Guild Wars 2

Flash.6912:

Time Gate topic:

- “Exploits (Many time gates are there to avoid exploits)”
I agree

- " Repeatable time gates add “pressure” to log in which helps create possible reward loops and play patterns (I want to log in every day, which often can become play experiences, talk with friends, strengthen relationships and get players into a pattern of seeing what’s going on.)"
I’m not sure this is the “Pros”. Because it’s punish the hardcore players that their playtime is the same reward as casual. Hardcore players should get more rewards for their playtime because they play more to be honest. It’s like in real life, if u work overtime u’ll get pay more

I agree, i think ANet really does need to move away from trying to bring the 2 together. I’m not hardcore by any definition, but i can tell you things continually get more complicated with these systems in place. If they need to do anything overall to make players happier, they need to focus on convenience (not “easier”) and QoL stuff, while they continue pumping out new, fun content.

It’s really key to note, vertical and horizontal progression are two horses of the same color, they both feel progressive, they both require a time investment, they both have a carrot on the end of a stick. People that are chancing skins, new fancy ones, are definitely no different than those chancing numbers. They both require development as well, players chancing number or BiS gear need content to play that meets growth in power. Skins are even more obvious, devs need to keep making new shinies, those shinies need to have more power (if your game goes vertical) i.e agony.

Convenience stuff goes a long way for all players, easier access to stuff, less going from here to there to accomplish things, ways to accumulate more stuff and easier ways to manage that stuff are huge sellers in the gem shop.

I really would like a way to gather skins, right now it’s pretty difficult to do that and add to the fact that stats are tied to eveything only makes it harder. Why anet didn’t go to the one model in gw that really made a huge impact toward gear in gw2 boggles my mind. Call a skin a skin and a stat a stat, simplify everyones life, make it more convenient. It might be harder in the short term to revamp the system of gear, but in the long run it’ll be a million times easy to have skin interchangeable with stats and won’t pigeon hole people into builds because it takes forever to change stats.

I see some discussion about alts and progression, and I thought I’d weigh in with my opinion too.

I have a necro with around 1500 hrs and this is my main character. I’ve recently started to level a guardian to around lvl 50. The thing is – I don’t want him to have access to all the stuff my necro has acquired. It ruins the feeling of progression for the new character. He has access to tons of mats, gold, karma, laurels, booster etc that he has in no way earned. If I want I can level him up to 80 and kit him out in exotic gear almost instantly. This situation gives me no grasp of what my new guardian has achieved, and means I don’t get the “oooh a green armour piece!” poverty-feeling I had when starting out with my necro.

As a result I wasn’t very happy with the account wallet thing – it just removed the “starting fresh on an adventure” feel of creating a new character. That doesn’t mean I want everything bound to just one character, but I would like to have to actively transfer resources from one character to another. That way I would be able to get a better sense of progression for new characters. As it is now, what has he achieved? I have no idea. Even skill points come on little scrolls.

Carighan.6758:

Honestly I see that as quite balanced, though. You have multiple toons fully decked out at the end, which gives you a very very high amount of flexibility in regards to gameplay. You can always relog to a character with specialized gear and trait setup and just the fitting utility skills.

That flexibility has a cost, in that you needed to spend the time for each character.

Seems fine to me?

Depends on how alt-friendly you want the game to be.

Most games have a pretty high vertical progression, so it’s extremly hard to equip many character, therefore you have only one main character, and your other toons are alts.

Gw1, like gw2 before, wasn’t like that. Equiping a toon to BiS was quite easy (the first one required a bit of time, after that it was easy to farm the stuff for the alts). So you could switch toons to play with friends, to have a team composition that was correct.

With the introduction of ascended, gw2 is taking the path most other games are taking, and it’s kinda sad, as the versatility we had before was really nice, we could switch to a guardian if the team needed it, or stay on our dps, etc. Now, with a new tier, we’ll feel compelled to stay on our only equiped character.

This is especially true with fractals. With the fractured patch, fractal level became account based. But now, the required AR is much more than before, so I can’t use my alts there, even if I want to. Kinda bad to make, in the same patch, a change to help alts (account based level), and one making it impossible to use alts (more AR required).

Dev post recap: part 2

Page 15-30

Earlier recaps:

Dev post recap: part 1

General:

Chris on the impact of CDI

Isaiah talking about timegating in GW2.

Dev questions and discussion requests:

Any complaints against the idea of being able to buy ascended gear with other account-bound currencies?

Is increased accessibility of ascended gear later on acceptable to early adopters?

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

Addition of stat changes to the formulation of a proposal for discussion.

Devs responding to individual posts:

Chris replying to 9 posts on page 19-20

10 more replies from Chris on page 23-26

Numerous replies from Chris and Isaiah on page 28 and 29

Where the thread has been going for the most part:

From Chris’s proposal request on page 14 until now the focus has been mostly on ascended gear. What are the pro’s and con’s? How accessible should it be? What can be done to overcome the problems it currently has?

The idea is that we use some time still to make sure that we have most of the opinions and suggestions about the existing stat-evolving progression, so that Chris can write up a solid proposal based on this thread to take to the team. When we have that out of the way the focus will shift towards horizontal progression. (This does not mean that any thoughts on horizontal progression are not being read. But it can explain why those ideas are not getting a lot of attention yet!)

And recently, on page 28 we have gained some insight in timegating.

One more quote written by Chris earlier in the thread:

‘Please also note that this thread will be going on until the New Year, so plenty of time for further discussion.’

Future dev post recaps:

Part 3

Page 31-39

Estriella Faerie.4029:

Carighan.6758:

Honestly I see that as quite balanced, though. You have multiple toons fully decked out at the end, which gives you a very very high amount of flexibility in regards to gameplay. You can always relog to a character with specialized gear and trait setup and just the fitting utility skills.

That flexibility has a cost, in that you needed to spend the time for each character.

Seems fine to me?

Depends on how alt-friendly you want the game to be.

Most games have a pretty high vertical progression, so it’s extremly hard to equip many character, therefore you have only one main character, and your other toons are alts.

Gw1, like gw2 before, wasn’t like that. Equiping a toon to BiS was quite easy (the first one required a bit of time, after that it was easy to farm the stuff for the alts). So you could switch toons to play with friends, to have a team composition that was correct.

With the introduction of ascended, gw2 is taking the path most other games are taking, and it’s kinda sad, as the versatility we had before was really nice, we could switch to a guardian if the team needed it, or stay on our dps, etc. Now, with a new tier, we’ll feel compelled to stay on our only equiped character.

This is especially true with fractals. With the fractured patch, fractal level became account based. But now, the required AR is much more than before, so I can’t use my alts there, even if I want to. Kinda bad to make, in the same patch, a change to help alts (account based level), and one making it impossible to use alts (more AR required).

You are forgetting that in other games with high vertical progression you still have the option to gear up alts alongside your main. Depending on how much time you have to spare. This option is not available in GW2 unless you have an extreme amount of gold. Even then some items are still time gated.

Other games do not limit gearing of alts, for those with time, as much as GW2 currently does.

Conner.4702:

Estriella Faerie.4029:

Carighan.6758:

Honestly I see that as quite balanced, though. You have multiple toons fully decked out at the end, which gives you a very very high amount of flexibility in regards to gameplay. You can always relog to a character with specialized gear and trait setup and just the fitting utility skills.

That flexibility has a cost, in that you needed to spend the time for each character.

Seems fine to me?

Depends on how alt-friendly you want the game to be.

Most games have a pretty high vertical progression, so it’s extremly hard to equip many character, therefore you have only one main character, and your other toons are alts.

Gw1, like gw2 before, wasn’t like that. Equiping a toon to BiS was quite easy (the first one required a bit of time, after that it was easy to farm the stuff for the alts). So you could switch toons to play with friends, to have a team composition that was correct.

With the introduction of ascended, gw2 is taking the path most other games are taking, and it’s kinda sad, as the versatility we had before was really nice, we could switch to a guardian if the team needed it, or stay on our dps, etc. Now, with a new tier, we’ll feel compelled to stay on our only equiped character.

This is especially true with fractals. With the fractured patch, fractal level became account based. But now, the required AR is much more than before, so I can’t use my alts there, even if I want to. Kinda bad to make, in the same patch, a change to help alts (account based level), and one making it impossible to use alts (more AR required).

You are forgetting that in other games with high vertical progression you still have the option to gear up alts alongside your main. Depending on how much time you have to spare. This option is not available in GW2 unless you have an extreme amount of gold. Even then some items are still time gated.

Other games do not limit gearing of alts, for those with time, as much as GW2 currently does.

You’re forgetting that those games with the endless vertical progression you pretty much have nothing to do until the next latest raid (and tier of gear) is released in a few months. You raid, get geared, so you raid and gear an alt or two while you wait, only to start over again with the next raid. Ascended gear isn’t meant to be recycled every couple months or so… it’s a long term investment, especially when compared to vertical treadmill based games.

This is not disposable gear.

Not that I have anything invested in an sPvP discussion, but just to push things along, what do people think about sPvP character progression, and/or the changes recently made?

Even though ascended gear, vertical vs horizontal, still very much on my mind and I have two unanswered questions lingering, I figure I could give some of the people who are frustrated with the ascended gear VP vs HP discussion a break and push a small discussion in another direction.

sPvP char progression… Does it belong in the game? Are you satisfied? What changes to be made? Risks, rewards?

Concerning alts and progression:

Right now, I play my alts because:
1. They might have a WP unlocked that I need.
2. They might be better suited for the content
3. Im bored with my main.

If I were given more of a reason to play my alts other than the above, or if there were some sort of character progression for them that did not involve a grind of materials ala Ascended Gear, that would give me more reasons to keep logging into the game.

I’ll try to make this short:

I konw this is somehow a hard wish but I really don’t like acended gear in WvW (and in general).
The biggest reason why I still play spvp is that at least I don’t have to gear up to archive a (mostly) balanced starting point. In pve we’re all on the same side so I just have to fell sorry to not bring the best gear possible for my team(not funny as well).

But in WvW I will have a disadvantage for not doing the grind or bringing an alt. I admit I was never the most dedicated wvw player but with this I will not go there again.
So in short my wish is to not increase the item lvl and stats on gear. (and give players an other way to slowly work towards ascended gear than crafting).

And to make a constructive counter example:
After some trys beating Liadri with my necro was something I was proud of (even if it was far easier on some professions) . And all I got was a mini. A gear peace or a title for this (to show of) would have been great and a perfect motivation to do it.

Thanks, I hope this helps.

Tallis.5607:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Guhracie.3419:

Nike.2631:

Guhracie.3419:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hi Guhracie,

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

Chris

Wauw… just… wauw.

With all due respect… but I don’t think that it is a good idea to post that you won’t listen to a Customer, just because he didn’t read 100s of posts.

If someone has the feeling that you people aren’t listening and that he doesn’t like the format of this discussion, you should listen to him. Even when you disagree. ESPECIALLY when you disagree. That’s kinda the point of feedback, no?

The reason why I do not contribute to this thread is exactly the same as the poster. A dialogue means that both people talk. Not say ‘I can not comment on this’.

And when a poster voices my opinion, he gets scolded at. Nice, nice! It just fuels my opinion that this isn’t a very useful feedback thread.

Don’t scold at customers. Don’t focus solely on people that post in the form that you prefer to listen to. Don’t shut people out. You will learn alot more about your customers that way.

But what were you expecting? This is an Arenanet forum, they tell us they don’t have to listen to us, they don’t have to tell us what they are doing, and it’s true, it is their game, we are just playing it, we are nothing but numbers to them, we aren’t people to them so don’t believe they actually care what we think.

Hi,
One thing I want to mention when discussion gear progression, or character progression in general…

Comparing two systems(brace yourself)… World of Warcraft vs GW2.

To acquire BiS gear in WoW:
-Defeat raid bosses and hope that you gear drops.
-This requires team work, communication, skill.
-Either the actual piece to equip drops, or it doesnt.
-There is no "Well I defeated X boss again for Y amount of materials. Probably another 10-12 kills and I have enough dragonite for one ingot…No No, Im either rewarded with the item that I need, or Im not. If I don’t get it, I might get it on the next kill.
-**Note, BiS gear is not required in anything but Raids in WoW.

To acquire BiS gear in GW2:
-Farm temples, world bosses, dungeons, jumping puzzles, nodes, and play the TP to acquire resources
-Level up crafting
-Sit behind the time gate until you have enough of the material to craft a piece.
-**Note, you do not need BiS gear for anything but fractals(similar to WoW…no?)

The difference between the two here: I defeated a boss in WoW for a drop. The feeling of “phew, we did it…time for loot. gasp, hold breath…Yay my dagger dropped! /roll”. Vs GW2 "<boss dead>, “Dwayna next?…need more dragonite ore”.

You farm the hell out of the bosses and events in GW2, whereas in WoW you might only fight a boss a few times before a drop. The reward drops in WoW are much more rewarding because after a hard battle, you may get what you need vs bread crumbs received in GW2. You truly feel a sense of accomplishment and reward…time well spent. Progression. You have a 50/50 chance of getting an item to equip after a boss fight…something measurable, quantifiable. After the raid, you compare stats between the two items, the one you are replacing and the one you just gained…seeing what the difference will be. In GW2, after that Dwayna event, or Tequatl fight, you walk away with nothing but a handful of karma, a smattering of silver, and a sack full of materials and you may be a few inches closer to the mile marker which is your ultimate goal.

Just my 2 cents on RNG vs materials gathering. Many will disagree with me. But can these people honestly say that defeating Ragnaros in cataclysm or HM Lich King in WOTLK for that uber drop was less rewarding than farming SB/Jormag/Dwayna/Lyss/Grenth/Teq 100x? You would rather do this?

Truthbearer.9708:

I apoligize in advance if this post sounds a bit hostile, but some things I red in your post made me slightly angry.

Isaiah Cartwright.8569:

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

Not sure where you’re getting this idea from. I’m one of those players and when I come home late during weekdays, I don’t want to spend my limited time on some kind of shopping list every single day. I’d rather do something fun like events, WvW or PvP, than waste my time on boring timegates.
However, the days I do have a lot more hours to play, I can’t catch up. Why? Because these timegates that are supposed to “help” me, are actually stopping me from progressing .

I am not one of those players, but I still agree with this. When I am done with my real life “shopping list” I don’t choose to log in and play just to find another one in game.

The “shopping list” is not what will keep me playing. Having fun while playing is.

So far, that means not crafting ascended. I do not find crafting fun enough to level all 3 weapon professions and one armor profession just to have the future option to gear up one character.

It also collides with some of the horizontal progression I had in mind for my characters, such as getting my hands on some of the beautiful weapons that happen to depend on the same materials that I would need to level crafting.

Truthbearer.9708:

Isaiah Cartwright.8569:

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

What about making actual fun stuff that makes me log in? Instead of shopping lists and other psychological tricks to “make” me. Wouldn’t it be better to have players log in to do content because it’s actually fun, instead of just because it’s time-gated?
Don’t get me wrong, I like most of your content. Just not the heavily time-gated content.

I would prefer this as well. I don’t feel my relationship with people in game becomes any stronger by standing at a crafting station x amount of minutes a day or running a champion train for y amount of hours in order to farm money and materials.

What does strengthen relationships is being able to play the game as you want while doing the things you enjoy and meeting people or playing with people that feel the same way.

I am not saying ascended and time gating makes it impossible, I am just saying from my point of view it works as a reducing factor, not an enhancing one.

I love the game still, but I loved it more before you introduced ascended crafting as the only reliable way to obtain ascended weapon/armor.

The Lost Witch.7601:

Isaiah Cartwright.8569:

Well this comes down to your play style it’s not like there is anything forcing you to log in every day just slows you down if you don’t and as for being behind I think when the new thing comes out there is a stronger pressure around “being behind” but as time goes on that pressure goes away. Sense we are normally planning on how something will work in the long term we are ok with there being a bit more pressure when something first goes out but someone who starts one month from now will have a very different feeling.

While it does come down to my playstyle (which I don’t think is limited to just me) it is the game that encourages this. (Partly by tagging timegating on to stat-progression, which feels much less optional than other forms of progression.) A playstyle is not just made by choice, also by the design of the game.

There is nothing ‘forcing’ me to log on every day. But there are systems in place that make not logging on feel like a wasted opportunity, that make reaching ‘completion’ a matter of logging on every day. Without these systems I would have a different playstyle. So while I am not ‘forced’ to do timegated content every day, I feel bad about missing out on the opportunities when I don’t. (Moreso because not doing it today means I will have to do it some time in the future. We can’t just get it out of the way.)

Games can use tricks to keep players attached. (Skinner box among others) They do not force us to play, but they are misleading us into doing things that we don’t actually want to do (or they make us want to do things that we wouldn’t want to do if we had clear vision, not deeply influenced by encouraging game mechanics). It can take a long time and some serious help from other people to get players to snap out of that mindset.

Now I understand that the devs can’t keep in mind every player. And that ‘feel’ arguments are especially hard to place. But it is the sort of stuff that fuels a gaming-burnout. I get the feeling that you are brushing it off. Like a minor issue. While to those affected, it is a very big deal. It may not affect the majority of the playerbase, but please acknowledge it and use it in evaluating wether or not a time-gate is worth it.

As I said, you make a fair point. And I am not suggesting that the con’s outweigh the pro’s, because even though I do not like it, I can see the value of timegates. But I somehow get the feeling that this side of timegating does not get the attention it deserves.

This side-effect is due to the time gate working both ways, you can’t access the “future” gated content, as intended, but you can’t also access the “past” gated content you missed. This creates time-limited content because the threshold of the time-gated content does not get carried over to the next gate: if I don’t have time to craft my daily Lump of Mithrillium (or other ectoplam refinement reciepe), I won’t be able to craft two of them the next day. The common time gate being a day, I have to log in and craft every day to get the new content in the less possible time without using the TP.

In the particular case of ascended crafting, I think this side-effect of the time gate is too penalizing for casual players. Allowing players to craft more than one ascended material a day if they missed it the previous days would, I think, help closing the gap in gear acquisition between casual and hardcore players. The number of materials you can carry over should of course be limited, like having a ‘memory’ only of the 7 previous days.

The achievement system suffers from the exact same problem with dailies being time-limited content, although I’m not sure the solution I proposed for ascended crafting would work for them. I’m eager to discuss this topic when the thread will move on to horizontal progression.

Yamiga.7863:

In the particular case of ascended crafting, I think this side-effect of the time gate is too penalizing for casual players. Allowing players to craft more than one ascended material a day if they missed it the previous days would, I think, help closing the gap in gear acquisition between casual and hardcore players. The number of materials you can carry over should of course be limited, like having a ‘memory’ only of the 7 previous days.

The achievement system suffers from the exact same problem with dailies being time-limited content, although I’m not sure the solution I proposed for ascended crafting would work for them. I’m eager to discuss this topic when the thread will move on to horizontal progression.

That’s a great idea. Don’t know if it can be implemented into the game, but if it can, it would be a nice thing for people who can’t log on everyday.

cesmode.4257:

Hi,
One thing I want to mention when discussion gear progression, or character progression in general…

Comparing two systems(brace yourself)… World of Warcraft vs GW2.

To acquire BiS gear in WoW:
-Defeat raid bosses and hope that you gear drops.
-This requires team work, communication, skill.
-Either the actual piece to equip drops, or it doesnt.
-There is no "Well I defeated X boss again for Y amount of materials. Probably another 10-12 kills and I have enough dragonite for one ingot…No No, Im either rewarded with the item that I need, or Im not. If I don’t get it, I might get it on the next kill.
-**Note, BiS gear is not required in anything but Raids in WoW.

To acquire BiS gear in GW2:
-Farm temples, world bosses, dungeons, jumping puzzles, nodes, and play the TP to acquire resources
-Level up crafting
-Sit behind the time gate until you have enough of the material to craft a piece.
-**Note, you do not need BiS gear for anything but fractals(similar to WoW…no?)

The difference between the two here: I defeated a boss in WoW for a drop. The feeling of “phew, we did it…time for loot. gasp, hold breath…Yay my dagger dropped! /roll”. Vs GW2 "<boss dead>, “Dwayna next?…need more dragonite ore”.

You farm the hell out of the bosses and events in GW2, whereas in WoW you might only fight a boss a few times before a drop. The reward drops in WoW are much more rewarding because after a hard battle, you may get what you need vs bread crumbs received in GW2. You truly feel a sense of accomplishment and reward…time well spent. Progression.

Just my 2 cents on RNG vs materials gathering. Many will disagree with me. But can these people honestly say that defeating Ragnaros in cataclysm or HM Lich King in WOTLK for that uber drop was less rewarding than farming SB/Jormag/Dwayna/Lyss/Grenth/Teq 100x? You would rather do this?

I recall raiding in WoW all to well. Raiding two or three nights a week, the same bosses over and over again, cycling through the rotation which gets locked into muscle memory as you beat the same bosses again and again and again hoping not only for the RNG gods to smile upon you but also that your group will all agree that you need the piece of gear you need and not some other guy. In GW2 here, I have control of what gear my characters get instead of other people and whatever DKP system they’ve come up with.

I can recall being invited to run a raid with a guild that had someone missing and accepting the invite. Things go well, a piece of gear drops I need, I roll on it and win the roll… but they give it to someone in their guild instead. They forgot to mention that guild members had priority on the loot and I could only get something if no one else needed it.

Not what I’d call rewarding.

Hi,
Concerning World bosses and reward…
Since returning to GW2 a month or two ago, I had not done Teq because no one does it anymore. Only a small handful of servers do it, or capable of it seems.

Finally, last night I did it. While all the boxes to open were cool, not one exotic dropped. And even if an exotic dropped, who cares? I want BiS gear from a fight like that.

So my contribution to this thread is in regard to alternate routes of acquiring ascended gear. If you are able to be in an overflow or on a server or part of a guild that is organized and skilled enough to take down a fight like Teq that requires 80+ people, you should be rewarded with a garunteed ascended item of your choice(stat wise). No discussion. That fight is nicely involved, time consuming…and leaps and bounds harder than anything else in the game. You cant give me 3 or 4 rares, a handful of T5 mats and a few silver for it. It needs to end with an ascended piece. No getting around it.

cesmode.4257:

Hi,
Concerning World bosses and reward…
Since returning to GW2 a month or two ago, I had not done Teq because no one does it anymore. Only a small handful of servers do it, or capable of it seems.

Finally, last night I did it. While all the boxes to open were cool, not one exotic dropped. And even if an exotic dropped, who cares? I want BiS gear from a fight like that.

So my contribution to this thread is in regard to alternate routes of acquiring ascended gear. If you are able to be in an overflow or on a server or part of a guild that is organized and skilled enough to take down a fight like Teq that requires 80+ people, you should be rewarded with a garunteed ascended item of your choice(stat wise). No discussion. That fight is nicely involved, time consuming…and leaps and bounds harder than anything else in the game. You cant give me 3 or 4 rares, a handful of T5 mats and a few silver for it. It needs to end with an ascended piece. No getting around it.

After killing him more than 100 times, I am yet to see anything interesting drop, so I can’t say I disagree with you. :-)
A friend of mine is closing in on 300 kills and is yet to get an ascended drop. RNG ftw.

I somehow posted this to the wrong thread. Reposting here.

Context I was an advocate of this game across several fora starting a few years before launch. I loved GW2 at launch, and approached it very immersively, following my whim through the game. I have spent money for gems, most notably to purchase the steampunk medium armor for my Engie.

I played (and paid) up until a little over a month ago, when I realized the game had become a series of checklists for me to do each time I log on. All of it traces back to the implementation of Ascended gear. I am now on an open ended hiatus from playing to see if the game becomes one I want to play again.

Early Adopter I wasn’t one who ignored Ascended. I’ve got several of my toons in full ascended trinkets, some of them in two sets for stat variety. I got weaponsmith to 500 and crafted an ascended zerker greatsword. I have artificer to 475, and hunstman to 425. I very much hope that Ascended armor and weapons will become much more accessible, as that’s what I need to comfortably return to Tyria.

Shallow Progression There are a lot of pre-launch ideals that were shared with us that people love to argue about on the forums (manifesto, everyone on equal footing at level cap), but there are two I don’t see brought up much.

1. The game should be the same after reaching level cap as it was on the journey there. It shouldn’t suddenly feel like another game.

2. Progression has a “flat curve”. It doesn’t get dramatically steeper the higher you progress.

It is the violation of these two principles, not some ideal about no vertical progression, that caused me to leave GW2. It was the implementation of Ascended armor and weapons that violated them.

Progressing from 400 to 500 crafting is like hitting a wall after the gentle progression from 0 to 400. It takes many magnitudes more resources (either in gold or gathering mats) for that last 100 crafting levels than it did the entire trip to 400.

The same is true for crafting the items. The amount of mats required is huge.

We keep hearing the refrain that ArenaNet is commited to a gradual vertical progression. This is true of the power increase, with small increments in stats, but is absolutely untrue when it comes to what it takes to acquire them.

It is also extremely different from the levelling experience. One of the beauties of this game is “Play how you want” up until level 80. Everything gives you reasonable amounts of experience, and you can ignore levelling, do whatever sounds fun, and find yourself progressing at a quick clip.

In contrast, Ascended weapons and armor require a considerable amount of time focusing on the reward rather than the activity. Dragonite requires repeated world boss zerging. The enormous numbers of high end mats require either a focus on the most efficient methods of getting gold or countless circles of the few zones with the harvesting nodes.

It’s theoretically possible to just play the game and earn the gold required to buy the mats, but it would take so ridiculously long that there will likely be many more new stages of progression implemented by the time even one character completed what we currently have.

Conclusion Since the whole point of Ascended was to solve the “problem” that exotics were moderately easy to achieve, I doubt they will ever be made easily achievable. I hope, however, that is not the case, as I would love to come back and make Tyria my home once again.

Reesha.7901:

cesmode.4257:

Hi,
Concerning World bosses and reward…
Since returning to GW2 a month or two ago, I had not done Teq because no one does it anymore. Only a small handful of servers do it, or capable of it seems.

Finally, last night I did it. While all the boxes to open were cool, not one exotic dropped. And even if an exotic dropped, who cares? I want BiS gear from a fight like that.

So my contribution to this thread is in regard to alternate routes of acquiring ascended gear. If you are able to be in an overflow or on a server or part of a guild that is organized and skilled enough to take down a fight like Teq that requires 80+ people, you should be rewarded with a garunteed ascended item of your choice(stat wise). No discussion. That fight is nicely involved, time consuming…and leaps and bounds harder than anything else in the game. You cant give me 3 or 4 rares, a handful of T5 mats and a few silver for it. It needs to end with an ascended piece. No getting around it.

After killing him more than 100 times, I am yet to see anything interesting drop, so I can’t say I disagree with you. :-)

I mean, don’t get me wrong…the Teq loot was far better than SB or Jormag loot. I did get 4 rares, which salved into 2 or 3 ectos. I might have gotten a charged core or so, maybe 1 or two T6 mats. The rest was greens and blues to be salvaged. So compare the 1 or 2 T6 mats, 2 or 3 ectos, and the profit from a core…next to the mountain of requirements for an ascended weapon. I moved an inch along a mile long race track. The boss kill was a rewarding feeling, and compared to other loot tables in GW2 it felt rewarding..but then thinking about how much of this stuff I need and what other loot/reward systems are in other games, any ecstasy was quickly…and I mean quickly deflated.

Did I feel like my character progressed after an 80+ person epic fight? No.
In WoW, did I feel like my character progressed after a Sindragosa fight in a 10 man raid? 50/50 chance either yes or not. And if not the first time, I bet the second time I will feel the progression. Compared to the second time of Tequatl, where I only feel an inch of it.

The Lost Witch.7601:

Dev post recap: part 2

<snip>

I would like to pause and say “You rock like a thing that rocks very much indeed!”

These recaps should be the most up-voted entries in the thread, hands down.

+1

I, for one, refuse to pretend that working toward ascended weapons and armor is mandatory to enjoy the game. In fact, I dare say that I find them to be quite optional! Thus, I find this time-gating and other hullabaloo to be quite fine and fair, thank you very much.

One thing I’ve seen repeated here is the desire for a guarantee that content will not increase in difficulty with ascended gear, and therefore it will remain optional.

I think that once you introduce more powerful gear, an increase in difficulty is inevitable.
If players get more powerful gear then the game becomes easier.
If the game becomes easier players complain that it’s too easy.
If players complain that it’s too easy ANet will provide more challenging content.

The content will probably not be gated (like agony) but the game will get harder to compensate for the increased power of the characters.

cesmode.4257:

Hi,
Concerning World bosses and reward…
Since returning to GW2 a month or two ago, I had not done Teq because no one does it anymore. Only a small handful of servers do it, or capable of it seems.

Finally, last night I did it. While all the boxes to open were cool, not one exotic dropped. And even if an exotic dropped, who cares? I want BiS gear from a fight like that.

So my contribution to this thread is in regard to alternate routes of acquiring ascended gear. If you are able to be in an overflow or on a server or part of a guild that is organized and skilled enough to take down a fight like Teq that requires 80+ people, you should be rewarded with a garunteed ascended item of your choice(stat wise). No discussion. That fight is nicely involved, time consuming…and leaps and bounds harder than anything else in the game. You cant give me 3 or 4 rares, a handful of T5 mats and a few silver for it. It needs to end with an ascended piece. No getting around it.

So all the 80 people (even the 30+ that did nothing but spamming 1) should get a BIS gear from an open world boss like that? I don’t think so.

If it were a battle like Liadri I’d totally agree, but not if that much random players are involved who may not contribute in that fight at all. Yes it is a difficult battle, but it’s mainly about organization, not personal skill.

I still think rewards should be much better at Tequatl. But a guaranteed piece of Ascended is too much for fights with the number of people like this.

Imho the open world needs more challenges for smaller groups. How could you guarantee that only few people participate and the battle mechanics aren’t broken by a zerg?: learn from Queens Gauntlet and put people in a area where only small groups/solos can fight.

Why not time saving and capping to make a more flexible time gating for some things?

For example, you would get one ‘use’ of a recipe for each day you logged (or completed any set of dailies).
Keep logging in without making the item, and more ‘uses’ for the recipe accumulate, up to a cap, let’s say 30 ‘uses’. You won’t get more uses past the cap unless you use up the uses you have saved.

So it’ll work a bit like now, being able to craft day by day, but would also allow leaving crafting for later, like when one of the dailies is the one for crafting. You won’t be able to craft more than the times you’ve logged in, and you’ll be able to craft daily right now, but you won’t have to craft daily.

If you didn’t have materials by then, you at least got the ‘presence’ credit, and by the time you did get materials, you may be able to craft a bit more than 1, as crafting just one when you reach a high crafting level feels underwhelming.

This would mean that you don’t have to prepare beforehand so much before expected changes, and you don’t have to start behind those who already had the materials by the time the recipe was added.

This is a great thread Chris. Sorry I am so late to the party. (Story of my life.)

So if this has already been suggested, forgive me for the duplication.

I agree that more ways need to acquire ascended items needs to happen. Even saying that, it is obvious that crafting of ascended items is not going away. Which is good.

My suggestion would be to have drops to help crafting progress faster as well. Maybe a spiritwood plank or an empyreal star drop. It is good to just get a piece of ascended equipment, but maybe a more frequent drop than the actual equipment would be mats to help in crafting of the equipment. Just a thought.

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

cesmode.4257:

Hi,
Concerning World bosses and reward…
Since returning to GW2 a month or two ago, I had not done Teq because no one does it anymore. Only a small handful of servers do it, or capable of it seems.

Finally, last night I did it. While all the boxes to open were cool, not one exotic dropped. And even if an exotic dropped, who cares? I want BiS gear from a fight like that.

So my contribution to this thread is in regard to alternate routes of acquiring ascended gear. If you are able to be in an overflow or on a server or part of a guild that is organized and skilled enough to take down a fight like Teq that requires 80+ people, you should be rewarded with a garunteed ascended item of your choice(stat wise). No discussion. That fight is nicely involved, time consuming…and leaps and bounds harder than anything else in the game. You cant give me 3 or 4 rares, a handful of T5 mats and a few silver for it. It needs to end with an ascended piece. No getting around it.

So all the 80 people (even the 30+ that did nothing but spamming 1) should get a BIS gear from an open world boss like that? I don’t think so.

If it were a battle like Liadri I’d totally agree, but not if that much random players are involved who may not contribute in that fight at all. Yes it is a difficult battle, but it’s mainly about organization, not personal skill.

I still think rewards should be much better at Tequatl. But a guaranteed piece of Ascended is too much for fights with the number of people like this.

Imho the open world needs more challenges for smaller groups. How could you guarantee that only few people participate and the battle mechanics aren’t broken by a zerg?: learn from Queens Gauntlet and put people in a area where only small groups/solos can fight.

The only thing I can think of is this:

Design a reward system that ranks everyone who has engaged the boss. Have the system calculate:
-the amount of times you rez someone
-the amount of healing throughput from you
-the amount of damage throughput from you
-the amount of boons/durations
-general activity uptime
-have the amount of times you die become a negative factor in the equation.

Calculate all of this and reward people accordingly. Out of, say 100 people on a Teq fight, top 25% receive garunteed ascended drop and the current loot table. Next 25% receive the current loot table, and figure out something else for the next two quartiles of people.

Its the only thing I can think of that will reward players for actively rezzing, buffing, doing DPS, and plainly doing something other than auto attacking. And it would not reward those that sit there and auto attack.

I some what agree with you even if it contradicts what I said in my previous post. However, If thats true, then this game’s reward structure is a failure and cannot be fixed. Because to date, Teq is the most challenging fight for open world play.

If at the core GW2 is about open world gameplay, and if this design philosophy fosters large amounts of people beating on a boss then you’re absolutely right. The people spamming #1 will get rewarded much like the people dropping rez banners or manning turrets. And this is not good. And you cannot force these people to do something other than spam #1, since they can get lost in the sea of people and just auto attack to their hearts content.

If the most difficult fight in the game for open world play cannot pay out and reward those who actually TRY, then there is no hope for risk vs reward in this game. There is no hope for character progression and loot acquisition in this game.

On time gating:
I’ve seen it in a number of past MMOs and though it is always contentious I think it is a really healthy/solid system to mitigate the problems of developing games for MMO players. In an ideal world definitely there’d be other/better solutions for these problems, maybe GW2 can be the game that introduces some more positive solutions but time gating is definitely better than nothing imo. All of the problems mentioned by Isaiah are real problems, which have caused all sorts of fall out in past MMOs.

Gulesave.5073:

I, for one, refuse to pretend that working toward ascended weapons and armor is mandatory to enjoy the game. In fact, I dare say that I find them to be quite optional! Thus, I find this time-gating and other hullabaloo to be quite fine and fair, thank you very much.

I can see your point, but this gear is mandatory for fractal players, as some of the new agony can’t be dodged anymore, therefore you need more, which you can only get by:
- spending a lot of time and gold for infusions crafting
- spending a lot of time and gold for ascended armor crafting…

Before someone comes and say: “Fractals is for hardcore players, they need vertical progression there”, hardcore fractal players want a challenge. Fractal players want their skill to be challenged, not their stuff !

jheryn.8390:

This is a great thread Chris. Sorry I am so late to the party. (Story of my life.)

So if this has already been suggested, forgive me for the duplication.

I agree that more ways need to acquire ascended items needs to happen. Even saying that, it is obvious that crafting of ascended items is not going away. Which is good.

My suggestion would be to have drops to help crafting progress faster as well. Maybe a spiritwood plank or an empyreal star drop. It is good to just get a piece of ascended equipment, but maybe a more frequent drop than the actual equipment would be mats to help in crafting of the equipment. Just a thought.

As far as I know that is a new idea.

It would certainly allow for more balanced rewards. (Where a full ascended piece is not quite warranted, but the regular ascended materials or exotics aren’t quite enough either)

Would these rewards be useful to players that don’t have the money to level their crafting up to 500 though? (I suppose the spiritwood plank could be sold.)

Chris Whiteside.6102:

BondageBill.4021:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Personally following the last proposal I put forward I am still listening and thinking to the CDI groups discussion and considerations. I am sorry if this isn’t moving fast enough for you but this thread isn’t closing anytime soon and I am a patient man.

Chris

Chris,

My apologies if I am just missing something, but I cannot find this proposal you are referencing. Searching through the Dev Tracker and this thread, I see the following:

11:55 – a post stating that you are building a proposal.
17:11 – a comment about several points that will impact the in-process proposal.
19:22 – the above quote where you refer to the previously presented proposal.

Unfortunately, I do not have much time to post back-and-forth during the week, nor time to sift through 29 (and counting) pages, but I would really like to see the resultant direction of this discussion and have a chance to comment further before the Vertical segment is closed and Horizontal is opened.

Would it be possible to post a summary proposal for the direction of vertical progression with a very easily identifiable and bolded title for those of us that are time-impaired during the week?

Hi Bill,

I will try to make the next evolution of the proposal easier to access. The Lost Witch did a great summary which I plan to link to the OP as well.

We need to build a better way of referencing summaries, proposals and major discussion points in the CDI for sure. But that is a topic for the next CDI Process Evolution thread.

Chris

Thanks Chris! Much appreciated.

Estriella Faerie.4029:

I can see your point, but this gear is mandatory for fractal players, as some of the new agony can’t be dodged anymore, therefore you need more, which you can only get by:
- spending a lot of time and gold for infusions crafting
- spending a lot of time and gold for ascended armor crafting…

Aren’t fractals pretty much content created just for those who like vertical progression though? Time and other forms of gating are somewhat standard in vertical progression based games (raid timers etc), so isn’t this really the sort of thing you should be totally into if you’re into fractals? Without the time gating wouldn’t we end up with the standard vertical progression woes of people racing to the top and then complaining endlessly about “no content” until there’s another batch of levels/goals/etc to chase?

On a side note I think this kind of outlines one of the troubles with the concept of vertical progression and in a roundabout way one of the big problems MMOs are having as a genre. GW2 has done more than just about any other sandbox MMO to push the idea that you can do what you want and experience the game however, but the continuous push for more stuff to do to get “better” raises problems whenever it comes up.

Add me to the list of people who don’t feel like time gating slows hardcore people down much. And is punishing to people who don’t log in every day, or have limited playtime..

But I’ll take a different tack on what slows down more casual players, more significantly: the fact that the time-gated ascended materials are HARD. Farming that shopping list of materials by yourself daily is no casual activity, and earning enough gold to buy them outright isn’t either. So we have a certain stockpile of mats.. and it goes away, and we’re left replenishing them slowly and falling ever more behind the ‘time gate’ a hardcore player can easily jump. And we get ever more tempted to just join the champ train in our limited playtime.

There’s a stand of elder wood in malchor’s leap that a friend of mine guests to multiple servers to farm daily. That wasn’t fun and he hasn’t logged in for more than twenty minutes in weeks. Don’t require that kind of kitten, please!

If the time-gated mats were a matter of ‘a few of this, a few of that’.. but no, it had to be on the order of boatloads of planks and refined ingots and leathers that aren’t even properly farmable. 50 elder wood planks? Isn’t that 150 logs? Daily?

Current price 150 elder wood logs on tp: 64 silver
Current price 100 mithril ore: 35 silver
Current price 150 thick leather section: 15 silver
Thermocatalytic stuff: 45 silver.

Total: 1g60s daily, just to keep up on those mats. That’s ‘treading water’ level if you run a dungeon or two daily or champ farm a good bit. Admittedly it’s mitigated by whatever mats you can get without money, but it accounts nothing for actually stockpiling other mats, gold, or just having fun. Activities quickly lose their fun factor when you go in with a ‘gold per hour’ mindset.

Also, regarding leveling crafting to 500 – can we at least make them give you skill all the way up? Please?

FeveredDreamer.2693:

Aren’t fractals pretty much content created just for those who like vertical progression though? Time and other forms of gating are somewhat standard in vertical progression based games (raid timers etc), so isn’t this really the sort of thing you should be totally into if you’re into fractals?

Please read the rest of my post

Estriella Faerie.4029:

FeveredDreamer.2693:

Aren’t fractals pretty much content created just for those who like vertical progression though? Time and other forms of gating are somewhat standard in vertical progression based games (raid timers etc), so isn’t this really the sort of thing you should be totally into if you’re into fractals?

Please read the rest of my post

Ooh apologies actually you’re totally right, in my defense it wasn’t in the post I quoted at least :P

I’m not a huge fan of fractals, I largely do them just for the substantial rewards they give (compared to other parts of the game) and as a result I just grind them out with my “main” character and filter rewards on down to my alts (or plan to). I didn’t stop to think about how rough the needed AR would be in the higher tiers of fractals for those who play alts.

Reesha.7901:

cesmode.4257:

Hi,
Concerning World bosses and reward…
Since returning to GW2 a month or two ago, I had not done Teq because no one does it anymore. Only a small handful of servers do it, or capable of it seems.

Finally, last night I did it. While all the boxes to open were cool, not one exotic dropped. And even if an exotic dropped, who cares? I want BiS gear from a fight like that.

So my contribution to this thread is in regard to alternate routes of acquiring ascended gear. If you are able to be in an overflow or on a server or part of a guild that is organized and skilled enough to take down a fight like Teq that requires 80+ people, you should be rewarded with a garunteed ascended item of your choice(stat wise). No discussion. That fight is nicely involved, time consuming…and leaps and bounds harder than anything else in the game. You cant give me 3 or 4 rares, a handful of T5 mats and a few silver for it. It needs to end with an ascended piece. No getting around it.

After killing him more than 100 times, I am yet to see anything interesting drop, so I can’t say I disagree with you. :-)
A friend of mine is closing in on 300 kills and is yet to get an ascended drop. RNG ftw.

I was on TC when they killed Teq the first time, I remember there was Dev there, I forget his name but he gave away a mini for some event he did, but that was the one and only time I ever killed Teq, I decided right then and there I would never do it again, I stood there for over 2 hours waiting for it to take place and when he was finally dead I had I think 5 chests to open, all of which had greens in them and the only thing worth anything I got from it was my daily rare, and using a mystic salvage kit on it gave me 1 piece of mithril, total waste of time.

Like I said before, this isn’t progression, this is regression.

Achievement points should be the only form of vertical progression in this game.

Lord Kuru.3685:

Achievement points should be the only form of vertical progression in this game.

I may be wrong, but aren’t achievement points horizontal progression?

My opinion on this :

-Horizontal progression-
Two things are lacking I think. The first one is a ward robe/locker like the PvP locker but for PvE. With each Living Story release there’s at least one skin item available. Add to this the gem store items and even the gear that came with the game at first. The PvP locker is genius but we really need the same to stock all our skins and be able to switch between looks at will. It sucks right now to destroy a skin so that we can wear a new one instead. Instead of transmutation stones we could require to buy locker slots (just like bank/inventory tabs) for our PvE locker. I think it would be a win-win situation for both the players and Anet.

The second thing is actually a real progression in cool looking gear. I think that the best looking gear (or more refined looking gear) isn’t always the hardest to get. The easiest comparison I could make is in GW1 with non-elite gear vs elite gear. Most of the elite armor versions of their non-elite counterparts felt quite “elite” indeed. It was worth the investment most of the time and it was something to look forward to in the first game. The crafting tiers gear in GW2 aren’t up to par for me. Yes, the level 20 crafted gear looks cheap compared to level 80 exotics but level 35 rare can look better than level 80 exotics in some instances. Same with dungeon gear not really looking “grand” compared to regular gear. I don’t feel like some armors are “elite” and are worth looking towards to like in GW1.

-Vertical progression-
I’m on the side that thinks that ascended gear as it is was a big error. I would have stopped the stats increase with exotics. If the need for a tier between exotics and legendary felt really necessary, the ascended tier should have been aesthetics only. Actually, I think a “elite armor” version of GW1 would have been a great addition to GW2 instead. One per each crafted set and all of them available at ascended gear tier. Their could have been two tiers of ascended as well just like in GW1. There were cheap elite armors and more costly ones. Sunspear Elite comes to mind as an example of a cheaper one. It gives the opportunity for more players to reach a ascended tier and maybe a way to ease them into ascended crafting also without feeling obliged to do so since the best stats gear would still be exotics.

Right now, the ascended crafting isn’t so bad even if the curve is a bit too much steep. The problem comes for people that have a lot of alts. It was possible to all gear them in exotics but it’s crazy to do this with ascended now. Everything is time gated in some capacity and very costly so I might be able to have full ascended on all my characters maybe… in 2015?

Outside of the ascended tier, the whole vertical progression should have been brought down to a horizontal one. Mainly with skills. Elite skills in GW2 are uninteresting most of the time while in GW1 many where fun and useful. The whole elite skills thing should have been put together the same way — capturing skills by defeating bosses (champions) throughout the game world. They could have been instanced to prevent zerg rushing them (personal story? dungeon?). This would make the whole elite skill system more dynamic and fun. New skills could be introduced in a similar way (with a task to do for earning it in PvE).

cesmode.4257:

Not that I have anything invested in an sPvP discussion, but just to push things along, what do people think about sPvP character progression, and/or the changes recently made?

Even though ascended gear, vertical vs horizontal, still very much on my mind and I have two unanswered questions lingering, I figure I could give some of the people who are frustrated with the ascended gear VP vs HP discussion a break and push a small discussion in another direction.

sPvP char progression… Does it belong in the game? Are you satisfied? What changes to be made? Risks, rewards?

Doesn’t really matter at the moment. sPvP has no vertical progression. We don’t want it. ANet has been opposed to it and doesn’t appear to be changing that policy. Chris is focused on Vertical Progression, so in interest of making the thread more organized for him, it’s best to wait.

Xenon.4537:

Sirendor.1394:

Maybe we should also introduce the balance of skill-reward into this discussion, since it is something which seems incredibly off balance in the case of ascended armour.

My biggest concern is that the vertical progression we have seen now requires no skill, but a lot of time:
- Gold is the main thing you need (200g per craft + 60g per piece)
- Gold is gained mostly through rather easy activities: dungeons, champion farms, world bosses
- Gold is very very low in challenging content: PvP is debatably one of the least rewarding areas of the game, Jumping Puzzles aswell.

Why do the most easy things in the game give more gold than the kittenes?

• Create a division where a small % of the players have access, and thus leave out a large % of players, which is contrary to Anet’s belief that everything should be accessible (playable) to everyone.

Of course that is not what we want, but the current situation is even worse. People who do harder content get less rewards. Sort of a reversed world. Anet wants me to go champ farming (aka. easiest content there is) to earn something, which I can’t earn by doing small scale, no zerg PvP (probably highest skill requirement).

Colin asked which progression systems we liked more from other games, I’ll name a couple here :
– Guild Wars 1 elite skills acquisition system
– Final Fantasy VII materia slotting; it’s like GW rune/insigna system, except that we have to salvage our gear to switch “materia” or have multiple gear sets to alternate between setup. I wouldn’t mind having a cost associated with switching “materia” but not at the point of destroying my gear set just to switch them. It was the same in GW1 and I didn’t like the salvaging system either in the first game actually.
– Final Fantasy X / Path of Exile grid system; I like the versatility of those kind of systems.

The common point between each system I like is actually the customization power the player have with said system, the ease of switching between different configurations and the feeling of progress and achievement when unlocking new abilities.

On a side note, GW1’s skill templates should come back in GW2.

Sirendor.1394:

Xenon.4537:

Sirendor.1394:

Maybe we should also introduce the balance of skill-reward into this discussion, since it is something which seems incredibly off balance in the case of ascended armour.

My biggest concern is that the vertical progression we have seen now requires no skill, but a lot of time:
- Gold is the main thing you need (200g per craft + 60g per piece)
- Gold is gained mostly through rather easy activities: dungeons, champion farms, world bosses
- Gold is very very low in challenging content: PvP is debatably one of the least rewarding areas of the game, Jumping Puzzles aswell.

Why do the most easy things in the game give more gold than the kittenes?

• Create a division where a small % of the players have access, and thus leave out a large % of players, which is contrary to Anet’s belief that everything should be accessible (playable) to everyone.

Of course that is not what we want, but the current situation is even worse. People who do harder content get less rewards. Sort of a reversed world. Anet wants me to go champ farming (aka. easiest content there is) to earn something, which I can’t earn by doing small scale, no zerg PvP (probably highest skill requirement).

I laugh everytime I see people think “skills” is just pressing buttons on a keyboard. Seriously? Also, this is a character progression thread, not a “plx rwrd my playstyle mor than others” thread. Albeit slower, your grandma can press keys on a keyboard too and speed is not a skill.

Lord Kuru.3685:

Achievement points should be the only form of vertical progression in this game.

I disagree, 100%. Placing VP on achievement points solves nothing IMO. IT shows you play the game a lot. It shows that you can grind a lot. Some of it skillful like jumping puzzles, but basically, you just play the game a lot and do EVERYTHING.

For example, the majority of people are satisfied with completing 5/5 for the daily. The AP progression crowd will do them all, every daily, and try to get as many achievements in every other category. When you start placing reward on AP progression, thats a slippery slope.

I think the current reward structure for AP is sufficient and should be the maximum reward. Adding any VP to it, and youre asking for trouble.

Yamiga.7863:

Lord Kuru.3685:

Achievement points should be the only form of vertical progression in this game.

I may be wrong, but aren’t achievement points horizontal progression?

If I didnt know better from reading Kuru’s posts, Id say this was trolling

But seriously, in most games achievements are for nothing but titles and vanity. The fact that GW2 is rewarding you as it currently does is pushing the envelop. I mentioned this stuff to a few of my friends who play other MMOs and they said “ew…rewards for achievements? Thats a sticky topic”.

TheDaiBish.9735:

Aeonblade.8709:

EnemyCrusher.7324:

Aeonblade.8709:

I feel like this is completely the wrong direction. All the stats should be unlockable via something in the game mode you play in, not forcing you to do supposedly optional stuff like crafting.

I’m glad you like the idea, but what you said would actually turn me AWAY from that kind of system.

So you would prefer different accomplishments to unlock each combination within each play style? How far would you take that? Just WvW vs PvE? Then you still have the problem of WvW roamers vs WvW zergers vs WvW defenders. In PvE there’s a whole myriad of play styles: dungeon runners, harvester/crafters, farmers, fractal runners, explorers, role-players, achievement hunters, living story focused players, etc, and they will all inevitably complain if they’re forced outside their usual play area. If you try giving all play styles a way to unlock everything by only doing one thing, you’ll end up giving them nothing but a grind.

I feel like the larger grind would be giving people stuff to do that they hate doing. For instance, I’d rather get 10,000 WvW kills for an achievement than have to kill1,000 PvE mobs. I feel like the 1000 PvE mobs is the bigger grind for me.

What about activities that require dedication from a particular game mode?

For example:

• For crafting, alter crafting so Ascended can be made at 450. At 475, Infusions, Runes / Sigils can be added to a piece of gear. At 500, Inscriptions / Insignia’s can be added.
• For WvW, allow players to unlock something on their piece of armour every X ranks. For example, after rank 50: every 5 ranks an Infusion, every 10 ranks a Rune / Sigil, every 25 ranks a stat combination, with one of each unlockable as soon as you hit 50.
• For Fractal runners (who have reached Level 10) and dungeon runners (who have unlocked Dungeon Master), they have to find the hidden bosses in a set of Fractals / along each path, with one in each Fractal / path. Each boss gives an item. 3 of these items can be used to unlock a stat combination, with dungeon tokens / Fractal Relics unlocking Runes / Sigils and Infusions.
• For OWPvE players, make use of jumping puzzles, mini-dungeons ect alongside world bosses.

Now that, is an idea I can get behind. +1

DarksunG.9537:

• Armor Progression Instead of selling the kind of cheap fx flavored reskins & garnering the “money grab” press, let us upgrade existing gear in the same way. I’m guessing doing those fx was extremely easy since you just need to make shaders particle emitters & some masks. Well, why not allow players to work towards upgrading current armor to have Grenth, Dwayna, Melandru, Balthazar, Lyssa& Kormir versions of existing skins. This is also a way to let people kind of tweak armor they might not like to be more flavored the way they do like instead of having to make more full sets.
  I don’t really expect this to happen because; why give away easy to make skins when you can sell them? Most importantly:

• Remove Repetitive, Archaic, Cosmetic Gating/Make skins Into an Easy to Use Collection
  This is one area I was extremely surprised that Anet is years behind the current MMO standards. DCUO is the prime example of how cosmetics should be handled. Having individual items with individual looks feels like nothing more than a reason to sell more bag slots. When I get an item, I should be able to use a transmutation stone to unlock the skin. I’m not talking about having skins like in the achievement panel or the pvpvlocker. Even that is pretty clunky. I should be able to right click an arrow next to an equipped item & see a window of my skins, like the skill bar. then I can just click the one I want to currently use. Anything else just seems like a waste of UI space & time. I have to say, I’m surprised Anet missed this MMO convention. They usually seem to want to be on the forefront with features & focus on cosmetics. But this time around it seemed 2 steps back.

I added a mock-up of this UI system below. The items you HAVE should fill up from the top down, as to get rid of unnecessary scrolling.

Would love this.

Estriella Faerie.4029:

I can see your point, but this gear is mandatory for fractal players, as some of the new agony can’t be dodged anymore, therefore you need more, which you can only get by:
- spending a lot of time and gold for infusions crafting
- spending a lot of time and gold for ascended armor crafting…

Before someone comes and say: “Fractals is for hardcore players, they need vertical progression there”, hardcore fractal players want a challenge. Fractal players want their skill to be challenged, not their stuff !

I totally agree with this and I hope Chris can think about a system where you get accountbound AR similar to mf for each instability firsttime completition.

→ You can get the AR needed to advance with simply playing the game
→ people would stop leveling up with easy instabilities only
→ You could finally swap between your alts without having to swap back each boss fractal

I really can’t think of anything that would harm the playerbase when implementing such a system. It would also help to increase levels maybe add several instabilities when past 100 without having to make sure there is gear avaiable in the firstplace for people to advance. I think it should be possible to advance to the highest levels without beeing forced to invest money in + 10 infusions and stuff.

Hope you take this suggestion into consideration when building releasing next levels.

Dingle.2743:

New item concept:
[Ascension Crystal]
Consumable, account-bound, ascended quality.
Begins the process of ascension, allowing a piece of equipment to reach its true potential. Double-click to apply this item to any piece of exotic equipment.

Acquisition:

• Crafting at rank 500. Vision Crystal + x Dark Matter. Each crafting profession crafts vision crystals that work only for equipment types that profession can craft.
• Laurels. Less than the cost of an amulet.
• Dungeon tokens. Around 400-500.
• Badges of Honor. Around 300.
• Guild commendations vendor. 6 commendations.
• Pristine Fractal Relics, 5
• The intention of the price is to be lower than regular ascended items from that source, as after usage the player still needs to do more work.

Mechanics:
Apply it to an item using a similar interface to transmutation. After it’s applied to the item, that item’s tooltip expands to include a progress bar, and a list of tasks which contribute to it. When the bar is filled out, the item becomes ascended quality. Rings, Amulets and Accessories become “Unidentified Ascended Ring/Amulet/Accessory” and when being equipped ask the player which of the ascended trinkets with that stat spread it should become. Back Items ask the player which infusion slot they want at the next time they’re equipped. Both of these pop a notification similar to the “You have equipped an item with no stats” when equipping items that allow you to choose stat spreads.

The process of ascending the item itself is different for each item. Several tasks are semi-randomly assigned, and doing any of these tasks with the item equipped fills out the progress bar slightly; like a heart, the player can choose to ignore certain tasks. These tasks should always include at the minimum something that can be done in WvW and something that can be done in Open World content, and may be further flavoured based on the item type, stat spread or skin of the item (have a tag system assigned to the skins in the database and use that to fill the random table for the choice).

For example, a weapon may task the player to kill champion/legendary mobs, a cleric equip might ask the player to heal other players, a Norn cultural armor piece may ask the player to complete events in the Shiverpeaks. The potential list could include anything that might appear in the daily/monthly; the WvW list could include any tasks from the season meta achievement.

The exact value of each task can vary; “Kill mobs” would be worth less than “Kill veteran or higher mobs” would be worth less than “Kill champion or higher mobs”, etc. It’s also ok if this is somewhat grindy, as long as the player is given a variety of options. The timegate here should not be a hard gate, but rather that it will take a certain amount of effort to ascend the item.

End result:

• New process of ascension. Time-intensive instead of resource-intensive.
• Gives a variety of tasks, but doesn’t force the player to commit a minimum amount of effort to any given task.
• Requires Exotic as a baseline, ensuring that ascended is directly in the gap between Exotic and Legendary.
• Does not obsolete previous gear, as it is the previous gear. Allows players to keep their skins without transmutation.
• Does not give the player a new skin; current ascended skins remain rewards for reaching ascended using those methods.
• Does not heavily consume resources that are used to make legendary weapons.
• Requires the player to actually play using the character they’re ascending.

One of the best proposals so far. Would allow a lot of us (who are not rich) to get ascended without giving out a huge amount of money.

cesmode.4257:

Yamiga.7863:

Lord Kuru.3685:

Achievement points should be the only form of vertical progression in this game.

I may be wrong, but aren’t achievement points horizontal progression?

If I didnt know better from reading Kuru’s posts, Id say this was trolling

But seriously, in most games achievements are for nothing but titles and vanity. The fact that GW2 is rewarding you as it currently does is pushing the envelop. I mentioned this stuff to a few of my friends who play other MMOs and they said “ew…rewards for achievements? Thats a sticky topic”.

Thanks for the precision I was a bit confused
Achievements should not be a requirement for anything and shouldn’t be part of any form of vertical progression. Unlocking titles with achievements is a good idea imo, its basically how the GWAMM title worked in gw1 and I feel it was missing in gw2. The other achievement rewards are just some nice additional rewards that pop from time to time.

On the topic of time gates:
Why are time gates set at one per day? Would it not accomplish the same task to set them to 7 per week? If I understand correctly the main reason to have time gates is to slow down hardcore players and allow the more casual players to keep up. The problem is that some casual players are not able to log in everyday and can only play on the weekends. Another player base that is hit hard by time gates are new players since they will always be behind the people that have been playing longer with no hope to reach them.

Personally my current play time in game consists of logging in, doing the dailies, daily crafting, daily quartz fuzing, maybe a world boss or two, and then logging off. If I had less things to do on the checklist, or could do them all for the week, I would be more inclined to do other things in the game like longer dungeons or lower level fractals.