Guild Wars 2

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Hi Guhracie,

The point you made that bothers me is this:

‘And, truly, without more meaningful feedback than “Interesting ideas” there’s not much more that we can do with the discussion, in my opinion.’

We are very passionate about the game, the community and the CDI. As such a huge amount of effort goes into it both from a Dev and community standpoint. I am sorry if I have upset you, that is not my intention. The point I am trying to make is that the CDI isn’t about what the Devs say, it is about the discussion we all have and the conclusions that are drawn from this. Thus if I am saying that somehting is an interesting idea I am saying that I am thinking about it and that it is worth group discussion in my opinion.

I hope this makes more sense?

Oh and in regard to folks questioning how I play. Well that really is water of a ducks back, and I would rather expend my energy have a healthy conversation than spending time explaining the obvious.

Cheers

Chris

Okay, I see where we broke down, and I totally understand why that sounded insulting. That is absolutely not what I meant by it. I don’t believe you are brushing us off by responding with “interesting ideas,” but I feel like there’s a point where the discussion does become circular due to your own constraints of not making promises or getting into specifics (both are totally reasonable and understandable).

As for me sounding impatient…. that’s because I am. I came into this thread excited by the topics, and I feel like the topic has become “ascended armor” when it was supposed to be about progression. I am not even slightly interested in discussing ascended armor. If I have a single crafting skill above 400, it was on accident. I am in no way saying that it’s not a valid topic of discussion for vertical progression, please do not misunderstand me. I just had a different expectation of what this topic would be covering, and I wasn’t expecting it to be dominated by ascended armor.

I’d be totally happy to sit out of a CDI called “Ascended Armor” and let the people who feel strongly about it discuss it. But I currently feel like I have to plod through posts about ascended armor so I don’t miss something that might be relevant to my interests… which is why I mentioned a summary of what has been mentioned about vertical progression. I’m anxious to get to horizontal progression because it’s one of the biggest reasons I switched to GW2 from WoW. And if I knew I wasn’t missing out on any of that discussion (or other vertical progress ideas not pertaining directly to ascended armor), I’d probably be spending way less time in this thread.

I’m terrible at portraying tone in text, but I am seriously sorry you felt like I was diminishing your efforts in this thread. That’s not what I meant at all. Thank you for your clarification. I think I’m going to take a break from foruming for right now- sometimes I get too stuck in my own head, as well.

Sidebar:

Palador.2170:

In CoH, I saw this happen, leaving the remaining/new devs high and dry because there was too much un/poorly documented stuff. I also saw someone good with math (Arcanaville) basically tear the game apart and show the devs how parts of the game REALLY worked, as opposed to how they thought it worked.

Holy heck… Arcanaville. Now there be a name to conjure with. I think I only ever once conclusively ‘won’ an argument with her and it was a shining moment. If you wanted to square off with her you needed to know your stuff backwards, forwards, and probably in hexadecimal too!

Good times.

End Sidebar.

Isaiah Cartwright.8569:

Pro’s
- Time gates help players with less time (If I can only play an hour a day, my time is more rewarded.)
- Repeatable time gates add “pressure” to log in which helps create possible reward loops and play patterns (I want to log in every day, which often can become play experiences, talk with friends, strengthen relationships and get players into a pattern of seeing what’s going on.)
- Time gates equalize players by bringing the hardcore and the causal players closer together. (Players play at an variety of different times and intensities. This makes balancing wealth disparity and play times/progression much harder without actual gates.)
- Time gates help group players up (guilds 1 week timer helps group a large amount of play times into the same time frame.)

Are those really all pros?
For example dungeon time gating. I’ve already done Path X of Dungeon Y then a friend ask “hey do you want to do Path X of Dungeon Y?”. Without the gating it’s much easier to say “sure!”. With gating it’s more like “well maybe … I already did that today I guess mobs still drop stuff right?”
Alternatively “since the game has seen fit to stop me from doing anymore I might as well log off, no point hanging around”.

Time gates can also prevent people from catching up because if something takes a whole month of gating there is nothing you can do to catch up but wait for that month to elapse in real time.

Overall I feel like time gating is important for an MMO because it’s important to close the gap between the causal and hardcore group so you can make sure your future rewards and content are useful for a wider variety of players. For example if there was no level cap and everyone could level as much as they want, hardcore players would be at level 4561 and a causal player would be at like 100. Once that happens, it would be very hard to make anything that both of those players would be happy about getting.

That can also be achieved by not adding raising the level cap or adding new tiers of gear or not having any sort of levels in the first place. An unlimited level cap has other issue anyway since you have people walking around oneshotting the toughest opponents in the game. Something like downscaling could mitigate that but then it would be the same as not having levels at all.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

cesmode.4257:

Im still waiting on some response about future progression in terms of

1. Ascended runes and sigils — Will they ever be in the game?
2. Will Ascended runes and sigils be only allowed on ascended weapons and armor? <-- thus forcing the player to craft the ascended armor first before being able to utilzie the ascended rune or sigil.

Dyin’ to know this one.

Edit: I know you all are busy and/or could be formulating a proper response to it Just waiting!

Hi Cesmode,

This is one for Izzy for sure. I am sure he will respond tomorrow. In all honesty I set a bad example in terms of my presence on the thread and I think that skews expectations on members of staff who aren’t workaholics (-:

Chris

hi chris!

i want all gear to be able to unlock stats skins and swap to them. i know a lot of other people want this too. will this be considered? thanks!

for example,
unlock armor stats one by one, swap armor stats
unlock runes one by one, swap runes

unlock weapon stats one by one, swap weapon stats
unlock sigils one by one, swap sigils

unlock armors skins one by one, swap armors skins
unlock weapons skins one by one, swap weapons skins
unlock trinkets inventory icons one by one, swap trinkets icon

unlock and swap various infusions too.

Hi Deimos,

I have definitely read this and sorry for not discussing it sooner. This is not something I cannot comment on currently. Sorry.

Chris

aaah thanks for the reply chris!

i think u wanna type
“This is not something I cannot comment on currently.”
or
“This is not something I cannot comment on currently.”

thanks again for the reply ya!

Isaiah Cartwright.8569:

Herr der Friedhoefe.2490

Still no Dev comment that I’ve seen on Time Gates, something that many players brought up early in this thread. Sort of disappointed by that.

So I know time gates is a pretty hot topical overall as I’ve had some pretty heated debates in the past over it. So here is my view on them.

Pro’s
- Time gates help players with less time (If I can only play an hour a day, my time is more rewarded.)
- Repeatable time gates add “pressure” to log in which helps create possible reward loops and play patterns (I want to log in every day, which often can become play experiences, talk with friends, strengthen relationships and get players into a pattern of seeing what’s going on.)
- Time gates equalize players by bringing the hardcore and the causal players closer together. (Players play at an variety of different times and intensities. This makes balancing wealth disparity and play times/progression much harder without actual gates.)
- Time gates help group players up (guilds 1 week timer helps group a large amount of play times into the same time frame.)

Reasons for time gating
- Exploits (Many time gates are there to avoid exploits)
- Overflow issues (the way our tech works without a time gate, you can use overflows to reset your timer)
- Reward Equalization (keep the time to do something more even between hardcore and causal)
- Character vs Account (some things we want to reward the account and thus an account time gated reward allows us to do that cleanly, which stops people from deleting characters and renaming in order to acquire a large number of things)

I hope ya’ll realize that most every pro and reason you just listed gets negated by allowing players to bypass time gates via gold.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Guhracie.3419:

Nike.2631:

Guhracie.3419:

1. We didn’t want another tier of gear; you guys knew that and implemented it anyway, so now we’re stuck with it.

Players rarely ever want their pet class nerfed, but its still necessary to the health of the game to do it from time to time. Consensus and Balance are distantly related on the best days and full-blown adversaries on more than a few.

While I have some issues with the specifics of Ascended acquisition, it’s not that hard to recognize the pressures at work that convinced them that the concept needed to be introduced to the game.

Keep in mind that prior to the release of the first Ascended items, the single most efficient way to advance your character was play the Trading Post. Full Stop. If you spent your time doing DEs or running dungeons you were a serf laboring in the fields in the service of your Trading Post betters. It was soul-sucking. Nothing you could do swinging your sword came close, and even today most people have this obsession with amassing gold when doing so mostly fattens you up to get fleeced at the market. The range of rewards that must be earned rather than bought is still astonishingly thin.

If anything the current crafting-only model of weapons and armor is a bit of a backslide towards ‘TP-uber-alles’. I sincerely hope that the currencies of heroism like skill points, karma, and various tokens get moved back to center stage as the means and the measure of characters’ mechanical advancement ~ vertical or horizontal.

I really just set out to summarize the thread to see if anything new was actually being said about vertical progression, or if we were just going in circles, this far into the discussion about it. And, truly, without more meaningful feedback than “Interesting ideas” there’s not much more that we can do with the discussion, in my opinion. Regardless, that was basically the first sort of comment that was picked up and addressed in the thread.

I’m in total agreement about consensus vs. balance, but I think it’s clear that balance isn’t being discussed here, on many levels.

I’m all for progress, and there’s truly no way to please everyone, but given the possibilities for vertical progression in a game like GW2, it seems like a middle ground other than “gear treadmill” might have been a more viable solution.

Hi Guhracie,

Will all due respect there has been a huge amount of dialog, discussion, ideation, summary and proposals. If you want to add value to the thread then I suggest you read it. Until then I am going to take everything you say with a large handful of salt. Sorry.

Chris

Wauw… just… wauw.

With all due respect… but I don’t think that it is a good idea to post that you won’t listen to a Customer, just because he didn’t read 100s of posts.

If someone has the feeling that you people aren’t listening and that he doesn’t like the format of this discussion, you should listen to him. Even when you disagree. ESPECIALLY when you disagree. That’s kinda the point of feedback, no?

The reason why I do not contribute to this thread is exactly the same as the poster. A dialogue means that both people talk. Not say ‘I can not comment on this’.

And when a poster voices my opinion, he gets scolded at. Nice, nice! It just fuels my opinion that this isn’t a very useful feedback thread.

Don’t scold at customers. Don’t focus solely on people that post in the form that you prefer to listen to. Don’t shut people out. You will learn alot more about your customers that way.

Guhracie.3419:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

-snip-

…I’d be totally happy to sit out of a CDI called “Ascended Armor” and let the people who feel strongly about it discuss it. But I currently feel like I have to plod through posts about ascended armor so I don’t miss something that might be relevant to my interests… which is why I mentioned a summary of what has been mentioned about vertical progression. I’m anxious to get to horizontal progression because it’s one of the biggest reasons I switched to GW2 from WoW. And if I knew I wasn’t missing out on any of that discussion (or other vertical progress ideas not pertaining directly to ascended armor), I’d probably be spending way less time in this thread…..

Not to harp on about this, but therein lies the issue that was evident before the CDI even began. You have a subject “PvE” or “PvP” or “Character progression” or whatever, then guiding the discussion (mostly only one or two ways) you are actually encouraging loads of topics to get steamrolled by a single major point. While they may read all of the posts, it’s not likely they’ll take the same emphasis back on feedback for “general crafting progression” or “the road to a legendaries progression” than they will on just ascended gear as a whole.
Not to say ascended topics are of a lesser value, but I just think you can get yourself stuck in a rut with the broad CDI question.

/rant

…carry on…

Tallis.5607:

The reason why I do not contribute to this thread is exactly the same as the poster. A dialogue means that both people talk. Not say ‘I can not comment on this’.

I’m pretty much in agreement with this. I won’t fail to throw my two cents in here and there as I really want to like GW2 more than I do. GW2 has it’s core gameplay locked in so well that I find myself pretty much unable to play any other MMO I’ve tried since starting. There are just some major flaws, however, and it’s becoming pretty clear at this point that the CDI is not what I interpreted it as being. I hesitate to call it an outright failure as, at best, we’re not going to be seeing any of the fruits of our labour for at least several months but the reality of what we are seeing now is definitely not what I was anticipating when the CDI stone was started in it’s rolling.

I know I posted earlier but I’ve thought abit on this so I’ll post again if that’s alright. Anyform of Vertical progression I feel needs action and effort on the players part and no player should be able to buy there way to ’’full’’ Ascended gear or new skills. Maybe a select few can as has already been stated like healing skills or head armour. But most I feel need to be either acquired in the open world, fractals, dungeons or WvW depending on what you play and while being accessable enough so people can gear multiple characters out in a reasonable time more options so to speak. They need to retain there prestiage while being more accessable

With that said I would absolutely support a return of the Skill and title quests/searchs that were in Gw1. Nothing says progress like going out there and slaying a boss and then earning an elite skill from him or having him drop that rare weapon. Wouldn’t be to hard to implement. as an example say if a server manages to open all 5 temples in Orr a series of single player instance open up which take you to boss and other types of challenges where you can either unlock a new elite school or get a Weapon Drop. admittedly programing new elite skills would be hard so initially anyway it would just be a guaranteed weapon/Armour drop. If people don’t want to go to Orr they can also slay the world bosses which Open’s up the instance’s and failure to do keeps them closed. The Open World becomes more dynamic and people get a shot at a guaranteed weapon/skill.

You could also Tie WvW into this for those who don’t like PvE. If for example Ehmry Bay controls at-least 6 Keeps, 10 Towers and Stonemist. A special Merchant is unlocked in SM that for a certain number of badges, Gold and Karma will Sell to those with at-least rank 100 Ascended weapons and Elite Skills. Tho you don’t have to fight a challenging boss You have to overcome the resistance of 2 servers tieing into the effort part. For Fractals players maybe completling a Fractal 50 gives you a guaranteed weapon/piece of armour or make it so Pristines can buy them for a high enough price.

But enough of me rambling I think I’ve got the point across. The idea is you need to give player’s multiple avenues of vertical progess in addition to the current methods and you should take the opportunity to expand the world while doing so. Some would be hard to implement some Easy (The WvW SM merchant) but at all cost’s people should not buy there way to Prestige through Gold stockpiles or Karma. If they get lucky so be it but otherwise needs to be earnt.

That’s my 2 cents on it

Character progression in this game “feels” bad. I say that as I sit at Lv:50 fractals with a legendary and a nearly completed set of ascended armor and weapons.

When I got my legendary back in 2012, people didn’t look at my accomplishment and think of how great it was. I mostly got questions like, “Did you farm it or buy it?” Obviously I liked my Frostfang, I thought it was cool, but I could start to see something wrong with the picture.

The old system of do dungeon X for Y amount of tokens to get your item was wonderful. I don’t understand why I’ve done hundreds and hundreds of fractals without getting the fractal shield, but someone else can run the dungeon a few times and throw it on their alt because they don’t care? So, when/if I finally get the reward, people won’t know if it is because I’ve reached the pinnacle of PvE or if it was because of dumb luck.

Ascended armor surprised me too. I never expected it to be able to be acquired so easily. Yes, the path is a little long but you can’t say it has any difficulty to it. With alts getting teleported to 3 jumping puzzles in LA, dynamic events being a big Zerg, and the rest able to be purchased with gold off of the TP, ascended armor asks very little of the player other than time.

The problem I see with character progression is how little skill in this game matters. It should not serve as the be all end all, but it has no role here.

I want to see my character progress because I learned how to master my class. Being able to do fractals should matter, I should never have to consider champion farming to get my gold when I can knock out a level 50 fractal. I want the weapons and armor I’m carrying to reflect my progress in the game, not be all about how much gold I make or what luck I have. When nearly everything about my character can be bought off of the trading post, it is hard for me to feel invested in what I accomplish in game.

StriderShinryu.6923:

…it’s becoming pretty clear at this point that the CDI is not what I interpreted it as being. I hesitate to call it an outright failure as, at best, we’re not going to be seeing any of the fruits of our labour for at least several months but the reality of what we are seeing now is definitely not what I was anticipating when the CDI stone was started in it’s rolling.

I’m sort of curious what you thought could happen that isn’t or the time you felt was reasonable to see ideas be converted into action?

Because personally, I find the turn around time between the close of the Living Story CDI and the announcement that the 2 week release schedule is being put on hold AND their revealing in advance the end date for the Scarlet Storyline were breathtakingly fast manifestations of that discussion.

Cause and effect, as far as I can tell.

crafting time-gating is not new.

in LOTRO you can only craft an item from the highest tier of a crafting profession only once a week, but then again there is option to get the more or less same quality by doing raid….

Izzy, you gave an example a little earlier about how it’s a problem that there’s a big gap between players who play a lot versus players who don’t play as much, and you mentioned an example of the hardcore players being level 4000 while the casual players are 100.

I don’t think this example really works, because this game doesn’t have any kind of vertical progression like that. In fact, before ascended gear, the hardcore and the casual players were on a level playing field, time-gating or not. Exotics were all anyone had to worry about, and they weren’t too difficult or time consuming to attain. Now with the ascended crafting, it actually makes things worse. Players who don’t play as much have less laurels, they miss days to do their ectoplasm refinements, have less materials to use, less money to buy materials they might need, etc. So I’m failing to see how the time-gating helps keep a minimal gap between hardcore players and casual players on a power level, especially when one didn’t really exist before.

At this point, the only purpose this time-gating is serving is what you just said: it keeps a stranglehold on the ascended material market so that some players can make money selling instead of crafting. Is that really worth it? I agree that crafting is largely useless when it comes to actually being profitable for players, but there has to be a better answer than crippling our ability to advance at a reasonable speed. Especially when we want to have multiple builds, outfit multiple characters, and outfit those multiple characters with multiple builds of their own.

Isaiah Cartwright.8569:

While it is true in how we work it’s hard to get fast turn around to ideas and I think a lot of the discussion and ideas need to be vetting more to make sure we are not missing something I do find these open discussion help drive discussions in the office and can help with priority. The goal of these in my mind isn’t to come away with a set of action items but to help share some insight on how we do things and why. This in turn gives people a greater understanding of how our game is made and can help improve communication between the dev’s and the community which can often lead to higher enjoyment for everyone.

Izzy,

It seems that the team would be in a great position to start coming up with a lot of smaller and maybe new fresh ideas for character progression. It’s early on in the game’s overall lifespan (knocks on wood), you’re trying to learn more about what the community likes and wants.

Now seems like a really good opportunity to break down character progression into numerous smaller pieces, there’s already lots of LONG term goals. What and how to do this are pending, but big picture if progression content is scatter throughout the world in smaller chunks (relatively speaking, with perhaps some variations in size) a couple important things may happen.

1) The concentration of players may change, and people might start exploring maps for the character progression content.

2) People may feel better about progressing alts, because they can go after smaller things they want for specific characters.

3) The dev team can collect metrics based upon the content that gets put out to see what people are doing most, and what people are repeating.

The hope for the team would be that releasing fair amounts of smaller character progression and related content is more feasible when it comes to turn around time. Spreading it throughout the existing world would hopefully allow reutilization of some existing content as opposed to having to completely develop from scratch.

I don’t know how the teams at ANet feel about casting a wide net of small content for progression, but RPGs are all about character progression, so you’d be pretty guarenteed all the content would be encountered a lot and can get a good idea of what to expand upon.

Food for thought.

I guess the thing that has been troubling me is why ascended gear was added at this point. You have a game here where Anet said they wanted people to have fun, not prepare to have fun. Crafting ascended gear is preparing to have fun. Now I have 8 level 80 professions and vertical progression for each step of the horizontal progression players like myself have done is just not possible the way it is implemented. This got me thinking about why Anet needed to do this.

Clearly, the majority of players haven’t gone as horizontal as players like myself. You don’t make changes like this for the minority. Clearly the majority of players have gone with one profession and were clamoring for something to do. Here is where I think Anet went wrong. They came up with something new for them to do.

Why fight that battle? Looking at the game from the perspective of the people that paid for the development and are counting on the game being a financial success which includes the gem store, why introduce a game mechanic, that went against your stated goal of not grinding? The cost of vertical progression (ascended gear) is such that it narrows the players focus to one or possibly two characters? What happened to the other 6? What about all the personal stories? Were these developed so that players would only see one of them?

This is my problem with it, they did not leverage the existing content that was already developed and paid for by fighting a different battle. Solving a different problem. How to get those players with one profession out of the typical MMO mindset and play more than one character. You made the game but didn’t lead them on the path to enjoying the games horizontal progression in terms of race, profession, and order.

Well, how would you do that? I’ll take the example of Final Fantasy Tactics and the job system. In that game, you could “level” a Mediator profession. You could change that character back to say the Cleric profession but equip a mediator skill. Chris liked this system. Then why didn’t you do something similar in GW2?

Here are some ideas off the top of my head of things you could have done. Level a warrior to 80 in the vigil. Any other character in your account would get access to +5% damage. Level them up in the Order of Whispers? Instead your other characters have access to +20% endurance regen. Level a Sylavari Ranger in the Durmond Priory to 80 and the rest of your characters could enjoy some manner of stealth detection. Something, anything that would get players leveling more than one profession and experience the content your company already paid for. Perhaps you could only have two combat and two non-combat bonuses equipped on a character but the more you unlocked, the more choices you’d have.

What this also would accomplish is make those boosters, character slots, and storage space worth getting from the gem store. Players would probably buy more skins if they had more characters. Level 20 scrolls? That would be a hot seller. The current direction is leading people down too narrow a path for the gem store to be as successful as it could. The current path, you are going to have to move the goalposts in a few months anyway.

You could even apply these to crafting. Mesmer’s that make armor, they can create items that allow armor pieces to hold more skins. If a Norn crafts weapons, 5% chance to chill added to weapon. If a Norn crafts armor, -5% chill duration. Things like that that would open the game up so players could get more powerful through playing more of the game that is already there.

I just don’t understand why you abandoned your goals of a horizontally progressive
game without at least trying to retrain the MMO crowd to stop thinking in terms of one character so they would have an incentive to see all the stories, join all the orders and generally have fun playing all the professions all while getting benefits for all of their other characters. Seems like this would have synergized with the gem store better.

I’m just curious why something like this wasn’t even attempted. Instead of letting players lead you, lead them where you want to go. Give them tangible rewards for going more horizontal. You built it, but didn’t put anything there for players to get a sense of what they should do different in this game and now the tail is wagging the dog.

Isaiah Cartwright.8569:

One thing to keep in mind how our system works is you can’t mix heavy, medium and light armor together the way we lay out the texture means these items can never be mixed.

I may want to know more about that at a later point, as more options for armor looks is something that a lot of players would like. But that’s for later, not now.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Personally following the last proposal I put forward I am still listening and thinking to the CDI groups discussion and considerations. I am sorry if this isn’t moving fast enough for you but this thread isn’t closing anytime soon and I am a patient man.

Chris

Chris,

My apologies if I am just missing something, but I cannot find this proposal you are referencing. Searching through the Dev Tracker and this thread, I see the following:

11:55 – a post stating that you are building a proposal.
17:11 – a comment about several points that will impact the in-process proposal.
19:22 – the above quote where you refer to the previously presented proposal.

Unfortunately, I do not have much time to post back-and-forth during the week, nor time to sift through 29 (and counting) pages, but I would really like to see the resultant direction of this discussion and have a chance to comment further before the Vertical segment is closed and Horizontal is opened.

Would it be possible to post a summary proposal for the direction of vertical progression with a very easily identifiable and bolded title for those of us that are time-impaired during the week?

Isaiah Cartwright.8569:

One thing to keep in mind how our system works is you can’t mix heavy, medium and light armor together the way we lay out the texture means these items can never be mixed. After that while it would open up some options you always have to be careful with making profession all feel the same. This is all ready a big struggle as we want all professions to fill multiple roles but it’s important some professions have weakness that they can overcome if you let your weakest character be a toughest as your toughest then they both lose some some of what makes them different

Hi Izzy, now that you are back can we talk about horizontal progression.

My feeling on the mater is that while you can add new elements to the game, if there is no compelling way to obtain then in game, they will never feel like a achievement (i don’t feel like i progressed I just retrieved something).

About the cosmetic progression there are some possibility, not being used like: animations and pet/summonable models.
For gameplay changing progression, it seems like runes/sigils could have a real impact on the way your character is played(in and out of combat). Also adding new skills is a god idea but there is a confrontation, between those new options and the available cookie cutter builds, for example the new warrior stance is a incredibly good skill which require effort and situation awareness to be used efficiently, but what is the point on using this when healing signet/healing surge are able to give me better heal i a lot more scenarios I am better off playing with those, except if i want to add some artificial difficulty to my game session. So what is the point in adding new skills, ways to fight if the actual game let you do better with builds that are easier to use(there should be easy builds but they shouldn’t be this strong ), I primarily see 2 ways to deal with the problem add skills that are flat out better than the present ones (wich would create a power creep), or rework/design new encounters to be played “better”(i really don’t know which notion to use) with more engaging skills.

Isaiah Cartwright.8569:

After that while it would open up some options you always have to be careful with making profession all feel the same. This is all ready a big struggle as we want all professions to fill multiple roles but it’s important some professions have weakness that they can overcome if you let your weakest character be a toughest as your toughest then they both lose some some of what makes them different

Sorry for being slightly off-topic, and I would like to preface that I have all the respect in the world for your teams abilities, you’ve really improved the game over the last several months. But speaking of differences, I don’t believe there is a ghost of a chance that you can ever balance the professions under the current extreme stat disparities.

For example, an elementalist with a full vitality build has a mere 4000 more HP than a warrior who is built glass cannon, that elementalist brings barely any more utility (none if the warrior decides to build for utility), and will have will always either have equal defense and less damage or no defense and equal damage.

Yes we know you guys have admitted that the elementalist is pretty borked at the moment, but that is just the most extreme example, largely being because the elementalist has neither a defensive class mechanic not any defensive utilities left. But a great many other such problems exist throughout the game, I mean look at the job you had to do on the necromancer to make it playable? It alone completely reversed the games PvP meta, and under this current system that’s how balance changes will always be, either gamesweeping or worthless. I’d say you’re trying to balance apples against oranges, but that really isn’t apt, it’s more like you’re trying to balance apples and oranges against just apples. This unnecessary gap is going to make your balance teams job at the least difficult for years to come, and at the most impossible.

In active play, the classes need to be as different as possible, I could not agree more on that. Through their abilities and play mechanics they need to cut out their own way through each role-type, everyone able to do a great many things but none in the same way. But in passive play, the invisible system of stats behind it all, we could use some more ‘sameness’.

but wouldn’t it be better if there were no such designs where you lock out new content until you’ve done old content? There will be new players in a year from now and they would have a really hard time catching up imho.

I guess this is why some mentioned a game without levels previously. You should only be gated by your player skill. What do you think about that?

my problem with ascended stuffs: im a HC wvw player. while pve players with the same or less play time have 2-3 legendarys, full set of ascended weapons, armors etc… i must to stop playing what i like to gain the best equickments to fight.

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, yet for me it is “at least change this”.

Isaiah Cartwright.8569:

I was using the example to explain how time gates help equalize players goals and focus them together. Another example would be guild timers without them a super hard core guild would have finished all guild levels in 1 night where other guilds of equal size might take months. Then if you design new content around the guild that can do that much content in 1 night then the other guilds just get left behind in the dust. Vertical or horizontal progression doesn’t matter a player who is going to take 3 years to do something everyone else and in a few weeks makes it hard to balance. Now gates don’t make them equal at all, the players with more time will still complete things faster take my guild example the super good guild still finishes something in 5 weeks that took the other 3 months, but it does help close that gap. You really don’t want them to be that close you just don’t want them to be crazy far apart.

This also is super important for wealth disparity as far as economy goes but I’m keeping the examples as much around progression as economy is a totally different discussion.

I see what you’re saying, and I agree in a way when you’re talking about actual gameplay content like guild missions. I still don’t totally accept that example though, because you guys specifically made guild missions in such a way that future additions to the system wouldn’t necessitate more vertical progression; if a guild has a mission type unlocked, it’s unlocked. In that sense, whether one guild is ahead of another in progress is irrelevant, because they’re totally separate. They don’t affect one another, and it doesn’t have to affect your end from a content producing angle. New missions would be going into the preexisting categories. But I don’t want to harp too much on that because that’s not what I meant for the conversation to be about.

I’m more referring to the current system of ascended item acquisition, crafting in particular. I wouldn’t really consider it gameplay content, and at the end of the day, what does it matter if the hardcore portion of the playerbase is able to outfit their characters in full ascended on the day of release? Does it have a negative impact on the more casual players, or the game as a whole? Before ascended gear was released, someone could hop on the trading post and completely outfit their character in the best gear possible in less than a minute. It wasn’t a problem then, why does it necessitate gating now? Sure, if you guys were coming out with content that required gear checks, and any people without ascended gear couldn’t advance, then it would be a problem. Casual players would fall behind, and wouldn’t be able to experience future content as it’s released. The only thing that exists like that in the game right now is fractals, and that’s self-contained (plus, the content itself is accessible to anyone, since new fractals will show up at fractal level 1 and fractal level 50 alike).

I’m just not seeing how this gap between casual and hardcore players is a problem based on how you’ve designed consumption of content in this game. And frankly, it’s a gap that hardly existed before ascended gear. It’s only widened since.

Dingle.2743:

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.

This could work and the idea is not bad, but I would prefer to make it like dungeon tokens would add statistic change options for ascended items, like:
- X(based on item type) CoF tokens would add to an item berserker stats
- X(based on item type) AC tokens would add to an item solder stats
…etc

Hi Chris. Thanks again for taking the time to discuss and take feedback from the community regarding current content and future development!

Ascended Equipment

Looking solely at Ascended gear by itself, I think you guys have done a good job in striking the balance between making it a lengthy/expensive goal to achieve, but not putting it out of reach of most players. (The way you’ve designed it to increase demand for previously unwanted lower tier materials was a stroke of genius!) Most importantly, the bonus that Ascended offers over Exotic is not great enough that Ascended becomes a must-have for players; GW2’s endgame has, and should always be, designed around players in Exotic gear. As such, Ascended equipment primarily exists only for players who desire BiS, and enjoy taking the time and energy to work towards that goal. For everyone else, Exotics will more than suffice.

I look forward to seeing what r500 Jeweler and Chef will bring. As someone who enjoys the process of crafting, I really hope that r500 Jeweler will allow me to craft my own Ascended trinkets.

Vertical Progression

I’m a bit wary of introducing any more vertical progression into the game. The slight increase from Exotics to Ascended is one thing, but introducing vertical progression with things like Ascended runes/sigils or ever-increasing infusions should be treated with extreme caution, because that CAN lead to a gear treadmill in a different form.

The other possible route, vertical progression via new (and possibly expensive) skills, is also not without risk. I was a bit surprised at the new healing skills requiring 25 skill points to unlock; all the new healing skills are balanced with their existing counterparts, yet are vastly more difficult to obtain. If this trend continues with other utility or elite skills, we could get into a situation where popular meta-builds require multiple 25-point skills, forcing newer players out of high-end content because they can’t run the “required” build for their profession. I would have preferred having them cost just 5 skill points, in line with the most expensive utility skills.

On a related note, I know that ANet has not ruled out increasing the level cap in future. I am not against a level cap increase, but I strongly urge against re-balancing loot and equipment to keep pace with a higher level, because that would, again, create a gear treadmill. Instead, what we could have is a system where players can continue to gain levels past level 80, but all it does is give players more trait points to allocate (and only within PvE), allowing them to create even more powerful and diverse builds for future “elite” PvE content. Players who are higher than level 80 get downscaled back to 80 in WvW and sPvP.

Horizontal Progression

Overall I think horizontal progression with regards to having luxury skins and Legendaries is in a pretty good state. Cost-wise most cosmetic items are at a good threshold, and the move to make previously exclusive weapons permanently available via the Black Lion Weapon Tickets was a much appreciated change. However, I would like to see less RNG when it comes to earning certain rewards such as Fractal weapons. The system you guys used for the Super Adventure Box was perfect, in my opinion; you had three routes of obtaining the look you wanted:

1. You can get lucky with a drop by playing the content repeatedly.

2. You can earn tokens and trade it in for an account-bound version of the skin you want.

3. You can buy the skin you want from the Trading Post from a lucky player from option 1. (This also has the added benefit of player 1 getting a bonus windfall if they happen to get a drop they don’t want. Both players end up happy!)

I would also like to see more love for alts by streamlining the way that expensive or exclusive skins can be made available to a player’s entire account as opposed to keeping them locked on one character. I know that in future, PvP and PvE skins are being merged together so that skins earned in one mode are usable in the other. Does this mean we can expect a PvE wardrobe? At the risk of self-promoting, I’m going to repost a suggestion I made a while ago about how such a PvE wardrobe could work:

1. Skins which are earned via AP’s or the completion of meta achievements (such as the Fervid Censer or the Slickpack) go into one tab. These skins can be withdrawn from the wardrobe as many times as you want for free, similar to the way Zenith skins work now. (For convenience, put the HoM reward skins in here too.)

2. All other PvE skins must be unlocked by putting an existing copy of it into the PvE wardrobe. Both weapons and armors can be unlocked in the wardrobe this way. Once unlocked, you can generate additional one-time use copies of the skin by paying either Transmutation Stones (creates a version that works for any item up to level 79), or Transmutation Crystals (can be used for all levels). These skin copies are account bound, so they can’t be sold.

This allows players to gradually build up a wardrobe of skins they like to use, and don’t have to waste inventory/bank space holding multiple sets of armor or weapons. At the same time, ANet also gets to keep its lucrative transmutation market, since you still need Stones/Crystals to generate additional skin copies.

moronwmachinegun.3815:

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.

PLEASE DON’T add more reasons for people to leave weak WvW servers.

We really need flat rewards in WvW so it won’t be even more damaged (and I personally think it’s damaged beyond repair for months now thanks to WvW S1).

Malediktus.9250:

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.

There is a lot people who experiment with builds and would use way more than 2-3 stats combos.

It’s not only solder or berserker, there is knight, carion, rabid, settlers and many more good stat combos for various builds and it shows the most on classes that switch between condi and pure dmg. Elementalist shows it the best.

Maybe you don’t have much experience in this field?
Thats what I’m guessing.

The Lost Witch.7601:

One thing that I want to stress about making ascended gear more accessible:

I look at ascended gear as a temporary form of progression. As a necessary evil that buys Anet enough time to come up with better progression systems.

Once these are in place, ascended and further stat-based progression should be undergoing severe changes. In my earlier proposal I mentioned that ascended gear should eventually be just 3 times as difficult to obtain as exotic gear currently is.

Grinding out ascended gear is tiresome the first time around, and it will not get any more fun the second, third or fourth time. It is an unfun part of the game and while I can see why they added it, there is no reason to keep it as a means to keep people playing when we have better progression tools available.

So while I do ponder on ideas that make ascended gear somehow more accessible, I do not for a moment believe that stat based evolution is a good progression system. It may be what GW2 ‘needs’ to get some breathing room, but it is not good design. It has a large negative impact on many parts of the game, while offering very few positive notes.

---

That is some fierce criticism, but I feel that my previous posts didn’t represent my unhappiness with the current progression system.

How much time was this supposed to buy? It has taken over a year for ascended gear to roll out and and there are still problems aplenty. How much time would this better expansion system need? Before or after this decade?

Septemptus.7164:

We really need flat rewards in WvW so it won’t be even more damaged (and I personally think it’s damaged beyond repair for months now thanks to WvW S1).

On the other hand the S1 rewards have shown that none of it really mattered. It was still just the same old thing about the scores.

No to power creep vertical grind.

Big yes to horizontal skin, skill and build progression.

K.I.S.S

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.

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.

I would love the idea to kinda divide ascended and legendaries like this:
Legendaries- you have everything like you want:
- stats change (full list)
- looks change (similar list with all possible looks from this kind of a weapon)

Ascended items:
- quest, do LS, dungeons, fractals, etc – to unlock stats change on the item one by one.
- quest, do LS, dungeons, fractals, etc – to unlock skin change on the item one by one.

Exotic items:
- pay for transmutation crystals to change look one time
- pay for stat change crystal to change stats one time.

I personally would go very much for it and I would have real means for progression.
The system would also give legendaries value of the ultimate item and ascended would be really between exotics and legendaries.
Basically this would ROCK BIG TIME! (for me)

Still new legendaries should be creatable only by BTA items (aside from those already in TP)

Chris,

I’m not sure you realize this, but a lot of us posting to this CDI would be incredibly gratified to have you pick and respond to one of our posts.

It’s thoughtful of you to try and engage with one particular player over his feelings about whether this CDI is worthwhile—but from the perspective of the rest of us, it feels like we’re “doing it wrong,” because it looks like we’d get more attention if we vented our emotions instead of sticking to the topic and being constructive.

One person feels better that you care about his frustrations, but some of the rest of us feel worse because our substantive posts don’t get the same kind of personal response.

I hope you won’t respond to this, and instead give some less meta posts about progression the attention you can spare.

Gingelyr.3648:

Chris,

I’m not sure you realize this, but a lot of us posting to this CDI would be incredibly gratified to have you pick and respond to one of our posts.

It’s thoughtful of you to try and engage with one particular player over his feelings about whether this CDI is worthwhile—but from the perspective of the rest of us, it feels like we’re “doing it wrong,” because it looks like we’d get more attention if we vented our emotions instead of sticking to the topic and being constructive.

I agree to this statement, but you have to remember it’s very hard to answer so many people and even thou Chris hardly ever responded to me and almost every 3nd or 4rd post of Nike, it’s OK.

I really think you need to remember:
1. He is only a human
2. He has limited time
3. He was kind enough to write to us in weekend
4. I personally think he is a great guy and if you look like that on Him, it will help you.

What I lack the most is summaries after CDI that would say – we will go this direction thanks to what you wrote.
All CDIs end like this: “It’s great you took the time and effort for answering us, we will now think about it” and then silence…

What I would love to get is something like last PvP road map when they stated what we will experience in months to come or PvE statement about the end of Scarlet.
That gives me something to long for instead of being in some kind of ideas fog after each CDI.

EDIT: Make that every 2nd post of Nike at times.
Chris, it would really be great if you would look more people to answer to. I know its hard and all, but many of us would love to her more from you.

I’d like to hear some discussion on what progression should be account bound vs which should be character bound.

Character Progression:
- Level/XP
- Skill Points
- Skill Unlocks
- Map Completion
- Personal Story
- Gear, and the related effects.
- Crafting Level

Account Progression:
- Achievements & Achievement Points
- Crafting Level, in a sense, since there’s no benefit to multiple chars maxing out a profession.
- Laurels
- Glory, and well, basically everything in PvP

Things that used to be Character but are now Account:
- Currencies (gold, tokens, badges of honor, etc)
- In particular, karma, which was previously unswappable.
- Fractal level
- WxP (well, soon to be)
- Dungeon/Fractal rewards

Things that were Account based, and now Character:
- <crickets>

Clearly, there’s a trend to making more and more things Account based.

So, what if we just went all the way, and made all progression account based?
- Bought a berserker headpiece? All character can use it! Most equipment would be for unlocks.
- Unlock CoF explorables on your Ranger? Your warrior can charge right on in!
- Cleared a map zone? All chars have at least one waypoint in the map!
- Reach level 80? All your characters are L80!
- Got Armorsmith up to 500 on your Warrior, but you’re on your Elementalist? not a problem!

This is a fairly shocking concept, and I’m not sure I’m advocating something quite this extreme, but using it as a way to open discussion about where the boundary between character and account should be.

The core of this idea, though, would be to do away with the notion of “main” and “alt” characters, and instead view having different characters as a way of expressing different personalities or playstyles through different classes, looks, or buildouts. You could more readily have two Guardians: one for WvW, and one for Dungeons. I suspect that the freer people are to experiment with new ideas like this, the more character slots they will purchase.

I suspect the most contentious point of my idea is the leveling part. But for that, I’ll bring out the following points:
- Most of the ‘tutorial’ effect of leveling is in teaching the game mechanics. By my sixth character, I think I can handle concepts like “weapon swapping before level 7”.
- Besides, this system is effectively already in place in PvP.
- A L80 has far richer options in gear… All the stat combos, all the runes and sigils, etc.
- Basicaly, you’re not really experiencing a new class until you hit L80

If you’re wanting to “relive the experience”, then there should still be ways to replay most of it, just not in a progression manner.
Example: You should be able to “reclear a zone” for the fun and some reward, but not be forced to do guild mission only on the character that explored everything. The reclear idea could be done by talking to an NPC on the map, and asking him for a challenge on that character, and it would clear it all. You could talk to the NPC again at any time to cancel the challenge and get all the waypoints again.

And for those who really want to do it all again… get another account. Then you’d have your “main” (account) and your “alt” (account).

Vertical progression in gear as a buildaolic

This dicussion is moving fast looks like were moving on from vertical and ascended soon but I thought I would just like to add the view of a buildaolic.

Lets just say I’m a buildaolic which can respec 5 times if not more before leaving the retraiter. In sPvP this is no problem but in PvE & WvW it starts to cost (I don’t mind the respec cost it once you add in the items needed). Before the release of ascended armour it wasn’t so bad yes it costed and I needed bag space to carry the weapons, armour and trinkets (as such I don’t carry all types). With the release of ascended weapons I got really excited with the change to legendary weapons with the ability to change stats out of combat (was hoping legendary armour with stat swapping would come out too). This means I only need to carry one of each item. Now I look at legendaries and wonder how am I ever going to make one but that was a long term goal (does not help that I keep changing builds). For me is not the look or stats as such but the ability to swap said stats allowing me to change builds. Now I agree they should be a cost / time to get this swapping ability. For me this is what I love, the ability to change my build and try out something else.

Now with the way ascended items are now implemented I feel I can no longer do this. If I want to try max stat builds and changing between then, I just can’t see anyway a build changing playstyle can exist with ascended items as is.

For me it feels like I’m locked into one stat combination and can only try builds that work with those stats. As the cost, time and space needed to hold all these items is just too much (this is not even including runes, sigils & infusions).

My question is; Is this build changing playstyle one you want in the game and is it one other players would like?

If it is just increasing ascended accessibility will not help, as space restrictions come into play. For this playstyle I feel a way to unlock the stat changing ability that legendary weapons have is really the only way.

For this I like the idea mentioned of the evolving items. Starting at exotic you start to build on to the item. Once a condition is reached that item can become ascended. Again you start to build on the ascended item and once you meet another condition it could become legendary. This could be a cool way to introduce new legendary items as well as ascended. In this process you could be adding the stat swapping ability one stat combo at a time. The stats you could add could be arranged into tiers. Were you can choose stat combos at that tier to add to you list of stats you can swap between until finally you have unlocked all stat combos.

Ultimately I would prefer the majority of stats to be independent of items and items to be more like runes, sigils and traits in that they give effects or change the wait a skill can be used.

Also not related to progression the one thing I loved about crafting before ascended was that I could craft for my guild. I was the armour crafter and made all my guilds first exotic armour sets, my partner made all our guilds the first exotic weapons. With ascended we feel there is no point to maxing crafting to 500 as we can’t make armour or weapons for our guild or friends. Before I could tell stories about john surviving this or that blow from Zhaitan because of the armour I created.

Now, What is the point of a crafter that only crafts for themselves.

Lastly reading these CDI and the feeling of the direction the game is heading in 2014 is very exciting.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

cesmode.4257:

Im still waiting on some response about future progression in terms of

1. Ascended runes and sigils — Will they ever be in the game?
2. Will Ascended runes and sigils be only allowed on ascended weapons and armor? <-- thus forcing the player to craft the ascended armor first before being able to utilzie the ascended rune or sigil.

Dyin’ to know this one.

Edit: I know you all are busy and/or could be formulating a proper response to it Just waiting!

Hi Cesmode,

This is one for Izzy for sure. I am sure he will respond tomorrow. In all honesty I set a bad example in terms of my presence on the thread and I think that skews expectations on members of staff who aren’t workaholics (-:

Chris

hi chris!

i want all gear to be able to unlock stats skins and swap to them. i know a lot of other people want this too. will this be considered? thanks!

for example,
unlock armor stats one by one, swap armor stats
unlock runes one by one, swap runes

unlock weapon stats one by one, swap weapon stats
unlock sigils one by one, swap sigils

unlock armors skins one by one, swap armors skins
unlock weapons skins one by one, swap weapons skins
unlock trinkets inventory icons one by one, swap trinkets icon

unlock and swap various infusions too.

Hi Deimos,

I have definitely read this and sorry for not discussing it sooner. This is not something I cannot comment on currently. Sorry.

Chris

Basically if there are more things you can’t comment now, please take your time to write that because that one statement assures you you hear what we say and you consider it at least.

Isaiah Cartwright.8569:

adubb.2453:

Here’s an crazy idea that’s a little out of left field:

What if any profession could use any armor type?
With this one change you would instantly have access to a wider range of aesthetic choice for their character. Not only would your characters get a wider aesthetic choice, but you could have some really crazy builds with it but it would completely squash the idea of the “trinity”.

In order to assist with balance, you could perhaps give certain advantages/disadvantages with each type of armor. Heavy armor would give you increased armor rating, but decreased movement speed. Medium armor would give a healthy dose of both. Light armor would give you the most movement speed, but lowest armor rating. The ability to mix and match would significantly widen the range of builds and survivability.

Bizarre use cases!
Guardians could switch to medium armor to focus more on DPS, then survivability. Ele’s could wear heavy armor to boost their survivability and perhaps encourage more melee Ele’s in PvE. When was the last time you saw a D/D ele in a dungeon? (It’s rare!) And imagine what would no doubt be everyone’s nightmare? A necro in heavy armor! Good lord, it would be glorious!

One thing to keep in mind how our system works is you can’t mix heavy, medium and light armor together the way we lay out the texture means these items can never be mixed. After that while it would open up some options you always have to be careful with making profession all feel the same. This is all ready a big struggle as we want all professions to fill multiple roles but it’s important some professions have weakness that they can overcome if you let your weakest character be a toughest as your toughest then they both lose some some of what makes them different

The current system lacks any sort of discernible balance formula where say 8k hp is equal to heavy armor and heavy armor is equal to stealth. If you were to make armor class a choice and even out the base health then it would open up a huge amount of builds. Through those builds would be horizontal progression since now you want multiple sets of armor class as well as stats, of course that involves demolishing the current vertical/time gating progression. Obviously armor classes would then need pros and cons, something like Heavy armor is more damage mitigated but reduces your damage output or reduces endurance regen or slows run speed, maybe a combination of them all. While you’re at it make stat choice it’s own system so they aren’t tied to traits. This starts to create a character progression system with depth and multiple layers of customization.

I think you’re thinking about your profession system all wrong. Instead of trying to limit a profession to just a few roles you should give them access to all roles and let them choose a few(more polarizing choices). The playstyle of the class is what will ultimately create the differences between the classes, not the roles since roles can be accomplished in different ways(playstyles).

Isaiah Cartwright.8569:

Well the crafting gating we added was actually for a different reason then gating the speed in which someone can craft ascended gear. We wanted to make people who level up crafting able to do something to gain gold each day. The time gate here goal is much more focused around making gold then limiting crafting as you can bypass it with gold. This does break down when someone has a lot of characters and has an endless demand for these mats. This problem I put under alt problem and we just need to brainstorm more ideas on how to make life easier for people with lots of characters.

I finally think that someone is looking at me, just slightly…
I wrote from very beginning how much it sucks for me that I enjoy playing different styles by having all alts on lvl (earned without PvP tomes). Now I basically can’t go ascended even though I could with probably 1 character and why I just can’t do it.

I would really, really, REALLY love to hear any answer to by proposition of crafting mastery I introduced…

Isaiah Cartwright.8569:

Summary
Overall I think time gates are important for an MMO, while they have pro’s and con’s for sure, in my opinion the overall gains come out ahead. That said I think there is diminishing returns to the number of time gates in a game. This brings up a core design philosophy which is “it’s always easier to add to then it is to take away” (while in this example it is a bit inverse, as adding a time gate is “adding” but it’s really taking away the players ability to repeat the action as much as they want). Meaning, we error on the side of time gating as we can always remove a time gate if needed but it’s really hard to add one. One clarification I would like to make is there are two different time gates: One time and repeatable. I think most of the complaints about time gates are all on the repeatable end, so I’ll focus my thoughts on that one.

Con’s
snip, need more room for my message

Pro’s
snip, same

Reasons for time gating
- Exploits (Many time gates are there to avoid exploits)
- Overflow issues (the way our tech works without a time gate, you can use overflows to reset your timer)
- Reward Equalization (keep the time to do something more even between hardcore and causal)
- Character vs Account (some things we want to reward the account and thus an account time gated reward allows us to do that cleanly, which stops people from deleting characters and renaming in order to acquire a large number of things)

Overall I feel like time gating is important for an MMO because it’s important to close the gap between the causal and hardcore group so you can make sure your future rewards and content are useful for a wider variety of players. For example if there was no level cap and everyone could level as much as they want, hardcore players would be at level 4561 and a causal player would be at like 100. Once that happens, it would be very hard to make anything that both of those players would be happy about getting. MMO’s also have what I like to call “mass” to them, the more people playing and logging on, the more fun they are and systems which encourage people to log in often help create that mass. People see their friends regularly even just to say “hey there is an event this Sunday with the guild” or “hey lets set aside some time Friday so we can do fractals”. Now this doesn’t mean I feel like we can just add time gates everywhere. In fact I think you need either a very large amount of time gated stuff so a player can play for ever and never run out of things to do (which is a bit unrealistic) or you need non-time gated rewards and game play. This is why we create places for people to farm for all types of things. We like people who farm a lot, we are just always trying to make sure farming doesn’t blow out an item so much it’s no longer worth farming as it sort of defeats the whole reason to farm. A nice mix of time gates and non-gates is important. I think there are some valid complaints that we have over time gated some areas of the game and we should do some reviews of our time gates to see if adjustments should be made, but the game needs time gates for many reasons and if they were not there the game would be way less fun for any type of player.

Can’t disagree more on timegating being important. Only bad MMO need time gating. So from my perspective you think GW2 is a bad game with the amount of timegating you put in. Timegating only punishes players. It doesn’t put them on equal footing what so ever. In fact it forces them to do things at a time interval they themselves do not want. You want people logging in because they want to not because they need to do a chore. That’s what timegating is a chore.

You haven’t even mentioned the biggest con in regards to GW2. It utterly punishes anyone that likes to play alts. Dungeons are timegated by account instead of character, which in fact is very hurtful for the dungeon community, because less dungeons will get run. Crafting again account based so anyone with alts that wants ascended either needs to farm gold or wait so long they loose interest in the game in the end. World bosses again have been made account bound over character bound. All of this severely punishes people with alts and you just ignore it in your summery.

If people are farming one area to much in your opinion than that is because it isn’t rewarding to be elsewhere. Instead of timegating the game to hell fix that.