Guild Wars 2

I have countless friends who would play but they can’t see any reason too.

I tell them there’s a ton to do, PvP, Raids, WvW, Open World…etc.

And their response is always the same…..“Why?”

They are stuck on the point of:

“Why do open world/raids, no gear drops worth using”
“PvP all gear is normalized, and WvW is just a zerg fest so gear doesn’t matter”

I love the game….but can’t really argue the point. Why raid for legendary armor and trinkets…it’s the same stats as Ascended. Why do Open World….all the gear is garbage and insta salvaged. SPvP you dont need gear, and WvW your gear doesnt matter because it’s a zerg.

Is loot being changed in any way this expansion? Or if you’re full ascended is there no such thing as an upgrade once again.

If your friends are looking for a gear treadmill, then unfortunately this is not the game for them. Guild Wars 2 has always leaned on the side of being anti gear treadmill, which many people love about it. There will not be any higher level gear for the expansion (though there will be new stat combos).

As for their other arguments. I really don’t see what they are saying about spvp? Like do they want to be able to have amazing gear and just stomp people with lower gear? That’s not what spvp is built on. It’s not competitive in that people grinded hours for gear, but creating and using well made builds skillfully. It’s skill over gear….

WvW can be a zerg fest, but even in a zerg your gear matters a great deal if you want to be better. It’s not wise to run in the front of the melee train in berserker’s gear, same if you are a staff elementalist in soldiers standing in the back. If you are a roamer, your gear and personal skill are even more important.

In everything it’s about your stat selection more than anything. I’m really failing to see what they are asking for in regards to pvp modes. Do they want ascended armor that you have to re-enchant over and over until it gets to ascended +15 or something?

Their other concerns about the quality of loot that drops, does have merit. There are tons of people that complain how Guild Wars 2 vomits blues and greens everywhere, but there’s not really a point to the loot besides salvage. However, I’m getting the vibe that your friends are the type who want to be showered with exotics and precursors that all have ever higher stats in an endless cycle… The expansion is changing up the way you get some loot, in the form of bundles that you need to identify to see what you got. But it will likely be more of the same, blues and greens that you salvage and sell materials to save up gold and get what you really want.

At the end of the day, I don’t think this is the game for them. You won’t be able to argue against their points. Instead I would convince them to try the game. The base is free, they have nothing to lose. Perhaps they will see how fun it is by trying it, rather than sitting back with their preconceived notions. Who knows, it might actually see how fun it is getting off the gear treadmill.

Not going to change. And if it did, I would absolutely leave the game. Many of us came here to get away from gear treadmills. When ascended gear was introduced you should have seen the kittenstorm on the forums.

Many people left at that time because they assumed more tiers of gear would come into the game and that’s not why we play this game.

If your friends want gear grind there’’s plenty of games out there…pretty much every MMO. Let’s have one that the rest of us can play.

If I’d wanted gear grind I’d have become a watchmaker.

GW2 capture the essence of gear without giving you the illusion of content and progression. Other game will bring you higher level cap, better and stronger gear that will then be mandatory, illusion of progress and content. Illusion of content because the better gear will make older content meaningless and obsolete, and illusion of progress because you were strong enough to do the end-game content, but then you need to re-grind your gear every new update just to actually reach your previous capacity as end-game toon. GW2 doesn’t provide such illusion and let you keep your power level, and doesn’t let old content become obsolete. The point for those hard to get item is in the rarity itself, not illusion of progression.

A gear treadmill is kinda mandatory for a competitive PvPvE open world game. For a game like GW2, where game modes are isolated, it doesn’t make any sense.

Lets say PoF introduces a new tier of gear. You play for it, you get it and then what?
You quit until a new patch/expansion is released and you’re back at the starting point again?
How is it different from playing for the experience and quitting when you get bored of the content? Is a glorified carrot worth rendering past content useless gameplay and loot wise?

Xegrilt.9426:

GW2 capture the essence of gear without giving you the illusion of content and progression. Other game will bring you higher level cap, better and stronger gear that will then be mandatory, illusion of progress and content. Illusion of content because the better gear will make older content meaningless and obsolete, and illusion of progress because you were strong enough to do the end-game content, but then you need to re-grind your gear every new update just to actually reach your previous capacity as end-game toon. GW2 doesn’t provide such illusion and let you keep your power level, and doesn’t let old content become obsolete. The point for those hard to get item is in the rarity itself, not illusion of progression.

Nothing in your post explains why you think that sense of progression is an illusion. If older content is becoming easier, then the sense of vertical progression exists, and thus it cannot be an illusion because it’s real and has real gameplay impact.

I would say it is the exact opposite. It is GW2 that is giving us an illusion of a different sense of progression, when it truly isn’t. Grinding the best DPS stat sets available whenever a new expansion comes is, for all intents and purposes, pretty much a less exciting and more convoluted version of the classic gear treadmill from other MMORPGs. The game gives you the illusion of choice (“that’s horizontal progression! you simply pick the stats you want!”), but flawed balance and flawed game design dictate that specific stat combinations are mathematically the superior option, and you end up having a “stat treadmill” that makes you stronger and old content easier anyways.

That being said, vertical progression can be very exciting when it feels very organic, and that excitement is the heart and soul of RPG mechanics. A RPG without vertical progression will always have a smaller audience, and that’s just normal. GW2 is an anti-RPG RPG, and not everyone will enjoy an experimental product like that.

DiogoSilva.7089:

Grinding the best DPS stat sets available whenever a new expansion comes is, for all intents and purposes, pretty much a less exciting and more convoluted version of the classic gear treadmill from other MMORPGs.

First, there isn’t any need for the vast majority of people to worry about changing stats: zerker and its variations will continue to be good/great for power builds sinister/viper and their variations will continue to be good/great for condi.

Second, people who speed clear or want to be “first” in completing new, challenging group content will always find a ‘need’ to get the latest “best” DPS builds, but even then, then can replace runes/sigils and stat swap their gear. There are only a handful of stats that require anything more than coin.

So gear-grind in GW2 is something that a minority of players impose upon themselves.

Progression in this game (after reaching L80 and maxing masteries) is much more about improving as a player and less about changing your skills/build or gear.

Vertical progression has always turned me off… and I’m not even a casual player. When you take a break (school, college, work, events… life) and come back, you’ll find yourself behind a lot of players, and you won’t be able to join others in completing something because you’re not strong enough and need to catch up.

It works in WoW because that was the game that really started it all—the grandfather of modern MMOs, which has a large following of players that are able to catch up because of the huge playerbase.

But in GW2 bringing vert progression would feel like another clone, would make it stale and of course would offput many including me.

I’ve read stories of players joining GW2 and two months later they’ve completed raids, heck I even heard someone say it took them about 3 months to complete every raid since they joined GW2.

And also, as a wise man once said, games are for fun. Enjoy them when you can.

Luclinraider.2317:

and WvW your gear doesnt matter because it’s a zerg.

That is extremely innacurate, and I don’t know what kind of wvw you have been doing but with that attitude you and your friends certainly are not contributing anything. Gear matters a great deal in WvW because it is not standardized like in PvP so the better the gear the greater the advantage you have. This of course does not mean gear is more important then skill, but it still matters a great deal.

Also the stats used constantly change due to shifts in the meta because of balance updates. WvW is not about using your pve gear and builds and blindly following whatever tag is up until your gift of battle reward track is done…There are many different types of builds and playstyles.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

DiogoSilva.7089:

Grinding the best DPS stat sets available whenever a new expansion comes is, for all intents and purposes, pretty much a less exciting and more convoluted version of the classic gear treadmill from other MMORPGs.

First, there isn’t any need for the vast majority of people to worry about changing stats: zerker and its variations will continue to be good/great for power builds sinister/viper and their variations will continue to be good/great for condi.

Second, people who speed clear or want to be “first” in completing new, challenging group content will always find a ‘need’ to get the latest “best” DPS builds, but even then, then can replace runes/sigils and stat swap their gear. There are only a handful of stats that require anything more than coin.

So gear-grind in GW2 is something that a minority of players impose upon themselves.

Progression in this game (after reaching L80 and maxing masteries) is much more about improving as a player and less about changing your skills/build or gear.

Not to mention it’s fairly cheap/easy to change your stats on aascended armor and weapons.

The comment about WvW being zerg is accurate sometimes and completely wrong many other ways. There is no single well defined “WvW player”. Instead, many different types play WvW.

Yes, there is usually pug blob running around in EB. You can follow commander tag and gain your pips without investing that much in your build and equipment. It is some sort of tutorial for new WvW players who have little idea what is going on in WvW in general and just want to have little fun and earn some rewards.

But there are also many other ways to play WvW. There are Guild groups that fight guilds from opposing servers. GvG fights are about skills, about builds, and they also require good equipment to support skill and build.

There are roamers, scouts, duelers and other sort of players who very rarely get involved in zerg vs zerg battles unless it is about attacking or defending big objective. They all very much care about equipment too.

And of course same player could do all those different things. You CAN spend all your WvW time in zerg but you don’t have to.

Luclinraider.2317:

I love the game….but can’t really argue the point.

It’s a shame when you can’t slap some sense into your friends but if they’re completely indoctrinated into gear-treadmill games it’s probably a very hard habit to break. Guild Wars 2 is a different game. It’s a game you have to want to play and you have to be motivated enough to drive yourself to experience all the content. It’s not going to hand content to you on a plate, you have to go and find it, and that’s part of the adventure. It’s too abstract a concept for those who just want to chase higher and higher stats.

There is also a deep rooted desire for stat-chasers to feel like they’re superior to others in PvP. “Why would I want normalised gear in PvP? I want to grind out gear that few people have so I can wipe out all the newbies.” It’s a common desire that you see all over MMOs with open world PvP. They don’t care about fairness, only being more powerful than the next guy.

My advice? Leave them to it. You’re wasting your breath. It’s a harsh truth but I’ve seen and experienced it all too often before. The closest to a gear treadmill GW2 has are new stat types that come out with Living World or Expansions. For a short time they may be players in PoF working to make a set of the armour with the new stat combinations, but it’s not the same as having the biggest baddest armour to paste newbies with.

Finally, it could be misleading to say that GW2 doesn’t have a gear treadmill. It does, sort of. When people call GW2 “Fashion Wars 2” it’s not tongue-in-cheek. You work to get the best, shiniest gear to show off. It’s not for everyone, and even players of GW2 don’t always care about having the shiniest – in fact there’s a thread on the front page of this forum right now speaking against just that. That’s GW2’s gear treadmill, I suppose – Legendaries.

I think ascended gear is more than enough to have, given the sheer effort needed to obtain it

Luclinraider.2317:

And their response is always the same…..“Why?”

Because it’s fun?
Why do your friends play video games?

@DiogoSilva.7089 What i mean by illusion of progression is that once you reach a relevant ‘power level’ in GW2 you will stay relevant. In other game, when they do a major update, raise level cap, new gear, your once relevant toon eventually become obsolete and you need to work on your toon just to stay relevant.. Bigger number is the illusion of progress here. This is both the strong point and the weakness of GW2 tho, because most people are so used to having stronger and stronger gear in other mmo that farming for just a skin in GW2 seems pointless

Many years of mmos have changed players mind.
Something like an OCD ( need to do, instead of playing for fun, for an instance ).

They need a “progression” ( stats, not aesthetic ), and “someone who tell em what to do” instead of things like exploration. Also Time Sink is something that is “required” to slow down the progress.

To my experience ( personal and not ) it is difficult to change the mind of who has it as an habit… you could maybe try to bring em around the world trying events, exploration, and so on… then once in a while a JP, and ofc other game with gw2 ( which does not require farming, but ofc you can farm to achieve something not “stats related” ).

DiogoSilva.7089:

Xegrilt.9426:

GW2 capture the essence of gear without giving you the illusion of content and progression. Other game will bring you higher level cap, better and stronger gear that will then be mandatory, illusion of progress and content. Illusion of content because the better gear will make older content meaningless and obsolete, and illusion of progress because you were strong enough to do the end-game content, but then you need to re-grind your gear every new update just to actually reach your previous capacity as end-game toon. GW2 doesn’t provide such illusion and let you keep your power level, and doesn’t let old content become obsolete. The point for those hard to get item is in the rarity itself, not illusion of progression.

Nothing in your post explains why you think that sense of progression is an illusion. If older content is becoming easier, then the sense of vertical progression exists, and thus it cannot be an illusion because it’s real and has real gameplay impact.

I would say it is the exact opposite. It is GW2 that is giving us an illusion of a different sense of progression, when it truly isn’t. Grinding the best DPS stat sets available whenever a new expansion comes is, for all intents and purposes, pretty much a less exciting and more convoluted version of the classic gear treadmill from other MMORPGs. The game gives you the illusion of choice (“that’s horizontal progression! you simply pick the stats you want!”), but flawed balance and flawed game design dictate that specific stat combinations are mathematically the superior option, and you end up having a “stat treadmill” that makes you stronger and old content easier anyways.

That being said, vertical progression can be very exciting when it feels very organic, and that excitement is the heart and soul of RPG mechanics. A RPG without vertical progression will always have a smaller audience, and that’s just normal. GW2 is an anti-RPG RPG, and not everyone will enjoy an experimental product like that.

Its considered an Illusion, because the mechanisms, even the goal itself, is about as contrived as it can get. It also doesn’t change your strategy and outlook (which is signs of growth), but rather reinforces the idea that “merit” has less value then participation. Thus you’re not “progressing” as in “getting better”, but are instead investing time to secure a false sense of accomplishment.

Stat numbers are tangible, thus apparent… which is why they’re so coveted. This hilarious now that DPS meters were green lit for use….. and the startling discovery that the vast majority players of in Raids were getting no where near the DPS numbers they thought they were. Some Players in exotics were getting numbers in excess of many Ascended players… which rightfully robs them of their sense of “accomplishment”.

See thats the real crux of the argument here….. progress and accomplishment are different things, but MMO players have a bad habit of using them interchangeably. Complicating this issue further, the adoption of reward schedules which make “accomplishment” (the reward) an inevitability. But the sense of accomplishment is diminished when its not really earned; thus resulting in the need to be lead around by a false notion of “progress” in increasing quantities, until interest is lost completely.

So when I see people in chat complain about no “sense of progress” I immediately question “what is their goal”. And the response I get is the usual trite “more gear to work on”, “higher levels”, or “an end game”. Note how intangible and open ended these ideas are….. Note how these aren’t really goals, but means of investment. Perpetual investment into an endless cycle of mile stones, as you move the screen to the right and make numbers go higher. Cap it, and they get bored. Make it go down/backwards, and people lose their kitten.

Just to get perspective, go play “Don’t Move”.

It has everything progress junkie could ever want. Leveling, achievements, points, metrics, difficult game play, and everything you do (or don’t do) ultimately progresses toward the ultimate End game. So why isn’t this game considered the greatest game since Progress quest? Because it gives no illusion that anything you do means anything beyond what you assign it. So all the “progress” you can make in a game like WoW is merely an illusion….. because every ultimate end game accomplishment is invalidated the moment a new expansion comes out, and all the time/effort investment you’ve put in is robbed of its value, as those same tasks are trivialized to allow players who came after you to catch up.

Its a very carefully constructed illusion, so as to not shatter itself under something as errant as brief contemplation. So you want to know why moving the goal post = progress in World of Warcraft?

I myself never understood the point of most difficult content dropping best gear. You’ve already finished most difficult content – why the hell would you need more powerful gear now?

Why do anything at all in life? When we all become nothing in the end.
Simple answer, to kill time.

If you don’t feel motivated by what the game offer, move on?

I like anet’s system where you don’t need to keep improving your gear to infinity levels in order to do something. wvw’ing is fun because you know nobody has better gear than you, it’s either they’re more skilled than you. And I’m always looking to improve my skill, not my gears.

Wintermute.5408:

I myself never understood the point of most difficult content dropping best gear. You’ve already finished most difficult content – why the hell would you need more powerful gear now?

The question is: Why the difficulty should drop time by time cause you have better equipment?

Pro Guilds probably could finish ( through many tries ) a content with base equipment, but the others who couldn’t ( cause they both suck and have maybe not enough time ) are going to complete it with a powerful equipment.

Really cool.