Guild Wars 2

GW2’s pillars have buckled. Prop them back up with monumental changes.

In the months leading up to the release of GW2, I was told that the game had “five pillars” of principles. That it was moving past the old ways of MMOs into the bold new future. A brave new world that kept players interested with fun instead of grinding.

1. Why are there player levels in GW2?
You’re bumped up to 80 in PvP, but in PvE you’re expected to grind to 80. Learning your class is important in PvE but not PvP? Doubt it. Level 80 players can scale down to play with friends, but here I am in the starter area when the screen boldly declares Scarlet is attacking [insert level 50 zone]. The feelings of a new player go through the stages of Excitement > Confusion > Disappointment.

My optimal solution: Bump everyone up to 80 at character creation. Players learn their class while gathering skill points (bonus skill points for 100%ing a zone), while not held back by levels.

2. Gear grind even before ascended.
I was looking forward to not grinding a dungeon hoping for drops. Earning badges for aesthetics is great. I’m for it. But for gear? I may as well be playing WoW. I want to switch specs on my thief because my legendary sword has severely limited my playstyle and I’m bored. So I want to go…I’m not going to bore you explaining it all. I want all Dire gear. Too bad for me that it can’t be crafted, it doesn’t drop, and the only place you can get it is by running the Crucible of Eternity for a full set of gear. To earn that full set, excluding weapons, I would need to run CoE about 21 times (at 66 badges a run, approx). All to try a spec I don’t even know if I’ll like! A massive stifle to innovation and creativity.

My optimal solution: Free exotic gear vendor. Just like in PvP. Aesthetic skins should be earned through current methods.

3. Ascended Gear.
Oh, the grind if you want to change your ascended gear stats. When it comes to grinding out rings, back, trinkets, and neck, who really wants to make a 2nd set for a new spec? I feel trapped into the spec I’ve spent my hundreds of laurels on. And now weapons and armor. Once you make those, you’re stuck for good. Want to switch from a condition necromancer to experiment with a healing/support necro? Look at that mountain to climb…

My optimal solution: Don’t eliminate Ascended Gear. Quite the opposite, make it Legendary. Make the stats of exotic and ascended gear the same, give ascended gear the feature that legendary gear has, changeable stats on the fly. That’s enough of a benefit to be worth the grind, but without forcing yourself into a corner by earning ascended gear.

4. Currencies.
Arenanet, you’re killing me. The wallet menu wasn’t a fix, it was an expansion in the wrong direction. The biggest challenge of this game isn’t capturing Stonemist castle in WvW; it’s playing with one monitor. Without GW2Wiki, this game would have failed shortly after launch. Take a second and think this through: could you play this game without referencing outside websites that explain not the challenging features, but the mundane ones? On a side note, is it just me or is the game built around Karma as THE non-tradeable currency…but Karma is practically worthless?

My optimal solution:
I don’t even know. The hole was dug pretty deep on this. I would say keep all the dungeon currencies as they are for aesthetic gear (we’ve been over the stats issue already). Merge glory and badges of honor. Gems would have to remain the same. As for laurels, guild commendations, fractal relics, pristine fractal relics, and I’m sure I’m missing a few things… Turn them into Karma? Maybe? I’m not sure about a solution to this problem.

Have any better solutions? Think these aren’t problems? Arenanet loves their game and wants to make it better, help them by providing what you think.

I really, really, REALLY like the ascended gear change. We should be able to change the stats on our ascended gear on the fly. Locking us into one role after months of grinding is just silly.

1) Leveling is fun for me and tons of other people and gives you more to work toward with an end goal. I feel satisfied when I hit a new level and get to spend another trait point and get new skills along with a small increase in all my stats. Plus, GW2 has a fairly quick 1-80 and plenty of ways to accomplish it.

2) Exotics are already practically free. I agree on that some types of stat combos are limited in how you can get them, but you can always test out builds in pvp too. Over time they will have more ways to get stat combos and most are available on the TP. Even GW1 had a small cost for max gear but stats were done differently.

3) Eventually we will have Legendary armor where you can change the stats. Exotic was too easy to get so Ascended added an actual sense of progression. However, not everyone likes Ascended but the stat increase is minor and only really needed for Fractals and maybe WvW (although that isn’t designed for 1v1). Only issue I see is if they raise the level cap, that is a bit too much work for gear that can become worthless although it would also be another reason to make Legendary gear more valuable as it will always stay BiS.

4) No. They are getting rid of glory and pristine relics can be broken down now but everything through karma is way too easy. The currencies are rewards in different areas of the game. I like earning laurels when I finish my daily and guild commendations are a good incentive to interact with the guild. Tokens show work in certain dungeons and Badges of Honor just need more to get with them as it is one of the few things exclusive to WvW.

Overall, either of us just have an opinion. I like the long-term goals and feeling I can progress a character in some way no matter how much time I put in each day. Other like you seem to want less need to do something to become stronger in maybe a more similar design to GW1 (tried to make sure I’m not sounding like you are wrong and just stating we have different viewpoints). I played GW1 for years and miss a lot of it but I personally enjoy these new progression systems better as I felt the low level cap and easy to get max gear worked for the almost single-player style of GW1 but would get boring quick in a true MMO.

Ascended gear destroys the notion of build diversity. Create a new level of gear that is expensive and requires a grind to attain and you’ve effectively forced every player to pick a build a stick with it. The magic of GW was being able to create new builds at any time and always have max stat armor. Now we’ve got new skills coming slowly. Either I get ascended gear and just hope the new skills adhere to my chosen build/gear structure or I skip ascended and get to enjoy all new skills introduced by simply getting a new exotic set.

Also, Ascended gear makes rare gear that much more undesirable. Whenever I wanted to try a new build that necessitated new gear, I could drop <2g on a complete set of rares without losing much when compared to exotics. But if everyone starts wearing ascended gear, it widens the gap on rares, making them comparatively weaker.

At level 80 we have white, blue, green, yellow, orange, and pink armor. Really? We need 6 tiers of gear?

I wouldn’t think it too much of a change if to get the exotic gear from dungeon vendors you were made to run Story mode and all 3 paths of explorable mode. This still gates the “Free” gear but you would still have to put in a bit of work for it. Of course this is only unlocked on one character, so you would have to do it with a new one over again. I understand some paths are less liked than others for various reasons, but this is what I could come up with without having gear being practically given away. As for the Free exotic vendor, It would be a decent idea. because let’s face it. The exotic gear you get off the TP looks horrible. So while it would be free to purchase, you’d look like a complete clown. And that’s where my previous idea comes from.

1. Why are there player levels in GW2?
I don’t think leveling should go away all together, there are new players entering the game and need to learn the mechanics as they level, rather than feeling overwhelmed and lost as soon as they come in. Which is what a lot of new wvw players apparently already feel. I would agree to boosting characters after you’ve leveled at least one character to 80. I hate leveling and I’ve come to really hate leveling in pve.

2. Gear grind even before ascended.
I would not offer exotics for free. I think one of the best things about exotic gear is all the different options to obtain them, something that is lost with the ascended tier.

From karma, crafting, wvw badges, gold, dungeon badges, random drops, mystic toilet. This wide range of options needs to be present for every level of gear except for the legendary.

3. Ascended Gear.
Ascended gear has put a serious limitation at the top tier of gears. There’s no decent way to obtain it, some people like that a lot of people don’t, the worse thing about ascended is that you’re stuck with the stats. As mentioned if someone wants to try out a new spec well they will just have to put exotics on to do it, because there’s very few that will craft two separate sets of armor for the same character. And what happens down the road when arenanet is doing a balance sweep and nerf something like say condition damage, yeah imagine the screaming that will happen.

Ascended were added to give a sense of progression to legendaries? Well guess what legendaries are only skins, they will have the same stats as ascended, so there’s no real progression there, just a really long grind for a set of gear that you’re stuck playing with in that spec you built it for. So yes treat them as legendaries, they will have the same stats for crying out loud, and allow stat changes.

The only thing Ascended gives me progression to is leaving the game. Until Ascended is obtainable as widely as exotics it will only hamper the game.

4. Currencies
Don’t have a problem with currencies at the moment just glad I don’t have to store it all in bank slots. Speaking of which I think raging about paying for increase max stack totals would be better at the moment.

Good thoughts all around! About the legendary armor… I’m going to pass on it. I made a legendary weapon and I regret it. Yes, it’s very shiny (Bolt), but it wasn’t worth the effort. There’s no way I’d want to make legendary armor or anything else. Right now, I just want to ditch all my ascended gear, put on all exotics and play around with a thief p/d condition set for dungeons/fractals (yeah, it’s weird, deal with it). But I can’t get Dire gear without those 21 CoE runs

Also, quick rant. Filter armor type on the AH search. Come on guys.

I like leveling, I have 1 character for each class and as of now, leveled 3 of them to 80, doing all the personal story on each of them (yes, including Arah). I feel it helps you to get more attached to your character and to feel it’s uniqueness, while leveling you have the opportunity to try out all skills, visit/revisit some obscure areas of the game, participate in some dynamic events and just generally have a pretty nice time – for me it’s very relaxing and in the end rewarding experience.

As for ascended items, you really don’t need them… Difference is really minimal and will only be noticed by min-maxers, I still have some green items on my thief and it doesn’t do that much worse in PvE/WvW than my fully exo/ascended main war.

Just relax and have fun Ascended items are supposed to be grindy and take a long time to get, we’ll get there when we’ll get there, you don’t need to have everything this very moment as it removes sense of progression.

Xenesis.6389:

The only thing Ascended gives me progression to is leaving the game.

Burrrrrrrrrrn. And agreed.

The whole thing is completely out of control. Their only real choice is to make ascended gear into something where you can pick your stats. If/when they release legendary armor… Can you even begin to comprehend what would go into making a character with a full legendary set? What will be the monetary cost? What will be the TIME cost?

I am not sure why they are taking the game in this direction, but from where I stand, I see them driving this bus down a cliff.

What ever happened to playing a game because it’s fun? Why do games, MMO’s especially, have to have such time consuming progression mechanics? If the game had enough fun things to, there’d be absolutely no need to have porogression. Progression is just a trick used to keep you playing a game that you would otherwise stop playing.

My advise to Anet would be to scrap all progression mechanics completely and spend their time and effort on making the game too fun to stop playing. The problem is though, progression is the easy way to keep players playing and it produces the best developer effort to profit ratio. So any company would be foolish to let go of such a good earner.

Rin.1046:

What ever happened to playing a game because it’s fun? Why do games, MMO’s especially, have to have such time consuming progression mechanics? If the game had enough fun things to, there’d be absolutely no need to have porogression. Progression is just a trick used to keep you playing a game that you would otherwise stop playing.

My advise to Anet would be to scrap all progression mechanics completely and spend their time and effort on making the game too fun to stop playing. The problem is though, progression is the easy way to keep players playing and it produces the best developer effort to profit ratio. So any company would be foolish to let go of such a good earner.

Not to mention for a lot of players, myself included, progression IS the fun!

Right, Rin. The old model is getting players into the game with fun, and then hooking them and addicting with with treadmills of progression. I thought GW2 was supposed to be the first of the “New” generation that hooked people with fun. I think it’s just not possible for developers to produce that much new content…I think EQN’s crowdsourcing ideas are the future.

Aeonblade.8709:

Not to mention for a lot of players, myself included, progression IS the fun!

I’m guessing you like progression because you enjoy the feeling of working towards some goal? Which is fine, I enjoy this also, and maybe saying scrap all progression mechanics was wrong. But a game CAN have a fun progression mechanic that does not impact on those that would prefer to do without it. Titles are a good example of this. Aesthetic items are another. But the moment you force progression on everyone, you limit the number of players who will enjoy the game for a long time, and those profits will eventually jump ship to try the next potential.

If however, you design your game to be fun to play, for players who hate progression and players who love it, your profits will remain stronger for longer and everyone’s a winner. So far, Guild Wars 2 seems to be aimed more and more at those who like progression and less and less at those who don’t.

I agree that it’s currently aimed at progression. I think it started towards the direction of fun, but couldn’t keep up with demand and so developers threw us progression (in terms of time commitment and repeatable tasks) to satiate our demand. I don’t want tasks. I want challenge and fun.

The thing is, do you need Ascended gear to switch builds? Are the stat differences THAT much that you can’t function properly in wvw or PvE w/o Ascended gear?

I don’t think so. All my characters have multiple gear sets, and I switch between them as the situation dictates.

Xae Isareth.1364:

The thing is, do you need Ascended gear to switch builds? Are the stat differences THAT much that you can’t function properly in wvw or PvE w/o Ascended gear?

Yes, otherwise no one would bother getting Ascended gear in the first place.

The stat bonuses are enough to make the difference in a close fight, especially for power builds.

Question for you OP: if there was no leveling, no character progression, nothing to collect, and no gear to acquire, what would you do to play the game besides complain about lack of rewarding content?

Gnat.9405:

Question for you OP: if there was no leveling, no character progression, nothing to collect, and no gear to acquire, what would you do to play the game besides complain about lack of rewarding content?

Nothing but improving your skill. It’s the game just becomes a less skilled based FPS or a higher skill cap 3-d fighting game.

Isn’t this everything that casual core gamers love? You know. . . everything wrong with game design these days, isn’t that the standard?