Guild Wars 2

Wonderfully written piece.

Wintyre Fraust.6534:

A permanent stat cap is as important to us as ongoing stat progression is to many others; without it, there’s no reason to play the game and no significant enjoyment to be derived from it, regardless of what else might be in the game to do or enjoy.

That sums up my feelings and my sudden drop in interest in the game.

I’d really love to have this kind of writing/logical skills, matey. If I could express my feelings/thoughts in such a well-mannered, thought-out way, I…. nevermind.
There’s just a tiny, little problem.
THEY DON’T CARE. Period.
I’m a minority, you’re a minority, a vegetarian is a minority, hence I’m a salad and I play sylvari for that.
Do you really expect respect from meat-eaters? Do you? It’s not a problem of misunderstandings between these two factions. They’re the majority, they speak. Since, afaik, they can think for themselves and read, they have plenty of posts explaining the “minority” thoughts in a very detailed and rational manner.
It’s going nowhere. No compromise, no understanding, no polite discussion can be achieved.
And really, it’s clear that everything is perfectly fine for everyone but a bunch of… arm… so-called whiners. It’s been over a week, and now we should all know that.
It’s ok for them, it’s ok for Anet. Let’s just end this pain already and kill that poor cow, okay?

Exactly why I bought GW2! Thanks for that post!

Really well written.
I see your point. Would you be objected to new gear having different combinations of stats? Or the addition of stat manipulation, ie discovering your own recipe for inscriptions that could be composed of any which stat (assuming the combination doesn’t already exist).

For me, what I miss is some of the raiding (not necessarily for the gear, rather the massive instance with people, working together). I feel, outside of pvp, there isn’t much to do with your guild, on a large scale, at least for me.

deSade:

I understand and feel your pain, brother, but here’s the thing: even if our outrage falls upon deaf ears at Arenanet, and even if we are mauled by the progressive-stat players here and in other forums, if there are enough of us, and if we make a loud enough ruckus, and if we can make a sound enough case why and how a stat-capped, 3A MMOG can be successful, perhaps some developer, future developer, or finance group understands it, realizes it can be successful, creates it, and sticks with it.

Look at it this way: GW2 proved, if nothing else, that not only could one be made, but it generated huge excitement and a very successful launch. That shows that it can be done, and even that it should be tried again by a company that won’t drop the ball 10 weeks into the game. ANET could have had the stat-cap player market, but even if they have permanently abandoned it, that leaves the door wide open for other developers. GW2 release, launch and this immense, very public reaction proves that there is a market for a stat-capped MMOG beyond what GW1 has been able to accrue.

I’m not so much trying to change ANET’s mind (although that would be nice); I’m contributing to the long-term cause -here and on other sites, like MMORPG.com – of getting developers (and future developers) to see the potential and expand the genre like ANET did for 10 weeks here.

Super post. Please make more!

Yes, that’s the problem. Despite so many other games (pretty much all other games) that have catered to the vertical progression crowd, they do not want to see the point of view of the horizontal progression crowd.

Unfortunately, since vertical progression is the norm, some people don’t even know any better. And hence there will be more people for it than there are people who are open to or embrace horizontal progression. And at the end of the day, this is a commercial enterprise, so money talks.

I was looking around to see the points of view of some of the bloggers on this matter, and came across this:
http://www.gamebreaker.tv/video-game-shows/guild-wars-video/guildcast-guild-wars-show/fear-the-gear-grind/
Essentially at 7:00 the host mentions that he was talking to Anet developers at a game conference at the launch of GW2, and the devs were saying that all of these big MMO companies have done extensive data on player behavior and “the numbers show that a progression system keeps players playing longer… more people just want that progression…”. So it looks like even back then Anet was convinced their manifesto wasn’t going to work.

On some level, it does make sense, there are a lot (majority?) of people with addictive personalities because of how the brain works.

From the company beancounter’s point of view, you cannot have a game that is made with the huge amount of money and effort thrown at it, AND have it only cater to a subset of players.

Personally I think this is false, because
a) it’s better to chase after a niche, core, LOYAL set of customers who will support you over a long period of time because they like your unique features, rather than try and be a me-too in an ever increasing pool of games. (Notice how so many of them have become free to play or are even LAUNCHING as free to play – Aion, SWTor, Lotro, Neverwinter, etc). However you will never convince an MBA beancounter of that.
and
b) I’m convinced there is a huge demand for horizontal MMOs, as evidenced by GW2’s successful launch compared to a lot of other recent MMOs. The older gamers just don’t have time to grind, and they’re wiser having been there, done that. However the METRICS will show a decreased (but more constant) load of players precisely because it’s easy to jump in and out, which sends the wrong message that the game is on the decline.

Kirito.3591:

Really well written.
I see your point. Would you be objected to new gear having different combinations of stats? Or the addition of stat manipulation, ie discovering your own recipe for inscriptions that could be composed of any which stat (assuming the combination doesn’t already exist).

For me, what I miss is some of the raiding (not necessarily for the gear, rather the massive instance with people, working together). I feel, outside of pvp, there isn’t much to do with your guild, on a large scale, at least for me.

My own 600+ active member feels the same. We are hamstrung already by having to be in multiple guilds as we easily hit the cap at launch. We now have 6 guilds and the leads have no tools that can help them discern who is still active so have had to embark on an enormously time consuming project to work it out for themselves before we can start merging at the risk of alienating some.

I for one think we need some G on G action as Guilds seem mostly superfluous presently.

Kirito.3591:

Really well written.
I see your point. Would you be objected to new gear having different combinations of stats? Or the addition of stat manipulation, ie discovering your own recipe for inscriptions that could be composed of any which stat (assuming the combination doesn’t already exist).

I don’t know what being able to arrange your own stats would do to balancing issues, but exotics with upgrades already allow you to customize stats to some degree. I’m not sure how gear with, say, all the stat pool piled into condition damage on every piece would affect PVE and WvW, but in theory I’m not opposed to the idea, as long as it didn’t become in practice the only viable gear. I’d also have to see how it was implemented.

Wintyre Fraust.6534:

deSade:

I understand and feel your pain, brother, but here’s the thing: even if our outrage falls upon deaf ears at Arenanet, and even if we are mauled by the progressive-stat players here and in other forums, if there are enough of us, and if we make a loud enough ruckus, and if we can make a sound enough case why and how a stat-capped, 3A MMOG can be successful, perhaps some developer, future developer, or finance group understands it, realizes it can be successful, creates it, and sticks with it.

Look at it this way: GW2 proved, if nothing else, that not only could one be made, but it generated huge excitement and a very successful launch. That shows that it can be done, and even that it should be tried again by a company that won’t drop the ball 10 weeks into the game. ANET could have had the stat-cap player market, but even if they have permanently abandoned it, that leaves the door wide open for other developers. GW2 release, launch and this immense, very public reaction proves that there is a market for a stat-capped MMOG beyond what GW1 has been able to accrue.

I’m not so much trying to change ANET’s mind (although that would be nice); I’m contributing to the long-term cause -here and on other sites, like MMORPG.com – of getting developers (and future developers) to see the potential and expand the genre like ANET did for 10 weeks here.

My respect for people like you is immense. You think something is worth your time and effort, has great value, and you fight for it. Someone sooner or later will listen and create something out of ephemeral ideas.
Well, the problem is I honestly think that it can’t happen, and never will, if things keep on going down the route of ignoring everything that doesn’t represent your personal point of view. Everything boils down to personal attacks, quote wars, bickering that does nothing but making me feel like a fool for posting on forums.
See, I’m tired. Always the same arguments, over and over, running in circles…. Still no word from… you know who.
I know why non-stats progression is important. I know why non-stats progression CAN BE. It can be successful, it can be enjoyable. I also know and respect the fact that stats- progression CAN be enjoyable. But no, oh no, I’m a whiner because I don’t like it. Yeah.
And noone that treats you respectfully, like a salad-being with different views and feelings for a game. Salads have feelings.

we have no place else to go

This.

I always thought it was “silly” to be a fan of a company, after all the ultimate goal of a business is making money (and this is not a bad a thing). But Anet’s manifesto made me a believer, sadly (thankfully?) it was a short live fandom. I’ll still play just like I still play other games that I own. I’m just not a “fan” anymore.

Excellent posts, OP.

I think ANet would have done better keeping GW2 as a niche game than trying to appeal to the more mainstream crowd. There are tons of games with vertial progression to choose from, and GW2 will now have to compete with them all. The thing about being niche: you may have a smaller target audience, but you also don’t have much in the way of competition. Also with niche, the target audience tends to be far more loyal. They have moved themselves from a market with little competition to a market that is absolutely saturated. I expected to be playing this game for years, just as I did with its predecessor.

While I don’t expect ANet to right their course back to the original design philosophy, I too hope that another developer gets the message. The message being that there is a market for this type of game. Build it, and we will come.

Great post OP +1. I think you can take your arguments to the Mondays QA with Chris on Reedit. You have value points here and you literally speak for all of us who came for this game for fun and relax not for “no-life, no-friends” grind.

Everything would be great.The whole new content, FOTM, gear, LS, karka, new map, if only stats were the same. Whole mess and dissapoitment becasue of few +5 here +8 there. Really, ANET, great trade.

To OP
you really deserve respect. Really a good Thread.
A Pve and Pvp competitive game dont need an infinite gear progression, but more challenging content.

Very very good write up! This is how I feel. i want attainable, set in stone, permanent goals. All the above goes to level caps as well.

If there’s no PERMANENT (aka rock solid never changing again in the story of the game) stat and level cap in the game, acquiring gear is pointless. There’s no goal, just a carrot, carrots are unattainable goals made to fool stupid donkeys. It’s not a goal if it can’t be reached permanently. Everything just feels ridiculously pointless.

A permanent written in stone stat AND level cap is also sorely needed in competitive environments where gear counts, like WvW. And if it takes too long to reach the gear cap and/or is keeps increasing forever, WvW loses its point entirely, it becomes a de facto pay 2 win even if the (current) max stat gears are available to non buyers, because they can’t actually humanly reach it unless they put up with a lot of crap.

More over, raising stats constantly is immoral and disrespectful. It is a cheap cheap baiting gimmick to keep people invested, thankfully people are increasingly wising up to it.

I’m confident that ANet respects its players’ intelligence and won’t resource to this ever again. Because that’s admitting the game has nothing to show for and has no genuine reasons to keep people playing, other than conditioning and unattainable goals.

Thank you Wintyre Fraust, for your eloquent and civil post. It’s essentially a flawless articulation of my feelings and thoughts on the matter of losing the sanctuary, for players partial to horizontal progression, that was GW2, prior to this, in my eyes, devastatingly deceitful alteration of direction.

I would agree with the OP. Well written and to the point.

Others are free to feel differently, but this is how I feel also.

GW1 didn’t necessarily have horizontal progression, at least not until you played it for a very long time and had every skill set and captured every elite you wanted to have.

At least for me, there were always new elite skills I wanted lot of which were gated

Green weapon drops and elite skills were actually closer to how vertical progression MMOs work – You reached it, you kill it, you get it.

People would not be so receptive to the system if say, a rare who drops a green instead has a 5% chance to drop a component, which you need 50 of, 50 skill points and 250 of a common material to craft.

Very well-written, OP. Thank you.

In response to the idea mentioned above that most players want vertical progression because it keeps people playing longer…well, I hope ArenaNet didn’t take that to heart, because I played WoW for years despite hating the gear treadmill. That was where my friends were, it was where I roleplayed, and I loved the game world. I clung to it, doing old-world achievements and hanging out in obsolete low level content, because I loved Azeroth. Eventually I started raiding because my close friends did it, but I didn’t like it, and I finally stopped. Looking back on it, there are times when I should have taken a break, and I’m shocked at how I let a game stress me out so much, but at the time I felt like I couldn’t stop playing for more than a day without falling behind. It took so much time to do both the things I wanted to do (which had nothing to do with progression), and the things I had to do (to keep playing with my friends). And I was never finished doing the things I had to do; by the time I caught up, I had to start over.

I always saw GW2 as kind of a grand experiment, to see whether people pursue vertical progression so fervently because they really want it, or if they do it because usually it’s the only thing to do in an MMO post-cap. I really hope ArenaNet hasn’t abandoned that experiment already, since it’s only been three months and they’ve barely begun to add the kind of activities that could conceivably replace gear grind—although Fractals and new areas are a good start.

Very nice write up!

Servanin.5021:

GW1 didn’t necessarily have horizontal progression, at least not until you played it for a very long time and had every skill set and captured every elite you wanted to have.

At least for me, there were always new elite skills I wanted lot of which were gated

Green weapon drops and elite skills were actually closer to how vertical progression MMOs work – You reached it, you kill it, you get it.

People would not be so receptive to the system if say, a rare who drops a green instead has a 5% chance to drop a component, which you need 50 of, 50 skill points and 250 of a common material to craft.

GW1 did have some vertical progression:
-Getting lvl 1-20
-Getting max stat gear
-Faction reputation, due to the PvE skills that were linked to it

What you are describing about getting all the skills and capturing elites is actually an example of horizontal progression. Building the bar of 8 skills that you wanted, including the elite, generally didn’t take much time. Getting all the skills DID take a long time, but you reached “full power” once you had the 8 skills that you needed for your bar. The rest of the skills increased versatility and allowed you to experiment with new builds.

Moreover, part of what makes it horizontal is that you aren’t forced to acquire the new skills in any particular order. I got the skills I wanted first, then started capping elites by map to acquire all the skill hunter titles.

Of the vertical progression in GW1, the only one that I would say was a detriment was the PvE skills linked to faction rep. The journey from 1-20, getting max stat gear, and getting the 8 skills for your skill bar wasn’t too bad.

I really think that ANet is on to something by getting rid of the gear treadmill. They need to do more with this concept. I really hope that ANet doesn’t accidently trip and fall into the hole that is the grave of gear treadmill MMOs.

So here’s a question, what makes you want to keep playing GW2? I just want your thoughts I’m not trying to start anything.

The stat cap vs stat progression broohaha is missing an important point.

It’s a point that’s missed because the game market comprises people who don’t appreciate math.

The gear steps in GW2 are not like gear steps in other games. It’s built into the formulas, these are small, incremental steps that decrease in significance the higher you go. (of course there’s the exception of infusions and the Agony mechanic, because that’s a brand new element).

We only have the rings and back, two small-stat components of the kit so far.

But imagine if Ascended main hand weapons come out and they have 50 more stat points. This is an extreme example, and you know if it came to play, people would be both screaming about how the game was ruined, and jumping at the bit to obtain these new weapons.

How much more damage will your character be able to do? For a typical power character, you’d get less than 2% increase in damage.

In contrast a single weapon upgrade in Rift would often get you 10 times that.

The formulae are in the wiki and other theorycraft posts. Figure it out.

This huge one-step increase to the stat-capped system is functional equivalent to still being stat-capped.

Kudos on this post. I sincerely hope someone at Anet takes the time to read and digest it. Until then, not a penny or copper from me (and barely logging in ).

Well said OP, the game is going in a direction that it wasn’t the original vision.
Probably Anet is trying to gather WOW players, but the history teach that everytime someone try to copy WoW it will fail hard in the long run. Is already happening, lot of people had leaved the game disgusted.

Really Anet, remove the item progression, there is already a lot of wow clones around, you are still in time to back to your original vision and save this game.

Improve DE, rewamp WvW, ,more content, these are the thing you should focus on, not the redundant item progression that will only hurt the game.

Anet, do a step back, for your playerbase and for people who follow your game since Gw1.

Sincerly.

@OP: Excellent post.

@mulch: Thus by your own logic, reverting ascended stats to exotic stats will be functionally equivalent? So then, ANet might as well do that.

This is the best post yet in the Ascended gear debate. Very well said, OP, and said with intelligence and respect for both sides of the argument. I wish everyone could express their heartfelt opinions in such a thoughtful and courteous manner.

I hope everyone reads and emulates this post, whatever side they are on. And I hope Anet will read it, too, and keep in mind all of us who loved the horizontal progression of GW1 or who came to GW2 from vertical progression games hoping for something different.

Did not see this post and good points. I made a similar post, also with hope for actual constructive community feed back.

This post has very few responses in comparison to ‘rant n’ rave’ topics. I find this happening in many constructive threats. Anyways, maybe a moderator can merge my thread with this one?

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Vertical-vs-Horizontal-a-compromise/first#post833924

Lets try and build constructive criticism!

Very nice post, I wish I could express my thoughts half so elegantly. The only part I would ‘disagree’ with is this:

“GW1 showed that such an MMOG could be viable.” -In my mind GW1 was a success, not merely “viable”. Viable has become a bit of a dirty term when it comes to MMOs, but I know what you meant by it.

Very good read. I hope the devs take it to heart and understand why it was written.

Thanks OP. This is a well-written analysis of the differences in the approaches and accurate assessment the reason many of us are disappointed in the change.

Hopefully, someone at Arenanet will find this post and share it with their leadership.
It at least offers a rational reason for the complaints about the change. And even offers encouragement for future developers that may want to cater to the niche market.

Lady Vireo.5189:

This is the best post yet in the Ascended gear debate. Very well said, OP, and said with intelligence and respect for both sides of the argument. I wish everyone could express their heartfelt opinions in such a thoughtful and courteous manner.

I hope everyone reads and emulates this post, whatever side they are on. And I hope Anet will read it, too, and keep in mind all of us who loved the horizontal progression of GW1 or who came to GW2 from vertical progression games hoping for something different.

The real problem ANET faces (or, if the choice has been made, faced) is that these two different kinds of players – stat-progressives and stat-cappers – have an irreconcilable difference in how they require their game to be fundamentally structured. One game simply cannot serve both.

I think it is highly unlikely that GW2, which focused so much of it’s original content philosophy, integrated design and mechanics on a stat-capped system, can simply switch over and significantly compete in a market saturated by stat-progression titles that are created from the ground up to be just that very thing. The game might continue on, but I doubt it’s going to enjoy a larger revenue from the saturated stat-progression market than it would have garnered being the only modern AAA MMOG on the market with capped stats.

Wintyre Fraust.6534:

I think it is highly unlikely that GW2, which focused so much of it’s original content philosophy, integrated design and mechanics on a stat-capped system, can simply switch over and significantly compete in a market saturated by stat-progression titles that are created from the ground up to be just that very thing. The game might continue on, but I doubt it’s going to enjoy a larger revenue from the saturated stat-progression market than it would have garnered being the only modern AAA MMOG on the market with capped stats.

Agree wholeheartedly, great thread here.

True, there isn’t another big game out there like it. Even if I wanted to quit this game where would I go to? Another one of the 100s of grindfest MMOs? No thanks.. It would have to be something else outside the genre.. I’m done with threadmilling and grindfests. I learned that the hard way during my high school days.

Really nice post, i’ve bought this game because i wasn’t expecting gear grind, but a good skills driven game, with a lot of emphasis on styles collection instead.

I would have expected grind for new skills, to make it more similar to gw1 system, which is godly, instead we had ascendant gear and FotM.

I’m just disappointed. Maybe as some one suggested i’ll just go back to gw1 and drop gw2 for a while.

Thank you for this write up. Puts forth most of the problems I have with this new direction. Especially the leveling part, which I think many are conditioned in to believing is necessary. I kind of see why they included it, to guide people through the world. But it was still a grind, but an acceptable grind because it had an end we could see.
Now we have a treadmill that we have no idea when or if it will ever stop.

Thank you again OP.

Great post thk you.

I spoke to an Anet employee and expressed my views. I play this game for wvw like many others I never wanted to feel forced into doing a pve grind, unfortunately this is exactly what has happenned.

Not only this but it is rng which means it is pot luck whether you get the correct drops or not, making said grind even worse. bringing in superior gear was bad enough but to make it RNG……………….

The problem is that Anet for some reason roped wvw and pve together. It has never really occured to them that making changes to pve which affect wvw will frustrate many in the wvw community.

There would of been many ways to avoid this if they had just thought about it. I am not sure what will happen going forward wvw wise as this has been one of the worst weeks I have experienced in the game.

Great post.

Anet should have realized that the vertical progression complainers had already gone back to WoW. There is no pleasing them with anything else than destroying all hopes for a fixed stat cap.

Perfect mate, just perfect.

I was so happy with this game but this update has just killed my enthusiasm for it.
I fear that a self selecting sample of hardcore gamers are having such an impact
on some these surveys that we will never see a game aimed at people like us.

Yaruna.2367:

Great post.

Anet should have realized that the vertical progression complainers had already gone back to WoW. There is no pleasing them with anything else than destroying all hopes for a fixed stat cap.

This is very true. It doesn’t take long to find posts on that games forum where they list the games they tried (inc gw2) and how they always come back. This change will not win them over as they never liked the premise of his game anyway.

Tenshi.3598:

@OP: Excellent post.

@mulch: Thus by your own logic, reverting ascended stats to exotic stats will be functionally equivalent? So then, ANet might as well do that.

Well the beauty of it is, they can give apparent progression to the many people who complained that there was no way to improve their characters, while giving stat increases that are so minor, none of the old content will need retuning. So it all can still be done with exotic, and not trivialized to ascended.

Edit: with the holidays it took me a while to respond — the point that I made was that because of the formulas that determine characters’ performance in GW2, what appear to be meaningful changes in stats do not translate to discernible performance changes in game. For example, adding 50 power on an item (substantially larger than we’ve seen on ascended) is still less than 2% increase in damage for a typical player character. This is in contrast to other games (e.g., Rift) where a new tier often represents 10 times that increase.

So this vertical progression is, in fact, basically flat.

Absolutely Dead On to the Original Poster.

I feel offering a greater gear differential and then requiring that to be there rewards the exclusion of other players from your efforts, which is the exact opposite of what ANet posted in their endless blogging for GW2

I feel like Im cheating when I have the opportunity to overgear an encounter.

I feel that WoW has already cornered the market and perfected the concept of a gear-grind game, and ANet will NEVER keep these people to which they are trying to cater in the game, but they seem to be doing their absolute best to drive away those who supported the original guild wars and looked so forward to GW2.

plasmacutter.2709:

I feel like Im cheating when I have the opportunity to overgear an encounter.

How much gear improvement do you think it will take to make you feel like you’re overgeared? How many stat points?

mulch.2586:

plasmacutter.2709:

I feel like Im cheating when I have the opportunity to overgear an encounter.

How much gear improvement do you think it will take to make you feel like you’re overgeared? How many stat points?

This game was painstakingly balanced around the maximum level of exotics. I’ve seen the difference moving from greens to superiors as I leveled, and I think anything beyond exotic would ridiculously trivialize the content. (for reference on this.. what I “think” about this is quite relevant, as both of my degrees are in STEM fields which stress the analsys of both time-series and cyclical scaling)

I did not even plan to go for legendary.

When it was just the legendary difference, given the difficulty of obtaining one, I did not believe it would become a quality of exclusion from explorables.

This, however, will, assuming there’s anyone left to DO the explorables because they’re being forced to get Ascended or face diminished loot as other people who DO have them farm world events for gold.

plasmacutter.2709:

mulch.2586:

plasmacutter.2709:

I feel like Im cheating when I have the opportunity to overgear an encounter.

How much gear improvement do you think it will take to make you feel like you’re overgeared? How many stat points?

This game was painstakingly balanced around the maximum level of exotics. I’ve seen the difference moving from greens to superiors as I leveled, and I think anything beyond exotic would ridiculously trivialize the content. (for reference on this.. what I “think” about this is quite relevant, as both of my degrees are in STEM fields which stress the analsys of both time-series and cyclical scaling)

Yeah, I used to teach that.

Look at the equations, look at the gear, calculate the gradient, or partials. For other readers, just do a “what-if” using your current stats and an increase.

They are simple, linear in their coefficients, equations.

The numbers for anything approaching “ridiculously trivialize” just aren’t there, if you do your homework.

I find myself in complete agreement with OP – superb summation of what I enjoy most about GW, and why the recent opening-up of vertical progression make me a little less eager every day to log-in.

I was care-free, but it’s been taken from me. (which is probably best said to music) – Hope Anet draw a line in the sand (again).

Here is something to chew on. I kinda liked Rift and wouldn’t mind checking it out. However, I never will. Why? Because if I returned I would have no one to play with and no way to gear up to do the content everyone is currently on. PVP… omg that would be impossible.

Now apply this to GW2 which is a free to play game. If you put in vertically progressive gear. People will come and go. But they won’t be coming back, they will be unable to take part in the current content.

If stats are capped then people will be more inclined to come back and play for periods of time, just like they did with gw1.

Relentliss.2170:

Here is something to chew on. I kinda liked Rift and wouldn’t mind checking it out. However, I never will. Why? Because if I returned I would have no one to play with and no way to gear up to do the content everyone is currently on. PVP… omg that would be impossible.

Now apply this to GW2 which is a free to play game. If you put in vertically progressive gear. People will come and go. But they won’t be coming back, they will be unable to take part in the current content.

If stats are capped then people will be more inclined to come back and play for periods of time, just like they did with gw1.

First off, Rift just launched an expansion with a new level cap, which reset the gear ladder. It’s a perfect time to give it a try.

Second off — you have to look at the way the gear increments affect performance. In Rift, there’s a large increment in performance (dps) with single upgrades.

If you got berserker style ascended gear replacing similar exotic gear, the actual damage output for a typical GW2 character increases about 2%. This is because we have a huge “providence” of 916 naked for each stat, and damage is based on the sum of power + weapon-damage (scaled by other coefficients, and inversely proportional to toughness + armor of the target).

So go ahead and skip this whole addition, and no one will be able to see any difference (until you get to someplace with Agony).

It’s very different from Rift where a single item upgrade could give you +20% dps.

mulch.2586:

Well the beauty of it is, they can give apparent progression to the many people who complained that there was no way to improve their characters, while giving stat increases that are so minor, none of the old content will need retuning. So it all can still be done with exotic, and not trivialized to ascended.

Edit: with the holidays it took me a while to respond — the point that I made was that because of the formulas that determine characters’ performance in GW2, what appear to be meaningful changes in stats do not translate to discernible performance changes in game. For example, adding 50 power on an item (substantially larger than we’ve seen on ascended) is still less than 2% increase in damage for a typical player character. This is in contrast to other games (e.g., Rift) where a new tier often represents 10 times that increase.

So this vertical progression is, in fact, basically flat.

Firstly, I deeply hope this is their actual thought process. Sadly, they haven’t given us much to go on one way or another, so imaginations are running wild.

Secondly, this idea runs afoul of the nature of gamers. We, as gamers, have been trained by uncounted games in the past that if an item exists that has better stats, we will one day find some content that requires those stats (or at the very least, the gamer of average skill will need those stats to complete the content, even if the exceptionally skilled can make do with lesser gear,) and therefore in order to see that content we have to acquire the higher stat gear. Gear with higher stats is never seen as optional since, well, why would it be put in the game if it was not needed?

Now, Anet might be trying, with some of their vague and rare replies, to hint at that, but stating that there is no intention to add grind or gear treadmill, but again we as a community of gamers are only going by our experiences of the past, and thus we instinctively flinch away from even a hint of the above the way an abused person would flinch away from a upraised fist.