Guild Wars 2

/signed. Thank you OP.

As a lawyer drafting judgements on an international level, I think it’s the first time I didn’t feel the need to change or nuance the original post.

@mulch: I actually had a much similar discussion with a good friend and guild mate yesterday, her pointing out that the stat increase was really negligible and how GW2s whole system didn’t even really allow for vertical progression akin to our typical WoW clone, and how she’d seen MUCH worse. Me making the point that they still turned their back on their manifesto, and how I found it difficult to believe that they woudln’t do worse once they started down this road…
The thing is: I can understand both sides of this particular argument. If the cap stayed at Ascended now – at least for the next 2 years or so – fine with me; because I know that the stat increase really is basically negligible. I’d still feel miffed about being lied to though, and have ultimately lost my trust in Anet. In German we would say “Wer einmal lügt, dem glaubt man nicht” (You don’t believe someone who lied to you once already). The sad thing is that those of us who love the fixed level cap really don’t have an alternative to turn to, while there are ots of alternatives for the crowd eager for vertical progression.
100% agreement to the OP that way.

First of all: OP, great writeup of my feelings.

Wintyre Fraust.6534:

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.

Look at it as an analogy to the PC market.

Apple ships about 10% of all PCs. However, last time I looked, their profits (from PCs, not iOS) dwarfs the combined profits of the PC devisions of HP, Dell, Lenovo. Why? 10% of a huge market is still enough to run a healthy business. Also, the 10% they shipped were the high-margin PCs. They never even attempted to ship a low-margin, cheap Mac.

ArenaNet could have had 100% of the stat-cap players of MMOs. Even if that are only 10% of all who play MMOs at the moment, that’s still more than enough players for a healthy business.

Would ArenaNet also be grabbing the high-margin 10%? Hard to say. In my experience, it’s mostly “older” gamers with jobs and money but limited time who yearn for a stat-cap MMO. They might have (on average) more money to spend. But do they spend it? Or does a student living with his parents spend more because he spends a vastly greater percentage of his disposable income? As I said: I don’t know.

I’d like to think that the relaxed folks over 30 with jobs are the folks looking for stat-capped games, but how should I know? I’m not a marketeer and I didn’t run extensive surveys. But even if it’s just 10% of the MMO market and assuming that those 10% are only willing or able to spend as much as everyone else, that’s still more than enough to run a healthy business on since you’d be the only vendor catering to this audience.

GW2 has turned to the progression crowd. Maybe that market is bigger. Maybe it’s as much as 90% of the market. I don’t know. What I do know is that GW2 has not only turned to those players, it also re-positioned the game away from a unique selling position (stat-cap) into a market that’s immensely overcrowded (progression). It now competes with all that’s out there: Pandas, Aion, Tera, Rift, SW:TOR, LotRO and all the others. There’s currently dozends of MMOs out there trying to grab the players’ attention. The small fraction of 90% GW2 will be able to grab might well be smaller than the 100% of 10% that it could have had.

Furthermore, there’s so many progression-MMOs out there that player-retention is much worse than it was, let’s say, for GW1. GW2 will have a hard time to bind progression-players to the franchise once new AAA MMOs hit the market that offer a whole new world of content to explore. Elderscrolls is the “big on” announced for next year, but there are sure to be many more than that.

I, as a stat-cap player, can only hope that eventually, another MMO will pick up the ball that GW2 dropped.

mulch.2586:

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.

Who knows what the power gap will be once all the ascended gear with top level inscrptions will be? Noone yet. It will exceed 20% though, unless changes are made.

Rift was just an example of one of the many games with vertical progression that will Never be able to rebuild its playerbase, no matter what it does. No reason tombe all pedantic. People do NOT return to games with vertical progression. The various gear gaps stop people from returning.

However, people came and went and came again in GW1. As a F2play game vertical progression is not a very good model.

Stat capped games only work for RTS based games. You cannot keep a audience with no way for them to progress. It works the same way in life is everyone capped at 100 dollars? No ofcourse not people need things to strive for. And reality check thats atleast 75% of the gaming population they want power and the means to earn it. If you really think a game is going to be successful with horizontal progression your in denial.

And what you really want is a console game not a online growing mmorpg. People really need to stop it with this subject its not going to work like that give it up. You really think a million plus people going to palette swap skins on gear for months after months. You must be smoking a new type of weed that makes dreams reality or something.

Also relentliss rift is fine stop talking out of your butt. I also play that game and the servers are packed since launch. So you clearly are one of those people I famemessly say don’t know wtf they are talking about. And just read something somewhere andsaid hey i aggree so it just must be fact. The same way people complain about ascended gear DONT actually have it tried or even been in the dungeon. I have and its not something to say omg I got raid gear I’m OP.

For one thing they’re is no dps race in this game. So who cares who is stronger because it doesn’t effect pvp either. So where is the complaint? Your kitten is smaller because you were too lazy to get off your butt in LA and get some gear? Or your too lazy to actually do the dungeons and get it. It’s not hard I’ve been doing a dungeon series with pugs and one shotting each level so far. It’s all on you tube so i’m really not paying attention to the whining.

Because I’m actually proving people are just crying and don’t actually know wtf they are talking about.

phooka.4295:

Look at it as an analogy to the PC market.

Apple ships about 10% of all PCs. However, last time I looked, their profits (from PCs, not iOS) dwarfs the combined profits of the PC devisions of HP, Dell, Lenovo. Why? 10% of a huge market is still enough to run a healthy business. Also, the 10% they shipped were the high-margin PCs. They never even attempted to ship a low-margin, cheap Mac.

ArenaNet could have had 100% of the stat-cap players of MMOs. Even if that are only 10% of all who play MMOs at the moment, that’s still more than enough players for a healthy business.

This is an important point – to my experience (or at least what we were taught at university ), companies targeting niche markets are often much more successfull (concerning ROI, profit and market share – although the last is rather obvious) than companies targeting a wide, highly competitive market segment. Many of them are highly international and highly successful, even if hardly anyone not working in that specific niche knows about them.

Silentstorm.7531:

Stat capped games only work for RTS based games. You cannot keep a audience with no way for them to progress. It works the same way in life is everyone capped at 100 dollars? No ofcourse not people need things to strive for. And reality check thats atleast 75% of the gaming population they want power and the means to earn it. If you really think a game is going to be successful with horizontal progression your in denial.

And what you really want is a console game not a online growing mmorpg. People really need to stop it with this subject its not going to work like that give it up. You really think a million plus people going to palette swap skins on gear for months after months. You must be smoking a new type of weed that makes dreams reality or something.

Look at GW1 – nuff said. It does work. And why should there not be a single MMO that offers an experience similar to VERY successful console RPGs but with the option of playing with millions of other people? And you really can’t compare a game to a real world working environment…also, in terms of stat-progression vs. skin-swapping: Ever heard of second life and the kind of money they used to make on “cosmetics”?

Innovation is the only long-term guarantee of success – merely copying your competitors or introducing easily copied changes will never give you a lasting advantage. Instead of talking down on people, you might want to study up on the basics of economics…

Also, you might want to consider that one of the selling points of GW2 was that players are not forced into specific activities to progress, and that dungeons – especially their explorable mode – were targeted at a specific group of players. Forcing “casuals” and other people who dislike dungeons into doing them? Very bad form. And please, PLEASE, stop turning us into people who want everything handed to them on a silver platter – because we aren’t. We just don’t wish to be put into a significant statistical disadvantage because we have a life outside of video games.

GW1 was considered the step child of mmo’s and actually was a cult game. Did you EVER ONCE hear “guild wars fiscal success” No right your dismissed now. And second life isn’t a mmorpg it’s a sim game totally different genre. No such thing as a mmorpg EVER that was horizontal and turned a profit. And they’re never will be period because if you can’t progress as you do in life. You won’t want to play something you can’t feel like a winner. You guys should give it up are talk to stock holders because that’s who really determine this.

If you hold 10 million shares in a company would you want them hanging onto a idea. That makes you lose any worth of that 10 million shares. Or do what makes you gain on that 10 million and what 75% of the player database wants. Not to mention all the magazines/media/websites that bashed gw2 for 2 months for not being vertical and abandoned it. You really think they going to even PAY attention to these post you guys are making lol…..Man again you guys are smoking that good stuff.

Silentstorm.7531:

Stat capped games only work for RTS based games. You cannot keep a audience with no way for them to progress.

What makes you think that stat-increase is the only kind of progression?

When GW2 went life, I was so hoping for addon-boxes to be released at least once a year with new areas to explore, new cultures, new events and new parts for my personal story, maybe picking up loose strands of the choices I made when I created my characters.

There could be new ressources that would allow me to craft new exotics (and maybe legendaries), maybe with a completely new look to them.

I was looking foreward to the existing dungeons being fixed and bug-free eventually and I didn’t care when. Because I thought that whenever this would happen, the dungeons would still be viable content since they granted tokens for exotics, the best gear in game. I was also looking for new dungeons being introduced to the game. New encounters with new mechanics.

I was looking foreward to build up an armory of diverse gear over time that would allow me to change my traits and re-skill to fill different roles in a group or to be more optimised for certain content. I still havn’t tried a ranged-build for my warrior.

I was looking foreward to playing alts. And why wouldn’t I? It’s not like I’d have to play catch up with my guildmates who’d have progressed while I was playing my alt. No progression would mean that I could play the alt and whenever I wanted to be able to switch back to my fully geared main and be viable for all content the game has to offer, so I could play with my friends and help them with whatever they want to do.

Silentstorm.7531:

And what you really want is a console game not a online growing mmorpg. People really need to stop it with this subject its not going to work like that give it up. You really think a million plus people going to palette swap skins on gear for months after months. You must be smoking a new type of weed that makes dreams reality or something.

No, you’re wrong. I want an MMO that’s exactly the way GW2 was before november the 15th. I don’t even own a console. There was plenty of room for progression in GW2 back then, even without the need to ever raise any stat or level cap.

You realize that if the gear was already there live none of this wouldn’t matter. And again you fail to realize YOU phooka are in the minority in your wants. Do you see any magazines asking for OR pining for guild wars 2 to go back? Nope actually it’s the other way around. I’ll gladly post you guys links so you can realize how futile your whining is. And that you got the wrong genre for those desires.

No one isn’t saying they don’t understand your whining. What i’m saying is its not successful and it doesn’t keep the player base. You can argue you can quit you can swear all you like. But new people will just replace you happy with the game.

Silentstorm.7531:

GW1 was considered the step child of mmo’s and actually was a cult game. Did you EVER ONCE hear “guild wars fiscal success” No right your dismissed now. And second life isn’t a mmorpg it’s a sim game totally different genre. No such thing as a mmorpg EVER that was horizontal and turned a profit. And they’re never will be period because if you can’t progress as you do in life. You won’t want to play something you can’t feel like a winner. You guys should give it up are talk to stock holders because that’s who really determine this.

If you hold 10 million shares in a company would you want them hanging onto a idea. That makes you lose any worth of that 10 million shares. Or do what makes you gain on that 10 million and what 75% of the player database wants. Not to mention all the magazines/media/websites that bashed gw2 for 2 months for not being vertical and abandoned it. You really think they going to even PAY attention to these post you guys are making lol…..Man again you guys are smoking that good stuff.

You argued that it wasn’t possible to keep “an audience” without vertical progression like we have in real life, hence it is perfectly valid to prove your argument wrong with a sim game
I haven’t looked at GW1 finances, so I can’t really argue about that point, but GW1 was obviously successful enough that NCsoft trusted ArenaNet with enough funds to make GW2.
Please don’t make assumptions about what I want to play, btw, as that is something you very obviously have absolutely no idea about.
Yes, trying something new is risky and difficult. However, we can never know wether it would be successful if we don’t try – and I don’t think Shareholders will be all that averse to ArenaNet turning a profit in a pretty much uncontested market segment (read: much more secure profit).

Also, just because the “majority” says “It’s like that” – doesn’t make it true, ESPECIALLY in the internet. Additionally, new players will most likely not replace us happy with the game for long, because they’ll just get bored again in no time if the tier upgrades don’t come soon enough…(keeping customers is always cheaper than winning new ones, if you didn’t know)
But it’s really now use arguing wth you, as you appear to have no well founded economical background when it comes to different business models and their success, so I’ll just go walk my dog and continue wasting my time on my thesis now…

Amen, Wintyre. Preach on.

I wish I had the motivation to really express my feelings, and I wish I had the skill to do it as eloquently and civilly as you have. I just feel crushed at this point… GW2 truly was a last bastion for me… I’m likely done with video games as a hobby at this point. They just don’t make games for me (us?) anymore, I guess.

Anyway, keep plugging away with posts like this. I whole-heartedly agree and echo everything you said. I doubt ArenaNet is listening, and I think the damage is already done…but there’s still a little bit of hope in the back of my mind that they’ll turn things around. Monday’s Q&A might kill that hope for good. We’ll see.

One element that I don’t think ArenaNet recognized was that the good community the game boasted just a month ago is deteriorating very rapidly due to the changes in philosophy and mechanics. Entirely predictably, these changes are attracting a different type of player, one that invests very little of themselves and cares little for a long-term community. They provided a mandate to these players…facilitated their anti-social, divisive behavior and showed them in no uncertain terms that they are the desired audience. At the same time, they have alienated the very players who were a stabilizing core for the community and planned to invest a tremendous amount of time and money in keeping the game and community healthy.

They aren’t going to bring in the stat-progression players in any significant numbers, because those players have already played the game and found it wasn’t for them, and a few poorly-conceived, buggy pieces of content aren’t going to provide those players with even remotely close to enough. They are impossible to satisfy, even in games that have spent years developing stat progression mechanics. At the same time, ArenaNet has lost the good will, trust, and loyalty of players who would have supported the game and played it for years. A smaller audience? Maybe…but one that would have been satisfied with simply fixes and extensions of the original game design…no panicked, rushed lame content needed.

ArenaNet is rapidly running out of feet and bullets.

I hope this is heard. It’s my first time on forum, and I wouldn’t like the idea of being forced to farm a dungeon to get gear.
I’d like to have options and not wasting time doing the same tasks 100 times. If I cannot have that liberty, it’s like playing a linear rpg where my only choice is selection dialog option A or B.

Hope this gets heard.

Silentstorm.7531:

You realize that if the gear was already there live none of this wouldn’t matter. And again you fail to realize YOU phooka are in the minority in your wants. Do you see any magazines asking for OR pining for guild wars 2 to go back? Nope actually it’s the other way around. I’ll gladly post you guys links so you can realize how futile your whining is. And that you got the wrong genre for those desires.

Oh, you think that magazines are not voicing concern is an idicator for anything? Gaming magazines are dependent on publishers giving interviews and (more importantly) inviting them to beta test and pre-release demonstrations. They hardly ever voice criticism.

Also, did you not read what I wrote? Why did you dispute it then? I said that I’m fully aware that the audience GW1 was targeted at and that GW2 was announced to be targeted at might well be a minority. However, I also explained why that doesn’t matter as far as financial success for GW2 is concerned.

If there’s 90 customers who want pencils and 45 companies selling pencils, each one will sell an average of 2 pencils. If, at the same time, 10 customers want crayons and you were the only one selling crayons so far and just introduces a new brand of crayons, you’d likely sell 10 of them.
If you now chose to stop selling crayons and start selling pencils because there’s 9 times more people buying pencils than there are people buying crayons, would that be a viable business strategy? Could you truly expect to sell more pencils after the change of your strategy than you sold crayons before that?

I don’t have to really prove anything. The public has already done that this change came from pressure of not enough money generation. And very bad negative press only thing i’m doing is stating the obvious you can actually google. Bet you can’t google “Guild Wars 2 losing money because of no horizontal progression” But can you google “Guild Wars 2 losing money from no endgame vertical progression” The results from both 7 possible hits for the first. And 2100 possible hits for the second yea……I don’t have to argue anything to something that apparent.

Like I said cry whine do whatever you want.You will be replaced because the playerbase for what is called straight liners in the mmorpg industry is so low. No one cares really if they come or go it won’t make or break your game. But if you lose whats called Goal Achievement player base your game is done. Hey I been doing this for 17 years and currently still in the industry and work for several sites mmorpg. Some of you seen the vids. I don’t lie or sugar coat you can sell yourself a dream if you want. But I’m always going to slam you back to earth with the reality bat.

And the reality here is it didn’t work get over it.

Silentstorm.7531:

Stat capped games only work for RTS based games. You cannot keep a audience with no way for them to progress. It works the same way in life is everyone capped at 100 dollars? No ofcourse not people need things to strive for. And reality check thats atleast 75% of the gaming population they want power and the means to earn it. If you really think a game is going to be successful with horizontal progression your in denial.

And what you really want is a console game not a online growing mmorpg. People really need to stop it with this subject its not going to work like that give it up. You really think a million plus people going to palette swap skins on gear for months after months. You must be smoking a new type of weed that makes dreams reality or something.

Also relentliss rift is fine stop talking out of your butt. I also play that game and the servers are packed since launch. So you clearly are one of those people I famemessly say don’t know wtf they are talking about. And just read something somewhere andsaid hey i aggree so it just must be fact. The same way people complain about ascended gear DONT actually have it tried or even been in the dungeon. I have and its not something to say omg I got raid gear I’m OP.

For one thing they’re is no dps race in this game. So who cares who is stronger because it doesn’t effect pvp either. So where is the complaint? Your kitten is smaller because you were too lazy to get off your butt in LA and get some gear? Or your too lazy to actually do the dungeons and get it. It’s not hard I’ve been doing a dungeon series with pugs and one shotting each level so far. It’s all on you tube so i’m really not paying attention to the whining.

Because I’m actually proving people are just crying and don’t actually know wtf they are talking about.

I’d feel that those 25% left (taking your number) are a pretty large niche for one game to dominate (while hundreds of games fight for the other 75%). But that’s a sidenote.

Hearing you, then I think we can arrive at a compromise.

If NCSoft/ANet officially state that “horizontal progression and no grind for max stats” was an error and they have decided to go vertical progression, I’ll (grudgingly) accept their choice. And hope Zenimax/Bethesda dare do what NCSoft didn’t.

If however, NCSoft/ANet officially state they will keep “horizontal progression and non-grind for maxed stats”, then there should be a revert to exotic stats.

Can we agree on that?

Silentstorm, that google example is flawed because the lack of horizontal progression
is an issue that only became relevant a week ago.
Another group of players has voiced their opinion on the matter of a lack of vertical
progression for months now.

That aside, no one here can claim they are part of the majority. All we can do is voice
our personal opinions about the matter of vertical/horizontal progression.

I cant wounder why did the ones that want gear progressions buy this game. Anet was not hiding what this game was going to be and was not going to be. And they said that the didnt want a grinding game, thats include Cap stats etc. Rading is oki i like rading but we got rading in form off dungons and now fractals. We dont need wow rading for gear or other games like that. This game wanted to be different and it is. If someone whants rading gear progression etc. Then there is a bunch of other games that can do that.

Great write-up OP. Really wise words. I’m also looking forward for a niche game like that.
@Silentstorm. All I see you do is repeat the same arguments. Give it a rest. You’re just spamming at this point.

Great post.
As someone else wrote before I think the stats cap can be considered a goal.
To me there is no meaning in level up a toon just to level it up again after few months.
Why should I spend time and golds to take and equip that will become useless?
That is why I am worried about expansions’ level cap increase.

Mulch,

If the actual net power increase is 2%, as you say, then ANET needs to just say so, so that people on both sides of the issue can make informed, good-faith decisions about what to. Otherwise, it is reasonable to conclude that ANET is simply trying to fool parts of its playerbase into staying with GW2.

Silentstorm.7531:

I don’t have to really prove anything. The public has already done that this change came from pressure of not enough money generation. And very bad negative press only thing i’m doing is stating the obvious you can actually google. Bet you can’t google “Guild Wars 2 losing money because of no horizontal progression” But can you google “Guild Wars 2 losing money from no endgame vertical progression” The results from both 7 possible hits for the first. And 2100 possible hits for the second yea……I don’t have to argue anything to something that apparent.

Especially in this case, Google hits only prove how strongly discussed a topic is – not where the truth lies. And vertical progression in GW2 definitely has been a hot topic for more than a week now, no argument there. As long as we have no official answer on profit in GW2, this really is a moot point in any discussion.
(With the many complaints about bad RNG in mad king chests etc., I’d wager the cash flow wasn’t that bad, but that’s a personal guess.)

Also, I’d just like to point out that not too long ago, many people also wouldn’t believe that it was possible to have a successful MMO without monthly fees…
“Everyone” doing things a specific way doesn’t necessarily make this the only way or the right way – just the lazy way.

Great Post OP! Very well written. It is sad seeing GW 2 changing in that way, it was something special. I never expected such a thing from ArenaNet. I hate grind. This game was fun because i never had to grind, but now I have to collect 250 rare resources just for one piece of armor?

Sims is the best selling PC game to date and has no progression that doesn’t mirror real life progression (money, fame, power, prestige). Guild Wars was and to an extent still is a successful game based entirely around stat capping. There are a lot of assumptions based around failure for this game that simply aren’t justified. I don’t assume that this change means that they are suffering losses due to the lack of stat progression. It seems to me that someone decided to go in the direction of this new agony mechanic, which actually required a change in gear functionality and by adding this gear decided to make it slightly better so that people would adopt the need to do what it took to get it. While it’s true they definitely needed more end game content, that was the hook. It was more about not having the content at level 80 than it ever was about inserting a gear treadmill. I think they were really relying on the achievement system to keep players playing longer and really misjudged that aspect. Take into account the “legendaries not feeling legendary” talk and you now have this new tier.

I’ve repeated this numerous times and will do so again. There is nothing outside the FotM that requires this new tier, meaning if a player has no desire to do the dungeon, they won’t be missing out. They’ve also stated that they would add a way to acquire this new tier to WvW, meaning WvW only players will have access to it as well. I would also assume that when they do add it to other areas, the need to attain the tier will also increase equally. It takes time to roll these changes out and it’s pretty sad that some people simply don’t trust the manefesto philosophy.

Of course they will make the current ascended gear easily available if it is required to
do new content, that’s how vertical progression games work in order to keep casuals
and give a chance to catch up for those who took a break.

If you look back on the original data mined stats for legendaries, they were stat’d higher and i wish they would have stuck to that. I also wish they would have had a tier between exotics and legendary from release, which would make all of this bickering moot. This is where we are now and i have no reason to say or believe that this will change anytime soon. I embrace the change, i just wish more people would.

Also, no, highest tier gear in most MMO’s aren’t easily attainable, they require specific areas of content to get, typically impact pvp scenarios and push the trend to stat increasing to the limit. That may be where gw2 is at this very moment (in simply acquiring this new gear), but i trust it will go in the right direction

mulch.2586:

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.

1) An Ascended weapon will have additional weapon damage, which all by itself will add more than 2% to damage even at a realistically expected increase… never mind the increase of a full set of berserker’s Ascended over Exotic. But, it will be some time before you can dress in all Exotic and “appreciate the math” of being pounded on by someone in all Ascended.

2) The percentage increase in other games doesn’t really matter. Mobs are scaled up to meet that percentage and in PVP gear differences are usually nerfed (because fighting someone that does 3 times your damage is dumb). So you might say that stat-wise you could suffer through Ascended level content in Exotic? Well, agony is there to prevent anything like that!

3) Only having 3 slots of Ascended items so far is a non-talking point. They are in the design, and they are coming to a grindy experience near you soon!

phooka.4295:

Oh, you think that magazines are not voicing concern is an idicator for anything? Gaming magazines are dependent on publishers giving interviews and (more importantly) inviting them to beta test and pre-release demonstrations. They hardly ever voice criticism.

Not only that, gaming magazines depend on gaming advertisement to even survive. The rest of their meager income trickles in from a few fanboys that will rage if their favorite game is dissed. This makes them effectively 100% advertisement from cover to cover.

munkiman.3068:

Also, no, highest tier gear in most MMO’s aren’t easily attainable, they require specific areas of content to get, typically impact pvp scenarios and push the trend to stat increasing to the limit. That may be where gw2 is at this very moment (in simply acquiring this new gear), but i trust it will go in the right direction

GW2 wasn’t meant to be “most MMOs”, it was meant to be different in (among others) that very aspect – read the manifesto if you will. What, now, is the right direction in your opinion?

I 100% agree with you OP and if Arenanet chooses not to listen to us I very much hope that another developer will. I will gladly uninstall this game for a game with developers that understand that there are a lot of us out there that do not want a vertical progression MMO and we are the ones with funding to continue to buy things in their online stores.

With new content i meant content yet to come. If it requires you to have the gear
from the current fractals, you can bet you will get easier access to the current ascended gear.

You have 3 choices in vertical progression games once you add a new tier:

a) make gear of old tier easily available so everyone can join the new one

b) don’t do that and leave some people behind. (at some point guilds will even start
to recruit players without the equip, but will hate the fact that they have to run
the old content again to equip them)

c) tune the difficulty of each new tier in a way to make it completely optional to
have the previous tier completed. That in return means since you also add
stronger items each time that every new tier will get easier and easier for a
progression guilds.

The first option is what most games follow i think.
Once you see that pattern, it’s obvious that vertical progression is either an illusion,
a tedious long process and/or pointless.

Each of these approaches has its own distinct disadvantage:
a) why bother grinding gear now when you get it almost for free in half a year?
b) with each tier, the pool of people with the required gear will shrink.
c) everyone can do the content, but it will be too easy for the “dedicated” players.

That’s why i preferred the rather easy to reach stat cap before the patch.
The change is a bad idea even if you don’t take broken promises into account.

Fortuna.7259:

1) An Ascended weapon will have additional weapon damage, which all by itself will add more than 2% to damage even at a realistically expected increase… never mind the increase of a full set of berserker’s Ascended over Exotic. But, it will be some time before you can dress in all Exotic and “appreciate the math” of being pounded on by someone in all Ascended.

2) The percentage increase in other games doesn’t really matter. Mobs are scaled up to meet that percentage and in PVP gear differences are usually nerfed (because fighting someone that does 3 times your damage is dumb). So you might say that stat-wise you could suffer through Ascended level content in Exotic? Well, agony is there to prevent anything like that!

3) Only having 3 slots of Ascended items so far is a non-talking point. They are in the design, and they are coming to a grindy experience near you soon!

There is already a huge disparity in WvW, going toe to toe with an actual level 80 with full exotics stat’d will get you killed regardless how good a player you are at say actual level 50 or less, AKA why there is so much zerging.

Most of my guildies don’t have a single Ascended and have faced level 12 Agony, it’s certainly doable.

I enjoy the dungeon, as do many people, which is why there are rather large complaints about them pulling so many people there, i don’t consider content i enjoy doing, grindy.

Frotee.2634:

munkiman.3068:

Also, no, highest tier gear in most MMO’s aren’t easily attainable, they require specific areas of content to get, typically impact pvp scenarios and push the trend to stat increasing to the limit. That may be where gw2 is at this very moment (in simply acquiring this new gear), but i trust it will go in the right direction

GW2 wasn’t meant to be “most MMOs”, it was meant to be different in (among others) that very aspect – read the manifesto if you will. What, now, is the right direction in your opinion?

My entire point was, it isn’t like other MMO’s and that as they progress in adding this new tier, along with new content, it will be attainable across multiple methods. If it was in the game at launch, it wouldn’t be an issue now. There is a lot of hindsight here, with the intro of this new tier, however i actually trust that it’s the end of it.

munkiman.3068:

I enjoy the dungeon, as do many people, which is why there are rather large complaints about them pulling so many people there, i don’t consider content i enjoy doing, grindy.

If the reason the zones are emptying is people enjoy doing them so much, then why do we need ascended gear to lure them there?

How about you put your money where your mouth is and join those of us who campaign against it.

Heck.. i’ll put up 100 bucks in real, hard cash that if:
1 – the stat bonuses on ascended gear are removed such that its only equivalent to exotics
2 – the same ascended gear is made available for karma and tokens from other dungeons
or
3 – the ascended gear is removed

Heck.. i’ll put up 100 bucks in real, hard cash that if:
1 – the stat bonuses on ascended gear are removed such that its only equivalent to exotics
2 – the same ascended gear is made available for karma and tokens from other dungeons
or
3 – the ascended gear is removedthen these horrible FotM’s will empty as if they were … “FOTM”

munkiman.3068:

Frotee.2634:

munkiman.3068:

Also, no, highest tier gear in most MMO’s aren’t easily attainable, they require specific areas of content to get, typically impact pvp scenarios and push the trend to stat increasing to the limit. That may be where gw2 is at this very moment (in simply acquiring this new gear), but i trust it will go in the right direction

GW2 wasn’t meant to be “most MMOs”, it was meant to be different in (among others) that very aspect – read the manifesto if you will. What, now, is the right direction in your opinion?

My entire point was, it isn’t like other MMO’s and that as they progress in adding this new tier, along with new content, it will be attainable across multiple methods. If it was in the game at launch, it wouldn’t be an issue now. There is a lot of hindsight here, with the intro of this new tier, however i actually trust that it’s the end of it.

Ah, then I apparently misunderstood you – at least in part. I agree though that there probably wouldn’t have been as much of an outcry if we’d had Ascended gear from the get-go (although having higher stats on gear that is really hard to get is still against the manifesto).
I really wish I had that much trust :/

A wonderfully written post by the OP that perfectly expresses my feelings and obviously a lot of others. ANET please listen to the community! This thread is only one of several saying exactly one thing: No darn treadmills.

@Silentstorm I don’t have to really prove anything. The public has already done that this change came from pressure of not enough money generation. But can you google “Guild Wars 2 losing money from no endgame vertical progression”

I did what you suggested. All I found where results listing posts from people on both sides giving their opinions. I did not find any gaming industry analysis. I did not find any financial analysis stating GW2 is a financial failure. I did not find any financial or marketing analysis of the GW2 business model either based on stat-cap or stat-progression.

Also, 3 months is not enough time to conduct a valid analysis. Arenanet should have surveyed customers who bought the product. The purpose of the survey would have been to assess the correlation between cash shop purchases and progression desires (horizontal vs. vertical). Do players who love gear treadmills spend more in the cash shop? Or is it players that love horizontal (playing game for fun even after reaching stat cap)?

There are many studies available about the ways to keep sub-based players engaged and playing. Those studies cannot be applied for GW2 because it has a different financial approach.

Arenanet has had 7 years to determine how much money it can make in cash shop while supporting a stat-cap design approach. Thanks to GW1, they should know what motivates stat-cap players into buying in their cash shop and buying expansions.They should have taken their lessons learned and used that as their roadmap for change/improvement.

plasmacutter.2709:

If the reason the zones are emptying is people enjoy doing them so much, then why do we need ascended gear to lure them there?

How about you put your money where your mouth is and join those of us who campaign against it.

Heck.. i’ll put up 100 bucks in real, hard cash that if:
1 – the stat bonuses on ascended gear are removed such that its only equivalent to exotics
2 – the same ascended gear is made available for karma and tokens from other dungeons
or
3 – the ascended gear is removed

Heck.. i’ll put up 100 bucks in real, hard cash that if:
1 – the stat bonuses on ascended gear are removed such that its only equivalent to exotics
2 – the same ascended gear is made available for karma and tokens from other dungeons
or
3 – the ascended gear is removedthen these horrible FotM’s will empty as if they were … “FOTM”

First i’m not for or against the addition to the ascended type, I actually reserve my judgement when there are some actual facts to back up an ongoing treadmill of gear progression, in which point i will stop playing altogether. I certainly agree with the outcry, but i can hardly justify it for myself.

I don’t think at all however that the new tier is there to lure players into the dungeon, i think the new mechanic agony is part of the reason for the new tier as well as adding what was lacking between exotic acquires and legendary acquires. I think there needs to be a balance there, which was severely lacking at release. Not to mention the lack of legendary armor types.

I could be totally wrong, but i foresee this. Legendaries will be the stat cap and slightly better than ascended, which will be slightly better than exotics and that will be the final complete set of gear tiers for some time to come. The methods and difficult of acquisition of each set will be more balanced, exotics being the baseline for difficulty to acquire. I’m completely fine with that.

Silentstorm.7531:

Stat capped games only work for RTS based games. You cannot keep a audience with no way for them to progress. It works the same way in life is everyone capped at 100 dollars? No ofcourse not people need things to strive for. And reality check thats atleast 75% of the gaming population they want power and the means to earn it. If you really think a game is going to be successful with horizontal progression your in denial.

Make me cry a little every time i read about ‘gear progress’ . You are not actually progressing in power , youre just trying to get to the same point where you were before the new more powerful tier was introduced.

I already have a job where I have to work.

I play to have fun, not to work.

A game has to be entertaining and FUN, not a CHORE.

If it’s FUN it won’t feel like a CHORE or WORK, and we can get hooked way more that way.

Boomstin.3460:

Silentstorm.7531:

Stat capped games only work for RTS based games. You cannot keep a audience with no way for them to progress. It works the same way in life is everyone capped at 100 dollars? No ofcourse not people need things to strive for. And reality check thats atleast 75% of the gaming population they want power and the means to earn it. If you really think a game is going to be successful with horizontal progression your in denial.

Make me cry a little every time i read about ‘gear progress’ . You are not actually progressing in power , youre just trying to get to the same point where you were before the new more powerful tier was introduced.

Boomstin, can I have your permission to use this for my sig?

I agree wholeheartedly, a good write up OP.

Fortuna.7259:

mulch.2586:

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.

1) An Ascended weapon will have additional weapon damage, which all by itself will add more than 2% to damage even at a realistically expected increase… never mind the increase of a full set of berserker’s Ascended over Exotic. But, it will be some time before you can dress in all Exotic and “appreciate the math” of being pounded on by someone in all Ascended.

2) The percentage increase in other games doesn’t really matter. Mobs are scaled up to meet that percentage and in PVP gear differences are usually nerfed (because fighting someone that does 3 times your damage is dumb). So you might say that stat-wise you could suffer through Ascended level content in Exotic? Well, agony is there to prevent anything like that!

3) Only having 3 slots of Ascended items so far is a non-talking point. They are in the design, and they are coming to a grindy experience near you soon!

1) We’ll have to see. Yes it’s true they could make a complete about-face and make the stats differences actually large enough to be significant.

However, so far with 3 slots, we’re seeing a total dps increase of about 1.25%. There are a grand total of 12 non-weapon slots equipped at any time (because the breather swaps for the helm underwater).

If the scaling goes in a similar pattern, where every slot is about .4 of 1% increase to dps, the total increase will amount to about 5%.

2/ Right the agony means that, right now, if you want to do FotM, you have to do FotM for the Agony. They’ve said there’ll be other ways to get the gear in future content. We’ll have to wait n see.

3/ We’ll have to wait and see, maybe they’ll make the increases much larger, and as noted, we’ve never seen an ascended weapon yet.

Right now, all the cries of verticality are neglecting the basic maths, that this appears to be the smallest increment in MMO history.

I’ll tell you, when I first heard the gear was coming, I freaked. Then the stats got leaked and I realized this new tier is a wafer-thin increment.

I also looked at this game, where everyone has a kitten magic-find set that we wear while doing the highest pve content in the game, and discover that it really doesn’t matter — our characters don’t need stats to do the content, because stats have minimal impact on the performance.

As I said in another thread, I think it’s not that they don’t realize lots of us hate running dungeons over and over again for stat gains at level cap. They know perfectly well, they sold us the game on the promise that we wouldn’t have to.

It’s simply that dungeons for gear shinies are cheap, easy content compared to other things they could create for us. Remember, this is first of all a for profit business. They want our money and they don’t want to have to spend much to get it, otherwise, what is the point.

No, let us all face the truth. Guild Wars 2 as advertised has failed. It’s a failed business model, as other posters have stated. They cannot make enough money in non-traditional ways to satisfy their investors while covering costs. The MMO industry is locked into this formula of dungeon running from now until that fails to make money, too (and may that day come soon).

Boomstin.3460:

Silentstorm.7531:

Stat capped games only work for RTS based games. You cannot keep a audience with no way for them to progress. It works the same way in life is everyone capped at 100 dollars? No ofcourse not people need things to strive for. And reality check thats atleast 75% of the gaming population they want power and the means to earn it. If you really think a game is going to be successful with horizontal progression your in denial.

Make me cry a little every time i read about ‘gear progress’ . You are not actually progressing in power , youre just trying to get to the same point where you were before the new more powerful tier was introduced.

As soon as Guild Wars 2 becomes “that game,” it’ll be like all the rest. Just like WOW. Just like SWTOR.

And in this three-abreast column of MMOG racing, the growth of player ambivalence will hasten, and the cross-examination of competition will continue to doom games that try to emulate World of Warcraft, instead of being something unique to quench the thirst of a player grown tired of the hackneyed hamster wheel they’re reduced to every time they send Blizzard a monthly check.

Stat caps worked fine in Guild Wars 1. No reason they can’t here, as well. Just give the player persistent content in which to immerse themselves wholly. Give that content meaning. The endgame should be a battle to keep what you have, and ensure other players safely reach your level, not ever-chasing the carrot that the basement-dweller in front of you will always get first, and subsequently hound over all the “noobs” who need to “L2P.”

People not having a clue, pretending to have a clue.

Stop all that nonsense about false advertising, lawsuits and breach of trust. You do not make yourselves look good.
At all.

All Anet did was release a small fraction of a new tier that perfectly fits in with the lore alongside the mini expansion that is Lost Shores.

I happen to have an ascended item, the quiver of swift flight, and to be fair I can’t really tell the difference in my gameplay. I die just the same in Orr if I act like an idiot. Only reason I got it is because I thought a quiver would look awesome on my thief rather than the lightsaber legendary dagger or my little pony legendary shortbow. Yes, legendary gear blows for my class.

Just for your information…farming endgame mats IS grinding. The only difference is that currently the grinding is for cosmetics, and doesn’t actually lock you out of any content.
Releasing ONE new tier meant for lvl80s little bit by bit isn’t a treadmill. As I said, grinding is pretty much all you do after finishing your storyline. The mats won’t be hard to come by either as you keep playing. As long as stuff like the Lost Shores keeps happening every few months, the endgame players will remain entertained. The new tier is just a little bonus on the top of it. A nice happy medium goal before legendary. That’s what they said, and so far it doesn’t seem like there’s more to it than that.

So what if the stats are a wee little bit higher ? It’s not like exotic was ever going to be the be all and end all of tiers. Legendary armors haven’t even been released or properly documented as of yet.

My guess is they will come in an actual expansion that we will have to pay for. Ascended will do in the meantime to keep us bored lvl80s playing the game, or for those that DON’T purchase the said expansion.

That’s of course just my gut feeling, I don’t have any sources nor the ability to predict future events.

But neither have you, so please can everyone just quiet down for a bit and actually wait to see what happens ? Tinfoil hats off please.

I’ve seen several people post statements and references about industry information concerning customer retention and keeping customers in-game. The problem with this information is that it is all predicated upon (1) the current, playing customer base of what is essentially a stat-progression market, and (2) games that are entirely geared around keeping players active and in-game and cash shops formulated primarily around players that are fundamentally interested in endless stat-progression.

This explains the puzzling assortment of goods offered in the cash shop and the utter failure of the black lion chests filled with boosters. That’s probably a much better seller in games where staying ahead of other people in a progression grind is more meaningful. It’s like they had absolutely no idea what kind of products to sell in a cash shop in a stat-capped game.

The OP is one of the most intelligent pieces I’ve seen written on the topic to date. I hope the CM’s let this thread stand.

While I totally agree that stat progression and stap capped systems both have merits and there’s nothing gamebreakingly wrong with either, I feel a few points need to be underscored.

1.) One of the major issues with stat progression models is that old content is rendered obsolete or trivial. This is a huge problem, which make large parts of MMO’s barren, meaningless, and lonely.

2.) GW2 was supposed to be a direct answer to this problem and the PR “manifesto” was a declaration of this thinking. The product was marketed a long time as an “alternative” MMO that eschewed the WoW model.

3.) Many of us, me included, helped advertise the virtues of GW2 on the basis of what we heard in the manifesto and Anet’s PR campaign. I for one lobbied my girlfriend and many of my WoW friends based on this information. I went so far as to promote and give lengthy posts on the WoW forums as to the merit of a stat capped system. It feels like a bit of betrayal that the GW2 worked to make sure that their “manifesto” went viral and then sort of pulled the rug out from those of us who spread their message.

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