Guild Wars 2

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Hi All,

Here is the next evolution of the original Vertical Progression proposal based on a summary of our discussions:

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.

A review of current RNG metrics.

The ability to change gear stats (Note there is still a lot of discussion about whether people want this or not)

The ability to build up to Ascended Gear through drops rather than just relying on RNG.

Ascended Gear mats dropping more equally across the game, for example WvW.

No more new Gear tiers that make the existing tiers obsolete.

Additional ways to earn Ascended Gear at accelerated for Alts. (YES!)

Note this is the formulation of a proposal for discussion. Once the proposal is finalized it will be discussed internally. However there will be no promise of actions or schedule.

Chris

Bump. We are close to being able to move onto the ‘focused’ Horizontal Progression part of this conversation.

Does anyone have anymore comments on the proposal above based on our discussions?

Chris

My only comment is that this is a VERY heartening list to see. All of the points are very worthwhile to consider IMO. Esp. the ones I bolded

Thanks for this CDI Chris. The Ascended grind has not been something I’ve been enjoying and it’s great to see ArenaNet noticing there are issues with it and coming to the community to ask for opinions on what can be done about it.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Hi All,

Here is the next evolution of the original Vertical Progression proposal based on a summary of our discussions:

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.

A review of current RNG metrics.

The ability to change gear stats (Note there is still a lot of discussion about whether people want this or not)

The ability to build up to Ascended Gear through drops rather than just relying on RNG.

Ascended Gear mats dropping more equally across the game, for example WvW.

No more new Gear tiers that make the existing tiers obsolete.

Additional ways to earn Ascended Gear at accelerated for Alts.

Note this is the formulation of a proposal for discussion. Once the proposal is finalized it will be discussed internally. However there will be no promise of actions or schedule.

Chris

Bump. We are close to being able to move onto the ‘focused’ Horizontal Progression part of this conversation.

Does anyone have anymore comments on the proposal above based on our discussions?

Chris

Yep, i have a question and a suggestion.

Question: Why did ascended gear needed to have better stats than exotics and more importantly can you bring the ascended stats back down to exotic level?
I think this was asked a lot ever since the release of ascended gear but never answered.

I’m asking because ->

Suggestion: Bring the ascended stats back to exotic level. In addition give ascended gear several “stat-slots” where you can store stats with transmutation stones allowing to change stats just like legendarys.
How this works.
- Every ascended gear comes with 2 slots by default, the one with the stat you crafted and one empty.
- You can now use a transmutation stone and transfuse a new stat in the empty slot, and from then on can change between those two stats the same as with legendarys.
- If you do another transmutation it simply overwrites one of the stats.
- Introduce a new gem shop item that raises the stat slot by one, up to max. four.

Why:
- Alts don’t need to be geared with ascended, the stats are the same as exotics!
- It does not devalue all the ascended that are in the game by now and at the same time does not devalue those that walked the extra mile for a legendary as these keep their full stat swap capability.
- It does not make transmutation stones “obsolete”, may even raise in demand.
- A new gem shop item.
- For those that like to run different builds and/or want to experiment a lot a nice way to prevent a cramped inventory.
- Should be easy to implement, it only uses the systems/UI (transmutation, legendary stat swap) that are in the game already.

MithranArkanere.8957:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

[…]

RNG: One of the best ways you’ve come up with to ease RNG is tokens and containers that let you choose stats.

Tokens are an accepted mmo convention to ease RNG, in fact feedback in relation to this thread is that arenanet doesn’t do enough in terms of providing tokens as an alternative to RNG, ascended weapons and armor are the obvious examples of this but there are other examples as well, black lion skins for example.

Everything subject to RNG should also have a means of getting it via a token system (except precursors and legendaries). Precursors obviously need an alternative method of obtaining them, a token system is just not the right system for it.

As for obtaining ascended gear, this again feels like the development just don’t get it. Look at precusors, it has been over a year and the only ways to obtain one are rng or via the trading post.

1) Named exotics should be upgradable to ascended weapons, such as Infinite Light. They require a lot of work to obtain the materials for, it’s only fair they should be the highest stat combination (non legendary). Also people put a lot of effort into making these before ascended gear came around, having to then craft another gear tier and transmute to keep a weapon at max stats is not player friendly.

2) Less RNG. More player driven rewards. Instead of Teq having a random chance to drop ascended gear, make it a reward based on completion somehow tied to the event and map. So people can actually aim and work towards the reward, not rng. I don’t think I can stress enough how horrible your rng systems are for most players, but I don’t think anyone will pay attention as it certainly hasn’t changed since release.

3) Completing difficult event chains should reward ascended gear. Or atleast something skill based. Less of 2 blues and a green, more of something meaningful and actually rewarding. Liadri was a good example of this, instead of a mini, why not allow the player to choose an ascended amulet for completing her? Actually meaningful reward based on a difficult skill challenge that would be useful to the majority of players (mini’s are ignored by 95% of the population yet seem to be a majority reward…)

4) Crafting mats need to be better distributed among different game modes. Just compare the difference in work required to kill a world boss to taking a keep in wvw… yet the first is dramatically more rewarding. Event chains should reward fragments based on completion.

The current systems – crafting, rng, trading tokens… just feel so lazy. Like Anet wanted an easy excuse to add another gear tear and tie people up with what is, often pointless grind for minimal return for the sake of having something to log in for…

why is it actually bad to gate through skill alone? Why are people leaving when content is skillgated? I just remember almost only positive feedback on the Liadri encounter.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Hi All,

Chris

Bump. We are close to being able to move onto the ‘focused’ Horizontal Progression part of this conversation.

Does anyone have anymore comments on the proposal above based on our discussions?

Chris

The above proposal for vertical progression really only relates to ascended gear. Since ascended gear is now pretty much all in the game (and noting your comments on ascended runes / sigils), does this mean there will be no more vertical progression going forward?

I would like to see futher vertical progression, which was not gear based.

Gear should not be the progression system, Feats, Skills, Traits, Areas and the actual world should be.

There should be reasons to play this game outside of “look at my dazzling new sword in Lion Arch”

I guess I am a bit late, but I wanted to share my view on the proposal. (A bit shorter than I had planned, but it’ll have to do at 3 am)

Chris’s proposal:

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.

Yes! Furthermore, I believe this to be important, in addition to things like stat-changing. Something so essential in a players mind as stats should not be locked away behind a long grind. Even if it were an incredibly large stat boost or if it summoned two lupici to fight for you whenever you jump.

A review of current RNG metrics.

Yes! See further below.

The ability to change gear stats (Note there is still a lot of discussion about whether people want this or not)

I was one of the people with doubts. But mostly concerning the potential for horizontal progression in the way of collecting new skins for extra armors and the problem of useless exotics. (At least currently they can function as a second set)

With additional features, like a wardrobe, part of this problem is removed. The useless exotics part is still an issue with that though. I suppose that requiring globs of dark matter for the change-process could work out in that regard. But it would still feel rather dull to get exotics. (Though to be honest, it is already dull, so we wouldn’t be falling much deeper in that regard)

All in all: I think stat swapping would be way better than what we have now, especially with proper horizontal support. (Adding certain stat options to the pool by doing special things for example)

The ability to build up to Ascended Gear through drops rather than just relying on RNG.

We already have this with crafting. But I suppose this refers to buying the gear with other currencies? I would also like to add that I would rather have this in addition to RNG. Because I do believe that it is important that Ascended gear is rewarded through more realistic RNG values aswell. Not from a progression standpoint, but from a loot standpoint. To many players exotics mean nothing more than salvage fodder. And to many players items like a mini or a backpack skin mean nothing but a pile of cash. But max stat items (especially if they have swappable stats) mean something of tremendous value to pretty much everyone.

This is a very powerful drop to have on a loot table. Something perfect. But it is largely irrelevant if the drop rates are too low. I have some really good ideas about how ascended gear could become part of loot tables without making them common as karma. But that is stuff for another post.

Ascended Gear mats dropping more equally across the game, for example WvW.

In addition to this, perhaps a station where we could trade in an amount of an account bound currency for ascended materials could help everyone balance out their gameplay with their ascended needs. (X Dungeon tokens/Badges of Honor/Fractal Relics for a dragonite ingot/empyreal star or bloodstone brick)

No more new Gear tiers that make the existing tiers obsolete.

This would be a nice promise. But if it is impossible to do, perhaps make a promise for the upcoming 2 years? And then re-evalue the situation in the future? (Preferably in a CDI again)

Additional ways to earn Ascended Gear at accelerated for Alts.

Yes! But a balance can be hard to find. If it is done very careful, by small decreases for every ascended item crafted, then it might be something that rich altoholics can work with, but it completely useless to the poor altoholic. On the other hand if the decrease in effort required is rather large, then it would be a great help to all alt-players, but creating new top stat armors could become less meaningful for the rich. (Which is completely o.k. in my book, but I bet Izzy would like to keep them busy, collecting materials.) In this regard I would like to give my advise: break down ascended gear as a grindy item, slowly if it need be, but do it. And let us know that you are doing it.

Note this is the formulation of a proposal for discussion. Once the proposal is finalized it will be discussed internally. However there will be no promise of actions or schedule.

How about coming back to us with some of the difficult issues that came up following our proposal? I can imagine that some things might not make it through, but I am sure that we would be willing to put our heads together to come up with ideas to work around these issues.

Man, why am I always late to these things?

Ok, I have a lot to say on the matter, so I am probably going to double post.
(also note that I have only glanced through the thread, since it would take me days to catch up, but I have a rough idea)

First I’ll touch on vertical progression. Honestly I have been mostly happy with this as is, Anet have done a fine job, and I really would rather not see any more progression in this regard, I really can’t stand it myself.
I don’t have a dog in the ascended gear fight, I really just don’t bloody care.
I wasn’t planning of getting it, as I hardly play as it is because I have basically done everything, and slightly better gear is not going to fix that issue.
-

Leveling could stand to be a little more engaging, as it becomes very dull after your 6th alt. The first 20 lvls is great, this is where all the interesting progression and skill gain happens. Up to lvl 40 this is still pretty decent with the traits and elite skills, still it dips a little.
But the last 40 lvls is a chore, by then you already have all you skills and there really isn’t anything left to do but slog it out.

So whatever additional progression (new skills or traits for example) that might be added in the future, would be wise to slot it into the 40-80 lvl range, esp thou’s last 20 levels. Thou by that point I will probably already have all 8 professions at 80.

-

Overall thou I couldn’t care less for getting more powerful per say. Honestly there are only two or three things that I really can dig into as far as horizontal progression is concerned.
1) Looking pretty – Ascetics
2) Build crafting and experimentation.
3) Physical non-combat activities.

First it Ascetics. I’m not going to ask for more armor or weapons, as thou’s are going to be added anyway, slowly over time as I know how time consuming it is to do them.
Thou I would ask for more account bounds skins for activities other then the bloody living story, as it grew old a long time ago for me.

How about an nice pair of boots for completing all of the jumping puzzles? It would be nice to have that accomplishment acknowledged for once.

-
Instead the major idea I would suggested is the idea of a Wardrobe that was mentioned earlier. Turning every skin in the game into a character bound collectible, where you can reuse and change the look of your armor or weapons, to anything that you have as part of your collection.

The only major issue with this is that it would render Transmutation stones obsolete, which is a problem from a monetization point of view. However, this can be easily worked around.
Have the Wardrobe space limited. Have it function just like a bank slot, so you have bank, collectibles, and skins/wardrobe.
Your given a set amount of space, and if you need more you buy another slot.
Given the shear amount of skins in the game, it would be expected that anyone (like me) who likes to collect them will buy a few more slots.

(note, the Wardrobe slots a account bound, the skins collected however are character bound, like dyes. Also if Anet chose to go this route, refunding for Transmutation stones is a must)

Heck, you could even roll it into the current dye system maybe, allowing you to completely change your look at a drop of a hat.

-
What’s more is that the collection of said skins could very well have players run all around the world, finding vendors, or perhaps slaying certain champions for the skins, completing jumping puzzles or performing other activities.

You could reuse a lot of game content this way, and you would give people who are particularly vain something engaging to do.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Abramelin.7356:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Hi All,

Chris

Bump. We are close to being able to move onto the ‘focused’ Horizontal Progression part of this conversation.

Does anyone have anymore comments on the proposal above based on our discussions?

Chris

The above proposal for vertical progression really only relates to ascended gear. Since ascended gear is now pretty much all in the game (and noting your comments on ascended runes / sigils), does this mean there will be no more vertical progression going forward?

I would like to see futher vertical progression, which was not gear based.

HI Abramelin,

Can you elaborate on the type of Vertical Progression you are referencing please? This will help me better understand your question.

Chris

I guess what they’re trying to ask is if there will be any more gear stat tiers past Ascended/Legendary that are going to be released in the foreseeable future. Is there going to be any new gear stat tiers past Ascended/Legendary in the foreseeable future? :x

Here’s my 2 cents…

I like the idea of Ascended Armor gaining stat switching that you unlock for each stat combination with the armor becoming “Legendary” once you’ve unlocked them all (adding some kind of visual effect no matter what skin you’ve applied to it).

Soulbinding needs to go away in general.

Named exotic weapons should be bumped up to ascended.

Ascended armor acquisition needs to be easier, cheaper and acquired through more various means, etc.

I think the Hall of Monuments needs to be leveraged as a place to visualize achievement progression. As you accomplish more achievements the Hall of Monuments should reflect your progress.

This would be a great place for a skin unlocker location. Perhaps we give Kimmes the Historian certain tokens or skins and they’ll be added to a new tab in his dialog. That way we can pull the skin out any time we like.

I want more opportunities to collect things, but I’d like to use the items without them disappearing from the collection. You can still use transmutation stones/crystals as a currency in the exchange to Kimmes. Put a Portal in Lion’s Arch and make use of that great location.

We need more weapon types available for the professions. Perhaps make gaining new weapon types part of an event chain. I think the goal should be for all professions to be able to use all weapon types.

Also elite skill capping needs to make a return in some form. Kill a certain boss and get a prize. Even if its a PvE only skill, but something to give us a hunt the boss type collection game.

Another collection style improvement would be a story book library where you can rewatch old cinematics. Something else for the Hall of Monuments. It’d be great if you could use them to replay an instance of the story.

We need a bestiary with a model viewer. Some kind of Asuran gadget to view the amazing animations of the enemies we’re always too busy killing to appreciate. More gotta collect them all.

Along the same lines, a menagerie to collect not just ranger pets but ambient animals in the game. Some kind of animal capture mini-game mechanic where once caught they show up in the menagerie.

One last thing… the return of the ghost of Nicholas the Traveler and the Professor. A weekly or monthly scavenger hunt or living story arc. Let’s hunt for something that improves our characters in some way or gives cool skins.

Right now I feel like the only way to get ‘good’ gear in the game is through crafting. Crafting, in every game I have ever played, has been my LEAST favorite style of gameplay. Period. Hands down, absolutely DO NOT LIKE IT. Unfortunately with current game design, I am forced to participate in activities I do not like if I want to get my character to the top end of progression. This is a huge frustration for me.

My suggestions? Right now dungeon gear is obsolete. Aside from skins that are so-so and tokens to buy exotics to salvage them for ectos, there’s not much point to them in terms of progression. My suggestion? Add a third tier of armor to the dungeons. Ascended armor. Then going beyond that, what about the people who don’t care about fractals and have no need for agony resistance? What about the possibility of ascended infusions that grant more general purpose effects? Hard stats are an easy way to do that, but I would rather see specialized bonuses that directly contribute to certain builds.

Cooldowns for certain style of skills would be a fun one. Enhancements to specific skills is another route.

Aside from all that… I feel like my biggest frustration with the game right now is as I initially stated. My progression is tied to a mechanic I hate. I want to be able to enjoy the game in different ways, to play and just have fun in my way without having to grind away at crafting.

It’s an aside, but I’m seeing a lot of contempt towards skill-1ing in world encounters here.

I think there’s a certain element of something akin to victim-blaming here – game design is such where slot-1ing, or alternating 1 and 2, is often your best choice with a given weapon. For several world encounters, DPS is what matters most of the time, and for many weapons, most of the DPS is on the first slot or two and the rest is essentially utility – which may or may not actually be useful in a world encounter (there’s no point blinding Tequatl, for instance, or using much control against the mobs attacking the batteries and turrets when the zerg is just going to kill them anyway). On reference to turrets specifically, there’s also the issue that only so many people can man turrets at once, and it’s not really fair to punish people for not being the first to jump in a turret.

Certainly, though, the game should offer more rewards for things that aren’t just DPS. It’s quite frustrating in any event, not just world events, where you know that through healing, reviving, protection and control you were pretty much the reason the event succeeded instead of failed, and then you get a silver or even a bronze because while you were concentrating on making sure the event succeeded, you weren’t dishing out as much damage. I think events first need to have a robust system for tracking contributions that aren’t simply damage, and then the bigger events can start having bonus rewards for people who make truly exceptional contributions.

Asuka Shikinami.5462:

1) Named exotics should be upgradable to ascended weapons, such as Infinite Light. They require a lot of work to obtain the materials for, it’s only fair they should be the highest stat combination (non legendary). Also people put a lot of effort into making these before ascended gear came around, having to then craft another gear tier and transmute to keep a weapon at max stats is not player friendly.

Second. On release, these things were purely cosmetic, but any MF recipe that is asking for a full stack of ectoplasm and/or a Gift really should be BiS.

Sondergaard.8469:

Right now I feel like the only way to get ‘good’ gear in the game is through crafting. Crafting, in every game I have ever played, has been my LEAST favorite style of gameplay. Period. Hands down, absolutely DO NOT LIKE IT. Unfortunately with current game design, I am forced to participate in activities I do not like if I want to get my character to the top end of progression. This is a huge frustration for me.

My suggestions? Right now dungeon gear is obsolete. Aside from skins that are so-so and tokens to buy exotics to salvage them for ectos, there’s not much point to them in terms of progression. My suggestion? Add a third tier of armor to the dungeons. Ascended armor. Then going beyond that, what about the people who don’t care about fractals and have no need for agony resistance? What about the possibility of ascended infusions that grant more general purpose effects? Hard stats are an easy way to do that, but I would rather see specialized bonuses that directly contribute to certain builds.

Cooldowns for certain style of skills would be a fun one. Enhancements to specific skills is another route.

Aside from all that… I feel like my biggest frustration with the game right now is as I initially stated. My progression is tied to a mechanic I hate. I want to be able to enjoy the game in different ways, to play and just have fun in my way without having to grind away at crafting.

I have to at least both agree, and disagree with you.

agree that crafting sucks in every MMO, but disagree that you have to craft to get decent gear. except while I was leveling I’ve never worn anything I crafted I just did it to kill time or on occasion make money. all the gear I have now is from dungeons,wvw, laurels or guild tokens. unless you count the forge, cause I did spent a lot of time there to get my legendary.

I am also deeply apposed to a gear ladder or any kind of tier system. adding a new tier is an easy “fix” but as time goes on the gap between those who have the “best” gear and those who don’t gets bigger and bigger. also gear starts to become more important than skill. that was one of the many things that killed my interest in wow was the huge gear dependency.

I’m glad thus far the stat difference between item rarities is small compared to other games, but I wasn’t thrilled with the inclusion of ascended items and don’t really want to see any new tiers added. I’m all for side grades and item skins, but please stats from gear are terrible.

and I know sondergaard was asking for an existing tier to be added to another part of the game which is fine, I am just using it as a jumping point for my dislike for gear ladders.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

Deified.7520:

I think the biggest thing Anet needs to start working for is item uniqueness based on skill level. Right now an item is considered to be very unique or rare because the drop rate for such item is very low or the collection requirements are very high.

That’s a good point as well. I would love to see some content that demanded real skill, and had unique rewards tied to it. With Super Adventure Box we had Tribulation Mode, which already offered us a special backpack for conquering some of the hardest platforming the game had to offer. And I liked working for my reward.

But should such an item be tradeable, or remain account bound?

Account bound.

Making an item tradeable immediate deminsihes and almost entirely elimintes the items unqiueness and what it represents in game. An example is the Pact weapons. If they would have made it so these were account bound, they would be so much more impressive and actually meant something. Now you can buy most of them on the TP for 1g-5g I believe, which isn’t hard to make once you get endgame.

You can’t tie everything to the TP for it allows gold to bypass any horizontal progression it added. I like their ideas of making some ascended armor pieces sellable, but they can’t make them all sell able. Also they will most likely just be the same price of the materials required to make them, as we see right now with most mystic forge exotics. So it really wont change anything for players unless they change the current drop rates for many items and ascended items.

Hi all,

I really didn’t read all the people have said before, but I have a suggest regarding “horizontal progression”.

There is no need for make better stats objects, what I suggest is to make some “particle improve” to the current armors that already exits (and add new armor with new appearence).

It is already done with the fractal capactior. Create a way to make some armor burn (like the recent added to the gem store), frezze, shine, drop flowers, what else..

I think its a cool way to solve the “progression” problem. A way to make interest people in the new content that you will do.

timmyf.1490:

Question for Deified and videoboy, who seem to like “working for rewards.” Is it enough if the rewards are cosmetic, or must the rewards be stats?

I had a lot of friends who came to GW2 and quickly left for Rift because they got exotics and there was nothing more powerful for them to grind out. “I have nothing to do!” they said.

“Do you have a Legendary?” – “No.” – “Get one!” – “Does it make me more powerful?” – “No, but it looks cool!” – “meh.”

I imagine most of the grind-for-stats types have already left, but as somebody who plays for fun, it’s always interesting to understand other viewpoints.

The problem with legendaries is they take an insane amount of time to get for players. I never cared for them because I didn’t come to gw2 to farm gold (which is what evey person in my guild who has a legendary did) to get. So while collection rewards is good, we have more than enough of those in the game currently and need to start getting more rewards that you work for in terms of skill level. A example of this was the queens gauntlent. I loved that event. Players who beat the final boss have a mutural respect for one another without even saying a word. I helped and gave tips and I received help and tips too. Once many of the ragers left, the people left over were a awesome community. I think it would have been a lot less of a forum rage lash if it wasn’t there for 2 weeks and players could keep working for it.

On the topic of rewards, they can be ascended if anet feels the difficulty is high enough, however I’m fine with cosemetic. Personally ascended only represented a advantage in fractals which I rarely do. I’ve killed plenty of enemy players in wvw with ascended gear and I never felt like the stat increase they add over exotics was big enough to make me think “If I had ascended items I would have won”. So I’m perfectly fine with cosmetic.

Only the topic of your friends leaving, this games horizontal progression currently is way too based around collection. Many times they don’t really challenge the player mentally. A lot of people like vertical gear grind because you always have something your working towards and it is often challenging because in order to get to that you have to do dungeons that were normally hard. It is another reason why I felt Gw1 had a amazing horizontal and vertical progression because most of the horizontal progression was gated behind where you were in the personal story. The story in Gw1 I felt was hard. Wasn’t always had, but there were more than a few times were I had to try 10 times, look up guides and viable builds, team comps, etc. So those story missions kept players interested and challenged. Then you had underworld and “farming” in there was a challenging and also satisfying because it wasn’t a thing you could just port instantly to. Then you had faction points and alliance battles and such. Gw1 wasn’t perfect, but in terms of horizontal progression it is in a much better state than gw2.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Morrigan.2809:

I came about this post of a several month s ago and what I really liked about it was the fact that it expanded on the current professions but added horizontal progression-without the idea of balancing classes nightmare please consider something like this:

I will just quote:
Warriors > Berserker —- Legionnaire —- Duellist
Guardians > Crusader —- Augmentor —- Patron
Necromancer > Occultist —- Visionary —- Witcher
Rangers > Hunter —- Strider —- Mystic
Thiefs > Rogue —- Infiltrator —- Saboteur
Engineers > Alchemist —- Artificer —- Pioneer
Mesmers > Chronomancer —- Fencer —- Bard
Elementalists > Runologist —- Sorcerer —- Arcanist
—-NEW CLASS – 3rd Soldier—-
Lancers > Dragoon —- Templar —- Partizan >
That way players can:
progress with their characters
individualize themself better and make them more unique
unlock alot of new skills, traits, weapons ect. just through progressing with their class specific Talents that define, into which direction you specialize your character

Yep we chat about this a lot (-: It get’s me excited as a player too.

Chris

Just gotta warn ya … When we turn to horizontal progression I’m coming at this with my sharpest knives and the intent to open its guts to the wind. Its a path riddled with secondary consequences that are in my experience usually toxic.

It should be a… spirited… discussion .

((Wanders off looking for a whet-stone))

The next, and arguably the biggest sticking point for me is build crafting.
This coming from someone who spend many years playing GW1, which was the build crafters wet dream. (or maybe that’s Path of Exile now?)

While it was wildly unbalanced, it was cool non the less.

GW2 on the other hand has barely budged since day 1. Almost no new skills have been added, only a few reassigned traits, and no new weapons. For shame Arenanet.
Over a year in and you haven’t done squat in this regard.

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Arguably the achievement and WvW rank took priority and I would agree with you, but come on, pick up the pace will you?

The addition of the new heal skills is probably the first time in over 6 months I was genuinely excited for, and very pleased with. More of this, please and thank you.
To of which I note the Chris said the team was looking to concentrate more in this direction, only about bloody time.

New skills, new traits, new weapons. I think that’s a given, and also that it will take time, but I also think that it is essential to the growth of the game.
Because honestly, what we have right now was good a year ago, but it’s still a very shallow pool to work with. I could easily see the number of skills/traits/weapons double, and probably still have a little more room to work with before it becomes unwieldy and difficult to balance.

-

However, I think the real interesting question is: What kind of new skills/trait/weapons should be added? What should the focus be?

Personally I am of the opinion that the classes and roles should expand in every direction other then DPS. We already have loads of dps, in fact every profession atm is effectively a dps class, to greater or lesser extents, and tanking/support/control/healing etc, are all only additional side dishes, they are not the focus at all.

This is mostly fine so far as SPvP and somewhat PvE is concerned, but in WvW it becomes quite the problem.

Any situation where the group grows to be larger the say 5-10, the DPS of the group continues to grow proportionally. However everything else, esp defense and survivability flat lines very early, and is almost entirely personal.

Even full tank/support, you can maybe hold off 2-3 people consistently.
That’s fantastic in SPvP when that’s half their forces, but in WvW it’s makes not the slightest bit of difference. It’s the difference between surviving for 3 seconds rather then 1. It’s moot.

-
And so the scale of DPS to survibility is completely out of balance, which is why (among others) zergs are able to steam roll everything besides a equivalent sized zerg, and even then it’s just an mindless cluster F! Tactics? Strategy? Ha! Ha I say.
Numbers are the only thing that matters in WvW. Which is sorrily disappointing.

-

So in a sense I would like to see whatever added to focus on bringing up tanking, support, healing and control to be on equal footing as DPS, and scale better in groups.
This might mean having the Holy Trinity in a way return, however it’s not an issue even thou people might think that it is.

There is nothing inherently wrong with healer/tank/dps, it’s only when the entirely of the content is build around only it in mind is when it becomes a problem, and that won’t happen here, they will merely be play styles, as they are now. Just a little more powerful then they are now.

Another adjacent issue to the class balance, is one of cooperative play, or rather the complete and utter lack of it. I am not joking, you cannot directly work with anyone in this game. Support and healing is limited, and without direct targeting you engagement with others is very limited.

Mind you I am in favor of the non-direct targeting, it’s an interesting restriction that can be worked around for some very interesting results, but I feel that it is a bit under utilized atm.
-

Your options are a little bit of healing, boons, and combo fields which are only an excuse for more boons and conditions and have no gameplay altering effects, and the occasional skill that effects others.

All of which does not require a party, or even the slightest bit of coordination.
Which makes me wonder what the bloody point of a party is in the first place.

What I’d like to see is mechanics that empathize coordination and organization, maneuvers that require people working together in unison to pull off, but a very effective, esp in the defensive/support/healing categories.
-

For example: You have 5+ people with shields, if near enough to each other they get a new skill or bundle they can toggle, if do at the same time they enter Phalanx Stance, a group skill/bundle system where skills effect everyone who is part of the stance, all of which also gain whatever passive effect.

Say in this case it increases toughness for every player additional in the stance, and gain boons whenever they block. They all get a bundle skills, which are strictly more defensive and tanking orientated, thus allowing the group to survive and onslaught much greater then they could as individuals.

But everyone has to be within a certain range of each other in order for the stance to remain active, and have a minimal amount of people.

-
I’m just throwing out wild ideas, but you get my point. Something that will drive cooperative play and make me actually want to party with people. Because currently GW2 is severely lacking in that regard.

Your vision of a game where players can play however they like and do not take part in the loot grind is admirable but unfortunately I think your largest problems (besides male light armor and mixed signals (ascended armor)) is the fact that you did not replace the gear grind with something else.

There is no alternative to the loot grind currently waiting at the end of GW2. There is a loot grind but it is extremely short and honestly if it weren’t timegated it would have been over a lot sooner. I genuinely believe that you need to find an equally powerful replacement for the gear grind and I believe you all have the idea of “Character Progression” which I feel you can all bank on.

Horizontal Progression should be your primary focus (Horizontal progression is not skin customization or visuals… that is Visual Progression, which is great and all… but not what we are looking for). Horizontal Progression is all about introducing different choices to players, where players can vary up their playstyle while still remaining within the same strength. What can this translate to? Well here are some Blue Sky Ideas I’ve just come up with:

1. Skills: Why don’t you introduce new skills to each profession (more than 1)? Why don’t you include a suite of skills themed around some new and exciting method of play, or alternatively that strengthen a class’s current mode of play? For example, elementalists can conjure a few weapons… Why don’t you introduce some new conjure weapon skills, some rifles maybe? Daggers? What about introducing conjured kits, or weapons that aren’t exactly in the game right now? While playing with my friend (who dunked over 4000 hours into GW2 so far which funny enough I introduced to the game… you’re welcome btw :P) Worried about PvP? It is high time you segregate between PvE and PvP and stop worrying about that – segregation will allow you to make BOTH sides more fun.

2. New Weapons: this is kinda like the new skills idea except you use weapons a lot more. You could introduce new weapons to the game primarily in two ways:
2.1 allow classes to use new weapons they couldn’t use before – examples: Elementalists start using axes in cool ways
2.2 Introduce completely new weapons to the game and give some of them to classes (Javelins, whips, crossbows, polearms…etc)

3. Playstyle variation: you broke the conventional MMO trinity by introducing a trinity of your own – well what about releasing some content (new stat combos, skills, weapons…etc) that makes a class viable in a specific role that currently is not so strong… Why not make ALL classes viable in ALL roles and leave it to the players to do cool things with that?

4. What about the traits? Why don’t you add skill progression to the game rather than just traits? Why don’t you allow players to augment certain skills they already have? For example: what if burning speed instead of moving the ele forward shot a fire hound that traveled forward a longer duration and upon activating the ability again explodes?

There are loads of ideas out there and im sure some of my ideas were repeated if not all but if there is 1 thing I’d like to make sure is taken away from this post is the following 2 things:
1. Progression is about moving forward constantly becoming better and better, literally looking back on your previous self and thinking “yup… I’ve grown”
2. There are thousands of good horizontal ideas out there (NOT SKINS) but it also all comes down to HOW players will earn them…. What is that Gear Grind replacement in the game? What is Guild Wars 2’s POWERFUL force that keeps players coming back and playing more and more and more… You need to answer this question and figure out an interesting delivery method before attempting anything, at least that is what I think.

If you introduce 50 new skills per class… Except you don’t unlock them in the same way, what if you introduce 5 new dungeons that have N new bosses… and once defeated the boss has a chance to drop one of those skills? What if that boss drops a component that you use in a semi epic quest to unlock a new skill? That is a silly example of adapting the Loot Grind into a delivery method for Horizontal Progression.

Good luck figuring this stuff out! It’s no easy feat and will mean the difference between GW2 being a good game for a while more and a Fantastic Game till the end of time.

Fourth post, geez I have a lot on my mind.

Physical Content

This is only loosely tied to horizontal progression, but it kind of does fit.
Jumping puzzles for example of content that isn’t just completed and your done with it…. well I suppose you can be so far as completionist is concerned, but I digress.

But rather it’s something you can do over and over, slowly getting better. Learning the jumps, the timings, etc. It doesn’t make you any more powerful, but you do learn a lot.

Honestly I find this one of the most enjoyable activities in GW2, and is one of it’s greatest strengths, the physicality of it all. While not for everyone, there is just nothing else quite like it in the MMO landscape, embrace that.

-

In in a way, more jumping puzzles if you would. But also other kinds of physical content, like for example races. Have races in zones that change location each day, and everyone in that zone speed runs it to the best of their ability, at the end of the day the top scores get a prize, in addition anyone who finishes the race within the prerequisite time limit also gets a small reward.

Kind of like the Wintersday jumping puzzle, but with an actual reward for people who win the race.

You don’t need to start at the same time, it’s more about speed running.

-
Underwater is a strong but chronically underused part of the game.
So maybe some sort of diving activity, or fishing perhaps?

It’s also worth noting that I am not talking about instanced mini games here.
While I do feel that mini games should have their own UI tab and not be centralized in LA. This is more something that is about getting out into the world more an exploring, reusing the PvE world content more.

So whatever fits into that.

Races, fishing, scavenger hunts, lore quizzes, more jumping puzzles.

And having it a casual competition with everyone else on the server on a daily basis with prizes and a leader board.

-

For another example, one of the most enjoyable activities to date was a guild activity my old guild did. It was a lore scavenger race.
We all paid a little to enter, and we worked as a group of 4, with 1 moderator to make sure we didn’t cheat and to give us the questions.

It was all in Queensdale. We would get a question, usually in the form of a riddle, where we had to run to a location as a group and do something.
Sometimes it was running to talk to an NPC, or fight a particular enemy that was kind of out of the way, or view a Vista at a certain location, or clicking on a certain object in the world.

Half the trick was figuring out what the answer to the riddle was before anybody else, then going to the right location and figuring out what you had to do.
It was about 15-20 questions in all, but it really tested your knowledge of the game.

Incidentally my team won, specifically because I am a walking encyclopedia apparently. And I only joined last minute on a whim.

-

But this is the kind of thing that I think would fit in perfectly for horizontal progression, because it’s non-combat and thus not restricted to that system, and also that it can recycle old content, which the game is in dire need of.

It would give people who are looking for something different something fun to do for a change, rather then just more mindless combat and bland storytelling. ‘cough’ living story ‘cough’

I would just like to address the RNG system. An almost completely RNG system like the one in place in Guild Wars 2 is damaging not only to the player, but to the game and Arenanet’s income as well.

RNG is damaging to the player for two reasons:

• The player that devotes a large amount of time to the game does not get rewarded for his or her effort when comparing themselves to someone who acquired a random drop that caused them to immediately leapfrog the first player in wealth.
• A player that does get lucky with RNG and finds themselves instantly wealthy soon loses interest in the game. While this is not always the case and I have no studies to back up my claim, anecdotal evidence has supported this conclusion.

RNG is damaging to the game and community as a whole because of the effects on the player. In either scenario, the player is negatively affected by RNG. Over time as each incidence of RNG takes place, the player is less likely to continue playing, therefore the community loses its members.

RNG is detrimental to Arenanet’s business model due to the abundance of RNG items available in the Gem Store. As with the effects on a player, the success rate of acquisition of decent items from the Black Lion Chests, Miniature Collection Packs, and Dye Packs will either discourage those that do not receive a positive outcome or disillusion those that do. A player that does not get a reward after countless attempts will stop attempting and a player who gets a reward to early will stop attempting. Of course, this means that less money will be spent on gems.

Possible Solution – Instead of relying completely on RNG, I suggest a weighted system.

In this system, an unsuccessful interaction with an RNG system would increase the player’s chances on subsequent attempts. This system would be a modification of the magic find system. The MF system would be expanded to work on chest drops and Black Lion Trading Company RNG items, in addition to the creature drops.

An unsuccessful encounter with RNG would be the acquisition of any white, blue, or green item. On an unsuccessful attempt, the magic find percentage of the player would increment. The amount could be almost minuscule (0.05%), and it would be better than a completely new chance each time with the current system.

A successful encounter would be a yellow, orange, or pink item. The outcome would be different for each of these acquisitions. For a yellow item, there would be no modification of the artificial magic find that has been accrued – the player would have the same chance on subsequent attempts. For an orange or exotic item, the artificial magic find can be reduced by a percentage. For a pink or ascended item, the accrued magic find would be lost. There could be other modifications as well for precursors or other high value items that are not in proportion with their rarity tier.

Thank you for reading my wall of text.
TL;DR: RNG is unfair.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Hi All,

Here is the next evolution of the original Vertical Progression proposal based on a summary of our discussions:

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.

A review of current RNG metrics.

The ability to change gear stats (Note there is still a lot of discussion about whether people want this or not)

The ability to build up to Ascended Gear through drops rather than just relying on RNG.

Ascended Gear mats dropping more equally across the game, for example WvW.

No more new Gear tiers that make the existing tiers obsolete.

Additional ways to earn Ascended Gear at accelerated for Alts.

Note this is the formulation of a proposal for discussion. Once the proposal is finalized it will be discussed internally. However there will be no promise of actions or schedule.

Chris

The ability to change gear stats would be great!

Keriana.9635:

The ability to change gear stats would be great!

Agreed.

I call for the return of the Fissure of Woe and the Underworld.

A sense of vertical and horizontal progression in one. Originally, only good players could complete them, and the potential rewards gave those who completed it a sense of prestige and accomplishment.

They were only skins, yet they were skins that were obtainable ONLY from the instance, at a small but not too small rate. It never felt like a grind because you weren’t doing the run over and over for the chance at these weapons; but there were several systems and rewards tied together. You could earn obsidian shards, ecto, chaos axes/other exclusive skins, as well as the final chest reward. If you weren’t in it for the skins, you were in it for the money you stood to make, or to craft obsidian armor.

Does this go against your aims for Guild Wars 2? No, I don’t think it does. In a game where people are satisfied with way pointing across a map and auto attacking champions for 5 hours a day, every day; at least this would cause them to actually engage with the game and their brains. FoW and UW were exponentially more fun than zerging around in a blob of 50 people PvDooring, or grinding champions.

The right choice was 100% made with the token system and making it easily accessible to everyone after a few runs, however, if you layer enough reward content within each dungeon; people would still run them if there was only an RNG chance at the skin they want. That is, if each dungeon provided not only the potential for a dungeon specific skin at the end of the dungeon, but other skins that only appear in that dungeon dropped throughout, people would be more willing to run those dungeons. With that you would have less complaints about end game where people have additional carrots to chase.

With that said, majority of players want new content, not re-hashed content with added skins that people may or may not like based on their own subjective opinion.

I feel as though horizontal and vertical progression needs to be viewed as overlapping, and what needs to be addressed is how these two modes of progression can be combined and work together.

To answer a question posed earlier in the thread before the topic shifts. I’m not a fan of vertical progression, but when a game does have it like many RPGs I always appreciate when it comes along with an element of choice. The traits serve this purpose, partially; but the important ones come fairly infrequently (every 5 levels) and when you reach the max level you no longer have choice in your progression. The game becomes mostly just getting better stat gear through exotics/ascendant items, which I find disinteresting to the point I haven’t bothered pursuing ascendant gear. Systems I’ve enjoyed in the past that offer choice include:

- Final Fantasy 10:The sphere grid was an excellent system for choosing how to grow your character. It pigeon-holed characters early on, but eventually they could grow in ways you wanted. Kimahri was a good example of a character that could grow in many ways you wanted. This system has been done better in the recently released Tales of Xillia and Path of Exile

- Final Fantasy 10: The items you equipped taught you skills. You could make a choice between permanently learning a new skill or swapping to a more powerful weapon with a different skill. I think it’s the permanency of acquiring a skill that makes this interesting, something gear lacks as it feels like one has to constantly “keep up”.

- Harvest Moon: There are are no player levels in Harvest Moon. Rather you level up your skills by using your skills. Want to be better at watering your crops? You practice watering your crops. I recall one poor RPG that did something similar, Quest 64. Cool concept but the less we speak of this game the better.

- Guild Wars: I liked seeking out skills from enemies and getting them from quests. More variety than elite hunting would have been nice, but it’s definitely better than just unlocking skills as you level.

Overall, I would prefer vertical progression stop as it’s going to create power gaps if it keeps escalating, which will make it difficult to balance the challenging and world impacting open world content I’d like to see more of.

I think this game needs not high but a low amount of vertical progression.
Why? Because players always need a new goal to achieve in mmos. If you remove this goal line or make it come closer(easier) to achieve, players will have nothing to play after reaching such a goal. Why should i play more if i own everything to achieve easily? Please don’t only listen to very casual players, we hardcore players need vertical progression to keep playing this game. Hardcore players are players that support this game, casuals play it for 1 month and quit. Hardcore players are who keep playing and supporting this game. I think, this is why mmos like wow are still doing great in the market. Please support hardcore players with new goals to achieve. Make the game harder, obtaining items harder and make items rarer. Casuals are just content tourists which won’t support your game. Don’t just look at forums, casuals mostly write and cry on forums while hardcore “real” players are playing the game. I can say that many ppl in game find this game very easy to play, and not rewarding in a vertical manner, some of them migrated to other mmos just because of this reason.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Abramelin.7356:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Hi All,

Chris

Bump. We are close to being able to move onto the ‘focused’ Horizontal Progression part of this conversation.

Does anyone have anymore comments on the proposal above based on our discussions?

Chris

The above proposal for vertical progression really only relates to ascended gear. Since ascended gear is now pretty much all in the game (and noting your comments on ascended runes / sigils), does this mean there will be no more vertical progression going forward?

I would like to see futher vertical progression, which was not gear based.

HI Abramelin,

Can you elaborate on the type of Vertical Progression you are referencing please? This will help me better understand your question.

Chris

Hi Chris, thanks for reading my post. By vertical progression I mean character power increases, either through straight stat bonuses or more powerful skills. I would like to know whether there will be a way to make our characters more powerful in the next year or so.

As an example of non-gear based stat progression, I like LOTRO’s virtue system http://lotro-wiki.com/index.php/Virtues. This gave you incremental stat bonuses from doing certain achievement type tasks. There were lots of stat bonus types, but you could only slot 5 at a time. For exampe, if you killed 1000 centaurs you could get a +5% damage bonus to centaurs, which would compete against other benefit type for your 5 slots. You could give other types of benefit too, like +20% duration on control effects.

This system would allow a lot of options for build customisation and specialisation. It also encourages players to do a wide variety of content, so they could have a range of possible bonus types to slot in the appropriate circumstances. Plus it makes sense frmo a roleplay / immersion perspective, since you get better at something from actually doing it.

I don’t know game design, but I do know what I like when I play, and my personal manifesto is “do what you enjoy, and advance your character doing it.” Unfortunately, few MMOs follow this idea. Therefore, here are my ideas based on leveling two characters in Gw2 to 80, as well as countless hours in practically every other MMO since SW Galaxies:

Weapons and Equipment:

—Evolving weapons and armor. What I’d love to see is a system that eliminates the need to replace one weapon or armor piece in a class with another, and instead worked more like Skyrim and similar games. In other words, I’d love to see stats or passives unlock in certain areas by doing certain things.

—Example: let’s say I have a great sword, and I kill 100 centaurs. I’d like the greatsword to then get a slight bonus against centaurs. The more centaurs I kill with my greatsword, the greater my proficiency in killing centaurs with greatswords should be.

—Or, maybe I use my greatsword mostly in WvW. So the greatsword would add proficiency in killing other player sin WvW. And so on.

—I’d love to see the same thing for armor; maybe each piece contributes to an overall armor rating that improves the more damage is blocked from this enemy or that. So the more I defend against centaurs, the better my defense proficiency against them should rise over time.

—I’d be fine if this kind of “evolving” weapon was only available at level cap. I wouldn’t want the process of obtaining them to be locked behind a dungeon or jumping puzzle or anything like that though. That’s the mistake The Secret World is making with its end game gear, and I think it’s a really bad design decision.

—Evolving weapons should still be fully transfigurable, so the skins can be changed to whatever suits the player’s fancy.

—I’d like to be able to collect weapon glow/particle effects, and be able to add them to any weapon using the transfiguration stones.

“Living Character”

—To me character progression isn’t just about improving stats. I want to have many more options to develop my avatar as an actual character. Think more like a movie character or a novel. How do I develop her personality? What is her background? What does she like to do in her spare time when she isn’t killing centaurs?

—I want my choice of god to matter, and to have gameplay options around that.

—I want more personal story.

—The Living World is great, but ultimately an MMO is about building a character. So I’d like to see “Living Character” added to the GW2 manifesto along with Living World. Give us options to make our little warriors more real.

Class Progression:

—My character is a Guardian. I want more options to be even more of a Guardian. I want Guardian-specific quests, Guardian-specific gear, Guardian-specific pets. I want to visit some distant guild hall that is the headquarters of the Guardian order.

Oh, and please also add an option to turn off the name tags for summoned pets.

Thanks!!

Vena.8436:

Mirta.5029:

And crafting is still worthless!
Why? Because there’s only one skin for ascended armor and it can only be gotten trough crafting, it’s also account bound and not sellable, meaning that if anyone wants to get ascended armor they have to pick up crafting themselves and they will be making the time limited items themselves.

Crafting isn’t worthless.

The component products at 500, which are sell-able, have greater value than their net components. Something which was never true in the past.

Which component is like that besides Bolt of Damask? Even for Damask that is likely temporary as well.

Coming late into the discussion, I will not make new points, but rather cast my vote for what was said, entirely out of context:

1. Stats are independant from skins.
I would go hunt all the skins that I do not care about now if there was something like the PvP locker in PvE.

2. Naga-hide sofa (Introduce trophies/story-driven customisations for the home instance.)
You have already started this. I have a human and at the beginning of my personal story I chose which priest sits in my Salma. When I finished the hunt for Krait Shards, I got one too.
There are also “story items” in my personal story tab that most players probably are not aware of. You could make these actual items in the home instance. Etc.

3. Unlock new class versions.
Engineer > Marksman > Grenadeer…. sure, who’d not love that.

4. Account-bound dyes.
Would give me more to hunt for, I’ve always wanted this.

5. Remove the rigid skill system.
I did not like the current skill-system when it was announced long before release. I gave it over a year of playing now. I still dislike it just as much.
I do not like having five fixed weapon skills. (When I had what? 25+ per weapon in GW1.) I do not like having a set number of three utility skills. I do not like having to take an elite skill. I do not like having to take a heal skill. I do not like the lack of freedom. I’m sorry for whoever designed it, but I gave it a try and it did not grow on me.

Also: Normalise dyes.
On one character I can wear pieces of six different armours, all made of metal. On these pieces I can use nothing but one single dye and still look like a patchwork-jester. Each dye should have one look on one material. This is currently preventing mix-and-match in many instances – and prevents points 1 and 5.

Nike.2631:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Morrigan.2809:

I came about this post of a several month s ago and what I really liked about it was the fact that it expanded on the current professions but added horizontal progression-without the idea of balancing classes nightmare please consider something like this:

I will just quote:
Warriors > Berserker —- Legionnaire —- Duellist
Guardians > Crusader —- Augmentor —- Patron
Necromancer > Occultist —- Visionary —- Witcher
Rangers > Hunter —- Strider —- Mystic
Thiefs > Rogue —- Infiltrator —- Saboteur
Engineers > Alchemist —- Artificer —- Pioneer
Mesmers > Chronomancer —- Fencer —- Bard
Elementalists > Runologist —- Sorcerer —- Arcanist
—-NEW CLASS – 3rd Soldier—-
Lancers > Dragoon —- Templar —- Partizan >
That way players can:
progress with their characters
individualize themself better and make them more unique
unlock alot of new skills, traits, weapons ect. just through progressing with their class specific Talents that define, into which direction you specialize your character

Yep we chat about this a lot (-: It get’s me excited as a player too.

Chris

Just gotta warn ya … When we turn to horizontal progression I’m coming at this with my sharpest knives and the intent to open its guts to the wind. Its a path riddled with secondary consequences that are in my experience usually toxic.

It should be a… spirited… discussion .

((Wanders off looking for a whet-stone))

waoh!
looking forward to it-
your ideas in the CDI have been very good and I will be interested to see why you think secondary specializations are a bad idea.
Will certainly be interesting

Nike.2631:

Ok, I’ve read variations on this a bunch of times now but I’ve got to ask it straight out:

Do people feel it’s impossible to test new builds using only Exotic gear?

When I get an evil notion to couple Superior Runes of the Sunless with the fastest Elite Skill cooldown in the game (Basilisk Venom, muhuwahahaaa…) I don’t need a full suit of Ascended to figure out if it works. I may want that full set eventually if the build comes together, but it seems like the experimentation and even refinement phases aren’t going on hinge on that last 5% of stats. If anything timing issues (mostly cooldowns) which are barely affected by gear load-out have a lot more make-or-break impact on my experiments.

No matter the outcome of the test the exotics will feel like a waste unless we move back to “there is no need to get ascended” argument. Testing with masterwork or rare wouldn’t be as big of and issue since you don’t end up wasting t6s but that leaves a bigger stat gap between testing and target. Those same t6s will need to be used for the ascended version too.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Hi All,

Here is the next evolution of the original Vertical Progression proposal based on a summary of our discussions:

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.

A review of current RNG metrics.

The ability to change gear stats (Note there is still a lot of discussion about whether people want this or not)

The ability to build up to Ascended Gear through drops rather than just relying on RNG.

Ascended Gear mats dropping more equally across the game, for example WvW.

No more new Gear tiers that make the existing tiers obsolete.

Additional ways to earn Ascended Gear at accelerated for Alts.

Note this is the formulation of a proposal for discussion. Once the proposal is finalized it will be discussed internally. However there will be no promise of actions or schedule.

Chris

The ability to change stats sounds nicer than it it. You’ll still be stuck with the wrong rune/sigil but this is existing problem for Legendaries.

Also, no the recently introduced gemstore item does not solve this anymore than the current situation of ‘everything can be solved if you have enough money’.

Squeesidhe.4761:

Weapons and Equipment:

—Evolving weapons and armor. What I’d love to see is a system that eliminates the need to replace one weapon or armor piece in a class with another, and instead worked more like Skyrim and similar games. In other words, I’d love to see stats or passives unlock in certain areas by doing certain things.

—Example: let’s say I have a great sword, and I kill 100 centaurs. I’d like the greatsword to then get a slight bonus against centaurs. The more centaurs I kill with my greatsword, the greater my proficiency in killing centaurs with greatswords should be.

—Or, maybe I use my greatsword mostly in WvW. So the greatsword would add proficiency in killing other player sin WvW. And so on.

—I’d love to see the same thing for armor; maybe each piece contributes to an overall armor rating that improves the more damage is blocked from this enemy or that. So the more I defend against centaurs, the better my defense proficiency against them should rise over time.

—I’d be fine if this kind of “evolving” weapon was only available at level cap. I wouldn’t want the process of obtaining them to be locked behind a dungeon or jumping puzzle or anything like that though. That’s the mistake The Secret World is making with its end game gear, and I think it’s a really bad design decision.

—Evolving weapons should still be fully transfigurable, so the skins can be changed to whatever suits the player’s fancy.

—I’d like to be able to collect weapon glow/particle effects, and be able to add them to any weapon using the transfiguration stones.

This idea is awesome, I think it’s a solid foundation for other progression features.

On the same note, I was just discussing an idea that I think would make the game pretty interesting for players that want to be rewarded for things that they enjoy.

I was thinking of allowing your character to have “Hobbies”. These would be something along the lines of Professions such as Cooking, Weaponsmithing, etc; there would be a tab for it in the Hero panel and the player will have access to it at the beginning of the game. They would be divided into 3 categories:

Spelunker— the more a player does dungeon runs the better the drops in dungeons/ more gold at the end of the dungeon.

Hunter— the more a player kills monsters in the overworld the better their drops, additionally, players can align themselves with certain “factions” and collect bounties (such as tokens) that can be exchanged for exclusive faction items. For example, if a player aligns themselves with the Quaggans whose canon enemies are the Krait, the player could collect “Krait Scales” on every kill that they could then turn in to a Quaggan Chief for exclusive faction rewards, Karma, or Gold. Also, the player will gain permanent bonuses to magic/gold find towards enemies that will stack individually from each other (the passive bonus for Risen cannot be applied to Skelk, they will progress individually from each other)

Cultivator— the more a player gathers nodes the higher their chance to receive extra gathering chances.

In order to prevent pigeon-holing, the player will NOT have to choose which Hobby to specialize in, rather, their playstyle and the activities that they enjoy will dictate how far—and how fast—they progress in each Hobby.

Even though this may not be the best implementation because of balancing issues, I would love to see things like this implemented into the game.

“The ability to change gear stats (Note there is still a lot of discussion about whether people want this or not)”
i am very sure a lot of people want this.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Hi All,

Here is the next evolution of the original Vertical Progression proposal based on a summary of our discussions:

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.

A review of current RNG metrics.

The ability to change gear stats (Note there is still a lot of discussion about whether people want this or not)

The ability to build up to Ascended Gear through drops rather than just relying on RNG.

Ascended Gear mats dropping more equally across the game, for example WvW.

No more new Gear tiers that make the existing tiers obsolete.

Additional ways to earn Ascended Gear at accelerated for Alts.

Note this is the formulation of a proposal for discussion. Once the proposal is finalized it will be discussed internally. However there will be no promise of actions or schedule.

Chris

i support all the above. thanks chris!

There’s been a lot of talk about vertical and horizontal progression, but there’s another kind of progression that could be applied to the game: storyline progression. I’ll explain what I mean by telling a story that makes me feel old.

enter black and white
Back in the day, when rpgs were mostly top view, there was this game for the Super Nintendo called ‘Chrono Trigger’. It was a Final Fantasy-style turn-based rpg that included time travelling. Even back then, it had multiple story paths and about 10 different endings or so. Things you did in the past affected the future as you may expect, but the plot went deeper than that.

There’s a particular part in the ‘middle ages’, where the player team recruits ‘the Hero’. This hero (who happened to be a frog) then went to get a legendary sword, which only the true hero could wield. A bit later in the game, when the players travel further back in time to a magical kingdom, they use a dagger to destroy a machine that would otherwise end up destroying the world. When they struck the machine with the dagger, two spirits come out, revealing the dagger to be the legendary sword the player has already found in the future.
back to present

There used to be great satisfaction in finishing a game. There was levelling and vertical progression of course, but the main focus was the story progress. With the absence of new looks and stats just being a few numbers, the main drive was to ‘see what happens next’. In the case of Chrono Trigger, people would play it multiple times just to see the different endings (which didn’t all require to replay the gam in its entirety thanks to the time travel plot).

My main point is that, to some of us, the progression of the story is the most important thing. Like reading a good book, a game can tell an amazing story. Finding new NPC’s that share a small bit of lore can be very rewarding. Guild Wars 1, especially the later War in Kryta and Winds of Change storylines, were about story progression rather than character progression. And that too, is a way to move forward. To keep people interested, to keep them playing. The lore forums are pretty stale because not enough happens to actually talk about. And like the legendary sword from Chorno Trigger, you can reveal quite a lot early on and still surprise your audience later.

The basis of rpgs used to be the story. And seeing how it worked very well 20 years ago…why not give it another try now?

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

why is it actually bad to gate through skill alone? Why are people leaving when content is skillgated? I just remember almost only positive feedback on the Liadri encounter.

There were negative ones as well. The truth is that not everyone is equally skilled, and generally, by definition, half of the players are below average. You either place skill level so low it becomes meaningless, or you lock out majority of the players (which will usually get them really angry).
Skill gates are a good thing, but they should never be placed on the only way to the goal.

FlipSide.4765:

Named exotic weapons should be bumped up to ascended.

Some of them. The ones forged in Mystic Toilet? Definitely. Most of them already cost more than any ascended. Those that come from direct drops or champ boxes? Not so much.
Remember, that there are a lot of named weapons that can be bought on TP at single digit gold range. Those do not really qualify.

FlipSide.4765:

I think the Hall of Monuments needs to be leveraged as a place to visualize achievement progression. As you accomplish more achievements the Hall of Monuments should reflect your progress.

Oh, yes. HoM in GW1 was a really great idea – it’s rather sad that it’s so underused in the current game.

FlipSide.4765:

Another collection style improvement would be a story book library where you can rewatch old cinematics. Something else for the Hall of Monuments. It’d be great if you could use them to replay an instance of the story.

Perhaps a return of the scrying font?

I like the concept of new skills [and traits]. The newest batch of healing skills helped fill in gaps in certain builds, even if they could probably use some balancing. I always felt that my Mesmer just wasn’t all that it could be, but I really like how it works now. Similarly, adding a new Venom heal for Thief adds something to that type of build (though I’m staying on a crit build).

However, something was lost between the Antitoxin Spray and the new heals: multiple methods of learning them. While 25 skill points isn’t much of an effort for a consistent player, the alternate cost for the Antitoxin Spray seemed a bit high. I’d rather not pay 25 skill points per month on all of my characters just on skills (Ascended crafting, material upgrades, etc. also using them). I actually don’t mind using event tokens, but the cost was a bit high on the last attempt. Also, I would advise not increasing costs for new skills over time because that would increase the difficulty for newer players to catch up.

I would also suggest having a new notification of the availability of new skills or traits because I’ve talked with some casual players who had no idea what was in the 12/10 patch, and that was 5 days after it was released.

This may sound crazy, but you might want to give out the new traits for free. We’ve never had to pay much for the existing traits. It would also be friendly to the casuals.

TheDaiBish.9735:

HiddenNick.7206:

You are talking like Vertical Progression is the next bad thing after meteor shower! And why it’s so bad? And why do you think that Horizontal Progression is vastly superior to it? You’re not playing an ordinary game. You’re playing an MMO game. And that’s the kind game of game that grows vertically and endlessly (or to the moment when people stops playing it) whether you like or not. And characters should grow with it.

Personally, I see horizontal more as growth of options, whereas vertical is simply numbers going up.

As such, I prefer a focus on horizontal since allowing players more options allows for more varied mechanics, whereas vertical is more a case of ‘I did 10 damage now I do 12’ so the growth of options isn’t there, thus encounter mechanics have to stay within the limit of the tools the player has.

Your mistaken. Check my previous posts in this thread – I don’t want to repeat myself. VP is not only about numbers going up.

And there are as many problems with Horizontal Progression as with Vertical Progression. Horizontal Progression creates options and you choose one – the best one. And that’s the main problem with it. Even now there are better and worse Sigils. So the majority of sigils are just a crowd for the useful ones. More options makes it more difficult to balance them all.

Asuka Shikinami.5462:

3) Completing difficult event chains should reward ascended gear. Or atleast something skill based. Less of 2 blues and a green, more of something meaningful and actually rewarding. Liadri was a good example of this, instead of a mini, why not allow the player to choose an ascended amulet for completing her? Actually meaningful reward based on a difficult skill challenge that would be useful to the majority of players (mini’s are ignored by 95% of the population yet seem to be a majority reward…)

I am all for rewards but I do not see that working. Rewards need to remain meaningful when the activity is repeated. Sure the amulet will be nice the first couple of times but at some point it just becomes junk that I have to waste time destroy. The reward turns into a punishment. People will reach that point at different rates but eventually you’ll have to go back to the drawing board. This is already happening with ascended rings in fractals.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

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.

While this is generally a good thing I believe that the main problem is the stats you’ll get. I got quite a few weapon-chests, but none of them had ‘useful’ stats (for me)

Chris Whiteside.6102:

A review of current RNG metrics.

I’m not exactly sure what this means. If it’s about the chances for Item X to drop then I think it’s ok how it is right now, besides always getting ascended gear with stats I don’t need

Chris Whiteside.6102:

The ability to change gear stats (Note there is still a lot of discussion about whether people want this or not)

I think this one should stay exclusive to legendaries and people should be able to get the stats they want easier through drops (e.g. let them choose stats AND weapon, because as mentioned above, wrong stats == useless to the player)

Chris Whiteside.6102:

The ability to build up to Ascended Gear through drops rather than just relying on RNG.

What I think would be nice would be if Dungeon-Vendors would offer it too, just with a way higher price. Currently it costs you 1380 tokens for a full set. In my opinion 3000-4000 tokens would be a good price for a full ascended set.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Ascended Gear mats dropping more equally across the game, for example WvW.

Besides dropping more equally across the game I’d like to have a way to convert one material to another. I have TONS of Bloodstone Dust/Bricks, but not so much of the other two. A Recipe could be:
- 250 from the unwanted
- 10 from the wanted
- 5 Obsidian Shards
- X Philosopher’s Stones / Crystals

Chris Whiteside.6102:

No more new Gear tiers that make the existing tiers obsolete.

There will still be player whining when you release Legendary Armor/Accesoires
I think a promise for 2years or so would be better at first. When you get horizontal progression right you can still say “no more tiers forever!”

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Additional ways to earn Ascended Gear at accelerated for Alts.

This would be awesome.

Faowri.4159:

HiddenNick.7206:

Gibson.4036:

Khisanth.2948:

VOLKON.1290:

I think we’re putting too much thought into “vertical” progression. It should be clear that hardly anyone (a vast minority) wants a continual power creep to be added to the game. So, for the sake of simplicity, let’s say that ascended gear is it. That is max “power”. If that can be agreed upon then the whole topic of vertical itself comes screeching to a halt and we automatically shift to the horizontal line of thinking… now that we know and have resolved ourselves to the idea that ascended is it, how accessible do we make ascended?

Are we? It was pretty clear that hardly anyone wants continual power creep a year ago as well yet here we are with the ascended gear. The strongest statement I’ve seen for not having more in the future is “I certainly hope not”, that is a very weak statement without any sort of commitment. I find the lack of conviction to be very disturbing.

Agreed. We have no guarantees. Even if Ascended is the final tier, which we haven’t been given an unequivocal statement about, we’ve also been told that ArenaNet is committed to continual, gradual vertical progression.

There are plenty of avenues for this without implementing a new tier of gear. We don’t yet have ascended equivalent runes, sigils, infusions or consumables. All of these things can gradually be implemented over the next year, and all with as steep of an acquisition curve as Ascended armor and weapons.

In addition, the last statement we have from ArenaNet is that they expect there to eventually be a level-cap increase, though we have no time-frame hinted at. That means we could have level 90 Ascended gear to chase.

Going on ArenaNet’s most recent statements surrounding this area, we can (without 100% confidence) expect not to see a gear above Ascended, but also expect that vertical progression will continue for the foreseeable future.

Statements that Ascended is the final tier of gear do not mean that vertical progression has ended.

Statements in this thread that they want to concentrate on horizontal progression do not mean that vertical progression has ended.

Anyone who thinks that the release of ascended armor has put an end to VP is either not paying attention, or really wants to believe it in spite of the evidence we currently have.

You are talking like Vertical Progression is the next bad thing after meteor shower! And why is it so bad? Why do you think that Horizontal Progression is vastly superior to it? You’re not playing an ordinary game. You’re playing an MMO game. And that’s the kind game of game that grows vertically and endlessly (or to the moment when people stops playing it) whether you like or not. And characters should grow with it.

I’m not sure why you seem to think horizontal progression results in no character growth.

That’s not what I meant. I would love to check out new weapons and skills. And that’s also a growth for me. But the game can’t grow without VP. For example lets compare dungeons (Horizontal “Progression”) and fractals(Vertical Progression). Dungeons can’t coexist because one diminishes the importance of the other. Like CoFp1 made all other paths less relevant to the game (progression wise). Fractal levels on the other hand aren’t mutually exclusive. First fractal level will always be the only way to get to level 2 and will be always relevant to the game. In the context of the whole game it works analogously.
I’m not saying that HP is bad and VP is good. I think that both types of progression have their place in the game (in opposite of Gibson).

PS. I also think that AC gear is useless and takes to much time to get

Nike.2631:

Do people feel it’s impossible to test new builds using only Exotic gear?

A higher gear ceiling is unfriendly to experimentation/evolution and build diversity, it hurts the player’s freedom to experience diverse build choices or classes.I’m not concerned about testing new builds (if it’s for WvW I can do that in sPvP, if it’s in PvE chances are it will involve berserkers/knights gear and ruby orbs or one of the other optimal DPS upgrades). I’m concerned about meta changes and changing builds. In PvE most characters will want some kind of DPS set. In WvW for a lot of players that is not optimal. The meta changes a lot, what I wanted three month ago isn’t what I want now. As the game and player skill evolves, gear demands evolve but acquired items don’t. This is a problem given how steep the investment is.

One set of gear does not fit all situations and the diversity of builds and play styles you can experience really helps keep the game fresh and players engaged. Ascended competes with this freedom because it encourages and rewards you for building one way and not experimenting outside of that. The cost of exotics is not to be dismissed and experimentation or just committing, for a time, to a build becomes less appealing when the wind could be blowing in another direction after the next balance patch, or you might just decide you want a change.

Unlocking multiple build choices on the same item is good progression.I like the idea of unlocking stat combinations on a piece of equipment. Maybe it doesn’t have all the stats to begin with, but for a decreased cost (not as much as an ascended item from scratch) I can add a new stat combination to that item that I can swap between. This would help to decrease inventory bloat and would ease the pain of swapping builds when an old one goes out of favour. It would also be a nice way to feel like my equipment is progressing without making me more powerful. An item that can swap between berserker, knight or rabid stats would be pretty cool and would make it feel like I’m constantly improving my character. Tie it to something like skill points an account bound currencies, maybe an NPC that sells stat specific components of a mystic forge recipe that can be purchased with ascended mats (bloodstone dust etc).

Add new methods of acquisition. I still don’t like current ascended acquisition methods(too grindy, too much gold required, little freedom in content). I don’t like that crafting is required (I personally hate crafting) and I feel like the biggest barrier for me is the gold required to push through crafting (or even assemble the purchasable components/materials to craft the item itself). I’d like to see a turn to multiple ways to access ascended items similair to exotics. Use more of the account bound currencies (karma, badges of honour, dungeon tokens, skill points) and possibly even the mystic forge. Unlike crafting, the Mystic Forge is relatively simple to use(only four items needed, no unnecessary time wasters like soles or boot linings). I think the emphasis on ascended acquisition is too heavy on gold, trading post economics and crafting. It just feels like a lot of stuff and not a lot of gameplay. I’m fine with dragonite/empyrial/bloodstone components (although I think their areas of acquisition and numbers need to be better balanced) but the other components I’d like to see replaced with other items (either drops or purchasable with account bound currencies).

Don’t involve gold or the Trading Post. One of the stated reasons for ascended was to give players another thing to progress towards on their way to legendaries. The heavy involvement of the economy and gold in ascended acquisition can be a huge speed bump on the legendary journey. Suddenly the money I was saving up to buy the Legend with now has to go towards levelling my crafting profession or buying bulk raw materials. Any tweaks to the ascended acquisition methods would best involve account bound currencies to avoid more bloat on the need for gold in this game and return the focus to playing the game to acquire items as opposed to playing the TP. Outright selling ascended items has this exact problem – you further increase the power of gold adding more pressure to the already bloated list of things players are best grinding gold to acquire.

EgonVenkman.1907:

HiddenNick.7206:

You are talking like Vertical Progression is the next bad thing after meteor shower! And why is it so bad? Why do you think that Horizontal Progression is vastly superior to it? You’re not playing an ordinary game. You’re playing an MMO game. And that’s the kind game of game that grows vertically and endlessly (or to the moment when people stops playing it) whether you like or not. And characters should grow with it.

Go look at GW1.

This was billed as the MMO that DIDN’T have VP. It was supposed to be different. However, you and all the other MMO content locusts, rammed through everything in one month, then scared Anet into releasing content for people they didn’t even market the game to.

There is an endless variety of MMOs with the endless vertical progression you desire. This game wasn’t built for it, but added as a complete kneejerk reaction, with devs lying/claiming they didn’t lie/proved they were lying/claiming “you didn’t understand what i said”. Leaving the community/dev interaction completely hostile to one another, resulting in the CDI efforts being put forth now. All because you wanted a carbon copy clone of every other MMO experience with slightly different graphics.

First: you should be infracted for your post.
Second: this suppose to be respectful discussion.
Third: Gw2 had a VP from the beginning of it’s existence (as Gw1 did).
Fourth: how is that talk making you any better from the “locusts”?!

Sorry I am a bit late to the discussion, had a pretty busy week, hope its not too late but I got a bit of a suggestion regarding Vertical progression that in a way ties in to horizontal progression so its not entirely out of point even at this stage.

Personally ascended gear doesnt matter much to me as i do feel its entirely optional and I can enjoy the game in its entirety if I ignore it. That being said I had a lot of discussions on the subject on this forum and I have a few ideas that might be interesting to consider. I will list the issue they address first and what I propose. Some of it works on an unlock system which is something Deimos Tel Arin discussed. I think its different but if its the same I apologize for repeating what you meant Deimos.

So the biggest issue and something that holds me back from pursuing Ascended gear myself is:

it takes a long time and a lot of “grinding” to acquire ascended gear
My Idea here is what if each piece was just slightly harder then exotics to get but would in turn be just slightly better then exotic and then the piece itself would need to be leveled up to reach the current ascended gear level. My idea is this would be done automatically as you “gain levels” at level 80. They obviously need to be real levels not levels acquired through tome of knowledge kind. If say there were 5 steps each step might require 3 levels. This would be great cause you can level up the gear playing whatever content you enjoy including WvW and there would be no Randomness involved which people hate. BUT obviously this undermins the intended sinks + it kills the market for gatherers so in addition to this kind of leveling I would also implement the possibility to craft objects, lets called them evolution crystals that when consumed would level up the pieces by 1 level. People who dont want to wait leveling all 180 levels for the full set can take this “shortcut” to speed it up. I personally think this would be better because everyday you play you can see some vertical progression, ehmmm progress so it doesnt feel like you need to give 15-30 days of play time before you see any actual progress thus hopefully making the whole thing feel less like a job and more like a reward. (the biggest problem here from a developer perspective is how the leveling will work. Only 1 piece needs to level at a time, I guess the easiest implementation would be the leveling would go to a random piece thats worn but isnt max level yet.

ascended gear is too expensive to use for different builds
here is where horizontal progression can get in. What if ascended gear can change stats like legendary weapons. But you dont get all the choices at once, they get unlocked by completing special achievements. My idea here is to have npcs give out special achievements say kill X veterans in Y time unlocks the Berserker stats or say healing X amount on allies will unlock the cleric type. These can be really hard achievements to get thus making them feel like real achievements but can then be account wide so it feels like the effort is worthed cause alts get to benefit too.

I think such a system might even making the whole thing more alt friendly too to a degree as even just playing a single day with an alt that just got ascended armor will have tangible progression.