Guild Wars 2

Groovy.6749:

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.

Congrats on the new gear piece!

You’re not seein a diff in the performance because of the way stats work in GW2. There simply isn’t a detectable difference with your upgrade.

The upgrades amount to about .004 * dps increase (4/10 of a percent) in dps.

A detectable increase in light/loudness/taste is ten times as great.

Amazing post OP, shame it will be overlooked and brushed off by the people who actually need to hear this.

This is Rift all over again. Well enjoy the server merges in 3 months and then again in 4-5

mulch.2586:

Groovy.6749:

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.

Congrats on the new gear piece!

You’re not seein a diff in the performance because of the way stats work in GW2. There simply isn’t a detectable difference with your upgrade.

The upgrades amount to about .004 * dps increase (4/10 of a percent) in dps.

A detectable increase in light/loudness/taste is ten times as great.

Every new piece of ascended makes the increase more pronounced. Then we can add the infusions which are currently their lowest tier.
When does this increase become significant? Is there a certain point an increase in stats becomes significant that we are all unaware of?

And to say this increase is insignificant and no one can tell is just an insult to all the people who want vertical progression added. You are saying ANet is tricking them in to believing there is vertical progression just so they keep grinding away, all for no benefit.

I also looked at this game, where everyone has a 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.

And yet, Anet made these changes…

It seems like your argument, and that of many, is that “this is no big deal” or the changes are so small as to not really make a real difference.

This begs the question:

“Why did Anet make these changes in the first place?”

I mean, if the changes are truly trivial, yet seem to totally violate the PR “manifesto” and what the entire gaming industry was led to believe about the upcoming GW2 design philosophy, why would Anet invite such chaos into their lives?

My sense is that Anet, whether spurred on by Nexon or not, is trying to satisfy those people who cannot comprehend that “gear progression” is truly a treadmill (because you never actually progress… you just run in place) in a “minimally invasive” way. They are making the increments real enough to give some people a “sense of progression” while trying to not to make it a crazy “do or die” level of change so as to placate the mass of people that actually believed they meant what they said in their “Manifesto”.

So, as I see it, Anet is trying to have it both ways. They are trying to hold onto the WoW type players as well as the GW2 players and wishfully hope that this all blows over.

However, I think they are on a slippery slope and ultimately the will end up ruining what was supposed to be an MMO where the non-instanced content and social environment is lively, engaging, and feel new every time you log in.

My belief is that dungeons and raid instances, while great in their own right, end up subverting the qualitative experience of the rest of the game outside of those instances. In a phrase, they “suck the oxygen out of the air”. If they didn’t have a deleterious effect on the rest of the game, I’d be less interested in the outcome of this newfound problem.

I thought the Anet devs really “got this” from the get-go but now I’m not so sure.

Might be by now offtopic but, I agree with the OP 100%.

Yeah. OP nailed it. This was the whole reason why I bought the game. Now I don’t really feel like playing. Mostly because I don’t want to have to do anymore PVE.

munkiman.3068:

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.

Why are you telling me about dying at level 50 nonsense? You are implying an 100-hour grind to max level makes a 500+ hour grind for decent gear on top of it just fine? Level 80 and Exotics was about the limit most people would do for a WvW experience with another class (many I know didn’t even want to do that). Ascended gear is a bit insane even with just one class.

Rejam.3946:

And to say this increase is insignificant and no one can tell is just an insult to all the people who want vertical progression added. You are saying ANet is tricking them in to believing there is vertical progression just so they keep grinding away, all for no benefit.

This. There is no increase. That is why we must have it. o.O BTW Link you gear or be kicked.

I think the major thing to realize here (and maybe it’s been mentioned before I didn’t take the time to read all of the posts, but I got the gist of most of them), is that Vertical Progress makes content easier. A difference that can be noticed is completely based on how you look at numbers and content, if I were to take the time to gear myself out in totally new gear replacing the exotics I just finished I could probably both find it and get it more than quickly enough, and feel the 1 to 2% difference. I played enough World of Warcraft to know how much a 1 to 2% difference can make over the course of a fight.

Furthermore, you take that 1 to 2% (full gear swapped this is about the total stat difference you’d get over all), apply it to each person in your group, and you might very well be pushing through lower rungs of content up to 20% faster. Now wait you might say, a total of 5 to 10% difference in just numbers should equate to almost double that in progress speed. . . but it does that exactly. You don’t have to take my word for it, just watch videos and read posts about how fast someone beat X dungeon or Boss, watch again after a gear increase.

The major issue here is, that gear caps don’t interest me as a player anymore, the people that say there needs to be one to keep interest might have a low attention span or more time than they know what to do with. An interesting study might be whether people want that gear grind or not, and asking us simply isn’t the way to do it, if they see a significant or lack of interest in their new content because of new stats on gear that may be a sign. More than likely they will see the same thing other games see, a burst of interest from players over all then a general fall off again as the days and weeks go by. From there they either have to make more new content or approach the content they have from a new standpoint.

TL;DR Stat progression leads to an easier game, and easier is boring for me and many others.

You were perhaps being kind in not dissembling the concept of vertical a bit further. Vertical progression is a common place in MMO’s and many really don’t question it at all. Game design theorists do and they are not usually kind about it. There is no progression in vertical progression. They call it a treadmill for a reason. Every one starts the grind at power X. When they get off the treadmill they are all at power Y. The mobs have also assumed power Y. No one has gone anywhere relative to each other or the environment. There has been no progression, just tedious grinding of content. The only real progression in the current discussion would be to move on from the concept of vertical progression.

A permanent stat cap is a necessary feature to avoid the pitfalls and senselessness of vertical progression. ArenaNet had it right; it’s an idea whose time has come.

A couple of points:

I think it’s funny when someone points out not wanting gear progression as “lazy” because we don’t want to run dungeons and grind for new content. Guess what, I don’t want to play a game once it devolves into work. I don’t log on to work, I don’t log on to prepare to have fun. I log on to cut to the chase and have fun. I don’t want to be funneled into running specific content, repeatedly, because of game mechanics. I had years of fun playing GW1. I played content in the order I chose, with little repetition because I could cycle across all the content.

Comparing progression in real life is a bad example. Progression in real life tends to be prestige and wealth. As far as physical stats, they tend to decrease. A person will not have the physical endurance/strength/toughness at 60 as they did at 25. But the 60 year old may very well have more wealth or prestige in their chosen profession if they plan properly and work hard.

Even though the ascended gear may only increase performance by 1-2%, once it’s aggregated with non-ascended gear and base stats, this gap in stats will affect the psychology of the gaming community and have ripple effects on the overall game. It will impact what content people run and who they group with.

Rejam.3946:

mulch.2586:

Groovy.6749:

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.

Congrats on the new gear piece!

You’re not seein a diff in the performance because of the way stats work in GW2. There simply isn’t a detectable difference with your upgrade.

The upgrades amount to about .004 * dps increase (4/10 of a percent) in dps.

A detectable increase in light/loudness/taste is ten times as great.

Every new piece of ascended makes the increase more pronounced. Then we can add the infusions which are currently their lowest tier.
When does this increase become significant? Is there a certain point an increase in stats becomes significant that we are all unaware of?

And to say this increase is insignificant and no one can tell is just an insult to all the people who want vertical progression added. You are saying ANet is tricking them in to believing there is vertical progression just so they keep grinding away, all for no benefit.

There is no telling — they could make the increases in stats big enough to matter when the other ascended gear gets added to the game. Time will tell.

The really cool thing about players who desire vertical progression is we really just want to have something to work toward.

A small increase is enough to motivate. Especially for the NA gamer market, because the quantitative reasoning skills are almost non-existant, and math-fear is so strong that people won’t actually apply the very simple formulas. They’ll see it’s a new color, new tier, I have to have it! while being completely ignorant of what it means. Witness this thread.

Fortuna.7259:

munkiman.3068:

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.

Why are you telling me about dying at level 50 nonsense? You are implying an 100-hour grind to max level makes a 500+ hour grind for decent gear on top of it just fine? Level 80 and Exotics was about the limit most people would do for a WvW experience with another class (many I know didn’t even want to do that). Ascended gear is a bit insane even with just one class.

Sorry, you feel the 100+ hours in the game was a grind. I don’t know what to tell you. I’m in full exotics and enjoyed the journey.

Sure friend, you enjoyed the journey, as did I, but then I made another character… And the journey was less shiny, but still acceptable.

Now I look up at the Ascended gear wall, and all I can think is that IF I do go and climb it, There might be another wall at the top. And IF I do climb it, I have to then climb it again and again for each other profession I want to play. And then I log out.

munkiman.3068:

Fortuna.7259:

munkiman.3068:

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.

Why are you telling me about dying at level 50 nonsense? You are implying an 100-hour grind to max level makes a 500+ hour grind for decent gear on top of it just fine? Level 80 and Exotics was about the limit most people would do for a WvW experience with another class (many I know didn’t even want to do that). Ascended gear is a bit insane even with just one class.

Sorry, you feel the 100+ hours in the game was a grind. I don’t know what to tell you. I’m in full exotics and enjoyed the journey.

While I would have preferred a quicker progression from 1-80, for a variety of reasons, I do not consider it to be a grind. 1-80 can be had fairly quickly with a minimal amount of content repetition. This is in direct contrast to gear grind, which often requires repetition of the same content ad nauseum.

The argument for horizontal progression (vs vertical) and the argument against grind are similar and have some overlap, but they are different subjects. Past a certain point, vertical progression does often devolve into grind. This is partially because the overall content of the game must be split up into more and more levels of power. This means that the content is less interchangeable, and players have fewer and fewer choices on what to play at any given level of power.

I agree with the OP 100% I put up with the vertical progression of the early game to get to the end game where there was supposed to be none. I applaud him for such a great post.

The compromise I could live with
A)Ascended weapons don’t have more damage on them
B) Infusion stones Only work in dungeons – they do zero outside of a dungeon
Ascende items remain a desirable upgrade, but the difference is pretty minimal overall.

OP nailed it!

Playing pre lost shores GW2 showed me just how much I love horizontal progression, and by contrast, just how much I hate the idea of vertical progression. Now that I have “seen the light”, I just can’t go back to playing gear treadmill MMO games.

I want to say something about one of the reasons why people want a treadmill. The idea is that there are some people who are happy to grind for hours and hours because their time is rewarded with a stat advantage over those who don’t have time to grind. If they get far enough ahead, they can “melt face” in pvp without having to apply very much skill.

Another way of looking at it is that by grinding something that requires almost no skill, grinders can gain a stat based advantage over their non-grinding opponents. Their stat advantage will enable them to beat those who are more skilled but less geared, and those who are equally skilled but less geared. It will also allow them to DESTROY those who are less skilled, and less geared.

I like how GW2 spvp has no gear tier differences. If we had a similar system in WvWvW, then the gear difference advantage between Exotic and Ascended (or any other future gear tiers) would be meaningless to me. Gear grinds would only be needed in pve, and would not be needed to stay competitive in pvp areas of the game.

If grinders cannot gain a pvp stat advantage against non grinders, would they even want to continue grinding? Of course some would; chasing bigger numbers or whatever. But I wonder: just how important is the pvp stat difference to grinders?

There may be a slight stat advantage, but there’s no performance advantage.

Corvindi.5734:

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).

Even though I have stopped spending money on the game and playing, I would not call it a failure.

However, when I read your post, you made me think of one other reason I did not consider for this change – Fixed and variable costs. Labor is a significant cost in a software development company. It takes people to make new content. It could be that despite strong revenue, their cost model does not support the true content updates needed for horizontal progression.

It is easy to introduce new gear with higher stats, especially if you have no plans to rebalance your world for the new power level. But it is harder and maybe more expensive to create new engaging areas, new skills, new dynamic events, etc. They promised to do this. But the realization may have hit that their staffing model cannot truly do it. They did not seem to have the issue with GW1 but maybe things are different now.

If this is true, that is even more sad for remaining players. That means in a short period of time (6-8 months) the game will become stale.

dalendria:

I wouldn’t have truly expected new content until an expansion was released. I think one of the problems is that people have 100s of hours into the game even though it’s only been out for a few months. With no additional content, the as-released game had a large amount of content and provided an excellent value for my gaming dollar.

Hard mode in GW1 was an excellent way of making non-endgame content relevant at endgame power levels, but this only worked because all combat areas were instanced. Also, one must keep in mind that I think most people are remembering the conglomerate of 3 stand-alone campaigns + 1 expansion.

I think everyone on here agrees that horizontal progression is more difficult from a development point of view.

Could be off-topic by now, but…

I’m with neither crowd – stat capping or endless stat progression. Though you could count me in with the side that prefers a stat cap – I do believe that after a certain point the game should be more about your skill than your ability to get better stats.

Though… I actually have an issue with games in that I need to feel like I’m always advancing toward something. Happens with console games, too. When I get near endgame, when I know there’ll be nothing to discover anymore, I get bored and… start over. I worry about what’ll happen when all my alts reach 80 – I’ll probably feel the need to ditch them and make new low level alts… rinse and repeat. /o\

Obviously, that’s just how I play games – other people aren’t me, so they don’t necessarily agree with me. I feel like something silly and useless – like level never capping even long after stats have capped (other players don’t need to be able to see it, just me) would be enough to keep me going even after hitting the gear/stat caps. Otherwise I just feel like it’s such a waste of exp that could be going toward leveling.

I don’t care about stats. Just give me levels. Forever…………

First, I commend Wintyre Fraust for this logical, constructive thread.
Second, I’d like to state that I have not read most of this thread’s posts, so everything I mention has likely been repeated and/or addressed. Consider my views as statistics.

Third, the community’s reactions are not necessarily unreasonable because of the lack of communication from Anet. Despite having more employees for Forum Moderation, Public Relations, and Customer Service than in most other games I have been exposed to, I find that GW2 lacks a true “Community Representative,” i.e. someone who talks to the community, communicates with the game developers, and attempts to calm the community by passing this information, even if it’s just something along the lines of:
“I’ve been summarising the community’s concerns and sending them to the game developers, but I have yet to receive any replies, so please be patient, since there’s nothing more I can tell you at this time.”

Fourth, I have nothing against GW2 or Anet. This is my favourite game right now.

If there’s already somebody whose job is to perform this task, then perhaps some changes should be made.

GW2 offered a unique experience. It did not necessarily cater to the mainstream market, but in turn gained the attention and loyalty of:
1. casual gamers who don’t want a grind-based MMO
2. gamers who can’t play non-stop all of the time, and thus want a more casual experience
3. hardcore gamers who (i) already focus on another (traditional) MMO and don’t want to spend ages starting from the ground up and (ii) want something different

and probably several other minorities.

Ascended gear didn’t need to increase the stat cap if they were only to act as a bridge between Exotic and Legendary. They could’ve made new gear with infusion slots but no direct stat increases. Legendary weapons were SUPPOSED to be aesthetics-only, so Ascended gear could’ve looked cooler and/or some special effects (not as many as the Legendaries have). They could’ve left the Legendary stats alone.

This suggests that Ascended gear could be an initial step towards (something that resembles) vertical progression. Although this whole conspiracy theory could just be a hyperbolic extrapolation, there hasn’t been an official statement regarding these new concerns, so there’s no point in crossing out possibilities just yet.

I don’t necessarily disagree with the addition of vertical progression, but I think that Anet is gradually changing its target market.

When my friends showed me GW1 and told me about GW2, when I finally purchased GW2, I was under the impression that it would be a skill-based game, rather than gear-based or stat-based.

Wintyre Fraust.6534:

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.

I really hate to say it, but whoever’s responsible for the Gem Shop could learn something by taking a look at Nexon’s cash stores. I’d rather throw money at Nexon for their Gachas over these Chests. Nexon’s still around. Heck, some of Nexon’s games only have 4-7 people on the entire team, including forum moderators, yet they’re still around. Some players spend hundreds of dollars every year on Nexon’s cash stores, and I’m not talking about little kids begging their parents for money. (Oh, and by hundreds, I mean $400-$1000+)And guess what: 80-100% of this money was spent on purely visual items that have absolutely no effect on your defence or damage.

With the current in-game content, losing the loyalty and respect of players who want horizontal progression, including long-time supporters, would be acceptable loss. However, that assumes that the in-game content, business model, and marketing tactics are perfect, but they aren’t. Adding vertical progression is taking the path that LOOKS like it’s the easiest way out.

tl;dr
If Anet felt like GW2 was going to fail and/or wasn’t making enough money, there were other alternatives, possibly more practical ones, that have worked for other games and could’ve been used instead.

I think people are conflating two issues which are equally egregious, but utterly mortal threats to the community as a one-two combo.

The first and foremost is actually the gated and challenging structure of the FotM dungeons, and the fact that they are the ONLY source for ascended gear.
If you want to progress, you MUST do this, and if you want to do this, you MUST keep up with the joneses, or you will be excluded because you’re not “level XX”.

It encourages exclusionary behavior and splinters the community.

Distributing Ascended gear in the same manner as exotics would drastically help the game in general and re-populate the original spheres of the game which are as-we-speak being sucked of their last drops of life by FotM-treadmills.

The second is the presence of Ascended gear and what it means in comparison to the manifesto released by Anet PR. The lead designers state categorically it will be the only one. I don’t believe them, but I’d still be much less peeved if they simply re-designed FotM and distributed their new sell-out “gear progression” tiers to all sources the same way exotics were so I’d actually have people to play with in an mmo

OP,
This is the best post I have ever read.

/signed
Let’s not let this post sink to the bottom of the barrel.

OP thank you for your great post!

I’m surprised MMOs don’t cater to the sandbox crowd more… how many people play minecraft?

Thanks for posting. I’m totally with you in this, Wintyre.

Brilliant post OP. I hope the devs take it to heart and understand why it was written.

Good post, OP.

“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)."

The fact is that we don’t know that to be the truth, and available evidence contra-indicates it. ANET has never said that they weren’t making enough money off of GW2, and I don’t know of any reputable source that shows this to be the case. All we really have to go on was Launch, which from where I’m sitting looked to be a success, since they had to actually stop digital sales to get capacity up, and since after launch they had to add servers.

Saying that you’re making the change “because of players hitting the Legendary wall before they were expected to” is not the same as saying that changes were being forced by lack of projected revenue.

Silentstorm.7531:

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

People used to play fps games (without stats progression, with relatively simple gameplay and relativly little content) many hours a day for years on end.
So it does not work only for RTS games, it works for other games as well. It also works very well for all offline games games such as socker, football, chess etc.

It’s only a certain type of player that cannot be kept without a way for them to progress their stats, without gaining an advantage, a reverse handicap relative to players who have not invested as much time in the game.

It is a relatively new development that (some) players want to become more powerful by receiving stats upgrades for having invested a lot of time in a game, instead of being content with progressing their own personal skill in playing the game and thus getting higher up on the ranking list.

The kind of progression that’s found in most RPGs these days is not even inherent to the genre. It all started with pen-and-paper RPGs where leveling up and obtaining better gear was far and few between.

Wintyre Fraust.6534:

“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)."

The fact is that we don’t know that to be the truth, and available evidence contra-indicates it. ANET has never said that they weren’t making enough money off of GW2, and I don’t know of any reputable source that shows this to be the case. All we really have to go on was Launch, which from where I’m sitting looked to be a success, since they had to actually stop digital sales to get capacity up, and since after launch they had to add servers.

Saying that you’re making the change “because of players hitting the Legendary wall before they were expected to” is not the same as saying that changes were being forced by lack of projected revenue.

I think that Anet got more people to buy this game than they expected and instead of consolidating around their intended fanbase, the dollar signs told them to follow the new majority of treadmill lovers that will leave anyway in a few months.

I’m convinced if they hadn’t gone with that flow and stuck to their guns they would’ve had a better chance at creating a solid fanbase that would be happy to spend a little extra coin in the gemshop, creating a more stable cash flow for a longer period of time.

Now, they have to work a lot more at keeping people happy and do it more quickly. The thing is that it’s not possible to tell from metrics why people do stuff so the answer to the question “why” takes longer. This means that they will be forced to take risks and hope that whatever new flavour they introduce gains them more than it will lose. And that gambling game will inevitably reduce this game to a small fanbase like any other MMO (WoW aside I suppose).

I believe that if they would have kept their spines and held the line they could’ve created a great game with their community. Now we see them ignoring the outrage and there’s the sign. They have separated themselves from the community and are talking to us instead of with us.

The gear treadmill is not the saviour of GW2 but an insidious parasite that, as the skill in GW1, takes their livelihood with each action they take.

neon.4863:

Though… I actually have an issue with games in that I need to feel like I’m always advancing toward something. Happens with console games, too. When I get near endgame, when I know there’ll be nothing to discover anymore, I get bored and… start over. I worry about what’ll happen when all my alts reach 80 – I’ll probably feel the need to ditch them and make new low level alts… rinse and repeat. /o\

Funny, I’m like that with console RPGs, too –
a) because most of the time, I really love the beginning of the journey, and its course, and would just rather do that again instead of fighting my way through the last dungeon and the last boss and
b), because I usually feel like I’ve missed oh-so-many sidequests which I should really catch up on…but that would be a lot of work, so I put it off for later and often end up not finishing the game for years (because come on, you can’t finish it if you haven’t done everything there is to do).

I’m weird that way

Anyway, @topic I still think I could grudgingly live with Ascended gear as it currently stands, as long as it is not the first step on the way to significant vertical gear progression. However, I just lack the trust in Anet to not take go down that road :/

Icas.3860:

GW2 offered a unique experience. It did not necessarily cater to the mainstream market, but in turn gained the attention and loyalty of:
1. casual gamers who don’t want a grind-based MMO
2. gamers who can’t play non-stop all of the time, and thus want a more casual experience
3. hardcore gamers who (i) already focus on another (traditional) MMO and don’t want to spend ages starting from the ground up and (ii) want something different

Ascended gear didn’t need to increase the stat cap if they were only to act as a bridge between Exotic and Legendary. They could’ve made new gear with infusion slots but no direct stat increases. Legendary weapons were SUPPOSED to be aesthetics-only, so Ascended gear could’ve looked cooler and/or some special effects (not as many as the Legendaries have). They could’ve left the Legendary stats alone.

This suggests that Ascended gear could be an initial step towards (something that resembles) vertical progression.
With the current in-game content, losing the loyalty and respect of players who want horizontal progression, including long-time supporters, would be acceptable loss. However, that assumes that the in-game content, business model, and marketing tactics are perfect, but they aren’t. Adding vertical progression is taking the path that LOOKS like it’s the easiest way out.

tl;dr
If Anet felt like GW2 was going to fail and/or wasn’t making enough money, there were other alternatives, possibly more practical ones, that have worked for other games and could’ve been used instead.

People did some research and discovered that earlier in the year, Arenanet hired a former Nexon employee to run their GW2 cash shop. Not sure what is happening there though. It seems sparse and devoid of items people would want.

However, I and others like me where spending money in the cash shop to show our support for Arenanet and its design vision (horizontal progression).

I keep asking but have not received a concrete answer yet. Is there any proof or statistical analysis that shows that people who like gear progression spend money in the cash shop more than those who don’t?

If the gear progression customers will support this game by buying more in the cash shop than myself and those like me, then I say Arenanet should head in this direction. I never wanted this game to fail. I really loved it prior to the patch and wanted to see it succeed. I and many others spent money in the cash shop but maybe the “most dedicated players” spend a heck of lot more.

It’s important to recognize that stats from gear make up only 21% of a player’s stats.

It’s important to recognize that, thus far, the increase from exotic to ascended has been very small.

Right now if you got all 3 of the new items, you’ll experience just over 1% increase in damage, for example.

This supposed change in the stat cap is so small in its effect on character performance that it functionally is the same as it was before.

So if you’re a casual gamer and don’t want to do what it takes to get it, you’ll be fine.
That 1% increase in performance will neither trivialize old content, nor lock you out of doing content from being underpowered, except for Agony. And of course the only places you need to protect yourself from Agony will be the places where you obtain that gear…

I love you post well thought out and well presented.

I might point out alot of the long time players in vertical games stick it out long term in hopes that a new game will come around just like what gw2 spoke of. I know this i played wow for 5/6 years. Tried Rift when it first came out but then they started focusing more on raids then the world so quit went back to WOW. But we can learn something from WOW their highest time for subscriptions was amidst Wrath when gear was made, with a little bit of farming, available to everyone. Due to elitist consensus, that they didnt feel special enough, gear was take back to being gated. Subsequent expansions, Cata and MOP, have seen a steady decline in the numbers playing. So there is a big market for a game that makes gear accessible to everyone its just a question of who will take advantage of this consumer base. I know a couple of people who have already went back to WOW even tho they are not happy there simply due to the fact that this game has put in gated gear and they spent less on a subscription there.

mulch.2586:

Right now if you got all 3 of the new items, you’ll experience just over 1% increase in damage, for example.

I agree it’s important to do the math and be realistic about must how much of a different we’re talking about here, but I’m worried about how much this number will change when every gear piece is available in ascended form. I’m thinking the difference will be more noticeable when it’s not just back slots and rings anymore, but full armor sets and weapons as well.

mulch.2586:

So if you’re a casual gamer and don’t want to do what it takes to get it, you’ll be fine.

That 1% increase in performance will neither trivialize old content, nor lock you out of doing content from being underpowered, except for Agony.

You’re making a good point here, and I wish I could feel reassured about this. But even if the stat difference does not affect gameplay as much as we fear, I still feel that casuals are being left out in the cold here. Even if it is mostly symbolic, casuals or even hardcore players who have limits on their time will play the game knowing that max stat gear is unobtainable for them, that their characters will not be able to achieve their full potential. In some games, this is normal and okay, and you expect what you can achieve to scale according to your time investment. You go into it knowing you won’t achieve X goal because that’s just not how much you can put into the game. But GW2 was not supposed to be like that, at least not when X goal is max stat gear.

Mulch.2586 is making some good points about stat value versus stat performance. In a way, the grinders might end up grinding out gear that will not give them a significant advantage. If the difference between full Ascended, and full Exotic ends up being only about 5% in performance (regardless of % difference in stats), then I suppose I would be happy; the grinders got something to grind out, but they didn’t end up with gear performance that is all that much greater than Exotic gear performance. It’s something to hope for at least.

Gotta love how stat cap people want everyone to bow to them and have it done their way. Stat progression is fine and it’s not even to a point where it’s overboard. Just play the game and be happy you are even able to play.

So I am on the other side of this argument than the rest of you. I want to try and understand your stance on this because currently, even after reading this thread, it doesn’t make sense to me. I knew the skins I wanted from day 1 and I worked to only get those ones. After I have those, there aren’t any more to get so… horizontal progression over, right? What do you do after that that’s fun, if not do new content to get better gear?

Just to add my two cents. May be people should take a step back and see it in the developer’s point of view?

Horizontal progression inherent a big problem, people will have the choice to do it or not. For some like me, found that the medium armour skins from all the dungeons are ugly, if not of the achievements I would not have run the dungeon at all, but even though I did, it was only once.

So if this patch there is no Ascended pieces just some new skin that you dont like how many times will you run the new dungeon? The developer used up so much resources to build the dungeon and pray that the majority will like the new skin so that the company will not close down this underperforming department?

Good post OP, I have no patience on this matter, uninstalling… Who wants my gear? Wait…

Yoshihito.5928: I am going to keep this civil because I think this is a good thread, and I don’t want to get it locked up. When you sarcastically say that you “love how stat cap people want everyone to bow to them,” I must ask you if you have ever heard the story about the pot and the kettle? If not, ask google about it.

Masterpyro.4310: Before the Ascended Tier chase was introduced to the game, there was a tonne of stuff to do with your toon post full exotic/ perfect cosmetic; however, none of it had any ability to improve your toon (except for trying to max out all crafting skills maybe). In other words, if you already have full power, and perfect looks, how else can you improve your toon?

What you need to see is that better gear is not a real improvement. You and your new mob opponents grow stronger by the same ratio, so your bigger numbers only serve to give you the illusion of improvement.

Unless we are talking about a stat advantage in WvWvW. If one has stronger gear (full Ascended) than one’s opponents (full Exotic), then one will be able to beat them with less effort. My question here is if you start the race early, and win, how can you take pride in your victory? Its like playing Warhammer 40K with a 2000 point army against someone who is only using a 1800 point army. That 200 points (one extra unit) gives an unfair advantage.

Honestly, if they handled WvWvW gear the same way they handle spvp gear, I think this whole issue would go away (at least it would go away for me anyway.)

Well done, OP, well done.

Asmodeus.8491:

Yoshihito.5928: I am going to keep this civil because I think this is a good thread, and I don’t want to get it locked up. When you sarcastically say that you “love how stat cap people want everyone to bow to them,” I must ask you if you have ever heard the story about the pot and the kettle? If not, ask google about it.

Masterpyro.4310: Before the Ascended Tier chase was introduced to the game, there was a tonne of stuff to do with your toon post full exotic/ perfect cosmetic; however, none of it had any ability to improve your toon (except for trying to max out all crafting skills maybe). In other words, if you already have full power, and perfect looks, how else can you improve your toon?

What you need to see is that better gear is not a real improvement. You and your new mob opponents grow stronger by the same ratio, so your bigger numbers only serve to give you the illusion of improvement.

Unless we are talking about a stat advantage in WvWvW. If one has stronger gear (full Ascended) than one’s opponents (full Exotic), then one will be able to beat them with less effort. My question here is if you start the race early, and win, how can you take pride in your victory? Its like playing Warhammer 40K with a 2000 point army against someone who is only using a 1800 point army. That 200 points (one extra unit) gives an unfair advantage.

Honestly, if they handled WvWvW gear the same way they handle spvp gear, I think this whole issue would go away (at least it would go away for me anyway.)

Partially, honestly the only thing left for me to do was get the legendary and I probably would have stopped playing after kicking some kitten in wvw with my sweet looking weapon. Now with ascended I have stuff to work for. I agree that their implementation is a bit against their manifesto though. Ascended gear should be higher stats imo, otherwise I wouldn’t bother because i already have the skin I want. But what should be different is how its obtained. It should be craftable with items obtained from fractals dungeons (which will be for sale on the TP for those that dont want to bother). Same as exotic, its just new content for everyone to consume in their own way.

Some people are complaining simply because its a new tier, which doesn’t make sense. They should have been complaining from the beginning that there was any tier higher than level 1 gear if that’s all they cared about. God forbid they add 1 more level, they are allowed to and encouraged to add more content. This game cannot just sit here the way it is and still have people playing 8 years down the road like current WoW or GW1 fans do/did.

If there’s a stat cap, there must be something with equal element of progression that will replace that. If not, I hate to say that any mmorpg will not succeed. GW2 replaces the “stats progression” with “skin progression”. They should have known by now that it’s very ineffective because beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Players just try to achieve their favourite one set and ignore the rest.

Why is stat cap a great gamble?
If everyone has achieve their maxed stats and favourite armor skins, what will you do next? You put the game back to the shelves and only pick it back up for a couple of days every month during festive events like Halloween and Christmas. It’s just like GW1 but that game can afford it because it’s mostly instanced and it’s not a mmorpg, but a corpg. Corpg can afford low concurrency of players. Mmorpgs must have high concurrency of players despite high sales and population.

That’s human nature. If people got nothing to play for, people feel satisfied and get burned out on the game. People no longer feel like login anymore. Does this sounds familiar? You will feel this way in all console pc, ps3 and xbox games. Console games can afford this because they don’t have a server. Mmorpg can’t afford those kind of scenarios. They can’t afford to create a wall for players. Mmorpg very nature is suppose to be progressive that will last 5 – ? years.

It does not have to be stat progression. Yet, it must have the same or greater pull than stat progression or else games will have ghost maps with high initial sales. It will end up with players who treat their server like a hotel and waste resources. I think players must know that it takes a great amount of money to maintain a server. The higher the graphics and population, the more money is needed. They can’t afford to punish dedicated players who are potential spenders that helps to keep their servers alive.

If players are looking for a game that have a console feel to it or an ending-wall, they should stick to their console games. They have a stat cap and you can feel a sense of completion by playing it. They progressive only to the point you finish the game.

Wintyre Fraust.6534:

When you attempt to make the case that GW2, up until level 80, was always a stat-progression game, you miss the entire point. We were willing to tolerate a relatively easy (or at least realistically attainable) effort to get to max stats as long as that was the end of it. Many of us would just prefer zero leveling and stat progress whatsoever. I’d personally rather just be able to log in, dress up a max character from the get-go, and then go have fun pursuing horizontal content (cosmetics, non-comparable skills, lore, titles, event leaderboards, sideral progression systems, PvP, WvW, etc.). However, I and many others were willing to tolerate vertical progression up to a point because we knew that it would end and we would eventually have maxed out characters to dress out in various costumes, gears, weapons and builds and enjoy Tyria in a leisurely manner. That was the whole thing for us. That GW2 also had amazing graphics and a variety of other revolutionary and evolutionary concepts baked in was icing on the cake – but the most important ingredient by far was the stat cap.

Pyro: I think quote above from the OP might answer your question about why stat cap people didn’t complain about the vertical progression leading up to level 80.

My question is to you is: once you have full Ascended, will you need another tier to grind out? If so, ANET will need to add another tier in order to keep you playing.

After 80 and max stats/perfect cosmetic, I wouldn’t need another tier in order to keep playing. I would start maxing out my alts, or go in and play WvWvW, or go chase 100% map completion, or go help lowbies through dungeons, or go RP, or etc.

Yoshi: Whoa! I’m sorry to have upset you so much.

I was just trying to point out that those who want post 80 stat progression want things one way, and those who don’t want stat progression, want things another way. The problem is that the two ways are mutually exclusive; if one group gets their way, the other group loses out.

I enjoyed reading and agree completely with your opening post, Wintyre Fraust. I too am a big fan of horizontal progression. The reason I enjoy it is because once I have attained full stat gear, I can simply enjoy the wonderful content that was created (DE’s, Dungeons, Exploration, etc.) without this feeling of doing it to get better gear. The feeling of getting max stats sits over my shoulder and pesters me like Salacious B Crumb. It’s there spoiling the content, preventing me from enjoying it to the fullest. I know I could just settle for less stats, but why should I? Why should I have to settle for second best just because I enjoy horizontal progression? Also, the obsessive compulsive in me insists I have the best in slot gear. Once I have that gear I’m free. Free to roam the wilds and do events as the mighty hero that my character is. Just as heroic and powerful as the next.

So I am all for fixed, never changing, max stats. Vertical progression players should just learn to live with it, as we have had to over the years, or go back to the multitude of options on offer to them. Oh, and stop saying we or they are a minority, because we and they are not. Both sides have a formidable force behind them and both have a valid right to say what they want. What Anet needs to do, if they really want to please both crowds, it to devise a way to offer both forms of progression without it effecting max stats. For example, adding in an item that provides a progressive stat gain that only effects you in a specific dungeon.

I’m against the stat gain on ascended gear and I’m against infusions only being on ascended gear. But it is early days yet and I am willing to see where Anet is going with this. Plus, it may be that infusions will only ever be relevant in FotM, and the stat gain will be the last they ever add, in which case I will be happy with it (even though it means I have to work towards end game gear again!). I refuse to believe Anet is going against their core philosophy like that and have to assume that they have some cunning plan up their sleeve to appeal to a wider audience. We just have to wait and see how it goes.

My fingers are crossed.

Asmodeus.8491:

Wintyre Fraust.6534:

When you attempt to make the case that GW2, up until level 80, was always a stat-progression game, you miss the entire point. We were willing to tolerate a relatively easy (or at least realistically attainable) effort to get to max stats as long as that was the end of it. Many of us would just prefer zero leveling and stat progress whatsoever. I’d personally rather just be able to log in, dress up a max character from the get-go, and then go have fun pursuing horizontal content (cosmetics, non-comparable skills, lore, titles, event leaderboards, sideral progression systems, PvP, WvW, etc.). However, I and many others were willing to tolerate vertical progression up to a point because we knew that it would end and we would eventually have maxed out characters to dress out in various costumes, gears, weapons and builds and enjoy Tyria in a leisurely manner. That was the whole thing for us. That GW2 also had amazing graphics and a variety of other revolutionary and evolutionary concepts baked in was icing on the cake – but the most important ingredient by far was the stat cap.

Pyro: I think quote above from the OP might answer your question about why stat cap people didn’t complain about the vertical progression leading up to level 80.

My question is to you is: once you have full Ascended, will you need another tier to grind out? If so, ANET will need to add another tier in order to keep you playing.

After 80 and max stats/perfect cosmetic, I wouldn’t need another tier in order to keep playing. I would start maxing out my alts, or go in and play WvWvW, or go chase 100% map completion, or go help lowbies through dungeons, or go RP, or etc.

Yoshi: Whoa! I’m sorry to have upset you so much.

I was just trying to point out that those who want post 80 stat progression want things one way, and those who don’t want stat progression, want things another way. The problem is that the two ways are mutually exclusive; if one group gets their way, the other group loses out.

We were willing to tolerate a relatively easy (or at least realistically attainable) effort to get to max stats as long as that was the end of it. Many of us would just prefer zero leveling and stat progress whatsoever. I’d personally rather just be able to log in, dress up a max character from the get-go, and then go have fun

This is the part I don’t understand though. He wants no effort to get to the top, hell he’d rather just be the best when he logs in the first time. He doesn’t want a game, he wants a chat room essentially. I want to actually play the game, that’s what I paid for.

I think it should be ok if they still did stat progression if the armor only progressed slightly like ascended did (whatever math thread you read, it is not 10% better, it hardly amounts to any extra dps). What they messed up on is how difficult it is to obtain that. We shouldnt have to grind dungeons, it should be craftable or forgeable with items obtained from that dungeon(and also for sale on the TP). That way you still progress, yet it nearly doesnt matter because its so easy for anyone to do it. This makes both sides happy.

They should also not already contain the extra stats of an upgrade item. There should be an infusion slot and an upgrade slot. Infusion slots should only contain agony stats for the dungeon and no other extra stats.

Rin.1046:

I enjoyed reading and agree completely with your opening post, Wintyre Fraust. I too am a big fan of horizontal progression. The reason I enjoy it is because once I have attained full stat gear, I can simply enjoy the wonderful content that was created (DE’s, Dungeons, Exploration, etc.) without this feeling of doing it to get better gear.

Yes, same for me and many others. We played for fun.

Hopefully, tomorrow, they will provide some concrete reasons for departing from their vision. I hope they wi ll clearly explain why they are moving into vertical progression. And if they present it as a hybrid (which was not in the original design), that will not work. Vertical progression people love gear with increasingly better stats, doing dungeons over and over to get that gear and the holy trinity to have a viable role for getting that gear. GW2 may be adding gear with better stats and a dungeon grind but it does not have the other options. Will the holy trinity and raids be introduced at some point? I hope they answer that as well. Finally, will Ascended gear be needed in the lower lvl areas?

These type of things were never a concern when endgame was throughout the entire world of Tyria and there was no increase in gear level past max stat.