Guild Wars 2

Hi, I encourage everyone to read this thread which was recently created.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/What-if-hearts-were-repeatable-for-T6/first#post3386694

The OP had an amazing idea to get players back into the open world, and provide players with another method of T6/end game materials (or can be designed to include actual gear) acquisition which I feel is relevant to this topic.

Summary: At max level, have each map/renown heart completable once per month. The hearts reward T6 materials(the quantity is up for debate). Full map completion in a zone(hearts only…) would reward something substantial like a core, 5 ects, and whatever else.

Heck, extend this idea to Dynamic Events. "Complete 10 events for X items, 25 for X+X items, 50, 100, and so on.

This entire idea serves multiple purposes:
1. Gets players into the open world, into any zone(really, all zones because once you’ve re-completed all the renown hearts in one zone, you can go onto the next zone of your choosing…same thing with the Dynamic Event idea I proposed).
2. Rewards max level players for simply playing the game.
3.Whether youre creating a legendary, ascended armor/weapons, or whatever..you could be working toward character progression.

I love this idea…the rewards have to be just right. One T6 item for a renown heart won’t work, but this can be debated.

Thanks Chris and Izzy for taking the time to have such a fantastic discourse with the community. I appreciate the time gating post by Izzy, but there is an issue with it: Wealthy players can buy the end result materials and negate the time sink. Casual players or even more regular players that don’t have a lot of disposable in game income can not. It makes for an unequal playing field. I think time gates should be universal.

I really love the above post that talks about adding 7 time gated materials per week. You can only make 7 a week, but you can make them all on the same day.That would actually benefit casual and hard core alike. You can do it all at once and forget it till the next week. There is a caveat with this system though: It needs to be universally time gated. The end result materials should not be available for purchase.

I think that vertical progression is better rewarded with in game items and not leaderboards that aren’t in the game. I want my progression to be represented in game. Titles and emotes do a great job of this in game. I think the Fractals needs it’s own set of armor to compliment the weapons and show off to other players that you do them. It is after all the only place in game where AR is needed. What better way to show off that you are at a certain fractal level (vertical progression) than with a set of armor that only drops at a certain tier or above? Fractal titles are a good way too. Leaderboards don’t show it off in Tyria and that is where my vertical progression matters.

VOLKON.1290:

Conner.4702:

Estriella Faerie.4029:

Carighan.6758:

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

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

Seems fine to me?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This is not disposable gear.

are you sure it’s not just the beginning of the endless vertical treadmill?
we do know right now there will be new max levels…new legendaries…maybe expansions.
i think it could be disposable gear.
it’s not the game anet announced. this is a typical-grind-mmo with just a bit less grind….disguised as events or other stuff.

DarksunG.9537:

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

This would rock, and I would actively work at unlocking all of the skins — this is a long term goal I could easily get behind. I don’t think attaining the “elite” skins should be easy, but being able to use them easily would be very nice indeed.

Kevan.8912:

VOLKON.1290:

Conner.4702:

Estriella Faerie.4029:

Carighan.6758:

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

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

Seems fine to me?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This is not disposable gear.

are you sure it’s not just the beginning of the endless vertical treadmill?
we do know right now there will be new max levels…new legendaries…maybe expansions.
i think it could be disposable gear.
it’s not the game anet announced. this is a typical-grind-mmo with just a bit less grind….disguised as events or other stuff.

In lesser MMOs I can see that as an issue, but it really doesn’t make sense to raise the level cap in GW2. You gain nothing from it and wind up,having to rebalance things, create all new gears and numbers… Far too much trouble for a game that down-levels you to keep lower content viable. I have no doubts they entertained the possibility of level cap increases but the game is built such that it is not only unnecessary, it would be damaging as a whole.

Based on that, I’m confident ascended gear, with all, the time and gold invested, will not be disposable gear… At least not for years.

Isaiah Cartwright.8569:

cesmode.4257

Im still waiting on some response about future progression in terms of
1. Ascended runes and sigils — Will they ever be in the game?
2. Will Ascended runes and sigils be only allowed on ascended weapons and armor? <— thus forcing the player to craft the ascended armor first before being able to utilzie the ascended rune or sigil.
Dyin’ to know this one.
Edit: I know you all are busy and/or could be formulating a proper response to it Just waiting!

We’ve talked about ascended runes/sigls as I think there are a number of balance issues with the current runes and sigils and it would allow us to make some tweaks to it that are harder to make without it but I don’t think we feel any need to do it yet and maybe not even at all. We have talked about how we are going to bring Jewel crafting and Cooking up to 500 but overall we really want to see how armor pans out and we would like to spend our time more on horizontal progression.

Hi, Thanks for the response! Get the email or the post-it note?

So this is semi comforting that you have not definitively decided on doing it yet, or if at all. I definately agree that JC and cooking need a boost and judging by this thread I think these are areas where you can lighten up on the requirements to craft in these disciplines. And it is good to hear that now that ascended armor is here, you are turning your focus to horizontal progression.

Question: How would it make your job easier to tweak balance issues if ascended sigils and runes were introduced, vs simply tweaking the existing ones? I don’t understand this.

Also, and one thing to keep in mind: If you ever decided to go ahead with introducing ascended sigils and runes, please allow them to be put into exotic gear. This would not force a player to grind up to 500 in a craft just to get these items.

ptitminou.6489:

Sirendor.1394:

Xenon.4537:

Sirendor.1394:

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

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

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

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

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

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

I beg to differ, speed is a skill, ask any athlete. And what you consider skills, others might laugh at, so don’t laugh at others, cause you could be laughing at someone you know or might consider a friend.

Rama.6439:

ptitminou.6489:

Sirendor.1394:

Xenon.4537:

Sirendor.1394:

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

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

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

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

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

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

I beg to differ, speed is a skill, ask any athlete. And what you consider skills, others might laugh at, so don’t laugh at others, cause you could be laughing at someone you know or might consider a friend.

On this, I would say that some of you elementalists can play the class, especially d/d and s/d, like a piano. Something I can’t do. You have way more skill than I.

On the topic of rewards(“reward my playstyle”) rewards tie into progression. Very relevant.

cesmode.4257:

Hi, I encourage everyone to read this thread which was recently created.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/What-if-hearts-were-repeatable-for-T6/first#post3386694

The OP had an amazing idea to get players back into the open world, and provide players with another method of T6/end game materials (or can be designed to include actual gear) acquisition which I feel is relevant to this topic.

Summary: At max level, have each map/renown heart completable once per month. The hearts reward T6 materials(the quantity is up for debate). Full map completion in a zone(hearts only…) would reward something substantial like a core, 5 ects, and whatever else.

Heck, extend this idea to Dynamic Events. "Complete 10 events for X items, 25 for X+X items, 50, 100, and so on.

This entire idea serves multiple purposes:
1. Gets players into the open world, into any zone(really, all zones because once you’ve re-completed all the renown hearts in one zone, you can go onto the next zone of your choosing…same thing with the Dynamic Event idea I proposed).
2. Rewards max level players for simply playing the game.
3.Whether youre creating a legendary, ascended armor/weapons, or whatever..you could be working toward character progression.

I love this idea…the rewards have to be just right. One T6 item for a renown heart won’t work, but this can be debated.

I was reading that thread as well, I’m glad that idea got transplanted over to this thread. This would help immensely with mat farming concerns and the new tier of ascended armors. I’m in full support of repeatable hearts as long as the reward is worth the time invested (I.E. 1 T6 mat and 1 RNG based mat sounds good)

Isaiah Cartwright.8569:

Overall I feel like time gating is important for an MMO because it’s important to close the gap between the causal and hardcore group so you can make sure your future rewards and content are useful for a wider variety of players. For example if there was no level cap and everyone could level as much as they want, hardcore players would be at level 4561 and a causal player would be at like 100. Once that happens, it would be very hard to make anything that both of those players would be happy about getting. MMO’s also have what I like to call “mass” to them, the more people playing and logging on, the more fun they are and systems which encourage people to log in often help create that mass. People see their friends regularly even just to say “hey there is an event this Sunday with the guild” or “hey lets set aside some time Friday so we can do fractals”. Now this doesn’t mean I feel like we can just add time gates everywhere. In fact I think you need either a very large amount of time gated stuff so a player can play for ever and never run out of things to do (which is a bit unrealistic) or you need non-time gated rewards and game play. This is why we create places for people to farm for all types of things. We like people who farm a lot, we are just always trying to make sure farming doesn’t blow out an item so much it’s no longer worth farming as it sort of defeats the whole reason to farm. A nice mix of time gates and non-gates is important. I think there are some valid complaints that we have over time gated some areas of the game and we should do some reviews of our time gates to see if adjustments should be made, but the game needs time gates for many reasons and if they were not there the game would be way less fun for any type of player.

That was, delusional to say the least. I’ll attempt to explain.

I have been playing a lot lately, I am a hardcore player so here is basically my story in the 2 last months:

1) WvW became less efficient for rewards since now I got plenty of karma for obsidian shards, so I stopped that for a while (plus waiting for server merges to fix the coverage issues as playing on my server is kinda pointless due to that so there really is not much fun involved in it) – so I figured, now that I learned how the WvW meta works incase it is one day viable, I might as well go try another way to make gold, fractals! And yes, it is really 100x better than WvW, though much less fun. I got me plenty of karma (useless except for obsidian) so why waste more time in it.

2) Ascended armor…. oh wait, I don’t use crit damage % in my build, so it is completely useless for me to spend time on that.

3) Fractals math: For my pve char which now has 25 AR (had laurels, commendations, badges already & got a lucky drop once I hit lvl 11 reward level), I can average 68 fragments per run. 3 runs a day. Given the low drop rate of agony resist, it makes no sense to farm anything else for an ascended back piece since by the time I get it infused, I may not even have a +10 AR yet. So to get ascended, It requires that I run 35 fractals. Three per timer once you reach 25 AR, so even if I get 1 bad group per day and only complete 2 per day, I get it done in 17 days.

That’s what timegating does to the hardcore player, intead of getting it in 7 days or so, I’ll get it in 17, completely pugging everything. Now my friend, who can get in 1 day per week (1 run of a lv 1-9 fractal because of timegate) he would be able to get the ascension item (cost 500 relics) in a total of 2 months at his current log in pace. The other days he has to farm other timegates for the ascended item in the first place to make the ascension item worth it. But we all know he then needs 250 ectos. He is most likely to just uninstall and let me know of the next game he is trying once he realizes he will never be able to catch up anytime soon.

TLDR/Conclusion:
So, I will be able to run level 39 fractals in a month’s time, 2 months if I were a fresh new account, my friend will barely be able to afford 1 ascended ring, or one ascension item and he will still be running level 1-9 in 2 months because you want to “help” casual players. Timegates do NOT work, they will never slow down a hardcore player, all they achieve is to make us math things out to get max efficiency. Fractals really make a lot of the other timegates useless too, just an fyi for your game.

L2P an MMO tips:
Chase the furthest attainable carrot for your gamestyle (ie: not wvw achieves if you are an achiever), chances are you’ll grab a few of the others along the way without even trying. As well as making a ton of gold, because games are generally misbalanced like that to incite players to even bother going after that far away carrot.

Want to chime in with this small thought:

Time gates have no place whatsoever in a supposedly casual and player friendly / grind free game.

Time gates are a grind that drives people away from games. I can’t think of a single person that has said “Oh I’m so glad I have to wait 17 more days to get this item even though I have the mats right in front of me.”

Aeonblade.8709:

cesmode.4257:

Hi, I encourage everyone to read this thread which was recently created.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/What-if-hearts-were-repeatable-for-T6/first#post3386694

The OP had an amazing idea to get players back into the open world, and provide players with another method of T6/end game materials (or can be designed to include actual gear) acquisition which I feel is relevant to this topic.

Summary: At max level, have each map/renown heart completable once per month. The hearts reward T6 materials(the quantity is up for debate). Full map completion in a zone(hearts only…) would reward something substantial like a core, 5 ects, and whatever else.

Heck, extend this idea to Dynamic Events. "Complete 10 events for X items, 25 for X+X items, 50, 100, and so on.

This entire idea serves multiple purposes:
1. Gets players into the open world, into any zone(really, all zones because once you’ve re-completed all the renown hearts in one zone, you can go onto the next zone of your choosing…same thing with the Dynamic Event idea I proposed).
2. Rewards max level players for simply playing the game.
3.Whether youre creating a legendary, ascended armor/weapons, or whatever..you could be working toward character progression.

I love this idea…the rewards have to be just right. One T6 item for a renown heart won’t work, but this can be debated.

I was reading that thread as well, I’m glad that idea got transplanted over to this thread. This would help immensely with mat farming concerns and the new tier of ascended armors. I’m in full support of repeatable hearts as long as the reward is worth the time invested (I.E. 1 T6 mat and 1 RNG based mat sounds good)

I agree, but I think the reward could be a smidge higher. Just a smidge. The idea itself is good to get people into the world again initially. After a while, they may see that its not worth the time spent and go back to champ farming.

Theres so much wasted potential, so much wasted content in the game because people found efficiency in champ farming and things of that sort. If suddenly the entire world became an oyster, woah! Imagine any day of the week, any time, any zone you will find people of all levels doing renown hearts.

I had even suggested to extend this to dynamic events too. Just throwing numbers out there, but 100 completed events in a zone would net you a chest that has anywhere from 10-20 T6 mats). Again, just throwing numbers out there, but you get the idea. Why stop at renown hearts? Make all the content relevant again.

I think this idea alone, if done correctly, would nearly 180 my views on the game in a positive way because THIS is the game I thought I would be playing when I bought GW2. An adventurer in any zone I wanted, doing whatever content I wanted. And not feeling left behind or unproductive.

Isaiah Cartwright.8569:

Some other interesting ways we could midigate the pressure on alts is just make all ascended gear account bound it would remove some demand but it’s something we’ve discussed before. Another idea is we could make it easier to craft ascended gear after you’ve made the first set, or we could allow you to duplicate ascended gear with some recipe so once you’ve created one set you can copy it for an alt for less. You could allow people to give up other time gates for the crafting one by letting people craft stuff with laurals or mystic coins. These are all some of the ideas or concepts we toss around for how to solve some of the alt issues. As for crafting your first set of ascended gear we want this to take a bit of time before you get to our horizontal progression systems. These are all some random brainstorm ideas that need a lot more vetting but I wanted to give some examples of other ways to work around some of these issues.

Good stuff.

The bolded: How about make it simple…cost karma? Bring the ascended armor set to a vendor, have him duplicate the pieces for karma?

The trick is that one player might run a zerker set for dungeons, but a more surviviability set or condition set for fractals. Allowing us to choose the stats on the duplicated item would need to be there too..otherwise its almost wasted unless all of your characters run the same stat setup.

Aeonblade.8709:

Time gates are a grind that drives people away from games. I can’t think of a single person that has said “Oh I’m so glad I have to wait 17 more days to get this item even though I have the mats right in front of me.”

This doesn’t actually apply to anything at all, does it?

You can BUY the only limiter for crafting (where mats would be a point of issue), but without the limiter the crafting would return to the Lv400 state of having no actual value to anyone who bothered getting it. Prior to this upgrade crafting was worthless, I could just buy my full gear set and crafting as a whole was a net loss in money with little hope of overcoming your loss to investment unless you got some bizarrely rare recipe.

Isaiah Cartwright.8569:

Yeah the 7 time gate thing is interesting there is a bit of a challenge to communicate something like that clearly

Limited stock NPC selling a required component which caps at 7 items max and refills his stock one item per day. Make it required to use one for each craft. Everything can be explained rather easily in the NPC tooltip.

As for the economic impact of having all 7 crafted at once, as long as the stock starts at 1 for the day you release the patch it shouldn’t affect much.

Isaiah Cartwright.8569:

We’ve talked about ascended runes/sigls as I think there are a number of balance issues with the current runes and sigils and it would allow us to make some tweaks to it that are harder to make without it but I don’t think we feel any need to do it yet and maybe not even at all. We have talked about how we are going to bring Jewel crafting and Cooking up to 500 but overall we really want to see how armor pans out and we would like to spend our time more on horizontal progression.

I feel that it’s redudant to have both a rune/ sigil slot and an infusion slot in the same pieces of gear. Why do we need both? Doesn’t it goes against minimalist design?

Hmmm, my main issue with character progression has more to do with the progression itself.
What I mean is I wish as part of our “personal” story we went on quests, missions, and adventures to learn new skills in our professions. Which on that note I wish there were more skills and utilities, even on individual weapons. I’m not sure which would be more balanced, to have extra skills locked to a position on the skill bar (so if you wanted to swap Sword 3 on Guardian with another skill it would be skills only available to sword 3) or to have the entire set itself swappable. Either way, I still with there were more skills and utilities that we acquired by playing our characters through something.

Ascended crafting is a painful painful experience. It is so hard leveling it up, not to mention expensive unless you want to farm Oris and Ancients all day everyday for a month. Once you get to 500 crafting it isn’t that bad but man going from 400-500 was such a terrible experience that I’ve decided to never do it again. Which means I’m limited to only ever having ascended weapons a weaponsmith can make…sigh. That’s not very horizontal progression friendly. If they are going to be that difficult to get they should probably have swappable stats like legendaries. Although I think the better solution is to create more avenues of acquiring.

That’s all I got off the top of my head…

Isaiah Cartwright.8569:

Ascended Runes/Sigils: This is mainly an issue with acquisition of the exotic ones there is just a large number of worthless runes mainly due to the balance between supply and demand, while I think there are a number of balance tweaks needed to bring more in line I don’t think the total supply of all runes/sigils comes anywhere near the total demand for all runes and sigils which means over time runes and sigils value just gets less and less. It’s much harder to change that as it requires changing the value of a lot of current items.

Why not just let us Mystic Forge all exotic level sigils and runes? There are a plethora of Sigils (+10% vs. X) that no one uses for anything. Thousands of them, probably.

Aeonblade.8709:

Want to chime in with this small thought:

Time gates have no place whatsoever in a supposedly casual and player friendly / grind free game.

This is not true.

The point of time gating isn’t “You can ever catch up faster than once per day while you are in game at all”

It’s “You can never fall behind faster than 1 per day while you’re gone.”

Any change directed toward alleviating the first statement has to not invalidate the second…

Time gates grind their boots of the faces of people who play for 8 hours a day far more vigorously than they do on people who log in for 45 minutes.

Where improvement seems possible to me is maybe some of those gates can be “saved up”. If you were gone for most of a week, would it be wrong for the game to let you to finish today’s set of dailes, then have yesterday’s pop-up, and if you finished those have the day before that pop up, and so on until you’ve back-tracked through as many as you care to from the days you decided going skiing was more important than logging in…?

Vena.8436:

This doesn’t actually apply to anything at all, does it?

You can BUY the only limiter for crafting (where mats would be a point of issue), but without the limiter the crafting would return to the Lv400 state of having no actual value to anyone who bothered getting it. Prior to this upgrade crafting was worthless, I could just buy my full gear set and crafting as a whole was a net loss in money with little hope of overcoming your loss to investment unless you got some bizarrely rare recipe.

And crafting is still worthless!
Why? Because there’s only one skin for ascended armor and it can only be gotten trough crafting, it’s also account bound and not sellable, meaning that if anyone wants to get ascended armor they have to pick up crafting themselves and they will be making the time limited items themselves.

What about this proposal for time-gated content for players that can’t log in every day:

• Being able to finish/ craft/ create any time-gated dailies or recipes you haven’t yet in the last 7 days.

For example, let’s imagine the following scenario:

• Day 1 – I finish my pvp daily.
• Day 2 – I play a dungeon.
• Day 3 – I finish my pvp dailies for day 2 and day 3.

This would make time-gating content keep its economic value, while taking pressure off players to log in every day to do every single time-gated content.

EDIT: And players would be able to finish all of their weekly time-gated tasks at the end of each weekend, which is when they have more time to play.

cesmode.4257:

Hi, I encourage everyone to read this thread which was recently created.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/What-if-hearts-were-repeatable-for-T6/first#post3386694

The OP had an amazing idea to get players back into the open world, and provide players with another method of T6/end game materials (or can be designed to include actual gear) acquisition which I feel is relevant to this topic.

Summary: At max level, have each map/renown heart completable once per month. The hearts reward T6 materials(the quantity is up for debate). Full map completion in a zone(hearts only…) would reward something substantial like a core, 5 ects, and whatever else.

I posted in that thread but would like to second the idea here as well. This is a horizontal progression rather than vertical, but in IMHO is one of the very best suggestions yet for horizontal progression. It benefits both casual and hardcore gamers, utilizing content that is already in place. Heart color could be used to differentiate between hearts that have been redone and those which have not, with color resetting when the month ends.

The only thing I would add is that there should also be a significant reward for those who manage to redo all the hearts in the world map in a month’s time. Perhaps an ascended weapon/armor box?

Isaiah Cartwright.8569:

Iason Evan.3806:

Thanks Chris and Izzy for taking the time to have such a fantastic discourse with the community. I appreciate the time gating post by Izzy, but there is an issue with it: Wealthy players can buy the end result materials and negate the time sink. Casual players or even more regular players that don’t have a lot of disposable in game income can not. It makes for an unequal playing field. I think time gates should be universal.

I really love the above post that talks about adding 7 time gated materials per week. You can only make 7 a week, but you can make them all on the same day.That would actually benefit casual and hard core alike. You can do it all at once and forget it till the next week. There is a caveat with this system though: It needs to be universally time gated. The end result materials should not be available for purchase.

I think that vertical progression is better rewarded with in game items and not leaderboards that aren’t in the game. I want my progression to be represented in game. Titles and emotes do a great job of this in game. I think the Fractals needs it’s own set of armor to compliment the weapons and show off to other players that you do them. It is after all the only place in game where AR is needed. What better way to show off that you are at a certain fractal level (vertical progression) than with a set of armor that only drops at a certain tier or above? Fractal titles are a good way too. Leaderboards don’t show it off in Tyria and that is where my vertical progression matters.

Yeah the 7 time gate thing is interesting there is a bit of a challenge to communicate something like that clearly and it has some economic impacts like currently T7 cloth goes for 10g but takes 4 or 5 to make so you can make a good 5 or 6 gold if you could choose you would simply craft all t7 cloth x 7 right now which would drive the price down quickly. The whole goal of the time gated crafting is to allow people to crafting something that is worth more then the mats because of our global trading post most materials are worth so close to the mats that crafting is rarely profitable unless your doing something like pitching for precursors. The demand for the materials is higher at the start but even the ascended weapons ones you can still make a gold or so off them. I’m not 100% sure how something like allowing players to craft any of 7 items would effect things I think some materials which have lower demand like leather would just be crafted a lot less in favor of cloth and ore which would start to normalize the materials which makes the whole system a little less interesting. (So need to an economic CDI at some point lol)

Some other interesting ways we could midigate the pressure on alts is just make all ascended gear account bound it would remove some demand but it’s something we’ve discussed before. Another idea is we could make it easier to craft ascended gear after you’ve made the first set, or we could allow you to duplicate ascended gear with some recipe so once you’ve created one set you can copy it for an alt for less. You could allow people to give up other time gates for the crafting one by letting people craft stuff with laurals or mystic coins. These are all some of the ideas or concepts we toss around for how to solve some of the alt issues. As for crafting your first set of ascended gear we want this to take a bit of time before you get to our horizontal progression systems. These are all some random brainstorm ideas that need a lot more vetting but I wanted to give some examples of other ways to work around some of these issues.

Thanks for the response Izzy. I really like the idea of after you make a first set of Ascended Armor, making sets after or copying sets is easier to get it on alts. I think that solves a lot of issues for people like myself with all of the classes. I play most of them regularly, so that would be cool.

If Ascended gear was more like what you just said, I wouldn’t mind vertical progresssion as much. Looking at it as it is in the game now though, would mean like a year’s worth of stuff for all my toons, and then I still don’t have the assurance that Ascended is the ceiling for gear. It makes me want to say no to the whole endeavor.

Thanks again for the response. I appreciate your time.

Isaiah Cartwright.8569:

While I could see how ascended gear feels like our focus as been on vertical progression I don’t feel like that is the case we spend a lot more time adding many things I would consider horizontal progression. I feel like new stat combos, skins, skills, traits, crafting recipes, mini pets, achievements, ect… are all horizontal progression and we have spent a lot more time and resources on expanding those systems by far.

I guess it feels like ascended gear is the focus of progression since many of us want to get that out of the way before we can focus on the horizontal progression.

Stats first, everything else later.

Hence the frustration at the enormous amount of time it takes to gear up our characters.

I am quite sure that we will appreciate the horizontal progression already in the game more when we have ascended gear taken care of. If we can manage to get there before the burnout.

Ascended gear works counterproductive to horizontal progression.

Isaiah Cartwright.8569:

I feel like new stat combos, skins, skills, traits, crafting recipes, mini pets, achievements, ect… are all horizontal progression and we have spent a lot more time and resources on expanding those systems by far.

From my player perspective the ton of dev time taken to balance skills and traits does not equate to horizontal progression.

Also in my opinion
New stat combos – with the current lack of saving builds I feel this is a small amount of progression. It is more of a cost decision than a progression. Do I want to use the bank space to store yet another set of armor/trinkets/weapons? Is this new stat combo going to be generally better than what I normally use? I don’t feel with all the costs that I am necessarily progressing.

Skins – the cost is even higher. I know you are a business, but I have to decide the cost of replacing my current skin or weapon. With exotics at least the cost was not as bad. I buy a 50g skin on the TP, 10% more to buy a new exotic is not that bad. Then add sigil cost. Then add build efficiency cost because now I don’t get my exotic sigil. Again, I don’t feel like I am progressing. I feel like I am making a decision on which I want.

Collections – always good for horizontal progression. I think this area can be expanded upon a lot with say a mob drop collection, or a daily flavor collection (do a daily a certain way, advance a collection).

Achievements – I think you guys have this one pretty well under control. This, I feel, is a pretty darn good horizontal progression.

Izzy, do you feel that the entry to ascended crafting is simple enough for casual players? I’m a bit between casual and hardcore and find it quite difficult to get it which mats I need and what I already have.

Wouldn’t it be much more customer friendly if you guys work on an UI which shows on one screen which mats I need and how much of it I currently have in my bank? It would go a long way to a more directed playstyle imho.

cesmode.4257:

Hi, I encourage everyone to read this thread which was recently created.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/What-if-hearts-were-repeatable-for-T6/first#post3386694

The OP had an amazing idea to get players back into the open world, and provide players with another method of T6/end game materials (or can be designed to include actual gear) acquisition which I feel is relevant to this topic.

Summary: At max level, have each map/renown heart completable once per month. The hearts reward T6 materials(the quantity is up for debate). Full map completion in a zone(hearts only…) would reward something substantial like a core, 5 ects, and whatever else.

Heck, extend this idea to Dynamic Events. "Complete 10 events for X items, 25 for X+X items, 50, 100, and so on.

This entire idea serves multiple purposes:
1. Gets players into the open world, into any zone(really, all zones because once you’ve re-completed all the renown hearts in one zone, you can go onto the next zone of your choosing…same thing with the Dynamic Event idea I proposed).
2. Rewards max level players for simply playing the game.
3.Whether youre creating a legendary, ascended armor/weapons, or whatever..you could be working toward character progression.

I love this idea…the rewards have to be just right. One T6 item for a renown heart won’t work, but this can be debated.

Having a book, like those used in GW1 for repeating missions would be reasonable — or possibly separate books for Ascalon, Kryta, etc. You complete an event, a page fills, you complete the full book and turn it in at a collector for the designated reward whether that be mats or tokens toward gear.

ps: I already never want to do another heart for the rest of my life, but I love doing events, dungeons, jumping puzzles, or simply rampaging through a zone with my wonderful guildies. I would also really love some type of journal that let me know if I were missing events that happen in a specific area — combining these things with gear acquisition would be great.

Also — crafting recipes… this is actually a great idea for progression, but having unique recipes where the product is then account bound kills the whole reason that I want to have them. Sure, I might want to make something for myself, but I’d also like to send something to friends, and maybe put it up for sale to make a profit. If time gating ( which is truly detrimental to my play style) is okay to allow crafters to make money then why shouldn’t unique recipes that fall only during a limited time be allowed to be used to make crafters some money?

edited for clarity and recipe idea

Hey guys I’ve noticed that there is a lot of discussion on ascended armor and gear in general. I love the ideas for normalizing ascended and exotic armor and giving ascended armor precursor status and unlockable stat swapping. I hope you don’t mind me veering off in another direction. My idea for horizontal progression moves away from gear and into investing players in the world. The following is a summary of an article I wrote for Relics of Orr back in February.

I would like to see additional horizontal progression in the game serve to provide the character with additional content beyond simply changing how you character is built and focusing on who your character is and has become through the personal and living stories.

Background
My Idea draws influence from the duty officer system in Star Trek Online, the Assassin’s Creed 2: Brotherhood’s assassin guild system, and Star Wars: The Old Republic Crew Skills. The open world missions are based on skyrim’s radiant questing system.

Living World/Personal story Tie-in
Trahearne summons you to a meeting in his office at fort trinity. You and he discuss the results of your recent campaign in Orr. With your success at cleansing of the heart of Orr and killing Zhaitan you have allowed the Pact to gain a solid footing in Orr. With the threat of scarlet (or the season 2 big bad) and her myriad alliances Traherne sends you back to your order to set up a response team.

You arrive at your order and meet the rest of the leadership. The order determines that you should begin recruiting in your home city in order to help replenish the losses in Orr. Your herald offers to help you in your efforts and the order allows you to choose a junior member to be your aide. Then you are given the keys to the orders new headquarters in your home instance.

Your headquarters will differ depending on the order you are a part of; a basement safe-house for the order of whispers, a barracks for the vigil and a rooftop observatory for the priory. Each headquarters will start with a single room containing a desk for your aide, a bulletin board and a table with a map of Tyria on it. Speaking with your herald allows you to view and manage your headquarters’ funds, agents and upgrades. Your headquarters uses funds, gained from missions and your direct donations, on facility upgrades, gear for your agents, and general upkeep of the headquarters. You equip agents with purchased gear to boost their abilities and statistics. Agents have the same stats, professions, crafting disciplines and personality profiles that you can have.

In addition to player stats Agents also have a happiness rating and an injury status. Agents can be injured or killed when they fail a dangerous mission. If they are inured agents will take time to recover before they can be redeployed. Purchasing a medical ward upgrade allows your agents to recover faster. Other upgrades you can purchase for example are increased barracks size to house more agents or a pub. When you purchase a new room it will be immediately accessible in your headquarters. You will be able to see injured agents in your medical ward, training in a dojo and off duty agents relaxing in the pub where they can regain morale.

Morale is an important part of running your facility. Low morale can cause agents to quit or go AWOL. To improve morale you can add decorations to your headquarters and send your agents on vacation. When your agents are healthy and happy you will be sending them on missions.

The map of Tyria in your headquarters is how you send your agents on missions. It is divided into regions with randomized topical missions such as investigating murders, defending a town from monsters or searching for lost artifacts. You can even send your agents out to farm small amounts of random materials with a small amount of operational overhead (aka gold).

To recruit agents you will need to complete recruitment dynamic events. Recruitment DEs can spawn anywhere in the word and involve either saving or helping the potential recruit in some way (similar to assassin creed recruitment missions). You can only offer the recruit a job if you successfully complete the event. Periodically you will receive requests for help from characters you had befriended in the personal/living storyline. These requests will allow you to recruit the associated npc. As a Charr this would let your recruit your warband members into your order, as a human commoner you could recruit the spunky barmaid Petra and her father or possibly recruit operative-o-tron fresh off his community service.

Continued…

Moira Shalaar.5620:

cesmode.4257:

Hi, I encourage everyone to read this thread which was recently created.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/What-if-hearts-were-repeatable-for-T6/first#post3386694

The OP had an amazing idea to get players back into the open world, and provide players with another method of T6/end game materials (or can be designed to include actual gear) acquisition which I feel is relevant to this topic.

Summary: At max level, have each map/renown heart completable once per month. The hearts reward T6 materials(the quantity is up for debate). Full map completion in a zone(hearts only…) would reward something substantial like a core, 5 ects, and whatever else.

I posted in that thread but would like to second the idea here as well. This is a horizontal progression rather than vertical, but in IMHO is one of the very best suggestions yet for horizontal progression. It benefits both casual and hardcore gamers, utilizing content that is already in place. Heart color could be used to differentiate between hearts that have been redone and those which have not, with color resetting when the month ends.

The only thing I would add is that there should also be a significant reward for those who manage to redo all the hearts in the world map in a month’s time. Perhaps an ascended weapon/armor box?

I personally think it this lends more to VP than horizontal because you are getting materials for crafting in the VP system.

Either way…your last sentence. If someone manages to do the entire map in a month, they get a full armor set Thats a lot of work.

Continued form above…

Agents come in seven different quality types corresponding with gear rarity; common, fine, master, rare, exotic, ascendant and legendary. The bulletin board in your headquarters will track potential recruits of common to rare quality. Exotic quality and better recruits will be found through rare events similar to the Treasure Skritt as well as meta achievements from the living world, WvW and SPvP. Random events in dungeons could also be set up to introduce special dungeon themed agents; like a freed ghost from Ascalon Catacombs or a Dredge rebel from Sorrow’s Embrace. All agents that are not out on a mission will appear in your headquarters in uniform or out in your home instance in plainclothes or custom gear skins. As your agents gain experience they will progress from trainees to field agents. Successful agents can be promoted to the coveted position of special operative or even one of five management positions in your headquarters.

While managing your agents would be an important part of the sub game you would also gain access to personal missions from the bulletin board. These missions would send you out into the open world similar to Guild missions and allow you to kick off events that award faction commendations to anyone who participates. Commendations would be used to buy order skinned soulbound exotic and ascended gear as well as order specific miniatures and other cosmetic rewards. Missions would vary by faction from members of the vigil going out and fighting large champions and world bosses to the priory searching for artifacts to the order of whispers sneaking into places to steal plans and gain intelligence on the various villains of Tyria. Anyone who participates in an order’s mission would receive that order’s commendations. Characters that are in a specific order would receive a commendation discount in that order’s store.

As you gain reputation with your Order and upgrade your headquarters new upgrades and mission types can be unlocked. Depending on your upgrades you might focus on espionage missions over combat or crafting over exploration. Once your reputation reaches a certain level you will be offered the chance to open Order headquarters in other cities. You may even have the chance to take over command of your order entirely.

Key Features:

• New content that provides new purpose for the home instance
• New long term progression system that emphasizes organization and gameplay over gear.
• Customizable headquarters for your Order
• New dynamic events that directly affect who you see in your home instance
• New crafting recipes that improve your agent’s stats
• Open world content that bases events on how you play
• Story that brings back characters from the early parts of GW2: The Road to Orr
• Unique decorations and premium headquarter skins in the gem store
• The opportunity to build an all Quaggan army for the order of whispers

Challenges

• Large number of new interfaces needed to be made.
• New code that affects the back end of the game
• Long implementation curve may need to be released in small chunks
• May pull players out of the open world initially

Opportunities

• Provide a framework for player/guild housing.
• Allow players to affect the world individually
• Invests players in the world
• Adds passive progression that makes players excited to log on
• A platform to provide lore and living story links beyond “your herald told you to”
• Monetize new art assets that can be used to expand the world

TLDR : I would like to see a horizontal progression system in the game that focuses on investing us in the world of Tyria; a system that allows us to build something beyond our character’s stats and appearance. I would like to see a system that rewards gameplay with expanded options to generate world content for yourself and other players.

In general in regards to crafting mats..

Acquisition of tiers 1-5 feel fine, with the possible exception of fangs/totems/etc. Plenty of spots out in the world to gather this stuff. Acquisition of T6 stuff feels borked – there’s so few nodes of it it’s not really farmable that way, so we rely on the salvage rng.

Sinks for the mats.. well, when you get to 400+ crafting, sinks for t1-4 mats feel fine. Sinks for t5 feel punishing, and t6 mats are so rare that the sinks feel really punishing.

Ironically I think for t1-4 mats, crafting 1-400 feels like a more harsh sink than what’s required above 400. There’s little way to keep an alt ‘on par’ crafting-wise by self gathered mats while leveling without supplementing from the TP.

So a lot of mismatch between availability and the sinks there, but it’s not all bad. But it does lead to us being more encouraged to farm gold to supplement.

Aye.8392:

cesmode.4257:

Hi, I encourage everyone to read this thread which was recently created.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/What-if-hearts-were-repeatable-for-T6/first#post3386694

The OP had an amazing idea to get players back into the open world, and provide players with another method of T6/end game materials (or can be designed to include actual gear) acquisition which I feel is relevant to this topic.

Summary: At max level, have each map/renown heart completable once per month. The hearts reward T6 materials(the quantity is up for debate). Full map completion in a zone(hearts only…) would reward something substantial like a core, 5 ects, and whatever else.

Heck, extend this idea to Dynamic Events. "Complete 10 events for X items, 25 for X+X items, 50, 100, and so on.

This entire idea serves multiple purposes:
1. Gets players into the open world, into any zone(really, all zones because once you’ve re-completed all the renown hearts in one zone, you can go onto the next zone of your choosing…same thing with the Dynamic Event idea I proposed).
2. Rewards max level players for simply playing the game.
3.Whether youre creating a legendary, ascended armor/weapons, or whatever..you could be working toward character progression.

I love this idea…the rewards have to be just right. One T6 item for a renown heart won’t work, but this can be debated.

Having a book, like those used in GW1 for repeating missions that could be turned in for Faction gain, would be reasonable — or possibly separate books for Ascalon, Kryta, etc. You do something, a page fills, you complete a book and turn it in at a collector for the designated reward whether that be mats or tokens toward gear.

ps: I already never want to do another heart for the rest of my life, but I love doing events, dungeons, jumping puzzles, or simply rampaging through a zone with my wonderful guildies. I would also really love some type of journal that let me know if I were missing events that happen in a specific area — combining these things with gear acquisition would be great.

To each his own, I loved the renown heart and I love DEs too. I extended the OP’s idea to include dynamic events.

And a journal of completed DEs in each zone would be nice.

Isaiah Cartwright.8569:

ptitminou.6489:

TLDR/Conclusion:
So, I will be able to run level 39 fractals in a month’s time, 2 months if I were a fresh new account, my friend will barely be able to afford 1 ascended ring, or one ascension item and he will still be running level 1-9 in 2 months because you want to “help” casual players. Timegates do NOT work, they will never slow down a hardcore player, all they achieve is to make us math things out to get max efficiency. Fractals really make a lot of the other timegates useless too, just an fyi for your game.

L2P an MMO tips:
Chase the furthest attainable carrot for your gamestyle (ie: not wvw achieves if you are an achiever), chances are you’ll grab a few of the others along the way without even trying. As well as making a ton of gold, because games are generally misbalanced like that to incite players to even bother going after that far away carrot.

The goal isn’t to make hardcore and causal players have equal times that would make for a pretty unfun game, goal is to just bring the ratios between them slightly closer instead of 100 to 1 get it to 20 to 1 and stop it from becoming 1000 to 1 over 10 years.

Some of the debate your leading into is time gating vs skill gating which is pretty tricky skill gating is important for a game but it drives a lot of people away. I actually think we need to add more skill gating but skill gating progression I think leaves some really strong imbalances and leads to really nitch hard core user base. This is why skill gating into horizontal progression rewards is good because this can allow people to do hard things but doesn’t require people to do it. This is why ascended armor is designed to be achievable by anyone just takes time to so.

More skill gating of horizontal progression sounds good. Skill gated content like Liadri was fun, I just wish the reward had been something more easily visible or permanent like a title/skin instead of a mini that you have to keep in a hidden bag and take out constantly.

Mirta.5029:

And crafting is still worthless!
Why? Because there’s only one skin for ascended armor and it can only be gotten trough crafting, it’s also account bound and not sellable, meaning that if anyone wants to get ascended armor they have to pick up crafting themselves and they will be making the time limited items themselves.

Crafting isn’t worthless.

The component products at 500, which are sell-able, have greater value than their net components. Something which was never true in the past.

Isaiah Cartwright.8569:

cesmode.4257:

We’ve talked about ascended runes/sigls as I think there are a number of balance issues with the current runes and sigils and it would allow us to make some tweaks to it that are harder to make without it but I don’t think we feel any need to do it yet and maybe not even at all. We have talked about how we are going to bring Jewel crafting and Cooking up to 500 but overall we really want to see how armor pans out and we would like to spend our time more on horizontal progression.

Hi, Thanks for the response! Get the email or the post-it note?

So this is semi comforting that you have not definitively decided on doing it yet, or if at all. I definately agree that JC and cooking need a boost and judging by this thread I think these are areas where you can lighten up on the requirements to craft in these disciplines. And it is good to hear that now that ascended armor is here, you are turning your focus to horizontal progression.

Question: How would it make your job easier to tweak balance issues if ascended sigils and runes were introduced, vs simply tweaking the existing ones? I don’t understand this.

Also, and one thing to keep in mind: If you ever decided to go ahead with introducing ascended sigils and runes, please allow them to be put into exotic gear. This would not force a player to grind up to 500 in a craft just to get these items.

While I could see how ascended gear feels like our focus as been on vertical progression I don’t feel like that is the case we spend a lot more time adding many things I would consider horizontal progression. I feel like new stat combos, skins, skills, traits, crafting recipes, mini pets, achievements, ect… are all horizontal progression and we have spent a lot more time and resources on expanding those systems by far.

Ascended Runes/Sigils: This is mainly an issue with acquisition of the exotic ones there is just a large number of worthless runes mainly due to the balance between supply and demand, while I think there are a number of balance tweaks needed to bring more in line I don’t think the total supply of all runes/sigils comes anywhere near the total demand for all runes and sigils which means over time runes and sigils value just gets less and less. It’s much harder to change that as it requires changing the value of a lot of current items. There are other systems we could do to fix this problem like we could make there be a less chance to salvage them out or make all runes/sigils crafting and when you salvage them you get some material that is used so we can adjust supply and demand between those.

Our system doesn’t really support limiting upgrades by rarity and I don’t think this is something we would do if we wanted to go that route we would just make infusions better sense they are naturally limited by ascended gear but that’s also a can of worms.

Hi,
Had to think about this for a few minutes while eating my chicken parm sammich.

I did not intend to mean that the sole focus has been VP. I definately recognize the amount of skins being pumped into the game, along with minis, etc. But in terms of impact and major announcements, VP seems to have taken the stage. Just my view.

Concerning the second paragraph: If coming by the exotic versions of these items is too difficult, simply allow folks to upgrade rare to exotic then to ascended, or ascend straight from rare to ascended via a formula. Or, again(you can see a trend in my responses), a vendor..pay him karma to ascend the item. I truly think karma is universal in the game and could reduce the amount of currencies you have, and also prop up a myriad of activities. Anything that rewards karma, which is nearly everything, would be working toward your goal of ascending sigils/runes, or whatever other uses you decide to give karma. Its there already. Just need to give it more purpose.

So, if I am reading your second paragraph correctly, you’re saying the current system does not limit upgrading on rarity. So, I could theoretically have a Masterwork armor piece, and throw an ascended upgrade in there(why would I..no idea). If this is the case, I am OK with it. If ascended upgrades are introduced, like you say, they should follow the same layout as the other sigils and runes where they can be placed on any rarity. We have come to an accord on this, sir. (unless I mis-read )

Ascended gear is only progression if you like the skins or magenta lettering — or if you think the minor stats increase matters in a game mode you play (such as WvW). Otherwise, there is no reason to get ascended armor.

Which is fine. In GW1, obsidian armor was pure vanity, and that’s fine.

But ascended armor is not progression for many players I talk to, or me. I’ve looked at it, and see no reason a non-WvW player like me should go thru the pain to get it.

So what’s meaningful progression for me? Most people in this thread are focused on ascended armor; what about those of us who have no interest in grinding it?

And I have posted ideas, only to see them lost in the ascended frenzy.

Nike.2631:

Aeonblade.8709:

Want to chime in with this small thought:

Time gates have no place whatsoever in a supposedly casual and player friendly / grind free game.

This is not true.

The point of time gating isn’t “You can ever catch up faster than once per day while you are in game at all”

It’s “You can never fall behind faster than 1 per day while you’re gone.”

Any change directed toward alleviating the first statement has to not invalidate the second…

Time gates grind their boots of the faces of people who play for 8 hours a day far more vigorously than they do on people who log in for 45 minutes.

Where improvement seems possible to me is maybe some of those gates can be “saved up”. If you were gone for most of a week, would it be wrong for the game to let you to finish today’s set of dailes, then have yesterday’s pop-up, and if you finished those have the day before that pop up, and so on until you’ve back-tracked through as many as you care to from the days you decided going skiing was more important than logging in…?

This! I hadn’t thought of it in quite these terms before, seeing only what time-gating takes away from me, but you are exactly spot on. Having some way to catch up to the pace that A-Net has decided is okay would be a huge boon for the players that can’t be in every day.

Sytherek.7689:

Ascended gear is only progression if you like the skins or magenta lettering — or if you think the minor stats increase matters in a game mode you play (such as WvW). Otherwise, there is no reason to get ascended armor.

Which is fine. In GW1, obsidian armor was pure vanity, and that’s fine.

But ascended armor is not progression for many players I talk to, or me. I’ve looked at it, and see no reason a non-WvW player like me should go thru the pain to get it.

So what’s meaningful progression for me? Most people in this thread are focused on ascended armor; what about those of us who have no interest in grinding it?

And I have posted ideas, only to see them lost in the ascended frenzy.

Ascended gear is required for FoTM. You will die a lot without it. There are fights that have an agony check at the start of the fight(literally, you walk into the area and random agony hits you to check your AR..those people that go down dont have enough and shouldnt be there).

Ascended gear in WvW…debatable if its needed. Ive noticed a decrease in my power compared to most people since my WvW toon doesnt have much ascended gear. But that could just be my perception.

Aye.8392:

Nike.2631:

Aeonblade.8709:

Want to chime in with this small thought:

Time gates have no place whatsoever in a supposedly casual and player friendly / grind free game.

This is not true.

The point of time gating isn’t “You can ever catch up faster than once per day while you are in game at all”

It’s “You can never fall behind faster than 1 per day while you’re gone.”

Any change directed toward alleviating the first statement has to not invalidate the second…

Time gates grind their boots of the faces of people who play for 8 hours a day far more vigorously than they do on people who log in for 45 minutes.

Where improvement seems possible to me is maybe some of those gates can be “saved up”. If you were gone for most of a week, would it be wrong for the game to let you to finish today’s set of dailes, then have yesterday’s pop-up, and if you finished those have the day before that pop up, and so on until you’ve back-tracked through as many as you care to from the days you decided going skiing was more important than logging in…?

This! I hadn’t thought of it in quite these terms before, seeing only what time-gating takes away from me, but you are exactly spot on. Having some way to catch up to the pace that A-Net has decided is okay would be a huge boon for the players that can’t be in every day.

I dont think Nike or Aeonblade are wrong. Its a question of “do you look at the glass half full or half empty”.

I have no vested interest in the concept of time gating. To me, its OK. But I can see why people are irate.

Isaiah Cartwright.8569:

Essence Snow.3194:

I hope ya’ll realize that most every pro and reason you just listed gets negated by allowing players to bypass time gates via gold.

This is why we really count crafting gating as a soft gate it is not meant to be a hard gate, but we have a lot of other time gates in the game daily, gathering, guild mission cool down, fractal daily timers ect. I know most of the concern about gating is directed at the crafting gate but I’m more trying to give insight to why we use time gates at all.

That still does not explain why ya’ll allow gold (the hardcore and tp players) to bypass the time gates that hold the rest/majority of the population back. It only serves to further the gap between them, which is in direct contradiction to what they are supposed to do in the 1st place.

So my questions are:

1) How do you define a soft cap?
2) Why was craft ascended designated as a soft cap vs a hard cap?
3) Why was gold allowed to bypass the “soft cap”?

Sytherek.7689:

Ascended gear is only progression if you like the skins or magenta lettering — or if you think the minor stats increase matters in a game mode you play (such as WvW). Otherwise, there is no reason to get ascended armor.

Which is fine. In GW1, obsidian armor was pure vanity, and that’s fine.

But ascended armor is not progression for many players I talk to, or me. I’ve looked at it, and see no reason a non-WvW player like me should go thru the pain to get it.

So what’s meaningful progression for me? Most people in this thread are focused on ascended armor; what about those of us who have no interest in grinding it?

And I have posted ideas, only to see them lost in the ascended frenzy.

It does seem like it may be a good idea to split the CDI into two threads so that the ascended gear debate can go uninterrupted and disscussion on horizontal progression doesn’t get swallowed up.

Essence Snow.3194:

Isaiah Cartwright.8569:

Essence Snow.3194:

I hope ya’ll realize that most every pro and reason you just listed gets negated by allowing players to bypass time gates via gold.

This is why we really count crafting gating as a soft gate it is not meant to be a hard gate, but we have a lot of other time gates in the game daily, gathering, guild mission cool down, fractal daily timers ect. I know most of the concern about gating is directed at the crafting gate but I’m more trying to give insight to why we use time gates at all.

That still does not explain why ya’ll allow gold (the hardcore and tp players) to bypass the time gates that hold the rest/majority of the population back. It only serves to further the gap between them, which is in direct contradiction to what they are supposed to do in the 1st place.

So my questions are:

1) How do you define a soft cap?
2) Why was craft ascended designated as a soft cap vs a hard cap?
3) Why was gold allowed to bypass the “soft cap”?

To be honest, I think it has to do with gem sales and gem to gold conversion. It gives players a way to bypass the time gate, but only if they are willing to spend some cheddar. It’s smart from a business standpoint, but it really shafts the majority of players in game.

Shongaqu.5279:

Continued form above…

Agents come in seven different quality types corresponding with gear rarity; common, fine, master, rare, exotic, ascendant and legendary. The bulletin board in your headquarters will track potential recruits of common to rare quality. Exotic quality and better recruits will be found through rare events similar to the Treasure Skritt as well as meta achievements from the living world, WvW and SPvP. Random events in dungeons could also be set up to introduce special dungeon themed agents; like a freed ghost from Ascalon Catacombs or a Dredge rebel from Sorrow’s Embrace. All agents that are not out on a mission will appear in your headquarters in uniform or out in your home instance in plainclothes or custom gear skins. As your agents gain experience they will progress from trainees to field agents. Successful agents can be promoted to the coveted position of special operative or even one of five management positions in your headquarters.

While managing your agents would be an important part of the sub game you would also gain access to personal missions from the bulletin board. These missions would send you out into the open world similar to Guild missions and allow you to kick off events that award faction commendations to anyone who participates. Commendations would be used to buy order skinned soulbound exotic and ascended gear as well as order specific miniatures and other cosmetic rewards. Missions would vary by faction from members of the vigil going out and fighting large champions and world bosses to the priory searching for artifacts to the order of whispers sneaking into places to steal plans and gain intelligence on the various villains of Tyria. Anyone who participates in an order’s mission would receive that order’s commendations. Characters that are in a specific order would receive a commendation discount in that order’s store.

As you gain reputation with your Order and upgrade your headquarters new upgrades and mission types can be unlocked. Depending on your upgrades you might focus on espionage missions over combat or crafting over exploration. Once your reputation reaches a certain level you will be offered the chance to open Order headquarters in other cities. You may even have the chance to take over command of your order entirely.

Key Features:

• New content that provides new purpose for the home instance
• New long term progression system that emphasizes organization and gameplay over gear.
• Customizable headquarters for your Order
• New dynamic events that directly affect who you see in your home instance
• New crafting recipes that improve your agent’s stats
• Open world content that bases events on how you play
• Story that brings back characters from the early parts of GW2: The Road to Orr
• Unique decorations and premium headquarter skins in the gem store
• The opportunity to build an all Quaggan army for the order of whispers

Challenges

• Large number of new interfaces needed to be made.
• New code that affects the back end of the game
• Long implementation curve may need to be released in small chunks
• May pull players out of the open world initially

Opportunities

• Provide a framework for player/guild housing.
• Allow players to affect the world individually
• Invests players in the world
• Adds passive progression that makes players excited to log on
• A platform to provide lore and living story links beyond “your herald told you to”
• Monetize new art assets that can be used to expand the world

TLDR : I would like to see a horizontal progression system in the game that focuses on investing us in the world of Tyria; a system that allows us to build something beyond our character’s stats and appearance. I would like to see a system that rewards gameplay with expanded options to generate world content for yourself and other players.

This sounds like a great game, but it doesn’t sound at all like GW2.

i’ve qqed about these for long time but i really feel like putting it all together again:

1) More ways to get ascended pieces, especially backpieces. harder content? Fine. Just make it consume much less time and require no repeatable content, just limit it to one set of something per month for one account if you must. I don’t see much problem if it’s unsalvageable account bound stuff though.
2) Considering price and time effort you should be able to switch stats on that gear.
3) Omg yeah. I have a problem when it comes to acquisition of legendary weapons after playing this game since beta 2. Why not add living world progression to give you precursors eventually or something.
4) Power creep in WvW. It has become totally mess even though it has been nearly unplayable for long time. Buffs, ascended gear, WvW bonuses and add some totally op builds/game mechanics caused By less Limited space than in pvp in calculation. At launch wvw thieves were a bit strong but at least everything else was somewhat understandable. WvW really should be PvP gear and no group or individual stat bonuses. Except “legit” real skills.
5) Hambow wars, stunshatter mesms, condiengis, terrornecros, mm’s and spirit rangers kind of annoy me in spvp, even though not really related to progression. Just sayan.

Lol, I’ve lost the thread of the conversation, what is it you want us to talk about currently? Something about vertical progression? Do you have any specific question for us?

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

Lol, I’ve lost the thread of the conversation, what is it you want us to talk about currently? Something about vertical progression? Do you have any specific question for us?

I hope this helps