Guild Wars 2

It will happen, so or so.
The question is only in which kind of way and in what kind of extent it will happen and naturally especially when.

What will be dead sure is, that Anet surely will announce it very early before they make the change, so that people can prepare up for the upcoming changes, same like they have done it with the coming changes to the PvP System and its rewards very soon.
They announced these changes months before they get implemented tomorrow, so that people could prepare.
Same they did with Ascended Equipment, they announced it, and gave people time to prepare.
The same way will it be done with a Level Cap Increase….
Anyone who believes, that anet would bring such a change into the game without making the announncement months before actually implementign the change to give us players time to prepare is just very naive.

This game has been designed from begin on to cater a complete different target group and ANet has clearly calculated around it, that many of their design desicisons will find a massive disliking from the old GW1 players. They don’t care, they absolutely know that they will never please all, they just follow to make the game, that THEY want to make and thats good so.

Where do we get to, when players try to “forbid” a Game Developer, how they should expand their very own game…seriously.
When Anet wants to increase the Level Cap for example from 80 to 90, then simply accept it, or leave.

ANet can basically implement a Level Cap Increase of +100, it wouldn’t affect any PvP-Players, because in PvP you are always maximum with max equipment…
In fact, Anet will change PvP soon to make it more fluidly integrated with the rest of the game, what will surely also result in a good new way to earn in a new way Max Equipment through playing PvP, where you need to have instantly Max Equipment so that this Game Mode works

It won’t also affect very much WvW, because in WvW you can simply get overwhelmed at any given time by a Zerg with players that have WvW Buffs, Buff Food, WvW Shrine buffs and whatever else active. WvW isn’t designed around that kind of balance anyway, that PvP has…

In PvE it would just increase the options for vertical progression, the game itself downscales you for low Level Maps, so that you can’t face roll everything in the game in seconds solo 1hittign everything like killing critters.
Again, Vertical Progression – something ANet has already commited to gradually increase – to this belogns also increasign the max level, giving us slowly more trait points to allow us for more build diversity.

Alukah.2063:

20 levels is not a grind,

It is when you have a lot of alts and need to regear them all because of a stupid level increase.

I advocate no level at all, it is an arbitrary number that skill and gear tie with it. When you gain XP, you gain skill stat with some player flexibility so you can tweak each stat slightly within class. It will also affect what equipment could be used. Example, in order to use heavy equipment, you need higher power… etc. But well, I’m talking about an entirely different game then. >_<

20 levels is no grind.

its the same time you need to make 1 Lvl 80 character split with 4 Alts.
The game offers more than enough of ways to earn very quickly level.
Leveling alts also becomes alot more fun, when you combine it with activities, that you’d do so or so anyways, like making Dungeon Runs for Tokens/Gold.
Each run is basicalyl a guaranteed level up…

If you just play the game further like you do know, without always complaining about everything you do/ have to do and instead play the game without thinking about what you do actually passively while you do somethign else in the game with your Alts, you’ll quickly see how your Alts will have again Max level…

And if this isn’t even enough, we will get soon options to earn thes Level Up Tomes…
Last WvW Season Rewards gave 10 of them as rewards, soon we will have such a tournament again… just collect these tomes and keep them for the moment when a Level Cap Increase is sure to come, so that you can use them to make your most important characters instantly to the new Max Level..

So whats seriously the fricking point here???

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Experience

Just so that you know.. people ican increase easiyl the Exp they gain from Kills massively:

+100% from Improved BLT Boosters
+ 30% Laurel Exp Boosters
+100% from Kill streaks especially usefull for very crouded places with lots of spawning enemies
+ 100% from Birthday Gifts for 24 hours
+ 25% from Buff Items
+ 5% from Guild Bonus
+10 % from World Bonus
+ 10% from Guild Banner
+ % from Achievement Points
—

add all together for the typical PvE Player you could get a Boost of 380+ % plus what your AP Boost gives you..

Then you get even alot of Extra Exp if you kill something, that hasn’t been killed long ago, even without the Killsteak Booster, 280 % is already a massive boost if you kill somethign that hasn’t been killed a long time

Orpheal.8263:

So whats seriously the fricking point here???

Having to regear all my alts. after working for a long time to finish them I like them to stay finished so I can screw around and do whatever I want without worrying about not having BiS gear.

The levelling itself is not the problem, it’s just the gear. I would have to spend a ton of gold on transmutation crystals alone.

Shockwave.1230:

Realistically though, ANet isn’t about vertical progression. Increasing the level cap is a such A blatantly obvious carrot on a stick design cop-out that it’s pretty offensive.

People with experience gaming know that when developers add to the grind to achieve something (max level in this case) it’s the laziest way to incentivize people to offer up their money.

I have yet to view ANet as a lazy company, like some other MMO companies that aren’t getting my time or money. ANet is very proactive and on the forefront of MMO innovation, which has its pros and cons.

They claim this, but have also shown they will cave and cater to the established , tired traditions of the current MMO’s.
Ascended gear is a direct result of that. Regardless of what has been said about it by them or the fanbase, its sole purpose is to be an endgame grind. Its there to fill that role that is currently in every other stagnant MMO and was a very lazy and uninspired way for them to add content/gear.

Getting back to the OP……what do you mean the map has gotten bigger recently? Its the same size its always been?

Elmo Benchwarmer.3025:

No more increase of stats, level or anything else. Bigger numbers don’t add nothing to the game.

Why don’t you just make ten louder and make ten be the top number and make that a little louder?

These go to eleven.

Impossible to do. It will never happen.

I don’t see a level cap adding anything of value. Levels are kind of pointless as is. We could do with more options for set-ups (weapon swap on Ele), builds (multi-classing with any other class that uses any of the same weapons), skills, and maybe even new weapons though.

Gibson.4036:

I agree with this. I don’t, however, understand how you can say:

Shockwave.1230:

Realistically though, ANet isn’t about vertical progression.

They’ve said they are committed to gradual vertical progression. They made it clear when they first started implementing Ascended that they plan to continue adding vertical progression. They’ve also made it clear they expect to increase the level cap at some point in the future.

That belief of mine the main reason I play this game.

The gear is no problem, Anet could find easy ways to let us earn higher leveled versions of gear.

• Adding new Dungeon Weapons/Armor of higher levels for Dungeon Tokens
• Adding new higher leveled Gears as rewards/loot from Fractals above Level 40
• Adding new Refinement Crafting Recipes that don’t require higher Crafting Levels than 500 to raise with Refinements just the Equipment Level
• Throwing Ascended Items together with other Items into the Mystic Forge and receive just a highe leveled version of the original Equipment back Zelda Fairy Well-Style
• Letting them drop as loot from new higher leveled World Bosses of new explorable Areas
• Earning them as Meta Achievement Rewards from Living Stories
• Earnign them as Rewards from futurous Personal Story Missions
• Trading them in for Karma/ Guild Commendations/ Badges of Honour
  ect.

Just be for once more open minded and creative and you’ll find alot of ways how anet can implement new gears with higher level requirements easily, instead of fighting against the unstoppable chancges that are going to happen, regardless of what people will say about it.

This game will get prepared for the Asian Market, its more of an traditional MMORPG, than many GW1 Veterans want to believe.
For the asian market around tradiotional MMORPGS, a Max Level of at Least 100 (99) is basically standard for them and with the Max level of 80, this Game already has started beign alot nearer to this Standard, then any other MMORPG out there before GW2.

The only classical MMORPG that started with a very high Cap that comes near to 80 that comes intio my mind is only Final Fantasy 11, which started with a Cap of 75, until it got raised several years later with an Expansion – you could have guessed it – to Max Level 99 and this game is already 12 years old!!! After that one increase, nothing has changed after that anymore until today… because the game reached the market’s “Standard” and the Game Devs were fine with this letting it stay that way, while there are also other Games with Max Caps of like 150 or even 250 or even Infinite/Levelless.

Anet is working kitten gettign GW2 released in Asia and I’m pretty sure, the day will come, where GW2 will get its Level Cap increase to fit at least to the Asian Standard to make the game more appealing to the asian market as a game, that provides a long character progression, but with an alot faster progressing and alot lesser grind, than the usual typical MMORPG that you’d expect from such a Game with a high Level Cap, where leveling is really fast…

GW2 was already before of the implemention of Ascended Gear a MMORPG, where you could get extremely quick Max Gear by just playing a few rounds of Dungeons to earn enough Tokens…. what worked with exotic gear, could work again at any given time in the future with new higher leveled gears of ascended quality or maybe even new gear tiers, if Anet ever should really add another tier, what I hardly doubt, but who knows … the token system would make it at least very easy to implement new better equipment.

I think, the whole issues around Ascended gear wouldn’t also be so much, if Anet would remove the senseless time gating in the crafting part of making ascended items and also allowing players to sell their crafted ascended items.
Makign them accountbound before usage imo was just the only wrong decision and the time gating, which has been implemented only so that the game’s economy doesn’t break in.
I think thats a restriction, that should get removed at some day.
—-

However, I understand your point regarding the Transmutation Crystals
I think Anet should remove them from the Gemstore and let us earn Transmutation Crystals with every Xth Daily Reward or so or by other methods and replace the Transmutation Stones just with something new with that they can earn money..

ANet is anyway at the position to permanently add new thigns to the gemstory, so its no problem for them to replace at any moment the Transmutation Items with somethign new, without that they should lose really any profits at all…

To raise the level cap at all, they’d have to consider a ton of stuff, and “gear” has been chanted considerably. There’s also power creep in the trait builds. It’s nice to have those build options, but at the same time, an extra 10 levels could cause some huge balance issues.
Assuming they keep the trait point system the same at all. We could see entire trait lines added/removed/redefined with more or less points than the current system. Long-time WoW players are definitely used to this.

The Trait System needs a complete redesign anyway … seriously.. just looking at that system and seeing, that it is designed only around the land combat and completely lefts out the whole water combat of the game, makes me rage everytime I log into the game. It should provide seperate “trees” for both combat versions of the game.
Its really ridiculous, how the water combat of this game has been handled like an unwanted step child for over a year now getting no attention at all …

Not only that, but the system could really need a Split into Traits, Talents and Abilities to allow for improvements also for overall vertical as like horizontal progression, creating that way a clear structure for active and passive effects as also visual effects to customize our skills more… just my opinion.

Alukah.2063:

CHIPS.6018:

Alukah.2063:

I’m perplexed with the overall responses here.

I’m kinda hoping for a level cap increase (20 levels or so?) to get rid of all these gw1 fans that still can’t get over the fact that this is not gw1.

If you want to play Grind Wars, there are already plenty of other games like that out there.

20 levels is not a grind, you are overreacting.

Until you actually try what’s real grinding (months to reach certain level) you don’t have the right to call a level cap increase as “grinding”, specially in a game where there’s no exp curve, the exp needed to level up is always the same.

This is not guild wars 1 and this was not meant to have a level set for a lifetime, it will happen and just quit the game now if you won’t deal with it. Stay away from all MMORPGs if you don’t want to deal with level cap increase.

It is not just 20 levels. The players will also need to grind for new gears for at least their main character. And many players have alt characters.

And when they get there, they will find that the mobs have also gotten stronger.

A level 100 player with level 100 ascended gear, fighting level 100 mobs.
(But the player need to grind for 2 months before they can attempt the new contents.)
=
A level 80 player with level 80 ascended gear, fighting level 80 mobs.
(But the player can attempt the new contents right away.)

The fun/utility levels are exactly the same for both! The game play are exactly the same for both! The story are exactly the same for both! Everything is the same, except for those wasted 2 months!

Raising the level cap only delay the players from having fun by 2 months. What is the point?

If the level cap is raised, then clearly the old GW1 population is no longer the target audience that Anet have in mind for GW2. You don’t have to ask us to leave. We can find the exit on our own, thank you very much. ^^

Much as I like this game, I would drop it instantly and walk away if there were to be a level cap increase. It would mean that ANet had given up on horizontal progression, and killed one of the most important links with GW1. I’ve got zero interest in seeing a never-ending treadmill.

Orpheal.8263:

It will happen, so or so.
The question is only in which kind of way and in what kind of extent it will happen and naturally especially when.

What will be dead sure is, that Anet surely will announce it very early before they make the change, so that people can prepare up for the upcoming changes, same like they have done it with the coming changes to the PvP System and its rewards very soon.
They announced these changes months before they get implemented tomorrow, so that people could prepare.
Same they did with Ascended Equipment, they announced it, and gave people time to prepare.
The same way will it be done with a Level Cap Increase….
Anyone who believes, that anet would bring such a change into the game without making the announncement months before actually implementign the change to give us players time to prepare is just very naive.

This game has been designed from begin on to cater a complete different target group and ANet has clearly calculated around it, that many of their design desicisons will find a massive disliking from the old GW1 players. They don’t care, they absolutely know that they will never please all, they just follow to make the game, that THEY want to make and thats good so.

Where do we get to, when players try to “forbid” a Game Developer, how they should expand their very own game…seriously.
When Anet wants to increase the Level Cap for example from 80 to 90, then simply accept it, or leave.

ANet can basically implement a Level Cap Increase of +100, it wouldn’t affect any PvP-Players, because in PvP you are always maximum with max equipment…
In fact, Anet will change PvP soon to make it more fluidly integrated with the rest of the game, what will surely also result in a good new way to earn in a new way Max Equipment through playing PvP, where you need to have instantly Max Equipment so that this Game Mode works

It won’t also affect very much WvW, because in WvW you can simply get overwhelmed at any given time by a Zerg with players that have WvW Buffs, Buff Food, WvW Shrine buffs and whatever else active. WvW isn’t designed around that kind of balance anyway, that PvP has…

In PvE it would just increase the options for vertical progression, the game itself downscales you for low Level Maps, so that you can’t face roll everything in the game in seconds solo 1hittign everything like killing critters.
Again, Vertical Progression – something ANet has already commited to gradually increase – to this belogns also increasign the max level, giving us slowly more trait points to allow us for more build diversity.

With all due respect, I just cannot understand this line of thinking.

You are a supporter of raising the level cap. But In your whole message, you did not post ONE SINGLE benefit, to the players, with the level cap being raised.

All you said was basically “Anet already decided to have vertical progression. They no longer cares about the old GW1 players. Take it or quit the game.”

But where are the benefits to the players?

It seems certain people loves level cap increases just so they have more to grind. Even if the grind brings no extra joy and are a massive waste of time, they just love to grind for no reason. They have a lot of spare time on their hands.

As for the “GW2 is entering the Asian market, and Asians loves to grind”. Asians are wrong, period. How do I know? I am Asian, and I played Lineage 1, Lineage 2 and Silkroad Online. So I know what grinding is. And I tell you for a fact that the Asians are wrong, period.

My friend, listen to my advice. Spent your spare time playing another game instead. There are plenty of awesome games, like The Last of Us.

Please do not support grinding without a cause anymore. Never support grinding. It is a massive waste of everyone’s time, and you know it.

I love how people are saying that it will never happen or that Anet would never do that…

It was even in the manifesto that they would raise the level cap for every expansion. It was one of the first things we found out about the game even before beta. The level cap WILL be increased, it is just a matter of when. It’s that same brand of denial from the people who think ascended is the last gear tier even though Anet specifically said it was the first tier increase of many.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

I love how people are saying that it will never happen or that Anet would never do that…

It was even in the manifesto that they would raise the level cap for every expansion. It was one of the first things we found out about the game even before beta. The level cap WILL be increased, it is just a matter of when. It’s that same brand of denial from the people who think ascended is the last gear tier even though Anet specifically said it was the first tier increase of many.

I love ppl who make up problems and use them as talking points. Yes they have a point IF and only IF what they are making up is true but they are still making it up.

And then they said they weren’t planning on making any expansions.

Just because it was in the manifesto doesn’t mean it’ll happen. Odds are they’ll just keep pumping out level 80 zones because balancing classes and keeping people playing existing zones is complicated enough without taking the cap to 90.

“Not a grind”? I don’t know what the )&#^&$ you’d call a month of laurels per trinket on nine 80th level characters, but re-gearing my stable is NOT going to happen. Yes, the leveling is trivial. Having bashed out 4/6 and occasionally 6/6 pink jewelry on 9 characters, I PROMISE re-gearing for the sake of re-gearing not going to increase the odds of my playing the game or browsing the Gem-Store.

Quite soon actually.

I imagine this is why they pushed through the Ferocity changes, to address any potential scaling issues.

@ Orpheal.8263

Benefits:
-Balancing has nothing to do with increasing the level caps. The game DOES NOT become easier to balance with higher levels. It is the same, if not more difficult because of increased trait points and stats.
-Class build variety does not increase at all with high level cap, unless new skills are introduced. And adding new skill (something I support) have nothing to do with increasing the level cap.
-I played GW1 for 7 years, and all 10 of my characters are level 20. I do not need grind to keep me playing. In fact grinding will turn me away from the game. I never felt the game stagnated. I had 10 characters and so there were plenty of stuff for me to do across 4 campaigns.
-Challenging contents can be introduced without increasing the level cap. Players should overcome challenges by player skills and experience. If you overcome challenges by increasing your stats, you DIDN’T become a better player. Your stats won the game for you, not your skills and experience.

So, all the benefits you listed are non-related to level cap.

-Grind and expansion
The game can provide expansions without increasing the level cap. New skills can also be introduced without increasing the level cap. GW1 did that just fine. Stop linking expansions to increasing level cap please.

Grinding by itself is purely a waste of time. No one can deny this fact.

-Spoiled and Asians.
If GW1 is the only game I played then maybe I am spoiled. But I also played Lineage 1, Lineage 2, Silkroad Online, and many other MMOs. So trust me I know what grinding is. And guess what, I am an Asian myself and I am fluent in an popular Asian language.

I am not spoiled, nor am I misinformed. I just know what is wrong with grinding. Grinding is wrong, period.

My guess is when GW3 is release

It’s a much larger grind to go from level 80 to 80 with ascended than it would be to go from 80 to 100 with exotic. Here’s to me hoping that if they decide to raise the cap, they will make acquiring gear at 100 grind free.

Never ever.

Level 80 is already far too much. They should have just made it 40 if anything if they wanted to add more levels then 20.

If they raise level cap with more gear and armor the company have been completely switched out.

I think, People that want to turn GW2 into a GW1 clone with better graphics only are more spoiled by this game, than they think they are.

However, I think discussing this further is pointless. You have your opinion, I have mine and you surely won’t change mine, regardless of how much you state your opinion as if its the ultimate opinion that has only right here. Period.

But maybe its because of the fact that you are Asian and thus have more experience with “Asia Grinder” MMORPG’s than me, that this lead to the point, that you just see in everything “grind”, because of GW2 or GW1 in general having showed you the first time, that there is also a different way of Game Design, which you didn’t knew before of GW1 anything different about, which is why I absolutely believe, that you are more spoiled by GW1 already, than you think that you are really.

But thats just my impression. I found GW1 became for me after 6 years of playing it way too boring, too stagnant, no real character development, everything was based only on the tons of skills that resulted only in the most weirdest skill/class combos that were also totally unrealistically partwise and created that way tons of builds which were completely a balance chaos from begin to the end leading only into 1 chain reaction of imbalanceed skills to another…

You had no character development basically in GW1 All you could do is just only collect tons of skills, where most of them were useless junk after some time when new skills got added that were more effective, and you could do 2 side quests to maximise your attribute points, get lvl 20 within a day once Factions was out and get Max Equipment also very faster.. after that there was nothing do do for you more in this game that was relative to Character Progression, other then hunting titles and doing stuff for your hall of monuments, but all of these thigns were all no thigns that have to do with character progression at all…most of the stuff was just item progression by grinding materials and gold to buy the various weapons/runes/minipets/hero armors ect. ya even buyable titles !!.

I found myself in the game at the end only logging in, to grind materials ect. to become able to buy what I need to put something new into my HoM, because GW1 had abokittenely nothing after reaching Lvl 20 and gettign Max Equip, what I would really call Character Progression after that point… and repeating such grindful things, like doing Elite Dungeon Runs ect to grind farm materials like Armbands, Ectoplasm, Obsi Shards ect., thats far more grind, than GW1 has in regard of collecting the Materials that you need

Never, hopefully.

But if we did get it, I would hope the monsters aren’t also levelled up. Most of them are overpowered as it is.

I hope they do raise it but I hope they do it in a sneaky way. Don’t call it a level call it a rank.
That way they don’t have to add more armor and everyone can keep their ascended but earning ranks can give you access to things like talents and abilities. I would also tie ranks to upgrades like runes and sigils.

Using skill points would be a perfect way to increase rank.

I personally don’t see a need to raise the level higher than 80. If they did…I’d probably give up on the game since I hate leveling characters to cap. Once I’m at a cap I want it to just stay there so I can enjoy my capped character and then focus on gearing them. I hate leveling in general, I like playing powerful characters and that is what being at cap helps me feel like, esp once I get the gear I want.
Now if they added in ranks like in WvW that could be cool. I think that could add more depth to character builds which would then be more fun (at least for me). Then that way I wouldn’t feel like I have to regear my already maxed character. I liked how GW1 was set up with a cap of 20 and max gear relatively easy to obtain.

I don’t mind level increases as long as it doesn’t mean stat increases.

i hope they raise it and we recive more skills beter gear maybe gear whit 4 statcs instead 3 or so on lvl 100 why not the same lvl after years is so borring and people wanna play teh same gear from day one thac why they hate progres but deep inside they goan get bored soon

The level cap will NOT be raised.
Ascended is intended to be the final tier and progression from this point onwards is meant to be horizontal rather than vertical.

If you didn’t wan’t level cap (Increase) you shouldn’t have bought this game. They’ve stated a couple times before the games release that their will be level progression. People are simply crying over spilled milk, if they increase the level cap by ten so be it this is Arenanet’s game and they know what they want out of it. We all know it won’t be happening anytime soon.

Martin no they have not…
They’ve stated multiple times that any progression they do will be horizontal rather than vertical – as in new trait lines, rather than increased levels.

They’ve learnt a LOT from ascended gear and the uproar from it, they aren’t about to increase the level and create a tier above that because it would make a rather large portion of the game redundant. Crafting would become pointless for any new players.

GW1 never once raised the level cap and it would be ridiculous for GW2 to do so. They put the level cap at 80 to appease traditional MMO players, but it still functions similarly to GW1’s low level cap. There’s no reason for them to ever raise it.

Martin The Brave.8731:

If you didn’t wan’t level cap (Increase) you shouldn’t have bought this game.

Nah. I’m perfectly capable of enjoying it right up until they tell me all my gear is now rubbish, and then the game and I can part ways.

To clarify some information being said:

@ Orpheal.8263

Ok, it seems you have a big big misunderstanding of what GW1 was about. Let me say that:

GW1 was NEVER meant for you to spent 5+ hours on it everyday, for 7 years.

It was never designed to be that kind of MMO.

GW1 have no pressure on you to play constantly. You should play maybe 1 or 2 hours a day, sometimes less. You play until you had you fill for the day, then you play something else. And it was perfectly ok to go Missing in Action for a few weeks. That’s what I did here and there.

Yet, every time a new expansion comes, I would come back full time and spent 5+ hours on it a day. Why? Because it was fun.

And this system was perfect. The game didn’t “fail” when people stops logging on. Because guess what, people always comes back when a new expansion with new game play comes. The game was designed this way. There is nothing wrong with this.

Look. MMOs used to be a big part of my life. In fact they used to be the only game I played. Those grinding MMOs did require me to spent 5+ hours on it every day, just to keep up. I did not have time to play anything else.

Then I got into GW1, and my view changed. I am no longer bounded by MMOs. They no longer take up so much time in my life. I was able to do something else. Going out, etc. And I was able to get into other games. Dead Space, Mass Effect, Last of Us, Total War, Bioshock, etc.

MMO is no longer all of my gaming life, and it will never be again.

So if GW2 or any other MMO tries to become my whole gaming life again, I will simply quit. I enjoy many other types of games. sRPG, shooters, RTS, etc. There is zero chance I will give them all up for one game.

If you want to call that being spoiled, go ahead. There is no way I will waste time grinding like that again. There are tons of other games out there to play.

Many people thought GW2 is only fighting against other MMOs. Nope. They are fighting against every other games out there for the players’ play time.

it’ll happen when their metrics show them the majority of players are done grinding their ascended gear etc, then they’ll reset everyone and make them grind lvl 81 ascended gear

never
15 chars

Martin The Brave.8731:

If you didn’t wan’t level cap (Increase) you shouldn’t have bought this game. They’ve stated a couple times before the games release that their will be level progression.

That was when the BiS gear was supposed to be easily acquirable during (not after) you journey to max level. With that assumption adding new levels wasn’t too much of a problem, as you wee supposed to be able to regear in days.
Introducing ascended gear changed the whole paradigm. Now adding even 5 more levels means a massive grind – not because of exp (20 levels can be done in a day if you really want it), but because getting BiS gear for one char now takes, few months to half a year to anyone except a very, very tiny minority, and the new level cap BiS gear is unlikely to be easier to acquire.

Healix.5819:

Also keep in mind that they recently held the vertical progression CDI.

Remember, that the progression CDI ended with almost unanimous agreement (including devs opinion) that the vertical progression wasn’t the solution after all, and the game should instead concentrate on switching towards horizontal more and more.

Hopefully they change it to 81 and make people craft new ascended gear.

Its not desperation. It’s experience.

I enjoyed Champions Online tremendously. I have a lifetime subscription – Its a B2P game just like this one form my perspective. Played the holy heck out of it and amassed BiS everything for my main. Continued to play events, dabbled in PvP, and generally swanned around annihilating bad-guys by the hundreds chasing after achievements and various cosmetic gee-gaws plus a few rare seasonal items (sound familiar?).

While the level cap didn’t change, they reworked the entire gear system so that I effectively had to start over. I played maybe two whole days under the new regime and dumped the game completely aside from logging in maybe once every 3 months for screenshots. I went from paying customer who frequented the store for a number of goodies beyond my permanent subscription to totally non-involved financially.

History may repeat itself here, but I know exactly what the outcome will look like in my case. I’ve dropped about $500-$600 dollars in the gem store since launch. I expect that rate to continue into the future right up until they think I’ll tolerate the Ascended Grind a second time. Because I won’t. There’s lots of other ways to add content and keep the game fresh that don’t burn my goodwill. Hopefully they pursue those first, before finally wimping out and falling back on the level cap bump.

I have zero love for this kind of progression. When ArenaNet announced Ascended Gear I vowed never to spend a cent of real money in the game ever again. I have held true to that promise. If they raise the level cap then forget it. Good-bye and good riddance.

Naevius.3185:

Much as I like this game, I would drop it instantly and walk away if there were to be a level cap increase. It would mean that ANet had given up on horizontal progression, and killed one of the most important links with GW1. I’ve got zero interest in seeing a never-ending treadmill.

Me too, going to drop it anyways though… too grindy as is.

Hopefully never though I have seen that old interview that was linked here in the thread, and it bothers me a bit.

I just stopped another game due to yet another lvl cap increase coming. It just gets so tedious for me, and I was hoping this game would avoid it. Already there are 80 levels and the thought of grinding through more with my characters has just become a turn off personally.

At one time it did not affect me, but I have finally reached the point after many years of gaming, that I have just so much tolerance for level cap increases (which may well be zero for me now). For a change, I really wanted the horizontal expansion that was advertised for GW2.

I don’t expect it to happen. Played the first game. They made it work once before w/ lv20

Nike.2631:

Its not desperation. It’s experience.

I enjoyed Champions Online tremendously. I have a lifetime subscription – Its a B2P game just like this one form my perspective. Played the holy heck out of it and amassed BiS everything for my main. Continued to play events, dabbled in PvP, and generally swanned around annihilating bad-guys by the hundreds chasing after achievements and various cosmetic gee-gaws plus a few rare seasonal items (sound familiar?).

While the level cap didn’t change, they reworked the entire gear system so that I effectively had to start over. I played maybe two whole days under the new regime and dumped the game completely aside from logging in maybe once every 3 months for screenshots. I went from paying customer who frequented the store for a number of goodies beyond my permanent subscription to totally non-involved financially.

History may repeat itself here, but I know exactly what the outcome will look like in my case. I’ve dropped about $500-$600 dollars in the gem store since launch. I expect that rate to continue into the future right up until they think I’ll tolerate the Ascended Grind a second time. Because I won’t. There’s lots of other ways to add content and keep the game fresh that don’t burn my goodwill. Hopefully they pursue those first, before finally wimping out and falling back on the level cap bump.

Glad to have another former hardcore grinder agree with me here. ^^

hopefully never.