Guild Wars 2

I am waiting for more details, I don’t have much grasp of the content yet… I was hoping for something equivalent to a new world/continent (ala GW: Factions with Cantha, GW: Nightfall with Elona), but it looks more like a continuation of the “living story” with more like Dry Top or Silver Wastes, at this point. Maybe what new zone or zone(s) is/are included will be “deep” enough to be more than I expect? I’d have gone if for player housing, which originally was supposed to come in at the same time as guild halls, but I don’t see any indication that such is happening with this xpack?

Waiting to see. I’m a GW & GW2 fan, so hoping this will be worthwhile.

Brother Grimm.5176:

Kentrey.3251:

So from what i’ve seen so far there has been no mention of any personal housing in The new xpac.

Quit reading after this very reasonable statement of the current status of personal housing….

Seriously, why do they need to mention something they have no plans of putting in place in GW2? If you love those other games for their personal housing, nobody is stopping you from playing them.

Actually people have been asking for this since before GW2 went live, a developer (Martin Kerstein) even posted the following to people’s querries on gw guru site back in 2011:

“It is helpful to take Eric’s full statement into account.

He mentioned that there will be no Guild Halls on release as we want to make Guild Halls a great experience and not just a “place”. We will introduce player housing at some point after launch, and at that time we will also implement guild halls."

So it’s not like people have had no reason for expecting player housing in GW2, some bought the game with expectations that it would be added (myself included), just not at release. Unfortunately the statement that housing would be added at the same time as guild halls may not have been realized (unless housing is included as a surprise feature in the expansion, weee!).

I’m still hoping for player housing here myself, but after years of waiting and with the presumed absence of player housing from the expansion pack which includes guild halls, my optimism/faith in player housing eventually making it here has taken a hit

Here’s a quote from Marten Kerstein from the guru site, back on 29 August 2011 – 04:21 AM, referring to an interview from Eric Flannum at PAX that year I think it was:

“It is helpful to take Eric’s full statement into account.

He mentioned that there will be no Guild Halls on release as we want to make Guild Halls a great experience and not just a “place”. We will introduce player housing at some point after launch, and at that time we will also implement guild halls."

For my part I’ve been waiting years to see if player housing indeed does come out with guild halls, hoping it does. Otherwise I’ll have egg all over my face with guidies I’ve been tossing that quote out to whenever they say there’s no player housing coming to gw2 :P. It’s been awhile obviously, but I’ve been holding onto that quote hoping for housing ever since. GW2 has a nice look that would work very well with player housing, of course more emotes & ability to actually use furniture could be added to go along with that

Adrenaline decay should not have been butchered as it was. I see some logic in adren being used on a miss, but not in tandem with adren disappearing into the ether in seconds without use.

Adren should come back more than slightly, IMO.

Adrenaline decay needs fixed ahead of other changes, IMO. By fixed, it needs not to drop off in seconds so warriors can actually choose when to use it rather than spam burst skills before adren falls off practically instantly (in many circumstances, at least). Losing adrenaline to stealth, and between kills in a given battle just ruin too many mechanisms for warriors outside of narrow circumstances, and certainly killed the fun factor of the class in my experience.

I do support the OP idea on moving warriors away from banner/buff role, and agree signets could use more appealing “active” uses relative to the passives in many cases, though this applies to some signets of other classes as well.

bigmonto.4215:

I am not going to argue about pve, since I no longer play that part of the game long before nerf.

But for PvP and WvW, I don’t feel any different. If anything, hammer GS is a buff. Shout-heal condition, pure condition, cele axe bow are all just as powerful as before. Ham bow is not even touched. I still rarely die in pvp, and win 1v1 fights against every profession I met. I am not sure what’s up with all the negativity. Ever think about maybe the problem is between the desk and the chair?

The “problem” (or the one that looms largest, IMO) is with the obliteration of Adrenaline (i.e., it disinitegrates once warriors are technically “out of combat”) other than in certain specific instances where you are “in combat” throughout whatever task you are working on. The problem is also with build diversity relatedly having been killed by Adrenaline changes (such that a multitude of traits & utilities do not function, save again in circumstances such as boss fights where characters are “in combat” for the duration). Ironically, yes “Hambow” -which was supposedly OP and the reason for the nerfs – seems hit much less than other weapon systems of warriors.

Other problems exist for warriors, but the biggest “new” problem is with the core warrior mechanic, Adrenaline having been gutted with practically instant decay.

Top 3 priorities:

1: Ongoing Customization (modular design recommended for this)- Include ways for each guild hall to look quite different, with additions to the hall over time possible to grow its size/add new rooms and/or floors. Each guild hall not only looks different, but expands and changes over time to keep its unique identity; Include options so that each piece/room added can look different from the “same” type of room added by another guild hall, so “end level” guild halls do not just look at the same with all the same rooms/decorations in the same places, etc. Ideally new kinds of rooms & decorations are added over time, so players have a sense of more to do as the game goes forward, rather than “our guild hall is all finished, nothing more to change here.”

2: Link to Player Housing/guild member rooms – Modular design could allow for instanced housing linked to the guild hall, as well as individual rooms for each guild member which also could be instanced. Housing linked to the hall allows something unique from each player to be attached to the hall without being dependent upon the guild (if you leave the guild, you keep your house, it just gets “linked” to whatever other guild(s) a player joins.

Relatedly, pre-release developer statement that “player housing and guild halls” would be part of the game & released together would be nice to see fullfilled

3: Additions not be directly limited by size of guild: Allow additions to be achieved over time by any size of guild. Large guilds may build certain features faster due to combined effort, and may well have more features built up than a smaller guild again due to combined efforts. But a small guild should be able to build the same things with either greater effort by members (to make up for smaller numbers, in effect) or over time. “Guild mission” activities are an example of how not to design guild hall improvements, as those were set up in such as way as to more or less exclude smaller guilds, whereas guild influence system has allowed smaller guilds to “build up” their guild features over time, and IMO serves as a superior model in terms of guild hall development.

kayo.3817:

Constantine.7812:

Apparition.1576:

Azure The Heartless.3261:

wolverine.5164:

i hope plenty more come with me. cheers.

Na bro.

Patch only made me stronger.

Same here bro.. I have said this in other threads. The good warriors are even better now after this patch.

Great logic there you are using. Let us make strong even stronger and crap even crapier.

I think he’s saying that, for example, before he could kill Profession A in 10sec. After nerf, he could kill Profession A in 8sec. Doesn’t that make him way stronger?

Only odd thing is….I didn’t see a buff that made that possible, unless…the person using Profession A somehow died to a whirling axe use which got a buff…

Somehow people who post “the nerf only made me, the good warrior better, and the bad warriors crappier” somehow don’t seem to understand that with a nerf, you became weaker, and without a buff, you are still weaker. So how are you able to get stronger? Unless you are killing other warriors who in your terms are “crappier than you”…

I guess for one using the favoured hammer/bow builds already, and no or fewer traits/abilities dependent on or benefitting from adrenaline, might feel stronger relative to warriors who reallllly don’t want to be stuck to hammer/bow or who enjoyed builds more related to the core warrior mechanic (adrenaline) before it was gutted? That is the only logic I can make out of statements suggesting ‘weeee my warrior got stronger because all you others suck’. Or maybe some feel relief at not having as many people raging against warriors? Not sure… I can surely say my warrior feels far less fun with the new nearly insta-vanishing adrenaline system

ardasica.4531:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Re: “What happens to the alliance guild hall…”

The answer is simple: Alliances as an entity do not get guild halls but rather an instanced place to call home which does not receive upgrades (perhaps aside from cosmetic revisions) and thus nothing is lost if the alliance dissolves for whatever reason.

This doesn’t allow small guilds to work with others in regard to progression of the guild hall though.

Chris

Not necessarily true. I co-run a small guild and while we haven’t attempted guild missions or anything, we do pretty good for ourselves. We had a small guild in GW1 and were still able to kit out our hall with everything.

Small guilds are not incapable of doing things in the game to build out a guild hall if the requirements are set forth that way. If the guild has to raise a set fee to purchase the hall and then pay out for other additions, they could do so. They may not get it done as quickly as the larger guilds but it could be done.

I’m on the fence about alliance halls. While I think they have potential benefits, I am leery of how the politics would work if the alliance hall was customizable. I think it is necessary for it to be instanced but have limited custom features in it. Most of the custom options, be it NPCs or decorations should be with the guild halls.

Why do you think that it would be a hurdle for small guilds to work together. If multiple guilds want to take on a guild mission for a single guild, the alliance hall is a place to meet. It is a lot easier than trying to do it on a PvE map or central city.

I’ve found small guilds able to advance guild progressions in multiple areas involving guild influence (architecture V, politics VI, etc. where tasks required to achieve such are not directly tied to numbers. Guild missions on the other hand are restrictive as set up such that a small guild cannot realistically achieve them (for the most part), even gradually. Thus I’d suggest influence over merits as currency for guild-hall production, but other means of producing halls that do not require multiple members all working at once (crafting, spending gold, etc.) could reasonably allow small guilds to advance their guild halls over time.

Personally I was disappointed that guild missions are quite so exclusive to medium or larger guilds, and hope guild halls will in no way suffer similar restrictions.

As for alliance halls -though I favour guild alliances, I should think such alliances could simply use a given alliance member’s guild hall for meeting, and just rotate among the membership to possibly meet at various halls on different occasions. Guild A could host one meeting, B the next, etc.? So long as solid (not feature-lacking) guild halls are available to small guilds and not exclusive to larger guilds, I would not think an alliance should need its own hall independent from member halls? Such would avoid difficulties over alliances breaking up or shifting memberships and squabbling over an “alliance hall” in the breakup.

Effective testing/design change of the Adrenaline mechanic would not have attacked the issue from multiple angles at once (i.e., adrenaline loss on miss, new rapid adrenaline decay mechanics). One such change to test to evaluate would yield measurable results not confounded by multiple other variables thrown in at once (including reduced efficacy of signet of rage and reduced damage to skills of greatsword, etc.). The result of such a shotgun approach to balance of the warrior is a clearly broken core class mechanic (despite claims of “100% balance” made elsewhere, which clearly is never to be achieved though the goal to do so be worthy).

The change to adrenaline loss on miss would have been worthy of evaluation in isolation without additional “nerfs.” What seems odd to me, statements were made months ago that in terms of balance warriors were about where they were supposed to be (a paraphrase rather than quote), but since that time at least three balance patches in a row have clearly intentioally weakened the class relative to others.

Having taken a break from warrior for awhile after initial testing of the changes and returned to the class for fresh testing, I stand with other players finding warrior unsatisfying to play with broken adrenaline mechanics. Although certain builds (ironically including the hambow build singled out as target for the changes, but also heal shout/warhorn warriors) remain more effective than others, the fun factor is just missing with the broken core mechanic. At present I still return to my warrior now and again for the r/p value and history of the character (going back to betas), but I cannot say the class is as fun as others at present.

Adrenaline is not “100% balanced” but is instead broken.

Looks to me like Hambow or condi builds still run as you say accepting what the nerf does. If you did not like being pidgeon-holed into Hambow or condi & liked to craft something else (admittedly not as optimal as the metas), but relied on use of burst skills & adren those are basically gone (IMO). You could go with a bland build avoiding anything adren related, but to me that takes the whole fun out of Warrior… Actually the feature patch adren changes took the whole fun out of warrior for me, in truth.

My current new “build” is playing other characters with my warrior indefinitely retired, or in r/p crippled and in seclusion pending possible eventual? recovery from some great wound (probably some sort of backstab :P). I’ve been rotating through guardian & necro mainly lately with some engi here and there, loved the warrior concept so not really happy to settle with one but there you have it, when I’m not doing something else outside of gw2.

ProtoGunner.4953:

Immediately after the update I played the Warrior to see how it plays. It’s fine I think. It’s now rather like it was in GW1. I always thought the Warrior is a bit OP, the adrenaline was kept up for too long while OOC and you could build it up in no time.

Now, with the Meta build, I build up adrenaline still very fast, it takes one 100b, a weapon swap and a few hits with the axe and bam I can use my burst skill. Don’t forget that it was never intended to spam your burst skill. Besides: many forget, that it got nerfed a year or so ago, it was even easier to build up the burst.

I think it depends what context one is talking of, I would agree in terms of many boss/tough npc fights where foes rarely evade you (Priestess of Lyssa might be different for example), but where pvp or wvw is involved (and again fights like Priestess of Lyssa) that adrenaline nerf really hurts.

nicknamenick.2437:

I like this one:

you’ll need to do more “setting up” of your burst skill (to give it a higher chance to land) if you’re relying on Cleansing for condie clears.

---

Yeah we have tons of ways to just drop CI and go BR + mending or something.. works great in pvp right!? pff..

Its CI that made use viable vs this condi crap (and CI still issnt enough against condi spam) but yeah i would love to see JonathanSharp running BR+ mending build or maby shout+ warhorn in pvp.. good luck!! maby you will kill some pets/minons.

If you dont go for CI you have to spec FULL offensive and hope your target dies before you,.. this issnt really viable in pvp.

But hey lets all use Bulls or Bolas right!?? because those skills hit 100% just like rush right!?? those skills dont have any problems right?!?!

I understand the point he was trying to make about counters, but feel that “countering” those counters or “setting up” largely depends upon having opponents who will not have the situational awareness to avoid your burst one way or another (unless perhaps you use bow… But I figure the bow burst is next up for nerf anyway?). Meanwhile of course you are dying from conditions whilst trying to set up your burst to clear said conditions, while your opponent who if they’ve presence of mind will save their evades/block/blind/interrupt etc etc to stop your burst skill. If you’re “depending on CI” to remove conditions while they are stacked on you, and meanwhile are playing cat and mouse trying to use up your opponent’s counters those conditions will eat you up beforehand.
Personally I’ve not found warriors OP compared to what, guardian/necro/mesmer/thief/engineer/bunker ele? But I did find warriors fun to play with functional adrenaline in place. I’m not sad to be seeing rangers having something of a day in the sun on the other hand, they have had a hard road.

JonathanSharp.7094:

Dand.8231:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Chap might reply to this. I play a warrior (PVT Shout Heal) and to be honest and quite happy with the changes. He knows more than I about balance however so i will bring it up with him tomorrow morning.
Chris

So did anything come of this discussion?

See, Chris… PVT Shout build is probably near the top of LEAST impacted Warrior builds, as a result of this adrenaline nerf.

Running around spamming Shouts and swinging a hammer, as you hurl yourself into Zergs, is still fine after this adrenal change. And as a PVT shout heal warrior, I’d tend to suspect you’re zerging it up quite a bit in WvW, because… well honestly, that’s all they’re really good at. PvP it’s a fairly meh build, Guards/Eles/Engies bunker better.

You’ll never “miss” with your earthshakers in a crowd of 15 people. And Soldier runes wipe condi’s fast as anything. You can even trait to gain almost a bar of adrenaline per shout.

So, try a roaming build or competitive PvP build.

See how the adrenaline loss-on-miss feels versus an experienced player who can reliably avoid your bursts 75% of the time.

See how that 75% miss ruins your condi-clearing from Cleansing Ire, leaving you up to your ears in condis. You’ll quickly understand why warriors feel LOCKED into Longbows combustive shot.

Hey what’s up man.

Before this change, it was the case that the Warrior Dogged/Cleansing specs were able to pretty much just spam their burst skills and remove condies. We had a lot of players (on forums and in person, talking to them at Gamescom) talking about how they wanted to have more play/skill to this, and they also wanted (if they were players who played AGAINST this type of Warrior) to have more counter-play.

This change means that Warriors need to be thinking ahead to their condition cleanse, as they will no longer be able to get them without risk. It also means that missing a burst skill can hurt the Warrior more than it did before, so even if you’re not running Cleansing, an opponent making you miss your burst skill can be a really big, really impactful moment in a fight.

This change means that some Warrior specs will need to shift/adjust, and you’ll need to do more “setting up” of your burst skill (to give it a higher chance to land) if you’re relying on Cleansing for condie clears.

My thought is that this change dramatically affects much more than cleansing ire, with adrenaline being the core mechanism unique to warriors (as documented & elaborated on other threads in the warrior forum). Also, counters already existed (i.e. evade, blind, block, etc.), whereas counters to such counters are harder to come by (if the warrior is not using a bow). Cleansing ire activation via burst skill also could not be exactly “spammed” in that burst skills already had a cooldown (with loss of adrenaline from misses & from ooc state in effect adding another sort of cooldown on top of this), although weapons swapping previously could of course allow back to back attempts at (different) burst skills.

Overall, if Cleansing ire specifically was targeted by this change (as opposed to adrenaline for other uses, burst skill related and otherwise), a more surgical and precise intervention, such as adding a “cooldown” to cleansing ire that only activates on “miss” of a burst skill) could be implemented instead of an across the board hit to adrenaline. As-is, my perception in playing my warrior is that the changes to adrenaline from multiple angles (& especially the new formula for drop in adrenaline out of combat) hit too hard, hit too many traits & utilities besides the burst skills themselves & apart from cleansing ire).

Personally, I’ve found GW2’s vision of the warrior as the most compelling class in the game from the initial hype over a year before release, through the beta weekends and through today, but the changes to adrenaline have hit to hard and too broadly such that the fun factor of the class is overwhelmed by its new limitations. Removal of cleansing ire entirely would be preferable to the overall adrenaline hits IMO; the warrior was much more fun to play before cleansing ire was added, than it is after the gutting of adrenaline systems. For me at least.

Thanks for consideration of this issue. Opinions may differ, and though many may have agitated for changes to cleansing ire, many also (judging from warrior forums, as well as input from my in-game circle) have had their game play dimished by the adrenaline changes (again, well beyond and independent of the cleansing ire trait itself).

I agree with OP, too much was hit with the adrenaline nerfs coming from multiple angles (loss of all adrenaline on miss, and new fast adrenaline decay) and affecting all those traits & related utilities at the same time. From an effective research perspective, one change to adrenaline one have been better to test results of that change in isolation (nevermind it’s not total isolation with other nerfs here and there, and other classes in the environment getting significant buffs – though some were needed (Ranger, anyone? :P).

I’d have been interested in seeing a loss of say half adrenaline with a miss but without any faster adrenaline decay “out of combat.” Worthy of note is now often times “out of combat” really isn’t when a fight is done, but when some other character goes into stealth, only to pop back with the warrior’s adrenaline gone.

Adrenaline as a core mechanism just feels dead after the feature patch, along with the traits/utilities relevant to it (outside of narrow circumstances of wvw zerg/long boss fights).

It is true, the adrenaline changes (not to mention other nerfs to warrior this patch, and over the past 3 patches) have basically broken the core warrior mechanics that previously helped make the class interesting. The concept of adrenaline loss on miss was worth exploring (seemed somewhat logical), but coupled with the drop of of adrenaline of out combat (the worse “feature”, IMO) gutted and killed the core adrenaline mechanism for those who actually used adrenaline (outside of zerg wvw/long boss fights where it won’t drop off since you’re not “out of combat” anyway).

Seriously if the core mechanism of adrenaline was being removed (virtually the effect of this change), warrior needs reworked from the ground up with a “new” core mechanism. Post patch the warrior lacks a core mechasm in effect outside of narrow types of play (those situations in which the warrior stays in combat the whole fight).

As a player who picked warrior over a year before game release and stuck with it through the beta weekends and up until now, I’ve found the class to have lost its fun mechanism. I’ve been playing some with my other 80 lvl classes since testing the change, but picking up the warrior sans adrenaline mechanism is just depressing. I never wanted to consistantly play a full support shout warhorn type build 24/7 with the warrior, I’m no fan of relying upon hambow (always like to play around with my own builds), and without useful adrenaline playing around with warrior builds is just no fun IMO.

Change to adrenaline loss on miss should have been tested in isolation, not with a other warrior nerfs alongside to kill the entire mechanism IMO. Perhaps warrior could have lost half of built up adrenaline instead of the whole batch with a miss, and without the changes to adrenaline drop off “out of combat” piled on at the same time. The arcing slice bait & switch was extra salt into the wound (arcing slice made interesting & useful? I’ll have to test that! — Ooops, it actually loses 10% damage overall, and does not even gain the double damage at 50% health, nevermind).

Dmorilize.9401:

So… i hit 80 a while ago , and now have 2 alts also 80 ( and yes i am a casual player, just sooo easy to lvl and get geared atm ). If i was to take the same stance as al the other people with a complaint about new gear tiers …… what should i now do with my time ????

I’d say play the adventures you presumably wanted to see in the game in the first place? There are virtually countless things to be done in the game, but it comes down to doing the type of things you find adventurous and fun.

What do characters in good storytelling and fiction do? In the genre of heroic fiction and fantasy, they usually go out adventuring, confronting the dangers to their peoples or world. Sure King Arthur got Excalibur, but he didn’t say “Oh noooes, I’ve got it, now what shall I do?” and end his adventuring life. Rousing tales of adventures of his knights did not all revolve around them seeking a way to “get better stats” from gear. Expanding the genre, take Indiana Jones, he wasn’t after “a better whip” or “better stats” for his pistol.

The adventure’s the thing, certain gear-grindy games have worked at conditioning us to think “better stats on gear” is what adventure is all about, but it’s just stuff they threw at us in an attempt to force us to play the game just to “keep up” so we could continue to play with our friends; “I have to play this game (even though they’re not giving me good stories or adventures) because if I don’t I’ll fall behind, and can’t keep up with my friends.” It’s really a rediculous mechanism that gw1 and gw2 design concepts many of us were sold on were trying to get away from!

What adventures to do? WvW if you like that, help your server confront the foe! Dynamic Events if you like, help people win one after the other, retake bases in Orr, take down a dragon, fight off some centaurs, etc. Go through the dungeons, you don’t have to race past encounters to get to the end bosses just to get points toward some item, but explore along the way (if that’s your thing). If you feel everything’s been done in the game and you want the developers to give you more, you don’t need them to up the stats, they can build new dungeons, new events, new maps, all kinds of things to explore instead of hooking you with the old standby of +gear you must have to avoid letting your friends down and “falling behind” so that you cannot play the same game they do.

Tyr.1965:

ckeeton.4907:

NaughtyProwler.8653:

ckeeton.4907:

IllegalChocolate.6938:

ckeeton.4907:

all of you people complaining really irritate me. its like you cant stand change. big deal they changed A PORTION OF THE GAME. IT ISNT THE END OF THE WORLD.

They made a change that was contradictory to their mission statement, for those of us who are responsible consumers and value corporate standards, that is a big deal.

You’ll understand that when you’re older.

no i just like to be open minded and i actually adapt to new ideas and dont just want a MMO that is suppose to evolve to just remain static. it isnt the end of the world. its 1 dungeon. there are other things to do. its nice to see some people are too close minded to figure that out.

There is nothing new about a gear treadmill. In fact, it is the exact opposite of new.

…it isnt the entire game. its one portion and it isnt a gear treadmill. its a form of vertical progression. it doesnt define the whole game.

Actually, because the gear is better than any other gear in the game and can be used outside the dungeon, this absolutely does affect the entirety of the rest of the game. Except sPvP, thankfully.

That’s a good point… If the gear stats only applied in the dungeon, and not in the open world, I’d not have nearly the same problem with it (though others still might). People wanting gear progression could have been given that, while others would be less affected. It might still ruin the dungeon for those that might have liked it otherwise, but at least would not pollute other aspects of the game (such as making lower level areas of the game even weaker and mob tagging harder).

Giving the gear its stats only in the dungeon would satisfy me as a compromise that feeds the stat-lovers, without damage for others outside of the dungeon.

phanmc.6759:

Agrik.7465:

I’d encourage even those “leaving” to continue voicing opinions in case anet decides to court you back. What’s been changed can be changed again, if they realize a mistake has been made.

When you lose someone’s trust, it’s extremely difficult to restore that trust. Had they been honest and open about their intentions I may have given them a chance, I probably still would have left but I wouldn’t hold it against them. This situation was handled poorly and I’m done with them.

The only way I’d come back is if Mike O’Brien formally apologized for reneging on his manifesto, put his head between his legs, and kiss his own kitten

True, I did have that trust (which is why I bought gems), and it has been lost. But, before this change I had enjoyed the game greatly and admired what they’d done with nothing but positive expectations for the future. That trust is broken, but the groundwork is still there if they back off this “gear progression.” Which might in theory happen, at least if we keep our voices heard; they might want us back at least once the gear-progression folk migrate on to the next content then want in some other game(s).

ckeeton.4907:

Oh ok so were all mad on a POTENTIAL gear treadmill despite the designers saying they dont intend to make the game a gear treadmill but to have some sort of vertical progression for people who enjoy that sort of progression. you people need to chill out

No, not “Potential” anything… Actual, undeniable gear stat progression post-release, that is the complaint. As if open world encounters were too tough and required “more stats” to contend with. The more stats are added, the less meaningful older areas of the game become, meaning less areas with any challenge and a loss of content, from that vantage.

Just one of the problems with “gear progression” but one I’ve not seen even an attempt at countering to date.

It is interesting to see people ordering others what to do “go away now that you see what it is” and characterizing anyone unhappy with this turn as “whining.” And then have the gall to call others rude or entitled. At least people who bought the game are entitled to post their views without subservience to the rude folk calling them whiners and telling them where to go. And it is more than fair to voice ongoing disappointment with characteristics (such as vertical gear progression) tacked on to a game not yet 3 months after release, that were never advertised and were actually argued against by the game’s designers in the run-up to the game.

I’d encourage even those “leaving” to continue voicing opinions in case anet decides to court you back. What’s been changed can be changed again, if they realize a mistake has been made.

Anatomy of a Fool:

Didn’t like “gear progression”, AoC promised skill over gear! Excited, first collector’s edition MMO I ever bought. AoC changes design philosophy to gear progression (away from gear having virtually no affect). I hang on a couple years hoping, then delete from hard drive.

Come GW2, promoting vertical progression, no gear grind, fantastic! I always liked gw1 but thought it needed features gw2 was adding (weapon skills not totally tied to your “build” of the moment, open world play with other players rather than all instanced, new character customization features, beautiful look, promise of player housing along with guild halls in future, much more, while keeping gw1 tradition of not being about gear stats).

Boy was I ever sold! 2nd ever collector’s edition MMO I bought, gladly bought gems in game to help keep game going strong, and then… what, 3 days ago? “Gear progression” rears its head… I hope, noooo they don’t really mean it. I see this thread, many others disaffected, they will change their minds! These guys brought us gw1 remember! So enthusiastic in those manifesto videos! I heard them say I wouldn’t have to grind gear, their game wasn’t about that…

Then Isaiah says that “all types of progression” are important when asked about vertical progression…

Fool me once, shame on you, but I’ve been fooled again. Le sigh…

—edit to add I rebuilt my computer for both games, just to admit another level to my foolishness… And for the record I’m still calling for an end to the gear progression, though I’ll not be holding my breath or spending any more on gems meanwhile.

Maarius 16 minutes ago
how important for you is vertical progression in GW2?
IsaiahCartwright @Maarius 36 seconds ago
All progression is important to us, we want to make sure our rewards and progression systems hit a spectrum of players and makes everyone feel excited to play the game.

This is more of an answer… Unfortunately not the one I wanted to hear, “vertical progression” is important in a nutshell

slumps

Loosifah.4739:

Freyar (Who’s… 3 hours ago
I’m concerned over ascended gear. Is Guild Wars 2 supposed to be moving towards traditional MMO progression? One of the reasons I stepped away from WoW and others was so that I could enjoy an MMO at my own pace without the risk of being excluded by something like Gear Score.
IsaiahCartwright @Freyar (Who’s best… 3 hours ago
I can see your concern, our goal with ascended items is to fill the gap in our progression between exotics and legendary as well as give us a new tool with the infusion slot to give more depth of rewards by offering new and interesting infusions that are directed at different game types.

Unfortunately the actual question wasn’t answered, just a canned non-answer repeating the blogpost

tkalamba.2541:

Jezath.7395:

Sdric.8526:

8300+Replies.
90% against a treadmill.
“The community wants a treadmill”

I’m sorry but I really think this is a mistake.
This is no small and ignorable issue people will learn to accept in time.
This is a 180° spin which brakes everything the name Guild Wars ever stood for.

If we can’t stop it, I hope they do realize it in a few month and disable this ascended grind madness again.

You need to look carefully at the thread, 95% are not against it… Alot of it is a discussion about this from the same people. the ones thatare against it as you ay are not all against the actual content either, they are discussing the fact that they may have been lied too..

So please read the thread before making false statements like that. its just scaremongering.

Well said, alot of these posts are repeat posters. I’ve posted alot on here, and so have many others. You cannot use post count as a metric.

Edited for bad spelling in the morning

Post count and % for or against are two different things. Personally, I’ve not gone through every post and counted how many distinct uses are for or against which will be required to accurately judge the sample represented in this forum, but it does seem very clear that more who post here are against ascended gear rather than for it. I’m not sure it reached 90% but it seems much more than 50%, especially if you count each poster’s opinion only once and not each time they post again. Someone would have to count and score each post of we want to give an exact %, but I think the sentiment that most posting here are against the incread in stats for ascended armour is easily true. It is impossible to assess the playerbase as a whole of course, outside of Anet conducting an in-game poll perhaps (which they were doing for things during beta, and could do once more if they want a clearer picture :P ).

The point remains though, for years the people looking forward to this game have been led to expect one thing (new adventures as content rather than stat increases/gear progression), and with this change are being given something else, explaining the disappointment (or more intense reactions) of many of us.

FrizzFreston.5290:

The people that feel betrayed, I’m sorry for you guys.
“They said no rarity should be more powerful than the other.”

Except.. you know… this was already the case. Exotic already had more power than rare, which had more power than masterwork.

Exotic was (and is) more powerful than lesser tiers, true, but the difference is that Exotic was a pinnacle people knew existed, that they did not have to reach beyond to gain that “even playing field” where they would need not focus on gear to be “as powerful” as everyone else (skill aside). People knew if they wanted to finish off the powering up of their character up to standard they would need exotic, but no more, so most were accepting of that I believe. The addition of a new tier (and presumably tiers to come) changes that, adding vertical progression that was advertised as not to occur in this game. Once you got your end gear, you were supposed to be set. People counted on that, spend $$ on fine transmutation stones, set up their preferred end set gear (or various sets for different circumstances – there is your “horizontal progression” which people had no problem with).
Now the tables are being turned, and a lot of people (myself included) clearly do not like it. Those who spent on transmutation stones for an “end set” realize we were misled into believing exotic was an end set (power-wise), and in effect that money spent on transmutation was wasted, and will be needed to be spent all over again once the ascended set is rolled out – not because we find a new kind of gear appearance we want to attach to the stats we already have, which would be acceptable and even welcomed! – But because our existing max stat set is made obsolete, which is one aspect of what people are finding unacceptable with this new gear progession sprung upon us.

And wither you like it or not, people have asked for this change. So there are quite a few people happy for it. It’s coming and there isn’t anything you can do about it.

And now people are asking to change this change. We are asking them not to do it, that’s what we are doing about it. You think people can ask for it but we cannot ask not to have it???

I am officially asking, do away with ascended armour (or at least reduce it stats in line with exotics). Reasons why I do not want it can be found in other posts both by myself, and others.

Having read Chris Whiteside’s post following up on ascended gear, my disappointment in the move to vertical gear progression is not eased, nor my objection to it.

Some points I would make about why I see gear progression as a problem:

1) One of the main problems I have with this is balance for the earlier areas of the game. As things stand, once you have level 80 and exotic gear, the lower level areas fade in challenge to at least a degree (I do not think this point has been contested anywhere). With stronger gear, these areas will be that much weaker in comparision, less of a challenge, less interesting to revisit – making for a smaller world to explore and revisit. This is something that will only get worse with continuing power creep/ gear progression, with whatever gear more powerful than ascended is added a year or whatever from now (we’ve been told we won’t need new gear every 3 months – but not that we will not need new gear every 6 months, every year, or whatever).

2) Ever been in an area trying to ‘tag’ mobs so that you can get credit to loot them for charged lodestones or whatever? Ever see the mobs killed before you can get to them? This problem will only grow with some players having enhanced gear that “you do not need unless you want to go into higher powered dungeons.” Gear you “do not need” but other players have will make them kill mobs faster, meaning less chance for you to get to the mobs to “tag” them youself. Their gear means you get less loot.

3) Fluxuating balance (especially relevant to pvp). Suppose the game was perfectly balanced between the classes. Then new more powerful gear is suddenly available! Unless all attributes are perfectly aligned (which it is not), the balance team has to go to work readjusting skills and such, using up energy they could have used elsewhere. Designers can attain a better balance if systems are not alway shifting under their feet with more numbers being added to abilities.

4) Players who take a break from the game, and come back, are out of the loop, less likely to get into content. One of the major advatanges of the systems gw2 had without power creep is taken away! Many players have expressed happiness at not having to keep up with gear just to play with their friends, with gear progression this is lost.

In short their are reasons players were drawn to this game for its promised lack of vertical gear progression. There are reasons we are upset and want vertical gear progression stopped flat. If we wanted gear progression, there are any number of MMO’s out there based on that “feature” and there is less reason to invest money in this game when it drops the ball with one of the key features that brought some of us to it.

Those who say “stop playing” are missing out on the true point; what we will do is “stop paying.” And make no mistake, those of us who were playing this game for its unique promises different from other MMO’s do pay, I for one have certainly been putting in more per month through the gem shop that I have ever paid in subscription feels to any other MMOs, because I thought what A-net’s manifesto brougth to us was worth it… But, no more. Not unless this vertical gear progression is stopped flat, in line with the A-net gw2 manifesto.

No, I hate the new Ascended Items.

Lack of the abominable “gear progression” or “itemization” feature of other MMO’s was a major factor in my excitement about gw2. I have been a total supporter of this game up until now, despite a few things I’ve not liked (gem shop, anyone?). This one though, is a killer for me. For the first time, in a long time, I’ll be looking to see what other games are doing, and holding back on spending more of my budget here, unless gw2/anet listens and stops this gear progression reversal before it gets going.

Seriously disappointed and surprised, feel like a fool for believing. I was so pleased that legendaries were no better than exotics stat-wise, something to strive for because it was different and special but not “more powerful.” Ah well this turn in the game is just depressing to a long-term previously very enthusiastic gw2 supporter.

My message to Anet: Abort this step towards gear progression, now. No better stats than exotics, I want to replace my gear because you’ve made something that looks better, not because I’m kittened because something with better stats came out. If I had wanted that, I’d have been elsewhere than gw2…

I placed my vote, against itemization in strongest way possible. Legendaries were done right, different look but no stat increase over exotics. I did believe there would be no gear itemization in gw2, and am (for the first time) actually extremely disappointed. I’ve not agreed with everything gw2 has been doing, but I’d thought I’d finally found the one mmorpg for me, for the first time I’m second guessing that. If itemization is here, and apparently it is, I’ll go back to looking for someone else to do it right without “gear progression.”

Extremely disappointed, strongly hope A-net reconsiders and aborts this instead of turning away previously total supporters such as myself.

1H spear (ala Romans, Greeks)

Javelin (1H ranged)

Polearm makes sense, could have variety of them even (bill hook & pike would be very different, for example)

Flail (1H & 2H would both be possible)

Dagger (Any warrior should know how to fight with a dagger, could just let them equip it as a weaker 1H sword in a pinch, main hand and/or offhand)