Guild Wars 2

One of the key aspects of the original Guild Wars was the ability to change specs all the time. A fire elementalist could quickly and easily change to water elementalist, or to a combination of water and earth, and so on. This added a lot of longevity to the game – are you bored of your character? Completely change your build, as was easy to do, and it almost feels like you’re playing a different character.

ArenaNet missed the mark, in GW2, by adding a lot of stats to items. The more powerful a given item is, the more time consuming it will be to acquire, and the less likely people will be to have multiple variations of it with different stats. The result is that people are less likely to change builds, since it’s not just a matter of changing attribute points or trait points – you also have to change your equipment, and that’s not as simple as changing the stats.

ArenaNet could have fixed this. We already had the trait system in the game, allowing players some way to change a bit their stats; by reducing significantly the stats from items, it would be possible to create a situation in which players are more likely to change builds, and so less likely to become bored with their characters.

But, of course, ArenaNet fails again. They will do the opposite change – increase the power of items, by removing stats alocation from traits and adding it to gear. Now ascended gear will give even better stats than it does today. People will be even more stuck on builds based on gear, since they will have less flexibility.

It’s as if ArenaNet were trying to make people stop playing GW2.

Test.8734:

It’s as if ArenaNet were trying to make people stop playing GW2.

Or they noticed people where already stopping playing, which caused this change. Cosmetic only grinds can only hold for so long, this isn’t surprising nor all that bad.

BrooksP.4318:

Cosmetic only grinds can only hold for so long, this isn’t surprising nor all that bad.

So instead of adding a new tier of gear, they are making the current top tier – which is still not that common – more powerful?

All the while branding the “we have no gear treadmill” slogan?

Test.8734:

BrooksP.4318:

Cosmetic only grinds can only hold for so long, this isn’t surprising nor all that bad.

So instead of adding a new tier of gear, they are making the current top tier – which is still not that common – more powerful?

All the while branding the “we have no gear treadmill” slogan?

I suspect gear base stats will increase.
Since each tier is just a % increase of the base stats, every tier of gear will gain more stats ( granted the gap between tiers will now become bigger, thus more noticeable).

Test.8734:

BrooksP.4318:

Cosmetic only grinds can only hold for so long, this isn’t surprising nor all that bad.

So instead of adding a new tier of gear, they are making the current top tier – which is still not that common – more powerful?

All the while branding the “we have no gear treadmill” slogan?

It depends on how you look at things, that’s what they’re playing off of saying that slogan.

There kind of is a grind getting the ascended gear… (and ofc some people will argue otherwise…)(and I will just leave this post by colin here)

At the same time, each release of say the living story/feature patch doesn’t introduce a new tier of gear to grind for again. Which means no gear grind…

So, pretty sure they’re going off of “we’re not constantly adding new tiers of gear, so there isn’t a grind for gear” as opposed to “there is no grind in getting max tier of gear”.

Test.8734:

It’s as if ArenaNet were trying to make people stop playing GW2.

They’re trying to do quite the opposite. But if you’re a gw1 player, yeah they are slowly pushing that target away since november 2012. Sucks to be one of us.
Here have a hug.

I’m glad. And let me tell you why.

First of all, my understanding is that ALL armor sets will be number-buffed to keep overall stats from all sources at the level they currently are at. I didn’t read anywhere that the percentage variance from rarity to rarity will grow, so I completely disagree that “ascended gear will give even better stats than it does today.” Numbers-wise, that may be the case. But the percentage (or the difference? unsure) of damage gained going from exotic to ascended would remain the same. Assuming I’ve understood the posts correctly. If it’s a flat sum difference, there is literally no issue. If it’s percentage-based, you would see a very slight increase in the spread. I don’t think it would be a big enough difference in the stat jumps from rarity to rarity to really register in the scheme of things, but we’ll see. They are doing a Q&A tomorrow, maybe someone can ask them.

Since we lost separate armor sets for PvP, I haven’t had a reason to have a second set of armor. The end-game of GW2 is arguably skin-based, so this poses a problem for me. What is my motivation to collect skins if I don’t have anything to put them on? I HATE the idea of reskinning a set I consider a settled outfit (both skin and stats-wise), so I wear the same thing all the time.

I finally have a reason to make a berserker exo set for my celestials ascs, a reason to keep both a condi damage and zerk set on my thief and to keep a bunker back up on my guard. Now that I know armor stats will make a larger impact on my build, I have a reason to use all those skins I’ve been collecting.

Gear treadmill doesn’t really exist unless you create locked content based off of the need for the new gear(making old gear redundant). sPVP is normalized so gear has no impact there, and WvW can be normalized due to scaling. So unless they expand on the Fractal ideology of requiring gear to advance, then having different tiers isn’t a issue.

However giving more incentive to either getting multiple sets to explore different builds or creating better gear to give something more then just cosmetics for people to “grind” to, can help with longevity of a game. Having gear equality only creates stagnation.

I dont see how locking stats behind armor stats gives more build freedom locking them behind trait trees. If they really wanted to give people build freedom they would let us allocate those stat points freely.

They also implied that some of the stats will be added to the characters base and based on what specialization is picked.

Whats the logic behind this decision?

Are people really complaining about this just to complain? The stats you get currently from your trait distribution is an afterthought. The majority of builds are not created on the stats that the trait distribution provides but rather the traits selected.

I do not remember see threads upon threads of people complaining about our current trait system in regards to the stats and how you often get stats you would not need because of the lines certain traits happen to be located in.

Mireles Lore.5942:

I dont see how locking stats behind armor stats gives more build freedom locking them behind trait trees. If they really wanted to give people build freedom they would let us allocate those stat points freely.

They also implied that some of the stats will be added to the characters base and based on what specialization is picked.

Whats the logic behind this decision?

If for example a warrior goes for Phalanx Strength, they have to sacrafice their personal power to get the Grandmaster Trait. With the change, warrior will be able to use more support-style traits without having to compensate for it with their personal DPS.

I like the change. The gear treadmill people are talking about is basically non-existant. “Veteran” players have had 1.5 years to accumulate about 500 gold worth of materials to create an armor.
If you run a couple of dungeons, play a few pvp matches and do some foraging, you can easily reach over 20-30G per day without hardcore grinding. That + laurels and the new daily logins make it very easy to reach “endgame gear”. And that’s without an expensive drop in between.

EnergySlam.2793:

Mireles Lore.5942:

I dont see how locking stats behind armor stats gives more build freedom locking them behind trait trees. If they really wanted to give people build freedom they would let us allocate those stat points freely.

They also implied that some of the stats will be added to the characters base and based on what specialization is picked.

Whats the logic behind this decision?

If for example a warrior goes for Phalanx Strength, they have to sacrafice their personal power to get the Grandmaster Trait. With the change, warrior will be able to use more support-style traits without having to compensate for it with their personal DPS.

I like the change. The gear treadmill people are talking about is basically non-existant. “Veteran” players have had 1.5 years to accumulate about 500 gold worth of materials to create an armor.
If you run a couple of dungeons, play a few pvp matches and do some foraging, you can easily reach over 20-30G per day without hardcore grinding. That + laurels and the new daily logins make it very easy to reach “endgame gear”. And that’s without an expensive drop in between.

I understand that. Im not complaining about gear. It just doesnt seem to make things more flexable just change the way it is inflexible. Granted your example would be favored in your situation. But on the flip side what if a knights armored warrior was using trait tree stats to increase thier power and critical damage to balance out his survivability and still have a decent dps. This player would not be able to do that anymore because most of the power and ferocity points he had alocated via the trait tree just got dumped into percision and toughness.

The change isnt more flexable just inflexable in a different way. Not saying the change is bad… it just seems like we are trading one inconvience for another. Your stat combos will be heavily based on your gear and just a little on the specializations. Its just if I was going for flexability I woukd have let these stats be allocated independently.

EnergySlam.2793:

Mireles Lore.5942:

I dont see how locking stats behind armor stats gives more build freedom locking them behind trait trees. If they really wanted to give people build freedom they would let us allocate those stat points freely.

They also implied that some of the stats will be added to the characters base and based on what specialization is picked.

Whats the logic behind this decision?

If for example a warrior goes for Phalanx Strength, they have to sacrafice their personal power to get the Grandmaster Trait. With the change, warrior will be able to use more support-style traits without having to compensate for it with their personal DPS.

I like the change. The gear treadmill people are talking about is basically non-existant. “Veteran” players have had 1.5 years to accumulate about 500 gold worth of materials to create an armor.
If you run a couple of dungeons, play a few pvp matches and do some foraging, you can easily reach over 20-30G per day without hardcore grinding. That + laurels and the new daily logins make it very easy to reach “endgame gear”. And that’s without an expensive drop in between.

Exactly this.

Personally I don’t like swapping out armor to change a build. Separating traits from attributes is a good thing, but adding more stats to items is a bad thing, assuming the items remain static. In other words, I think this change could be a good thing if all items had flexible stats (like Legendaries already have.)

And to reduce the tedium of manipulating stats on multiple items, they’d want to use this opportunity to add build template functionality.

Armour should provide nothing but toughness, and a place to hang your runes.

Traits should be just that – traits.

Your stats really should be done on a separate tree, unlinked from either traits or gear..

EDIT: From what I can find, they ARE removing stats from your traits, which is awesome. Nowhere (not FB, Reddit nor the GW2 site) can I find information on an increase in stats on gear though. Could someone point me in the right direction for the source of this particular rumour?

EDIT2: Nevermind – found it. GG Anet, finding another way to reduce diversity in the name of increasing diversity. Gear grind sucks. Making it less optional than before sucks a lot.

Stat allocation suggestion: 33% armor, 33% profession, 33% player selected or 25%, 25%, 50% respectively or 15 armor, 15 profession, 15 trait, 55 player or a variation of that.

Zahld.4956:

Stat allocation suggestion: 33% armor, 33% profession, 33% player selected or 25%, 25%, 50% respectively or 15 armor, 15 profession, 15 trait, 55 player or a variation of that.

It’s already based on profession. Heavy Armor is a built-in bonus to Toughness. Likewise there are three tiers of health that are just built-in bonuses to Vitality.

I agree that it’s an issue in PvP, hopefully we can get Amulet + Jewel to customize our stats better.

However, I don’t get people who are upset for this change because of PvE
current system: ’zerker armor + ’zerker traits
new system: ’zerker armor + choice of traits

how is that a worse system?

none.9681:

I agree that it’s an issue in PvP, hopefully we can get Amulet + Jewel to customize our stats better.

However, I don’t get people who are upset for this change because of PvE
current system: ’zerker armor + ’zerker traits
new system: ’zerker armor + choice of traits

how is that a worse system?

Its better, but its not what they seem to want.
What they seem to want is “armor + assign choice of traits + assign zerker stas (or choice of stats)”

…which in all honesty would be a better system than getting a new set of gear every time you want to try/make a different build. Especially if said build gets a nerf or a “better” stat combination appears for that build later, like dire and other gear did over the course of living story.

BrooksP.4318:

Test.8734:

It’s as if ArenaNet were trying to make people stop playing GW2.

Or they noticed people where already stopping playing, which caused this change. Cosmetic only grinds can only hold for so long, this isn’t surprising nor all that bad.

Um the cosmetic grind in GW2 is poor since it completely lacks the variety of cosmetics required. So it hasn’t failed.

You can say, in general, adding the standard mmo stats setup was a bad direction to go. GW1 was a lot more flexible with builds and gear.

morrolan.9608:

BrooksP.4318:

Test.8734:

It’s as if ArenaNet were trying to make people stop playing GW2.

Or they noticed people where already stopping playing, which caused this change. Cosmetic only grinds can only hold for so long, this isn’t surprising nor all that bad.

Um the cosmetic grind in GW2 is poor since it completely lacks the variety of cosmetics required. So it hasn’t failed.

Agreed. The problem with the cosmetic grind is more cosmetic gear wasn’t added fast enough to hold interest (or it was added as outfits instead of mixable armor pieces). GW1 cosmetic grind concept was successful because they released like 3 expacs worth of armor designs in the space of 2ish years. HoT will (hopefully) breath a lot of life into it.

Your stats have very little to do with your build. This is not going to change when the expansion lands.

Stats ARE part of your build. I applaud that they are removing stats from the Trait selection process, but stacking more on equipment may not be the best way to go but I’m willing to give them the benefit of the doubt and try it.

I’m still convinced that those players that complain about GW2’s “gear grind” have NO idea what that term means if you seriously think GW2 has it.

I believe that, rather than putting more stats on gear, a different system would have better fostered experimentation and possibly diversity. What system? Take a page from the original guild wars, and give people the 1400 stat points to spend on the respective stats as they see fit, with caps of 300 in any given stat. Make this changeable out of combat. Provide a means to save templates with the stat allocation and trait selections.

Tying more stats to gear emphasizes that changing out builds requires expense or time to make the gear and storage space to keep it. There’s already too much of that in the game. More, in this case, does not seem better to me.

Brother Grimm.5176:

I’m still convinced that those players that complain about GW2’s “gear grind” have NO idea what that term means if you seriously think GW2 has it.

The fact that the grind is differentl from other mmos doesn’t mean it isn’t a grind.

Having 1 or 2 armor sets in the bag is really bad. I have no space anyway. We just need an option for multiple stat combos on armor or multiple slots for armor which you can switch.