Guild Wars 2

I posted this in a thread that turned into a pretty big rage thread at the OP, but I feel it should be seen more. I’m not complaining, I am content with the content of the game. I’m compiling complaints of a few of my friends into this post which need to be discussed and addressed.

I just keep seeing “this game isn’t for you,” “go back to WoW,” and “that’s a grind, though!”

If you have any of these responses with some terrible backup of their initial comment, you have nothing to contribute to this thread.

There’s really no incentive to work towards to in this game other than looking like a fabulous rainbow with your sparkly legendary and multicolored armor set. The only reason to play this game, as of this moment, for those of us with 500, 600, or more hours clocked, is for a prettier item that what we have. This doesn’t appeal to more of the hardcore players.

The hardcore players are more focused on progression, to become better and hit harder, and this does not happen much. With Ascended gear, this was introduced, but there has been a lot of feedback on this from the community because people didn’t want to have a gear requirement. The hardcore players (the ones that will keep playing this game for a long time) need an incentive to stay, or else this player base will dwindle.

The more softcore players, and the casuals, do not want this gear progression. They want to pick up the game after months away and be able to compete again. This is the current state of the game, since I had taken a 2 month break and was able to pick it back up. This is a nice aspect of the game, but it is one that quickly gets boring after picking the game back up. There’s not much to aim towards.

The currencies are part of the issue.

We have laurels, which are pretty bad for a couple reasons :
One, to create a gold sink for players who are not smart enough to realize that there are much easier ways to get items (See the Armor Boxes, Crafting Mat boxes, Crafting starter kits, Obsidian Shards, Unidentified Dyes… nothing else comes to mind at the moment)
Two, to give the more hardcore players more stuff to buy! This grind isn’t fun though. Roughly 40 laurels a month? An ascended amulet costing that much? No thank you, I’d rather spend my laurels on an insanely expensive cat.

Badges of Honor, which are near useless:
I know they’re probably being looked at in the 26 Mar. update, but they’re terrible right now. It’s just another prerequisite for a legendary, to buy siege blueprints (which are so much easier to get if you have gold, which you can also get faster than badges. For example, 100 badges for an alpha siege, or 1 gold. I can get one gold in a few minutes, which 100 badges takes a few hours of WvW, or a few days of casual play) or for you to buy extremely expensive PVT gear (soldier’s) which you can craft, buy with karma, or do dungeons (AC, SE, HoTW).

There’s also the new Guild Merits, and Guild commendations(2 per week, for 6 weeks for another pretty pink ascended piece!), but I won’t even go into those for how much they’re messed up. Seriously, you have to have an amazing amount of guild money, for a small guild, or a massive guild, to receive enough guild influence to unlock the missions. Even then, the most hardcore guilds that I’ve seen have Guild Treks unlocked, which don’t even reward commendations.

Overall, ArenaNet needs to do some serious rethinking on the direction they’re taking the game, because if they sway too far towards a more casual approach, they’ll be losing some of the hardcore player base, and if they sway more towards a hardcore approach, they’ll be losing some of the casual player base.

I completely agree with everything you’ve said. It’s a shame that the majority of your responses and this thread will be responses like “If you don’t like it you don’t have to do it.” and other asinine statements.

This game has no gear progression. That is a good thing.

Hardcore players who focus on skill don’t want gear progression. They want progression in the form of skill and teamwork, and skins to show for it without giving themselves a stat advantage.

Hardcore players who want gear progression to mask their lack of skill are no-lifers. They have other games that cater to their gameplay style, and should play those.

GW2 does not have gear progression and does not give an advantage to those who spend 16 hours a day playing every day of the year.

That is why it’s so popular with both casuals who don’t have the time, and hardcores who think skill is more important than time spent.

xiv.7136:

This game has no gear progression. That is a good thing.

Hardcore players who focus on skill don’t want gear progression. They want progression in the form of skill and teamwork, and skins to show for it without giving themselves a stat advantage.

Hardcore players who want gear progression to mask their lack of skill are no-lifers. They have other games that cater to their gameplay style, and should play those.

GW2 does not have gear progression and does not give an advantage to those who spend 16 hours a day playing every day of the year.

That is why it’s so popular with both casuals who don’t have the time, and hardcores who think skill is more important than time spent.

And for the OP to say the player base will radically decline if this isnt added more is pure nonsense, just look at GW1 that did not have vertical gear progression and people still play it now.

Ricky Da Man.5064:

xiv.7136:

This game has no gear progression. That is a good thing.

Hardcore players who focus on skill don’t want gear progression. They want progression in the form of skill and teamwork, and skins to show for it without giving themselves a stat advantage.

Hardcore players who want gear progression to mask their lack of skill are no-lifers. They have other games that cater to their gameplay style, and should play those.

GW2 does not have gear progression and does not give an advantage to those who spend 16 hours a day playing every day of the year.

That is why it’s so popular with both casuals who don’t have the time, and hardcores who think skill is more important than time spent.

And for the OP to say the player base will radically decline if this isnt added more is pure nonsense, just look at GW1 that did not have vertical gear progression and people still play it now.

Or just look at GW2, it’s already outsold MOP in the EU and US.

Once it releases in China, who knows what could happen really.

Many other MMO’s have avoided gear progression for quite a long time and they did just fine like UO and GW1. These games also had some very hard core players and lots of casual players that played because they like the game, enjoyed the content and made their own personal goals like player housing, aesthetics, personal challenges ect.

GW2 was supposed to be a game you played to have fun and if you wanted to grind you did it for looks and other optional stuff. Just like the game was designed without a trinity. Which is why people say this may not be a good game for you if those are important to you.

Personally I get a bit annoyed at the people asking for gear progression. I miss the trinity, but I would never post multiple threads about changing GW2 into a trinity game. And if they added the trinity here I would support the player base being upset because they were told that wasn’t a part of this game. I wish people who want gear progression showed the same courtesy.

Once upon a time people played mmo’s because they enjoyed the game and had fun doing the content. People played the game for the sake of playing it. Somewhere in between then and now people got tricked into thinking that the reason to play an mmo was gear progression.

New content shouldn’t be about what new more powerful gear it can offer but about being fun and enjoyable. The new content added to this game since November has been blighted by the fact it’s designed around a new level of gear. Guild missions have horrible time sinks built in that reduce incentive for guilds to do them more than once a week and that’s only the guilds that can actually afford them. Would laurels have caused such hand wringing and moaning if ascended gear wasn’t one of the things purchasable with them. People would have looked at fractals as a new and interesting dungeon and not something they had to do if they wanted the new gear tier.

You also don’t seem to understand what makes a player hardcore or casual. It’s nothing to do with wanting gear progression what so ever. In fact according to you no serious wvw player could be casual as gear progression is a pain in the kitten for wvw. For wvw people would prefer to be able to gear characters to the best possible stats in a relatively short space of time and then just have fun playing.

The game was originally designed and marketed to those who wanted a game they could quickly gear a character to top items and just play level 80 content for fun, not meaningless stat progression. Those players, who you sneer at and call casual, and the ones who would damage this game if they left. They are the ones who buy character slots, bag and bank slots, fine transmute stones etc.

Almost every mmo now has gear progression, going that route will remove some of the uniqueness that makes gw2 stand out. Offering exactly the same product as your competitors isn’t really the best business sense.

Sorry that’s a bit rambling. It’s early here and I’m trying to write this on my phone.

I think the OP underestimates how many hard core players there are compared to casuals. kitten off the hard core players and they leave, and shrugs. So what?

kitten off the casual players and there’ll be no one to fund the game. This is actually true in most games. There are far more casual players than there are hard core players.

Then there are guys like me who play a LOT for a long time and don’t want gear progression in my game. Because I know how to make my own fun. The game gives me the tools to have fun and I go and have it. I don’t have to be ultra competitive or get phat lootz to enjoy playing this game.

Everyone seems to think that their demographic represents the majority of players. We can’t ALL be right. lol

Vayne.8563:

Everyone seems to think that their demographic represents the majority of players. We can’t ALL be right. lol

This is so true. People have such a hard time stepping out of their own shoes for a second. Nobody is really wrong in all of these discussions about progression, trinity, etc. It is all a matter of opinion.

I firmly believe that there are a lot of good options out there for trinity based games that have a nice vertical progression. Guild Wars has done a fantastic job of being an alternative. I don’t want this game to change in that regard because it is something that makes GW2 stand out and differentiate itself from the competition.

I can just base it on personal experience. I felt the same way and someone told me to set small goals for myself like get 400 in all the crafting skills, work on different armor sets. When I started doing this it gave me an excuse to logon every day. I won’t get on here and bash people, I can just offer my personal experiences in GW2. After going back to old MMOs I used to play I just couldn’t do it, GW2 has left an impression on me for sure.

Fuinir.7489:

I posted this in a thread that turned into a pretty big rage thread at the OP, but I feel it should be seen more. I’m not complaining, I am content with the content of the game. I’m compiling complaints of a few of my friends into this post which need to be discussed and addressed.

There’s really no incentive to work towards to in this game other than looking like a fabulous rainbow with your sparkly legendary and multicolored armor set. The only reason to play this game, as of this moment, for those of us with 500, 600, or more hours clocked, is for a prettier item that what we have. This doesn’t appeal to more of the hardcore players.

The hardcore players are more focused on progression ….. SNIP ……

Overall, ArenaNet needs to do some serious rethinking on the direction they’re taking the game, because if they sway too far towards a more casual approach, they’ll be losing some of the hardcore player base, and if they sway more towards a hardcore approach, they’ll be losing some of the casual player base.

I think your definition of “Hardcore” and mine I think is what fundementally sets the base for many of these opinionated threads.
I play on average maybe 3-6 hrs a day (actually more towards the lower end since the Jan patch if I’m honest), but I consider myself to be reletively casual in my gaming habit… that’s to say I try to enjoy every aspect of the game, I dont tend to zerg through everything and enjoy learning what works or does’nt for my toons. But because I have clocked 500-1000+ hrs in the game since pre launch I am by your definition to be considered hardcore.
I have been pretty consistant in my thoughts on the Ascended gearing argument as I don’t really see the small stat increases as anything more than irrelevant but do see that its maybe another content hook in order to temp people to keep playing the game… nothing wrong with that because its my choice if I take the bait and run it rather than repeting other stuff even more. It provides an option in game for us, another focus once we have got our Legendaries or reched the pinnalces of WvWvW / sPvP etc etc… without it I think the playerbase would of dwindled already and the playerbase screaming for something else to do. Its also given ANET time to maybe work on other aspects of the game that have long been plaguing it, maybe!
I haven’t really attacked Fractals all that much yet as I am still working through my toons, getting Map completions, getting crafting levels up, trying out WvWvW and sPvP, working towards my Legendaries, getting my guilds bonuses up etc etc… generally enjoying the game like many casual players tend to do. But I play more than some and in many games that’s does create an advantage where there are gearing gates… more time in game, gates get broken down sooner (note I said sooner not quicker.. as time is time it still takes as much time give or take luck and skill just seems longer when you have less time to play each day).
The difference is GW2 use the hooks in a differnet way than other MMO’s.. they want player retention, of course they do but they also want players to feel they can pick up mwhere they left off becuase its not about who has the bestest gear stats, but who has the better skills and who can find the best advatages in builds and gearing and tactics etc when everyone plays on a level playing field…. HARDCORE players by my defintion are ones that strive to get to that most bejewelled of places within their guilds, within their server and within the game without the belief they have to have bigger gear stats than anyone else in which to do it… and athe aesthetics that are earned in GW2 are what try to set those players apart.
Now I am not saying its perfect – the ability already to purchase many of those items that set you apart is a real bugbear for me becuase beleive it or not it almost forces players to forget the game and just farm places over and over like dungeons, like Orr tunnel and like Boss events just for the purpose of swelling one’s coffers .. that is what both the hardcore and softcore casuals end up doing.. then the “this game is all grind.. blah balh blah” begins to appear here and across the interdweebs.

As a side thought though, I think GW2 will need some kind of gear progressiokittenome point, otherwise everyone will begin to tire of it.. but its when and how that transition is implemented that is the bigger issue – GW2 like any other MMMO needs longevity and it won’t achieve that if the playerbase is unwilling to accept that evolution has to happen. But progression doesnt have to be a sudden shift in beliefs or traditions it just has to have some imputus to engage the players, whether that be gradual stats progression or gradual aesthetic progression.. the game does need to pregress in order to keep the server running.

Heijincks.9267:

Unfortunately, I can’t agree with you. If this was another game I would, but GW2’s progression incentive is to work towards aesthetics.

This has been GW2’s direction from the very start. The developers did not want progression that would make a player stronger (other than the amount we have right now).

You know why there was a huge uproar with the release of ascended? Because a major portion of the playerbase does not want progression to be anything but for aesthetics. This is ingrained into an enormous amount of players. In short, GW2 is not the kind of game you’d say it should be. This type of progression worked very well for GW1, so why not have it in GW2?

Yes, perhaps GW2 isn’t catering to the hardcore crowd. I’d rather keep it that way. If “hardcore” is what you’re all about, show off your skills in WvW.

Secondly, you contradicted yourself when you said laurels are a gold sink.

Thirdly, badge of honor for aesthetics. I think 90% of the playerbase would agree to just keep it at that.

If the developers did not want gear progression, then why was it that Ascended was added in the first place? It does not set straight with me to read that developers did not want gear progression, yet they add Ascended, making it a requirement to do Fractals, and another piece of gear to get to have the advantage over somebody in WvW.

I respect your opinion that GW2 should not cater towards the hardcore crowd, but I do not think you’re right. They already tilted towards giving the hardcore crowd a carrot to chase with Ascended, but there really should be something other to pursue than just a prettier look. It’s nice after a while, but even after I geared my main to what I wanted, I really lost the incentive to do so for any future characters.

Lastly, laurels are a “gold sink.” I’m referring to a gold sink as something that you can waste a currency on—not actual gold. You can buy these random items if you would like to, and waste the dailies and monthlies that you have ground out.

Ricky Da Man.5064:

And for the OP to say the player base will radically decline if this isnt added more is pure nonsense, just look at GW1 that did not have vertical gear progression and people still play it now.

Please re-read my post, because you seem to have changed “some” to “radically.”

purpleskies.3274:

Personally I get a bit annoyed at the people asking for gear progression. I miss the trinity, but I would never post multiple threads about changing GW2 into a trinity game. And if they added the trinity here I would support the player base being upset because they were told that wasn’t a part of this game. I wish people who want gear progression showed the same courtesy.

To be honest, it would not surprise me in the future if there actually was a bigger gear progression. There’s already a somewhat time-based gear progression now, which is going against ANet’s initial stance.

Kaiem.8297:

Once upon a time people played mmo’s because they enjoyed the game and had fun doing the content. People played the game for the sake of playing it. Somewhere in between then and now people got tricked into thinking that the reason to play an mmo was gear progression.

New content shouldn’t be about what new more powerful gear it can offer but about being fun and enjoyable. The new content added to this game since November has been blighted by the fact it’s designed around a new level of gear. Guild missions have horrible time sinks built in that reduce incentive for guilds to do them more than once a week and that’s only the guilds that can actually afford them. Would laurels have caused such hand wringing and moaning if ascended gear wasn’t one of the things purchasable with them. People would have looked at fractals as a new and interesting dungeon and not something they had to do if they wanted the new gear tier.

You also don’t seem to understand what makes a player hardcore or casual. It’s nothing to do with wanting gear progression what so ever. In fact according to you no serious wvw player could be casual as gear progression is a pain in the kitten for wvw. For wvw people would prefer to be able to gear characters to the best possible stats in a relatively short space of time and then just have fun playing.

The game was originally designed and marketed to those who wanted a game they could quickly gear a character to top items and just play level 80 content for fun, not meaningless stat progression. Those players, who you sneer at and call casual, and the ones who would damage this game if they left. They are the ones who buy character slots, bag and bank slots, fine transmute stones etc.

Almost every mmo now has gear progression, going that route will remove some of the uniqueness that makes gw2 stand out. Offering exactly the same product as your competitors isn’t really the best business sense.

Sorry that’s a bit rambling. It’s early here and I’m trying to write this on my phone.

I’ll answer the part of response that refers to hardcore and casual. I made no indication and never said that hardcore players are all a certain “give me a better gear set group” and not all casual players are “I want to be able to pick this game back up after months away.” There was no such thing in my initial post, so you are interpreting it wrong.

I’m not going answer the rest of your post because you are twisting my words, and molding me into a person I did not say I was. I do not sneer at casual players. I do not consider myself a hardcore player. I barely have 600 hours clocked in the game, and consider myself semi-casual. For future reference, do not twist people’s words, it makes your argument invalid.

Vayne.8563:

I think the OP underestimates how many hard core players there are compared to casuals. kitten off the hard core players and they leave, and shrugs. So what?

kitten off the casual players and there’ll be no one to fund the game. This is actually true in most games. There are far more casual players than there are hard core players.

Then there are guys like me who play a LOT for a long time and don’t want gear progression in my game. Because I know how to make my own fun. The game gives me the tools to have fun and I go and have it. I don’t have to be ultra competitive or get phat lootz to enjoy playing this game.

Everyone seems to think that their demographic represents the majority of players. We can’t ALL be right. lol

I did not say I underestimated or pretended to know the demographics of the GW2 population at all in my post. It would be idiotic to say that the number of hardcore players rivals the number of casual players, and it would be idiotic to say that the casual players do not “pay the game.” I know many casual people who spend their well-earning money in-game to get more gold, so they can get items easier, as they do not have the time.

In a game like Guild Wars 2, where I see that there are many less people than there were at launch (most likely because of the no subscription key and the ability to pick the game back up without paying.) is worrying, because I want to see more people playing it, therefore I think that ANet needs to consider the entirety of the population that is playing the game—casuals and hardcore players, and everything in between—instead of mostly the people who oppose a gear progression.

To conclude, I want to say that gear progression is not the only answer to try to cater to their entire crowd, but it is the only one I can think of that would somewhat satisfy the some of the hardcore players, but at the same time angering some of the casual players. I would suggest a more content-driven ANet, which they are sort-of, but the monthly content updates are not that big, and with some news that says they are not planning a future expansion worries me. I also know that you cannot satisfy everyone, but discussions such as these help convince, flesh out, and to teach ideas that people might not otherwise be aware of.

Fuinir.7489:

The hardcore players are more focused on progression, to become better and hit harder, and this does not happen much. With Ascended gear, this was introduced, but there has been a lot of feedback on this from the community because people didn’t want to have a gear requirement. The hardcore players (the ones that will keep playing this game for a long time) need an incentive to stay, or else this player base will dwindle.

That is the problem right there. The perception that the “hard core” player is the only type of player to keep the game alive.

That is wrong. The hardcore players, the ones who want to spend 10 hours a day chasing down better gear so they can be better than the next player are not the bread and butter player of GW2. They are not the gem buyers. They are not the players who will stay for the long haul.

They will leave when another game releases a new patch and a new tier of gear. They will leave when new raids are introduced in other games and the loyal GW2 players will be left with a mess of a game created on their demands that we don’t want.

Gear treadmills are not wanted by the majority of the players. That is why there was such an outcry when Ascended gear was introduced. The players here to stay. The loyal GW2 players know what they want from their game and it’s not the same thing as the “hard cores”.

Anet needs to take a long hard look at who their loyal players are. Who are the most likely to stick around and play consistently. Who are most likely to make gem purchases. Who are most likely to log in and have GW2 be their game.

Those are the players they want to cater to. Not the players who just drop into GW2 when they are bored with their “main” game and making demands and creating a mess for the rest of us.

I came to GW2 because I got sick of item progression. Really, if I wanted to continue running in the hamster wheel I’d go back to WoW, Rift, Aion or any other mediocre game. Stop invading my game!

xiv.7136:

This game has no gear progression. That is a good thing.

There’s this thing called Ascended gear. It’s better than anything else, and was only added months after release.

Fuinir.7489:

ArenaNet needs to do some serious rethinking on the direction they’re taking the game, because if they sway too far towards a more casual approach, they’ll be losing some of the hardcore player base, and if they sway more towards a hardcore approach, they’ll be losing some of the casual player base.

Well what can one suggest to them since one way you lose and the other way you lose?

Fuinir.7489:

If the developers did not want gear progression, then why was it that Ascended was added in the first place? It does not set straight with me to read that developers did not want gear progression, yet they add Ascended, making it a requirement to do Fractals, and another piece of gear to get to have the advantage over somebody in WvW.

I respect your opinion that GW2 should not cater towards the hardcore crowd, but I do not think you’re right. They already tilted towards giving the hardcore crowd a carrot to chase with Ascended, but there really should be something other to pursue than just a prettier look. It’s nice after a while, but even after I geared my main to what I wanted, I really lost the incentive to do so for any future characters.

ANet is trying to walk a tight-rope between those that want progression and those that don’t. That is why we are not seeing large stat increases in Ascended gear. It is to keep the difference small. This is also why we are seeing the gear available in multiple ways. Whether it is a good idea for a company to try to cater to as many demographics as possible is debatable. However, most game developers seem to do so.

What I expect going forward is more powerful infusions. The current infusions are blue, which is the 2nd of 6 tiers in gear. I don’t know if this is going to please gear progressionists or not, but I expect — as with everything — it will please some and not others. Regardless, whatever comes this will not make it into the game quickly. We all have our pet wishes, we’ve all had to wait.

Cheers.

What you’re asking for is a massive amount of repeatable game content that is good enough to make you log on again and again. That’s the MMO nirvana. Until then we have to make do with some sort of character advancement to keep us interested.

my only problem with ascended gear is the incredible length of time required to obtain them. i don’t feel like doing 700 dailies so i can gear my alts.

i don’t think that’s fair. sure the guy that plays 20 min a night can keep up, but is that really fair? you’re punishing the people that play more to cater to the uber casuals. in the end everyone loses.

Stooperdale.3560:

What you’re asking for is a massive amount of repeatable game content that is good enough to make you log on again and again. That’s the MMO nirvana. Until then we have to make do with some sort of character advancement to keep us interested.

Well it’s called a sandbox mmo, but people tend to lack the imagination to set their own goals. And devs tend to not give people tools to make their own content.

I saw a poll on ascended gear and stats progression. I’m quite surprise on how most people don’t like it. And actually very few think it’s good for the game.

You can actually google it I believe there is like almost 1000 people voting? I think like 18% like it 70% don’t like it, the other can go either way or don’t care.

The reason why you see people saying “This game is not for you” is simply because, well, this game is not for you.

GW2 was advertised as not having a gear treadmill, and the gear progression would be aesthetic only. So, if you´re not ok with this, that leaves you with no other option then to find another game that satisfies your desire for statistical gear progression – instead of trying to change one of the core principles of GW2.

I agree that this game should be less dedication-dependant, I mean, if I can’t play for a month I’m short of 30 laurels.

But I totally disagree with GW2 needing to be a casual game.
I want esport PvP and hardmode PvE. This isn’t a game for 4 years olds.
Without challenge and skillbased-ness this game is doomed, it needs them.

So I’m all for giving casual a chance to get back on track with the laurels and other stuff, but I’m totally against turning GW2 into Hello Kitty Online.

I cant fully agree. I think the guild mission system is fun. I am a progression type player and its a progression type system. Ye, technically u could unlock guild bounty instantly, but not guild trek or any of the others. Having a whole lot of money to spend only gets you so far because of merits. Plus, most guilds dont have that money. My guild of 500 people just now got trek, and we had to spend nearly all our influence. To reduce the build time of guild trek by 25 percent it cost 125k influence which isnt feasible in the eyes of anyone. My entire guild who is 20 percent active, casual and hardcore alike, really enjoy guild mission. The guild commendations are the best part. Some rewards are kittenty but others are worth working towards. Plus you stated laurels as if they were a grind to get? Seriously I think you have no clue of the true meaning of grind. Playing other MMO’s I can tell you the grind in this game is very little compared to others. The only serious grind is for legendaries which isnt for everyone. The one thing I think this game needs is more lore immersion. Dynamic events do very little justice to this games lore. There is so much lore and yet I feel kept in the shadows without a traditional questing system. Tasks are nice, but a superficial replacement and they could do better. Make a further quest progression after tasks that is optional, so the people who really do want to know more about that part of the zone can.