Guild Wars 2

As the title says, I think Agony itself is rather brilliant. It creates vertical progression endlessly without stat progression.

As it stands, ArenaNet could add endless dungeons and simply gate them by agony resist required. The hardcore PvE players get their vertical progression though more and more agony resist, which makes them better at these dungeons, while it does literally nothing for WvW, or world PvE.

Provided they handle it right, it’s effectively endless vertical progression, without any form of significant power creep.

But like many things in this game… it’s great on paper and theory, but it’s execution is severely flawed.

Execution wasn’t that bad, most Agony mechanics presented are easily dodged which bases on player skill the only one that I can think of that isn’t possible to dodge is the Jade Maw transition agony.

It’s not really brilliant, this was unpopular in LOTRO, so much so that they removed it and I think effectively the same system was tried in other games and removed because it was annoying and unpopular.

Bruno Sardine.2907:

But like many things in this game… it’s great on paper and theory, but it’s execution is severely flawed.

If they handle it right, it’s not flawed.

Lets say, for introducing ascended gear, mid december, they add all of the current ascended gear to karma vendors and whatnot, then release a new set (Earrings, perhaps), and repeat this exact process, every patch opening up one more slot, and making the previously opened slot effortless to get.

If they repeate this, the gap between a fully geared player, and a casual is effectively a single item, that the casual will just get at the start of the next patch. Grind and progression for those who need it, while the casual is just right behind them.

Shanna.4762:

It’s not really brilliant, this was unpopular in LOTRO, so much so that they removed it and I think effectively the same system was tried in other games and removed because it was annoying and unpopular.

That was tied to gear progression though. If they seperate agony progression from actual stat progression, it works perfectly. If they mix them, it’s obnoxious.

Shanna.4762:

It’s not really brilliant, this was unpopular in LOTRO, so much so that they removed it and I think effectively the same system was tried in other games and removed because it was annoying and unpopular.

The problem is it is TOO brilliant. It exposes the lie at the heart of vertical progression schemes too obviously.

Verti progressional people WANT power creep. They WANT to be able to lord it over the plebs. This is what keeps them going, not being able to do the same dungeon with a higher level of agony so they can farm more agony gear so they can do the same dungeon with higher tuned numbers.

I like it. It allows for a large growth potential in horizontal progression with the addition of new agony-like mechanics and new infusions for future sets of ascended gear and dungeons.

Shanna.4762:

It’s not really brilliant, this was unpopular in LOTRO, so much so that they removed it and I think effectively the same system was tried in other games and removed because it was annoying and unpopular.

Sorry I only played LOTRO for about two or three days but isn’t it more of generic MMORPG, I feel the agony mechanic feature wouldn’t work unless the MMORPG is leaning or is an Action MMORPG.

Yukishiro.8792:

Shanna.4762:

It’s not really brilliant, this was unpopular in LOTRO, so much so that they removed it and I think effectively the same system was tried in other games and removed because it was annoying and unpopular.

The problem is it is TOO brilliant. It exposes the lie at the heart of vertical progression schemes too obviously.

Verti progressional people WANT power creep. They WANT to be able to lord it over the plebs. This is what keeps them going, not being able to do the same dungeon with a higher level of agony so they can farm more agony gear so they can do the same dungeon with higher tuned numbers.

And this is why i don’t bother with PVP. Too many monkeys wanting to wave their e-jewels around…

Do wonder how many hours of being curb stomped hide behind those 5 min glory run videos of the toon one shot some unsuspecting foe that happens to pass by.

digiowl.9620:

Yukishiro.8792:

Shanna.4762:

It’s not really brilliant, this was unpopular in LOTRO, so much so that they removed it and I think effectively the same system was tried in other games and removed because it was annoying and unpopular.

The problem is it is TOO brilliant. It exposes the lie at the heart of vertical progression schemes too obviously.

Verti progressional people WANT power creep. They WANT to be able to lord it over the plebs. This is what keeps them going, not being able to do the same dungeon with a higher level of agony so they can farm more agony gear so they can do the same dungeon with higher tuned numbers.

And this is why i don’t bother with PVP. Too many monkeys wanting to wave their e-jewels around…

And you think the people that go afk in LA for half the day with their legendaries aren’t waving their e-jewels around?

GrapeGatsby.6937:

digiowl.9620:

Yukishiro.8792:

Shanna.4762:

It’s not really brilliant, this was unpopular in LOTRO, so much so that they removed it and I think effectively the same system was tried in other games and removed because it was annoying and unpopular.

The problem is it is TOO brilliant. It exposes the lie at the heart of vertical progression schemes too obviously.

Verti progressional people WANT power creep. They WANT to be able to lord it over the plebs. This is what keeps them going, not being able to do the same dungeon with a higher level of agony so they can farm more agony gear so they can do the same dungeon with higher tuned numbers.

And this is why i don’t bother with PVP. Too many monkeys wanting to wave their e-jewels around…

And you think the people that go afk in LA for half the day with their legendaries aren’t waving their e-jewels around?

Think more family jewels (alpha ape male style)

digiowl.9620:

GrapeGatsby.6937:

digiowl.9620:

Yukishiro.8792:

Shanna.4762:

It’s not really brilliant, this was unpopular in LOTRO, so much so that they removed it and I think effectively the same system was tried in other games and removed because it was annoying and unpopular.

The problem is it is TOO brilliant. It exposes the lie at the heart of vertical progression schemes too obviously.

Verti progressional people WANT power creep. They WANT to be able to lord it over the plebs. This is what keeps them going, not being able to do the same dungeon with a higher level of agony so they can farm more agony gear so they can do the same dungeon with higher tuned numbers.

And this is why i don’t bother with PVP. Too many monkeys wanting to wave their e-jewels around…

And you think the people that go afk in LA for half the day with their legendaries aren’t waving their e-jewels around?

Think more family jewels (alpha ape male style)

Ah ok anyways my point was that there are people that brag about their character in every area of MMORPG even if it is just horizontal progression – but I guess if that wasn’t what you are referring to nvm.

In this game you can’t really lord it over the plebs in PVP because of the flat gear system.

But vertical progression is all about lording it over normal people, whether its PVE or PVP. No one wants to get good gear so they can do the same dungeon over again with harder numbers. That’s not how human psychology works.

Agony is a pointless mechanism because it fills a need no one has. The reason people are farming for ascended gear is because the stats are better, not because of the agony resistance.

No, it’s not, and if you dig in the AMA you will see where Chris Whiteside himself says it sucks and they’re not going to do something like that again.

plasmacutter.2709:

No, it’s not, and if you dig in the AMA you will see where Chris Whiteside himself says it sucks and they’re not going to do something like that again.

Really? I transcribed the whole thing. Here, let me get the quotes on agony for ya!

“Q: The agony system (as well as any other monster-only conditions added in the future) seems to encourage grinding for hard-to-get gears as opposed to skill-based progression promised in the manifesto, will this be remedied in the future?

A: I think the amount of materials required to make some of the gear is disproportionate to the amount of time the player wants to put in before he/she starts feeling like the goal is a grind and this skews the overall experience of
the dungeon and the perception of the gear within it. I would like us to correct this and we will start working to this shortly.

In regard to future items the amount of work required to gain an item to allow players to experience content and continue having fun will be balanced appropriately.

Fractals have become the end-all for making your character stronger. Players are vanishing from maps everywhere to grind grind grind for the now-strongest items they can get ahold of. It’s disruptive to the community, the fun, and the manifesto. What is being done about this?
This ties back to what i was saying earlier in which Ascended Gear and really any progression related reward mechanism that impacts the world globally should be introduced (Where possible) across the game and inside the different type of player’s activities specifically. Allowing players to continue doing the things they love without focusing player migration to a specific part of the world. The introduction of the Ascended reward in one part of the game was a mistake and one that i don’t want to make again.

Soon Ascended Gear will adhere to these rules."

“Do you stand behind the decision of having the levelling system in FOTM, essentially fracturing your player base into many, many, different portions, with players only looking for the specific level they need to advance through level difficulty?

It was never a conscious decision to fracture the player base through the Dungeon. Honestly we were aware the dungeon was good but we didn’t know just how popular it would be. Nearly straight away we saw the issue and have been working on a fix since, we have explored multiple systems and will land on one this week. Suffice to say that Ascended should have been a global roll out and wasn’t.

In regard to disconnects we totally understand the frustration. It frustrates everyone in the studio because they have to suffer through it to. On top of this i never hear the end of it from my guild! Kidding aside though it is a big issue, we have a fix in our dev build and will test it thoroughly before deploying it. We will let you know when we intend to deploy."

You were sayyyyying?

He said the implementation of Ascended gear in only one area of the game was an obvious mistake. He said no such thing about agony.

Eh, it’s kind of a good idea… on paper. It’s basically a soft cap on progression until they release new gear. Implementation, however, sucks.

I have heard about this thing called skill-based progression.

He said the implementation of Ascended gear in only one area of the game was an obvious mistake. He said no such thing about agony

Actually, he did. Specifically this, in regard to one of the questions which included mention of agony vs skill based progression:

Chris Whiteside

In regard to gated content via gear then i think that this is something we are going to give more thought to.

plasmacutter.2709:

Actually, he did. Specifically this, in regard to one of the questions which included mention of agony vs skill based progression:

Chris Whiteside

In regard to gated content via gear then i think that this is something we are going to give more thought to.

When I read that quote, I can’t help picturing Whiney the Pooh. “Think, think, think.” It’s funny and kind of ironic at the same time.

plasmacutter.2709:

He said the implementation of Ascended gear in only one area of the game was an obvious mistake. He said no such thing about agony

Actually, he did. Specifically this, in regard to one of the questions which included mention of agony vs skill based progression:

Chris Whiteside

In regard to gated content via gear then i think that this is something we are going to give more thought to.

Fair. I can’t believe I missed that part. My bad, thanks for correcting me.

Still thinking about it doesn’t mean they are completely eradicating it or considering it a whole failure.

Remember, that one of the reason people hated Radiance in LoTRO was that it was tied to gear.

It was the only stat that really mattered, which pretty much pigeon-holed people into equipping whichever had the most Radiance, almost to the exclusion of everything else.

Before they removed it there were a couple of suggestions that I remember:

— Have crafters be able to make Radiance gear (in addition to them being available as dungeon barter items).

— if they really wanted to gate content, make it similar to what they did with Angmar – have the gate be tied to a Deed/Achievement/Title/Passive skill instead. This is effectively what they started doing with the newer dungeons. You can barter for the gear if you want, but you can’t equip it until after you beat a particular boss in the dungeon.

How is agony brilliant when it was done by developers 10 years ago, and generally disliked and phased out?

WoW vanilla required fire resistance for MC. That was in 2004. Agony is not something new.

Vertical progression without stat progression? You do know that Infusions have stats too right? And when they mean Infusion will be the new vertical progression, they mean that newer Infusions introduced will have higher rarities, Agony resistance, AND stats.

So instead of a gear treadmill, we’ll have an infusion treadmill. I’m still hoping they would come around on this but it doesn’t look like it will be happening judging from the responses in the AMA

AnemoneMeer.7182:

As the title says, I think Agony itself is rather brilliant. It creates vertical progression endlessly without stat progression.

As it stands, ArenaNet could add endless dungeons and simply gate them by agony resist required. The hardcore PvE players get their vertical progression though more and more agony resist, which makes them better at these dungeons, while it does literally nothing for WvW, or world PvE.

Provided they handle it right, it’s effectively endless vertical progression, without any form of significant power creep.

Yeah, that’s what I thought too, back when it was Radiance in LOTRO.

You can see for yourself how well that turned out.

It COULD have been something that made most people happy, instead it’s this mess. Tying it to actual stats is the biggest mistake here.

Also, resistance checks will never be a “brilliant” mechanic. Acceptable, possibly, but never brilliant. There’s a reason they’ve all died out in other games. They’re fake progression, the best you can do is make it non-intrusive to people who don’t give a crap about it.

It is well done. I LOVE the fact that FotM isn’t cut and dry and predictable at every step. I failed a run on lvl 11 yesterday which actually makes me happy. If you never had to think and just want to mindless grind, you can always go find something to farm. This is about playing, which is pretty cool.

Feycat.4370:

AnemoneMeer.7182:

As the title says, I think Agony itself is rather brilliant. It creates vertical progression endlessly without stat progression.

As it stands, ArenaNet could add endless dungeons and simply gate them by agony resist required. The hardcore PvE players get their vertical progression though more and more agony resist, which makes them better at these dungeons, while it does literally nothing for WvW, or world PvE.

Provided they handle it right, it’s effectively endless vertical progression, without any form of significant power creep.

Yeah, that’s what I thought too, back when it was Radiance in LOTRO.

You can see for yourself how well that turned out.

Yep, dejavu.

http://www.lotro.com/gameinfo/devdiaries/1043-update-2-radiance-removal-developer-diary

Just 1 piece of agony significantly reduces the damage.

Yukishiro.8792:

But vertical progression is all about lording it over normal people, whether its PVE or PVP.

Once people come to the realization that it is possible to “lord of the plebs” without having 3x (or in D3’s case, 40 times) higher stats, they will come to expect more of the genre.

There was no gear difference in GW…but there were kitten sure people that I didn’t want to play with, and far fewer people that I actually felt comfortable playing with in that I wouldn’t have to carry them since they aren’t better than the AI.

Vertical progression is a crutch.

Apathy.6430:

Yukishiro.8792:

But vertical progression is all about lording it over normal people, whether its PVE or PVP.

Once people come to the realization that it is possible to “lord of the plebs” without having 3x (or in D3’s case, 40 times) higher stats, they will come to expect more of the genre.

There was no gear difference in GW…but there were kitten sure people that I didn’t want to play with, and far fewer people that I actually felt comfortable playing with in that I wouldn’t have to carry them since they aren’t better than the AI.

Vertical progression is a crutch.

To add onto this, the “there’s nothing to do” crowd did kind of have a point. The structure of the original GW was far more… accommodating for “horizontal progression” and “lording over the plebs” by knowledge and skill.

The mission based system of Guild Wars worked better for getting people together for general playing, and the personal story fails HORRIBLY in the same sense. Guild Wars 2 does a great job of making it worthwhile to play around people, but fails to capture any essence of playing with people, outside of dungeons anyway.

ComeAndSee.1356:

Just 1 piece of agony significantly reduces the damage.

That equals 60 hours of your life?

AnemoneMeer.7182:

As the title says, I think Agony itself is rather brilliant. It creates vertical progression endlessly without stat progression.

As it stands, ArenaNet could add endless dungeons and simply gate them by agony resist required. The hardcore PvE players get their vertical progression though more and more agony resist, which makes them better at these dungeons, while it does literally nothing for WvW, or world PvE.

Provided they handle it right, it’s effectively endless vertical progression, without any form of significant power creep.

LOTRO tried something like that. It didn’t work.

Lording it over the plebs can be accomplished in more ways than just stat advantage. that’s true. The problem is MMOs over the years have moved away from designing game content that can only be accessed by the elite and towards a model where everything is easy enough that everyone can do it. That means the only way left to allow people to feel better than their peers is through better gear obtained through an easy but very reptitive grind.

Look for example at the original EQ. Sure, gear from Vox or Nagafen was good. But the primary appeal of the gear wasn’t the stats. It was the exclusivity. If you had a cloak of flames you were cool not because you attacked 10% faster than someone with a FBSS but because you were one of 5 people on the whole server who had one.

These days content is designed so everyone can get the Cloak of Flames if they keep at it long enough. It’s not locked off by difficulty, it’s locked off by time. In that environment people naturally gravitate towards stats as the way of feeling superior.

Speaking of horizontal progression, a guildie mentioned this. They really need to add more titles to this game.

Coming from LoTRO where there’s tons of titles, a lot of the times I do extra content (even a lot of levels below me) just to get that title that fits so perfectly with my name – any one word title that starts with S.

There’s a festival event where you stomp shrews from a garden, that gives out “The Shrewd” title. You know I just had to have it lol.

Brilliant? No. Old, tired, worn out and emulated by other gaming companies trying to beat Blizzard at their own game and getting massively pwned.

Next…..

What they really need is a lot more awesome cosmetic skins. Lording it over the plebs should be done by having that awesome weapon skin that is really hard to get, not by having a weapon that hits harder.

I don’t see why Anet abandoned that original philosophy. Legendaries were a good start, but they need way, way more unique, hard-to-obtain skins in the game. It is the natural way to give people their need to feel superior to others without it impacting game mechanics.

It’s not even like it takes a long time to design new skins. It takes an artist what, a few hours for a basic skin, maybe 10 hours for a legendary skin? Hardly particularly labor intensive.

Yukishiro.8792:

Lording it over the plebs can be accomplished in more ways than just stat advantage. that’s true. The problem is MMOs over the years have moved away from designing game content that can only be accessed by the elite and towards a model where everything is easy enough that everyone can do it. That means the only way left to allow people to feel better than their peers is through better gear obtained through an easy but very reptitive grind.

Look for example at the original EQ. Sure, gear from Vox or Nagafen was good. But the primary appeal of the gear wasn’t the stats. It was the exclusivity. If you had a cloak of flames you were cool not because you attacked 10% faster than someone with a FBSS but because you were one of 5 people on the whole server who had one.

These days content is designed so everyone can get the Cloak of Flames if they keep at it long enough. It’s not locked off by difficulty, it’s locked off by time. In that environment people naturally gravitate towards stats as the way of feeling superior.

You don’t need a “Cloak of Flames” to be recognized as being good at the game.

You can be recognized as being good at the game by being good at the game around people. The whole concept of needing a ribbon to prove that you’re good at the game is pretty dumb.

Slyder.9215:

Remember, that one of the reason people hated Radiance in LoTRO was that it was tied to gear.

It was the only stat that really mattered, which pretty much pigeon-holed people into equipping whichever had the most Radiance, almost to the exclusion of everything else.

Before they removed it there were a couple of suggestions that I remember:

— Have crafters be able to make Radiance gear (in addition to them being available as dungeon barter items).

— if they really wanted to gate content, make it similar to what they did with Angmar – have the gate be tied to a Deed/Achievement/Title/Passive skill instead. This is effectively what they started doing with the newer dungeons. You can barter for the gear if you want, but you can’t equip it until after you beat a particular boss in the dungeon.

The radiance thing was vastly different though. There was full set of armor that you HAD to have to move on. Each piece of armor was in its own separate dungeon. At first it was only part of your group that received the armor from the dungeon, it was totally random. So people would run a dungeon 30 times before getting their armor piece. That made them get left behind their group that got the armor faster.

You had to have the radiance to move on. So until you had I think it was 60 radiance you couldn’t move on to the next dungeon, and then had to have more radiance for the next and so on.

From what I understand, all fractals can be run without the agony resist gear. You only need the gear if you want to do the fractal as a higher/harder level. There is no gear gating like LOTRO did. Gear gating is what truly made people mad, not the radiance.

Apathy.6430:

Yukishiro.8792:

Lording it over the plebs can be accomplished in more ways than just stat advantage. that’s true. The problem is MMOs over the years have moved away from designing game content that can only be accessed by the elite and towards a model where everything is easy enough that everyone can do it. That means the only way left to allow people to feel better than their peers is through better gear obtained through an easy but very reptitive grind.

Look for example at the original EQ. Sure, gear from Vox or Nagafen was good. But the primary appeal of the gear wasn’t the stats. It was the exclusivity. If you had a cloak of flames you were cool not because you attacked 10% faster than someone with a FBSS but because you were one of 5 people on the whole server who had one.

These days content is designed so everyone can get the Cloak of Flames if they keep at it long enough. It’s not locked off by difficulty, it’s locked off by time. In that environment people naturally gravitate towards stats as the way of feeling superior.

You don’t need a “Cloak of Flames” to be recognized as being good at the game.

You can be recognized as being good at the game by being good at the game around people. The whole concept of needing a ribbon to prove that you’re good at the game is pretty dumb.

And again, to continue this thought…

“Vertical progression” (I hate the term but it does make sense) makes the whole being good thing irrelevant. Oh, you finished AC EM with a full group of 35s? Cool story bro, we do it in 7 minutes on our level 80 full exotic group. Inflated stats remove any kind of achievement from most of the game.

Agony would be brilliant if it were implemented properly. If Ascended gear ONLY gave an advantage to Fractals – then everyone would be happy and the game would continue on.

Slyder.9215:

Speaking of horizontal progression, a guildie mentioned this. They really need to add more titles to this game.

Coming from LoTRO where there’s tons of titles, a lot of the times I do extra content (even a lot of levels below me) just to get that title that fits so perfectly with my name – any one word title that starts with S.

There’s a festival event where you stomp shrews from a garden, that gives out “The Shrewd” title. You know I just had to have it lol.

LOTRO has been in existence for about 5.5 years. GW2 3 months.

Hell, FotM is a fantastic place to show your prowess, if only they didn’t tarnish it by just making it a gear gate.

Imagine if almost everyone had the same stats, but your group managed to make it deep into FotM. Hell, it could give titles for every level so you can show off your superb mastery of the dodge mechanics.

Instead it is a matter of how many times you have ran it to get the gear that pushes you further.

I want my Mist Delver (28) title.

Apathy.6430:

Hell, FotM is a fantastic place to show your prowess, if only they didn’t tarnish it by just making it a gear gate.

Imagine if almost everyone had the same stats, but your group managed to make it deep into FotM. Hell, it could give titles for every level so you can show off your superb mastery of the dodge mechanics.

Instead it is a matter of how many times you have ran it to get the gear that pushes you further.

I want my Mist Delver (28) title.

Can i have Mist Delver (3)?

Apathy.6430:

“Vertical progression” (I hate the term but it does make sense) makes the whole being good thing irrelevant. Oh, you finished AC EM with a full group of 35s? Cool story bro, we do it in 7 minutes on our level 80 full exotic group. Inflated stats remove any kind of achievement from most of the game.

You got stronger armor at level 20 in GW then you had at level 5, 10, or 15. That is just the way games work. At least you can go back to old content in this game. Level 10 stuff as a level 20 is boring in GW.

Eugenics.6953:

Apathy.6430:

Hell, FotM is a fantastic place to show your prowess, if only they didn’t tarnish it by just making it a gear gate.

Imagine if almost everyone had the same stats, but your group managed to make it deep into FotM. Hell, it could give titles for every level so you can show off your superb mastery of the dodge mechanics.

Instead it is a matter of how many times you have ran it to get the gear that pushes you further.

I want my Mist Delver (28) title.

Can i have Mist Delver (3)?

The current iteration should be Mist Delver (249 runs)

Ualtar.5047:

Apathy.6430:

“Vertical progression” (I hate the term but it does make sense) makes the whole being good thing irrelevant. Oh, you finished AC EM with a full group of 35s? Cool story bro, we do it in 7 minutes on our level 80 full exotic group. Inflated stats remove any kind of achievement from most of the game.

You got stronger armor at level 20 in GW then you had at level 5, 10, or 15. That is just the way games work. At least you can go back to old content in this game. Level 10 stuff as a level 20 is boring in GW.

You hit level 20 about 15% of the way through the game in the later two games. It was nothing more than an extended tutorial.

But really cool story, bro.

Apathy.6430:

Ualtar.5047:

Apathy.6430:

“Vertical progression” (I hate the term but it does make sense) makes the whole being good thing irrelevant. Oh, you finished AC EM with a full group of 35s? Cool story bro, we do it in 7 minutes on our level 80 full exotic group. Inflated stats remove any kind of achievement from most of the game.

You got stronger armor at level 20 in GW then you had at level 5, 10, or 15. That is just the way games work. At least you can go back to old content in this game. Level 10 stuff as a level 20 is boring in GW.

You hit level 20 about 15% of the way through the game in the later two games. It was nothing more than an extended tutorial.

But really cool story, bro.

ok…but after 3 months it wasn’t that way. Sorry didn’t realize we were comparing a 3 month old game to a 2 or 3 year old game.

so umm…cool story bra

Ualtar.5047:

Apathy.6430:

Ualtar.5047:

Apathy.6430:

“Vertical progression” (I hate the term but it does make sense) makes the whole being good thing irrelevant. Oh, you finished AC EM with a full group of 35s? Cool story bro, we do it in 7 minutes on our level 80 full exotic group. Inflated stats remove any kind of achievement from most of the game.

You got stronger armor at level 20 in GW then you had at level 5, 10, or 15. That is just the way games work. At least you can go back to old content in this game. Level 10 stuff as a level 20 is boring in GW.

You hit level 20 about 15% of the way through the game in the later two games. It was nothing more than an extended tutorial.

But really cool story, bro.

ok…but after 3 months it wasn’t that way. Sorry didn’t realize we were comparing a 3 month old game to a 2 or 3 year old game.

so umm…cool story bra

Ah, so we should expect the game to take a step back from the later GW expansions.

Makes sense.