Guild Wars 2

Dev’s asked: What’s fun about Vertical Progression?

Answer: When it ends. It’s not supposed to be a joke (well, not only). VP only has a purpose and feels meaningful to me when it ENDS, when your each a peak and then it starts branching out horizontally. Initial VP IS fun, but it has to PEAK to be fun. If it doesn’t peak forever in the story of the game then it becomes just a never-ending pain in the kitten of having to accomplish something you already did over and over.

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

Harbard.5738:

but crafters will get an actual “do it yourself” experience and play the game, which is what most people like about making their own stuff, in the first place. Go, gather, craft. Not go, sit at tp for hours, craft.

I agree.

Imho the trading post, as it currently works, is poison for a lot of ideas in this game.

I cannot agree with this more. In the pursuit to have the model economy the tp has sort of castrated a lot of what makes this genre of game fun for a lot of adventurer type players. Evidently adventuring is acceptable collateral damage to having a robust trading environment in an adventuring game…go figure.

Harbard.5738:

1) Once we have one set of gear, why bother getting any new ones and find new skins

With the current prices on ascended gear you’re lucky if you ever complete ONE set of armor and weapons at all in the coming year. Assuming you’re the average player. If we have a skin wardrobe, the quest for skins is still on.

2) it devalues non interchangeable stat gear

Devaluing previous tiers is how vertical progression that don’t use upgrades goes. I don’t like it, but that’s how they chose to make it. Not my fault. Your exotic is still worse than ascended, flex stats or not. The only difference is that an ascended set would be worth the time investment.

3) it removes the opportunity for unique stat combos

No, it doesn’t. Just add that unique stat combo to the pool of combos you can pick. Now is unique stat combo from Tequatl for instance a good idea? I don’t think so.

To 1) I didn’t mean that sticking to what we have was better than what you have in mind. Just that there are real downsides to that suggestion. Personally I would like to see ascended gear way more accessible. So completing more than one set would be a real option.

As for the skin wardrobe: yes, that’d be great. Although personally: I am not much of a collector. When I have a need for a new armor, I search for looks that fit the build. The joy that I get from mix/matching armors is directly related to my desire for new gear, not just a desire for a new skin.

To 2) Currently I can have an ascended clerics mace. When I find a berserker exotic mace I can use it for a different build set-up. With interchangeable stats the second mace is completely useless. There is a big difference between these two situations, even though ascended is clearly better than exotic in both cases. I hope this clarifies the point I was trying to make?

To 3) So there is a limit to how many stats you can pick with interchangeable stat-gear? I thought you meant that we could pick pretty much every existing stat combination like we can with legendary gear. I suppose there could be something inbetween. And the current implementation of Tequatls ascended gear is not good, that doesn’t mean that the idea doesn’t have merit. I imagine a system where there are 30+ bosses/quests all over Tyria that each have their own ascended rewards with unique stats attached. But yeah, I suppose we could ‘unlock’ certain stats on these interchangeable weapons through those bosses/quests? We might be on to something here.

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))

Nike,

This is a great suggestion! But what do you think would be an appropriate number of dungeon tokens (we’ll use that as an example) to buy Ascended armor? Right now it costs 1380 tokens to buy a dungeon armor set. Should you be able to buy Ascended armor with tokens from just one dungeon or should it require tokens from all dungeons to purchase Ascended armor? i.e. 690 token from each dungeon (5520 total), or something. This would be a great step away from the “need gold to buy anything” mentality.

EDIT: Another thought, they could add new Ascended armor skins for each way you could unlock it. This would add prestige to Ascended armor not just because you have it, but because of the way you unlocked it (i.e. you excel at dungeons, WvW, farming gold, etc.)

~Finn

I could care less about fractals and 5 man instances. I think they are useless and boring. But if you must have them go ahead, just don’t make it so I feel I need to do them. Don’t hide must have items and crafting mats inside them in ordet to force players to participate. There should always be more than one way to skin the cat.
So if you don’t enjoy doing one thing you can do something you enjoy more and get the same items. Equally as hard to achieve but different.

Crafting if fun and I like it very much. But it can get confusing and convoluted. Especially now that your trying to tie it to doing events. Instead of mining ore you have to get it from certain events.

John.5732:

Here is one suggestion for how a quest for a legendary weapon would work. Of course, the tropes for these are fairly common, and I don’t mind copying well-worn tropes if it’s made well. My idea would use great quests. Great quests would look like LW updates in your right-hand tracker and would appear in your AP tracker menu. They would show you where you are along this long quest chain that would lead to a goal (like a legendary or ascended weapon or rare skin). It would update as you go and give you AP for completing legs of the quest. It would also have a timer for how long you had to wait for the next part, if it was time-gated.

1) Greatsword You get a great quest from an NPC in LA about the legendary greatsword. He tells you a story about who created it and how. He tells you that the last the greatsword was seen was before Orr fell. This starts the Great Quest to seek out info in Orr. After a few temple events, an NPC there would tell you that her history research shows that the GS wkittentered when fighting the rise of Zhaitan and fell into the sea. Using her notes, you are able to locate two places in Orr. You must recover the hilt and the blade. Each of those are instances, like personal story.

Next, you must find someone who can reforge the blade. This leads you back to LA, where you show the initial guy the sword pieces and he tells you of the living descendants of the original blacksmith. The great great granddaughter of the blacksmith carries on the family business and she lives up in the Iron Marches. She is impressed you found the blade that he father had told her about. She always thought it a family tall tale. She agrees to attempt to reforge it. She sends you on a quest to find the hottest flame, which would be a special event in the CoF dungeon. Taking the flame and money to her for supplies, she begins work on the GS. She needs a week to experiment and forge. When the week is up, she tells you that she was unable to reforge the blade because she does not have strong enough metals. She tells you of an experimental metal the Dredge are creating that sounds ideal. This leads you to Dredgehaunt Cliffs and another personal story instance. Taking back the experimental metal, she asks for more money and time to complete the weapon. A week later, you have your legendary GS.

See I love this concept, and chris you would do wise to listen to this man because this represents the fundamental flaw not only with the way the end game works for items, but the personal story as well.

Everyone complains about the personal story being “trahearnes personal story” because the personal story should have paved the ground work for this exact item find concept. The last mission in the personal story line should have rewarded the player with trahearnes exotic dreamthistle sword as a reward for all the hard work of kicking dragon kitten . Which also highlights this games aversion to death and all things “adult” related about the way the world should really be. There is nothing really that represents how violent the core philosophy of killing things with weapons really is in the game. It doesn’t have a dark approach to anything, its all ponies and rainbows most of the time. And for a game where its userbase is mostly over the age of 21, where as this is the exact opposite with other MMO’s, it shows.

But back to the item acquisition problem. Again, the theory that crafting needs to be the all mighty solution to acquiring cool gear essentially IS the problem. What would be difficult about implementing a 10 man dungeon in say orr or southsun that required much higher skill levels then the traditional…we will say beginner dungeons, that award your rewards on a token basis, instead having dungeon specific ascended gear only drop in this particular 10 man dungeon, a full set of weapons and armor of ascended class exclusive for this dungeon, that used the magic find and RNG system to dish out rewards on champion bosses in the dungeon. There would be such a large variety in the way the drops were sorted out that you could almost guarantee that players would have to come back for at least 6 months to get the set of gear they want. Sometimes it would drop knight gear, othertimes it would drop zerker, but it would require 10 man raids everytime to try to find that cool gear.

This is the PVE i think everyone expects from this game that just isnt there, and the game has such interesting lore, i think everyone wonders why it is squandered so badly on scarlet. What this game really should have had from day one is a scheduled release of 8 separate dragon based expansion packs, but it doesnt have this, and I cant figure out why from a business standpoint you wouldnt exploit this feature.

Essence Snow.3194:

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

Harbard.5738:

but crafters will get an actual “do it yourself” experience and play the game, which is what most people like about making their own stuff, in the first place. Go, gather, craft. Not go, sit at tp for hours, craft.

I agree.

Imho the trading post, as it currently works, is poison for a lot of ideas in this game.

I cannot agree with this more. In the pursuit to have the model economy the tp has sort of castrated a lot of what makes this genre of game fun for a lot of adventurer type players. Evidently adventuring is acceptable collateral damage to having a robust trading environment in an adventuring game…go figure.

I also agree with this.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Savoy.6824:

Now, jumping right into horizontal progression. Can the ArenaNet designers begin to design a game that incorporates the orders that we joined in our personal story. The designers may already be doing this to some degree, but it is my opinion that it is lightly used.

You may recall that in the first Guild Wars there were two factions. I believe they were called the Luxons and the Kurzacks. In that game it was possible to compete quest for a particular faction. Doing so resulted in rewards such as special armor and weapons. I would like to see the orders work in a similar fashion (or if no one likes the orders, then create some new factions for us to be a part of. I just pick the orders because there already in the game and I like that incorporates the personal story back into the game)

Also, I believe it would be great if completing quest didnt stop at skin and title rewards. If npc’s in the world could react to you based on which order you joined that would be cool as well. Have npc’s sell you cheaper food based on the order your in. For example, the vigil could sell you cheaper food that has power at its base, where the order of whispers could sell you items that deal with vigor or stealth. Discount food has already been done in game. The dragon bash festival introduced food that could be bought with candy (which is basically another currency when you get down to it) The food had buffs similar to that of food that was already in the game it just didnt last as long. Please dont stop at just food, Im just using this as an example.

Maybe put some animosity between some of the orders and provide us with some conflict we can participate in. Thats all Ive come up with for now. Anyone else have any ideas?

Would this kind of ‘Faction’ progression outside of how NPC’s perceive you in the world allow you access to exclusive Faction based rewards? Would this be grindy?

I like the base idea a lot and obviously it is something we could build in and thus am keen to hear the thoughts of everyone in regard to this?

Chris

Exclusive Faction based rewards: Yes, please! Also, would faction alliance be account bound, server bound, guild bound, or character bound?

Would this be grindy: That depends on a few factors. How long does it take before I reach said goal? Is it fun? Are the rewards reasonable for time spent? Is it worth it? Is it time gated? Am I forced to do it?

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))

what kind of balance is that? Fractal relics are much more time consuming to get than badges of honor or dungeon tokens.
200 commendations for one piece of a set
2000 badges of honor for one piece of a set
2500 fractal relicts for one piece of a set
5000 dungeon tokens for one piece of a set

ASCENDED GEAR AND ALT FRIENDLYNESS

Why simply allowing ascended copying is not the way for alt-friendlyness

If you have a warrior and and elementalist, you’re pretty much at the same place you were before. Can’t copy much from a warrior to an ele.

The current account-wide bonus system is a good way for alt-friendlyness

• For every ascended item you build, mat costs are cut by say +50% account-wide.
• For every craft you master, the next one is say +50% faster to level account-wide.
• For every ascended piece you buy with laurels, you get a progressive say +50% discount account-wide

A lot can be derived from those ideas, and again, all of this could use the current account-wide bonuses system.

Vertical Progression and its compatibility with Horizontal progression:

As we have seen with the success of Achievement Points and Magic Find Luck, the most well-recieved vertical progression in this game, are those which do not impact our combat stats.

Perhaps introduce something like permanent reduced waypoint costs?

Looking back at GW1, it featured cool title tracks such as Lightbringer, which helped us fight against Margonites exclusively in the endgame zones. Perhaps a similar mechanic as well, where the more Icebrood we kill, the higher the kitten track?

I’ll be bluntly honest… when it comes to vertical progression, I don’t like it. Period. I don’t particularly care how its introduced, be it through gear like in GW2 and most MMOs or through skill grind (like in GW1). I find it absurdly silly that players in this game demarcate the two and think one is awesome and the other is a painful slog. It’s both grindy busy work.

That said, I also accept that it pretty much has to happen. I know MMO players, and I know the one thing they demand is new shinies. They WANT the grind. They WANT the bigger numbers. It’s what they’ve been trained and conditioned to seek for years.

I’ll be honest, I find myself increasingly uninterested in these “CDI threads” for precisely that reason. Let’s just drop the illusion of collaboration. Chris, you know it, I know it, let’s let everyone else know it. Players are the problem. They aren’t letting you break the mold as much as you want. Ascended gear is here because the MMO masses you have to cater to can’t accept anything beyond, “PHAT PURPLEZ! MUST HAVE BIG LEWT!!!”

Just be honest. There WILL be more vertical progression. There WILL be an increase to the level cap. Because if you don’t, the players you need to sustain the game will get bored and quit, just like they quickly did in late 2012. Nothing that will be said here (or in any other CDI thread) is going to change the greater vision, so let’s just stop with the games and move on.

Do not get up so high with tokens & points.
5000 Token? Thats a month of hard CoF Grind… really want that?
Don’t think so…
First, as wrote before, Dungeons shouldn’t be speedclearable.
When they became a whole night fun (~2-4 hours), THEN, and ONLY THEN can anything they offer worth something in the eye of players.
And 1 run 1 piece – as the original merchandising – can Happen.

BTW, 5 run 1 piece for ELITE versions aren’t an another thing we should forget.

Malediktus.9250:

what kind of balance is that?

I like fractals and do them. I am somewhat ambivalent about dungeons and don’t do them? Therefore I end up with far more pristine relics than Dungeon tokens?

Fractal relics are much more time consuming to get than badges of honor or dungeon tokens.

Not if you don’t do those things you don’t enjoy . The numbers can be tweaked. It was an off the cuff post.

…Actually the number I’m most interested in is Skill Points -> Ascended Chests.

I’m also thinking the two-tiers cost scheme we see in crafting could be repeated

Coat and weapon = x1
Other armor pieces = x.4

So we might see buying Ascended with skill points as~

Weapon or Coat chest costs 500 skill points.
Other armor piece chest costs 200 skill points.

daros.3407:

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 :-)

You could also make these upgrades availble in game for karma? We need a karma sink and who wouldn’t want to spend their karma on this?

Malediktus.9250:

Stop suggesting stat switching for ascended. It should stay a legendary only perk. Most legendaries look terrible enough so there is no other reason to build them.

Diversity for build-crafting and alt-playing should be higher priority, as they are core playstyles to GW2’s design (and manifesto).

I did make some suggestions that would allow to preserve legendary equipment’s convenience bonus. They’re a bit scattered through the thread, so here’s them:

Ascended Gear

• Being able to create duplicates of the same item type with (the same or) different stats.

This would fix the restrictions for build crafting and alt playing that come out of ascended. In fact, it would go deep the opposite way, and make ascended gear highly desired for horizontal progression. It is therefore a superior suggestion than a system to simply change stats of an already existing set at will, because this one would do nothing to fully gear alts.

This solution doesn’t needs to come for free, either. Each duplicate (with stats of choice) could require a small/ modest material or money sink. Just not something too high.

Legendary Gear

• Being able to create duplicates of the same item type with (the same or) different stats.

(Just like for Ascended).

• Being able to change stats at will on the same piece.

(Just like what Legendary Equipment already allows you to do).

So, what would be the big difference here? Which bonus convenience would legendary gear have over ascended?

Inventory Space

While you would need several different copies of the same ascended gear set for each different stat combination, quickly filling in your inventory bag space, the same wouldn’t (and already doesn’t) happens with legendary.

This way, the current system to change legendary’s stats would be preserved and players would still desire it.

On the time-gated content/rewards + Laurels!

I’ll let Extra Creditz do the talking:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQtFo_E_Ea0

Is the goal to be good design, or to be habituate design?

I like the idea of the ascended crafting station. Those recipes that require mats which require mats which require mats which require…. is just REALLY confusing.

Idea, even though it might not be the simplest to implement, would be a crafting station for elite items (ascended, legendary,…) with a seperate UI. This station would level with each crafted item – 1 level per item. With each level the material costs of further items of the same type (e.g. ascended) decrease, the progress of that station is accountbound.

The UI of that station would show all the mats you need for one of these items at once, and you can store your mats in that station (like in a bank). Voilla: you can easily see your progress in crafting one item.

Harbard.5738:

ASCENDED GEAR AND ALT FRIENDLYNESS

Why simply allowing ascended copying is not the way for alt-friendlyness

If you have a warrior and and elementalist, you’re pretty much at the same place you were before. Can’t copy much from a warrior to an ele.

Excellent point.

It might not mean much in the long-term, if Anet is willing to add new weapon choices to professions. But that depends on how long we’ll have to wait until that happens, and at how frequent will new weapon choices be added.

RoyalPredator.9163:

Do not get up so high with tokens & points.
5000 Token? Thats a month of hard CoF Grind… really want that?

I’m thinking a full set in a month is insanely fast…

The current grind to craft them takes a long time, and yet people are still wearing full sets already – the hurdle is clearly NOT insurmountable. I’m more concerned with opening up alternative avenues, not with it being faster – especially if I had my way and getting an Ascended item unlocks as many copies of that exact item/stat combo for as many alternate sets or alternate characters as you want.

In many respects the horse has already left the barn. People have paid for a lot of recipes, often different stat combos for the same item slot. Rather than tweak costs (and trigger endless refunds for this or that affected player) or combine items (and more refunding) I’d rather enhance the results in ways that add value to the effort.

The Lost Witch.7601:

I imagine a system where there are 30+ bosses/quests all over Tyria that each have their own ascended rewards with unique stats attached. But yeah, I suppose we could ‘unlock’ certain stats on these interchangeable weapons through those bosses/quests? We might be on to something here.

I love this idea!

The Lost Witch.7601:

Harbard.5738:

1) Once we have one set of gear, why bother getting any new ones and find new skins

With the current prices on ascended gear you’re lucky if you ever complete ONE set of armor and weapons at all in the coming year. Assuming you’re the average player. If we have a skin wardrobe, the quest for skins is still on.

2) it devalues non interchangeable stat gear

Devaluing previous tiers is how vertical progression that don’t use upgrades goes. I don’t like it, but that’s how they chose to make it. Not my fault. Your exotic is still worse than ascended, flex stats or not. The only difference is that an ascended set would be worth the time investment.

3) it removes the opportunity for unique stat combos

No, it doesn’t. Just add that unique stat combo to the pool of combos you can pick. Now is unique stat combo from Tequatl for instance a good idea? I don’t think so.

To 1) I didn’t mean that sticking to what we have was better than what you have in mind. Just that there are real downsides to that suggestion. Personally I would like to see ascended gear way more accessible. So completing more than one set would be a real option.

As for the skin wardrobe: yes, that’d be great. Although personally: I am not much of a collector. When I have a need for a new armor, I search for looks that fit the build. The joy that I get from mix/matching armors is directly related to my desire for new gear, not just a desire for a new skin.

To 2) Currently I can have an ascended clerics mace. When I find a berserker exotic mace I can use it for a different build set-up. With interchangeable stats the second mace is completely useless. There is a big difference between these two situations, even though ascended is clearly better than exotic in both cases. I hope this clarifies the point I was trying to make?

To 3) So there is a limit to how many stats you can pick with interchangeable stat-gear? I thought you meant that we could pick pretty much every existing stat combination like we can with legendary gear. I suppose there could be something inbetween. And the current implementation of Tequatls ascended gear is not good, that doesn’t mean that the idea doesn’t have merit. I imagine a system where there are 30+ bosses/quests all over Tyria that each have their own ascended rewards with unique stats attached. But yeah, I suppose we could ‘unlock’ certain stats on these interchangeable weapons through those bosses/quests? We might be on to something here.

1) They will never make ascended as accessible as exotics, that’s why they created the tier anyway, to be a pain in the kitten to get and slow people down and keep em playing longer. I, like you, love creating sets that LOOK like their stats. My “tanky” gear always looks beefier etc. I know what you’re talking about. Thing is, as far as builds go, having 3/4 sets on your inventory is not practical with ascended. Period. You are never gonna get it on one char much less on alts like you can with exotics. Do you really think they’re gonna trivialize something made to be a pain in the kitten to get to the point you can have many sets on your main and a couple of alts in a reasonable time?

Ascended not as accessible as exotics and will never be. People’s claim for flex stats is a VERY GOOD one because of the time investment required and the killing of builds, best of all, it uses a system that it’s already in the game and have COST ZERO. In other words, they can implement it in weeks, not months. So, realistically, with the system we currently have, it’s is a kick kitten solution with minimal if none downsides at all. The fact we won’t enjoy making stuff that looks like their stats (which is really sad) is very minimal compared to the good it will do to this mess of a tier.

Quickie: Content-specific stat combos: WvWers will cry, and they should. All stat combos should be available to everyone.

Nike.2631:

Nike’s Numbers

Yikes, big numbers.

I assume that we are seeing this as a complete picture? Because the more means to ascended armor the more reasonable big numbers can be. (I don’t have enough skillpoints to gear my thief, but I could combine it with some crafting, some through badges and perhaps one through dungeon tokens, though that many of the same dungeon… yikes!)

So our means to getting ascended items would be (the more the merrier):

• Crafting
• Badge of Honor vendor
• Dungeon vendor
• Fractals vendor
• Skill point vendor
• Guild vendor
• Laurel vendor
• Karma vendor
• Cultural (money) vendor
• Faction? vendor
• One time living story event rewards
• Personal story completion revamp reward
• RNG on a number of chests (world events/dungeons/wvw rank up/whatnot)
• Mystic forge recipes
• RNG on specific instanced mobs with specific rewards (< my favourite, like GW1 greens)
• Certain achievements (world completion? fractal level 50?)
• Epic quest chains
• PvP victories of some sort
• What did I miss?

I came up with this long ago but never made a post about it.

What about a diffrent part of Fractals of the mists that’s sort of a boss. Everytime when a party defeats a boss, they will fight against a harder boss. When the party is wiped, the party will get tp’ed back to the instance and have to start over. This will be hard content. I bet Arenanet and the community could think of bosses/ enemies from the past/present. Everytime you defeat a boss you will get better loot. (and mayble punish the players by letting them do it once a week.)

This is just my idea for progression (hard content).

if ascended weapons/armor should be available for a variety of activities, why not simply use laurels?

The problem with gold and trading post, is that there is infinite supply of gold in game. You can literally make gold out of thin air. It’s only natural that it will inflate indefinitely. The only solution for that problem is to limit maximum gold that can be present in game at any single time.

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

if ascended weapons/armor should be available for a variety of activities, why not simply use laurels?

There is a HUGE difference between a currency like Skill Points and Laurels.

Skill points come from anything that gives you XP without time gates. They’re even being added to the PvP vendors so all adventuring aspects of play advance along this line.

Laurels… yeah… not so much.

What about progression thorugh Achievements? but not the AP grind, I mean real achievements, how? well I have a few ideas:

-Ever played Ragnarok Online? they introduced this dungeon called Thanatos Tower, it had increased difficulty for each floor, so being able to reach the upper levels was an actual achievement you could brag about, also mobs at higher levels would drop better loot.

-Server-wide objectives, Tequatl was a really nice approach to this, but what about having a non-instanced dungeon, every server has to unlock higher levels by completing different tasks (beating the floor boss, completing a puzzle, etc) you can have the name of each player that helped in the task engraved in the history of the game and now the whole server has something to work towards, this also allows to add exclusive skins(rare drops, craftable, etc) for each floor

-killing champs has no meaning, what about getting rid of the champ bags, but having each champ drop some special item weapons, crafting materials, etc… just dont make it too grindy, but there is some degree of grind that is acceptable and even fun

there surely are more and better ways to do this, but I believe that progressing through achievements is a huge part of the PvE fun

What about upgrading weapons and armor via crafting?
If you have a rare berserker sword you could craft it to be an exotic berserker sword.

Hello everyone,

i would like to give my point of view.

I have had problems motivating myself to play Guild Wars 2 for a while know. Here is my personal reason why: I love character progresstion.
I love game with a vast amout of thinks where my character can evolve. I love getting new attacks, getting new ways to combine my attacks, getting new cool weapons and abilitys. Mechanics that opens up while new levels of gameplay.

I am not the gear type, i dont care much about vertical Progression.
I am more in love with horizontal progression and this is,

where Guild Wars 2 lacks.

I play as Warrior and although i have plenty of Alts, my Warrior is my favorite.

But since there are so limited skills and abilities my character can obtain, i dont feel like progressing any longer. I know that i could go for some ascended gear but i am not really interesstet in shiny new armor. I would like to be able to choose my own fighting style rather then only my own look.

As the skill system in Guild Wars 2 is right now, people like me will feel unsatisfied without more abilities to be learned.

Personally i would like to see an enhanced combat system with more ways to progress, with more styles to play. The warrior next to me may have a better looking Greatsword than me, but he will always play like me, execute the same weapon skills with that awesome sword like me, no matter what. I feel like there are not enough ways to individualise at the machinical level.

Chris asked whether vertical progression could be confined to Fractals. I say yes, in the form that has already been introduced: Agony Resistance infusions. If you tweak the rewards in Fractals, I think this could provide sufficient end-game for that type of player. (The treadmill lover.)

Morrigan.2809:

I came about this post several months ago and what I really liked about it was the fact that it expanded on the current professions but added horizontal progression-without the idea of balancing classes nightmare

Eh, why can’t I simply be a Mesmer, the three advanced ideas all sound pretty lame

Chris Whiteside.6102:

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))

Good question. And morning/afternoon everyone. Just reading through all the new pages and great discussion. This is awesome.

Chris

I like this idea a lot. Ascended should not be “craft it or go home.”

You could also throw karma in the mix (especially now that they made it harder to get).

Chris Whiteside.6102:

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))

Good question. And morning/afternoon everyone. Just reading through all the new pages and great discussion. This is awesome.

Chris

I have no problem with this, actually this should be in already like with every other tier of gear

Feyhen.7432:

[…]

Unlocking more skills is not vertical progression if the new skills are not stronger than the old ones, effectively replacing them in your skill bar.

In GW1 you leveled up to 20, and got by then a decent amount of skills that would allow you to do many things. You didn’t have to level up more, and once you got max gear getting more gear was not necessary, but you could get more skills to try new stuff until you got all 1319 of them in a single character.

Skills became part of the horizontal progression, as new skills allowed you to do new things and the same things in different ways, but they weren’t necessarily stronger than the ones you already had.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

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))

Good question. And morning/afternoon everyone. Just reading through all the new pages and great discussion. This is awesome.

Chris

I think it might be tidier to clean up the grind to 500 crafting (which seems to be absurd for the average player) by adding new recipes around the 450/475 mark. Why not add global drops rarely of tradeable tomes that increase a discipline by 5 levels?

Then you could sell players things like the Insignias or even things like weapon components with currencies already in game. That way players still need to make their Vision Crystals but have more options for avoiding the time gating of crafting.

Simple solution for ascendent weapons and armor problem

OK, so the basic problem at the moment is getting ascendent items for alts and different builds – it is just too expensive and time consuming – set of armor + 4-5 weapons cost at least 900 gold + 55 laurels, this is to much for most of the players and its turning the game into constant gold farm, there is no balance between vertical and horizontal progression here.

In order to change it, we need solution which:

- will not destroy existing crafting/acquisition system.
- will not punish players who already made their ascended items.
- will not make acquiring ascendent items for casual players impossible.
- will be easy to implement / will use existing mechanics in the game.

Here comes a very simple idea – lets use the radiant/hellfire/Zenith skin system for ascendent weapons/armors. How would this work? Players will basically unlock weapons/armor in their achievement panel by crafting them (using existing crafting system), then they can use them how many time they want, on every character they have – this would solve the alt problem and really make ascendent worth making. What about different statistics of items? When player will unlock one type of the weapon lets say greatsword, he will need to spend 5 laurels + 3 gold (insignia recipe price) to unlock additional stats he want to have, he can chose them in the panel then. To sum this up – you need to craft every weapon/armor piece once to unlock them, then you just buy ‘recipes’ for additional stats you want.

This is really easy solution to this problem and it uses existing system. Whats important – it still makes crafting ascended items challenging but not insane and its much more balanced. You can add different currencies for recipes like commendations, so its no gonna by only laurels dependent.

That’s basically it, what do you think about it? (sorry for my English

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

CONFINED VERTICAL PROGRESSION -> AWESOME

I’m with Cesmode here. The beauty of fracts is that it doesn’t gate you out of CONTENT like traditional MMOs raids do. So, if ascended only increase in stats inside fracts, people in exotics can still play the content from levels 1-10 but people that gear up like crazy still get better money, etc.

But out there in Tyria, especially WvW we’re all at exotics level, everybody is happy, the grind doesn’t have to be dealt with, the game won’t be alt unfriendly because of ascended, people won’t have issues with the tier, the game is still gonna rock and people can totally progress their stats vertically in fracts if they want, if they don’t, they can still play the content for fun, with little reward other than fun itself, at exotics level.

I think this is absolutely beautiful and simple solution for ascended as far as progression goes.

EXPANDING THIS CONCEPT OF CONFINED VP

In the same way fracts are done, dungeons could also have levels. People could still play them in exotics from 1-10, for example, and then they’d need ascended for higher levels. Again: higher stats in ascended and their infusions would ONLY work in leveled instances, similar to fracts. Everyone can play the content at exotics, but better geared people playing at higher levels get finishers, RANK EMOTES, maybe more gold, ascended drops, etc etc.

If this is how it works, if ascended entirely scales back to exotics in the Open World and WvW, stats can increase indefinitely on gear as far as I’m concerned. I think this is a way to make happy virtually irreconcilable parts of the community.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Randulf.7614:

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

I dont see that as attractive to do though. The game has a fantastic feature in its scaling which maintains challenge at lower level content across the entire game, whether it is zones or dungeons.

If higher fractal player was with me, I’d hope for us both to experience challenge. Otherwise the lower fractal player would feel carried (me) and the higher lvl fractal player would feel bored. The sense of achievemnt for us both would be gone. Remember, people are getting to higher fractals because they are skilled not because of their stats.

It would go against a fundamental ideal of the game you implemented.

Yep.

Really the point of the question was to see if anyone would want to see vertical style progression live anywhere in the game. The question is essentially a forcing function to get a more macro level question answered.

Chris

wvw has small vertical progression only in wvw. people feel forced to spec into guard defense and killer lines for the raw stat buffs, and any time its mentioned on the forums heaps of complaints follow. i dont think adding vertical progression to a certain subsection of the game will help matters any. if guard leech and applied fortitude didnt exist, id still be traited in those lines because i like soloing camps and those lines make it relatively easy instead of ridiculously hard (i wouldnt be able to solo a camp if i were to get a trait reset and not respec, im way too sloppy about it now). but the extra 450 stats mean i dont have to heal to kill the 2nd camp, and that any old average player wont even bring my hp to 1/2 in a duel (and thats partly because ive built my gear around having that extra survivability so i can stack what i want instead of what i feel like i need).

sorry bit of a wall here, but i do feel strongly about this.

Feyhen.7432:

Hello everyone,

i would like to give my point of view.

I have had problems motivating myself to play Guild Wars 2 for a while know. Here is my personal reason why: I love character progresstion.
I love game with a vast amout of thinks where my character can evolve. I love getting new attacks, getting new ways to combine my attacks, getting new cool weapons and abilitys. Mechanics that opens up while new levels of gameplay.

I am not the gear type, i dont care much about horizontal Progression.
I am more in love with vertical progression and this is,

where Guild Wars 2 lacks.

I play as Warrior and although i have plenty of Alts, my Warrior is my favorite.

But since there are so limited skills and abilities my character can obtain, i dont feel like progressing any longer. I know that i could go for some ascended gear but i am not really interesstet in shiny new armor. I would like to be able to choose my own fighting style rather then only my own look.

As the skill system in Guild Wars 2 is right now, people like me will feel unsatisfied without more abilities to be learned.

Personally i would like to see an enhanced combat system with more ways to progress, with more styles to play. The warrior next to me may have a better looking Greatsword than me, but he will always play like me, execute the same weapon skills with that awesome sword like me, no matter what. I feel like there are not enough ways to individualise at the machinical level.

Agreed. I totally disappointed when after a whole year of game play, i only have 1 more healing skill option.

Every extended contents of GW1 are all about “Options”: options to different professions, skills, runes, skins, builds etc.

I think the current vertical progression for a character to level 80 is already too time consuming – compared to GW1. We want to:

• able to change our weapon skills just like what we do when changing slot skills
• more options to traits
• more slot skills
• more elite skills

Yes, I hate vertical progression.

Harbard.5738:

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

CONFINED VERTICAL PROGRESSION -> AWESOME

I’m with Cesmode here. The beauty of fracts is that it doesn’t gate you out of CONTENT like traditional MMOs raids do. So, if ascended only increase in stats inside fracts, people in exotics can still play the content from levels 1-10 but people that gear up like crazy still get better money, etc.

But out there in Tyria, especially WvW we’re all at exotics level, everybody is happy, the grind doesn’t have to be dealt with, the game won’t be alt unfriendly because of ascended, people won’t have issues with the tier, the game is still gonna rock and people can totally progress their stats vertically in fracts if they want, if they don’t, they can still play the content for fun, with little reward other than fun itself, at exotics level.

I think this is absolutely beautiful and simple solution for ascended as far as progression goes.

EXPANDING THIS CONCEPT OF CONFINED VP

In the same way fracts are done, dungeons could also have levels. People could still play them in exotics from 1-10, for example, and then they’d need ascended for higher levels. Again: higher stats in ascended and their infusions would ONLY work in leveled instances, similar to fracts. Everyone can play the content at exotics, but better geared people playing at higher levels get finishers, RANK EMOTES, maybe more gold, ascended drops, etc etc.

If this is how it works, if ascended entirely scales back to exotics in the Open World and WvW, stats can increase indefinitely on gear as far as I’m concerned. I think this is a way to make happy virtually irreconcilable parts of the community.

I wouldn’t include dungeons here. I find it frustrating enough that my friends and guildmembers don’t have enough agony resistance to join me on higher level fractals, I would hate to see this frustration spread to dungeons aswell.

I actually have a question regarding a statement made earlier in the thread, saying that the amount of time it takes to acquire Ascended Armor will be watched.

Does this mean that if it seems easy for a majority of players, that another tier will be added “because we feel Ascended was too easy to get”?

I ask this not as a player with Ascended, but as a player who isn’t going to progress passed Exotic. I don’t play “to progressively get stronger” and all that stuff that keeps getting thrown around. Call me crazy but I like getting my character to the end point and continuing on to actually enjoying the game. Gw1 did an excellent job of this, and Gw2 did before all this Ascended was added.

I’ve already seen players that have full Ascended, due to either paying with money or having farmed the passed months to save up the required materials. I don’t have this luxury for my 6 characters (as a full time college student), and so I’ll be staying at Exotic. I’m already faced with the concern that I’ll be obsolete next to other players, but if Ascended is deemed “too easy” like exotic was and another teir is added I’ll be beyond left in the dust.

I’m not sure if this has been said yet, but one thing that doesn’t sit well with me is the craftable AR used in infusion slots. I love the idea, but I don’t like the reality that you either need to use it or save it.

We should either be able to remove the AR and use that to craft the next one, or to just craft it in the item. If I made a +8 and wanted a +9, I’d either have to not use the +8, or craft 3 total +8s just to get to +9.

I hope this is looked into as what’s the point of progression you can’t use? Especially when it’s unlimited progression

Harbard.5738:

CONFINED VERTICAL PROGRESSION -> AWESOME

I’m with Cesmode here. The beauty of fracts is that it doesn’t gate you out of CONTENT like traditional MMOs raids do. So, if ascended only increase in stats inside fracts, people in exotics can still play the content from levels 1-10 but people that gear up like crazy still get better money, etc.

But out there in Tyria, especially WvW we’re all at exotics level, everybody is happy, the grind doesn’t have to be dealt with, the game won’t be alt unfriendly because of ascended, people won’t have issues with the tier, the game is still gonna rock and people can totally progress their stats vertically in fracts if they want, if they don’t, they can still play the content for fun, with little reward other than fun itself, at exotics level.

I think this is absolutely beautiful and simple solution for ascended as far as progression goes.

EXPANDING THIS CONCEPT OF CONFINED VP

In the same way fracts are done, dungeons could also have levels. People could still play them in exotics from 1-10, for example, and then they’d need ascended for higher levels. Again: higher stats in ascended and their infusions would ONLY work in leveled instances, similar to fracts. Everyone can play the content at exotics, but better geared people playing at higher levels get finishers, RANK EMOTES, maybe more gold, ascended drops, etc etc.

If this is how it works, if ascended entirely scales back to exotics in the Open World and WvW, stats can increase indefinitely on gear as far as I’m concerned. I think this is a way to make happy virtually irreconcilable parts of the community.

I think I would prefer if this kind of addition came with an overhaul of the Infusion system. I made a post about this on reddit a while back but my vision for how Infusions slots could be is that you achieve your small amounts of vertical progression in those slots, rather than adding new tiers of gear.

This means that I like the idea of certain infusions only being active in different parts of the world (kind of like how agony resist only effects fractals at the moment)

My general idea was that Infusions need to be tidied up, they seem confusing at first glance.
Instead of having different infusion slots like offensive and defensive and having to choose, just have every entry level ascended piece with one Minor Infusion Slot and give the player the option, later on, to add a second, more specialised slot.

Reading it all i just wanna state that i’m absolutely opposed the idea of ascended gear stat change via gem store item. That would be massive unfairness ingame (make anotehr ascended weapon/armor set or use gems), not to mention how would you feel if you had to choose between awesome skin in gem store or not flashy but practical stat change? Like kicked in the nuts in my case!