enhance class specific mechanics. I play mostly necro so I can talk about necro. Few things that come to my mind:
1b. Increase Life Force.
1c. Passive Life Force generation.
1d. Increase mark radius.
1e. Increase Damage/Health/Thoughness of minions (split it into three seprate stats).
1f. Increase life force generation from attacks.
(some of thse things overlap with traits. But that is ok. Items will supplement to further specialize your build, or extend range of possibilities with other build by minor amount).

2. If, While, For Each effects on per item basis.
2a. If your health is below 50% you deal 40% more damage with X.
2b. For each condition on you, your condition deal 5% more damage.

3. More generic stats like:
3a. Cooldown reduction.(non-stackable)
3b. Cast time reduction. (non-stackable)
3c. Weapon swap cooldown reduction. (non-stackable)
3d. Increased stamina regeneration. (non-stackable)
3e. Increase aoe radius of skills.(non-stackable)
3f. Life Steal.
3g. Passive health regen.
3h. Individual condition/boon stats (non-stackable).
And so on. I welcome anyone to add more to this list.

This should go along with increasing the variety of stats per item. Currently items are locked into 3 stats + rune. It’s not enough.

There are few possible solutions:
1. Increase stat variety to 5 per item, and reduce numbers of old stats in favor of new ones.
2. Add new upgrade slots, that will add the new stats.

Another step would be using different formula for stat distribution. I’m honestly all in for random generation here for stats of random drop items.
Of course designer assigned stats would exist. In form of unique items.

Of course the preset items should not be hard to get. In fact it should be pretty easy, to encourage players to experimentation with builds. With vastly increased amount of options, it really shouldn’t be a problem if players get items fast, since the have lots of options to try out.

That would add exponential new possibilities of builds. And solve problem of item progression in horizontal manner.

Lord Kuru.3685:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Brainstorm statement.

I am assuming that you wouldn’t want a progression system in which new skills and traits superseded/replaced existing skills and traits.

What’s wrong with this? IMO this is the way to go: regular introduction of new skills and expiration of old ones — exactly like Type II/Standard play in Magic: the Gathering.

• The game stays fresh — even old content, as they can be revisited with new skills.
• Balance is possible as the number of skills remains fixed.
• Only egregiously OP skills need to be nerfed as they’ll be rotated out anyway.
• Interesting mechanics can be experimented with — if they’re no good, they rotate out anyway. If they’re good, bring them back in the future.
• Skill releases can be themed to tie with the current LS.
• Dev team creates more skills more regularly, making them better at balance over time.

Of course this means people will be changing builds regularly, which means gear grind needs to completely go away.

I’d really like to know why you prefer not to go in this direction.

It’s wrong because it removes options and replacing them with other ones. IT leads to dead end when we are not progressing anywhere, just stay in the same place, with replaced options.

That’s why I’m also against class specializations. Instead of adding specialization and locking me from other ones, I’d rather just get skills, that add options that those specialization would bring, and be able to mix them with other skills.

Hi, this is going to be my first post – sorry for all my mistakes, English is not my native language so writing can be tricky Some of my ideas/thoughts:

Transmutation System

This is really awful at the moment, especially with current high gem prizes which are not gonna go down. Something must be done about this, changing the look of your weapon or armor should be an easy thing to do with symbolic fee – like trait change. Now you must spend at least 20 gold for 5 items, this is blocking all the freedom of playing with skins. Two solutions:

Short term: We have transmutation stones in the game for items below level 80 – these are almost useless, I’m playing gw2 for a year now and i used them maybe 2-3 times. Why not changing transmutation stones into crystals, so we will have only one type of transmutation item? They will be much easier to acquire (map exploration/daily) and many players have a lot them just gathering dust in a bank. This would really solve the problem for few months.

Long term: Just add a vendor, who will transmute item for 1 gold fee.

Skins from TP / Racial armor

Skins bought on TP and racial armor should work like radiant/hellfire skins. It really hurts when you spend 800 gems (or 120 gold for T3) on an armor, and you must spend additional 350 gems every time you want to change armor stats. I have T3 armor on my asura guardian bought months ago and i just never changed my skin – it is just to expensive. Problem is even bigger when you have expensive runs in your armor and you want to change them – if you want your runes back, you must destroy your armor which is senseless. It would be so much easier to get another armor set with new runes and just add skin to it.

Soul bond/Account bound items

You should really take some time and look through all the items which are Account/Soul bound, some of them really doesn’t make sens, two examples:

- gold, magic find and other banners, why they are account bound? Would it be much better, if you could just put them in guild bank for other guild members to use, especially if you don’t need them?

- philosopher stone/crystals which are soul bound – this is really inconvenient when you want to use skill points from 2-3 characters in order to craft something in mf. If you keep this items in a bank you must guess to which character they belong and you cant stack them, so they are taking useful bank space.

Another and much more important issue – moving items from one character to another. For example i have two sets of ascended trinkets (amulet/rings etc. -6 pieces) on my main characters and i want to give one set to my alt. Only way i can do this is by using Transmutation Splitter which would cost me 1650 gems ~~ 135 gold, this is crazy. You really should introduce an efficient way of moving weapons/armor/jewelry from one character to another, for reasonable prize for example: 1 gold fee for exotic, 3 gold for ascended.

Ascended Rings

They were introduce to the game long time ago and players have a lot of them – i myself have one tab in the bank full of this rings and I don’t need most of them. This is kinda strange, that for so many months you didn’t introduce any way of using spare rings – we can only destroy them which is a shame. Why not let players to put 4 rings to mf and get one with stats they need or make them salvageable with chance of getting one random ascended material? It would be much better than just destroying them.

Ascended Weapons Chest

Main problem with these chests are the random stats of the item you get- its cool to get free ascended weapon but its really depressing when you get one with stats which are completely useless to you. This chests are very rare – you should give players an option to choose not only type of the weapon but also the statistics.

Ascended Weapon/Armors

Many great ideas here, in my opinion they should be sellable, why?

- Because people with money are buying materials and making their weapons/armor in one day anyway. Even Dragonite isn’t hard to get – you can farm bosses with 4 characters on three servers and get 500+ without bigger problems. Cost of making one ascended weapons is about 50 gold no matter what you will do, and believe me or not – it will be also TP price for it. Ascended armor will be even cheaper than 50 gold per piece, we just need to wait a month or two for realistic prize for damask – it should be around 3 gold, now its 15 gold because of one day cap. In general, Ascended weapons/armor would be much cheaper from the beginning, if developers wouldn’t introduce this 24h cap.

Second thing – changing statistic of weapons/armor – we really need this option and presented ideas are going into good direction, option to add additional statistic to existing gear would be great and i hope it will slightly cheaper than making new one, for example recipe could look like this: ascended weapon + ascended insignia of chosen stats + skill points + some dust.

That’s all from me for now, sorry for all the mistakes

Nike.2631:

Anyone here have a huge complaint against the idea of being able to buy Ascended Weapon/Armor Chests with some of our account-bound currencies?

Maybe~

Guild Commendations – 150 commendations, any stats
Badges of Honor – 800 badges, any stats
Dungeon Tokens – 1,000 w/ stat combinations matching the each dungeons’ existing flavors
Fractal Relics – 1,500 w/ stat combinations matching the current capacitors

((all quantities subject to change and offered only to inspire thought))

I like this idea, and not just because I was going to suggest it myself. Rare and exotic armour can already be bought with badges and tokens, and having the option to buy ascended armour with dungeon tokens would add another possibility for people who run dungeons.

regarding the fractal backpacks, by the time you have 1.5k relics you’d probably have more than enough to create an ascended backpack using the current process (i know that it was just a suggested number, but my point stands). the only thing i would say regarding this is that there needs to be some way to access stat combos not currently available other than crafting the old magic find packs, which are obnoxiously expensive compared to other routes and to be honest I’m not even sure is possible any more.

All this thread seems to me ,that you (anet) have derailed so much from the original idea of the manifesto and what gw2 were suposed to be ,that you dont have any idea of what direction the game is going.

All since the introduction of ascended gear,you have craeted such a kittenstorm that now you are sinked to the knees in it and do not know wich direction to go.

What makes me angry about all this ,is that you got it right in Gw1,so i still can not understant how can you manage to screw it up so much,yeah sure Gw1 has its flaws and whatnot,but instead of improving on the idea of Gw1 to create Gw2 ,you just converted this game in to a massive grind ,and its not a grind for aestethics like Gw1
its a vertical grind for better gear (that was absolutley no needed ,exotics should have been the las tier of gear).

And you now what the worst part about all of this is?,well the game is no fun anymore
its just a massive grind.
People didnt want ascended gear,nor living story(another grind ,this time for achivements).

What people do want is ,new skills ,new traits ,new weapons for each professions,new wvw maps,new spvp modes,new zones new enemies new classes…..

Any way im just angry at what this game could have been ,and what it sadly have become,i dont know if you are stil on time to fix it but i hope you can come with a solution to all this mess .

I know that this i not a constructive post,but come on this all thread just reeks of the fact that anet have lost northwith the direction of the game.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Ok another brainstorm idea.

What if certain pieces of ascended gear could be crafted and sold on the TP such as gloves and boots?

Chris

This would ruin the economy. People with money will get richer and richer and will dictate the prices in TP, like we have with legendaries at the moment.

I think Ascended gear wasnt needed in total. Exotics were obtained a bit too easy, but this could be compensatet by an increase of the crafting costs. Infusion slots could be simply edited by infusing them in the mystik forge if someone needs more agony resistance.
Acsended gear is too expensive and costs too much time to get, that playing an alt or even try a new build is made really hard and very expensive.

An alternative would be an Armor retrainer NPC, that can change your armor stats for 15s per armor piece and you can choose the stat of the ascended Armor afterward. This would make ascended gear a lot more buildfriendly. But you need to go to a NPC and pay him for respecing your armor.

This change would make Ascended gear a lot more interesting for all players. Yes you have to invest some time and Gold to get the gear, but after this, you have no downside if you want to test some builds. Even getting Ascended gear on Alts would be interesting.

DiogoSilva.7089:

• It is crippled by some of the systems set in place for vertical progression, like stats being tied to gear, which in turn is tied to huge money and time sinks.

I agree for ascended gear (exotic is cheap, no problems). One month farming for top gear is nice, but farm it several times for all alts is too long and expensive. Since ascended is not “must have”, it’s not a big problem (yet?)

lack of build templates

Want them much in GW2. Roles in Rift are very handy (change build to one of predefined in 2 sec, out of combat). Now it’s easier to level and alt and relog to him, rather than changing traits.

Non-profession skills are very underwhelming.

Yes, they are useless now. No traits works with them, and they are weaker than profession skills.

• The skill system is generally very restrictive, with few weapons per profession, very few utility slots tied to high cooldowns, and an elite skill system that isn’t acchieving the epic feel it was meant to acchieve.

Don’t think so. Skill system is nice (except of racial skills). 10 skills is enough, I don’t want to play the interface instead of game.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

The Tokens idea is interesting and I am sure you are noting that with our Mega Boss update Tequatl players can earn Ascended Weapons with Unique skins (Sunless) and that we will be moving forward with that paradigm. The idea of more challenging zone meta events was raised in the Living World CDI and a good idea.

I think the Tequatl approach for gear distribution is highly problematic because of the following reasons:

- Mega bosses have a very low level of personal responsibility. You don’t matter to the overall success or failure of the event no matter how well (or poorly) you play.

- You are usually fighting alongside random people who, more often than not, won’t listen to instructions or tips. However, it’s difficult to even make organized groups to rectify this due to the restrictions imposed by overflow mechanics.

- It encourages things like camping Sparkfly Fen so you’re not in the overflow. This isn’t an option for somebody like me who has limited play time if I want to enjoy other aspects of the game.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

What if certain pieces of ascended gear could be crafted and sold on the TP such as gloves and boots?

I think the less the TP has to do with vertical progression, the better.

Eley.1907:

DiogoSilva.7089:

• It is crippled by some of the systems set in place for vertical progression, like stats being tied to gear, which in turn is tied to huge money and time sinks.

I agree for ascended gear (exotic is cheap, no problems). One month farming for top gear is nice, but farm it several times for all alts is too long and expensive. Since ascended is not “must have”, it’s not a big problem (yet?)

lack of build templates

Want them much in GW2. Roles in Rift are very handy (change build to one of predefined in 2 sec, out of combat). Now it’s easier to level and alt and relog to him, rather than changing traits.

Non-profession skills are very underwhelming.

Yes, they are useless now. No traits works with them, and they are weaker than profession skills.

• The skill system is generally very restrictive, with few weapons per profession, very few utility slots tied to high cooldowns, and an elite skill system that isn’t acchieving the epic feel it was meant to acchieve.

Don’t think so. Skill system is nice (except of racial skills). 10 skills is enough, I don’t want to play the interface instead of game.

I think you misunderstood what he said about the skill system being restrictive. His points were:

-skills 1-5 are for weapons, there are only a few weapons per class, and no ability to change individual skills
-skills 7-9 are utility skills that usually have long cds
-skill 10 usually has a super long cd and doesn’t feel epic enough to compensate for it

I see nothing in that about wanting more than 10 skill slots. I do see wanting skills with shorter cooldowns, and more customization and expansion of weapon skill choices.