Guild Wars 2

Colin just confirmed the “loot bug” and guess what, DR has nothing to do with it.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Update-on-Loot-Drops-Investigation/first#post1462956

It took months, but we finally have vindication. Good job Anet, can’t wait for the next patch.

Focus discussion/feedback/tears of joy here.

This should be stickied.

Everyone who thinks that Anet “broke” their design principles are wrong, period.

I didn’t buy into GW2 being the second coming of christ; I just wanted a AAA MMO with no sub made by ArenaNet. And it’s awesome.

Calae.1738:

I’m not sure how long they will be able to sustain this though. Their Achilles heel is a AAA MMO targeted to a mature audience. The Disney stuff might be tolerable for awhile but; it’ll get dumped really fast. Your average MMO gamers is over 30 and is demanding mature content.

Good thing people are capable of playing more than one game at a time. Otherwise this all or nothing argument would hold water.

Open your eyes, you’ll see, your eyes are open.

HiddenNick.7206:

clay.7849:

This is a great video someone showed me once about the difference between extrinsic and intrinsic rewards playing video games.

Author did a mistake there… In WoW your grinding not to just get the items but to get items powerful enough to overcome next challenge. What’s wrong with that?!

The progression is stagnant. You’re not actually getting stronger, you’re just coming up to par with whatever the top happens to be at that step in the treadmill.

Vayne.8563:

Blacklight.2871:

Murderin.8269:

Adine.2184:

Murderin.8269:

A game without a subscription will never die.

This is a false statement . it depends on the quality of the game and the financial soundness of the company . Many free games have gone poof over the years

I figured that was obvious. Anyway neither of those apply to GW2 in the first place.

Unless there are serious developmental mistakes this game will be active until Guild Wars 3.

They’ve been making serious developmental mistakes since launch. Doesn’t seem to have had much of an adverse effect. Though it’s hard to tell without subscription numbers to use for a relative comparison. The hiring page is pretty much the only clear evidence that ANet isn’t hurting.

If the game is healthy, maybe they aren’t mistakes. I mean how many people say the Fractals was a mistake. Ascended gear is a mistake. The new super action box is a mistake. For each person who claims something is a mistake, another person likes it.

I think selling stuff in the shop that’s RNG is a mistake…I hate it. But it’s probably making them money. Over the long haul, they’ll probably make more money doing that. They’ll lose some players over it. Is it a mistake?

There have been a couple of mistakes, objectively, like the way the Lost Shores event was run…that was definitely a mistake, but a lot of things that people call mistakes are only mistakes from certain viewpoints.

And the take away from these mistakes is that Anet is learning what works and what doesn’t. Every release has been an improvement upon the game.

I thought I’d seen it all on this forum.

Your premise is extremely flawed.

Please post evidence that substantiates your hypothesis that ANet is specifically targeting the impoverished demographic. And no, analogies don’t count as evidence.

On the topic of trying to please casuals and hardcore both, I think a lot of posters are missing a key piece of the puzzle.

The playerbase isn’t split 50-50. This isn’t a coin where heads is casual gamers and tails is hardcore gamers, and Anet flips the coin and develops features for either side.

I contend that there is an area in the middle that people like myself fall into. I used to be a hardcore MMO player when I was in high school and while I was attending college. Now that I’m in the work force I don’t have that kind of time to dedicate, but I still enjoy the challenge and and long-term goals that “hardcore” options grant me.

This game’s design has been tailor-made for my play time and my motivations. I am smack-dab in the middle of casual and hardcore, and every addition to the game has appealed to me on some level. I like the hardcore options, they give me purpose. I like the casual currencies, they reward me for my limited play time.

I figure I represent the population of the game who is neither hurt nor hindered by any of the additions to the game thus far. If the playerbase is a bell curve between hardcore types and casual types, the grey area between the two extremes will most likely be the satisfied silent majority that constitutes the primary population (read: target audience) in the game.

Like Tobias, I can only intuit that this is the case, I have no evidence other than anecdotal conversations with several members of the community and members of whatever current guild I happen to be representing when I talk about the game.

TL;DR: The compromise that Anet is making between hardcore and casual appeals to the people that fall between the two extremes, and from my observations, the amount of players in the “grey area” constitute the majority of the active player base.

DocHolliday.5921:

Mackdose.6504:

DocHolliday.5921:

Mackdose.6504:

Bastien.1645:

That logic is flawed.

So let’s take 2 of the best spvp players in this game ever, top guilds etc.

They duel each other and the one who loses is now terrible at this game ?! That makes 0 sense, in a duel/1v1 there will always be a victor and a loser, doesn’t mean the loser is terrible just because he was outmatched!

By the way guys, there’s a similar thread in the WvWvW forums if you want to check that out as well.

I’m pretty sure that in a fight between equally skilled opponents, the one that makes a mistake first loses.

I mean, equally skilled opponents mean that one sides wins 50% of the time.

Sure, if they have equal equipment. It’s not that hard to not make mistakes though, especially if it’s one vs one, which means the player with the better equipment will always win.

Bottom line, you’re basing your entire argument off the assumption that the player with ascended gear will make a mistake the other player can exploit, BEFORE the player in the worse gear makes a mistake, or that he will make more mistakes than the player with worse gear. In fact, you’re not actually arguing equal skill at all. In your scenario, the player in the worse gear has better skill. That’s such an unbelievably bad argument to make in defense of gear upgrades.

I’m making the argument that the better class/build/player will change the outcome before gear came into play, a concept that no one seems to grasp.

Ok, so now you’re changing your argument. You’re really desperate, aren’t you? Guess what. That still doesn’t change the opposing argument, which is and always has been:

“So again, how exactly is that a reason to put in ascended gear? If it doesn’t make any difference, why not just leave it out? "

I haven’t changed my argument. Again, read the thread.

Ascended gear is already in, that’s the reason not to remove it.

I know this might be hard for you to swallow, but WvW lets you use the PvE gear you’ve earned on your character rather than normalizing it like sPvP.

This is because WvW isn’t a level playing field, never has been. Upscaled players are disadvantaged; should we scale everyone in the game down to a upscale 80 in rares so you can be secure that gear isn’t the reason you’re losing/winning?

Hell, let’s keep going. Let’s make everyone the same class too, since those vary drastically in strength, and we don’t want that kind of imbalance in a mode that’s supposed to be competitive. /rolleyes

azizul.8469:

there should be an option of getting an ascended gear by mystique forging an exotic gear together with few other items, possibly earned by completing the main storyline…

remember in GW1, you get your gear infused by taking a normal gear to an NPC after completing a quest…. that’s all….

You can do this with the triforge amulet.

Hawkian.6580:

Astralporing.1957:

Yes. good luck completely gearing (which includes amulets) two chars in two weeks

You can “completely gear” two characters in about 15 minutes.

The circular path that these discussions follow always strikes me as so peculiar, because they all seem to boil down to the idea that “gearing up” your character means “obtaining a best-in-slot item for every slot.” Why? Is it other games that reinforced the idea that this was necessary? It wasn’t something that I considered particularly important even before Ascended gear was added. First of all, it’s not really cost effective! Lots of level 80 exotic pieces are outrageously overpriced on the TP considering the diminishing returns on stacking stats.

We talk about Ascended gear like it’s corrupting ArenaNet’s vision of a skill-driven game focusing on horizontal progression, while suddenly forgetting what an actual gear treadmill honestly looks like. It’s almost as though someone has been spreading around the rumor that equipping that final piece of best-in-slot gear, finally putting on that Ascended amulet you’ve been required to grind for, unlocks some secret part of the game that you can’t reach otherwise. But such a rumor would be best described as an outright lie.

There’s no individual piece of content in the game that requires Ascended gear. There’s no piece of content in the game in the game that requires level-80 Exotic gear. There’s no piece of content in the game, quite frankly, that requires level 80 Rare gear, especially when it comes to accessories, as my Mesmer still wearing a laughably old blue amulet can attest. Nothing- nothing is tuned to require a specific threshold of gear to be able to complete. It’s simply not that type of game.

I want to stress that this is true even for high-level fractals. You do stand a much better chance of surviving if them if you have Ascended gear, but this is because of the infusions that provide Agony Resistance, and not because of the stat increase. Indeed, thinking that the stat boost of an ascended piece will help you out noticeably in high-level fractals- rather than the needed improvement in skill, forethought and survivability- will get you killed rapidly.

That leaves WvW, where the rather more legitimate complaint comes in that you’re going up against other humans on uneven footing. But I’d counter that WvW was designed to be, at all times, wildly unbalanced in any individual encounter. It’s not meant to put players on an even playing field. Even so, I will indeed be happy when WvW-only players get their method of acquiring Ascended gear.

My overarching point is that when someone says “you don’t need Ascended gear” they’re not trying to pull one over on you; they’re telling the truth.

I just don’t understand where the idea came from in the first place, and just on top of that it really is not particularly taxing to get if you do want it- 10 daily runs of Fractal level 10 for a ring of your choice, with a chance for an extra one each time. It only gets easier from there. Is doing your daily and monthly considered too much for casual players who wish to pursue an ascended piece? Can the argument really be reduced to “I have 6 level 80s and it’s going to take me 6 times as long to get them all the best gear in the game?”

Anyway, if anyone reading and scared that they omg need ascended gear this is a grindy nightmare must get it would like a more detailed explanation as to how GW2 does not feature a gear treadmill in any real sense, I can give one with shiny stats and examples and what have you; feel free to PM me.

Dude, I’ve been trying to explain this since Nov. 15th. Good luck.

2/10.

Not everyone who loved WoW is a GW2 hater, and not everyone who’s complaining comes from WoW. I’ll give it an hour before this thread is locked.

Delgan.8619:

Syphen.1980:

The developers do read the forums. With all the upcoming content though they do not have time to respond to every thread.

I’m not suggesting they respond to every thread… I’m asking for active involvement on a level that you can at the very least see they’re taking comments onboard.

At the end of the day this game revolves around it’s players, don’t listen to them you lose them.

Players as a whole make terrible game designers, because they can’t (or refuse to) see that changes they suggest would break other mechanics or open up the game to exploits.

AcidicVision.5498:

If you are asking if everyone’s fears and conspiracies came true…they didn’t. Ascended items offer a small stat increase over exotics. They do not get normal upgrades and can only be infused, which is a +5 bonus to a single stat.

Players with ascended gear are not steam rolling players in exotics or even with the occasional rares. Players are not kicking people from groups because they don’t have two rings and a quiver (unless you get to Fractals level 30+).

Now you can get rings from using fractal tokens instead of relying on drops. So you can get any combination you want. They are account bound so a higher level character can feed the gear to a lower level character. The amulets, rings and infusions can be bought with dailies, so if you don’t want to do Fractals then you never have to set foot in one. But instead of two weeks to buy one with the respective currency, it will take four.

No treadmill happened. Ascended are exactly what they said they would be. Slightly higher end armor to work towards between exotics and a legendary. No mandatory grind was introduced. Get your daily within an hour of playing normally and you have made progress.

All in all it was a whole lot of community noise over something that ended up being nothing.

Somehow, “we told you so” just doesn’t cut it.

Players wanted loot chasing, they got loot chasing.

Spencer.1386:

Geotherma.2395:

Grinding for a month for 1 piece of the best gear in game. I have no words to express how very much I wish EVERY game was this “difficult” in this aspect.

I have great appreciation for the epic feeling of working toward something for a long time and finally achieving it. The problem with your ideology is that it doesn’t fit in this game. Guild Wars 1 was never about getting better gear, the stats where all the same. It was about getting cooler looking gear and ascended gear is better. Ascended gear has higher stats which gives an advantage to players who where hardcore enough to get it. I’m not saying grind is bad, I enjoyed my 6 years in World of Warcraft. I’m just saying that grind wasn’t intended to be a part of this game.
“Otherwise, your MMO becomes all about grinding to get the best gear. We don’t make grindy games.”
- Mike Obrien

Your logic fails in this respect: You don’t need to be hardcore to get ascended items.

You need to be hardcore to get the items quickly.

I’m taking my sweet time with these items, they aren’t required for me to enjoy the game. If you need maximum stats to enjoy the game then you’ve got the problem, not the game.

critickitten.1498:

No one, least of all me, said that their concurrency figures are directly related to their sales figures. This is just you not reading my post properly. What I said was that the sales figures are down, which in turn means that the overall growth of the player base might not be as significant as the devs want us to believe.

How can anyone reading the quote above not infer that you’re correlating sales figures with active population growth?

Colin clearly wasn’t talking about total population growth, he was talking about active population and concurrency. More people logging in more often.

When he’s talking about the game’s population hitting a baseline where it leveled out for several weeks, then started slowly going up, he’s obviously not talking about how many people bought the game.

The actual numbers don’t paint nearly as rosy of a picture: visible decreases in sales and a downtrend on Xfire and other related sites. Then there’s the more anecdotal stuff: individual accounts of the player count, continued silence about the game’s concurrency and active player counts (when previously they were all too willing to brag about them), etc. It all doesn’t add up very positively. No, the game’s not dying, it may even be growing as they claim, but it’s likely not as large of a growth as they’re trying to imply.

Once again, the only one here talking about total player growth (the only thing having to do with sales), as opposed to active and concurrent player growth, is you.

Colin has said that the active player base is growing from the plateau they hit after launch’s surge and decline.

You’re bringing in slowed direct sales, the game itself going on sale, and Xfire statistics as evidence to the contrary when that evidence has little to no weight against what Colin has said. You then put value in negative anecdotal evidence, while either ignoring or dismissing positive anecdotal evidence. Further, you take silence on the matter as a negative, then when Colin comes out and says “We’re seeing an increase in active logins after hitting our core player population,” you’re skeptical and argumentative.

I’m not sure why you’re taking a tone of superiority in this thread when you’ve clearly misinterpreted Anets statements on what “growth” was referring to.

Bluebird.1890:

This is not becoming World of Warcraft. It is becoming a nice niche in between World of Warcraft, and GW1, where vertical progression exists for those who want to experience it, and can be safely ignored by those of us who just want to play around in all portions of the game.

This. A thousand times.

This is the MMO I wanted, the fantasy game I wanted, I co-op game I wanted, the PvP game I wanted, the siege warfare I wanted.

I like knowing that there’s another 1% increase in character power just around the corner for me to achieve if i want it and if i don’t, then the 1% increase won’t keep me from participating in all of the content available.

lothefallen.7081:

Depth, depth, shallow, shallow! I want WoW back! This isn’t it! Depth, trinity depth shallow.

Every. Single. Post.

What does this have to do with guild leechers at all?

Flissy.4093:

Mackdose.6504:

Flissy.4093:

Flissy.4093:

Actually less diverse now, professions that used parts of Assassin over Berserker, such as Guardian, Warrior & Ele, to min/max are now just going to sit in full Berserker.

Since when was min/maxing (read: cookie cutter max dps) a sign of diversity?

We will now only be using 1 gear type – Berserker – instead of 2, Berserker & Assassin. Any defensive stat sets are still not even going to get a glance, because they still are useless to someone worth their kitten.

That doesn’t address what I said at all.

Oh no, 30k 100B crits will now only crit for 27k. The horror.

clay.7849:

^^

Nappyychappy hit the nail on the head, IMO.

The definition of “casual player” doesn’t lend itself to the kind of dedication and “stickiness” you need to make a game like an MMO live for a long time.

Except when you’re a casual MMO player, then it doesn’t matter what your contrived definition of “casual” is.

You don’t to be a hardcore gamer (read: lots of free time) to stick with an MMO.

Casual doesn’t mean “unskilled” or “idiot.” It just means you don’t have lots of free time.

champ.7021:

Dante.1508:

a t s e.9614:

Getting a cool skin is not a grind .
Getting better stats it’s a grind.

They are both grind just one is not needed the other is.. if you want to progress in the game at all..

Yeah what anet probably meant when they said no grind was that unlike other games you wouldnt need to grind in order to progress. However ascended weapons are a necessary grind. People like to say its optional but what about the infusion slots. If you want to do higher level fractals then it is absolutely necessary for you to have the extra ar (well if you want to do even level fractal). In wvw it is also pretty much necessary and in pve having second tier stats is…lets just say even though its optional in pve outside of fractals with ascended armor it might become necesary for groups.

For me, they’ve been completely optional.

I do fine in WvW, I don’t play fractals, and I refuse to blame the game for elitist player mentality.

DocHolliday.5921:

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.

Okay so we’re just going to ignore that WvW is about large scale warfare and siege tactics in favor of making sure that there’s perfectly balanced 1v1 competition?

Can we please stop talking about WvW under the the same lens as structured/tournament PvP?

Talk about missing the forest for the trees.

Toroxus.9256:

Immensus.9732:

yeah the only mmo i remeber releasing numbers is WOW and that because they wanted to show off their record amount of players they had playing wow

That’s because the only reason people play WoW is numbers.

This is true on so many levels.

I’m hoping for Guild airships.

I went there.

FirstBlood.7359:

Comebacks are impossible.

This. Conquests points in GW2 need to be more like Victory Points in Company of Heroes.

That is to say when Red holds one point, Blue holds one point, and no one holds the third point, the score doesn’t tick.

This will drag out matches a bit more, and the game becomes a push/shove rather bunker up.

It’d be nice if the underdog team could stop the score ticker and make a comeback, something that Company of Heroes did extremely well.

Xia.3485:

Kakeru.2873:

Well age clearly is a factor here. As the the superbox commercial and 8bit in general is homage to some gamers childhood and growing up. Sometime I didn’t grow up with and do not understand or enjoy in any particular way. I do not relate to it in anyway 1 because of my age and 2 because of my interests. So age kinda is a factor.

Essentially, following your logic, you’re saying I need to be over three hundred years old to appreciate Shakespeare?

GW2 was never marketed as a hardcore MMO, or a dark game full of tragedy for that matter. They talked about horizontal progression and removing competition more than anything else. Review all the pre-launch videos, trailers and interviews.. They are still there for all to see.

I like this event, its amusing. Its funny. It’s also easy content they can add while fixing WvW and working on sPvP being viable. Arenanet isn’t a one employee company, they can (and should) work on more than one thing at a time.

I don’t understand today’s “gamers”. This is a game, a diversion; its not a career. Playing isn’t your job, nor does it define you in any way. They are designing this game, its their project, their vision, not ours. How entitled the gaming community got is unbelievable. (Not all my rant is about this sole thread, but this forum in general).

And the gaming populace at large, for that matter.

I’m really glad the game’s population has stabilized. It’s a fair call to say that GW2 is doing well. The population density I’m seeing is as consistent this month as it was in February. I took a break after missing February’s monthly achievement, and came back to a still bustling game.

Anet may not have the lightning in a bottle that WoW caught, but GW2 is clearly here for the long haul.

Pariah.8506:

Mackdose.6504:

IndigoSundown.5419:

I’m pretty sure that when proponents of other sets asked for the gap to narrow, they weren’t just asking for berserker to be lowered — they were asking for others sets to be more effective/desirable. This is not what will happen. No mob changes, no adjustments to the effectiveness of other gear set-ups.

What ANet is doing is the functional equivalent of adding ~10% to the health of mobs — but only for dedicated DPS-max groups. The experience of non-berserker groups will not change at all. The experience of groups with a berserker or two will be slightly longer run times. Dedicated speed run groups are no more likely to be willing to accept soldier or cleric users than they were before.

This change is nothing other than ANet taking the easy way out by adjusting some numbers in tables — rather than accepting the harder task of actually fixing mobs to be more diverse, have better AI, and to demand more diversity because of their mechanics. It’s a cop-out.

They could be doing both you know. I assume you understand how hard AI in an open environment is to code. This means long development, and a massive amount of testing.

We already have AI in the heart of the Mists that dodges, cleans conditions and uses more than that one skill whenever it’s off its CD.
We had smarter mobs in the first beta (whose flaw of being turned harmless by AoE could easily be fixed by allowing them to attack on the move just like us).

Honestly they’ve got a lot covered already, and I’m sure that many others like me will greatly appreciate enemies that require a different approach than huddling in a corner.

Call me a hardcore elitist (lol) but I enjoyed when roaming the field was a dangerous proposition.

I’d suggest a hardcore server but that’d split the player base too much.

Sirendor.1394:

quaniesan.8497:

runing dungeons and fractual with groups with legendaries and ascended in my super outdated full exotic gear and not a single soul complained or even noticed the difference.

Again, this is PvE. PvE isn’t influenced by ascended.

WvW is.

Take it to the 12 page thread, and until someone shows me how ascended gear affects WvW as a whole and not just 1v1’s where all other factors are controlled for, I vehemently disagree.

This doesn’t seem like the end of the world to me… In fact, I’m actually liking where this is going.

This thread is amazing, please keep updating it.

Put simply, I don’t feel that they violated the manifesto.

Play some WoW. No seriously, I’ll wait.

……
……
……

Okay, now come back here and tell me that the difference isn’t night and day.

In GW2, I don’t have to do dailies every day with a forest green bar that barely moves when I’m finished just to see the content I want to see. I don’t have to wait a week to see the best encounters in the game. I don’t have to pay 15 dollars a month to attempt to stay relevant while juggling a fledgling career and the needs of my relationship.

Gw2 is the MMO I wanted, the MMO that rewards me for playing, and doesn’t punish me for not playing. It’s not perfect, it has glaring issues on a list a mile long.

The manifesto hasn’t been violated by Anet, it’s been violated by a player-base that twisted it into whatever they thought it should have meant, rather than what it actually meant.

Revolution.6301:

Mackdose.6504:

Algreg.3629:

ProtoGunner.4953:

Not really, as soon as I hit lvl80 on a new alt, I can use all the jugs and drops of karma to spend it on exotics or just buy it with the tokens I got from dungeons. Since I have my legendary, I don’t play THAT much. Maybe 2 hours a day. Maybe 6-7 dungeon runs in a week. It is EASILY I really mean EASILY achievable to get exotic gear. I never, ever, EVER understand people complaining about gear treadmill. The few ascended items are easy to get. If you have problems, shut up and go play your casual mobile game.

Edit: You need a bit effort to achieve something, if not, games like MMOs (and honestl,y most PC and console games I played) are nothihng for you. I really can’t stand the whining anymore, it is just ridiculous.

one might say applying the attribute “only” to devoting almost 2 full work days a week to GW2 while implying that it must have been a lot more before aquiring casually mentioned 2 legendaries doesn´t make you really the go-to-guy regarding the judgement of in game timeframes. Do not misunderstand me, your playing habits are your thing and totally fine by me, I devote a lot of time to games myself, but that is hardly a reasonable perspective you have.

Speaking of perspective, why were people in rares never complaining about the vertical progression of exotics? It’s the same percentage of stat increase, same relative amount of time to acquire (remember that dungeons didn’t always give 180 tokens a day,) as ascended is now.

There were complaints about how long it took to get exotics at first, but nothing about the inherent statistical advantage exotics gave over rare-equipped or downscaled players.

Where was the outcry from WvW players? Where was the outcry from so-called casuals?

You clearly see the issue at hand thanks!

Exotics are an armor piece that people even if you only have an hour a day to play can eventually seeing getting. It will take a bit but they can see that mountain getting closer and closer.

Ascended feels like an impossibility. Instead of only having to reach 1 mountain you are ask to go to 25 different ones with Not help at all, hence you have to climb up 1, down it and rinse and repeat.

I play 2 hours a day, 3 or 4 days out of the week. Ascended does not feel impossible, nor does it feel like climbing like 25 mountains.

Stop trying to speak for me.

Risingashes.8694:

Best MMO, but will quickly be replaced by MMOs that have learnt from GW2s mistakes if they continue to fail to improve core systems instead of focusing entirely on themepark sideshows.

Which MMOs are you referring to? Hypothetical MMO That Does Everything Better #1289?

AstralDusk.1670:

The only thing that’s even remotely anti-casual is laurels. While laurels are intended to be a reward for showing up and playing daily, it’s always going to feel like a penalty to those who can’t play that often.

Everything else about the game is mega-casual.

Laurels are actually anti-hardcore.

Because no matter how much you play the game, you can only get so many laurels.

Play for 1 hour a day or 10 hours a day, same reward.

Skan.5301:

Mackdose.6504:

For me, they’ve been completely optional.

I do fine in WvW, I don’t play fractals, and I refuse to blame the game for elitist player mentality.

So, you farm the nodes in WvW, and stand in LA the rest of the time you’re on the game?

Alright, it’s optional for you. Good job. You won the argument.

To anyone else who understands how MMO’s work, it won’t be optional for too long unless you run with a select group of friends who adhere to whatever. However, that might change down the road as well, since doing things faster is always a plus.

No, I’m leveling alts most of the time. I only have one 80, which I play WvW pretty much exclusively..

I understand exactly how MMOs work, and thus far, there is no sign of environmental numerical power creep. As the game is now, ascended is the power plateau. The mobs aren’t exponentially getting stronger with every patch, there’s no statistical gear check (once again, outside of fractals) that mandates that I get BiS as fast as possible.

Everyone needs to start looking at GW2 mechanics in context of GW2, and not in the context of every other themepark MMO.

This game uses a completely different business model, design philosophy, and combat system than what we were fed for the past 10 years. There’s no in-game reason to get ascended gear besides the standard stat increase from moving up a rarity, and getting an infusion slot if you play fractals.

If you feel like you need the best in slot items or you’ll “fall behind” the gear curve, you’re thinking in terms that the game isn’t asking of you.

TainoFuerte.8136:

DocHolliday.5921:

And again, the point remains: if gear makes so little difference, why not just put everyone’s stats at the same level, making it more fun for everyone?

Because you don’t get paid unless you back Anet’s decisions.

Man, I can’t wait for that check. /sarcasm

You do realize how insulting you are by insinuating that having opinions different from yours means that people are shills for the game?

Ashen.2907:

Mackdose.6504:

Here are the determining factors in a fight from most to least influential:
Number of Participants
VoIP
Latency
Class
Level
Build
Skill
Passive buffs
Boons
Gear

Anyone going to argue with that list? Seems pretty common sense to me.

Numbers only matter when they actually come into play. I’ve been locked down so hard no gear would have saved me.

This does not address anything I stated in the quoted post.

Gear is one part of the formula. Choosing to purposefully introduce imbalance into such a situation is a bad idea IMO.

Here’s the thing though, the imbalance isn’t new. It made no change to the game play of WvW. Nothing changed except people’s reaction to the stat imbalance that’s always been there.

Why do people want to change WvW’s rule set now when it was like this before?

Also, the comparison that a molotov blew up a tank is intentionally exaggerating the difference between full exotic and full ascended, and this kind of hyperbole is why the threads get so heated.

People aren’t even using absolute numbers choosing instead to use percentages which mean nothing without knowing first what the percentage is of.

I like to log on an hour before the reset and hammer out two daily achieves in one session.

Using this method allows me to miss a day (Pacific timezone here) without missing a laurel.

Kaiyanwan.8521:

90% of the playerbase has around 3500 achievement points or less.

50% of the playerbase has around 770 achievement points or less.

This shows two things:

1. There are probably a lot of deserted accounts.
2. That is how popular the PvE stuff is. Kitten, I am fairly deep in the 90% and play casual. People do grind less than most expect on the forums.

Ascended weapons and probably armor is something for the elitists, no but or or.

Or people play more than one game at a time. /shrug.

Kimyrielle.3826:

I would by any expansion, but a Cantha or Elona one I’d buy -really- fast.

Pretty much this.

Though I’d empty my wallet for any release with the Crystal Desert (or Jade Sea).

gimmethegepgun.1284:

Heretic.4915:

Personally, I have no problem with how it is now, and I think majority of posters in this thread are just the usual MMO garbage that show up in every new game, complain for months, and move on to the next big thing as soon as it comes out so they can complain about that, all while boasting about how they’ve played since beta as if that meant a thing anymore.

Luckily ANet seems to see them for what they are as well (they’re not exactly new to this) and tunes them out accordingly.

Actually, the majority of posters in this thread are GW1 veterans, who for some strange reason expected ANet to make a game that used one of the most important core principles of GW1, the utter lack of the treadmill.
Somehow, tuning out the people who promoted your game for you, preordered early, helped in the betas, etc, doesn’t seem like a good idea.

Ironically, I’m one of the GW1 veterans who day 1 pre-purchased, helped with the beta, and promoted the game to friends and family.

I didn’t do this because I was expecting GW1 design philosophy, I did this expecting a sub-free MMO that could compete with WoW quality-wise while getting rid of mandatory content gates from gear.

I’m not saying I want WoW’s features and design goals with no sub-fee. Just a high-quality MMO to occupy my time that doesn’t punish me for not playing.

Even with the ascended gear in right now, I don’t feel punished for not playing as much as a 16 year old me would have been able to. I’m tired of people trying to argue that I should feel threatened by a gear treadmill. I’m the exact player that a gear treadmill would penalize, I know when I’m going to get hit with a mandatory grind to stay relevant to the current content. I’ve been down that road before.

I honestly think that the combat and power curve are designed to directly mitigate the pitfalls of vertical progression and its evil cousin, content gating.

I have yet to see anyone present a solid argument to counter that thinking that isn’t “Other games have been doing this and it always turns out the same,” as if the writing is on the wall and designers can’t change the way vertical progression interacts with the rest of the game. As if they must follow WoW or EQ or whatever MMO in regards to the way the power curve interacts with future NPC and encounter scaling.

I refuse to accept WoW’s status quo as some “inevitable conclusion” of vertical progression. It doesn’t have to be that way, if I can mitigate vertical progression in a tabletop RPG, Anet can mitigate it in a video game.

This is why I have fundamental disagreements with folks like Critickitten and Raine.

Dark Catalyst.1028:

Mackdose.6504:

DocHolliday.5921:

Mackdose.6504:

DocHolliday.5921:

Mackdose.6504:

It’s not important they have an advantage, it’s important that the rewards that they earned through playing the game aren’t taken away because someone that wants to be on equal footing without playing the game feels it’s unfair.

I’d be fine with everyone being scaled up to ascended.

So your whole argument has been about splitting hairs this entire time. Why on earth didn’t you just post that at the very start, and save yourself the time and trouble of all your other pointless arguments?

I don’t think any changes should be made in WvW at all, and I dislike the reasons given to justify player’s rewards being taken away.

I argued against the justifications.

And, as I just pointed out, your arguments against the justifications did nothing to refute them. All those arguments you made were pointless. So again, why did you waste your time splitting hairs, instead of just posting the compromise you’d be OK with?

Because their shouldn’t be a compromise. There’s no problem to fix. Just because someone says there’s a problem doesn’t mean there is one.

Everyone just threw numbers out there and said “See? Massive advantage for grinders!” No evidence, no nothing, just theory.

Cue confirmation bias, straw mans, and outright ignorance of the combat system, and here we are.

Yet you’re the one arguing a clear statistical advantage isn’t really an advantage. Or in other terms, that 1=0.

Funny, eh?

No, I’m arguing that the advantage isn’t large enough to make a significant difference on average, due to the nature of the combat system.

You’d do well to stop misrepresenting my stance on the matter.

It’s more like saying .99950 = 1

PiSquare.2904:

I enjoy doing some of those things, but i enjoy them because they gave me rewards that allowed me to progress in the game or towards a goal. If they lock that out i feel like there is no point in doing it as i will achieve nothing.

This mindset is why you don’t find the game fun. If you’re playing GW2 for a constant reward stream for the entirety of your play session, you’re going to be disappointed.

If you play GW2 for fun and the rewards are icing on the cake, you’ll enjoy your time more.

I’m not here to dictate that you’re playing wrong, just pointing out the kind of play style the game seems to be built for.

projectcedric.6951:

ColinJohanson.2394:

We’ve been playing around so far this year with a lot of different concepts to see what works for a living world game, and see what players liked and didn’t like. Based on all of your feedback, you’ll be seeing a greater degree of permanent content built into future living world releases in 2013. And of course, some things you’ve seen before may return again, in its current form but updated like SAB or holiday festivals, or in a new form entirely….

So to put this in another way, basically you were playing around with our gaming experience and now you’re saying that you’re planning to put in more permanent content now that you’ve pretty much arrived at what you think the game should be.

In other words, the whole of past year has been one big open beta, except there is no server-reset at the end of it all. In other words, no matter how beautiful the game was when it came out, it wasn’t finished to begin with because you haven’y made up your mind yet about what to put in permanently.

In other words, we are all guinea pigs to you.

Hi there! This must be your first MMO. Welcome to the genre, where the first year of a major MMO is usually one filled with bugs, broken classes, and changing features.

WoW was like this, LoTRO was like this, AoC was like this, Warhammer was like this.

Par for the course.

Spiral Architect.6540:

Mackdose.6504:

If you got everything these was to get in the game, would you still be playing it? For a large majority of people the answer is “No.”

For me the answer would be “yes.” If ANet had diverted their Living Story resources and gear progression resources to creating meaningful horizontal progression, I’d still be playing. I find the Living Story to be weak and anemic, and too focused on achievement mongering for my taste. And gear progression? No thanks, been there, done that, don’t find it interesting.

However, if we had the options of new skill acquisition through game play, tweaking trait lines through game play, cosmetic additions through game play, etc., I’d be all over that.

So, yeah, items don’t interest me much. Developing my character does.

Horizontal progression can still be completed, so the question still stands:

If you got everything there was to get in the game, would you still be playing it?

For a large majority of people the answer is “No.”

Kaiyanwan.8521:

Terok.7315:

Epic areas that have less pew pew and more indiana jones.

Unfortunately they have chosen to make them more like Indiana Jones 4…

Zing.

Anyway, go fight champs in Orr is you want some solo-fun. Or go take out mini-dungeons and pull your hair out at the fact that mobs respawn to kitten ed fast.

critickitten.1498:

Just because you run the marathon for the sake of completing it doesn’t mean that it only existed for the purposes of completion.

Vertical progression is designed to appeal to the people who want to race to the top. Just because it makes a good long-term goal for you doesn’t mean that’s what it was designed for.

Pure conjecture.

Vertical progression (in gear/ attribute points/ title point grinds) is designed to offer improving effectiveness without raising a level cap. That’s it. That’s all it’s ever been since inception. It’s not put in the game for a target audience, it’s there to serve as a long-term goal. It’s a leveling replacement.

Vertical progression may appeal to those who race to the top, but that’s not who it’s designed for. Nor does it favor them.

“Of course it favors them! They get the items faster, and everyone else falls behind!”

It may take them less RL time to get the items, but it’s the same amount of game play. The returns on that game play are severely diminished in GW2 compared to the alternative VP-based MMOs on the market.

The “falls behind” point especially eludes me in the context of GW2’s PvE. You’re either at the power curve (Rares), slightly above the power curve (Exotics), or above the power curve (Ascended). This means that as long as you’re in rares, the only thing you’re behind in is how many seconds longer a boss lives before he falls over.

If you’re referring to WvW and the inherent advantages of better gear, I’d like to point out that WvW isn’t designed to be balanced on a small scale.

Everyone else is completing content to achieve a goal, or, in other words, progress. I could care less if I am not the first. I can be the 1000th and be happy that I progressed. So, you see, vertical progression is not for the hardcore. It’s for everyone who wants to put forth the effort.

There’s no arguing with this sentiment, your opinion that I should care who has more gear than me is largely ignoring the game’s intentional design to suit your confirmation bias against vertical progression.

TC is awesome for its roleplayers, makes Tyria feel like Tyria.

Roleplaying and WvW play aren’t mutually exclusive any more than people doing fractals, open world PVE, or any other non wuvwuv activity.

Stop trying to spoil everyone’s fun because you feel like “roleplayers” are detrimental to WvW performance. Like someone said above me, we’re in T2, and we got there because of our playerbase. Don’t like it? Transfer.

Long live roleplaying in all game activites, from a tabletop RPG veteran.