Guild Wars 2

x Charlie.4820:

[s]

Not only that but when you get fractals ascended boxes or craft backpieces with chooseable stats, These stat combos are left off of them, Making even less sense.

I just want to mention really quick that you CAN get Zealot’s out of fractal ascended boxes, they come in Raider’s boxes as their primary stat is Power. I happen to have 4/6 pieces of ascended Zealot armor and I sure as hell didn’t pay that much for them

But absolutely, we should have equality in the acquisition of ascended items, having them be a limited time thing was a mistake, IMO.

I know that technically there’s no song called the “Shire Theme” from Lord of the Rings but it’s a mash up of Concerning Hobbits and In Dreams, which always reminds me of the shire :)

Alesahna GW2 Harp – In Dreams/Concerning Hobbits from Lord of the Rings

From the video description:

I’ve had a version of this done for a while now, but even as I changed things it still never seemed good enough to post or call finished. So I went back and did a new version from the ground up, using a beautiful piano arrangement of In Dreams by Kyle Landry and mashing up some pieces of Concerning Hobbits with what I could develop of a bass line. The result is something I really am proud of, with lots of room for expression and a lot of depth. It doesn’t perfectly follow either theme, but I think it still captures the important parts of the melody.

I play and arrange my songs myself, and my transcriptions are meant to be easy to read while playing. Type the numbers as you see them, notes in {}’s are meant to be pressed at the same time, while notes in ()‘s are meant to be strummed smoothly as a sliding chord. Octave swaps are in []’s for visibility.

Lord of the Rings: The Shire (in Dreams/Concerning Hobbits)

12 [ 9 ] (158 [ 0 ] 3) [ 9 ] 5 [ 0 ] {15} 23
2 32 [ 9 ] (468) 468 {35}
[ 0 ] 3 5 [ 9 ] (468 [ 0 ] 6) [ 9 ] 48 [ 0 ] 4
87 5 [ 9 ] (15 [ 0 ] 3) [ 9 ] 5 8 [ 0 ] 43 ⁹ (25 [ 0 ] 2)
[ 9 ] 2 7 [ 0 ] 2
12 [ 9 ] (158 [ 0 ] 3) [ 9 ] 5 8 [ 0 ] 2 (135)
2 32 [ 9 ] (468) 468 {15}
[ 0 ] 35 [ 9 ] (148 [ 0 ] 6) [ 9 ] 4 8 [ 0 ] 4
[ 9 ] 6 [ 0 ] 565 3 [ 9 ] (257[ 0 ] 2) [ 9 ] 257
[ 0 ] 12 [ 9 ] (468) (258)

1 58 58 535
1 58 58 535
[ 0 ] 12 [ 9 ] (58 [ 0 ] 3) [ 9 ] 5 [ 0 ] {13} [ 9 ] 58 [ 0 ] 3 52
[ 9 ] (7 [ 0 ] 2) [ 9 ] 5 (7 [ 0 ] 2) [ 9 ] 5 75
678 3 {68} 3 [ 0 ] 31 [ 9 ] {46} 24 8 {25} 257
[ 0 ] 12 [ 9 ] (58 [ 0 ] 3) [ 9 ] 5 [ 0 ] {13} [ 9 ] 58
[ 0 ] 53 43 [ 9 ] (57 [ 0 ] 2) [ 9 ] 575
78 76 [ 0 ] 3
3 67 [ 9 ] (468 [ 0 ] 8) [ 9 ] {257 [ 0 ] 7} 5 ⁹ (46 [ 0 ] 3) 432

[ 9 ] 27 [ 0 ] 2
12 [ 9 ] (158 [ 0 ] 3) [ 9 ] 5 [ 0 ] {15} [ 9 ] 5 [ 0 ] {13} [ 9 ] 5
[ 0 ] 121 [ 9 ] (468) 468 {35}
[ 0 ] 3 5 [ 9 ] (468 [ 0 ] 6) [ 9 ] 48 [ 0 ] 4
87 5 [ 9 ] (25 [ 0 ] 2)
[ 9 ] 257 [ 0 ] 2
12 [ 9 ] (158)

Recorded in Gendarren Fields

I posted this on reddit but I feel it bears repeating here:

I feel like the “dragons = evil = demons = demon hunters” argument isn’t good enough. They’ve established in the lore that the dragons are primordial beings that have been around since before recorded time. They go in cycles where they sleep, wake, consume the world’s magic (wiki) and then go back to sleep. That strikes me more like a latent natural disaster, and you can’t call an ice age or a meteor or an earthquake “evil” just because it harms people. It simply acts on the world. Even if there was no intelligent life in Tyria the dragons would still do what they do and IMHO, evil requires sentience and intent.

So does that really fit with “demon hunting”? It seems more like we’re fighting global warming than the forces of evil. So what that leaves me with with is a feeling that now we’re beating up forces of nature, and on a daily scale going out and hunting animals. I’m sorry, but the last thing I’d expect for a guardian is for one to go on a safari to get a trophy to mount on their wall. It really doesn’t matter if this is following Brahm’s story line, Brahm can be a special snowflake. Guardians are about protecting their allies, dispensing justice, and holy might, and absolutely nowhere should the phrase “Big Game Hunter” come into that.

Yay! Thank you so much Gaile! I’m happy to help spread the harp-y love

Mo Mo.1947:

Any recommendations for keybinds? I’ve altered my keybinds to suit normal play, so my skills aren’t set to 1234567890 like the default.

Do you use 1234567890 for your skills or something else?

Hey! GW2 actually allows you to use two different keys to activate the same command, it’s a second column in the control options window, so it’s a secondary keybind. I have my 67890 set to ECVBZ as well as to the original keybinds, so I can position my hands on the number keys for playing music, then use the letter keys for combat

Hey everyone! I’m Alesahna, a hardcore fan of the harp and a long time player of both the game and all of the in-game instruments. I’ve been playing and transcribing songs since the first Wintersday when Bell Choir became my favorite mini-game ever, and since then I’ve worked on transcribing new, more challenging songs for myself and bringing beautiful and familiar music into Tyria.

Now I’d like to help you play them too!

Since macros have been officially OK’ed by the mods, I’ve noticed a lot of people buying harps or lutes to play pre-programmed music that they find on GW2MB or similar sites. While sometimes the songs sound beautiful and complex, it lacks the expression, personal touch and enjoyment of a hand played song, both for the performer and the listeners. When I ask if they know how to actually play songs, most people will respond “ah, it’s too hard.” I’d like to try and change that. If you can type, you can play!

I’ve put together a playlist of songs to help you learn!
GW2 Instruments for Beginners

The playlist takes you through some short, familiar songs with both a simple version and a more complex version for you to advance to. There are also original, repeatable practices that you can continue to play for as long as you like to get your fingers used to movements like pressing keys together for chords, swapping octaves, or flourishes like sliding chords. I’ll be adding more songs to this list over time, so check back every now and then.

Once you’re comfortable playing as smoothly as the example piece, try out some of the songs in my instrument playlists!

If you think of any lessons or practices you feel I may have missed, please do let me know, as I would be happy to help you learn. Hopefully, together we can fill Tyria with beautiful music.

IMO, it’s not the RNG itself that is an issue. It’s that RNG has been implemented in areas it shouldn’t be. People are only complaining about Fractal drops, precursors, and Black Lion tickets. Give us fractal items for tokens, change the legendary system, and adjust the drop rate of scraps and we wouldn’t be having this conversation.

RNG in GW2 on a whole is really not so bad. Pretty much everything fully RNG based is on the trading post, and with the whole population getting drops and selling them it simply makes most things a matter of saving up a bit of gold to buy what you need or want. Considering just how many different types of content there are in the game, there aren’t many places RNG is actually a problem. As long as there are alternate methods of acquiring items, there’s always a cap for how much work or how many loot rolls are involved. Where problems do arise is when there are either no alternate methods of acquisition, or those alternate methods don’t feel like options. Such as:

•Precursors, which are available but at a cost that doesn’t seem attainable to most players

•Black lion chest items (dyes/weapons), which dropped at a rate that many players felt was no where near the value of a key

•Fractal rewards, which are completely account bound and 100% dependent on RNG

I’ll start with precursors, but I’ll try to be brief because I know other people have put a lot more thought than I into solutions. Personally, I would take the RNG completely out of legendaries. Mawdrey could be the template for a new way of doing them: a trans-Tyrian scavenger hunt with a combination of account bound, story related items and time-gated tradeable items working together to make something rare, rewarding, time consuming but ultimately attainable. RNG has no place here, a legendary weapon should not be a matter of luck. I’m hoping Mawdrey was a sort of beta legendary process. It’s not perfect of course but it’s on the right track.

Black lion rewards you’ve already seen to by upping the drops and I think there have been fewer complaints lately. Adding the gem store dye packs to the chest rewards was also a great idea because it devalues them a little and takes some of the sting out of getting commons from them. I wouldn’t say it’s been tweaked to perfection but it’s probably been helping, which leads me to what I see as the worst offender.

Fractal rewards. How many patches have gotten our hopes up with a little note that says “adjusted fractal rewards”? And yet, I’ve been doing level 49’s daily for several months now, sometimes with a level 37 on the same day, and I have very little to show for it except two bank tabs full of rings. I think it was KING that did the math and found that if you wanted to get a Fractal Tonic, you would need to play four years in order to be likely to get one. To get a full set of different fractal weapons, you’d be looking at possibly two years. Your solution “2.5” is the absolute perfect fix here, though. If I had a wish for Zommoros to fill it would be that I could exchange pristine relics for weapons or a fractal tonic. As it is now, I’m ready to give up on my daily fractals because I’ve had a two week dry spell of getting nothing. I’ve been feeling more and more bitter with every Lucce Seal or empty daily chest I get.

I used to think that having something be account bound and RNG at the same time was simply cruel, and I do still think that about items like the Tequatl weapons and armor set. If someone wants those, they have an incredibly unpleasant experience ahead of them. However, I think the Ambrite weapons are a great example of an item that’s account bound with an element of RNG. The fossilized bugs are universal for all of the weapons, and rare but not too rare. The way the drop rate is now, while working on getting the recipes you will get enough bugs to craft the weapons you want, making it a grind based prestige weapon set that’s got a fair amount of work involved. The RNG is a much smaller part of the whole, so it feels negligible. It’s well balanced so that you’re always making progress as long as you’re being active in the area. It’s another promising template for a better relationship with RNG, and I’d like to see it extend to other new zones or even Orr.

Banzie.5248:

Rip in pepperonis, Dont think IoJ got a single dev.

We have a few native devs

Nefara.2186:

Since you’ve mentioned that “silk wasn’t an accident”, I’d love to know some of the reasoning behind that. When you say you want to add volatility, I’m very curious as to what the benefits are to putting an immense amount of demand stress on to a specific commodity. Doing so effected the price of all cloth (except jute), since Damask is so profitable to craft. However, it is more than triple the price of other ascended materials and all cloth is at least twice as expensive as its counterparts. it’s been terrible for newbs who want to level up their armor related crafting. I don’t understand the need for the imbalance so I’d love some illumination.

On a related note, is there an economic reason why superior runes and sigils are not able to be put into the mystic forge? Adding a mystic forge recipe would help equalize the prices of all of the superior runes, adding value to the, well, crappy ones and adding supply to whichever ones are currently en vogue. Was this inequality something else that was planned and if so, why?

John Smith.4610:

I’m not confident I can adequately explain the concepts you’re asking about in this forum without a significant time investment. Remind me of this question at a later date and I’ll put some thought into it.

Just a nudge in case you do find some time to ramble! I’ve still been wondering about the value of demand stress on a specific commodity (for example charged lodestones in comparison to other lodestones, silk in comparison to other t5 basic mats, etc)

Nefara.2186:

Since you’ve mentioned that “silk wasn’t an accident”, I’d love to know some of the reasoning behind that. When you say you want to add volatility, I’m very curious as to what the benefits are to putting an immense amount of demand stress on to a specific commodity. Doing so effected the price of all cloth (except jute), since Damask is so profitable to craft. However, it is more than triple the price of other ascended materials and all cloth is at least twice as expensive as its counterparts. it’s been terrible for newbs who want to level up their armor related crafting. I don’t understand the need for the imbalance so I’d love some illumination.

On a related note, is there an economic reason why superior runes and sigils are not able to be put into the mystic forge? Adding a mystic forge recipe would help equalize the prices of all of the superior runes, adding value to the, well, crappy ones and adding supply to whichever ones are currently en vogue. Was this inequality something else that was planned and if so, why?

If you get the chance I’d still love a response about the benefits of cost imbalance, it’s something I genuinely would like to understand better!

Since you’ve mentioned that “silk wasn’t an accident”, I’d love to know some of the reasoning behind that. When you say you want to add volatility, I’m very curious as to what the benefits are to putting an immense amount of demand stress on to a specific commodity. Doing so effected the price of all cloth (except jute), since Damask is so profitable to craft. However, it is more than triple the price of other ascended materials and all cloth is at least twice as expensive as its counterparts. it’s been terrible for newbs who want to level up their armor related crafting. I don’t understand the need for the imbalance so I’d love some illumination.

On a related note, is there an economic reason why superior runes and sigils are not able to be put into the mystic forge? Adding a mystic forge recipe would help equalize the prices of all of the superior runes, adding value to the, well, crappy ones and adding supply to whichever ones are currently en vogue. Was this inequality something else that was planned and if so, why?

I guess you only have my word for it, but I can only tell you that I did not assemble any keys while in the secret room. So in that respect I can be 100% positive that it was not a key that I forgot I had made, and I did actually receive it as loot.

On top of that, I didn’t even have enough molten or lockbox fragments to make cyphers (at the time I think about 5-10 of each) so there’s that.

Again, I have to encourage everyone who is opening the chest regularly to please check your loot logs and see if maybe you’re getting “phantom” drops. If it wasn’t just a one-off glitch then it must be happening to more people, but I’m guessing most people just don’t watch their logs as closely.

Well, that’s the thing, I did check my chat log (I have a tab specifically set to just loot) and the list read along the lines of:

Cabalist Hood
5 Molten Cypher Pieces
1 Onyx Core
1 Molten Cypher

Plus, I assembled some of the cyphers yesterday, so there’s no chance of it being a leftover from assembly. I strongly encourage you to watch your own loot logs every time you loot one of the chests. I think that they meant to implement it but that something went wrong with it.

I opened a few chests in Scarlet’s Secret Lair (2 watchwork, 1 molten, 1 lockbox) and was lucky enough to receive a completed Molten Cypher and Scarlet’s Lockbox Key out of their respective chests. In the loot sidebar I saw their icons along with the telltale gold rimmed icon. However, after trying to open the Molten chest or Scarlet’s lockbox it said I didn’t have a cypher for them, and looking in my inventory, they weren’t there. I checked my loot log and it confirmed that I’d received the key and the molten cypher.

Has anyone ever successfully used a cypher or key that was given as loot from one of the chests? Was this a fluke/unlucky happenstance or did something not get implemented?

Re: the “waxy” look being gone, Kristen said that was a result of having to pick either glow or a specular map, and choosing glow. Specular maps are what give certain areas of the body or armor more or less shininess.

But I don’t think it’s the loss of the specular that’s bothering most people, I think it’s the other tweak she mentioned here:

Kristen Perry

Some of the textures are also better balanced to give you more consistent results… you won’t have to guess what color you need to find to make the red feel red, for example. It will just work.

I think a lot of us very much preferred the gradient and more varied colors we got from different dyes, allowing us to work with a way more rich and interesting palette than other races. Having the colors suddenly be flat like they are on cloth armors removes a lot of the interest and detail that fading from light to dark and from reds to greens and purples to blues offers. Sure, it’s a bit unpredictable but it was unique and beautiful.

Please consider at least reverting that change.

I absolutely love the idea of having more glow in our armors, but shouldn’t they match our Sylvari body glow? I don’t remember the exact shade I picked in character creation and probably can’t find out without a total makeover kit, but I would think most people would want it to match. While I’m completely on board with changing it from the default white-ish glow (like in the TA pieces), if it can blend into our skin tone can’t it pick up on our body glow color?

Hey! Would you mind adding my channel to the youtube flute player list? I have some of my songs up and recorded with notes.

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL9rZiHENY1UjXZrLTZkjn1OJY7Cvl9qLg

I know a lot of people who, when they join the game and start seeing their golden Achievement Points start adding up, ask “what is this good for?”. While I don’t think they should ever be “spent” (that’s what laurels are for), how about unlocking a new title every 1000 or so points?

GW1 had the meta title track of “Kind of a Big Deal” to give people an idea of how much a player had accomplished, and this could be something similar. I think it’d be very rewarding to earn a title when you hit a big milestone, and might be an incentive to hunt down tricky achievements like the Explorer or Jumping Puzzle ones. That, and keep people logging in every day for their dailies/monthlies. I don’t care what the titles would be, it’d just be a nice perk to have something to show for the points.

Lanser.8520:

Super old Recipe to reward high level FotM play with guaranteed progression towards desired weapon skins without making it easy for low levels to acquire without some significant effort or luck with RNG. Also provides some retroactive rewards to those who have already run the dungeon many many times.

I posted that back in Feb. I can’t believe its already June.

Yeah, it’s been on my mind too for a while, and I’ve made posts on Reddit about it but I’m still bothered by it, and I’ll keep complaining about it for as long as it bothers me. Which might be a while :p

That’s exactly what I want though, to be able to earn them. Would they really be everywhere if you could get them for 1000 pristine relics? And do you think that the people who get a fractal weapon their first or second run into 20+ fractals shouldn’t have them? As it is, the RNG is probably making them more common than they would be if they were extremely expensive.

MakersMark.8420:

I’d even applaud a weapon ticket dropping so you can pick out a weapon usable by your profession. I’ve made new characters just to use some of the fractal weapons I’ve obtained. Fun having a level 1 thief running around with a fractal dagger.

A weapon ticket is a good idea, if they’re determined to keep it purely RNG. You’d at least get something you can use from your luck, and we know they have the system implemented because of the gamble boxes from Southsun and Flame and Frost. Obviously not as ideal as being able to work over time for it, but at least you’d no longer get items you couldn’t use or sell.

Why are Fractal weapons the only dungeon exclusive weapon skin that isn’t available for tokens?

When Fractals first came out, it made some sense that they weren’t available from a dungeon vendor, as the only tokens for Fractals were the simple relics which could be easily farmed by doing lower level fractals. However, now that Pristine Relics drop from only 10+ Fractals, why are we still suffering from the combination of this RNG account bound nonsense?

The dungeon token system was designed to circumvent the frustration of farming for something that could only be obtained at random, and yet here it is, sneaking back into the game. Arenanet already listened with the furor over ascended rings, so why not Fractal weapons?

It doesn’t matter how many relics it’s available for, it could be for 300 relics or 1000, I see people constantly throwing up convoluted recipes and concepts but the point is we want a guaranteed way to get the weapon we WANT and can USE.

I’m not sure if the new Ghost Eater fight is buggy or not, but I’m not entirely clear on when he becomes vulnerable. I think the new mechanic of pulling oozes to the traps is fun and a great homage to Ghost Busters (especially because one of our guildies likes to play the Ghost Busters song during the ghost fight right before it!), but after the traps are full it seems like the Ghost Eater can be standing right on top of it for a while and still have his shield up.

Do all of the traps have to be powered to some degree at the same time? Or maybe just the two he’s closest to? It’s very confusing, and Detha doesn’t seem to explain it fully. It would make sense if you just need to charge one trap and make him activate it to make him vulnerable, but if that’s the case then it’s hella buggy right now.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

Greggers.6247:

The mobs in Howling King fight really aren’t much of a problem either. If you pull them into the flame circles that appear on the ground they die almost instantly.

They should die instantly. That is the power of the flame scepters! Hodgins sure is useful isn’t he?

We’ve been joking all this time doing guild runs of AC that Hodgins is like the accountant that the Priory hired to manage the books, and just fell into a life near the catacombs due to budget issues managing the gravelings. He’s so ill equipped for the life of the adventurer. The entire flame scepter story seemed to go out the window for the HK fight when Hodgins spends 100% of it lying flat on his face. It was a running joke on voice to always say “Oh Hodgins…”.

So… definitely a big improvement. The Ghost Eater fight might need a bit more explanation from Detha though.

As someone on Reddit said, it could also be based on active population instead of objectives held, but either works I think, as long as the two are outmatched by the one.

There seems to be a pretty common issue in WvW where one server will utterly trash the two other ones. The assumption there is that the two other servers could both focus on the one dominating, and together, might be able to re-balance the map. Unfortunately, this is rarely what happens, as team to team communication is non existent, and there will always be kittens on either side who attack potential allies.

So, my suggestion is the ability to form a temporary alliance.

The way I imagine this working is when the two underdog teams reach a certain low percentage of holdings (maybe 80% of the map taken by the dominating team), every WvW player on the two servers gets a notice that an alliance is available. They then can participate in a map wide dynamic event that requires players from both sides of the underdog team to participate. Once this dynamic event has been triggered, the two teams that can form an alliance are no longer red names, they’re yellow (can still turn hostile, but not a default).

If the alliance is successfully completed, you now will be able to speak in /map to the allied server. You can coordinate with their commanders and form cross-server squads and parties. All of your allies names are in green, and they are essentially on your side except /team chat still is only for your server. A count down timer across all WvW maps would display the time remaining on the alliance. Perhaps for two, maybe four hours, generally the idea is that it would be temporary and would need to be renewed if they don’t succeed in taking back parts of the map in time. Once the alliance expires, there’s a neutral period where your allies are yellow again and the holdings retaken are divvied up, which also has a timer on it. If balance is restored, then the option of an alliance is removed, if not, then another may be formed.

I think Anet is aware that once you’re down, it’s hard to get up again. Along with break-outs, the alliance system would be another way to restore balance to the map and hopefully make the fight fair again.

I wouldn’t be completely adverse to maybe 5-10 extra trait points or something like that, which is why Ascension seemed like a better alternative. You could go through the process of “advancing” your character and meeting the new standard power level, without needing to change all of your gear.

As I said in the last thread, again, I think that a recipe requiring perfect scores in each part (600 for mid, upper, and lower) as well as a certain amount of cogs would be perfect. People who have spent hours playing the bell game and having fun would be able to craft the bell, rather than someone who just got lucky. It would be rewarding player skill, and if it required a limited, controlled resource like the cogs it would ensure that people were only able to craft one and not flood the market with them.

They should still be rare, otherwise they would lose the “grand prize” feeling, but as it is now the distribution of them doesn’t seem right. People who just like to troll and make noise and generally be kitten have an equal chance to getting them as musically talented people who’d use them to entertain and make music. Doesn’t seem right to me.

You should be able to transfer them across characters via the ol’ transmutation stone trick. Grab a cheap spine guard on the TP and transmute the Memoires onto it, it should then be account bound.

100 is certainly a nice round number, but 80 is nice too. It seems as good a spot as any to leave it.

You can already “buy” your levels with gold/gems, via crafting. If you don’t have the gold, convert your gems and buy mats to level with. Each crafting discipline will give you 10 levels, which will get you to 80.

demetrodon.1457:

… On my lvl 80 Char, I have equipped all the top tier gears. Full exotics, with Ascended spineguard and Rings. Now what am I supposed to do..nothing really. Get Twilight? not worth the grind ! Of course, it’s been just 4 months roughly, the game’s age. So talking about increasing level cap is kinda irrelevant now. But of course, I wanna see increase in Caps with the next expansion…

Even far in the future, an increased cap still will be not friendly to casuals for the reasons mentioned elsewhere in the thread. Are you sure what you want is a higher level cap, and not just a fun reason to continue playing your awesome character? It seems when people hear “increased level cap” they assume that that is the only way to continue progression. That’s certainly not the case, and it seems to me simply adding new content is what people want the most, not a higher number on their XP bar.

Don’t forget that GW1 did a Wintersday in July celebration, which means it’s likely you won’t have to wait a whole year again for this. We also don’t know if similar mechanics (the “rock band” gameplay) will end up in another city based mini game.

I absolutely love Bell Choir and I’m completely hooked, but I’m hoping maybe Uzolan’s Mechanical Orchestra might become a similar game, and even if it doesn’t, we’ll still have it back in a few months

I will never spend cash on RNG, because I consider any chance of failure simply not worth it.

I would absolutely be excited to pay directly for Festivoo or the other Wintersday minis that aren’t listed in the shop. I’ve been happy purchasing the costumes and style items and even some consumables (like the total makeover kit and fine transmutation stones) because I know what I’m getting and I’ll have fun with them.

I know that with RNG, if I have any high expectations they’ll inevitably be crushed. It’s not fun if it’s the only way to get something. In fact, I believe it’s just cruel.

PanBelacqua.9058:

If ArenaNet wishes to add another axis of progression, I strongly advocate a process such as Ascension, in Guild Wars Prophecies (and the other two, though it felt less meaningful). In fact, I would be willing to accept another Ascension, but for a Guild Wars 2 character.

Just to clarify, when you mention Ascension, do you mean new trait/skill points/abilities based on achieving a mission or task? Rather than having these unlocked via leveling if new stats or trait points were desired. I, too, would prefer that rather than have my gear become obsolete.

I’m not really seeing anyone in this thread explaining why there should be a level cap raise, only that they don’t mind it. Keeping in mind that character progression, new content, gear, and lore are not directly tied to a higher level than the current max, what problem does a new cap uniquely solve?

All of us want to enjoy new content, new gear, and new stories to explore. These things can all be enjoyed at level 80.

Another thought: If they stay RNG, and only RNG, they should not be account bound. Let us either grind for them, or grind for the cash for them, and not be stuck with something we don’t want or can’t use. If one of us gets a hammer and we want the greatsword, we should be able to sell one and get the other.

Raebfle.5914:

I wouldn’t be annoyed if they didn’t, but increasing a level cap isn’t bad at all.
It’s just a few more hours to add to playing

I don’t see the bad side of a level increase is all.

You say a few hours, and it’s very possible that the actual leveling process alone might take that long, yes. However, you’re forgetting that all of the gear that you worked for will now be 5 levels old, and obsolete. You grinded dungeon tokens, raised the ecto, raised the money and made the effort to get level eighty gear, which at the time of your purchasing it, was the best you could afford. It was sold at a premium price with the assumption that it would be the last set you would ever need, with the exact appearance you were working towards.

Now, imagine that you now have a new set of full armor and weapons to work towards. And of course, since the supply is new and the market hasn’t caught up to demand yet, it’s extravagantly expensive. If you don’t have the gold on you, maybe you could grind a bit in your old level eighty gear, but the places that you need to do to get level 85+ gear are too challenging for your subpar gear and paying for it with gold really does seem to be your only option. So you go back to grinding dungeons and raising 1-2g at a time, hoping to make as much as you need to catch up to the new benchmark.

Not only that, but since you put runes in your old armor, and treated yourself to the good ones that you raised up the cash for, you’re not going to just leave them on your old armor. That means either fine transmutation stones or black lion chests, as you want a 100% chance of getting back runes that each cost 1g or more. Cash shop items, which means either shelling out more gold for gems or real cash.

I hope you can start to understand why a level cap increase is so negative for casual players. For a casual player, who doesn’t have time to grind dungeons for gold and saves up what they make slowly and incrementally, splurging on their level 80 max gear is an indulgence, with an assumed guarantee that it will last the rest of their character’s “lives”. That’s why we worked so hard for it, it’s end game. You don’t buy your level 68 character a bunch of level 68 exotics, not when rares or masterworks are so much cheaper, you know that it won’t last you long enough to make the money worth it.

Guild Wars 2 is supposed to be a game that casuals can confidently play, who can drop it for a few months when life gets hectic, and pick it up again guilt free because of no subscription. Coming back to find all of your gear that you worked very hard for suddenly obsolete, and your character no longer able to jump into new events, is not a welcome back I ever want to experience.

I made a very similar post myself a little while ago. The way they’re set up now is completely against the dungeon reward design philosophy, even Colin Johanson specifically said as much.

As someone who adores the Fractal skins, it’s just unacceptable to me that the only way to get them is RNG, without even the hope of earning enough money to buy them via the trading post. It means that as someone who wants two Fractal Swords on my mesmer, I have such an infinitesimally small chance to actually get that it’s positively negligible. Slavishly grinding a dungeon to the point that I might as well be a human bot is not a viable option, nor should I be in any way expected to do such a thing.

In my older post, I mentioned a “higher tier” of dungeon token that should be able to be traded in for the Fractal skins, and so I emphatically agree that the dungeon weapons should be available for the new relics. The dungeon token system was designed and put in place for a reason, and that reason (I can only assume) was for the sake of the sanity of people who have their heart set on those items. The new, higher tier of token creates a delineation between people who do the lower level Fractals vs higher, which is appropriate for these weapons.

They can stay RNG in addition, but GIVE US A GUARANTEED WAY TO GET THEM… I’m begging you

Firkin.2847:

Well said Nefara

they need to ignore their level and simply experience the content.

The game is the incredible journey. The level doesn’t matter. Unfortunately, the level cap, testifies, as you say yourself, to a “feeling of completion.” I don’t wish the fun of this magical journey to end so quickly. Increase the level cap to 800 or 8,000 and continue the wonderful, funny, exciting content with it.

Like Sisyphus, we smile at the start of each climb; unlike Sisyphus, we get a new mountain as we go!

Thank you, but does the fun really stop when the leveling does? If you played the original Guild Wars, you’d know that’s certainly not the case. Again, I feel that leveling should be used as a tool to prevent people who are unskilled at the game from becoming frustrated with advanced mechanics meant for more advanced players. Are they honestly going to be coming up with more advanced challenges, or will it just be tougher monsters with bigger numbers? I don’t see why the concept of progression must be tied so tightly with the idea of larger level numbers.

Warlord D S.8435:

JazKW.6547:

@ThuGaNoMiX Source or your argument is invalid

The source for the proposed level cap increase may be found in this interview from 2011.

http://tinyurl.com/c7986zy

The current level cap is about 40 levels too high for my liking, so I’m not thrilled at all that they want to increase it further.

I hadn’t heard that interview, that’s indeed worrisome, especially considering it sounds like it came from Colin Johanson. All the more reason to speak up and say what the community would prefer.

Shear Force.9154:

What’s your argument against people who don’t want to level more than once character? I personally do not. I have one and I’m happy but I sure would like to see that character to grow more, and since I have all exotics and see no point in legendary weapons “I just don’t think they are legendary, there’s nothing legendary about grinding” I should just quit? I’ve seen everything this game has to offer. A new expansion without an increased level cap and just new zones new items and new dungeons would be very disappointing to say the least.

If you like to focus completely on one character, there are certainly ways to add progression without that translating directly into new levels. Imagine if you could do Order based missions or quests that could get you titles and new abilities that increase in power the higher you get in the Order? Or maybe you could earn items and unique skins from completing achievements, like a dragon scale shield from killing all of the dragons, or wearable diving goggles from doing all of the dive challenges. You’re right, your journey isn’t over, but that doesn’t mean it has to take the same exact path it has been to continue.

To others saying they wouldn’t mind if the level cap was insanely high, I haven’t heard reasons why continued leveling, specifically, is the solution to a lack of end-game character progression. If there was more content, achievements and titles to work towards, would you still feel the need for it? Why?

Well, like I mentioned, there were a few things from the Chris Whiteside AMA that sent out alarms to me. For example, in this post

Infusions will become the vertical progression…accessible through a wide variety of different player activities…

Should we add new player levels to the game then new items within the current rarities with a shallow power increase would be viable, however we would look at doing a new system rather than defaulting to this initially.

That implies that right now they’re not ruling it out, and that it is on the table, even if it’s not happening right this instant. As an avid player, I want to help take it off of the table. We can’t just assume that it won’t happen, because if we do it just might. It’s worth speaking up about if we feel passionately about it, which I certainly do.

After Chris Whiteside’s AMA, I’ve been increasingly worried about the direction Arenanet is headed in regards to progression. As someone who read every blog post over the years leading up to release, I had faith that the real level cap would be the cap in player skill, not just a number that leads to higher stats. A lot of things he said in that AMA seemed to go directly against the design philosophies and I hope it wasn’t indicative of a broader change in leadership.

Raising the level cap is an artificial elongation of progression. Considering that gameplay content remains relatively similar aside from difficulty from level 10-80, what exactly does raising the level cap offer that uniquely helps the game? The entire game is “end game” as many developers have said, and I’ve personally told many people that if they’re not having fun, they need to ignore their level and simply experience the content.

Remember, a lot of us are Guild Wars 1 players. I played for six years over five thousand hours (eep) with nothing more to work towards than titles, prestige armors and weapons, world completion, helping friends, and filling my HOM. Being level twenty was meaningless, just like being level eighty should be meaningless. The use of different leveled content is to create a gate, that requires learning how to play and becoming skilled with your class, before advancement to more difficult activities. Will adding a few buffs to our stats actually make us more skilled? No. At level eighty, the training wheels are already off and there’s nothing more to be learned.

As someone with four level eighty characters, I like the feeling of “completion” after reaching level eighty. I have armor skins that I like on them, but I could go for rarer ones. I could finish up world completion on each of them. I have directions to go in, but that leveling part of them is done. Having that suddenly change, and that level cap be raised, would feel like a day at work where you clear your inbox, get everything done, and ten minutes before you’re supposed to go home your boss plops a whole pile of papers down on your desk. I had a goal, I achieved it, but like Sisyphus the boulder would be down at the bottom of the hill again.

I would much prefer to be able to earn new titles, learn new skills through “rank” in different orders, or have more armor and weapons to work towards than to have to finish something that was already done just for the sake of a timesink.

Perhaps I’m missing something, and I’d like people who are for an increased level cap to please offer their opinions. As of right now, I simply can’t see how it could possibly help the game, and only could harm it.

I would say make travel to any major city free, considering it already is via the heart of the mists→lion’s arch→ asura gate. I think the argument against it is a lack of immersion, but considering we already have instant teleports all it is is a major inconvenience. As a cheapskate, I’m already not paying the fees, all I’m doing is sitting through a dozen loading screens.

Here here! My feelings exactly, Groovy. I would definitely prefer a high level token drop, even if it was still RNG. I would at least then have 100% chance of getting the weapon I want and can use provided I got one to drop.

@Lucas: unique drops are cool, like Shard of the Deep or Wisteria, but those can be sold. That means that the RNG is not literally the only way to get them.

Lucas Ashrock.8675:

The OP request would makes a sense if weapons was with agony resistance and a slot, offensive, defensive. So the weapon would be a “key role” so important to be craftable, vendored for an other etc. Instead no, they are just cool exotic weapons, the only reason to type a “hyke” is for the skin, retransmuting them, period. No need to change nothing about those weapons at all.

They are currently the only weapon set that is wholly based on RNG with no method of acquiring them reliably. That doesn’t seem fine to me. Yes, they are vanity items, but the same amount of status and impressiveness can be achieved with monumentally less frustration. A new high level fractal token, mystic forge recipe, or some other method isn’t “easier” than RNG, just less infuriating. Isn’t the point of the game to be fun?

If you’ve ever played a female sylvari, or attacked the nightmare court, you’ve heard the little “ahf ahf ahf!” noise that I am now officially sick of. It’s the little yappy dog noise that gets played every time you get hit. As a mesmer, all of my clones and phantasms also make this noise, along with every other female sylvari NPC that doesn’t have a unique voice actor. And, considering I’ve been doing Twilight Arbor to try to get armor and weapons which puts me in the way of plenty of female nightmare court, I’ve hit my maximum tolerance for this noise. It has to be the one noise in the game that now makes my ears want to shrivel up and hide in a hole.

It’s so kitten high pitched, and staccato, and distinctive. Does it have to play three times every time you get hit? Do all of the clones and phantasms have to make it too? And every female sylvari NPC on top of that? Could it maybe just be on a critical hit, or on cripple, or something instead of every time I get aggro.

I’m not exaggerating when I say that this noise is single-handedly responsible for making me not want to play a character I otherwise love and am very happy with. Please, if something could be done about the pitch and frequency of it, that’d be amazing.

Exactly… in GW1 there was so much to do that you could play thousands of hours after getting your ideal gear with the looks and stats you wanted. Your gear was a part of your character progression but it definitely wasn’t all there was to it.

Deliberately complicating and obfuscating the path to items and enhancing the grind isn’t the way to keep us playing.