Guild Wars 2

Has the issue of content location concentration been addressed yet in regard to progression?

Obviously many people play mmos for progression, but this is an ANet MMO with a vast world, lots of art and lore.

So is there serious consideration for dispersing content throughout the zones of the world?

Is there consideration for mixing lore/story with the acquisition of character progression?

It’s important, with this discussion topic especially, to address other problem areas, because character progression is such a big deal for the RPG genre that by doing it right you can solve problems in those other areas that can be improved (such as story/lore and empty zones).

Samhayn.2385:

I like this idea of higher drop rates for harder content but it still neglects wvw so I would like to add. Higher drop rates in wvw from Player kills modified by the players rank. Higher rank = better chance to get something good from them. In theory higher rank players should have more experience and thus be more difficult to fight.

In practice this would be really bad. For one thing, it would be too exploitable (i.e. a friend transfers to enemy server, and kills the high-ranked player repeatedly with someone else there to resurrect). It would also unfairly turn high-ranked players into walking target practice. And finally, WvW isn’t really the best place to reward people for being good at PvP – PvP is.

Ok, here’s my personal stance on the game right now. I have eight level 80s, one of each class, all fully geared in exotics, none with Ascended stuff beyond a couple of backpacks and amulets. I have enough Mist to make a few more backpacks, but not nearly enough T6 materials. I have a weaponeer at 500, and every other craft at 450+, but I’m in no huge rush to get them all to 500 just yet, and this would be expensive to do. At the moment I’m just slow-rolling them to 470 by crafting the daily mats.

My main issue with Ascended weapons (and legendaries) is how the one-handed ones cost almost the same price as the two-handers, even though you’ll need two of them. They should cost roughly half the cost instead. I have a TON of ascended level mats. WAY too many. I have tens of thousands of Bloodstone dust, thousands of Dragonite, and at least a few thousand Emperyals. What I don’t have is the large amounts of T6 mats needed to actually make something useful with them. There need to be more recipes that burn Ascended mats without requiring huge stacks of expensive mats like Crystalline Dust, Spores, T6 mats, etc.

As for legendaries, I’ve been playing almost daily since launch, have about 116% MF at this point, and I’ve never once had a precursor drop. I have the other stuff I’d need to make a Legendary, but I don’t have a Precursor so I can’t, and I am not a market tycoon so I can’t afford to buy one either. There need to be more even-handed methods for acquiring them, ones that don’t require RNG, and don’t require a degree in economics.

I have a personal guild that earned enough to get a bank vault, but I’ll never be able to afford launching the guild events stuff, and couldn’t complete them even if I could, so I do NOT want any features that would tie my personal character’s progression to guild progression. I already hate all the various prizes that can easily be acquired by players in large guilds that are unavailable to players who don’t do the guild thing. All guild rewards should be guild-based ONLY, like halls and guild-branded merch and that sort of thing, not easier access to gear or functions that offer a mechanical advantage to players of that guild in non-guild content.

I also have zero interest in Fractals because they take too long. I just cannot set aside the solid hour+ it takes to get through one Fractal cycle, and will not participate in Fractals until they are rebalanced in such a way that you can be in and out within about fifteen minutes. Ideally you’d be able to just do one Fractal at a time instead of having to do an entire 4-round cycle.

I’ll also note that while making the infinite harvesting tools account-bound was a good step, the new one was too expensive, and even so trading them between characters is a hassle. It’d be nice to have a small “account bag” that players could open on any character at any time, where you could store things like harvesting tools and stuff so that any character could pull them out and use them without having to visit a bank first. Even a 6-8 slot bag would be plenty. I would pay cash money for something like this.

I generally like the horizontal progression. I don’t like to feel that I am behind the curve. I’d like to have legendary weapons and ascended armor, but I wouldn’t want to see anything above that. I just need a more casual way of gaining Precursors, and I need more recipes that don’t require stacks of T6 mats, and/or lower priced T6 mats.

Yalora Istairiea.6287:

In this post: Vertical Weapon progression without causing a ruckus

I provided an option for adding some vertical weapon progression without the pitfalls of adding a new BiS tier. The benefit is that making a Legacy Weapon does not actually require you to make a NEW tier but only to modify the current one.

From a Role Playing standpoint the question is: how does a Legendary Weapon get to be Legendary?
By having the very best weapons stand out above all others thru the deeds of their wielders(Legacy Weapons become Legendary over a few generations).

Now if you don’t like the idea of adding a new tier you always have to option to allow these changes to all Ascended items and make this a Horizontal progression instead of a Vertical one though I do not really like that idea as you would be taking Ascended Weapons and turning them into something different and I don’t think that is a path that you really want to tread.

Either way Ascended remains BiS.

Solid read for sure and definitely another worthwhile suggestion on how to make vertical progression moderately less painful. In line with these suggestions maybe check out the Legendary weapons from LotRO. The system is certainly contentious, some love it, some hate it, but conceptually it is a great addition to gameplay, potentially something that could be added conceptually to GW2 gear if there remains the near for vertical gear progression.

Personally I’d still prefer that progression be more attached to one’s character than one’s gear, but at least if progression must be gear based it shouldn’t revolve around throwaway gear and RNG. Few things feel less epic/heroic/legendary in an MMO then the standard blue/yellow/orange/purple gear system where over their career a character finds McGillions of magic items only to junk them because they aren’t best in slot.

Just a few comments overall. First, I think the ability to get ascended gear is not balanced well between the different game modes. In WvW in particular, getting dragonite is way too painful.

Second, I’d like to see all ascended items be account bound vs soul bound. I don’t want to grind to gear up all my alts. Let them share what I’ve earned.

Third, I’d also like to see legendaries be account bound for the same reason as #2. In addition, I’d like to see people have a path to make armor be legendary. This could have the same stats as ascended, but give people who enjoy grinding something to work towards.

My view on progression:

• Legendaries Should Have Cosmetic Progression
  Like the Mad King’s Tome & the Fractal Back skins, Legendaries should have a satisfying progression to their looks. This does 3 things: makes it feel less grindy, shows how much you’ve accomplished & gives people who would otherwise not bother at all, a reason to try for them. Plus it’s just more fun. Heck, I may like the stage 2 Legendary more than the stage 4, either way, i’ll play your game more.
  I also think this should be done with the simple LS cosmetic rewards (backs/gloves/minis) make a much harder tier of Achievements so that your back piece glows. This makes the art end much easier & shows that you had additional commitment to particular LS releases that you really liked.

• Releasing 1 Skill/Skin/Item At a Time Doesn’t Feel Like Personal Progression
  When my next “progression” is simply about waiting for Anet to release that 1 thing that everyone will get at the same time, it doesn’t feel like I’m growing or progressing because of my adventures, it feels like everyone just goes up one notch on the set “progression day”. Unfortunately this is an inherent problem with Non-Expansion Development. Players need a large enough pool of activities so that everyone isn’t just unlocking the same things at the same time. This may also be the reason that permanent content needs always needs to be accumulating.

• I Want to SEE My Progressing
  I know this was discussed earlier in terms of how expensive the production of art assets is. Anything worth getting will have to be considerable in the making, this is unfortunately how things work. So players will always like Armor sets more than a helm. Unfortunately, because armor sets are sold & not earned, they have yet to be part of the horizontal progression. Ascended is the first set of earned armor in a game with cosmetic progression. This is good for revenue, but bad for progression. Also, there is a marked difference in the quality of the art on the Ascended armor & the Jem Store armor & the required use of Transmutation which is also bad for progression.
  However, there are some alternatives that help show your progression without as much asset production:

• Medals This would require going through all gear & placing 2-4 nodes on each set of armor where you could place earned medals & decals. similar to WH40k seals & skulls, a veteran player could have all sorts of cool medallions, awards, seals & fx located on either side of the chest or shoulders. It would be front loaded work to have to place these nodes but the work on making medals would be even easier than making back items & yet make your character look like a true vet without resorting to something as bland as titles. which many people find so boring they don’t even count as progression.

• Armor Progression Instead of selling the kind of cheap fx flavored reskins & garnering the “money grab” press, let us upgrade existing gear in the same way. I’m guessing doing those fx was extremely easy since you just need to make shaders particle emitters & some masks. Well, why not allow players to work towards upgrading current armor to have Grenth, Dwayna, Melandru, Balthazar, Lyssa& Kormir versions of existing skins. This is also a way to let people kind of tweak armor they might not like to be more flavored the way they do like instead of having to make more full sets.
  I don’t really expect this to happen because; why give away easy to make skins when you can sell them? Most importantly:

• Remove Repetitive, Archaic, Cosmetic Gating/Make skins Into an Easy to Use Collection
  This is one area I was extremely surprised that Anet is years behind the current MMO standards. DCUO is the prime example of how cosmetics should be handled. Having individual items with individual looks feels like nothing more than a reason to sell more bag slots. When I get an item, I should be able to use a transmutation stone to unlock the skin. I’m not talking about having skins like in the achievement panel or the pvpvlocker. Even that is pretty clunky. I should be able to right click an arrow next to an equipped item & see a window of my skins, like the skill bar. then I can just click the one I want to currently use. Anything else just seems like a waste of UI space & time. I have to say, I’m surprised Anet missed this MMO convention. They usually seem to want to be on the forefront with features & focus on cosmetics. But this time around it seemed 2 steps back.

I added a mock-up of this UI system below. The items you HAVE should fill up from the top down, as to get rid of unnecessary scrolling.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Is it fair to say that regarding Ascended Gear we would like to see more ways to earn it and in terms of drop rates, a higher percentage chance of acquiring them through this method?

Chris

I’m very sorry Chris, but I will be very blunt.
Could you finally stop going for RNG?

There are a lot of us who hate it and you should already know that.
I leveled all crafting shools for that reason and it cost me fortune. I would probably had a legendary already, but I went another way for my alts and now what?
Do you really want to make all crafters look like total fools because we wasted hundreds of gold coins on your gold sink?

Also making big drop rate will never help us gear alts.
I really don’t want to pray everyday to RNG divine algorithm to get like 1 part of set for one of my 8 alts.

That is why I already wrote it 2 times. Reduce material cost after crafting few weapons/armors (3-5 weapons/6-10 armor pieces) so we can gear alts cheap after loosing a lot of money (and time but one equals the other).

We want to gear up and be done with vertical progression. That’s all we really want and we really, really ask you (all ANet) for that because Ascended is very bad idea, it harmed many players as you can read on the entire forum and you need to make a really good decisions in that regard before the acid will poison more people.

But remember RNG is the worst way you can go.
EVER.

Malediktus.9250:

Changing stats should stay legendary exclusive. Otherwise there is no reason to go for legendary if you dont like the skin.

Stats could go for ascended.
Legendaries were supposed to be accomplishment or cash farm as we see now, there is nothing exclusive in them anymore.

Septemptus.7164:

Malediktus.9250:

Changing stats should stay legendary exclusive. Otherwise there is no reason to go for legendary if you dont like the skin.

Stats could go for ascended.
Legendaries were supposed to be accomplishment or cash farm as we see now, there is nothing exclusive in them anymore.

Yes there is, stat-changing :P

They specifically added that functionality to give legendaries a little more of a meaning, even with their skins being completely awesome.

Adding the same hot-swap stat change functionality to ascended would REALLY remove exclusivity and meaning from Legendaries.

100% agreed with RNG being the worst way to go. If it’s a necessary evil of marketing/business/or game structure, so be it. However, for top of tier loot/rewards, I’m sure a majority of players would rather have a concrete goal to work towards.

EnemyCrusher.7324:

Aeonblade.8709:

I feel like this is completely the wrong direction. All the stats should be unlockable via something in the game mode you play in, not forcing you to do supposedly optional stuff like crafting.

I’m glad you like the idea, but what you said would actually turn me AWAY from that kind of system.

So you would prefer different accomplishments to unlock each combination within each play style? How far would you take that? Just WvW vs PvE? Then you still have the problem of WvW roamers vs WvW zergers vs WvW defenders. In PvE there’s a whole myriad of play styles: dungeon runners, harvester/crafters, farmers, fractal runners, explorers, role-players, achievement hunters, living story focused players, etc, and they will all inevitably complain if they’re forced outside their usual play area. If you try giving all play styles a way to unlock everything by only doing one thing, you’ll end up giving them nothing but a grind.

I feel like the larger grind would be giving people stuff to do that they hate doing. For instance, I’d rather get 10,000 WvW kills for an achievement than have to kill1,000 PvE mobs. I feel like the 1000 PvE mobs is the bigger grind for me.

Honestly i’d be happy if all the skins i’ve earned (especially from achievements) would go into my achievements tab (similar to the zenith stuff)…

i currently have all my bank slots full because i’m too afraid to use the skin on only one of my 8 characters…it seems a bit cruel to have a cool back slot item but only for one character. Not very alt friendly

Malchior.5042:

Septemptus.7164:

Malediktus.9250:

Changing stats should stay legendary exclusive. Otherwise there is no reason to go for legendary if you dont like the skin.

Stats could go for ascended.
Legendaries were supposed to be accomplishment or cash farm as we see now, there is nothing exclusive in them anymore.

Yes there is, stat-changing :P

They specifically added that functionality to give legendaries a little more of a meaning, even with their skins being completely awesome.

But you could make ascended to have like 2 or 3 stats possible (chooseable on soulbinding) and legendaries would always have everything.

Malchior.5042:

Septemptus.7164:

Malediktus.9250:

Changing stats should stay legendary exclusive. Otherwise there is no reason to go for legendary if you dont like the skin.

Stats could go for ascended.
Legendaries were supposed to be accomplishment or cash farm as we see now, there is nothing exclusive in them anymore.

Yes there is, stat-changing :P

They specifically added that functionality to give legendaries a little more of a meaning, even with their skins being completely awesome.

Adding the same hot-swap stat change functionality to ascended would REALLY remove exclusivity and meaning from Legendaries.

100% agreed with RNG being the worst way to go. If it’s a necessary evil of marketing/business/or game structure, so be it. However, for top of tier loot/rewards, I’m sure a majority of players would rather have a concrete goal to work towards.

It makes sense that if Ascended is supposed to be part way between exotic and legendary, then it should have some of the same characteristics. I do agree that perhaps Legendary’s should keep some of their exclusivity, which is why I proposed a system of either adding some stat-changing to a piece of ascended (through a quest or item), or giving them limited stat-change capabilitys (like giving them only the original crafted stats (I think there were 5), while legendary’s would keep the full set of 17).

Right now ascended is ridiculously hard to build (and with the time-gating, actually take longer to build than a legendary), they don’t have the looks of a legendary, and their stat increase really doesn’t justify all the work and gold-sink they require. With limited stat-change abilities they would at least be “worth it” for players to go for in leiu of a legendary…until they go for their legendary.

Over the last year the majority of the horizontal progression in Gw2 has been locked behind RnG based Black Lion Chest. I understand that Anet needs to make money and all but I just feel it was such as wasted opportunity for interesting horizontal progression that would allow players to earn many of these epic looking skins in a more fun, meaningful , and challenging way besides swiping a credit card. I know you cannot give much info but is this something that could change in the future? Me personally I get a better sense of accomplishment knowing I fought and dedicated myself to the challenge to earn something than getting a lucky lotto ticket.

Septemptus.7164:

Malchior.5042:

Septemptus.7164:

Malediktus.9250:

Changing stats should stay legendary exclusive. Otherwise there is no reason to go for legendary if you dont like the skin.

Stats could go for ascended.
Legendaries were supposed to be accomplishment or cash farm as we see now, there is nothing exclusive in them anymore.

Yes there is, stat-changing :P

They specifically added that functionality to give legendaries a little more of a meaning, even with their skins being completely awesome.

But you could make ascended to have like 2 or 3 stats possible (chooseable on soulbinding) and legendaries would always have everything.

Now THERE’S an idea!

It still faces the potential of singling people out based on their choices (New player or rather, just ignorant player doesn’t know Berserker’s and Soldier’s is all you ever need), but I feel it’s more reasonable then doing a copy/paste of the currently Legendary functionality to Ascended Gear.

Suggestion for small correction to Ascended Weapons crafting Recipes:

2-Handed weapons remain unchanged. They fill 5 skill slots and effectively require 500 dragonite ore, empyreal shards, and bloodstone dust.

Off-hand Only weapons (e.g. focus or torch) replace the Vision Crystal with a Lesser Vision Crystal. They fill 2 skill slots and require 200 dragonite ore, empyreal shards, and bloodstone dust.

Main-hand weapons replace the Vision Crystal with a new “Medium Vision Crystal”. They fill 3 skill slots and the new crystal is made with 300 dragonite ore, empyreal shards, and bloodstone dust.

This brings parity to the effort required to craft 2-h weapons vs. 1-h/off-hand builds. Using a main hand weapon in an off-hand slot is slightly overpriced using a 100-mats-per-skill-slot model, but its still far more forgiving than the 1,000 mats it takes now.

Last step in a perfect world would be to refund the excess 200 (for main hand) or 300 (off-hand) of each combined material via mail. These could be returned in their 100:1 forms (ingots, stars, and bricks).

If the system can track ‘chest’ weapons vs. crafted weapons they could be excluded, though there is a case to be made that a chest should always grant 1 weapon and the appropriate ‘left over’ mats to prevent chests always being converted into 2-h weapons…

Guitarzero.8316:

Honestly i’d be happy if all the skins i’ve earned (especially from achievements) would go into my achievements tab (similar to the zenith stuff)…

i currently have all my bank slots full because i’m too afraid to use the skin on only one of my 8 characters…it seems a bit cruel to have a cool back slot item but only for one character. Not very alt friendly

I agree that this needs to be addressed. I HATE the idea that I might lose some of the awesome skins that I earned in LS, but even with 8 alts, I have run out of characters to put things on…and I still have a ton of skins in my bank (mostly soulbound onto things for one of my characters). There needs to be some kind of skin-library for anything that was gotten through the living story or gem-store so that these skins aren’t lost when you want to change your looks.

Nike.2631:

Suggestion for small correction to Ascended Weapons crafting Recipes:

2-Handed weapons remain unchanged. They fill 5 skill slots and effectively require 500 dragonite ore, empyreal shards, and bloodstone dust.

Off-hand Only weapons (e.g. focus or torch) replace the Vision Crystal with a Lesser Vision Crystal. They fill 2 skill slots and require 200 dragonite ore, empyreal shards, and bloodstone dust.

Main-hand weapons replace the Vision Crystal with a new “Medium Vision Crystal”. They fill 3 skill slots and the new crystal is made with 300 dragonite ore, empyreal shards, and bloodstone dust.

This brings parity to the effort required to craft 2-h weapons vs. 1-h/off-hand builds. Using a main hand weapon in an off-hand slot is slightly overpriced using a 100-mats-per-skill-slot model, but its still far more forgiving than the 1,000 mats it takes now.

Last step in a perfect world would be to refund the excess 200 (for main hand) or 300 (off-hand) of each combined material via mail. These could be returned in their 100:1 forms (ingots, stars, and bricks).

If the system can track ‘chest’ weapons vs. crafted weapons they could be excluded, though there is a case to be made that a chest should always grant 1 weapon and the appropriate ‘left over’ mats to prevent chests always being converted into 2-h weapons…

+1 to this.

Aeonblade.8709:

EnemyCrusher.7324:

Aeonblade.8709:

I feel like this is completely the wrong direction. All the stats should be unlockable via something in the game mode you play in, not forcing you to do supposedly optional stuff like crafting.

I’m glad you like the idea, but what you said would actually turn me AWAY from that kind of system.

So you would prefer different accomplishments to unlock each combination within each play style? How far would you take that? Just WvW vs PvE? Then you still have the problem of WvW roamers vs WvW zergers vs WvW defenders. In PvE there’s a whole myriad of play styles: dungeon runners, harvester/crafters, farmers, fractal runners, explorers, role-players, achievement hunters, living story focused players, etc, and they will all inevitably complain if they’re forced outside their usual play area. If you try giving all play styles a way to unlock everything by only doing one thing, you’ll end up giving them nothing but a grind.

I feel like the larger grind would be giving people stuff to do that they hate doing. For instance, I’d rather get 10,000 WvW kills for an achievement than have to kill1,000 PvE mobs. I feel like the 1000 PvE mobs is the bigger grind for me.

What about activities that require dedication from a particular game mode?

For example:

• For crafting, alter crafting so Ascended can be made at 450. At 475, Infusions, Runes / Sigils can be added to a piece of gear. At 500, Inscriptions / Insignia’s can be added.
• For WvW, allow players to unlock something on their piece of armour every X ranks. For example, after rank 50: every 5 ranks an Infusion, every 10 ranks a Rune / Sigil, every 25 ranks a stat combination, with one of each unlockable as soon as you hit 50.
• For Fractal runners (who have reached Level 10) and dungeon runners (who have unlocked Dungeon Master), they have to find the hidden bosses in a set of Fractals / along each path, with one in each Fractal / path. Each boss gives an item. 3 of these items can be used to unlock a stat combination, with dungeon tokens / Fractal Relics unlocking Runes / Sigils and Infusions.
• For OWPvE players, make use of jumping puzzles, mini-dungeons ect alongside world bosses.

New item concept:
[Ascension Crystal]
Consumable, account-bound, ascended quality.
Begins the process of ascension, allowing a piece of equipment to reach its true potential. Double-click to apply this item to any piece of exotic equipment.

Acquisition:

• Crafting at rank 500. Vision Crystal + x Dark Matter. Each crafting profession crafts vision crystals that work only for equipment types that profession can craft.
• Laurels. Less than the cost of an amulet.
• Dungeon tokens. Around 400-500.
• Badges of Honor. Around 300.
• Guild commendations vendor. 6 commendations.
• Pristine Fractal Relics, 5
• The intention of the price is to be lower than regular ascended items from that source, as after usage the player still needs to do more work.

Mechanics:
Apply it to an item using a similar interface to transmutation. After it’s applied to the item, that item’s tooltip expands to include a progress bar, and a list of tasks which contribute to it. When the bar is filled out, the item becomes ascended quality. Rings, Amulets and Accessories become “Unidentified Ascended Ring/Amulet/Accessory” and when being equipped ask the player which of the ascended trinkets with that stat spread it should become. Back Items ask the player which infusion slot they want at the next time they’re equipped. Both of these pop a notification similar to the “You have equipped an item with no stats” when equipping items that allow you to choose stat spreads.

The process of ascending the item itself is different for each item. Several tasks are semi-randomly assigned, and doing any of these tasks with the item equipped fills out the progress bar slightly; like a heart, the player can choose to ignore certain tasks. These tasks should always include at the minimum something that can be done in WvW and something that can be done in Open World content, and may be further flavoured based on the item type, stat spread or skin of the item (have a tag system assigned to the skins in the database and use that to fill the random table for the choice).

For example, a weapon may task the player to kill champion/legendary mobs, a cleric equip might ask the player to heal other players, a Norn cultural armor piece may ask the player to complete events in the Shiverpeaks. The potential list could include anything that might appear in the daily/monthly; the WvW list could include any tasks from the season meta achievement.

The exact value of each task can vary; “Kill mobs” would be worth less than “Kill veteran or higher mobs” would be worth less than “Kill champion or higher mobs”, etc. It’s also ok if this is somewhat grindy, as long as the player is given a variety of options. The timegate here should not be a hard gate, but rather that it will take a certain amount of effort to ascend the item.

End result:

• New process of ascension. Time-intensive instead of resource-intensive.
• Gives a variety of tasks, but doesn’t force the player to commit a minimum amount of effort to any given task.
• Requires Exotic as a baseline, ensuring that ascended is directly in the gap between Exotic and Legendary.
• Does not obsolete previous gear, as it is the previous gear. Allows players to keep their skins without transmutation.
• Does not give the player a new skin; current ascended skins remain rewards for reaching ascended using those methods.
• Does not heavily consume resources that are used to make legendary weapons.
• Requires the player to actually play using the character they’re ascending.

Ooooooh! Nice work on the Master Sticky! =)

Chris, do you plan to come up with a single proposal from this effort, or would it be possible to do a few proposals and let the player base vote on it, similar to Evan/Eileen?

TheDaiBish.9735:

• For OWPvE players, make use of jumping puzzles, mini-dungeons ect alongside world bosses.

Ok, I know I mis-read this initially, but I have to share:

Imagine a jump puzzle to climb the Shatterer DURING the fight. You go back to the tail and start jumping. It’s narrow. It’s tricky. Things try to eat your face. You have broad ledges you must reach and cling to when the Shatter takes off.

Anyone who reaches the top gets the Achievement and a chest, but the FIRST person to the top during each event gets to smash a crystal on the back of the Shatterer’s head that immediately inflicts damage equal to 10% of its total life and gets some modestly awesome prize (like an extra 25 Dragonite ore) for coming in first on this crazy race .

((Yes, I play a lot of platform-puzzle games on my consoles. Ico and Shadow of the Colossus rule. God of War and Castlevania have both done really good monster climbs too!))

Rooks Zaer.5846:

ptitminou.6489:

A lot of the ideas here seem so simple that I cannot imagine them not coming up at all during your meetings. Most of those should NOT seem new to you guys.

Just wanted to echo this. Ideas on how to do a better job at progression have been all over the forums for the better part of a year now. This issue still being in a pre-planning phase is…troubling.

Add to this the fact that GW1 is basically -the- holy grail on how to do interesting character progression and it makes the current state of progression in GW2 absolutely baffling. It’s like a master chef serving burnt toast and raw eggs.

This is the sort of stuff that ANet needs to talk about, but refuses to.

Without a roadmap on where things are going and what sort of options have been considered already (and why they have been opted out of), it’s a pretty difficult road to see the CDI going anywhere. One of the most agreed upon points in the last CDI Process thread was that more focused discussion is needed and letting players deeper into the development process is a key way to do that. It also makes the CDI look bad even on a surface level because, yeah, many of the ideas being put forward in this thread and the others have been put forward and discussed before (some even as far back as launch).

Nike.2631:

Suggestion for small correction to Ascended Weapons crafting Recipes:

2-Handed weapons remain unchanged. They fill 5 skill slots and effectively require 500 dragonite ore, empyreal shards, and bloodstone dust.

Off-hand Only weapons (e.g. focus or torch) replace the Vision Crystal with a Lesser Vision Crystal. They fill 2 skill slots and require 200 dragonite ore, empyreal shards, and bloodstone dust.

Main-hand weapons replace the Vision Crystal with a new “Medium Vision Crystal”. They fill 3 skill slots and the new crystal is made with 300 dragonite ore, empyreal shards, and bloodstone dust.

This brings parity to the effort required to craft 2-h weapons vs. 1-h/off-hand builds. Using a main hand weapon in an off-hand slot is slightly overpriced using a 100-mats-per-skill-slot model, but its still far more forgiving than the 1,000 mats it takes now.

Something along these lines would be worthwhile IMO.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Samhayn.2385:

I like this idea of higher drop rates for harder content but it still neglects wvw so I would like to add. Higher drop rates in wvw from Player kills modified by the players rank. Higher rank = better chance to get something good from them. In theory higher rank players should have more experience and thus be more difficult to fight.

Interesting idea.

Chris

How about this?
– Increased drop rate for currently winning server +X% vs both other servers
– Increased drop rate against highest-ranked server +X/2% for 2nd&3rd place rank
– Increased drop rate against highest-scored server +X/2% for 2nd&3rd place score

This makes it easier to encourage people to come out to WvW, and splitting it this way encourages the two weaker servers to band together to fight the stronger server, making for a more interesting match all around.

Nike.2631:

TheDaiBish.9735:

• For OWPvE players, make use of jumping puzzles, mini-dungeons ect alongside world bosses.

Ok, I know I mis-read this initially, but I have to share:

Imagine a jump puzzle to climb the Shatterer DURING the fight. You go back to the tail and start jumping. It’s narrow. It’s tricky. Things try to eat your face. You have broad ledges you must reach and cling to when the Shatter takes off.

Anyone who reaches the top gets the Achievement and a chest, but the FIRST person to the top during each event gets to smash a crystal on the back of the Shatterer’s head that immediately inflicts damage equal to 10% of its total life and gets some modestly awesome prize (like an extra 25 Dragonite ore) for coming in first on this crazy race .

((Yes, I play a lot of platform-puzzle games on my consoles. Ico and Shadow of the Colossus rule. God of War and Castlevania have both done really good monster climbs too!))

You know…I’ve always wanted to play Shadow of the Colossus, but never got around to it.

Sounds pretty cool, although I can think of a few issues:

• Competitiveness in an event that is supposed to be co-operative.
• Norns and Charr either need to go on a diet, or the Asura need to drink more milk and grow a bit.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Is it fair to say that regarding Ascended Gear we would like to see more ways to earn it and in terms of drop rates, a higher percentage chance of acquiring them through this method?

Chris

Definitely. More ways to obtain ascended weapons and armor other than crafting. I myself am into WvW, and I think it would be great to see ascended chests (that way you get to choose what stat you want) for sale from a WvW vendor for something like 2,000 badges of honor (so there’s time/effort) and 10 gold (money sink). That way it is balanced. I’m not sure how many dungeon tokens would be appropriate or how many fractal/pristine fractal relics etc. would be required for an ascended chest, as I personally don’t do those, so I can’t comment there.

I think it would be great to see a higher chance of obtaining an ascended chest with the higher WvW rank you are too. In 443+ ranks, my elementalist has not received one ascended chest. And the one and only ascended ring I ever received from a WvW rank up chest had horrible stats (I got the ‘lucce seal’) and has been sitting in my bank ever since – it would be awesome to be able to choose which ascended ring you get in the future, should you get one from a rank up chest.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Samhayn.2385:

Spawne.3128:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Is it fair to say that regarding Ascended Gear we would like to see more ways to earn it and in terms of drop rates, a higher percentage chance of acquiring them through this method?

Chris

I would say that is true pretty much about all items. However I see this strategy being problematic unless you increase the overall amount of items in the game. Supply vs demand basically. Scale it so that ascended weapons/armor only drop from the hardest of pve related events in the game, and exotics drop from lower difficulty events, and just leave the drop rate of precursors the same so that you dont diminish the rarity of legendary’s. PvE in this game has so much potential however has been largely undeveloped.

I like this idea of higher drop rates for harder content but it still neglects wvw so I would like to add. Higher drop rates in wvw from Player kills modified by the players rank. Higher rank = better chance to get something good from them. In theory higher rank players should have more experience and thus be more difficult to fight.

Interesting idea.

Chris

Chris,

I don’t know if you played Warhammer Online at all, but they had a system like this.

For those unfamiliar, WAR had a tier system that required you be fully geared in one set before you could not get one shot by the new content and grind that for your next set. Well, early on the only way to get new gear was through RNG bags, and only 3-6 people got these bags based on some arcane public quest system. To help progression into the enemy cities, they added additional ways to get the gear. The most noteworthy was that low stat items (such as gloves or boots) could rarely drop off of players and players had a chance to drop a crest based on their rank(or a lower rank). These crests could be turned in for gear of the associated rank. There was no better feeling than having an epic fight against an enemy player and finally best him and looting a Sovereign crest (even if you needed like 250 for a chest piece alone). You knew you just beat one of the enemies big dogs!

This could be one way to add alternative paths to ascended gear which I hear alot of people asking for; killing high level foes for token that can be traded for dragonite, emphyreal fragments or even T6 mats(assuming this doesn’t wreck the economy). I know you can get ascended weapons chests from WvW ranks, but you can get WvW ranks for following the karma train. Finally crafting the last piece of your ascended armor piece after slaying your 250th Blackgate Gold Legend is a reward for skill (assuming you didn’t zerg down all 250 enemies) and is a story worth telling.

In WAR, the community was very small and therefore very tight. You knew everyone on your server who was RR80. They were the commanders calling all the shots, the assassins who were in and out before the health bar could render from full to empty, the healers who were unkillable and saved your life countless times. They were legends and knew they had a target on their head, knew they could drop the best gear to the enemy and carried that responsibility accordingly.

So, would ArenaNet be open to letting us, as a community, be the gate keepers to gear? Also, would people be open to being a gatekeeper? Does the zergy nature of T1 destroy this possibility?

Septemptus.7164:

Malchior.5042:

Septemptus.7164:

Malediktus.9250:

Changing stats should stay legendary exclusive. Otherwise there is no reason to go for legendary if you dont like the skin.

Stats could go for ascended.
Legendaries were supposed to be accomplishment or cash farm as we see now, there is nothing exclusive in them anymore.

Yes there is, stat-changing :P

They specifically added that functionality to give legendaries a little more of a meaning, even with their skins being completely awesome.

But you could make ascended to have like 2 or 3 stats possible (chooseable on soulbinding) and legendaries would always have everything.

Still a terrible idea. How many people need more than 3 stat combinations? There really are only 2-3 truly best in slot stats for each class.

ozma.3498:

Samhayn.2385:

I like this idea of higher drop rates for harder content but it still neglects wvw so I would like to add. Higher drop rates in wvw from Player kills modified by the players rank. Higher rank = better chance to get something good from them. In theory higher rank players should have more experience and thus be more difficult to fight.

In practice this would be really bad. For one thing, it would be too exploitable (i.e. a friend transfers to enemy server, and kills the high-ranked player repeatedly with someone else there to resurrect). It would also unfairly turn high-ranked players into walking target practice. And finally, WvW isn’t really the best place to reward people for being good at PvP – PvP is.

the mechanic is on the game to remove rewards from people recently killed.

high ranked people should be targets. Really it adds a little intensity to wvw.

pvp rewards are being revamped, pve is rewarded, why should wvw be left out?

More ideas from the peanut gallery:

A nested soulbound Ascended Chest (first choice sets Armor/Weapon, second choice sets Stat combination, third choice sets item slot) delivered to each character on their 2nd birthday would be a nice way to level the field between alts and mains…

Just make very sure we can’t concentrate multiple chests on to a single character .

Nike.2631:

More ideas from the peanut gallery:

A nested soulbound Ascended Chest (first choice sets Armor/Weapon, second choice sets Stat combination, third choice sets item slot) delivered to each character on their 2nd birthday would be a nice way to level the field between alts and mains…

Just make very sure we can’t concentrate multiple chests on to a single character .

Not sure I like the soulbound idea. Some people might have re-rolled and would end receiving gear bound to an alt they don’t play much.

Reesha.7901:

Nike.2631:

More ideas from the peanut gallery:

A nested soulbound Ascended Chest (first choice sets Armor/Weapon, second choice sets Stat combination, third choice sets item slot) delivered to each character on their 2nd birthday would be a nice way to level the field between alts and mains…

Just make very sure we can’t concentrate multiple chests on to a single character .

Not sure I like the soulbound idea. Some people might have re-rolled and would end receiving gear bound to an alt they don’t play much.

I’m going to second the no soulbound. Think of it this way, by the time most people hit their second birthday, they would probably have their main in ascendeds. What would they do then? Sell the precious gear to a vendor for a few silver? Keep it in their bank and hog up the space?

I like that the question is being asked now, but Ascended gear should have been put on the dungeon vendors. There are tokens you can buy to make exotic jewelry from the dungeon vendors that cost 200 tokens. Why not make a way to use those with a piece of exotic armor from the same dungeon as the token and something from Miyani and put it in the forge for an ascended version of the armor or weapon.

Don’t lose sight of what should be our ability to play the game how we want to play it. We should be able to get gear from multiple sources and play styles.

If these two week updates are supposed to feel like an “Expansion” over the course of a year, then the content needs to feel complete. We should be able to get Ascended weapons and armor from Guild comms, dungeon vendors, WvW vendors, crafting, random drops, and fractals. That would have been how we would have gotten it in an expansion. New races, classes, skills, and zones are also a huge part of an expansion.

Reesha.7901:

Not sure I like the soulbound idea. Some people might have re-rolled and would end receiving gear bound to an alt they don’t play much.

That pieces would be locked to lesser-played characters, allowing them to catch-up slightly compared to more played characters in your stable is entirely the point .

I have 16 character slots – do I deserve 2 characters fully geared with Ascendeds just because I rolled them all within a month or so of the game launching? I’m inclined to say ‘no’. But each character getting exactly 1 Ascended goes a long way towards addressing the ‘left behind’ status those alts are laboring under now…

The proportional difference between 5:0:0:0:0 and 6:1:1:1:1 is literally the difference between 1/6th and divide by zero .

Mirta.5029:

Think of it this way, by the time most people hit their second birthday, they would probably have their main in Ascendeds. What would they do then?

I’m pretty sure I just read the larger part of 20 pages of concerns/complaints that the cost of setting up multiple Ascended Gear sets is beyond all tolerance. I’m thinking people will find something to do with a freebie…

Sell the precious gear to a vendor for a few silver? Keep it in their bank and hog up the space?

I simply cannot imagine what you’re keeping in a character’s personal bags that would take priority over storing one BiS item ’til you were ready to use it.

Put the stack of ‘small scales’ down, Sir Packrat!

In any event, it was an avenue for acquisition quite unlike what had been discussed to date. Something to consider.

I think the general idea of a skin locker is great but what I don’t agree with is it containing infinite amounts of unlocked content for free if you just own the skin. I think there should be a price associated with the replication of skins from the locker or the addition of skins to the locker. This would make it a more interesting feature while also allowing for somewhat meaningful decisions to take place.

With that being said, I have two ideas.

One, is that the locker works on a charging system where, everytime you use it, the “charge” on the locker decreases until depleted. Do I create a copy of X armor for my new build or do I create skins for my low level alts before depleting the charge and having to wait for it to recharge thorugh other means? Locker can be “recharged” with Karma, mystic coins, skill points, etc. The more valuable the skin, the more it takes away from your “charge” pool.

Or two, you could make it where players have to “inscribe” every piece of armor that they want added to their locker by using Karma, mystic coins, skill points, etc. The more valuable the armor skin, the more it costs to inscribe.

I figure I’d add my 2 cents since it seems like such a great oppurtunity to do so.

Sirendor.1394:

Mungrul.9358:

The idea is that the material you craft the gear with doesn’t affect stats at all; rather it determines what the gear looks like. It means more work for the art team, yes, but when it comes down to it, one of the biggest complaints about crafted gear is the restricted set of appearances.

Aha. I think I see where you are going. For example heavy armour can have ‘berserker’ inscription: reflects itself in heavy armour with a typical look for a berserker? A heavy helm with horn for example. Carrion could look a little gloomy. Cleric could have some glow or other, or a particularly ‘elegant’ look.

I had an idea similar to this, but I said Ascended skins should be based on the way you obtain it rather than it’s stats (assuming you could buy it with account-bound currencies, such as Badges of Honor). I think that would add prestige to Ascended armor because it’s like saying “Hey… that guy is good at WvW” or “That guy is good at Dungeons” or whatever.

“The difference between medicine and poison is in the dose”.
This game needs a little bit of vertical progression

FeveredDreamer.2693:

I realize this is a bit behind the current debate but it was a good question which seemed worth answering.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Agreed. Let’s spend a little more time discussing and brainstorming the following questions:

Controversial: Vertical Progression acquisition can be a pain but what if any elements do you like about Vertical Progression?

Lets keep coming up with some awesome Horizontal Progression systemic ideas and also reward ideas?

Try to tie these ideas into the core foundation of GW2’s systems and mechanics please.

Chris

While I prefer horizontal progression, vertical progression does not in and of itself suck, the problem is that ANet chose perhaps the poorest quality way of developing vertical progression. Vertical progression via items is particularly terrible because of its innately “temporary” feeling, bottom line sooner or later all of the effort you’ve put into vertical progression via item grind becomes pointless. I’ll try to explain my thoughts on the subject succinctly below.

What is fun about vertical progression?

• The feeling of character growth
• The thrill of progress and the feeling that your efforts are being rewarded
• The ability to display your time and effort spent

What is not fun about vertical progression?

• The invalidation of all of your past efforts
• The feeling of monotony

Never found much fun in “character growth”. Making numbers go up just for playing longer feels more like cheating and lying to myself. “Hey! I’ve gotten better … well not really I’ve just made the numbers go up so everything is easier now.” It’s the same sort of “fun” that can be had by popping in a game genie and then running around doing things you aren’t supposed to but that tends kill a game’s repeatability very quickly.

Actually learning to make better use of available tools(skills, weapons, traits, etc) is fun. The more options(horizontal) you have the more often that can occur.

Regarding transmuting items

Stars.2179:

So, which one is it? You agree that you don’t HAVE TO pay real money for that then? Your concern is that it costs 2g-5g per stone then. And that might or might not be a valid one depending on the opinion. Each one to their own.

Personally I don’t think transmutation is a “basic” gearing up process. It is rather a luxurious one, so charging 2-5g is fine. But that’s just my opinion.

I think it is, since the game doesn’t really have much of an end-game. Much like with GW1, levels are not as important as gear is. Working on your gear is eventually what you’ll be doing after level 80, and that includes cosmetics. Anet is well aware how important armor looks are, which is why each dungeon has its own armor. So quite quickly you’ll be working on the look of your character. In that regard, transmutation is an essential element of the game.

Most players should have a large pile of unused Transmutation Stones lying around in their bank by now. The fact that these work up to level 79, is kind of silly really. I think Anet knows quite well how important transmuting level 80 items is to players, which is why that is locked behind a gemstore-only item. And I think we should have a normal way to do something so basic.

Regarding time gating

I really hate time gated content. It is the equivalent of saying: “We just want you to waste more time doing this, without us adding any extra fun to the process”.

If something should take longer, then there should be more content to validate wasting all that time. For example, crafting ascended weapons. Rather than having materials that you can only craft once a day, I would prefer to play a new dungeon in which these materials drop. Because then I’m actually involved with acquiring the materials, rather than waiting for a timer. Stretch our the process by giving us things to do, and not with a time-wasting timer.

It’s been a long day at work, so please understand that if I come across as less than pleasant, it is not my intention.

When this thread was started, we were discussing vertical vs. horizontal progression.

We, en masse, were trying to discuss what types of vertical progression was acceptable and what kinds were not, and also suggesting ways to incorporate more horizontal progression.

What it has seemed to turn into is a large discussion of Ascended gear. We truly need more discussion of horizontal progression.

I am one of those players who truly does not care if I ever get ascended gear or a legendary. (if it happens someday, cool, but not actively pursuing it.) The key for me is that there be no content that requires ascended gear. I do not want to be locked out of something simply because my gear doesn’t cut it. Yes, I know that some players will be elitists and ask to ping armor, and if you don’t have ascended, you’ll get kicked. That isn’t what I mean.

Horizontal progression to me is having the world at my fingertips, and being able to gain shineys or awards that give me the sense of accomplishment other than having a specific set of gear that says “Hey, I’ve got money!!!” or “I can farm better than you can!!!”

I think that some of what we need is less Gem Shop items and more In Game items. Why should all the cool armor and weapon skins be Gem Shop? I am not opposed to them, but there needs to be a balance of in-game rewards as well. We have a number of sets of back items (just lovely…/endsarcasm) but “special” armor or weapon skins are almost exclusively gem shop items or BL Chest lottery, which again, is Gem Shop related in that you have to get the keys from somewhere since they don’t drop in the world very often. I can honestly say that the only keys I have ever gotten have been from PS rewards or purchased. I can’t remember any other time I have ever had one drop.

I also suggest that there be a chance to get unique skins from Champ encounters. I wouldn’t want them to drop from low-level champs, but anywhere there’s a level 75-80 champ that takes more than a few people and more than just spamming 111111611111 to kill. If that’s still too much, how about Temple events? or maybe completing the zone meta event for a level 80 zone?

Anyways, I digress. The point of this post is that we have pretty much forsaken the discussion of implementing any horizontal progression in favor of discussing the pros and cons of Ascended armor and how to go about getting it.

TL;DR:
Might it be a possibility someday to open a CDI solely on ideas for horizontal progression and leave this one to the discussion of Ascended gear?

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Samhayn.2385:

Spawne.3128:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Is it fair to say that regarding Ascended Gear we would like to see more ways to earn it and in terms of drop rates, a higher percentage chance of acquiring them through this method?

Chris

I would say that is true pretty much about all items. However I see this strategy being problematic unless you increase the overall amount of items in the game. Supply vs demand basically. Scale it so that ascended weapons/armor only drop from the hardest of pve related events in the game, and exotics drop from lower difficulty events, and just leave the drop rate of precursors the same so that you dont diminish the rarity of legendary’s. PvE in this game has so much potential however has been largely undeveloped.

I like this idea of higher drop rates for harder content but it still neglects wvw so I would like to add. Higher drop rates in wvw from Player kills modified by the players rank. Higher rank = better chance to get something good from them. In theory higher rank players should have more experience and thus be more difficult to fight.

Interesting idea.

Chris

“Higher rank = better chance to get something good” leads directly to people from opposing servers organizing and taking turns killing each other to rank up and earn good loot.

Hi,
I don’t know if my previous post was lost, but I would really appreciate an answer about these two questions:
- Is ascended the latest tier to ever appear in GW2?
- Is the level cap going to be increased one day?

Without answering those two questions I firmly believe this topic is useless.

The developpers affirm that ascended is a wanted (required?) gear level between exotics and Legendary. We are making all these proposals with that in mind. If there is to be a higher tier later, this topic has no value. If level cap increases and lvl90 exotics or lvl90 ascended appears for example, this topic is useless too.

Without having a clear view of what you plan for the future how can we help you?

i’ll say this again.

allow us to have horizontal progression in our gear.
allow each gear to unlock stats one by one, swap stats when out of combat via a menu.
allow each gear to unlock skins one by one, swap skins when out of combat via a menu.

best horizontal gear progression ever!

thank you.

please help to spread and support.

also, please remove level cap increase off the table.
please also remove higher tier than ascended off the table.

this means the maximum level 80 will not be increased, ever. and the highest tier ascended will not be any higher. ever. please. yes. thank you.

So any comments about the Magic: the Gathering model (Type II/Standard)? IMO it’s a great way to keep the game fresh.

Septemptus.7164:

But remember RNG is the worst way you can go.
EVER.

While RNG can be quite disheartening, so is the alternative that GW2 uses a lot: the long grind.

Personally I’d prefer a reasonable amount of RNG in addition to a reliable way of acquisition over just the reliable way of acquisition (currently crafting).

RNG offers an opportunity for people that hate grinding, but are willing to ‘give it a shot’ on a free evening. Unless the chance is so small that it is completely pointless (as it currently is when considering ascended gear…)

Ashabhi.1365:

It’s been a long day at work, so please understand that if I come across as less than pleasant, it is not my intention.

When this thread was started, we were discussing vertical vs. horizontal progression.

We, en masse, were trying to discuss what types of vertical progression was acceptable and what kinds were not, and also suggesting ways to incorporate more horizontal progression.

What it has seemed to turn into is a large discussion of Ascended gear. We truly need more discussion of horizontal progression.

Chris wanted to collaboratively build a proposal for vertical progression as it currently stands in the game. So we could get that out of the way and then focus on horizontal progression (which he is eager to get to, but he deemed ascended gear/vertical progression important enough as a topic to spend some more time on that first.)

This CDI will be running for quite some time still so just a bit of patience.

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

i’ll say this again.

allow us to have horizontal progression in our gear.
allow each gear to unlock stats one by one, swap stats when out of combat via a menu.
allow each gear to unlock skins one by one, swap skins when out of combat via a menu.

This is exactly what we need.

But I would also like to see a solution to the issue with Runes. These things can not be swapped around easily, and are really expensive. In GW1 swapping runes was much easier, since people could put their superior rune on the head gear, and then only swap that item around. In GW2 you usually apply runes to the entire armor to get all the bonuses. If we make swapping out statistics easier on armor, then please do the same for swapping out runes.

Lord Kuru.3685:

So any comments about the Magic: the Gathering model (Type II/Standard)? IMO it’s a great way to keep the game fresh.

I did say earlier, but I think it’s a bad model, simply because it removes progression made.