Guild Wars 2

The idea of grinding in this game is a joke. There is no grind, only people that trick themselves into thinking they actually need an item, when in fact they don’t.

You call it grind because for some reason or another, you think that in order to play the game you have to have this maxed out piece of gear.

Content is not gated here, the only argument you could even make on gated content is FoTM after ~15 and agony resist, which by that time you should have gotten a drop/be able to craft/buy to continue on. Grind is non-existent in the traditional sense, all it is now are people thinking they have to have an item.

Play the game to enjoy it, not to have another job or think that in order to be competitive you need this gear, because you don’t.

Once they introduced even minor vertical stat increases, the fear (and justifiably so) is that they will continue to add stat increases.

They said yesterday that they intend to do this.

Roargathor.2743:

Age of Conan went through a similar change with the introduction of the 1.05 patch. Before the patch, item stats had no effect on PvP. Once they revamped the gear, the game went on life support ever since. The same will happen if Anet follows suit. Mark my words.

My memory of Conan is a bit different. Life support was started when people realized that there was zilch content after 20ish and it was basically mob grind to max level.

Avatar.1923:

the stat progression, as mild as it is, is in opposition to their original intent.

and the reason why it changed, is still unknown to us;
most players like this ?
somebody forced them ?

hard to say.

Its not unknown they stated it very clearly this week in the interview. They said they will not be catering to just one specific type of players, but will focus on filling both player types expectations.

It really blows my mind how many people fail to gather and read information. They are not marketing and catering to people that want no progression they are not marketing and catering to people that want progression. They are finding a middle ground to satisfy both crowds.

Perhaps a little patience is in order from the community so see how it further developes…. or is that too much to ask?

Perhaps a little patience is in order from the community so see how it further developes…. or is that too much to ask?

Too much to ask. They’ve already told us how they’re going to further develop this. They’re going to continue rolling out new ascended pieces for different slots, and add more ways for people to obtain them. They’re going to slowly roll out each slot.

What this means is periodically, I’ll have to grind out each new piece of gear if I want to stay on a level playing field. If I choose not to participate in this, I will be significantly behind everyone else by the time they roll everything out.

When they have rolled out an ascended piece for every slot, they have three options:

A) Create another new tier (aka: neverending gear grind)
B) Raise the level cap so they can recycle the ascended tier 10 levels higher (thus invalidating all the work that went into the first set of ascended gear you put together; aka: neverending gear and level grind)
C) Stop there (why would they decide to create ascended in the first place if this was their plan?)

I’d love to hope they pick C, but the original decision to create the ascended tier tells me they’re not going to.

6 years development just to end up like another wow clone. well done.

IndigoSundown.5419:

Reaver.9256:

I can go buy the best gear in the game for about 1.5 gold on the market if I want with no grind whatsoever.

Not even close anymore. The only exotic armor or weapons that are under 3g each are those with +condition damage, or maybe the odd MF piece. If you want Knight’s, Cleric’s or Berserker, be prepared to pay 3.5g and up.

Still amazingly cheap. Had 12 gold on my warrior before I hit 80…..

Reaver.9256:

IndigoSundown.5419:

Reaver.9256:

I can go buy the best gear in the game for about 1.5 gold on the market if I want with no grind whatsoever.

Not even close anymore. The only exotic armor or weapons that are under 3g each are those with +condition damage, or maybe the odd MF piece. If you want Knight’s, Cleric’s or Berserker, be prepared to pay 3.5g and up.

Still amazingly cheap. Had 12 gold on my warrior before I hit 80…..

6 X 3.5g = 21 gold… better go grind that 9 gold bro
and that’s not even including jewelery which is far more expensive
and the runes + sigils and the only useful one’s cost a mint best get your farmwars 2 on

Hmm…my reply here isn’t intended to go against any of the opinions here but just wanted to share my experience so far with regards to the Manifesto in Guild Wars 2. I’m currently taking my time levelling up my only character which is still a level 71 Elementalist and I’m still excited and confident that I can head to Orr soon at level 80. I’m still having fun at the Fractals of the Mists and the other dungeons and I’m still having fun playing with siege weapons and killing enemy players with my guild mates in World vs World (especially when I killed enemies that had legendaries or exotics). All these while still wearing Blue/Green rarity equipments (Don’t know what they’re called, yeah I’m a noob at this). Never have I felt once that I needed to drag my way to the higher levels with the best equipment there is to have fun doing all those things I have mentioned (like my experience with playing Maple Story for 6-8 hours to get the 5% experience increase at level 50, it may be the problem with how/where I grind but still I was trying to fight monsters that what I considered as challenging due to the damage they do). Nor do I feel inferior when I’m going against other players in World vs World. So I hope that my experience can give some insight to all of you.

The manifesto came out in 2010 and was the start of their discussions about how they intended to make a “unique” MMO. In 2011 and 2012, they explained in more detail the core design principles of GW2.

There are so many interviews, blogs, articles and videos in which the Arenanet team make their positions clear about gear, end game, etc. Below are just two examples from 2012.

First, Colin Johnason, Lead Game Designer explains their position that max stat gear should exists and new gear should only be differentiated based on looks.
6/19/12
http://www.arena.net/blog/is-it-fun-colin-johanson-on-how-arenanet-measures-success

“This metric of success impacted a lot of our early content-related design decisions for Guild Wars 2. Some examples include:

Fun impacts loot collection. The rarest items in the game are not more powerful than other items, so you don’t need them to be the best. The rarest items have unique looks to help your character feel that sense of accomplishment, but it’s not required to play the game. We don’t need to make mandatory gear treadmills, we make all of it optional, so those who find it fun to chase this prestigious gear can do so, but those who don’t are just as powerful and get to have fun too."

Second, Eric Flannum and Colin Johanson discuss end game, gear, etc.
7/14/2012
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yjxvj2I_CCA

They make it clear in the video that Exotics will have the max stats. They then explain that Legendaries will be the same as Exotics in terms of stats. They state that the only difference will be that legendaries will have cool looks and be harder to obtain.

rchu.8945:

Mackdose.6504:

Bluebird.1890:

This is not becoming World of Warcraft. It is becoming a nice niche in between World of Warcraft, and GW1, where vertical progression exists for those who want to experience it, and can be safely ignored by those of us who just want to play around in all portions of the game.

This. A thousand times.

This is the MMO I wanted, the fantasy game I wanted, I co-op game I wanted, the PvP game I wanted, the siege warfare I wanted.

I like knowing that there’s another 1% increase in character power just around the corner for me to achieve if i want it and if i don’t, then the 1% increase won’t keep me from participating in all of the content available.

that’s the problem, why should PvP / WvW players suffer the 1% stats difference just because they dont want to do any dungeons?

So now you are suggesting that those of us who do not want to dungeon grind just skip content. I heard that same statement made many times about raids in WOW. And yes, I did avoid doing the same ones over and over. Hated some so much that I eventually avoided all raids. Then I realized that I was supporting a game that I did not play all the content in. I finally just left and have not looked back at WOW in 4 years.

Quite biased original post if you ask me, it clearly selects things that were hardly mentioned in the entire thread of 200+ pages, while other quotes which clearly spoke of horizontal progression and have shown significant proof are entirely ignored for the sake of attempting to build a strong argument.

dalendria.3762:

The manifesto came out in 2010 and was the start of their discussions about how they intended to make a “unique” MMO. In 2011 and 2012, they explained in more detail the core design principles of GW2.

There are so many interviews, blogs, articles and videos in which the Arenanet team make their positions clear about gear, end game, etc. Below are just two examples from 2012.

First, Colin Johnason, Lead Game Designer explains their position that max stat gear should exists and new gear should only be differentiated based on looks.
6/19/12
http://www.arena.net/blog/is-it-fun-colin-johanson-on-how-arenanet-measures-success

“This metric of success impacted a lot of our early content-related design decisions for Guild Wars 2. Some examples include:

Fun impacts loot collection. The rarest items in the game are not more powerful than other items, so you don’t need them to be the best. The rarest items have unique looks to help your character feel that sense of accomplishment, but it’s not required to play the game. We don’t need to make mandatory gear treadmills, we make all of it optional, so those who find it fun to chase this prestigious gear can do so, but those who don’t are just as powerful and get to have fun too."

Second, Eric Flannum and Colin Johanson discuss end game, gear, etc.
7/14/2012
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yjxvj2I_CCA

They make it clear in the video that Exotics will have the max stats. They then explain that Legendaries will be the same as Exotics in terms of stats. They state that the only difference will be that legendaries will have cool looks and be harder to obtain.

I totally agree. They totally went against these quotes, and the best part is, now that it started, and since “all kinds of progression are important to them”, what do you think they will add, once the full set of ascended items is implemented?

And also, could we stop talking about numbers when the real matter is the very idea of vertical progression? If a 1% stats increase is so insignificant to you, then why should there even be a stat increase?

dalendria.3762:

The manifesto came out in 2010 and was the start of their discussions about how they intended to make a “unique” MMO. In 2011 and 2012, they explained in more detail the core design principles of GW2.

There are so many interviews, blogs, articles and videos in which the Arenanet team make their positions clear about gear, end game, etc. Below are just two examples from 2012.

First, Colin Johnason, Lead Game Designer explains their position that max stat gear should exists and new gear should only be differentiated based on looks.
6/19/12
http://www.arena.net/blog/is-it-fun-colin-johanson-on-how-arenanet-measures-success

“This metric of success impacted a lot of our early content-related design decisions for Guild Wars 2. Some examples include:

Fun impacts loot collection. The rarest items in the game are not more powerful than other items, so you don’t need them to be the best. The rarest items have unique looks to help your character feel that sense of accomplishment, but it’s not required to play the game. We don’t need to make mandatory gear treadmills, we make all of it optional, so those who find it fun to chase this prestigious gear can do so, but those who don’t are just as powerful and get to have fun too."

Second, Eric Flannum and Colin Johanson discuss end game, gear, etc.
7/14/2012
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yjxvj2I_CCA

They make it clear in the video that Exotics will have the max stats. They then explain that Legendaries will be the same as Exotics in terms of stats. They state that the only difference will be that legendaries will have cool looks and be harder to obtain.

And these things are why I am silently in favor of the “what the hell possessed them to do this” camp.

One man being put in the line of fire to explain why there is gear progression and why it was introduced so haphazardly in a game that actively promoted that it didn’t have any after an outcry of such questions all over every medium GW2 is talked about in saying that “no really, we always planned this, but I guess we should have done it pre-launch” is not going to quiet down the people who feel their trust was misplaced, because the exact answer I just quoted is only half of an answer. It does not elaborate on why they chose not to add these items pre-launch and in so doing leaves room to doubt the truthfulness of the answer itself. There was no sign they ever had any intention of doing this until the Lost Shores event was announced.

The “what the hell were they thinking” reaction is entirely predictable and reasonable, if not always well-spoken.

xiede.8543:

Roargathor.2743:

Age of Conan went through a similar change with the introduction of the 1.05 patch. Before the patch, item stats had no effect on PvP. Once they revamped the gear, the game went on life support ever since. The same will happen if Anet follows suit. Mark my words.

My memory of Conan is a bit different. Life support was started when people realized that there was zilch content after 20ish and it was basically mob grind to max level.

There were many issues with that game early on. The biggest one being that they could not deliver what they advertised. Broken sieges, lack of content, and bugs up the kitten #8230;.. The money heads at Funcom blamed the original vision for the game’s failings and demanded they change direction to the more conventional MMO path. Introducing the gear treadmill. The game currently has 10 players.. The majority of the player-base was PvP focused. They all left. Anet should learn from this. Don’t sell your game to the PvP crowd, then fail at giving us what we were promised. Don’t cave into the wow bunch, because they are just as fickle and will just go back to wow anyway. Stay the course. Introduce Guildwars as a pvp option (guild vs guild). Improve and polish WvW (normalize item stats in wvw). You’ll keep more players and make more money that way.

Don’t care about the stat progression, it’s not necessary as the resists are enough, but if the grind for them is too much (still haven’t mustered up the strength to log on) then I’m pretty sure that like most of the endgame grind outside of pvp, I’ll just not bother logging on again.

And to those claiming “All the grind is imaginary” when the only aesthetic progression you can make in the game at endgame feels like a grind, by repeating the same process over and over again even on a small random rotation (as is my understanding of FOTM) then it’s grind.

Example:

I play pvp for a bit of mindless fun, but I find the class disparity and issues too much, changes to this are slow and somewhat irritating as my class gets bashed (thief) quite a bit, because of niche problematic builds. leaving me wondering where the give and take is, “oooh shadow trap changed, I’m trembling with excitement…”

This doesn’t mean I hate, love or care about the PVP obsessives, because I’m a pve player at heart and it suits me fine not to, the divide between those paradigms in this mmo should be in my honest opinion further enforced and strengthened, heck yes there should be legendary weapons in the game, but make a pvp themed legendary and a pve themed one based on dungeons, make one based on WPVP and one based on crafting and trading, heck MAKE MULTIPLE ONES FOR EACH ASPECT!

But when I get to a game that claims “we don’t like grinding” and the void at the end options are explore and run around like a headless chicken finding viewpoints which can be fun but eventually it gets old fast if it’s not your thing, start wpvping and join the zergs of pointlessness. Play dungeons and grind the same things over and over on “partially” gated content (20 tokens….yay) that you sometimes have to spam in chat for an hour to do, and then usually have to unlock like CoF, that might be bugged even (lol arah) OR to grind mats so I can craft….nothing… perhaps weapons for those to throw into the forge because they’re crazy and like to see billions of greatswords burn in an effort to get a precursor… and ultimately one has to ask yourself, do I find this fun? and should this be the way it is if it’s so anti-fun?

I know I looked at how the legendaries were crafted in the first week or so looking for possible long term goals outside alts, and my first impression was “wow, that doesn’t seem very legendary, unless grinding ad tedium is considered a legendary quality”

ALSO! what’s with this weird demand that the game be based solely around WPVP, just because it’s one of the most ambitious and original aspects in GW2 in terms of scale of what they’re doing, does not make it the only part of the game worth saving, or what they should focus on, look at WoW’s pvp, and the absolute travesty that can be at times, besides the hybrid gametype that wpvp is should be improved by tying it more into the guild system and have the activities of the guild members that are NOT participating in it, but doing other stuff fuel the efforts of the wpvp’ers

All WPVP results in currently is a gold sink… one of too many in this game

“No boring grind… We don’t want players to grind in GW2”

You got me good with that one!

STOp crying I LOVE THE gear progresion go play BARBY if u like to play for comsetics

Distaste.4801:

Mackdose.6504:

Logun.2349:

Bluebird.1890:

No. What we can blame people for is not having some patience after the apology is made to give them some time to try and fix the mistakes they obviously want to correct. We can also blame them for blowing the mistakes completely out of proportion to make it seem like the current status of the game is grind FOTM or you will be weak in comparison to someone who has grinded FOTM.

Neither of which is correct.

True perhaps, but if players didn’t ring the alarm bells now “loud and hard” the live team may have stayed on course to turn this into another endgame dungeon grind game, since they seemed to be oblivious to the impact this is having on the rest of the game.

Arena Net made a lot of statements on their game design philosophies over the years. I suggest watching a few of their developer and GDC Panels and you might get why people felt like this patch stepped on some of their core design values and why people were shocked to see this at all never mind 3 months after launch.

I did watch the GDC panels. Religiously. I still don’t feel betrayed, or understand why other people do.

Because

A. They said they wanted to make a game with less grinding-> Didn’t happen.
B. Gear progression would be skins->Introduction of ascended gear means they lied
C. Their continued stance that going forward they will have vertical progression that drastically alters how this game will be played.

I followed the game. I read and watched everything I could. I understood that top statted lvl 80 gear was supposed to be easy to get and things from really hard dungeons were purely cosmetic. At release this was fairly true although exotics were still a bit of a grind for most people to obtain. Now suddenly that is all changing. So either I missed an interview somewhere along with probably a million other people, they always planned this but failed to inform people, or they just started tacking on ideas to keep people playing. I bought this game on the premice that it wouldn’t be a gear treadmill like WoW, I’ve done that grind and I’ll never do it again. You wonder why people are angry? They bought something they thought and were told was different, yet suddenly it’s changing so it isn’t any different at all.

Well said, that is the best way i could have explained it as well, i wanted to play Guildwars 2 Casually as i played the first one casually, not grind my life away on yet another clone of WoW, I grind to 80, i grind in dungeons over and over to get gear, i grind to get mats to craft, i really really have to grind for money, i dont get these “there is no Grind in Guildwars 2” people half this game is boring grind at this time.

I expected more content maps, world expansions, map completions rewards better rewards all over, more story quests etc and great “looking” gear not this stat based stuff we are seeing now.

If i wanted to play the gear grinding game i’d not have purchased Guildwars 2, i’d have bought WoW or some other MMO that lacks any thought other than new stats every few months…

Namu.5712:

Avatar.1923:

the stat progression, as mild as it is, is in opposition to their original intent.

and the reason why it changed, is still unknown to us;
most players like this ?
somebody forced them ?

hard to say.

Its not unknown they stated it very clearly this week in the interview. They said they will not be catering to just one specific type of players, but will focus on filling both player types expectations.

It really blows my mind how many people fail to gather and read information. They are not marketing and catering to people that want no progression they are not marketing and catering to people that want progression. They are finding a middle ground to satisfy both crowds.

Perhaps a little patience is in order from the community so see how it further developes…. or is that too much to ask?

Its not about reading comphrension its about, “why should we believe a company that has displayed a lack of integity and will lie, cheat and steal”. There was a reason why the man who cried wolf ended up being ate by the wolf.

If that middle ground involves stat progression how is that compromising to the player that wants horizontal progression, to me its caving to the vertical progression argument and that is not a compromise.

Now the manifesto mean nothing i suppose, its really useless to talk about it, we have our reply, so move along.
Im one of those stopped to play because i dont really feel all the FOTM\AGONY\ASCENDED a right path to follow, there was a lot of things to do before a move like this

• this game was supposed about skill, and building (the game take all the things you like from GW) but for now, our build choice are poor, we have something like 3 or 4 effective build per class.
• bug and balance, because in a game like this continue to develop new content, without fix the old core of the game, its like add more wood on a fire, if you add a lot of wood, maybe you dont see the fire, but under, its still burning.
• add cash shop variety, because its poor, nothing else to say.

and im worried about the implementation method of this ascended stuff too.

with an implementation piece by piece, builders cant program their equipment, they have to wait the next implementation, and hope that some piece have the right stats for the build, and useless to say that play differents build, it can become really hard. (and most of ppl use at least 2 build, one for pve, and one for WvW)
Its really frustrating i have to say.

And another real problem for me is the abosolescence of old content like runes and sigils, and ok they say they are going to think about it, but when? and they tell something to us before let us buy useless things on TP? or simply they will follow the same rule to say something only a couple of days before the release?

as i said, now for me vertical vs horizontal progression is a closed question they want to follow both, and for me is a real mistake, but im not the developer…
but the things i have illustrated on this post, are still open wounds.

You couldn’t have posted this in one of the several hundred posts about ascended gear or the manifesto? Your post is a special and unique snow flake that deserves more attention than everyone else’s who is posting in those threads?

No one at ANet is going to tell us what really happened. While statements can be spun stating that the manifesto was this or that, their pre-launch PR created the impression that Exotic was max stat gear. The Flannum/Johanson video linked by Dalendria may not be the manifesto, but it is definitive in creating an impression.

So what happened? ANet found that a perhaps significant percentage of people who bought the game didn’t give a kitten about all of the things Gw2 had to do at endgame because these things did not come with a character-progression loot pinata. Now they are trying to please everyone, an endeavor that every company in the business tries to do, usually resulting in pleasing fewer folks than if they stuck to one approach.

Next development? If/when they roll out ways to get the Ascended rings and back pieces by means other than FotM, those who did the dungeon to get them will complain that their accomplishment has been devalued by people looking for something for nothing. Another option would be to make each other subset of the rest of the Ascended pieces available in different portions of the game. Want rings/back, do the dungeon. Want Earrings and Amulet, do Wv3. Want … etc. This would of course anger anyone who is not a completionist.

I find it a pity that there are so many more things to do in GW2 endgame than in any other MMO at launch I’ve ever seen, but those things were largely ignored because of lack of reward. Well, what’s done is done. At least the game does not have a sub.

In WoW or Rift you often find that you have to grind your life away in boredom to get to the really cool stuff. Sometimes that even means waiting months of no content updates all while paying a monthly fee for some reason.

This is what they mean by not having to grind to get to the best things in the game. It was a painful and tedious process that was like going on a hunger strike imo. In Guild Wars 2 they don’t do this to you. You get to experience awesome things like huge bosses even at low level. You get to see high quality content at any level range rather than seeing the very best only at max level.

This doesn’t mean that there isn’t a grind, or vertical progression. There obviously is vertical progression with gear otherwise all gear would be the same tier with no stats on it. You have to have higher level items to be able to complete the higher level areas of the game with ease.

One of the biggest annoyances I have with many of the posts upset with ArenaNet, is that they do not even know what the word LIE means.

Even IF way back when, they said something would work one way and now it doesn’t, it does NOT mean you were lied to.

Lie:
a false statement made with deliberate intent to deceive; an intentional untruth; a falsehood.
So unless you really believe when they put out a given statement, it was their intent at that time to be untruthful, it is not a lie.

Changing game design philosophies mid swing is a bad idea. My guess is they are scrambling to recover finances and are grabbing at straws. The loot kittens (those who need item stat progression to be motivated to log in) have always proven to be a loyal bunch, even if it’s the current minority of players, it’s where they believe the money will come from in the long run. It will kill the game for most of us though. Don’t say we didn’t warn you.

KillSlash.6148:

One of the biggest annoyances I have with many of the posts upset with ArenaNet, is that they do not even know what the word LIE means.

Even IF way back when, they said something would work one way and now it doesn’t, it does NOT mean you were lied to.

Lie:
a false statement made with deliberate intent to deceive; an intentional untruth; a falsehood.
So unless you really believe when they put out a given statement, it was their intent at that time to be untruthful, it is not a lie.

Either we accept Chris Whiteside’s statement that this was planned all along, in which case they lied then, or it wasn’t planned all along and they are lying now. Either way, they lied. There is one thing a company can do to instantly lose all respect in my eyes and that is lie. I don’t like being lied to.

Tolmos.8395:

“Our games aren’t about preparing to have fun, or about grinding for a future fun reward. Our games are designed to be fun from moment to moment.”

If that was true they would have added an LFD tool so that we could go out into the world and actually play the game while looking for dungeon groups instead of standing around in LA/other towns for an hour beforehand screaming “LFG LFG LFG” or “LFM LFM LFM”

You can’t pug explorable dungeons in this game. All explorable dungeons must be done with experienced, dedicated and coordinated groups of people, and all of them take a substantial amount of time as well. This means there is no need for a LFG system in the first place.

Colin Johanson

The rarest items in the game are not more powerful than other items, so you don’t need them to be the best. The rarest items have unique looks to help your character feel that sense of accomplishment, but it’s not required to play the game. We don’t need to make mandatory gear treadmills, we make all of it optional, so those who find it fun to chase this prestigious gear can do so, but those who don’t are just as powerful and get to have fun too.

http://www.arena.net/blog/is-it-fun-colin-johanson-on-how-arenanet-measures-success

Just quoting this again to make sure the OP gets the message that he’s wrong. This statement explicitly states that the rarest items (ascended) are not more powerful than other items (yes, they are).

I’m sure you could come up with some way to deliberately misread it to suggest they didn’t say that but at that point you’re being willfully ignorant.

They knew the people reading this stuff were mostly GW1 fans and what they were describing was the GW1 gear system. You could take those words and apply them to GW1 perfectly. They knew full well that everyone would read it as the game having a gear plateau with horizontal progression like GW1. There were countless discussions about this on forums, including the official forums during beta, and not once did any dev correct anyone.

I honestly feel sorry for you defending ANet at this point. Regardless of what you actually think of the changes are you really so blind as to not see this for the obvious deception that it is?

Roargathor.2743:

Changing game design philosophies mid swing is a bad idea. My guess is they are scrambling to recover finances and are grabbing at straws. The loot kittens (those who need item stat progression to be motivated to log in) have always proven to be a loyal bunch, even if it’s the current minority of players, it’s where they believe the money will come from in the long run. It will kill the game for most of us though. Don’t say we didn’t warn you.

Given GW1’s uh… relatively small playerbase with a similar purchase price then F2P setup I really doubt they’re scrambling to recover finances, especially when I know of at least a couple vocal people (which generally means there were plenty of silent people) who were willing to put down $50 on gems for Halloween items. They probably turned a nice profit with their Thanksgiving Weekend sales too. This is with a playerbase at least a couple times the size of GW1.

So either they really did lie to/mislead us (pre-launch or now, the conflicting information heavily implies it has happened regardless) or they think the vocal minority (talking extreme minority here, there were more people opposing the idea of stat progression than in favor of it every time it came up before Lost Shores was announced) on the forums is somehow representative of the much more massive number of players in-game which is silly and I hope they aren’t doing that.

ANET needs to get its PR and Marketing acts together lest the ride turn down a bumpy road.

arcaneclarity.5283:

KillSlash.6148:

One of the biggest annoyances I have with many of the posts upset with ArenaNet, is that they do not even know what the word LIE means.

Even IF way back when, they said something would work one way and now it doesn’t, it does NOT mean you were lied to.

Lie:
a false statement made with deliberate intent to deceive; an intentional untruth; a falsehood.
So unless you really believe when they put out a given statement, it was their intent at that time to be untruthful, it is not a lie.

Either we accept Chris Whiteside’s statement that this was planned all along, in which case they lied then, or it wasn’t planned all along and they are lying now. Either way, they lied. There is one thing a company can do to instantly lose all respect in my eyes and that is lie. I don’t like being lied to.

Ascended was planned all along? I don’t remember that part of it. I remember, “It was not specifically designed before launch. However the concept of progression rewards with a shallow curve bridging other rewards was. Hope that makes sense.” Vague as kitten in some respects, but clear in others. There was always going to be some vertical progression in the game (there were 5 tiers of level 80 gear, now there are 6), but that statement tells me that the current implementation of Ascended gear was not intended all along.

If you want to hang onto the idea that they lied, I cannot stop you, but it might be better to look at all the facts after a while, once their ideas for making the new gear more accessible are out, and people have cooled down.

Alberel Leonhart.9640:

Colin Johanson

The rarest items in the game are not more powerful than other items, so you don’t need them to be the best. The rarest items have unique looks to help your character feel that sense of accomplishment, but it’s not required to play the game. We don’t need to make mandatory gear treadmills, we make all of it optional, so those who find it fun to chase this prestigious gear can do so, but those who don’t are just as powerful and get to have fun too.

http://www.arena.net/blog/is-it-fun-colin-johanson-on-how-arenanet-measures-success

Just quoting this again to make sure the OP gets the message that he’s wrong. This statement explicitly states that the rarest items (ascended) are not more powerful than other items (yes, they are).

Actually, the rarest items are legendaries, and those will not be more powerful than Ascended will be. Of course, we took that gap to be between Exotic and Legendary. You can give them a chance to fix the Ascended accessibility, or you can uninstall and never give ANet the time of day, again. The first option might result in your being able to enjoy playing a game you are obviously passionate about. The second will mean you won’t, but you’ll get to be “right” about how ANet “betrayed” you.

So OP, this is the same manifesto that states they will not make a “grindy” game, the same manifesto and dev blogs that state “we will reward the thousands of hours played”, that the manifesto you are referring to? Those are direct quotes.

The game currently is GRINDY, is a FARMFEST, is a mathmatical oddity of 250 rare whatever that takes, what are the series of words i am looking for? Grinding and farming and rote action does not reflect the manifesto, the game is not fun, but it is pretty and has some great music.

What is new or innovative about gw2 in regards to this? Instead of standing on a soapbox defending the “Manifesto” you need to hold the devs accountable verse what has been released, after that, you can give them kudos for the few good things like the artwork and sound.

They have indeed done a fair share of good things, but the bad still far outweighs the good. NO team lead is going to tell a consumer with common sense, “Well, we knew this would cause grief and yet we released it anyway and in fact had nothing prepared in the long or short term to address it other than our patented statement of protection which is We see our mistakes and look forward to correcting them moving forward”, words to that effect.

The manifesto was made for a reason, not to give plausible deniability to the developers in these cases. The devs need to be held to task and to standard. Manifesto aside it seems that alot of developer choices are not thought out or planned properly, my basis for this? The last 3 months and to many “moving forward” statements and dev apologies.

Ganzo.5079:

• this game was supposed about skill, and building (the game take all the things you like from GW) but for now, our build choice are poor, we have something like 3 or 4 effective build per class.
• bug and balance, because in a game like this continue to develop new content, without fix the old core of the game, its like add more wood on a fire, if you add a lot of wood, maybe you dont see the fire, but under, its still burning.
• add cash shop variety, because its poor, nothing else to say.

Many classes after the plethora of nerfs really have no extra builds we’re being herded into the berserker only setup where all anyone worries about is burst damage and it’s really not the thief that has the most burst it’s the warrior. Hear all the time about how the scout classes have the highest dps, well sorry but the math points elsewhere. I guess they want us all to reroll berserker 2 handed warriors at the rate this is going then everyone will actually be playing on equal terms without the need to rebalance.

Want to see the imbalance, check the engineer class. The bombs/grenades/pistol shots all do weak damage compared to the 1 handed abilities of the other classes yet we’re supposedly the top dps? yeah right. On top of that they make smaller the already tiny blast radius of the explosives and our pistols don’t shoot any faster then our rifles. Watch ANY western, you’ll see why that’s an issue. (it’s an issue for pistols on thieves as well) Delays and small radius problems cause dps loss. Poison and bleeding hardly do anything compared to burning. So now we are pigeonholed into a single viable spec for anything. Pow/Pre/% crit dam On everyone. Now that they did that all of the prices for this armor in the TP have skyrocketed because everyone knows it’s the only armor to get.

It’s really crazy that a game that was advertised to offer more choices now has only 1. 1 dungeon for progression or drops of any worth, 1 viable spec, 1 thing to do end game.

But I am waiting to see if they make good on their promises to fix and bring back horizontal progression, with multiple repairs to open world content, drops, mf, removal of dr, etc. so this game can return to what it was at launch.

Yeah. I have the same sentiments as TC.
Some players are pushing their own expectations and interpretations of the game upon others. The manifesto didn’t claim that they are going to make the game with no vertical progression. They didn’t claim they’re not going to put a new tier.

If players realised, the game is already a vertical progression from Lv1 to 80. Yet, they’ve not realised it. They expect a game to be like console rpgs where they reach the cap and gain favourite skins. Then feel like they ended a game, so they could put back the game in the shelf and stop playing for months. Ps3/xbox can afford that, but mmorpgs can’t.

Some gw1 players said that gw2 should be like gw1, but there’s no such promises that they’re going to make gw2 a replica of gw1. They are approaching to make it an entire new game concept. Please remember that gw1 is a CORPG and gw2 is a MMORPG. Gw1 is full of instances which horizontal progression is recommended. Gw2 is full of open maps and dynamic events which they can’t afford players to every players to put back the game in the shelf and stop playing for months.

Players are misinterpreting “no grind for gears to experience the fun content”. This means higher tier gears are optional. Gears are not content, but rewards and bonus. You are able to experience all the fun content without the best gears in the game. This is the true interpretation of the manifesto. If you say, you enjoy mmorpgs where you get max stats (when it’s optional and you can already experience all fun contents with any gears), this means you are actually fond of chasing gears inside your heart. That’s the truth.

The Manifesto was only the start of the Blogs that Anet did. This one by Colin Johanson specifically talks about gear progression.

Is it Fun? Colin Johanson on How ArenaNet Measures Success
By Colin Johanson June 19th, 2012

It’s easy to tell if a subscription-based game is hitting its metric of success, you simply look at the number of subscriptions; fun is much harder to define. To accomplish this, we’ve had to fundamentally redefine our development process of content in Guild Wars 2 around this concept of fun, and it starts with asking a very simple question that surprisingly isn’t asked that often in game development: “Are you having fun?”

This metric of success impacted a lot of our early content-related design decisions for Guild Wars 2. Some examples include:

•Fun impacts loot collection. The rarest items in the game are not more powerful than other items, so you don’t need them to be the best. The rarest items have unique looks to help your character feel that sense of accomplishment, but it’s not required to play the game. We don’t need to make mandatory gear treadmills, we make all of it optional, so those who find it fun to chase this prestigious gear can do so, but those who don’t are just as powerful and get to have fun too.

•Fun impacts decisions. Every time you finish a dungeon you get tokens you can trade in for reward items that you want, rather than having a small chance of getting it as a drop, because it’s more fun to always get rewarded for finishing with something you want to have!

Now, would someone like to tell me how I misinterpreted that to mean something other than no vertical gear progression? Would someone like to explain to me how vertical gear progression was always a part of the plan? I read everything that came out from Anet prior to purchase, including this. It’s still on the Blog site.

stpetemermaid.5947:

The rarest items in the game are not more powerful than other items, so you don’t need them to be the best. The rarest items have unique looks to help your character feel that sense of accomplishment, but it’s not required to play the game. We don’t need to make mandatory gear treadmills, we make all of it optional, so those who find it fun to chase this prestigious gear can do so, but those who don’t are just as powerful and get to have fun too.

“The rarest items in the game are not more powerful than other items, so you don’t need them to be the best.”

The misinterpretation is here. The rarest items in the game is only the legendary. Before 15th nov, legendary = exotic. After 15th nov, legendary = ascended. Legendary have the same stats as the other items. You don’t need legendary to be the best. You can have any tier gears and still be the best because what’s counted is your skills, not the gear. A masterwork-geared player can beat exotic-geared player in WvWvW without making 2-3 times more effort. It’s because the increase is very insignificant. Unlike other traditional mmos where 1-2 tiers above others can make you 50% stronger that’s almost impossible to win against.

“The rarest items have unique looks to help your character feel that sense of accomplishment, but it’s not required to play the game.”

You don’t need legendary tier to play all the content in the game. You also don’t need ascended tier to play all the content in the game. Imo, gw2 is the only mmorpg that allows player to have accesibility to 100% fun contents without being best-geared.

“We don’t need to make mandatory gear treadmills, we make all of it optional, so those who find it fun to chase this prestigious gear can do so”

There, it’s optional. No mandatory gear treadmills but only optional gear treadmills for those who find fun in it. If a group of players don’t find it fun, they don’t need to go for the ascended tier. If players want the optional “max-stats”, it means players actually fond of stat progression inside their hearts to crave for “max stats”.

Naoko.7096:

If players realised, the game is already a vertical progression from Lv1 to 80. Yet, they’ve not realised it.

This is is a fundamentally flawed understanding of any game. In a game where you’re never expected to go out of your way to achieve Max Level/Stats/Items/Whatever it’s valid (such as the games you talk about all of us expecting to be able to put down once we beat it) and it is only valid because there is often not much else in the way of “progression”. In an MMO where you are expected to achieve max level the number next to your character is a subconscious reward while you progress through learning the game. Vertical progress is measured by how much your character can grow once it’s done growing. What’s our natural stat cap at 80? 916 in each stat or something close to that? How much can your character grow beyond that? That is vertical progression. Exploring the world, finding new skins, doing dungeons and crafting are horizontal. They don’t affect your character’s growth beyond an experience notch on its belt (you’ll notice this much more clearly in GW2, since our characters continue to gain experience with no vertical reward for each “level” we gain beyond 80).

Gw2 is full of open maps and dynamic events which they can’t afford players to every players to put back the game in the shelf and stop playing for months.

This is actually the design philosophy of F2P games. They expect people to put the game down until they feel like playing again for as long as that takes. With all this backlash and negative criticism it would seem as though more people are going to put the game down for months and months than otherwise would have without this potential progression.

Players are misinterpreting “no grind for gears to experience the fun content”. This means higher tier gears are optional. Gears are not content, but rewards and bonus. You are able to experience all the fun content without the best gears in the game.

This is just completely untrue. I can see where you’re coming from but anything in the game that can be experienced by players is “content.” That includes higher tiers of gear. The content is supposed to be fun and we are not supposed to need the best gear to experience all of it.

Naoko.7096:

“The rarest items in the game are not more powerful than other items, so you don’t need them to be the best.”

The misinterpretation is here. The rarest items in the game is only the legendary. Before 15th nov, legendary = exotic. After 15th nov, legendary = ascended. Legendary have the same stats as the other items. You don’t need legendary to be the best. You can have any tier gears and still be the best because what’s counted is your skills, not the gear. A masterwork-geared player can beat exotic-geared player in WvWvW without making 2-3 times more effort. It’s because the increase is very insignificant. Unlike other traditional mmos where 1-2 tiers above others can make you 50% stronger that’s almost impossible to win against.

“The rarest items have unique looks to help your character feel that sense of accomplishment, but it’s not required to play the game.”

You don’t need legendary tier to play all the content in the game. You also don’t need ascended tier to play all the content in the game. Imo, gw2 is the only mmorpg that allows player to have accesibility to 100% fun contents without being best-geared.

“We don’t need to make mandatory gear treadmills, we make all of it optional, so those who find it fun to chase this prestigious gear can do so”

There, it’s optional. No mandatory gear treadmills but only optional gear treadmills for those who find fun in it. If a group of players don’t find it fun, they don’t need to go for the ascended tier. If players want the optional “max-stats”, it means players actually fond of stat progression inside their hearts to crave for “max stats”.

That’s exactly the reason why companies nowadays think they can fool their costumers. People got so used to all that “political talk” so they always find a way to justify actions by re-interpreting what was said earlier.

Especially the last part about mandatory gear treadmills is outstanding. Ascended gear in combination with the infusions are without any doubt the start of a treadmill. And Arena Net not just didn’t deny that, they also said that they will continue going down this road. They said that this is just the start of the progression. A gear treadmill is a gear treadmill, it doesn’t matter if you just call it progression, it essentially stays the same thing.

nachtnebel.9168:

Naoko.7096:

“The rarest items in the game are not more powerful than other items, so you don’t need them to be the best.”

The misinterpretation is here. The rarest items in the game is only the legendary. Before 15th nov, legendary = exotic. After 15th nov, legendary = ascended. Legendary have the same stats as the other items. You don’t need legendary to be the best. You can have any tier gears and still be the best because what’s counted is your skills, not the gear. A masterwork-geared player can beat exotic-geared player in WvWvW without making 2-3 times more effort. It’s because the increase is very insignificant. Unlike other traditional mmos where 1-2 tiers above others can make you 50% stronger that’s almost impossible to win against.

“The rarest items have unique looks to help your character feel that sense of accomplishment, but it’s not required to play the game.”

You don’t need legendary tier to play all the content in the game. You also don’t need ascended tier to play all the content in the game. Imo, gw2 is the only mmorpg that allows player to have accesibility to 100% fun contents without being best-geared.

“We don’t need to make mandatory gear treadmills, we make all of it optional, so those who find it fun to chase this prestigious gear can do so”

There, it’s optional. No mandatory gear treadmills but only optional gear treadmills for those who find fun in it. If a group of players don’t find it fun, they don’t need to go for the ascended tier. If players want the optional “max-stats”, it means players actually fond of stat progression inside their hearts to crave for “max stats”.

That’s exactly the reason why companies nowadays think they can fool their costumers. People got so used to all that “political talk” so they always find a way to justify actions by re-interpreting what was said earlier.

Especially the last part about mandatory gear treadmills is outstanding. Ascended gear in combination with the infusions are without any doubt the start of a treadmill. And Arena Net not just didn’t deny that, they also said that they will continue going down this road. They said that this is just the start of the progression. A gear treadmill is a gear treadmill, it doesn’t matter if you just call it progression, it essentially stays the same thing.

In nature, people perceive things what they want to perceive it to be.
If you perceived negatively in that way, it’s really your problem. =/

When I first heard about the game before it was launched, I did watch those manifesto trailers. However, I never even heard nor feel of being promised that there won’t be any vertical progression. So I don’t know why there’s a group that feel like they’re promised. I keep an open mind that the game is jack of all trades, master of none. Personally, I still feel the game sticks to it’s manifesto. I didn’t feel forced into ascended. I feel it’s optional that I can acquire it anytime as a bonus. Therefore, it’s a not a forced treadmill.

They did break their design compared to GW1 though, and that’s where people are coming from. Not so much the manifesto. A lot of us are actually GW fans, ya know?

And I will take my favorite (and most disappointing) quote from the GW2 manifesto:
“GW2 takes everything you love about GW1 and puts it into a persistent world” which is complete BULLCRAP.

Alberel Leonhart.9640:

Colin Johanson

The rarest items in the game are not more powerful than other items, so you don’t need them to be the best. The rarest items have unique looks to help your character feel that sense of accomplishment, but it’s not required to play the game. We don’t need to make mandatory gear treadmills, we make all of it optional, so those who find it fun to chase this prestigious gear can do so, but those who don’t are just as powerful and get to have fun too.

http://www.arena.net/blog/is-it-fun-colin-johanson-on-how-arenanet-measures-success

Just quoting this again to make sure the OP gets the message that he’s wrong. This statement explicitly states that the rarest items (ascended) are not more powerful than other items (yes, they are).

I’m sure you could come up with some way to deliberately misread it to suggest they didn’t say that but at that point you’re being willfully ignorant.

They knew the people reading this stuff were mostly GW1 fans and what they were describing was the GW1 gear system. You could take those words and apply them to GW1 perfectly. They knew full well that everyone would read it as the game having a gear plateau with horizontal progression like GW1. There were countless discussions about this on forums, including the official forums during beta, and not once did any dev correct anyone.

I honestly feel sorry for you defending ANet at this point. Regardless of what you actually think of the changes are you really so blind as to not see this for the obvious deception that it is?

Hmm I dont know about you but even though ascended gear has been introduced just for 2 weeks, the rarest items are still legendary weapons! at least on my server they are! just yesterday I saw 2 people link ascended gear in map chat! have yet to see a single legendary weapon on my server even though they had over 3 months head start!

Sorry to break it to you but that statement is still correct! Do you honstly believe ascended are more rare then legendary?

“We don’t need to make mandatory gear treadmills, we make all of it optional, so those who find it fun to chase this prestigious gear can do so, but those who don’t are just as powerful and get to have fun too.”
Ascended gear contradicts this statement. You have to chase ascended gear or you are not as powerful as those who do. It’s not the rarest gear in the game, that’s true, but it still is a hell of a grind to get it.

Mackdose.6504:

Raine.1394:

I played WoW for years and grinded out countless tiers in PvE and PvP. The grind in WoW and the grind in GW2 are in no way comparable, you are right, but it is GW2 that utterly dwarfs WoW for the steepness or difficulty or time investment in the grind. I could get a set of gear in WoW in the time it would take to grind out a single piece in GW2—and there was zero cost in gold! Those appealing to steepness or difficulty of the grind in this way have clearly never played WoW or never marched through the tiers. It was tedious as all grinds are, but it was easy compared to GW2.

Comparing apples to apples, (max gear in GW2 to max gear in WoW) You’d have to:

In WoW:

1. Heroics for pre-raid
2. 1 raid per week, LFR, Daily grind until geared for heroic raids.
3. 1 Heroic Raid per week

I’d reckon about 2 months before you had full heroic tier, then you’d get a content patch a couple weeks later and you’d repeat the raid/LFR per week/ heroic per week/ new dailies until you’re back at status quo. Oh yeah, and you’d be doing this with 9 other people who may or may not be as dedicated as you.

In GW2:

1. Story mode once, for a given dungeon.
2. Explorables until you have a set of exotics
3. Fractals to realistically 15 before maybe you would be stopped by agony.

This can be accomplished in about a month from level 1.

Yeah, night and day difference, with GW2 being on top.

Not true at all. Nobody did heroic raids except the top tier of raiders. Everyone else geared to the tier just below. It took a couple, three weeks max. I could also gear up to the the top tier in PvP in under a month. There is no comparison between the grind in WoW and GW2 from any standpoint. Especially, when you consider that cash is required with GW2 to shorten the incredibly long grind. WoW didn’t require the infusion of real money as GW2 does. The mats required are just insane.

I urge people to focus on the big picture rather then single individual things. The manifesto says a lot of things and one of its core concepts is play the game they way you want. That has a ton of implications, it means the game will be designed for many different play styles and ascended gear and the infusion progression is part of that!

I personally think Arenanet are doing an amazing job fusing Vertical progression game play with horizontal progression game play… wouldnt have thought it possible without seeing it myself!

Let me just point out how they achieved this!

You have gear tiers but content is designed such even masterworks is enough to play anything in the game!

sPvP has its own max gear, if you go purely horizontal and never bother with gear you can still be fully competitive in PvP with 0 draw back.

Gear can be aquired playing anything you like (still not true for Ascended Gear but just cause they havent had the time to implement the other avenues of getting Ascended gear. It was always the plan to be like that, they even appologized for rolling out one part of the aquistion method and not all of them at the same time)

Level scaling… You have progression, you always get more powerful. At level 1 you’re not going to handle level 80 content… leveling up is without a doubt progression but that progression doesnt negate your horizontal content because you’re scalled down when going back and still rewarded!

gear progression doesnt gate any content, none ! not one tiny bit! You could wear only stuff that drops and still be able to play everything!

Simply speaking like the manifesto says you can truely play the game anyway you want! you want progression, you have it! you want to ignore progression and enjoy the sights? you got it! you want to ignore PvE and just PvP, you got it!

The game design is such That gear is unimportant! You level provides 50% of the stats so even wearing no armor at all you’re still effective having stats in direct damage, condition and support ! But thats not all everything important has a base value, Health A Necro gets 18k base health so have no attribute in vitality still makes quite effective. A weapon has a base damage, etc… More then that Combat is skill based, Stats help obviously ! doing x% less damage isnt exactly a minor thing of course but if you’re good and play well you can negate all damage done by an enemy still enabling you to win! (in PvE i would say quite easily as well)

This leave WvW which is argueably the only place where vertical progression has some effect in my opinion. Its been said time and time again that WvW isnt balanced and never was intended to be… More then that it can never be balanced! In all engagements one side outnumbers the other, almost never do you get 1 on 1 engagements. The outnumbered side still wins at times! Now ascended gear might add 2 – 5 more damage to an average 100dmg attack if you’re lucky but guess what? thats still about 9900dmg short of what a direct hit from a trebuchet will do to you! its also a fraction of the advantage an arrow cart or a ballista will provide! Its a negligable defence value to what a keep wall will give you!

Well I am taking this too far… suffice to say the game is designed so that you can be effective with any gear tier you wear! If you want the best gear, by all means go for it! but realise thats entirely your decision, it isnt the game forcing you to get it! on the contrary the game does A LOT to ensure if you dont get it you can still play everything you desire!

There is absolutely nothing mandatory about Ascended gear right now!

Raine.1394:

Mackdose.6504:

Raine.1394:

I played WoW for years and grinded out countless tiers in PvE and PvP. The grind in WoW and the grind in GW2 are in no way comparable, you are right, but it is GW2 that utterly dwarfs WoW for the steepness or difficulty or time investment in the grind. I could get a set of gear in WoW in the time it would take to grind out a single piece in GW2—and there was zero cost in gold! Those appealing to steepness or difficulty of the grind in this way have clearly never played WoW or never marched through the tiers. It was tedious as all grinds are, but it was easy compared to GW2.

Comparing apples to apples, (max gear in GW2 to max gear in WoW) You’d have to:

In WoW:

1. Heroics for pre-raid
2. 1 raid per week, LFR, Daily grind until geared for heroic raids.
3. 1 Heroic Raid per week

I’d reckon about 2 months before you had full heroic tier, then you’d get a content patch a couple weeks later and you’d repeat the raid/LFR per week/ heroic per week/ new dailies until you’re back at status quo. Oh yeah, and you’d be doing this with 9 other people who may or may not be as dedicated as you.

In GW2:

1. Story mode once, for a given dungeon.
2. Explorables until you have a set of exotics
3. Fractals to realistically 15 before maybe you would be stopped by agony.

This can be accomplished in about a month from level 1.

Yeah, night and day difference, with GW2 being on top.

Not true at all. Nobody did heroic raids except the top tier of raiders. Everyone else geared to the tier just below. It took a couple, three weeks max. I could also gear up to the the top tier in PvP in under a month. There is no comparison between the grind in WoW and GW2 from any standpoint. Especially, when you consider that cash is required with GW2 to shorten the incredibly long grind. WoW didn’t require the infusion of real money as GW2 does. The mats required are just insane.

And honestly whats stopping you for gearing exotic in gw2?

Is there really anything you will not be able to enjoy if have an exotic set as opposed to ascended set?

Mackdose.6504:

Raine.1394:

I played WoW for years and grinded out countless tiers in PvE and PvP. The grind in WoW and the grind in GW2 are in no way comparable, you are right, but it is GW2 that utterly dwarfs WoW for the steepness or difficulty or time investment in the grind. I could get a set of gear in WoW in the time it would take to grind out a single piece in GW2—and there was zero cost in gold! Those appealing to steepness or difficulty of the grind in this way have clearly never played WoW or never marched through the tiers. It was tedious as all grinds are, but it was easy compared to GW2.

Comparing apples to apples, (max gear in GW2 to max gear in WoW) You’d have to:

In WoW:

1. Heroics for pre-raid
2. 1 raid per week, LFR, Daily grind until geared for heroic raids.
3. 1 Heroic Raid per week

I’d reckon about 2 months before you had full heroic tier, then you’d get a content patch a couple weeks later and you’d repeat the raid/LFR per week/ heroic per week/ new dailies until you’re back at status quo. Oh yeah, and you’d be doing this with 9 other people who may or may not be as dedicated as you.

In GW2:

1. Story mode once, for a given dungeon.
2. Explorables until you have a set of exotics
3. Fractals to realistically 15 before maybe you would be stopped by agony.

This can be accomplished in about a month from level 1.

Yeah, night and day difference, with GW2 being on top.

Haha, are you talking about 2 rings and a back piece in comparison to a complete set, armor and weapons, in WoW? And, you don’t even mention that at Fractals level 15 you may or may not have even the rings. Again, no comparison. Nice try at apples to apples though, perhaps you’d like to try again.

Bluebird.1890:

Yukishiro.8792:

nachtnebel.9168:

“We don’t make grindy games” that’s the part of the manifesto they broke.

Yep. FOTM violates the spirit of the manifesto as a whole and that specific bit of it. I don’t see how anyone can even try to argue otherwise.

Now maybe the manifesto is wrong. Maybe people want a gear treadmill. But that is very clearly not what the game was marketed as and originally supposed to be.

FOTM violates this because it forces you to do only FOTM over and over for ascended gear, and not WVWVW, or PVE, or other dungeons.

Which, Chris Whiteside has already stated in the Reddit AMA, will be changing. Soon.

Again, where is the problem?

Talk is cheap. Now if he’d said it will take as long to get ascended as it does to get exotic that would have meant something.

Mackdose.6504:

Everyone who thinks that Anet “broke” their design principles are wrong, period.

I didn’t buy into GW2 being the second coming of christ; I just wanted a AAA MMO with no sub made by ArenaNet. And it’s awesome.

This is how I see it, too.
The game is massively enjoyable right now, even with all the issues and bugs and quirks it has.

So what, if ANet ends up tanking it over additional gear tiers in 2-3 years? By that time I will have another game to play. Sure, I’d prefer to stay with this … actually, I played 4 years EQ1, 3,5 years DAoC, and then 8 years WoW. I think WoW is the outlier, here.

Mackdose.6504:

arcaneclarity.5283:

Colin Johanson

Fun impacts loot collection. The rarest items in the game are not more powerful than other items, so you don’t need them to be the best. The rarest items have unique looks to help your character feel that sense of accomplishment, but it’s not required to play the game. We don’t need to make mandatory gear treadmills, we make all of it optional, so those who find it fun to chase this prestigious gear can do so, but those who don’t are just as powerful and get to have fun too.

http://www.arena.net/blog/is-it-fun-colin-johanson-on-how-arenanet-measures-success

Anyone notice that Colin Johanson and Eric Flannum are mysteriously missing since the whole Lost Shores fiasco started?

Did you notice that nothing in that quote from Colin has been contradicted?

Yes, it has been contradicted. The rarest items in the game are now Ascended for one aspect of the game and Legendary for the rest (not including SpVp – it has it’s own armor). Now, Ascended armor has the Infusion slot while Legendary Armor, like all other armors, has a Rune slot. Since the infusions are only useful in the Fractal Dungeons and the other new land area, Ascended armor is the new ‘best in class’ for that area. Legendary, which was the same as Exotic is now a better form of standard PvE/WvW gear.

So, Legendary gear is no longer a horizontal accomplishment that is purely optional. If you want the best in class you HAVE to have Legendary gear now.

What was that line:

The rarest items in the game are not more powerful than other items, so you don’t need them to be the best.

SO, now Ascended armor is new best End Game armor for Fractal Dungeons and PvE and Legendary Armor is now the definitive Best In Class standard PvE and WvW armor. (because Legendary is BETTER than Exotic now)

And yes, Legendary armor is the rarest armor in the game.

He also said this:

If our model was subscription based, we might be spending all this time racing to add as much filler content as possible to keep players chasing the carrot. Instead, as content designers with the goal of creating fun, we get to spend this time refining our content and making it amazing. As designers, this is both liberating and refreshing in an industry in which developers rarely get time from publishers to actually polish their games.

Thankfully it is not subscription based. To all you people running Fractal Dungeons over and over and over to get that nice ring… What’s up Doc? And, as was evident from the disaster the one time event was and the horrible implementation of the new gear progression, this was definitely not “polished” at all and the content from before is not “refined” yet.

Galen Grey.4709:

Raine.1394:

Mackdose.6504:

Raine.1394:

I played WoW for years and grinded out countless tiers in PvE and PvP. The grind in WoW and the grind in GW2 are in no way comparable, you are right, but it is GW2 that utterly dwarfs WoW for the steepness or difficulty or time investment in the grind. I could get a set of gear in WoW in the time it would take to grind out a single piece in GW2—and there was zero cost in gold! Those appealing to steepness or difficulty of the grind in this way have clearly never played WoW or never marched through the tiers. It was tedious as all grinds are, but it was easy compared to GW2.

Comparing apples to apples, (max gear in GW2 to max gear in WoW) You’d have to:

In WoW:

1. Heroics for pre-raid
2. 1 raid per week, LFR, Daily grind until geared for heroic raids.
3. 1 Heroic Raid per week

I’d reckon about 2 months before you had full heroic tier, then you’d get a content patch a couple weeks later and you’d repeat the raid/LFR per week/ heroic per week/ new dailies until you’re back at status quo. Oh yeah, and you’d be doing this with 9 other people who may or may not be as dedicated as you.

In GW2:

1. Story mode once, for a given dungeon.
2. Explorables until you have a set of exotics
3. Fractals to realistically 15 before maybe you would be stopped by agony.

This can be accomplished in about a month from level 1.

Yeah, night and day difference, with GW2 being on top.

Not true at all. Nobody did heroic raids except the top tier of raiders. Everyone else geared to the tier just below. It took a couple, three weeks max. I could also gear up to the the top tier in PvP in under a month. There is no comparison between the grind in WoW and GW2 from any standpoint. Especially, when you consider that cash is required with GW2 to shorten the incredibly long grind. WoW didn’t require the infusion of real money as GW2 does. The mats required are just insane.

And honestly whats stopping you for gearing exotic in gw2?

Is there really anything you will not be able to enjoy if have an exotic set as opposed to ascended set?

My problem is conceptual. Check my sig for the low down. Vertical progression is synonymous with perpetual gear grind. Since I don’t enjoy gear grinds, yes, there are things in the new GW2 I won’t enjoy, i.e., the gear grind.