Guild Wars 2

Warning: This is incredibly long, which was not my original intention. Please see the tl;drat the bottom if you want to save time.

My orginal topic, being the intention to talk about ascended items vs exotic and their flexibility
There’s a wonderful build editor that exists gw2skills.net that helped bring this to my attention.

In my theorycrafting of builds I realized that ascended gear is nowhere near as flexible with it’s stat distribution as exotics and their upgrade slot.

The reason this is true is that exotic upgrade slots allow for points to be distributed more flexibly.

On the otherhand acended gear stat distribution is far less flexible. Therefore, while ascended gear is better for maximizing a few attributes, exotic gear is better for balancing stat distribution.

Stop right there and let’s think about what this means.
1.) Less flexibility means players are more likely to build heavily into 3 stats of their choosing.
2.) Players who want flexibility are more likely to get celestial (all-stat) ascended items
3.) Players who want flexibility are more likely to stick with exotic items, because of the flexibiliy it offers

Regarding point 1, that means that players will likley experience buyers remorse for the items as they learn better ways of distributing their stats or if they want to change their build. However, being heavily invested into these ascended items will likely keep players from changing their builds, because they realize they will kitten themselves. In these situations players will find the lack of flexibility to be annoying as their build gets stale. Eventually if they ever do change builds, then ascended items just take up space in their account, and it doesn’t make sense to get rid of them because of how much time has to be invested to obtain them.

Regarding point 2, this means that these players will be more able to change their build and playing experience. However, exotics with upgrades can achieve higher stat totals that these grab bag stat items. This also may result in buyers remorse, because even though they’ve obtained an ascended item, the item doesn’t make sense to use when exotics with upgrades are better for a build.

Regarding point 3, this means that there are players who believe that the flexiblility of exotics outweighs the stat increase of ascended items. Also, even with the more flexible celestial ascended items being available, they aren’t worth getting, because higher values can be obtained through exotics. This is because points are wasted on condition damage or direct damage, and because healing power’s impact on combat is so negligible that points would be better spent elsewhere.

My topic of flexibility starts to bleed into gameplay and builds
My expectations of an MMO are driven by the first Guild Wars, where I expect easy readily available flexibility and diversity in both gameplay in builds. It’s pretty much a given that the diversity of gameplay and diversity of builds are fractions of fractions from what existed in Guild Wars. Even still I expect more flexibility to play the comparatively small amount of different playstyles and builds that are available.

It’s a matter of preference, I prefer changing playstyles and experiencing combat in new ways over grinding out the maximum potential of a build. I actually prefer to lots of playstyles and builds with the maximum potential of each build readily available like it was for the first Guild Wars.

My topic of gameplay and builds leads to overall design decisions
I feel like what I’m driving at her is ultimately a core competency change from the first game to the second game, and I don’t prefer this new direction.

It’s like there’s way more grind in Guild Wars 2. It takes weeks maybe a couple months to get a build to maximum potential, whereas in Guild Wars it takes minutes maybe hours if you need to grind out a little gold.

The problem lies in the lack readily available max stat gear and scarcity driving the prices up.

Ultimately time is equating to money. Players get nickle and dimed for everything…
You put your time in to get game currency, but then you have to spend that currency which represents your time to save you time. Which ultimately leads to people paying for things that should be free.

I wish there was a waypoint counter so I could estimate how much gold I’ve lost fast traveling.

I kind of wish the trading post didn’t exist, it seems like semi-pro market analysts hold most of the wealth. You can’t get significant wealth redistribution with the trading post either. This is one of the biggest things about the GW2 economy that I see preventing wealth redistribution, everyone is always willing to undercut by 1 copper and it ends up driving prices down super fast compared to players offering straight rounded off numbers only wavering in price by 100 gold or 1 plat.

I just see a lot of high level design issues.

tl;dr
Basically what I’m getting at, is that Guild Wars 2 is designed to prevent casual players from having flexible game play and to prevent them from having maximum potential builds. This is due to penalizing players by taking away their time mostly in the form of game currency (which is earned through their time) via numerous implementations.

I’m not one who’s going to be milked for their money in order to save time on things that I expect I should already be able to do. I’ll just do something else instead.

p.s. Death penalty from Guild Wars was incredible because it didn’t steal my time to make it go away, it just went away when I played better.

p.p.s I realize now that the first Guild Wars is probably the gold standard of casual player friendliness out of any online game that I’ve ever played, console or pc. The core principles behind that game should be engraved on a gold plate with a platinum frame, which should then be streamed via a live feed over the internet for all to read and marvel at.

p.s.p.s. I have to say Guild Wars 2 falls incredibly short in giving casual players a good experience for their time. Guild Wars -10/10, Guild Wars 2 – 3/10. But I’m sure it exceeds in generating revenue.

Is this another one of those threads where people only look at the front-loaded Stats on the Ascended items and then assume what gets put into them is just as good??

HAHA … people who fall for that stuff always give me a good laugh.
Good trolling Anet, probably your best L00t grind troll since the Bone Dragon Staff..

Wait, why-

Ohh, another GW2 should be more like GW1 thread. Gotcha.