Guild Wars 2

Ithir Darkleaf.7923:

TL;DR: Keep the Living Story going on, but don’t make it the main focus of development, so you can bring us expansions which probably will make almost everyone happy and you will earn more money.

This is what I’d like to see happen. Maybe not the same pace of living story content that is now planned, but keep it coming like it has been. Even though I’ve not been a big fan of the stories they have added, this type of content can be a good thing. And even if the quality doesn’t improve, it’s still a filler/time waster in between other larger expansions. It just shouldn’t be the main/only content we see.

Vayne.8563:

But doesn’t nearly give you the same type of advantage. Apples to apples. You had to grind Luxon/Kurzick ranks if you wanted to say, have an imbagon paragon. That became required.

The WvW stuff that you get isn’t on the same level. It’s passive stuff, not active skills. So you get it by playing.

Both gave you advantages that made your character better in some way. In fact, the wvw abilty advantages are bigger/better because they aren’t just effecting 1-2 skills (you could only have 2 allegiance skills at any given time) on your bar. In fact the single example you gave was likely the only allegiance skill (the warrior’s Save Yourselves that was used by Paragon/Warriors) that actually had a noticable effect on anything. The only other that was frequently used was Summon Spirits, and that skill’s main function didn’t care if you were rank 1 or rank 12. The other 8 skills were minor support for just your own build that never saw much use.

You don’t have to grind it because everything you do in WvW gets you that experience. Everything.

Not like Luxon and Kurzick stuff, where you had to do specific things (admittedly there was a range of them), to get that stuff.

Basically if you just play WvW (which is what WvW players do) you’ll go up in rank. That’s it. You just play. You don’t have to do anything differently. You don’t have to grind. You don’t have to farm. You just play…and eventually those levels will take care of themselves.

The only one making it a grind is you, through lack of patience. I mean the only people who really care about WvW rank are people who WvW most. And those people get them by playing the game.

I didn’t have to grind for my GW1 allegiance titles. Everything I did in Alliance Battles, Ft. Aspenwood, Jade Quarry, or any pve zone in Cantha gave me those points. Everything.

There was no specific activity. “just play AB/FA/JQ” is no more or less specific than “just play wvw”. Sure some people decided that speedclear grinding certain pve maps was the “only” way to get the title, but it was most certainly not. I never did a single speedclear of anything during the 7 years I played.

And I don’t believe I ever referred to wxp as a grind, although in some ways it is. Primarily because it has to be repeated on a per-character basis. It’s active discouragement for playing more than a single character in wvw. And it’s also turning into a progression treadmill because they keep adding more and more abilities to the list.

mrstealth.6701:

Vayne.8563:

But doesn’t nearly give you the same type of advantage. Apples to apples. You had to grind Luxon/Kurzick ranks if you wanted to say, have an imbagon paragon. That became required.

The WvW stuff that you get isn’t on the same level. It’s passive stuff, not active skills. So you get it by playing.

Both gave you advantages that made your character better in some way. In fact, the wvw abilty advantages are bigger/better because they aren’t just effecting 1-2 skills (you could only have 2 allegiance skills at any given time) on your bar. In fact the single example you gave was likely the only allegiance skill (the warrior’s Save Yourselves that was used by Paragon/Warriors) that actually had a noticable effect on anything. The only other that was frequently used was Summon Spirits, and that skill’s main function didn’t care if you were rank 1 or rank 12. The other 8 skills were minor support for just your own build that never saw much use.

You don’t have to grind it because everything you do in WvW gets you that experience. Everything.

Not like Luxon and Kurzick stuff, where you had to do specific things (admittedly there was a range of them), to get that stuff.

Basically if you just play WvW (which is what WvW players do) you’ll go up in rank. That’s it. You just play. You don’t have to do anything differently. You don’t have to grind. You don’t have to farm. You just play…and eventually those levels will take care of themselves.

The only one making it a grind is you, through lack of patience. I mean the only people who really care about WvW rank are people who WvW most. And those people get them by playing the game.

I didn’t have to grind for my GW1 allegiance titles. Everything I did in Alliance Battles, Ft. Aspenwood, Jade Quarry, or any pve zone in Cantha gave me those points. Everything.

There was no specific activity. “just play AB/FA/JQ” is no more or less specific than “just play wvw”. Sure some people decided that speedclear grinding certain pve maps was the “only” way to get the title, but it was most certainly not. I never did a single speedclear of anything during the 7 years I played.

And I don’t believe I ever referred to wxp as a grind, although in some ways it is. Primarily because it has to be repeated on a per-character basis. It’s active discouragement for playing more than a single character in wvw. And it’s also turning into a progression treadmill because they keep adding more and more abilities to the list.

It’s giving people already playing WvW something to work towards and that’s all it’s doing.

Min/maxers who are so worried about this stuff will suffer. I’m pretty sure most players aren’t screaming about this. Hard core WvW guys who are convinced 1 or 2% damage makes a difference will care.

Not that I’d care if it was account bound, I just don’t think the stuff is so useful that it’s going to make that much of a difference.

mrstealth.6701:

Vayne.8563:

But doesn’t nearly give you the same type of advantage. Apples to apples. You had to grind Luxon/Kurzick ranks if you wanted to say, have an imbagon paragon. That became required.

The WvW stuff that you get isn’t on the same level. It’s passive stuff, not active skills. So you get it by playing.

Both gave you advantages that made your character better in some way. In fact, the wvw abilty advantages are bigger/better because they aren’t just effecting 1-2 skills (you could only have 2 allegiance skills at any given time) on your bar. In fact the single example you gave was likely the only allegiance skill (the warrior’s Save Yourselves that was used by Paragon/Warriors) that actually had a noticable effect on anything. The only other that was frequently used was Summon Spirits, and that skill’s main function didn’t care if you were rank 1 or rank 12. The other 8 skills were minor support for just your own build that never saw much use.

May I remind both of you that Arenanet changed the Allegiance ranks to scale up to rank 6 in effectiveness.

Anything above that, was only there for the title, as at rank 6 your faction skills were already maxed out in effectiveness. For Save Yourselves specifically, rank 5 was the maximum you needed, it was capped at 6seconds at rank 5 so any rank above it was “wasted”. Getting to a healthy rank 5 or 6 wasn’t very “grindy” either, you just had to complete Factions in NM/HM – Vanquish Luxon zones and do the Deep a few times. Of course you could get it just by doing PVP too. Getting to rank 12 was an enormous grind, no matter how you look at it, but it was completely optional and didn’t give any kind of benefit.

Vayne.8563:

It’s giving people already playing WvW something to work towards and that’s all it’s doing.

Min/maxers who are so worried about this stuff will suffer. I’m pretty sure most players aren’t screaming about this. Hard core WvW guys who are convinced 1 or 2% damage makes a difference will care.

Not that I’d care if it was account bound, I just don’t think the stuff is so useful that it’s going to make that much of a difference.

And everything you just said applies to the GW1 allegiance titles/skills as well. Do you think the majority cared about pve skills? Even the imbagon was something for the min/maxers.

I didn’t care if the imbagon existed or not, that was very rarely a part of anything I did. In fact, I was the only person in my group of friends to semi-frequently play paragon. Even then, it was one of my least played characters.

Hard core WvW guys who are convinced 1 or 2% damage makes a difference will care.

There aren’t many that will try to claim that 1% (but it goes up to 5%, which is something) matters. But what about +25% damage to arrow cart, ballista, burning oil, or the ability to carry more supply? Those are significant advantages.

mrstealth.6701:

And I don’t believe I ever referred to wxp as a grind, although in some ways it is. Primarily because it has to be repeated on a per-character basis. It’s active discouragement for playing more than a single character in wvw. And it’s also turning into a progression treadmill because they keep adding more and more abilities to the list.

In my very humble opinion WxP is far better as Character Bound than account bound. I can give my characters different builds, try new skills and abilities that way. I won’t use Siege boosting abilities on my Thief, I’m only roaming on my Thief, but on my Ele I would take them to help during sieges.

Once I’m able to, I will get the extra supply boosts on my Ranger to move across the battlefield quickly to construct siege and repair walls etc

maddoctor.2738:

May I remind both of you that Arenanet changed the Allegiance ranks to scale up to rank 6 in effectiveness.

Anything above that, was only there for the title, as at rank 6 your faction skills were already maxed out in effectiveness. For Save Yourselves specifically, rank 5 was the maximum you needed, it was capped at 6seconds at rank 5 so any rank above it was “wasted”. Getting to a healthy rank 5 or 6 wasn’t very “grindy” either, you just had to complete Factions in NM/HM – Vanquish Luxon zones and do the Deep a few times. Of course you could get it just by doing PVP too. Getting to rank 12 was an enormous grind, no matter how you look at it, but it was completely optional and didn’t give any kind of benefit.

You are completely right, on all counts. Although I wouldn’t call how I got it a grind (not for me at least, as I enjoyed FA a lot). And it wasn’t just the allegiance ranks this happened for, the same was done for the EotN racial ranks. It actually got scaled down twice, the latter ending with the numbers you gave.

Looking at the two games with those changes in mind, GW1’s allegiance skills are just that much more easily attainable compared to GW2’s wvw abilities. Given the effects of wvw abilities, and the time it takes to aquire them, I think it’s very important for them to be made account-based rather than character to promote variety in our wvw playstyles. As a self-described alt-a-holic, these character-based ranks are the primary reason I no longer do WvW. Every time I did WvW on an less-played alt, I felt as if I shouldn’t be touching arrow carts, etc because I lacked the powerful abilities my other character had.

I think what people want is a coherent LONG story campaign with expansive contents, and not these tiny updates with massive grinds built into it.

They are trying to compare these “episodic release” as TV shows, well too bad none of the current content has any quality climax to make people wanting to see the next thing. There isn’t any real goal. Who are we fighting now? Some pirates? GIVE people a purpose in your storyline, and not some random weird out of nowhere bs.

This is bad project management, you have 4 teams and they are creating incoherent stories.

You guys really want to develop it like a TV show? Take some inspiration from Game of the Throne, not freaking CSI Miami, where every episodes are barely connected.

maddoctor.2738:

In my very humble opinion WxP is far better as Character Bound than account bound. I can give my characters different builds, try new skills and abilities that way. I won’t use Siege boosting abilities on my Thief, I’m only roaming on my Thief, but on my Ele I would take them to help during sieges.

Once I’m able to, I will get the extra supply boosts on my Ranger to move across the battlefield quickly to construct siege and repair walls etc

I totally agree with you about the actual abilities. The selection of abilities should be character-based. What needs to be account-based is the ranks/earning of points.

example: If I gain 30 ranks on my guardian, I should have 30 points on each character to spend how I choose for that specific character.

maddoctor.2738:

mrstealth.6701:

Vayne.8563:

But doesn’t nearly give you the same type of advantage. Apples to apples. You had to grind Luxon/Kurzick ranks if you wanted to say, have an imbagon paragon. That became required.

The WvW stuff that you get isn’t on the same level. It’s passive stuff, not active skills. So you get it by playing.

Both gave you advantages that made your character better in some way. In fact, the wvw abilty advantages are bigger/better because they aren’t just effecting 1-2 skills (you could only have 2 allegiance skills at any given time) on your bar. In fact the single example you gave was likely the only allegiance skill (the warrior’s Save Yourselves that was used by Paragon/Warriors) that actually had a noticable effect on anything. The only other that was frequently used was Summon Spirits, and that skill’s main function didn’t care if you were rank 1 or rank 12. The other 8 skills were minor support for just your own build that never saw much use.

May I remind both of you that Arenanet changed the Allegiance ranks to scale up to rank 6 in effectiveness.

Anything above that, was only there for the title, as at rank 6 your faction skills were already maxed out in effectiveness. For Save Yourselves specifically, rank 5 was the maximum you needed, it was capped at 6seconds at rank 5 so any rank above it was “wasted”. Getting to a healthy rank 5 or 6 wasn’t very “grindy” either, you just had to complete Factions in NM/HM – Vanquish Luxon zones and do the Deep a few times. Of course you could get it just by doing PVP too. Getting to rank 12 was an enormous grind, no matter how you look at it, but it was completely optional and didn’t give any kind of benefit.

They changed it six years into the game. They also changed the alcohol title track, the survivor title track, the Defender of Ascalon Title track (by putting dailies in Pre, so you didn’t have to death level). All these changes were done for one reason. To make getting achievements easier. Why? Because Guild Wars 2 was coming out and that’s pretty much where they want people.

Relatively few people are going to want to grind away for achievements in Guild Wars 1 anymore. It’s not like the old days. There are less players, so they’re making it easier to play/survive, including allowing people to use 7 heroes.

I don’t see how Anet making these changes has any bearing on the current discussion.

mrstealth.6701:

Who in their right mind would buy those dragon coffers from the gemstore when you can easily get hundreds of the droppable version for free? Unless the chance to get a ticket from them is 50% (or at least 30%), they simply are not worth bothering with. And if items are made exclusive to gemstore boxes, the player backlash is brutal…and rightfully so.

Really? Because not nearly enough backlash occurred when they added that Dragon Revelry Starcake recipe only to Rich Dragon Coffers. Exclusive recipe to the gem store only available through RNG boxes. Personally, that crossed the line in terms of the gem store being “cosmetic only”. I’m particularly concerned that this is part of a new strategy to sucker players who aren’t interested in skins into buying the RNG boxes anyway by stuffing things like recipes into them.

mrstealth.6701:

I don’t need any more incentive to do this.
snip…

I know what you’re trying to say but be honest in a typical game session how many zones do you play in? I dont care about getting the best rewards, I dont care if I play in Orr or in queensdale yet in a typical session I barely visit 2 or maybe 3 zones. I let the daily guide me in which zone I play and thats it. Thanks to the effigies I ended up playing in a lot more zones each and every day. Not only that but because most of the time was spend enjoying the journey between one effigy to the next it wasnt any more tedious then it is tedious pressing F in order to loot a kill.

Yeah I agree with you that an expansion size release was a bit of an exaggeration but they really didnt release a bunch of stuff. What we got was a pvp map, an improved daily, selecting which dailies to do, laurels and their rewards. Guesting. New infusions and new ascended items, New guild missions (quite a few of them), preview of items in the trading post, they two story instances, some cutscenes, WvW progression, a few dynamic events, Elimination of Culling in WvW , the leader boards, a really good dungeon, Customer Arenas and spectator mode, 30 new guild missions, guild themed siege weapons and banners. Not an expansion size of stuff no saying it is, but it wasnt that bad and more then that it was their first attempt, the fact they delayed it twice is good indication that it didnt go as smoothly as they hoped.

Sorry, I did a Typo, I meant new full fledge zones is not something that can be completed in 2 months. I didnt want to imply they already did it before, just thakittens a long term project which I personally hope is already in the works. Also Southsun cove is a bit understimated, its the only zone that is at least a little challenging, its very beautiful visually and its a great farming spot. Its not as lackluster as people imply imho.

You’re saying gw1 open world is more rewarding then gw2 open world? If you play a low level area in gw1 like say the area around sardelac sanitarium (or any other open world zone really) in hard mode it will take you an hour if not two and selling drops together with the reward you’ll get 3 maybe 4 plat if you’re lucky. Doing a mission like Auspicious Beginnings will net you at least 2 plat if not 3 in 5 minutes flat. Thats about 24plat in an hour which makes it 600% better at best conditions 1200% better at worst. And if you’re lucky farming ecto can give you even better returns than that.
In gw2 there is nothing thats 600% more profitable as far as I can tell. An hour playing in queensdale can easily earn you 1g. Farming lodestones can earn you maybe 3 times as much but not more. Thats on a material side but what about on an enjoyment side. What is there to do in the open world in gw1? just killing stuff and farming, perhaps capturing some skills but you’re not gonna get the same experiance you get in gw2. Dynamic events make the open world much more enjoyable. Not saying gw1 is a bad game, its my 2nd favorite so far! I personally enjoy the open world a lot more in gw2 though. As for gear, what useful gear drops do you get in gw1 when you fully equip yourself from a vendor the moment you level up? both games are not about the gear power, they never were. They’re about cosmetics and you could kill as many mobs as you wanted in the open world in gw1, no mob would drop you a piece of vabbi armor or any other armor set.

Fort Aspenwood and Jade Quarry are closer to spvp then WvW in my opinion. They’re short objective based areas rather then a long term large scale unbalanced battle like WvW. Anyhow… why would it be alt hate just cause these are not account bound? Its not like you cannot play an alt that doesnt have any of these upgrades right? They’re really nice to have no doubt but it will not be the end of the world if now and again you play an alt that doesnt have them. That being said I agree with you that it would have been better if they were account bound, dont get me wrong am not disagreeing with you. I suppose they did it this way so that hardcore WvW players who want progression and max out one character can work on an other if they want?

That being said this is the most Alt friendly game I have ever seen including Gw1. There are multiple zones per level bracket so you can play an alt in zones you havent played yet. It is trivial to fully equip a character with good gear ( I mean rare or exotic) 1 – 2g to fully equip a lvl 80 character in rares and you can earn that in 1 day easily. Rare is good enough for any content in the game. There is shared bank space and even a brand new alt can be played in WvW even at level 1 if you so desire.

Vayne.8563:

They changed it six years into the game.

I don’t see how Anet making these changes has any bearing on the current discussion.

That was, as I mentioned, the second change to pve skill related titles. I’m fairly certain that the first adjustment, years earlier, also changed how the Kuzrick/Luxon skills scaled with higher ranks. I think the skills still improved all the way to the max rank, but the amount they improved by diminished with each rank. The highest rank gave very little improvement to the skills’ stats.

That initial rescaling was done because the ranks were considered to much of a grind/taking to long to achieve for something that was linked to character/skill improvement. The later change still had nothing to do with making the title easier. Other titles were made easier to get when GW2’s release was closer, but the allegiance titles I think remained the same in that update. They were made more convenient with the addition of Imperial Faction, but the effort required to get them wasn’t really altered. The 2nd change to the skill scaling was simply to make the full power of the skills more accessible. This, again, was because it was considered too much grind/effort in order to obtain the maximum skill potential.

If anything, the changes that were deemed necessary in GW1 are evidence that the current wvw ability progression should be made more accessible. Making the ability point earnings account bound would a huge step towards that. I think that WXP/abilities are a good idea, if implemented that way. Further tweaks might be needed to make them more reasonable for newer players later in the game’s life, so they don’t feel so hopelessly behind the curve. But for now, account-based earning would a great start.

I do think the wvw ranks (not considering the abilities) are a good addition, and an incentive for some players. I don’t think it qualifies as new content by any means, but it does serve to generate interest in existing content. It would be nice to see something similar done for the pve side of the game, as GW1 had a great deal of success with title hunting. Just don’t link it with skills/power in any way, and keep any other improvement/progression account-based, not character.

killcannon.2576:

So I asked you to list what has changed…and you listed:
1.Couple of Grawl npcs in LA
2.The refugees who were not there before the living story are no longer there…shocking!!!
3. A broken Lighthouse
4. Southshore is still a dead zone…which they were supposed to fix but didn’t do too hot a job at.

Three things that have zip to do with gameplay, and another failed attempt to make SouthSun worthwhile. Thanks.

Dont twist my words please. You asked me what impact those events left on the world. I was answering specific this statement of yours in a previous post: “Tyria is much the same as when I started, I can see little to no evidence of any “Living World” that the devs have spoken so much about over the last 8 months.”

I listed 3 off the top of my head that I knew were in game off the top of my head. There are more. Even subtle ones like you can still see the disturbed land where the camps had been in hoelbrak. I mean areas without snow, scorched land where the camp fires where etc..

anyhow back on subject. Like I said in a previous post if you want to have a moving storyline you have to do this. If all the events/instances in flame and frost remained in the world how could you ever say the conflict was resolved? Would it make sense to have the story say we destroyed the molten alliance, the threat is resolved but then in the open world you’d get the alliance attacking the outposts still? or refugees limping along the road?

Think of it in real world terms. If there is a major conflict anywhere in the world, while its happening you see a lot of activity, soldiers fighting, tanks, planes etc… right after the fighting stops things will start to return to normal, you’d see some distraction, people rebuilding, refugees etc.. Fast forward more and you’ll be left with some subtle hints nothing more. More time passes and everything will disappear. If today we visit london or berlin we wouldnt be able to tell those 2 cities where prime targets in a world war. That doesnt mean world war 2 never happened. Same here the effects of the molten alliance are starting to disappear sure but thats to be expected.

Also what do you mean the refugees appeared out of no where? when the flame and frost saga started you could see the refugees walking from the center of where the alliance was attacking up to hoelbrak and the black citadel. Week after week the refugee settlements grew and grew and more refugees joined them. Thats like unheard of in an MMO, what more did you want?

mrstealth.6701:

Ithir Darkleaf.7923:

TL;DR: Keep the Living Story going on, but don’t make it the main focus of development, so you can bring us expansions which probably will make almost everyone happy and you will earn more money.

This is what I’d like to see happen. Maybe not the same pace of living story content that is now planned, but keep it coming like it has been. Even though I’ve not been a big fan of the stories they have added, this type of content can be a good thing. And even if the quality doesn’t improve, it’s still a filler/time waster in between other larger expansions. It just shouldn’t be the main/only content we see.

from what they said this is exactly whats going on.

mrstealth.6701:

Vayne.8563:

They changed it six years into the game.

I don’t see how Anet making these changes has any bearing on the current discussion.

That was, as I mentioned, the second change to pve skill related titles. I’m fairly certain that the first adjustment, years earlier, also changed how the Kuzrick/Luxon skills scaled with higher ranks. I think the skills still improved all the way to the max rank, but the amount they improved by diminished with each rank. The highest rank gave very little improvement to the skills’ stats.

That initial rescaling was done because the ranks were considered to much of a grind/taking to long to achieve for something that was linked to character/skill improvement. The later change still had nothing to do with making the title easier. Other titles were made easier to get when GW2’s release was closer, but the allegiance titles I think remained the same in that update. They were made more convenient with the addition of Imperial Faction, but the effort required to get them wasn’t really altered. The 2nd change to the skill scaling was simply to make the full power of the skills more accessible. This, again, was because it was considered too much grind/effort in order to obtain the maximum skill potential.

If anything, the changes that were deemed necessary in GW1 are evidence that the current wvw ability progression should be made more accessible. Making the ability point earnings account bound would a huge step towards that. I think that WXP/abilities are a good idea, if implemented that way. Further tweaks might be needed to make them more reasonable for newer players later in the game’s life, so they don’t feel so hopelessly behind the curve. But for now, account-based earning would a great start.

I do think the wvw ranks (not considering the abilities) are a good addition, and an incentive for some players. I don’t think it qualifies as new content by any means, but it does serve to generate interest in existing content. It would be nice to see something similar done for the pve side of the game, as GW1 had a great deal of success with title hunting. Just don’t link it with skills/power in any way, and keep any other improvement/progression account-based, not character.

I didn’t say it made the title easier, I said it made the game easier. Essentially, you could have a full imbagon paragon without having to grind all the way to max level or even past level 5, which isn’t that hard to get. That’s what I was talking about.

Galen Grey.4709:

You’re saying gw1 open world is more rewarding then gw2 open world? If you play a low level area in gw1 like say the area around sardelac sanitarium (or any other open world zone really) in hard mode it will take you an hour if not two and selling drops together with the reward you’ll get 3 maybe 4 plat if you’re lucky.

As for gear, what useful gear drops do you get in gw1 when you fully equip yourself from a vendor the moment you level up? both games are not about the gear power, they never were. They’re about cosmetics and you could kill as many mobs as you wanted in the open world in gw1, no mob would drop you a piece of vabbi armor or any other armor set.

I could easily get 1-1.2k in 5-7 minutes in that same area. Just from killing the stone elementals right outside of the town. A bad run would still usually get at least 500g. And I had a better chance of getting a useful weapon to drop than I’ve ever seemed to in GW2. I had over 2000 hours played before I saw my first exotic that wasn’t from map completion. Max stat weapons were practically raining from the sky in GW1 compared to GW2.

That being said this is the most Alt friendly game I have ever seen including Gw1. There are multiple zones per level bracket so you can play an alt in zones you havent played yet. It is trivial to fully equip a character with good gear ( I mean rare or exotic) 1 – 2g to fully equip a lvl 80 character in rares and you can earn that in 1 day easily. Rare is good enough for any content in the game. There is shared bank space and even a brand new alt can be played in WvW even at level 1 if you so desire.

I do agree that GW2 is still the 2nd most alt-friendly game I’ve played (GW1 being the first), but that is in comparison to games where simply reaching max level can take months and months. Quite a few of the update since release have been detrimental to the game’s alt-friendliness. It is still alt-friendly, just considerably less so than it was at release. And it’s already known that more alt-unfriendly changes are coming in the future (more ascended gear for one).

Hell Avenger.7021:

I think what people want is a coherent LONG story campaign with expansive contents, and not these tiny updates with massive grinds built into it.

They are trying to compare these “episodic release” as TV shows, well too bad none of the current content has any quality climax to make people wanting to see the next thing. There isn’t any real goal. Who are we fighting now? Some pirates? GIVE people a purpose in your storyline, and not some random weird out of nowhere bs.

This is bad project management, you have 4 teams and they are creating incoherent stories.

You guys really want to develop it like a TV show? Take some inspiration from Game of the Throne, not freaking CSI Miami, where every episodes are barely connected.

Yes, yes, and yes.
I’m happy to see that there are players that realize the devs potential and how they are squandering it away making mini holiday-imitation events.

I have not forgotten the “Personal Story” feature and how we were told choices we made would influence our adventures in the world. Was that just for leveling up? Just a gimmick? A bait and switch? Looks like it because the Living Story project makes it seem like they jumped ship on a lot of their ideas that got me to buy the game in the first place.

Lane.3410:

mrstealth.6701:

Who in their right mind would buy those dragon coffers from the gemstore when you can easily get hundreds of the droppable version for free? Unless the chance to get a ticket from them is 50% (or at least 30%), they simply are not worth bothering with. And if items are made exclusive to gemstore boxes, the player backlash is brutal…and rightfully so.

Really? Because not nearly enough backlash occurred when they added that Dragon Revelry Starcake recipe only to Rich Dragon Coffers. Exclusive recipe to the gem store only available through RNG boxes. Personally, that crossed the line in terms of the gem store being “cosmetic only”. I’m particularly concerned that this is part of a new strategy to sucker players who aren’t interested in skins into buying the RNG boxes anyway by stuffing things like recipes into them.

This is fair statement and I agree with you. That recipe shouldnt have been exclusive to the rich dragon coffer. Having a higher chance to drop then regular coffers yes, but exclusive, I am unhappy with.

[quote=2354540;Vayne.8563:
I didn’t say it made the title easier, I said it made the game easier. Essentially, you could have a full imbagon paragon without having to grind all the way to max level or even past level 5, which isn’t that hard to get. That’s what I was talking about.
[/quote]

I’m not really sure what point you’re trying to make.

I think you’re trying to limit the entire idea behind adjusting those title down to a single skill/build. Making Save Yourselves easier to attain the max stat for doesn’t make the game easier. In fact, I would so far as to say that single skill/change had zero effect at all for the majority of the players. The players using/relying on an imbagon is only a small subset of GW1’s playerbase.

If making a skill/ability’s full power more easily accessible was good/necessary in GW1, why does that not apply to GW2 as well? The relative ease of max account-based allegiance skill power, and slow character-based wvw ability progression are at completely opposite ends of the spectrum in the current state.

Galen Grey.4709:

Lane.3410:

Really? Because not nearly enough backlash occurred when they added that Dragon Revelry Starcake recipe only to Rich Dragon Coffers. Exclusive recipe to the gem store only available through RNG boxes. Personally, that crossed the line in terms of the gem store being “cosmetic only”. I’m particularly concerned that this is part of a new strategy to sucker players who aren’t interested in skins into buying the RNG boxes anyway by stuffing things like recipes into them.

This is fair statement and I agree with you. That recipe shouldnt have been exclusive to the rich dragon coffer. Having a higher chance to drop then regular coffers yes, but exclusive, I am unhappy with.

I actually forgot about that recipe. I agree with both of you. I’m fine with gemstore coffers having a higher chance at dropping items, as long as all of the items are also available in-game in a semi-reasonable fashion.

I know weapon tickets have a pretty low drop rate, but the coffers are common and we’ve had a considerable amount of time to obtain them. I consider it to be reasonable enough. Just add the recipe to the coffer with a similar chance.

mrstealth.6701:

Galen Grey.4709:

You’re saying gw1 open world is more rewarding then gw2 open world? If you play a low level area in gw1 like say the area around sardelac sanitarium (or any other open world zone really) in hard mode it will take you an hour if not two and selling drops together with the reward you’ll get 3 maybe 4 plat if you’re lucky.

As for gear, what useful gear drops do you get in gw1 when you fully equip yourself from a vendor the moment you level up? both games are not about the gear power, they never were. They’re about cosmetics and you could kill as many mobs as you wanted in the open world in gw1, no mob would drop you a piece of vabbi armor or any other armor set.

I could easily get 1-1.2k in 5-7 minutes in that same area. Just from killing the stone elementals right outside of the town. A bad run would still usually get at least 500g. And I had a better chance of getting a useful weapon to drop than I’ve ever seemed to in GW2. I had over 2000 hours played before I saw my first exotic that wasn’t from map completion. Max stat weapons were practically raining from the sky in GW1 compared to GW2.

That being said this is the most Alt friendly game I have ever seen including Gw1. There are multiple zones per level bracket so you can play an alt in zones you havent played yet. It is trivial to fully equip a character with good gear ( I mean rare or exotic) 1 – 2g to fully equip a lvl 80 character in rares and you can earn that in 1 day easily. Rare is good enough for any content in the game. There is shared bank space and even a brand new alt can be played in WvW even at level 1 if you so desire.

I do agree that GW2 is still the 2nd most alt-friendly game I’ve played (GW1 being the first), but that is in comparison to games where simply reaching max level can take months and months. Quite a few of the update since release have been detrimental to the game’s alt-friendliness. It is still alt-friendly, just considerably less so than it was at release. And it’s already known that more alt-unfriendly changes are coming in the future (more ascended gear for one).

I farmed so many stone elementals out there, there is no way you’d get 1plat worth of stone in 5 – 7 minutes. I had a 30 minute route I did solo in hard mode and got maybe 2 stacks of granite slabs by the end of it. Thats like 800g max. But even so keep in mind our kind of farming isnt exactly playing the open world, its just grinding a mob. in 5 minutes you’d experience less then 0.5% of that zone

Sure exotic drops are pretty rare but like gw1 before it the nice thing about gw2 is you play any content you like then convert that to any reward you want. 100 dynamic events = 1 exotic weapon bought with karma. 2 Dungeon runs = 1 exotic weapon bought with gold. a few of hours of gathering = Craft your exotic weapon. Same in Gw1, you didnt get your weapons through drops. You bought them and sticked on the them the right inscription.

I dont have a single ascended gear item on any of my characters and can enjoy the game just fine. Once I tried to play the game without a single piece of armor and accessory worn and I could do level 80 events just fine as long as I paid attention. Thing is until content is balanced for ascended gear, ascended gear will remain a nice to have just like WvW upgrades really. Its a goal to work towards nothing more. I honestly dont see it as something that makes the game alt unfriendly.

If you add something significant to the game through these patches, it’s going to feel like an expansion, and nobody is gonna care how it was delivered.

Anet tends to do things differently… so get used to it.

JackDaniels.1697:

If you add something significant to the game through these patches, it’s going to feel like an expansion, and nobody is gonna care how it was delivered.

Anet tends to do things differently… so get used to it.

so far nothing, but tiny updates.

Hell Avenger.7021:

I think what people want is a coherent LONG story campaign with expansive contents, and not these tiny updates with massive grinds built into it.

They are trying to compare these “episodic release” as TV shows, well too bad none of the current content has any quality climax to make people wanting to see the next thing. There isn’t any real goal. Who are we fighting now? Some pirates? GIVE people a purpose in your storyline, and not some random weird out of nowhere bs.

This is bad project management, you have 4 teams and they are creating incoherent stories.

You guys really want to develop it like a TV show? Take some inspiration from Game of the Throne, not freaking CSI Miami, where every episodes are barely connected.

In a way they are doing Star Trek: Online who do Episodic updates

Galen Grey.4709:

I farmed so many stone elementals out there, there is no way you’d get 1plat worth of stone in 5 – 7 minutes. I had a 30 minute route I did solo in hard mode and got maybe 2 stacks of granite slabs by the end of it. Thats like 800g max.

You must have been doing that at an entirely different point in the game’s life than I was. Even selling to the NPC trader, 10 granite got you over 200g. A stack of it sold to another player was 6-7k.

Sure exotic drops are pretty rare but like gw1 before it the nice thing about gw2 is you play any content you like then convert that to any reward you want. 100 dynamic events = 1 exotic weapon bought with karma. 2 Dungeon runs = 1 exotic weapon bought with gold. a few of hours of gathering = Craft your exotic weapon. Same in Gw1, you didnt get your weapons through drops. You bought them and sticked on the them the right inscription.

I think I bought maybe 10 weapons through the 7 years I played GW1. Almost every weapon I had was either a drop for me or a friend. It was fairly common for a small group of us to trade weapons among each other, but most weapons I used were my own drops. I did buy some rare skinned weapons from others, but even most of my rare items were dropped for me from chests/mobs.

I dont have a single ascended gear item on any of my characters and can enjoy the game just fine. Once I tried to play the game without a single piece of armor and accessory worn and I could do level 80 events just fine as long as I paid attention. Thing is until content is balanced for ascended gear, ascended gear will remain a nice to have just like WvW upgrades really. Its a goal to work towards nothing more. I honestly dont see it as something that makes the game alt unfriendly.

I have most of the currently available ascended jewelry on one character, and that’s not something I really plan on working on for any others. Somewhat because most of the stat combos I would need to replace existing gear are not available, but mainly because it’s such a massive time sink to get it. I do see exotic/ascended/whatever is highest at a given time gear in a game like GW2 as “needed” from a player’s perspective, even if not required by the game itself. A lot of players (likely the majority) want their characters to be as powerful as they can be. Not meaning min/maxing stats like only using full ’zerker gear (I will never build a char like that), but simply having the highest tier available.

Whether or not most get that gear is very dependent on how the game goes about making it available/accessible. Right now, ascended gear is considerably restrictive and very much timegated in comparison to exotic. The timegating becomes much more of issue as the number of alts increases.

Galen Grey.4709:

the instances seem to take 30 mins to complete while the raid about 2hrs from some research i did.

The dungeons were total faceroll, yes. I one-shotted all three of them on the night they were patched with random people. They were terrible.

The raid was actually short-lived by WoW’s standards – it took the top guild in the world (at that time) roughly 3 weeks of raiding 16+ hours per day to clear it. Usually it will take about a month for one guild to clear it, then over the following weeks a few more guilds will clear it.

Two hours to clear a new raid is unheard of. Average guilds will easily get 6 months of three raids per week, four hours per raid and still probably not even clear half of the hard modes in a single raiding tier.

So far we’ve gotten a lot more content than that I would say. in the same 8 month period.

I don’t see it that way. To use an anology, for me WoW’s raiding end-game is like playing a console game from start to finish – it gets more and more complex and challenging as you go through it, the rewards become greater and you have to evolve as a player, whereas GW2’s updates are like doing the first level over and over again.

Even if we’re just talking literally the size of the content added, I’d say it’s about equal. They added some pretty big features too, like raid finder (which I personally dislike, but a huge part of the playerbase benefited from it) and transmogrification.

But regardless of how the updates stack up compared to a WoW update, two years of the kind of updates we’ve been getting is still not even half of the size of a true MMORPG expansion. It’s probably not even a quarter of the size.

darkace.8925:

Another thing about zones being added one at a time is they’re going to be jammed full of people, and all the other zones are going to be abandoned by all but the tumbleweeds. Too many people isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but…well, imagine trying to enjoy a scenic hike with your friends and while a marathon is being run on your hiking path. But that’s a personal hangup that doesn’t mean much in the grand scheme of things.

Like going to some national parks on a holiday. Your nature trail is so crowded you could tie a rope link between everyone from the parking lot to that ‘special scenic spot’ that has a few hundred folks standing around it taking pictures and trying to keep each other out of respective snapshots…
- Making you feel like you might as well have gone on vacation to the local mall.

Kichwas.7152:

darkace.8925:

Another thing about zones being added one at a time is they’re going to be jammed full of people, and all the other zones are going to be abandoned by all but the tumbleweeds. Too many people isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but…well, imagine trying to enjoy a scenic hike with your friends and while a marathon is being run on your hiking path. But that’s a personal hangup that doesn’t mean much in the grand scheme of things.

Like going to some national parks on a holiday. Your nature trail is so crowded you could tie a rope link between everyone from the parking lot to that ‘special scenic spot’ that has a few hundred folks standing around it taking pictures and trying to keep each other out of respective snapshots…
- Making you feel like you might as well have gone on vacation to the local mall.

lol, yeah kinda like that.

Wolfheart.1938:

ozma.3498:

PolarisNova.3867:

aspirine.6852:

No expansion will make it a dead game within half a year or less. No amount of living story can give you the effect what a new expansion does.

Can I have your crystal ball please?

Why, because as far as I can tell, instead of getting content all in one big blob (expansion), it’s evolving and coming to us in stages. Is that so difficult to envision? o.o

Well, I think the issue is that the content on offer isn’t actually comparable to what you’d get in a true MMORPG expansion. Even if you took 2 years worth of the kind of content we’ve been getting and offered it all at once, it still wouldn’t be on the same level as a WoW expansion.

For example, in WoW’s latest expansion you got:
- 16 new raid bosses at launch, with 3 difficulty levels.
- 9 new 5-man dungeons with 3 difficulty levels.
- 7 new scenarios (like a normal mode dungeon, but for 1-3 people).
- About 1400 new quests in an entirely new continent.
- About 900 new achievements.
- 2 new PvP maps, 1 new arena map.
- The usual mass of armor skins, weapon skins, mounts etc.
- Pet battle system.
- A new class.
- A new playable race.
- Increased level cap.

Then you have the content patches throughout the expansion’s life cycle on top of that.

As much as I’m impressed (and surprised) by the frequency of updates in GW2, to say it’s the equivalent of an expansion being spread out over time is just plain inaccurate.

Unrelated question.
What did Blizzard release during the 6 months you were charged a subscription fee before releasing the expansion that you had to pay for? Also 2 pvp maps and 1 arena sure looks impressive :p

Most of the time I’d agree with you, and you can even find posts where I trot out how much money I paid for the Dragon Soul raid and how little I got…

But this time I’m going to side with the person you quoted… because of a key caveat he made:

“Even if you took 2 years worth of the kind of content we’ve been getting and offered it all at once, it still wouldn’t be on the same level as a WoW expansion.”

And I’m reading more into that “on the same level” than he might have intended.

Lets look at what LS has given us so far, and multiply it out.

6 months, in which we got:

2 multi-boss dungeons, both temporary…
1 scenario like dungeon (Canach + Canach explorable, not even as much in there as a single WoW scenario, so I am actually being generous to GW2 here).
Roughly 5 ‘hit ’F’ to win quests: signposts, fire dances, etc.
About 50 achievements (rounding here).
About 10-20 temporary events (almost all of them in Southsun.)
About 10 mini-pets
About 2 to 5 weapon skins (because of RNG, your odds of getting more than 2 are super slim. Many never even got 1).
About 5 back armor skins.
3 armor skins
2 new armor stat setups (Settler and one before it I think)
0 new classes
0 new races
1 zone
2 Jumping puzzles (Southsun and now the Aetherblade one).

- Multiply that by 4, and it is still less than a WoW expansion in terms of ‘VARIETY’ and depth.

It is a lot of stuff… but we’d still only have 4 zones and 8 dungeons. But because those dungeons are temporary and last for about 1 month, we really have 1/3rd of a dungeon.

Plus this all comes in as disjointed separate stories, often told on blogs, websites, and video interviews rather than in game. So the gameplay often involves a ‘fix X signs’ and then ‘kill the boss that was behind it all’ – with no link saying how we got from ‘oh, this sign fell down’ to ‘this guy destroying the world must be stopped’. We might not even know who the guy is, how we found him, or even what he was doing…
- Unless we were one of the folks who watched some interview on twitch.tv…

So another thing we’re missing that an Expansion gives: a Plot.
We have a story, but it has no plot.

The actual list of changes was posted earlier in this thread:

Galen Grey.4709:

- 139 New Achievements
- 62 New Dynamic Events
- 9 New Jumping Puzzles
- 3 new mini dungeons (Forsaken Halls, Vexa’s Lab,Canach’s Lair)
- 2 new story-line instances (Braham and Rox)
- The Diving Goggles Activity
- Costume Brawl
- 3 farming Activity (Halloween (haunted Doors), Wintersday and Dragon Bash)
- 5 PvP Mini Game (Lunatic Inquisition,Reaper’s Rumble, Snowball mayhem, Crab toss, Dragon Ball)
- 4 mini games (Bell choir, super adventure box,Toypocalypse,Moa Racing )
- 510 new recipes (Halloween, Lost Shores, Wintersday)
- 15 new minis
- 98 new skins
- 20 new tonics
- 2 new world event (Skritt Thief and Modus Sceleris)
- 4 event specific dungeon (Ascent to Madness, Tixx’s Infinirarium, Molten Core, Aetherblade Retreat)
- Fractal of the mists (9 new mini dungeons)
- 2 new PvP map (Temple of the Silent Storm, Spirit Watch)
- New Gear Tier
- 2 new maps (Mad King Labyrinth, Southsun Cove)
- 9 new game features (crafting materials accessible through bank,PvP paid Tournaments, guesting, guild missions, trading post preview, selectable daily achievement, Custom arena, spectaor mode, WvW progression)
- 4 new currency ( Pristine Fractal Relics,Laurels, guild merits, guild commendations)
- 3 scavenger hunt (the mad king, Karka scavenger hunt, Marriner Plaque )
- 42 new guild missions
- 1 new meta event (Legendary Karka Queen)

You missed quite a lot

GoldenTruth.2853:

Other points will just be a back and forth that aren’t very relevant to the main topic so I’ll just say that there are positives and negatives to having both the dungeon and a fractal, and in my opinion adding it to strictly fractals would be better (though if they added armor sets to be bought with tokens keeping them strictly as dungeons would be best).

Mostly I agree except that you cannot select which fractal you will run – they’re random. This can be good for keeping an unpopular dungeon alive. But it can be bad for keeping an unpopular dungeon alive.

Here is the thing.

Anet is not the first MMO developer to change gears in how they manage their product. As I mentioned earlier Cryptic Studios who made Star Trek: Online changed how they managed their product once their parent company was replaced.
They started releasing new content every six months. The game was released without Romulans.
Guess which race is now in that game?
And there was no expansion pack.
Now we have Anet in a way following that model but at a quicker paces.
Will permanent content be added? Yes.
Will they meet everyone’s wish list? No.

I came from Star Trek: Online to this game. Out of the two this one blows STO out of the water. That is why I believe what they are saying they are going to do will take place.

Don’t go making a huge list of your dream game here. Go get the funding to hire a team of over 150 folks and design your own game.

Let’s stop getting all in an up roar that you will not see a traditional expansion pack. STO has shown it is not needed.

Let’s just set back enjoy the ride and if you get to the point that you are not happy just head out. I do not plan on leaving this game till they shutdown the last server or release GW3.

mrstealth.6701:

darkace.8925:

rhodoc.2381:

So how they gonna make money without doing classical buy2play expansions?

rng boxes.

Who in their right mind would buy those dragon coffers from the gemstore when you can easily get hundreds of the droppable version for free? Unless the chance to get a ticket from them is 50% (or at least 30%), they simply are not worth bothering with. And if items are made exclusive to gemstore boxes, the player backlash is brutal…and rightfully so.

Yes well…

Somebody done been doing it, or we wouldn’t keep getting the things thrown out there.

But this is also why a lot of gemstore items come as temporary items. That drives up the ‘must buy now’ mindset. For all the people who, for example, complained about the mining pick as pricey and soulbound… I see someone using one every few days – and if in busy areas, multiple times a day on different people.

- ‘limited time sales’ for stuff works.

Nobody has to buy cosmetics. Sure. I’m fine with that. I -do- buy some cosmetics.

But we just want something more substantial ALSO.

I’m fine funding the game with the gemstore… but I’m not fine with that being a reason to NOT give us the missing 2/3rds of the game world… and I’m NOT fine with choppy inconsistent temp story content with its plot told in out-of-game interviews being used as the means to drive me to get that gemstore content.

If we’re going to have a living world, make it a living world, not a selling story.

Kichwas.7152:

GoldenTruth.2853:

Other points will just be a back and forth that aren’t very relevant to the main topic so I’ll just say that there are positives and negatives to having both the dungeon and a fractal, and in my opinion adding it to strictly fractals would be better (though if they added armor sets to be bought with tokens keeping them strictly as dungeons would be best).

Mostly I agree except that you cannot select which fractal you will run – they’re random. This can be good for keeping an unpopular dungeon alive. But it can be bad for keeping an unpopular dungeon alive.

You can select your first fractal in a very roundabout way that will become harder and harder the more fractals they add (would be nice if they just let you pick the 1st one, but I doubt that will happen).

I think you meant it would be bad for keeping “unpopular” dungeons dead (dredge fractal, oh how I loathe you), so I’ll go under the assumption you meant that (and you can correct me if I’m wrong).

Although I doubt my idea will get implemented I’ll throw it out there. Colin has already expressed that when these dungeons return as fractals the special reward would be removed (jetpack, monocle, etc.). This means that disliked dungeons will return as even more disliked fractals. Personally, I think it would be far better to make it so at fractal level 30+ (with a much higher chance at 40+) you have a chance (similar chance to running the actual dungeon) to get an account bound version of the prize from that fractals end chest (though for the monocle it would be a skin rather than actual gear because people can’t trade in a medium for a light using the TP). That way even if the dungeon is disliked at least there are some positives for keeping it as a fractal. Though I think that keeping bad dungeons is obviously bad, it’s a necessary evil for something overall better (and I hope that my solution would relieve at least a little of it). They also need to do a complete reward overhaul for FotM so the risks match the rewards, making running high level fractals a more viable source of income (Colin has stated there will be a reward overhaul for FotM so we can only hope it works well).

Edit: I’m so off topic right now. Thread is supposed to be about living story and less regular, but larger content patches replacing expansions. Yet I’m off talking about temporary content returning in fractals and how rewards should work >.>

Hell Avenger.7021:

You guys really want to develop it like a TV show? Take some inspiration from Game of the Throne, not freaking CSI Miami, where every episodes are barely connected.

BUT, But, but…

Mah sunglasses!!!

Can’t be epic without the shades.

Now I know why this was one of the first gemstore items.

GoldenTruth.2853:

Kichwas.7152:

fractal – they’re random. This can be good for keeping an unpopular dungeon alive. But it can be bad for keeping an unpopular dungeon alive.

You can select your first fractal in a very roundabout way

I think you meant it would be bad for keeping “unpopular” dungeons dead (dredge fractal, oh how I loathe you), so I’ll go under the assumption you meant that (and you can correct me if I’m wrong).

I intended it exactly as I wrote it:

This can be good for keeping an unpopular dungeon alive. But it can be bad for keeping an unpopular dungeon alive.

Unpopular varies in reason. Some dungeons enjoyed by a number of people are unpopular because they don’t incentivize the ‘gold farmers / bots’. Like CM explorable.

- So as a random fractal people who want to find it have a chance at it.

Good in keeping such an unpopular place still “in the rotation” and thus alive.

The counter view is that some places are unpopular because many do not like the game mechanic to it. Arah explorable – getting past Lupicus. If you know him he’s so easy you might wonder why I list this, but as I’m currently working my way through Arah paths right now I’ve found a LOT of people cannot handle this boss’ mechanic and groups often shatter here, or end up reforming looking for a replacement.

So it can ‘bad’ if you end up in an a fractal that is unpopular because huge numbers of players cannot get past it. Swamp Fractal for example, or Dredge Fractal. I’ve seen many fractal runners when new to Fractals give up returning to them due to those two. My own guild was surrendering due to Dredge Fractal during a 3 month period I was away from the game. My first run of it was brutal with about 1 or 2 hours spent on the final boss alone… let alone the other parts. As a former WoW GM of a raiding guild – who used to never watch the videos (heh), I noticed things they didn’t and flipped the dial on that one… (Dredge fractal is both easy and fast once you figure out where to put your tanky teammates on the first and final pulls – wrong place, horrid run, right place, super fast).

The risk of fractals… being random you have less control over what you get – and if you get the one you can’t stand, that’s very bad. But if you get the one you love despite everyone else not liking it, you stay quiet and have fun at the expense of your teammates time… :p

I foresee Aetherblade being like that. Quite a few people hate the place as “impossible and too gimmicky”. Others have figured out the way it works, and either find it “an engaging challenge” or, as I’ve seen stated one “so easy its not worth my time being bored that much.”
- If it lands in fractals that will be a boon to some and a condition to endure for others.

“Living Story” plays like a content patch, not an expansion.

This is also ignoring that expansions usually coincide with a lot of gameplay changes, class balancing, additions to class’ toolsets, new features in general, etc.

And ignoring that expansions give the player a -lot- of content to go through at a time and living story has so far had a tendency to give very little. “Living Story” as it is presented has yet to get me to want to log in for more than a day or two.

also +1 to the MST3K reference that happened earlier in this thread.

mrstealth.6701:

Galen Grey.4709:

I farmed so many stone elementals out there, there is no way you’d get 1plat worth of stone in 5 – 7 minutes. I had a 30 minute route I did solo in hard mode and got maybe 2 stacks of granite slabs by the end of it. Thats like 800g max.

You must have been doing that at an entirely different point in the game’s life than I was. Even selling to the NPC trader, 10 granite got you over 200g. A stack of it sold to another player was 6-7k.

Sure exotic drops are pretty rare but like gw1 before it the nice thing about gw2 is you play any content you like then convert that to any reward you want. 100 dynamic events = 1 exotic weapon bought with karma. 2 Dungeon runs = 1 exotic weapon bought with gold. a few of hours of gathering = Craft your exotic weapon. Same in Gw1, you didnt get your weapons through drops. You bought them and sticked on the them the right inscription.

I think I bought maybe 10 weapons through the 7 years I played GW1. Almost every weapon I had was either a drop for me or a friend. It was fairly common for a small group of us to trade weapons among each other, but most weapons I used were my own drops. I did buy some rare skinned weapons from others, but even most of my rare items were dropped for me from chests/mobs.

I dont have a single ascended gear item on any of my characters and can enjoy the game just fine. Once I tried to play the game without a single piece of armor and accessory worn and I could do level 80 events just fine as long as I paid attention. Thing is until content is balanced for ascended gear, ascended gear will remain a nice to have just like WvW upgrades really. Its a goal to work towards nothing more. I honestly dont see it as something that makes the game alt unfriendly.

I have most of the currently available ascended jewelry on one character, and that’s not something I really plan on working on for any others. Somewhat because most of the stat combos I would need to replace existing gear are not available, but mainly because it’s such a massive time sink to get it. I do see exotic/ascended/whatever is highest at a given time gear in a game like GW2 as “needed” from a player’s perspective, even if not required by the game itself. A lot of players (likely the majority) want their characters to be as powerful as they can be. Not meaning min/maxing stats like only using full ’zerker gear (I will never build a char like that), but simply having the highest tier available.

Whether or not most get that gear is very dependent on how the game goes about making it available/accessible. Right now, ascended gear is considerably restrictive and very much timegated in comparison to exotic. The timegating becomes much more of issue as the number of alts increases.

yes thats what I was thinking too, we probably just played in different times.

I know what you’re saying by people feeling they need the best gear. You’re right, I’ve seen it plenty of times myself. That being said there isnt really a solution there. Thing is this is gw2 and gw2 is trying to provide content for multiple play styles. Ascended Item are intended for the person who wants progression. Those who want to grind and have a long term effort to get the best gear. Problem here is the crowd who doesnt want that but would rather have easily achievable gear feel they need that gear. Gw2 does the only thing possible which is allow those players to have an easy time living without that gear. What else can they do? if they make it easily achievable so that the casual multi alt player can easily earn it for all their alts then the hardcore I want to work for my best gear player loosing their content.

I truely believe as is now is the best solution but the casual multi alt player has to realise this is gw2 and not [insert other mmo here]. Here things are different you work toward what you desire. If you dont want to grind/have a hard time to get your equipment then you should steer clear of Ascended gear. You can live a nice happy life without it. I can personally vouch for that.

Kichwas.7152:

- If it lands in fractals that will be a boon to some and a condition to endure for others.

Ok, thanks for clarifying on that since it was worded kind of weirdly. I agree, it can be both a positive and a negative depending on who you are and who your playing with. That’s why I hope the rewards overhaul finds some way to fix this (and I’d hate for some of these awesome dungeons to go to waste).

They could keep them as permanent dungeons, but I do think a year or two from now, with no other rewards from MF and AR other than a rare chance at a jetpack and monocle respectively, many of these types of dungeons would end up as ghost towns even if the dungeon mechanics are good (especially as more and more dungeons get created). Maybe I’ll try to think of some sort of solution and add it to the suggestion forum.

GoldenTruth.2853:

Kichwas.7152:

- If it lands in fractals that will be a boon to some and a condition to endure for others.

Maybe I’ll try to think of some sort of solution and add it to the suggestion forum.

I can think of one but its addition would be kind of a rude shock to the way the game works right now and probably very divisive:

Made the dungeon tokens from all dungeons identical… and have the dungeon token vendors sell their gear to anyone with both enough ‘generic dungeon tokens’ and perhaps the achievement for that dungeon.

Benefit: any dungeon is good to run to get tokens.

Problem: only the easiest dungeon out of every single option gets run by anyone save for the very few people like myself that enjoy intrinsic ‘run it just for the play of it’ over extrinsic ‘run it for the reward’.

- This problem already partly exists, in that other than people who want tokens from a specific dungeon, most dungeon runners live their entire GW2 lives standing outside of CoF path 1 waiting for someone else to do the event 5 feet down the hill so they can enter the place…
(ok, so I’ve 3-personed that event on a level 69 toon WAY TOO MANY TIMES while watching a crowd of 20+ people standing around by the dungeon door complaining that it was contested and not doing JACK but for being too close to me so that the event scaled up on the 3 of us doing it…).

- So, another mixed bag idea…

Kichwas.7152:

Unpopular varies in reason. Some dungeons enjoyed by a number of people are unpopular because they don’t incentivize the ‘gold farmers / bots’. Like CM explorable

I judge a dungeon/my desire to run it based on two things. The armor/weapon rewards I can get with the tokens, and the content/mechanics of the dungeon.

For me, CoF is a mid-ground on the content/mechanics, but the rewards are lacking. I just don’t like the armor aside from heavy on asura and charr. And I don’t like playing warrior enough to bother finishing the set for my asura war. I have no interest in ever doing this dungeon (or any other) as a “speedclear” or using it as a gold farm.

AC is much better to me. The post-overhaul mechanics are more interesting/fun without being annoying or frustrating (referring to the Detha/Ghosteater path). And I like the majority of the weapon rewards, as well as one set of the armor.

I know I’m probably in the minority looking at dungeons in this way. At least among those that regularly/semi-regularly run dungeons.

It look like this thread has de-railed.

Hopefully I will enjoy the living story more then I enjoy most TV Shows due to character development and story progression is shallow as people need to be able to pick it up mid season.

Or maybe they just don’t have enough money to make an expansion.

Nick.6972:

Or maybe they just don’t have enough money to make an expansion.

that would be the wrong answer please read all the interviews before making comments that show you haven’t

Ah, well, who knows, maybe NCSoft is too busy investing in Wildstar since GW2 isn;t doing that great.
I’m not saying its true, just “What if”/“Maybe”.

“It seems all of this free content is only possible due to the ongoing popularity of the in-game gem store which Mike told us feeds new revenue into the studio at a “constant” rate, something which regular updates would inevitably increase as players return to the game regularly to sample newly added content. Essentially it seems those who use the store are essentially sponsoring those who don’t ensuring these new content updates remain free, and that’s a tough balance which very few online games get right.”
http://www.gamerzines.com/pc/arenanet-planning-fortnightly.html

Nick.6972:

Ah, well, who knows, maybe NCSoft is too busy investing in Wildstar since GW2 isn;t doing that great.
I’m not saying its true, just “What if”/“Maybe”.

A quick browse through your posting history leaves me wondering what your motives on these forums truly are. You’re either very disgruntled that this game didn’t turn out to be Guild Wars 1.5 and you want to share your misery or you’re simply here to troll.

darkace.8925:

Nick.6972:

Ah, well, who knows, maybe NCSoft is too busy investing in Wildstar since GW2 isn;t doing that great.
I’m not saying its true, just “What if”/“Maybe”.

A quick browse through your posting history leaves me wondering what your motives on these forums truly are. You’re either very disgruntled that this game didn’t turn out to be Guild Wars 1.5 and you want to share your misery or you’re simply here to troll.

Sorry, sorry.
Guild Wars 2 is the greatest game ever made, people please stop whining.
If you don’t like the game, quit.

Krosslite.1950:

“Essentially it seems those who use the store are essentially sponsoring those who don’t ensuring these new content updates remain free, and that’s a tough balance which very few online games get right.”

Hah. If they would put something in the store that I essentially want, I might essentially buy it. Otherwise, I’m not essentially sponsoring anybody or ensuring anything. Hint: some so-called ‘rich’ version of an RNG box ain’t essentially gonna do it. Essentially.