Guild Wars 2

HiddenNick.7206:

Gehenna.3625:

Aside from whether you like it or not, it does introduce content gating.

What exact content is ascended gear gating right now?

Difficulty level is content to you?!

If you can´t play FotM with your friends/guildmates/most other players because they are lvl 20+ and want to progress while you have no ascended gear – what else is that than gated content?

hydeaut.1758:

If you can´t play FotM with your friends/guildmates/most other players because they are lvl 20+ and want to progress while you have no ascended gear – what else is that than gated content?

This is really bad argument…

If it is in fact gated content so is: any content for levels 1-79, group events etc.

HiddenNick.7206:

hydeaut.1758:

If you can´t play FotM with your friends/guildmates/most other players because they are lvl 20+ and want to progress while you have no ascended gear – what else is that than gated content?

This is really bad argument…

If it is in fact gated content so is: any content for levels 1-79, group events etc.

This is plain false: any content for levels 1-79, group events, . . . has no restrictions for a player on lvl 80 without ascended gear while FotM clearly has those when agony hits in.

And people don´t do FotM mainly because of the difficulty, they want to progress because of the better rewards which makes FotM lvl10+ much more valueable than those levels before – which in practice make´s it significantly different content on higher levels.

So better stop insulting our intelligence with your bad arguments.

OP and others, you can twist words however you like, but I feel betrayed by ArenaNet.

The fact is, I and many others feel betrayed. There’s a video from a convention where they flat out said there would be no gear chase, no power creep, no carrot on a stick. I can’t find the video for the life of me, so I guess you’ll have to take my word on it.

But regardless, I feel betrayed and while I don’t want a refund, as I’ve gotten my money’s worth, I absolutely no longer trust ArenaNet and will never pre-order anything from them; I will never trust anything they say.
It feels like Guild Wars 2 is slowly being turned into an actual WoW clone, to try and get the WoW audience I guess? I don’t know who’s doing that whether it’s ArenaNet, NCSoft, or what but frankly Guild Wars 2 is good at being Guild Wars 2 and it needs to stop trying to be WoW.

You can disagree if you like, and pick apart my words, but that won’t change how I feel. I feel betrayed, and I suspect deep down you do too, even as you perform these word games to try to convince yourself otherwise.

HiddenNick.7206:

nachtnebel.9168:

something absolutely incorrect about the FotM dungeon.

Where exactly I’m incorrect?

As I explained in my other posting: Agony is not the only content blocker in the game. Try to reach lvl 20 with a team that only wears greens and you will see that their are certain HP and DPS checks you can’t beat without exploiting them (e.g. Old Tom, the Grawl Shaman or the seals on the colossals hands). And before you say that lvl 20 is only optional content, it’s not, you need to reach it in order to get access to infused ascended rings.

Wait until the whole range of ascended gear is released, then we can talk again.

Exactly… Until then don’t just assume it’s going to be bad!

And once again you took a sentence out of its context to proof nothing. The part you didn’t quote was the important one:
You will see that this gear either will create a gate, that content will be too easy for those that have it or that the progression will be removed due to the scaling system.

How is that more important then the fact that ascended gear is not there yet and you have no idea how it’s going to work?

If you have the two numbers 1 and 2 they will add up to 3, it doesn’t matter if you have done the “math” already or if you are just going to do it in the future, the outcome will not change.
With stat progression it’s exactly the same, there are not many different options how it can be implemented and I gave you all of them. And btw that’s why I asked you that question, which you still haven’t asnwered yet, in the first place. So that you see it for yourself.

hydeaut.1758:

HiddenNick.7206:

Gehenna.3625:

Aside from whether you like it or not, it does introduce content gating.

What exact content is ascended gear gating right now?

Difficulty level is content to you?!

If you can´t play FotM with your friends/guildmates/most other players because they are lvl 20+ and want to progress while you have no ascended gear – what else is that than gated content?

honestly the problem there is an egoistic guild / friends ! Both a guild / friends should be helping out each other! In my guild quite often people join a dungeon not because they need it but because someone else needs it !

Its not even like running lvl 1 fotm gets you nothing or something you’re still rewarded well! Honestly in such an event its more of a player issue then a game issue ! game isnt 100% innocent either I will give you that, if there were no levels there would be no possibility of a segregation true ! But seriously do people have to be forced in doing the decent thing? That problem can never be fully resolved anyone, even if FoTM had no levels some one might want to run say AC but the rest of the guild might want to turn FoTM and there no progression of any kind and you still come to the same impass cause thats primarily a social issue not a game issue!

nachtnebel.9168:

HiddenNick.7206:

nachtnebel.9168:

something absolutely incorrect about the FotM dungeon.

Where exactly I’m incorrect?

As I explained in my other posting: Agony is not the only content blocker in the game. Try to reach lvl 20 with a team that only wears greens and you will see that their are certain HP and DPS checks you can’t beat without exploiting them (e.g. Old Tom, the Grawl Shaman or the seals on the colossals hands). And before you say that lvl 20 is only optional content, it’s not, you need to reach it in order to get access to infused ascended rings.

And this is it?! Just think about it again! I think they did a really good job in not locking anything with ascended gear. But you instead give them credit for that, whine because of Grawl Shaman that no one cares about?! OMG! You can experience fractals in almost the same way as anyone on 20th level but still whine! If this the kind of issue you can’t bare then you will never be happy with the game!

This isn’t like WoW where they lock half of the dungeons with gear that you can only acquire by farming it for months.

Wait until the whole range of ascended gear is released, then we can talk again.

Exactly… Until then don’t just assume it’s going to be bad!

And once again you took a sentence out of its context to proof nothing. The part you didn’t quote was the important one:
You will see that this gear either will create a gate, that content will be too easy for those that have it or that the progression will be removed due to the scaling system.

How is that more important then the fact that ascended gear is not there yet and you have no idea how it’s going to work?

If you have the two numbers 1 and 2 they will add up to 3, it doesn’t matter if you have done the “math” already or if you are just going to do it in the future, the outcome will not change.
With stat progression it’s exactly the same, there are not many different options how it can be implemented and I gave you all of them. And btw that’s why I asked you that question, which you still haven’t asnwered yet, in the first place. So that you see it for yourself.

Ok, once upon a time there was this problem in gw1: no one played missions any more that required 8 people to complete. And they’ve fixed it by adding heroes. No one could ever predict that.

Also I think that they did a great job with fractals to resolve the issue you describe.

nachtnebel.9168:

HiddenNick.7206:

nachtnebel.9168:

something absolutely incorrect about the FotM dungeon.

Where exactly I’m incorrect?

As I explained in my other posting: Agony is not the only content blocker in the game. Try to reach lvl 20 with a team that only wears greens and you will see that their are certain HP and DPS checks you can’t beat without exploiting them (e.g. Old Tom, the Grawl Shaman or the seals on the colossals hands). And before you say that lvl 20 is only optional content, it’s not, you need to reach it in order to get access to infused ascended rings.

Wait until the whole range of ascended gear is released, then we can talk again.

Exactly… Until then don’t just assume it’s going to be bad!

And once again you took a sentence out of its context to proof nothing. The part you didn’t quote was the important one:
You will see that this gear either will create a gate, that content will be too easy for those that have it or that the progression will be removed due to the scaling system.

How is that more important then the fact that ascended gear is not there yet and you have no idea how it’s going to work?

If you have the two numbers 1 and 2 they will add up to 3, it doesn’t matter if you have done the “math” already or if you are just going to do it in the future, the outcome will not change.
With stat progression it’s exactly the same, there are not many different options how it can be implemented and I gave you all of them. And btw that’s why I asked you that question, which you still haven’t asnwered yet, in the first place. So that you see it for yourself.

First a little clarrification, I might be wrong but I beleive ring drops from level 10+ not 20+
anyhow with that out of the way you’re making a theoretical case that I am entirely sure will never happen in actuality. Why do I say this? if you’re trying to get an ascended armor set you’re a player who has to have the best armor, you’re not going to be geared in greens especially when considering by the 2nd run of FoTM you’ll be able to afford a rare set!, by the 12th run you could probably afford to craft an exotic set!

In anycase what you’re talking about is a difficulty barrier thats intended ! The Dungeon scales forever, even if you gear in full ascended gear with the best infusions there will be a point where the difficulty will still outweigh the best gear in the game ! That difficulty barrier is tackled part with skill and part in stats.

In Gw1 some people where able to solo farm underworld! other people needed a good group to tackle it! Thats not because underworld was gated and it certainly is not because Gw1 had some vertical gear progression gating but rather simply speaking there was a difficulty gating !

Same thing happened with the mad king tower for example. stats and armor played no part in it though not everyone was able to complete it ! While others could do it nearly every go ! You could argue that was gated too using your same criteria but I believe that wouldnt really be accurate !

hydeaut.1758:

HiddenNick.7206:

hydeaut.1758:

If you can´t play FotM with your friends/guildmates/most other players because they are lvl 20+ and want to progress while you have no ascended gear – what else is that than gated content?

This is really bad argument…

If it is in fact gated content so is: any content for levels 1-79, group events etc.

This is plain false: any content for levels 1-79, group events, . . . has no restrictions for a player on lvl 80 without ascended gear while FotM clearly has those when agony hits in.

Just THINK once more in the context I wrote it…

To help you with that i’ll write this to show how little sense is in your response:

“This is plain false: any content in FotM level 1-5. . . has no restrictions for a player on lvl 15 without ascended gear while events in areas level 25-80 clearly has those.”

My sentence has exactly the same amount of sense as yours!

This post has been edited to remove a violation of the CoC.

Galen Grey.4709:

hydeaut.1758:

HiddenNick.7206:

Gehenna.3625:

Aside from whether you like it or not, it does introduce content gating.

What exact content is ascended gear gating right now?

Difficulty level is content to you?!

If you can´t play FotM with your friends/guildmates/most other players because they are lvl 20+ and want to progress while you have no ascended gear – what else is that than gated content?

honestly the problem there is an egoistic guild / friends ! Both a guild / friends should be helping out each other! In my guild quite often people join a dungeon not because they need it but because someone else needs it !

Some people in your guild cant run higher level FotM with you? Well then bloody help them get there!

Thats what players should be like, but the majority are not and those are the people ANet wants to please. And theyve stated that quite frequently too, so the whole Ascended thing isnt really a surprise. Im beginning to realize the vocal people on the issue were the ones who created it in the first place(myself included!), there was no broken promise other than the ones that the community fabricated for themselves.

But that really changes nothing for me, Ill continue to play for fun and just run level 1 FotM because theyre really fun dungeons. Ill still do DEs in Orr because theyre fun, Ill still run story modes with friends and guild because its fun, and Ill still pop into WvW to get my kitten kicked – because its still fun.

HiddenNick.7206:

And this is it?! Just think about it again! I think they did a really good job in not locking anything with ascended gear. But you instead give them credit for that, whine because of Grawl Shaman that no one cares about?! OMG! You can experience fractals in almost the same way as anyone on 20th level but still whine! If this the kind of issue you can’t bare then you will never be happy with the game!

Learn to read please. You wanted to know why your statement that only agony works as a gating mechanic in FotM is wrong and I gave you 3 examples of DPS or HP checks. And I further explained that this is gating content due to the fact that certain rings (and crafting materials too btw) don’t drop before lvl 20. And crafting mats as well as items are definitively content.

This isn’t like WoW where they lock half of the dungeons with gear that you can only acquire by farming it for months.

Wait until the whole range of ascended gear is released, then we can talk again.

Exactly… Until then don’t just assume it’s going to be bad!

And once again you took a sentence out of its context to proof nothing. The part you didn’t quote was the important one:
You will see that this gear either will create a gate, that content will be too easy for those that have it or that the progression will be removed due to the scaling system.

How is that more important then the fact that ascended gear is not there yet and you have no idea how it’s going to work?

If you have the two numbers 1 and 2 they will add up to 3, it doesn’t matter if you have done the “math” already or if you are just going to do it in the future, the outcome will not change.
With stat progression it’s exactly the same, there are not many different options how it can be implemented and I gave you all of them. And btw that’s why I asked you that question, which you still haven’t asnwered yet, in the first place. So that you see it for yourself.

Ok, once upon a time there was this problem in gw1: no one played missions any more that required 8 people to complete. And they’ve fixed it by adding heroes. No one could ever predict that.

Also I think that they did a great job with fractals to resolve the issue you describe./quote]
The way missions work could be changed but you can’t change how stat progression interacts with the rest of the game.
And I’m still waiting for your example how to implement stat progression without either:
a) gating
b) encapsulating it
c) removing the challenge for some players due to way too easy mobs

Galen Grey.4709:

First a little clarrification, I might be wrong but I beleive ring drops from level 10+ not 20+

Sadly not, there are certain rings (and crafting mats) that can only drop from lvl 20+.

anyhow with that out of the way you’re making a theoretical case that I am entirely sure will never happen in actuality. Why do I say this? if you’re trying to get an ascended armor set you’re a player who has to have the best armor, you’re not going to be geared in greens especially whe
n considering by the 2nd run of FoTM you’ll be able to afford a rare set!, by the 12th run you could probably afford to craft an exotic set!

I agree here, you will most likely not run higher scales of FotM in greens. But still the fact that you can’t do it at all creates a gate.

In anycase what you’re talking about is a difficulty barrier thats intended ! The Dungeon scales forever, even if you gear in full ascended gear with the best infusions there will be a point where the difficulty will still outweigh the best gear in the game ! That difficulty barrier is tackled part with skill and part in stats.

I agree again but I don’t like that you call it “difficulty barrier” cause that’s simple not true. The difficulty of the dungeon does not increase at all, the gear check just gets harder.

In Gw1 some people where able to solo farm underworld! other people needed a good group to tackle it! Thats not because underworld was gated and it certainly is not because Gw1 had some vertical gear progression gating but rather simply speaking there was a difficulty gating !

In GW1 Underworld was a real skill check and not a gear check. So technically we could speak of a skill gate, which is fine.

Same thing happened with the mad king tower for example. stats and armor played no part in it though not everyone was able to complete it ! While others could do it nearly every go ! You could argue that was gated too using your same criteria but I believe that wouldnt really be accurate !

Again a perfect example for a skill check. If the FotM scaling would work in a similar way it would be fantastic, but sadly it’s all about the way easier to implement gear check.

Hawks.5736:

Galen Grey.4709:

hydeaut.1758:

HiddenNick.7206:

Gehenna.3625:

Aside from whether you like it or not, it does introduce content gating.

What exact content is ascended gear gating right now?

Difficulty level is content to you?!

If you can´t play FotM with your friends/guildmates/most other players because they are lvl 20+ and want to progress while you have no ascended gear – what else is that than gated content?

honestly the problem there is an egoistic guild / friends ! Both a guild / friends should be helping out each other! In my guild quite often people join a dungeon not because they need it but because someone else needs it !

Some people in your guild cant run higher level FotM with you? Well then bloody help them get there!

Thats what players should be like, but the majority are not and those are the people ANet wants to please. And theyve stated that quite frequently too, so the whole Ascended thing isnt really a surprise. Im beginning to realize the vocal people on the issue were the ones who created it in the first place(myself included!), there was no broken promise other than the ones that the community fabricated for themselves.

But that really changes nothing for me, Ill continue to play for fun and just run level 1 FotM because theyre really fun dungeons. Ill still do DEs in Orr because theyre fun, Ill still run story modes with friends and guild because its fun, and Ill still pop into WvW to get my kitten kicked – because its still fun.

Well the only thing I disagree with you is that Anet want to please people who want vertical progression. They’re trying to give them stuff to do yes, but from what I am seeing the deck is still hugely stacked in favor of horizontal progression!

And I totally agree that this whole ascended gear was probably created for the people who are really vocal against it ! It would make 100% sense !

Why?

Well lets think about it !

From what I am seeing people who go for horizontal progression come into two categories. 1 category is content driven! we love the fact there is so much to do, explore and experiance in the game and try to do it everything! Another category is reward driven. They still dont want vertical progression but they dont care about the soul of a horizontal game they just want the rewards and these are the people who spend their day farming

Now dont get me wrong I am not saying one play style is good and the other bad, just that they are differnet !

However people who spend their time farming the same spots I would image where the ones complaining that there were just 2 zones for level 80 players! For players who loved to explore everything there were in fact 25 zones at level 80!

Well obviously Arenanet have no way to issue enough zones to keep these players interested all the time so they came up with FoTM. Instead of having the same few DE to farm, you get a dungeon that changes and evolves with additional content updates that scales in difficulty and increases its rewards accordingly ! I am not a farmer but I would imagine its actually quite good !

At the same time people who like to explore still kept their whole world to play in !

nachtnebel.9168:

Galen Grey.4709:

First a little clarrification, I might be wrong but I beleive ring drops from level 10+ not 20+

Sadly not, there are certain rings (and crafting mats) that can only drop from lvl 20+.

K thanks for the clarification, didnt know that!

nachtnebel.9168:

anyhow with that out of the way you’re making a theoretical case that I am entirely sure will never happen in actuality. Why do I say this? if you’re trying to get an ascended armor set you’re a player who has to have the best armor, you’re not going to be geared in greens especially whe
n considering by the 2nd run of FoTM you’ll be able to afford a rare set!, by the 12th run you could probably afford to craft an exotic set!

I agree here, you will most likely not run higher scales of FotM in greens. But still the fact that you can’t do it at all creates a gate.

Correction, you can do it all in greens, you cannot do all the difficulty in greens ! Which is true, no one is denying that there is a gate in FotM on the difficulty level we’re just saying there is no gate on the content. You can play every single thing in FoTM in greens no problem just up to a certain difficulty level!

nachtnebel.9168:

In anycase what you’re talking about is a difficulty barrier thats intended ! The Dungeon scales forever, even if you gear in full ascended gear with the best infusions there will be a point where the difficulty will still outweigh the best gear in the game ! That difficulty barrier is tackled part with skill and part in stats.

I agree again but I don’t like that you call it “difficulty barrier” cause that’s simple not true. The difficulty of the dungeon does not increase at all, the gear check just gets harder.

It is a difficulty level, its a collection of things really gear check is just part of it of course but player skill and how well they play their build is also part of it! if that were not the case and it was purely gear based there would be a clear cut off point. Yes some people say they can get to level 10 with no ascended gear, some say they can reach level 15 and a few that said they can get past level 20.

In any case the only real gear check comes with the agony mechanic that doesnt kick in until level 10. Level 1 – 10 dont have the same difficulty though do they?

Its like the dreaded temple of intolerable in the war in kryta. Having your armor infused was obviously critical and a gear check of sorts but getting that out of the way didnt make it easy either !

nachtnebel.9168:

In Gw1 some people where able to solo farm underworld! other people needed a good group to tackle it! Thats not because underworld was gated and it certainly is not because Gw1 had some vertical gear progression gating but rather simply speaking there was a difficulty gating !

In GW1 Underworld was a real skill check and not a gear check. So technically we could speak of a skill gate, which is fine.

In both cases it was a bit of both. Never tried it but I am guessing it would have been harder / possibly impossible to solo underworld with level 1 gear and no runes
But having the best armor alone was also definitely not enough to solo it !

nachtnebel.9168:

Same thing happened with the mad king tower for example. stats and armor played no part in it though not everyone was able to complete it ! While others could do it nearly every go ! You could argue that was gated too using your same criteria but I believe that wouldnt really be accurate !

Again a perfect example for a skill check. If the FotM scaling would work in a similar way it would be fantastic, but sadly it’s all about the way easier to implement gear check.

I think you’re generalizing a bit too much I didnt play a lot of FotM, only got to level 3 for the monthly achievement but I thought the fractals I did were pretty well done with mechanics that dont even involve gear checks. Take the swamp fractal, carrying the wisps to the tree trunks has 0 effect on gear, its all co-ordination and skill to react timely to events.

The fact there are no way points makes team work and supporting each other essential!

Again agony is obviously a gear check fundamentaly with perhaps a minsicule amount of skill (you ability to dodge the attack to inflict it) but it would be unfair to say thats all there is to FoTM!

Galen Grey.4709:

It is a difficulty level, its a collection of things really gear check is just part of it of course but player skill and how well they play their build is also part of it! if that were not the case and it was purely gear based there would be a clear cut off point. Yes some people say they can get to level 10 with no ascended gear, some say they can reach level 15 and a few that said they can get past level 20.

Things don’t get more difficult just cause of higher numbers. Encounters are easy or hard based on how complex their mechanics are. Of course this sometimes needs high numbers (e.g. one shot abilities) but if the encounters base mechanics are easy the fight stays easy no matter how high the numbers are. On the other hand when there is e.g. unavoidable damage this has nothing to do with difficulty, it’s just a gear check. And for FotM the later is the case.

In any case the only real gear check comes with the agony mechanic that doesnt kick in until level 10.

In fact there currently are at least three simple gear checks in higher FotM scales:
- if you don’t take Old Tom down before you run out of Tears you can’t beat him unless you exploit him
- the seals on the colossals hands require you to be able to take a certain amount of damage or you won’t be able to fight off the increasing number of mobs spawning in front of them
- if you are too low on HP and DPS beating the grawl shaman is impossible

Level 1 – 10 dont have the same difficulty though do they?

Level 1-9 do, at 10 we have agony as an additional factor.

Its like the dreaded temple of intolerable in the war in kryta. Having your armor infused was obviously critical and a gear check of sorts but getting that out of the way didnt make it easy either !

With the huge difference that getting you armor infused is easier, way less time consuming, doesn’t rely on RNG at all and you can infuse whatever armor you want.
In addition the temple is actually difficult while the FotM encounters are rather easy. If you would remove Agony they won’t be much of a challenge, not even on higher scales (unless you don’t meet the gear requirements for certain encounters of course).

nachtnebel.9168:

In Gw1 some people where able to solo farm underworld! other people needed a good group to tackle it! Thats not because underworld was gated and it certainly is not because Gw1 had some vertical gear progression gating but rather simply speaking there was a difficulty gating !

In GW1 Underworld was a real skill check and not a gear check. So technically we could speak of a skill gate, which is fine.

In both cases it was a bit of both. Never tried it but I am guessing it would have been harder / possibly impossible to solo underworld with level 1 gear and no runes
But having the best armor alone was also definitely not enough to solo it !

Well, it probably would be as impossible as doing any GW2 dungeon in lvl 4 armor so I don’t really see the point you are trying to make here.
FotM is a gear check due to the existence of agony, nothing more. If you don’t have any agony resi at all there is a point where Jade Maw will just kill you no matter what you do since there is no way to avoid his agony and it eventually does enough damage to not just take you into down state but to kill you. And since you also get automatically hit by agony whenever you engage him after respawning there is literally no way to beat him without a certain amount of agony resi. There was no mechanic like that in GW1.

nachtnebel.9168:

Same thing happened with the mad king tower for example. stats and armor played no part in it though not everyone was able to complete it ! While others could do it nearly every go ! You could argue that was gated too using your same criteria but I believe that wouldnt really be accurate !

Again a perfect example for a skill check. If the FotM scaling would work in a similar way it would be fantastic, but sadly it’s all about the way easier to implement gear check.

I think you’re generalizing a bit too much I didnt play a lot of FotM, only got to level 3 for the monthly achievement but I thought the fractals I did were pretty well done with mechanics that dont even involve gear checks. Take the swamp fractal, carrying the wisps to the tree trunks has 0 effect on gear, its all co-ordination and skill to react timely to events.

Well with level 3 you are still in the “tutorial mode” of the dungeon, there is no real challenge yet since both mobs and encounters do by far not enough damage to be a threat. Once you hit 20+, what you need to do in order to get access to all drops (=content) you will see certain encounters evolve into full scale gear checks.

The fact there are no way points makes team work and supporting each other essential!

Correct. One of the best ideas Arena Net had about dungeons.

Again agony is obviously a gear check fundamentaly with perhaps a minsicule amount of skill (you ability to dodge the attack to inflict it) but it would be unfair to say thats all there is to FoTM!

As I said before: You can’t avoid Jade Maw’s agony, you will suffer from it multiple times during the fight (each time he switches phases).
FotM is not all about Agony, but without it it still is way less of a challenge than e.g. Lupicus, Simin or even Subject Alpha.

nachtnebel.9168:

And I’m still waiting for your example how to implement stat progression without either:
a) gating
b) encapsulating it
c) removing the challenge for some players due to way too easy mobs

I did: difficulty scale. Just like in FotM. For me its fine solution. You can still whine about your Grawl Shaman. EOT

HiddenNick.7206:

nachtnebel.9168:

And I’m still waiting for your example how to implement stat progression without either:
a) gating
b) encapsulating it
c) removing the challenge for some players due to way too easy mobs

I did: difficulty scale. Just like in FotM. For me its fine solution. You can still whine about your Grawl Shaman. EOT

Since the difficulty scaling in FotM uses agony as well as gear checks as a gate and I asked for a solution without gating I’m done talking to you know. As soon as a discussions becomes a grind it is time to stop it.

nachtnebel.9168:

Galen Grey.4709:

It is a difficulty level, its a collection of things really gear check is just part of it of course but player skill and how well they play their build is also part of it! if that were not the case and it was purely gear based there would be a clear cut off point. Yes some people say they can get to level 10 with no ascended gear, some say they can reach level 15 and a few that said they can get past level 20.

In fact there currently are at least three simple gear checks in higher FotM scales:
- if you don’t take Old Tom down before you run out of Tears you can’t beat him unless you exploit him
- the seals on the colossals hands require you to be able to take a certain amount of damage or you won’t be able to fight off the increasing number of mobs spawning in front of them
- if you are too low on HP and DPS beating the grawl shaman is impossible

I am sorry but I think you’re serverely underestimating the GW2 combat system. You’re making it sound that the only possible cure to higher damage is higher resistance which isnt true at all !, Dodging, Blinding, Fearing, Push back, shields, teleporting, weakness, Aegis, protection, dazing, regeneration,retaliation, projectile reflection, chilling, crippling, immobilization all help eliminate or reduce damage received. nearly all of them have nothing to do with gear and stats and all to do with skill. Same thing goes for fights which are time limited Might, Fury, stability, vulnerability, cross profession combos and direct skills synergy between members of the party can all help end a fight quicker. This is not even a comprehensive list cause each class has its own mechanic that can help! like necro has death shroud, plague and lich form that can both help in terms of survivability and in terms of inflicting extra damage. Mesmers have distortion etc… There is a lot lot more to fighting than the gear you’re wearing !

nachtnebel.9168:

Level 1 – 10 dont have the same difficulty though do they?

Level 1-9 do, at 10 we have agony as an additional factor.

Its like the dreaded temple of intolerable in the war in kryta. Having your armor infused was obviously critical and a gear check of sorts but getting that out of the way didnt make it easy either !

With the huge difference that getting you armor infused is easier, way less time consuming, doesn’t rely on RNG at all and you can infuse whatever armor you want.
In addition the temple is actually difficult while the FotM encounters are rather easy. If you would remove Agony they won’t be much of a challenge, not even on higher scales (unless you don’t meet the gear requirements for certain encounters of course).

Thats my point, the agony / infusion system in both games is only one variable not the whole that the fight is about !

nachtnebel.9168:

In GW1 Underworld was a real skill check and not a gear check. So technically we could speak of a skill gate, which is fine.

And since you also get automatically hit by agony whenever you engage him after respawning there is literally no way to beat him without a certain amount of agony resi. There was no mechanic like that in GW1.

The point I am trying to make is simply that levels / the infusion / agony system, Skills whatever is simply a mechanic to slow you down ! If there were no levels in gw2 I bet a lot of people who have skipped everything and started farming Orr day one !

Same thing with FoTM with no agony difficulty level mechanic what would happen? You’d have to set a ceiling how hard you want to scale the dungeon until it becomes undoable. Say level 30 I dont know. And then you’re locked. you either release a new gear tier or you can have 0 progression in FoTM and it will end up just another farming location with a set challenge that everyone will get used to and there for one can simply ignore. But like this you can keep it going ! So this month we released infusion level 1.. that allows you to reach level 30 before agony is too much to progress. Some skill full players managed to drag that to level 33 and feel very proud of having acomplished that… and rightly so. Next month we dont have to release a new gear tier to progress the dungeon but just a new infusion level that moves the progress to level 40. And thus you have control on how far you want players to progress, allowing them that slight opening where they can challenge themselves trying to reach a higher level then others manage showing actual skill but at the same time not risk that someone beats your difficulty rating and end up progressing to a level so high that they get rewards so big they upset the economy.

I dont know why you think this is bad design in my opinion its quite an elegant solution!

Galen Grey.4709:

I am sorry but I think you’re serverely underestimating the GW2 combat system. You’re making it sound that the only possible cure to higher damage is higher resistance which isnt true at all !, Dodging, Blinding, Fearing, Push back, shields, teleporting, weakness, Aegis, protection, dazing, regeneration,retaliation, projectile reflection, chilling, crippling, immobilization all help eliminate or reduce damage received. nearly all of them have nothing to do with gear and stats and all to do with skill. Same thing goes for fights which are time limited Might, Fury, stability, vulnerability, cross profession combos and direct skills synergy between members of the party can all help end a fight quicker. This is not even a comprehensive list cause each class has its own mechanic that can help! like necro has death shroud, plague and lich form that can both help in terms of survivability and in terms of inflicting extra damage. Mesmers have distortion etc… There is a lot lot more to fighting than the gear you’re wearing !

Take Old Tom as an example. The GW2 combat system is totally irrelevant in this case. You either take him down before you run out of tears or you will die due to unavoidable (no dodge, no invulnerability, no protection, …) damage originating from the room being filled with poisonous gas (or whatever it is). You also can’t stop Old Tom from doing this, it just happens from time to time and the poison will last until you power the ventilation system with 2 tears and activate it. There is really nothing you can do once you run out of tears except to try to DPS him down before you die.
The colossal and the grawl shaman are similar to that, both are all about the kill speed of your team, either you take down the mobs fast enough or you will die/not succeed.

Thats my point, the agony / infusion system in both games is only one variable not the whole that the fight is about !

Not quite, FotM on higher levels is all about the gear check and agony resi, it’s not more difficult than the early levels (which are pretty easy).
Let me put it that way: Fighting Lupicus in Arah is actually difficult while fightin Zhaitan is not. Even if Zhaitan would apply agony the fight would still stay very simple cause of its one-dimensional mechanics. Lupi on the other hand doesn’t require artificial difficulty like agony to be a challenge, in order to beat him people actually have to deal with multiple attacks at the same time and adapt to his actions, he doesn’t do the same stuff over and over again in the exactly same way like Zhaitan.

Same thing with FoTM with no agony difficulty level mechanic what would happen? You’d have to set a ceiling how hard you want to scale the dungeon until it becomes undoable. Say level 30 I dont know. And then you’re locked. you either release a new gear tier or you can have 0 progression in FoTM and it will end up just another farming location with a set challenge that everyone will get used to and there for one can simply ignore. But like this you can keep it going ! So this month we released infusion level 1.. that allows you to reach level 30 before agony is too much to progress. Some skill full players managed to drag that to level 33 and feel very proud of having acomplished that… and rightly so. Next month we dont have to release a new gear tier to progress the dungeon but just a new infusion level that moves the progress to level 40. And thus you have control on how far you want players to progress, allowing them that slight opening where they can challenge themselves trying to reach a higher level then others manage showing actual skill but at the same time not risk that someone beats your difficulty rating and end up progressing to a level so high that they get rewards so big they upset the economy.

I dont know why you think this is bad design in my opinion its quite an elegant solution!

If you like content gating and gear treadmill than it is an elegant solution. New and better infusions are basically a new tier of gear since they are more powerful than what was in the game before. It doesn’t matter if you call them t1, t2, level 1, level 2, exotic, ascended or if you just increase the stats on them, releasing something with better stats periodically is a gear treadmill.
Also, if we call reaching higher scales of FotM progression this still doesn’t change the fact that FotM is nothing more than another farming location. The only difference currently is that you can get things from FotM which you can’t get from any other farming location.

HiddenNick.7206:

hydeaut.1758:

HiddenNick.7206:

hydeaut.1758:

If you can´t play FotM with your friends/guildmates/most other players because they are lvl 20+ and want to progress while you have no ascended gear – what else is that than gated content?

This is really bad argument…

If it is in fact gated content so is: any content for levels 1-79, group events etc.

This is plain false: any content for levels 1-79, group events, . . . has no restrictions for a player on lvl 80 without ascended gear while FotM clearly has those when agony hits in.

Just THINK once more in the context I wrote it…

To help you with that i’ll write this to show how little sense is in your response:

“This is plain false: any content in FotM level 1-5. . . has no restrictions for a player on lvl 15 without ascended gear while events in areas level 25-80 clearly has those.”

My sentence has exactly the same amount of sense as yours!

THINK HARDER!

I understood what you tried to construct, that´s why I outlined the lvl 80 part.

But I´ll try to keep it simple for you: this discussion is not about leveling, the issue is gating in the endgame which is a completely different part of the game and that´s what this discussion is about.

And your example makes zero sense in a discussion about endgame, you could as well have said paying for the game must then also be considered gating of content: also true in some way but it has absolutely nothing to do with this discussion.

So if you want to talk about levels 1-79 you´re clearly in the wrong thread, better stop mixing up apples and oranges (hope you atleast recognize the difference between those . . )

On Fractals: Difficulty Modes vs. Gated Content

Requiring Agony Resistance is not a difficulty increase mechanic. It is an additional damage mechanic used to force you to get a thing to resist it before it is possible. Kind of like Gated Content forces you to get a certain level of gear before your stats are high enough to not die.

A real difficulty change would look like this upon entering a normal old dungeon:
Choose Difficulty – Normal
Choose Difficulty – Hard
and this is key here: you would not need a special “infusion” or additional resistance mechanic slotted into your armor to do it. It would be a skill check against enemies with their stats scaled to a higher standard of difficulty or lower margin of error.

So yes, deeper sections of the Fractals dungeon are indeed “Gated Content.”

nachtnebel.9168:

Take Old Tom as an example. The GW2 combat system is totally irrelevant in this case. You either take him down before you run out of tears or you will die due to unavoidable (no dodge, no invulnerability, no protection, …) damage originating from the room being filled with poisonous gas (or whatever it is). You also can’t stop Old Tom from doing this, it just happens from time to time and the poison will last until you power the ventilation system with 2 tears and activate it. There is really nothing you can do once you run out of tears except to try to DPS him down before you die.
The colossal and the grawl shaman are similar to that, both are all about the kill speed of your team, either you take down the mobs fast enough or you will die/not succeed.

We risk ending up going in circles if you just repeat your previous statements I will keep it short. The whole poison thing is an environmental way to put the fight on a timer. A timer can be used to increase difficulty. Again think mad king tower, if it didnt have a timer it would be a lot easier to do it I have no doubt! Same here the timer forces the team to band together to increase damage as much as possible! Remember damage output of the team isnt just a gear thing. If an elementalist and a ranger fight separately they will just do their individual damage but if the elementalist drops a wall of flame they will do their individual damage + inflict an extra burning condition on their targets. DPS increased and gear had nothing to do with it! Everyone who can stacks as much might on everyone else before the fight starts and conditions including the burning condition mentioned above will do even more damage! DPS increased further and once again gear has nothing to do with it!

Also I disagree with your assesment of the colossal. It definitely is about defense and damage mitgation. So much so that the hammer itself has a defense skill! Honestly you’re underestimating the intricacies of the GW2 combat system. I personally find it to be a lot more about skill and strategy then about gear!

nachtnebel.9168:

Not quite, FotM on higher levels is all about the gear check and agony resi, it’s not more difficult than the early levels (which are pretty easy).

Well I only got to level 3 so I have no idea how hard or not it gets But like I explained previously even if the only difficulty inflicted is a higher agony level it would still be mostly a game of skill. Agony resist would only be a way to make the difficulty easier! But without any additional Agony Resist you can still mitigate it in two ways. Avoid getting agony, end up the fight before agony ends you! Its just another artificial way to put the fight on a timer. Only in this case you can avoid having the timer start if you’re good enough. As for the Jade Maw, its attacks are all dodgable at least on level 2, does it get some way to inflict agony without you being able to avoid it?

nachtnebel.9168:

If you like content gating and gear treadmill than it is an elegant solution. New and better infusions are basically a new tier of gear since they are more powerful than what was in the game before. It doesn’t matter if you call them t1, t2, level 1, level 2, exotic, ascended or if you just increase the stats on them, releasing something with better stats periodically is a gear treadmill.
Also, if we call reaching higher scales of FotM progression this still doesn’t change the fact that FotM is nothing more than another farming location. The only difference currently is that you can get things from FotM which you can’t get from any other farming location.

You’re twisting things now ! for starters like its been said countless times now there is absolutely no content gating! you can still do all the fractals without ever facing any agony! you’re not gated from any content whatsoever ! And it isnt a gear treadmill either! One single new set doesnt create a treadmill! Its an infusion treadmill yes! But You dont need any of that unless you want to seriously do FoTM in which case why would you mind having goals such as acquiring infusions? Ohh please +5 to a single stat is not even remotely close to a new gear tier That would be like arguing every new level in cooking unlocks a new gear tier because you can cook better versions of food that give an increase in stats! many times what infusions give you even! Come on lets stay realistic now!

Archmortal.1027:

On Fractals: Difficulty Modes vs. Gated Content

Requiring Agony Resistance is not a difficulty increase mechanic. It is an additional damage mechanic used to force you to get a thing to resist it before it is possible. Kind of like Gated Content forces you to get a certain level of gear before your stats are high enough to not die.

A real difficulty change would look like this upon entering a normal old dungeon:
Choose Difficulty – Normal
Choose Difficulty – Hard
and this is key here: you would not need a special “infusion” or additional resistance mechanic slotted into your armor to do it. It would be a skill check against enemies with their stats scaled to a higher standard of difficulty or lower margin of error.

So yes, deeper sections of the Fractals dungeon are indeed “Gated Content.”

Disagree with you here. In your context hard would still be gated content as you definite it ! if your build, gear and skill allow you to just perfectly complete normal you’re going to fail hard and you’re calling that “gating content” The content will remain gated to you until you increase any of those 3

FoTM is no differnt only instead of have normal and hard. It has normal and Hard level 1, hard level 2, hard level 3 …. hard level infinity

Each one of those hard levels can be how far your build, gear, skill (and that of your team) gets you until you offset it with any of those 3 factors!

Algreg.3629:

Reaver.9256:

Lionaeron.5724:

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

Sounds like you should go play a barbie dressup simulator. Especially if you think “grinding” 9 gold is a lot of work. So easy to get equiped in this game I’d hate to see you rage playing any other MMO on the market…….

Ladies and Gentlemen, we proudly present the new target demographic and anet´s dearest “most dedicated player” type: Condescending full time gamers who consider roughly 7-9 hours of playing a computer game not a considerable amount of time. Enjoy!

If you think that 7-9 hours playing time for the best gear is a long time then MMO’s definitely aren’t games for you. Gear will probably never be as easy to get in an mmo as this one(don’t tell me gw1 is an mmo). It sounds like you want everything handed to you in one hour long play session. There is nothing stopping you from earning the 9 gold over a course of 2-3-4 weeks if you can only play a couple hours a week. Also maybe look into learning the market or something to cut that time down by a lot. There is no sub fee in this game so I see no reason why everyone sees the need to rush everything.

Even tho im not one that really care about it either way i have to mention to the OP that it was indeed said that that there will be No gear progression way back so you cannot say they are wrong.

Galen Grey.4709:

Disagree with you here. In your context hard would still be gated content as you definite it ! if your build, gear and skill allow you to just perfectly complete normal you’re going to fail hard and you’re calling that “gating content” The content will remain gated to you until you increase any of those 3

Uh… no? The most skilled player in the game isn’t going to be able to function at a certain point in Fractals without getting Agony resistance. That is not “difficulty.” That is a gate whose key is “ascended gear.”

That same player will be able to function as normal in
Choose Difficulty – Hard
wherein enemies have slightly more health/slightly higher stats/slightly higher damage/etc. There is no artificial mechanic that will eventually force the player to get a better piece of gear. Better gear will, of course, help, but it ultimately rests on the player’s skill. Skill dependency is not the same as gated content because in my example the Hard Mode is no different from the Normal Mode except in terms of enemy stats (most games also add an additional mechanic during boss fights, but again- not something that demands an arbitrary item or gear piece to overcome it).
It is the same content except harder and therefor you need more skill to complete it.

Fractals appear to function like this, but eventually they arbitrarily demand that the player have gear pieces and infusions instead of skill to resist an arbitrary mechanic. The mechanic serves no purpose except to demand that gear from the player. If it were just another condition and it just happened to be non-removable then it would set a sort of timer on the encounters which would act as a less (but still) arbitrary means of imposing artificial difficulty if only because that timer is something that the player can measure their skill against. Agony and Agony resistance in its current iteration and progression is not a measure of skill, but rather a gate demanding progressively more [item with Agony resistance] in order to pass. There is no actual increase in difficulty, just an increase in the amount of requried [item with Agony resistance].
It is the same content always, except you need more [item with Agony resistance] to complete it.

There is a clear, distinct difference. One is a difficulty increase tailored for people who want more challenge, the other has a static difficulty and is tailored to progressively require more [item with Agony resistance].

Let me just say I am not opposed to this kind of design. There is a right way to implement this, but the Fractals do not do it properly. A better way to do it is to make the resistance available through an NPC switch in the starting area. Each progressive tier of fractals you reach, you gain another switch to pull for more resistance. This is not only a much less arbitrary way to implement Agony/Resistance, but it allows the opportunity to tailor rewards based on how many switches of Resistance are pulled. Players are no longer reliant on gear to continue to deeper levels, but as per the usual- the gear will of course, help kind of like real difficulty increases.

Archmortal.1027:

Galen Grey.4709:

Disagree with you here. In your context hard would still be gated content as you definite it ! if your build, gear and skill allow you to just perfectly complete normal you’re going to fail hard and you’re calling that “gating content” The content will remain gated to you until you increase any of those 3

Uh… no? The most skilled player in the game isn’t going to be able to function at a certain point in Fractals without getting Agony resistance. That is not “difficulty.” That is a gate whose key is “ascended gear.”

That same player will be able to function as normal in
Choose Difficulty – Hard
wherein enemies have slightly more health/slightly higher stats/slightly higher damage/etc. There is no artificial mechanic that will eventually force the player to get a better piece of gear. Better gear will, of course, help, but it ultimately rests on the player’s skill. Skill dependency is not the same as gated content because in my example the Hard Mode is no different from the Normal Mode except in terms of enemy stats (most games also add an additional mechanic during boss fights, but again- not something that demands an arbitrary item or gear piece to overcome it).
It is the same content except harder and therefor you need more skill to complete it.

Fractals appear to function like this, but eventually they arbitrarily demand that the player have gear pieces and infusions instead of skill to resist an arbitrary mechanic. The mechanic serves no purpose except to demand that gear from the player. If it were just another condition and it just happened to be non-removable then it would set a sort of timer on the encounters which would act as a less (but still) arbitrary means of imposing artificial difficulty if only because that timer is something that the player can measure their skill against. Agony and Agony resistance in its current iteration and progression is not a measure of skill, but rather a gate demanding progressively more [item with Agony resistance] in order to pass. There is no actual increase in difficulty, just an increase in the amount of requried [item with Agony resistance].
It is the same content always, except you need more [item with Agony resistance] to complete it.

There is a clear, distinct difference. One is a difficulty increase tailored for people who want more challenge, the other has a static difficulty and is tailored to progressively require more [item with Agony resistance].

Let me just say I am not opposed to this kind of design. There is a right way to implement this, but the Fractals do not do it properly. A better way to do it is to make the resistance available through an NPC switch in the starting area. Each progressive tier of fractals you reach, you gain another switch to pull for more resistance. This is not only a much less arbitrary way to implement Agony/Resistance, but it allows the opportunity to tailor rewards based on how many switches of Resistance are pulled. Players are no longer reliant on gear to continue to deeper levels, but as per the usual- the gear will of course, help kind of like real difficulty increases.

Is my english really that bad or am I really that bad at expressing myself? Anyway new try. Never said skill is going to take you all the way to infinity. Never said you can ignore Agony resistance as long as you’re skill full! I only said Agony resistance is only one factor on how far you can get in FoTM, skill being another ! An average player with no agony resistance might make it till say level 15. Someone with an above average skill level might make it to 18. That all I said in essence!

I dont agree that any hard mode has no pre-requists they all do else it wouldnt be a hard mode at all! Take GW1 for example You could do say I dont know the old ascalon zone in easy mode wearing lowest level armor with any skill set you want easily. Switch to hard mode and the lowest level armor / the basic skill set will not be enough. That doesnt mean GW1 is all about the gear just that those higher numbers you’re facing now require more preparation to tackle!

The agony / infusion mechanic is there just to limit how deep you can get. Much like levels limit how deep you can dwell in the game !

If what you were saying was true it was all about the gear and not about skill we would have hard limits we could say without agony resistance you will only get to level 10. Where as poeple report that without agony resistance they got anywhere from 12 – 20+ Why the gap? I’d say skill, what do you think?

So yes obviously Agony is meant to be a limit on how deep you can dwell and how fast you can get there but its not a hard limit dependant exclusively on your gear, its a limit that can be so to say stretched using skill

Galen Grey.4709:

So yes obviously Agony is meant to be a limit on how deep you can dwell and how fast you can get there but its not a hard limit dependant exclusively on your gear, its a limit that can be so to say stretched using skill

Okay I understand what you mean now (I did sort of have trouble interpreting that previous post, sorry).

I’m still not in favor of Agony being designed this way because regardless of how many extra levels a skilled player can complete through skill alone, there is a hard limit on how far they can get and it ultimately has nothing to do with their skill, and everything to do with the arbitrary requirement of [item(s) with Agony resistance].

That is indicative of the differences I put in bold in my previous post.

A hard mode is tailored to require skill and give additional challenge for the players that want it. There is an inherent understanding that players of “normal” or “average” skill level will have a hard time and they choose the hard mode knowing it will be hard because they want it to be hard. There is no prerequisite except understanding that it will be hard. Just keep in mind this isn’t only applicable to Fractals of the Mist, I’m also applying this to all dungeons. A Hard Mode is the exact same dungeon with the exact same enemies with no differences other than enemy stats being increased; not so much that it is impossible without a certain level of gear, but enough that it discourages people who are not fully prepared for it. It does not rely on a new persistent mechanic to create a false sense of difficulty, and obtaining better gear will only help the player rather than determine how far they can get.

Deeper fractal tiers do not require skill. Skill helps, but it is not required. Deeper fractal tiers require [item(s) with Agony resistance]. The Fractals Difficulty Scale is not actually an indication of how hard the selected floor will be. It doesn’t matter how deep you go, the actual difficulty of the encounters remains the same. That they use the word “difficulty” is entirely misleading. By choosing a higher number you are not making the dungeon more difficult, you are simply increasing the damage that Agony will do and thus the required amount of resistance you need to survive it. That a skilled player can survive up to 18 floors without any resistance does not change that the majority of players will need it sooner than that, and even the most skilled player will be required to have it any farther than that. Lack of preparedness is not a factor that discourages the player as it is with a genuine Hard Mode, but rather a wall that disables the player from playing at that Fractal level until they have [item(s) with Agony resistance].

In my previous post I gave an example of a much better way to manage agony resistance without actually removing the Ascended Gear that gives it. In my example, the gear is not required, but it will help and reduce the need for switches to be pulled which in turn would yield greater rewards. It adds positive reinforcement for having the gear, but does not impose a requirement on players before they can continue past the gate.

Reaver.9256:

Algreg.3629:

Reaver.9256:

Lionaeron.5724:

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

Sounds like you should go play a barbie dressup simulator. Especially if you think “grinding” 9 gold is a lot of work. So easy to get equiped in this game I’d hate to see you rage playing any other MMO on the market…….

Ladies and Gentlemen, we proudly present the new target demographic and anet´s dearest “most dedicated player” type: Condescending full time gamers who consider roughly 7-9 hours of playing a computer game not a considerable amount of time. Enjoy!

If you think that 7-9 hours playing time for the best gear is a long time then MMO’s definitely aren’t games for you. Gear will probably never be as easy to get in an mmo as this one(don’t tell me gw1 is an mmo). It sounds like you want everything handed to you in one hour long play session. There is nothing stopping you from earning the 9 gold over a course of 2-3-4 weeks if you can only play a couple hours a week. Also maybe look into learning the market or something to cut that time down by a lot. There is no sub fee in this game so I see no reason why everyone sees the need to rush everything.

Oh, do not jump to conclusions, I am fine personally as I am not really a casual player myself – but I know that I play computer games an unreasonably high amount of time. But telling people who have and value their familiy eg. that a whole day of gametime is just nothing is ridiculous. Also you speak of MMOs as if their attributes were written in some divinely created stone tablets. Breaking the grind paradigm was exactly what anet was high and mighty about in their marketing and well… I do not mind vertical progression, farming and all that stuff, but I mind being led astray and casual gamers probably feel even more so. Hence now I grind, spend way too much time and vertically progress again, just in another game.

Bluebird.1890:

Thus, the apology from Chris Whiteside, stating that they should have closed the time gap between exotic and legendary attainability prior to launch by implementing ascended gear beforehand.

Then, perhaps it could have been better balanced and less of a grind.

People are literally angry over something that has already been openly apologized for and is being worked on. It’s absurd.

I’ve not seen an apology I’ve seen a lot of PR fluff elsewhere it could have been hidden there I suppose along with confirmation of the treadmill and gated content…. but these are the official forums the place where it is simplest for ANet to communicate directly and they choose not too.

The GW1 community spent 5+ years of being told what kind of game GW2 would be we hung on the devs every word and waited expectantly. I’m one of those and yes I’m very disappointed that they turned everything on it’s head after just 3 months but what I’m angry about is the lack of communication – that has done more harm to the game and community than anything else IMO because now it’s very hard to believe anything thats said and difficult to undo the damage done.

Archmortal.1027:

Galen Grey.4709:

So yes obviously Agony is meant to be a limit on how deep you can dwell and how fast you can get there but its not a hard limit dependant exclusively on your gear, its a limit that can be so to say stretched using skill

Okay I understand what you mean now (I did sort of have trouble interpreting that previous post, sorry).

I’m still not in favor of Agony being designed this way because regardless of how many extra levels a skilled player can complete through skill alone, there is a hard limit on how far they can get and it ultimately has nothing to do with their skill, and everything to do with the arbitrary requirement of [item(s) with Agony resistance].

Sorry remove a lot of the quote as the post was getting too big.. Anyhow There will always be a hard limit and thats a good thing. If you’re scaling the reward with the difficulty last thing you want is your players getting to a level where they get 100s of gold worth of returns per run! you need to control that somehow. In Gw1 hard mode also had a hard limit and thats that is was limited to 1 level of difficutly. That in itself was a wall you could get beyond gear or not. Is that really any different if a level 1 infusion will not allow to get past say level 30?

Why is one okey but not the other?

Part of what makes the whole experiance interesting in my opinion is you can make “investements” if you want to keep going deeper in search for better rewards you invest in the gear you need! it just gives you a goal to work towards I dont see why thats a bad thing! If you’re not interested in getting the gear or invest the time they you just play casually in the levels that your gear allows you to play safely!

As for the difficulty, I didnt 3 levels, cant gauge difficutly per-se too limited runs! but the 2nd run did feel more involved then the rest are you sure its just agony that goes up and not everything?

A really interesting discussion. At the end of the day I am afraid nobody cares about a manifesto made for marketing reasons when it comes to making money. To me it seems the real turn in ArenaNets politics is going with the free to play model where it used to be the “without monthly fees”. The difference is huge while the later was the unique GW1 way, the f2p is something different. I’m sure I don’t need to explain this, since most MMO players seem to have tested f2p games. With all the variations in that there is one thing they have in common. Some sort of felt or real item progression. The important part is it only needs to be “felt”. That is sooner or later getting people to buy the equipment with real money. The figures for that are easy and there is obviously solid data for this business model. The longer you get them to play the more likely it is they will spend money. At GDC 2012 in cologne f2p developers stated that only 5 to 10 % of all players are bringing the money. Some people (thats about 1%) are even willing to spend more than 800$ a month.
So in simple math that means even if 90% of us players don’t like it – the rest is enough to meet the business model. That should pretty much answer the question why they brought it up, knowing the sh…storm would be coming.

Only a bit off topic
So far nobody seems to care about how much an individual spends on virtual goods in a game. To me every company who takes more than 50$ a month on a regular basis is exploiting peoples weaknesses.

Yoss Elendil.5862:

A really interesting discussion. At the end of the day I am afraid nobody cares about a manifesto made for marketing reasons when it comes to making money. To me it seems the real turn in ArenaNets politics is going with the free to play model where it used to be the “without monthly fees”. The difference is huge while the later was the unique GW1 way, the f2p is something different. I’m sure I don’t need to explain this, since most MMO players seem to have tested f2p games. With all the variations in that there is one thing they have in common. Some sort of felt or real item progression. The important part is it only needs to be “felt”. That is sooner or later getting people to buy the equipment with real money. The figures for that are easy and there is obviously solid data for this business model. The longer you get them to play the more likely it is they will spend money. At GDC 2012 in cologne f2p developers stated that only 5 to 10 % of all players are bringing the money. Some people (thats about 1%) are even willing to spend more than 800$ a month.
So in simple math that means even if 90% of us players don’t like it – the rest is enough to meet the business model. That should pretty much answer the question why they brought it up, knowing the sh…storm would be coming.

Only a bit off topic
So far nobody seems to care about how much an individual spends on virtual goods in a game. To me every company who takes more than 50$ a month on a regular basis is exploiting peoples weaknesses.

careful, you’re making your own personal conclusions based on the numbers.

You said that because only 10% of the people pay many in a f2p game it means that 90% of the people dont like it!

But you’re making a corellation that doesnt exist. Not paying anything in a f2p game doesnt mean you dont like it or the business model! In fact it could be quite the opposite you might not pay because you’re happy with the game and dont feel like you need to buy anything. IT could be because you dont afford to pay, it could be because you dont pay for anything unless you’re forced to!

A more telling statistic in my opinion is how every single game that switched from P2P to F2P did order of magnitutes bigger profits !
I think thats a larger indication that more people embrace f2p then they do P2P especially when factoring in that if 10% of the people pay and if we take a game like say lotro which tripled its profits after going free to play it means it increased its player base by 3000%

This of course is still skewed because it assumes f2p every person pays the same amount per month as a subscription which is not the case! There is a factor (people paying more) that makes the player base smaller then 3000% and there is a factor (not the same persons pay the same every month sometimes its different people) that make the 3000% larger!

Also Gw2 and Gw1 had the same business model, buy game with an optional micro transaction system. The only difference is in gw2 the range of times in the cash shop is larger!

nachtnebel.9168:

In fact there currently are at least three simple gear checks in higher FotM scales:
- if you don’t take Old Tom down before you run out of Tears you can’t beat him unless you exploit him
- the seals on the colossals hands require you to be able to take a certain amount of damage or you won’t be able to fight off the increasing number of mobs spawning in front of them
- if you are too low on HP and DPS beating the grawl shaman is impossible

im pretty sure i can beat level 10 in greens, and most of the things you talk about here are actually skill checks, (its highly unlikely that anyone would be in all greens and get to level 10, because they give you rares and exotics while you are doing fotm)

Beating old tom using up all tears doesnt seem probable for a 5 man team, done fractals in randoms, with people under 60 and was able to succeed. he simply doesnt have that much hp, and only one person needs to soak the damage, also, the poison field can be mitigated by team mechanics such as regeneration, null field, blast combos on light fields, the damage can be soaked by one player, or mostly dodged.

the left right hands, requires killing small groups of novices , you dont need high armor hp or dps at all here, if you clear out the non veterans every time you fight a room, you wont have massive pops, and the novices die fast for anyone, Many people try to speed run this, by not killing enemies, and require lots of defense, but that is just the power through it way to win,

• none of these enemies are immune to control effects,
  *i once did a run with only pants and shoes after the first fractal(guild), difficulty 6 or 8

grawl shaman is not really a dps fight, id say its mostly an endurance fight. Its about how well you can handle and mitigate the burn damages since a lot of the damage is burn, armor isnt even the biggest issue, heals, condition removal, paying attention the shaman and dealing with spawns is.

Agony resistance is a pretty eh mechanic, but you can get rings never going past 10, the rings that are infused are EXACTLY the same statwise except for agony resistance, anywhere outside fotm

i hope that the next iteration of buffs arent about damage mitigation or resists, i would prefer special traits and skill for different playstyles, or possibly buffs that increase your speed of completition and versatility like, a bonus to damage after an agony attack is triggered in your area, or reduces recasts while in a FOTM zone, If you are going to introduce gating progression only in FOTM, make it at least a type of fun one, where you can feel like your are truely bad kitten and what would normally be overpowered since it is a self contained progression.

ascended rings are just about right for obtaining, you have to get to level 10, once, after that you just have to do it once a day and you can get as many rings as you want,

the back piece is needs 1 item from the dungeon only, while it sucks that its random drop for some people, for most people they will see one way before level 10

now the numbers of items were foolish, i cant even understand how someone would sign off on 250 teir 6 items for one piece. all i can think is they put those numbers in back when we had a wealth of bots, and 250 teir 6 items would run you anywhere from 50 silver, to 12.5 gold.
changing that should be as simple as altering the database.

the content in terms of actual content isnt gated, the only reason to get high level ascended gear is to get more high level ascended gear.

there is a ton of problems with implementation, but not so much with the concepts of FOTM

Now, in the GW2 system, the worst thing they can do is add new teirs, because in actuallity, teirs is a straight up boost that makes content easier, whereas levels alone(due to level caping zones) is not, but i guess they had to because they didnt have much room to improve rewards with the demand that exotics bring for high level items, the only reason anything before was valuable at 80 was for people trying to get legendaries, which is a pretty small percentage.

Exotics should be able to be upgraded through some means into ascended. if ascended is replacing them directly it makes exotics value essentially only valuable for salvage or gambling in the mystic forge

GW1 had checks, they just built it in so people didnt notice, go try to do hard mode domain of anguish with no lightbringer, (40% more damage and 8% less damage taken for you and your heroes), lightbinger skills, or Sunspear skills. These were essentially the same type of mechanics, though i will admit that lightbringer title/skills and sunspear title/skills were a better execution of the same idea

Galen Grey.4709:

Yoss Elendil.5862:

A really interesting discussion. At the end of the day I am afraid nobody cares about a manifesto made for marketing reasons when it comes to making money. To me it seems the real turn in ArenaNets politics is going with the free to play model where it used to be the “without monthly fees”. The difference is huge while the later was the unique GW1 way, the f2p is something different. I’m sure I don’t need to explain this, since most MMO players seem to have tested f2p games. With all the variations in that there is one thing they have in common. Some sort of felt or real item progression. The important part is it only needs to be “felt”. That is sooner or later getting people to buy the equipment with real money. The figures for that are easy and there is obviously solid data for this business model. The longer you get them to play the more likely it is they will spend money. At GDC 2012 in cologne f2p developers stated that only 5 to 10 % of all players are bringing the money. Some people (thats about 1%) are even willing to spend more than 800$ a month.
So in simple math that means even if 90% of us players don’t like it – the rest is enough to meet the business model. That should pretty much answer the question why they brought it up, knowing the sh…storm would be coming.

Only a bit off topic
So far nobody seems to care about how much an individual spends on virtual goods in a game. To me every company who takes more than 50$ a month on a regular basis is exploiting peoples weaknesses.

careful, you’re making your own personal conclusions based on the numbers.

You said that because only 10% of the people pay many in a f2p game it means that 90% of the people dont like it!

But you’re making a corellation that doesnt exist. Not paying anything in a f2p game doesnt mean you dont like it or the business model! In fact it could be quite the opposite you might not pay because you’re happy with the game and dont feel like you need to buy anything. IT could be because you dont afford to pay, it could be because you dont pay for anything unless you’re forced to!

A more telling statistic in my opinion is how every single game that switched from P2P to F2P did order of magnitutes bigger profits !
I think thats a larger indication that more people embrace f2p then they do P2P especially when factoring in that if 10% of the people pay and if we take a game like say lotro which tripled its profits after going free to play it means it increased its player base by 3000%

This of course is still skewed because it assumes f2p every person pays the same amount per month as a subscription which is not the case! There is a factor (people paying more) that makes the player base smaller then 3000% and there is a factor (not the same persons pay the same every month sometimes its different people) that make the 3000% larger!

Also Gw2 and Gw1 had the same business model, buy game with an optional micro transaction system. The only difference is in gw2 the range of times in the cash shop is larger!

Yes I do make my own conclusion but it’s not about if the other 90% like the game or not (or certain aspects of the game like ascended gear). My own conclusion is about how much a developer cares about these 90% liking a certain aspect of the game. Al I’m saying is they don’t care cause 10% of the players are driving the business model and the rest has to live with it if they want to play the game.

I also think there is a huge difference in the model of GW1 and GW2. In GW1 you simply were not able to buy your armor and weapons, which you can do now. If you then see a system installed which raises the power level on a “shallow curve” throughout the game you can see where this is going. Off course you don’t need to buy. It’s still your discission. I still think it affects all players.

I am not sure if I got you right on "This of course is still skewed because it assumes f2p every person pays the same amount per month as a subscription which is not the case! " . But I am not sugesting everybody is paying in a f2p model. In fact without monthly fees you lower the entrance “gate” for players and out of every 10 new players you will have one who is paying. As I understood the dicussion at GDC these 5 to 10% of players are bringing more money than charging fees from 100% of players. (Sry to reapeat it in case you were saying the same.)

Galen Grey.4709:

Part of what makes the whole experiance interesting in my opinion is you can make “investements” if you want to keep going deeper in search for better rewards you invest in the gear you need! it just gives you a goal to work towards I dont see why thats a bad thing! If you’re not interested in getting the gear or invest the time they you just play casually in the levels that your gear allows you to play safely!

I agree with you in the pure theorie of the statement. The problem I see and that other posts pointed out as well is the massive concentration of players in LA to play FOTM. Try finding a group for dungeons especialy story mode. It’s even hard to find one player if you don’t have enough players from your guild. So recent changes have a huge effect on the whole game.

Every dungeon and dynamic event in this game is gated.

If I am a level 1 character…. Can I go to Orr and survive and prosper? Nope. If my friends are doing AC and I am level 20… can I join them and contribute? Nope

So levels in general create artificial gates.

At least in FoTM my level 50 friends can run with me in the lower levels 1-9 since the dungeon scales you up…. can’t say that about any other dungeon

Galen Grey.4709:

We risk ending up going in circles if you just repeat your previous statements I will keep it short. The whole poison thing is an environmental way to put the fight on a timer. A timer can be used to increase difficulty. Again think mad king tower, if it didnt have a timer it would be a lot easier to do it I have no doubt! Same here the timer forces the team to band together to increase damage as much as possible! Remember damage output of the team isnt just a gear thing. If an elementalist and a ranger fight separately they will just do their individual damage but if the elementalist drops a wall of flame they will do their individual damage + inflict an extra burning condition on their targets. DPS increased and gear had nothing to do with it! Everyone who can stacks as much might on everyone else before the fight starts and conditions including the burning condition mentioned above will do even more damage! DPS increased further and once again gear has nothing to do with it!

As soon as a timer is linked to one or more things that aren’t exclusively skill based the timer becomes a gate. That’s the difference between the Mad Kings Tower and Old Tom. The tower was all about player skill, Old Tom is about DPS and HP. The timer doesn’t make the fight more difficult, it will either don’t bother you at all or it will be a wall you run against (unless you exploit it).
I agree that this is a rather theoretical discussion since most players that reach lvl 20+ won’t be wearing greens so they probably will be able to win the DPS check, but that doesn’t change how Old Toms mechanic works. Using two tears to power up the generators for the ventilation system is fine, it adds something special to the fight, but limiting the number of tears and therefore creating a dps gate is not. That’s the point I’m trying to make here.

Also I disagree with your assesment of the colossal. It definitely is about defense and damage mitgation. So much so that the hammer itself has a defense skill! Honestly you’re underestimating the intricacies of the GW2 combat system. I personally find it to be a lot more about skill and strategy then about gear!

Wait until you hit higher levels. There are so many mobs that you will almost constantly have 20+ vulnerability stacks up, and their damage increases too. In addition, if you are not fast enough killing the pack at one seal those on the other side will repair theirs rather quickly.

Well I only got to level 3 so I have no idea how hard or not it gets But like I explained previously even if the only difficulty inflicted is a higher agony level it would still be mostly a game of skill. Agony resist would only be a way to make the difficulty easier! But without any additional Agony Resist you can still mitigate it in two ways. Avoid getting agony, end up the fight before agony ends you! Its just another artificial way to put the fight on a timer. Only in this case you can avoid having the timer start if you’re good enough. As for the Jade Maw, its attacks are all dodgable at least on level 2, does it get some way to inflict agony without you being able to avoid it?

As I already explained that’s exactly the case. Jade Maw has 3 phases each time he switches you get agony no matter what you do, their is no way to avoid it. And since at lvl 20 agony does enough damage to not just put you into down state but to kill you this creates a gate that can’t be overcome by skill.

You’re twisting things now ! for starters like its been said countless times now there is absolutely no content gating! you can still do all the fractals without ever facing any agony! you’re not gated from any content whatsoever !

In my book items are content and since not all of them drop before lvl 20 you’ll have to face agony and since you can’t avoid Jade Maw’s agony you are gated from it.

And it isnt a gear treadmill either! One single new set doesnt create a treadmill! Its an infusion treadmill yes! But You dont need any of that unless you want to seriously do FoTM in which case why would you mind having goals such as acquiring infusions? Ohh please +5 to a single stat is not even remotely close to a new gear tier That would be like arguing every new level in cooking unlocks a new gear tier because you can cook better versions of food that give an increase in stats! many times what infusions give you even! Come on lets stay realistic now!

I admit that it currently isn’t a full scale treadmill but according to the dev blog it will be. They never used the word treadmill but the described it, they want more gear progression and there will be more powerfull infusions (green, rares, extotics, ascended ones) in the future. The system they just created is build around the idea of having a gear – or infusion – treadmill and this is something I really don’t like.

phys.7689:

im pretty sure i can beat level 10 in greens, and most of the things you talk about here are actually skill checks, (its highly unlikely that anyone would be in all greens and get to level 10, because they give you rares and exotics while you are doing fotm)

A timer is only a skill check if it isn’t liked to stats. The Mad King’s Tower’s timer was a skill check, Old Tom’s timer is a gear check.

Beating old tom using up all tears doesnt seem probable for a 5 man team, done fractals in randoms, with people under 60 and was able to succeed. he simply doesnt have that much hp, and only one person needs to soak the damage, also, the poison field can be mitigated by team mechanics such as regeneration, null field, blast combos on light fields, the damage can be soaked by one player, or mostly dodged.

First of all the poison is not removeable since it isn’t a condition, it’s the green icon I’m talking about not the regular poison symbol. Next is that Old Tom’s HP and damage increase with the scale of FotM (as those of every other mob too).
You can avoid Old Tom’s poison bolts but not the “poison” in the air.

the left right hands, requires killing small groups of novices , you dont need high armor hp or dps at all here, if you clear out the non veterans every time you fight a room, you wont have massive pops, and the novices die fast for anyone, Many people try to speed run this, by not killing enemies, and require lots of defense, but that is just the power through it way to win,

• none of these enemies are immune to control effects,
  *i once did a run with only pants and shoes after the first fractal(guild), difficulty 6 or 8

Wait untill you reach difficulty 20+ or 30+, then we can talk again. I’m not talking about the tutorial mode of FotM here.

grawl shaman is not really a dps fight, id say its mostly an endurance fight. Its about how well you can handle and mitigate the burn damages since a lot of the damage is burn, armor isnt even the biggest issue, heals, condition removal, paying attention the shaman and dealing with spawns is.

Wait untill you are surrounded by 20+ of his adds which permanently keep you immobilized unless you kill them fast enough.

GW1 had checks, they just built it in so people didnt notice, go try to do hard mode domain of anguish with no lightbringer, (40% more damage and 8% less damage taken for you and your heroes), lightbinger skills, or Sunspear skills. These were essentially the same type of mechanics, though i will admit that lightbringer title/skills and sunspear title/skills were a better execution of the same idea

I agree here, it’s all about how you achieve what is required to pass the gate. If it happens automatically it’s fine, if it requires drop luck and grind it just sucks.

Yoss Elendil.5862:

Yes I do make my own conclusion but it’s not about if the other 90% like the game or not (or certain aspects of the game like ascended gear). My own conclusion is about how much a developer cares about these 90% liking a certain aspect of the game. Al I’m saying is they don’t care cause 10% of the players are driving the business model and the rest has to live with it if they want to play the game.

I also think there is a huge difference in the model of GW1 and GW2. In GW1 you simply were not able to buy your armor and weapons, which you can do now. If you then see a system installed which raises the power level on a “shallow curve” throughout the game you can see where this is going. Off course you don’t need to buy. It’s still your discission. I still think it affects all players.

I am not sure if I got you right on "This of course is still skewed because it assumes f2p every person pays the same amount per month as a subscription which is not the case! " . But I am not sugesting everybody is paying in a f2p model. In fact without monthly fees you lower the entrance “gate” for players and out of every 10 new players you will have one who is paying. As I understood the dicussion at GDC these 5 to 10% of players are bringing more money than charging fees from 100% of players. (Sry to reapeat it in case you were saying the same.)

Okey I see what you mean and it makes a lot more sense. Sorry for the misunderstanding. That being said while I do agree that any publisher would decide to make paying customers happy over unpaying users you can alienate any of them. Ultimately the success of any MMO is based on all its players Paying or not! IF you loose too many players the overall experiance will drop which increases the risks your paying customers leaves!

Also players who dont pay today doesnt mean will not pay tomorrow! Not only that but while the statistic might say 10% of the players play in a f2p game it doesnt mean that 10% is month after month the same exact players. What I mean is imagine an MMO where you have 100 players and month after month only 10 players pay for something at the end of the year every one of those 100 players payed for something a few of them more then twice. Even though 100% of the players are paying customers month adter month the amount of players who have paid for something is still 10%

Beyond that there is no reason to think vertical / horizontal players are clustered only in one group or another! So I dont believe it is even possible to make such a design decission based on playstyle!

More so then that I would be really surprised if vertical players payed more then horizontal players! Its true you can buy gems and convert them to money and thus buy weapons with them but there really is no reason to! you can easily craft 1 exotic gear/weapon a day! on the other hand horizontal players generally like their cosmetics and collecting stuff making them more likely to buy skins, costumes and minis

Though obviously this is all speculation on my part!

If the shallow powercurve keeps as is +5 to a single stat it would be crazy to spend the amount of money required to craft the infusion! just bake a cake litterally high end food gives up to +70 to a single stat!

Yoss Elendil.5862:

Galen Grey.4709:

Part of what makes the whole experiance interesting in my opinion is you can make “investements” if you want to keep going deeper in search for better rewards you invest in the gear you need! it just gives you a goal to work towards I dont see why thats a bad thing! If you’re not interested in getting the gear or invest the time they you just play casually in the levels that your gear allows you to play safely!

I agree with you in the pure theorie of the statement. The problem I see and that other posts pointed out as well is the massive concentration of players in LA to play FOTM. Try finding a group for dungeons especialy story mode. It’s even hard to find one player if you don’t have enough players from your guild. So recent changes have a huge effect on the whole game.

True but like I said in a previous post this is unavoidable so long as players are reward driven. Any new content that rewards more will always attract players who see better rewards and content that doesnt reward more will be ignored in favor of existant content that still rewards maximum!

Galen Grey.4709:

Beyond that there is no reason to think vertical / horizontal players are clustered only in one group or another! So I dont believe it is even possible to make such a design decission based on playstyle!

More so then that I would be really surprised if vertical players payed more then horizontal players! Its true you can buy gems and convert them to money and thus buy weapons with them but there really is no reason to! you can easily craft 1 exotic gear/weapon a day! on the other hand horizontal players generally like their cosmetics and collecting stuff making them more likely to buy skins, costumes and minis

Though obviously this is all speculation on my part!

I agree with you on most of the things I do not quote here again. On the quoted things I agree with you that should be difficult to identify pure horizontel or vertical type of players. Same goes for buying vertical or horizontel items in theorie. Still the reason for most of buyers with the high spend is staying ahead or at least showing of with items nobody has.
Big Point used to be (maybe still are) biggest publishers in browser based games and they liked to tell that item selling works best in countrys with high machismo. Thats not realy a huge point against your argument, but I think it shows the varity of actual gameplay/f2p models. Some really close to creative day light robbery, some rather just free and a lot of games in between.
My personal worries are where will ArenaNet end up?! BioWare used to be one of my favorite companies in the industrie and still they ruined SWTOR. So (as you may have already guessed) I am a big fan of GW2 and its not good to see that ArenaNet does not know where to go. So I think the concerns about the future of GW2 and if we can trust ArenaNet or not is the point in which our opinions realy differ.

Galen Grey.4709:

Why is one okay but not the other?

Because as-is, the Fractals dungeon and the necessity of Ascended items to continue deeper into it is one of the purest most unashamed examples of a functioning Gear Treadmill I have ever seen in a game. It is literally “grind more gear to do more levels.” Hopefully they’re planning on fixing this, but currently that is how it is. A simple difficulty option with no strings attached is nothing like this.

And this brings us back to “ANET lied to/mislead us.” They said they were entirely against the mere idea of a gear treadmill, and now they have given us such a treadmill in raw form. Get more gear to do more levels.

Yoss Elendil.5862:

Galen Grey.4709:

Beyond that there is no reason to think vertical / horizontal players are clustered only in one group or another! So I dont believe it is even possible to make such a design decission based on playstyle!

More so then that I would be really surprised if vertical players payed more then horizontal players! Its true you can buy gems and convert them to money and thus buy weapons with them but there really is no reason to! you can easily craft 1 exotic gear/weapon a day! on the other hand horizontal players generally like their cosmetics and collecting stuff making them more likely to buy skins, costumes and minis

Though obviously this is all speculation on my part!

I agree with you on most of the things I do not quote here again. On the quoted things I agree with you that should be difficult to identify pure horizontel or vertical type of players. Same goes for buying vertical or horizontel items in theorie. Still the reason for most of buyers with the high spend is staying ahead or at least showing of with items nobody has.
Big Point used to be (maybe still are) biggest publishers in browser based games and they liked to tell that item selling works best in countrys with high machismo. Thats not realy a huge point against your argument, but I think it shows the varity of actual gameplay/f2p models. Some really close to creative day light robbery, some rather just free and a lot of games in between.
My personal worries are where will ArenaNet end up?! BioWare used to be one of my favorite companies in the industrie and still they ruined SWTOR. So (as you may have already guessed) I am a big fan of GW2 and its not good to see that ArenaNet does not know where to go. So I think the concerns about the future of GW2 and if we can trust ArenaNet or not is the point in which our opinions realy differ.

I am sure some people will pay for power when they are forced to, no doubt! even gw2 is a good example, how people complain that to get Ascended armor is a massive grind yet they rush to do it just cause they have to have the best gear even though none of the game requires it! But that doesnt mean people will only pay for power! Big point might have gotten their conclusion from a sort of self fullfilling prophecy kind of thing because the little experiance I had with their games, their cash shop sell mostly power items. In battlestar galactica online you had ships and while I didnt have a first hand experiance I know that there was a story not long ago where in dark star or what its called they used to sell really expensive drones that fight along your side. in case of the drones at least the cash shop was the only way to get it! In Gw2 there is no such wall, its not pay or you will not get the item you can get absolutely anything by investing the time to play the game! on the other hand you could use money to get them but it will cost so much that hopefully that cost will work as a deterant !

I dont think Gw2 doesnt have a direction at all! I think their direction is to be as open as possible! I see that reflected in all their designs really, its not just about being vertical or being horizontal ! Their game’s moto is play the way you want after all! How many MMOs allow you to get to max level crafting? or by doing PvP? or Give you XP for just exploring around, Allow you to play any zone in the game even at max level? Allow you to get the best equipement using any game type you choose (right now this is temporaraly not the case as they’re still phasing Acended armor but they already assured it will be). To me Gw2 is all about freedom and In my opinion they do that very well!

Archmortal.1027:

Galen Grey.4709:

Why is one okay but not the other?

Because as-is, the Fractals dungeon and the necessity of Ascended items to continue deeper into it is one of the purest most unashamed examples of a functioning Gear Treadmill I have ever seen in a game. It is literally “grind more gear to do more levels.” Hopefully they’re planning on fixing this, but currently that is how it is. A simple difficulty option with no strings attached is nothing like this.

And this brings us back to “ANET lied to/mislead us.” They said they were entirely against the mere idea of a gear treadmill, and now they have given us such a treadmill in raw form. Get more gear to do more levels.

Like every other part of Gw2 its designed to work as open ended as possible to provide something for everyone !
If you dont want a treadmill then you can ignore the treadmill, play up to level 10, enjoy level 10 as long as you want! you’ll still get ascended gear as well but even then there is no need to go deeper if you dont want to !

People who want the treadmill can engage in the treadmill, they can try to get better gear + infusions to see how far in they can get!

if you dont like dungeon, you can ignore the whole thing… you dont even have to give up on ascended gear as they already said like exotics they’ll make it available every where short of sPvP ! so if you’re a crafter you can craft it, if you’re WvW person you can get it with badges etc..

If you’re a person who likes the content but doesnt want difficulty you can have that too, simply replay the fractals on level 1 as many times as you want! You can still experiance it all and not bother with higher difficulties

In your case where you want a hard mode but not a treadmill simply work your way to level 10 and keep playing level 10 why does that have to be problem? I dont get it why does the game itself have to force mechanics on players? I would have though people would be more happy being really given the option to play as they want but it seems its really the opposite that is true! the more this ascended story keeps going forward the more I see people who want to be forced on the path they want, they seem to be unable to choose it for themselves. Why, I honestly dont get it?

So maybe I am just crazy but, I find nothing wrong with the game >.> Like, I dont even care about legendary stuff or ascended gear. I have the option to not care about it and I think thats great. I dont hold anyone back when its me running with my exotics and others running with legends/ascended. And I dont get steam rolled. This game is about skill man, skill. How you play your character and how fast you can think in a situation. In my travels I have found it didnt matter your opponents gear. If you were faster/more skilled than them when it came to decisions, then it didnt matter. But thats just me.

Aerwyna.2541:

So maybe I am just crazy but, I find nothing wrong with the game >.> Like, I dont even care about legendary stuff or ascended gear. I have the option to not care about it and I think thats great. I dont hold anyone back when its me running with my exotics and others running with legends/ascended. And I dont get steam rolled. This game is about skill man, skill. How you play your character and how fast you can think in a situation. In my travels I have found it didnt matter your opponents gear. If you were faster/more skilled than them when it came to decisions, then it didnt matter. But thats just me.

Yes and no, its clearly stated that at some point you will need ascend gear else the fractal dungeon gets too hard because you lack the necessary infusion. Most of the time it probably is no problem, since you ll drop the gear once you reach the level. But in the future parties maybe start asking for ascend gear just to have a smoother run. Gear they can see, you skill they don’t know.

beren.6048:

Aerwyna.2541:

So maybe I am just crazy but, I find nothing wrong with the game >.> Like, I dont even care about legendary stuff or ascended gear. I have the option to not care about it and I think thats great. I dont hold anyone back when its me running with my exotics and others running with legends/ascended. And I dont get steam rolled. This game is about skill man, skill. How you play your character and how fast you can think in a situation. In my travels I have found it didnt matter your opponents gear. If you were faster/more skilled than them when it came to decisions, then it didnt matter. But thats just me.

Yes and no, its clearly stated that at some point you will need ascend gear else the fractal dungeon gets too hard because you lack the necessary infusion. Most of the time it probably is no problem, since you ll drop the gear once you reach the level. But in the future parties maybe start asking for ascend gear just to have a smoother run. Gear they can see, you skill they don’t know.

Oh well if its just to be able to do Fractals, then it wont matter if you dont care to see that correct? And if you do, you will spend the time doing what is needed.

Aerwyna.2541:

Oh well if its just to be able to do Fractals, then it wont matter if you dont care to see that correct? And if you do, you will spend the time doing what is needed.

Guess so It must be said that I seen the stats and they are a lot better. The problem starts if they start demanding ascend gear when you go AC or other dungeons. Or if other future content requires infusion. Also, maybe you want to do fractals but you go slow or you are new. Already it will be hard to find a level 2 group.

Galen Grey.4709:

Stuff

(sorry, Message Length)

The problem here is, and I don’t see you disagreeing with this, that the Fractals are a Pure Gear Treadmill. The dungeon serves no other purpose. There is no end boss, there is no final chest, it is just a literal dungeon treadmill that forces you to grind gear to take the next step. This is abhorrent game design, especially so in this game where such design was created in clear defiance of the original design philosophy and sticks out like a sore, bruised face.

Let’s look at the game everyone is afraid of GW2 homogenizing into. World of Warcraft. You race to max level and the real game starts. The end-game grind. The carrot on the stick. The ever-increasing stat plateau to keep you feeling like your character is progressing while you repeat the same activities over and over, day after day, week after week. The entire game is built around this concept and it is done superbly. World of Warcraft is an excellent game. The end-game PvE content is smooth, well-paced, has several options at the same difficulty and each of those options has their own individual Hard Mode option (Heroic Dungeons I do not count in this, they are not genuine hard modes, they are simply max-level versions of their lower-level counterparts). A player who isn’t thinking about it may never even realize they’re participating in a grind until several months or years in. The reason is because every dungeon has a clear end. There is always a final boss of the dungeon or a final chest to loot. You are given a beginning and an end to measure your progress against and to give you a sense of achievement and satisfaction while you accumulate gear rewards in preparation for the next power creep to reveal itself or to prepare for the Hard Mode of that end game scenario. The game actively discourages repetition of the same tasks ad nauseam through relatively organic means. You cannot repeat the raids rapidly because they are on a timer and will not reset right away. You can repeat the dungeons to your heart’s content and never be penalized by diminishing returns, rather the Additional Bonuses tacked on for a full-complete are reduced (but not eliminated). There are daily quests everywhere to help you grind toward certain goals, but there are only so many you can do in a day. The game is constantly giving subtle reminders that you need to stop grinding eventually even while giving you more incentive to continue as fast as you can. It is brilliant and it works.

Guild Wars 2 is not designed around any kind of grind or philosophy involving one, and that is exactly why the Fractals created such a distinct split in the community. ANET told the world that they don’t believe Gear Treadmills are fun and they had (still have?) no intention of putting them in their game. Then the Lost Shores event comes along and they drop a giant ball in front of us. We are given a Gear Treadmill and a developer telling us things that greatly conflict with what we had been told before. Not only that, but this Gear Treadmill is fresh out of the manufacturer with no fancy polish or decoration to try and hide what it is. The Fractals dungeon is a rapid repetition of the same series of events (albeit only 3 at a time and almost never the same 3 or in the same order) with no clear goal or reward, but the deeper into the dungeon you go the more you have to grind gear to continue. There is never a point where the game tells the player “hey, you accomplished something and should feel some satisfaction.” This is the definition of an Endless Grind. It was poorly conceived, poorly considered and answered for poorly. It defies the design of the rest of the game that existed before it and it does so in such blatant fashion that half of the vocal community was instantly on the same page about it and instantly disappointed with both the content and the developer and rightly so.

(to be continued…)