Guild Wars 2

IsaiahCartwright said 10 minutes ago at the Reddit Q & A:

“I can see your concern, our goal with ascended items is to fill the gap in our progression between exotics and legendary as well as give us a new tool with the infusion slot to give more depth of rewards by offering new and interesting infusions that are directed at different game types. "

There was no “gap in progression” between legendary and exotics, so he’s just spinning a blatant falsehood. And for everyone who insisted this was going to end with agony infusions, you’ve just been enlightened. There will be more, different infusions in the future directed at “different game types” .

The gear grind treadmill has officially come to GW2.

After grinding for three sets of exotics and two sets of accessories.. I find it very insulting that I need to pursue new gear in order to proceed in new content to be effective. Not like I can recycle or sell what I have.

With all that collecting and increasing my crafts to make what I was hoping would badequatete for end content.. I feel my time was wasted.

And to use the MF as part of the new upgrade is something I would phantomatom to touch due to the the uselessness of having to rely on luck instead of solid fun and workacquireuire gear and to enjoy ibenefitsfits..

Will never invest in a game with rl coin if what you spend will only be obsolete… I feel this game is slowly fading away..

First itadequateadaquate drops in DE due to competing with others who have higher DPS… and then unresponsive actions after clicking a skill… Tired of micro managing a combat that feels broken.. and drops which were useless…

Loosifah.4739:

Freyar (Who’s… 3 hours ago
I’m concerned over ascended gear. Is Guild Wars 2 supposed to be moving towards traditional MMO progression? One of the reasons I stepped away from WoW and others was so that I could enjoy an MMO at my own pace without the risk of being excluded by something like Gear Score.
IsaiahCartwright @Freyar (Who’s best… 3 hours ago
I can see your concern, our goal with ascended items is to fill the gap in our progression between exotics and legendary as well as give us a new tool with the infusion slot to give more depth of rewards by offering new and interesting infusions that are directed at different game types.

Unfortunately the actual question wasn’t answered, just a canned non-answer repeating the blogpost

You know what guys? In the next patch they will introduce the trinity back to the game. Due to a popular demand of course.

I think we’re at the 7th stage of seven stages of death, acceptance.

Oh my, did you guys see that post “All progression is important to us, we want to make sure our rewards and progression systems hit a spectrum of players and makes everyone feel excited to play the game.” when asked if they cared about vertical progression.
G
G

I really don’t want this to happen.
The main selling point of GW2 was you dont gear-grind in this game.
PvE was suppose to be all about exploring/adventuring/ more personal stories, bigger events and soo much more!

Progression was suppose to be based on cosmatic and fun!
Not this Gear-Grinding treadmil!!!

When are the developers going to adress this issue!!!
When will they know we dont WANT THIS.

We didnt buy and support GW2 to play like this! Noo! Why are they doing this?

I always thought ArenaNet was the best when it comes to making games because its never about gear treadmil. It’s about having fun! BUT IM WRONG!!

Im soo Stupid.. How could I believe this? If this was monthly sub based… Oh god I’d be done with the game already. But I think I might still have hopes…

Please get rid of Ascended gear or at least just make them just cosmatic rewards for doing the dungoen!

Maarius 16 minutes ago
how important for you is vertical progression in GW2?
IsaiahCartwright @Maarius 36 seconds ago
All progression is important to us, we want to make sure our rewards and progression systems hit a spectrum of players and makes everyone feel excited to play the game.

This is more of an answer… Unfortunately not the one I wanted to hear, “vertical progression” is important in a nutshell

slumps

Agrik.7465:

Maarius 16 minutes ago
how important for you is vertical progression in GW2?
IsaiahCartwright @Maarius 36 seconds ago
All progression is important to us, we want to make sure our rewards and progression systems hit a spectrum of players and makes everyone feel excited to play the game.

This is more of an answer… Unfortunately not the one I wanted to hear, “vertical progression” is important in a nutshell

slumps

Yeah, the more I read of that the more I am realizing there is no hope whatsoever.

Next thing you know, people who I invted to this game will think I’m a Lier when I said this game has no grear treadmil… what am I suppose to tell my friends Now ArenaNet!?

Please, I’d like to know.

Angrec.6970:

Oh my, did you guys see that post “All progression is important to us, we want to make sure our rewards and progression systems hit a spectrum of players and makes everyone feel excited to play the game.” when asked if they cared about vertical progression.
G
G

Yeap another non answer its all double talk and PR speak now

So today is the day the game starts it downward spiral then..
I wish I would have known that A-net was gonna go down this road, I would have never bought the game or spent money in cash shop.
Nice bait and switch A-net, Well played! now have fun spoon feeding the WoW kiddie types while getting thrown into the same junk pile as all the WoW clones out there….

I’m out…. Peace!

omg i really im concerned about izzy… kitten…

Joshmans.8937:

Meh.

Depending on how different the stats are, it may bring me back to the game. Lack of gear progression is why i stopped played after hitting 80.

And this person’s reply sums up precisely why they shouldn’t have bothered with this in the first place. The increase is not big enough to make stat chasers happy but they are big enough to turn off a huge chunk of the core fans of the GW franchise. Lose/lose they have set up here. Tomorrow is going to be interesting to be sure.

We finally got our answer. We did it by being bystanders to the newest marketing outreach to unhappy vertical progression MMO players.

I understand what happened. The development team was what we bought, the “Live” team is who is now in charge.

Beta through release was a fantastic game with some flaws.
The first content update, managed by the Live team, used “industry standards” to “respond” to their most “dedicated players”.

I do want to know where these two gentlemen who pioneered horizontal progression in Guild Wars 1 have gone, and if there is any legal way for the original developers to speak up I would like to hear it.

It’ s been fun.

DreamyAbaddon.3265:

Next thing you know, people who I invted to this game will think I’m a Lier when I said this game has no grear treadmil… what am I suppose to tell my friends Now ArenaNet!?

Please, I’d like to know.

yeah I had originally thought “hey they are letting me invite friends!” cause I had a few interested since they are sick of the normal gear grind on MMOs and stopped playing them all together. Now… those invites will go to waste as it would be an insult to our friendships if I even suggested them to come play GW2.

Sky.9347:

We finally got our answer. We did it by being bystanders to the newest marketing outreach to unhappy vertical progression MMO players.

I understand what happened. The development team was what we bought, the “Live” team is who is now in charge.

Beta through release was a fantastic game with some flaws.
The first content update, managed by the Live team, used “industry standards” to “respond” to their most “dedicated players”.

I do want to know where these two gentlemen who pioneered horizontal progression in Guild Wars 1 have gone, and if there is any legal way for the original developers to speak up I would like to hear it.

It’ s been fun.

That it has been. I can honestly say I truly enjoyed myself until this point. But as with everything, ascended gear and infusion are the line I will not cross.

I really dont understand why continue to contraddict their statement now… all progression important? are they fools or what?

Kingbee.4091:

Angrec.6970:

Oh my, did you guys see that post “All progression is important to us, we want to make sure our rewards and progression systems hit a spectrum of players and makes everyone feel excited to play the game.” when asked if they cared about vertical progression.
G
G

Yeap another non answer its all double talk and PR speak now

That’s not a non-answer, it’s just an answer you didn’t want to hear.

“We’ve added a new infusion that is slightly more powerful, come get it in our new dungeon X!”
sounds a lot less like a gear treadmill than
“We’ve added new armor that is slightly more powerful, come get it in our new dungeon X!”
Ascended tier aside, that’s probably why they went with infusions. “It’s only an upgrade, it’s not gear tier!”

As soon as my update finishes, I’m going to stand in LA /crying. Some company is always welcome.

Sky.9347:

We finally got our answer. We did it by being bystanders to the newest marketing outreach to unhappy vertical progression MMO players.

I understand what happened. The development team was what we bought, the “Live” team is who is now in charge.

Beta through release was a fantastic game with some flaws.
The first content update, managed by the Live team, used “industry standards” to “respond” to their most “dedicated players”.

I do want to know where these two gentlemen who pioneered horizontal progression in Guild Wars 1 have gone, and if there is any legal way for the original developers to speak up I would like to hear it.

It’ s been fun.

The two people responcible for the original horizontal progression direction left GW2 in 2010 and are now working at Undeadlabs

progress simply means they will be invalidating your time invested, both in getting items and other in-game wealth, welcome to hamsterville.

Eh, I’ll just play something else for a while. Worst case scenario it’s just another MMO to go into my video game graveyard (aka. old cardboard box in basement).

Hold on! All development effort focused on dungeon locusts, gear grind and now a patch where the only class immune to nerfs is the warrior – Did they hire Kaplan & Kalgan?

I was holding on hoping that the blowback would give them pause to reconsider all this Ascended business, but I’m not really detecting even a hint of concern in these answers (not even if it ends with “But we’re going ahead with this anyway, for now”).

Hopefully support will close my account without me having to go to the trouble of actually getting myself banned for some infraction.

Ostra.3927:

Sky.9347:

We finally got our answer. We did it by being bystanders to the newest marketing outreach to unhappy vertical progression MMO players.

I understand what happened. The development team was what we bought, the “Live” team is who is now in charge.

Beta through release was a fantastic game with some flaws.
The first content update, managed by the Live team, used “industry standards” to “respond” to their most “dedicated players”.

I do want to know where these two gentlemen who pioneered horizontal progression in Guild Wars 1 have gone, and if there is any legal way for the original developers to speak up I would like to hear it.

It’ s been fun.

The two people responcible for the original horizontal progression direction left GW2 in 2010 and are now working at Undeadlabs

Where did you get that?
If that’s true that’s there are only 2 ppl who believed in only horizontal progression are gone, then where are the rest who worked at the original GW in ANet?

I guess the invite-a-friend is there to stop the bleeding caused by the mass exodus induced by the introduction of gear grind.

Peace Y’all.

Ostra.3927:

DreamyAbaddon.3265:

Next thing you know, people who I invted to this game will think I’m a Lier when I said this game has no grear treadmil… what am I suppose to tell my friends Now ArenaNet!?

Please, I’d like to know.

yeah I had originally thought “hey they are letting me invite friends!” cause I had a few interested since they are sick of the normal gear grind on MMOs and stopped playing them all together. Now… those invites will go to waste as it would be an insult to our friendships if I even suggested them to come play GW2.

A co-worker of mine was waiting until December to purchase because he’s a bit younger than me and is graduating from his university at the end of the year. Wanted to focus on school.

I’d planned to give him a budkitteny for the weekend. Instead I told him not to buy it at all, because the reasons he was excited about it were no longer applicable.

Will definitely not be inviting any friends.

Agrik.7465:

Loosifah.4739:

Freyar (Who’s… 3 hours ago
I’m concerned over ascended gear. Is Guild Wars 2 supposed to be moving towards traditional MMO progression? One of the reasons I stepped away from WoW and others was so that I could enjoy an MMO at my own pace without the risk of being excluded by something like Gear Score.
IsaiahCartwright @Freyar (Who’s best… 3 hours ago
I can see your concern, our goal with ascended items is to fill the gap in our progression between exotics and legendary as well as give us a new tool with the infusion slot to give more depth of rewards by offering new and interesting infusions that are directed at different game types.

Unfortunately the actual question wasn’t answered, just a canned non-answer repeating the blogpost

I think he answered the question – we just don’t like the answer.

I won’t stop playing the game, because I paid for it, but it has blunted my enthusiasm to spend more money in the gem shop. I don’t want to throw good money after bad. Personally, I’m concerned that the horizontal progression features I want will never show up because vertical progression will take over, but I’ll just have to wait and see.

Everyone should just boycott all gem buying, and anything to do with gems. This is a F2P game, the revenue from key purchasing is only trickling now, it is mainly the shop. If you cut this away they will have to answer to the share holders/execs as to why the profits were down. Then it will be clear they actually have to listen.

I gave an invitation to my girlfriend who is a very casual gamer, but now I just told her to not bother since she will never be able to keep up.
Not that she would have made it to exotics anytime soon, but at least she won’t have to suffer all the gear grind mentality that comes with these types of games…

Venn.8931:

I guess the invite-a-friend is there to stop the bleeding caused by the mass exodus induced by the introduction of gear grind.

Peace Y’all.

My invites are rotting in their graves – why would i invite anyone to this fiasco?

Funny thing is, pre gear grind, I would have sent them out in a heartbeat. Loved the game but now, not so much. Not even logged in to download the patch.

Crater.1625:

Hopefully support will close my account without me having to go to the trouble of actually getting myself banned for some infraction.

yeah, I opened a ticket a few days back asking to be permanently banned, lol, not as easy as you’d think. Now I’m having fun watching the ‘twighlight zone’ effect: what we wanted to be true and what is true now collide.

Venn.8931:

I guess the invite-a-friend is there to stop the bleeding caused by the mass exodus induced by the introduction of gear grind.

Peace Y’all.

actually that makes sense. They already admitted they knew this would cause anger.

Basicly… they know they are going to lose players… and have basically decided they would rather have more carrot style players then the old fans of GW1

Mythios.2735:

Everyone should just boycott all gem buying, and anything to do with gems. This is a F2P game, the revenue from key purchasing is only trickling now, it is mainly the shop. If you cut this away they will have to answer to the share holders/execs as to why the profits were down. Then it will be clear they actually have to listen. .

now that is genius, play the heck out of the game without spending a dime. maybe I’ll withdraw my support ticket, self-perma-ban request.

Just throwing in my rage filled hat against the new tier. Reasons have already been stated by so many other loyal fans to this game. I won’t be grinding for ascended gear. If I happen to get some, there will be no joy in it, knowing that it’ll just be sub-par the next time Anet decides it’s time to appease the WOW playerbase. I can say with certainty I won’t be buying any more gems with cash or gold, nor can I say I’ll be diverting any more suckers to get in to the game, and if my attitude drives out friends and guild members, so be it. I had thought I would enjoy playing, and paying to enjoy, the game for years to come… needless to say it’s been shockingly short lived.

LucasOfTheDesert 29 minutes ago

Hello Isaiah Cartwright,
I am just curious about the gap between exotics and legendaries that gets mentioned so often. Since they are both max stats and GW2 is (supposed to be) just for the looks then there is no real gap in my opinion. If you want to have a nice skin then go for the Foefire´s Essence or the Anomaly or if you think you can afford the time go for a legendary.

The real problem is that players ONLY want a legendary and forget about all the other weapons and about what it is supposed to be: legendary! So only about 5% of the gamers should be able to obtain it. I believe that you shouldn´t have advertised for the legendarys that much. This way players believe that it is part of finishing the game to get one instead of just finding a gear that satisfies your expectation.

What are your thoughts on that? (I´m sorry for grammer mistakes my native language is german :/)

Best regards
IsaiahCartwright @LucasOfTheDesert a minute ago
The gap we’ve talked about is more the game in time we everyone to have achievable goals that players can look forward to. Legendary are very long term goals and we want to make sure they are layered in with other interesting goals a player can accomplished while on their way to finishing a legendary.

So the stat increase has nothing to do with the gap fix… thats the grind… the stat fix must simply be to get the grind heads to come play.

Anatomy of a Fool:

Didn’t like “gear progression”, AoC promised skill over gear! Excited, first collector’s edition MMO I ever bought. AoC changes design philosophy to gear progression (away from gear having virtually no affect). I hang on a couple years hoping, then delete from hard drive.

Come GW2, promoting vertical progression, no gear grind, fantastic! I always liked gw1 but thought it needed features gw2 was adding (weapon skills not totally tied to your “build” of the moment, open world play with other players rather than all instanced, new character customization features, beautiful look, promise of player housing along with guild halls in future, much more, while keeping gw1 tradition of not being about gear stats).

Boy was I ever sold! 2nd ever collector’s edition MMO I bought, gladly bought gems in game to help keep game going strong, and then… what, 3 days ago? “Gear progression” rears its head… I hope, noooo they don’t really mean it. I see this thread, many others disaffected, they will change their minds! These guys brought us gw1 remember! So enthusiastic in those manifesto videos! I heard them say I wouldn’t have to grind gear, their game wasn’t about that…

Then Isaiah says that “all types of progression” are important when asked about vertical progression…

Fool me once, shame on you, but I’ve been fooled again. Le sigh…

—edit to add I rebuilt my computer for both games, just to admit another level to my foolishness… And for the record I’m still calling for an end to the gear progression, though I’ll not be holding my breath or spending any more on gems meanwhile.

From the patch notes:

New Rarity Type: Ascended

• Ascended rarity falls between Exotics and Legendaries on the rarity spectrum.
• Ascended items have higher stats than Exotics and come with slots for the new upgrade type, Infusions.
• Ascended rings and back slot items have been added to the game.

All the posts here didn’t convinced Anet to tune down the ascended stats.
WoW 2 is here. I haven’t asked any friend of mine to the game, i will play the game without even touching the gem store.

Wintyre Fraust.6534:

Well I wasn’t going to log in until the 19th anyway. My own protest. Problem is, I probably won’t log in after that either. Just not really any point to it anymore. I’ve been reduced to scrub status by yet another developer.

We only have one option it seems stick to hard core sandbox pvp games, I dont see another alternative. Maybe a few of the Sci fi games coming out as well, hell I have been playing the DayZ mod for 3 days now, OMG actual world pvp it’s been so so long. Fantasy mmorpgs just seem to want to screw us over every time. They cant introduce world pvp, or fix broken classes but gear treadmill just for carebears,….. no problem.

Rhydian.5412:

Wintyre Fraust.6534:

Well I wasn’t going to log in until the 19th anyway. My own protest. Problem is, I probably won’t log in after that either. Just not really any point to it anymore. I’ve been reduced to scrub status by yet another developer.

We only have one option it seems stick to hard core sandbox pvp games, I dont see another alternative. Maybe a few of the Sci fi games coming out as well, hell I have been playing the DayZ mod for 3 days now, OMG actual world pvp it’s been so so long. Fantasy mmorpgs just seem to want to screw us over every time. They cant introduce world pvp, or fix broken classes but gear treadmill just for carebears,….. no problem.

I truly is frustrating. Every mmo that seems to have promise utterly fails with stupid stupid stupid design decisions. Its sad to because their early incarnations have so much hope.

Not to mention how much hope and excitement everyone had for a game made by anet that used horizontal progression. Guess thats all out the window now. Maybe mmos just cant get over the remains of everquest and wow, I dont know but Im slowly starting to think that the genre is not worth looking into anymore.

Linsey Murdock

players were ready to start on that path much sooner than we expected and were becoming frustrated with a lack of personal progression. Our desire is to create a game that is more inclusive for hardcore and casual players alike, but we don’t want to overlook the basic need for players to feel like they are progressing and growing even after hitting max level. Adding item progression is a delicate process normally undertaken in an expansion, but we feel it’s important to strive to satisfy the basic needs of our players sooner rather than later.

As a player, I feel that the problem stated is a problem that I never experienced or complained about. As a matter of fact my experience was not progressing to cap at max stats fast enough. Because of that I feel like this is a feature makes the problem I experience even worse.

My only concern is that I prefer gear-balanced in WvW. In wvw I feel like the progression of a single player translates to a global regression of all of the other players, including myself. If stat differences between exotics and legendaries are insignificant, would you give a feature that automatically buffs any given weapon to be legendary-equivalent for those who do not ask for a sense of progression?

I still can’t see why the new items have to be better than exotic gear. The agony-mechanic would still work if the infusion-set would be equal to exotic gear. The people who play the fractal-dungeon would have their “progress” when they play the dungeon but won’t have an advantage over the players who don’t want to play that dungeon. So why, why, why does infusion-gear has to be better than exotic gear?

Hope I could make myself clear, english ist not my native language …

ckeeton.4907:

Quit being self entitled.

It’s not self entitlement. It’s being pissed off that they changed one of the core fundamentals of this game. That said, the deed is now done. Some of us will get over it and continue to play. Others will leave over this. Anet will know if they made the right decision based on the numbers. I don’t see them reversing the course they have now set. Almost 10K posts and neither Colin nor Mike anywhere to be found.

Loosifah.4739:

Well you’ve seen the direction this is heading people. No point whining about it anymore. Either stick around; or don’t.

Uninstalling now unfortunately. It was fun while it lasted. Will only reinstall and come back if they remove ascended and abandon this insane vertical progression model.

Loosifah.4739:

Well you’ve seen the direction this is heading people. No point whining about it anymore. Either stick around; or don’t.

Well seeing as how some people whined about the lack of vertical progression until they went in this direction, maybe the rest of us can whine until its reversed before it gets worse.

Lopez.7369:

Infusions have stats. LOL.

WTF. If that is true, this makes Ascended items even more superior that they already were. The items alone have around 8% more stats (which is with proper Synergy, like Berserker equipment where damage, crit chance and crit damage goes up in unison, already quote substantial), now you get additional stats from the infusions?

Can i please have my gold and real money back? I wasted like 25 gold and 7 transmutation stones (armor + 1 weapon) on mere exotics, which were apparently never meant as endgame items, not even close…

may as well put in my ten cents

the way i see it, some people are overreacting when they say that the game has become entirely stat based. i think the stats are important to an extent, only to make individual builds work, since this isnt a game in which you are stuck playing your class in one of 3 or 4 different ways. so to that extent, they do have a place.

however they dont need to be increased. when i started playing, from WoW, i was impressed with the fact that there was a top tier of gear that was easily obtainable. i feel that this encourages individual skill over how geared someone is. gear progression never seemed to be a good idea to me. it seemed to simply make games boring. having flat constant stats on gear anyone could realistically obtain makes more sense, allowing the player to gear to their build and not have to worry about having to upgrade at any point, unless they wanted to upgrade how they look.

basically what im saying is that more developers, with Anet potentially leading the way, MMO’s should stop glorifying gear and numbers and instead glorify and reward individual skill, in which ever way the player wants to play the game. find something their good at and reward them with that. or something.

Honestly I don’t recall seeing that many people whine about wanting vertical progression; which leads me to believe they had intended to do this from the start.

Lopez.7369:

Infusions have stats. LOL.

I didn’t mouth off about it because I had no way to know prior but this doesn’t surprise me at all. So now the grindiest of the grinders will have the best WvW gear. Isn’t that great. Que incoming pvp only stat to reduce the effectiveness of PvE gear in WvW creating yet another problem. A-Net, you all are a bunch of fools for doing this.

Bottomline is people wanted more content, not extra grind. If they couldn’t deliver that amount of content and had to resort to adding grind, that’s fine. As long as it’s cosmetics and not statgrind that restricts people from playing the way they want.