Guild Wars 2

Greetings!

I’ll try to keep my post as concise as possible. I’ll use my experience crafting my first ascended weapon as an example.

It took me 4 weeks and in the end all I felt was relief because the grind was over. The weapon itself looks amazing, but what did I really get? Bigger numbers on my screen. As soon as I got it, I threw it around a few times, took a closer look at my character and logged off. My mesmer doesn’t feel different in any way. I honestly got it just for the looks.

More than that, what if there’s a game update that makes my current build unappealing (let’s not say obsolete)? As others have said, being pigeonholed into one build or another is very unattractive considering the sheer amount of effort it would take to rebuild your character.

I would spend hours and hours creating new (and crazy) builds back in GW1 because it was just SO easy and painless to mix and match, even with the occasional nominal fee. Whenever there was a massive skill functionality update, while others would throw tantrums because their builds were ruined, I’d say “Cool! New toys to play with!” and I would go on a field trip to cap skills that I didn’t have.

To bring back some of the GW1 flexibility, I would suggest the following: salvage (yep, that’s right) your ascended item and get a special token; that token along with some nominal fee (laurels, money, etc.) could then be exchanged for a new piece with the stats that you want. It could even be simplified and streamlined with the new functionality that was introduced with the ascended recipes.

Example:

• The stats on your greatsword don’t really work anymore because of recent updates so you need to swap stats.
• You salvage (gasp!) your greatsword and receive an Ascended Greatsword Sigil.
• You take that sigil to Vendorina McAscendedson, conveniently located near the Mystic Forge in LA.
• You get a menu that allows you to choose an ascended gear box in exchange for your sigil and maybe a small fee.
• You open it and get a window “Which stats would you like?”; you select “Zojja’s”
• And now you have a shiny new ascended weapon. Easy as that.

This could obviously be used for armour as well, only with a different token. It could even be possible to get an entire set at once, just to avoid extra clicks. They would probably have to be different since different pieces of equipment need different materials (and different quantities).
This would offer nearly the same flexibility as the legendaries, only not quite as flexible given that it takes more effort to craft a legendary item.

My second idea is to not tie aesthetics to stats. Let’s say that the new tier of gear takes 30 days to craft. What if you would spend 15 days to craft the gear with generic looks and another 15 days to craft the skins? That would be appealing to players who want the stats AND to players who just want their characters to look awesome.

Note that I am taking into account technology that already exists.

I am also under the impression that players would not mind the grind as much if they knew that what they’re getting in the end is something that they will always be able to use. Remember those REALLY out of the way bosses in GW1 that had really awesome elite skills that you wanted? It didn’t matter how long it took; once you capped it, it was yours forever.

Remember: FLEXIBILITY. This would be a good mix between horizontal and vertical progression. You have to grind a bit to get to the next tier of gear, but when you reach that point, all of a sudden your character is much more versatile.

Thoughts?

Isaiah Cartwright.8569:

This is why for GW2 our goals from the start where using Vertical progression for teaching and clarity and then have a common understandable end point at that point switch to a more horizontal progression system which is easy to add too. We’ll still have to overcome some of the downsides with horizontal progression and it’s something we are contiung to work on.

I dunno if this has been replied to cause this thread is too large to follow completely follow even now but isn’t ascended gear completely counter to this? I think most players would have the opinion that it is.

Isaiah Cartwright.8569:

Ascended Gear
So then why did we add ascended gear, well the reason is we wanted sometime between the transition and what we shipped with was very little time 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. We still have some progression to smooth out around the rare -> exotic area as mostly you just jump from leveling greens to exotics and rare is really only used for salvaging into ecto. We have been spacing out adding each slot of ascended gear to make sure we don’t make our original mistake again and I’m sure we’ll need to continue to evaluate the time to gain this gear like we do all things.

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.
Ascended creation time

We had a lot of discussion pre-releasing ascended armor to make sure the time to make ascended doesn’t blow out, We pull a lot of data and are watching how long it takes players and like we do with everything we will keep and eye on it but with anything with progression there are always a lot of tradeoffs when you make changes but we’re always looking at it.

Reason for ascended gear: well thats a better epxlanation than any we’ve received before so thank you for that. I don’t agree with it but it is more understandable. I would say though that IMHO it conflicts with what you appear to want the TP to be as a game within a game and somewhat of a simulated real world economy.

Grind: I think its pretty clear that a large number of players, maybe a majority (certainly everyone I speak to ingame does), regard ascended armor and weapon creation as a grind and a grind for BiS items even if its a shallow curve.

Ascended armor: so how did the requirements for say over 10,000 silk scraps and 30 laurels make it through that discussion? Cause I think most regard those requirements as OTT.

There is also the issue that most players would regard it is against the stated design goals from arenanet prior to launch both in terms of the manifesto and other pre release pieces such as Colin’s blog on fund being the major criteria for content development, ascended item acquisition is very very much NOT fun indeed it could be argued to be almost the antithesis of fun. These have all apparently been thrown out as design goals. Perhaps they were simply marketing, but they weren’t presented as such they were presented essentially as extracts from a vision statement that content would be developed under. No good reason for this departure has ever really been stated.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Controversial: Vertical Progression acquisition can be a pain but what if any elements do you like about Vertical Progression?

Chris

Chris, I thought I would respond to this as I think its important for devs to get a sense of how players view vertical progression.

I enjoy vertical progression when:

- it involves incremental improvements rather than all or nothing improvements. In this sense, its frustrating to be doing working towards a goal over a significant period without realising some benefit from the process in the interim. GW2 inherently does this by allowing you to gain various pieces of ascended equipment over time but the general attitude towards ascended armour is that you either get a full set or you don’t bother. Improving the utility of each item of ascended armour (see below) would open up this feeling of progressive improvement.

- it has a greater end purpose then just a one off improvement to some numbers. Legendary weapons are a perfect example of what the “pinnacle” of ordinary vertical progression should be; they combine the best stats with the best cosmetics (obviously subjective) but also create flexibility by allowing players to switch up stats on the fly. The single best suggestion I have seen in this thread is to let ascended armour change stats like legendaries. This gives people like me, who are otherwise not going to bother with the one off numerical increase, a reason to progress towards getting it.

- if it is useable in the game mode I enjoy playing (ie. its going to have an effect on that game mode), it’s achievable by playing the game the way I enjoy playing it. This does not mean I want a free ride by getting vertical progression just by logging in. It does mean that I play WvW pretty much exclusively and ascended armor will be used in WvW. I should be able to achieve progression towards ascended armour by playing WvW. I shouldn’t have to go and run dungeons or Fractals or some other game mode that I don’t enjoy, just to have a realistic chance at achieving the same vertical progression.

Touching on that last point, I think its important to recognise that some systems of progression are limited in terms of the game modes they effect and, in my view, there is no problem with progression within those system being limited to people who participate in those game modes. For example, the WXP system only impacts on WvW and its fine that you can only progress within that system by participating in WvW. Similarly, if you introduced a World Map progression system where you gain bonuses within a particular world zone by doing things within that zone, its fine if I can’t progress along that system if I never go to that world zone. The flip side is that, as mentioned above, where the progression system is gear which can and will be used in every game mode (excluding sPvP) then I should be able to make meaningful progress by playing any game mode.

Estriella Faerie.4029:

As was said before, and to clarify, putting ascended items as loot (like tequatl, …) is not a solution to make them more accessible. The drop rate is so low that you can’t expect to get your weapon that way (not even counting that you’re not choosing the stats you want, like with fractals chests).

So the only way to get ascended stuff at the moment is with crafting, which needs a ton of materials, not all available everywhere. That’s the accessibility of those materials which you should make easier, as it’s the only sure way to get your weapons. All the other chests possibilities are bonuses if you’re real lucky, not something you can count on.

I just wanted to throw my support in on this post. It’s nice to know that the devs are looking into drop rate issues, but it’s still an important point to bear in mind.

Getting something by drop, in any system without at the least cumulative odds based on successive failures, is not a true method of acquiring it. It’s just being extremely lucky. That’s like telling someone that winning the lottery is a perfectly reasonable way to become a millionaire. I mean, sure it happens, but you have better odds of getting hit by lightning multiple times.

Are there any plans to complete the weapon and armor sets that have already been introduced in pieces? Sets such as:

-Hellfire Armor
-Radiant Armor
-Weapons of the Mists (the set that Whisperblade is part of)

I’d really love to finish those sets off. Also, would it be feasible to allow us to buy Gem Store Armor in pieces, rather than the whole set if we want? It would help to be able to “save up” and buy a piece at a time or only the pieces we liked.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Morrigan.2809:

I came about this post of a several month s ago and what I really liked about it was the fact that it expanded on the current professions but added horizontal progression-without the idea of balancing classes nightmare please consider something like this:

I will just quote:
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

Yep we chat about this a lot (-: It get’s me excited as a player to.

Chris

If your thinking about doing something like that please name one of the thief advanced classes “Assassin” because of memories from GW1!

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Savoy.6824:

Now, jumping right into horizontal progression. Can the ArenaNet designers begin to design a game that incorporates the orders that we joined in our personal story. The designers may already be doing this to some degree, but it is my opinion that it is lightly used.

You may recall that in the first Guild Wars there were two factions. I believe they were called the Luxons and the Kurzacks. In that game it was possible to compete quest for a particular faction. Doing so resulted in rewards such as special armor and weapons. I would like to see the orders work in a similar fashion (or if no one likes the orders, then create some new factions for us to be a part of. I just pick the orders because there already in the game and I like that incorporates the personal story back into the game)

Also, I believe it would be great if completing quest didnt stop at skin and title rewards. If npc’s in the world could react to you based on which order you joined that would be cool as well. Have npc’s sell you cheaper food based on the order your in. For example, the vigil could sell you cheaper food that has power at its base, where the order of whispers could sell you items that deal with vigor or stealth. Discount food has already been done in game. The dragon bash festival introduced food that could be bought with candy (which is basically another currency when you get down to it) The food had buffs similar to that of food that was already in the game it just didnt last as long. Please dont stop at just food, Im just using this as an example.

Maybe put some animosity between some of the orders and provide us with some conflict we can participate in. Thats all Ive come up with for now. Anyone else have any ideas?

Would this kind of ‘Faction’ progression outside of how NPC’s perceive you in the world allow you access to exclusive Faction based rewards? Would this be grindy?

I like the base idea a lot and obviously it is something we could build in and thus am keen to hear the thoughts of everyone in regard to this?

Chris

Working more towards our chosen factions is something that I would love to see more of, even if it had a grind element to it. It’s something that came up in the Living World CDI as well. Gaining titles, new weapons, armour (even ascended), etc. would be a major boon to further character progression. Given that we spend a pretty large part of our personal storyline time (levels 20-50 or so) working on choosing and then supporting a single order only to have that basically tossed to the wayside at level 50 when the trinity is formed feels like a big failure of the game at this point.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

DiogoSilva.7089:

snip

Separate the concept of (ascended) gear crafting from the concept of equipment stat customisation. Make it easy or easier to change stats, or at the very least, to craft new copies of the same gear with different stats.

snip

There are some good ideas here which I would like to see us discussing as a group.

What do you all think about these ideas?

Chris

The cropped quote above would address my biggest issue with ascended gear.

Since I typically only use one set of gear, a way to change stats on existing gear cheaply would be better for me, since I wouldn’t have to worry about storing/destroying my old gear.

One of the reasons I like jumping puzzles is that you reach the meta improving in something that is not a stat nor even an ability in you skill bar.

I feel that the game as a whole should be developed around this type of progression.

Excluding the zergfest (to access to the real content) that the crown pavillion was, the Queen’s Gauntlet was a nice addition (imo).
During that activity I was forced to learn more about my opponents, my own profession and to experiment with my build to overcome those challanges.

Surely owning items with big stats numbers can be helpful, but then that would be just a demonstration of how long I played, not of the quality of the time I spent.

Faowri.4159:

cesmode.4257:

While I agree that theres way too much crafting going on, and forced upon you if you want/need BiS gear… I do not think adding another currency into the game is the way to go. Theres way too much of it as it is. Have the items cost Karma instead, since its one of the universal currencies.

Karma absolutely does not get enough mileage for these basic elements of the game. I still think they should be incorporated directly into getting BiS gear. That way, no matter what I’m doing in the game and however many hours I can play, I’m typically gaining karma and I’m building up a pot of funds I can use for BiS gear. I don’t have to do forced crafting or participate in RNG to get something that should be a standard, based on the original vision of the game.

It might still take me a while if the karma cost was very high, but at least I don’t have to choose between playing the parts of the game that I enjoy while never getting BiS gear, and playing very specific, frankly unenjoyable parts of the game in very specific ways to achieve it. “Play your way” was a big sales line for GW2, too.

I agree10000000x

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Agreed. Let’s spend a little more time discussing and brainstorming the following questions:

Controversial: Vertical Progression acquisition can be a pain but what if any elements do you like about Vertical Progression?

Chris

I like very little about vertical progression, especially when it requires replacing gear. Makes the gear I had previously worked very hard for feel useless.

I would not love, but wouldn’t be against vertical progression from titles like those in WvW if it was really needed.

As for horizontal progression: New skills please! Specifically new WEAPONS, WEAPON SKILLS, and ELITES.

I understand that weapons were made in their current form to make balancing easier, and to reduce the complexity of the game, however the constraints feel too tight.

More than just providing some additional customization, new weapon skills might solve some of the current problems I have found. I will show them with examples from a thief weapon.

D/D
skill 1 physical dmg w/ poison, and backstab very good physical dmg
skill 2 heartseeker good physical dmg
skill 3 death blossom too short of an evade that is difficult to time due to it being in the middle of the animation so it is bad against other players, poor physical dmg, very good for bleed stacking
skill 4 dancing dagger physical dmg, cripples
skill 5 good physical dmg, vuln(increases physical dmg), stealth

Now, I see one skill that doesn’t belong. There are 4 physical damage skills and 1 condition stacking skill. This means that if you go berserker to maximize physical damage, skill 3 is basically useless. On the other hand if you are a condition build, then numbers 1,2, 4 (cause you most likely have dodge caltrops for cripple and stacking more bleed), and 5 are basically useless, while 3 is awesome.

Thus, due to the cost of initiative vs cds on other classes, near useless skills are not used. For this reason, a skill pool or swappable skills for each slot on a weapon would go a long way to alleviate this problem. In addition, many people often complain about thieves only pressing a couple buttons to win. This wouldn’t happen if there were swappable skills.

Hopefully this shows the value behind a pool of weapon specific skills, or slot swappable weapon skills in addition to just the “new shiny” effect.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Savoy.6824:

Now, jumping right into horizontal progression. Can the ArenaNet designers begin to design a game that incorporates the orders that we joined in our personal story. The designers may already be doing this to some degree, but it is my opinion that it is lightly used.

You may recall that in the first Guild Wars there were two factions. I believe they were called the Luxons and the Kurzacks. In that game it was possible to compete quest for a particular faction. Doing so resulted in rewards such as special armor and weapons. I would like to see the orders work in a similar fashion (or if no one likes the orders, then create some new factions for us to be a part of. I just pick the orders because there already in the game and I like that incorporates the personal story back into the game)

Also, I believe it would be great if completing quest didnt stop at skin and title rewards. If npc’s in the world could react to you based on which order you joined that would be cool as well. Have npc’s sell you cheaper food based on the order your in. For example, the vigil could sell you cheaper food that has power at its base, where the order of whispers could sell you items that deal with vigor or stealth. Discount food has already been done in game. The dragon bash festival introduced food that could be bought with candy (which is basically another currency when you get down to it) The food had buffs similar to that of food that was already in the game it just didnt last as long. Please dont stop at just food, Im just using this as an example.

Maybe put some animosity between some of the orders and provide us with some conflict we can participate in. Thats all Ive come up with for now. Anyone else have any ideas?

Would this kind of ‘Faction’ progression outside of how NPC’s perceive you in the world allow you access to exclusive Faction based rewards? Would this be grindy?

I like the base idea a lot and obviously it is something we could build in and thus am keen to hear the thoughts of everyone in regard to this?

Chris

Some time ago I was thinking: who give the daily and monthly quests? Then i come with the idea in which the Orders (before we join an order, the daily and monthly goals could be given in our home city) could give them (could be all of them or only a few). Each order could give quests related to their profile. Could be simple quests like gather x amount of a specific resource (to make it for all lvls, it could be mining, gathering, etc) or kill x amount of some kind of enemy. And could be more complex ones (maybe monthly) which are like the ones we do in the personal story (i liked that thing of pick a strategy to follow).

For example, one quest could ask us to defeat the last boss in Vexa’s lab. The idea is that the order’s quests send us to many places we may or may not know about.

We could win points when complete each order’s quest. This points could let us buy things in special npcs, something like the laurel system.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Controversial: Vertical Progression acquisition can be a pain but what if any elements do you like about Vertical Progression?

I think the main thing I like is the vertical level progression is rather varied. While I feel it could be balanced better, the setup as a whole is nice.

Personally, I don’t mind some account bound progression. I don’t want all progression to be account bound. That way leads to a lack of things to do. Look at achivements, once an achievement has been done, it can never be done again. If in 3 years time, I wanted to redo something, I’d get nothing out of it. On the other hand, not having to grind multiple Mini Candy-Corn Elementals for Blood and Madness was rather good.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Lets keep coming up with some awesome Horizontal Progression systemic ideas and also reward ideas?

Custom Skills or Composite Skills? Something like an Elite-only special skill that accepts customizations that could be found anywhere. It would be limited based on the profession. Eles could only make Glyphs, Conjures, Cantrips, etc. Necros could only make Wells, Minions, Marks, etc.

One thing I noticed that came up is the idea of Subclasses. While nice on their own, it might help to look at games like Final Fantasy 5, Final Fantasy: Tactics (or it’s successor games). In general, those games allow for multiple classes, but with extensive customization using those classes as the source of the customization. In short, those games take it further than subclasses alone.

There is one alternative for subclasses though: Command Styles. It’s from Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep. The main thing of note is that the style being used can change during a fight. The method used is likely too complex for gw2, but maybe something like swapping styles like we already swap weapons? If we can customize the styles like traits, gear, or a mix of the two, we could have quite a bit of variety to work with.

Edit:
One thing that could be done is to tie a style or subclass into the story or content type. A low level human could do the early personal story quest and get a style called “Seraph’s Honor” which improves human racial skills. Charr could have “Legion’s Pride,” Sylvari with “Pale Light,” and so on. Wvw players could get “Gate Buster” or “Guardbane.” Stuff like that.

A system where we could improve the power of our racial skills would be really cool. Kinda like the GW1: EOTN titles. It would also make for a more interesting vertical system than extra stats on your gear.

Personally tired of seeing more time gated vertical progression coming in with very minimal horizontal emphasis.

Would love to see this changed through how we acquire resources within the open world. Remove the artificial caps, whether it be the daily timers for bosses / nodes and remove the annoyance known as diminishing returns as it only punishes and denies people the ability to work on horizontal progression at their own leisure.

Ascended Gears / Weapons need to go back to the concept board and be made able to swap stats as it it not friendly for players of multiple characters. Additionally reduced the absurd material cost and time constraints required to get said items and gear. Another viable alternative would be to change world completion rewards to include ascended gears and retro actively reward those who have done so with them while adding them with more frequency to open world encounters.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Controversial: Vertical Progression acquisition can be a pain but what if any elements do you like about Vertical Progression?

Lets keep coming up with some awesome Horizontal Progression systemic ideas and also reward ideas?

Try to tie these ideas into the core foundation of GW2’s systems and mechanics please.

Chris

The only benefit I can think of for vertical progression would be serving as a guide/reference where you can expect higher level enemies to be more challenge so you are appropriately prepared for the fight. Essentially level equals challenge rating. However this has been completely invalidated in GW2 due to the actual content having no association between level and difficulty. It just bounces all over the place.

I definitely think the skin locker idea would be a huge step for horizontal progression.

I can imagine a system where Transmutation Stones or Crystals are used as tickets to “unlock” a skin for permanent, unlimited use from the Hearts of the Mists locker instead of applying a skin to an stat item. This way, the Gem Store items will still be generating good turnovers, possibly more than before due to reinvigorated interest in acquiring skins.

This is just for the skins side of things, though. There have been good suggestions before for the stat side.

Thighum.7295:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Morrigan.2809:

I came about this post of a several month s ago and what I really liked about it was the fact that it expanded on the current professions but added horizontal progression-without the idea of balancing classes nightmare please consider something like this:

I will just quote:
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

Yep we chat about this a lot (-: It get’s me excited as a player to.

Chris

If your thinking about doing something like that please name one of the thief advanced classes “Assassin” because of memories from GW1!

EQ2 did something similar in the beta phase and ended up scraping it. They started characters as just toons and and you went throught 2 periods of specialization. Think they scrapped it because people found it too confusing, if you were to do this I think you would have to really show people what they are getting into, guide them by the hand and show them the options open to them, possibly let them demo the choices before them.

Elementalist specialization could be runeologist (use runes to enhance skills), arcanist (focusing more on arcane skills) and particle fundamentalist (able to reach a new lvl of magic to enhance skills). The ele shouldn’t be called a sorcerer as we aren’t mages or anything close to it.

The progression with ascended gear is just unpleasant. Some reasons:

-ascended gear = advantage → need ascended gear to keep up
After a failure you don’t just ask what went wrong skill and tactics wise but also how/if it would have gone with max stats.

-getting max stats now requires much time and gold = grind

-prevents from playing alternative characters
because you have to focus one for equipping with ascended gear. And that even takes too much time and gold, it’s just not possible to keep up with other characters or test builds/have several builds (this is a general issue, but with ascended gear it gets worse)

-increases the gap between „green, yellow, exotic“ players/new players and ascended/more experienced players
more experienced/richer player → faster ascended gear = stats advantage (+ experience advantage of course). Why take newbie?

I can’t the the positive things of this „progression“. I perhaps would see positive aspects if it wouldn’t force me to farm and keep up and preventing me from playing several characters.

As far as I am concerned you can add as much vertical progression as you want to PvE…just leave it out of WvW.

Chris,

Background in GW2

Before I dive into the meat and potatoes of my post I wanted to do two things. First, thank you to you and your team for doing this. The amount of back and forth I am seeing is really positive to me as a player Second, I wanted to give you some background on my time with GW2, so you had some perspective on where I am coming from. I consider myself a semi-casual player. I have a 9-5 job, friends, other hobbies and, as I would dearly like to find my soulmate, I go out on dates as well. Despite that, GW2 has gripped me in a way that no game has since Warhammer Online (my first MMO, you may all start booing) did back in college. Therefore, I often find myself playing a couple hours at a time 2-3 times a week and then like all day Sunday.

Maybe this is that “entitlement” that people speak of, but as a fairly regular player for over a year now I figured I would of had enough mats to craft ascended armor when it came out, especially since I haven’t crafted an ascended weapon yet. Now, I don’t do anything that I consider a grind, but I figured that over the past year all the dungeons, WvW, Living Story and just open world roaming I have done, enough mats would have dropped that crafting ascended armor would be viable. However, I am nowhere close. Maybe I am just playing the game wrong? Also, as someone who is looking to purchase GW2 for a friend, how can I tell them that the best armor in the game (even if its just a 5% increase over exotics) is over a year away?

When I first heard of this CDI, I was ready to come in here and blast you guys for making Ascended gear such a grind. But then, I looked at my character. My armor hasn’t changed one bit in the last 6 months. Furthermore, my trinkets were a disaster. Aside from the few ascended pieces I had purchased with laurels, they were yellows, a green and the Karka Shell from Lost Shores. It then hit me that gear doesn’t really matter at all in this game. I still feel compelled to get ascended because its a stat boost and I hate the thought of losing in WvW because the other guy had that 5% boost, but gear shouldn’t be the end all be all. In fact, looking back, I don’t really have anything “physical” (as physical as something can be in a digital world) to show for my time in GW2. All of my achievements have been emotional ones. I didn’t feel achieved when I got full exotics, but I did when I got 100% zone completion, completed the SAB achievements, came together with some guildies and WvW non-stop for a week to finish WvW Season 1 in the nick of time, and seeing the Living Story through from start to finish. These are all goals I set for myself and followed through on.

To be continued…

What Should Progression Be?

So, here is my question to the devs. Is it possible to make aiming for ascended gear not the goal of the game as far as future progression goes? Instead, can it simply be a reward for achieving in the game? A show that you have done something monumental? When ascended gear first came out, I really liked the idea of it. You get ascended gear and then slot it with AR to dive deeper and deeper into fractals. Eventually you go deep enough that you have to infuse your items so they can hold even more AR. The back piece goes from some dull, dead piece of rock to this glowing living thing. That was an incredible system. It was a reward that was in addition to, but not replacing, the skill it took to get to Fractal Levels 50. Now we have Ascended weapons and armors and they are simply just a mat list. Really, its just a test of do you have enough gold or can you stand mindless grinding.

Earlier in this thread you asked what our favorite progression systems from other games were. Instead, I would like to propose what I think would be my ideal system for GW2. While I praised the ascended system when it came to fractals earlier, there are a few flaws in it. In my opinion, the most prevalent one is the ways to acquire ascended are very narrow (craft grind or pray to the RNG gods) and their use (outside of the stat boost) is limited to fractals, a single portion of a very large game. My dream system would keep the existing systems in place while also expanding it to every other portion of the game. I realize you guys are busy, so I tried to keep the perceived work to a minimum. This means finding alternative ways to acquire existing mats instead of brand new recipes from scratch for each area of the game. Also, for now you can reuse the same skin for all areas. but long term it would be cool if eacha rea had its own skin that fit the theme.

In my dream system, you buy the game and level your way up to 80. At 80, you probably have a few yellows, blues and greens. A bit undergeared, but good enough to get started. This is where things get interesting for you. The whole world is at your fingertips, you get to choose how you will leave your legacy. Your journey will take you through exotic armor and ultimately ascended. From there, you can infuse to show additional prestige in your area or move to a new area. I want people to be able to “master” each area of the game or focus on one area and be a supreme kitten of their chosen field. Either way you go, it should be about the same amount of time to get an ascended set, with my suggestions probably being quicker than the current method. However, the ascended set is an reward for completing a grand task.

Anyways, here are my ideas for each area of the game:

Crafting

• Keep this system in place, as we don’t want to take away armor from people who already crafted it. Also, the mat requirement is high enough, IMO, that if you crafted it, you are worthy of it.
• Craft your exotics on the way from 400-500.
• Infuse your armor with additional craftings for more prestige. if the art assets are available, make it like the fractal capacitor. The armor would start looking kinda dead but then comes to life over time with successful infusions.
  *Traveling this path shows you are a master craftsman.

Wealth Acquisition

• Buy your exotics from the AH
• More of an offshoot/ alternative to crafting
• Add in a new T4 cultural armor (if time exists to make the armors and weapons) that’s even more expensive than T3 and is ascended. Should be more expensive than crafting the set, gold wise, but lacks the time gated component.
• Traveling this path is for those who want to show off just how obscenely rich they are.

Fractals

• The exotic Armageddon set drops from the boss fractal chest at lower levels
• As I said earlier, I like the AR and infusion system as it is.
• Add a way to craft ascended gear or ascended gear mats in the Mystic Forge using items dropped inside the fractals (things like the globs of Mist Essence). By the time you are at Frac Lvl 50 and conquered the Mistlock Instabilities, you should be able to craft an ascended set to show off you made it this deep into fractals.
• Be it titles or even more glowy back pieces, armors or weapons, someone should be able to look at you and know that your armor has been infused 2 or 3 times and you are at Fractal level 125 or something.
  *Traveling this path shows great skill..

Dungeons

• Use tokens to get your exotic armor and weapons
• The first time completing an explorable branch awards a unique item. The three items from each branch can be combined with the Gift of X (purchasable for 500 tokens currently) to make a component that can be used to help craft ascended items. Maybe this is an alternative method to craft dragonite ingots and empyreal stars? Either way, getting an ascended set should require beating all of the dungeons and getting the dungeon master title.
• Maybe add a system similar to AR, but for dungeons. Then, once or twice a year come out with a new, super difficult dungeon. To even have a chance at this new dungeon you must have infused all your armor slots in last years dungeon.
• To differentiate itself from Fractals, the new dungeon is long and hard and filled with puzzles. Maybe even some sort of limited healing mechanic with checkpoints to heal/save progress. While it still shows skills, it also shows cleverness and endurance.

Exploration

• Buy your exotics with karma at the Temples.
• 100% world completion offers 8 Gifts of Exploration. These Gifts along with dragonite from the world bosses can be used in creating an ascended set. Maybe hide things like dragonite ingots in rotating chests that are located in some of the hardest to reach areas of the game?
• Many people early in this thread offered ideas for open world achieving, such as zone wide sets/challenges. This can be used to infuse your ascended set.
  Traveling this path shows your dedication to find all the secrets in the world.

WvW

• Buy your exotics with badges.
• Getting the dragonite to craft an ascended set can be difficult depending on the role you play (I personally love roaming. Unfortunately, I get squat for dragonite because of this.) Also, I know you don’t want WvW to become more profitable than PvE, but a little boost in gold gain wouldn’t hurt to help offset the cost of siege, respecs for different roles and armor damage. it would also help in buying mats to level up crafting.
• New token like items have a chance to drop from WvW Rank up chests and a small chance to drop from players and keep/castle lords upon being killed. The type of token would depend on what tier you are in (Invader, Bronze Invader, Silver Invader, ect…). No prefix gets you a token that might buy some dragonite, wood or ore from a quartermaster in town. Bronze would maybe let you buy a bolt of Damask or an Dragonite Ingot. Silver and up could possible buy you a box with an ascended item. Either way, I feel that by the time you are a Bronze Invader, you should be looking at being able to craft an ascended set( or at least a good portion of it).
• To show achievement in WvW, break up the huge 1 million kills type achievemetns into smaller tiers, awarding cool titles along the way. In addition, getting to silver, gold and diamond invader should allow you to get the mats needed to infuse armor for an additional slot for things like +1% guard damage or even +1 supply carried.
• Traveling this path shows how battle hardened you have become.

SPvP

• I admit I play very little SPvP. Also, I hear there are changes coming to glory and how ranks work. So I will leave this one in your capable hands.

Living Story?

• Is sticking with the LS and getting every meta achievement along the way worth an ascended weapon box? Assuming that the whole Scarlett arc lasts about a year, I would say its a maybe.

Final Thoughts

• Keep the trinkets for laurels in the game. I would say that if you are dedicated to your daily for a month, you deserve the trinket. In addition, they help people round out their AR and access content. However, to address alts…
• An item locker would be great for getting skins for your characters! However, maybe a separate tab in the item locker could be an ascended vault. Once you equip an ascended item on a character, it unlocks in the vault. Therefore, if you want to equip your alt or try a different spec you can go to your vault and for a small fee (maybe a dragonite ingot can be crafted into a dragonite key to take out 1 armor piece and a empyreal star can be used to take out a trinket) take out the ascended piece and assign it a stat combo. This way, there’s that achievement of unlocking your full set and all the work that comes along, but you also have some flexibility when it comes to alts.
• My intent here is to give people who play all parts of the game a chance at ascended while also allowing people who focus one one type that opportunity as well. For the focused type of people, there is room to grow and show off in your field of choice. For the unfocused, there’s always something new to explore. Maybe my post isn’t so much about how future progression should play out, but how we can’t leave new players in the dust. Multiple choices on how to catch up are always good.
• As always, I am open to criticism and discussion on my ideas. Really, I just wanted to propose an idea that I felt would help me feel like I was progressing in the game, as opposed to being lost in gigantic mat lists.

Edit: After posting this I only now realized how long it was. If you are actually reading this, thank you for our time.

Chris Whiteside.6102

3373369

Solutions

• Separate the concept of (ascended) gear crafting from the concept of equipment stat customisation. Make it easy or easier to change stats, or at the very least, to craft new copies of the same gear with different stats.

There are some good ideas here which I would like to see us discussing as a group.

What do you all think about these ideas?

Chris

I have kinda a problem with this.
I know that there is or soon will be in gemstore an item that allows stat changing. (datamined)

So I kinda see it like this: We get extreamly money consuming armor and istead of making another copy of it we can do a one time stat change – so you just kinda created yourself a market for new item that was already datamined like 5 months ago.

It looks really bad for me.

I kinda would have a nice solution to back it up:
Make an item (gem shop item of corse) that will one time add another stat combo to an item.
How should it work.
I will craft berserker gear but I will think “wait on WvW I would use soldger” so I buy that new item and add soldger to the item and I will get list of 2 stats I can change on the item. I will then think, Carrion or Rabid could be also nice for come builds, so I will buy that new item 2 times and I will have ascended item that can choose stats from the list of 4. (or make them have choice ot 2 stats and add more to the list with gemstore item?)

That would be something I could place my money on and if it was only doable for ascneded those would be kinda (limited legendar like) and so they would have some meaning in making with the cost of them, because now they are way more like an eyesore.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

I have read the posts. And I will specifically comment on them why I get to them in the order I am parsing through the thread. My point was for everyone to have a focused discussion around this. The point of the CDI is for us all to brainstorm not just Devs and single participants. I hope this makes sense.

Chris

It sure does.

A lot of what I want to say has been said already, so I’ll just recap on a couple of things before moving on to new stuff.

Vertical progression is bad. Stop it.

Personal and guild housing, a great place to have and display game progress without any balance issues.

A skin locker is a MUST.

Change Ascended stats to Exotic level, and give Ascended gear the ability to change stats while out of combat. Drop Legendaries back to Exotic level as well, but keep the stat change of Ascended. Before Ascended, people got them for their looks and effects. They don’t need nor should they have an added function. Hold true to this for any new Legendary items that come out.

Now, for a few new ideas:

• Add in a way to spend Laurels for a boost in crafting skill. Say, 3 Laurels for +10 to your current crafting skill. It sounds like a bad rate of exchange, until you realize that people would only use it for the higher levels of crafting. 30 Laurels to go from 400 to 500 crafting (with no items produced and no EXP gain) sounds about right to me, but it could be adjusted.

• Introduce cosmetically different versions of existing skills, and allow players to earn the ability to unlock them. For example, the turrets of the Engineer class. Each race has their own style in armor and weapons, so why do all Engineers summon the same machine gun turret? Let someone that has the skill undertake a task to earn a variant of the skill that summons one with a different look to it. A norn’s weapon turret should look different than an asura’s, and they should both look different than a human’s Watchwork style one. Warrior banners (racial styles), ranger spirits (different animals), and elementalist elementals (different forms) would all be good candidates for this.

• Costume Slots, we need them. Basically, different “outfits” that we can change between. Right now, we have two, but one’s non-combat. Imagine if we had TWO in-combat looks, and changing between them did not alter stats. (Why yes, this WOULD pretty much require the skin locker.) It would give people even more reason to fill the skin locker with all the parts they can. And the second slot could be earn-able at a certain point. Then you can sell slots 3-5 in the gem store. As outfit options grow, this would become a more and more tempting offer to people.

• Cross-crafting could be fun if done right. An example would be a muffin recipe that requires a muffin tin. The muffin tin is made by an armor smith, and is account bound. So, if someone sets out the [Tray of Blueberry Muffins], then that means they’ve got both a cook and an armor smith on their account. Or a weapon smith making Sparkler Rods, and then handing them off to the artificer to make sparklers he can hand out. Make them fun items that can be shared, and NEVER make them a “must have” or “best choice”, so they’re fun but not needed for anything.

I am a confessed altaholic having 9 level 80 toons. At the same time I am also closing in on 60 years of age and to date have managed to craft 2 Ascended weapons, one for my Guardian and one for my Mesmer. I was lucky on RNG and found a third weapon which went to my engineer.

My issue is with the time gating and Laurel acquisition. With the addition of Ascended armor, the requirements needed to bring all my crafters to level 500 (I have leveled all crafts to at least 400 currently) and the materials that I will need to outfit everyone with Ascended armour and at least one weapon is out of reach. I just do not think I have enough time left on this earth to even get close to that. The recent changes in the amount of raw materials required to refine raw materials from 2:1 to 3:1 only exacerbated the problems driving up the cost of raw materials on the TP and extending the amount of time required to gather them yourself.

Do I need the Ascended stuff? Perhaps not but if you put it into the game as a form of vertical progression, which it is, it has to be obtainable within a reasonable amount of time AND with a reasonable amount of grind for players with 9 level 80’s like me and not just for those that play one toon.

In every game I have played I have always worked towards crafting myself the best items that could be crafted. Spending most of my time in WvW now I am finding that I am rapidly losing the desire to obtain those “best crafted” items because the time that is required to get those items is being extended with each and every patch/update. This leaves me with nothing other then WvW to do. How long that will keep me interested in this game before I move on remains to be seen. I do not gain the same sense of satisfaction by finding an item RNG versus creating that item myself.

Soulbinding items versus account binding, time gating for Laurels per account versus per character, time gating Ascended components, all add to artificially extending the time needed to reach the top. If you place that pinnacle too far away for people like myself to reach why should we begin that climb?

Septemptus.7164:

Chris Whiteside.6102

3373369

Solutions

• Separate the concept of (ascended) gear crafting from the concept of equipment stat customisation. Make it easy or easier to change stats, or at the very least, to craft new copies of the same gear with different stats.

There are some good ideas here which I would like to see us discussing as a group.

What do you all think about these ideas?

Chris

I have kinda a problem with this.
I know that there is or soon will be in gemstore an item that allows stat changing. (datamined)

So I kinda see it like this: We get extreamly money consuming armor and istead of making another copy of it we can do a one time stat change – so you just kinda created yourself a market for new item that was already datamined like 5 months ago.

It looks really bad for me.

I kinda would have a nice solution to back it up:
Make an item (gem shop item of corse) that will one time add another stat combo to an item.
How should it work.
I will craft berserker gear but I will think “wait on WvW I would use soldger” so I buy that new item and add soldger to the item and I will get list of 2 stats I can change on the item. I will then think, Carrion or Rabid could be also nice for come builds, so I will buy that new item 2 times and I will have ascended item that can choose stats from the list of 4. (or make them have choice ot 2 stats and add more to the list with gemstore item?)

That would be something I could place my money on and if it was only doable for ascneded those would be kinda (limited legendar like) and so they would have some meaning in making with the cost of them, because now they are way more like an eyesore.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

I have read the posts. And I will specifically comment on them why I get to them in the order I am parsing through the thread. My point was for everyone to have a focused discussion around this. The point of the CDI is for us all to brainstorm not just Devs and single participants. I hope this makes sense.

Chris

It sure does.

I like this idea A LOT. Then I wouldn’t have to get multiple ascended armor sets for 1 character every time I want to run a different build. This would also cut down on armor taking up way too much room in storage. I would definitely be willing to buy this item. In addition, since it would cost gems per stat combo option, people who have legendary weapons shouldn’t complain as much about this.

This suggestion
1 reduces grind if you want multiple stat sets
2 gives ANET an incentive to make it (gems)
3 wouldn’t be a requirement, but would be convenient

Isaiah Cartwright.8569:

Art Progression
Art progression! It’s horizontal why not do it more!!! Well we do this a lot all ready and a lot of it’s constraints comes down to costs. Every single piece of art we make is not liked by everyone and so the amount of art you have to make to give everyone a smooth art progression curve is very high. The cost of making some pieces of art is also very high (Armor especially) sense very pair of gloves = 10 pairs of gloves due to race/sex. We think art is a great horizontal progression system but not something that can stand 100% alone due to constraints of creation.

I am way behind on this thread… but just to toss an idea out regarding Art Progression and the part I bolded… then don’t do it. No, no, don’t don’t do art progression… don’t worry about having to make 10 sets every time you add something new. Yes, there will be a few that complain because Charr had a new set released this cycle but Asura didn’t, however it’ll let you take a more realistic path to adding new styles in. If one of your amazing artists comes up with a new style for Norn, for example, don’t say “Now we need eight more before we can add it to the game.” Just add it and say “Let’s think about the other races now, ideas?” I think it may open up more artistic freedom as well. It seems unlikely (aside from a faction concept) for armors of the different races to coincidentally look similar. Charr may have heavy designs that simply don’t have an equal amongst the other races. So find your favorite Charrtist and say “Hey, go wild and don’t worry about converting this to a model for everyone”.

Don’t get caught in a “all must be equal or none gets it” mode. It seems too binding.

I hope this post won’t be too long but I would like to explain why the Ascended vertical progression failed for me.

I actually like the idea of Ascended gear. It is a nice, medium term goal that fits in well between the near instant “I just dinged 80 and now I’m in full exotics” short term goal and the “dudes, I just crafted Quip!” long term goal, the problem however is how it interfaces with the horizontal progression of multiple builds.

I LOVE to make builds, try out cool, strange setups and I would change talents like I change underwear IF I could change my gear just as easily. That is why I’ve capped my progression at exotics (and in some cases, rare), I simply can’t see myself putting in the time and resources needed to craft a full set of Ascended gear only to get bored of that playstyle and want to change it a month later.

This is not even counting my alts. I will disagree with Izzy here for a second and say that I don’t find leveling up to be a grind at all, even after my 6th 80… what I do see as a grind however would be to try and get them all into anything higher than Exotics (and honestly, prior to the price crash that came with Ascended armor I thought they all would never get out of the rares).

About the only armor type I feel I can get enough out of to eventually build ascended versions of is ’zerker since that is nearly universally good for PVE. Even then however I would still like to be able to fiddle with my build by swapping out a few pieces of gear and not need to commit a month or more to a simple test.

Ascended takes too long and are too restrictive for me to be able to commit to. I want to be able to take more and more advantage of the horizontal progression without locking myself in. If legendary armor comes out with the same feature as the weapons, I will dedicate all I have to getting a set on each toon ONLY for the ability to change stats no matter how it looks.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Would this kind of ‘Faction’ progression outside of how NPC’s perceive you in the world allow you access to exclusive Faction based rewards? Would this be grindy?

GW1 keeps being mentioned even though it had some of the biggest grinds I’ve ever done. The reason these worked is because they were horizontal. If it takes 3 months of grinding, but you don’t need it, it works. If ascended took 6 months but had the same stats as exotics, no one would complain about the time. They would simply know that the armor set required a lot to get it (it would be prestige armor).

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Controversial: Vertical Progression acquisition can be a pain but what if any elements do you like about Vertical Progression?

I don’t. I’m done doing the treadmill. Almost every vertical progression can be horizontal and end up better for it.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Lets keep coming up with some awesome Horizontal Progression systemic ideas and also reward ideas?

Hard Progression: Keep the grind low here. Keep the barrier to entry low as well. Forcing PvPers to run around doing hearts to get to 80 discourages many from entering pve. Hard progression is required, so make it freely available to all. Do not make people spend their rewards to get them. Adjust the rates for the modes if appropriate, but this should be passive for every game play style.

• Leveling. You don’t need to gear reset when you increase the level cap. If you add 10 levels to the cap and add a trait line; but keep the gear cap constant, you’ve expanded horizontally. Down-scaling is in the game. So, the old stuff stays relevant.
• Gear. As others stated, add slots to the existing top tier. Let it be upgraded. The players stuff stays relevant. Your art stays relevant.
• Skill Collection. More skills would be awesome.
• Subclasses. Been mentioned.

Soft Progression: Large grinds are fine; think GW1.

• Title tracks: Like GW1! Increased damage, MF, XP, health, etc when killing, in zone, etc.
• Account Dyes: Make it be a horrendous grind if you want (IE: the equivalent of learning the dye on 4 characters).
• Skin Locker. Like PvP.
• Altaholic. Leveling between levels 10 to 80 grant points toward the altaholic achieve track. It increases the XP and such gained while in those levels. Consider rewarding an additional char slot, higher starting bags, etc. Make a track to make the game friendlier to alts.
• WvW Finishers. Add a finisher progression track.
• Armor sets. Armor sets for all of them. Some are lacking.
• Tournament win/leaderboard track. Be it armor, titles, finishers or emotes. Add some love to the tournaments (and leaderboards) and keep glory rank as the overall time spent in PvP progression track.
• Factions. Like GW1; share them with WvW, PvE, PvP. Give similar boosts as WvW gives.

Guild Progression: Grinds are fine unless the rewards make people want to switch guilds.

• Guild Halls. Others have talked about it.
• Guild PvE leaderboard. Use guild halls
• Guild WvW leaderboard. Use guild halls.
• GvG PvP leaderboard. Use guild halls.

Apologies if this is said – at this time of night after a 12hr shift, I’m only reading dev replies atm.

One of the best forms of horizontal progression is map exploration. You guys are usually pretty good at rewarding exploration, in fact certainly the best from an MMo stance I’ve personally played and that applies to both GW1 and GW2. What I would say is that I’d like to see more of what you did with GW1 where you made it pretty challenging to explore 100%. Now that isn’t to say I’d like to see the wall grinding return – that was just a bit too silly. But, lots more secrets and easter eggs where you are rewarded with titles, minis, artistic zone maps for your home instance maybe. Like I said, this is real strength for the team and could be something to progress further with.

As for Vertical? My only peev is the constant renewal of gear this can bring alongside extra levels. Whilst I feel you have too many tiers as I said earlier, I think if Ascended is the final tier then it feels right to have it take some time to complete. It’s a question of balance I guess. It doesn’t bother me as it is, but it is obviously bothers a significant portion of the community so maybe need balancing in terms of acquisition (but I believe that has been discussed in depth already anyway). As long as more tiers or levels are never added, I personally feel iyour gear acquisition system works pretty well Vs the traditional “run an instance x number of times and hope you get lucky” other mmos use.

Whether horizontal or vertical, one of the key things is that the obtaining or the grinding should be fun. Legendary weapons are an excellent horizontal progression you added. The time investment factor is spot on, it’s whether the obtaining of the mats can be considered fun. That at the moment is inconsistent due to RNG, but again that leads on to the rewards topic which is a sep issue as you stated earlier.

Not sure if any of that makes sense, I’m pretty tired

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?

I was very fond of the Materia system in FF7. I loved how flexible it was, the options with it were just HUGE. Looking back, though, I also love how it made you hinder yourself at times. As players may recall, you’d get the materia and you would have to equip it in armor or a weapon and wear it in battle to level it up and make it more useful. But, the most powerful weapons were bad for growing materia. There were some weapons that were actually weaker than average, however, that boosted materia growth rates. You had the option of nerfing yourself to gain more effective AP. It was an important aspect of the game that I think many people overlooked.

I was also fond of City of Heroes, and in this case I want to talk about the Incarnate system of advancement. What I loved about the incarnate system was that you could always count on making some small advancement towards your goal. You didn’t need luck. Luck could move you ahead MUCH faster at times, but you never had to rely on it to get there. Also, your current incarnate ability would be used as one of the components for the next level incarnate ability, basically leveling it up.

Imagine being able to get “a common Sword” in GW2. You use it in some fights, and eventually it “unlocks” the option to upgrade. You gather some items (that you’ve likely been saving up) and do a quest, then take it to a forge in your home town to add a stat boost to it. Now it’s “a Strong Sword” or “a Precise Sword”, maybe. You keep using it, and the next unlock gives you the option to change the looks to one of a few choices. Again, there’s some gathering and a quest, and then you go to a special forge somewhere a bit away from your starting city to upgrade it. Then, you keep using it, and eventually it’s time to add the second stat bonus to it, and so on…

That’s not quite what CoH did, but you get the idea I think.

Directly to the TL;DR Version:

About Ascended Gear: Amulets and rings are fine to me. Accessories are too expensive (time-wise expecially) if not purchased with Guild Commendations. Same for Backpieces if you dislike fractals (like i do).
Weapons and Armors are awfully expensive (level up crafting) and way to long to acquire (time gated stuff): if an alternative way to obtain weaps and armors comes out tomorrow imho no one will be crafting them. It’s just a huge goldsink.

About Vertical progression.
Stuff that i like: vertical progression that define my character (skills, skins, titles) only if not too grindy (Legendary Weapons, i’m looking at you)

Stuff that i don’t like: vertical progression in terms of better stats. As it is now in this game 90% of your stats comes from gear; this is not alt friendly, against build diversity and a huge goldsink.
Having to gear up multiple characters and/or for multiple roles it’s something i really dislike.

The main question you should ask yourselves (and then tell us the answer) is : what kind of customers do i want to appeal to? Because you can’t keep a foot in both camps (casuals and hardcore).

In relation to my above post perhaps this could be considered. Take my Weaponsmith, currently level 500 in his trade and has successfully created two Ascended weapons. With each success the requirements in material and time to create the next one are lowered. He understands the material he is working with and is capable of doing more with less. Since those weapons are Account bound crafting them for 9 alts would not be so onerous and you get that feeling of progressing your crafting ability.

So once reaching 500 in crafting the items crafted still provide experience and not grayed out as they currently are. Each time you “level” your craft past 500 the material requirements for the next item crafted are lowered by 25%. A level 500 weaponsmith could then progress through ranks. It could be capped at a given number of ranks but at least outfitting alts would be doable and if you only have one toon you are not missing out.

Yuri.5810:

The main question you should ask yourselves (and then tell us the answer) is : what kind of customers do i want to appeal to? Because you can’t keep a foot in both camps (casuals and hardcore).

Yeah, it looks, like so many people think that its impossible to create a game for casuals, and hardcore players too. And I think people who’s talking about it are just wrong. Yes, its possible to make a MMORPG, where u can put content for casuals, hardcores, pvp, and pve players. And even if ArenaNet dont do it, then other companies will. Its simple.
Check this post.

Shriketalon.1937:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Lets keep coming up with some awesome Horizontal Progression systemic ideas and also reward ideas?

Well, since Evee already brought up the skill customization most adeptly, I’ll throw Home Instance Improvement into the mix.

You have the code for "if X condition is met, item Y appears in the home instance* as demonstrated by the quartz node. This is a gold mine for rewarding achievements and activities in a more vibrant manner. Use several buildings or locations within each home instance as designated spots to transform based on the player’s completed objectives.

For instance, a hunting lodge area might reflect the Slayer achievements. If I gain Drake Slayer, a mounted broodmother’s head is added to the wall as a trophy. The community achievements could by the tavern growing and improving with new furnishings and new products. When you implement the skin wardrobe, an Armory might contain copies of all the weapons and armor the player owns, thus allowing a collector to view they massive armament ensemble stretching from wall to wall.

It can also serve as an economic incentive. You might construct a garden to let players plant different harvesting nodes, but the amount of space each one takes up is directly related to their rarity. Thus, I could add lots of Herbal Seedlings or Gummo Saplings, but only one Ghost Pepper or Mithril Node for a block of space.

And finally, it could be an excellent way to sell convenience in a simple format. With a “Return to my Home Instance” and “Leave my Home Instance” button that functions just like the Heart of the Mists trigger, you could allow players to use their home as a hub for their activities without losing their current adventuring location. Meanwhile, you add Merchant, Repair, Trade Post, and Grocer (sells all unlocked karma food bundles) to the gem store, giving people a permanent service access for a nice price. Oh, and sell an Unlimited Total Makeover Contract in the store there as well, because if you’re willing to give people an unlimited contract selling for the price of a legendary via holiday-only RNG, you might as well use the same tech to pay rent.

Just had to come on to say that I absolutely love this idea.

Xar.1387:

Yuri.5810:

The main question you should ask yourselves (and then tell us the answer) is : what kind of customers do i want to appeal to? Because you can’t keep a foot in both camps (casuals and hardcore).

Yeah, it looks, like so many people think that its impossible to create a game for casuals, and hardcore players too. And I think people who’s talking about it are just wrong. Yes, its possible to make a MMORPG, where u can put content for casuals, hardcores, pvp, and pve players. And even if ArenaNet dont do it, then other companies will. Its simple.
Check this post.

I don’t think it’s a question of casual vs hardcore, although it does somewhat depend on your definition of the terms. Some people define it as easy (casual) vs difficult (hardcore), but the game can have easy content and it can have hard content – that isn’t the problem, or wouldn’t be, if players could easily achieve a statistical level playing field and content difficulty was matched by skill instead of gear level.

It works if you define casual as ‘limited time to play’ vs hardcore as ‘lots of time to play’. The problem is time investment, and gating character progression behind significant time investment and repetitive activity. Hardcore players are willing and able to do it, but casual players won’t, or very often can’t.

The Raids you’re talking about are already in the game: fractals. The problem is that people that like vertical progression stat-wise want it in every content. People that dislike it don’t want it.
I’ll try to explain myself better: the point of vertical progression is to have a benefit (content gets doable/easier/faster).
If i like the content with vertical progression but i dislike the progression itself i’ll think that it’s unfair that people with more time than me to play will have an advantage over me.
If i like the content without vertical progression but i dislike horizontal progression i’ll think that’s unfair that i’ve put much more time and effort in that content and yet i don’t get anything more in return.

I don’t blame it on the game, it’s a matter of mindset. Casuals and Hardcores can’t be pleased by the same game as a whole because they want to find their mindset in every single aspect of it. That’s my opinion.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Here is a crazy brainstorm idea, not in anyway indicative of our direction.

What if there was vertical progression in the Fractals with gear that increased in stats but when outside of the fractals defaulted back to BiS numbers?

I am asking this because it is going to generate some left field conversation not because I think it is or isn’t a good idea.

Chris

For what purpose or benefit would said proposition bring? Currently Fractals works very well as it is because of how it is currently set up. How would the idea improve fractals? (ie can you expand a little more on the idea?)

Someone suggested the idea of mimicking Materia from Final Fantasy VII. At first didn’t like this idea, but then I realized how similar Materia are to Infusions in Ascended gear.

For anyone who doesn’t know “Materia” are spells that can be combined to create Materia that are more powerful or from a different element. This system already exists in GW2 in the way you combine Agony-Resistance Infusions to create more powerful ones.

Agony-Resistance is an arbitrary stat though. It doesn’t make your character more powerful; it simply allows you to play at higher Fractal levels.

It would be interesting if Agony Resistance was replaced with Infusions with unique effects (like sigils) that drop in Fractals and can be combined to create new Infusions of higher power or different types. At higher level Fractals more types of infusions would drop.

I think Infusions that increase your level of power would be more fun than Agony-Resistance, and give you a reason to buy ascended gear besides the minor stat increase.

Now I don’t often post in the forum but I will say that this thread is pretty interesting and has a lot of surprisingly good discussion going on. Thanks a lot to the team for creating and being involved in threads like this!

I feel like a lot of players have missed the point of ascended gear a little and perhaps the almost entire reliance on having level 500 crafting to get weapons and armour has turned people off the idea a bit. Perhaps more semi-reliable ways to get these would go down well? Not Laurels though, Laurels seem confusing enough for new players as is.

One thing the development team has mentioned on a number of occasions is new skills & traits. We are just now beginning to see new skills appear and I will admit, simply unlocking them with skill points has left me feeling a little cold. Especially due to the abnormally high cost. Perhaps the new skills should have been worked into the current tier system to guide new players, perhaps adding a fourth tier of utility skills once we start getting some of those?
As it stands, a healing skill costing 25 points stands out like a sore thumb to a new player, making it seem a lot more valuable than perhaps it actually is. I think I would be quite disappointed if I was a new player with a Necromancer and I saved up to buy the new heal because the cost made it look better.

One of the suggestions being mentioned that I REALLY like the idea of is NPC factions. As players, we can join several player owned guilds. Why not add NPC guilds we can also join and gain ranks within? These guilds could then be used to give players a bit of guidance on what they want to do in a given play session. Perhaps I want to champion the explorers guild and complete events across different zones and explore places I might not normally tread. Or maybe I can join a mercenary branch of the Seraph and hunt bandits/centaurs.
If a split between pve/pvp skills ends up happening (And I honestly don’t think it is an unhealthy idea, either) then it would make sense to split up unlocks to systems like this. You could add some movement based skills/traits you wouldn’t normally for balance reasons for PvE players that have enough experience with the Explorers Guild.
Still add new skills and traits across pve and pvp but this way you could be a little more experimentative with what is added, not needing to fear that a skill will swing the pvp meta too much.

Finally, you have created a rich and large world. Please please please don’t fear that by adding new content you are causing players to stop exploring the old content. I can see why it is a concern for developers but it is genuinely heartbreaking to see the work of many talented people vanish from the world permanently, even if some manages to come back in the form of Fractals.
It seems like it would be fairly sensible as the world gets bigger to add things like Historians or someone like Nicholas the Traveler to funnel players into specific content that cycles over a month. Things like the Zaishen coins are a good endgame idea too, especially if tied to long term cosmetic rewards.

Sorry that this became a bit of a wall of text and thanks for reading. Keep up the good work!

A paid item to unlock stat switching for ascended gear isn’t something I’m particularly happy with – but mainly I just think you can’t have it be both very very hard to get and then have to pay real money to make it ‘fully functional’. One or the other – okay, but definitely not both.