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Sanctum of Rall
GW 1 had vertical progression.
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Yes, GW1 absolutely had vertical progression.
What it did NOT have was vertical progression that made your previous gear obsolete.
What it did NOT have was vertical progression behind a time gate.
- I could farm for a week or during a double faction weekend and earn a Kurzick/Luxon/Sunspear/Lightbringer title.
- No matter how hard I try, I CAN NOT gain more than 40 laurels a month. No matter how hard I try, I CAN NOT gain more than a certain number of guild merits a day.
- I now have to choose what alt will be maxed out. The rest will stay sub par. HOW IS THAT OK?
- The worst part is, if someone is new to the game, no matter how much effort they put in, they can NEVER have the power of someone who has done dailies from the get go. THAT…IS…NOT…RIGHT.
I am not against vertical progression; I was a GWAMM in GW1. What I am against is making current gear obsolete. ESPECIALLY if it is stuck firmly behind a time gate.
Reward me for skill like with the clocktower; reward me for continuous effort like with dungeon tokens. DO NOT make my current gear worthless. DO NOT make me walk in lock-step with everyone else with time gates. DO NOT make it take years to outfit all alternate characters. DO NOT make it impossible for new people to reach the same level as someone who started eariler than them.
Here’s what people thought of GW1 when it first came out: http://tinyurl.com/bntcvyc
“A release is 7 days or less away or has just happened within the last 7 days…
These are the only two states you’ll find the world of Tyria.”
“A release is 7 days or less away or has just happened within the last 7 days…
These are the only two states you’ll find the world of Tyria.”
And I also agree with you, we certainly don’t have it yet in GW2 either – the way I understand it anyway – but I think there are a lot of fears (possibly unwarranted) that we are going that direction.
*Note: Full Ascended Gear [Armor + Weapons, etc] is already a step in that direction. Given the power increase between existing Ascended gear and other gear, we can speculate a statistical increase significant enough to warrant enough of the population to be concerned. We have been informed that Ascended will be the only tier introduced this year.
*Note 2: Future level caps increases may render current gear obsolete by nature of the gear not leveling with the character. The Development team has very clearly left the door open for level cap increases.
(edited by Anchorwind.9016)
And if you want to go title route, you can play GW1 all the way through without using a single title skill.
You can also play GW2 all the way through without a single Ascended item.
So sorry, but no. There was no vertical progression there either.
No, there is. Just because it’s optional doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. It’s there.
Which is wrong cause you can’t do high level Fractals without having Ascended gear. And when the full set of Ascended gear is released, you can bet that it is going to make a big enough impact that you’ll need it to survive in WvWvW as well.
In GW1, you can play any of the content the game offers without a single PvE skill required. You don’t need to grind out titles to max those skills out, because they are never required to complete any content. In GW2 on the other hand, you can’t complete all the content the game offers without having Ascended gear. Fractals requires Agony resistance in the higher levels, thus requiring you to have Ascended gear.
Two completely different things. One is optional, the other is required.
In GW1 your gear needed to be infused to combat Spectral Agony in PvE. You couldn’t play Prophecies without infused gear (their first storyline). You couldn’t play the War in Kryta content without infused gear. You also needed to be Ascended to get the infused gear to combat Spectral Agony which pretty much insta-killed you if your gear wasn’t infused due to being heavy damage per second, which you couldn’t remove like a condition
So, spectral agony, infusion, and ascended gear came back from GW. They’re so ridiculously similar. At least in GW2, it’s relegated to Fractals, not necessary to finish the main storyline.
Two completely different things there. Infusion in GW1 didn’t make you stronger or give you higher stats did it? No, it did not. Getting Ascended in GW1 didn’t make you stronger or give you higher stats did it? No, it did not.
Ascended items in GW2 and Infusions in GW2 give you higher stats don’t they? Yes they do. So sorry, but they did not “come back” from GW1. They are two completely different things.
If you’re a paragon that wants to play elite areas, you needed to max out your kurzick and sunspear titles and it was also nice if you maxed out your lightbringer. So three titles. Three titles
You also needed to progress in your Sunspear title to continue in the story of Nightfall (particularly if you were a Nightfall-based character, but also if you were not).
And again, you didn’t NEED to max out any thing. You didn’t NEED those three titles. It was not required of you by Anet to have those titles maxed was it? No, it wasn’t. You only WANTED them maxed for your own personal benefit. There is no requirement saying you had to have those titles maxed or you couldn’t play specific content.
And really? Sunspear title? The requirement for that title to progress through the story was so low, that it took no effort to reach it.
A day without sunshine is like, you know, night.
Lady Bethany Of Noh – Chronomancer – Lords of Noh [LoN]
Lady Bethany Of Noh – Chronomancer – Lords of Noh [LoN]
OP, what you are trying to use to excuse VP in GW2 won’t work. Even Anet has said that GW1 did not have VP. Here’s a quote from Mike O’Brien, “How is introducing VP respecting the player? Because it’s fun to be challenged and rewarded. Because it’s fun to have the character you play grow and evolve over time. Because ArenaNet (sort of) held a hard line against all VP with GW1 — no VP ever, year after year — and it wasn’t that fun. It was stagnant.”
That’s probably enough said on the subject of your thread, but let me point out the distinction a little more clearly. GW1 had no VP from max level gear at max level—period. What GW2 has is vertical progression and this is what you see in the initial pieces. The amount of the stat increases of the initial pieces is a red herring. Vertical progression does not progress by stopping. The power level of the game will continue rising. The have clearly laid out the path of the power curve. The good citizens of Tyria will follow the path laid out for them if they want to continue playing the game. Some call the path a gear grind, some a treadmill. Call it whatever you like, but GW2 has vertical progression, GW1 did not.
(edited by Raine.1394)
In GW1 your gear needed to be infused to combat Spectral Agony in PvE. You couldn’t play Prophecies without infused gear (their first storyline). You couldn’t play the War in Kryta content without infused gear. You also needed to be Ascended to get the infused gear to combat Spectral Agony which pretty much insta-killed you if your gear wasn’t infused due to being heavy damage per second, which you couldn’t remove like a condition
So, spectral agony, infusion, and ascended gear came back from GW. They’re so ridiculously similar. At least in GW2, it’s relegated to Fractals, not necessary to finish the main storyline.
Really? You went there?…
Ok, yes getting “infused” was part of a 25 min (first time) storyline mission.
Ascension was another part of the storyline missions – effectively taking a (as an example) lvl. 17 character to lvl. 20 (max) after completing one (5-7 min) mission.
Right… I guess “ascended” and “infused” just got updated to “asfugrinded”???
Different insignias that top out at a level that can be attained by a fresh 20 is still horizontal progression in the same way exotics and runes in GW2 are attained by a fresh 80 right off the bat.
Zed Zebes – SBI Mesmer
Yes, you could get max armor very easily, but to reach true max stats, you had to get Insignias and Runes for your armor. Some of the best Insignias/Runes were quite pricy (Superior Vigor was like what, 30 plat?). And on top of that you had your heroes, who all could be equipped with Insignias/Runes. Fully upgrading all your hero’s armor took AGES.
There was 9 (nine) HP points difference between a major and a superior vigor, that is almost 2%, or the bonus from killing a single boss. You didnt need to equip heroes, yoú had henchmen, who came fully equipped. But I don’t consider Exotics to be ‘vertical progression’, you will not have them complete at the end of the campaign but you’d be well on your way and they can be obtained by regular play, or at least the gold yo uget from that.
Gw1 had zero vertical progression in PvP. All formats.
Then you had the title tracks. As a Paragon, I had to grind to max out my Sunspear and Kurzick titles to achieve maximum effectiveness.
Not true. The PvE skills maxed out at rank 5, I think, out of 10. Rank 5 was more then obtained before completing the campaign. Kurzick and Luxon titles were harder, a lot harder. And yes, the were a from of vertical progression, even if their effect was limited to PvE.
There were also many other title tracks like Lightbringer, Ebon Vanguard, etc. that increased damage of certain skills. Those are vertical progression. Of titles, not gear.
You could equip max three of them, the number of titles available didn’t really matter, except to ensure that there were some good ones available when finishing a EotN.
GW2 and GW1 has very similar philosophies in terms of vertical progression.
Quite the opposite, you had max gear by the end of the first campaign, originally you didn’t have insignia’s and when they were introduced, insignia + armor were cheaper then the equivalent piece costed before. The original campaign(s) didn’t have PvE skills either. Well, except for Signet of Capture
You can get near-max stats relatively easily (Max level armor in GW1, Exotics in GW2) but after that, it’s a grind to get very minimal gains (4 ranks of Kurzick for one extra second on Save Yourselves, 10 fractal runs just for one Ascended ring).
No, one ascended piece is a 30 day grind, even if it’s just half an hour to an hour per day, the problem is it’s repetitive and That investment of time would have given you rank 6-8 in either Kurzick or Luxon by playing the relatively relaxed pvp formats of Jade Quarry, Fort Aspenwood or Alliance Battles. Plus a boatload of faction to unlock skills for your heroes. You could also replay early missions of the campaigns in Hard Mode for an Young Heros handbook, which was quite fun.
Now, you can still disagree on whether the game should have vertical progression or not. That is your opinion, and I respect it. Just please don’t bring up GW1 as an example of a “purely horizontal progression” game. Because it isn’t.
Prophecies had none at all, actually it took them two years before they introduced the PvE skills that could be qualified as ‘vertical progression’. It took Guildwars2 3 months.
You seem to have missed my title track portion of the post. I was pretty much forced to run ABs/Jade Quarry to increase my effectiveness of Save Yourselves. Gear wasn’t the only way to increase your character’s effectiveness.
Weird, SY! was quite effective even at rank 4-6
Yes, but you could make them even more effective through insignias and runes. That is the definition of vertical progression. GW1 had it.
Yeh, well, blue items were more effective then whites. That is not the issue, these upgrades were available right after pre-searing.
(edited by frans.8092)
In gw1 I was interested mainly on pve and not a single time I felt underpowered by not having those optional titles/skills. The game never forced me to grind them AND if a random-guy in my party thought those things were mandatory I could always kick-and-replace him with one of my heroes, clearing many things that could lend me to nice skins. In gw2 you can solo a lot of things even without ascened items BUT most of the content is now scaled on exo or less. What about when new content will be scaled on ascended, legendary or an higher tier? (and so on…) This is what I call vertical progression, someting you have to do to not be owned by mobs and to collect cool items. C’mon… here even clearing your PS does not grant you any single max tier weap…
(ps sorry for my english)
“Otherwise, your MMO becomes all about grinding to get the best gear. We don’t make grindy games.”
- Mike Obrien
- Mike Obrien
(edited by Erick Alastor.3917)
I think you’re mixing customization and progression here.
The difference is, with customization you add things onto an item, you shape the item to better suit your play style and character’s way of playing. Yes, it adds onto your weapon, making it better, but here’s where the big difference comes in…
Vertical progression forces you to throw away items. It makes all previous customizations moot as one item just replaces the next, or rather, you progress from one item to the next.
That’s the difference. It might seem slight, but with a system where you customize the functionality of the item, that item remains relevant and will continue meaning something in the long haul, and not force you to replace it.
I despise dailies.
What they do is force the player to play a certain minimum amount per day to keep up with everybody else. That’s work, not pastime
Dailies are an artificial way of prolonging a game’s life, and a bad one at that.
It saddens me so much that gw2 was a game I waited for so long, and then it became stale in about half a year. Haven’t played it at all for 3 months now, and I don’t see any reason to play GW2 anymore.
honestly though, if they plan on continuing the way they’re doing things, they might just aswell make gear progression identical to the infinite run-of-the-mill MMO’s out there and stop calling the game guild wars 2, and rename it into “a generic MMO with a setting based on guild wars”
(edited by Unanimous.1486)
Skill point acquisition, Skill capture and Hero Acquisition were most definitely vertical progression.
A newly minted lvl 20 could barely make it through Prophecies. A lvl 20 with the extra skill points, a wide selection of heroes and gear for those heroes, and the skill points and faction (acquired through continual play) to buy a wide selection of skills could solo Glint’s challenge.
Not because of more skills – you still could fit only 8 on your bar, no matter how much you grinded. And initially only 3 heroes (7 shortly before end). And you could get everything in about two weeks (that’s from personal experience), including skills/eq for more than one build.
In short, you could completely max your character in less time than it would take you to get one ascended amulet in GW2.
Oh hey, look at the defensive responses here:
“It’s not mandatory!”
“+9 Health didn’t make a difference!”
Because it didn’t. I had several of those in storage. Didn’t use them – there were always other, better (and cheaper) runes to use in their place.
And even superior vigors were relatively cheap.
Actions, not words.
Remember, remember, 15th of November
Remember, remember, 15th of November
(edited by Astralporing.1957)
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