If I would buy it, I’d wait half a year after its release to make sure they’re not adding a gear treadmill to that game as well.
how can ArenaNet understand what are we looking for?
Easy.
“How can we make more money?”
“Appeal to the lowest common denominator!”
“Done!”
It’s simple economics.
If the pipeline from start to finish is 8 months, that’s a different deal and fairly believable – but would mean they have to have been able to work on other maps in the meantime as well.
What makes you think they’re budget is big enough to have their whole staff working on the game full time? And if one believes that they’re making a lot of profit, they’re either having most of the money the game makes siphoned away towards other NCSoft games, or have been working on a major project since launch without telling anyone even the slightest thing about it in the last two years. If you’re asking me, the last option looks like the least likely one.
Ascended infusions?
All you get is agro pulled onto you when you don’t want it.
Didn’t even think about that.
Reminds me of this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V9lb7WwvRsk
Mounts in Gw2 is a DOA idea.
Dead or Alive? or maybe Domain of Anguish? OMG NIGHTFALL CONFIRMED
But honestly, I think that if there’s enough money to be made then it will definitely happen. Reason why it’s not already a reality is because customers have been satisfaction isn’t that high due to a lot of costumes and armors being gem-only items. If they run out of that, chances are good they’ll replace it with something else – like mounts.
(edited by ASB.4295)
Yeah, we did our research for years leading up to launch, but that didn’t protect us from the gear treadmill that was introduced shortly after launch.
The best thing you can do is to not believe anything and wait at least a year or two for the devs to keep their design philosophy(or at least the parts you care about), and then consider trusting them with your money and time.
Good to see ANet doing the right thing instead of the popular thing for once.
Back in the good old days in GW1
Arch-heresy! We don’t talk about GW2’s dark and stagnant past here!
I don’t think their silence is the major reason people leave. The game has plenty of issues that amalgamate into a giant boulder of frustration given enough playtime.
why am i so scared of “growth” and “tradition” in the same phrase?
oxymoron…
Well, tradition in this sense doesn’t refer to the prequel but rather to traditional MMO concepts. Moving goalpost stat grind, to be precise.
It’s still your choice to make ascended gear or not. So you still play however you want. You just choose to ‘grind’.
If you don’t like the idea of ascended gear, don’t pay attention to it. It will not affect you anyways.
Bullkitten. If someone cannot enjoy endgame as long as they know they are statistically inferior to anyone that spent x amount of time grinding out gear with a minimal advantage, it affects them. Again, the game was marketed in a way that lead most people to believe that there would be an easy to reach, static power plateau. That changed. And no, the definition of an MMOs doesn’t include endless or difficult to reach vertical progression. It’s a staple, not a necessity.
I don’t even know if I have the right to post in these threads after not having played for so long, so if that’s reason enough to discredit my opinion, just disregard the rest of the post.
I’m trying to be as concise as possible here to not waste anybody’s time.
Open ended or very long term vertical progression is something that will kill any desire for me to play anymore. One of my core beliefs for gaming is that ideally everyone, no matter how long they have played, should not be statistically inferior to anyone else. The first Guild Wars game was so close to that ideal(minus the reputation titles) that it captivated me for years on end.
There are only two vertical progression mechanics I find acceptable and somewhat fun to experience, and none of them involve raising the bar.
The first one is “prestiging” or “releveling”, where you would be able to increase your character’s/gear’s efficiency by resetting its rank and leveling it up again, only that at the end instead of let’s say having 70 trait points available, you now have 75. Naturally, there has to be a definite plateau for that as well, one that a very dedicated player could reach in a short amount of time. I would say no longer than two weeks. Note that this is just an example to demonstrate how such a mechanic would work in GW2. I’m not proposing to increase the number of trait points being available.
The second and my by far least objectionable method of vertical progression could be described as from balanced specialization. For it to work, the whole gear system would have to be based around a never changing maximum value of distributable stat points. Common gear would have the exact same power potential as the rarest of rare gears, with the only difference being that the rare gear drops with very specialized stat point distributions allowing for far more situational builds compared to balanced common gear. Example: Every piece of gear has 100 stat points available with 4 different attributes to distribute them into. The stat point discrepancy between attributes for common rarity drops cannot exceed 10 points. If we have attributes A,B,C and D, the most unbalanced/specialized point distribution for this particular rarity would be 20,30,20,30. Rarer gear would allow for a higher discrepancy, say 90(5,0,5,90).
It’s very similar to how the trait point mechanic works in GW2. The key point is that no piece of gear is statistically superior to another and that there is a fixed stat plateau that will never move. I know that it’s most probably much too late for these methods to be implemented as they would radically change the way leveling works.
As it stands, the reason I stopped playing GW2 is because I inherently dislike the principles behind vertical progression, which is to give the player a short lived stat high that vanishes quickly and leaves other players without the time or will to catch up feeling inferior.
The key to keep in mind is how steep, how required, and where it stops.
True that those factors will make a difference. However, I’m still holding ANet to their original statements about no-grind and easy to attain BiS gear until they come out with a statement addressing these things directly. I’m won’t take their “exotics were too easy to get” statement as their way of telling us that their original philosophy was abandoned for one reason or another.
Ascended Infusions
Ascended Runes/Sigils
Rep Title bonuses making you do more damage vs. x mobs
Skills that have to be leveled up through use to reach maximum potential
Gear level 80+
It may not be a gear treadmill, but it’s a treadmill nonetheless.
Keep those things in mind. It won’t stop for a very long time.
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Do_Not_Touch
inb4 Crystal Desert conspiracy theories.
Hmm… At this point, we already know that ascended gear is just a symptom of their new philosophy of bringing players vertical progression in as many different ways as possible. If the gear was removed, there’s going to be an allegiance like title(WvW rank kinda already is that) boosting your stats, or some other means of “do this new content to become more powerful!”.
They won’t remove it, it’s just too much of a hassle even if their philosophy changed to what it was before. At best you and I can hope for a day on which they announce further VP will be postponed indefinitely and make Ascended attainable for everyone without any significant effort.
The only VP I’d be okay with is high level caps, even if boosting numbers will just attract treadmill kids, because those will be attained automatically by experiencing the content.
As much I’m against VP, the article you linked to is solely about ascended gear, not stat progression overall. I agree that gear tiers have long since become synonymous with vertical progression, which is why we have to realize that anything with a non-absolute statistic tied to it has the potential to be used as additional steps on the treadmill. It’s not going to be treadmill for gear anymore, but a treadmill for stats. Unfortunately, there are no articles about character progression or progression in general on the wiki, where adding this information would be most appropriate to.
If ANet ever wants Costume Brawl to be taken as a serious esport they kitten well better start balancing it or this game will not have a future!
PvE:
1. Future of stat progression with respect to gear, levels, skills, titles, etc.
2. Temporary vs. permanent/cyclical content
3. Improving AI to provide dynamic combat experiences
It doesn’t matter whether or not the trinity is objectively better for the game, because:
…anything that the vast majority of the players want, we (as players of our own game) also want.
If you want a hard trinity back, you have to make it popular with the lion share of players. Same goes for other controversial topics like open world dueling or mounts.
etc etc for all the gear we wear.
But ANet was really clever in designing their vertical progression by branching out stat progression into many different aspects of the game. Traditional armors and weapons are just the most obvious and popular elements. There’s even a recent quote saying that they want to pursue different avenues of shallow stat progression. We know what that means because we experienced it in GW Factions, Nightfall and EotN with reputation based skills that increase in power with higher ranks.
WvW rank and abilities are just as much a form of vertical progression as ascended gear is, with most of them being passive boosts to stats, and some of them active. As far as I can see, there are no upgrades that have an inherent drawback, or a choice you have to make between unlocking one bonus over the other.
You are probably aware that even if they promise to never release another, better tier of gear, they can easily give any other system in the game vertical progression. And the hilarious thing is that if they never expand on any added vertical progression system beyond its initial introduction, they can still claim that each aspect on its own technically has a plateau, effectively dismantling initial arguments about introducing treadmills.
Looking at how many strictly visual titles could be given stat bonuses based on rank, their possibilities for adding stat progression are almost limitless. Well, technically, they already turned achievements into a stat progression on a broad scale by giving AP permanent stat increases as rewards. But you know where I’m coming from.
Leveling has always been meaningless.
At the very least it’s an indicator of how long a person has been playing the game.
It’s also a cheap and easy way to give your average player a little “high” whenever they level up, although that feeling drastically reduces in intensity the more you experience it.
Lastly, a generation of gamers has been conditioned to expect long term stat progression through conditioning by pretty much every modern multiplayer game, be it PvE or PvP. Designing a game without an easily identifiable progress meter for players would make a large portion of potential customers feel like the game is not rewarding enough, even if other, less direct methods of progression are available.
Not all mmos have levels! Ultima Online had no levels.
Ultima Online was an entirely different beast. It was much closer to what EVE is today than your typical theme park MMO. Built from the ground up around providing players with the mechanics and environment to create content themselves, both in PvP and PvE, players weren’t separated based on their playstyle, forcing everyone to adapt arrange themselves around being ganked or scammed. People had jobs in that game, they provided services. Protection form thieves, crafted gear, materials and other necessities. You can’t really do that in todays gaming climate anymore with so many immature children creating a toxic environment, especially in PvP which provides an easy space grief in.
UO had skill levels that could be maxed out, which indeed made you more proficient in a certain craft, like normal levels do today. However, you had a finite amount of skill points you could spend, and there were a lot more disciplines than you had skill points for to max out, ending in you making meaningful choices what you want to specialize your character in. The closest system GW2 has in that regard are trait points.
Why can’t you craft-to-sell? That’s what I don’t understand. I find this most peculiar in this market-driven game with it’s own dedicated economist and all.
The reason is to force even the most hardcore of players to progress at a set speed, so ANet had enough time to develop and release more stat progression by the time the first and fastest players completed their ascended gear set. Had ascended gear been sellable, the time and resources a player had to invest would’ve dropped drastically as the market would’ve saturated quickly. Think of ascended gear simply as a giant speed bump that was designed to keep hardcore players occupied. The details weren’t at all thought through at release, so a half finished gear tier was introduced while the other half was still in its conceptual stages. That’s why its all over the place today, that’s why so many stat combos are missing.
There were all the old Mario games, Sonic games, the old Fallout series, Neverwinter Nights, Baldur’s Gate, Oblivion, Final Fantasy, etc.
You forgot one: Guild Wars
Power creep it is, or as the devs like to call it: Shallow power curve.
What in earlier days was an unintended, unfortunate side effect of imperfect balancing is now a feature and a psychological trick to keep players in the game.
Whether or not you need the gear for general play isn’t critical to the definition of power creep, or the definition of a treadmill for that matter. What counts is the criteria of exploiting human nature to not feel inferior to their peers. Carrot + Stick = Content
Not a post that’s filled with a lot of substance, to be honest. Enjoining the forums to exhibit less of a toxic behaviour understandable, but all that PR speak about trying to listen to your community and trying to build a unique world sounds really hollow. That’s just me, though.
You’re in your rights to delete the posts of disrespectful, insulting users and warn them. Mentioning that you’re going to enforce these kinds of rules more strictly would’ve given the OP message more substance.
I would suggest releasing up a roadmap of where you plan to go with the game, including – yes, including – where you are currently standing with things like like new gear tiers, level caps, requested feature X(dueling, mounts, et al.). It would save your player base from being needlessly disappointed because they waited for something you don’t plan to implement ever, or vice versa. Be honest about your plans, see what the player base thinks, adjust accordingly or not and explain why. That way people don’t feel betrayed and have enough time to make a decision about whether or not they want to keep playing. But I guess that kind of transparency’s out of the question.
That would be doing one of those things the devs have said they didn’t want. It would mean people play more are pretty much automatically better than people who play less.
I didn’t know that they removed ascended gear from the game. Huh.
Anet could easily have added infusion slots to Exotic gear. Fractals and AR were merely a (very flimsy) excuse for introducing the Ascended gear grind.
I’m certain they will add infusions to other tiers once they feel like getting out content that needs AR or a similar gating mechanic if the outrage is big enough to leave them no choice. That way they can still say that you don’t need ascended gear to experience all the content, while at the same time introducing a smaller treadmill to lower gear tiers.
How fast a treadmill moves doesn’t matter, it is still one.
GW2s target audience?
Long requested cosmetic fixes for charr: zero.
In GW1, the female Necromancer version of the most prestigious armor set(Obisidian armor) has a nasty shading error that creates an unsightly bright spot right in the middle of the wearers belly.
It was never fixed.
I’d give up hope if I were you.
Exotics are 4g or free with drop… Can take an few hours to get 1
Legendary is 1400g and takes 6 months to get 1.Ascended is around 60g worth of mats, 3 weeks worth of laurels or a lucky drop.
Why would anybody be stupid enough to waste their gold/grinding time on inferior items when they can put all of their resources towards their ultimate goal? You’re not required to have the gear outside of high level fractals, which by far isn’t anywhere close to the optimal way to progress towards your legendary. You’d be wasting a hell of a lot of your time in the end, time you’re being exposed to gem shop offers.
It’s not about what’s a good idea or what enriches the game in the developers eyes. It’s about what makes the most money, preferably in the short term. Having a stagnating progression curve that fails to pressure or heavily encourage the majority of players to keep playing, increasing the time they’re being exposed to gem store offers, will result in a smaller average gem store revenue, making it harder for them to get permission to create new content, decreasing average player retention, which lowers the number of players exposed to the gem store and consequently the size of the revenue gained from it.
tl;dr if you are against a level cap increase, you are killing the game
And yet, here you are.
If you’ve moved on… why are you still here?
Because maybe he still loves GW2 except for this one game-breaking thing that prevents him from actually enjoying it. Because maybe there might come a day when power creep and currency inflation have made getting full sets of BiS gear just as cheap and fast as getting exotic or even rare gear was at release. It happened in GW1 with Runes of Superior Vigor, it can happen here as well.
Maybe he’s just anxiously waiting for that day to arrive.
However, the fact that you don’t need more powerful gear to put everyone on a treadmill might have escaped him, as well as ANet having confirmed to continue raising the power bar in other ways(title grind skills for instance).
As someone once said: Hope dies last. But yeah, there’s no denying that GW2 will have constant stat progression in some form for the foreseeable future. Don’t want to repeat the same mistake they did in GW2s “stagnant” predecessor.
So it is IMPRESSIVE, even through each individual player may not like parts of it.
The amount of burgers the McD corporation produces and sells each day is also super impressive, but that doesn’t mean it has any value to the customer other than the price and the quality of the product.
We were the folks who kept GW1 alive, and that’s why we generally feel so betrayed by this pandering to the target audience of EOMMORPGotM.
Fun Fact: The only reason there’s no direct gear progression in GW1 is because Anet at first didn’t regard their PvE content as anything else but a lengthy tutorial for what they considered was going to become endgame for every single player: PvP
However, by the time the PvE part of their game grew increasingly popular with people, they couldn’t change their whole gear system to make long term gear progression part of the game without totally screwing over balance. They didn’t build their game with that in mind, and by the time they realized it, all they could do was to add a crapton of different skins and a few pve-only skills and titles that made you marginally more powerful each expansion/campaign.
The way gear worked in GW1 was the result of a miscalculation on Anets part, which unexpectedly attracted a set of players with preferences they never really intended to cater to.
Hell, even their president regards GW1 as a stale game. It’s pretty clear by now that, had they known GW1 PvE would’ve become that popular on its own before they started building it, they would’ve added long term vertical gear progression before it even launched.
1. Walk into a major city
2. Run up to Armorsmith vendor
3. Buy a set for 5 gold
I haven’t played GW2 since last November, so I don’t know how easy 5 gold are to come buy today. You know, just make that ‘5 gold’ into however long it took to get 5 plat in GW1 one year into its life.
Yea so I suppose fun content is out of the question then. Oy vey. ArenaNet. I give up. There are enough new and shiny things on the horizon. I don’t need this crap.
If you’ve managed to find a modern MMO or Co-Op game with an easy to reach stat cap that will not change in the future, please pm me its name.
At least ANet is doing something right.
Down with exclusivity! Down with prestige!
I’m realy hapy that Kiel is winning. Face harsh truth, fractal involving epic battle of 6 gods would fail hard, like Zaithan fight version 2 … Epic expetations = epic fail.
Plus, almost noone who’s still playing GW2 right now has any sentimental connection to Abaddon. Compare that to the experience of pre-nerf thaumanova a heck of a lot more active players had and you’ve got yourselves a winner.
They can open portals to the literal crossroads of the universe and alternate universes, so I’m pretty sure that they’ve already set up their Polymock arena on the Dark Side™ of the moon.
Well, it would of course be far superior to new gear tiers, but still a form of vertical progression, so I would have to say “no”. I’ve seen this form of progression work in the game I’m playing right now, and the only reason I’m able to bear it is because it’s a F2P game and all of the gear related info is not shown anywhere, so there’s no incentive for people to “prestige grind” to show off and brag.
If you had me choosing between a new gear tier or a higher gear level cap and more trait points, traits points would be the lesser evil. They’d still be an evil IMO, though.
(edited by ASB.4295)
Call me crazy, but 3:15 to 3:18 looks like a duel.
Oh god, here we go again…
so you would decline or ignore the notification and it would not affect you in the slightest…
What if PvE players don’t want the PvP culture to seep into their environment? That’s the biggest threat when you combine PvP and E. Rampant trash-talking, verbal harassment and general aggressive behavior towards or discrimination of the less or non-competitive players can seriously hurt a “carebear’s” gaming experience to a point of not even wanting to log into the game anymore because he doesn’t want to expose himself to these elements again.
And before you argue that I’m pigeonholing PvPers: Honorable, friendly PvPers are a small minority drowned out by the hordes of loud, immature, testosterone addicted egomaniacs looking for an easy target to put down and harass in order to make them feel better about themselves.
So… level 90 ascended gear comes when, 01/2014?
I just do not understand why they did not continue the philosophy behind Guild Wars 1, but with an improved battle system, a persistent world, and a few other small improvements.
Because, looking back, they would have done the exact same thing(gear treadmill and grind) to GW1 PvE if they had designed it to stand up on its own instead of just being a tutorial for what they thought the only endgame would be: PvP.
Since changing the gear system to support increasing or prestige stats back then most probably would have been too difficult to implement after they released Prophecies, they gradually introduced more and more vertical progression with each new campaign/expansion through the use of title tracks.
Factions brought the Allegiance Ranks, unlockable PvE-only skills that got more powerful the higher your rank was, some of which being straight upgrades over any comparable skill in the standard skill pool(SY, Summon Spirits).
Nightfall introduced more PvE only skills and titles that you could grind to make them more powerful. A new mechanic was the Lightbringer title, which would not only make your attacks against DoA creeps more effective but also gave you resistance against their attacks.
EotN added even more PvE skills whose powers were tied to title progression, most of which being very useful and even required to get into endgame PuGs(spare me the “should’ve gotten a guild”-talk).
If ANet had known their PvE in GW1 would be popular from the start, you would have definitely seen Elite armor sets with +2 armor and Obsidian armor with +5 armor. Those of us who were attracted to GW1 by its shortcomings, namely a lack of long term gear or stat progression, were never intended to be catered to in GW2. The constant addition of title power progression in GW1 was a clear indication of the direction ANet always wanted to go. The horizontal progression purists simply misjudged the developers intentions on a fundamental level, which wasn’t hard given the fact how GW1 turned out to be.
In the end, the best you can do is walk away, keep enjoying the fond memories of your favorite flawed CO-RPG and wait for another developer to make a similar set of “mistakes” in the future.
Spyro the Dragon.
Buy the license to create games in the GW universe. Acquire the GW lore bible.
Fund indie teams to make small games alongside GW2, exploring various subjects that players always wanted answers to. Closely work with ANet loremasters to keep the games canon, or hire them to write. Have them stick very closely to ANets manifesto…