Guild Wars 2

Ubi.4136:

Sitting, mostly AFK, on a map I’d like to do something on while entertaining a toddler…occasionally reading/responding to map chat and porting people to whatever “thing” I am afk at (usually a JP or mastery point).

So this is where JP mesmers come from! Yay, parenting!

Hm, right. So slap some glow on it, already, kitten it.

While I’m meh/somehwat enjoy HoT and really don’t have a problem killing or avoiding getting killed, I sympathize in your exasperation at the annoying keys clogging up or missing from inventories across alts and other conditioning gimmicks that pile up and end up becoming a PITA.

Just be happy in central tyria. No sarcasm, really, do that and be happy.

So GW2 is pretty much like my ex. She’s plain looking and dull and has no sense of humor, but I keep coming back to her because all women I meet are crazy and/or butt-ugly. Then, in an attempt to avoid the realization I’m a horrible and weak person, I extol the amazing personality she doesn’t really have to everyone, and then I feel good about the whole thing.

Feels familiar? lol

I’ve finished the map again a while ago. I feel stupid now. lol It was such an easy thing to do. The trouble is exactly the opposite: The map fills very fast and it’s hard to get a taxi spot lol

Still I get the feeling the server isn’t really filling any maps but is instead spreading a few people accross multiple maps. Hope it gets fixed soon.

Thanks everyone!

Shall do, thanks all, glad to know it’s not dead I suppose I’ve gotten too casual about gw2 i totally stopped using lfg xD

Yeah, I thought the megaserver would send me to a crowded map, like it usually does with other maps, and it’s no problem to just join the meta at any point, but then I suppose all of the taxiing is filling maps right at the beginning of the meta so I always end up in an empty map when I try to do it spontaneously.

That kills most of what I like about gw2: spontaneity. You zone in and stuff is happening and one thing leads to another and if it’s not organized you can just tag up and get kitten done and it just works (usually), but I guess I’ll just start using lfg instead. Not as much fun but at least I get to play the kitten map. xD

+1

At some point in the distant past they were just making ALL updates about these bulkitten minigames that have nothing to do with MMORPG, but at least it was their own thing. Now they are making it part of character progression. Jesus christ, anet.

Also, it’s bad enough that my elite spec’ ascended weapon comes from a disjointed collection of random items that screams “we are not designing this so you think it’s cool, fun and meaningful, but to spread everybody’s gaming time evenly across the content”, you still had to add stupid minigames as part of the already stupid collections intead of some cool mission/story or whatever that has remotely anything to do with my class or my elite spec.

Why no one ever runs these events? I mean NEVER, not even sunday nights. At least on EU servers. What’s up with that? There are always people running events on the other HoT maps, why not DS?

Is it because there’s extra coordination required? Lacking rewards? Boring map? Too hard?

I could only do one lane of this map ONCE, when HoT launched and never again. Always, always dead.

- More magical particle effect stuff that’s not actually a glider object, like the static-magnetic-electric-charged-power-thingy or the bubble glider, I can’t remember the names. Examples:

• flaming body with flaming trail
• tornado or wind-like fx
• ghost fx
• smoke-out Nightcrwaler-like fx
• dyable generic magic particle effect+shader membrane with trails (cause it matches any looks, it’s probably going to sell well)
• invisible glider, so it just looks like you’re flying like a super hero (with the appropriate much lower price due to nearly zero work it will take to make)

ALSO:

- enough overpriced wing-backpacked combos. Just make the actual gliders available separately. I don’t wanna pollute everybody’s screen with my giant wing-backpack thinggy while looking like an oversized chicken while i’m on the ground.

- NO ROTATION FOR THE LOVE OF GOD – I mean seriously, I’m not gonna buy your crappy items just because the good ones are out of rotation. just put them all for sale, jesus. What store keeps people from spending??? I GAVE UP buying gliders because they are never on sale.

PROS

- Maps and Events-

The first 3 maps are usually active. The first 2 are the best ones by far, IMO, Verdant Brink being my favorite. There’s ALWAYS an event and there’s usually people doing them. I like the whole meta thing because it’s more engaging than central tyria. There are whole maps in central tyria still devoid of events for a looong time. That almost never happens on the first 3 HoT maps. It kinda sucks its teh same story on a loop instead of an actual plausible repeatable situation, but that’s not the end of the world. It’s the best use of dynamic events since launch imo. Less maps but more work put into their events.

- Elite Specs
Most of them are fun. i won’t get into balance and build viability here because I think that ship has sailed a long time ago. But nevertheless, all classes are at least a little bit more fun with them, and they’re one of my favorite parts of the expac.

- Revenant
All skills are pretty fun, the animations, everything. I really like my revenant.

-Gliding
I think gliding is great fun, even in central Tyria, but especially in the first HoT map. It’s the only map with real wind currents and vertical navigation, though. you won’t be gliding much anywhere else, which is a shame. Still, gliding is fun

CONS
- Maps and Events-

-Tangled Depths is a freaking nightmare to navigate still, very annoying, the map makes it harder instead of helping sometimes. At any rate it still have fun events WHEN YOU GET THERE before it ends.

- (edited) Dragon Stand is always empty if you just walk in there, but joining a squad and teleporting to their map works fine enough as a workaround.

- Currencies and Collections :they annoy the kitten out of me to the point I just play casually and don’t really pay attention, because i can’t afford to keep track of all the bullkitten nonsensical collections and the currency they require. It’s just so boring, uninspired and make no intrinsical sense whatsoever in relation to the item you’re “getting” from it or whatever. ugh.

- Crap Loot and Chest Keys. Bags within bags, zillion blue worthless crap you have to salvage/sell instead of just flat good loot. More ascended ‘materials’ you have to deal with. More kitten you have to move around. More keys to more chest for each zone. They’re either clogging up or missing, always trying to make you feel bad to keep you playing (which actually makes me play waaay less, because it’s kittening annoying). You spend 1/4 of your play time clicking your inventory. Good luck with your carpal tunnels.

-Raids: kitten raids. Same boring preparing, consumables, stat crunching, grinding kitten. Only a lite version of it. if you enjoy them, go for it. If not, that’s a lot of content you’re gonna pay for and never play. And if you ever decide to, you’ll only get viable parties if you grind the ascended crap and eventually the masteries.

-Gear. I suppose you can just go to teh wiki and see them for themselves. They’re sparse and all fugly imo and there’s the same old lame addition of another craft-only stat combination at higher costs, recipes bought with map-specific currency on top of that. Yawn.

-Story. Same old fanfic-level teenage writing. If you liked it before, you’ll still like it now, I suppose. Blergh. Being short is actually a pro. On the other hand, the gameplay inside the story instances has improved dramatically (remember Zhaitan’s final instance? good lord wtf was that!? Nothing of that level.)

SUMMING UP

I just bought HoT because i had this crazy MMO itch when it was launching and MMO-land has never sucked so hard (if i’m missing something PLEASE PM me with a good non quest-based MMO). Definitely not worth the full game price they were asking, but I had money to burn at the time so kitten it. If it’s cheap now and you want to keep it as a secondary/tertiary game to scratch your MMO itch, it’s definitely worth it.

The part being made by real game designers is still good, and the one being made by behavior conditioners still sucks.

Hope that helped.

KoD is recruiting foulmouthed, obnoxious and immature halfwits to spam the guild chat with teenage ‘sarcasm’ and simultaneously hurt the feelings of our sensitive loremongers and middle-aged moms by making awful jokes involving sylvari and the word ‘wood’. (Honestly, I don’t care who you are as long as you fulfill my fantasies of doing something important with my life while I boss you around with a smile!)

Mission: Our goal is to amass as much gold we can to fund our raiding elite guild – to which you’re not invited, naturally – so we can start being kittens to the community as soon as we can!

We offer:
Constant nagging about 100% rep and guild events !
Forms to fill !
Hierarchy rules!
Timetables !
Horrible singing on VOIP!
Impossible accents!
Meetings to discuss the most efficient builds and consumables!
A toxic environment!
Buzzwords!
Kindergarten games!
Fancy self-important titles!
And another FAMILY! Cause that’s what we are!
Oh and every sunday night we spoil the last episode of Game of Thrones for everyone!

Hey, at least we’re not bulkittenting you! Join us today so you’ll have a place to sell kitten, fix your armor with one click and annoy everyone asking for favors after months of silence! We. Want. You!

whisper Harbard.5738

I mean engie got visually nerfed so bad ( RIP mortar) it almost killed my fun. Revert that kitten already! The chrono, the ele… jesus, wtf anet?! The coolest ffects are the reason i play this game for so long and my fav ones across the classes are getting so pitiful i’d rather play eso (that’s how depressed i am)

And yet, visual clutter is still there and always will. Make it a LOD option or restricted to pvp, SOMETHING that’s not this 90’s wet fart FX

necro bump for hope
it annoys me to no end. that and the pet’s skating back and forth all over the place, ninja rubberbanding like it’s a very happy dog on cocaine. Since the latter won’t be fixed, at least let us hide the godkitten ameplate floating around

Fort siege maps with siege weapons!! 8v8, 12v12 even 16v16!! One team defends the other tries to break in. (I woke up believing in miracles apparently :P)

Before people say this already happens in WvW, no, it never happens, never ever. If it’s not PvDoor, it’s a zergfest that often lasts 2min max, then the rest of WvW is the annoying running around. So, ironically, cool sieges is the last thing really happening in WvW.

https://scontent-a-mia.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-prn2/t1.0-9/1972311_766664863376431_2853608313993433031_n.jpg

The system is nearly as boring and restricted as transmutation stones.

Now I have a wardrobe full of junk skins that were auto-added cluttering everything and i can’t still play with skins without the charge restriction (it’s a lot of gold to just play with them freely on one char, to say across all chars).

The system would be way more fun and uncluttered (and still sell transmute charges) if you could use charges to unlock ONLY the skins that you wanted and then were allowed free transmutes to play with those skins at will.

Why town clothes weren’t converted to outfits or why outfits are a single-piece object is beyond me as well. Was it so hard to make it like Lotro or Rift even after their systems were consistently referenced as good systems during the CDI phase?

Meehael.8240:

It’s going to be very interesting to see how ESO will fare among competition.

ESO sucks so much they should be paying people to play it. As far as I’m concerned it might as well be the first Reverse P2P business model.

Well, I wouldn’t be surprised. If they can turn on their manifesto then it’s easy for them to turn on the sub thing right after that “free from sub mmo” campaign

GlowSticks.9734:

The new hammer one is amazing.. Now if it didn’t have a heart on it lol. Why can’t they make hammers in this game more appealing. _

Yeah, hammers and greatswords really suffer from the tumor-on-a-stick disease. When they make one that looks good, they slap a heart on it. I bet they have a competition agent infiltrated in their ranks telling them to make this stuff and not make gem money ever. (OR the great majority of GW2 players have crappy taste for gear :P)

Vayne.8563:

I’d wager an expansion will be announced closer to the release of some of the competing games that are coming out. It seems like good business sense. You want to rekindle interest in your game, you save the expansion for when it’s release will do you the most good..

Well, I’d definitely skip a paid expansion to GW2 and use the money on new games, should they launch close to each other. Heck, I’m not even sure I’d buy any expansion at all at any date. It would have to be something glorious to get my money at this point.

All I really hope is that they start accumulating features and releasing beefy feature updates instead of trickling down content , cause spreading it thin as it is diminishes the “omg new stuff” impact on players. That way they could start getting more goodwill toward the biweekly updates.

I’m sure they have learned that. I really want this update model to be successful and never change, I still have some faith.

Rouven.7409:

And what is the disco-balls message, dance or die?

To me that’s way more serious. Especially if those pants come back with the dancing.

Yeah and ANet is teaching kids to slaughter wildlife with Ambient Killer achievement.

On a more down to earth remark. I was glad it’s the first black lion set that actually includes a weapon that doesn’t look like a tumor on a stick, but then of course you had to slap a silly heart on it.

Hopefully ANet is gonna keep the functional-yet-elegant design for the coming weapons, and not slap silly stuff on them.

ronpierce.2760:

Harbard.5738:

ronpierce.2760:

Harbard.5738:

ronpierce.2760:

If you can play an MMO with absolutely 0 rewards, what is most peoples’ “fun factor”, that’s fine, but in that case you’d enjoy just about any game well designed or not… You’re a rarity, and frankly a lazy game designers delight.. x.X

Oh yeah, because it’s not totally lazy to make a game that’s just like a food dispenser that trickles down rewards instead of making a game that is engaging on it’s own and doesn’t need you to bribe you with illusory gains of money/shinies.

See, it’s way harder to design a really good game with really engaging gameplay than set up loot tables for you to roll on.

I forgot how engaging buying grinding gold to buy all the mats you need to do everything with was. My bad. I didn’t say other games had it perfect. But they’re certainly a hell of a lot better than this.

I’m not saying GW2 is super engaging. I’m saying YOU are the lazy dev’s dream. And the fact I had to spell it out to you again pretty much explains why.

Um… What? So you’re saying dealing with loot tables and having some sort of depth to armor and where it comes from is MORE lazy than: Everything is crafted but takes 250 (max stack) of items AND You can get the rare precursors from anywhere in the game! Oh, but t6 mats are like 1 in 100 loot bags (not even specific materials just any t6) and a precursor is some ridiculously low number.

This solution isn’t less lazy. It’s definitely more lazy. The grind is so kittening long because it means they don’t have to keep ANDING MORE CONTENT. So don’t try to call me out like you’re some genius. You’re fooled by the geniuses who stopped putting the carrot on a stick and put it in a fishing pole so they could cast it out further….

Good god… facepalm. If you need further clarification, feel free to PM me! xD

ronpierce.2760:

Harbard.5738:

ronpierce.2760:

If you can play an MMO with absolutely 0 rewards, what is most peoples’ “fun factor”, that’s fine, but in that case you’d enjoy just about any game well designed or not… You’re a rarity, and frankly a lazy game designers delight.. x.X

Oh yeah, because it’s not totally lazy to make a game that’s just like a food dispenser that trickles down rewards instead of making a game that is engaging on it’s own and doesn’t need you to bribe you with illusory gains of money/shinies.

See, it’s way harder to design a really good game with really engaging gameplay than set up loot tables for you to roll on.

I forgot how engaging buying grinding gold to buy all the mats you need to do everything with was. My bad. I didn’t say other games had it perfect. But they’re certainly a hell of a lot better than this.

I’m not saying GW2 is super engaging. I’m saying YOU are the lazy dev’s dream. And the fact I had to spell it out to you again pretty much explains why.

ronpierce.2760:

If you can play an MMO with absolutely 0 rewards, what is most peoples’ “fun factor”, that’s fine, but in that case you’d enjoy just about any game well designed or not… You’re a rarity, and frankly a lazy game designers delight.. x.X

Oh yeah, because it’s not totally lazy to make a game that’s just like a food dispenser that trickles down rewards instead of making a game that is engaging on it’s own and doesn’t need you to bribe you with illusory gains of money/shinies.

See, it’s way harder to design a really good game with really engaging gameplay than set up loot tables for you to roll on.

There is subclassing already: builds. They just need to:

1) Be spelled out by the devs to the average player

There should be presets for each build that take their staple skills and traits and show where the player can fine tune. This is important especially in PvP, so players are taught not to come up with entirely horrible builds and is also aware of the roles available to their class. So why make it look unnecessarily open-ended, since it all boils down to a certain number of roles? Since that there are traits that are meant to go with each other?

2) All be relevant (in PvE as well)

3) Ironed out with new skills that reinforce certain roles.

4) Get lots of QoL love
Trait and skill saving, swapping, equipment load outs saving, easy rune and sigil swapping, stat swapping etc…

__
All that “subclassing” stuff can emerge from a properly supported ROLE system, already intended with builds (skills, traits and gear). Only after that we can come up with new roles too.

Cycling events are a great idea to deliver horizontal progression
I really like all those suggestions of expeditions and random DE chains. i’d run them even if there was no progression or rewards at all. The challenge I suppose is making them unpredictable enough. But anything, especially DEs, that change daily, weekly, monthly, seasonally, whatever, is just great stuff.

Why group events suck though
I just wish there were no more group-only events, because they stay dead unless a zerg or something runs the whole chain in 10 mins and flips it and then it stays dead for hours, maybe days again. All solo events should scale to prevent all the facerolling, but no events should be group-only. It kills the spontaneity that’s the best part of DEs: You’re just exploring and bump into one guy doing some event, and another guy joins you and stuff scales and you end up on the other corner of the zone with 10-15 people and everyone had fun, as opposed to “begged in chat for an hour to get enough people to run a temple and was glad I was done with that crap”.

ColinJohanson.2394:

Romo.3709:

Given the fact that the questing is a thing of the past, maybe instead of having “trainers” be merchants, we can create a small instance (no bigger than Ascension Arena in GW1) where you’re presented with a task having your regular weapon skill and only that one utility skill you’re trying to learn.
With a trainer (now in real meaning of the word) looking over you, giving you pointers as to what to do in situation he/she had presented you with.
It’s just a small concept, but this way you’d earn your skill rather than just outright buy it, while learning it at the same time. Maybe give it an attempt cost? Creating an ability to fail such quest?

I think this could have a lot of potential as well, depending on the ability it could even change up the game-play/experience.

The next challenge: We want to put as much content in the open world as possible, so you’re constantly running into other players and having great social experiences. This is one of the pillars of Gw2, and why we try and avoid instances as much as possible. How would you modify this system to work in the open world? (I see a lot of easy ways – skill point challenges are very similar to this, but it’s fun to ask you!)

Here are my ideas to new skill acquisition, all simple enough anybody gets it and hopefully fun to most people (i know i’d be having tons of it)

PVE avenue

Why not triggerable and scalable boss events? Better than plain old skill challenges that are not challenging at all, especially when 2+ people are involved. You talk to an npc, trigger a soloable event that scales if more people join after you. So no one has to be waiting on anything and players are going to know where to go because they are directed by a order storyline, or better yet, a PACT storyline that actually involves elder dragons (or at least not involving any hihihihohoho lame characters). I’d have fun dueling a veteran that uses that skill i’m trying to capture, a la queen’s jubilee arena, and it could scale to champion and spawn trash mobs if more people join.

As far as I’m concerned, it doesn’t have to be anything shocking new, DEs are great stuff. As long as people don’t have to camp bosses and events a la EQ1, it would be fun.

PVP avenue

Pit two random opponents using a locked down prefab build using the skill to be acquired. The winner wins the skill. This could be either instanced or a duel in the open world where others could watch. It needs to be a random queue though, cause otherwise people will just lose on purpose to their friends.

WvW avenue

If you beat anyone that has a skill you don’t have, you could be able to learn it with skill points, as long it was an up to 5v5 fight. Don’t know how technically feasible it is to check if it was a small scale fight, but that’s an idea.

—
I like these two avenues because it takes skill rather than time spent, apparently they don’t have a path of least resistance and they’re fun.

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

In an earlier forum post one of the devs stated that they had added new events like the ones mentioned by Colin to (last years) Halloween event. He came to the conclusion that because of lack of player feedback this isn’t something players enjoy, so they scrapped the idea of adding new events and increasing the rotation timers of existing ones.

My guess is that instead of adding new events to existing zones permanently, Anet developed those new events we get through the living world releases. The thing is: we are far away from a 200% increase of number of events per zone like Colin mentioned. (His words were: in a zone which offers 100 events at release, a year from now you will see 300 events – something like that).

Sadness. Hope they review that decision.

Ok, so maybe we should discuss the open world here, then. I leveled 8 chars to 80 because I thought DEs were fun. I was too happy playing the game to give any feedback.

So I’m sure there is (or at least was) a lot of people who felt like me about the game at the time, possible some of them are still here or returned lately to check out the world actually changing again after 1.5 year. Now If this becomes a game about DEs, changing environments, stuff happening in the open world and horizontal progression tied to the open world, i’m pretty sure they’d come back.

I can’t possible fathom why the game DIDN’T go the route of adding more DEs, (that give karma) and add more horizontal rewards for karma and skill points from the get go, end of story. “Why, if it’s so simple it probably sucks, duh…” Who am i to know, right?

So speaking for myself: Give me new fun DEs and i don’t need a single new reward or “horizontal progression” to keep playing. But as far as horizontal progression is concerned, something that makes ascended less stupid, or at least tolerable (like swapping stats), weapons, skills, builds and cosmetics is what I care about.

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

The personal story instances are the only place I can see this happening. I don’t think it’s worth the development time for that limited gameplay content aspect.

You’ve got a point. What if barren group events could let you get your heroes out? If there’s no one out, you can call your heroes. So many dead zones and untouched group events out there that could use this…

Orpheal.8263:

The Companion will be exactly 1:1 that, what the character is on your account, so when you use it, the A.I. controls that character weith exactly your equipment, your equippen weapon(s) and traits ect.

That’s really expensive to do, I’m betting. I’d be totally happy with companions that just look like my alts and have their names but fight with a default AI package. I don’t care, it would still be pure awesome. AND it would sell char slots!

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

Chrispy.5641:

Dang, weapon skills are pulling ahead of everything else in this thread. I hope its relatively cheap(er than other features) to implement.

this is one of my biggest fears, people want more of the same… Anet already works on new weapons/armors and skill… shouldn’t here be more discussion about new ideas? If Anet thinks that the lack of new skills, weapons and armors is our biggest flaw, then I’d see a boring GW2 future.

Imho the reason why people don’t go to zones needs to be adressed in the first place. What good are new skills if you find no interesting reason to go out there (except WvW) and use it?

Well this is a horizontal progression CDI. They’re asking specifically about progression and not all other ways of keep people playing PvE. But it’s obvious that if nothing is done in the open world and if they don’t give us a real reason to run events with everyone on all zones other than grind for pink crap, then it’s all for nothing. No matter how many weapons and skills, and skins and wardrobes they dump in the game. That’s the core PvE game and it needs love.

I wonder what happened to that talk about rotating DEs across the zones and make things more interesting. I remember Colin saying it was relatively cheap to make them and that they could add more of them across the zones and rotate them. What happened to that?

If they could tie the whole faction thing with more dynamic and rotating events and a reason to play in the open world, coupled with living story and WITH those horizontal rewards/progression, that would make PvE it come alive again. But that needs its own CDI (asap, imo).

Randulf.7614:

On a slightly side note, only a small proportion of the community are contributing to this discussion, as good and valuable as it is. If you as devs are as behind this as you say, it might be worth highlighting these initiatives a bit more to the wider community. Granted, if people don’t use the forum now, they probably wont, but may be a link on the news part of the login page is a good way to alert ppl to visit here.

Exactly. There should be a login post on this. What’s the point of running a CDI if you’re collecting opinions from just a bunch of forum goers? Aren’t we the loud minority? (or some crap like that).

What about that post-karka-lag-cataclysm survey? Why not run something like that as well?

• Alts as followers

I like this idea a lot. That would be one of the most awesome things to ever hit mmos in decades and a great incentive for “alting” as horizontal progression.This is horizontal progression if you think player, not character. For every alt you level you unlock a new hero, the alt himself, and you could play with them. as a full group, in instanced areas, such as dungeons, like in GW1, but those heroes would be your own alts as npcs. I could even play those instances with little or no coin/item rewards (if that’s used as a measure against botted farming, for instance). But it would be still every bit as awesome.

All I want to ask is, whatever you do, think of what is FUN to keep people coming back, not what is most habit-inducing. Don’t start getting all too crazy with the grind and the reward schedules all over again. As far as I’m concerned this game is fun because of things like fun combat skills (gw2 is great at this), Dynamic Events and recent living story (because of the actual change in the world) and not all the “progression”/reward/currency/gear clutter added in the last year and half (boooring). So for the love of god, focus on that. But as far as Horizontal progression goes:

TOP 3

• New weapons and skills for each class
  They should be the same level of power. Don’t add power creep like in GW1. Add variety and FUN. Anything with fun animations and leaps and spins, please. The system has to be consistent. Can’t have a run of the mill skill costing 1/ 5/10 skill points while a similar one costs 30. Lacks coherence.

• Unlockable cosmetic gear loadouts (or outfit tabs) – maybe even for actual gear
  LOTRO and Rift have this, and additional tabs are unlockable from the gemstore. But in GW2 , in addition to the store, you could actually acquire this spending karma, for instance. If you’re acquiring it by playing, it becomes horizontal progression

• Save slots for builds unlocked with skillpoints
  You should be able to save entire trait and skill sets and switch freely (out of combat). So people keeps leveling past 80 and using those skillpoints. It’s part QOL, part horizontal progression. To feel like you’re getting increasingly flexible with a class is really fun.

OTHER GOOD IDEAS

• Unlockable emotes

• Taxidermy and other furniture for houses and guild halls
  Boss and creature heads on your wall. Achievement furniture. Other collectible furniture from mobs, events, holidays etc. LOTRO is a good example of this. This stuff is not strictly progression, but any collectibility and displaying of achievements gives this sort of progression feel.

• Title progression (no stats)
  This is especially good in WvW. People want to be able to show off what they’re good at and they will play for it more eagerly than for stats. Titles associated with orders, the pact, each zone…

• Unlimited-withdraw skin wardrobe
  It should still use stones or karma to STORE skins and expand the storage, but be always FREE to withdraw.

BAD IDEAS

• Withdrawing copied skins from wardrobe at some sort of fee
  The FUN of collecting skins comes from knowing you’re going to be able to constantly change and experiment with them. If you want something to be collectible, you have to OWN it, not renting it every time you’re changing looks. It’s just redundant, it’s going to end up being as annoying like it is right now: people eventually get turned off and stop collecting skins, because they’re not fun and are restricted.

• Subclassing

There is subclassing already in the form of builds. Just polish each build and make them more EVIDENT to every player.

RagingDragon.9475:

They are removing PvP and PvE armor and they will be merging into just Armor. Essencially you will be wearing the same armor in PvE as well as PvP, but the stats will be adjusted for PvP. If I understand it correctly

The thing I want to know is what they are doing with the PvP locker? Will it be turned into a skin locker or something? And I want to buy t3 Cultural PvP Armor for my Norn, but I already have it for PvE, would I just be wasting my glory buying it?

But if PvE armor is going to work in PvP, even if my kittenty stats get adjusted to sPvP, does that mean I need to buy sigils with gold from the tp? Is the pvp armor turning into skins? Any info out on how that’s gonna work exactly?

I’m, a bit confused about the changes in sPvP gear. What’s gonna happen to the sPvP armor I have? What about the looks?

What about sigils, amulets? They’re not gonna be free anymore?

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Hi All,

Here is the next evolution of the original Vertical Progression proposal based on a summary of our discussions:

Regarding Ascended Gear we would like to see more ways to earn it and in terms of drop rates, a higher percentage chance of acquiring them through this method.

A review of current RNG metrics.

The ability to change gear stats (Note there is still a lot of discussion about whether people want this or not)

The ability to build up to Ascended Gear through drops rather than just relying on RNG.

Ascended Gear mats dropping more equally across the game, for example WvW.

No more new Gear tiers that make the existing tiers obsolete.

Additional ways to earn Ascended Gear at accelerated for Alts.

Note this is the formulation of a proposal for discussion. Once the proposal is finalized it will be discussed internally. However there will be no promise of actions or schedule.

Chris

Bump. We are close to being able to move onto the ‘focused’ Horizontal Progression part of this conversation.

Does anyone have anymore comments on the proposal above based on our discussions?

Chris

Would you add the tier upgrading idea? Like being able to upgrade rare into exotics into ascended into legendary… at reduced costs? How about level upgrading? Like upgrading a level 70 exotic piece to level 80 for instance? Maybe via crafting, to give it more purpose. Maybe it could be a way to keep the tiers equidistant as you want, forming one single upgrade line that involves no replacements, but upgrades. Otherwise people are always going to go masterwork all the way up to lvl 80 then leap to ascended or just stay at exotics.

At any rate, thanks a lot for the space, I think we’re ready for horizontal

Coldtart.4785:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Is it fair to say that regarding Ascended Gear we would like to see more ways to earn it and in terms of drop rates, a higher percentage chance of acquiring them through this method?

Chris

As long as ascended gear is ‘Better-than-BiS’ it will continue to run against the very core of character building in Guild Wars 2, regardless of how short or how long it takes to obtain. Optimising your character is not about just getting the biggest stat total, it’s about getting the right stats for you. This takes a whole lot of theory and practical experimentation to determine both how valuable different aspects of performance are to you and how to best achieve your desired level of performance.

Ascended appears to have been built in a very half-hearted manner to try to appease both stat-chasers and people opposed to vertical progression. As a result it’s utterly meaningless from a gameplay point of view, offering nothing to stat-chasers while still being vertical progression.

My earlier proposal which I will give the short version of here was for exotic gear to be able to be upgraded with customisation slots that allow for selecting a different skin, stat type and/or rune/sigil and the item becoming ‘ascended’ once it reaches a certain quantity of customisations, allowing it to then be used as a legendary precursor.

This setup would remove post-game vertical progression in favour of horizontal build variety without invalidating the effort people have put into obtaining existing ascended items, while also making ascended into a true bridge between exotic and legendary rather than competition for mats as it currently is.

Now that’s a great observation: The way the game fosters build diversity and gear VP are incompatible. Also I like his proposition.

Tyrannus Blade.3408:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Aeonblade.8709:

Lheimroo.2947:

Moshari.8570:

Give the ascended gear either “limited” stat swapping or full stat swapping like legendaries…or a way (a quest for instance) that would allow you to Add a stat for stat swapping.

If there were epic quests in place where you could unlock stat combinations for your gear that’d be.. awesome. That would be unbelievably awesome.

No more grind; make it about challenges.

I agree, would love to hear from Chris on this idea specifically, epic quest chains to unlock swappable item stats and new item stat combos.

This is a cool idea. Lots of logic problems to think about in regard to it. Need more time to think (-:

Chris

If I’m understanding this right then the suggestion involves the idea of one piece of gear having many possible stat combos unlocked for it which can be swapped out on the fly so you don’t need a set of gear for each build. I wonder if it would be possible to also extend this idea to include swappable sigils and runes on weapons and armour so that one set of ascended really can work for all builds with the right unlocks.

That would be awesome. I’d always rather spend gold and time in stat/sigili/rune flexibility than higher stats.

cesmode.4257:

Chris, could you or anyone else comment on something that is a splinter in many of our minds:

Are there plans for ascended runes and sigils? Taking that a step further, are there plans for ascended runes and sigils that can only be placed on ascended gear?

I think this question deserves an answer before a large amount of people pass on creating ascended weapons and armor believing it is the last bit of ascended only to, again, be sideswiped by more power creep and widening the gap more between ascended and exotic.

Im dying to know the answer to this :/

Me too, I bet most people would really like an answer to this.

cesmode.4257:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Is it fair to say that regarding Ascended Gear we would like to see more ways to earn it and in terms of drop rates, a higher percentage chance of acquiring them through this method?

Chris

One thing I want to…point out. You had to have been aware that we want multiple ways of obtaining this gear. This should not be/is not a surprise to you. In fact, early on in the ascended gear debate, going back almost a year, it was mentioned by Arenanet that these items would be obtained through various means. Now, the only way to get an ascended weapon or armor is via crafting. Id like to give arenanet the benefit of the doubt here, but I have a hard time swallowing the idea that arenanet was not aware or did not perceive that we would want multiple ways of acquiring these items.

Precisely. This is last year all over again, I find it hard to believe they didn’t know we would want different avenues to get the gear. My bet is they’re just testing how many people are willing to take on this stupid grind and drawn an average or whatever with their metrics and tone it down later based on the data.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

FeveredDreamer.2693:

I realize this is a bit behind the current debate but it was a good question which seemed worth answering.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Agreed. Let’s spend a little more time discussing and brainstorming the following questions:

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

Lets keep coming up with some awesome Horizontal Progression systemic ideas and also reward ideas?

Try to tie these ideas into the core foundation of GW2’s systems and mechanics please.

Chris

While I prefer horizontal progression, vertical progression does not in and of itself suck, the problem is that ANet chose perhaps the poorest quality way of developing vertical progression. Vertical progression via items is particularly terrible because of its innately “temporary” feeling, bottom line sooner or later all of the effort you’ve put into vertical progression via item grind becomes pointless. I’ll try to explain my thoughts on the subject succinctly below.

What is fun about vertical progression?

• The feeling of character growth
• The thrill of progress and the feeling that your efforts are being rewarded
• The ability to display your time and effort spent

What is not fun about vertical progression?

• The invalidation of all of your past efforts
• The feeling of monotony

What might be done to make vertical progression in GW2 more enjoyable?

• Attach more progression to your character rather than gear
• Make gear upgradeable rather than disposable

People rarely point out SWTOR as a brillaint show of MMO ideas, but lots of the account unlock ideas worked into SWTOR would work nicely in GW. This material was all doubtlessly vertical progression but it wasn’t attached to RNG and the newest “Sword of Pwning +1” that would soon be made worthless by your “Sword of Pwning +2”. Even in GW2 the new approach to infusions (though it sucks that they can’t be removed, fix this) is built on developing strength rather than replacing it. You combine your +1 infusions to get +2s, rather than just throwing those +1s away.

Good post Dreamer. Excellent food for thought.

Chris

On this line, gear tiers could be upgradable at considerably lower mat costs than what it costs to make a brand new piece. And all ascended gear should be precursors to legendary gear, that’s the only way it’s gonna fill any gap between exotics and legendaries, otherwise it’s just competing for resources.

Still, VP as far as combat power goes, always stumbles on WvW. Otherwise WvW is only going to mean Wallet vs Wallet or my free time vs your free time. There is enough “unfairness” and random circumstances to keep things interesting. Making it more unfair will break it.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Is it fair to say that regarding Ascended Gear we would like to see more ways to earn it and in terms of drop rates, a higher percentage chance of acquiring them through this method?

Chris

At the very least that should be the proposal, and it should be there form the beginning. Also really important: volume of materials, and time gating. Stat “swapability” could also add real value to the tier, I really hope it’s part of the new proposal.

Now, is restricting ascended slots and extra stats only to fractals or dungeons totally out of the table on anet’s side, Chris?

What about on the player’s side? What you guys think?

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Harbard.5738:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Reesha.7901:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Reesha.7901:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Ok another brainstorm idea.

What if certain pieces of ascended gear could be crafted and sold on the TP such as gloves and boots?

Chris

Yes please, or even better:
All pieces could be crafted and sold on the TP.
All pieces could change stats.
All pieces could be obtained outside crafting without relying on RNG.

Personally and note this is not the opinion of Arena but I like the idea of uniquely skinned BiS items dropping in challenging content. My opinion as a player is that the current drop rates could be tweaked.

Chris

That will not remove the RNG factor…. Look at it this way:
Say you increased the drop rate on Tequatl. That means a higher change to get a weapon. But it is still RNG.
Some people will get several drops, others will get nothing, most will get items with the wrong stat combination. Please, please, please: No more RNG!

What if you could sell them? Thus complimentary to other forms of acquisition?

Chris

What’s the point of having an unique skin drop from a challenging encounter if you can just buy it on TP? Isn’t the point of the skin showing you beat the challenge? If a unique gear is gonna drop from a challenging encounter, it should be guaranteed and account bound, and the encounter really tough.

Yep your right sorry I should have given more detail in the brainstorm idea. In the idea I imagined Sunless not being trade able but other normal Ascended gear being trade able. Note this is just a brainstorm idea.

Chris

Non tradeable content-specif skin is great. Tradeable run-of-the-mill ascended sounds good in the beginning, but at these drop rates, they’re gonna be as expensive as precursors, and very prone to speculation, flipping etc… I think higher drop rates and keeping them account bound makes it more interesting. You could be able to pick in the box the type of gear and stat combo tho.

Bottom line: Find it while playing always beats the “farm, buy on tp” drudgery. But drop rates have to be decent.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

cesmode.4257:

Im simply amazed at the amount of people that are opposed to vertical progression being confined to FoTM. If you think about it, it is the only place ascended gear is required(currently). So why does a stat increase even need to exist outside of it?

If ascended stats were confined to fractals, then the rest of us who may not want to step foot into fractals would not need to worry about power creep or a treadmill in the open world.

Im very much in favor of this and again, Im amazed that people are against it.

Yep and kudos to you Cesmode for offering the counter argument.

Chris

CONFINED VERTICAL PROGRESSION -> AWESOME

I’m with Cesmode here. The beauty of fracts is that it doesn’t gate you out of CONTENT like traditional MMOs raids do. So, if ascended only increase in stats inside fracts, people in exotics can still play the content from levels 1-10 but people that gear up like crazy still get better money, etc.

But out there in Tyria, especially WvW we’re all at exotics level, everybody is happy, the grind doesn’t have to be dealt with, the game won’t be alt unfriendly because of ascended, people won’t have issues with the tier, the game is still gonna rock and people can totally progress their stats vertically in fracts if they want, if they don’t, they can still play the content for fun, with little reward other than fun itself, at exotics level.

I think this is absolutely beautiful and simple solution for ascended as far as progression goes.

EXPANDING THIS CONCEPT OF CONFINED VP

In the same way fracts are done, dungeons could also have levels. People could still play them in exotics from 1-10, for example, and then they’d need ascended for higher levels. Again: higher stats in ascended and their infusions would ONLY work in leveled instances, similar to fracts. Everyone can play the content at exotics, but better geared people playing at higher levels get finishers, RANK EMOTES, maybe more gold, ascended drops, etc etc.

If this is how it works, if ascended entirely scales back to exotics in the Open World and WvW, stats can increase indefinitely on gear as far as I’m concerned. I think this is a way to make happy virtually irreconcilable parts of the community.

The Lost Witch.7601:

Harbard.5738:

1) Once we have one set of gear, why bother getting any new ones and find new skins

With the current prices on ascended gear you’re lucky if you ever complete ONE set of armor and weapons at all in the coming year. Assuming you’re the average player. If we have a skin wardrobe, the quest for skins is still on.

2) it devalues non interchangeable stat gear

Devaluing previous tiers is how vertical progression that don’t use upgrades goes. I don’t like it, but that’s how they chose to make it. Not my fault. Your exotic is still worse than ascended, flex stats or not. The only difference is that an ascended set would be worth the time investment.

3) it removes the opportunity for unique stat combos

No, it doesn’t. Just add that unique stat combo to the pool of combos you can pick. Now is unique stat combo from Tequatl for instance a good idea? I don’t think so.

To 1) I didn’t mean that sticking to what we have was better than what you have in mind. Just that there are real downsides to that suggestion. Personally I would like to see ascended gear way more accessible. So completing more than one set would be a real option.

As for the skin wardrobe: yes, that’d be great. Although personally: I am not much of a collector. When I have a need for a new armor, I search for looks that fit the build. The joy that I get from mix/matching armors is directly related to my desire for new gear, not just a desire for a new skin.

To 2) Currently I can have an ascended clerics mace. When I find a berserker exotic mace I can use it for a different build set-up. With interchangeable stats the second mace is completely useless. There is a big difference between these two situations, even though ascended is clearly better than exotic in both cases. I hope this clarifies the point I was trying to make?

To 3) So there is a limit to how many stats you can pick with interchangeable stat-gear? I thought you meant that we could pick pretty much every existing stat combination like we can with legendary gear. I suppose there could be something inbetween. And the current implementation of Tequatls ascended gear is not good, that doesn’t mean that the idea doesn’t have merit. I imagine a system where there are 30+ bosses/quests all over Tyria that each have their own ascended rewards with unique stats attached. But yeah, I suppose we could ‘unlock’ certain stats on these interchangeable weapons through those bosses/quests? We might be on to something here.

1) They will never make ascended as accessible as exotics, that’s why they created the tier anyway, to be a pain in the kitten to get and slow people down and keep em playing longer. I, like you, love creating sets that LOOK like their stats. My “tanky” gear always looks beefier etc. I know what you’re talking about. Thing is, as far as builds go, having 3/4 sets on your inventory is not practical with ascended. Period. You are never gonna get it on one char much less on alts like you can with exotics. Do you really think they’re gonna trivialize something made to be a pain in the kitten to get to the point you can have many sets on your main and a couple of alts in a reasonable time?

Ascended not as accessible as exotics and will never be. People’s claim for flex stats is a VERY GOOD one because of the time investment required and the killing of builds, best of all, it uses a system that it’s already in the game and have COST ZERO. In other words, they can implement it in weeks, not months. So, realistically, with the system we currently have, it’s is a kick kitten solution with minimal if none downsides at all. The fact we won’t enjoy making stuff that looks like their stats (which is really sad) is very minimal compared to the good it will do to this mess of a tier.

Quickie: Content-specific stat combos: WvWers will cry, and they should. All stat combos should be available to everyone.

ASCENDED GEAR AND ALT FRIENDLYNESS

Why simply allowing ascended copying is not the way for alt-friendlyness

If you have a warrior and and elementalist, you’re pretty much at the same place you were before. Can’t copy much from a warrior to an ele.

The current account-wide bonus system is a good way for alt-friendlyness

• For every ascended item you build, mat costs are cut by say +50% account-wide.
• For every craft you master, the next one is say +50% faster to level account-wide.
• For every ascended piece you buy with laurels, you get a progressive say +50% discount account-wide

A lot can be derived from those ideas, and again, all of this could use the current account-wide bonuses system.

Dev’s asked: What’s fun about Vertical Progression?

Answer: When it ends. It’s not supposed to be a joke (well, not only). VP only has a purpose and feels meaningful to me when it ENDS, when your each a peak and then it starts branching out horizontally. Initial VP IS fun, but it has to PEAK to be fun. If it doesn’t peak forever in the story of the game then it becomes just a never-ending pain in the kitten of having to accomplish something you already did over and over.