Guild Wars 2

I am far from new to MMO’s having played most since the birth of them with Everquest.

I have read and been apart in a lot of the hate in regards to last week’s patch and the awful lag filled, billion hp countless enemy filled event.

However as much as there are tons of bugs and problems with Fractals such as people being disconnected and a bug list that is very long.

I can see the frustration on the what seems for some (including me) low drop rate of the Essences for the gear. I am over 60 runs and have now received 2 just for the record.

I guess my question here is why is there such hate in regards to this newer armor being introduced only a few months after launch into this game? Why do people simply want the game to just sit at exotics and be done with any higher or more progression gear wise?

Our guild has been a ghost town before the patch simply due to the lack of content in the game and gear progression (not everyone likes to grind gear for simply looks).

Most PVE players are in fact the latter and always want to improve their character stat wise etc as much as possible and will continue coming back to do so on that rare dragon drop or whatever the case may be. This is some of the reason that nobody gives a rats kitten to do Legendary items. Who cares when they are the same stat as the 80silver exotic I can buy? It looks different? Have you seen the short bow rainbow thrower? Not a bloody chance!! Legendary items should be a legendary quest and completion to do so – not the gold sucking that it currently is. Go back to EQ/EQ2 and their epic quests for how a legendary item SHOULD be done

So if this ascended gear was in the game from start this complaining wouldn’t even exist except for the grind perhaps which really compared to other MMO’s to get your top tier item should be and normally is work. The part I detest with this gear is the 250 t6 craftable, need components as this is ridiculous and if anything it should simply just be an item comprised with the tokens you get out of the Fractals. (yes I also have to buy the 18silver per item component or farm for eons to get my Vicious Claws)

I guess I personally don’t see why the anger for them raising the gear/bar any? This day and age there needs to be something for everyone to do. Yes I agree that for people who only do pvp should have an alternative option to also getting that gear. Because I would feel the same if I had to PvP to get gear that would change how important each stat is in this game. But lets face it if you really don’t have a level 80 exotic item at level 80 in this game is simply pathetic because they are so cheap that there is literally no actual fight to get that item or any other besides a pre-cursor in this game.

Anyhow in closing Anet I think you did a great job introducing higher tier gear and actually having to do something to obtain it. Do i think the way to obtain it is correct for the back piece? No not at all. The dropped item in Fractals – yes. T6 x250 is ludicrous and makes no sense at all.

I simply don’t see how Anet or anyone else for that matter can keep a game going and making a good profit by simply doing Skins forever when it took all of a week to get to level 80. The leveling speeds remind me of the days of WoW how fast it is and is always sad to see that in these new games. The rush to top level to sit around and do nothing is all too common these days. Especially in a game like GW2 where there is no raids for PVE players and there is no actual risk in this game. All the dragon fights are a joke. Hopefully one day a new massive dungeon will be here with nothing but drakes/dragons in it and be hard as hell and more strategy then dodge the red circles that plague this game.

Anyhow just my opinion as I know we all have our own.

Its like you have a brand new car and when you take it to be serviced, the Mechanic goes and takes a dump on your front seat.

They did tell us from the very beginning that there would be “pink” items. It’s just now that they’ve actually given them a name. We will probably have a similar uproar when they eventually add in Legendary Armor.

People on the forum seem to feel the need to be overly melodramatic in their posting of their dislike of this new content. Helpful critical feedback tends to get thrown out the window.

Relentliss.2170:

Its like you have a brand new car and when you take it to be serviced, the Mechanic goes and takes a dump on your front seat.

I guess I don’t get this analogy. Every other MMO increases it’s gear/levels etc as time goes on. I don’t understand what players would do in a game that this did not happen?? Again sit and wait for the next Christmas event for a santa Claus hat?

I’m not trying to disrespect your comment I honestly don’t understand how anyone can think or why this should not happen that gear/levels etc change as the game grows. Year from now I certainly would not be around with this game if all it did was give me a new look over and over and over again if I am perfectly fine with the set I am wearing.

Akacia.1583:

Relentliss.2170:

Its like you have a brand new car and when you take it to be serviced, the Mechanic goes and takes a dump on your front seat.

I guess I don’t get this analogy. Every other MMO increases it’s gear/levels etc as time goes on. I don’t understand what players would do in a game that this did not happen?? Again sit and wait for the next Christmas event for a santa Claus hat?

I’m not trying to disrespect your comment I honestly don’t understand how anyone can think or why this should not happen that gear/levels etc change as the game grows. Year from now I certainly would not be around with this game if all it did was give me a new look over and over and over again if I am perfectly fine with the set I am wearing.

I can still drive the car. There is nothing fundamentally wrong with it.

I can still play the game. It seems about the same.

But the whole thing stinks.

Look for most people WOW or EQ were their first games. They see gear grind as a necessary evil, even something desirable. Others maybe started online gaming with something different and can see that gear grind is not necessary or even desirable.

You’re right. ‘Every other game’ – but there are a few exceptions to this. GW1 and EVE Online for example. And people have been playing those for years.

ANet has a treack record of sticking to their word – no vertucal progression; GW1 works this way. Now they seem to pull off or prepare a 180, that’s why people are angry.

If I wanted vertical progression and power creep I would play any of those ‘every other games’.

Akacia.1583:

I guess my question here is why is there such hate in regards to this newer armor being introduced only a few months after launch into this game? Why do people simply want the game to just sit at exotics and be done with any higher or more progression gear wise?

Because those of us that actually took note of the videos, interviews, blogs, etc pre-release were sold a game on the basis there would not be a gear treadmill, that progression would be optional based on things like cosmetics, titles, achievements, etc, so have basically been duped, that it wouldn’t be just another “WoW 2.0” Anet’s phrase not mine.

For instance in their blog their lead dev wrote this:

“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.”

It is no longer optional if you want the most powerful gear, nor will it be optional for the highest levels of dugneon and that aspect will only get worse when they add ascended / agony to more slots, add higher levels of infusion and more levels of new dungeons are balanced for people with ascended gear.

“I simply don’t see how Anet or anyone else for that matter can keep a game going and making a good profit by simply doing Skins forever when it took all of a week to get to level 80."

Answer: League of Legends. GW1. The huge mod industry around Skyrim and Oblivion.

Yes, there are a lot of people who play MMOGs who can’t see a reason to play IF there is no vertical progression. There are also a lot of people who want to play MMOGs if there is NO vertical progression, or if there is a permanently capped, relatively easy-to-achieve vertical limit.

That was the fundamental selling point of GW2, whether you agreed with it or not. That was the core philosophy. Whether it would have succeeded financially or not is something we may never know, but I hear League of Legends is doing quite well, and GW1 did quite well for 7 years with that philosophy.

The OP is answering its own question.

For people saying that getting new crap is “something to do” I really loathe your level of conditioning. Seems you learned nothing from Everquest, then, after a decade. You’re supposed to be playing a real game, not a slot machine. People actually demanding “rewards” and playing for stat baits have been turned into this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_ctJqjlrHA

With the only difference this pigeon is getting a NECESSARY and tangible reward. Not an ever inflating integer that equals to absolutely nothing.

The introduction of gear with stats 5-10% higher than Exotics is the worst thing to happen to the game yet, yes. If you don’t see how this is something ArenaNet will continuously build upon to create a large, necessary (if you like doing high level content, WvW and similar) item grind then you are incredibly narrow-sighted.

I will continue to play the game all the same, but it’s a truly unfortunate road that ArenaNet has taken.

I don’t disagree with what they advertised etc. However I guess I will go back to my question that putting in gear has not changed the grind in this game. The only thing that changed is what you choose to grind for. The entire game is full of grind in different areas such as achievements, puzzles, legendary etc. So that is not a valid point in my eyes.

I also am not saying that it has to be like all other games, however keep in mind that one of those other games which I do not play and did not for more than a few months still has 10 million active subs or close to it.

I can only think of Anet introducing more to do such as fractals grind simply to get people back in the game. PVE players in large part were and or are gone because of lack of things to do in game. And with no monthly sub to pay Anet isn’t making money off those players one way or another. I am not saying it is right just trying to look at the entire thing as a whole.

And again IF which of course is all hearsay this game had 7 different gear tiers when it launched this wouldn’t even be in discussion one per 10 levels and slower leveling to make each tier useful in those levels. I guess for the most part the problem is that we weren’t at this stage on launch for people? Making the problem for Anet a financial one, as the real issue here is that they did not have this stuff implemented before what was still an early launch and thus the lashing out from the community. The new gear is there for a reason and one reason only – players back and hopefully spending real cash on either gold for T6 items etc. Of course it has also cost them players in turn as does everything any MMO does or does not do

Harbard.5738:

The OP is answering its own question.

For people saying that getting new crap is “something to do” I really loathe your level of conditioning. Seems you learned nothing from Everquest, then, after a decade. You’re supposed to be playing a real game, not a slot machine. People actually demanding “rewards” and playing for stat baits have been turned into this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_ctJqjlrHA

With the only difference this pigeon is getting a NECESSARY and tangible reward. Not an ever inflating integer that equals to absolutely nothing.

the difference is that you also assume I care to do WvW to spend my time in. I prefer PVE to PvP. So with no raids whether it be 8 man 10 man 20 man whatever the number this game is sorely lacking in PVE content for PVE guilds and so on.

I don’t disagree with your statement however you need to look at it from all angles as well.

Or better yet even if Fractals opened up with nothing new but more tokes for different looking gear how long do you think people would actually be running them on a regular basis or maybe some insight as to what you would give a PVE player to continue to want to do that content and login?

There is no demand for anything – my question is to you what do you give PVE players for a reason to login and continue playing this game as it was designed currently? After you run the same dungeon handful of times it is boring and it is easier to logoff and go play or do something else. Remember again Anet wants to chip away that 10 million player base elsewhere in every possible way – it had the GW1 PvP players. I am just looking to hear what others think is a best or better way to improve the pve to keep people playing

One way personally and hopefully they do it with legendary gear is progression through actual content instead of a million Karma etc such as quest related kill each dragon/ do this /do that etc etc not go to the TPB and spend gold.

actually if you read the forum back, Anet doesn’t want to do gear treadmill at all, but lots of stupid elementary and childish kitten gamer keep kittening and kittening nonstop like there’s no tomorrow, asking for more content, more of this, more of that. This piece of crap lack of this and that. SO, THEY FREAKIN LISTENED and give us an event without any gear treadmill. ONCE AGAIN, those kind of player kittening more and more, still lack of content, still doesn’t know what kind of end game, wasting of time etc. AND THEY LISTENED AGAIN, now they give us ascended and THIS IS HOW YOU GUYS THANKING THEM?

Be a good gamer. You can ask for content, if they give one, give a positive feedback, not with kittenin around like hell.

OP: Everything you’ve asked in this thread has been answered in other threads, sometimes over and over. Here’s one very recent and pretty good one: Why The Stat Cap Is So Important.

Rpgtabbycat.5869:

They did tell us from the very beginning that there would be “pink” items. It’s just now that they’ve actually given them a name.

No they didnt. I don’t believe that one second. Link please.

I wanted them to add new story content, new events with fun things to do and new places to explore. I didn’t want them to change the game into a place where time spent grinding is worth more then your skill playing a game. Or where getting an item and adding a few stats onto it is considered new content. If you wanted to grind for your +1 gear to fight the +1 enemy and think that is progression then I am not sure why you bought GW2 in the first place when almost every other game caters to that.

In fact as I put in an other post

I got all my crafting professions up to 400 to get my exotic armour and I was told that would be it. I have geared up, I have made my builds, now I want to go out and fight Dragons with them, I want to lead the Norn back into their homelands, I want to see the Largos home city, I want to go to Elona and kill Palawa Joko, I want to go to Cantha and free it from the corrupt Emperor/Dragon/whatever has happened there, I want to go back into the Underworld and kicks Dhuums kitten again.

I don’t want to constantly have to be grinding new gear every update so I can actually take part in the new content. I already have a job, I don’t need a game to replace it.

Sylosi.6503:

Akacia.1583:

I guess my question here is why is there such hate in regards to this newer armor being introduced only a few months after launch into this game? Why do people simply want the game to just sit at exotics and be done with any higher or more progression gear wise?

Because those of us that actually took note of the videos, interviews, blogs, etc pre-release were sold a game on the basis there would not be a gear treadmill, that progression would be optional based on things like cosmetics, titles, achievements, etc, so have basically been duped, that it wouldn’t be just another “WoW 2.0” Anet’s phrase not mine.

For instance in their blog their lead dev wrote this:

“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.”

It is no longer optional if you want the most powerful gear, nor will it be optional for the highest levels of dugneon and that aspect will only get worse when they add ascended / agony to more slots, add higher levels of infusion and more levels of new dungeons are balanced for people with ascended gear.

^^^^^This.

Many of us followed this game for years. We were courted for years. And, now, it very much feels like a betrayal. It feels like promises were made and now promises are broken.

Is it Ascended Gear I hate? No, it is the entire philosophy behind it. An apparent 180 degree turn from what we were told for so long.

I leveled in this game not because I get more stats. You get de-leveled depending on where you are anyways.

I leveled in this game because it opened up more traits/skills and allowed me to play around with different builds.

Better stats on equipment just let’s you kill stuff faster and leads to a monster hp treadmill. There is no point. You are just proportionally changing the combat. Instead of dealing 10 damage for 10 seconds on a boss with 100 hp, you are dealing 100 damage for 10 seconds on a boss with 1000 hp. The only thing that changed is the number.

If equipment were made to introduce a new mechanic instead of stats, then that would actually change up the gameplay.

We already kind of have that with upgrades, but I feel it can be extended even further. For example: a weapon that gives you healing on roll at a penalty of less damage, an armor that gives you new utility skills that you can only access when you wear it…etc.

Wintyre Fraust.6534:

“I simply don’t see how Anet or anyone else for that matter can keep a game going and making a good profit by simply doing Skins forever when it took all of a week to get to level 80."

Answer: League of Legends. GW1. The huge mod industry around Skyrim and Oblivion.

Yes, there are a lot of people who play MMOGs who can’t see a reason to play IF there is no vertical progression. There are also a lot of people who want to play MMOGs if there is NO vertical progression, or if there is a permanently capped, relatively easy-to-achieve vertical limit.

That was the fundamental selling point of GW2, whether you agreed with it or not. That was the core philosophy. Whether it would have succeeded financially or not is something we may never know, but I hear League of Legends is doing quite well, and GW1 did quite well for 7 years with that philosophy.

Quoted for absolute truth. Especially the last paragraph. Thank you for that. IT hit the nail on the head.

MechanicalMind.9126:

Rpgtabbycat.5869:

They did tell us from the very beginning that there would be “pink” items. It’s just now that they’ve actually given them a name.

No they didnt. I don’t believe that one second. Link please.

Everything links to the new changes. I can’t find anything else. I could be mistaken but I could’ve sworn there was another color that just wasn’t used in the game.

Akacia.1583:

I don’t disagree with what they advertised etc. However I guess I will go back to my question that putting in gear has not changed the grind in this game. The only thing that changed is what you choose to grind for. The entire game is full of grind in different areas such as achievements, puzzles, legendary etc. So that is not a valid point in my eyes.

All of those was purely optional. I could decide what i’d want to grind for and what i wouldn’t. My choices depended only on what i liked more. Now there is one choice that offers a mechanical advantage over all others, and it requires heavy grind. It doesn’t matter what i like to do, if i don’t want to fall behind i need to farm FotM. A lot.

So to the OP, a simple question for you.

With their brilliant move, Arenanet has alienated the customer segment who bought the game because they were promised a grindless MMO. Now they find themselves with an MMO which is the usual WoW-clone, vertical progression-based gear treadmill.

Do you honestly think Arenanet can do WoW better than Blizzard?

If you’ve played other MMO’s before and never played Guild Wars 1 or saw the Manifesto video they brought out last year and never read any of their interviews in the last 5 years, I can see how this might surprise you.

However, if you have played GW1 and have seen the manifesto video and have read any of their interviews up to and including the launch of the game, then you understand the hatred against this new gear.

For me, if this is the way they want to go, I am not happy because I thought they would stick to their principles. They didn’t. I got over it.

How did I get over it? For me it was simple. I quit SWTOR to play GW2 because I didn’t like the gear treadmill and I knew a game was coming (GW2) that didn’t have any gear treadmill. So here I was.

Now the gear treadmill is introduced and that by itself can be defended in any number of ways. However, then I need to reassess. And I see that I can stay in GW2 and ignore the treadmill and focus on the rest of the game…or I can go back to SWTOR (or any other MMO I might like) and ignore endgame there.

And then I have to compare the world, story line, voice acting, leveling experience etc. Needless to say for me SWTOR won. I love Star Wars in general, the storylines and voice acting are vastly better than here and I don’t mind questing.

Don’t get me wrong. GW2 might still be a success. More power to Anet. But it isn’t what they promised, in fact it’s turning into the opposite and the problem for me is that that was exactly the reason I wanted to play GW2. So now that reason is gone and the rest of the game by itself isn’t strong enough. I did all the puzzles. That was lot of fun. I completed the world. That was also fun. PvP and WvW are fun occasionally, but not enough to keep me busy.

So I was very upset at this turnaround by Anet because this is opposite to what Anet was set up to do from the beginning. But it’s done and so be it. No more anger from me, but just an explanation why it made me stop playing and why it was upsetting that Anet did this (not even touching the communication issue).

I play another game. I hope the rest here enjoys GW2 for what it is.

Frankly, it isn’t very difficult to understand. Apart from the fact that they explicitly stated on multiple occasions throughout the development of the game that there would be no gear treadmill, if you stop to think about it you can easily see why the power creep/gear grind is a terrible convention that is long past its time and needs to go away.

Progression can include any number of things in a video game, from new skills, new skins, new titles, new lore rich content, new unique items, new professions, new races, etc. etc. “Progression” through endless vertical climbing of stats is and always has been an inferior model for a number reasons:

1. The progression is illusory, you are just getting new stats to keep up with the new stats other players and mobs are getting with new content. It’s pointless.
2. Endless power creep forces you to play the game in specific ways to keep up with the bar. Horizontal progression instead allows you to do whatever you want in the game while “progressing” and does not lock you into any particular content. As we speak, LA is filled with lfg spammers while everything else in the world is pretty empty because running FotM is much more lucrative than anything else in the world right now.
3. It’s stupidly unrealistic and in many ways ruins immersion
4. It gates content needlessly. Old content becomes useless far too quickly, and very quickly you reach a point where there’s only one thing in the game worth doing (the latest dungeon with the latest tiered drop). (See above)
5. It’s the laziest progression/retention mechanic from a development PoV
6. Your average MMO player doesn’t actually care that much about stats, they care more about enjoying the setting and the world. The gear grind caters to a minority who have a driving, burning need to be ‘elite’ relative to other players based on their stats rather than skill, strategy, etc.
7. Following #6, it destroys player skill and strategy as the primary arbiter of the game and instead gives that weight to someone’s gear rating.

Akacia.1583:

Our guild has been a ghost town before the patch simply due to the lack of content in the game and gear progression (not everyone likes to grind gear for simply looks).

Thank you for posting.

You like gear stat progression. I do not.

If Arenanet also supported gear stat progression in their game prior to their GW2 launch, that is fine. The issue is that they marketed and sold the product as one that did not have gear stat progression. Exotics were stated to be the max stat. Any additional progression related to gear would be based on looks. They said that people will continue playing as long as the game is fun. Their intent for the past 7 years is to keep games fresh and new by offering new content, skill progression, fun events, etc.

They did not market or sell the product as a gear stat progression based game. Do you think it is alright for a company to take people’s money then radically change the product?

What if you bought Assassin’s Creed because Ubisoft said you would be able to kill people? You play it for a while and find out you can. Then they issue a patch that removes the ability to kill anyone? Worse, they tell you they are doing it because their “most dedicated players” hate violence in games?

How would that make you feel? Would you still think it was the same product that you bought a few months ago?

Rpgtabbycat.5869:

MechanicalMind.9126:

Rpgtabbycat.5869:

They did tell us from the very beginning that there would be “pink” items. It’s just now that they’ve actually given them a name.

No they didnt. I don’t believe that one second. Link please.

Everything links to the new changes. I can’t find anything else. I could be mistaken but I could’ve sworn there was another color that just wasn’t used in the game.

There was purple, back in the BWEs. It was used for transmuted items. But now transmuted items simply have the color of the item that the stats came from.

Now more to the point.
Nothing before release indicated that there would be a tier of gear above exotic, everything indicated that max stats would be easy to reach (although it’d still be a bit harder than in GW1).
This game has always been advertised as a horizontal progression game, and that’s why I bought it. If for any reason anyone bought this game expecting or wanting vertical progression, well, too bad, this game was not made for you! You could have played any of those “every other MMO out there” and gotten what you wanted, but no, you had to come and ruin this game instead.
Although obviously not all blame can be put on the players. ArenaNet (or whoever made this decision, probably Nexon) could have simply ignored them.

I think I’m just gonna quit playing MMOs now. Or maybe play GW1. I dunno, I’ll see.

Your question was answered in the first sentence. This game wasn’t supposed to be for people who accepted MMOs for what they are, it was supposed to be for what MMOs could be. People like you came to GW2 and didn’t care about all the things it could be, all the MMOs traps that people who don’t like current MMOs wanted to avoid. People came to this game from other MMOs quite happy with the way other MMOs were run. The problems raised in the manifesto, the design vision and promises made to the community were things that people like you didn’t value very highly.

You weren’t sold on the low gear ceiling, you weren’t sold on no item progression (in fact you seem to crave it). The people upset, the people posting, the people who feel angry and betrayed. Those people watched the manifesto, they read the developer blogs, they read the interview with the company founder, they knew exactly what they were buying. They knew what GW2 was. You apparently didn’t.

People like you asked for something different from what was promised. You asked for them to turn an apple into a lemon. We now have a lemon. You are happy because you have your lemon. The rest of us were told we were buying an apple, we had the apple, we were enjoying our apple. In industry full of fruit and everything was lemons, we had our apple and we were happy with it. People who go from lemon to lemon, who are happy with the design of lemons, they came to GW2 not caring that it was an apple, that it was intended to be, promised to be an apple. They complained, we knew they would. We didn’t know ArenaNet would listen to them.

So now the people who wanted an apple have a lemon, a bitter tasting lemon. We knew GW2 was special, it was an apple in an industry full of lemons. I don’t understand why people who want lemons can’t play one of the other games, they came to GW2 and demanded it be more like every other MMO out there. They got their wish at the expense of the people who cared about everything the game was supposed to be. This isn’t a personal attack, this is an explanation on how people who wanted two different things bought the same game and the ones who knew what the game was are the ones who got betrayed in favour of the ones who didn’t care that the game was different, they just wanted to hop to another MMO for a few months before the next one came out. Unfortunately I think enough damage continues to be done, the original crowd who cared about what the game was supposed to be are moving on and eventually the community will be no different from every other MMO and will want all the same things as other MMOs.

Akacia.1583:

Relentliss.2170:

Its like you have a brand new car and when you take it to be serviced, the Mechanic goes and takes a dump on your front seat.

I guess I don’t get this analogy. Every other MMO increases it’s gear/levels etc as time goes on. I don’t understand what players would do in a game that this did not happen?? Again sit and wait for the next Christmas event for a santa Claus hat?

I’m not trying to disrespect your comment I honestly don’t understand how anyone can think or why this should not happen that gear/levels etc change as the game grows. Year from now I certainly would not be around with this game if all it did was give me a new look over and over and over again if I am perfectly fine with the set I am wearing.

Why do you need higher stat gear? If you get higher stat gear, then the creatures in the game are still adjusted to your new progress; thus, you truly have made no progress. Zones are scaled to level, so higher stat gear would make no difference there either. So if you gain +stat gear, what do you gain? In reality all you gain is a new skin.

I came here because of the Manifesto.

I didn´t come her to experience Nexon´s brilliant monetization strategies that make Blizzard look like Jesus getting old testament on the moneylenders.

MagnusLL.8473:

So to the OP, a simple question for you.

With their brilliant move, Arenanet has alienated the customer segment who bought the game because they were promised a grindless MMO. Now they find themselves with an MMO which is the usual WoW-clone, vertical progression-based gear treadmill.

Do you honestly think Arenanet can do WoW better than Blizzard?

Honestly everyone who bought this game is because they read somewhere they were promised no grind? gear or not the entire game is a grind in one way or another it’s just a different type of grind which I personally could care less what it is I am grinding as long as it is enjoyable type of grind.

not a chance on better than blizzard but better is different for everyone and why I asked what people like simply because I am just curious where people are coming from is all

dalendria.3762:

Akacia.1583:

Our guild has been a ghost town before the patch simply due to the lack of content in the game and gear progression (not everyone likes to grind gear for simply looks).

Thank you for posting.

You like gear stat progression. I do not.

If Arenanet also supported gear stat progression in their game prior to their GW2 launch, that is fine. The issue is that they marketed and sold the product as one that did not have gear stat progression. Exotics were stated to be the max stat. Any additional progression related to gear would be based on looks. They said that people will continue playing as long as the game is fun. Their intent for the past 7 years is to keep games fresh and new by offering new content, skill progression, fun events, etc.

They did not market or sell the product as a gear stat progression based game. Do you think it is alright for a company to take people’s money then radically change the product?

What if you bought Assassin’s Creed because Ubisoft said you would be able to kill people? You play it for a while and find out you can. Then they issue a patch that removes the ability to kill anyone? Worse, they tell you they are doing it because their “most dedicated players” hate violence in games?

How would that make you feel? Would you still think it was the same product that you bought a few months ago?

it’s not that I specifically like gear/stat progression, simply I do not like skin/title progression. However that being said a lot of the rest of the way the game is simply built for me is wrong and or boring. Take for example the Dragon bosses that spawn every 4 hours it static places. These should not be a matter of when you kill it you will get a useless chest and it will be back in 4 hours. For me this should be IF you kill it you will be rewarded with some useful chest (you can input whatever you like here item wise – does not have to be gear/stat). The game is just way too easy and these major dragon encounters in this game should kick your butt over and over again until a group of people learn it and can beat it and are rewarded well for it.

For me I guess I would prefer to sit there for hours at a time working on different encounters/bosses figuring their strat out instead of spending hours at a time farming karma/gold in Orr for a garbage legendary weapon ?

Elifia.7621:

Rpgtabbycat.5869:

MechanicalMind.9126:

Rpgtabbycat.5869:

They did tell us from the very beginning that there would be “pink” items. It’s just now that they’ve actually given them a name.

No they didnt. I don’t believe that one second. Link please.

Everything links to the new changes. I can’t find anything else. I could be mistaken but I could’ve sworn there was another color that just wasn’t used in the game.

There was purple, back in the BWEs. It was used for transmuted items. But now transmuted items simply have the color of the item that the stats came from.

Now more to the point.
Nothing before release indicated that there would be a tier of gear above exotic, everything indicated that max stats would be easy to reach (although it’d still be a bit harder than in GW1).
This game has always been advertised as a horizontal progression game, and that’s why I bought it. If for any reason anyone bought this game expecting or wanting vertical progression, well, too bad, this game was not made for you! You could have played any of those “every other MMO out there” and gotten what you wanted, but no, you had to come and ruin this game instead.
Although obviously not all blame can be put on the players. ArenaNet (or whoever made this decision, probably Nexon) could have simply ignored them.

I think I’m just gonna quit playing MMOs now. Or maybe play GW1. I dunno, I’ll see.

thanks for the reply I like this post, my question however is do you actually think the horizontal game in GW2 is good and long lasting? comparable say to GW1 ? So instead of comparing it to have to go vertical. Ask yourself if you were in the grouping of people who play even say 20 hours a week does this game have holding power to keep them entertained horizontally?

Personally for me – not in the slightest. Again however that horizontal progression doesn’t mean they need to increase the stats of gear but they need to drastically change how things are especially for the more hardcore player or people who have been in exotics a few weeks after launch and have gotten all their keg brawl achievements/puzzle/kills etc etc because of boredom.

Maybe they saw nowhere else to go but up? I don’t know I’m just curious

My reason for disliking Ascended gear—or rather, the stat increase specifically—is that I feel it’s a lazy way to respond to the complaints of there being “nothing to do.” And I don’t think it fixes the problem.

What I want to see from future content is more activities, period. More gameplay modes, more adjustments to combat. Minigames, exploration, puzzles, quests, whatever. Fractals are a very good start, even though I dislike the level gating mechanic.

Adding one new tier of stat-based gear is not going to keep people who find the rest of the game boring occupied. If you think Legendary weapons are garbage, you hate collecting skins, you don’t like any of the activities in the game, and the only thing that will keep you playing is more stats, I have trouble understanding why you would want to play at all. There are many games where the entire endgame revolves around constant stat progression, and they basically do nothing else but add to that once you reach max level. They’re also far more established, in many cases more polished, and have huge numbers of players. If this is a stopgap measure to keep that kind of player, it’s only going to last as long as it takes them to very quickly gear up and then complain that it was too easy and there’s nothing to do.

If, on the other hand, you’re interested in working out new strategies and seeing more challenging content, I’m fully behind that and I would far rather see them work on that sort of thing than stat-based “progression,” which is about as exciting to me as Legendaries are to you. Grind for more stats is not necessary for that, though, and as a result the Ascended gear stat increase does nothing for either of us. They could have just added the Infusion and Agony mechanics to the same effect.

I don’t see why people can’t fathom a MMO without gear progression.
Progression can come in many forms. Gear is not the only one.

The issue is also there are plenty of gear-progression games out there. This was supposed to be different.

Bonefield.9813:

My reason for disliking Ascended gear—or rather, the stat increase specifically—is that I feel it’s a lazy way to respond to the complaints of there being “nothing to do.” And I don’t think it fixes the problem.

In a nutshell, this is the most succinct way to put why Ascended gear is bad. In addition, it doesn’t just “not fix the problem”, it introduces a host of problems on its own. See other threads and posts for more information.

Xandax.1753:

I don’t see why people can’t fathom a MMO without gear progression.
Progression can come in many forms. Gear is not the only one.

The issue is also there are plenty of gear-progression games out there. This was supposed to be different.

I don’t mean to sound insulting, but it frankly has to do with people blindly accepting conventions and failing to think critically or outside the box. I hate to say it, but a large percentage of the population just seems to be wired to accept the status quo.

The effect this has had on the game has been absolutely disasterous. It goes far beyond “it sucks having to grind hard to get the new tier of gear”

LA is just Fractal spam. I hardly even see anyone talking about anything, just LF2M Fractal X. People are discouraged from playing on alts because of a stat based gear grind, and the game really needs alts to keep the zones alive in a game like this. WvWvW is hit really badly. Want to run a non fractal dungeon? Have fun with that. You might be able to get AC or CoF going if you’re lucky.

I think the fractals dungeons are neat, standalone. But what drops in them and the need to go there (It’s the first thing in this game where you HAVE to participate to optimally stat yourself, unlike the many paths to exotics one could take) reduces the game into “LF2M fractal X” in LA. Reminds me of standing around in Dalaran in WoW WOTLK expansion except it’s actually worse, since there’s exactly one thing to do.

The regular overworld PVE maps have been hit pretty hard. It really is not good for the game funneling everyone into doing exactly one thing. That one thing was neat for a bit but there isn’t really anything more to it for me. I can keep advancing and the mobs may hit a little harder and do more agony or whatever but it’s already pretty worn out.

Einlanzer.1627:

In addition, it doesn’t just “not fix the problem”, it introduces a host of problems on its own. See other threads and posts for more information.

Yeah. One of the most cringe-inducing things about it for me—which I haven’t seen widely addressed—is that it indicates to the people who want constant gear progression that they should expect it, whether or not ArenaNet intends to add more ever. I remember in WoW how much people would whine every time something that wasn’t a raid or an elite dungeon got added to the game. It was all “fluff,” and “a waste of time and resources,” and I’m afraid ArenaNet is going to find that they can’t cater to that type of player and those who seek a more relaxed experience without pissing off both. WoW appeals to both casual and endgame players, but it also doesn’t concern itself much with having a variety of things to do at max level. They just try to make sure that everyone can access the same basic content, and then gate off hard-mode versions with gear requirements…which is exactly what Ascended gear does.

Bonefield.9813:

My reason for disliking Ascended gear—or rather, the stat increase specifically—is that I feel it’s a lazy way to respond to the complaints of there being “nothing to do.” And I don’t think it fixes the problem.

What I want to see from future content is more activities, period. More gameplay modes, more adjustments to combat. Minigames, exploration, puzzles, quests, whatever. Fractals are a very good start, even though I dislike the level gating mechanic.

Adding one new tier of stat-based gear is not going to keep people who find the rest of the game boring occupied. If you think Legendary weapons are garbage, you hate collecting skins, you don’t like any of the activities in the game, and the only thing that will keep you playing is more stats, I have trouble understanding why you would want to play at all. There are many games where the entire endgame revolves around constant stat progression, and they basically do nothing else but add to that once you reach max level. They’re also far more established, in many cases more polished, and have huge numbers of players. If this is a stopgap measure to keep that kind of player, it’s only going to last as long as it takes them to very quickly gear up and then complain that it was too easy and there’s nothing to do.

If, on the other hand, you’re interested in working out new strategies and seeing more challenging content, I’m fully behind that and I would far rather see them work on that sort of thing than stat-based “progression,” which is about as exciting to me as Legendaries are to you. Grind for more stats is not necessary for that, though, and as a result the Ascended gear stat increase does nothing for either of us. They could have just added the Infusion and Agony mechanics to the same effect.

Thanks for the reply and I agree with you. Progression even in a place like Frac I like purely on even the ability to finish something very hard and progress to another level of hard. Again does not have to be gear progression at all.

However to comment on your skin and legendary items. It isn’t simply not wanting to grind for the legendary, I just feel something like this is a completely wrong way of going about how you obtain said legendary and this is a perfect example of progression should be on an item or could be on an item by what you do in game and not what you do on the TP or the karma train field.

I personally just need a reason to continue to log back in whether it’s raid zones for pve with guild buddies and work on progression in a massive zone setting/boss setting and it needs to be hard as hell, like where you leave the zone and don’t kill it because you didn’t sort the fight out properly boss progression so to speak and you come back another day and continue on etc etc. I don’t care if the drops progress to another level of stat or not. However you have to have a carrot so even if that carrot was some cool town clothes or mount or whatever the case I don’t care there just needs to be something for people to want to play this game.

The gameplay when in comparison to other MMO’s is a huge reason why people are here over others.

Minion of Vey.4398:

The effect this has had on the game has been absolutely disasterous. It goes far beyond “it sucks having to grind hard to get the new tier of gear”

LA is just Fractal spam. I hardly even see anyone talking about anything, just LF2M Fractal X. People are discouraged from playing on alts because of a stat based gear grind, and the game really needs alts to keep the zones alive in a game like this. WvWvW is hit really badly. Want to run a non fractal dungeon? Have fun with that. You might be able to get AC or CoF going if you’re lucky.

I think the fractals dungeons are neat, standalone. But what drops in them and the need to go there (It’s the first thing in this game where you HAVE to participate to optimally stat yourself, unlike the many paths to exotics one could take) reduces the game into “LF2M fractal X” in LA. Reminds me of standing around in Dalaran in WoW WOTLK expansion except it’s actually worse, since there’s exactly one thing to do.

The regular overworld PVE maps have been hit pretty hard. It really is not good for the game funneling everyone into doing exactly one thing. That one thing was neat for a bit but there isn’t really anything more to it for me. I can keep advancing and the mobs may hit a little harder and do more agony or whatever but it’s already pretty worn out.

Agreed however I also think a lot of this is also people are bored to death doing those other dungeons and in time should somewhat even itself out especially once they change old world dungeons which they say they are working on currently.

They promised no gear grind. This requires grinding. I hate dungeons. I must grind dungeons to get the best gear. Not that complicated.

Thanks for asking the question, OP! It was my choice to and my guy’s to buy the game and supported it afterward with RL money. That choice was based on a stated premise. Now that the premise has changed, it is right now not a game I wish to support. It’s that simple.

I don’t want the additional gear grind and what that brings to a game. Specifically what it brings to WvW and blocking content.

I think the game still needs work. I was willing to overlook those and give ANet time to work on the game, and add more content, build events guilds could do together, more challanges, go back and work on dungeons and PvP and whatever else, and still support the game in the meantime.

As it stand now, it is up to the persons who like the changes, or are willing to put money in the game regardless of the changes to support ANet. I am no longer angry. I won’t say I’m over it, as I won’t forget what was done. I won’t support with RL money a game that turned out to be something else.

And as another posted stated, now I have a choice to make. Continue to support this game, or go play another game with stat progression, or don’t play at all. There was no choice before; I was only playing and supporting this game, and would not have even thought to look at what else is out there.

The posts written by Einlanzer, Dalendria and Shiren are a work of art and should fully address any concern that the OP or any other pro-gear grind/treadmill player may have regarding the uproar on this forum. If you read those posts and still can not understand the uproar then you are simply not listening.

To that I’d only add this … to me (and i suspect from reading on these forums there are many who feel the same), it is not so much the implementation of the in-game treadmill that has raised my ire. Because many of you are right when you say its their game and they can do whatever they want even if that meant compromising their manifesto. At that point, the only decision left to make is to voice our displeasure and leave.

The sad part about that though is, that Anet does not even have the decency to allow their loyal customers to voice their opinion about their displeasure before leaving. They have simply resorted to blatantly and disrespectfully refracting, censoring, deleting, banning and in essence simply attempting to silence their loyal customers for simply posting harmless responses only because they could. This is unacceptable treatment from a company toward its loyal long-time paying customers. In the year 2012, this type of disrespectful, heavy-handed, draconian treatment should not be tolerated.

Akacia.1583:

Elifia.7621:

Rpgtabbycat.5869:

MechanicalMind.9126:

Rpgtabbycat.5869:

They did tell us from the very beginning that there would be “pink” items. It’s just now that they’ve actually given them a name.

No they didnt. I don’t believe that one second. Link please.

Everything links to the new changes. I can’t find anything else. I could be mistaken but I could’ve sworn there was another color that just wasn’t used in the game.

There was purple, back in the BWEs. It was used for transmuted items. But now transmuted items simply have the color of the item that the stats came from.

Now more to the point.
Nothing before release indicated that there would be a tier of gear above exotic, everything indicated that max stats would be easy to reach (although it’d still be a bit harder than in GW1).
This game has always been advertised as a horizontal progression game, and that’s why I bought it. If for any reason anyone bought this game expecting or wanting vertical progression, well, too bad, this game was not made for you! You could have played any of those “every other MMO out there” and gotten what you wanted, but no, you had to come and ruin this game instead.
Although obviously not all blame can be put on the players. ArenaNet (or whoever made this decision, probably Nexon) could have simply ignored them.

I think I’m just gonna quit playing MMOs now. Or maybe play GW1. I dunno, I’ll see.

thanks for the reply I like this post, my question however is do you actually think the horizontal game in GW2 is good and long lasting? comparable say to GW1 ? So instead of comparing it to have to go vertical. Ask yourself if you were in the grouping of people who play even say 20 hours a week does this game have holding power to keep them entertained horizontally?

Personally for me – not in the slightest. Again however that horizontal progression doesn’t mean they need to increase the stats of gear but they need to drastically change how things are especially for the more hardcore player or people who have been in exotics a few weeks after launch and have gotten all their keg brawl achievements/puzzle/kills etc etc because of boredom.

Maybe they saw nowhere else to go but up? I don’t know I’m just curious

The people that do not like Ascended Gear are not angry because they added new things to do, but because they added a new gear grind that makes the old one obsolete (because of the better stats), something that violates some of the design principles that GW1 and 2 where built on (hence why Legendaries have the same stats as exotics)

It’s as simple as that, we are not against new content or things to do we just don’t want vertical gear progression. If one does not likes horizontal progression and is bored with it then maybe it’s time to head to a different game, and there is nothing wrong with that, there is no monthly fee, you can play for a week go play something else until they release new content then come back, is how GW1 worked with its expansions and content updates.

Akacia.1583:

Honestly everyone who bought this game is because they read somewhere they were promised no grind? gear or not the entire game is a grind in one way or another it’s just a different type of grind which I personally could care less what it is I am grinding as long as it is enjoyable type of grind.

not a chance on better than blizzard but better is different for everyone and why I asked what people like simply because I am just curious where people are coming from is all

Can’t speak for everyone, however I can tell you why this patch killed the game for me.

GW2 is not the only MMO I’m playing. I’m currently guild and raid leader in another MMO (not WoW) which does the whole “grind PvE dungeons for better gear stats” miles better than GW2.

After over 4 years of that I’m pretty burned out on the whole “grind stuff for +X” thing so I came here looking for a MMO with a mass PvP subsystem promising an experience where the smartest player would win as opposed to:

- the player with better twitch skills (any FPS)
- the player bringing more friends (any zerg-based PvP system)

As it turned out, the WvW system is rather poor. It has the potential to be extremely good but unfortunately there are plenty of major structural design flaws which make it fall very short of that potential.

This was already a pretty big bummer, but I started to take a “low-intensity”, relaxed “wait and see” approach to the whole thing. After all, not paying any sub and not being in any danger of becoming outclassed, I could simply afford to play a few hours of WvW here, a couple dungeons there, and wait the (likely very long) time needed to fix this mess praying that sooner or later they would manage to actually fix it.

After the latest patch, I’d need to play a high intensity, mindnumbingly boring PvE dungeon grind just to keep one of my toon up to date on the off chance that several months (or years) down the line they can actually fix WvW.

…yeah.

Akacia.1583:

Or better yet even if Fractals opened up with nothing new but more tokes for different looking gear how long do you think people would actually be running them on a regular basis or maybe some insight as to what you would give a PVE player to continue to want to do that content and login?

There is no demand for anything – my question is to you what do you give PVE players for a reason to login and continue playing this game as it was designed currently? After you run the same dungeon handful of times it is boring and it is easier to logoff and go play or do something else. Remember again Anet wants to chip away that 10 million player base elsewhere in every possible way – it had the GW1 PvP players. I am just looking to hear what others think is a best or better way to improve the pve to keep people playing

That 10 million player base is a false statistic, and I am probably counted as one even though my account is no longer active.

Anyway, the thing Anet and many other people seem to be forgetting is that they were able to keep players coming back and back again in GW1 without raising stat cap and only relying on aesthetics. Or is everyone forgetting how long the grind in Underworld and FoW was to get one of the prestigious armor? Or how long the grind in Torment was to get one of the weapons? (Of course, they nerfed it to make it easier, but that only encouraged people to keep grinding more to sell the items).

Sure, people’s interest in the game waxed and waned, but they came back to the game an awful lot when new content was introduced…. and none of that new content introduced a new stat level.

To answer your question more specifically, OP, it’s a matter of playstyle. I have played WoW and Rift. I did the constant gear grind for PvP and some for PvE. I didn’t raid much, so I was more into PvP gear.

In this game, I liked being able to level slowly. I like having five characters at the same time. If you ask me which one is my main, I honestly can’t answer you, except to say which one is a higher level. I play them all. I had almost 500 hours in, but my two highest are 60, and the lowest is 30.

I like crafting. It was my intention to craft my own Exotic gear (and some may have needed two sets). It didn’t matter how long it took me to get that done.

The comment of leveling up in a week made me smile. You and I are worlds apart on playstyle. But it would not have mattered. If you were level 80 for five months and I just got there, it would not matter. As long as I made some effort to have decent gear at 80, we would have been equals. We could have paired up, or joined the same guild, and done the whatever 80s do at that level.

If you had ledgendary or fancy dungeon gear, I would not have cared. Stats would be no better than mine, and I would have congratulated you on your achievements. If I had transmuted all my stuff to Vigil Order, you might have said, ’that’s a cool outfit’.

But I would not have worried that I couldn’t keep up with you, and you would not have worried that I was not geared enough to play with you. That’s how I roll. Or at least, how I wanted to roll.

Akacia.1583:

Go back to EQ/EQ2

It’s not so much the Ascended Gear in itself that bugs me as it is the effect it has on the world. Almost everyone is in Lions Arch farming the fractals dungeons. Nobody in Orr, not possible to get the karma gear anymore since there’s no way to beat the event solo. Its presence just kills the rest of the game and it goes against the philosophy that was preached from the start.
I’m going to give it some more time, but it is quite possible that caving to the raiders will be the killing blow for GW2. The whole world is end game…right.

Harbard.5738:

The OP is answering its own question.

For people saying that getting new crap is “something to do” I really loathe your level of conditioning. Seems you learned nothing from Everquest, then, after a decade. You’re supposed to be playing a real game, not a slot machine. People actually demanding “rewards” and playing for stat baits have been turned into this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_ctJqjlrHA

With the only difference this pigeon is getting a NECESSARY and tangible reward. Not an ever inflating integer that equals to absolutely nothing.

Thank you for this. I hope many people watch the video. This is actually quite educational. I had expected some funny video, but instead, it’s actually a very interesting scientific experiment. Somehow reminded me of the Milgram experiment and the Stanford experiment. Must have been those old camera images that triggered my memory.