Guild Wars 2

TheDaiBish.9735:

Sterz.2463:

Meaningful rewards that give you a sense of character/gear progression is a key component to keeping players interested.

Why gear progression? Why not other forms of character progression:

• Rising up the ranks in your Order and Race after the threat of Zhaitan has been dealt with (shame they did this through the story really, as opposed to in the world).
• Finding Skills and Traits all around the world, which depend on your profession? EG Warriors fight a weapons-master and meet a certain criteria (eg, attack the enemy when they’re knocked down to unlock +damage when foe is knocked down trait) to unlock a trait.
• Rather than give all 3 Explorable paths at once, make all 3 paths have different difficulty, and then unlock them as you beat each path, with appropriate rewards for each path. Maybe make it so only certain pieces of armour can be bought in each path.

You don’t need ever-rising stats to have a sense of progression.

I really like these ideas. I’m tired of the wow fans begging for more gear progression or a level raise. Adding more permanent story based content (sans trahearne) would be cool. Having what order I chose actually matter? That’d be cooler.

Well, Lotro is having a bad time of it atm due to its gear progression strategy. It’s killed a swathe of ppl since Rohan as ppl are forced re-grind after each content patch.

I don’t think a lack of gear progression will kill GW2, it didn’t with GW1 and there’s just no reason or evidence to suggest it will here. There are things wrong with the game, but this isn’t one of them in my opinion and I’m glad to see an MMO trying to do end game a diff way. But, it’s way too early to write it off.

There are a number of issues with your argument:

> States that nearly every gear grind game has been successful.
> Points out that no MMO has tried to change the gear grind until GW2.

To say that something is a ‘failure’ based on one sample doesn’t constitute as accurate evidence.

Second, how are you measuring success? Do you have stats for every single game you mentioned there? And do you have stats to show that gear grind is a leading contributor to their success?

Third, some of us aren’t ‘pretending’ that we don’t like gear grind. Some of us genuinely don’t. Unsure where you got that idea from.

Fourth, just because 410 people in your guild agree with you, that doesn’t mean that the majority do. Unsure how you could even present this as a valid argument.[/quote]

No, I agree that an mmo cannot be considered a failure due to no gear grind, but in terms of end-game content, Guild Wars 2 does not have the gear grind that other mmorpgs would. This means that there is a severe lack of end-game content, (and no, living story does not count. People finish those in a day.) If there were some substitute for a gear grind, then I would consider Guild Wars 2 to be up to par with other mmo’s, but no gear grind means that you will endlessly be doing CoF p1, meta bosses, and WvW.

Secondly, I do not have “stats” for every game. I’ve played these games personally for most of their mmo lives and have seen them change for the good and for the bad, experienced player’s discomfort with certain aspects of the game and I’ve experienced their joy when they get rewarded correctly. I can tell you from my experiences with WoW, Runes of Magic, and Lotro that players love to gain gear whether it be from dungeons, loot, or quests. I can speak for these games because I have played each since the beginning of their existence. It’s not coincidence that nearly every player I’ve come across loves to get more powerful gear. I definitely agree with Vayne that the people that don’t like to grind for gear come to other games that don’t have that grind, but they’re missing out on end-game content since GW2 has no substitute for it at the moment.

Thirdly, I know that some players don’t pretend to hate grinding and genuinely do hate it with a passion. I got that idea from multiple people that pretended they hated gear grind until I finally got it out of them that they secretly enjoy grinding for gear and progressing in power. GW2 barely has any armor progression at all.

Lastly, It’s not people from just one guild. That was one example I was using to prove a point. This actually happened in 3 of my guilds that I later quit because they all left to go to a game with more gear progression.

I definitely do not think every mmo that has gear grind is successful. There are other factors that lead to it being successful other than the gear grind, but if those are bad or lacking in content, the gear progression keeps people going. It’s the only reason I stayed with WoW for so long – because I felt that drive to get more gear even when I hit max level. Every time someone would beat me in PvP or I would die in PvE, I would google for armor that would improve the areas I’m lacking in. I don’t have that in GW2 at all. I can’t get more gear to constantly improve myself. All I can do is change my build around to better suit my needs, but it still doesn’t improve my already amazing build. I can’t fix something that’s not broken.

stale.9785:

TheDaiBish.9735:

Sterz.2463:

Meaningful rewards that give you a sense of character/gear progression is a key component to keeping players interested.

Why gear progression? Why not other forms of character progression:

• Rising up the ranks in your Order and Race after the threat of Zhaitan has been dealt with (shame they did this through the story really, as opposed to in the world).
• Finding Skills and Traits all around the world, which depend on your profession? EG Warriors fight a weapons-master and meet a certain criteria (eg, attack the enemy when they’re knocked down to unlock +damage when foe is knocked down trait) to unlock a trait.
• Rather than give all 3 Explorable paths at once, make all 3 paths have different difficulty, and then unlock them as you beat each path, with appropriate rewards for each path. Maybe make it so only certain pieces of armour can be bought in each path.

You don’t need ever-rising stats to have a sense of progression.

I really like these ideas. I’m tired of the wow fans begging for more gear progression or a level raise. Adding more permanent story based content (sans trahearne) would be cool. Having what order I chose actually matter? That’d be cooler.

Sure, that would definitely work. This was the substitution method I was talking about earlier and it would work in place of the gear grind. I’d be happy with any progression at the moment. These are some great ideas that would improve the sense of accomplishment people get from completing difficult tasks. Anet just needs to implement some type of end-game to please the crowds.

@Galtrix

I have a question for you? Do you have a tally of the number of people who specifically AVOID those games because of gear grind?

Let’s say there are 20 million people playing MMOs today. Maybe a bit more, maybe less. There are over 200 million gamers according to some estimates.

That means only 10% of the gaming population (again more or less) actually play MMOs. Ever ask yourself why?

Maybe if MMOs didn’t have gear grind, MORE people would be playing them.

best thing for me about gw2 is the character modelling and animation (flawless imo and worth making it that good, female norn my favourite …plus many of the weapons and armour look great with the attention to detail) and some environments like the snow regions. i love the voices for the female sylvari -that english voice….:3- and female norn.

Vayne.8563:

@Galtrix

I have a question for you? Do you have a tally of the number of people who specifically AVOID those games because of gear grind?

Let’s say there are 20 million people playing MMOs today. Maybe a bit more, maybe less. There are over 200 million gamers according to some estimates.

That means only 10% of the gaming population (again more or less) actually play MMOs. Ever ask yourself why?

Maybe if MMOs didn’t have gear grind, MORE people would be playing them.

Perhaps. But I’m guessing there are a lot of reasons for people not playing mmo’s. People play consoles, some people don’t like the idea of playing online all the time, some people suck at typing and are too embarrassed to play online. That’s my guess anyway. I’m guessing the amount of people specifically avoiding the games WITH the gear grind is pretty miniscule compared to the people that avoid the games for other reasons. Guild Wars 2 doesn’t have the gear grind, and the amount of people playing GW2 compared to WoW, a game with gear grind, is a lot less than WoW. Runes of Magic may have about the same playerbase as GW2, even though it’s f2p which is impressive. I had to google the part about WoW as I haven’t recently seen any numbers for their actual playerbase. I suppose it’s a matter of opinion on which aspect of the mmo you prefer though. I would be content with gear-grind, as would many other people, and I would also be content with more permanent additions to GW2. Others may not agree, and they think the living story content is enough. It depends on the majority of the people wanting more gear-grind or more content for Anet to do anything about it. From my experience, a lot of people want more gear.

Galtrix.7369:

Guild Wars 2 doesn’t have the gear grind, and the amount of people playing GW2 compared to WoW, a game with gear grind, is a lot less than WoW. .

i feel like there is a gear grind. i exclusively did wvw with my guardian and it took way too long to get a complete exotic invaders. plus, you make barely any gold in wvw. and there is no ascended wvw either so it’s impossible while the pveers come in with ascended and can beat you (when you spent all your time in wvw….not really a great situation there).

wolfie.7296:

Galtrix.7369:

Guild Wars 2 doesn’t have the gear grind, and the amount of people playing GW2 compared to WoW, a game with gear grind, is a lot less than WoW. .

i feel like there is a gear grind. i exclusively did wvw with my guardian and it took way too long to get a complete exotic invaders. plus, you make barely any gold in wvw. and there is no ascended wvw either so it’s impossible while the pveers come in with ascended and can beat you (when you spent all your time in wvw….not really a great situation there).

That’s as close to a gear grind as Anet’s probably ever going to get. Even that gear grind lasts…. what, 3 days to a week? It’s still pretty long, but I don’t believe it’s really a grind when there are multiple ways to get the WvW armor. Jumping puzzles, killing invaders, zerging, capturing towers, all ways to get the tokens. I really don’t know how long it takes casual players to get this armor, but it took me about 4 days to get a complete set.

My biggest issue with GW2 at the moment is that there is nothing to work towards, some say thats what Legendarys are for but as we all know Legendarys are not earned they are given away to only the lucky few thanks to a very punishing RNG system.

Now I am not looking for a gear grind by any means but I would like to see unique skins/items put into the game that require skill/achievements to get, items/skins that display true accomplishment where the only thing holding you back from obtaining the “Bow of Mega Awesome” is your own lack of skill.

Or say in WvW once you unlock ex. Rank 50 it opens up a unique vendor for skins/items etc, and every x amount of ranks there after opens up more unique skins/items. Right now all WvW has as far as long term goals is titles, so if you kill/escort 50 yaks a day for the next 225yrs you will earn your yakslapper title or whatever its called.

All I am asking for is cool looking unique things I can work towards that are not reliant on Rng, or one sitting in Lions Arch with a credit card buying gems to convert into gems to buy thousands of chest/coffers/boxes to have a “chance” at something new and unique. Give players a real reason to log on everyday!

Well, I can understand the want for gear grind. It is a valid staple of character development and sort of supersedes level since level is dynamically changed by area.

Rather than knock gear grind, you could always discuss acceptable gear grind. I still don’t consider ascended junk to be necessary and do have most of my characters with ascended exect for the 3 without backpieces.

There’s various avenues one could go like giving pure customization on stats instead of the limited-time nomenclatures that likely won’t cover every stat combo. Just make it grindy and you have to do so for each piece of armor/weapon but if you want condition/duration/precision or healing/toughness/vitality you can make it.

Or you can put another ‘sidegrade’ of gear that give free bonuses via ‘useless’ stats, i.e. magicfind, goldfind, +karma, +experience so you can kit yourself out with full berserker’s gear yet have high magicfind on the side with no drawback…or stack magicfind on your magicfind if you’re that crazy.

Galtrix.7369:

Guild Wars 2 doesn’t have the gear grind, and the amount of people playing GW2 compared to WoW, a game with gear grind, is a lot less than WoW.

And Rift has gear grind, and yet there are a lot less people playing Rift than WoW. TOR has gear grind, and there are a lot less people playing it than WoW. And so on, and so on.

You are assuming gear grind makes a game good. You are wrong.

Erasculio.2914:

Galtrix.7369:

Guild Wars 2 doesn’t have the gear grind, and the amount of people playing GW2 compared to WoW, a game with gear grind, is a lot less than WoW.

And Rift has gear grind, and yet there are a lot less people playing Rift than WoW. TOR has gear grind, and there are a lot less people playing it than WoW. And so on, and so on.

You are assuming gear grind makes a game good. You are wrong.

Read my above messages please. I am not assuming gear grind makes a game good. There are other factors as well. I explained how gear grind was good for some people and not good for others

Galtrix.7369:

it took me about 4 days to get a complete set.

sounds like bs to me….but you are an elementalist. i said guardian…and most of the time was support….anyway… 4×24 = 96 hours …playing 2 hour every day = 7 weeks for 1 character.. and you would have to be doing nothing else than farming tokens like a bot, rather than contributing to wvw in a meaningful or intended way…..so i think your comment is a little obnoxious bc you are under-exaggerating it and ignoring the fact that you are an elementalist, and promoting a bad, grindy way to play the game as ‘normal’ rather than participate in wvw. plus you don’t say if it was recent or from release.

I do agree that endgame in GW2 is lacking, there is a wall you hit once you have made all the alts you want and geared them all.

However I don’t think stat based and gear based grinds is the way forward. I believe that Anet needs to consider adding more to the game that enhances community team play.

Going back to GW1 & Expansions they offered instanced dungeons that enabled more than the usual party cap limit and the challenge to match it.

For example Urgoz’s Warren ( 12 player team cap). These were “epic” there was nothing more fun than to team with a substantial amount of players from your own guilds and alliances to take on the challenge.

No one minded the reward at the end of the dungeon really it was the taking part, the experience. And you know what we kept going back time after time. I truly think atm Gw2 lacks enough scope atm to allow guilds to truly operate as guilds. The 5 person instance cap limit across all existing content is too small for guilds.

I believe there are other ways to add more endgame to GW2, I don’t believe gear grind or grinding for visual items like we have now is necessarily the way forward. I suggest working on expanding the community interaction, because in GW1 a lot of us kept coming back time and time again just for that.

What do you guys think?

Well, yes GW2 PvE open world content is run around the world doing stuff.
If there were huge zone/world events like in Rift that would be really cool, like the event in Silverwood and Freemarch. Let events like that happen, but not too often.

Galtrix.7369:

Sure, mmorpgs die of course, as do all games eventually. You can count them successful when they’ve lived as long kitten years, which all of them have. WoW is still going strong, as well as Perfect World, Lotro, and Runes of Magic. I can pretty much guarantee GW2 will not last as long as even Runes of Magic.

You’re contradicting yourself. You said that SWTOR is a successful MMO but now you claim, success means living long. SWTOR isn’t there that much longer than GW2 and it sold fewer copies. It had to abandon it’s subscription model within a year after release. It’s pretty much an example of a MMO-disaster and probably would have been a total failure weren’t it for its franchise.
Guild Wars didn’t have gear progression and it sold over 7 million copies. More than any of your examples except WoW. Guild Wars 2 was advertised for years as not having gear progression and yet, over 3 million people bought it. As I write this, GW2 is in my country on place 4 in the retail charts. It increased NCSoft’s profit last year by 500%. There’s no question whether it will fail, it is already a massive success. Even if all players will stop playing tomorrow, it will have been a success. And I’m convinced that it will still be played in 5 years.

wolfie.7296:

Galtrix.7369:

it took me about 4 days to get a complete set.

sounds like bs to me….but you are an elementalist. i said guardian…and most of the time was support….anyway… 4×24 = 96 hours …playing 2 hour every day = 7 weeks for 1 character.. and you would have to be doing nothing else than farming tokens like a bot, rather than contributing to wvw in a meaningful or intended way…..so i think your comment is a little obnoxious bc you are under-exaggerating it and ignoring the fact that you are an elementalist, and promoting a bad, grindy way to play the game as ‘normal’ rather than participate in wvw. plus you don’t say if it was recent or from release.

7 weeks? So what?

Is 7 weeks long? The game isn’t going to add another bracket of gear in that time span or likely not ever 3x that time span. You could take 25 weeks and I still don’t see the problem. You can still progress without grinding and the options to overcharge the process is always there. It’s not like ascended gear equates to success against other players. Lots of people run test builds in WvW with just rare gear before taking the effort to stockpile for the exotic/ascended version. I know I tend to use rare/masterwork trinkets in a build first before dropping dime/tokens on exotic/ascended (crafting exotic armor and weapons isn’t hard though).

Sterz.2463:

Erasculio.2914:

Sterz.2463:

GW2 is like a carnival. It’s fun to pass the time and look at all the cool sideshows, but there is no overall epic adventure. Just mindless wandering.

Quoting the OP from another topic:

Sterz.2463:

Do you honestly think most MMO players are thinking “oh sweet I cant wait for this awesome challenge in this dungeon”…no they want to get that sweet rare reward at the end.

So no, you are not looking for any “overall epic adventure”. By your words, all you want is “mindless” grind. I’m happy that there isn’t enough of the gear grind you want in this game.

I can see how these two statements at first seem to contradict one another. However, it is all in how you define an epic adventure. My idea of an epic adventure is content that is of large scale, offers large rewards, and overall feels interesting and challenging. Perhaps adventure the is the wrong word as an adventure does not guarantee rewards.

A system by which one goes into a dungeon or an event knowing that he/she will not likely not receive any meaningful loot is not a fun system. Meaningful rewards that give you a sense of character/gear progression is a key component to keeping players interested. Having epic story telling is usually a bonus. And I am not saying I want to more grind, you all seem to think that this will occur if item progression was more emphasized. Dungeon token grinding is the most grinding I have and will ever do for armor/weapons in this game. Anything more is silly and not fun. I am talking about let boss chests actually give you good rewards. Each boss fight you should be excited that your cool item might drop. I will likely never play WoW again but if there is one thing they did right is raid loot tables. It kept you coming back for your drop, and when it dropped, you were so happy. Loot tables don’t exist in this game and buying armor/weapons from TP or with karma that has the same states is too cheap for loot from bosses to matter. Its tricky because this just isnt possible in GW2. Even if every boss in dungeons now dropped exotics, people would still sell them because they likely already have their desired exotic stats on their desired looking armor. Loot just doesn’t matter in this game. Everything is so cosmetically driven in this game that it all seems superficial and fake (mostly mini’s and joke/holiday skins).

That’s not unreasonable at all. And I agree. And that cool stuff doesn’t need to be +stat. I mean it’s great to solo a champion just for the heck of it, but if it dropped something good, unique that’s not generic TP stuff it would be a bit nicer. It gives an extra yay, no doubt.

My fear is that, if they become farmable, the zombies will come for their 18-hour shift of endless farming and start breaking and locking down dynamic events left and right. So this stuff needs to be bound.

IMO, if they just added karma merchants with good soulbound stuff that could solve this who reward thing and keep people playing everywhere. But if they wanted to do something that makes so much sense they wouldn’t have come up with laurels. So they probably have another goal other than making it fun and rewarding and spreading people throughout the world.

At any rate, these demands have been (apparently) heard, and, according to Colin, they’re revamping Orr to be an “endgame” zone with “endgame” rewards. They are telling more about this by the end of July, i think that’s what he said. Look up the dev tracker or the Orr topic in the GW2Discusstions forum.

So no point in keep opening these threads anymore, at least not until July.

At the end of the day one players killer feature is another’s reason to stop playing. As Harbard says there’s not much point posting up as these threads don’t actually get us anywhere (how amazing would it be if they did).

That said its always interesting to throw some ideas around. We know AN are working on some major content for the rest of the year so I’m happy enough to wait.

Gw2 endgame is not lacking- I have been 80 since sept and I am not bored in the slightest and love playing my 80’s

Anet stated from the beginning that the whole game is endgame- this is true, literally.

I find it amazing that people from more traditional MMO’s keep banging their head against the wall unable to accept this.
You do realize the whole idea of gear progression is a mechanism to get you paying your sub every month right?

The fact that so many gear progression based MMO’s have gone free to play, tells me 2 things:
1 sub model is dead
2 gear grinders leave as soon as the next shiny gear grinder come out.

The progression from bigger numbers, just so you can get bigger numbers is a illusion and it created a player base that cannot function without it- this is very sad and imo would have killed the MMO genre sooner rather than later.
GW2 tries to create a new paradigm for MMO’s and I really appreciate it.

Flame all you want but there are more people like me than you think

Morrigan.2809:

Gw2 endgame is not lacking- I have been 80 since sept and I am not bored in the slightest and love playing my 80’s

Anet stated from the beginning that the whole game is endgame- this is true, literally.

I find it amazing that people from more traditional MMO’s keep banging their head against the wall unable to accept this.
You do realize the whole idea of gear progression is a mechanism to get you paying your sub every month right?

The fact that so many gear progression based MMO’s have gone free to play, tells me 2 things:
1 sub model is dead
2 gear grinders leave as soon as the next shiny gear grinder come out.

The progression from bigger numbers, just so you can get bigger numbers is a illusion and it created a player base that cannot function without it- this is very sad and imo would have killed the MMO genre sooner rather than later.
GW2 tries to create a new paradigm for MMO’s and I really appreciate it.

Flame all you want but there are more people like me than you think

Please keep talking sense! Almost makes me believe there’s hope for MMOs and that ANet’s “reward revamp” coming in the second half is not more traditional MMO bs to appease the zombie hordes… I have about 2 months of illusions left I suppose :P

Randulf.7614:

Well, Lotro is having a bad time of it atm due to its gear progression strategy. It’s killed a swathe of ppl since Rohan as ppl are forced re-grind after each content patch.

I don’t think a lack of gear progression will kill GW2, it didn’t with GW1 and there’s just no reason or evidence to suggest it will here. There are things wrong with the game, but this isn’t one of them in my opinion and I’m glad to see an MMO trying to do end game a diff way. But, it’s way too early to write it off.

I can confirm that for myself at least. I WANTED, like, really bad, to come back to that particular mmo, because i still like my minstrel. But the “catch up” gear grind is absolutely insane. Not to mention the crapton of currencies and gating shenanigans that piled up in the game over the years that make the whole thing oh so hodoring clunky it’s a disaster.

As a result, they’re not getting my money for any expansion. How many returning people may have felt the same and how much the game lost by doing that, I don’t know, but my guess is that’s what pulls the plug on older mmos.

After some time those game become impenetrable to newer people and a huge pain in the hodor for some or maybe most of older ones. Even if they have the graphics, good classes and decent content coming up.

TBH i think its more of a design choice than a flaw.

GW2 is the “casual” MMO, the one designed from the ground to NOT be played like an mmo. Look at Living Story, that screams “hey guys who quit, come back to me, play me again for 3 days – Maybe buy something on the shop and then see ya next month!”

It’s babies first mmo. Or older people (those who DID play years of wow and more hardcore stuff, but are now older and with less free time) weekend waster.
Thats why the “middleground” is often ignored, suffers and leaves. Yet, keeping the game installed, checking the patches and waiting for an expansion that will probably preorder and play for 3 weeks before getting bored again.

Galtrix.7369:

anything about it. From my experience, a lot of people want more gear.

From my experience people like gear as an extra, but loathe “systems”, tiers and gating around it. And especially they loathe the ever-increasing stats and the meaninglessness of it all, plus the annoyance of always have to replace crap. Some of them never liked that, others just got burned out of that crap.

And as Vayne said. There are people out there that would love to play a massive online multiplayer game that doesn’t necessarily revolve around gated instanced content, +stat junk and endless currencies, that has a dead open world that only serves as a quick diversion before the gated grind, and a story that is just there to Hodor knows what end. I know at least two gaming and modding forums full of those people. Heck even mmorpg.com has people like that who got absolutely burned out of the +stat crap.

People that just hate mmos usually say it’s all about getting +3 sword to kill +3 mob and that when you’re 1 you’re killing lvl1 boars and at 80 you’re killing lv 80 boars with +5 skills in your rotation. And then when you hit max level you go into your epic adventure of wasting hours of your life to put 40 people together to endure hours crap over and over to jump to the next tier of crap and hopefully experience some decent REAL content. Are they too far from the truth?

In fact, some gamers go so far to never touch mmos, and some even say MMos are not even a gaming genre. I remember the initial reaction from Elder Scrolls fans when TESO was announced. I didn’t understand why I was the only one excited about it on that thread, but then I saw they were terrified their singleplayer series would be over and the next Elder Scrolls game would be all about getting gear to get more gear to get more gear. Zero story. Zero RPG. Zero game. Just gated +stat junk.

Despite all that, most of those people are waiting for a LONG time for a massive online game that can match a single player when it comes to being a REAL game, with real mechanics, objectives and engaging rules, and not sequence of timewasters between content and a dead world. i see this desire expressed all over the place.

Are these people I read and know any representative of ALL people who want massive online games with GAME and not junk and gimmicks? Are they enough to make a profitable game? Are they a potential market?I have no real numbers. My guess is that they are, but my guess is as good as yours.

My experience vs yours experience. This makes no arguments. There’s no winning here. Quit this argument, speak for yourself.

Harbard.5738:

I have a feeling these crazy people begging for gear grind are going to make anet take another dump into their game sooner than later.

I don’t think developers are ever really influenced by people whining on forums, they’re only influenced by the bottom line and the metrics they have access to that we don’t.

That is to say, if their statistics and metrics show them that they need to have an endgame gear grind, then they’ll put one in – nothing else will make them put it in, because they’ve got a vision, and if they make their targeted money with that vision they’ll be happy. But if they don’t make the money they expect to make with that vision, then they’ll change.

gurugeorge.9857:

Harbard.5738:

I have a feeling these crazy people begging for gear grind are going to make anet take another dump into their game sooner than later.

I don’t think developers are ever really influenced by people whining on forums, they’re only influenced by the bottom line and the metrics they have access to that we don’t.

That is to say, if their statistics and metrics show them that they need to have an endgame gear grind, then they’ll put one in – nothing else will make them put it in, because they’ve got a vision, and if they make their targeted money with that vision they’ll be happy. But if they don’t make the money they expect to make with that vision, then they’ll change.

You’re right. Case closed.