Guild Wars 2

Erasculio.2914:

The GW1 skill system was incredibly flawed. It was so flawed that it effectivelly killed the game.

Really? I wonder why they haven’t shut it down yet then. Maybe because there’s still people playing it, despite GW2 being out?

Erasculio.2914:

The combat system in GW2 is an improvement. Combat has been made more complex due to how positioning became more important, and how skills now have more effects connected to positioning – while GW1 had knock downs, GW2 has pulls, pushs, knock downs, and etc.

No it’s not. Aside from dodging, positioning mattered just as much in GW, despite not having pulls.

Erasculio.2914:

This makes combat not only more active, but also more reliable on player skill as opposed to character skills. It’s less likely we will reach a “Build Wars” state in GW2 than in GW1.

Sure, until you know how to dodge. It’s not hard. Once you learn it, the whole system is pretty trivial and simplistic.

Besides, if the game lost Smiting damage, it has now Retaliation; rangers and mesmers can still interrupt (and there are some traits about interrupting enemies); boon removal and condition removal have replaced enchantment and hex removal, the latter something eternally imbalanced in GW1; and so on.

Guild Wars also had some retaliation type skills. Rangers and Mesmers have nowhere near the interrupt capacity they had in Guild Wars, and what does exist is fairly cumbersome. Boons and conditions in GW2 pale in comparison to what Guild Wars had in enchantments, hexes and conditions.

But the worst part of it is, they had all those good systems already designed in Guild Wars. They could have brought them over and made GW2 so much better. GW2 is clearly not about skill acquisition as a form of character progression, so why didn’t they just implement a lot more of the abilities they already created?

I’ll tell you why. Because the whole skill system in GW2 is rushed and half-baked. They spent so much time on everything else that they didn’t really have time to finish the skill system and combat. The lack of skill variety is only a small piece of that puzzle. Another really big piece is how nearly all skills lack some or all of a description as to what exactly they do. And then add to that the fact that all classes have only one or two elites that can be used underwater. And I’m sure other players could add a lot more to this.

Edit: Oh yeah, here’s a perfect example of a completely useless skill description.

Shield of the Avenger
Summon an arcane shield to defend you.

Duration: 20 s
Range: 600

I still cannot believe they put something that useless in the game. How does it defend me? What does it do? Why should I use it? When should I use it? Going to the Wiki, you can find this additional information:

- Spirit Weapons begin cooling down once they disappear.
- The shield follows behind the guardian and periodically generates a Shield of Absorption that absorbs projectiles. The shield generated does not push back.
- The shield will not begin generating the shield until a nearby ally is struck.

And even that is still less useful than what the tooltips had for skills in GW. Sad.

Xae Isareth.1364:

I don’t quite see how this make it a treadmill. Its vertical progression, but it doesn’t make it a treadmill until they keep adding tiers, which they seem to be quite against.

They will keep adding tiers.

Here’s an interesting article from almost a year ago on the topic.
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012-11-27-arenanet-holds-frank-reddit-debate-on-guild-wars-2-loot-grind

They toss around a lot of mumbo-jumbo to obfuscate exactly what their plans are, but they do finally make it pretty clear in these paragraphs:

On the general topic of vertical progression – i.e. going upwards in power rather than sideways or horizontal: being as powerful but different – Whiteside said Guild Wars 2 has it and “we do intend to keep moving forward with this philosophy”.

“We have never said there would be no vertical progression,” he wrote. "We do intend to focus on horizontal but we will have vertical progression moving forward with the focus on zero grind and a very low power curve.

Thanks to the ascended mess, we know exactly what they mean by “zero grind” and “very low power curve”.

No, they never came right out and told us there would be no vertical progression, but they sure wanted us to believe it. That’s what got all the GW1 fans hooked and started the ball rolling. It’s a lot easier to get more players to join a game that already has a bunch of players.

Xae Isareth.1364:

Vertical progression isn’t necessarily a bad thing because people like progression.

Actually it is, and I’ll explain why.

1. Supplying vertical progression is always a losing battle. Always. The players that want it can never be supplied enough progression fast enough and will always quit as soon as they burn through whatever content you have available, which is very quickly because these players are almost across the board power-gamers of some sort. Providing progression for them keeps them around another month or two at best. Even slower, average players can easily play through vertical progression content far more quickly than developers can produce it.

2. Vertical progression always creates power creep and balancing nightmares.

3. Vertical progression means you have to create new content far faster than if you didn’t have it, because it obsoletes old content. A player in GW1 who started when Nightfall was released could still go back and find all the endgame content in Prophecies and Factions 100% useful and relevant. WoW, on the other hand, is one of the best-designed examples of vertical progression ever, and it has dozens of instances that almost no one ever visits any more because there’s no point.

Xae Isareth.1364:

Not having Ascended gear doesn’t bar you from content. I don’t see the point of going into the WvW argument.

It will, once they introduce the next tier of gear.

Xae Isareth.1364:

Ascended gear was beneficial to the game for other reasons regarding making content not dead as well. Did you ever actually see people doing Temples before it was added?

And it would have been just as effective at that if it had been merely cosmetic. GW1 proved that over and over.

Vanthian.9267:

eisberg.2379:

Vanthian.9267:

This is not whining due to how to earn the gear. It is the principle of the matter. When a game is advertised as a horizontal progression game like it predecessor you don’t add a vertical jump in the game 3 months after lunch and try to claim it was on the table to begin with.

I don’t ever remember then advertising it as a Horizontal progression game with no vertical progression. In the article that another posted above from the Eurogamer, they even stated they never said there would be no vertical progression. Looks like to me people made assumptions and somehow they turned into “facts”

Very false. They did advertise this game as a horizontal end game. They did so for years. They discussed and commented on this while it was still in the very early alpha stages of what they called “Guild Wars: Utopia”. I waited years for this game to come out and kept up with every bit of news as I possibly could. It was advertised as a skill based game with the end game focusing on a visual grind not stat grind.

Then 3 months into the game (note this is the time a vast majority of the pro player base has left ~aka the old super leet Guild Wars 1 guilds~) they completely gave up with what they had touted for 2 years plus and just started doing whatever would make the most money.

Tada temporary bs living story crap. Made just to add more things to the gem store to get you to buy them. You can not even being to say that the living story updates are even remotely decent in terms of game play and lore. They are nothing more than short zerg fests from here to there. The only update that had any remotely decent things in it was the Pavilion and even then, it was horribly done.

Lets end with the biggest pile that this game has, BUGS. Bugs from the early stages of BETA that have not been fixed. I don’t know about you guys, but I would be severely embarrassed if I made a game and just left it completely in beta/alpha stage. Just to name a few that have not been fixed since the launch of the game.

-Warrior Fast Hands Bug: When dropping banners via weapon switching, your weapon swap will go on cool down without actually swapping your weapons.

-Rush: Does not track correctly. Can not hit a target that simply moves left to right.
(oh, they updated it to make it smoother? yeah didn’t fix the problem. Words are different from actions.)

-Eathshaker: Does not hit targets who are slightly higher than player character. As in 0.001 units higher on the hill.
etc..

The list goes on and on for multiple classes for multiple different things. Lets not forget that slayer potions didn’t actually work for a couple of months and instead of giving you the 10% bonus to your damage, you got a +10% bonus to taking damage, yay!

Stop trying to white knight this game. There are huge problems even if you care to realize them or not.

Sadly, I can’t give this post all the +1s it deserves. So I’ll just quote it so people have the chance to read it again.

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

i just spam my skills and collect the bags!

Sounds legit.

Yeah I also was (still am) very disappointed with the route they chose to go, having the weapons determine have your skills. I do understand it. I do. I just don’t like it. I miss the monk almost as much. The combination of these things often makes the combat in GW2 feel a lot less interesting because it often feels like all the classes do exactly the same stuff only in slightly different ways.

That said, the variety in utility skills is even worse. There’s less of them than in GW1, and many of the ones we have are borderline useless.

But what gets me the most is the HUGE lack of Elites. Most classes have only two that can be used underwater, some have only 1. And several of the elites that ARE in the game are not even class-specific, but race-specific. None of them are really all that interesting. And all of them are essentially “oh-kitten” buttons with long recharges.

If I could have GW1’s skill system and combat in GW2 I’d take it without hesitation.

Rooks Zaer.5846:

Xae Isareth.1364:

It was never advertised as a horizontal progression game.

Sure it was.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2011-09-27-guild-wars-2-preview

Eurogamer: How are you handling endgame loot – will we be farming bosses?
Colin Johanson: Everyone, including casual gamers, by level 80 should have the best statistical loot in the game. We want everyone on an equal power base. The rare stuff becomes the really awesome looking armours. It’s all about collecting the unique looking stuff and collecting all the other rare collectable items in the game <snip>
perm

/thread. That is all. Debate over. ArenaNet, where’s my free ascended gear I was supposed to have by 80 as a casual player?

Zeldain.5710:

What I’m finding here in this thread is the emerging issue that, at the core, players do not find the tasks in the game fun, so they immediately turn it into a “treadmill”.

So, I think the bigger problem is that the game itself just isn’t resonating with players, regardless of the reward or progression structure.

You might think that but you would be wrong. The problem is that the false advertising is not resonating with players.

YES please. In fact I think dodge should break anything you’re currently doing.

If they raise the level cap, I’m done. This is supposed to be a sequel to Guild Wars, not “World of Guild Wars”. Any more stupid questions?

Xae Isareth.1364:

1) You missed out a very important sentence in that article which stated ‘we have no plans to introduce another tier if rarity like Ascended’.

No, I didn’t. They also said they weren’t going to introduce any new tiers after the start of the game. Then they put in Ascended. Earlier this year (after the article I linked) they said they had no plans to introduce more new tiers this year. That part I can believe. The new tiers are, in fact, not coming this year. But they are coming. If you truly believe otherwise, you are a fool.

2) it depends on how you use it. What happened here is that since there was no statistical progression for doing dungeons, JPs, or anything at all really after 80 since you would’ve got enough money to buy a set of exotics, people didn’t even bother doing them and just said tgere’s nothing to do.

What? That’s not even coherent.

Xae Isareth.1364:

Did Ascended gear make dungeons obselete? I got enough emp stars to make 4 Ascended weapons and I’m still doing them, and I don’t think I’m alone. Having vertical progression doesn’t make content obsolete if you implemented it right.

Even WoW didn’t make anything obsolete in the first 14 months. When you can get a full set of ascended gear, yes, you will have no need for exotic gear and all those instances will be obsoleted. That’s coming some time next year.

Xae Isareth.1364:

4) what worked for GW1 doesn’t nessecarily work for GW2.

Wow, what a vague and pointless statement.

Like I pointed out, people were leaving after 80. Did they all get their Legendaries and 350-lode skins at 80? No.

Again, what a vague and pointless statement. Were you trying to go somewhere with this babble?

Until Ascended gear is at least as easily and widely available as Exotic gear currently is, they haven’t fixed kitten.

Vayne.8563:

dimgl.4786:

Vayne.8563:

Because GW 1 was very well balanced. It was so easy to balance all those skills. What you might not be realizing is that GW 1 was a nightmare for some people, because of the number of skills. People didn’t know how to make builds. A lot of people tried the game, failed heavily and went on to different games. Anet doesn’t want that to happen again.

Now people are forced to take a self-heal. They’re forced to have at least some skills that work together. Sure it doesn’t suit you, personally. Doesn’t particularly suit me either. But that doesn’t mean it’s not better from a design point of view, or better for the game.

The combination of the number of skills in Guild Wars 1 and the second profession mechanic made the game virtually impossible to balance. It screwed with PvP and PVe became so easy it was meaningless, down to the point where you could use a Rit to solo farm ectos in the underworld.

I too miss the skill selection from Guild Wars 1, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a good reason for not having it in Guild Wars 2.

Omg! A game that makes players think?! SAY IT AIN’T SO!

I love games that make you think. I also recognize that the kind of game Guild Wars 2 was going to be depends on traffic and, unfortunately, if you make people think, you’ll seriously limit the number of people playing the game. Guild Wars 1 had 20% of the staff of Guild Wars 2. This is a much bigger project and has to appeal to a much wider audience.

WoW doesn’t make anyone think and has a zillion players. Guild Wars 1 did make people think and had far less (though many just as devoted). I’m a Guild Wars 1 fan and loved the game.

But I’m also aware that a game that aims to be mainstream can’t make people think too much, because there are fewer smart people than average people (pretty much by definition lol).

All true, but it doesn’t make it any less disappointing. And I’m not so sure that in the end this will prove more successful, simply because of the vast glut of games already available for those players who don’t like to think too much. Sometimes you can actually be more successful filling a particular niche where there’s no real competition – that’s what a real successor to Guild Wars would have done. But even if they didn’t want to risk that, there’s still ways to do some compromises, even with the current system, which they chose not to do.

Honestly, the more I play GW2, the more I miss GW and the more I feel like maybe I should just ditch GW2 and go back to GW. If my account hadn’t got hacked 3 years ago I already would have. As it is, I just never had the heart to start over with getting my obsidian and other nice elite gear sets. But the way GW2 is going, that might change.

DoctorOverlord.8620:

Also as Shufflepants stated, ArenaNet has said that while thousands of combinations were possible, their data showed players ended up using the same skills over and over (Thousand Blades for example). ArenaNet would have seen the exact same thing if they copied GW1’s system into GW2 only in that case they would have known from their past that making all those skills was a waste of resources (and known they would be wasting even more resources in the future by making their job that much harder in balancing)

So essentially, because some people lacked the capability to put together builds of their own they decided to take that option away from everyone? That sounds like a great solution. /sarcasm

DocHolliday.5921:

DocHolliday.5921:

I still cannot believe they put something that useless in the game. How does it defend me? What does it do? Why should I use it? When should I use it? Going to the Wiki, you can find this additional information:
.

This is the exact same problem in GW1. ArenaNet has never had good communication about their mechanics or how to use them. It was the community who always provide the best information for me when I returned to GW1. I learned fairly quickly that the official wiki was okay for quick reference as long as you avoided the mind-numbing details but if you wanted to find anything useful for when you were actually playing, you needed to go to the forums.

The difference in GW2 is that even if you don’t know all the details of using skills, your character is still functional. You can still play the game. In GW1, if you didn’t know the the right details of certain skills/builds/whatever, you could end up with an unplayable experience.

Seriously? Good god man, did you even play the first Guild Wars? ALL the skill descriptions were miles better than anything in GW2. How to explain how much of a joke the skill descriptions are in GW2 compared to GW? Words fail me.

Praxis.4976:

If indeed there is a ‘gear treadmill’, it is not created by ANet, it’s created by players who come into gw2 with mentalities from other games.

Yes, it is going to take you a long time to get these things. It’s MEANT TO. You’re not supposed to be spending every waking minute working towards a goal of a full ascended set. That is such a small part of the game. You can only work towards it little by little because if you didn’t it would be a gear treadmill. ANet have done what they can to satisfy everyone, and still not turn the game into a clone of other mmo gear grinders.

You are supposed to play the game. Enjoy the game. Make friends, explore the world become good players. Along the way you’re going to pick up points and tokens and a bunch of other stuff, then, one day you’re going to realise that you can buy something with these things. I say ‘buy’ for want of a better word, the game owes you nothing for giving you enjoyment, just like ANet itself owes you nothing. But still, they give, and you can get better gear. It’s there if you want it. It is not necessary by definition in game. The only people that make it so are the players who look down on other players for not having the gear.

Solution: everyone needs to realise this is a game, not a living. It’s a game, if you don’t enjoy playing, it’s probably not the game for you. If you do, then play it! Don’t turn it into full time employment and look down on others when their ‘fun’ isn’t as hardcore or powerful as yours.

Wrong in so many ways.

First, players can never create a gear treadmill. That’s all on the game developers.

Second, As for the better gear not being necessary, did you miss the fact that PvP is a HUGE part of this game? Many players play this JUST for the PvP. Sure, the extra stats on better gear may not be that big a deal in WvW, but you can bet your kitten it is in anything more structured. And for that matter, if you really think it doesn’t matter, please tell me you do all your playing in just plain old white gear. After all, every quality level better only adds a few stats, surely it’s not necessary?

Thirdly, getting top-stat gear was always easy in GW1. That’s the spirit of the game. That’s one of the things that set it apart and made it attractive to those of us who are sick and tired of having to waste hours on end just to get the gear needed to run the content we want to run. Even exotic gear takes way too much time to acquire in this game. Seriously. No gear in GW2 should have better stats than rare quality gear. Exotic and Ascended gear should be different in appearance only. There’s already a billion and one MMORPGs out there that allow you to keep grinding and replacing gear forever, why on earth would you want that crap in GW2? So it’s just another run-of-the-mill MMORPG, except with chaotic group PvE instead of a trinity? Because that’s what it’s rapidly turning into.

I, for one, will not put up with ANY more vertical progression of any kind in GW2. Higher levels, another level of better gear, and I’m gone. Just like that. I’ve been there done that in way too many other games, and I’m DONE with gear grinds. They’ve already assured they won’t see any more money from me for a long while until I can be 100% sure they’re not going to screw it up further.

lordkrall.7241:

Lucius.2140:

They exist lol.
For example: Necro can do that like crazy and mesmer also have some tools for that.

I am almost 100% sure that the user you quoted was using sarcasm.

I think the response you were looking for was

“Whoosh!”

Scourge.4317:

Did Guild Wars Prophecies start out with over 200 skills for each class? NO! all those extra skills, classes ect came in expansions. Chill out people kitten Its already been said that classes will be given more weapons to use in the future.

And yet despite that, the skill system in Prophecies had way more variety and was way more interesting than anything GW2 has to offer. Why exactly do you think that is?

eisberg.2379:

um, nope, not wrong. But keep on being insulting, just proves that you have nothing to refute a valid point.

Yes, wrong. One hundred percent wrong. You have zero valid points in this entire thread. Not one.

Debsylvania.7396:

I would love to know how the OP thinks the game should work. How should new items be obtained, for example?

ANet was talking about classic MMO GEAR GRIND. You know, the kind where you have to replace all of your gear because a new PVP season has started or because a new expansion has been introduced?

They’ve validated their stance against that sort of gear grind by correcting their error in making ascended gear obtainable only through fractals. This is why they’ve just introduced these new methods to obtain those items.

Short of having an NPC somewhere simply handing out new items, there’s got to be some means of GAMEPLAY involved in getting new stuff. Unless of course, OP, you have in mind that no new stuff is ever introduced.

Good grief.

Yes, ANet was talking about classic gear grind, and now we have that. Or did you miss the Ascended gear that got added? And no, dailies where it takes a whole month to get one piece of ascended gear do NOT correct the error. Not even close.

They knew exactly what those of us coming from GW wanted, and the statements they made were essentially a promise that we’d get exactly the same kind of gear progression as in GW: none, once you hit level cap.

Based on their statements, there should, in fact, be NPCs standing around in cities handing out gear with max stats, for trivial amounts of gold. Now, that gear wouldn’t necessarily be very pretty, but stat-wise it would be as good as it gets. If you also want to look pretty/awesome/whatever, well, that requires some time and effort. That’s what they meant by their statements about “no gear grind”. Or at least, that’s what we were supposed to believe they meant. Whether they straight-up lied to us or simply deceived us with half-truths makes little difference. They knew how their statements would be interpreted, then they implemented stuff that flies directly in the face of it.

Knote.2904:

rjnemer.7816:

As a Pve ’er my main problem with the game is how broken Risk vs. Reward is. The fact that you make equal if not more money running in a champ train over running the most difficult content (arah/48+ fractals) blows my mind.

We need INSTANCED elite content as well. PvE is way to easy right now.

Risk/Reward is messed up everywhere in the game.

Pvp balance especially.

My biggest grievance with the game is the lack of skills/build variety and just…. “FUN”.

Still over a year in and still no new traits/skills, and on top of that, skill/traits that have been garbage since beta… are still garbage… Over a year in.. Cmon now.

I still can’t see how people think this is better than GW1 was, at any point from launch.

eisberg.2379:

DocHolliday.5921:

eisberg.2379:

What you call grind, I call being rewarded for playing the game the same way I have been playing it since level 1.

You were running fractals from level 1? Really?

eisberg.2379:

I hate grinding, which is why I wont go for Legendary unless by happen chance, but ascended is far from a grind when I can get it through normal game play with no grinding needed. But when we have a lot of people who consider leveling up as grinding, it is no surprise that something that will take more than a few days to get would also be considered as grinding. /shrug

You never played GW1, did you? Even most exotic gear is a grind. Only the crafted stuff isn’t. With ascended, even the crafted stuff is a grind – and time-gated to boot.

Played Guild Wars 1 for many years, since the day it launched, was even a part of their beta events. Again, what you call grind, I don’t.

Really? You don’t consider doing the same mind-numbing thing over and over a grind? Please, tell us how you define “grind”. Pretty sure your definition is 100% unique.

Also, you still didn’t tell me how you were running fractals from level 1. I want to hear about that as well.

athuria.2751:

Like it’s been pointed out, your skill variety from GW1 was not at all what it was when it came out. We will get more utilities, elites, weapons (and maybe we will get to customize those weapons) over time, like we did in GW1, and like it happens in every other MMO. This will not be the end of your variety, nor do I think the combat system will remain so static that it will never add new mechanics or skill types that will result in new playstyles and builds.

To be honest, I’m of the opposite opinion where combat in GW1 was boring and repetitive for me (I don’t agree there’s no skill/build variety in GW2). You has a lot of skill variety that you could combine in different ways and customize your efficiency with them, but the fighting in and of itself felt very static to me. It had a lot of thinking, but not a lot of dynamics or really engaging your enemy like you can in GW2 (or actively layering skills with instant-casting/channeling). I played it and enjoyed it for the story, but spending a lot of time in combat in the open world ended up just being tedious to me.

I was there in GW Prophecies from the beginning. I started 1 or 2 weeks after release. It had way more skills even at that time than GW2 has now. But quantity is only a small part of it. It had far, far more skill variety than GW2 does. The skill system in GW2 is just overall far more simple. Hexes/curses are gone. There’s nothing resembling smiting damage. Degen/regen is implemented completely differently, exactly like in every other MMO. Boons are a pale imitation and nothing really at all like enchantments (shatter enchantment, anyone?). There’s nothing really to cause you to be all that careful how and when you use your abilities. With the exception of a few “oh ****” abilities, you use them when they come off cooldown and that’s that. (Yes there’s some few exceptions to that last statement, but the point still stands.)

Afyael.1740:

When they announced that they would have fewer skills to improve balance I was on board with it, PvP in GW1 was great but there were ‘cookie-cutter’ builds that would get run all the time and quite often were irritating/boring to play against.

Unfortunately the balance in this game is really bad too, classes such as the engineer, ranger and necromancer have been begging for months for some buffs and over the last 3 months they haven’t gotten squat. It really is quite pathetic, instead of throwing in all this new pve content that is shallow and poorly done, I would rather they would focus on making the combat more fun and immersive. Why they haven’t touched bunkers for months is absolutely ridiculous.

If they were going to balance the game like this I would have definitely preferred the GW1 skill system. Everything was much more unpredictable and interesting, instead of memorizing the same bar and using it more efficiently you would learn several builds and counters. There would be occasional build wars when your build was hard countered but most of the time the winner would be the players/team that adapted their strategy quickest to what the enemy was doing.

That was just PvP, in GW1 PvE the enemies used the same skills as players, kited out of AoE and were just much, much smarter. Once heroes came out the game became a cakewalk but early in the days of prophecies there were challenging areas/missions (Thirsty river, Thunderhead Keep, Abbadon’s mouth etc). I have never failed a personal story, ever. The only times I had to restart a mission were in the first month whenever I encountered a glitch.

This game definitely needs more variety (either by adding more skills, changing existing skills to be more interesting/varied or redoing traits to actually change your playstyle rather than just create bigger numbers). Not all of this post is specifically on topic but I’ve just been so frustrated by the way Anet have (mis)managed the game from release, this could have been an absolutely amazing game that changed the mmorpg genre but as it is, it’s a merely above average game with a handful of nice features that we may see in future mmo’s.

Thank you for taking the time to post that. Very well stated and exactly how I feel as well.

eisberg.2379:

Julie Yann.5379:

eisberg.2379:

DocHolliday.5921:

It will, once they introduce the next tier of gear.

You got absolutely nothing to base this prediction off of. They introduced a new tier, and yet the content is still balanced around fine (Blue) gear, they haven’t introduced any content that is gated by having higher stats than fine gear.

Then why introduce the gear if it isn’t needed?

Because many people like to get higher numbers, they find that enjoyable.

And just as many find it annoying, while many others just couldn’t care less. Meanwhile, the players who DO want “higher numbers” are a lot more likely to quit sooner and be less profitable for the developer, as I already explained above.

Erasculio.2914:

DocHolliday.5921:

Really? I wonder why they haven’t shut it down yet then. Maybe because there’s still people playing it, despite GW2 being out?

And why do you think they have stopped supporting it? Why no chapter 4, why was Utopia cancelled, and so on? The skill system in GW1 prevented ArenaNet from making the game grow anymore. Without the ability to grow, there was little more for GW1 other than withering and dying, as it has been doing.

Why they stopped supporting it is no mystery. They explained that way back when they first announced GW2. And that was because Guild Wars just couldn’t handle all the new stuff they wanted to put into it. Had nothing to do with the skill system being flawed. Based on what we got with GW2, the most likely new thing they couldn’t properly implement in GW was dynamic events. But please, if you have insider information that states otherwise, please post it. Otherwise quit spreading misinformation.

DocHolliday.5921:

DocHolliday.5921:

No it’s not. Aside from dodging, positioning mattered just as much in GW, despite not having pulls.

False. The fact the game allows people to cast skills on the move, the presence of pulls and pushs, the way projectiles work now, projectile reflection, having all abilities cast on allies being available only as area effects (instead of having people click on an ally’s health bar), and many other factors show how positioning is much more important than in GW1.

That makes it slightly different, not more important. Having to stop to cast your skills makes your positioning when you start casting them extremely important.

Erasculio.2914:

You appear to have the false belief that GW2 is GW1 sans hexes. That’s not how the game works. The entire combat system is considerably more position-based and (player) skill-based than in GW1.

Really? That’s how you interpret what I posted? How sad.

Guild Wars was mostly about how you did things. Guild Wars 2 is mostly about what things you do. And that’s why the whole skill system in GW2 isn’t nearly as dynamic and robust as the one in Guild Wars.

Vanthian.9267:

So in closing, THE OVERALL DAMAGE INCREASE FROM EXOTIC TO CURRENTLY AVAILABLE ASCENDED GEAR IS ROUGHLY 10.3%.

TL:DR Damage gain is around 10.3%

And that’s before ascended armor. So much for no gear treadmill.

Good info, thanks.

Edit: out of curiosity, could you also do a comparison using only gear that is available in both exotic and ascended? That might give us some idea what kind of increase we will see once we have full ascended.

Striker.9413:

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Actually, Anet admitted that they underestimated the player base’s dedication to the game. Exotics were the final tier, until a majority of the players maxed out within months of the game’s release.

I don’t see a problem with this.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

So they added the next, and supposedly last tier, which is Ascended. So it wasn’t because of the vocal minority of the game that triggered it, it was a vast majority of active players.

They assumed that since a “majority” of players had exotics that we wanted another full tier of gear? Oh wait, they said it was going to be added from the start but didn’t tell anyone and are implementing it horribly. A player’s actions now does not tell you what they would like to see happen in the future.

And seeing as you have access to anet’s metrics, please let me know the number of full and non-full exotic players in October. If you can’t, then you can’t say kitten about anything being a majority.

And to add to this, players who were complaining about having done the endgame content already wanted more content not more vertical progression. That’s what players have always wanted. Vertical progression is far more of a stick than a carrot for most players.

MasterGeese.4756:

What’s the first thing you’re going to do?

Scrap the gear system, the level system and the skill system, and bring over the previous ones from Guild Wars that were 100x better.

I believe GW had friend/guild login notifications, but it’s been a while so I could be misremembering. But yes, I would really like to see those implemented.

Marxo.3829:

I would certainly not complain about having more skills to work with, especially if they are as fun as the current.

However a lot of people are missing that a lot of the gameplay has been shifted away from sheer number of skills and rather towards timing of skill use, combinations, and character movement, including dodge.

No, we’re not missing that. We’re just getting bored with that already. Because you can’t ever iterate on that. You can’t add anything new and groundbreaking to that. Sure, you can add a few more skills and a few more combo fields but it all plays the same. There’s nothing that will ever force us to completely rethink our skill builds, nothing to force us to completely rethink our playstyles, nothing to make new content any different than current content. It doesn’t allow for any truly new class mechanics with a new class. It’s so very limiting on what they can do with this game long-term.

Yes please! Want!

Xae Isareth.1364:

It was never advertised as a horizontal progression game. All they said was that you dont need to grind, which is still true because as far as unaware if, apart from very high level fractals, there’s no gear-checks in game.

Wow. Just wow. Even in that article I just linked, they’re still advertising it as a horizontal progression game.

We do intend to focus on horizontal

Did you miss that part? The double-talk in that article is just fantastic. This is the kind of trouble you get yourself in when you try to advertise two conflicting features. It’s truly disappointing coming from them though, because they’re the one developer that actually got it right the first time. But instead of following on their own success and learning from others’ mistakes, they instead decided to repeat those mistakes. It’s just amazing.

Star Ace.5207:

I loved GW1 unique skill system, with the way we could play endlessly with it; what I hated was that it mattered little, as most players wanted you to use cookie cutter builds for this or that, therefore negating the game’s greatest advantage-its build diversity.

There’s variety in GW2; it’s just very different, and ironically enough, despite the lesser number of build variety, one does have more freedom to use whatever works for you, and there’s no real need for specific builds in order to do well (despite whatever some may think.)

And the reason you have the freedom to use “whatever works” is because there’s a lot less variety to begin with. There’s a lot less meaningful difference between builds in GW2 as compared to GW1. You have melee DPS, melee dps/support, ranged dps, ranged dps/support. And that’s it. Every class can do everything. And they do basically all the same stuff only in slightly different ways. There’s no particular skill to running a necromancer “minion master” build in GW2. It’s just like a ranger more or less, only with a few more pets. There’s no such thing as a necro hex build, no such thing as a mesmer interrupt build, and never mind the fact that the dedicated healer (and along with it smiting damage) is completely gone.

eisberg.2379:

DocHolliday.5921:

eisberg.2379:

DocHolliday.5921:

eisberg.2379:

DocHolliday.5921:

eisberg.2379:

If you were talking about PvP you would be right. But we are talking about PvEvP, where time does make a difference.

And why, exactly, should the time someone spends in fractals or doing dailies have any more bearing on WvWvW than on sPvP? It shouldn’t. It’s still PvP. It’s still intended to be competitive.

And this right here is where your whole argument breaks down. You clearly do not understand the point of WvWvW. You simply disagree with how WvWvW was intentionally designed, what it was intentionally designed to simulate. It was literally designed to simulate an open world Faction Vs Faction Vs Faction game something LIKE Dark of Age of Camelot, where it is a meld of PvP and PvE, and that is the reason why PvE has an effect on this mode of play, because it is a meld of PvE and PvP.

I do understand that. I simply believe that I, and many others, prefer to do that without the gear disparity. Perhaps you’re not understanding that many (if not the majority) of PvP (and WvWvW) players here come from the first GW. It had PvEvP as well. You could use your PvE gear in it, yes, but it didn’t matter because the only difference was cosmetics. If ArenaNet wanted to keep those players around, they needed to translate that to GW2. They didn’t, and I strongly believe that’s a big reason why WvWvW and GW2 in general are rapidly turning into a ghost town on many servers. I also believe that if they made changes as suggested by the OP here, they’d get some of those players back – as well as retain more current players.

Ascended gear came out just a few months after release, and since then (1 year anniversary) Anet has stated that WvWvW currently has more players playing it each day then the highest total number of logins on any given day with Guild Wars 1. What you think is happening, and what Anet has stated did happen, don’t seem to match up.

So I did a quick browse of the WvW forums, and you’re right about this one thing: it’s not the ghost town I thought it was. But the argument there is even more against ascended gear than the one in this thread. Most people want it gone; only a few players who don’t want to lose their gear advantage are arguing in favor of it. So for whatever reason, most players who DO participate in WvW feel it makes a difference and they don’t want it.

you can only say “most players” on a particular forum thread wants…. we ourselves have no hard data of what the general player base for WvWvW wants.

So go over to the WvW forums and check. Actually, I’ll even save you the trouble and just post the link to a current thread there about this.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/Discussion-Ascended-gear-from-WvW

See, the entire issue here is that players like yourself don’t grasp the mentality of PvP players. PvP players don’t care how much difference a piece of better gear makes. If it’s BiS, they need it. A real PvPer doesn’t play to win “most of the time”. A real PvPer plays to win ALL the time, and any advantage that can be had is a must. So what if it only gives you 10 more hps? If you’ve played a lot of PvP, you have at some point had a situation where having 10 hps more or 10 hps less would have made the difference between a win and a loss. Even just losing one like that is too much.

rgrwng.4072:

Zeus CM.1692:

30 Laurels per Amulet is too much. You can get only 1 per month wtf… + infusions extra month.

but it gives longevity to playing, i suppose. if the daily gave you ~900 laurels, you could have everything you wanted sooner, thus getting bored quicker, because you have everything in a few minutes.

i am normally all-for getting stuff cheap and early (though i kind of pace myself), and have made peace with the current laurel prices. i just hope the prices don’t INCREASE with all of the griping about laurels.

> get it while the gettin’s good

You’re totally missing the point. Guild Wars isn’t supposed to be about spending lots of time acquiring gear based on stats, yet that’s exactly what Ascended gear is. You can’t even see the gear on characters. You should literally be able to walk up to a vendor and buy these things for 2 gold each. That’s how the first GW worked, and that’s how they led us to believe GW2 would work.

The ONLY gear “upgrade” in all of GW that you could do that couldn’t be bought with money was infusion, which was a lot like infusion in GW2, in that it reduced the damage you took from a special enemy ability called “spectral agony”. The difference, however, was that infusion involved running one special quest inside an instance that took about 15 minutes in an average group, and then your whole set of armor was infused. And even that could be bought with gold by paying someone to run you to the turn-in for infusion.

eisberg.2379:

Provide proof of them saying they were not going to introduce any new tiers after the start of the game.

I would, but I can’t, because they removed the content after the ascended gear fiasco to hide the fact that they broke their word.

But here’s the link for you, enjoy!

http://www.arena.net/blog/the-golden-rules-of-guild-wars-2

Fyrebrand.4859:

I come from WoW, where you have at least 4 or 5 action bars on your screen at any given time, and 90% of my skills don’t even get used on a regular basis. At the time, I felt appreciation for the “complexity” of the game, but looking back on it I think it was just poor game design. I much prefer GW2’s approach, with a single, tight action bar.

Could I appreciate having more skills? Sure, if they’re as good as the ones I already have, and are balanced fairly. But 200? No, thank you!

I would bet ANet will add more skills over time, though it’s hard to say how many, and when. How many skills did GW1 let you have equipped, at one time?

Guild Wars let you have 8 skills on your bar at one time, but you had complete control over all of them. People came up with some really crazy builds that could do things the devs never expected (like the original 55HP monk with prot bond). I believe that’s ultimately what lead them to breaking off development for GW and changing the skill system in GW2… but the old system was still way more fun.

Vayne.8563:

DocHolliday.5921:

Knote.2904:

rjnemer.7816:

As a Pve ’er my main problem with the game is how broken Risk vs. Reward is. The fact that you make equal if not more money running in a champ train over running the most difficult content (arah/48+ fractals) blows my mind.

We need INSTANCED elite content as well. PvE is way to easy right now.

Risk/Reward is messed up everywhere in the game.

Pvp balance especially.

My biggest grievance with the game is the lack of skills/build variety and just…. “FUN”.

Still over a year in and still no new traits/skills, and on top of that, skill/traits that have been garbage since beta… are still garbage… Over a year in.. Cmon now.

I still can’t see how people think this is better than GW1 was, at any point from launch.

It depends on what you play for. Guild Wars 1 had great skills and great builds, but not everyone liked that aspect of the game. Guild Wars 1 was completely “pathed”. It was hard to go off road. If you ran into a log, you had to turn around and go back. Not all people liked that aspect of the game.

But mostly Guild Wars 1 was instanced. There was no chance of running into a random stranger out in the open world and a lot of people, myself included, simply prefer a persistent world.

Maybe I don’t want to start over in a zone if I want someone to join me.

Yes, so the only actual improvement in GW2 is the persistent world, and even that is still somewhat instanced as you can only get from one zone to another through portals. (See WoW for how to do it right.) The only other advantage I can think of for GW2 is the AH – and that’s also not nearly as good as in many other MMOs. Everything else in GW2 is worse or at least no better than GW1. That’s just… sad.