Guild Wars 2

As someone with multiple characters (one for each class so far, but three still need levelling to 80) I’m curious how this will compare to crafting Celestial. Especially with recent changes making even dungeon token rewards have account-based diminishing returns, it concerns me that this game could be heading places that discourage having lots of characters on one account.

Will Ascended weapons (and later armour) be something anyone can work towards at their own pace, or is this going to be like standing at a skill challenge once per day, x y z days per character on your account?

Some of the mats required to craft ascended weapons are account bound and the rest of the mats require 500 crafting and are made combining lower tiers of mats; please god don’t make it 250 ectos and 250 x mat to get the T7 level.

Towards the bottom:
https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/looking-ahead-guild-wars-2-in-2013/

LameFox.6349:

….it concerns me that this game could be heading places that discourage having lots of characters on one account.

Your question is a good one, but it is coming from a twisted point of view. I have 8 characters myself but I realize it SHOULD take me 8x longer to outfit them compared to 1 character. Despite what many think, time gating does not exist to punish anyone (it’s there to maintain some level of “rarity” for at least some limited time frame).

Even if you don’t think it’s an intentional punishment (as some here will post…“ANet HATES ALTS PEOPLE!!”), you viewing it as a discouragement is just a point of view that you should re-examine.

Brother Grimm.5176:

LameFox.6349:

….it concerns me that this game could be heading places that discourage having lots of characters on one account.

Your question is a good one, but it is coming from a twisted point of view. I have 8 characters myself but I realize it SHOULD take me 8x longer to outfit them compared to 1 character. Despite what many think, time gating does not exist to punish anyone (it’s there to maintain some level of “rarity” for at least some limited time frame).

Even if you don’t think it’s an intentional punishment (as some here will post…“ANet HATES ALTS PEOPLE!!”), you viewing it as a discouragement is just a point of view that you should re-examine.

But if it’s time-gated, it doesn’t take you 8x longer. It takes you more than 8x longer, because you have to (say for a full set of armour) wait through 48 time gates as well as the extra time needed to farm the gold/mats/etc.

Crafting. Kitten that. Ill wait until i can get weapons in another way that doesn’t force me to craft.

There are many people who don’t like crafting. Requiring it to progress is a clear step backwards from the decision to put ascended rings and accessories on the laurel vendor.

You can bet it will be time gated. Anet is moving more and more in this direction.

This will be really bad for alts, build diversity, and new players.

(Yes, each Ascended gear adds a small bonus to stats, but those bonuses will add up in a fully Ascended set.)

As for crafting: it’s pretty much one of the worst parts of the whole game. Just terribly tedious. Crafting needs to be more creative and less formulaic.

Brother Grimm.5176:

Your question is a good one, but it is coming from a twisted point of view. I have 8 characters myself but I realize it SHOULD take me 8x longer to outfit them compared to 1 character. Despite what many think, time gating does not exist to punish anyone (it’s there to maintain some level of “rarity” for at least some limited time frame).

Even if you don’t think it’s an intentional punishment (as some here will post…“ANet HATES ALTS PEOPLE!!”), you viewing it as a discouragement is just a point of view that you should re-examine.

With other gear, if I need more I do what I have to do until I get it, and that’s fine. If I want to equip 8 characters, I need to make 8x the gold, or 8x the tokens, or farm 8x the materials, whatever. This is normal and I have no issue with it.

What bothers me is things like… being able to create 1 piece of charged quartz per day. Had I actually wanted celestial gear, it’d take me 5 days per inscription.^ AFAIK each piece of gear should have that same requirement, so for 6 pieces of armour I have to wait 30 days. Not work toward it for 30 days, literally wait 30 days. For a very conservative two weapons, it’s another 10. For five pieces of jewellery (I don’t make this so I could be wrong here, but I’m assuming it’s still 5 per piece) another 25 days. 65 days per character, assuming it needs no more than 2 weapons. 520 days for 8 characters – if I log in every single day.

The key difference here is that I cannot put any extra work into this. It’s literally about nothing but the passage of time. If that’s the direction this game is headed in, I want to know about it as soon as possible, because I’ll go and play something where my progress reflects the effort I put in.

LameFox.6349:

What bothers me is things like… being able to create 1 piece of charged quartz per day.
…
The key difference here is that I cannot put any extra work into this. It’s literally about nothing but the passage of time. If that’s the direction this game is headed in, I want to know about it as soon as possible, because I’ll go and play something where my progress reflects the effort I put in.

And by the time you get that much time put in, it’s probably not even worth it, because a year from now, I’m sure they’ll have double-triply ascended gear.

That’s an additional problem between gear stat creep (new gear coming out every few months) and time gated content. Why bother getting the time gated stuff if better stuff will surely be around in a few months anyway.

Making my full set of Celestial Armor for my Elementalist was a slog. Fortunately for me, it was the only character I wanted it on. Time gating in this game seems odd because we have no subscription fees. I used to hate time gated crafting in sub games because I felt like it was the developer’s scheme to get us paying a sub for longer. Here it just seems arbitrary and inconsistent to their core ideas about what an MMO should be: Fun.

I would even be OK with time gated crafting in this game if it wasn’t like quartz and only a one time per day per account thing. It needs to be per character, per day. 30 days per set of armor per character when you have 7 to 8 or more characters that you play regularly is quite frankly, gross for lack of a better term. I am also stretching the limits of what I am actually OK with by typing that it is OK for it to be once per character per day. There are reasons other than subs that people left grindy crafting systems like this. They are arbitrary, not very creative, not fun, and make you have to play EVERY day consecutively or you feel like you are being left behind gear wise. I know that I don’t have to have that grade of gear. That isn’t the point. The point of what I am really saying is that time gated crafting is a dev’s way of taking the easy, un-creative way out of making a system that actually makes crafting something that players who like crafting want to do. You are better than this ArenaNet. You can do better.

Brother Grimm.5176:

LameFox.6349:

….it concerns me that this game could be heading places that discourage having lots of characters on one account.

Your question is a good one, but it is coming from a twisted point of view. I have 8 characters myself but I realize it SHOULD take me 8x longer to outfit them compared to 1 character. Despite what many think, time gating does not exist to punish anyone (it’s there to maintain some level of “rarity” for at least some limited time frame).

Even if you don’t think it’s an intentional punishment (as some here will post…“ANet HATES ALTS PEOPLE!!”), you viewing it as a discouragement is just a point of view that you should re-examine.

Time gating does hurt people. With 8 characters, it should take 8 times more effort to outfit them…not 8 times more time-gating – there is a significant difference between those two.

Restricting the effort a player is permitted to do in a time period is where the problem lies.

If I’m personally willing to put in 2 hours of effort for every one hour of effort you do, why should I not then be permitted outfit 2 characters to your one as a result of that effort? Account-wide time-gating doesn’t permit that.

Sushihammer.4813:

And by the time you get that much time put in, it’s probably not even worth it, because a year from now, I’m sure they’ll have double-triply ascended gear.

That’s an additional problem between gear stat creep (new gear coming out every few months) and time gated content. Why bother getting the time gated stuff if better stuff will surely be around in a few months anyway.

I could be wrong (can’t remember where I read/heard it now) but I was under the impression they’d decided against (more) creep. Not that it would be binding or anything even if they had, I guess, but it seems like something that might be more obviously a bad idea.

I feel like time gating is something they sort of slowly got into with things like laurels, and guild challenges, and to a limited extent tokens, which weren’t quite so bad because there was a few different ways to get things like the trinkets (and tokens aren’t entirely gated, even if now it would take decidedly more than 8x effort to equip 8 characters). Personally I’d planned on doing a lot more Fractals once I finally didn’t need to externally source a LFG tool, for instance.

Then when there wasn’t any particular outcry against the mechanic in general, they took it to the next level and made the Celestial gear. And there wasn’t really much said about that, either, perhaps because it’s just one stat combo and not a great deal of people found a use for it.

Well, given the rumours of time-gated Ascended gear, suddenly I get this sense I should have said something about Celestial…

Brother Grimm.5176:

LameFox.6349:

….it concerns me that this game could be heading places that discourage having lots of characters on one account.

Your question is a good one, but it is coming from a twisted point of view. I have 8 characters myself but I realize it SHOULD take me 8x longer to outfit them compared to 1 character. Despite what many think, time gating does not exist to punish anyone (it’s there to maintain some level of “rarity” for at least some limited time frame).

Even if you don’t think it’s an intentional punishment (as some here will post…“ANet HATES ALTS PEOPLE!!”), you viewing it as a discouragement is just a point of view that you should re-examine.

This argument works better if the issue was Soulbound vs Account Bound, but this is time-gating vs just letting us do whatever we have the time to do.

Time-gating, in general, is supposed to bridge the gap between casual players and hardcore players by letting hardcore players not get too far ahead of the casuals… but I don’t think it’s working the way it ought to.

I really don’t understand why time gating is necessary on items that are NOT trade-able.

BilboBaggins.5620:

I really don’t understand why time gating is necessary on items that are NOT trade-able.

We’ll flood the market our inventories!

In all seriousness though I think it’s a combination of things. In part, some attempt to retain players from other MMO’s which were basically designed as an eternal grindfest, where they realize some people if allowed to actually get what they want will lose interest entirely. Except I don’t think ‘wait a long time’ is going to prove nearly the substitute that needs, because boring-as-all-hell effort spent in getting something is still actually spending effort in getting it, and working toward it is the appeal which (can, for some people) make the dull grind worthwhile. Even if the ingredients for Asc. will be harder to obtain than quartz, with time gating that’s only relevant until you hit that wall instead, and then your work is done; it’s down to waiting.

Then in part, as per Kirschwasser's post, an attempt to keep casual players from being left behind. Which… I guess it would work if they logged in as often as required (and here I’ll just mention that ‘dailies’ are a thing) but ultimately it still creates people you can literally never catch up to – people who have had the game longer – and says to anyone who would have put in extra effort to get extra stuff that they will not be able to.

If anything that makes me sympathetic to the idea of grinding…

…so no official word yet?

I can find speculation it will be time gated just about anywhere, but for some reason it seems to be something they’re not mentioning.

for time gating, how about if I want to put in 8+ hours over the weekend, instead of taking an hour out of each day. Dailies are annoying enough! Now more time gating on top of it. Increasing the amount I’d have to play, every day. Not just when I have the time for it.

This game is becoming more and more suffocating. There really isn’t a leisurely way to play it at all. Because if you do, you’ll end up feeling behind the curve. Time gating isn’t slowing down the hardcore, it’s hurting the casuals most.

Brother Grimm.5176:

LameFox.6349:

….it concerns me that this game could be heading places that discourage having lots of characters on one account.

Your question is a good one, but it is coming from a twisted point of view. I have 8 characters myself but I realize it SHOULD take me 8x longer to outfit them compared to 1 character. Despite what many think, time gating does not exist to punish anyone (it’s there to maintain some level of “rarity” for at least some limited time frame).

Even if you don’t think it’s an intentional punishment (as some here will post…“ANet HATES ALTS PEOPLE!!”), you viewing it as a discouragement is just a point of view that you should re-examine.

No, you should have to do 8 times the work, not be time-gated.

Kirschwasser.3972:

Brother Grimm.5176:

LameFox.6349:

….it concerns me that this game could be heading places that discourage having lots of characters on one account.

Your question is a good one, but it is coming from a twisted point of view. I have 8 characters myself but I realize it SHOULD take me 8x longer to outfit them compared to 1 character. Despite what many think, time gating does not exist to punish anyone (it’s there to maintain some level of “rarity” for at least some limited time frame).

Even if you don’t think it’s an intentional punishment (as some here will post…“ANet HATES ALTS PEOPLE!!”), you viewing it as a discouragement is just a point of view that you should re-examine.

This argument works better if the issue was Soulbound vs Account Bound, but this is time-gating vs just letting us do whatever we have the time to do.

Time-gating, in general, is supposed to bridge the gap between casual players and hardcore players by letting hardcore players not get too far ahead of the casuals… but I don’t think it’s working the way it ought to.

Instead, it is going to make the hardcore players find another game that allows hardcore gameplay…..

DeWolfe.2174:

for time gating, how about if I want to put in 8+ hours over the weekend, instead of taking an hour out of each day. Dailies are annoying enough! Now more time gating on top of it. Increasing the amount I’d have to play, every day. Not just when I have the time for it.

This game is becoming more and more suffocating. There really isn’t a leisurely way to play it at all. Because if you do, you’ll end up feeling behind the curve. Time gating isn’t slowing down the hardcore, it’s hurting the casuals most.

Heh. It amuses me that I didn’t think of that, considering there were times I’d get home during the week and pretty much fall onto a safe-looking surface to sleep.

I guess they’re leaning toward not just casual players but a specific subset of casual players…

(and for the record, I’m still hoping someone will pop in and say that this won’t be time gated, or at the very least there’ll be other ways to get things, but the chance has been out there…)

Kirschwasser.3972:

Time-gating, in general, is supposed to bridge the gap between casual players and hardcore players by letting hardcore players not get too far ahead of the casuals… but I don’t think it’s working the way it ought to.

Because it slows down casuals as well, even more than hardcores. Casuals not only usually play less (and less consistently, so not every day), but also are more prone to use that time for things that they consider fun, not things that are preparations for fun.
If it really was about not letting hardcore players get too far ahead of casuals, making the ascended gear acquisition easier and faster would be a way better idea (yes, that would let hardcores stockpile ascended gear, but since it’s not tradable, and there’s only so many eq pieces that you might need, it would not be a problem).
Of course, it was never about helping casuals in the first place – timegates are nothing more than a stopgap measure to slow gear acquisition and “character (lol) progress” to a crawl, so that Anet can delay decision about introducing even newer tier for a bit longer.

LameFox.6349:

BilboBaggins.5620:

I really don’t understand why time gating is necessary on items that are NOT trade-able.

We’ll flood the market our inventories!

In all seriousness though I think it’s a combination of things. In part, some attempt to retain players from other MMO’s which were basically designed as an eternal grindfest, where they realize some people if allowed to actually get what they want will lose interest entirely. Except I don’t think ‘wait a long time’ is going to prove nearly the substitute that needs, because boring-as-all-hell effort spent in getting something is still actually spending effort in getting it, and working toward it is the appeal which (can, for some people) make the dull grind worthwhile. Even if the ingredients for Asc. will be harder to obtain than quartz, with time gating that’s only relevant until you hit that wall instead, and then your work is done; it’s down to waiting.

Then in part, as per Kirschwasser's post, an attempt to keep casual players from being left behind. Which… I guess it would work if they logged in as often as required (and here I’ll just mention that ‘dailies’ are a thing) but ultimately it still creates people you can literally never catch up to – people who have had the game longer – and says to anyone who would have put in extra effort to get extra stuff that they will not be able to.

If anything that makes me sympathetic to the idea of grinding…

Unfortunately I’ll be one of those left behind, and I was in it from beta just like GW1. I just can’t log in every single day to craft. Oh well, just one more thing I’m locked out of.

The time gates are just on the first refining process, correct?

Once you get to the step to make the ingots, those are unbound and tradeable. So while it may take you 2 weeks to make the gear just by yourself, it would take much less time if you were willing to purchase those materials from other players.

The timegates are likely there to prevent the market from suddenly being flooded with materials, and quickly devaluing Ascended Gear as soon as it comes out.

Coldin.2840:

The time gates are just on the first refining process, correct?

Once you get to the step to make the ingots, those are unbound and tradeable. So while it may take you 2 weeks to make the gear just by yourself, it would take much less time if you were willing to purchase those materials from other players.

The timegates are likely there to prevent the market from suddenly being flooded with materials, and quickly devaluing Ascended Gear as soon as it comes out.

It’s possible but if they’ve said as much somewhere I haven’t seen it.

LameFox.6349:

Coldin.2840:

The time gates are just on the first refining process, correct?

Once you get to the step to make the ingots, those are unbound and tradeable. So while it may take you 2 weeks to make the gear just by yourself, it would take much less time if you were willing to purchase those materials from other players.

The timegates are likely there to prevent the market from suddenly being flooded with materials, and quickly devaluing Ascended Gear as soon as it comes out.

It’s possible but if they’ve said as much somewhere I haven’t seen it.

http://dulfy.net/2013/08/30/gw2-account-magic-find-ascended-crafting-and-legendary-weapons-revamp-preview/

It was explained while Lump of Mithrillium is account bound, the item they make Deldrimor Steel Ingots are not.

I’m ok with time gating.

My opinion is if it’s time-gated then the items we create should be trade-able, if the items are going to remain account bound then there should be no time-gate. As someone who can only play on the weekends (usually), time-gating means it will be years before I can outfit all of my characters. For a daily player, it will take two weeks per item.

BilboBaggins.5620:

My opinion is if it’s time-gated then the items we create should be trade-able, if the items are going to remain account bound then there should be no time-gate. As someone who can only play on the weekends (usually), time-gating means it will be years before I can outfit all of my characters. For a daily player, it will take two weeks per item.

All of the current “daily” systems heavily favour players who can log in every day. If they would allow to stack up those dailies to a max. of 7, people who can only do weekends would be on an even footing. High time in my eyes.

BilboBaggins.5620:

My opinion is if it’s time-gated then the items we create should be trade-able, if the items are going to remain account bound then there should be no time-gate. As someone who can only play on the weekends (usually), time-gating means it will be years before I can outfit all of my characters. For a daily player, it will take two weeks per item.

People seem to be keep missing the fact that some of the items are in fact tradeable.

Basically, you have a raw material (account bound), which you can used to make a refined material (account bound), which you then use to make the component material (unbound).

Melana, your argument works equally well against time gating something on only one character. They already decided on time gating this stuff, if they reconsider based on you wanting to make two mcguffins because you use two different characters, then I want to make two mcguffins because I put in twice the effort on one character. So essentially, remove time gating.

Specifically, this part of your quote:

Melana.8345:

Restricting the effort a player is permitted to do in a time period is where the problem lies.

If I’m personally willing to put in 2 hours of effort for every one hour of effort you do, why should I not then be permitted outfit 2 characters to your one as a result of that effort? Account-wide time-gating doesn’t permit that.

If I’m personally willing to put in 2 hours of effort for every one hour of effort you do, why should not then be permitted to outfit my one character with 2 ascended items to your one as a result of that effort? Account-wide time-gating doesn’t permit that, either.

Alts are a strawman in your argument that is actually aimed against time-gating in general. (though you might not have seen it way, I think the above quote should convince you).

I sure hope that the time gating is based on an account.

After all, there are people with literally dozens of alts. It would result in those people getting tremendous benefits while people with no alts would get shafted.

@Olba But then they could sell it to us The more crafting items in circulation the better IMO (even if I have to buy it, it’s better than waiting two weeks)