Guild Wars 2

IndigoSundown.5419:

Catering to the content-gobblers is a losing proposition. They will continue to gobble as fast as they are allowed to, and demand more. If you put in gobble blocks like time gates, they will demand they be removed. Catering to the insatiable is a no-win situation.

ArenaNet isn’t catering to content-gobblers, but to those that are harmed by them, aka the economy. The content-gobblers make money fast and spend it fast, making it harder for others to get things that cost money.
As for the time-gating, it’s interesting that this topic is coming up now. Time-gating has been in the game since release and since the new dailies. When the new dailies came, I read few people complain about time gating.
The only thing that changed now is that people with many alts can’t circumvent the time-gating of dungeon rewards any longer.
Time-gating is bad for those with too much time on their hands or too little. For everyone else, it’s good.

@ToolBz

Thanks for the clarification, now I understand what you mean.

Sure you’re right… enjoyment is subjective but so is what makes a character complete. You decided that having BiS armor makes a character complete and thats fair enough but even BiS in subjective. A character can have many builds and play in different roles. What makes BiS armor for one isnt BiS for other build / roles.

For example if I am using staff as a main weapon on my necro I want armor that gives me mainly condition damage. If I switch to axe / dagger power is more beneficial. But thats not all, if i want to be more support base with my staff armor that gives me healing power and runes that give me boon duration are better. So when should I consider my character complete? When I get a full ascended set that gives me condition damage? Well when I play in a support role my exotic set that gives me healing power and boon duration is actually better. etc.. What I am trying to say is better is subjective. You don’t have to consider a character that’s in exotic armor as necessarily inferior to one in ascended armor. For example I mentioned boon duration. Why you can have boon duration boosting exotic gear as far as i know there is just no ascended gear that can give that bonus at all. That means you can have a more effective support character thats gear in exotic then any ascended armor combination . (provided they dont add a boon duration infusion or something like that in the future) With that in mind why should a character in exotic armor be consider incomplete? Thats not to say you shouldnt go for ascended gear. If you want it go for it, thats why it exist. But there is no need to gear all your characters in ascended gear. Exotic armor is customization, its easy and doable to have multiple sets etc.. So why not considered complete a main in ascended gear and 2 alts that are geared for flexibility for example?

@Galen Grey

Don’t know. It’s just a feeling. Oddly enough, I’m less happy with the characters I don’t play who don’t have ascended trinkets than I am with the Guardian I do play but who I chose to keep with with exotic rings because of the stat flexibility with Gems.

I am not consistent or rational about this.

TooBz.3065:

Now that ascended gear is out they feel “incomplete.” They don’t have BIS gear anymore. When ascended weapons and armor comes out they will feel even more incomplete.

Although I have alts for different reasons than you (or so it seems), I can understand that. It’s a nice feeling to have a character ‘complete’. But I also played other MMOs before. Actually I still play Rift and I know that my chars in Rift will never have BiS gear, they will never be complete because I’m not in a progress raid guild and content is added faster than I can complete it. So I know how it is not to be able to ‘complete’ a character and still be satisfied. However, in GW2 I know that eventually my chars will be complete.

ASaturnus.4980:

TooBz.3065:

Now that ascended gear is out they feel “incomplete.” They don’t have BIS gear anymore. When ascended weapons and armor comes out they will feel even more incomplete.

Although I have alts for different reasons than you (or so it seems), I can understand that. It’s a nice feeling to have a character ‘complete’. But I also played other MMOs before. Actually I still play Rift and I know that my chars in Rift will never have BiS gear, they will never be complete because I’m not in a progress raid guild and content is added faster than I can complete it. So I know how it is not to be able to ‘complete’ a character and still be satisfied. However, in GW2 I know that eventually my chars will be complete.

This is my first MMO, so I think I don’t have the context that a lot of other people bring to the experience. I had an “if you like the game play it multiple times” attitude. For example, I played through Mass Effect 2 like 4 times with different classes for each run (each class was different and made the experience fun again).

I like GuildWars so I was replicating that experience even though MMO’s aren’t like that. My friend, who plays a lot of MMOs didn’t create alts, but I didn’t understand why. At first this game seemed very friendly. I ran through with my Ranger, then a thief, then a mesmer.

Since then (and 5 alts later) the game has become less and less alt friendly. I wish I had better understood the nature of MMOs and the direction the ArenaNet was going.

Alts are a tricky subject in any mmo really. In every MMO it takes a while to get BiS and doing it multiple times for each alt makes that situation worst.

I think you expressed it best TooBz when you implied its about how you feel. You wanted stats flexiblity with your guardian so achieving that goal made him/her feel complete. And thats it, you set your goal, you set your targets. I got 6 alts and plan on getting another one so yeah I know what a money sink it is to get them to look the way you want. (personally I dont care about power as long as that doesnt limit me on what content I can play. Right now it doesnt so that doesnt effect me.) But then even if the stars fall from the sky and Anet decide to go for content geared towards BiS I can just have my main geared for that and leave the alts for the rest.

It depends on what you want to use the alts for I guess.

TooBz.3065:

I also agree, for once, I think there’s really no other way to add a low power curve vertical progression to the game. Without time gating, the “locusts” as Lanfear calls them would get their ascended whatever and start crying for more.

They will be crying anyway, just a bit later. And when they’ll start crying, Anet will have to cave in again, and introduce one more tier. Again timegaded. Eventually it will slow down everyone else so much, that they will be years behind anyway. Only, then it will be too late to do something about it.

Astralporing.1957:

TooBz.3065:

I also agree, for once, I think there’s really no other way to add a low power curve vertical progression to the game. Without time gating, the “locusts” as Lanfear calls them would get their ascended whatever and start crying for more.

They will be crying anyway, just a bit later. And when they’ll start crying, Anet will have to cave in again, and introduce one more tier. Again timegaded. Eventually it will slow down everyone else so much, that they will be years behind anyway. Only, then it will be too late to do something about it.

Yeah, maybe. That’s my fear also.

I hope that ANet was buying time to get the Living Story off the ground. Once the living story gets going, the constant influx of new content will hopefully be enough to keep the locusts calm.

If it’s not, then, yes, ANet will have to decide what kind of game they want to be and who they want to appeal to. I don’t think they can take another step and still be straddling the line.

IMO, depending on how they do ascended weapons and armor, it may be too late when that stuff launches.

I don’t remember if I said this before, but I asked on another forum and many people have multiple sets of armor and weapons. I think most people had about 3-4 complete sets (for a single character). If the armor and weapons are too slow / expensive to acquire, I think we may see a huge backlash.

Here’s an additional point for your consideration that I’ve made before:

I think we can safely assume that the vast majority of “Content Locusts” are those with lots of free time on their hands.
It may be stereotyping, but a lot of these people are going to either be students or unemployed.
While being rich in game because they have more time to play than anyone else, they will NOT be rich in real life.
They will have very little disposable income.

THEY WILL NOT BUY GEMS WITH CASH.

These people that tear through content and that ArenaNet feels the need to pander to through the addition of Ascended gear and time-gated “progression” aren’t giving them any money.

ArenaNet are catering to the whims of those who are least able to pay them.

That doesn’t strike me as a sound business strategy.

Except that students tend to be the most free with their disposable income. They don’t, generally, save for the future. What comes in goes out.

I’m guessing that differs from country to country. Students in the UK are typically just above the poverty line.

Mungrul.9358:

I’m guessing that differs from country to country. Students in the UK are typically just above the poverty line.

I just did a quick search, and you’re right. The 18-34 demographic doesn’t have the market power it use to. When I was in school (horse and buggy days) I guess things were different.