Guild Wars 2

It seems like Counter Magic is all but essential to succeed in Lake Doric and particularly last chapter of the personal story in Episode 4. In particular the conditions applied by various enemies are nearly impossible to cleanse by normal meas.

I don’t have episode 1 open. Is there a way to learn Counter Magic without it. If not, do I just need to learn to play better? Should I suck it up and buy the episode?

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Controversial: Vertical Progression acquisition can be a pain but what if any elements do you like about Vertical Progression?

Chris

Chris, I thought I would respond to this as I think its important for devs to get a sense of how players view vertical progression.

I enjoy vertical progression when:

- it involves incremental improvements rather than all or nothing improvements. In this sense, its frustrating to be doing working towards a goal over a significant period without realising some benefit from the process in the interim. GW2 inherently does this by allowing you to gain various pieces of ascended equipment over time but the general attitude towards ascended armour is that you either get a full set or you don’t bother. Improving the utility of each item of ascended armour (see below) would open up this feeling of progressive improvement.

- it has a greater end purpose then just a one off improvement to some numbers. Legendary weapons are a perfect example of what the “pinnacle” of ordinary vertical progression should be; they combine the best stats with the best cosmetics (obviously subjective) but also create flexibility by allowing players to switch up stats on the fly. The single best suggestion I have seen in this thread is to let ascended armour change stats like legendaries. This gives people like me, who are otherwise not going to bother with the one off numerical increase, a reason to progress towards getting it.

- if it is useable in the game mode I enjoy playing (ie. its going to have an effect on that game mode), it’s achievable by playing the game the way I enjoy playing it. This does not mean I want a free ride by getting vertical progression just by logging in. It does mean that I play WvW pretty much exclusively and ascended armor will be used in WvW. I should be able to achieve progression towards ascended armour by playing WvW. I shouldn’t have to go and run dungeons or Fractals or some other game mode that I don’t enjoy, just to have a realistic chance at achieving the same vertical progression.

Touching on that last point, I think its important to recognise that some systems of progression are limited in terms of the game modes they effect and, in my view, there is no problem with progression within those system being limited to people who participate in those game modes. For example, the WXP system only impacts on WvW and its fine that you can only progress within that system by participating in WvW. Similarly, if you introduced a World Map progression system where you gain bonuses within a particular world zone by doing things within that zone, its fine if I can’t progress along that system if I never go to that world zone. The flip side is that, as mentioned above, where the progression system is gear which can and will be used in every game mode (excluding sPvP) then I should be able to make meaningful progress by playing any game mode.