Guild Wars 2

My thoughts?
This: http://extra-credits.net/episodes/power-creep/

Zefiris.8297:

So now I’m equated to a crack addict because I like the idea of having a new tier of equipment with a major content release?

Yes, you are like one, since you can only have fun when imaginary numbers go up and the game becomes about it. This is because you are so used to the skinner box that you start confusing it with actual fun.

Hence crack: It’s the perfect comparison.

You said it yourself, really. I am simply point out what this says about you.

You’re delusional. So because I actually like this I’m a lower class of gamer or an “addict”? Get over yourself.

I’m a casual player and even I have 4 crafted exotic sets, 1 dungeon armor set, full compliment of exotic weapons usable by my profession, world completion is at 56% only.

Ascended gear is welcomed with open arms, people complain about gear hamster wheel but they do not see that ascended gear is just in between exotic and legendary, now if they add something like godly armor as higher than legendary THAT right there would be a gear hamster wheel.

Most of the people complaining, I see them as the part of the player base that never even touched guild wars 1 and have no idea about infused armor, how it works and how it is NOT part of a gear hamster wheel.

EverythingXen.1835:

Not enough to keep a game this size running, or this wouldnt be happening.

That’s nonsense. Most of the servers are either Full or High. I see people everywhere, even in the newbie zones. If the issue was money, they could’ve just added some skins to the cash shop and call it a day. I can tell you for a fact that I personally would buy skins.

I do refuse to participate in gambling for skins with BLTC chests though.

If the only thing you get from new sets and new gear in new content updates is a new look, what the hell is the point in doing the new content other than “Oh wow I have all these pretty USELESS sets”?

You could’ve made this new dungeon all about getting inscriptions, with the Ascended armor just being exotic gears with different stat variations that didn’t previously exist (I know some condition folks were looking for some more variations)… As well as offer backpacks, jewelry, even a breathing mask… things that weren’t originally dungeon gear.

Inscriptions could’ve been a new feature, with all level 70-80 gear having inscription slots, that makes your current gear more attuned to a dungeon and doesn’t necessarily have to be attuning for Lost Shores dungeon… Maybe I, or some other players, love CoE. Well there might be inscriptions that are like “increased loot off chests in CoE” or “5% less damage from enemies in CoE”.

Point is, there were lots of options to go with this that could’ve reached a compromise between players that like the game “as-is” and players who wanted “more”. I don’t this option as being the compromise since voice of opposition is heavily one-sided…

ANET U BETTER ADRESS THIS QUICK IGN POSTING ON YALL

Mythilas.7325:

I don’t feel anywhere near the hatred for this move that some of you are displaying, but I do have some reservations about it.

From today’s post by Murdock:

“By adding challenging new combat mechanics to end-game content and ways to mitigate those mechanics through gear progression for high-end players, we can add personal progression without making the game feel like an endless treadmill of gear that is just out of your reach.”

Doesn’t the above statement seem a little contradictory? Even reading it in context, it doesn’t make sense to me. You create new mechanics that can only be dealt with by “gear progression” and then say that this creates a sense of personal progression without creating a gear treadmill. O_o

Am I missing something?

Logic: he’s doing it wrong.

This is another slap in the face to all the players who bought GW2 under the promise of no gear treadmilling. It’s simply offensive to a rationale-minded person.

http://www.examiner.com/article/guild-wars-2-may-take-it-s-first-critical-mis-step-upcoming-lost-shores-exp

Sad but true.

I’m sorry, I didn’t know I needed a reward to play a game. Playing the game is reward enough for me. As soon as it starts to feel like a grind, I will quit – just like I have many other MMOs in the past.

This is a prime example of what has happened to the MMO community. It is no longer about playing the game. It is about the PHAT LOOTZ SON that you get at the end. It really doesn’t matter to these type of people what that content is, as long as they’re properly rewarded for it.

I am truly saddened by this. It’s why MMOs are steadily going down the drain by going along the grain. All clones.

I truly had hopes for GW2 being different, it’s why I came back to a MMO after years of not playing any ever since I quit WoW during TBC, after a long time in MMOs such as Ragnarok Online, Ultima Online, or some silly D&D one wayyyyyy back.

Guess that’s it. Back to Retro games for me, when games were still about fun and actual gameplay, not about rewards to appease the addicts.

pfft, I for when welcome higher stat gear, gives me something to work towards cause I know I sure as hell won’t be aimming for legendaries anytime soon, way too go anet! , Besides you know they are just gonna ignore the QQing from people since the content is already primed and ready for release.

What is really funny is Linsey Murdock says that they were surprised people got exotics so fast and some were even getting legendaries. Like really? It just shows how out of touch these developers are with games. But then again, to them its just a job to pay the bills and you cant blame them. Whereas to us we live and breath games and we know 100x more than any developer about what is a good idea and what isnt.

Anyone here could of told them that people would get legandaries after like two weeks. Yet they are surprised? Its so bizaare.

And that isnt even the case. In my active guild there are people who play ALOT and still dont have full set of exotics. And I think I have only ever seen 1 or 2 legandaries in my 300 hours in the game. So what are arenanet on? I have no idea.

Mythilas.7325:

I don’t feel anywhere near the hatred for this move that some of you are displaying, but I do have some reservations about it.

From today’s post by Murdock:

“By adding challenging new combat mechanics to end-game content and ways to mitigate those mechanics through gear progression for high-end players, we can add personal progression without making the game feel like an endless treadmill of gear that is just out of your reach.”

Doesn’t the above statement seem a little contradictory? Even reading it in context, it doesn’t make sense to me. You create new mechanics that can only be dealt with by “gear progression” and then say that this creates a sense of personal progression without creating a gear treadmill. O_o

Am I missing something?

Nope. You’re pretty much just as befuddled as the other 105 pages full of posters.

Aphix.9846:

Good idea. Only more stuff to work towards and more things to do endgame.
Good update in general.

SO MANY people moan about it. WHY ? It’s optional and you don’t have to get it. People who don’t want them can just ignore and…well…don’t get it rofl….AND GET ROFLSTOMPED DUE TO NUMBERS IN WVWVW

I fixed that for you and no to anyone that actually cares about being competitive whether it’s PvE or WvWvW it’s entirely not optional. If it were that simple don’t you think everyone in the thread would have shut up after that was posted on like the first page.

It’s entirely optional for me to do anything in this game so maybe I should just hop into WvWvW in lvl 1 whites and be happy with my performance.

rosswise.7203:

Snerf.1650:

The problem is that they immediately showed stat upgrades with the line “This is just the beginning…”

I know that, and it is going over about as well as a kitten in a punchbowl. Making Ascended items statistically similar will be the best way to defuse the situation and make most people happy.

I’m hopeful because they’re only putting in a couple ascended items with this patch. I’m not 100% against what I read. The insane parts are introducing an apparently vastly superior tier and to some extent the infusions being designed to combat damage. The first part just smacks of traditional gear treadmill that I bought this game to avoid (I wanted to avoid the treadmill games so much that I bought the game when it came out for prepurchase and there was no Mac version yet…yes I use a Mac get over it). The whole damage mitigation thing is slightly annoying but could be tolerable depending on how forgiving it is (i.e., if you can do several repeats without much problem without the mitigation then whatever). However, we’re going to get people demanding stat checks now which is going to destroy the community.

I am relieved that they’re taking baby steps here and not just changing the endgame design with a single patch because it gives them a chance to reverse the stupid parts of this. It still smacks of selling the game’s future for a short-term gain.

Shunsui Jiraiya.9103:

Solutions:

1: Issue an apology for miss selling a core principal over the 4 years leading up to the game release. Admit that they unintentionally gave us an ideal that they was not willing to standby. Accept requests for refunds.
Release a new manifesto that reflects their new design strategy and move on with the game.

2: Admit the decision was a hasty knee jerk solution to please what was perceived to be the majority of the player base. Make new items exotic level stats. Make the new condition feature work on consumables that drop frequently in PvE, Crafting, Karma & via WvW or scrap it. Keep the fundamental value of adding new content with visually spectacular gear for us to grind for. Focus on making the game fun as per the manifesto.

Or they could go with

3. Pretend they are doing this only because the majority of the player base wants it, ignore their design manifesto, and say “I hope all of you are as excited as I am.” Then start making even more changes which make this game more like other MMOs.

I hate you Anet.

Allow me to propose an alternative to power creep that keeps the same kind of progression. Inspired by GW1.

Step 1: Create a monster ability that is so powerful it must be countered in order to progress (done).
Step 2: Create a counter that players have to work for, but that DOES NOT CAUSE POWER CREEP. Example: Doing a series of quests and/or dungeons in order to “Infuse” your armor with magical protection against the Mursaat. This simultaneously introduces content chains, progression, and reward. And it doesn’t involve power creep. Yay!
Step 0.5: Realize this is a good idea, note that you have a 5000 response thread, the majority of which hates your new idea, and halt the release. Eat the short-term loss, suck it up, and go back to the drawing board. Release the content when you have a properly GW-ish system in place.

I will not buy any expansions of GW2, ever, if it includes Power Creep.

It runs 100% counter to the reasons I enjoy GW2 in the first place, and takes away my reason for playing here instead of another sandbox, like say, EVE Online.

So the ppl who played TOEE or Keep on the Borderlands or any other D&D module and got their +1 or +2 magical weapons to beat the harder enemys where crack addicrs too?
This isnt just an MMO its an MMORPG, Character and Item progression where always a part of RPGs if you dont like that maybe you should ask yourself if RPGs are even the genre you like.

The only good point here is that older dungeons may be obselete now. However, who knows, maybe they will make criteria where you have to have full exotics to enter the new ascended dungeon. Plus, people still like the looks of old dungeon gear, so they will get them for transmutation.

As far as this whole 1% goes, you are idiots for reading it this way. She simply said that people have started on legendaries, not own legendaries. There are way too many people right now trying to obtain one, because they all got their exotics earlier and easier than Anet expected. This is known as the “legendary wall” because getting exotics is so easy and the next step is a legendary which is incredibly long and time consuming.

“but players were ready to start on that path much sooner than we expected and were becoming frustrated” This is the cause of many frustrations. Precursers, lodstones, t6 items are all insanely expensive right now because the game hasn’t been out long (the supply is low) and everybody wants one (demand is high).

Fayte.1803:

pfft, I for when welcome higher stat gear, gives me something to work towards cause I know I sure as hell won’t be aimming for legendaries anytime soon, way too go anet! , Besides you know they are just gonna ignore the QQing from people since the content is already primed and ready for release.

Games shouldn’t be about “work”.

Strang.8170:

It´s a start of vertical progression, we don´t want vertical progression…at all.

And neither did they when they were trying to sell their game pre-launch. funny thing is that we actualy believed them.

Very true. I believed them 100%. This is probably why I’m so angry at them right now.

I have to admit that at first I was really disappointed of Arena … after reading many of this answers my thought was about:

Alright maybe they just want to add an step between exotic and legendary.
That would be the only thing I would go with..

I really enjoyed playing so far and I´m a casual gamer, too.
It´s true that the step from exotic to legendary is really a big thing.. and I would love to have one in the future, but I´m also aware of the ton of time that will go by till I can reach this goal. Anyway I´m not upset that this will take so much time, because I think it´s worth it

So if Arena want´s to add just a step between exotic an legendary item´s I´m okay with that. But if they just want to use this to force us gear-grinding like WoW or all the other kitty boring games I can tell you they gonna kill all the fun I had till this day…

So please Arena, don´t listen to those kitty WoW-gamers, if they want Tiers for their equipment they can go back to WoW and have their fun there.

And I think I´ll stop spending money on this game for now until I´m sure that this is just an overreaction from us.. because there is still a little faith in Arena Net.

the thing about this mistake is player base really really dictates the dificulty of the events and everythign around u in the inviroment have fun playing new content when the player base leaves and no one is helping u with events good luck completing any of it.

106 pages

Largely negative. The message is clear Anet.

We don’t want this sort of progression.

Fayte.1803:

pfft, I for when welcome higher stat gear, gives me something to work towards cause I know I sure as hell won’t be aimming for legendaries anytime soon, way too go anet! , Besides you know they are just gonna ignore the QQing from people since the content is already primed and ready for release.

If I was A-Net I wouldnt underestimate the loyal Fanbase they had until today.

I need a new staff of troll destruction.

New gear, new stuff, new zones, and new monsters are good….. in fact they are great and when they are free…….

…..They are aweeesooommmme!!! I love it Anet. Keep up the good work.

I ve tried playing GW2 since this news came out and i just cant any more. Not out of protest but i just see no point in it.
ANET has lost all and any credibility they had in my eyes and the more questions i ask myself on this the worse it gets:

Was this done to please a vocal minority of raiders that expected WoW 2.0?
Was it done because the sales are bad?
What of the above is worse or does it even matter if its both?
Is this game even financially viable anymore or will there be severe cash shop “limitations” in the future?
Is there any point in playing this game if further patches are going to include gear based progression?
What point is there in achieving something, gearing up your chars only to have to do it again when the next update comes along?
Where are the fixes for the many problems like performance, broken DEs, WvW?
What happened to esports, observer mode?
What happened to endgame starts at lvl 1?
What happened to the manifesto?
Why turn your back on your core playerbase?
Why is there no response at all?
Will they really go trough with this?
Does it even matter anymore?

Rhyse.8176:

I hate you Anet.

Allow me to propose an alternative to power creep that keeps the same kind of progression. Inspired by GW1.

Step 1: Create a monster ability that is so powerful it must be countered in order to progress (done).
Step 2: Create a counter that players have to work for, but that DOES NOT CAUSE POWER CREEP. Example: Doing a series of quests and/or dungeons in order to “Infuse” your armor with magical protection against the Mursaat. This simultaneously introduces content chains, progression, and reward. And it doesn’t involve power creep. Yay!
Step 0.5: Realize this is a good idea, note that you have a 5000 response thread, the majority of which hates your new idea, and halt the release. Eat the short-term loss, suck it up, and go back to the drawing board. Release the content when you have a properly GW-ish system in place.

I will not buy any expansions of GW2, ever, if it includes Power Creep.

It runs 100% counter to the reasons I enjoy GW2 in the first place, and takes away my reason for playing here instead of another sandbox, like say, EVE Online.

Once agian, another idea I would prefer… a quest to make current armor “infused”.

So many good suggestions, will we ever get a response about any of them I wonder? Should some of these perhaps be thrown over into the suggestions forum?

Change the stats on the ring to…

48 power
48 precision
7% magic find
18 power
18 precision
infusion slot
—-

This is all it would take for 99% of the complaints on this board to vanish. By changing five numbers, I just did a better job at pleasing the community than Linsey Murdock’s entire team, and I don’t even have my bachelor’s yet.

As a loyal Guild Wars player, I implore you – let me keep my current gear and work for things to ADD to my arsenal rather than REPLACE parts of it. If I wanted to constantly work for better gear, I could do it a heck of a lot cheaper in Aion – which I left to try to get AWAY from.

Latinkuro.9420:

I’m a casual player and even I have 4 crafted exotic sets, 1 dungeon armor set, full compliment of exotic weapons usable by my profession, world completion is at 56% only.

Ascended gear is welcomed with open arms, people complain about gear hamster wheel but they do not see that ascended gear is just in between exotic and legendary, now if they add something like godly armor as higher than legendary THAT right there would be a gear hamster wheel.

Most of the people complaining, I see them as the part of the player base that never even touched guild wars 1 and have no idea about infused armor, how it works and how it is NOT part of a gear hamster wheel.

GW1 vet here. All of the systems in Guild Wars 2 are abysmal. Combat is designed around dodging and downed state, rather than skill. Traits are stat bonuses with small situational perks. Guild system discourages guild loyalty by allowing you to jump around guilds. Magic find causes players to sacrifice ability for probability. Loot is now based on six rarities, blue, green, yellow, orange, pink and purple. The Mystic Forge is the RNG system without the fun part.

I’m done with Guild Wars 2. Ascended armor is a gear check at its best. And for those defending the infusion system in Guild Wars, infusion was a necessary evil designed to stop talented players from progressing into the end game without completing all of the cooperative missions. How quick people are to forget Droknar’s Forge runs!

This is in no way similar to how it works in Guild Wars 2. Stat bonuses to ascended armor make all other armors irrelevant. Not that stats on armor matters, because in the end combat is just based on dodging LOL

GW2 Manifesto looks like the Pirates Code… “Its more like guidelines”

I can see Mike O’Brien doing the Johnny Depp run from all of the former GW2 customers

The new changes sound great! Can ya’ll stop QQ’ing when the game continues to get a little more challenging? Like for real.. you blew the forums up about the “challenging” Clock tower not giving you free loot. And now you’re QQ’ing about the need to go into another dungeon to have fun. What do you want? To sit in LA? Maybe they can add some chess tournaments in LA for your pleasure and you’ll stop the QQ.

I really hate being lied to. At least they did this before the Planetside and Darkfall releases.

lol love the sig! “The spirit of Guild Wars died on Nov. 13 2012. R.I.P.”

Latinkuro.9420:

Ascended gear is welcomed with open arms, people complain about gear hamster wheel but they do not see that ascended gear is just in between exotic and legendary, now if they add something like godly armor as higher than legendary THAT right there would be a gear hamster wheel.

It constantly amazes me how many people think that Legendary items are better than Exotics.

Your signature, by the way, is very apt.

Loosifah.4739:

jboynton.7894:

Loosifah.4739:

If the only thing you get from new sets and new gear in new content updates is a new look, what the hell is the point in doing the new content other than “Oh wow I have all these pretty USELESS sets”?

This is a prime example of what has happened to the MMO community. It is no longer about playing the game. It is about the PHAT LOOTZ SON that you get at the end. It really doesn’t matter to these type of people what that content is, as long as they’re properly rewarded for it.

If the content is fun and you’re rewarded with a skin that marks the prestige of what you’ve done; why isn’t that good enough? You can increase the difficulty of content without having to exponentially increase mob HP and Dmg. You can also make the content rewarding without creating vertical gear progression.

It’s not ALL ABOUT PHAT LOOTZ SON as you would say, I enjoy the game for what it is without a loot progression. But I also enjoy an upgrade in equipment from time to time. Get over yourself ‘son’

You take the forums far too personally. That was simply a little 1337 speak that goes so well with the implementation of a new tier of gear and the beginning of a new design philosophy more akin to WoW.

If you enjoy the game the way it is, there’s no need to change the core design philosophy. If you enjoy playing games with gear progression, there’s already some out there to play. Nothing is stopping people who enjoy that from playing those games instead or as well. Throughout my MMO “career” I’ve usually had two that I play simultaneously. Attempting to attract another game’s player base by changing the already existing framework will not work; it only alienates the current players.

unless its the same 50 people posting multiple QQ’s

pity party, this way!

The new changes sound great! Can ya’ll stop QQ’ing when the game continues to get a little more challenging? Like for real.. you blew the forums up about the “challenging” Clock tower not giving you free loot. And now you’re QQ’ing about the need to go into another dungeon to have fun. What do you want? To sit in LA? Maybe they can add some chess tournaments in LA for your pleasure and you’ll stop the QQ.

One point that hasn’t been made about the new gear is: transmutation.

With each new tier of gear, will we have to buy a new round of transmutation stones to copy that gear to our desired skins?

If so, the gear treadmill is also a way to sell more cosmetic-related cash shop items.

Nar.8327:

Change the stats on the ring to…

---

48 power
48 precision
7% magic find
18 power
18 precision
infusion slot
—-

This is all it would take for 99% of the complaints on this board to vanish. By changing five numbers, I just did a better job at pleasing the community than Linsey Murdock’s entire team, and I don’t even have my bachelor’s yet.

You know, that’s actually quite sad, but I’m afraid you’re right.
Not that I’d like that: I’ve just completed my Exotic set and I have no desire to dish out more gold for something like that, but at least the gap would be less apparent.

dirtyoldgoat.5496:

I need a new staff of troll destruction.

New gear, new stuff, new zones, and new monsters are good….. in fact they are great and when they are free…….

…..They are aweeesooommmme!!! I love it Anet. Keep up the good work.

They indeed are, and nobody is against any of that.

We´re brandishing our pitchforks against that +1 tied to it, which very well may become +10 next year.
New content is good, different stat distributions are good, new skins are good…
Having new gear that´s strictly just statisticaly better than old is what begins a gear threadmill, and is frankly a terrible idea.

krookie.6378:

EverythingXen.1835:

Not enough to keep a game this size running, or this wouldnt be happening.

That’s nonsense. Most of the servers are either Full or High. I see people everywhere, even in the newbie zones. If the issue was money, they could’ve just added some skins to the cash shop and call it a day. I can tell you for a fact that I personally would buy skins.

I do refuse to participate in gambling for skins with BLTC chests though.

I didnt say it wasnt a lot of people. I said it wasnt enough.

I agree the lack of anything worthwhile on the cash shop isnt helping.

Latinkuro.9420:

I’m a casual player and even I have 4 crafted exotic sets, 1 dungeon armor set, full compliment of exotic weapons usable by my profession, world completion is at 56% only.

Ascended gear is welcomed with open arms, people complain about gear hamster wheel but they do not see that ascended gear is just in between exotic and legendary, now if they add something like godly armor as higher than legendary THAT right there would be a gear hamster wheel.

Most of the people complaining, I see them as the part of the player base that never even touched guild wars 1 and have no idea about infused armor, how it works and how it is NOT part of a gear hamster wheel.

“This is just the beginning. In November, we’re only adding the first level of Infusions and Ascended Rings and Back slots, so that leaves us a lot of room to build upon these levels of Item progression in future content.”

I would call that a treadmill.

After having time to reflect, I find this move by ANET to be even more troubling.

First, they said that pre-launch and launch sales were successful beyond their expectations. This means they exceeded their revenue goals – probably by a considerable margin. Since GW2 is B2P, the only significant revenue they could have expected between launch and the first B2P expansion would be cash shop and additional game sales.

Now, they sold so many games that they even suspended digital game sales, so it’s hard for me to imagine they aren’t happy with game sales. If you’re ANET and you know your main source of income for the next 6 months or so is the cash shop, it seems to me clear that cash shop expansion should be your primary focus besides getting that first expansion ready.

However, 3 months into the game and now we have a new armor tier set that goes hand-in-hand with new content gateway mechanics. This kind of thing isn’t something you just throw together at the last minute because some players are complaining about lack of gear progression, because such complaints had to be something ANET knew was going to happen. It would of course take time for the community to sort itself out, because many, many people were going to log in expecting to find the usual MMOG and would probably be dissatisfied with the lack of the usual end-game grind. This is something ANET certainly realized. They even said that they expected the game population to slack off between expansions as the powergamers consumed the content; it was part of their design philosophy.

It’s only logical, given their philosophy, that they should have had a massive cash shop expansion ready to go – new skins, emotes, animations, perhaps an expansion of the dye system, avatar cosmetics, ability to change names, custom dye weapons, etc., perhaps some new armor drops throughout the whole world, perhaps some new events scattered throughout the zones, a new zone. But the cash shop expansion should have been on the top of the list because it was going to be the revenue generator.

But, what are we getting? 3 months in – before any cash shop expansion or any other content in keeping with the original design philosophy, we get content that certainly took some time to generate (perhaps months, considering how ANET likes multiple iterations) and is clearly contradictory to their design philosophy as stated.

Is ANET really just schlepping out thrown-together design-busting content generated in a panic by nothing more than a lack of cash shop sales? If that was the case, wouldn’t it be more prudent to “schlep out” cash shop product that keeps in the design philosophy, even if they hadn’t been planning on such an expansion all along (and they should have been)?

Linsey Murdock said that this change is due to customer feedback; I don’t see how that is possible. What customer feedback? Complaints by a group they knew were going to complain? There were no log-in polls or questionnaires. Is Linsey saying that after a month or two they got feedback and THEN decided to schlep together a philosophy-betraying update including new armor and armor-locked “end game” content? In a month? Where is that famous ANET iterative process?

No, I don’t think so. I don’t think that complaints by a group they knew were going to complain due to fundament design differences, on top of sales that exceeded their expectations, and before they even expanded the cash shop in ways that customers have been asking since launch – I don’t think that precipitated a supposed break from ANET’s famous iteration-heavy development history towards schlepping together the AGONY gate armor tier and system and betraying so many customers.

That doesn’t make any sense. They planned this – this “item progression initiative” from the start, which is why the Agony system and content is ready to go 3 months into the game and BEFORE any significant cash shop expansion. This can’t be a direction made necessary by a lack of income. This can’t be a direction made necessary by any meaningful “customer feedback” since launch, because there was no log-in poll or questionnaire. The “item progression initiative” is just too big and broad to have been thrown together in a month.

Nope. The “item progression initiative” had to have been developed long before any unexpected “customer feedback” forced them to sit around and come up with a core-philosophy defying update they could throw together in a month or so. Sorry, that explanation just doesn’t wash. You don’t change the entire direction and structure of your game based on that kind of “customer feedback” at this point in the game.

They were going to do this all along. That’s why it’s coming out before any cash shop expansion and without any real polling of the customer base. It has nothing to do with a lack of revenue or “customer feedback”. There’s no logic to those claims.

As many others have said, I don’t understand why they can’t just treat Ascension in GW2 as they treated Infusion in GW1. Why can’t we just “infuse” our current exotics into ascended somehow? They could keep the exact same stats as the exotics and have this resistance slot to assist in PvE content. I don’t understand why I’ll soon have to replace every single piece of 80 exotics on all my characters. I’ve also bought and used fine transmutation stones on my armor, so I guess you want me shelling out more cash to transmute my Ascended armor/weapons again? And in another three months you’ll want me doing this again because the crack addicts can’t find any other way to occupy themselves? This blows. I don’t even want to work on my other characters for exotics now. They’ll just be replaced for optimization soon anyways. Actually, why should I even play at all if in a year everything I do and pay for now will just be obsolete?

I had zero problem with how Guild Wars 1 progression worked. I was more than happy to buy a DLC pack as soon as it came out and to buy costumes, etc. I could always jump into the game immediately and be at maximum efficiency.

Strang.8170:

dirtyoldgoat.5496:

I need a new staff of troll destruction.

New gear, new stuff, new zones, and new monsters are good….. in fact they are great and when they are free…….

…..They are aweeesooommmme!!! I love it Anet. Keep up the good work.

They indeed are, and nobody is against any of that.

We´re brandishing our pitchforks against that +1 tied to it, which very well may become +10 next year.
New content is good, different stat distributions are good, new skins are good…
Having new gear that´s strictly just statisticaly better than old is what begins a gear threadmill, and is frankly a terrible idea.

I respectfully disagree.

The thing that I find the funniest here is that all of this feedback from the community is based on speculation. Nobody has even seen anything other than a RING kitten

Serpenti.6753:

The new changes sound great! Can ya’ll stop QQ’ing when the game continues to get a little more challenging? Like for real.. you blew the forums up about the “challenging” Clock tower not giving you free loot. And now you’re QQ’ing about the need to go into another dungeon to have fun. What do you want? To sit in LA? Maybe they can add some chess tournaments in LA for your pleasure and you’ll stop the QQ.

How is it getting more challenging? Rezzing and running back to bosses repeatedly to defeat them does not a fun or challenging dungeon make and that’s just the start of the fail design on their previous dungeon work. Also it does not get more challenging when they buff gear strength at the same time as buffing content difficulty. That just evens things out to have higher numbers but the current difficulty would remain the same.

Also you’re missing that some people don’t want to run dungeons. I HATE DUNGEONS. I never want to HAVE to run one to remain competitive. That’s what they’re forcing me into. Sure it’s optional, but I will also optionally go play another game entirely where I can be competitive without being forced to engage in activities that I derive 0 enjoyment from.

Bruno Sardine.2907:

KrakenAZ.9367:

The ‘MMO Manifesto’ is looking more like an ’MMO Rough Guideline".

Let’s be clear, a Manifesto is merely a declaration of intentions, motives and perspectives by the author…. not a binding contract that locks them into a set of conditions.

While I don’t think this is necessarily the best solution for Anet, let’s recognize that they have total freedom in terms of deciding how they wish to move the game forward…. Total freedom doesn’t mean that all possible decisions they can make are good ones, there are still consequences and this decision might not shake out they way they want it to.

Sure, it isn’t a binding contract. But they made bold claims that attracted many people to the game, even those (like myself) with no prior experience with the franchise. Like it or not, this change is a in stark contrast to what was seen as a core philosophy of the design team. That is going to leave a bad taste in a lot of peoples’ mouths (as can be seen already).

Will I stop playing? Probably not. But GW2 certainly is feeling a lot less like a new MMO home for me, and just another one-night-stand.

camoflaugz.5031:

Snerf.1650:

Loosifah.4739:

If the only thing you get from new sets and new gear in new content updates is a new look, what the hell is the point in doing the new content other than “Oh wow I have all these pretty USELESS sets”?

Because we enjoy doing the content for the sake of fun!

You don’t need to chase the carrot to enjoy yourself. Doing fun things is fun.

Why should there be more to it than that? This is what Anet has said to believe, and it’s what many of us do as well.

Actually, nothing is fun for me, without a reason for doing something. And Millions of MMO players have proved this to be true already. Anet stick to whats proven numbers don’t lie.

You aren’t a gamer. That’s all there is to say.

Kagoshima Josh.5412:

I don’t think the folks at ANet are dim, so I’m assuming they’d expect a pretty significant push back against a new tier of gear. Yet, they did it anyway. That says to me that they are willing to sacrifice the support of many GW2 fans who love the (up till now) non-treadmill approach to gain an influx of players (fans of the pro gear treadmill approach).

This is what I wish to know more about. How many people in ANet really favor this? How many of them didn’t expect a big backlash? How many of them think this is really just an insignificant change?

Kagoshima Josh.5412:

Nobody likes a bait and switch and this definitely feels like one.

Feels that way to me too.