Guild Wars 2

Phadde.7362:

Astralporing.1957:

Yes, you can sit in LA chatting with friends. Now, technically speaking, no other game is grindy either if you don’t want to grind.

. . . OR, you can play the game as intended with everyone else. =)

What do you mean by “as intended”? Because i see clearly that the devs do intend us to grind. A lot.

Vayne.8563:

So if they stayed true to form and the game died completely and couldn’t be updated, that would have helped you how? That would have been better for you, how?

What would have been better was to find a solution within their espoused ideals. They actually did later with the fortnightly content updates. Which makes me wonder why proceed with asc items beyond trinkets. If it had started leaking subs again then as I’ve said quite a few times maybe the fault is in the poor quality living world updates.

morrolan.9608:

Vayne.8563:

So if they stayed true to form and the game died completely and couldn’t be updated, that would have helped you how? That would have been better for you, how?

What would have been better was to find a solution within their espoused ideals. They actually did later with the fortnightly content updates. Which makes me wonder why proceed with asc items beyond trinkets. If it had started leaking subs again then as I’ve said quite a few times maybe the fault is in the poor quality living world updates.

I agree with this. They should have left the ascended stuff as just jewelry, and that would have been that. I don’t like that they brought in weapons.

I think the bi-weekly updates are “sticky” enough to keep people coming back for more.

Vayne.8563:

Swagger.1459:

ok Vayne, if you were lead developer in charge of gear implementation and progression, how would you design all gear related systems that would be beneficial for anet and not keep any player out in the cold?

Well, see this is the problem.

First, don’t make any mistakes. I’m against, in principle, ascended gear. I don’t like it and I don’t think it’s necessary.

However, I understand I’m not typical of people who play MMOs and might not well be in the majority. I’ve seen far too many people get to max level and leave the game because they had “nothing to do”.

Arguably, most of us would rather have more content than grind for ascended gear, but no matter how fast content is made, once it’s consumed we’re in the exact same place again.

Dynamic events weren’t working to keep people playing. Lots of people say because they’re not rewarding enough, but if every dynamic event had enough rewards to keep people playing them, the inflation would be insane, and people would keep needed to do it to catch up. It’s not a solution.

So Anet probably had some sort of meeting about what to do, and there were probably lots of suggestions. Of those suggestions, most would take time and a short time later leave them in exactly the same situation.

They can’t make content fast enough….no company can. People run out of things to do and they leave.

Annecdotally at least, it seems concurrency numbers are very important to Anet. They have said directly that it’s what they look at, because they’re not a subscription game. They can’t get concurrency numbers up if people don’t log in. That’s why the current situation exists.

Anet might have tried many other untried, untested, longer to implement solutions to keep people playing, but that involves increased risk. More time to program, more downtime if it doesn’t work and then what?

So they did what businesses always do when something they’ve tried doesn’t work. They go to something that they suspect will work. It’s the best thing to do for the business, which in my mind is probably the best thing to do for the game.

Will they lose people? Undoubtedly. But the alternative may well have been to lose more people.

thanks for replying. I understand there are many factor running in the background, but let us look at hypothetical solutions instead of anything else for now. if you were hired today to design a gearing up system that made everyone happy, what would it look like?

stof.9341:

That’s not denial, that’s called disagreeing with the evolution of a game and a franchise I loved. That’s not unhealthy, that’s standing up for me and not following the sheeps down the standard treadmill MMO genre.

In fact, I do believe it’s more healthy to have a no statistics evolution MMO past the tutorial part. GW2 having lost it’s way just means I’m not giving them any more money nor playing their product until they fix that mistake.

I think you are completely missing the point. Change happened. It is there. It is permanent for now. It exists. You don’t have to like it and disagree with it all you want, but pretending it isn’t a reality is denial.

Hate it all you want, that is your prerogative. Do and say everything you can to change things and I will even support you. We were talking about change as a concept and not accepting it as being unhealthy. Nowhere did I say that disagreeing with the change was unhealthy. Nowhere did I say that a no statistics evolution MMO past the tutorial was unhealthy. Denying that change happens is unhealthy. I am not sure where you picked up what you said above from our conversation.

Gregori.5807:

Yes, not accepting change is unhealthy. However, that does not mean I can’t wish things had been as promised and mourn the loss of the game I had bought.

I am not one to say “they broke the Manifesto, I leaving the game!!” However, I can say that I refuse the gear treadmill (that means no ascended or further), play with people who likewise refuse the gear treadmill (or do not mind that I am), and choose to not give them any more money unless things change to something I prefer.

Certainly the game will continue to change. It will either go in a direction I cannot stand or I will find a game I think I would prefer, at which time I will simply leave, or it will go somewhere I like, at which time Anet will get my money again.

I agree with you about wishing for something different or even trying to change things yet again. That is great. My only point is that denying change when it is reality is unhealthy. Some like the poster above are trying to twist what I say into something more. Again, like change or not; disagree with changes or not; but don’t deny change when it happens. No one is saying you have to like it.

BeoErgon.9107:

Well, there are lots of player grinding for Legendaries that were mere skins just not long ago…
And don’t forget the OP quoted comments : long term goals were supposed to be just that: skins.
Me and as far as I can see many in the forums liked this game just as it was: no grind for stats.

Ok, I will give you that. Some people actually would like to grind for skins just as I don’t mind grinding for ascended equipment. Also, I will give you that many in the forums don’t like the grinding for ascended equipment. Having said both of those things, forum posters only represent a small amount of any game’s population. A good majority of forum posters don’t post positive posts, they come to air their disgruntlement. People who are happy with the way things are generally don’t come on to the forums to say “I like things the way they are” because they expect them to be that way. There are plenty of articles on the net that talk about just that. Forums are a place used by most to complain not praise.

So I agree that many would grind for skins. I’m not one of them which is also fine. I have no problem grinding for stats and I accept that you do have a problem with it. I don’t accept that people who post on the forums represent the majority of players in a game, but rather a small vocal minority.

hi jheryn, if you were hired today to design a gearing up system that made everyone happy, what would it look like?

Swagger.1459:

hi jheryn, if you were hired today to design a gearing up system that made everyone happy, what would it look like?

No one, especially me, would be hired to do that because it is impossible. There isn’t any system that will make everyone happy. No matter what I or anyone else would do, there will be people complaining about they way it is.

I have seen changes actually happen that people/posters have wanted in this game and others that seem to be what everyone is is screaming for. As soon as those changes are done a whole fresh group of people who hate the changes emerge. Heck, even many of those clamoring for the change start hating on the change because it wasn’t good enough for them.

You are never going to make everyone happy. It is pointless to try. For myself, I either accept changes as they come or do what I can to change the changes.

jheryn.8390:

Swagger.1459:

hi jheryn, if you were hired today to design a gearing up system that made everyone happy, what would it look like?

No one, especially me, would be hired to do that because it is impossible. There isn’t any system that will make everyone happy. No matter what I or anyone else would do, there will be people complaining about they way it is.

I have seen changes actually happen that people/posters have wanted in this game and others that seem to be what everyone is is screaming for. As soon as those changes are done a whole fresh group of people who hate the changes emerge. Heck, even many of those clamoring for the change start hating on the change because it wasn’t good enough for them.

You are never going to make everyone happy. It is pointless to try. For myself, I either accept changes as they come or do what I can to change the changes.

I understand, but that is not the point of the exercise. i’m looking for hypothetical solutions that are reasonable and would benefit both anet and players. put all your thoughts and feelings aside for now, and place yourself in a position where you had to/were forced/must create a gear progression system that made all parties involved happy/happier/less sad/smile more often when they logged in…

BeoErgon.9107:

I think Anet is missing an important point here.
What was the thing that guaranteed the long success of GW1? No subscription AND no vertical progression. They were apart from other games and had their own niche. You could create your toon, log out, come back a month later or for an expansion and remain competitive.

Now, if someone stops a month or two in GW2 and comes back to find that his toon needs to grind for new armor and weapons he might as well go and look that other new MMO that comes out all shiny and new. Why stay in GW2 if it is just like any other MMO?

But well, this thread is sterile. They can’t go back now in ascended weapons if they don’t want to risk a riot from those that spent their time gettign them.
We can only hope they NEVER introduce ascended armors (yes, I know they will, but I can dream, can’t I?)

This is what I look at for the future. If ANET keeps it like it is, with Ascended being the last tier and they don’t add anymore. A year from when the armors are released, it will be a none issue. This game is just a little over a year old, it has a lot of growing to do.

I think GW1 was successful for a lot of reason, not just no vertical progression.

But to touch on a point made farther up the thread. The day ANET adds content that requires Ascended armor, that stops some players from being able to do it, is the day I turn my back on them. The day they add another tier above this one, which shows they are going full on vertical progression, is the day I probably stop playing as much. I personally don’t mind ascended, I actually enjoy it, that little bit of progression is fun for me. But a true treadmill, where you have to grind for everything, that is something I don’t want, something that will kill the game for me.

Also, as someone stated above, I did get lucky to have the mats to get my Weaponsmith to 500, but I didn’t have the mats to do huntsman or artificer, I also don’t have the mats to do any armor crafting professions. So I will be in the same boat as a lot of others are, but I think my mindstate will be different and I will just wait a little longer to get my armor and continue to play my way.

Swagger.1459:

I understand, but that is not the point of the exercise. i’m looking for hypothetical solutions that are reasonable and would benefit both anet and players. put all your thoughts and feelings aside for now, and place yourself in a position where you had to/were forced/must create a gear progression system that made all parties involved happy/happier/less sad/smile more often when they logged in…

I’ll think about it but will not promise I’ll do it. The problem with posting something like that is that you get eaten alive by people who don’t like what you say. Not sure I want to subject myself to that.

Astralporing.1957:

Phadde.7362:

Astralporing.1957:

Yes, you can sit in LA chatting with friends. Now, technically speaking, no other game is grindy either if you don’t want to grind.

. . . OR, you can play the game as intended with everyone else. =)

What do you mean by “as intended”? Because i see clearly that the devs do intend us to grind. A lot.

. . . Why do you need to grind? Surely, if you do things faster in such a way that you put the reward before the actual fun of the journey towards that reward (i.e., kinda grindy), you’ll get that reward faster.

If you take a few glasses of your favorite ale as an example: Either you enjoy your ale and drink it in the pace you feel like, get that deep feeling of the flavour and feel fortunate of how cold it is. After some pleasurable drinking, you and your friends gets drunk – This is the reward you where looking for, since you’ve all had a rough week.

Or you chug them all down, one after another, feel a bit ill afterwards. But boy, did you get drunk fast.

If you want to have full exotic ASAP, you’ll kinda have to grind. Or you can just take it in a nice pace, enjoy the journey towards the rewards without stress, and without freaking out because you’ve a new guy in the group that you’ll have to help out a bit and do some explaining, because he’s “ruining your tokens/minute -ratio”

Discussions with no sense

But to stay on topic, for now I have not seen any horizontal progression in a year and a half (only 1 new skill is a joke), so for now they not only have lied saying that the vertical progression would not be there, but they lied also saying that there would be a horizontal progression!

And Anet continues to remain silent …

jheryn.8390:

Swagger.1459:

I understand, but that is not the point of the exercise. i’m looking for hypothetical solutions that are reasonable and would benefit both anet and players. put all your thoughts and feelings aside for now, and place yourself in a position where you had to/were forced/must create a gear progression system that made all parties involved happy/happier/less sad/smile more often when they logged in…

I’ll think about it but will not promise I’ll do it. The problem with posting something like that is that you get eaten alive by people who don’t like what you say. Not sure I want to subject myself to that.

That is something funny right there. On this forum you get eaten alive for being different. LOL.

But I think I will give a brief on an item system for a game. No details really cause I don’t have time to figure them out.

Tier based
Hard Cap – no tiers beyond a point, probably 6 or 8 tiers
Each tier is harder to get then the previous one, but not impossible, can be grinded for to get fast or comes easy with more time.

Awesome skins tied to boss chests throughout the world/dungeons, no guaranteed drops, have to grind for them.

Stats only increase 10% for each tier.

Skins added all the time with new content, no new tiers.

That type of system is what I would design, and make sure it was sent out with the original product. That way everyone knew what they was getting. Also the final tier would be mostly based on playing and having stuff build up over time. Or if someone had the time, they could grind for it. But the 10% increase between tiers would make the new tier not overly better and wouldn’t put someone at too big of a disadvantage over the ones that grinded.

Now I know I will probably get flamed for this post, but that is just something I came up with just sitting here, and really didn’t do a lot of thinking to it.

Hjorje.9453:

This is what I look at for the future. If ANET keeps it like it is, with Ascended being the last tier and they don’t add anymore. A year from when the armors are released, it will be a none issue. This game is just a little over a year old, it has a lot of growing to do.

I think GW1 was successful for a lot of reason, not just no vertical progression.

But to touch on a point made farther up the thread. The day ANET adds content that requires Ascended armor, that stops some players from being able to do it, is the day I turn my back on them. The day they add another tier above this one, which shows they are going full on vertical progression, is the day I probably stop playing as much. I personally don’t mind ascended, I actually enjoy it, that little bit of progression is fun for me. But a true treadmill, where you have to grind for everything, that is something I don’t want, something that will kill the game for me.

you keep talking about change, so i’m going to tell you now that…

-there will be an increase in profession levels down the road.

-there will be harder content designed around higher levels, ascended and legendary stat performance.

-there will be a higher level tiers of gear as the game continues to expand and change.

falling back to my question to you now. things will change. if the current ascended gear fiasco is any indicator of what the future of gear progression holds, we need to think about possible solutions that will make anet money while keeping the majority of players happy.

Hjorje.9453:

Iason Evan.3806:

I think a lot of this discussion is coming from two different viewpoints. 1.) The view point of GW1 players. There was zero vertical progression. You leveled to 20 bought some armor and weapons and it was cheap. Gw2 compared with that game is grindy.

2.) Players coming from games with raid locks where level curves are steep etc. find this game a breeze.

The problem: When they were saying they wanted it to be cosmetic only, it was mostly read by the GW1 vets. That was the largest player base reading all of the early hype. It feels as if it was aimed at that. The problem is that the devs over sold what it was going to be.

Keep in mind they were also saying there may not be a level cap and that we would get actual expansions. Things have changed with the devs and the consumer’s opinion. It makes sense that some people are disgruntled and others are not. Sometimes though, if you bought something for a reason based off of what a developer said and the game now doesn’t match that (and it doesn’t match the early things said by the devs by their own admission of iteration) then sometimes it’s best to move on.

I for one am waiting to hear what the permanent content was that Colin was talking about earlier in the year. I will give the benefit of the doubt til then.

Not sure which group you was putting me in, but I am a GW1 vet.

So you would be in both groups like me. I was really just trying to differentiate the points of view. People have a hard time communicating what they mean through typing sometimes. People are having two different arguments in here. Both groups are right to a certain extent. GW1 people were sold a game based on knowledge of GW1. In that game there is no vertical progression. I don’t need to tell you that. You played it. If you only played GW1 though you would have no other point of reference and this game would feel grindy. Make sense?

So on the premise of this game being grindy to the people who only played GW1, their opinion is correct from where they stand. In GW1 you could level a character to cap, get a run to every outpost (sans Factions of course) and have a set of armor with max level stats for very cheap. Weapons were cheap as well. You could buy skill tomes and have a character with all the map locations, all the primary skills, and many elites (If you had money, all the elites) in a very short amount of time. If you compare that with GW2, GW2 is grindy. That is where those people are coming from and they have every right to feel that way about it. It’s their only point of reference and it was what the devs were selling them in those videos from their point of view.

Anet should compensate!
Let’s make Ascended gear non transmutable!
When players get tired of being ugly as kitten they will come back to our beloved exotics

Best of two worlds : They get the stats; we get to at least laugh in their faces before they make us eat their swords…

Iason Evan.3806

So you would be in both groups like me. I was really just trying to differentiate the points of view. People have a hard time communicating what they mean through typing sometimes. People are having two different arguments in here. Both groups are right to a certain extent. GW1 people were sold a game based on knowledge of GW1. In that game there is no vertical progression. I don’t need to tell you that. You played it. If you only played GW1 though you would have no other point of reference and this game would feel grindy. Make sense?

So on the premise of this game being grindy to the people who only played GW1, their opinion is correct from where they stand. In GW1 you could level a character to cap, get a run to every outpost (sans Factions of course) and have a set of armor with max level stats for very cheap. Weapons were cheap as well. You could buy skill tomes and have a character with all the map locations, all the primary skills, and many elites (If you had money, all the elites) in a very short amount of time. If you compare that with GW2, GW2 is grindy. That is where those people are coming from and they have every right to feel that way about it. It’s their only point of reference and it was what the devs were selling them in those videos from their point of view.

This I can agree on. Since I have played games that are grindy, GW2 is a cake walk. GW1 was the breath of fresh air I needed back then, but I can see where GW2 would be more of a grind then GW1. This makes sense.

Vayne.8563:

To those who are saying Anet advertised a game that was going to be one thing and ended up another…sure. They did. Because there were unforseen circumstances revolving around people not playing the game they advertised…Without gear progression of some kind, I believe this game would have failed. And how would that help those who now feel betrayed?

Well I suppose if we are going to just make up scenarios:

The switch probably came because a key player in the ANet/NCSoft hierarchy wanted to up his bonus so that he could get his new Ferrari made out of platinum instead of gold. The fastest selling MMO in history, quite sustainable with its original model, wasn’t going to pad his pockets enough so he pushed for WoW money figuring that if vertical progression works there it might generate just enough extra revenue here to finance his newly acquired taste for Faberge egg omelettes.

LOL
Like its the first time they blatantly lie to us.
Get used to it and play your beloved game.
Nothing to see here, people, move along.

Ashen.2907:

Vayne.8563:

To those who are saying Anet advertised a game that was going to be one thing and ended up another…sure. They did. Because there were unforseen circumstances revolving around people not playing the game they advertised…Without gear progression of some kind, I believe this game would have failed. And how would that help those who now feel betrayed?

Well I suppose if we are going to just make up scenarios:

The switch probably came because a key player in the ANet/NCSoft hierarchy wanted to up his bonus so that he could get his new Ferrari made out of platinum instead of gold. The fastest selling MMO in history, quite sustainable with its original model, wasn’t going to pad his pockets enough so he pushed for WoW money figuring that if vertical progression works there it might generate just enough extra revenue here to finance his newly acquired taste for Faberge egg omelettes.

How am I making up a scenario. I moderated a fan forum around November, and the amount of people leaving the game because they felt they had nothing to do at level cap was astounding.

And Anet was well aware how many people were going on to get legendaries which they saw as end game. I don’t have all the quotes from devs from that time, but at least one of them said the pickup on legendaries was disappointed. For most people the goal was too long term.

Exotics were nothing at all to get.

Over the long term, it’s not that hard to get ascended gear. The only real problem with it is wanting it now. If you don’t want it now (and most people don’t needed it now) then you’ll get it when you get it and it barely affects your game at all. Something else to save for is all.

Happy Thanksgiving Y’all!

The holiday season is officially upon us so remember my fellow tyrians, grind is/are totally lame!

Hopefully over the weekend some of you -looks at vayne and hjorje- can submit a basic gear progression system proposal to make tyria a better place to live and migrate to. all is/are totally welcome to join in the conversation to help us find solutions to the current lame turkey grind issues