Guild Wars 2

xarallei.4279:

I think I would quit the game if they raised the level cap. It’s so not necessary.

I could see raising the level cap at some distant future point, but not soon, and certainly not now. My fear is that horizontal progression would get neglected, and it’s horizontal progression that the game needs most.

Gytis.1637:

Now this ladies and gentlemen is a winning post. I’ve always dreamed of raids, but didn’t see them possible in GW2 and this guy comes and tells that you can have them simply as that When i think about it, it’s the same sPvP principle… I just can’t hold my excitement that the raids are really possible ^.^
Addressing the progression systems topic, I really like ones where you get something special to wield as a bonus to go deep in a tree (I guess FF XII is something similar).
For example:
Profession goes x points in a specific tree – BOOM ! You can now wield bazooka.
Prof. goes x in one tree and y in another – WHAM ! You mastered how to use nunchakus.
I think this would add more uniqueness to a play / player style.

You’re welcome!
It would be great to hear the opinion of game creators too.
I’m really curious what they think about it.
My first post is here

When I was writing it was 2:00 am, so I’m really sorry for some mistakes that i’ve made, but also atm I can tell something more about my idea.
Even WvWvW shouldnt be pressed into the “open world” and ive made a mistake by writing it. I just focused more on PvE stuff. But yeah, IMO when we really want a good modes in the mmorpg’s, then we’ve to separate them, and let them life of its own, and develop in different ways – this is the future. ArenaNet for now is making it a little bit, cause we’ve got separated PvP, and WvWvW. Maybe in WvWvW we’re using same armors (stats) like in the Open World, but hey – they’ve added ranks, and skills there – what’s really good progress for this mode, and it can be still developing. That’s good. Likewise, in pvp – they can still develop there so many things. But IMO for now this game miss so much a separate mode for PvE – to separate solid, PvE stuff from open world.

In sum:

Open World: Cool story, plot things, awesome world full of interesting things, living elements, bosses, guild missions, dungeons, fractals – and where every person is able to progress their character by: getting exotic/ascended/legendary armors/weapons – but IMO not more. IMO Exotic should be always something good in the open world content. Also people can get there cool skins, titles, minis, etc, etc…

WvWvW mode with their own progression system, where we’re able to get new ranks, skills – This all can be still developed in various ways.

PvP mode as i wrote. Every1 uses same stat items there, and people can finaly play real, balanced PvP in the mmorpg. We just need more maps, and maybe new modes like… 8v8 maps, 1v1, new rewards (but ArenaNet wrote something about it in the last days so… They know exactly what to do for this mode: better rewards, pvp seasons etc etc)

PvE mode as i wrote, if we want to talk about a real PvE mode in a game like that, IMO the best solution is to create separate mode for it – like its done for pvp. There would be a map with NPC’s. People would sign there for new raids, and for any practice or smt. U would add one, extensive, and demanding raid per 6 months or something like that, and let people progress it. Just focus on bosses, and advanced battle with them – not doing a “dungeon”, where boss is just a part of it. Separate builds, skills, vendors – professional mode, where each raid member has a role. Those who did any raid would get new items with stats, to be able to do next raids, and show others, that they did it. And lets give them titles too – cause people should be able to show that they did it in Open World too. Maybe lets create a “first world kill” or smt like that and leaderboards? After that PvE would have taken the professional nature.

In my opinion it would be a very healthy option for all players. Every player would find here (in this game) something for themselves, and also – then GW2 would be really top1 mmorpg.

Dunno, i think that we need the 3 game modes to mold toghether more, not less.

See upcoming gear changes.

And Gw1 did wondrefully on that issue (again, Gw1, it’s there, why you scrapped so much good stuff form it, Anet? Bah.)

Well to be simple and quick wht ppl want in character progression is….more chanlenge to be done like the teq fight in closed instance…but with less players …those awesome drake fights should be done in a lfg with 10-15 player in a more Challengeble way…your are doing a great job…but there are too many things to do at the same time and ppl cant farm for good stuff unlesse they buy with real money, thats your point i know, but it could be a bit less expensive…One other thing in some living world events , you should act like you do to dungeons . I know tht what i am asking for is a larger group in more difficult linving world events like the drakes tht today are easy to kill….but above all this thank you for this awesome game you guys ahve been doing a great job…sry for my English

Ascended gear shoud be kept the top tier, now regarding horizontal progression:

- make an alternate skill tree, you earn alternate skill points through quests, pvp, dungeons, dailies, etc. and put those points in that tree – divided between DPS, Tanking & General stats – more variety in builds, more reasons to experiment (you would have an alternate skill point limit of course)

- Specialized weapon tree where you can choose a weapon and specialize in it – either gaining 1 or 2 extra skills or more power with it – part of the Advanced tree system

- houses – what you do daily could reward you with quest house items, pvp/dungeon house rewards – houses would have at least 3 tiers & sizes

- with player houses come guild Halls – bonuses to players as house progresses, items that give special bonuses, etc – new rare items for house as well

- crafting options for house items – market would be more dinamic

- Solo dungeon versions – that reward players at a slower pace, but reward them still.

Group dungeons would provide better items than Solo ones (could exist in Solo but more rare), reward faster XP / Money than Solo and reward guild unique items both in looks & usefulness

- Pet rewards that you can feed & develop with special rewarded items – then you can compete with them in tournaments – yes a mounted tournament could exist, if you had a mounted Pet and develop it

Just a thought but how about just improving/ making vertical progression more accessible through multiple playstyles as opposed to RNG and crafting(the gold to just reach the max level is a unintended gate in itself).
There are plenty of currencies around and plenty of things to buy with them alot less of them are actually usefull for a level 80 character who wants to max out his/her gear.
Would it be a good idea to give the currencies such as dungeon tokens/karma more purpose/new life by allowing us to buy gear(including ascended) with them. It would open up more possiblities to acquire the gear you want and also removes alot of frustrating RNG from the game.
Even if the karma/token/<insert currency cost> would be ridiculously high people could work towards (ascended) gear doing what they enjoy instead of being forced to craft or relying on pure luck.

An Underworld like elite instanced area where you can take up to 12 or so players. That way guilds have a bit more to do together. Don’t get me wrong guild missions are fun too and we should definitely have more of those in the open world, but I know there are many looking for large group content that is harder and instanced.

Thats an example list I made some time ago, how I’d like to see the current classes getting splitted up in Sub Classes, to let them specialize and by this way progress in their character development through learning new skills, talents, traits, receiving new options for equipable weapons ect. A suggestion, that is deeply bonded together with all the other points I listed above

Warriors > Berserker —- Legionnaire —- Duellist
Guardians > Crusader —- Augmentor —- Patron
Necromancer > Occultist —- Visionary —- Witcher
Rangers > Hunter —- Strider —- Mystic
Thiefs > Rogue —- Infiltrator —- Saboteur
Engineers > Alchemist —- Artificer —- Pioneer
Mesmers > Chronomancer —- Fencer —- Bard
Elementalists > Runologist —- Sorcerer —- Arcanist
—-NEW CLASS – 3rd Soldier—-
Lancers > Dragoon —- Templar —- Partizan >

That way players can:

• progress with their characters
• individualize themself better and make them more unique
• unlock alot of new skills, traits, weapons ect. just through progressing with their class specific Talents that define, into which direction you specialize your character
• gives players a reason to buy more character slots, thus Anet makes more profit.

I know very well, that alone this would mean alot of work, but I guarantee you, that making something like this would massively improve the game and its character development.
it would also allow Anet to give GW2 somethign very similar to GW1’s Dual Class System (if we could change our Sub Class like a Secondary Class out), without having the same problems of the Secondary Class System from GW1 due to its issues with cross class mixed skills. A Sub CLass System based on the 8 to 9 Basic Classes is alot easier to balance and far more overviewable, than a system that basically exponentially lets mix every class with every class und results cause of that always in a crapload of unwanted unbalanced things due to the changes being made with skills ect reacting then always like domino stones causing a huge chain reaction of unbalanced consequences among alot of them being unpredictable for the Devs cause of the chaotic nature of a dual class system that allows for cross class mixing of skills that exponentially multiplicates the balancing problems with every single tiny change you doon any class…

So here we have more character progression, within a limited frame based on the 8-9 Basic Classes that the game already provides, which need only to allow us to specialize our characters to improve the overall feeling of character progression in this game alot.

@ xarallei: I think, ANet absolutely doesn’t care about this, they know very well, what they do and with what Mike O’Brien said about this topic, chances are big, that a Cap Increase will come sooner or later, simply because of the fact, that THIS TIME, the game has been developed around the fact, that a Level Cap Increase should be at any given time possible and easy implementable, whereas GW1 was a game, that wasn’t at any given time developed around the thought, that they might ever increase the Level Cap. People should stop finally to live in their dream bubbles and think, that GW2 is just a better looking copy of GW1.

Another problem with vertical progression (sorry if anyone has already mentioned this), is that it’s a barrier for new players. I’ve only been playing Guild Wars 2 for 3 months (it is now my favourite game), and I simply don’t have the kind of resources that players who have been playing since the beginning have. I don’t have the stockpiles of mats, and I don’t have any gold. On its own, getting my crafting levels up to 500 seems like a Herculean task, never mind actually crafting the items I need. I just don’t have the money to buy the mats to craft my way up to 500, and I don’t have the mats to do it either. Moreover, one of my main character’s crafting skills is cooking, so in order to get fully geared in ascended, I would have to pick another crafting profession and level that up from scratch. As it stands right now, working towards ascended gear for even one character seems hopeless. If it wasn’t for a friend giving me a stack of globs of ectoplasm, I might not even be able to make exotic gear yet.

In short, my point is that vertical progression is something that could really be a deterrent for new players. If potential newbies know that they will have to play for a year just to be on an even playing field with other players, they might now want to buy the game.

Horizontal progression, on the other hand, I’m all for. This game has so many possibilities, that even after playing it for 3 solid months, I feel like I’ve just begun. Trying out different builds, having an active community that discusses builds and gives advice, etc. are all amazing. There are so many possibilities there that it would keep me playing this game for years to come. Tired of playing a condi mesmer? No problem! For a mere 3-4s I can change my spec to a phantasm dps build. This is a great way to keep the game interesting…until the potential of horizontal progression runs up against the drawbacks of vertical progression. Now the ability to change from one to the other, if it involves different gear, becomes a three month time investment, rather than something I can try out on a whim.

P.S. someone posted earlier about title progressions. I love titles, and I think title progression would be amazing!

Edit: I just want to add that I really appreciate the CDI, so thanks for taking the time out of your probably insanely busy schedules to listen to what we have to say.

Happy Wintersday!

I was concerned about ascended gear when you first introduced the rings. I think you implemented it well. I don’t feel the need to get every slot ascended. The options for juwellery are great now. Some other options for armor and weapons would be welcome.

For the future i would like to point out the progression used with the fractal, karka and 2012 halloween backpieces. These things are awesome and we need more of it.
The Halloween books were enjoyable content. It felt rewarding even when the stats on the items weren’t that good, only masterwork. I really wished for it to continue this year because the content was fun and the book was special because of it. It’s still the skin I use on my main character.
The karka backpiece was only an stats upgrade and perhaps too fast/cheap to obtain. It a good idea I’d like to see more too. You used it on this one celestial amulett too, there it was very cheap but in that case it’s fine because the triforge pendant itself is crazy. If you could make the upgrade harder to achieve it would be a nice, different way to upgrade special exotics to ascended items. Dungeon armor/weapon possibly.
After these two I have to talk about the possibly best thing you have in the game right now when it comes to progression. It combines both of the above progressions, the fractal capacitor. I don’t play the fractals often, it’s just not my thing. But the backpiece is the main reason for me to at least once in a while go into the fractals and a longterm goal of mine is to get the fully upgraded version, which I don’t even need because I’m not doing fractals that often!

Other good progression systems you have in place right now are the pvp achievements. Unlike the wvw achievements you get them once in a while and they make me try different classes.
Also the wxp-system seems to be fine as well. I’m now waiting to see if you add new tiers to the siegetraits and perhaps balance some of the abilities so you have to really get deep into a siegetrait to max the siege effect. Right now some traits are very early and powerful.

What’s missing right now seems to be some kind of openworld or general pve progression. Something like the sunspear or kurzick title in GW1. Let’s use karma or do things for influence with the koda, grawl, dredge or refugees so they recognise me as a friend of specifically them.

Wow, now I know why everyone has written that much…

My biggest complaint is that almost all the horizontal progression in terms of armor skins comes from the gem store.

T3 cultural? Buy transmutation stones for it
Amazing new armor skins? Gem store only
Sweet backpack? gem store!
Ascended armor? You’re probably going to transmute it anyways

There’s very little actual player investment into almost all of the new armor skins. If you like the skin you form over the dough to either buy the transmutation crystals or the armor itself. And none of the armor is unique, outside of the racial cultural armor, so there’s very little reason to buy it for its exclusivity.

So what am I getting at?

1) there isn’t enough in game investment into armor skins. In gw1 I had to find a crafter, assemble my materials, and then spend a very large amount of gold for my prestigious set. Now all I have to do for the latest skin is simply buy it on the gem store for $10.

2) skins aren’t unique. The armor skins in gw1 didn’t give me any advantage but the skins screamed kitten, and they were very unique in that they were profession bound. You recognized that that player was a warrior or that player was a guardian. It didn’t take you a second to look at the HUD to tell you that – you knew right away what they were.

3) there’s not enough of them in the game. Outside of t3 cultural armors there really isn’t anything prestigious to work on.

So those are my two problems with skin progression in this game. I would fix this by making steps towards high end – skin only – exclusive, hard to make, armors. It doesn’t have to be overly flashy like all of the flame effects, but it needs to be special. Tie it to crafting, dailies, an exorbitant amount of gold (119g), whatever, but make it feel like I went above and beyond for that skin.

I’ll give you an example: I had human t3 cultural a few weeks into the game – I was one of the first people to make it and it looks amazing. It was incredibly hard to make early, and lots of people commented on how kitten it was a it felt amazing to own that armor.

ColinJohanson.2394:

A question to help direct the discussion a bit:

What are some of your favorite progression systems of all time in others? Be they horizontal, or vertical, just which ones really got you excited and were fun for you to continue to progress in?

For me, Final Fantasy Tactics is one I loved, where I was able to continue to unlock new jobs and advanced professions for my characters, as well as level up their abilities within those professions. It remains one of my all time favorite games, and one of my favorite systems of progression in any game. I’m also pretty darn fond of that Guild Wars game and skill collection.

Im really in love with progression systems that abandon classes altogether where the way you play dictates what you’ll become instead of the profession you pick determining how you play.

Skyrim and Dark souls come to mind although those are both single player rpgs.

And ofcourse guildwars 1 progression system were you didnt progress through armor but the skill youve hunted down. That combined with the ease of switching builds really gave me hours of fun just theorizing about possible builds.

Also i loved the whole title+skill progression that was introduced in Eotn.

What are your thoughts on implenting ‘advanced professions’ through traits maybe.
Taking the ranger as example (because im not that familiar with other professions traitlines).
What if through traits you could make your ranger resemble a druid more by introducing more traits for sprits in lines besides nature magic.
1 or 2 spirit traits in markmanship which improves offensive or allow spirits to periodically attack as random example.
A trait in skirmishing which offers a critical bonus for each active spririts.

etc

>same for signets , shouts , other skill types/professions.

So in short deeper specialization for all professions through traits (by having more then just 3 traits in just 1 traitline in the case of spirits)

For the love of all that is unholy. Do not make any specializations, subclasses or add more classes.
If you really want to have more options, just add more horizontal options:
1. More utility skills.
2. Swappable weapon skills.
3. Non-locked utility skills (i don’t want elite and heal, I want 5 utility skills).
4. More weapons.
5. Alternate Advancement system (horizontal traits).
6. Separate stats from traits.

I really do not want to have more classes that I need to level, or specialize my class in some way. What I want is it have more options in customization. Customization that is easly accessible (which means I can change stuff as I wish without any gates, and I get that stuff asap).
We have far to much artificial gating as it stands now. We really do not need any more of them.

Eh, I would love to have a ritualist or dervish in the game. Though I do think that’s something that should come later on. Right now they need to focus on the current classes and adding more skills to each class. Perhaps add the ability to “morph” or specialize certain skills/abilities.

Yeah, I never got the “exotics were obtained too easily” thing. Max gear was easily obtainable in Guild Wars, but that never stopped me from continuing to play. Hell, how many hours did I put in to get two suits of obby armor, and that had no statistical advantage?

I know ascended gear isn’t “needed” for most content, but for the content it is needed for it really feels like it falls into the “preparing to have fun” catagory Colin talked about so long ago. I’m sick of preparing.

Progression – difficult topic.

Storyline – The world has progression in the living world but characters do not. The living world also ignores personal story progression. I can see that this lets all players join into all living content without restriction but it does make the story seem entirely impersonal and lacking in character development. The lack of choice in the living world story reinforces this.

Gear – I am against gear grind. I am against level grind with another inevitable gear grind. I was happy with the plateau at exotic level 80. I do not want to see vertical development. There are many reasons against this and they are all well know: works against respec and build variation, works against alts, encourages pointless time sinks, encourages repeating content for virtual reward without fun, PvE grind for WvW advantage, etc. I thought the infusion grind was entirely unnecessary and is a chore. It is a time sink chore. It is not fun. It is not what I want to log on for.

Guild progression – I’d like to see more perks and features come through guild progression. Nothing with a combat advantage, but some things that are nice to have.

Gating content – I think you should keep the open access principle for all content so please don’t introduce progression with keys and gating for any content. I liked the fractal principle where all characters have access to enjoy the content but experienced characters can get better rewards for higher challenge. I’d like this principle to be applied more widely.

Personally I think the fractal level reset was fair and I would be happy if the fractal levels were more compressed (so that new players are not left with an insurmountable mountain to climb.). A title could have been given to the old level 49 achievers though.

Isaiah Cartwright.8569:

Grind
Alts

I group these together because I think they have some relation. Grind well I think grind is a kittene to fully describe because it really comes down to each person own personal feeling of I can only do x action so many times before its fun faction goes down and thus starts to feel grinding. For some this can be do something twice others 100 times, our goal with how to keep grind out of the game is the relation between time based and skill based gating. I think this is an area we are always trying to get a better sense on as we start to make things harder to add more challenge to the game sometimes we cross the time gate and skill gate too much and things feel more grindy then we intend. As for alts why I lump these up is I think often leveling up alts can feel grindy, our goals here are really about how we make things feel a little less grinding for some actions and we’ve been making a lot of steps with that combing WvW xp, adding tradable level up books, birthday gifts that level you up ect..I think we are not done with the initiative to progressing alts being a bit more smooth and it’s something we will keep working on as we move forward.

The problem with alts is not XP, It’s ascended and you know it! I have 8 lvl 80 chars and i liked leveling em up all the same. Varied gameplay is GOLD for long term games, and you’re killing variety (with fire). It’s stupid. You make a very alt-friendly game and then slap an insane vertical grind on it. Ascended just forces you to pick a main, give up all the varied gameplay for ONE char, ONE build (which might be nerfed/get stale at some point).

ACCOUNT-BASED PROGRESSION

All progression, no matter vertical or horizontal, shouldn’t be character based at this point, but account-based. The focus shouldn’t be character progression, but ACCOUNT progression. My guess is that your metrics say most people have at least one alt in GW2, because they WERE actually fun to make and gear up in this game. By having account-based progression be the norm, people can still have fun with varied gameplay and be engaged by progression, not kitten ed off by it.

It’s even going to encourage people to buy more char slots.

Subclasses and weapon skills.

I think we might be able to kill two birds with one stone here. So, weapons determine a profession’s playstyle. So hammer warrior and greatsword warrior could be thought of as subclasses of warrior. If you want to add variety to weapons there’s a few ways to do it. One would be to add skills so we can adjust our weapon build. Another would be to build sets of skills for each weapon and let players pick which build they want. This second option would be easier for balancing, because you have set builds, rather than trying to figure out all the things players will do. Along that line, you could also add new weapons, giving more options and playstyles to players and keeping it fairly easy to balance. Just be careful of powercreep, however slight. (Though I think weapons are an easier way to keep powercreep in check than say new professions.)

Stooperdale.3560:

Progression – difficult topic.

Gear – I am against gear grind.

Gating content – I think you should keep the open access principle for all content so please don’t introduce progression with keys and gating for any content. I liked the fractal principle where all characters have access to enjoy the content but experienced characters can get better rewards for higher challenge. I’d like this principle to be applied more widely.

Personally I think the fractal level reset was fair and I would be happy if the fractal levels were more compressed (so that new players are not left with an insurmountable mountain to climb.). A title could have been given to the old level 49 achievers though.

Hey just some imputs for you! If you are truly against geargrind you don’t want to see the fractal gaiting concept to be used in other serctions. Fractals are gated only by geargrind! You can advance only if you grind gear this wasn’t the case at start of the fractals but is the case now. You Need the right AR to get past certain Levels so it’s geargrind only.

From your last sentence I take that you barly played fractals. I agree we should have gotten compensation for our work. But I Need to say I completly disagree and don’t get your Definition of Fairness if you say : It is FAIR that many hours of work gets deleted. Maybe you can explain me. as well as why you think a geargated Progress like Fractals is a smart solution if you don’t like geargrind.

Ascended gear should allow you the ability to change stats on it. With how obnoxious it is to get this gear it’s very anti-build experimentation. I don’t want to be stuck with one build. I want to try things out. Or maybe a build I was using was nerfed horribly and I want to change it. Whatever the reason, I should be able to experiment with builds and I shouldn’t have to grind several sets of Ascended for this. I shouldn’t be pigeonholed into one build.

A suggestion I might make about Ascended gear, and maybe I’m way off, is to reduce the crafting requirement and link unlocking it to Fractals since this is what Ascended level gear is designed for.

This would solve the problem with people feeling like they have to craft Ascended to compete in WvW, and it would allow people to focus on having fun instead of feeling like they have to farm gold (grind) in order to craft Ascended gear.

Harbard.5738:

Isaiah Cartwright.8569:

Grind
Alts

I group these together because I think they have some relation. Grind well I think grind is a kittene to fully describe because it really comes down to each person own personal feeling of I can only do x action so many times before its fun faction goes down and thus starts to feel grinding. For some this can be do something twice others 100 times, our goal with how to keep grind out of the game is the relation between time based and skill based gating. I think this is an area we are always trying to get a better sense on as we start to make things harder to add more challenge to the game sometimes we cross the time gate and skill gate too much and things feel more grindy then we intend. As for alts why I lump these up is I think often leveling up alts can feel grindy, our goals here are really about how we make things feel a little less grinding for some actions and we’ve been making a lot of steps with that combing WvW xp, adding tradable level up books, birthday gifts that level you up ect..I think we are not done with the initiative to progressing alts being a bit more smooth and it’s something we will keep working on as we move forward.

The problem with alts is not XP, and you know it!

Ascended just forces you to pick a main, give up all the varied gameplay for ONE char, ONE build (which might be nerfed/get stale at some point).

I basically agree. Now, I don’t like the idea of too much being account based and levelling an alt is in my opinion a pain in the behind, but you’re right that ascended gear is a problem for altaholics and the stat system does pigeon-hole us into a small subset of builds. That’s why I don’t like stats on gear.

Finnway.2183:

A suggestion I might make about Ascended gear, and maybe I’m way off, is to reduce the crafting requirement and link unlocking it to Fractals since this is what Ascended level gear is designed for.

This would solve the problem with people feeling like they have to craft Ascended to compete in WvW, and it would allow people to focus on having fun instead of feeling like they have to farm gold (grind) in order to craft Ascended gear.

Honestly, at this point I almost want WvW to go with the sPvP gear system. Just drop all those stats and simplify it and standardize it. Of course I also don’t like consumables in there so I want that dropped as well, but I don’t see either happening.

Finnway.2183:

A suggestion I might make about Ascended gear, and maybe I’m way off, is to reduce the crafting requirement and link unlocking it to Fractals since this is what Ascended level gear is designed for.

This would solve the problem with people feeling like they have to craft Ascended to compete in WvW, and it would allow people to focus on having fun instead of feeling like they have to farm gold (grind) in order to craft Ascended gear.

If Ascended gear was intended for Fractals play, then it should have had the same stats as Exo gear, but with the addition of infusion slots for increasing Agony Resistance… and dramatically reduced acquisition costs.

Since Ascended gear has roughly 5% higher stats than Exotics, it has value in all play environments. Linking accessibility to Fractals would have been a good idea if they did not increase stats, but it is not a good solution given the current state of Ascended gear stats.

adagiophoto.4512:

I basically agree. Now, I don’t like the idea of too much being account based and levelling an alt is in my opinion a pain in the behind, but you’re right that ascended gear is a problem for altaholics and the stat system does pigeon-hole us into a small subset of builds. That’s why I don’t like stats on gear.

I think something people misunderstand about Ascended gear is that the stat increase is only 6% over Exotic gear and it is designed for Fractals, since enemies in Fractals grow in power as the Fractals scale.

jsduke.6537:

If Ascended gear was intended for Fractals play, then it should have had the same stats as Exo gear, but with the addition of infusion slots for increasing Agony Resistance… and dramatically reduced acquisition costs.

Since Ascended gear has roughly 5% higher stats than Exotics, it has value in all play environments. Linking accessibility to Fractals would have been a good idea if they did not increase stats, but it is not a good solution given the current state of Ascended gear stats.

But the game is also designed to completed in Rare level gear (still), and as I said in my previous post enemies scale in power as you progress in Fractals so you need the power boost too.

adagiophoto.4512:

Honestly, at this point I almost want WvW to go with the sPvP gear system. Just drop all those stats and simplify it and standardize it. Of course I also don’t like consumables in there so I want that dropped as well, but I don’t see either happening.

It’s an interesting idea because it might make the transition from WvW to sPvP easier. It would also make WvW easier on people with a lot of alts.

A bunch of others have mentioned this, but I think it deserves repeating:

Horizontal Progression through new traits and skills, especially ones you have to EARN, could go a long way toward giving us something to do without undoing all the progress we’ve made so far.

If you were to create new instances with hard bosses and you unlocked the elite skill from that boss (sort of like GW1 skillcapping), that’d be great! Something that is challenging but doesn’t take a huge amount of time.

Part 1/2

4. Skill Gating, not Gear Gating. FotM has the right idea – same dungeon with multiple levels of increasing difficulty and challenge, however not the right implementation. Agony is a form a gear gating, but what we really want is skill gating. For example, the Uncategorized harpies start off simple and gain knockback at level 10. That is proto-brilliant dungeon design, and would have been straight brilliant had all of FotM had been implemented like that – no increasing Agony levels, but instead increasingly difficult dungeon mechanics. That’s more work for the dev team than adding mere Agony damage, but the result is a much more interesting experience based on skill gating rather than gear gating.

I completely agree with you that the gating of content should be based on the player’s skill, not his gear.

As I said on a previous post page 3, the gear-gating on fractals was before way lower than it is now. That is because a skilled player could avoid almost every agony, even without AR. I have friends who reached the level 80 back then with only 25 AR. With the new fractals, they couldn’t even do the level 40, as the agony has become completely unavoidable. This change is going in the wrong direction, away from skill-gating and toward a full gear-gating.

The progression of AR is also completely ridiculous. The new infusions that were released can be upgraded from +1 to a maximum of +30 (datamined). What was the point of choosing such a number ? Has anyone in Anet even looked at how much time and money it would take with their system to craft such a level of AR ? If a player did 16 fractal runs per day, 7days a week, it would take him about 18 373 years to farm the required +1 infusions, for only one +30 infusion. That’s not counting the 8 millions gold to buy the reagent from the npcs… For a +20 AR infusion, it would take 18 years to farm enough +1 infusions to make 1. For a +15, it would take almost 7 months of farm (and 245 gold) to make 1 (and we need 3 of them). And we’re talking about someone who lives only for fractals for all those months/years…

So what was the point of that much gear-gating ? All it did was bringing a “pay-to-win” component. Who managed to beat the new fractal level 50, to get first on leaderboard ? The ones who paid an outragous amount of money to buy their AR, and now it’s the same with the people who paid to buy their ascended armor. Which bring me to :

Part 2/2

Ascended Gear
…turns out global trading post has a lot more effect on this then we had original thought which made us need a non-tradable gear step

What is the point of putting a non-tradable, time-gated gear in the game, if the components used to craft that gear are tradable ? The day of the release of ascended, some people already had a full set, cause they bought the required component to craft it. We’re looking at around a thousand gold here, so it’s a solution only the rich players can use.

If you want progression to be meaningful for the players, you can’t let people buy their way around it. However, you also need to let everyone progress toward it. At the moment, crafting ascended gear is a chore for me. Not because of the time needed, but the components needed. I play mostly fractals, a bit of dungeons. If I want the required dragonite, I have to play a content I don’t especially like, and I have to do it, as this gear is absolutely necessary for me to continue progressing in fractals (and we’re back to the gear-gating…). So you need the required components to craft this gear to be available, regardless of the type of content we play. That is at the moment not the case. For example, you could put dragonite ore to be bought with dungeon tokens. The amount per token would have to be balanced, of course. I’m not saying that every part of the game should reward the same amount of ressources. For example, dungeons gives quite a bit of empyreal fragments. So it’s ok if it gives a bit less dragonite. But you should still be able to get dragonite from it. If not, you’re forcing players to go to an area of the game they don’t especially like.

As Chris asked also about this, rewards are a key component of progression.
Rewards should be awarded depending on the difficulty of the content. It is not the case at the moment. You can get more loot and more money for farming easy dungeons than you get for a high level fractal (in the time needed for one fractal run (which gives 1.4 gold), you can do 3 easy dungeon runs and get much more chests / gold. Let’s not even talk about killing champions or doing temple runs on the open world, with a non-existent difficulty (as there are zergs farming those champions/events)…

IceVyper described it pretty nicely here about dungeons.

Finnway.2183:

adagiophoto.4512:

I basically agree. Now, I don’t like the idea of too much being account based and levelling an alt is in my opinion a pain in the behind, but you’re right that ascended gear is a problem for altaholics and the stat system does pigeon-hole us into a small subset of builds. That’s why I don’t like stats on gear.

I think something people misunderstand about Ascended gear is that the stat increase is only 6% over Exotic gear and it is designed for Fractals, since enemies in Fractals grow in power as the Fractals scale.

Yes, the power difference between exotic and ascended is small and for most PvE it’s completely unnecessary. I don’t do much fractals, so ascended doesn’t affect me there, but I do like WvW and it is an issue there. Honestly, that’s my biggest issue with ascended gear.

Finnway.2183:

jsduke.6537:

If Ascended gear was intended for Fractals play, then it should have had the same stats as Exo gear, but with the addition of infusion slots for increasing Agony Resistance… and dramatically reduced acquisition costs.

Since Ascended gear has roughly 5% higher stats than Exotics, it has value in all play environments. Linking accessibility to Fractals would have been a good idea if they did not increase stats, but it is not a good solution given the current state of Ascended gear stats.

But the game is also designed to completed in Rare level gear (still), and as I said in my previous post enemies scale in power as you progress in Fractals so you need the power boost too.

I see your point, and I suppose the Ascended gear stats address that issue.

My comments were in response to a post that suggested Ascended acquisition should be keyed through Fractals. I’m just saying I don’t think that’s a good solution because Ascended gear is desirable in multiple game environments.

@ Colin Johansson:

To answer your specific Question, I’ve to split it up into 2 parts: – Part 1
( I like those Developer Questions, they lead so easily the Discussion into specific directions )

First off I’ve to say..I’m 28 years old and 23 Years of them are Game Experience of various kinds of RPG’s be it offline game or online games, I started gaming with 5 year, when I got the NES, my first RPG was 1 year later with 6 with the SNES Mystic Quest Legend, the former renamed version for the european market of a Final Fantasy Spinoff Game.
Over the past 23 years of gaming experience, I’ve played alot of RPGs and collected many inspirations from them all.

Progression Systems that got me peronally very exited and where I got my inspirations from for example for the Sub Class System, or for splitting up the Trait System into Traits, Abilities and especially Talents are following games:

• Ragnarok Online (for its easy understandable and still complex enough to be entertaining Sub Class System that offers alot of Character Progression.
  Howeve,r in Ragnarok Online, the Character Progression with Sub Classes was based on a bi-way raising progression, where once having chosen a path for progression, there was no way back basically anymore.

I just asked myself, what would come out, if Guild Wars 1 would have been merged with Ragnarok Online. The Answer is my Suggestion for a Sub Class System, where each Class simply has 3 different options to progress and specialize in, with the opportunity to exchange those Sub Classes like in GW1 were Secondary Classes exchangeable. That way we receive a similar system, like in GW1, but with the advantages of the Ragnarok System and still being easily balanceable and overviewable, like now in GW2, where no cross class mixes could lead to chaotic chain reactions with totally unpredictable unbalanced effects.

• The Star Ocean/Tales of-Game Series (games made by the same developers at earlier times, until the development team splitted up after Star Ocean 2, when I remember myself right.

These Games always provide a kind of “Talent” System, where players could progress in various combat relavant and combat unrelevant talents to become better in various tasks – take for example now gathering materials …
If you would increase in GW2 your Talents for Mining, this could result for example in an increased chance for rarer materials or an increased chance, that you can mine ores more oftenly, until the mining ore runs out of materials for you..
Thats the simple concept of a Talent being improved, resulting in simple character progression for something combat unrelevant like gathering materials.
Combat relevant Talents for example for a Thief would be everything, thats based on their class specific mechanics:

- Stealing
- Stealth
- Shadow Steps
- Dodging
- Quick Movements
- Critical Hitting
- Venom Mastery

and so on, you know the stuff… specific things in which thiefs are superior in due to having natural born talents in these things that make out of their proffession simply their vocation, Talents that can be then again used for unlocking specific Sub Classes to underline these vocations with unlocked new skills/traits/ability, new and old added weapons and so on as also maybe sub class specific armor sets ect. to make them visually also more individual and unique over the Basic Class and other Sub Classes from the Basic Class.
So much potential in all of this.

What would be the point of raising level cap? It would only create more grinding to get to the max level just to experience content for said level.

Guild Wars 1 never raised the level cap past 20 and IMO GW1 is a great game.

Vertical progression and power creep is a slippery slope. It’s cheap and quick to produce but it’s the lowest quality content you could possibly ever make. Players will get tired of it; look at World of Warcraft. They’re dying and reinventing themselves next expansion.

Crafting.

Seriously? No challenging content to earn great rewards? Just crafting? Obviously your target market is a very casual player who plays all their games on the “very easy” setting.

You want people to leave WoW for this? I honestly don’t know what to tell you.

Part 2:

The 3rd game(s) which has influenced me and my inspirations the most in my gaming life, were games like the Legend of Zelda/Alundra Series and the Wild Arms Series.
The first one, because it showed Character Progression just with only improving the Gear and Tools, having various Tools at your disposal, without needign to Level the Character, which allow you to interact with the game world.
The Zelda/Alundra games influenced me also very alot on about what I expect from a very good dungeon, but thats an other topic…

The Wild Arms games on the other hand, the more typical classical RPG with Leveling System basically took up the Zelda Concept and provided in each game for every character a various amount of different character (class) based tools with that you were able to interact in the game world, just like in Zelda, where all your items were interactively useable in the game and needed to progress in the game further also too.

Thats also something where I think that the classes of GW2 could get improved, by giving every class class specific tools with that they can interact in game world, like for example giving a Thief a Grappling Hook, a Stealth Manteau and Throwing Stars, which could for example be tools, that could be upgradable, just like basically the items in the SAB, where the Items all work exactly like Zelda Tools and are upgradable.

That are for me personally the 3 things, that exited me in my gaming life the most so far. However I still think Level Systems are better for GW2 including Cap Increases.
In regard with Leveling Systems its just like the speech:

Never touch a running system

And i think it simply fits good to GW2, also thinking about how easy it is in this game to level up with a character.
When I think about Ragnarok Online, this game was in regard of Leveling a Character something totally different, than GW2 and absolutely not comparable with GW2 – like Black and White. So I absolutely see no problems in a Level Cap increase, as long Leveling a Character stays as simple, as like now and doesn’t become significantly instantly alot harder, than before exponentially.
But I doubt very hard, that this would happen at all.

jsduke.6537:

I see your point, and I suppose the Ascended gear stats address that issue.

My comments were in response to a post that suggested Ascended acquisition should be keyed through Fractals. I’m just saying I don’t think that’s a good solution because Ascended gear is desirable in multiple game environments.

hehe, I was the one who wrote that post, hence my reply.
ArenaNet included Ascended gear for players who are motivated by statistical progression. Exotic gear was originally supposed to accomplish this, but it was too easy to obtain so they added Ascended. Fractals of The Mist are also catered to these players because you have to increase your agony resistance in order to progress.
The only thing I’m baffled by is that players who normally like running dungeons (such as the guild DnT) dislike Fractals, and that seems like a major failure on ArenaNet’s end.

Finnway.2183:

Fractals of The Mist are also catered to these players because you have to increase your agony resistance in order to progress.
The only thing I’m baffled by is that players who normally like running dungeons (such as the guild DnT) dislike Fractals, and that seems like a major failure on ArenaNet’s end.

I’m kind of a solo-player, so I tend to avoid forced-grouping content like dungeons. But Fractals take it even further than that.

I remember being a new player and hearing about Fractals. They sounded interesting, and I wanted to try them, but they are pretty inaccessible to new players. People who do Fractals have been doing Fractals forever and never do the low-level content. So who do I group with to begin my Fractals journey as a new Fractals player? It’s not solo-able, and there are no noob-level groups to join. I can’t jump in at lvl 30 because I have no AR. Combine that with my personal avoidance of forced-group content and it’s easy to see why I’m still a Fractals virgin.

Fractals are a very niche kind of content for a very specific kind of player. I’m glad they’re in the game, but it’s really not my thing.

Hello , this is my 1st post on the forum . I’ve been playing GW2 since release and have arround 1800 hours of playtime on my account . I just wanted to mention that i like the game but there’s something in the reward system that just doesnt feel right ( I dont feel rewarded for anything i do at all ) , i cant earn gold without farming , im more of a person that loves exploring , finding a random jumping puzzle and doing it and i allways get happy when i reach the end , but when i open the chest i basicly regret doing it.

2nd: I like dungeons and such but i hate it that im allways forced to build berserker bcus the other builds are just nothing compared to berserkers .

3rd: DYES! I love colors but when i have 4-5 chars (3 of them with abyss dye and 2 with celestial) i just hate it when i cant use my dyes on other alts and that im allways forced to buy em AGAIN…

My wish is for better rewards in jumping puzzles and mini dungeons , i want to be rewarded for doing that atleast with a rare item , considering i spend most of my time in JP’s , even completed ones . It just sucks that i cant earn anything out of doing that , that im forced to go grind dungeons or go farm with “trains” in frostgorge\queensdale .

I feel like there’s no point for me to play the game , bcus i dont get rewarded for doing content i like . BUT STILL there is no game (MMORPG) better then GW2!!!!! (personal opinion)

Sry for the big post , but i wanted to share my opinion.

To Anet : Thanks for the great game and keep up the good work ! I wish you a verry profitable year ^^

The greatest potential

This game has a lot of different ways to build characters. Loads of skills and traits to tweak our builds, and then there are a bunch of sigils, runes and stat combinations to toy with as well.

Now: We aren’t there yet! In PvE monsters will need to be more varied to allow more builds to shine for example. But really interesting combat is within reach!

Like in the original Guild Wars, I could probably spend hours upon hours tweaking and testing new builds. And when I find a new interesting build I can get a fitting armor for it, combine some skins to make my own unique creation!

I really want to play that Guild Wars 2.

But I feel limited by ascended gear. I know that I can never ever have the perfect setup for my crazy build ideas. And the road to this more interesting GW2 is being blocked by it as well.

You cannot design encounters to be a challenge to buildcrafters if players cannot be expected to adapt to a situation.

• I want an environment that is too hostile to bash through without defense.

• I would like a challenge that rewards picking up condition damage.

• I desire a dungeon that encourages the use of an interrupt build.

But how can we have that if players are tied to one gear set, because it takes ages to get? If we finally managed to craft a complete set, are we going to play on our ‘lesser’ characters?

By encouraging us to play a single build on a single character, this game loses a lot of potential in so many ways:

• Less time invested in doing the same thing in different ways. (Other builds/other characters) So we get bored quicker by doing the same thing… the same way.

• We’re not encouraged to get multiple armors. So we buy less gemstore skins and transmutation crystals.

• Less opportunity from a development viewpoint to improve combat by requiring different builds. (We can’t expect players to have both a defensive and an offensive setup.)

• It kills the dream of ever being ‘done’. We’re not working towards something, we’re trying to keep up. (At least that’s what it feels like for me.)

• It reduces the joy of new skills and traits. Or even just balance changes. If our gear doesn’t combine well with the new skills/traits, we’ll just stick to the same old thing.

• It reduces the joy of exotic loot. It is just salvage fodder now… while it was an opportunity to try something new before. (Or a lottery ticket)

• It reduces the joy of awesome loot. If I manage to get that Tequatl rabid ascended drop, I don’t replace my berserker weapon with that. But if ascended gear wasn’t so hard to get, I might just get a new rabid set for a new build!

There are clearly more downsides to ascended gear, as can be read earlier in the thread.

But if I still have your attention:

My proposed solution:

Make ascended gear more accessible over time.

Bring it closer to exotic gear. Make having multiple gear sets on multiple characters a realistic goal for the long term. We could keep the current crafting recipes, but introduce entirely new ways to get specific ascended items. (The things themselves, not the crafing ingredients.)

Be it Scavenger hunts/Dungeon challenges/Living story completion (when we do finally kill Scarlet)/A high level WvW rankup chest/Winning something big in PvP/Or any of the countless other suggestions made in this thread.

By then we will most likely have loads of partial ascended sets that we complete by crafting the remaining parts, or grinding it out through different means. And we will have loads of ascended materials after some time aswell. So making a few pieces of armor or a weapon every now and then through crafting is more of a bonus than the main goal.

As for what game had an awesome progression system: Guild Wars until Eye of the North. The title-skills were a bit on the grindy side, and they were WAY too powerful in comparison to the rest of the skills.

I’ve noticed that several people keep asking if Ascended is the final Tier. As far as I know, the final Tier remains Legendary, with more options (armor) being added in later on. Ascended exists in between Exotic and Legendary.

If this is correct, I humbly request that the Devs add Lore to anything added to the Legendary category so that it has meaning to it, making it even more worthwhile to collect.