Guild Wars 2

Before this gets buried in the flotsam of other posts, what about this “Lightbringer” title that Andrew McLeod discussed?

“This is something that existed prior to ascended gear, and was something that we saw happen all the time in GW1, even without any sort of gear progression. Some players, typically people who play the game a lot, tend to only want to play with other players that play like them. They require some sort of proof to get into their party, whether it be displaying your Lightbringer Title, equipping or linking some type of gear, or using some other method of showing that you have already done and are experienced with the content. While ascended gear might be the new excuse, this behavior happens regardless. While this is not really something that we want to encourage, players do have the choice to play the game in the way they want. We can’t force those players to be all-inclusive in who they invite to the parties they create, and to be honest, doing so would probably make people even more unhappy than they are now, and lead to a lot of undesirable behavior.”

And when we look up Lightbringer, we find:

Lightbringer:
Title. For each rank of Lightbringer, you deal 5% more damage to and have +1 damage reduction against Abaddon and his demonic servants.

Well, well, well. So for all the complaining I’m seeing regarding how progression goes against every design philosophy of GW, how it wasn’t in GW1, and Anet has lied to us and betrayed us by adding some progression to GW2, what do we find.

Hmm. It’s all just another excuse to complain, as McLeod suggests.

I’ll return when there’s a real issue. And btw- this is why Massively hasn’t picked it up: because its not an issue.

How about you learn about it first.

“against Abaddon and his Demonic Servants”

It does not say “Against all content in the game including other players”

Plus it was a horizontal. Anyone could build the rank, it did not take running a special dungeon, and it did not preclude casual or hardcore from the title track.

So, yeah… you yet again are un informed on what you are talking about.

You clearly didn’t play Guild Wars 1. Lightbringer ranks were acquired through playing the game, and only applied to foes that you had to play through the content that gave you ranks to even run into. It was free, it happened without a grind, and came along with content that players were naturally playing anyway. There were 8 total ranks of Lightbringer, and by the time you finished the campaign and really encountered “Abaddon and his demonic servants”, without taking ANY time to pursue further ranks for their own sake, my characters had all acquired rank 6. That’s like playing through Fractals, and by the time you get to agony at tier 10, you already have your back piece, one ring, and are two thirds of the way towards your second, all merely acquired just by playing through Fractals normally.

Your argument is based on incomprehension of a subject you have no experience with, and that is why it fails.

What does this have to do with Gear Progression and the fact that Ascended gear is a new tier of gear that effects aspects of the game other than PVE?

What you’re talking about is a PVE gating mechanic, which is similar to Agony. While I don’t like it, I have no problem with it in the game. What most people have a problem with is adding a gear treadmill to a game that specifically made it a point to say that they would not implement one.

Fail. Lightbringer only affected AI. It does not affect how you interact with other players in combat. Not to mention the real gem of lightbringer related activities were the PVE skills that came with it, the title itself was a quality of life issue. GW1 nightfall was not balanced around people with max Lightbringer, it was balanced around people with rudimentary levels of it.

Ascended gear? Nope. You’ll crit 2% more per piece of gear if you use it compared to someone decked out in exotics. Real significant changes in WvW. Now GW2 will be balanced around, you guessed it, this new tier.

It wasn’t a gating mechanism though, you were still able to do Nightfall whether you had a high level of the title or not. It just made things slightly easier.

Agony get to the point where you’re unable to progress without infused ascended gear.

No I didn’t play GW1, but I don’t need to when I have a wiki and a dev post at my disposal. No matter how you slice it, this was a form of progession, horizontal or otherwise. It applies, my friends. And didn’t the devs say that anyone could gain Ascended gear by means other than running the dungeon? By multiple methods, I do believe I read that.

House of cards. Doesn’t stand for very long.

slazzy.7309:

No I didn’t play GW1, but I don’t need to when I have a wiki and a dev post at my disposal. No matter how you slice it, this was a form of progession, horizontal or otherwise. It applies, my friends. And didn’t the devs say that anyone could gain Ascended gear by means other than running the dungeon? By multiple methods, I do believe I read that.

House of cards. Doesn’t stand for very long.

No one has a problem with horizontal progression. Not only do you not understand the counter argument you’re making, you don’t even understand the issue.

Don’t even justify this thread with a response, let it die. The OP has no clue what he’s talking about.

slazzy.7309:

No I didn’t play GW1, but I don’t need to when I have a wiki and a dev post at my disposal. No matter how you slice it, this was a form of progession, horizontal or otherwise. It applies, my friends. And didn’t the devs say that anyone could gain Ascended gear by means other than running the dungeon? By multiple methods, I do believe I read that.

House of cards. Doesn’t stand for very long.

That’s like saying: “No, your honor, I didn’t witness the defendant stealing from the prosecution, but the prosecution said he did and I’ve read about this kind of thing so it’s kind of obvious isn’t it…”

You can submit that, I don’t know detail about the mechanics. But I do know one thing. Many of you have misled players about the effect of Agony on the game. Now we find progression existed in GW1, at whatever the level, and yet this somehow does not apply. Even when a dev states Lightbringer was just another method players had to filter out those they want to play with. This is exactly the same thing, and you all know it is.

Hey, I could care less if none of you agree or see the point. But now I know from my own research that your complaints are baseless, and this game with thrive. I hope others aren’t affected by the negativity we’ve seen the last several days. That’s my point.

Congrats Anet. You have fans now as smart as Slazzy feel good about yourself..

wait you probably do. Cause they believe the PR statements without really taking a critical eye to the facts.

slazzy.7309:

You can submit that, I don’t know detail about the mechanics. But I do know one thing. Many of you have misled players about the effect of Agony on the game. Now we find progression existed in GW1, at whatever the level, and yet this somehow does not apply. Even when a dev states Lightbringer was just another method players had to filter out those they want to play with. This is exactly the same thing, and you all know it is.

Hey, I could care less if none of you agree or see the point. But now I know from my own research that your complaints are baseless, and this game with thrive. I hope others aren’t affected by the negativity we’ve seen the last several days. That’s my point.

Wow, I thought they didn’t allow trolling on these forums, I sure feel trolled here. Vertical progression <> horizontal progression. It would behoove you to learn what the difference is before spouting nonsense here. Everyone has a pair of rose tinted glasses, it takes the well informed to not wear them. Clearly you still have your’s on.

Lothair.8942:

Don’t even justify this thread with a response, let it die. The OP has no clue what he’s talking about.

Wait until he finds out that Spectral Agony existed on GW1, he’ll be on that wiki page within seconds.

Spectral Agony:
Concise description
Skill. (5 seconds.) Target foe has -1…30 Health degeneration; moves, attacks, and uses skills 80% slower; and loses 3…81 Health each second.

slazzy.7309:

You can submit that, I don’t know detail about the mechanics. But I do know one thing. Many of you have misled players about the effect of Agony on the game. Now we find progression existed in GW1, at whatever the level, and yet this somehow does not apply. Even when a dev states Lightbringer was just another method players had to filter out those they want to play with. This is exactly the same thing, and you all know it is.

Hey, I could care less if none of you agree or see the point. But now I know from my own research that your complaints are baseless, and this game with thrive. I hope others aren’t affected by the negativity we’ve seen the last several days. That’s my point.

Let’s try something with math.

Berserker-statted exotic ring – 6% crit damage. Berserker-statted ascended equivalent – 8% crit damage. Power/precision is increased by 10-20% as well.

What does this have to do with agony and gating ONLY the dungeon itself? Those stats gate everything else. Extrapolate that difference in stats to 11 other ascended pieces. Ascended zerker = 150% crit damage and 10% more crit than exotic zerker (100% crit dmg). That is a flat ~35%+ damage increase from exotic to ascended, against EVERYTHING. Is this getting through to you yet?

And this is just one example of a stat combination. Every other stat combo is this off-the-wall-obviously-superior when comparing exotic to ascended.

Lightbringer did NOT allow you to do 40% more damage to everything, ONLY to very, VERY specific parts of the Nightfall campaign, and this only started to become necessary in the most difficult and optional portion of Nightfall – Domain of Anguish. It didn’t allow you to do 40% more damage to players either.

slazzy.7309:

You can submit that, I don’t know detail about the mechanics. But I do know one thing. Many of you have misled players about the effect of Agony on the game. Now we find progression existed in GW1, at whatever the level, and yet this somehow does not apply. Even when a dev states Lightbringer was just another method players had to filter out those they want to play with. This is exactly the same thing, and you all know it is.

Hey, I could care less if none of you agree or see the point. But now I know from my own research that your complaints are baseless, and this game with thrive. I hope others aren’t affected by the negativity we’ve seen the last several days. That’s my point.

Lightbringer title is comparable to running FotM up to level 10 (when agony hits) and getting a ring that has the same stats as exotic rings with an infusion slot that makes FotM easier, but not by such a big margin that it is required.

In reality, you are not even guaranteed to get the ring, you are gonna have an extremely hard time progressing past level 20 if you don’t, and it has better stats than any other ring in the game.

You have obviously not played Guild Wars 1. The lightbringer title was only useful against Abandons minions who were only present at certain parts of the game and I don’t know that anyone really liked it.
It would be like if ascended gear had the same stats as exotic but provided agony resistance or a bonus specifically to the enemies in the dungeon. Most would be fine with this, in fact it has been suggested as a compromise more than once by people against the ascended gear.

This all sort of assumes that people who were fans of GW1’s static system of gear progression all loved every instance of linear, mechanical, vertical title track progression. This is not the case. I think the Lightbringer title (and the handful equivalents for other types of enemies) was stupid and unnecessary, and a blemish on the design of the game.
Nobody is in love with elements of GW1 because they were elements of GW1. People liked specific mechanics in GW1 because they were good ideas. Do you see fans of Guild Wars 1 clamoring to remove jumping and dodging from the game? No? Then why would you assume they would be in favour of all of a game’s mechanics, instead of just the one that they happen to be bringing up over and over as supremely important to them?

Now, having said all that, there is a clear difference, that other people have already pointed out, between the Lightbringer title’s mechanical bonus, and what ArenaNet is doing with Ascended gear and Infusion: Lightbringer was localized vertical progression. You obtained it in a certain area, from doing a certain type of content, and the bonuses you gained applied only while you were doing more of that type of content.
If there must be vertical progression in the game, it is infinitely more tolerable when localized to a specific area of the game than when it applies across the whole game world. It’s the difference between disliking it, but being able to tolerate its presence, and being enough of a cancer on the game that I won’t play the game at all when it’s present.

Crater.1625:

This all sort of assumes that people who were fans of GW1’s static system of gear progression all loved every instance of linear, mechanical, vertical title track progression. This is not the case. I think the Lightbringer title (and the handful equivalents for other types of enemies) was stupid and unnecessary, and a blemish on the design of the game.
Nobody is in love with elements of GW1 because they were elements of GW1. People liked specific mechanics in GW1 because they were good ideas. Do you see fans of Guild Wars 1 clamoring to remove jumping and dodging from the game? No? Then why would you assume they would be in favour of all of a game’s mechanics, instead of just the one that they happen to be bringing up over and over as supremely important to them?

Now, having said all that, there is a clear difference, that other people have already pointed out, between the Lightbringer title’s mechanical bonus, and what ArenaNet is doing with Ascended gear and Infusion: Lightbringer was localized vertical progression. You obtained it in a certain area, from doing a certain type of content, and the bonuses you gained applied only while you were doing more of that type of content.
If there must be vertical progression in the game, it is infinitely more tolerable when localized to a specific area of the game than when it applies across the whole game world. It’s the difference between disliking it, but being able to tolerate its presence, and being enough of a cancer on the game that I won’t play the game at all when it’s present.

This. Lightbringer was dumb. We would not be up in arms if there was a Fractalbuster track in GW2. We would… think it was dumb. And move on.

Somethings just don’t matter much. Others do.

Next we will hear how GW1 “had infusion” again.