Guild Wars 2

Vaerah.4907:

I take it, you are one of those players that would not even breath if the game wouldn’t “encourage” you to and possibly stick a carrot for pushing you to do it.

I have always been part of “public in game chats” and similar that foster a community even just talking about random things. I don’t get a “reward” nor the game “encourages” that stuff, but I take initiative and play an active role.
If people prefer to be passive guinea pigs pushing the red button only because there’s food at the end of it, it’s not my – or the developers – fault.

Thank you for completely and utterly missing the point.

Maeglin.7416:

Untouch.2541:

It’s not progression.

Stop calling it that.
Levelling is progression, you gain new stuff, new skills.

Endgame is endgame, you don’t move at all, it’s just a way to artificially make the content last longer.
The proper term is “content barricade”.

Thanks.

No wanting the story to continue is wanting some form of progression it is not a content barricade. Why is it nobody has a problem with how grindy it is to get new skins for weapons but the second someone mentions slightly better loot they get flamed?

I have no problem with PvP progression at the moment, I really like how everyone has pretty much the same gear. In PvE it would be nice to have more story line that comes out with slightly better gear ( No this does not have to mean they are huge upgrades that cause vast power creep issues).

It is also not an mmo thing it’s from of rpg games. If the story line remains at the same difficulty throughout the entire game and the pc remains at the same power level for the entire game the game becomes boring really quickly. The story line needs to progress and the player needs to feel as if they are getting stronger for completing more difficult content.

Not sure what’s stopping them from adding new story content.
I know the story “ends” after you kill Zaihtan, but the end mission explicitly states tat it isn’t finished.

Ordika.9513:

Honestly I was going to say not many modern, but in all honesty, I can go back to Baldur’s Gate and Fallout and safely say I hit level cap long before I got to the end of the game.

This is more a nature of the “sandbox” RPG subgenre, in which the storyline isn’t nearly as important as the freedom granted the player to explore and interact with the world. Following the narrative in any RPG is going to lead to game completion long, long before you ever hit the level cap.

Ordika.9513:

The problem with your analysis is that it assumes a customer not liking your product makes you or your product a failure, when it could be just as simple as a bad fit (not every product is for everybody).

ANet has never said get on board or get out, but by the same token just because they didn’t get every single human on the planet to like their game doesn’t mean the capitulate to their desires. It just means that you except that the customer didn’t purchase the right product for themselves, either from lack of knowledge or because of a smooth talking salesman (buyer beware).

Customer expectation is a problem the designer can’t fix and is not their problem. Unfortunately we live in a society where the consumer has been given to much power in the seller/purchaser relationship. Granted this is in reaction to when the seller had to much power, but imbalance the other way never makes up for the original imbalance.

That’s fair, although you have to consider your market if you’re trying to sell to it. In that situation, if it was just marketed to the wrong people, that again is the producer’s fault, not the consumer.

However, with GW2, obviously they have a very, very large market. Their main concern is going to be who their primary income is. Will it be new players trickling in, enjoying the game until 80, then quitting, and possibly returning for expansions? Gem purchasers? How long will those people play? How much of a stretch in income do we want to ensure repeat purchases but also not to trivialize limited content? Those are questions we won’t have answers to because we don’t know what their income looks like. What they focus on will depend on who they’re trying to retain the most. You can’t please everyone, but you can please your best customers.

Correction : Its not that “you dont need gear/ranks to see content” the truth is there is no content. You grind boring dungeons, you look fancy and game is over.
If you wanna look fancy, visit Prada.

Question: “Are MMO players trained to play for progression.”. Answer: Yes and they are determined to turn GW2 into that type of game.

Greyfeld.7104:

Ordika.9513:

Honestly I was going to say not many modern, but in all honesty, I can go back to Baldur’s Gate and Fallout and safely say I hit level cap long before I got to the end of the game.

This is more a nature of the “sandbox” RPG subgenre, in which the storyline isn’t nearly as important as the freedom granted the player to explore and interact with the world. Following the narrative in any RPG is going to lead to game completion long, long before you ever hit the level cap.

GW2 is not a sandbox MMO. I believe there are a large population of players running around the game avoiding personal story and dynamic events only doing Hearts and thinking the story sucks (even a few pro reviewers seemed to not grasp the concept of story delivery in this game) . It’s not sandbox MMO because players can’t make lasting changes in game and players don’t really control the economy (who sets the exchange rate of gems to gold conversion?). Also, although it appears you have multiple paths there really isn’t. In GW2 you a single path through YOUR story, that’s Personal Story chapters. That’s your single path of progression that takes you from level 1 tutorial all the way to the beaches of Orr. You ride that wave until level 80 then dymamic events get you to the final dungeon where the final boss awaits.

Many players have chosen to ignore personal story, clear zones, grind dynamic events and dungeons for XP to max level, then go to Orr, get to the final boss and scream about lack of endgame content and lack of story. I’m beginning to wonder how much fault can be put on the player for doing that in a game that so easily lets them.

The player should not be allowed to exclusively do Hearts, or only dynamic events and ignore PS. You are encouraged and expected to mix these things up at your own pace, but people are still focused on the level cap as goal #1 and they quickly determine the story as throw away. Thinking this is just like all other MMOs they wonder why story isn’t being delivered through Heart/quest. The only one of the three progression vehicles that’s really required is Personal Story, because it’s a linear path. Without it you are just running around the game world really. It gives meaning to the events you see going on around you. I don’t understand why the game doesn’t require this.

It seems the developers want the story in this game to be very important to you, but they’ve made it so players can choose to ignore personal story altogether (a contradiction of design I don’t understand)

I think ArenaNet should lock zones until certain Personal Story chapter are complete. If you have a level 70 personal story chapter that delivers some important information the player needs to know before going to Orr they should be required to play through that. This non-linear approach to design leaves players having finished the game and ignored the story altogether.

Heres the problem though, there is no reward but yet there is nothing new here, its wow without reward, remember you can explore in wow or just play for fun, enjoy the gameplay etc but there is also reward, therefore whats new here?

eladox.3457:

Correction : Its not that “you dont need gear/ranks to see content” the truth is there is no content. You grind boring dungeons, you look fancy and game is over.
If you wanna look fancy, visit Prada.

How is this any different than WoW?
WoW the gear doesn’t even matter, you get welfare epics, so all that grind you did was pointless, you’re not progressing at all.

This type of thing from this community (not all a good number) gets more and more disturbing every day. It’s borderline nuts, delusional atleast.

The attempt to redefine every standard that GW2 does not meet (When suggestions could be made to bring it up to standard in certain areas) is disgusting.

Are football players trained to gain yards? wtf?

bcbully.7289:

This type of thing from this community (not all a good number) gets more and more disturbing every day. It’s borderline nuts, delusional atleast.

The attempt to redefine every standard that GW2 does not meet (When suggestions could be made to bring it up to standards in certain section) is disgusting.

Are football players trained to gain yards? wtf?

The core concept of MMOs are not imaginary endgame “progression”.
This was a concept designed to drag content on and keep people subbing.

It’s been drilled so hard into the genre that people think that not only is it beneficial, but a game needs it.

MMORPG = MMO RPG
Name me an RPG with this system, no diablo doesn’t have it.
The only game that comes close that I know of is dungeon defenders, and WOW that ruined the game!

SamTheGuardian.2938:

Greyfeld.7104:

Ordika.9513:

Honestly I was going to say not many modern, but in all honesty, I can go back to Baldur’s Gate and Fallout and safely say I hit level cap long before I got to the end of the game.

This is more a nature of the “sandbox” RPG subgenre, in which the storyline isn’t nearly as important as the freedom granted the player to explore and interact with the world. Following the narrative in any RPG is going to lead to game completion long, long before you ever hit the level cap.

GW2 is not a sandbox MMO. I believe there are a large population of players running around the game avoiding personal story and dynamic events only doing Hearts and thinking the story sucks (even a few pro reviewers seemed to not grasp the concept of story delivery in this game) . It’s not sandbox MMO because players can’t make lasting changes in game and players don’t really control the economy (who sets the exchange rate of gems to gold conversion?). Also, although it appears you have multiple paths there really isn’t. In GW2 you a single path through YOUR story, that’s Personal Story chapters. That’s your single path of progression that takes you from level 1 tutorial all the way to the beaches of Orr. You ride that wave until level 80 then dymamic events get you to the final dungeon where the final boss awaits.

Which is sort of my point. GW2, being a themepark, has more in common with narrative-driven RPGs than sandbox RPGs, but has the inverted progression style of a sandbox RPG (without the breadth of explorable “other” content to make up for the lack of progression at the level cap).

They should implement some sandbox features in the future, housing, etc.

Plague.5329:

That’s fair, although you have to consider your market if you’re trying to sell to it. In that situation, if it was just marketed to the wrong people, that again is the producer’s fault, not the consumer.

However, with GW2, obviously they have a very, very large market. Their main concern is going to be who their primary income is. Will it be new players trickling in, enjoying the game until 80, then quitting, and possibly returning for expansions? Gem purchasers? How long will those people play? How much of a stretch in income do we want to ensure repeat purchases but also not to trivialize limited content? Those are questions we won’t have answers to because we don’t know what their income looks like. What they focus on will depend on who they’re trying to retain the most. You can’t please everyone, but you can please your best customers.

Granted you go where the money is, but that should have been decided up front in the business model.

Personally given what I know of consumer psyche, in almost all cases this is the consumer’s fault for one of two reasons; build up of unreachable hype/expectations and/or simply good salesmanship the buyer bought into instead of the particulars of the product. To give you an example, if you ever read the D3 forums after launch the biggest complaint was the lack of offline mode. While I didn’t like D3 I was flabbergasted that people were complaining about it as Blizz had stated their would be no offline at least a year prior to the game being made. Again buyer beware.

My ultimate opinion is simply that a business should strive to make the best possible product that they are trying to make, and expertly sell it to as many people as possible. But a reaction to a product in terms of satisfaction is always on the customer. To give you an example, GW2 has some bugs, and I know ANet is working on them, so as long as they are fixed before ANet rolls out any new content I will be satisfied (it is why I am not crying for ANet’s blood even though I know of some bugs and a few even blocked my progress at one point). That is on me because I determine my level of acceptance of certain unavoidable things (bugs will always exist), but not everyone is as laid back as me and I can still get my moneys worth by doing other activities while the bugs are fixed. But again that is my response to the situation I bought into of my own free will.

Actually most of these replies and the discussion is very nice but i dont see an end to this…the opinions are so many and i dont think opinions of people change like this if they even change at all most of the times

Plague is spot on actually.

Nailed my main gripes with the game for sure.

Skill/playstyle customization, uniqueness, complexity is something I always look for in MMO’s and is one of the things I thought GW1 did best at by far, and was why I had such faith in GW2.

It’s a shame they were afraid to go any further than they did. Just removing dual-profressions could’ve easily made balancing a x1000 easier, w/o having to gut any build variety/skill quantity.

And as he said, for a game where the only objective/carrot is Cosmetic skins, there sure as hell isn’t many options for them.

And having 0 reasons to replay lower levels is a massive flaw indeed, in fact I thought their intention was to have people re-playing low level areas even at cap. Nothing encourages that though, no scaling rewards/loot, high waypoint costs scaling with level, high lvl gear making down-scaling a joke (nearly 1 shot mobs).

There should atleast be things exclusive to the old zones for people to go back and hunt down new skins or pets, or w/e.

Granted Anet may do something about any of these problems, so I’ll still wait and see of course. Hopefully build variety is one of their priorities, and that goes for both PvE and PvP.

it’s not that im not having fun it’s just not fun when there isn’t anything to do :/

I absolutely love that I am finished gearing up. I dropped some cash for gems, traded them for gold and bought mats on the trader so a friend could craft me my level 80 exotic set. Now I can just WvW and not worry about being “out geared”. In my opinion all item stats should be level in any PvP situation like they are in Spvp. This game has crushed all other MMO’s in that respect. I actually love seeing the gear grinders qq posts too. Finally a game that focuses more on game-play and player skill over item progression. Sweet victory. To those who say " Some of us like item progression, and this game won’t retain us"… I say, it was never designed to retain you. Anet got your money, you can leave now. You won’t be missed, (at least in game). Please continue to stop by the forums to complain though, it gives me the giggles at work.

Roargathor.2743:

I absolutely love that I am finished gearing up. I dropped some cash for gems, traded them for gold and bought mats on the trader so a friend could craft me my level 80 exotic set. Now I can just WvW and not worry about being “out geared”. In my opinion all item stats should be level in any PvP situation like they are in Spvp. This game has crushed all other MMO’s in that respect. I actually love seeing the gear grinders qq posts too. Finally a game that focuses more on game-play and player skill over item progression. Sweet victory. To those who say " Some of us like item progression, and this game won’t retain us"… I say, it was never designed to retain you. Anet got your money, you can leave now. You won’t be missed, (at least in game). Please continue to stop by the forums to complain though, it gives me the giggles at work.

On the whole I agree with this.

What does give me pause, however (as a fanboi), is people who have reached 80 who say the endgame PvE just isn’t fun (in the sense of not being particularly challenging, i.e. the dungeons just aren’t very good, very challenging, etc., in the way that raid content is in some other games).

But on the other hand, I’m fairly confident that that’s precisely the sort of thing Anet are on the watch for, and prepared to improve, and add content that’s actually good. If I’m justified in my confidence, we’ll see GW grow and evolve in that way – as Anet get a feel for the playerbase, they will create content, and evolve the virtual world, so that in the future, a few years from now, nobody starting the game who loves challenging and varied endgame content will have cause for complaint.

symke.3105:

To answer your challenge … yes, I am enjoying GW2. But not so much as I’ve hoped to. One of my biggest complains is combat system. And the other is lack of “growth”.
There is a gear progression in game. But to me it’s only cosmetic gear progression. Which to me means that ArenaNet thinks we value our looks most of all. Do you?

Now my challenge to you … What do you do to have fun in GW2? What do you do to enjoy it?
To put it differently … if this game had gear progression … how would that stop you from having fun? You simply choose not to follow that progression, do your own thing and enjoy the game in the way you want.

I really don’t want to insult anyone but it just boggles my mind that people see lack of added options as something better.

I’m glad you brought this up. Firstly, I can and do spend hours customizing the look of my characters. So it’s very important to me, and I imagine to some extent or another it’s important for most people. You gotta look good while you’re smashing faces, after all.

To answer your question—what I do to have fun in GW2—I play it. More specifically my primary interest in the game is the PvP,. I’ve done the hardcore PvP grind, most recently owning about a dozen server firsts for acquiring top-end PvP gear in Rift, which, sadly, made it entirely too easy to destroy people because the gear in that game inflated FAST. Ended up quitting because having such dominance based on gear alone stopped being fun. So there’s a knock against gear progression, even though there are ways around it, which GW2 is already doing really.

I also wanted to address the last couple things you said. You said it boggles your mind that people see a lack of options as better, and that gear progression does not limit your enjoyment of the game. To the former, I agree wholeheartedly. However, the latter is completely untrue.

See, gear progression does limit the content a player can do, because one must have the prerequisite gear to even be capable of doing the content. Gear checks and all. No matter how good your tactic for beating the encounter, you simply cannot if you don’t have the stat numbers required to survive hits or to kill the boss in X time.

This style of content ends up being limiting, because with each tier of gear progression added, smaller and smaller numbers of players can access it. It also limits the content that the progression players can enjoy, because their gear advantage begins to absolutely wreck older areas. This creates a lack of options for a significant portion of the community, and as we’ve agreed, it boggles both of our minds why anyone would think less options are better.

gurugeorge.9857:

On the whole I agree with this.

What does give me pause, however (as a fanboi), is people who have reached 80 who say the endgame PvE just isn’t fun (in the sense of not being particularly challenging, i.e. the dungeons just aren’t very good, very challenging, etc., in the way that raid content is in some other games).

But on the other hand, I’m fairly confident that that’s precisely the sort of thing Anet are on the watch for, and prepared to improve, and add content that’s actually good. If I’m justified in my confidence, we’ll see GW grow and evolve in that way – as Anet get a feel for the playerbase, they will create content, and evolve the virtual world, so that in the future, a few years from now, nobody starting the game who loves challenging and varied endgame content will have cause for complaint.

I like this post but sadly it’s going to go ignored by most people either a) not reading this thread and go on to start their own later or b) they just don’t believe you. Which is sad.

People seem to not realize this is only the first iteration. First of many. This isn’t some xbox game where what you see is what you get, updates are made, content is updated and added. There’s no guarantees that it’s going to change a bunch but at the same time there’s no guarantees that it won’t be improved for the better. Just have to wait and see.

Every game for the most part is based on some sort of progression or else why play? Single player console games you play to finish the game which is a form of progression. FPS games now offer upgrades on weapons and armor so that is a form of progression.

MMO’s people play for either pvp or pve. The very minority plays to just chill. Even if you are just a crafter that is still a form of progression because you are leveling that skill up. Heck even if you just play for the story and level that is progression because you can’t see the next zone if you don’t level.

I don’t see how you can just play an mmo for fun without any type of progression. Even in SWG if you just danced in a cantina all day you still had to progress to learn dancing and the skill. But for me I play for end game raiding and I love competing for server firsts and progressing. It is my choice to be in guilds like that but there are many who just like to see this content slowly at their own pace. It is still progression.

Removing levels like TSW still means nothing because you have to level your skills then.

Anyways since mmo’s really have no end to them, it is all about different types of progression.

Roargathor.2743:

Now I can just WvW and not worry about being “out geared”. In my opinion all item stats should be level in any PvP situation like they are in Spvp. This game has crushed all other MMO’s in that respect. I actually love seeing the gear grinders qq posts too. Finally a game that focuses more on game-play and player skill over item progression.

Some of them are cryng simply because of that.

In the past, lack of skill could be hidden by spending 500 hours in dungeons grinding gear.

Now…everyone’s geared the same. You sink or swim in PVP based on your ability and that sucks for some of the former “gear grinders” who could hide behind their bigger numbers but can no longer do so.

Mrpopo.4593:

it’s not that im not having fun it’s just not fun when there isn’t anything to do :/

WvW is something to do. Do you not find that fun?
Dungeons in explore mode require focused team play. Do you not find that fun?

ArenaNet has stated they intend to change the world by slowly removing scripted dynamic events and adding new ones. That is going to be their primary means of delivering new content between expansions. If you’re thinking “I don’t really want to keep running around the GW2 world finding new events” and you don’t think of dungeons or WvW as fun, I think you’re safely at a point where you can say this isn’t the game for you.

There is plenty to do. If you only define endgame as raids then there isn’t move on to a game with raids perhaps.

Here’s a random thought about progression;

After playing GW2 a bit, i moved on to a new F2p game. I enjoy them from time to time, but the higher a character gets, the pricer it is (with real life money) to keep up and progress.

The game design is a lot different in f2p games than sub games. Most of them have a randomness system, where gear dropped and crafted are created randomly, and require upgrading with cashshop items. With sub games, upgrading gear is less involved, and generally all you can do is slightly modify (like in WOW) or gem/enchant it with something.

Also it is interesting that no sub game has touched on the idea of creating a f2p style ( im thinking Perfect World games and similair to PW) Pet system. These games offer a really involved pet system, but which can require hundreds of dollars (ive seen posts on people spending over a thousand to create a perfect pet in BOI)

If this was turned into something where you would use in-game currecy, earned through playing, to try and create ‘perfect’ gear or pet, i think it would be enjoyable.

Why everyone follows the WoW design for so long i have no idea. Early games such as EQ AC or UO were a lot different, and more enjoyable with different, yet simple, concepts.

I move on to less popular games because of new design concepts. GW2 was fun for about two weeks for me, but it didn’t feel like anything too ‘new’

Ordika.9513:

Plague.5329:

Again, the problem is never the consumer, when it comes to design. Your job is to make something that makes money, and keeps making money. If your consumers decide to take their money somewhere else, you don’t stab your finger at their back as they walk into the sunset and tell them they don’t know how to enjoy your product. That’s your failure. You are the failure. Not them. You are the bad designer. If you can’t respond to that failure, all the worse for you. The consumer will just move on, leaving you only with a collection of fanboys eager to stroke your ego and agree with one another that everything is perfect, except for all the problems they can’t bring themselves to address.

The problem with your analysis is that it assumes a customer not liking your product makes you or your product a failure, when it could be just as simple as a bad fit (not every product is for everybody).

ANet has never said get on board or get out, but by the same token just because they didn’t get every single human on the planet to like their game doesn’t mean the capitulate to their desires. It just means that you except that the customer didn’t purchase the right product for themselves, either from lack of knowledge or because of a smooth talking salesman (buyer beware).

Customer expectation is a problem the designer can’t fix and is not their problem. Unfortunately we live in a society where the consumer has been given to much power in the seller/purchaser relationship. Granted this is in reaction to when the seller had to much power, but imbalance the other way never makes up for the original imbalance.

If you’ve designed a product without the consumer in mind then you’re a bad designer.

Rizzy.8293:

If you’ve designed a product without the consumer in mind then you’re a bad designer.

And I guess you’re going to insist they did exactly that because the game doesn’t appeal solely to people like you, right?

Screw what the rest of us who actually knew what we were buying think. If it don’t please the Rizzmaster, it don’t please nobody.

eladox.3457:

Correction : Its not that “you dont need gear/ranks to see content” the truth is there is no content. You grind boring dungeons, you look fancy and game is over.
If you wanna look fancy, visit Prada.

There’s more content already in GW2 than a person could experience in years; it’s just not content you personally have fun experiencing.

Wintyre Fraust.6534:

eladox.3457:

Correction : Its not that “you dont need gear/ranks to see content” the truth is there is no content. You grind boring dungeons, you look fancy and game is over.
If you wanna look fancy, visit Prada.

There’s more content already in GW2 than a person could experience in years; it’s just not content you personally have fun experiencing.

And yet, somehow, people have inexplicably done all this years’ worth of content in a month. Sounds like somebody owns a time machine!!

There’s plenty of progression in GW2, just not the usual statistical progresson, which is fine by me.

I came to PC games from a console fighting game background. The very thought of someone being able to beat me, not by skill, but by equipment pisses me off (I’m looking at you , SFxTekken)

However, I do realize that there is a market for that. GW2 doesn’t appeal to that market because there are already plenty of games for those people. And guess what? even if you like that kind of stuff, you can always hop back into GW2. Bought once, bought for life.

Corian.4068:

symke.3105:

To answer your challenge … yes, I am enjoying GW2. But not so much as I’ve hoped to. One of my biggest complains is combat system. And the other is lack of “growth”.
There is a gear progression in game. But to me it’s only cosmetic gear progression. Which to me means that ArenaNet thinks we value our looks most of all. Do you?

Now my challenge to you … What do you do to have fun in GW2? What do you do to enjoy it?
To put it differently … if this game had gear progression … how would that stop you from having fun? You simply choose not to follow that progression, do your own thing and enjoy the game in the way you want.

I really don’t want to insult anyone but it just boggles my mind that people see lack of added options as something better.

I’m glad you brought this up. Firstly, I can and do spend hours customizing the look of my characters. So it’s very important to me, and I imagine to some extent or another it’s important for most people. You gotta look good while you’re smashing faces, after all.

To answer your question—what I do to have fun in GW2—I play it. More specifically my primary interest in the game is the PvP,. I’ve done the hardcore PvP grind, most recently owning about a dozen server firsts for acquiring top-end PvP gear in Rift, which, sadly, made it entirely too easy to destroy people because the gear in that game inflated FAST. Ended up quitting because having such dominance based on gear alone stopped being fun. So there’s a knock against gear progression, even though there are ways around it, which GW2 is already doing really.

I also wanted to address the last couple things you said. You said it boggles your mind that people see a lack of options as better, and that gear progression does not limit your enjoyment of the game. To the former, I agree wholeheartedly. However, the latter is completely untrue.

See, gear progression does limit the content a player can do, because one must have the prerequisite gear to even be capable of doing the content. Gear checks and all. No matter how good your tactic for beating the encounter, you simply cannot if you don’t have the stat numbers required to survive hits or to kill the boss in X time.

This style of content ends up being limiting, because with each tier of gear progression added, smaller and smaller numbers of players can access it. It also limits the content that the progression players can enjoy, because their gear advantage begins to absolutely wreck older areas. This creates a lack of options for a significant portion of the community, and as we’ve agreed, it boggkitten th of our minds why anyone would think less options are better.

Your primary interest is PVP. That’s where all your differences stem from.

sPVP is gear-irrelevant.

WvW which would then only require a scale down and/or stats cap.

And all your arguments would then be invalid. So can we now have our PVE gear progression/threadmill?

Like what symke said, why can’t we have both FUN and GEAR, instead of being forced to choose one or the other like what everyone here seems to think?

EDIT: Btw, gearless PVP is not an innovation from GW2. There are other older games that had subscribed to that format long before GW2.

Strifer.3507:

Like what symke said, why can’t we have both FUN and GEAR, instead of being forced to choose one or the other like what everyone here seems to think?

Because:

Colin Johanson

Fun impacts loot collection. The rarest items in the game are not more powerful than other items, so you don’t need them to be the best. The rarest items have unique looks to help your character feel that sense of accomplishment, but it’s not required to play the game. We don’t need to make mandatory gear treadmills, we make all of it optional, so those who find it fun to chase this prestigious gear can do so, but those who don’t are just as powerful and get to have fun too.

Simply put you have your FUN, and you have your GEAR. The fact that it doesn’t give you more superpowers doesn’t mean it’s not there.

The real question is: Why do people insist on asking questions that have been answered over and over again?

to answer this question, enjoy as a factor, is pretty much subjective, u can enjoy an aspect of the game and not necessarily other people would find it enjoyable….. but let’s go point from point.

Progression is what make a game genre different from the others (being rpg genre the top one on this aspect) and as all of MMO games, u want to reach further as u want to if u enjoy the game as it is, with its pros and cons, i mean, if u like WoW u want to reach the highest it allows (or reach a certain stage of the game in case u play a game because your friends are playing it too) so i could define Progression as a factor to play a game.

For Enjoyment of the game, i would say that we need to say what we like from a MMO in general, and then go to the particular case of GW2, this said, i in general, love to play mmo that have massive events, where i play with lot of people (for something is ON LINE) and make me focus on my role of my class (if I’m a tank i defend the people, if i am a bowman i do critical, if i am a dual i will keep the dps pressure on. etc.) till finish, if we win wahoo we did it!, if we fail, think about what went wrong especially on something i can control like my playstyle, gear, etc. because i wont argue or fight with people if the problem was done by an idiot who messed it up, that is up to him, but i wont stress about it, so that is what make me enjoyable a game, a game that puts me on the edge of what i know of my class and play it till i don’t find any challenge into the game.

DusK.3849:

Strifer.3507:

Like what symke said, why can’t we have both FUN and GEAR, instead of being forced to choose one or the other like what everyone here seems to think?

Because:

Colin Johanson

Fun impacts loot collection. The rarest items in the game are not more powerful than other items, so you don’t need them to be the best. The rarest items have unique looks to help your character feel that sense of accomplishment, but it’s not required to play the game. We don’t need to make mandatory gear treadmills, we make all of it optional, so those who find it fun to chase this prestigious gear can do so, but those who don’t are just as powerful and get to have fun too.

Simply put you have your FUN, and you have your GEAR. The fact that it doesn’t give you more superpowers doesn’t mean it’s not there.

The real question is: Why do people insist on asking questions that have been answered over and over again?

Rarest loot =/= gear progression. There is none in GW2.
So we’ve reached lvl 80, bought/craft lvl 80 exotics immediately with that amount of gold we’ve saved or gotten so far. And…

That’s it.

While GW2 provides for tonnes of cosmetic armors, cosmetic progression =/= character progression. So at level 80, there’s nothing for your character to progress on.

Before we jump on the chicken and egg argument and someone starts saying “hey, gear doesn’t matter, you can still have fun”. That’s exactly my point; why cant we have fun AND gear at the same time?

There is also satisfaction in doing a dungeon that seems difficult at first until a certain set of gear is achieved and finally completing that dungeon. This is progression.

Of course, it is the balance between the gap of the gear threadmill that needs to be addressed carefully. Difficult it may be but this may be what differentiates a good developer from the rest.

DusK.3849:

Rizzy.8293:

If you’ve designed a product without the consumer in mind then you’re a bad designer.

And I guess you’re going to insist they did exactly that because the game doesn’t appeal solely to people like you, right?

Screw what the rest of us who actually knew what we were buying think. If it don’t please the Rizzmaster, it don’t please nobody.

" I know its a lot to ask of you but I do wish you’d educate yourself before you spew"

And I quote.

Just because you don’t know what baseline gear means and think Factions armour is exotic when infact its rare doesn’t mean you;re an expert in Gw2 mechanics. It means you’re the opposite actually.

So “go research the game before you buy it” and start spewing crap to people.

Strifer.3507:

DusK.3849:

Strifer.3507:

Like what symke said, why can’t we have both FUN and GEAR, instead of being forced to choose one or the other like what everyone here seems to think?

Because:

Colin Johanson

Fun impacts loot collection. The rarest items in the game are not more powerful than other items, so you don’t need them to be the best. The rarest items have unique looks to help your character feel that sense of accomplishment, but it’s not required to play the game. We don’t need to make mandatory gear treadmills, we make all of it optional, so those who find it fun to chase this prestigious gear can do so, but those who don’t are just as powerful and get to have fun too.

Simply put you have your FUN, and you have your GEAR. The fact that it doesn’t give you more superpowers doesn’t mean it’s not there.

The real question is: Why do people insist on asking questions that have been answered over and over again?

Rarest loot =/= gear progression. There is none in GW2.
So we’ve reached lvl 80, bought/craft lvl 80 exotics immediately with that amount of gold we’ve saved or gotten so far. And…

That’s it.

While GW2 provides for tonnes of cosmetic armors, cosmetic progression =/= character progression. So at level 80, there’s nothing for your character to progress on.

Before we jump on the chicken and egg argument and someone starts saying “hey, gear doesn’t matter, you can still have fun”. That’s exactly my point; why cant we have fun AND gear at the same time?

Because PVP games are designed with balance in mind, its not fair to have high numbers with every new expansion and leave the old ones behind. Take Champions online, City of Heroes/Villains and DCUO, all games with PVP in mind, is there even armour aesthetics? No, you have little gadgets that +stats and armour is purely cosmetic.

Have they balanced PVE and PVP, for the most part, Id have to say Champions Online did a fairly good job.

Whats guildwars 2 doing?
Ensuring that people who enjoy PVP from the first game are still able to enjoy WvW without having to worry about someone else having better gear than them by allowing base line armor to stop at exotic and everything else is cosmetic.

What am I doing now?
Working on a dungeon to get some parts of gear to further maximize my visual aesthetics, do I have to? No but I WANT to.

Before the 25th, everything in PVE costs way too much and rewards way too little, atleast now you can still make a profit from doing stuff in PVE.

Im not going to go so far as to say Gw2 is perfect, its not, it needs to find the balance between PVE and PVP still and a lot of PVE can be improved

Post patch 25th sept, things are getting better, aside from the DR system which now flags me for no reason

Corian.4068:

I’m glad you brought this up. …

Well one of the differences between us is that I couldn’t care less how I look in-game. But I am no saying look is not important. There are a lot people that value it and thus it is important to be a part of the game. I admit, it can add some personal note when you are satisfied with your character. But looking good in GW2 means looking like so many others (for now), as there are so few choices. So I don’t know how satisfied you will be in few months when so many others around you will be wearing the same clothes as you will. I hope they will add many more.

And that brings me to second thing. Gear progression. There is gear progression in GW2. And we all follow it. It’s just wrapped in some “I am not really here” paper hoping that it will not be noticed. Before you say otherwise … not having gear progression means you fight with the same weapon at level 1 and at level 80. Something like PVP.
Gear does progress with buffed up stats and we do upgrade it. We all do. Even those that say you hate it. Because you have to if you want to finish PVE. I can understand your frustration with Rift and it’s gear demands. But the main problem in the example you provided is not gear progression it’s the amount of gear progression. If the change from one set of gear to another is 1-3% (official gear in GW2 has even bigger change), then those differences are not so great. You would not be dominant because of your gear if your armor has only 2% better toughness, right?
You already have to have certain gear if you want to move to higher level area, don’t you? Or do you actually still fight with your starting gear? I know starting gear looks like crap (even I admit that), but could you fight level 30 with your starting gear?

Like you said, I can understand equal gear beinkittenortant in PVP. But it’s not so important in PVE. I like SWTOR type of PVP (I know, I just became public enemy with this one, but it’s me so…). I like the fact that you have to work your kitten off to get on the same footing as those top ones. I don’t like it if (like you said) the differences are too big, but they don’t have to be. They could make gear differences very small in increment so no gear dominance.
One of the biggest demands in PVP community is more focus on skill rather than on gear. And I agree with that. Skill should be more important. But how much of a skill do you think you will need when you will have learned all combos, other classes and their weapons? It will become repetition of those few combinations public will determine are the best. There are already builds that are thought of as “the best” or “optimal”. So your choices for PVP combat are already smaller since your build might not be the best. And this happened 1 month after the release. I don’t think any other game managed that. Is this good or bad, I don’t know.
I do think that all those buffing and nerfing of classes, skills and other things that other games are doing constantly is one of the biggest reasons for their longevity. It’s this “let’s see how good I am now, with this change” that in my opinion makes people play month after month, year after year. One of them, not the only reason, off course.

To finish … if they didn’t want gear progression to be so important, why is then gear progression necessary for finishing PVE?

Why do people think progression is a bad thing? Striving to do the new challenge and being rewarded for such challenge is what MMO games are based on? If you dont like progression maybe a game like League of legends or FPS games where is a fresh game each time but in a persistent world you need advancement or there is just simply nothing really, and what ever there is to do will soon be completed and then people leave, kind of like the state the game is in now

People get to fixated on gear=progression,
its not about the gear its about having a challenge in front of you still, gear is just the prestige that goes with completing. better stat gear can be a gating mechanism to make the challenges need to be completed in order.

@ Plague:

very well said. The definite proof that things have gone from wrong to worse is the GRAPH in GW2 player activity. The numbers are plunging and FAST.

So the fan-boys can come up with any excuses they want, the fact is that the player-base is less and less active. Maybe they consider themselves the true base, and the rest, 80% of people who stopped playing the game or are rarely logging-in are just collateral damage, and they should go back to WoW?

Good for Blizzard, in that case.

The problem with GW2 is their content isn’t as interesting as a single player RPG and the progression is not as good as many MMORPG’s. They are in the stuck in the middle of just mediocre. Dungeons aren’t that hard. Legendaries really have no purpose. A goal for hardcores, but they don’t have a use other than rolling over overplayed content. Many games have some type of progression to capture the investment of their player base. The only thing that keeps GW2 fun is SPvP and friends. I say the same thing about WoW, except I have played that for years and this game for a couple months. ArenaNet needs to improve progression or have better content. Maybe I just expected too much from this game.

Never ending progression keeps me away from games like WoW. I have thoughally enjoyed GW2 and still like playing, despite the fact that I don’t really need more rewards. There are some things i’d like to have, but its not essential. I’m not trying to skip content in order to get to some envisioned “end game”. If I played a subscription game I’m sure i’d be no where near getting decent gear or high level, and I would probably feel like I was just going through the motions and not really enjoying my gaming sessions.

I just like the combat, I like exploring and taking part in group events. I like the epic big boss fights (despite the blue/green rewards). I like farming gold for more exotics. I like WvW, although the lag and character pop in can make it awkward, and I feel like i’m just part of a zerg sometimes

I understand people’s need for progression though, but I agree 100% with Arenanets model. They could accommodate these players though with more goals in between Legendaries, and then maybe even something beyond Legendary. Theres a lot of achievements people can do too, and more that could be added. For me I would just want more boss fights, maybe an easy way to find bosses with chests, generally more different things to do. The progression won’t stop me playing though, only if I get bored of the content

The main thing that disappoints me with GW2 is the lack of transition from PVE to sPVP. It feels very jarring and like I teleported to a different game rather than an extension of my own character in an RPG world. The guy you go to to search for a game even calls it a “game server browser” or something. Totally kills any sense of playing an RPG for me, and maybe one of the main things thats kept me away from it. I should be able to go to sPVP and feel like i’m still my PVE character, it should be optional to have the same skill set up as pve, similar gear etc and get rid of the “server browser” guy

It can take months to get legendary equips without buying it off the TP. I have no idea what you’re on about.

You people should learn this:

1. MMORPG has a competitive player base. Therefore, most of the players are hardcores.

2. In MMORPG, fun = victory&success. People enjoy getting high level items, not solving jumping puzzles.

3. No progression = no fun. You might enjoy watching the ocean in GW2 but for many of the players out there, it is pointless because this is a game.

So if I get the top tier items in a week, that means I’m done with that game in a week. That’s actually what happened to GW2.

People can enjoy content without endless progression.

Watch this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWtvrPTbQ_c

That is what makes people so blinded by progression in games. If you can’t enjoy the content for what it is and need some constant “progression” or skinner box/treadmill style game mechanics then I don’t see the point of even playing a game. Why do you care about getting an item when as soon as you get it the goal posts are moved and now you have a whole new goal you have to reach? Its about keeping you playing (and paying) past the point of boredom and beyond.

What really is progression to me is mastering my character to a point where I react to situations instinctively instead of thinking about it. It’s all about understanding its strenghts and weaknesses and use those to my advantage in any given scenario.

Of course stronger gear is alway fun to find but there’s a point, and I think GW2 found it, where gear becomes irrelevant except for looks and War (PvP) becomes the true goal.

I want to fight, bleed and die so I can master my character and become a force to reckon with. That is progression in my book.

Corian.4068:

How do we make these players get it about Guild Wars 2?

Or can we at all?

I don’t think there is any reason to. For a lot of people this is what an MMO is all about. Most of the complaints I am seeing go something like “I got through the content and now I have to stop because there is no more interesting content to play. Giving me stat based progression would help me enjoy dull content and feel accomplished.”. To me not having any reason to do unpleasant content over and over is a perk. If you get through that many hours of playing a game and you need a developer to drip feed you statistics it’s probably time to take a break. Wait a few months for the dev team to come up with some new fresh content. This is what most folks do with single player RPGs.

The best part is that this is where the lack of level 80 stat progression really comes into play, as in 6 months time you will be able to jump back in check out what’s new with your friends and not worry about having to “catch up” or “gear grind” to get involved. The fact that they have no sub fee means that it really doesn’t hurt to just put it down for a while and pick it back up at a later date.