Guild Wars 2

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

i’ll say this again.

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

This is exactly what we need.

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

ah thanks for the reminder. i forgot about runes, sigils.

allow us to have horizontal progression in our gear.

allow each gear to unlock stats one by one, swap stats when out of combat via a menu.
allow each gear to unlock skins one by one, swap skins when out of combat via a menu.
allow each armor to unlock runes one by one, swap runes when out of combat via a menu.
allow each weapon to unlock sigils one by one, swap runes when out of combat via a menu.

best horizontal gear progression ever!

please help to quote to spread and get their attention if you support this. thanks!

BeoErgon.9107:

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

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

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

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

I dunno. While i’m not a fan of vertical progression, and I can’t see the point of raising the level cap, it can be done in such a way that it doesn’t completely negate your effort from before. For example:

• Content tasks that use your current gear as the ‘base’ of the upgrade. For example, you have Exotic gear, you buy a Gift of Ascension, then it turns into Ascended.
• That one piece of gear scales with level, and is improved horizontally by unlocking more options (stat combos, runes, aesthetics ect) on it.

TheDaiBish.9735:

BeoErgon.9107:

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

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

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

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

I dunno. While i’m not a fan of vertical progression, and I can’t see the point of raising the level cap, it can be done in such a way that it doesn’t completely negate your effort from before. For example:

• Content tasks that use your current gear as the ‘base’ of the upgrade. For example, you have Exotic gear, you buy a Gift of Ascension, then it turns into Ascended.
• That one piece of gear scales with level, and is improved horizontally by unlocking more options (stat combos, runes, aesthetics ect) on it.

Sure, there are ways to make incremental levels not being a chore.

But again, if we don’t know if they plan it, how can we fully discuss on Character progression? Knowing about eventual higher tiers and levels in the future is essential to fully discuss the different proposals in this topic.

Ashabhi.1365:

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

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

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

What it has seemed to turn into is a large discussion of Ascended gear.
…..

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

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

Snipped by me to highlight my favourite bits. I, personally, would be happy to copy/paste and/or rewrite my posts on horizontal progression in a thread dedicated to actually discussing horizontal progression.

Here’s my summary of the vertical progression discussion:
1. We didn’t want another tier of gear; you guys knew that and implemented it anyway, so now we’re stuck with it.
2. We want more ways to acquire it and more ways for alts to gear up.
3. Do something with the rune/sigil system. It’s awful and punishingly expensive right now.
4. Don’t give us yet another tier of gear after ascended. It will burn up the remainder of any goodwill you still have.
5. Don’t reset vertical progression in the future. Doing the reset to fractal level without doing anything to acknowledge the work people did before the reset (a title, a helm, a little trophy in their home instance, a single post on the forum acknowledging the issue; ANYTHING) was shoddy, and you’re better than that.
6. Make use of karma and other currencies.
7. Remember the mission statement of “Play how you want”

no more vertical gear progression, please.

maximum level 80 is fine. please, do not ever increase. please.
highest tier ascended is okay as it is now. please do not introduce higher tiers, ever. please.

allow us to have horizontal progression in our gear.

allow each gear to unlock stats one by one, swap stats when out of combat via a menu.
allow each gear to unlock skins one by one, swap skins when out of combat via a menu.
allow each armor to unlock runes one by one, swap runes when out of combat via a menu.
allow each weapon to unlock sigils one by one, swap runes when out of combat via a menu.

best horizontal gear progression ever!

please help to quote to spread and get their attention if you support this. thanks!

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

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

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

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

Lord Kuru.3685:

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

I prefer Legacy

GW1 had a PvP mode that had a (weekly?) rotation. We could only use a subset of skills every week in that arena. It functioned a bit like sealed in MTG.

It was not popular. I guess players wanted to have all the skills at their disposal. I know I did.

(Then again, I dislike sealed, while I do like drafting)

What GW1 did, that is a bit like the standard rotation in MTG, is more massive skill balances. Every now and then they would completely overhaul numerous skills that were for some reason rarely used.

Now in GW2, they need to be a bit more careful with that, because of weapon investments. Destroying some builds by accident may have quite a severe impact on players. Let’s say they change some underused condition skills to power skills. Suddenly a player that had condition gear just for that underused build is very sad.

If gear becomes easier to acquire that may be less of a problem though, and heavier skill rebalances could work out.

I wouldn’t want to miss out on any of the limited set of skills that we currently have though.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Feyhen.7432:

Hello everyone,

i would like to give my point of view.

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

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

where Guild Wars 2 lacks.

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

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

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

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

Hi Fey,

I play a PVT AOE Heal shout War. I have played this role fora long period of time and have never played a DPS War. On top of this I am also easily able to hold agro and support my group. My DPS is terrible but I keep my team alive while they run around destroying everything (-: The reason I raise this is because I would like to know what your role is with you War and I am wondering if you are aware of the different roles that each Profession can play dependent on their traits/skill/sigil/rune and weapon setup?

Note I ‘Look’ like a DPS war because i use a great sword (greatsaw) and a Longbow (Arthropoda). I like you believe that Horizontal Progression should be about role differentiation, however I feel like this system is already very core to the game but that we could do a better job of teaching how it works to a broader audience.

In short there are multiple War and profession roles and thus it is quite unlikely that that War next to you plays just like you.

Chris

Wait… seriously… you’re involved in making this game and that’s how you built a character for pve? Please go do the math and understand that in the game you WORK ON, the pve 1 shot = 1 kill content means that healing somebody else and stacking toughness/vitality means you will still be 1 shot if you fail at dodging/reflecting, you will not be able to keep anybody alive through taking 20k hits, and your reduced dps output combined with a complete lack of defensive utility options means you drag party down. This isn’t about elitism, this is about being useful.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

On top of this I am also easily able to hold agro

That’s not even how this game works…

BeoErgon.9107:

Sure, there are ways to make incremental levels not being a chore.

But again, if we don’t know if they plan it, how can we fully discuss on Character progression? Knowing about eventual higher tiers and levels in the future is essential to fully discuss the different proposals in this topic.

Even if we don’t know their plans (heck, they might not be planning it at the moment, then suddenly they’ll implement something that would benefit from a level-cap raise), we can always discuss the concepts and plan what they could / should do in the event they raise the level cap / tier cap.

Even if they just file it away somewhere, it’s still worth discussing so the ideas are in place for proper implementation so we don’t end up with another Ascended expletive-storm.

adubb.2453:

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

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

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

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

To me, this would work ONLY if you had to decide on one armor class either permanently or semi-permanently (like switching crafting skills), and you couldn’t mix and match. It has interesting potential, though. I like it.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

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

Chris

As long as ascended gear is ‘Better-than-BiS’ it will continue to run against the very core of character building in Guild Wars 2, regardless of how short or how long it takes to obtain. Optimising your character is not about just getting the biggest stat total, it’s about getting the right stats for you. This takes a whole lot of theory and practical experimentation to determine both how valuable different aspects of performance are to you and how to best achieve your desired level of performance.

Ascended appears to have been built in a very half-hearted manner to try to appease both stat-chasers and people opposed to vertical progression. As a result it’s utterly meaningless from a gameplay point of view, offering nothing to stat-chasers while still being vertical progression.

My earlier proposal which I will give the short version of here was for exotic gear to be able to be upgraded with customisation slots that allow for selecting a different skin, stat type and/or rune/sigil and the item becoming ‘ascended’ once it reaches a certain quantity of customisations, allowing it to then be used as a legendary precursor.

This setup would remove post-game vertical progression in favour of horizontal build variety without invalidating the effort people have put into obtaining existing ascended items, while also making ascended into a true bridge between exotic and legendary rather than competition for mats as it currently is.

Player Character.9467:

That’s not even how this game works…

Or maybe we’re missing something about how this game works. ‘Cause, you know, a designer that’s worked on it should know more than us.

Guhracie.3419:

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

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

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

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

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

Chris Whiteside.6102:

The proposals will evolve and when we are all happy with it we can cap the Vertical progression conversation in this thread and then I will feedback on my thoughts etc.

((Shakes head)) ‘When we are all happy with it’ ((Bursts into slightly manic giggles))

And people call me an optimist .

Incidentally, your mailbox is full.

TriggerSad.2597:

Player Character.9467:

That’s not even how this game works…

Or maybe we’re missing something about how this game works. ‘Cause, you know, a designer that’s worked on it should know more than us.

While that’s in theory true, games can be very complex things and can easily have systems in them that nobody still working at the company knows the details of.

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

So, yes, it’s possible that there’s a misunderstanding by the devs about how parts of the game work. Even if it’s all documented, there’s no way one dev can know all the workings of the game. If that is the case here, it would be good for all concerned to find out and get things sorted out.

Coldtart.4785:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

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

Chris

As long as ascended gear is ‘Better-than-BiS’ it will continue to run against the very core of character building in Guild Wars 2, regardless of how short or how long it takes to obtain. Optimising your character is not about just getting the biggest stat total, it’s about getting the right stats for you. This takes a whole lot of theory and practical experimentation to determine both how valuable different aspects of performance are to you and how to best achieve your desired level of performance.

Ascended appears to have been built in a very half-hearted manner to try to appease both stat-chasers and people opposed to vertical progression. As a result it’s utterly meaningless from a gameplay point of view, offering nothing to stat-chasers while still being vertical progression.

My earlier proposal which I will give the short version of here was for exotic gear to be able to be upgraded with customisation slots that allow for selecting a different skin, stat type and/or rune/sigil and the item becoming ‘ascended’ once it reaches a certain quantity of customisations, allowing it to then be used as a legendary precursor.

This setup would remove post-game vertical progression in favour of horizontal build variety without invalidating the effort people have put into obtaining existing ascended items, while also making ascended into a true bridge between exotic and legendary rather than competition for mats as it currently is.

Now that’s a great observation: The way the game fosters build diversity and gear VP are incompatible. Also I like his proposition.

Lord Kuru.3685:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Samhayn.2385:

Spawne.3128:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

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

Chris

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

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

Interesting idea.

Chris

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

again, the mechanics are already in the game to keep people from doing this with wxp. You can make it even more stringent with loot drops.

Coldtart.4785:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

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

Chris

As long as ascended gear is ‘Better-than-BiS’ it will continue to run against the very core of character building in Guild Wars 2, regardless of how short or how long it takes to obtain. Optimising your character is not about just getting the biggest stat total, it’s about getting the right stats for you. This takes a whole lot of theory and practical experimentation to determine both how valuable different aspects of performance are to you and how to best achieve your desired level of performance.

Ascended appears to have been built in a very half-hearted manner to try to appease both stat-chasers and people opposed to vertical progression. As a result it’s utterly meaningless from a gameplay point of view, offering nothing to stat-chasers while still being vertical progression.

My earlier proposal which I will give the short version of here was for exotic gear to be able to be upgraded with customisation slots that allow for selecting a different skin, stat type and/or rune/sigil and the item becoming ‘ascended’ once it reaches a certain quantity of customisations, allowing it to then be used as a legendary precursor.

This setup would remove post-game vertical progression in favour of horizontal build variety without invalidating the effort people have put into obtaining existing ascended items, while also making ascended into a true bridge between exotic and legendary rather than competition for mats as it currently is.

quoted what you wrote since your concept is similar to mine.
unlock stats skins runes sigils on armor weapons one by one, swap stats skins runes sigils when out of combat.

allow us to have horizontal progression in our gear.

allow each gear to unlock stats one by one, swap stats when out of combat via a menu.
allow each gear to unlock skins one by one, swap skins when out of combat via a menu.
allow each armor to unlock runes one by one, swap runes when out of combat via a menu.
allow each weapon to unlock sigils one by one, swap runes when out of combat via a menu.

best horizontal gear progression ever!

please help to quote to spread and get their attention if you support this. thanks!

Isaiah,

I see where you’re coming from with the time gates. My question is, do you think that allowing players to craft two or three items per day would be too detrimental?

Nike.2631:

Reesha.7901:

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

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

Still don’t like the soulbound part.
It might work for you, but I stopped playing my first created character a long time ago. Actually, I deleted it a while back for the very same reason.

Nike.2631:

Guhracie.3419:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Izzy-

I think that’s some great info on time-gating and helps us to understand why you use it. I would add that, in addition to casual-vs-hardcore, you should consider single-vs-multiple character players.

Time gates that might be reasonable for players with a single character could be entirely ridiculous for those of us who have eight.

timmyf.1490:

Izzy-

I think that’s some great info on time-gating and helps us to understand why you use it. I would add that, in addition to casual-vs-hardcore, you should consider single-vs-multiple character players.

Time gates that might be reasonable for players with a single character could be entirely ridiculous for those of us who have eight.

You might not like this answer but the person who has 8 characters can craft more things quickly, like spiritwood for example, than the guy with just one character.

The guy with just one character might not even be a casual that plays 1 hour a day. He might have 1500 hours in and just really love his class.

So how is this fair to him?

Isaiah Cartwright.8569:

Pro’s
- Time gates help players with less time (If I can only play an hour a day, my time is more rewarded.)

There is an issue with this, that player has less time in the game but time gating ensures he must spend some of that valuable time on time gated activities when he may rather spend it on other activities.

cesmode.4257:

timmyf.1490:

Izzy-

I think that’s some great info on time-gating and helps us to understand why you use it. I would add that, in addition to casual-vs-hardcore, you should consider single-vs-multiple character players.

Time gates that might be reasonable for players with a single character could be entirely ridiculous for those of us who have eight.

You might not like this answer but the person who has 8 characters can craft more things quickly, like spiritwood for example, than the guy with just one character.

The guy with just one character might not even be a casual that plays 1 hour a day. He might have 1500 hours in and just really love his class.

So how is this fair to him?

That’s a flawed answer as you’re making too many assumptions on a person’s play style. I have 9 level 80s, but I spend almost all my time on my main. The others are just there for me to have something different to do when I can play. It takes me roughly the same amount of time to craft things like Spirit Wood, as it does my Guildies that constantly switch between characters.

cesmode.4257:

You might not like this answer but the person who has 8 characters can craft more things quickly, like spiritwood for example, than the guy with just one character.

Um… you know that the once a day limit on spirit wood is account wide, yes?

My Artificer and Huntsman regularly fought over the privilege of which of them would get the crafting XP for the day for that item.

Nike.2631:

cesmode.4257:

You might not like this answer but the person who has 8 characters can craft more things quickly, like spiritwood for example, than the guy with just one character.

Um… you know that the once a day limit on spirit wood is account wide, yes?

My Artificer and Huntsman regularly fought over the privilege of which of them would get the crafting XP for the day for that item.

Spirit Wood doesn’t have a time gate. Not sure why he used it in his example.

Nike.2631:

cesmode.4257:

You might not like this answer but the person who has 8 characters can craft more things quickly, like spiritwood for example, than the guy with just one character.

Um… you know that the once a day limit on spirit wood is account wide, yes?

My Artificer and Huntsman regularly fought over the privilege of which of them would get the crafting XP for the day for that item.

Yes I do, and Im responding to Timmyf’s post about time gating and single chars vs multiple chars.

videoboy.4162:

Nike.2631:

cesmode.4257:

You might not like this answer but the person who has 8 characters can craft more things quickly, like spiritwood for example, than the guy with just one character.

Um… you know that the once a day limit on spirit wood is account wide, yes?

My Artificer and Huntsman regularly fought over the privilege of which of them would get the crafting XP for the day for that item.

Spirit Wood doesn’t have a time gate. Not sure why he used it in his example.

Dur, you’re right on that haha. Ok, the glob of spirit residue…

In the context of time gating and considering single vs multiple chars..(whether or not the time gate is applied as account wide or character), a person with multiple characters could always craft more.

Thats what im getting at.

Edit: its late, Im tired and not thinking clearly! Trying to catch up on the thread.

Isiah, just a lil tip it’s not ‘error on the side of’ it’s ‘err on the side of’

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Guhracie.3419:

Nike.2631:

Guhracie.3419:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hi Guhracie,

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

Chris

I do not even know how to begin to respond to this. My hands are literally shaking right now, on account of the time and effort I have put into reading and responding to this thread, and generally into participating in the forum.

I wouldn’t want to give you heart trouble, so I’m going to go ahead and reduce your sodium intake. I’m done.

However, for what it’s worth, the previous statement was in no way meant to be an attack on you in any way, and I’m sorry it broke down our communication and/or made you feel badly. I’m truly and honestly not sure what you found to be so insulting. I just re-read what I wrote and maybe it was the bit about not discussing balance?

Seriously, there are people here who are mocking your ability to play the game you work on and obviously love, but I’m the one who gets a handful of salt? Stay classy.

cesmode.4257:

videoboy.4162:

Nike.2631:

cesmode.4257:

You might not like this answer but the person who has 8 characters can craft more things quickly, like spiritwood for example, than the guy with just one character.

Um… you know that the once a day limit on spirit wood is account wide, yes?

My Artificer and Huntsman regularly fought over the privilege of which of them would get the crafting XP for the day for that item.

Spirit Wood doesn’t have a time gate. Not sure why he used it in his example.

Dur, you’re right on that haha. Ok, the glob of spirit residue…

In the context of time gating and considering single vs multiple chars..(whether or not the time gate is applied as account wide or character), a person with multiple characters could always craft more.

Thats what im getting at.

My personal opinion, is that it should be once per profession per account, per day. At most, you could make three Globs. I’m not sure if that would completely mess up their gate thing, but one item per day per account is just way too low.

Isaiah Cartwright.8569:

Pro’s
- Time gates help players with less time (If I can only play an hour a day, my time is more rewarded.)
- Repeatable time gates add “pressure” to log in which helps create possible reward loops and play patterns (I want to log in every day, which often can become play experiences, talk with friends, strengthen relationships and get players into a pattern of seeing what’s going on.)

These two have their own con’s:

- If I can only play an hour a day, I don’t want to spend any of that time loading into Lions Arch to do my crafting and do my daily. Yet that is what I often find myself doing, and it freaks me out.
- I don’t want to log in every day, I need to spend some time on something else. I want to put GW2 away for a few weeks and invest in other parts of life. (Be it other forms of play/studying/traveling/social calls/an intense working period or who knows what.) But I will be ‘behind’ on progress if I don’t log in. And it is so ‘easy’ to just log in and get those time gated things done… but they make it really hard to take a break!

You make a fair point, but these should really be a part of the con’s in your list!

My overall opinions on timegating:

I dont necessarily hate it or love it. I think its OK, especially for the reasons Mr Cartwright laid out. It prevents me from going into overload to rush rush rush to craft everything at once, so I can do my one or two time gated things per day, and go do other things.

So I guess its OK for me.

Edit: I play about 30-40 hours per week, so I am right in the middle between ‘casual’ and ‘semi hardcore’…so my opinions on time gating have nothing to do with my available play time.

The Lost Witch.7601:

Isaiah Cartwright.8569:

Pro’s
- Time gates help players with less time (If I can only play an hour a day, my time is more rewarded.)
- Repeatable time gates add “pressure” to log in which helps create possible reward loops and play patterns (I want to log in every day, which often can become play experiences, talk with friends, strengthen relationships and get players into a pattern of seeing what’s going on.)

These two have their own con’s:

- If I can only play an hour a day, I don’t want to spend any of that time loading into Lions Arch to do my crafting and do my daily. Yet that is what I often find myself doing, and it freaks me out.
- I don’t want to log in every day, I need to spend some time on something else. I want to put GW2 away for a few weeks and invest in other parts of life. (Be it other forms of play/studying/traveling/social calls/an intense working period or who knows what.) But I will be ‘behind’ on progress if I don’t log in. And it is so ‘easy’ to just log in and get those time gated things done… but they make it really hard to take a break!

You make a fair point, but these should really be a part of the con’s in your list!

Regarding logging in every day…this touches on another area that has yet to be really mentioned here(and Im not sure it belongs here or not). The ‘pressure’ to log in and do XYZ in order to stay on par, as much as possible, with the masses.

I don’t like these sorts of pressures in a game, especially gw2 but I am unsure how to remedy it since it has been put into the game.

Current a person with 8 characters cannot craft more spiritwood than a person with just one and he should be able to. Time and effort invested 8 characters is a lot more than just one character.

I personally would even prefer time gated materials to be crafting profession wide rather than account wide or character wide. For example: Character A with 450 Armorer and Weaponsmith should be able to craft 2 deldrimor steels and 1 damask per day. If the account has another character B with 450 weaponsmith and artificer, that character B should be able to craft another 2 deldrimor steel and 2 spirit wood. After all the guy invested in TWO characters instead of just one.

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

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

Dyin’ to know this one.

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

Guhracie.3419:

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

Heehee. To me Balance is the only thing being discussed – not the balance between which character can throw 20,000 points of damage down range the fastest or who can push the highest green numbers over a 5 second ‘moment of crisis’ test because they have stats XYZ from gear ABC…

…Its about the balance between activities and their rewards.

Ascended gear represents a big general nerf to casual playstyles, no argument.
But its an even bigger targeted nerf to Gold Almighty.

When the gearing up meta-game became “You can run off a full set of Exotic Armor by running a dungeon roughly 40 times taking fully active play for around 7 hours vs. you can run up enough gold to buy the same Exotic Gear stat-wise in 10 minutes of marketplace orders” yeah, there were balance issues being addressed by the introduction of a new tier that cannot be bought and sold.

For example I’m glad there is now a way to get repeatedly get Ascended Back items without running fractals ever (the two crafted ones just introduced). The WvW players who didn’t enjoy fractals needed at least the possibility of getting one to regain true parity. OTOH I’m faintly disappointed that the method added is almost entirely gold-gated rather than keyed to Badges of Honor.

To me that’s still a balance issue. It starts with balancing numbers, but it’s not resolved until you’ve balanced opportunities.

((Hmm, suddenly I have a craving for fortune cookies ))

The Lost Witch.7601:

Lord Kuru.3685:

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

I prefer Legacy

GW1 had a PvP mode that had a (weekly?) rotation. We could only use a subset of skills every week in that arena. It functioned a bit like sealed in MTG.

It was not popular. I guess players wanted to have all the skills at their disposal. I know I did.

(Then again, I dislike sealed, while I do like drafting)

What GW1 did, that is a bit like the standard rotation in MTG, is more massive skill balances. Every now and then they would completely overhaul numerous skills that were for some reason rarely used.

Now in GW2, they need to be a bit more careful with that, because of weapon investments. Destroying some builds by accident may have quite a severe impact on players. Let’s say they change some underused condition skills to power skills. Suddenly a player that had condition gear just for that underused build is very sad.

If gear becomes easier to acquire that may be less of a problem though, and heavier skill rebalances could work out.

I wouldn’t want to miss out on any of the limited set of skills that we currently have though.

I prefer Type II/Standard because it’s much easier to balance and evades power creep issues.

As for gear… you’re right, with a Type II/Standard system in GW2, builds would regularly change and gear would be a huge issue. Exotics are easy enough to get that I feel drastic build changes 3 times a year would be ok. Unfortunately, we now have the Ascended grind and that would pose a enormous problem. Big mistake on Anet’s part in my opinion

(even in the current system, we are no longer encouraged to experiment with builds — negating the effect of new skills — as well as discouraging people from changing skins)

Chris Whiteside.6102:

cesmode.4257:

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

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

Dyin’ to know this one.

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

Hi Cesmode,

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

Chris

You mean to say, they do not work 20 hours per day and love it? What is this witch craft?!

Go get your daily done and get to sleep!

And then answer the question(kidding).

But maybe you could leave a post-it on his desk tomorrow morning! haha.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

cesmode.4257:

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

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

Dyin’ to know this one.

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

Hi Cesmode,

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

Chris

hi chris!

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

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

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

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

unlock and swap various infusions too.