Guild Wars 2

I am not 80 yet, I started a week ago, I am so confused by all this new gear and stats and stuff I have no idea how to make or do or find any of this yet, but I do no like it one bit and I am very disappointed they just don’t care already. They have begun not only doing the opposite of what they said, they are destroying the new players, I cant find anyone in the zones im in atm, and im sure it wont get better with this game becoming the new WoW Gear score game.

Relentliss.2170:

Here’s a thought. Decrease the stat increase slightly, simply adjust the % based stat to be equal (7% instead of 10) and remove stats from the infusions. 10% crit damage instead of 7% is a massive increase. You could even make it 8% for the hsmsters in all of us.

Now you have gear that is only slightly better. Depending on whether your build needs runes, Exotic armor is only slightly less and people will notice little difference. At the same time you have your little treadmill for the hamsters and kept your horizontal progression.

No and No,

You can’t compromise, then they would be getting away with false advertising.
Its either only cosmetic or they lose players/ never get gems from a large portion till it becomes such. Simple, that is the Guild Wars way, not the Warcraft way which they think they can curveball this into and get away with it

psirca.9452:

It’s not just gear now, tonight I went into the dungeon foyer (right there in the big portal) and there were rewards for 20 slot bags and some item that when used gives you an instant skillpoint.

It’s not just gear, it’s not just gear, it’s not just gear.
I’m going to be chanting that tonight.

This is the first friday night that at 9pm I turned off the game.

Poor crafters! Now they won’t even be able to sell bags.

Hey Anet? You need to do some damage control. You see, we feel betrayed. You said you were listening, and now we want to know what you plan on doing. At the very least we’d like to know your reasoning, and why you think we need to grind for stats instead of just skins.

Before you announced the new gear grind I was really excited for this game. I was making plans to play with friends this weekend. But it’s really difficult to motivate myself to play a game when some of the reasons I bought it are in limbo. And I’m far more moderate in my feeling than some of my guildmates.

Chiming in with my first post here on this issue. Game was advertised as a non-grind game where endgame was solely cosmetic. They lied with this update. And I’m really displeased to see the legendary weapons with increased stats damage showing up in wvw. This is just the beginning of a korean grind mmo that I do not want to be part of. 1 non upgraded ascended backpack is 90hrs of dungeons. Not to mention all the other upgrades. And on top of that the legendary grind so you can have a max dps weapon. Ugh.
/done

The new dungeon looks and plays very well …

…but i do not like the ascended items.. not at all.

There is NO need for a stat increase.

Why is there an ascended back piece before there is even a god kitten exotic back piece?

I just don’t get it, this update just doesn’t seem right at all.

This actually goes one step beyond typical grindy MMO’s. At least they allow you some time to enjoy your accomplishments before you hop back on the treadmill again. I just got my first character to 80 and now it’s time to think about gearing up…again. I thought GW2 was going to be a different MMO.

I’ve made a few posts about this issue already, and this shall be my last one.

It appears A.net are really going all the way with this Ascended gear project. Essentially, they’re now competing with WoW and other similar MMOs for the same audience (that is, vertical gear grinders), but in the case of WoW, it has the upper hand since it had nearly a decade of experience to perfect the vertical progression model. However disappointed I am, I wish them luck, but I have a feeling this will not bode well.

In a way, Arenanet are putting themselves on a treadmill as well: vertical grinders will never be satisfied, and Arenanet will have to push out more vertical content just to go back to where they were before (that is, to get these players back). Yet, if they don’t, they’ll lose more players. It amazes me that they’re willing to throw away their seven-year old philosophy just to fill a “gap” that only exists for some players and not all. I never felt there was a gap, as I never thought about going after a Legendary. I’m sure I’m not the only one who felt this way.

Anyhow, although I felt betrayed by this 180 degree turn of theirs, it did prove to me one thing: the higher the expectation, the bigger the disappointment. I waited five years for this game, and I expected A.net to deliver it in accordance with the promises they’ve made throughout these years. What a big mistake I made; I suppose I should’ve smarten up and be more sceptical of things. Yesterday I decided to uninstall the game and stay away from it. I could’ve just deal with the crap and continue playing, since I haven’t completely finished the game yet (the only dungeon I’ve completed is story mode Arah) and I paid for its content (and possibly Lost Shore and FoTM as well). However, to me this is about principle and dignity, and I’m not giving them up just to get my money’s worth. I just don’t appreciate being lied to. In addition, I feared of becoming another victim to gear treadmill, as once I start grinding for Ascended gear, it’s very hard to go back.

Rhotsbin.8579:

Pushing 200 pages of largely legitimate complaints about this decision, and not a word to address it. Fires spreading to fansites. During beta there were devs jumping all over the tiniest QQ about personal story dialog that didn’t jive right with a handful of players that saw/disliked it.

What. Thekitten. Happened. To Anet.

I’m seriously starting to wonder if every dev speaking in the MMOifesto has quit/been fired and NC$oft is running the show.

I doubt they’ve been fired, though it is odd that they haven’t come forward to speak to us honestly. We don’t need sugar coated PR at this point, we need answers and we need them as swiftly as possible.

I’m very willing to give Arena Net the benefit of the doubt, since I know how ruthless and cruel the world of business can be. I suspect many of the developers have their hands tied, especially since these sort of sweeping changes just reek of investor meddling.

Anet, I loved youre game for what it was and not for what its becoming. I tought i found a game that i would be playing for years to come and i felt it was truly Unique in everything that it had to offer, finally no treadmill, everyone was equal in gear and only our skill was the diffrence. I just cant keep playing the game the way it is now and the way its heading now i just feel like im back into world of warcraft again and the whole ideal of this game that made me love it was completley smashed. Not only did i quit cause of the changes and direction you took, i quit and deleted both my lvl 80 full exotic characters for another reason beyond that, and that was youre way of treating youre community and constantly going back on youre words and deceving youre true fan base.

Now when my characters are deleted i dont even feel sad neither do i feel disappointed, i feel that i actully reached endgame GW2 while this still was GW2 and that knowledge alone is good enough for me. i would also like to say Good luck to every other player on this forum and if you still love this game even doh they changed direction im happy for you and i would kill for being able to feel the same. Also thanks Anet for the Great MMORPG u deliverd in the beginning giving me more fun in these short months then ive ever had in any mmorpg.

Skins alone cannot keep most of us playing the game for longer and longer. Maybe they did it a little early but I appreciate new content when it comes.
For those who don’t like a new ceiling most of them will complain but few will leave for that reason. It was a smart move to make them, Just not a smart time to release them.

Colin Johanson, June 19, 2012:

“Now let me pose a second question: If the success of a subscription-based MMO is measured by the number of people paying a monthly fee, how does that impact game design decisions?

“The answer can be found in the mechanics and choices made in subscription-based MMOs, which keep customers actively playing by chasing something in the game through processes that take as long as possible. In other words, designers of traditional MMOs create content systems that take more time to keep people playing longer. If this is your business motivation and model so you keep getting paid, it makes sense and is an incredibly smart thing to do, and you need to support it.

“When your game systems are designed to achieve the prime motivation of a subscription-based MMO, you run the risk of sacrificing quality to get as much content in as possible to fill that time. You get leveling systems that take insane amounts of grind to gain a level, loot drop systems that require doing a dungeon with a tiny chance the item you want can drop at the end, raid systems that need huge numbers of people online simultaneously to organize and play, thousands of wash/repeat item-collection or kill-mob quests or dailies with flavor text support, the best stat gear requiring crazy amounts of time to earn, etc.

“But what if your business model isn’t based on a subscription? What if your content-design motivations aren’t driven by the need to create mechanics that keep people playing as long as possible? When looking at content design for Guild Wars 2, we’ve tried to ask the question: What if the development of the game was based on…wait for it…fun?”

“If we chose fun as our main metric for tracking success, can we flip the core paradigm and make design decisions based on what we’d like to play as game players? Can we focus our time on making meaningful and impactful content, rather than filler content meant to draw out the experience? Can we make something so much fun you might want to play it multiple times because it’s fun, rather than making you do it because the game says you have to? It’s how we played games while growing up. I can’t tell you how many times I played Quest for Glory; the game didn’t give me 25 daily quests I needed to log in and do—I played it multiple times because it was fun!”

Reidlos.5437:

I am not 80 yet, I started a week ago, I am so confused by all this new gear and stats and stuff I have no idea how to make or do or find any of this yet, but I do no like it one bit and I am very disappointed they just don’t care already. They have begun not only doing the opposite of what they said, they are destroying the new players, I cant find anyone in the zones im in atm, and im sure it wont get better with this game becoming the new WoW Gear score game.

I can sympathize with you Reidlos.5437, I’ve been playing the game since open beta about 3 hours a day and I feel overwhelmed by all this new armor and have no clue where it will all come from or how exactly to get it.

You can’t find anyone in the open world to play with because everyone has parked their Alternative characters in favor of upgrading their Exotics to Ascended gear and re-running the never ending instanced dungeon they just put in.

I think they have lost their minds to tell you the truth, I really do not see how a never ending instanced dungeons complements this games open world dynamic content. All it does is whisks players attention off the open world where they need a critical mass of players to keep that content viable. The open world was already suffering from a lack of players and this will just make it worse.

I’m just shocked by the lack of forethought going into these post launch decisions and the ramifications they could have on the rest of the game.

Kelvingts.2035:

Skins alone cannot keep most of us playing the game for longer and longer.

How ’bout skins and new dungeons and explorable areas?

Kelvingts.2035:

Skins alone cannot keep most of us playing the game for longer and longer. Maybe they did it a little early but I appreciate new content when it comes.
For those who don’t like a new ceiling most of them will complain but few will leave for that reason. It was a smart move to make them, Just not a smart time to release them.

You only come back for bigger numbers? It is possible to release new content without increasing stats. I got this game to you know, play it, not for numbers.

Does Colin still work for ANET? Does he realize his reputation is being ruined? Does he have a facebook or twitter account? Someone needs to tell him that his word is fast becoming worthless. Seriously, if it were me, and some corporate suits were behind this that I had no control over, I’d bail as a matter of principle.

Aaron.4807:

Why is there an ascended back piece before there is even a god kitten exotic back piece?

I just don’t get it, this update just doesn’t seem right at all.

I think they added exotic back pieces and rings to the dungeons. I know i found some masterwork ones after a few runs, and they mentioned new exotic drops in the dungeons as per the patch notes.

Rhyse.8176:

Well, it’s official, I no longer have an active GW2 account.

Following up my original statement (it’s well buried now I’m sure), but my refund just went through. I pre-ordered in June, and didn’t expect it to be approved after so long, but there it is anyway. Props to Anet for, at least, supporting their product to that level.

For the record, Anet, if you are reading, I will buy the game right back if you remove/fix this stat inflation.

If anyone else wants to give it a go, and speak with their wallets, here’s the official link:

https://en.support.guildwars2.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/9053

Thanks for this information. At least we can get a refund for their lies.

New content : YAY
New stat increases : NAY

Anet, why are you doing this? You should know about GW1, how well it worked with just new content and new gear, but WITHOUT stat increases.

Now, a lot, and I meant a lot, will either refund or just quit the game, because if this treadmill goes on this game is not better then any other mmo in the endgame.

Sad that anet went that way.
I hope they turn otherwise after reading all this.

I just submitted a refund ticket, but only for gem purchases that went toward buying armor. I definitely got my $60 worth of gameplay, but I certainly did not get what I bought gems for, which is armor that lasts the life of the game.

I’ve been really thinking about this change in direction a lot more thoroughly and to be quite honest, I really do like it now. Allow me to explain.

I’ve been playing this game waaaay too much for my own good. I used to live in WvWvW, dungeon crawl endlessly, spend much of my time in Lions Arch and explorable areas helping people and just outright feeling good about myself and the amount of time I spent in this game. I was addicted to say the least, I felt really good. The problem with this was that I’ve been neglecting a lot of other things in my life, I didn’t hang out with my friends very often anymore, I just simply didn’t want to do anything else but play Guildwars 2. Now that this change in direction has rolled out, my attachment to this game has simply disconnected, my itch to play this game is no longer there.

So thank you for setting me free, I can continue to write my book, paint, and pursue something else that I can enjoy. I’ll be on here and there but my focus has realigned because of this change, and I’m quite happy that I can put down this game without the never ending lust to get back on.

Wintyre Fraust.6534:

Colin Johanson, June 19, 2012:

“Now let me pose a second question: If the success of a subscription-based MMO is measured by the number of people paying a monthly fee, how does that impact game design decisions?

“The answer can be found in the mechanics and choices made in subscription-based MMOs, which keep customers actively playing by chasing something in the game through processes that take as long as possible. In other words, designers of traditional MMOs create content systems that take more time to keep people playing longer. If this is your business motivation and model so you keep getting paid, it makes sense and is an incredibly smart thing to do, and you need to support it.

“When your game systems are designed to achieve the prime motivation of a subscription-based MMO, you run the risk of sacrificing quality to get as much content in as possible to fill that time. You get leveling systems that take insane amounts of grind to gain a level, loot drop systems that require doing a dungeon with a tiny chance the item you want can drop at the end, raid systems that need huge numbers of people online simultaneously to organize and play, thousands of wash/repeat item-collection or kill-mob quests or dailies with flavor text support, Lthe best stat gear requiring crazy amounts of time to earn, etc.

“But what if your business model isn’t based on a subscription? What if your content-design motivations aren’t driven by the need to create mechanics that keep people playing as long as possible? When looking at content design for Guild Wars 2, we’ve tried to ask the question: What if the development of the game was based on…wait for it…fun?”

“If we chose fun as our main metric for tracking success, can we flip the core paradigm and make design decisions based on what we’d like to play as game players? Can we focus our time on making meaningful and impactful content, rather than filler content meant to draw out the experience? Can we make something so much fun you might want to play it multiple times because it’s fun, rather than making you do it because the game says you have to? It’s how we played games while growing up. I can’t tell you how many times I played Quest for Glory; the game didn’t give me 25 daily quests I needed to log in and do—I played it multiple times because it was fun!”

I do feel sorry for any of the devs who really meant all of this. Maybe they were just wrong and there aren’t enough of us who aren’t interested in stat carrots to keep this game going. I know, I know, Guild Wars. Right. But it couldn’t have cost nearly as much to develop as this one did.

But I’m still angry they limited ways to get the new gear. There are only three possible reasons for doing that:

1. They were in a huge hurry to get the gear out in order to retain more players and didn’t have time to figure out how to put it in for crafters, open world PVE players, and WvW players.

2. They plan to make money off the people who hate doing dungeons by selling this gear to them somehow, either by making getting it in other ways incredibly expensive in gold cost or outright in the store (probably the former and note to Anet, that won’t work, at least not on me!).

3. They wanted to funnel players into one area and get them teamed up so they wouldn’t quit over feeling lonely. (I think this is likely even if one of the others is also true. The game world is big and sectioned off and some areas seem very empty even when the server is showing full. Personally, I’m fine with it except when the DEs or skill point challenges are too hard to solo on my squishier alts, but some people just can’t stand wandering around hardly ever seeing anyone.)

Well, there is one more reason. They might be trying to attract that dungeon running hamster mentality crowd, people who insist that the best gear only be in dungeons that must be run over and over again. That would be a really stupid reason, though, because those players already have their games. They aren’t going to leave their Heroics and their raids for GW2.

IllegalChocolate.6938:

I’ve been really thinking about this change in direction a lot more thoroughly and to be quite honest, I really do like it now. Allow me to explain.

I’ve been playing this game waaaay too much for my own good. I used to live in WvWvW, dungeon crawl endlessly, spend much of my time in Lions Arch and explorable areas helping people and just outright feeling good about myself and the amount of time I spent in this game. I was addicted to say the least, I felt really good. The problem with this was that I’ve been neglecting a lot of other things in my life, I didn’t hang out with my friends very often anymore, I just simply didn’t want to do anything else but play Guildwars 2. Now that this change in direction has rolled out, my attachment to this game has simply disconnected, my itch to play this game is no longer there.

So thank you for setting me free, I can continue to write my book, paint, and pursue something else that I can enjoy. I’ll be on here and there but my focus has realigned because of this change, and I’m quite happy that I can put down this game without the never ending lust to get back on.

I hear playing a game that it’s easy to walk away from on a regular basis also cures the dreaded butt numbness!

Seriously, good for you, though. I need to spend less time with MMOs in general.

Frankly the MMO genre is hampered by the WoW crowd. Now dont get me wrong the crowd began back with EQ1 so its not JUST WoW players. But wow being such a success means if any MMO does not make WoW levels of success in a few months the investors and stock holders start screaming for change or close the doors.

How will the MMO genre evolve? it wont. Not until WoW drops to under 1mil players. But due to the smart ways Blizzard counts their subscribers (group deals at Chinese and Korean game cafes so even if only 1 person plays it counts as 30 for the total licenses) we will not see anything good come from the MMO market for another 5 years.

After that the virtual world MMO may make a comback. User generated content where the developer just gives the basic rules of the world and the foundation, and the gamers themselves create the world.

Hopefully the 12 year old WoW kiddies that rule the MMO market right now will have aged to at least 18-20 by this time and gotten past the higher numbers = content crap they are stuck in right now.

Until then… yeah I think I am pretty much done with the MMO market. I’ll be back in mod gaming world like War Z and Skyrim mods.

hplee.2839:

Fozzik.1742:

I’ve decided to skip the weekend event. I don’t feel like logging in.

I’m not sure when I’ll feel like it again…but even when/if I do, I won’t be wasting another dime on this game. I bought gems the first two months because I wanted to show ArenaNet that I supported the game they made, and I wanted them to fix the bugs and add more of the same great content. Instead, they took my money and used it to turn the game into something I don’t find even remotely fun, and which has sucked out my motivation to log into a game that I really, really enjoyed.

In short, they used my money to screw me over. I won’t make the mistake of paying them anything again. I hope the event is fun for the folks who see it.

hello there Drama kings/queens, Guild-war 1 puritists and anti-extra-stats-on-gear fundementalists

i will like to thank you for not playing the game, we already have enough of people in Lion’s Arch that makes it so laggy…

people still turn up for the event despite 200 pages of tears (Anet if you are reading it the lag is unacceptable) , and the dungeon is amazing.

please keep crying on the forum and stop log-in into thegame so the rest of us can enjoy a lag-free event

If you can manage to read through all of the tear soaked typing, you will see that a lot of it is the same few people posting over and over again. I clicked on a few of the hyper negative posters and view their history, and some of them have 20+ posts in this thread.

Its hard to really gauge how many people are hardcore upset with the changes, because the few that are crowding the thread with their drama.

For me, its still the same game for now. Im not that impressed with the new event, but there sure was a massive lag inducing turn out- so there is still a massive crowd that is interested in the game.

hplee.2839:

Fozzik.1742:

I’ve decided to skip the weekend event. I don’t feel like logging in.

I’m not sure when I’ll feel like it again…but even when/if I do, I won’t be wasting another dime on this game. I bought gems the first two months because I wanted to show ArenaNet that I supported the game they made, and I wanted them to fix the bugs and add more of the same great content. Instead, they took my money and used it to turn the game into something I don’t find even remotely fun, and which has sucked out my motivation to log into a game that I really, really enjoyed.

In short, they used my money to screw me over. I won’t make the mistake of paying them anything again. I hope the event is fun for the folks who see it.

hello there Drama kings/queens, Guild-war 1 puritists and anti-extra-stats-on-gear fundementalists

i will like to thank you for not playing the game, we already have enough of people in Lion’s Arch that makes it so laggy…

people still turn up for the event despite 200 pages of tears (Anet if you are reading it the lag is unacceptable) , and the dungeon is amazing.

please keep crying on the forum and stop log-in into thegame so the rest of us can enjoy a lag-free event

Sure thing boss. You are so amazing I just wann…

ya know what no. Just gonna report you

Take a look, the rat race is already going:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/users-are-getting-picky-on-party-toughts/first

I thought that they wasn’t going to introduce the dungeon the first day…… but as you see they are running.

And the expected show with it, soon tho, we’ll see other kind of complains, in particular the kind of grind (still the immense majority is unaware) and the gating. Its just the beginning.

TransparentlyOpaque.1824:

hplee.2839:

Fozzik.1742:

I’ve decided to skip the weekend event. I don’t feel like logging in.

I’m not sure when I’ll feel like it again…but even when/if I do, I won’t be wasting another dime on this game. I bought gems the first two months because I wanted to show ArenaNet that I supported the game they made, and I wanted them to fix the bugs and add more of the same great content. Instead, they took my money and used it to turn the game into something I don’t find even remotely fun, and which has sucked out my motivation to log into a game that I really, really enjoyed.

In short, they used my money to screw me over. I won’t make the mistake of paying them anything again. I hope the event is fun for the folks who see it.

hello there Drama kings/queens, Guild-war 1 puritists and anti-extra-stats-on-gear fundementalists

i will like to thank you for not playing the game, we already have enough of people in Lion’s Arch that makes it so laggy…

people still turn up for the event despite 200 pages of tears (Anet if you are reading it the lag is unacceptable) , and the dungeon is amazing.

please keep crying on the forum and stop log-in into thegame so the rest of us can enjoy a lag-free event

If you can manage to read through all of the tear soaked typing, you will see that a lot of it is the same few people posting over and over again. I clicked on a few of the hyper negative posters and view their history, and some of them have 20+ posts in this thread.

Its hard to really gauge how many people are hardcore upset with the changes, because the few that are crowding the thread with their drama.

For me, its still the same game for now. Im not that impressed with the new event, but there sure was a massive lag inducing turn out- so there is still a massive crowd that is interested in the game.

Some of us have posted a lot in this thread but do you really think 5 or even 10 of us could fill a 200 page thread?

If you go back in lock a ton of first (and last) time posters have chimed in against this kitten.

Many People: “I’ll give you money for a ‘Pirate’ Quaggan plushie.”

Result: No plushie

Many People: “I’ll NEVER give you money again if you institute a gear grind.”

Result: Gear grind

Conclusion: Shaka when the walls fell!

Say “buh-bye” to my wallet, ’cause it sure said “buh-bye” to you!

Aether Cerulean.3675:

Many People: “I’ll give you money for a ‘Pirate’ Quaggan plushie.”

Result: No plushie

Many People: “I’ll NEVER give you money again if you institute a gear grind.”

Result: Gear grind

Conclusion: Shaka when the walls fell!

Say “buh-bye” to my wallet, ’cause it sure said “buh-bye” to you!

I don’t think you’ve learned the lesson. This means logically you should be saying “I will order a million copies of GW2 if it has an even bigger gear grind!”

Solution: for Anet and all players
1)Make a different Open wvwvw with “gear progression and geartreadmill” only in open WvWvW can ware this gear but earn from pve dungeon everyone happy?
2)Make an arena pure pvp (1vs1 2vs2 3vs3 5vs5) if you want gear progression go in 2 different things from others we dont care about stats and make all players Happy

Well, to be honest I have no idea anymore.! But I tell you this – After looking at the GW2 Database it sure looks like a whole lot of mathematics going on.

And if I want to excersise mathemathics and speculate in what new content and updates will bring? Well I wouldn’t be playing games

I would study mathematics/fortune telling. Now, that’s a Combo

I was a little bit upset first about the Ascended Gear, Oh, for my own amusement I just googled Ascended because I didn’t know what it actually ment, and found this on The Free Dictionary by Farlex

3. To rise from a lower level or station; advance: ascended from poverty to great wealth; ascend to the throne.

Good Luck on the business mathematics & Good Luck on Ascending

LuckyLuke.9046:

Solution: for Anet and all players
1)Make a different Open wvwvw with “gear progression and geartreadmill” only in open WvWvW can ware this gear but earn from pve dungeon everyone happy?
2)Make an arena pure pvp (1vs1 2vs2 3vs3 5vs5) if you want gear progression go in 2 different things from others we dont care about stats and make all players Happy

As a PVE player, I don’t like this. I don’t want gear grind, period. It’s not just WvWvW players that suffer from this. With Ascended, I have to grind just as much unwanted content as you do

Aether Cerulean.3675:

Many People: “I’ll give you money for a ‘Pirate’ Quaggan plushie.”

Result: No plushie

Many People: “I’ll NEVER give you money again if you institute a gear grind.”

Result: Gear grind

Conclusion: Shaka when the walls fell!

Say “buh-bye” to my wallet, ’cause it sure said “buh-bye” to you!

Pff, give people what they want? What do you think this is, Valve?
It’s obviously much more economically sound to cheat people out of money with kitteny rng boxes than do things like sell plushies.

TransparentlyOpaque.1824:

If you can manage to read through all of the tear soaked typing, you will see that a lot of it is the same few people posting over and over again. I clicked on a few of the hyper negative posters and view their history, and some of them have 20+ posts in this thread.

Its hard to really gauge how many people are hardcore upset with the changes, because the few that are crowding the thread with their drama.

For me, its still the same game for now. Im not that impressed with the new event, but there sure was a massive lag inducing turn out- so there is still a massive crowd that is interested in the game.

This is my first post in the topic, if it matters at all.

I still love the game. I will still play it. The new dungeon is a lot of fun and I’m glad that it’s picking up the story mission styles of GW1.

But I really, really am disappointed with the concept of ascended armor and the associated gear grind. Because make no mistake, it is a gear grind. Yes, I feel betrayed and maybe it is a “drama” thing, but it has tainted my enjoyment of the game.

I’m not going to stop playing the game because there are some fun aspects to it, but I can’t help being sad about the direction it is heading. And, I’ve decided not to blindly follow the gear grind, so I guess I’m sad that I’m not “contributing” to the team whether in PvE or in WvW as much as I could be stat wise. Eventually I’ll get to the Ascended gear, but I’ve had enough of the gear treadmill from a couple years of playing WoW.

Anyway, again, kudos on a fun dungeon. Please rethink the grind, or at the very least, rethink adding more of this “vertical progression”.

—From someone who faithfully played GW1 from incarnation through EoTN and bonus mission packs.

My thoughts on this whole Fractals of the Mists thing is this: I just spent 4+ hours with 2 separate groups running this instance. First of all, the instance with the giant is absolutely amazing. My most favorite instance in an MMO to date.

However, both times, in both groups someone had to leave before we can finish 3. First group, someone went AFK after we did 2 fractals, second group someone had to leave just as we got to the last boss of the second fractal. Meaning that I just spent 4 hours doing this instance and didn’t even go up a difficulty level because someone had to go. Basically, I just ran this kitten twice and didn’t even go up a level.

So far, I got a bunch of blues and greens and 15 fractal relics as a reward. Considering the cost of some of these relic items, at this rate I should be able to purchase one in about 4 years, right before Guild Wars 3 comes out.

So yea, I wanted to give them the benefit of the doubt but this is gear grind to the extreme. I mean WoW is a cakewalk compared to this grind.

PS: whoever designed the swamp instance, I hope you like kittens.

I will probably never play the new dungeon, I will probably only play to level up characters to 80 now over the course of a few months in hopes that Anet will give up on this gear grind mentality.

After that… hell maybe by the 20th (PS2 on STEAM!) I will probably only log in for the free events like christmas and stuff, never spend another dime on their product and stick to playing games where they have horizontal progression. If that means no more MMOs then no more MMOs. I dont NEED an mmo social life… I play for fun. Gear grinds are NOT fun for me anymore. I have way more fun playing paintball or trying to get better with my recurve bow then doing mindless dungeon runs.

Until the MMO genre gets out of this stupid mentality… I am pretty much done with it after this.

Car.3805:

TransparentlyOpaque.1824:

If you can manage to read through all of the tear soaked typing, you will see that a lot of it is the same few people posting over and over again. I clicked on a few of the hyper negative posters and view their history, and some of them have 20+ posts in this thread.

Its hard to really gauge how many people are hardcore upset with the changes, because the few that are crowding the thread with their drama.

For me, its still the same game for now. Im not that impressed with the new event, but there sure was a massive lag inducing turn out- so there is still a massive crowd that is interested in the game.

This is my first post in the topic, if it matters at all.

I still love the game. I will still play it. The new dungeon is a lot of fun and I’m glad that it’s picking up the story mission styles of GW1.

But I really, really am disappointed with the concept of ascended armor and the associated gear grind. Because make no mistake, it is a gear grind. Yes, I feel betrayed and maybe it is a “drama” thing, but it has tainted my enjoyment of the game.

I’m not going to stop playing the game because there are some fun aspects to it, but I can’t help being sad about the direction it is heading. And, I’ve decided not to blindly follow the gear grind, so I guess I’m sad that I’m not “contributing” to the team whether in PvE or in WvW as much as I could be stat wise. Eventually I’ll get to the Ascended gear, but I’ve had enough of the gear treadmill from a couple years of playing WoW.

Anyway, again, kudos on a fun dungeon. Please rethink the grind, or at the very least, rethink adding more of this “vertical progression”.

—From someone who faithfully played GW1 from incarnation through EoTN and bonus mission packs.

With you 100%! While I’ve been on Anet’s side throughout this whole fiasco and has defended them, even I’ll admit that the idea of ascended and infusion doesn’t sit completely right with me (especially when I got my hopes up and started thinking this was gonna be Mursaat forshadowing… I still kind of do for once this is all over).

At the end of the day though, this is still an amazingly fun game, and while position on Anet and doing a tier upgrade should change over time if they do this repeatingly, it’s not the end of the world. Or is that all that really matters here- a game that is totally and absolutely unique and different than every MMORPG that’s ever existed period? None of us want to admit it, but sometimes, (not just with this game, just things in general) every now and then something happens that deviates from the main design. Heroes got scrapped after all, didn’t they? [spoiler=The mountain-sized Zhaitan from official art -make no mistake he’s still gigantic and they fixed his bugs-[/spoiler]. GW2 may not have redefined the MMORPG genre as people thought it was, but it’s still an amazing game.

For everything it’s worth, at the least, doesn’t this game at least deserve a chance? Too early to just give up on it now.

Azure, a chance is what we have been giving them. They already did so many things to make this just another grind MMO.

The saving grace was no gear treadmill and no monthy fee.

I would gladly spend 15-20 dollars a month to have no gear treadmill. Infact, I have every much both me and my wife dump 15 each into the cash shop.

but now with ascended armor bringing a gear progression that was never needed as they was no GAP, I will gladly NOT pay that 30 bucks a month.

Totally bumbed they went this route.. There just was no need to do it..

krookie.6378:

My thoughts on this whole Fractals of the Mists thing is this: I just spent 4+ hours with 2 separate groups running this instance. First of all, the instance with the giant is absolutely amazing. My most favorite instance in an MMO to date.

However, both times, in both groups someone had to leave before we can finish 3. First group, someone went AFK after we did 2 fractals, second group someone had to leave just as we got to the last boss of the second fractal. Meaning that I just spent 4 hours doing this instance and didn’t even go up a difficulty level because someone had to go. Basically, I just ran this kitten twice and didn’t even go up a level.

So far, I got a bunch of blues and greens and 15 fractal relics as a reward. Considering the cost of some of these relic items, at this rate I should be able to purchase one in about 4 years, right before Guild Wars 3 comes out.

So yea, I wanted to give them the benefit of the doubt but this is gear grind to the extreme. I mean WoW is a cakewalk compared to this grind.

PS: whoever designed the swamp instance, I hope you like kittens.

I was really hoping to hear different although this is what I expected

Well, the only other game that’s free to play with no gear grind is Hello Kitty online adventure…..

I can’t even believe that I’m actually considering going to play that game now. >=(

Honestly, the only thing left for me to do in GW2 now is to finish my personal story and get my 100% map completion, after that (if the gear treadmill/ gated content is here to stay) I’d better ask my 6 yr old niece who those other animals are on the island with Hello kitty.

I had always thought that a gear treadmill was when a game consistently introduces a new set of more powerful gear as new content is added. I always figured that this implied that there had to be many content patches that introduced new tiers of gear to claim its existence but the Guild Wars 2 forums have proved me wrong. A gear treadmill is incurred the second that you introduce a set of armor that has more stats than previous sets, regardless of whether or not it happens as a consistent mechanic of progression for new content. Some would argue that because GW2 has not had any of these content updates with new tiers of gear and because Devs have explicitly stated why this was added a singular solution to a singular problem that it lacks the consistency that a gear treadmill contains, but that’s just plain ridiculous.

Rashaki.9162:

Hey Anet? You need to do some damage control. You see, we feel betrayed. You said you were listening, and now we want to know what you plan on doing. At the very least we’d like to know your reasoning, and why you think we need to grind for stats instead of just skins.

Before you announced the new gear grind I was really excited for this game. I was making plans to play with friends this weekend. But it’s really difficult to motivate myself to play a game when some of the reasons I bought it are in limbo. And I’m far more moderate in my feeling than some of my guildmates.

Being honest would be 100 times worse for them. Do you really want to hear it? I can do it for you:

“We built up a massive marketing on the game to get our already excited players of GW1 to buy it and advertise for it. When then planned all along to betray them and just use this to our advantage to build a generic MMO. We released the ascended gear immediately at the time of this massive ‘bring some friends’ event so these new friends, who more than likely represent the regular MMO population that is so lucrative, will notice the game now has a gear treadmill so they can enjoy it. The amount of people lost by betraying our initial fans is overshadowed by tricking people into buying into a now generic MMO, which only generated interest in the first place by being nothing what it is now. Had it started out a generic MMO or not sullied Guild Wars 1’s name to kitten it, we would never have launched with so many players.”

See now that doesn’t look very satisfying. I don’t think it would sit well with people.

I’m not mad, I’m just disappointed. Blink twice if NCSoft has a gun to your back.

Aelelan.1639:

I had always thought that a gear treadmill was when a game consistently introduces a new set of more powerful gear as new content is added. I always figured that this implied that there had to be many content patches that introduced new tiers of gear to claim its existence but the Guild Wars 2 forums have proved me wrong. A gear treadmill is incurred the second that you introduce a set of armor that has more stats than previous sets, regardless of whether or not it happens as a consistent mechanic of progression for new content. Some would argue that because GW2 has not had any of these content updates with new tiers of gear and because Devs have explicitly stated why this was added a singular solution to a singular problem that it lacks the consistency that a gear treadmill contains, but that’s just plain ridiculous.

You are wrong on multiple levels with your sarcastic remarks.

Devs have NOT explicitly stated its a singular solution. In fact its the opposite they have made it a point to skirt the answer and say they CANNOT state this will not happen again.

Paraphrased-“We will not introduce a new tier every 3 months”

A gear treadmill is when they add higher level stats to new items, then have to adjust content to make up for it. Item progression would be adding ascended items that can be infused but has no stat bonus higher then exotic. The simple fact is by adding higher STATs and having to adjust already existing content (legendaries) means its power creep. Power creep is the first step to a treadmill.

They added power creep to bring in those grinders that need the higher numbers. Those grinders felt they had the best stats so no need to play. Well what happens when those grinders get the new higher stats… thats right young grasshopper they QUIT again. So Anet has to again add more higher stat items and again adjust existing content to compensate for it.

THAT is a gear treadmill. That is the future of GW2. hope you like it.

Aelelan.1639:

I had always thought that a gear treadmill was when a game consistently introduces a new set of more powerful gear as new content is added. I always figured that this implied that there had to be many content patches that introduced new tiers of gear to claim its existence but the Guild Wars 2 forums have proved me wrong. A gear treadmill is incurred the second that you introduce a set of armor that has more stats than previous sets, regardless of whether or not it happens as a consistent mechanic of progression for new content. Some would argue that because GW2 has not had any of these content updates with new tiers of gear and because Devs have explicitly stated why this was added a singular solution to a singular problem that it lacks the consistency that a gear treadmill contains, but that’s just plain ridiculous.

C’mon man, use your head. If they intended this to be a one time thing, why would they have bothered with it at all? Especially when you consider the overwhelming flood of complaints it’s caused (which only a fool couldn’t have foreseen) it wouldn’t even be worth the resources to do it if it wasn’t something they intended to build on but hey, don’t take my word for it. Straight from the source:

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.

As we release more new end game content in the future, you’ll see more Infusions and Ascended item types being added to the game. Eventually, you’ll be able to kit yourself out with a full set of Ascended gear and high end Infusions to help give you the edge in end game content.

That is taken directly from here: https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/linsey-murdock-unveils-new-high-end-ascended-gear/

So I have to ask, why oh why do you think this is the end of item progression in GW2 when they clearly stated this is just the beginning?

Goodnews Everyone.9317:

I’m not mad, I’m just disappointed. Blink twice if NCSoft has a gun to your back.

Ehehehehe. Watch this space.

Not once in my entire life have I needed to spew rage all over a forum.

This new gear tier that fills a made up gap between exotics and the legendary items is insane. The increase of stats on weapons that need to be grinded is mad. The unbalance this presents to WvW players is idiotic.

The dungeons are great and I welcome the change to the dungeons that include new loot, new boss drops etc. I welcome skill changes. I welcome changes that allow me to adapt to the game while still being on a level playing field.

When you choose to make me adapt to a gear change I draw the line. I played GW1 religiously and had nothing but great things to say about the game. There were constant patchs, additions, and expansions but not once was this garbage pulled….

If you had asked me a week ago what I’d be doing this weekend. I’d have said “Ill be in GW2, there’s an awesome update hitting on Friday”.

Instead…sadly…I have logged into the forums twice to expel my seeping rage O-o. I have logged into the game 0 times. Guild Wars was my jam!….Until today.