Guild Wars 2

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

Ashabhi.1365:

Respectfully, no…

The grind in this game is nothing compared to the older “grind til you level” games of the past. Please don’t try to “catch up.”

Grinding isn’t the answer to anything. Adding more grind to fill yet another hall of monuments would only add to the frustration of those who don’t want to be forced to grind in the first place, while those who do not mind will tell those who do that “this game is not for you…”

But I want something to work towards. I want to collect armors, and display them somewhere. I want to collect various rare weapons, and put those on display as well. I want to see statues for each elite dungeon that I’ve completed, and a display for all my miniatures. These things are not grind, they are a visualization of your progress in the game and some recognition.

You are still able to do these things. You can collect armors, and you can collect rare weapons.

What you can’t do is show them off.

I may have misunderstood your post in that I assumed you meant the HoM in the way that in order to get rewards, you had to grind. Example: Collect (X) minis, and collect (Y) elite armors in order to receive (in-game reward.)

The thing is, we already have a place to “see our progress.” If you open your hero window, and you see your Achievement tab, there it is. It shows you everything you can do and everything you have already done, along with how far you have progressed in (whatever) category.

Having a place to show them off (maybe in your home instance) would be ok with me, as long as I don’t have to grind 10K skritt shineys, 200 Greater Ego Insignias and a Left Nasal Inhaler (which is RNG based in the MF) in order to raise my Artificing level to 600 so I can craft my showcase, and then have to go kill “over 9000” evil quaggans for a rare drop called “Shelf” for each type of item I wanted to display.

However, again, I say, if you are talking about the HoM as a way to earn in-game rewards, I am against it.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

Bring back the Hall of Monuments.
It’s already in the game. Use it.

This.

And guild halls.

And expand the home instance!

I want a physical place to show off my minipets and accomplishments. A bank tab is dull and the achievement panel boring. It would be even more awesome if all your alts are there as NPCs to bring the place to life, as living mannequins showing off their nice clothes and gear.

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?

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

Bit late, but for horizontal vanity progression how come you don’t utilize the AP Zenith/Hellfire/Radiant panel more? Such as let us pull any of the skins we got from the LS metas (at the very least anyways, in addition to the skins we got from LS before the meta achievements started) from that? The system is already there, but hasn’t been utilized for anything else since the system has been added/implemented.
To me, it doesn’t seem like it would take much more work, because the system is already there and works, all you’d need to do is add them to the list of items that show up in it. (Though eventually some way to sort/narrow the list would be needed)

Septemptus.7164:

CHARACTER TITLE and PROGRESSION.

Many people in here say we need a title for doing something, but really I kinda feel like its a bit misguided .

You can have only one title.

Because of that one will think that the most awesome was doing fractals, someone else will feel that the best title is the one for achievement points and 3rd person will think that the best title was from GW1 (I just love GW1 titles because they meant my character progression).

If you want titles to matter there should be the master title like it was in GW1.
It was called GWAMM – God Walking Amongst Mere Mortals.

snip

Agree.

What I’d like to see though, is a choice between which global title you want.

I’d like each complete title to give you a prestige point. And you being able to dedicate your prestige points to some of the major factions.

Once you have X prestige points into a faction, you get an overarching title unlocked. There should also be some cross-faction titles. Even better if there are multiple subfactions for each race. So if you spend 50 prestige points with Logan Thackaray, you get a “Seraph Lieutenant” title, but if you spend them with Faren, you would get a baron title of some estate somewhere. If you spend 25 on both but still have 50 points total with the human faction, you might get “Divinity’s Reach Aristocrat” along with some lower noble and seraph title. And if you spend at least 10 points with a faction of each race, you’re a “Pact Ambassador” or something like that.

So for example, you can spend 50 prestige points into a Divinity’s Reach faction and you’ll unlock

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Zyphent.2967:

Also, Titles are a cosmetic progression reward that is severely underutilized. What about Title tracks that I could progress through?
Example: As it currently stands each world of Super Adventure Box has its own title, and I don’t need all the achieves in World 1 to get the title for World 2. But what if doing all the achievements in one world just Progressed my Super Adventure Box title track up one level? Then I could have a form of progression with titles! Note: Some work like this already in a way, like the Hall of Monuments titles. Why dont more?

Hi Zyphent,

Regarding gear that your can evolve aesthetically: I really like this to and this is something I will be chatting more about with the folks at work.

Chris

I think he brings up a good point with the title progression, and there was a missed opportunity this year for wintersday.

For those of us that were here for Wintersday 2012
we got the “Apprentice Toymaker” Title.

This year for Wintersday 2013, the available title is
“Journeyman Toymaker”

It’s good for those of us who were there during 2012, because we’re upgrading from Apprentice to Journeyman, but for those who missed 2012, this year they should get Apprentice, and not Journeyman.

Then we can show off that we’ve been here for x amount of wintersday to others.

Ilmatar.6709:

My idea in Horizontal and Vertcal progress is that the Order, what character have been chosen before, are giving tasks. And when character have been done these Order given tasks, character will get that reward what he/she has been chosen before. These tasks are repeatable as many times as player wants, only those DE’s are RNG in these tasks.

Ilmatar's Suggestions...

hide spoiler

Example for reward what character can choose:

Order representative:
“What do you need?
- Ascended materials (only account bound)( minimum 5 and maximum 250)
- Legendary materials (only account bound)( minimum 5 and maximum 250)
- Karma (minimum 5 000 Karma points and Maximum 250 000 Karma points)
- Skill points (Minimum 5 and maximum 250 Skill points)
- Money (minimum 5 gold and maximum 250 gold)
- Experience points (for leveling)( minimum 50 000 xp and maximum 4 500 000 xp)
- Tokens (only account bound)(minimum 5 and maximum 250)”

At this time Character needs some Ascended materials. So he choose Ascended Materials from the list. Then there is opening new window where character can choose material what he needs (materials are only account bound). And he choose Empyreal Fragments.

When character have chosen what material he needs there will come amount window, how many of those materials he needs. (Same way with Karma, Skill points, Money, Experience points and Tokens):

Order representative:
“How much do you need this material?
- 5 Empyreal Fragments
- 10 Empyreal Fragments
- 50 Empyreal Fragments
- 100 Empyreal Fragments
- 250 Empyreal Fragments”

When character have been chosen how much he needs these materials, Order representative gives lists of the Dynamic Events what character needs to do to get this material. Larger amount of the material means more dynamic events from level 1 – 80 maps. (No FotM or Dungeon (meaning instances)), only dynamic events from the open world map.

By doing these tasks character is leveling up, getting materials what he needs, have to do dynamic events and get done also achievement points, (exploration, killings, using weapon and so on.)

This system requires, that all Dynamic Events are woking properly and are not bugged in any ways.

I am sorry that my English is so bad, but I hope you got idea what I wanted to share.

This is a really cool idea. I don’t know that it would work out well with quite those numbers, but the idea is really interesting. Also, your english is great :-) +1 Ilmatar.

jsduke.6537:

Elrey.5472:

I am joining the thread late, but since this is a brainstorm… what if characters could actually get more permanent weapons skills based on the living world content?

It’s an interesting idea, but a balance nightmare for the devs, so I think it’s unlikely to happen.

New Weapon Skills are likely to come in the form of expanded weapon accessibility as ANet opens up more weapons for each of the professions. If I remember correctly, this is something that ANet has stated they want/intend to do at some point.

This idea came from because of how “easy” seems for Anet to create new skills. We can interact with several items in the game, mini-games, enviroments objects and most of them have their own skills. It might be a stone, snowballs, halloween items… everything with it’s own skills. So i figured out that Anet can develop skills easier than we would think.

Re-balancing might be a problem, indeed, but that’s why those “new” skills should be optional, in my opinnion. The content, dungeons and events would still be scripted to be done with the normal skills, although these ones might help a bit. Not a really big headache if one of these skills is not as powerful as the normal ones. Wouldn’t even be an issue if some new skills deal 0 damage but they add some crowd control.

Just my thoughs :P

Vertical Progression: very very bad, should be a no-no at any given moment. I can understand that Ascended gear was somehow necessary because heavy grinders were fully exotic minutes after release, but -especially for casual players- Ascended is a major problem. I feel severely punished for playing only WvW, because the chances to get money and Ascended items there are abysmal.
Also, I don’t like the idea of having level cap incremented (really, who cares about that number in the corner of the screen…), and even less I want to grind to see numbers increasing on the stats of my gear. The absence of vertical progression was one of the selling point for me when I choosed GW2 and would really appreciate things staying like they were supposed to be from the beginning.

horizontal progression: greatly welcome in all its aspects. New skills, new weapons, new mechanics, new whatever.
The change I would welcome the most and that would make me “wooooow”: adding Presige Classes, highly specialized in something (like the ones you have in the dice/paper D&D). That would be ultimate horizontal progression and a joy to play.

Hello,

Sorry for the long post. I tried to make it shorter, but the issue is too complex for that.

There’s a quote from Izzy I want to comment on:

Alts
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 issue with Alts is not about about leveling. Let me explain why I, caretaker of 8 characters, am pretty frustrated with the way the game treats us:

Alting as a playstyle
Some people choose to lern a single character to perfection, others like to constantly dabble in different builds, yet others choose to spice up their playing experience by playing a different character every now and then.
Personally, I don’t have a “main char” and “alts”, I have a family of 8 characters, all of which I like to play. Unless dictated by party composition, I choose the character I feel like playing at the moment, and on most evenings at least half of them get something to do.

Thus I consider “alts” a misnomer. It’s about build diversity. How many different builds do you want to play? Do you want to specialize or do you prefer variety?

It’s a whole spectrum, and I’m aware that I’m probably at the extreme end of it.

The issue is that the choice of playing style has a profound impact on the amount of time, gold and grind required. Since build diversity is a form of horizontal progression, a certain amount of additional work is acceptable. But in some cases, it’s way too much.

• The initial investment is way too expensive for horizontal progression. Depending on who you ask, that includes leveling, but for me it’s mostly about the cost of ascended gear.

• It’s not just an initial investment to “unlock” the new build, but a continuous investment you need to repeat each time. New skill? Spend 25 skill points on every character. New gear tier? Get a copy for every character. New skin? Buy for every character. Bag slots, infinite sickles or salvage kits? Pay gems for every character.
  Since most patches balance the costs of the new stuff around the average player with 1 or 2 characters, those with many characters have problems keeping up.

Leveling
Just to answer izzy, the leveling “problem” has been solved since release: crafting. Those who don’t like playing lowlevel areas can just spend a couple of gold to craft to level 80.
Given the discrepancies between lowlevel-rewards and lvl80-rewards, that process is still financially better than just playing through.
Making it even easier/cheaper to skip to lvl 80 means that playing through regularly is throwing even more money out of the window. Personal story rewards are usually less than the forced waypointing costs to backtrack to the next cutscene, and the hearts and events barely pay for the Training Manuals.
If anything is done about leveling, I’d like to see more rewards on lowlevel content to make regular leveling an enjoyable experience your wallet won’t regret.

If the problem is to keep people playing by introducing more grind progression, then the solution is not to make content skippable, but to make the existing content more enjoyable.

Ascended Gear
Let’s just say I want to fully equip 8 characters with ascended gear. This takes

• 160 full fractal runs for the rings, unless you’re lucky. I’m at 117.
• at least 8 months of guild missions for the accessoires.
• ~800 gold for the back items. Getting more than 2 with fractal tokens won’t work if you want to do anything else besides just fractals. Don’t forget all the tokens you need for the infusions.
• ~700 gold to get all crafting professions to 500.
• >1000 gold for all the crafting materials for the ascended gear.
• 230 days timegating for bolts of damask.
• >200 days timegating for dragonite ore.
• ~525 days timegating for the 700 laurels for amulets and recipes.

Note that this does not include underwater weapons, any infusions with attribute bonuses, cultural armor skins or even multiple equipment sets for different builds.

By the time I’m through with that, will ascended gear be obsolete? Will the next tier have arrived, or the level cap been raised? Can I even invest all the things I need to invest, or will there be more grind for horizontal progression, which I have to do eight times as well?

So this is where the horizontal progression of build diversity is way too expensive. The build diversity I absolutely require so I don’t get bored with the game is offered to me at a price that I cannot pay.

(continued in next post)

(continued from last post)

Timegating and buying out of it
While I’m sitting behind a 230 day timegate, looking at an immense bill for crafting materials, other players just built their second legendary for their single character and still have gold left. Those can just ignore the timegate and buy out of it.

So last week on Tuesday, the first people said “alright, full ascended armor, I’m done.” The same people will say come january “hey, there’s nothing to do any more, game’s getting boring”. Arenanet will listen, will add more grind progression, and I’ll have to follow even though I’m not through with the previous patches’ grind.

Timegating is a good way to make sure that newly introduced goals and content will keep the players busy for a while. But for that to work, it has to apply equally to everyone.

It doesn’t have to be cheaper, or easier, or faster to get your first set of ascended gear. The whole point of ascended gear was for us to spend gold and time on it, so stick to it.
It has to be cheaper, easier and faster to get your second, third and eights set of ascended gear.
I’m convinced that making any significant part of it tradeable is absolutely the wrong way to go. That includes both Damask etc, as well as the final ascended gear.

So how can this be fixed?

Before any of this can be fixed, it has to be acknowledged that it is a problem. I understand the desire for more gold sinks, and I understand the desire to give the active players more “work” to do than those with less time on their hands.

However, I argue that there isn’t really a strong correlation between “active players” and “those that like build diversity”, and even if there were, a factor of up to 8 in the amount of work required is way too much.

Would arenanet agree? Or, if not, explain to us why things are the way they are, and why it’s considered to be a good thing?

Going forward, I’d like to propose five new design principles that every future content is checked against:

1. For all forms of progression that are infinite, progress should be awarded account wide
2. For all forms of progression that are very expensive or time consuming, the bulk of the costs should be shared between all characters.
3. For all forms of progression with timegating, the amount of time required should be the same for all accounts, independently of the number of characters or any other decision regarding playing style.
4. All one-time rewards should be available account wide.
5. All all gem shop items should be available account wide.

1) The first one is almost there. I’m glad you turned around on fractals and WvW rank, and luck has always been account bound. I’d also suggest turning the +Agony infusions into an account wide bonus, since a shared fractal rank is worthless unless there’s a reasonable way to get multiple characters equipped with enough agony resists.

2) The second one is mostly about ascended gear. IMHO it should have been expensive to level the crafting professions, but cheap to craft the actual gear. Can this truly be fixed now that ascended crafts have been released? I doubt it.

3) The third one is one of the major issues I have. Laurels.
As a minimum, I’d like to see the recipes for “Berserker Heavy Helmet” etc (5 laurels each) to be turned into a generic unlock for all heavy helmets, and the same for weapons, with laurels retroactively refunded for those who bought multiple recipes. This would at least limit the amount of laurels per account to a maximum of 185 to unlock everything. Which is still way more than the ~40 some players can get away with, but it’s not the ~360 I’m looking at.
I’d also like to see a way to acquire ascended amulets and accessoires without laurels/gild tokens or other forms of timegating. Jeweler 500? Maybe unlock the ring recipes with fractal tokens, the accessoire recipes with guild tokens and the amulet recipes with laurels, so you can unlock them once, then craft as many as your characters need, for a reasonable price, without further timegating?
Timegating on damask etc is still an issue, but I’m not sure this is fixable post-release without radical changes, like removing the timegating altogether. Though maybe that can be done 2 or 3 months from now, making it easier for everyone who hasn’t yet finished their ascended gear to “catch up”?

4) Number four is mostly about one-time skins from living story chapters. Making multiple copies of all skins available next to the Zenith Skins, with the ability to withdraw as many as you need, would be perfect.

5) The gem shop one. Why should a player with multiple characters pay more? “Because some people do, and that makes NCSoft happy” isn’t really an answer that I, as a customer, would accept. You got my money for the character slots, if you want more of it, start treating me fairly. I’m not your cash cow and I’m not your gold sink.

Vertical:
I think Vertical progression is good but very hard to correctly introduce since it has to be:

• long/hard enough to be an achievement
• rare enough so it doesn’t feel like a treadmill
• rewarding enough so there is actually a meaning for player to invest the time/resources into it
  and at the same time it has to :
• be easy enough to let more casual players go for it, even if it takes them a long time
• keep the power increase low enough so that old content does not become too easy
• keep the power increase low enough so that new content does not absolutely require this vertical progression (fractals does not require ascended gear unless you go for higher levels)
• avoid penalizing people with alts/ wanting to play multiple builds

I think the way ascended gear was introduced was rather good considering those criterias, especially the small stat increase. It lacks on the last point though: crafting a whole set for one char is ok, but going for multiple sets is really long/expensive. I personnaly think we should not get more vertical progression, at least for a while. It will take a while for people to fully gear themselves with ascended, and PvE content (dungeons especially) is easy enough for experienced players that more power creep would trivialise it.
To main problem I have with gear in gw2 is how the rune/sigils are handled: unless you buy an item from the gem store you lose the old rune/sigil when using a new one. And if you want to be able to switch runes often (pve set and WvW set, for example), you need two separate armor sets. It was ok with exotics, not so much with ascended. The solution I propose is to have runes/sigil stack on the weapons/armor piece they’re added to with only one active at a time. Adding another sigil/rune would not erase the first one, but instead the player would be able to chose which one he wants to use when not in combat mode, just like the stats combo on legendaries. This could also be used for infusion slots.

Horizontal:
I really think horizontal progression is the way to go, I really loved the way gw1 was almost exclusively horizontal. I see three main types of horizontal progression: skills, cosmetcis and achievements.

Skills
It has already been stated that new skills are to be introduced, like the new healing skills in the last update. I think there should be a special mechanic for unlocking those new skills/weapons (whiel being automatically unlockes in PvP), maybe a dedicated instance where the character learns something, with the new skill/weapon as a reward. This instance could or could not be profession-specific and skill-specific, depending on the work needed and of the number of new skills that are to be introduced.
On a related topic, having templates for traits would be a great improvement. I know I almost never change my build because I am too lazy to go through the whole process, but there are multiple occasions where I wish I could easily adapt my build to my team composition.
(to be continued)

Cosmetics
Cosmetic progression is very important in the game and imo replaces advantagely vertical progression, since it gives people a long-term vanity goal without giving them an advantage over other players. Weapons aside,there is currently very few such vanity items, since all the armor skins are either crafted (ascended) or bought directly from a npc (dungeons, karma, cultural, gem store). Having a chance to get (tradeable?) rare skins when finishing challenging content should be more frequent (like fractal weapons or Final Rest), but I understand that the drop rate for those items are hard to set
Also I completely support the wardrobe suggestion, it would really help to have those LS skins always available without having them taking inventory/bank space.

Achievements/titles

The basis of the achievement system is to reward players for completing certains tasks, the rewards being achievement points and titles. But there’s currently only very few titles that are actually hard to obtain, and the difficulty require way more grind than actual skill. Overall I feel the titles lack prestige, the better being probably the ones from gw1. I’d love to have more difficult titles, preferably requiring skill, but unlocking a title when finishing a given achievement category could be a good idea (it would not be possible to add more achievements to this category though). A personnal home instance where the player can display his achievements would be great also, like the Hall of Monuments in gw1.

My main concern with the achievement system is the dominance of dailies on the AP score, mainly because it makes the permanent achievements a bit meaningless since scoring 5000 kills with a given weapon awards less points than a complete daily. The original system awarded 10AP max per day iirc, but now its up to 23AP/day for someone willing to chase them all: if this system was in place since launch, the total AP earned with dailies would be higher than the AP from permanent achievements, even if the LS are considered permanent.
For someone like me that whises to max their AP score, doing all the dailies every day is mandatory, but it has become a chore, especially with the new PvP dailies introduced on Dec 10th that more than doubled the time required to do all the dailies (around 6h now). Capping the AP one can obtain with dailies is imo the better solution, be it a hard cap (after X AP dailies stop awarding AP, like the agent of entropy), or a soft cap (can’t earn more than X AP per day). The AP already earned can’t be taken away since it would mess badly with the achievement rewards.
To summarize, I think the achievement system should focus on permanent achievements, with titles awarded for the harder ones and a cap on the daily AP gain (read the suggestion linked in my signature for detailed ideas on how this could be implemented with close to no negative impact on 99% of the playerbase).

To me cosmetic progression is lacking. Its completly in the eyes of the beholder if rare and expensive item X looks better than common item Y. Many legendaries look exotic to me at best.
I also feel too much (90%+) cosmetic progression is offered via the gem shop only. New dyes, most minis, armor skins, weapon skins… All gem shop. I know you have to make money, but the ratio between gemshop and ingame earned should be at least 50/50.
Personally I prefer statistical progression, simply because it makes me feel stronger and something to do all the time. As said earlier, cosmetic progression is entirely subjective.

The 5% stat increase for ascneded is too small. Should be more like 20%.

Many legendaries are still bugged over one year after release. (Example: Juggernaut loosing metallic effect if someone stealths you or if you use a mesmer portal, or Eternity (https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Eternity-bugs)

Miniatures are severally lacking and a chore to use. I dedicated a whole thread to suggesting improvements to miniatures. You can look at it here: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/Suggestions-to-make-miniatures

I have seen subclasses suggested several times.

After thinking about it, the problem with the implementation of the standard idea of subclasses in other games is that they would outdate our current skills, and could add too much complexity, not to mention eat up a lot of time to produce, more time than the time to make new weapons, weapons skill variation, and new traits for each standard class.

Thus to make the idea of subclasses more reasonable, the effects should be limited… to something that we currently have minimal control customizing. Our profession mechanic would be the perfect target! Most traits only minimally impact the mechanics, the subclass could use the base of each professions mechanic and expand on it in different directions depending on which subclass you chose.

Thief example:
F1 remains steal as the current implementation

subclass 1 saboteur- the F2 slot now offers a temporary stealth which depletes your new stealth bar. The stealth bar only recharges while out of combat, and depletes faster while in combat. (Idea is additional avoidance)

subclass 2 assassin- the F2 slot now provides a long distance leap skill on a low-medium cd. If skill is used while already in stealth, stealth is broken. (Idea is increased movement)

subclass 3 duelist- The F2 slot now provides stability and evades for a short durations. Medium cd.

In addition to this they could possibly add say 1 trait for each subclass in the appropriate trait line.

This would require far less work that having to make an entire new set of traits for each subclass for each trait line, and could greatly increase build variation.

Imagine
Ranger : subclass (Loner) : new F skill toggle that dismisses the pet, and increases your stats by an appropriate amount while it is away!

Just sayin

Make people unlock more skins in the Zenith/Hellfire/Radiant-panel, like for doing LS-content, other achievements or other, newer ways. There are a lot people that like the “GOTTA CATCH’EM ALL”-grind (because you know, collecting things for prestige is more cool than getting new gear which makes old gear worthless and will be worthless too as soon as there’s newer gear), and let people show their stuff in some kind of Hall of Monuments.

Chris, it would help a lot for suggestions if Anet would tell us what they look for. A lot of the ideas here seem so simple that I cannot imagine them not coming up at all during your meetings. Most of those should NOT seem new to you guys.

We all know a business needs to make money, so what is Anet looking for exactly? I thought it would be fun, but having to farm the fractals 30 times with a time-gate for a backpiece gets old fast. So there must be something I am missing.

How much is the financial issue (both cost to dev. and potential revenue) part of the decision process for progression through a LS or a feature?

Both vertical and horizontal progression isn’t for everyone, why did they get put both in instead of looking to please only one of those groups instead of displeasing everyone at some point?

Did someone seriously convince the directors that time-gating would keep players committed to the game, if so, what was the argument used, it would help a lot with this thread? Did anyone ever bring up that it could also burn people out and make them lose sight of what else the game offers?

As another dev said decisions are taken as a group during meetings, then solved by a dedicated team, then the solution must be approved again before going into dev ( https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/Collaborative-Development-Commander-System/page/7#post3310904 )

I am just trying to see the thought process behind the decisions being made as it is pointless to suggest things that go against that and I have a feeling most of the suggestions made will go against it.

PS: Let us dye left side and right side of gloves, shoulders and boots sometime soon?

Shakkara.2641:

…
I want a physical place to show off my minipets and accomplishments.
…

My favorite would be the possibility to right click on a selected charater giving the option to “show history” (or something like that) which would then open a seperate window for that character where you could see all achievements, minipets, skins, skills and whatnot.

There should also be a field where one can write a few individual lines.

And ofc there should be a possibility to make that “history panel” hidden for others or just available for friends.

In another MMO I loved to sometimes just stand around and check the “bio”.

I find that much better than something like the HoM, because its much more accessible.

Vertical Weapon progression without causing a ruckus
With the screams that accompanied the implementation of Ascended items I thought I would offer you a way to add another tier between Ascended and Legendary without making people go crazy.

Legacy Weapons
These would be Ascended weapons that have developed a name for themselves by being wielded by a hero for a period of time.

Given: For discussion purposes I will select one weapon and one profession and use it as a reference throughout my example.

• Staff
• Elementalist

To set the stage: Some of us will probably never have a Legendary Weapon, what with the minuscule chance for a precursor to drop, Mystic Forge, and/or the cost on the TP (The Bifrost currently 2230-3097 gold The Legend 721-810 gold); Ascended is about the best a lot of us will ever get, so let’s make it special.

Since anyone who has been playing for a fair amount of time has the ability to craft an ascended weapon this option would be available for pretty much any dedicated player. I say “would be available” since, I have been playing since pre-launch but do NOT have an Ascended weapon, though I could make one Today if I chose to.

What is it: a Legacy weapon is an Ascended weapon which has been modified to make it more unique to the user. As all Ascended weapons look the same, varying only in color of the inscription; a Legacy weapon would take the basic template for the Ascended weapon and customize it. As it is a modified Ascended weapon it would retain its Best in Slot status.

Possible modifications: Let us take a page from GW1, staff wrapping and staff head, would give two different possible modifications. Each modification would make 2 different changes one aesthetic and the other minorly functional. These modifications would have to be earned not bought or RNG dropped.

As an example:

1. Swift staff head: might give user a slight boost in running speed and some sort of quickness animation
2. Staff wrapping of the Elementalist: might allow the elemental attunement animation to travel from the users wrist up/down the staff. For example, when attuned to fire, flames lick up the staff length; when attuned to air, electricity does the same etc. User gets a slight boost in their current attunement.

Now instead of having Zojja’s Ascended Staff, I have Yalora’s Swift Ascended Staff of the Elementalist.

So there you have it: You have added a tier in vertical progression without changing the Ascended best in slot. Nobody has to get rid of the Ascended items they worked so hard to get so those complaints are nipped in the bud and you have granted some customization to an otherwise common (looking) weapon.

ptitminou.6489:

A lot of the ideas here seem so simple that I cannot imagine them not coming up at all during your meetings. Most of those should NOT seem new to you guys.

Just wanted to echo this. Ideas on how to do a better job at progression have been all over the forums for the better part of a year now. This issue still being in a pre-planning phase is…troubling.

Add to this the fact that GW1 is basically -the- holy grail on how to do interesting character progression and it makes the current state of progression in GW2 absolutely baffling. It’s like a master chef serving burnt toast and raw eggs.

Yalora Istairiea.6287:

Vertical Weapon progression without causing a ruckus
With the screams that accompanied the implementation of Ascended items I thought I would offer you a way to add another tier between Ascended and Legendary without making people go crazy.

Legacy Weapons
These would be Ascended weapons that have developed a name for themselves by being wielded by a hero for a period of time.

Given: For discussion purposes I will select one weapon and one profession and use it as a reference throughout my example.

• Staff
• Elementalist

To set the stage: Some of us will probably never have a Legendary Weapon, what with the minuscule chance for a precursor to drop, Mystic Forge, and/or the cost on the TP (The Bifrost currently 2230-3097 gold The Legend 721-810 gold); Ascended is about the best a lot of us will ever get, so let’s make it special.

Since anyone who has been playing for a fair amount of time has the ability to craft an ascended weapon this option would be available for pretty much any dedicated player. I say “would be available” since, I have been playing since pre-launch but do NOT have an Ascended weapon, though I could make one Today if I chose to.

What is it: a Legacy weapon is an Ascended weapon which has been modified to make it more unique to the user. As all Ascended weapons look the same, varying only in color of the inscription; a Legacy weapon would take the basic template for the Ascended weapon and customize it. As it is a modified Ascended weapon it would retain its Best in Slot status.

Possible modifications: Let us take a page from GW1, staff wrapping and staff head, would give two different possible modifications. Each modification would make 2 different changes one aesthetic and the other minorly functional. These modifications would have to be earned not bought or RNG dropped.

As an example:

1. Swift staff head: might give user a slight boost in running speed and some sort of quickness animation
2. Staff wrapping of the Elementalist: might allow the elemental attunement animation to travel from the users wrist up/down the staff. For example, when attuned to fire, flames lick up the staff length; when attuned to air, electricity does the same etc. User gets a slight boost in their current attunement.

Now instead of having Zojja’s Ascended Staff, I have Yalora’s Swift Ascended Staff of the Elementalist.

So there you have it: You have added a tier in vertical progression without changing the Ascended best in slot. Nobody has to get rid of the Ascended items they worked so hard to get so those complaints are nipped in the bud and you have granted some customization to an otherwise common (looking) weapon.

Really cool idea here.

Just wanna stress how proud I am of everyone here for this discussion, we all come from different isles on this issue of progression, and it’s good to see a healthy discussion take place rather than us pointing fingers for once.

Rooks Zaer.5846:

Add to this the fact that GW1 is basically -the- holy grail on how to do interesting character progression and it makes the current state of progression in GW2 absolutely baffling. It’s like a master chef serving burnt toast and raw eggs.

A thousand times this.

Guild Wars 1 had better features, namely…

• Thousands of skills
• Monsters using exactly the same mechanics and skills as players (hardly any zillion-hp-boss stupidity)
• Synergy between skills and skill groups (enchantments, signets, shouts, stances, etc)
• NO STATS ON GEAR
• Many interesting or situational bonuses on gear (15% extra damage when stanced/enchanted, +20% ench length, etc )
• Fully customizable heroes
• Ability to get max gear everywhere with minimal effort
• Titles and Hall of Monuments
• One universal mana resource for all classes that most skills use, short skill cooldowns
• Only 20 levels

Guild Wars 2 has the following things that are interesting…

• Rune set bonuses
• Some sigils providing interesting effects
• Crafting (except ascended)
• Dungeons and token systems for unique-looking gear (now worthless thanks to ascended stats)
• Some trait effects are interesting (not the trait system itself)

Could we please remove stats alltogether and just use skills instead? Why do I need to choose between condition damage and power and precision and critical damage to choose my flavor of damage-dealing? Why do I have to grind to see these stupid numbers go up and up and up? It’s just so pointless… I want to make interesting character builds, things that require thought to work out, and options to really make a UNIQUE character that noone else has. I want to be given resources (like a pool of skills) and work with what I have in a smart way to increase the amount of shinies in the pool (learn more skills for more options and overcome new challenges).

Shakkara.2641:

Could we please remove stats alltogether and just use skills instead? Why do I need to choose between condition damage and power and precision and critical damage to choose my flavor of damage-dealing? Why do I have to grind to see these stupid numbers go up and up and up? It’s just so pointless… I want to make interesting character builds, things that require thought to work out, and options to really make a UNIQUE character that noone else has. I want to be given resources (like a pool of skills) and work with what I have in a smart way to increase the amount of shinies in the pool (learn more skills for more options and overcome new challenges).

The problem with this however, is that after a year or so, there are only 3-4 viable builds per class either because some skills totally suck or because some skill combos got nerfed because they were OP. Then if you don’t run one of the builds, you can go kitten yourself if you search for group play.

Try going in WvW and stacking on a commander wtih berserker gear to see how fast they tell you to go away or how fast they abandon you by tagging down and waypointing (or insulting you non-stop). Same thing was happening in GW1 and quite fast too if you didnt run the “right” build. You maybe had 1 or 2 skills of your choosing if you got really lucky.

We need to think of things in terms of what can be feasibly implemented within the game framework. That means there is no drastic re-writing of the game. The engine is built the way it is right now. Asking for things like “get rid of all skills” or “eliminate stats on weapons” is just simply beyond the scope for anything that can be done at this point…that would have to be looked at for GW3.

That said, and Since Chris asked about Vertical progression and how it could be implemented into the game:

How about “silo’d” vertical progression? In WvW as well as in PvP already there is a vertical progression system that allows players to progress in those areas while not affecting their PVE environment (or each other). A lot of people (myself included) do not want to see vertical progression within the game…however, I don’t think too many of us would be opposed to a vertical progression system tied to a silo…for instance, a new land (northern shiverpeaks?) that perhaps is a constant PVE battleground, trying to win back the lands from Jormag. It could have its own skills that aid in that battle (similar to WvW skills) that could be leveled while in that area…but cease to function back in the “regular” world.

Or as someone else suggested once….how about an “infinite” dungeon similar to Fractals but different in the aspect that it is simply a dungeon that scales based on the amount of people that enter it during a general time that it is open (like the tower in nightmare)…I know a lot of guilds enjoyed taking on the tower together….maybe this could be tied to Commander badges…so that only Squads could enter the dungeon together…giving people a raid-like experience, but more open in the way that GW2 is…and since it is scalable (unlike most raids) a group as small kitten could enter….or a group as large as 100…and rewards could scale with the dungeon (more champs = more champ chests).

I really like the idea of adding some sort of special “synergy” skills that could be used with other classes for devastating combos. This would be more “long term” thinking since I am sure it will be hell to code as well as implement with balance in mind…but it would be definitely something that would be cool to see in the game.

Skills that when combined with other class skills, cause bigger effects (similar to blast finishers, but with more dramatic effects…like a guardian puts down a shield skill, and if an elementalist casts their “fire skill” skill on top of it, it would create a “fire shield” that is visible and does something unique. Or a warrior places their “destruction skill” and the elementals uses their “fire skills” it creates a “fiery blast” or destruction combined with shield creates a shield that last for some time and then explodes….each class could have some unique skills (make them elites) that when thrown down with another class’s creates something unique…and these could stack, so a destruction on top of a shield, with fire, would create a fiery shield that then explodes….these would be nice horizontal progression ideas to throw into the game.

Beside the annoyance of having to seek out specific professions for that ‘perfect’ synergy-move for whatever farm you’re optimizing, I really tend to think that under all the whistles and bells it’s just recreating something we already have: skills like “On my mark” and the active portion of Signet of Vampirism.

Maybe that itch could be better scratched by adding a little more visibility or variety to the Fields & Finishers system we already have?

I think before talking about these interesting yet complicated “synergy” abilities, we should have a meaningful discussion about the effectiveness of the current combo system.

Yalora Istairiea.6287:

Vertical Weapon progression without causing a ruckus
With the screams that accompanied the implementation of Ascended items I thought I would offer you a way to add another tier between Ascended and Legendary without making people go crazy.

Legacy Weapons
These would be Ascended weapons that have developed a name for themselves by being wielded by a hero for a period of time.

Given: For discussion purposes I will select one weapon and one profession and use it as a reference throughout my example.

• Staff
• Elementalist

To set the stage: Some of us will probably never have a Legendary Weapon, what with the minuscule chance for a precursor to drop, Mystic Forge, and/or the cost on the TP (The Bifrost currently 2230-3097 gold The Legend 721-810 gold); Ascended is about the best a lot of us will ever get, so let’s make it special.

Since anyone who has been playing for a fair amount of time has the ability to craft an ascended weapon this option would be available for pretty much any dedicated player. I say “would be available” since, I have been playing since pre-launch but do NOT have an Ascended weapon, though I could make one Today if I chose to.

What is it: a Legacy weapon is an Ascended weapon which has been modified to make it more unique to the user. As all Ascended weapons look the same, varying only in color of the inscription; a Legacy weapon would take the basic template for the Ascended weapon and customize it. As it is a modified Ascended weapon it would retain its Best in Slot status.

Possible modifications: Let us take a page from GW1, staff wrapping and staff head, would give two different possible modifications. Each modification would make 2 different changes one aesthetic and the other minorly functional. These modifications would have to be earned not bought or RNG dropped.

As an example:

1. Swift staff head: might give user a slight boost in running speed and some sort of quickness animation
2. Staff wrapping of the Elementalist: might allow the elemental attunement animation to travel from the users wrist up/down the staff. For example, when attuned to fire, flames lick up the staff length; when attuned to air, electricity does the same etc. User gets a slight boost in their current attunement.

Now instead of having Zojja’s Ascended Staff, I have Yalora’s Swift Ascended Staff of the Elementalist.

So there you have it: You have added a tier in vertical progression without changing the Ascended best in slot. Nobody has to get rid of the Ascended items they worked so hard to get so those complaints are nipped in the bud and you have granted some customization to an otherwise common (looking) weapon.

Interesting at the least.

Nike.2631:

Beside the annoyance of having to seek out specific professions for that ‘perfect’ synergy-move for whatever farm you’re optimizing, I really tend to think that under all the whistles and bells it’s just recreating something we already have: skills like “On my mark” and the active portion of Signet of Vampirism.

Maybe that itch could be better scratched by adding a little more visibility or variety to the Fields & Finishers system we already have?

Basically, that was what I was proposing, but with more interesting effects…rather than just the “steal health” or “heal party” that currently happens, make them actively DO something visibly…like create a shield, or a wall, or a mystic karka that suddenly rolls on your enemies.

I didn’t explain it very well I guess, I was thinking not in terms of X skill specifically works with Y skill so that you would have to “seek out someone with the appropriate skill” I was thinking more in terms of X skill would work with A-Z skills of the other classes to create a unique effect….utilizing the system of blast finishers we have today….but expanded.

I love the idea of synergy skills, but rather than adding new skills, how about allowing existing skills to have synergy like that instead? That is I think one of the core things the combat is missing: Inter-class dependence. It’s basically a big ego train, where classes do very little to assist each other, except providing some healing and boons.

Also, please add hexes back into the game. These are what made GW1’s combat diverse and interesting. Stuff like Spiteful Spirit was great because of the unique things it did, and not being reliant on existing conditions and boons. It did it’s own thing.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

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

Chris

Possibly, or in lieu of that a means to add flexibility to the gear to allow for stat changes without needing to create a whole new set (see my inscription idea as an example).

Someone creates a whole set of berserker ascended and finds themselves getting rolled still (as glass cannons do) in WvW may have buyers remorse when that PVT set starts looking mighty tempting…

Chris Whiteside.6102:

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

Chris

Yes, that is totally what we want.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

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

Chris

I hate to say it, but when ANet has used the phrase “improved drop rate” in the past it generally goes from insignificant all the way up to still insignificant. Your side of the screen has to balance for a population of millions. Our side deals in the personal experience of one person.

I had a random Ascended Box (in a stat combo I would use, no less!) drop at part of the reward for gaining a level out in WvW. Sure, it was exciting for about 10 minutes, but the overall thrill was NOTHING compared to working towards one.

I can’t speak for anyone else here, but I do not enjoy waiting around for the RNG fairy to tap me on the head. I like to set a goal and move towards it.

Put another way: sure, better drop rates sound cool and all, but it’ll be still insignificant compared to the benefits of letting us use the currencies that measure our heroic effort to acquire them deliberately .

Lilith Ajit.6173:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

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

Chris

Yes, that is totally what we want.

Not entirely all of us. I personally prefer the timesink aspect involved in getting the set. Without it it won’t be long before people start demanding the next set to come along because they have nothing left to shoot for now. Keep the timesink, add flexibility so that the time spent becomes more rewarding instead of feeling punishing for going after a set you didn’t ultimately want or no longer do want due to a change of build.

Tub.4560:

Timegating and buying out of it
While I’m sitting behind a 230 day timegate, looking at an immense bill for crafting materials, other players just built their second legendary for their single character and still have gold left. Those can just ignore the timegate and buy out of it.

So last week on Tuesday, the first people said “alright, full ascended armor, I’m done.” The same people will say come january “hey, there’s nothing to do any more, game’s getting boring”. Arenanet will listen, will add more grind progression, and I’ll have to follow even though I’m not through with the previous patches’ grind.

Timegating is a good way to make sure that newly introduced goals and content will keep the players busy for a while. But for that to work, it has to apply equally to everyone.
….

Going forward, I’d like to propose five new design principles that every future content is checked against:

1. For all forms of progression that are infinite, progress should be awarded account wide
2. For all forms of progression that are very expensive or time consuming, the bulk of the costs should be shared between all characters.
3. For all forms of progression with timegating, the amount of time required should be the same for all accounts, independently of the number of characters or any other decision regarding playing style.
4. All one-time rewards should be available account wide.
5. All all gem shop items should be available account wide.

I agree with TUB, as someone who has a lot of ALTS and really enjoys playing them…ascended gear is ridiculous….it would at least be worthwhile to get if it had selectable stats similar to Legendary…and face it, people went for legendaries when they had fixed stats and the same stats as exotic…people will still go for them if Ascendeds had selectable stats like they do…their looks is why people went for legendaries….and to brag that they had one…the selectable stats has almost thrown them over the top.

I would even be okay with spending the time to outfit all of my alts if there was a way to add stats as someone suggested (so not truly selectable like a legendary, a more limited selectability where you can add some additional builds to the single piece of armor either through a gem-store purchase or a mystic forge recipe)…or perhaps Ascendeds only have the 5 “basic” stat combos available, while legendaries have them all.

Even if you made Ascended more accessible via trading post, or greater drops, the fact that the infusions are non-removable and the fact that they will be prohibitively expensive (unless you made them as common as exotics, which would be silly)…it still means you are locking someone into a particular build from the infusion standpoint.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

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

Chris

Yes, but do not make them sell-able. This would make certain people able to control the market keeping the prices of materials high at all times. At the same time, make ascended materials trad-able or sell-able. Example: Tons of Bloodstone Dust, not enough Dragonite Ore. Helping out guildies if they need an extra few materials by sending it to them, etc.

VOLKON.1290:

Lilith Ajit.6173:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

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

Chris

Yes, that is totally what we want.

Not entirely all of us. I personally prefer the timesink aspect involved in getting the set. Without it it won’t be long before people start demanding the next set to come along because they have nothing left to shoot for now. Keep the timesink, add flexibility so that the time spent becomes more rewarding instead of feeling punishing for going after a set you didn’t ultimately want or no longer do want due to a change of build.

Well for me, I either have it dropped or I don’t get it. I’m not wasting my time playing parts of the game I dislike so I can craft armor (or weapons). I did the weapon thing, but I found that it was more tedious than anything and ruined my fun for a good 2 weeks. I’d rather play my fractals, and not have to farm world bosses or wvw to get the dragonite. No thanks. That’s why drops would make me happier. Regardless of the stats, if all I need is more AR I’ll use whatever drops when it is needed.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

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

Chris

Yes.

The very best feature of GW2 is this: It fully supports vertical progression through multiple playstyles. All require time and commitment, and some are faster than others, but you can achieve statistically best-in-slot gear just by logging in every day and playing the parts of the game you prefer. You never feel forced to spend significant time in an activity you do not enjoy for itself.

This was largely true when exotics were the top tier. You can orange up your toons through WvW, overland PvE (karma), dungeons, crafting or just flipping stuff on the tradepost. If none of those playstyles appeal to you, you’re in the wrong game (and perhaps wrong genre!). Perhaps the pace was too fast, but the variety of means was wonderful.

Ascended armor is a break with this. You must craft. Moreover, you must PvE (dragonite exists in WvW, but it’s much slower to acquire). Drops exist, but they are so rare as to be meaningless. Parts of this are starting to feel like work. I’ll commit to playing a lot at things I enjoy, but I don’t want that second-job feeling I remember from prior MMO’s.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

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

Chris

Absolutely. You already use several ways of getting ascended gear. Guild Commendation, Pristine, Fractal Relics, Laurel, Crafting, drops. But alway each of these method are only use for 1 type of ascended gear. I can’t use Pristine to get nothing but rings, Guild commendation only allow me to get Accessories, while you need to craft weapons and armor. This is part of big problem. You gate acquisition of new ascended gear, but after sometime not only this gate stop working you are now stuck with a lot of useless items. Rings were so hard to get at the beginning, you had to grind lower fractal level to get them before you go into higher level, but now most of use don’t know what to do with Pristine and rings drop. Same things with Guild Commendation. It took us a while to get accessories to gear 1, 2 maybe even 3 characters. But now guild that never stop doing mission are now stuck with a bunch of Guild Commendation with really limited use for them.

About the drop rate. When a group of 20-30 people are doing a World Boss, then 1 person should get a box of ascended gear. Usually this people link it in the map chat so everybody see that ya we can get ascended gear here it so awesome. And if each time you do a world boss you see 1 person link a box, then you begin to think. Ya maybe I’ll do World Boss on a daily basis. And 1 drop for every 20-30 people is not that big. It mean that you have to do about 20-30 World Boss to get 1 box.

Lilith Ajit.6173:

VOLKON.1290:

Lilith Ajit.6173:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

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

Chris

Yes, that is totally what we want.

Not entirely all of us. I personally prefer the timesink aspect involved in getting the set. Without it it won’t be long before people start demanding the next set to come along because they have nothing left to shoot for now. Keep the timesink, add flexibility so that the time spent becomes more rewarding instead of feeling punishing for going after a set you didn’t ultimately want or no longer do want due to a change of build.

Well for me, I either have it dropped or I don’t get it. I’m not wasting my time playing parts of the game I dislike so I can craft armor (or weapons). I did the weapon thing, but I found that it was more tedious than anything and ruined my fun for a good 2 weeks. I’d rather play my fractals, and not have to farm world bosses or wvw to get the dragonite. No thanks. That’s why drops would make me happier. Regardless of the stats, if all I need is more AR I’ll use whatever drops when it is needed.

So what if you were able to get fractals related ascended gear for pristine fractal relics for example? Not just back pieces, but whole sets, weapons included? It would still take awhile but your dedication to Fractals would have definite goals in sight as well.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

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

Chris

I’m not interested in RNG. Please provide stable ‘complete-this’ lists, not random drops where one player gets 5 and another gets 0 in the same timespan.

Prices for ascended are ridiculous and they make the game worse: people on a competitive level (yes I mean WvW), need different armour sets and weapons sets.
I have 6 sets – used in 10+ different builds – on my guardian, ranging from pure dps to pure heal to pure condi to wall of steel to hit and run. Besides my guardian I have 4 more level 80 characters. Anyways, i’m sure you understand.

What we need is one of both options:
- Deleting ascended from all competitive content
- Allowing competitive players to collect 1 ascended set (all armour pieces & trinkets) in less than a normal week’s play (which would still mean I need 6 weeks to get all my gear on guardian, 2 weeks for my elementalist, 1 week for my thief, 3 weeks for my warrior, 2 weeks for my mesmer).

(or as VOLKON suggestion allow us to change our stats for a small fee – comparable to the retrait/repair cost- and make the acquisition period slightly longer).

The best thing we (I mean WvW players) could get, would be armour acquisition for WvW like it is in SPvP.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

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

Chris

The problem would still be runes / infusions placed into the ascended gear. If you made a way to transfer those easily…then yes.

I have 8 alts, right now each has 2-3 sets of armor for different things. I have been only getting the “celestial” accessories and amulets because I used these characters for fractals and I had to infuse these in order to do fractals…if I was going to infuse them…I decided to use the infusions that did both STAT + AR to gain an additional bonus. I would love to be able to get different accessories like I do with my armor and swap it out when needed…but went with celestial because of the infusion limitation.

Armor has now thrown another wrench in it, since now armor can have infusions, and I will need this for higher level fractals…I would like to have multiple sets again, and have these multiple sets on multiple characters (so I can grab a Mesmer when needed, or theif, etc)…but how do I move the infusions? I cannot…and grinding for that many infusions is again, even more ridiculous when you are dealing with ALTS.

Like TUB said, anything you need to do for ONE character (getting PVT armor for WvW, Zerker for dungeons, PPT for situations that need more toughness, etc) is X times greater if you play your additional characters (like TUB, I hate the term “alts” since I play them all)

This needs to be taken into consideration when implementing new things into the game. Right now ascendeds is out of reach for most players that play tons of characters…it requires you to play a “Main” and only outfit that single character…which to me…already limits my horizontal progression within the game (leveling and playing and learning my alts has kept me in the game since launch).

I remain (strongly) opposed to the ability to change their stats. It wasn’t necessary for Exotics and if access improves it won’t be necessary for Ascended.

If Ascended are supposed to occupy your time between a full exotic load-out and getting a Legendary, then amassing one set and being done forever puts them way, way, WAY closer to the Exotic side of that sequence of play. If we add some means to purchase them, filling out your Ascended tier once-&-only-once could easily end up taking less time than amassing 2-3 sets of exotics does…

The entire tier becomes fully self-defeating at that point.

VOLKON.1290:

Lilith Ajit.6173:

VOLKON.1290:

Lilith Ajit.6173:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

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

Chris

Yes, that is totally what we want.

Not entirely all of us. I personally prefer the timesink aspect involved in getting the set. Without it it won’t be long before people start demanding the next set to come along because they have nothing left to shoot for now. Keep the timesink, add flexibility so that the time spent becomes more rewarding instead of feeling punishing for going after a set you didn’t ultimately want or no longer do want due to a change of build.

Well for me, I either have it dropped or I don’t get it. I’m not wasting my time playing parts of the game I dislike so I can craft armor (or weapons). I did the weapon thing, but I found that it was more tedious than anything and ruined my fun for a good 2 weeks. I’d rather play my fractals, and not have to farm world bosses or wvw to get the dragonite. No thanks. That’s why drops would make me happier. Regardless of the stats, if all I need is more AR I’ll use whatever drops when it is needed.

So what if you were able to get fractals related ascended gear for pristine fractal relics for example? Not just back pieces, but whole sets, weapons included? It would still take awhile but your dedication to Fractals would have definite goals in sight as well.

Well, yeah. If they made an ascended version of dungeon armors too, I would do that absolutely. But if our options are: drops or craft, for me, drops is what I’d prefer.

I love the idea of actually, reliably, being able to get ascended gear from doing fractals. But they haven’t given us amulets or accessories. I just don’t think they will do armor or weapons. But I can hope I guess.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

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

Chris

I think that would be Ok. Just make sure to announce something like that about two weeks before the actual patch, so that people don’t make their ascended weapons five minutes before the patch and are cought on the wrong foot when reading the patch-notes a few minutes later.
The question is: Why is ascended gear needed than, when it’s “downgraded” to what Exotic was before? Progression makes only sense if there’s a reason to ‘progress’, progression for the sake of progression is horrible design.

As far as I’ve read in this thread (besides the oppinions I already know from people I play gw2 together with), it’s general consensus that Ascended Gear, as it’s currently implemented, is a bad idea and doesn’t satisfy any kind of player.

As a more general side note: ANet, you have so many years of experience with GW1, this game was awesome and you know it. Why do you guys want to invent the wheel new for everything if you already know what works (and maybe also what works not) from what you’ve done in GW1? It seems so pointless.

maybe it would be a good idea to think about new kinds of combos, when thinking about new skills

Chris Whiteside.6102:

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

Chris

Thats not what I want. Crafting would be pointless yet again.

Nike.2631:

The entire tier becomes fully self-defeating at that point.

It is already self-defeating.

There’s no way we needed ascended gear for Player vs. Player purposes (if everyone has exotic it’s the same as everyone having ascended).

There’s no PvE content except Fractals (which I think maybe 1 in 5 people or less plays on a weekly base and maybe 1/20 on a daily one) that needs any better gear. PvE is ridiculously easy already, burned through it in a couple of months.