Guild Wars 2

Thank you, both to Felicja and Gaile. I know it’s gotta be ‘fun’ dealing with complaints and what not. Just know that your works doesn’t go unappreciated.

The fix works just fine for me, stopped the constant updates, and I seem to be able to access the gem store. I hesitantly want to say my Trading Post is working more smoothly now as well, but that might just be me getting lucky. Never had much of a camera problem.

Again, thank you so much for your work!

Lord Kuru.3685:

The fact that you can buy practically everything through the TP causes people to play only the content that returns the most gold. The game becomes like real life, where you’re working an awful job (champ farming) to earn the money (gold) to buy what you want. This makes the game boring very quickly.

Of course no one is forced to play like this, but the fact is that a large proportion of the population does — because they can, I guess.

Unless something is done about this, no amount of horizontal progression will help the game — people will just go for the most efficient gold farm and all the hard work of creating content is wasted.

Thank you, that’s a pretty good way of looking at it. I mean, it DOES make sense, though, that if your goal is gear acquisition Players will gravitate towards the most efficient way of obtaining it. If Gold Per Hour from Champ farming is quicker and easier than making it yourself, well… like I said, it makes sense. I know I do it.

Continued from above

While we’re on the subject of gear acquisition, I’d like to point out that I find the prospect of gaining my gear through the Trading Post to be a very… anti-climactic method. Crafting is obviously a step up, but when a great deal of that process still has to do with gathering the materials from the TP, it still doesn’t ‘feel’ horribly exciting. Perhaps the new Ascended Gear feels different as many of the materials are Account Bound, but I’ve not experienced that yet, as the time investment seems daunting. I don’t have a current solution to that kicking around my brain, and this post is long enough already.

Wrapping Up STATS:
I think the thing that strikes me about Horizontal Progression as far as Stats go is that they should be a means to an end, and not the end itself. That is to say, gaining the variety and ‘fluidity’ to select from a wide pool of play styles should not be as difficult to achieve as it currently is, but instead that it allows the Player to go about achieving their other more long term goals in a variety of ways. As it is, it feels like getting that ‘fluidity’ in Stats is the end game, but one that is exceptionally off-putting for the amount of effort that goes into it. I would rather see the larger goals of Players focused on something other than the perfection of Stats.

There’s other areas I’d like to discuss such as cosmetics and such, but I’m a little ‘typed out’ right now, so I’ll hopefully do that before the thread gets locked! Thanks again for having this open.

Thanks again for making these threads available, it does mean a lot that you’re willing to open up discussion with the players like this. Now, I haven’t read through all the previous posts, but just wanted to ramble a bit about my thoughts on the subject.

Though I missed out on the Vertical Progression side of things, I think it bears repeating that it, as a design decision, taps into that part of a Player that seeks perfection, and honing of their avatar. For some people, and when done well, it can be extremely motivating and keeps them occupied for a very long time. Horizontal Progression, on the other hand, walks a little bit of a finer line. I’ll divvy my thoughts up on the matter into a few categories.

STATS:
So when it comes to the actual play and min-max side of the game, I feel like the Player’s options in the game are not as fluid as many would like them to be. That is to say, changing around Stats and playing their avatars in a variety of ways is a cumbersome system with some fairly severe consequences. When it comes to gear, in order to try out a new play style it means investing in what will become soul bound gear, an entire new set in fact, which then needs to have runes applied, upgrades installed, and if the look isn’t right, transmuted to be comfortable to play in. That means additional armor taking up bank space, having to travel to switch it out, and then redoing your traits to make the system work with it.

Basically, I think there’s a very obvious reason some stats are decided to be the best for a particular job, and real world experimentation is a bit low. If that’s the sort of investment we’re talking about, it is in the Player’s best interest to find a Stat makeup that works, and stick to it.

The polar opposite and the most Horizontal Progression you could get would be the Legendary Weapon system applied to all armor, as in you buy armor at a certain level and rarity, and then are able to swap out the stat distribution freely while also being able to redo your traits completely. That’s quite a shift, and I somehow doubt that would be in the cards, especially since a great deal of the economy is based on gear swapping and trait resetting is a bit of a gold sink.

One option would be, as some people have offered on the cosmetic side, a sort of stat ‘wardrobe’ where you gather and ‘consume’ various prefixes to a particular weapon, gradually making it so you can use the Legendary Weapon system to switch it to any previously ‘consumed’ Stat prefix you have. For instance, you buy a Berserker’s level 80 Exotic Sword, then buy a Cleric’s lvl 80 Exotic Sword. Through some UI process (perhaps a consumable item like a Salvage Kit) you ‘add’ the Cleric’s Sword to the Berserker, and may then freely switch between the two at any time you’d like, without taking up space in your inventory. The end goal, obviously being, to gather all possible permutations of the weapon and have it be completely malleable. While this doesn’t solve all of the issues I noted before (aside from storage concerns) I feel it would be an incentive that would drive the Player to ‘complete’ their gear, as this system could be applied to armor sets as well. It would have the added benefit of being relatively clear to the Player which prefixes they were missing, as changing the gear’s Stats could also display a list of both the prefixes available, and also those missing.

Perhaps another possibility would be to have the same sort of system as before, but to avoid the massive cost of either gold or crafting resources, (after all, buying THAT many exotics for every slot is still a steep price to pay) would be to have the ability to ‘Level Up’ the Player’s gear, either through just normal combat, investing unused Skill Points, or any number of the currently implemented currencies, or with an entirely new one. So that, for example, a Berserker’s Lvl 80 Exotic Sword takes 3 skill points to unlock another Prefix of choice, perhaps with a scaling cost or not. This is an idea that I would personally prefer, especially if it had an automatic process (such as an extra portion of experience gained through play being split between the gear currently equipped) as it really scratches that itch to ‘fill them bars’ you get from leveling and becoming more powerful, only this makes you more flexible. This option would mean that a Player would really only need to purchase a piece of gear at a certain level and rarity once, which might seem like a negative on the economy, however it has been my personal experience, as noted earlier, that I am motivated to make my decision on gear beforehand, and then stick rigidly to it as the cost for mistakes is simply too high, thusly I only buy one piece of gear for each slot regardless. I do not know how true that holds for other Players.

Concluded Below