Guild Wars 2

Gibson.4036:

HiddenNick.7206:

You are talking like Vertical Progression is the next bad thing after meteor shower! And why is it so bad? Why do you think that Horizontal Progression is vastly superior to it? You’re not playing an ordinary game. You’re playing an MMO game. And that’s the kind game of game that grows vertically and endlessly (or to the moment when people stops playing it) whether you like or not. And characters should grow with it.

I’m not sure how you got that out of that post. It was in response to a conversation about whether we can accept that Ascended is the final tier of gear, which means the discussion about vertical progression is over, and we can move on to just talking about horizontal progression.

I was pointing out that, quite the contrary, ArenaNet is committed to continuing vertical progression, and therefore the subject is far from closed.

I read you words out of the context. I must agree that I misunderstood you there in a worst way possible. English i not my native language but that shouldn’t be an excuse. Sorry.

As to your assertion that MMO automatically means vertical progression, that is certainly the tradition of MMORPGs, but there is nothing inherent in Massive, Multiplayer, Online, or Role Playing Game that means vertical progression is necessary.

There are plenty of Multiplayer games, Online games, and Role Playing Games that do not have continual, vertical progression.

I already did a post about it in this thread. I did explain using fractals and dungeons as an example of why I think that VP is needed for the PvE aspect of the game. What I have in mind is that adding permanent and relevant content to the game without Vertical Progression is only possible at the expense of other content that is already in the game. And having in mind how people dislike temporary content that’s a problem.

I am also not dead set against vertical progression. I do, however, hate the current implementation of Ascended gear for a variety of reasons I’ve listed previously.

Vertical progression that flows naturally out of immersive gameplay is fine. GW2 leveling is an example. Vertical Progression where the extrinsic reward vastly eclipses the intrinsic rewards (Ascended Gear) is what made me take a break from playing GW2.

I absolutely agree!

This is the same mechanic of any korean F2P mmorpg, release ubergrinding stuff and then plan easier way to acquire it later when most people will already had to grind it…

I personally can t convince myself to believe they didn t read in the past all suggestion on dungeon tokens and then suddenly they consider it…

Its suits to well as a mean to gain time and just going the usual korean grinding f2p….
With the last 2 thing added and what we seen in dev fotm video we got the last 2 ingredients of any korean f2p

Infusions +X (with added stats) and gem shop upgrade extractor…

Tell me Granado espada is not the same as GW2…tell me lineage is different…
It got almost identical….

I bet if i go today on lineage 2 most lvl old top tier weapons are really easy to acquire…..

Its fantastic and great to have this CDI topic…but if facts goes in the opposite way i can t really give anet any trust…they already betrayed it on a regular base.

My 2 cents on this, I love to work towards a reward. If it takes a few months to get there, that’s fine. It gives you a long term goal in the game. But if this process involves grinding materials and gold, just to make the crafting possible… count me out. I’d rather do quests and dungeons to earn my reward.

As an example, after the GW1 Prophecies campaign had been completed, there was an optional quest line where you drive off the remaining Titans. These quests were really hard, and while there was no reward at the end of the line, this did give players some end game goal. That is what I would love to see, but with a unique reward at the end. That is how I would like to earn my ascended gear.

But don’t fall into the trap of making it RNG. That is the sort of cheap trick they use in WoW, where you go through an entire quest, and then the game randomly decides if you get the reward you want. I hate that! It forces you to do the same thing over and over again, just because the end reward is a random die roll.

Since others bought it up, vertical progression as is, clashes with experimentation with builds. This is very clearly the case at max level, where a full exotic set can easily set you back 20-30 gold.

And if you just so happened to get a set with stats that don’t play into what you want to do, or the build turns out to not be very good, you’ve wasted a whole lot of money.

Back in the days of GW1, you didn’t even have stats, not really, nothing that could just be changed on the fly. And in conjunction with free attribute resets and templates, you could experiment quickly and easily. It was by far the superior system kitten far as experimentation and build creation was concerned.

-

Here I think there is a nice middle of the road approach to take the best from both worlds.
Being able to save your trait and skill layout into a template would help, and honest should have been there from the beginning, but who’s counting.
Making respecing free would also help, as I really don’t see any good reason not to, just limit it to being in town or otherwise where combat cannot happen.

But the real hang up is stats. Perhaps from Exotic and up, stats can be reassigned, but only to a few sets. So for example Exotics can have three stat options, so if it’s Berserker now, you will gain the option to go to Valkyrie and Assassin.

Ascended can go to up to 6 different prefixes, and Legendary can go to all of them.
And like respecing, this can only be done in town or in other non-combat zones, or at the very least out of combat.

-
These changes in addition to a skins Wardrobe would greatly reduce the cost in regards to experimentation, and increase the value of ascended and legendary equipment.

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.

This is not a bad idea for people who like to explore in the game.
At least making an alt and exploring would be worth something.

gotkitten ed.5318:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

The ability to change gear stats (Note there is still a lot of discussion about whether people want this or not)

I think this one should stay exclusive to legendaries and people should be able to get the stats they want easier through drops (e.g. let them choose stats AND weapon, because as mentioned above, wrong stats == useless to the player)

I disagree with that. The drops are way too irregular to be considered a viable way to acquire multiple sets of ascended gear with different stats. The stat-swap option would make ascended gear worth pursuing for players who wish to put extra effort into acquiring a set of gear, but with that receive the option to swap its stats at will. While some say that this is part of the prestige of legendaries, legendary weapons, too, launched without swappable stats, and yet people went for them simply for the prestige.

I do not see how adding this extra convenience to ascended armor will hurt anyone, especially considering that people mainly go for legendaries for the prestige and shiny skins. It is true that stat-swapping is part of legendaries now, but this has not always been the case, and the option to add this feature to future, high-cost items should not be looked badly upon, simply because “legendary weapons have it”.

Why not make it so you can choose between 2-3 stats to swap between when you create an ascended item. It will make ascended more flexible and worth the cost and legendaries will still be special.

Currently its not worth making an ascended item. I even tried for a bit, but now i would rather save my money for something else. Something with a better skin perhaps.

They should scrap those ascended skins and use them for another part of the game. Why not make it so you can just upgrade any one of your current armor pieces to ascended instead?

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.

You are right, but that doesn’t feel like we progress in something.
Especially achievement system is so broken… (I wrote about it before if You don’t recall)
For now we had first skill update (I won’t count the useless toxic spray), ale those are VERY GOOD, I love them and I count for more those updates.
Sigils and runes are also nice.

I wrote in my previous post that you could use WvW progression system in PvE.
That would rock to the core because we would feel that the time we spend is not onlt transferable to gold to buy some skins or farming champions to get skill scrolls or mats.

The PROBLEM in HERE is that all we do is transferable to gold, and that NEVER should be the case.

Don’t get it wrong, all skins should be sellable – that was a great move, but as I mentioned earlier, legendaries should be obtainable by BTA mats that are obtainable by fixed amount, not RNG. Like Dung tokens, bloodstone dust/dragonite ore/imperial fragments, karma, etc.

LordByron.8369:

This is the same mechanic of any korean F2P mmorpg, release ubergrinding stuff and then plan easier way to acquire it later when most people will already had to grind it…

I personally can t convince myself to believe they didn t read in the past all suggestion on dungeon tokens and then suddenly they consider it…

Its suits to well as a mean to gain time and just going the usual korean grinding f2p….
With the last 2 thing added and what we seen in dev fotm video we got the last 2 ingredients of any korean f2p

Infusions +X (with added stats) and gem shop upgrade extractor…

Tell me Granado espada is not the same as GW2…tell me lineage is different…
It got almost identical….

I bet if i go today on lineage 2 most lvl old top tier weapons are really easy to acquire…..

Its fantastic and great to have this CDI topic…but if facts goes in the opposite way i can t really give anet any trust…they already betrayed it on a regular base.

I think this whole topic sprung out of fact that GW2 is on indefinite hold to release in the east by NCSoft.

So they have to figure out how to get their western audience back. It doesnt really make sense that you actually release ascended armor and almost immediately make CDI thread "What can we do to make whole “ascended experience” better"?

So with ANet and GW2 i developed “dont believe anything until its ingame” attitude. I gave a lot of feedback few months back and i just feel as this whole thread is just a rehash of what a lot of people (that dont play the game any more) have been saying for whole past year. I guess i will check back at GW2 and this topic in a few months to see if they actually did something about it.

Ideas for horizontal progression

Unlock new stat combos for ascended gear
I would definitely welcome a change to let ascended gear also swap stats like legendaries; it brings those two “tiers” of gear together power-wise and in terms of flexibility, but also retains that only the legendary will give you the ultimate, cool style. A way to remove the vertical progression of having to grind out several sets of varied-stat ascended gear to have all the top stats, this could change into horizontal progression by starting out as crafting one fixed stat combo for your ascended gear, and then send your character on missions of some sort (exploration, gw1-like challenge missions, faction progression or set of achievements to complete) to unlock further stat combos you can swap between.

Progress with faction
By faction progression, I’ll refer back to one of my ideas from very long ago, in the personal story you rise in ranks in one of your factions, but after a couple personal story quests, you never hear about your faction again. Why not let us become more invested/immersed in our character’s in Tyria by building reputation within our chosen factions (whether the mutually exclusive Order of Whispers, Durmand Priory, Vigil) or even in the Pact – or introduce new ones with upcoming LS updates. E.g. if we ever get to Cantha, reintroduce the Luxons and Kurzick, this time not necessarily opposed to each other because that would just be repeating yourself, but possible as allies facing a greater threat and one in which you could gain ranks. Same goes for your character’s race background; could a Norn gain reputation within one of the clans (Bear, Wolf, Snow Leopard, Raven) – an Asura within its chosen college – a Charr within its legion, etc. Rewards could be unlocking new, unique skins, or a vast array of new skills and traits to further expand on build diversity in this game.

Making all weapons accessible to all classes
Probably a big undertaking – but I think Anet are capable of handling it – but instead of making me grind out materials/gold/tokens all the time, give me the option to work towards getting my hand on new weapons for my characters. This again would give you a lot more skills and traits per weapon per profession which again would greatly benefit build diversity. And I wouldn’t mind having to work for unlocking new weapons by completing some achievements first or such, not just buy my way to new skills with skill points but follow the somewhat similar pattern you used for the Antitoxin Spray healing skill purchased with LS specific tokens.

Just some thoughts off the top my head – lots of details to go through to ensure it would work – but at least I think they’d be nice alternative “grinds” to more of the same grind we have now.

Hello Chris.

I’m sorry to to write it so late, but I couldn’t do it faster.

Here are some answers from my perspective:

A review of current RNG metrics.

I think those should be highly random and hard to get – probably as they are now.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

The ability to change gear stats (Note there is still a lot of discussion about whether people want this or not)

Yes, at least for limited amount to still maintain legendaries more special.
I really like the idea to upgrade ascended item to add stats combos to the by playing and if possible to add them skin menus also (like stat combos menu) would ROCK!

Basically make ascended upgradeable items, exotic base locked items, legendaries maxed up in any way.
I will rewrite what I wrote before:
Exotics (looks and stat changed by gem store tokens)
Ascended (adding stat combos and looks to menu by game achievements in mystic forge – item + dung tokens + fer skill points)
Legendaries (have it all from the start – both stats and looks all to choose)

Chris Whiteside.6102:

The ability to build up to Ascended Gear through drops rather than just relying on RNG.

It could be added but I would not make it like better way from crafting. You might add a way to make them in Mystic Toilet by 2 times as much mats as you need in crafting (for those who don’t want to craft them but would still get mats by playing).

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Ascended Gear mats dropping more equally across the game, for example WvW.

WvW is balanced as I see it. Overall revamp might not be good for the system. You could always increase the quantity a bit, but I’m personally would look into it better to don’t throw away peoples current efforts to trash by making it a lot easier later.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

No more new Gear tiers that make the existing tiers obsolete.

Absolutely.
If you want to increase level cap, legendaries and ascended should be both always the highest level items. Exotics should remain on the level I think.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Additional ways to earn Ascended Gear at accelerated for Alts.

Absolutely.
I will still hope to reduce crafting costs with more items that you create. Or maybe some unlocks?
One thing is certain for me. Alts need to be geared as good as main characters in terms of items tiers or people will fill punished for having them.
Please remember that.

I hope it will help.

Vorch.2985:

• Skin management needs to be redone. I think you guys are working on it… work faster

You forgot to add one word: “please”.

“I think you guys are working on it…” please “work faster”

Seriously. I really look forward for skin managing in GW2.

Hi Chris,

Short reminder: Fractals reset?

Septemptus.7164:

Vorch.2985:

• Skin management needs to be redone. I think you guys are working on it… work faster

You forgot to add one word: “please”.

“I think you guys are working on it…” please “work faster”

Seriously. I really look forward for skin managing in GW2.

Like a Wardrobe, yeah I made a similar suggestion earlier as did others.
Chris said this is something they are interested in, thou to what extent I do not know.

I’d love to collect all the skins in the game, if would give me something compelling to do for a change.

Forst.5863:

Also: Normalise dyes.
On one character I can wear pieces of six different armours, all made of metal. On these pieces I can use nothing but one single dye and still look like a patchwork-jester. Each dye should have one look on one material. This is currently preventing mix-and-match in many instances – and prevents points 1 and 5.

This would be major change for me.

Factions, organisations, lore and unlocks:

I fell in love with GW2’s rich and detailed background, often going around in the game to discover hidden places, find books, gravestones and all those small things.
Discovering the lore of the world inspired me to purchase a copy of GW1 too, to learn more about past events!

It would be great to have characters be able to unlock things from specific factions or races. I think that for many players, cultural armour is so popular because it
really exemplifies a character’s choice of race. The recent uproar over that reskinned flame-kissed armour seemed to be mostly because people who played human characters, lost some of their uniqueness. While I personally didn’t mind its introduction at all (I’m always one for more choice!), I definitely saw why people were annoyed at it. and I found myself agreeing with the choice to remove it, even if it essentially took away options.

I’d love to see more ways to really personalize our characters, preferably tied in to the lore. Perhaps Norn characters could unlock a headdress (like those worn by the shamans in game) for each of the different Animal Spirits. Or town clothes tied to your character’s social standing for humans, such as noble, commoner, etc.
Maybe items of devotion to the Six. Or food items with appropriate stats, or specific dyes or skills. Maybe you could unlock a scruffy ‘street rat’ hairstyle, or a unique glow colour tied to a sylvari’s cycle of awakening. Things like the town clothes and aforementioned shaman headpieces are already in the game, too!

New weapons could also be introduced in this way. Perhaps gaining standing with the Norn would allow you to be taught to wield a double-handed greataxe, or maybe aligning yourself with the insidious Nightmare Court would allow you to be unlock a whip. Or maybe small cutscenes. I loved that Marjory book that you got as one of the living story rewards, perhaps use race-specific cutscenes or lore secrets as a reward.

Also, Karma is such an excellent idea which really could see some more use at max level. I think buying mats for Karma is a bit mundane, I’d rather see unique skins tied to specific locations.

As a last thing, I really like the wardrobe and armour-stats-in-sigil suggestions I read earlier. As a fashion-oriented player, that would make my playtime more enjoyable for sure.

All in all, I’ve really enjoyed this game so far. It’s kind of nice that I can actually try to help by offering my thoughts on how to make it even better. I bet all MMO’s have suggestion forums, but this CDI seems like the discussions are actually taken into account, going by the responses from the designers. :-)

Hey Chris,

This is really CDI as it should be:

ColinJohanson.2394:

We’re holding the leaderboard for now to see if we can’t decide on a better way to help differentiate people on it who are all at the same tier, other than just the first who got there specifically. Once we have decided that, we’ll need to code, test, and vet it and then update the leaderboards to reflect the new tracking.

Once you have decided how you gonna implement the leaderboards you will code test it and vet it and than update it… ehhhhhmm waiiiit maybe for just one time , Before you set us all to Level 1 again because you realized that starting a race from Level 30 isn’t fair you should: SPEAK TO YOUR PLAYERBASE!

I mean there is currently just no good idea to implement a leaderboard…. if you have one tell us. Here are some bad Ideas:
-First come first serve ( unfair for the top Players because some got unlucky with RNG or got mai trin on 37 before fix)
- Fastest completition of each Level ( This will be RNG again that you get good fractals )
- Fastest completition time of each Level per Fractal ( People would just Need to grind low Level fractals again to get better times to stay on the top)
- A mix of everything ( Bad still we actually have no clue why we are Standing where we Standing )
- Completition of a Level with lowest Agony resistance ( I can do all Levels with 0 Agony resistance even the 50’s because I can search good enough teammembers that can carry me / I can carry them to do those Levels)

I can’t think about anything else besides the easiest:
- Highest Fractal Level completed
This is the best System IF you can just stop that GEARCHECK. Players Need to be able to advance to the highest places of the Leaderboards with just they’re exotics. Without having to wait at certain Levels to farm up for a new Infusion. This new Gemshop item that can split infusions away without destroying the Upgrade worries me that you will take exactly the Direction of just geargating Levels/leaderboards ..It probably will feel that way as soon as you open 50 again: “great your at the cap your skill didn’t get tested but you still have to wait till you can advance. because you don’t have the right gear”

Just tell me a reason why it is so hard to make Accoundbound Agony resist for each firsttime completition of instability that is high enough ( If you completed all previous instabilities ) to advance without investing more Money?

As I posted before:
-True Leaderboards People who complete the highest scales will Need to have played most instabilities not just the x0ers to Level up with enough AR.

- Alt friendlyness

- No Gear but Skillgating

- People can still have the save net of just buying gear to make up for they’re missing skill in order to advance ( at least to a certain Point)

- You have nice instabilities in place you can make 100 to have 2 isntabilities , you can infinite scale it People just get they’re ar through playing.

- People will still aquire ascended for the stats for hard Content they can’t beat to get better and an Advantage

And please even if my Posts may Sound sometimes a bit offensive or aren’t the best english don’t look at em as sort of a flame. I woulnd’t take my time ( Several hours since 1 week before the fractal patch went live /with several Forum bans and infractions due to defending myself of beeing an exploiter) to make your guys at least consider another direction your currently going. If I would think all hope is lost I just woulnd’t care at all.
If you tell me now:
-that you have no System to track down Progress made of Players before the fractured reset
-You think somthing like this can happen again and you have no incetive to Retro Award Players for they’re work
-that Fractals are gonna be some place where you will need infusions worth several hundreds /thousends of Gold to advance to the highest Levels available.

I will glady leave the Forums with the answer and the knowledge I can’t make an Impact.

But as Long as this isn’t confirmed as well as there is no answer on the reset and what you do about it or think about it.. I just can’t get my peace of mind. And there will always be a Little light of hope

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Hi All,

Here is the next evolution of the original Vertical Progression proposal based on a summary of our discussions:

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.

A review of current RNG metrics.

The ability to change gear stats (Note there is still a lot of discussion about whether people want this or not)

The ability to build up to Ascended Gear through drops rather than just relying on RNG.

Ascended Gear mats dropping more equally across the game, for example WvW.

No more new Gear tiers that make the existing tiers obsolete.

Additional ways to earn Ascended Gear at accelerated for Alts.

Note this is the formulation of a proposal for discussion. Once the proposal is finalized it will be discussed internally. However there will be no promise of actions or schedule.

Chris

Nice summary.

Regarding more ways to earn Ascended: I think it is very important to note that you should not build all kinds of new systems through which players earn these Ascended items/materials/etc. I think it would be better if you’d revisit existing systems that have been the main ways through which players acquired best-in-slot gear before the introduction of ascended items, and tie ascended item/material drops into them.

The main thing I’m talking about here is Dungeons – they have very cool looking sets of armor and a very nice way to acquire them through tokens (I really love this mechanic), but these are no longer best-in-slot. Adding an additional tier of dungeon gear that does have ascended stats (and hopefully a new skin, but yeah, lots of work I suppose) for a larger amount of tokens would really be awesome.

Same with T3 cultural sets, the principle behind them and their looks are awesome, could there be an update to them, either T3 with Ascended stats or a new T4 cultural armor set? I know that the total gold price for T3 is lower than the current price of an ascended armor set, but I feel that something in the range of the T3 price is more realistic to expect of player that want a best-in-slot set of gear. It’s still one of the most expensive sets of armor in the game. I know that Cultural is very straight-forward “Just get gold and buy it”, so if you do an Ascended T4 gear set you might want to sell it for gold + somekind of token or something else.

Another pretty awesome set of high-end items to consider for a stat bump are the temple/karma sets in Orr. Another tier of ascended Orr karma items, please?

HORIZONTAL PROGRESSION (kinda summary)

1. TITLES:
Create master title similar to GWAMM that would describe how good someone is by defining certain achievement that would bump the title to another title, I described it earlier.

In here you could also support a bit more old GW1 players to recognize their effort in playing GW1 and getting those up to 11 titles.

2. SKINS:
- Create wardrobe system that would allow players to unlock skins and use it at least few times. Maybe use some kind of Mystic forge recipe to create skin from base item and the store skins in wardrobe?

As I proposed ascended items should have an ability to unlock skins and a way to add skins to the item by achievements and recipe.
For example adding dungeon skins by doing dungeon but karma skin by recipe.
If you have a skin bought from gem store it should be unlocked for all ascended items and also wardrobe. Legendaries would also require to unlock gem store skins by purchase and would also need some effort to get skins from Black Lion Specialist.

Unlocking old gem store skins could be done by Mystic Forge recipe.

Wardrobe could work like achievement skins: you can get as many of them as you want, so I can model my look on lvl one and just run through the whole game having it just because I like it.

3. TRIBES/ORDERS/RACES SUPPORT
I think we really need a way to contribute to many existing orders that are in Tyria.
Those could unlock special skins and abilities that they use.

If you will support skirts you will get some item skirt themed and for example some special bonuses towards skirts oppressors. like +1-5% more dmg/def against destroyers.

I also pointed race in here because I really think that we should be able to cross race cultural stuff. The idea is to create a way for char to get in favor of humans so much that they will acknowledge him as great guy and one of the despite where he was born and will make custom armor especially for him that will say: “we love you!”

The armor needs to be an account bound item without race requirement. It might cost more money, but it has to be for every class/race as long as you will prove that you earned it by race support.

The way I see it works is make it like a 200 points system.
Each account starts with 0 points and on 20 points you will have cultural T1, on 50 T2, on 100 you will have cultural T3, and later maybe more items and titles.
If you log in as certain race you will be able to buy race limited items and unlocked those that are unlocked by your playing (in another tab).
Points has to be earned for account or it won’t work.

HORIZONTAL PROGRESSION (part 2)

4. THINGS THAT MONEY CAN’T BUY – legendaries and all that
Everyone will tell there are things that money can’t buy but relaying on RNG is the worst possible way.
I pointed it already so I will write it shortly.
We need stuff that aside from new skins added to the game will be only obtainable by doing certain things.
First of those would be new legendaries. Those needs to require a lot of effort but the effort you have to do by your own. You need to get rid of T6 mats, lodestones and all those items or make certain (maybe time gated) ways to get them with 100% accuracy.
So we could know that doing something for example 150 days will get us legendary item but it won’t be random. It will be something certain. You can add some RNG to it that could reduce basically the time, but you have to get certain results.
I think that you should get it tied with dungeons, challenges, titles, maybe achievements, karma and all those bound currencies and items.
The idea is that when you have a legendary item, you earned it time wise and challenge wise and it shows that you are at least decent if not awesome.
(not like current legendaries that can be bought or you can both mats for them because getting them by yourself is a RNG pain).

This can also be used for other items/skills etc.

5. VERTICAL ABILITIES PROGRESSION
I pointed that out many pages ago, I really would like WvW alike progression with skills and abilities. The skills you get in WvW are amazing and I think all players in there feel like they progress and get stronger without leveling and gearing.

Of course getting new skills is very needed. I love those new healing skills.

6. DYES
There should be a way to unlock certain dyes for entire account. Those are also means of progression, there will be those who want to have all of them but due to many characters nobody will invest hundreds of gold into them.
This is also a goal so please think about it. Tie it for some achievements/quests for some people to spend their time on.

Dondarrion.2748:

Patrikan Habaton.2548:

Hi Chris,

Short reminder: Fractals reset?

Hi Chris,

please ignore this stupid, non-constructive remark.

What makes this remark stupid and non-construcitve? It is indeed very needed and constructive if talking about Progression also talking about Progression reset that happened. Chris himself told at least 2 times that he will comment on it and doesn’t have an answer yet.

@ Chris If you really read all this Forum I hope this gives you a minor insight in what place we are currently. Blamed and left alone by the community of the game. Even People who did great work at doing a complete site with dungeonguides ect and helped out the community got blamed and flamed hard for questioning the reset. If you ever have time to Read the fractured Forums you might get a Feeling about the accusations we had to here all this time, and might understand why our tone and writestyle isn’t always that friendly..

Beeing accused several times to use non itended gamemechanics for the use of rez orbs at maw. Without having any comment of a dev that gives you some shelter or whatever, after asking for 1 year over a confirmation if 80 was the cap and if you were supposed to go there is just frustrating. You have somthing taken away reseted from you and when you ask for a explonation why this happened. you have a whole croud throwing words at you that you don’t deserve an answer/explonation or anything….

Why it is necessary to change stats of ascended gear like you do with legendaries and why twinks are a problem
I think this is really necessary. Ascended gear was intended to be something between legendary and exotic. It doesn’t feel that way though, at least not for me. You craft yourself a legendary because you want the skin or show off. That’s basically what legendaries are for. You also get the stat swapping which is another reason and a pretty good one. The reason for going for ascended gear is to max your stats or because you want to play high-level fractals. It feels much more like a thing you need to do. I really like to play high level fractals and I like to play it with different chars. I don’t want to choose just one (not even sure who is my main). Making fractal level account bound (which was good, even though I had more than just one char on level 50) and making it much harder to max out AR for more than just one char feels just like a slap in the face. What makes it even worse is that I liked to switch by berseker armor to something more defensive for certain bosses. So I have more than one armor per char and multiple chars. I really don’t know what to craft first. To be able to change stats out of combat would make ascended gear much more valuable, decrease the amount you need to craft and make it a desirable goal that’s really worth the money.

Other ways to acquire ascended armor and weapons
So far I got 3 weapon chests out of fractals. It’s good that they drop there quite often because it’s the place you need them most. Unfortuantely one of those boxes had Shaman-Stats, which I really do not need at all. If you implement the stat switching this won’t be a problem in the future but if not, drops like this would be much more helpful if you can choose stats. I pretty much liked what you did with the jewelery. You can equip you char without spending much money (backpiece excluded). It would be great if you offer armor and wepons for laurels/guilds recommendations and especially fractal relicts as well. It would be great if ascended armor is also obtainable from dungeon tokens (which are also timegated so this wont be much of a problem). With the dungeon skin just that they cost maybe four times more than the exotic versions. It would be a pitty to lose this kind of way to equip you char with max stats. Same could be done for karma and WvW Armor.

Solutions for Alts
I like the idea of accountbound gear. This wouldn’t solve the problem though because your alt may not be able to equip the weapon/armor. A solution for fractals could be to make AR account bound. With every piece of ascendet gear you equip on a char for the first time you unlock a slot you can put AR into. This could be shown in a new window in the hero panel. This would solve the AR Problem when you play alts in fractals.
Reducing the crafting cost for every pice you have crafted before is another good solution. It also makes sense If you have made a coat before you know how to do it more efficient the next time you make it and therefore need less materials. This has to be capped for sure

Increase the ability to experiment with builds and let us change them more easily
Adding more skills is great (a lot of classes really need some decent options for elite skills) and it’s great you can switch utility skills outside combat. The problem is that builds depends very much on equipment and you cannot change them easily. If you want to switch from direct damage to condition you need a complete other set of gear to do it efficiently. This costs you a lot of gold and inventory space and chances exist you may find out you do not like that playstyle. This leads back to stat switching of ascended gear outside combat Also templates for builds like in GW1 would be great, with the ability to tag some favs for each char for fast switch. You may keep the 3 silver for trait switching if you really think this is needed, but let us change traits everywhere. In WvW you may want to skill completely different than in PvE, or in CoF Path1 you may find other traits appropriate than in fractals 40+. It just doesn’t make any fun traveling to a trainer, resetting your traits and then have to look carefully which traits you had in which builds. I think alot of people would like this, it prevents a class from getting boring because it would invite people to change their playstyle more often.

Umut.5471:

I think this game needs not high but a low amount of vertical progression.
Why? Because players always need a new goal to achieve in mmos. If you remove this goal line or make it come closer(easier) to achieve, players will have nothing to play after reaching such a goal.

A vertical progression system would have that problem, yes. Look at it as a ladder towards glory, the higher you get, the better you become. If you reach the top, there is no reason to go back down, because there is nothing there that quite lives up to the glory in the sky. So if some players get there fast, they get bored. And if we balance it for those players, then it will be an impossible goal for those with less time.

On the other hand, with horizontal progression you could look at it more like a landscape. Where you are exploring progression horizontally. You head in the direction of a mountain in the distance if you are a hardcore player, or towards the creek nearby if you are more of a casual. But if you have already seen the mountain, there is still the creek to discover. And even the casual could perhaps go by the creek, the forest and the desert to eventually end up at that same mountain. (By then the true hardcore player has most likely discovered the caverns and the waterfalls aswell though!)

Septemptus.7164:

I wrote in my previous post that you could use WvW progression system in PvE.
That would rock to the core because we would feel that the time we spend is not onlt transferable to gold to buy some skins or farming champions to get skill scrolls or mats.

Now that you mentioned it… (Or repeated it actually)

I think that the WvW progression system isn’t as good as it could be. And adopting it for PvE could have a really bad effect on my game experience.

It basically works like this: The more time you put in, the better you become. Infinitely.

• Those who have put in less time will always be worse than those who have.

• Players that come late will always have a lesser potential than those who started when the progression was introduced.

This creates a gap that breeds elitism and can work very discouraging for new players. (Or players new to the game mode. I know it discourages me from seriously diving into WvW)

I think it would be much better to change it into a trait-like system, where we get to earn a maximum amount of points and spend those in different lines. Perhaps using extra points beyond the maximum to respec.

Yoh.8469:

So in a sense I would like to see whatever added to focus on bringing up tanking, support, healing and control to be on equal footing as DPS, and scale better in groups.
This might mean having the Holy Trinity in a way return, however it’s not an issue even thou people might think that it is.

There is nothing inherently wrong with healer/tank/dps, it’s only when the entirely of the content is build around only it in mind is when it becomes a problem, and that won’t happen here, they will merely be play styles, as they are now. Just a little more powerful then they are now.

The risk is that you come to the “what isn’t forbidden is mandatory” concept. If you get to the point where classic trinity (or even just the GW1 style DPS-control-heal/protect trinity) is sufficiently more optimised than other team builds, then either the designers have to build encounters with that behaviour in mind, or trinity groups will start walking over content that was intended to be challenging for non-trinity groups. Either way, any group looking to succeed with maximum efficiency and minimum risk will want to go with the trinity party build – it’s just a question of whether this is to trivialise content that was designed for non-trinity groups, or because non-trinity groups have been locked out by encounters that assume the trinity. Either way, the end result becomes the same.

That said, in PvE at least, I do think the current system has gone too far the other way and made DPS the only thing that matters – but I think that’s an issue with encounter design. Unshakeable needs to be replaced with something that, while preventing stunlocking of bosses, doesn’t make using control effects against bosses all but pointless. There need to be more encounters that rely on pressure rather than big hits, allowing pressure mitigation – particularly pressure mitigation over an area, like the staff water elementalist – to be more viable (at the moment, they really aren’t, because most of the time remaining in an area opens you up to take more damage than you recover). In a PvE context, I think these should be the opening steps – before enhancing the control and support we’ve got, remove or mitigate some of the things that make it not worth taking.

Once the encounters are less, let’s call a spade a spade, outright hostile to control and half of the support effects in game, then I think we’d have a better baseline to see how much the non-DPS legs of the trinity can and should be ramped up.

Another opinion nobody cares about: I’m still waiting for high quality expansion with new areas, continue of the main story with high quality (like guild wars 1 campaigns), good story that expands the lore, like huge Maguuma where is interesting to play. explore, and complete. I mean not “hearts and POI hunt” but when you actually are completing the good (very important) story and area is like “level” in single player games. More interaction with NPC. I want the mists more impact to pve, it should be part where only best of the best come to after finishing the campaign. I really want more story like in single player games, but where you need to interact with other players.
So, more horizontal progression please! WvW/sPvP have huge impact on PvE, PvE has charismatic bosses not “just big monster because there should be boss and you’ll never remember it”. I’m okay with farm but there is nothing to do in this game after you finish personal story and do some dungeons\wvw because “there’s nothing else to do”. Did you play Blade&Soul? That what guild wars 2 should have been + wvw. What we got instead?

wow 37 pages … anyone got a tl;dr ?
so i can catch up

Dondarrion.2748:

Patrikan Habaton.2548:

Hi Chris,

Short reminder: Fractals reset?

Hi Chris,

please ignore this stupid, non-constructive remark.

Why the sudden upswing in volunteer moderation in this thread? Not just this post, there have been a couple lately.

And as a purely objective critique, how is this remark stupid? It was a topic in this thread in the past and our resident Dev-host indicated he was still thinking about it.

To those who are curious about that bit of cogitation, consider:

Fractal reward levels are actually horizontal progression (not vertical). They don’t give you ANY mechanical advantage outside of the fractals themselves. Unlocking level 50 doesn’t give you new skills or new buffs. The Ascended Gear can be earned without ever pushing deeper than LEVEL 1 (does progress get an ‘flatter’ than this? I mean really…).

So, please, just stand-by.

When we get into discussion horizontal progression, part of it will HAVE TO BE talking terms about some of the “soft” progressions. Is your increasing Luck/Magic Find a vertical progression? I personally don’t think so. If it’s possible for a number on your character sheet to go up, but for that to track horizontal progression (like ‘Luck’) then a number like “fractal reward level” has to be viewed as tracking a non-vertical progression also… and is about to become very topical to this thread.

bobbles.5940:

wow 37 pages … anyone got a tl;dr ?
so i can catch up

You NEED to read the most current version of the Dev-side concept accumulator here~

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Character-Progression/page/33#post3387528

You’ll benefit greatly from 10-15 minutes browsing the super abbreviated ‘Cliff notes’ collection of links here~

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Character-Progression/page/31#post3385962

Welcome aboard! and “Watch the Ledges!” (there are no safety railings…)

From my side of things and to wrap up my point of views on verticle progression/ascended gear:

-I want ascended weapons and armor to be the last pieces of ascended gear added. I would prefer no ascended sigils or runes. I don’t think it is necessary since the amount of time it would take the majority of players to create ascended armor sets is good enough to bridge the gap between exotic and legendary.

-I am indifferent to time gating. It prevents me from going into crafting overload and going overboard. However, I can see where it is a detriment so I would get behind a solution to allow us to craft 7 time gated materials per week(one for each day) all at once, or something of that nature.

-I truly hope that agony remains in FoTM and that no content requires ascended gear on any level or any aspect at all in the rest of the game. The moment you start to see ‘LFM must have ascended’ is when we have a problem.

-I think verticle progression can also be achieved by upgrading spells and abilities. Controversial topic, but it could work.

-I think the overall grind in GW2 needs to be reduced drastically, especially when it pertains to BiS. Make it challenging or time consuming, but not life consuming. The vision crystals, for example, are something that can just go. Not needed. Dark matter globs are another item that can disappear.

-I love the idea of a wardrobe. I think I suggested this on these very forums early on in the game’s life. It is needed especially when we are talking about horizontal progression soon.

-I am in favor of being able to change stats on the fly for ascended gear. Who wants to craft multiple sets? And what if your current build is nerfed to the ground and you want to go from berserker to condition damage. Then you need to craft an entire new set. I disagree with this. Make the stats interchangeable.

-Overall, I like VP, Im just not sure how much I like it in GW2. I don’t think its the game for it. Which is why I have been so opposed to introducing ascended gear in the first place without any warning prior to the game launching. Please let the recent addition of ascended armor be the last we see of ascended gear. Lets move on from this discussion and debate, and leave all of this…agony(no pun intended) behind and focus on bigger and better things.

Nike.2631:

bobbles.5940:

wow 37 pages … anyone got a tl;dr ?
so i can catch up

You NEED to read the most current version of the Dev-side concept accumulator here~

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Character-Progression/page/33#post3387528

You’ll benefit greatly from 10-15 minutes browsing the super abbreviated ‘Cliff notes’ collection of links here~

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Character-Progression/page/31#post3385962

Welcome aboard! and “Watch the Ledges!” (there are no safety railings…)

Thnx Nike will put on my reading glasses and dive in

Nike.2631:

Dondarrion.2748:

Patrikan Habaton.2548:

Hi Chris,

Short reminder: Fractals reset?

Hi Chris,

please ignore this stupid, non-constructive remark.

Why the sudden upswing in volunteer moderation in this thread? Not just this post, there have been a couple lately.

And as a purely objective critique, how is this remark stupid? It was a topic in this thread in the past and our resident Dev-host indicated he was still thinking about it.

To those who are curious about that bit of cogitation, consider:

Fractal reward levels are actually horizontal progression (not vertical). They don’t give you ANY mechanical advantage outside of the fractals themselves. Unlocking level 50 doesn’t give you new skills or new buffs. The Ascended Gear can be earned without ever pushing deeper than LEVEL 1 (does progress get an ‘flatter’ than this? I mean really…).

So, please, just stand-by.

When we get into discussion horizontal progression, part of it will HAVE TO BE talking terms about some of the “soft” progressions. Is your increasing Luck/Magic Find a vertical progression? I personally don’t think so. If it’s possible for a number on your character sheet to go up, but for that to track horizontal progression (like ‘Luck’) then a number like “fractal reward level” has to be viewed as tracking a non-vertical progression also… and is about to become very topical to this thread.

I would agree. I understand why people were irate about being reset. But in the grand scheme of things, does it matter? Level 30, level 50…who cares? Lvl 50 gives you a slightly better chance at ascended stuff maybe? And an excuse to beat your chest a little harder than the guy at 30, or 20.

Eh, I just don’t see the big deal about being reset down to 30. You aren’t losing anything, just a number corresponding to level, which roughly content remains the same through the levels.

draxynnic.3719:

There is nothing inherently wrong with healer/tank/dps, it’s only when the entirely of the content is build around only it in mind is when it becomes a problem, and that won’t happen here, they will merely be play styles, as they are now. Just a little more powerful then they are now. The risk is that you come to the “what isn’t forbidden is mandatory” concept. If you get to the point where classic trinity (or even just the GW1 style DPS-control-heal/protect trinity) is sufficiently more optimised than other team builds, then either the designers have to build encounters with that behaviour in mind, or trinity groups will start walking over content that was intended to be challenging for non-trinity groups. Either way, any group looking to succeed with maximum efficiency and minimum risk will want to go with the trinity party build – it’s just a question of whether this is to trivialise content that was designed for non-trinity groups, or because non-trinity groups have been locked out by encounters that assume the trinity. Either way, the end result becomes the same.

That said, in PvE at least, I do think the current system has gone too far the other way and made DPS the only thing that matters – but I think that’s an issue with encounter design. Unshakeable needs to be replaced with something that, while preventing stunlocking of bosses, doesn’t make using control effects against bosses all but pointless. There need to be more encounters that rely on pressure rather than big hits, allowing pressure mitigation – particularly pressure mitigation over an area, like the staff water elementalist – to be more viable (at the moment, they really aren’t, because most of the time remaining in an area opens you up to take more damage than you recover). In a PvE context, I think these should be the opening steps – before enhancing the control and support we’ve got, remove or mitigate some of the things that make it not worth taking.

Once the encounters are less, let’s call a spade a spade, outright hostile to control and half of the support effects in game, then I think we’d have a better baseline to see how much the non-DPS legs of the trinity can and should be ramped up.

I find your observations of great value and wish to subscribe to your newsletter .

In every MMO I’ve participated in over the last 8 years, I’ve found the Devs split into 2 teams that don’t talk nearly enough – the “Class Balance Team” and the “Encounters/ Content Team”…

The reality is these are the SAME JOB. And the name of the combined department is the “Fun Gameplay Section” .

If the Class Balance Team is pouring their heart and soul into workable value comparisons between classes, and then the content team comes along and throws a switch that selectively turns off a quarter of the buttons on a quarter of the classes not only are they wasting each other’s time, they’re all wasting the players’ time.

Yes, I wish they would just give us a ‘no more vertical progression.’ statement instead of always adding qualifiers to the sentence.

Twice now.. three, if you count the AR change, they’ve blindsided us with horridly grindy vertical progression systems, and both times the player base just rebels and I think they’re surprised by the strength of the rebellion.

If they want to court this controversy continually through the game’s development, sure, I’ll let them. I’ll just give up on the game, though. I’m already at the point where my emotional investment is at an all time low, and I’m basically waiting on some kind of fix.

Lheimroo.2947:

Yes, I wish they would just give us a ‘no more vertical progression.’ statement instead of always adding qualifiers to the sentence.

Twice now.. three, if you count the AR change, they’ve blindsided us with horridly grindy vertical progression systems, and both times the player base just rebels and I think they’re surprised by the strength of the rebellion.

I have to agree. And from the 3 AR is the worst there is.
No wonder people don’t do it.

But on the other hand people also learn and ANet is not some mystic evil like many try to write in their posts. It’s a company with people working in there. It’s good they learn and those CDI is the best proof for that. So for now I will be full of hope.

Patrikan Habaton.2548:

@ Chris If you really read all this Forum I hope this gives you a minor insight in what place we are currently. Blamed and left alone by the community of the game. Even People who did great work at doing a complete site with dungeonguides ect and helped out the community got blamed and flamed hard for questioning the reset. If you ever have time to Read the fractured Forums you might get a Feeling about the accusations we had to here all this time, and might understand why our tone and writestyle isn’t always that friendly..

Beeing accused several times to use non itended gamemechanics for the use of rez orbs at maw. Without having any comment of a dev that gives you some shelter or whatever, after asking for 1 year over a confirmation if 80 was the cap and if you were supposed to go there is just frustrating. You have somthing taken away reseted from you and when you ask for a explonation why this happened. you have a whole croud throwing words at you that you don’t deserve an answer/explonation or anything….

I hope you will share your time to explain this in more detail from a player perspective, because here is where I am at:

I am generally Death Come Calling when Devs outright screw players. I’ve played LoTRO for years and the Devs relationship with players over there is outright SPITEFUL at times. I say this because normally I’d be your champion in this matter going in with blades out and my war-face on. I’ve even encountered similar treatment in this game, having my progress fully filling out my crafting recipe books arbitrarily reset “for my own good”. I’m usually very empathetic to other player’s problems even if I don’t share them, because in the long run happy players give me more people to play with in game. I don’t like losing population over stupid design decisions. It harms my experience… maybe not that day, but over the weeks and months that follow.

So, I keep asking myself, “why on this occasion do I not care?” I should care. I know that. I was at about rank 20 when the reset happened so obviously I wasn’t directly effected, but this is so totally in that class of issue that usually sends me off on bloody-handed crusades that I knew something was up.

It is my (probably completely ignorant) perception that those ranks are tainted.

I don’t know the details, but my general scuttlebutt understanding is that it shouldn’t have been possible to get above Rank X (see, I’m so ignorant I don’t even know what the ‘intended’ cut-off even was). So some part of my usually justice-minded self thinks “Screw those exploiters. Screw them into the ground.”

I don’t know if that’s true. I don’t know if that’s right. But I do know that unless I really stop to consider it, that what I unthinkingly feel.

Help me understand better. You may have more allies than you think.

Grind , grind,.grind & farm , farm, farm… PVE easy and bored, PVP stressfull and simple, gameplay the same weak thing from the beginning and skills, traits, gear, builds, stats, all is full of penalties and almost forcing us to play the way they wanna without fun…

Arenanet… you are not so ignorant as not to know what you’re doing with the game, you know perfectly well that without this type of things the game dies because there is absolutely nothing new or fun or balanced to do a level 80 …

Everything you have done in more of a year, simply add cheap stories without substance and quality, only full of bugs and achievements and mainly addressed to spend gems in all … not forgetting that the only thing you do is promote zergs, farm & grind, also for the equipment and make a nightmare and totally boring and against the playability of the game. or equip all my caracthers is just a joke, yeah you want all the banks full of trash for that i buy more space with gems…

You havent fixed or added anything really good or great in the base game, things absolutely necessary, You dedicate to ignore and betray players a while back they gave everything to you…

No one could imagine that the game would be worse today than at launch, a nightmare of company that does not really listen to their players and has abandoned the game so much

in a year in GW1 already we had 3 times more things ( new big map, new big personal campaign , new professions ,lots of new skills, new game modes , new dungeons or coops , new weapons & equipment without gems, and much more things that i dont want say all because is ridiculous for you and disgusting for me.) than this second part lazy and decadent…

You need change a lot the progression because the game progression dont exist, you understand?? the caracther progression is 100% linked to the gameplay….

the most sad is that seems that we are condemned to play without FUN or MERITwith zergs, farm and grind … the game requires severe changes and they havent done anything about this in over a year, they are lost (making money) and we are the victims…

ZERGWARS 2 or GRINDWARS 2 is a better ttitle for this game…

Vertical progression requires to keep on going in order to keep a game alive, which automatically adds arbitrary additions of stats, rarity of items, etc. There is not enough vertical player skill progression, it is just tied to items. Things don’t get harder. There is no hardmode for dungeons, and there is still a useful set of really hard zones to fight through. Two-hit death mechanics or required gear/weapon setups are by no means valid ways to increase difficulty. It is just flat-out annoying.
Granted, horizontal progression is meaningless without a certain push from the bottom. So you really have to get down to one thing; diagonal progression or - as I want to call it; the T-approach.

Diagonal progression would be both, starting out at zero and increase with varying emphasis. You do have a good diagonal progression at the start of the game. Slowly improving on gear, unlocking skills, then adding trinkets and traits, and so on. Starting to play the game is fun but after level 30 nothing is really new other than the look of the zones. Enemies don’t get that much harder on your merry way to 80.

Nowadays there isn’t much to do. Nothing improving us as a player, nothing optionally challenging and all the living story stuff doesn’t have remotely enough impact to have sufficient longevity on the game world or in our minds. To be honest, your living story has zero impact on me. When was the last time I was saving Tyria from a looming threat? When Zhaitan the Lame was brought down.

We have ascended armor now, and I grudgingly ask... why? The extra stats are completely meaningless, yet this causes people to say "it is best in slot, so I need to have it for this little advantage." The uproar against ascended gear would have been a lot more quiet if there was only agony resistance as part of it, and nothing else. This instils worry if there are going to be more gear treadmills, and you have successfully kept vague about this future.

So, what is the T-approach? If you look at a T you’ll see it having a nice vertical bar and a horizontal one on top. Think of the vertical one as your way up to 80. You improve on items & mechanics & skills & experience. The horizontal one is basically what you can do with everything you’ve acquired at level 80 and branching out with special mechanics and increasing challenge - show how good you are at wielding this power. A slightly different version of Fractals would be a great example of horizontal progression:

It should not be mandatory content, but rather the "you want harder dungeons? Come here!" approach. However, the only thing ascended gear managed to do was making people lock into the grind-mindset of needing to get it because of... guess what... more stats. There are people wearing ascended gear and haven’t even set foot into a Fractal due to the availability of said gear outside this dungeon instance. Isn’t that missing the point?

Ascended gear should have been purely about agony resistance, not extra stats. With this basic concept you could do the same thing anywhere else. For example, a few new zones in a row which require you fight hard, open world encounters which reward you with occupied progression on the map as well as new kinds of items that give you a certain resistance against... I dunno, corrosive sulfur dust. Those areas would be like the Southsun cove, which doesn’t require map completion and therefore not MANDATORY for people to get there. If you add things, then they should only be relevant to that specific part of the game. Design content that people are interested to venture forth and check out, and don’t force them to do so. Those who don’t want Ascended gear should not be kicked out of dungeon groups because they failed to post an entire pink trinket set and weapon. Yet, this has happened. I am not even kidding.

Therefore, I would think the best way to have item-dependant content without adding extra stats would be getting rid of all trinkets and making them pure resistance slots. Because that is basically what they became, with the introduction of Fractals. Once you have opened that door, you can put in more resistance against anything. Broad resistance like Flame legion, Sons of Svanir, whatever. Specialized resistance against agony, corrosive sulfur, etc.

Now my personal issues with the current character progression:

1.) Our personal story progression is meaningless. Choices at the start of character creation are dealt with and have no repercussions once we get to level 30, and the world story does not continue after we killed Zhaitan. Orr remains a mess, and the Orders we joined never call us in for extra missions or additional work. After Zhaitan, we are clueless freelancers. We receive guild commendations from guild missions, you could easily use the same framework for Order missions.

2.) Our deeds in the game world are meaningless. Event chains are being worked down with no visible change... usually because they reset too soon. Not only are open-world boss battles an adventure of stifling as many yawns as you can, but there is no consequence in being victorious or not. If Tequatl manages to stay alive through the encounter (which he usually does thanks to the laughable change of the boss mechanic which is just done ludicrously bad) then nothing happens in Sparkfly Fen. No hordes of undead are pushing up, no nothing.

3) The game does not make us better players, difficulty isn’t increasing on a skill based level. The only additions are extra game mechanics which require us to obtain a certain set of gear to speed through it again. Once you gained sufficient Fractal resistance, entire fights became ridiculously easy. There are a few fights I really dig but those are few and far in between. World boss fights are not one of them. They are not even epic or merely visually enjoyable. I slice a dragon’s toe. Yay. But even aside nonexisting skill improvement, there just isn’t enough hard content. Where are our hardmode dungeons? Please don’t say Fractals...

4.) Gated crafting progression and account-bound materials was a bad idea. Those who want to burn a lot of money to have stuff on day 1 should be allowed to do so. I don’t want to even get started on the RNG factor - Glob of Dark Matter anyone? If that would be a fixed 1 Glob per exotic, it wouldn’t be so bad. Or if it was not account-bound, people would be giving no kitten .
But still people are obliged to get this equipment without even setting foot into Fractals. Why? More stats = more effectiveness = easier content. It doesn’t matter how little the bonus is, a noticeable number of people will go for it, invalidating your intent for agony resistance and Fractals even more.

5.) Don’t single-handedly tie things to random drops. Give us more linear progression that might look long and tedious, but also ADD the random element to give us a chance to get where we want faster - but those not having luck still can make their way towards the desired goal. Effort should never be less worth than luck. *insert more tokens here*. Fractal tokens for ascended rings where a good idea. Further this.

6.) Stop punishing people for not playing your game. Event-specific items which are unavailable any more because they are from achievements no longer obtainable is nothing but infuriating. Make them tradeable, this would solve the entire issue.

7.) Cultural Armor and Weapons being rare instead of exotic is outright insulting as it blatantly tells you "go to the shop and buy a trans-crystal." This has nothing to do with progression towards a desired item but milking money out of players.

8.) Our character progression becomes more and more solo and ego-focused, or rather "solo in a big blob of people." You continue to remove the incentive to play together. The two worst things you’ve done was adding more and more parts for the daily quest to complete which are giving out achievement points. You would be surprised how many people are chasing those points like mad and most of them are better off done alone. The other thing is, you are continuing to alienate bonded players by forcing activities into a non-groupable pvp set.

Please cap the achievement points obtainable for the daily reward chest to 5. The other way would be to remove achievement points from dailies to and monthlies altogether and do that retroactively as well. Completing a daily is not worth mentioning to be an "achievement" at all.

Allow players to group and join an activity as a group. Think of the community based tournaments that would be held. Quarterly Kegbrawl championships are just one of many possibilities. If you even add personal or time-specific leaderboards into those activities, a lot of people would play that more often.

I would like to see more engaging ways to get good weapon/armour skins. Basically take the same system you have for ascended items at the moment but instead of the end result being an ascended item with higher stats it is instead just a really cool skin. Most of the time the new skins are just chucked in the chests or in the gem store and you just buy them or wish you could afford them.

The only current examples of this in game are the Legendary weapons and I guess you could argue for the dungeon skins but that’s pretty much just ‘run this one dungeon a lot and if you don’t like it well then too bad because that’s the only way to get it’

I don’t post very often but, when i think of horizontal progression i think of AoC Alternate Advancement System:

Basicly, you have awful lot of new skills and passives you can get in two ways.

1)Just get levels and levels of this “new” progression bar
2)put a skill/perk/passive on “time” update, so u learn that after hours/days.

I honestly liked that model and if done right it can bring a whole new life into the game.

Khunvyel.3972:

the Orders we joined never call us in for extra missions or additional work. After Zhaitan, we are clueless freelancers. We receive guild commendations from guild missions, you could easily use the same framework for Order missions.

This is actually an incredibly awesome idea. I can’t stress how awesome that is. Oh my god dude, just wow. I’m imagining the order of whispers sending me on challenging instances that I have to solo or bring a party along (final rewards would be split though so the achieves remain daily, per character, instead of being able to exploit them through LFG farming), that give me nice and different challenges each day for some income.

Khunvyel.3972:

7.) Cultural Armor and Weapons being rare instead of exotic is outright insulting as it blatantly tells you “go to the shop and buy a trans-crystal.” This has nothing to do with progression towards a desired item but milking money out of players.

Oh come on. It’s a company and one main source of their income, is gems. No one forces you to buy cultural armor, if you don’t like how it’s given to you, don’t buy it. That’s whining for no reason.

Khunvyel.3972:

Allow players to group and join an activity as a group. Think of the community based tournaments that would be held. Quarterly Kegbrawl championships are just one of many possibilities. If you even add personal or time-specific leaderboards into those activities, a lot of people would play that more often.

If Kegbrawl championships start being held before we get Deathmatch Arena and King of the Hill modes in tPvP, I’ll start crying. Leaderboards on who’s gonna drink more? Oh come on.

Khunvyel.3972:

8.) Our character progression becomes more and more solo and ego-focused, or rather “solo in a big blob of people.” You continue to remove the incentive to play together. The two worst things you’ve done was adding more and more parts for the daily quest to complete which are giving out achievement points. You would be surprised how many people are chasing those points like mad and most of them are better off done alone. The other thing is, you are continuing to alienate bonded players by forcing activities into a non-groupable pvp set.

Please cap the achievement points obtainable for the daily reward chest to 5. The other way would be to remove achievement points from dailies to and monthlies altogether and do that retroactively as well. Completing a daily is not worth mentioning to be an “achievement” at all.

This is very true.
I wrote about the problem with achievement points and I would add to it:
- cap total amount of dailies/monthlies, please
- remove those leaderbords for achievment point, because that drives people to play only for those points.
We really need more group content to play with and that is the very fact.
I see it more and more in guilds. People at most talk to each other when they solo something… World bosses, dungeons, maybe together from time to time, but hardly ever together…
This has to change.

Sorry, I know I’m late, I meant to post my Horizontal Progression ideas last night but I got wrapped up in leveling my Necro. I think a lot of good came out of the Vertical Progression side of the convo, and now I’ll move on:

Ideas for Horizontal Progression:

Skin availability and obtainability

• All skins should eventually be able to be found in the game world without a real money purchase. Of course, you want exclusive armors and items on the TP, but keep in mind after 6 months or so and the “newness” of these armors wear off, it might behoove you guys to throw your players a bone and make a way for them to be obtained in game.

• Skins aren’t the only form of horizontal progression. A good example is the new healing skills. New skills should be added to the game constantly.

• Make the progression feel rewarding. Right now, the horizontal progression side of the game is near non-existent. No new thrilling armor sets (style wise, and imo) have been released in a long, long time. There is nothing really to work on, horizontal wise, besides a legendary, which a lot of people aren’t going to do, I.E. me. I just don’t care about legendaries and I don’t really like any of the models. Basically, give us more than just legendaries to work on for horizontal progression.

• Skills skills skills. Give us a way to unlock new skills and new skill combos. Don’t break the game, but make it interesting and worthwhile to get, not because you have to, but because you want to

• Currency Squish – This idea I’ve been letting spin it’s tires in my head for quite a while now. I feel like all of the dungeon currencies need to be squished to a single universal currency, used to purchase all of the horizontal progression skins in the game. Make multiple ways beyond dungeons to obtain this currency (WvW, JP, DE trains, etc.) Then, you are able to choose which direction you want your horizontal progression to go. No forcing people to do dungeons they don’t want to do. I have been done with dungeons in MMO’s for years. I’m a WvW player and open world PvE player, forcing me to do dungeons when I don’t want to is why WoW has lost 5 million subs in 1.5 years. I haven’t ironed out all the details yet.

tl;dr There are too many currencies in game. Make a universal horizontal progression/skin currency used to purchase all skins in game.

I’m sure I’ll have more to add later, but I’m thinking pretty heavily on currency squish atm for ease of horizontal progression, because right now it feels far too painful to even deal with.

Morinmeth.9823:

Khunvyel.3972:

7.) Cultural Armor and Weapons being rare instead of exotic is outright insulting as it blatantly tells you “go to the shop and buy a trans-crystal.” This has nothing to do with progression towards a desired item but milking money out of players.

Oh come on. It’s a company and one main source of their income, is gems. No one forces you to buy cultural armor, if you don’t like how it’s given to you, don’t buy it. That’s whining for no reason.

You are wrong in one thing.
They should give more and more items skins and such but not this kind of force people to buy yo took decent.
I have a lot of issues with it but for now I will remain silent and wait for the outcome of propositions to allow ascended to swap looks.

Isaiah Cartwright.8569:

Well the crafting gating we added was actually for a different reason then gating the speed in which someone can craft ascended gear. We wanted to make people who level up crafting able to do something to gain gold each day. The time gate here goal is much more focused around making gold then limiting crafting as you can bypass it with gold.

Okay. If that’s the case, would it be possible to add an account-bound version of these mats that is not gated? That way we preserve the economic goals of the gate, but also relax the time-gate on people crafting for personal use.

If I have the materials to make 10 Ingots, I can craft them all in one day, but only the first one would be trade-able. The other 9 would be account bound for personal use gearing up my characters.

But if my goal was to craft for profit I would still need to limit myself to 1 ingot per day.

Khunvyel.3972:

8.) Our character progression becomes more and more solo and ego-focused, or rather “solo in a big blob of people.” You continue to remove the incentive to play together. The two worst things you’ve done was adding more and more parts for the daily quest to complete which are giving out achievement points. You would be surprised how many people are chasing those points like mad and most of them are better off done alone. The other thing is, you are continuing to alienate bonded players by forcing activities into a non-groupable pvp set.

Please cap the achievement points obtainable for the daily reward chest to 5. The other way would be to remove achievement points from dailies to and monthlies altogether and do that retroactively as well. Completing a daily is not worth mentioning to be an “achievement” at all.

Allow players to group and join an activity as a group. Think of the community based tournaments that would be held. Quarterly Kegbrawl championships are just one of many possibilities. If you even add personal or time-specific leaderboards into those activities, a lot of people would play that more often.

I disagree with this proposal. Achievement points are tied to rewards and already require a significant amount of time to reach each tier. If you limit the number of achievements a player can receive you are hurting the players that are working hard daily to reach those rewards and adding another ridiculous time gate. I completely disagree with trying to force people to play together by enacting a block which doesn’t promote the “play the way you want” mantra. If I want to finish 10 daily achievements or more, every single day then I should be able to.

Yorgie B.5618:

Khunvyel.3972:

8.) Our character progression becomes more and more solo and ego-focused, or rather “solo in a big blob of people.” You continue to remove the incentive to play together. The two worst things you’ve done was adding more and more parts for the daily quest to complete which are giving out achievement points. You would be surprised how many people are chasing those points like mad and most of them are better off done alone. The other thing is, you are continuing to alienate bonded players by forcing activities into a non-groupable pvp set.

Please cap the achievement points obtainable for the daily reward chest to 5. The other way would be to remove achievement points from dailies to and monthlies altogether and do that retroactively as well. Completing a daily is not worth mentioning to be an “achievement” at all.

Allow players to group and join an activity as a group. Think of the community based tournaments that would be held. Quarterly Kegbrawl championships are just one of many possibilities. If you even add personal or time-specific leaderboards into those activities, a lot of people would play that more often.

I disagree with this proposal. Achievement points are tied to rewards and already require a significant amount of time to reach each tier. If you limit the number of achievements a player can receive you are hurting the players that are working hard daily to reach those rewards and adding another ridiculous time gate. I completely disagree with trying to force people to play together by enacting a block which doesn’t promote the “play the way you want” mantra. If I want to finish 10 daily achievements or more, every single day then I should be able to.

I don’t think the point was that you can’t do all the daily steps so much as something as trivial and meaninglessly easy as dailies shouldn’t of had an achievement point reward to begin with.

At least that’s what I gleaned from it.

Septemptus.7164:

Morinmeth.9823:

Khunvyel.3972:

7.) Cultural Armor and Weapons being rare instead of exotic is outright insulting as it blatantly tells you “go to the shop and buy a trans-crystal.” This has nothing to do with progression towards a desired item but milking money out of players.

Oh come on. It’s a company and one main source of their income, is gems. No one forces you to buy cultural armor, if you don’t like how it’s given to you, don’t buy it. That’s whining for no reason.

You are wrong in one thing.
They should give more and more items skins and such but not this kind of force people to buy yo took decent.
I have a lot of issues with it but for now I will remain silent and wait for the outcome of propositions to allow ascended to swap looks.

That’s what I’m saying, no one is forcing you. I’m reading this a lot in the forums, “the game forces me to do this and that” – no, the game is not forcing you to do anything. The game is a game, no one is telling you “play the game this way, or else!”. You want the skin, that’s how you get the skin, end of story. This issue you’re addressing is so minor that it’s not even worth complaining, that’s what I’m saying.

Khunvyel.3972:

Now my personal issues with the current character progression:

7.) Cultural Armor and Weapons being rare instead of exotic is outright insulting as it blatantly tells you “go to the shop and buy a trans-crystal.” This has nothing to do with progression towards a desired item but milking money out of players.

You have a number of interesting and I think important points to go over, but I want to grab this one because it prompts a quick thought & question .

The Devs have clearly expressed a concern that Exotic-grade gear proved too easily acquired. If making the Tier 3 cultural gear Exotic-grade is an absolute non-starter of an idea because it would just make a bad situation worse…

…Would you be satisfied if the Cultural armor and weapon vendors sold only cosmetic skins that were click-to-apply and had no stats whatsoever?

While this is a direct attack on Transmutation Crystal income and would mean that lower level character on their way up could no longer turn to their cultural vendors as a way of getting some of their first Rare-grade gear, I wonder if its something we could convince the Devs of implementing sort of as an act of good faith. The gold cost for T3 armor is so high, it’s sort of hard not to think there’s a bit of ANet ‘double dipping’ in making the first thing you do after dropping a heap of gold is have to burn a T-Crystal to actually use it.

so my few suggestions regarding character progression in general.

1. Balance cash-shop cosmetics with in-game cosmetics (skins) acquiring. It means that I would like to see more obtainable armor/weapon skins from personal story quests, WvW, dungeons, fractals etc. Basicaly even greater variety and cash shop that suits devs and players.

2. Skill hunting sounds very interesting – I have never played GW1, but the idea behind it is very good. Form of alternative skill progresion linked to specific bosses, events or quests is needed.

3. More variety in the trait system. So far I have linked the changes, but more “passive” specializastion via sub-trait system would be great.

So to summarise my post – greater variety of skins and greater variety of skills and traits.