When gw1 players heard there were going to be 80 levels not 20 I said “that’s fine”.
When players heard boosts were going to be in the cash shop I said “that’s fine”.
When players noticed that everything was one time use and soulbound I said “that’s fine”.
It’s not fine this time arenanet. It’s not fine this time because it is a complete departure from all of the answers you gave us over the years. All of the videos you made, the AMAs you did on reddit, the interviews you gave at gamescoms.
So before everyone loses it on me for being some kind of ungrateful, anti-wow, person who “doesn’t get it”…. I get it. Let me clear some misconceptions:
This is NOTHING like infusions or spectral agony from gw1. Anyone who says they’re the same has outed themselves as having never played gw1. Infusions and spectral agony in gw1 were a storyline plot point. *You’re dying in 1 shot to everything * get infused *everything back to normal.
The gear stats are not content. New bosses are content. New dynamic events are content. New dungeons and pvp maps and skins and quests and recipes are all new content. We LOVE new content. We are more than happy to funnel $ into gems for new content. Gear tier stats are not content.
Having never played LOTRO I cannot be certain, but quite a few LOTRO players say agony closely mirrors the radiance mechanic which drove off players and was eventually removed. It certainly seems that an artificial barrier doesn’t add any fun. If a players skill ceiling is higher they should go farther. Making gear mandatory as stated on both blog posts now removes skillful play as the sole decisive factor.
I don’t mind gear progression games. Lots of games do this well. Almost every other MMO already does this to some extent. Some do it better than others. Every MMO is planned out with gear as one of the main focuses. In the case of GW2, the focus was to make a flat final tier. When you cast aside that plan, so much that uses it as a foundation becomes shaky. PVP and PVE no longer have anything in common. WvW becomes a gated entry if you want to be at peak efficiency. PvE becomes unbalanced (ursan blessing anyone?) for high end difficult content.
We can’t trust you. More than any specific small detail or stat change is this. It feels like the ship is listing without anyone at the wheel, rocking in whichever way the waves tell it at that second. Without someone with conviction saying “this stays, this goes” and sticking to the manifesto and the vision you sold us all on we have no confidence. Why should we? This game is less than 3 months old, a huge success, and the devs have already voted no confidence in the system and the players by changing basic and core mechanics to the same ones they decried.
So there you have it. We don’t hate gear progression; but we don’t feel this game needed it especially after so heavy handed ant-gear rhetoric from anet. And we’re disappointed.
If anet came out and said “Hey look, we’re SO confident that you will love this gear treadmill that we will offer (50%? 25%? gems only?) money back to everyone who wants to close out their account after we introduce it” then at least it would show they had some confidence in this system themselves….. but they don’t.