Guild Wars 2

Dear Tixx,

Thief here, please don’t judge one by the actions of the whole.

Here is my wish list:

Off-hand sword training.
Rifle training.
Some different looking medium armor.
A pony.

Just do holiday events like Blizzard does them. Let them be repeatable like crazy, but only give out the good rewards once per character. Everyone is happy.

Stomp video was excellent info. I’m a little ashamed I never thought of this stuff.

Also, I love listening to your accent.

This is one of my biggest frustrations in playing, and it’s causing problems with my friends and family who play. I have a hard time investing in a profession that is getting constantly more broken. As soon as I find a well-functioning method of play, it gets nerfed and I’m stuck struggling to keep up with everyone.

Can we get a clear design direction on Thief? I used to think having direct damage and condition damage abilities on the same weapon set was cool, but it really isn’t. Every weapon set leaves me wondering what playstyle this is for. Can we have one type of weapon be for crit and another be for con?

Some more weapon variety would be nice, but I think the allure of that is because of how awkward our existing weapons are. There are some very good suggestions on these forums. Can we have a Reddit AMA specifically about Thief?

Maybe I just suck, but I can’t get anything but D/D bleeds to work well for me. I just take too many hits. I would like to try something like this, but it always fails hard. Is there hope for me?

Ath.2531:

None. Your player types are deeply biased and you make too many irrelevant assumptions.
Just because someone has time(or not) doesn’t mean they love or hate the fractal dungeons.

This. I have time to play, but I hate the new dungeon and Ascended gear. Why can’t I just have the game I bought? You know the one with no gear chase?

One-time events have been covered pretty well, so I’ll just say that I hate them.

Onto other matters, I think that instead of adding more grind to the “endgame” we should be given incentive to return to existing parts of Tyria. Zones below level 75-80 have become quite empty, and that needs to change. Please give us equal rewards at any content, or maybe have certain zones give a special boost each day. For example, on one day Gendra— Genrrand— Genradd— Kessex Hills has 10% more xp/karma/money, etc. The next day it’s Sparkfly Fen. This could be random and different for each player so it keeps people roaming around.

We don;t want more power to chase, we want more content to see and do. It is not necessary to make us gear up for new content once we obtain high quality max level gear.

At least we have a chance to say what we think in an official matter. Plus, this email will likely reach many people that do not ever visit the forums.

Hold the phone. Did NCsoft just… care?

AndrewMcLeod.3857:

Derk.3189:

Stormleaf.1769:

Erulogos.2591:

Quoting you both as you both make the same argument, essentially, and miss the same issue.

The issue is not with -current- content. No Ascended gear is required to finish every dungeon and kill every boss currently walking Tyria.

The issue is with -future- content. It was stated, when Ascended gear was announced, that Agony (and thus Agony resist) was something that would be involved in content going forward. It was not stated, one way or the other, if it would be required to even attempt future content, and it therefore becomes a simple question: grind Ascended and Agony resist now, so you are ready for the new content no matter what, or wait and see if it will be required, and hope that, if it is, enough other people waited that you can get groups to grind it out.

It is true that as of this moment in time, the grind heavy gear is not required to see any of the content in the game. But we don’t know when or if it will be, and Anet has not said one way or the other. A lot of folks saying it is required are basically taking the cautious path, assuming it will be and preparing for the worst.

The issue with this is that ArenaNet could have easily made this content require Agony resistance from the beginning as well, by making it some Mystic Forge thing and introducing Agony at fractal level 1. They didn’t; heck, they even made it so low levels can participate. Exotics aren’t even a requirement for the early difficulty levels. If they didn’t do it now, why do you think they’re magically going to start doing it in the future? None of the content in GW2 has been restricted like that. There is zero indication of ArenaNet ever restricting content like that, and it’s simply not helpful to base your argument on an assumption that they’ll magically start doing it.

AHHAHA You really think they did that for the players? Its just there to draw out the content, an additional carrot on another stick. Oh you want to see what agony is like? Hit me up 10 levels.

The Agony mechanic wasn’t introduced at the start of the dungeon so that everybody can experience the content. While one of the goals of the Fractals of the Mists dungeon was to provide some difficult content for players looking for a challenge, we also wanted the dungeon to be available for everybody to experience. While getting far into the dungeon requires agony resistance from ascended gear, the content was designed to provide challenging content, and to allow players to choose what difficulty they wanted to play at.

As for ascended gear, to reiterate what Chris has said (https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/info/news/A-message-from-our-Studio-Design-Director-Chris-Whiteside), it’s not intended as a treadmill, but rather as a tier of rewards that can help bridge the gap between Exotics (a few hours of effort to acquire a piece) and Legendaries (hundreds of hours of effort to acquire one). They’re currently only available in the Fractals of the Mist Dungeon, but we’re going to be adding new ways to acquire them, both inside of WvW as well as elsewhere in PvE.

I would believe this if exotics were an ingredient for Ascended, and Ascended was an ingredient for Legendary, so that you were required to do each tier in order, which is still a bad idea because it’s stupid, but at least it would make sense.

It was fine with exotics and legendaries, why did it need to change?

Very solid write-up. GW2 is fun, but after 3 months of play plus beta time, it’s become a game that I’ll play only until something better comes along for these exact reasons.

I was unable to effectively play the final event due to many of the issues discussed on the forum.

I missed the rewards, too. I suppose I should tell myself that it sucks to be unlucky.

Wait Arenanet gives infractions for calling them out for being liars? How about for poor customer service? Don’t they think we deserve to know the reason for NGE2.0? Is NCsoft pushing them? Did they get new people that don’t know what they are doing? Something’s gotta give.

Might I direct you to the lyrics of a composition by one William Joel: “Honesty is such a lonely word; everyone is so untrue.”

Or maybe the paraphrased words of Obi kittenenobi in the only well-acted scene in Revenge of the Sith: “You were the chosen one! You were supposed to bring [newness to MMOs, not chicken out and follow the same old gear-chase model]!”

Edit: This game delivers: http://new.livestream.com/accounts/398160/events/1594566/player_pop_up

Yeah, I’m just casually enjoying the still good parts of GW2 until something else can take its place. Elderscrolls online being the best contender at the time. Hopefully they don’t back out on their principles.

I was thinking the same thing. I’l;l keep playing, but not nearly to the level I was hoping to. I’ll dabble until something more reliable comes along. Kind of like how I entertained the CU and NGE until something else caught my eye. 460 hours total, probably about 300 of those actual playtime.

And one-time events are still a good idea?

Anet may be building a slower treadmill, but it’s still a treadmill. I’ve been rather turned off by the game since the announcement of Ascended items because it’s SWG all over again—taking a good thing that people like and fundamentally changing it to be like Blizzard.

Am I the only one who has gotten really sick of Anet’s armor designs always being absurdly asymmetrical?

Anyone speak German?

https://forum-de.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Einige-Fragen-zum-November-Update-mit-Blick-auf-die-Zukunft/first#post158833

Google Translation is dodgy.

Summary: http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/139a4j/official_post_ascended_items_on_german_forums/

Edit: Summary Added.

Ryan.6951:

Never.6014:

stuff

Thanks…. I really wanted to know if I was completely off base. These are the exact things I was thinking.

If this is their plan and vision and manifesto made real then that’s troubling. If this isn’t part of the plan… equally troubling. I honestly cannot think up a scenario where this is a rational well thought out non-reactionary measure taken with the goals of the manifesto and the respect of the players considered. I’m trying.

Here’s the best case scenario as I see it:
Games always seem to take longer than allotted to develop. Crunch time is coming with Pandaland and other reasons, so they decide to release what’s done and save some unfinished content and mechanics for later. Infusions, the actual top tier of gear, and progressively difficult dungeons would be that content.

So they release the game in an interim stage. Functional, but incomplete. Now they have finished those three things, which all sort of need to go together for them to work. They add the final tier of gear, and introduce their progressive difficulty design. They’ve had some time to fine-tune it based on player feedback and internal statistics, so it may have changed in small ways. In the end, we get Ascended items, which were planned all along, and progressively more difficult and rewarding dungeons.

Even with this, the problem remains: they just aren’t being up-front with us. Keeping the loyalty of a playerbase is a challenging thing, but it’s simple. Tell the truth and tell it often and tell it in detail. If you do that, the players will genuinely love you and your game if it is the kind of game that interests them. Do anything less, and they’ll see right through it and your credibility is irreparably damaged.

Is arenanet executing their vision of the game by reversing their stance on gear tiers?
There is some uncertainty on this. It comes down to if they do it more than once. Once, I can understand to add in planned mechanics that were not ready in time for launch. If that’s the case, it can be forgivable/understandable. If not, then this question urgently needs a straight-up response from Anet.

If this IS their vision, why have they never told us about it during 5 years of blogs and community info, during a frenzy of sales leading up to; and immediately after launch?
This is my biggest concern with ArenaNet and other game shops like BioWare. Vague information, “we aren’t talking about that yet,” “soon,” and the like really only frustrate their fans. Making games isn’t the smoke and mirrors it used to be. Many of us players have some idea of the process involved and are actually smart enough to understand the mechanics, reverse-engineer their formulas, and see flaws and determine fixes that they missed. If Anet came out and said, “We’re adding gear tiers because of a mandate from our parent company,” I would understand, and probably just deal with it and keep playing. At least I had been given up-front, honest information. Instead we are treated like idiots.

If this is NOT their vision of the game, why are they doing it?
The notion that they may be doing something contrary to their vision of their own game is the most troubling, and it bodes no good for the future. I would rather discover that they wanted to make endless gear progression for a good reason than they were forced to against their better judgement.

Any way you slice it, Anet needs to cowboy up and give us the whole truth on these matters.

Mylo.1247:

“Here’s what we believe: If someone wants to play for a thousand hours to get an item that is so rare that other players can’t realistically acquire it, that rare item should be differentiated by its visual appearance and rarity alone, not by being more powerful than everything else in the game. Otherwise, your MMO becomes all about grinding to get the best gear. We don’t make grindy games — we leave the grind to other MMOs.”
-Mike Obrien, President of Arenanet
Fun impacts loot collection. The rarest items in the game are not more powerful than other items, so you don’t need them to be the best. The rarest items have unique looks to help your character feel that sense of accomplishment, but it’s not required to play the game. We don’t need to make mandatory gear treadmills, we make all of it optional, so those who find it fun to chase this prestigious gear can do so, but those who don’t are just as powerful and get to have fun too.”
– Colin Johanson

What happend? Countless people play GW2 because they believed in ANet und GW2.
This not the case anymore. That’s what has happened.

Almost. Two possibilities:
1. Ascended gear was in the plans from the get-go and they didn’t have time to implement it before launch, so we’re getting it now and it will be the last and only stat increase they ever do. The problem then lies with communication, which we already know they suck at right now.

2. This is the first of multiple stat increases and they are a bunch of liars.

I’m more inclined to number 1, given Anet’s track record with GW1, but either way they need to be more transparent with their players. No one really cares about a “big surprise” we care about the investment we’ve put into these games.

Rune of the Ogre. 5% chance to summon a Rock Dog on hit, lasts 60 seconds.

It must be SO JUICY!

This is my dearest with for GW2, because hey, it’s already free lol.

A public test server would be fantastic.

“Hey, you should totally come check out my home instance.”

The Mesmer option is a smart one, but all the same, I don’t think you should count yourself out just yet. If you work at it, you can do it! You should have seen the first time I tried to play a game with a mouse, but now I can’t live without it. Best of luck whatever you decide to do.

No, KITTEN NO, in fact.

They said they would be adding methods of getting Ascended gear to existing content. We simply don’t have enough info, which is my actual beef with Anet. Too much hush-hush.

Just give each player their own stack. Problem solved.

The vistas are much easier than jumping puzzles, and only vistas are required. They are the little maps floating around the place. Jumping puzzles are the 5-20 minute challenging puzzles that give an achievement and chest reward at the end.

My mount is so fast and cool.

This thread is like a tidal wave of sarcasm lol

The real Million Dollar Question is “Will they make another tier with better stats than Ascended?”

If no, then we have nothing to worry about.
If yes, then we have a problem.

Really nice video I’m glad to see more condition Thieves out there amid all this backstab-5k shaman-bullcrap. My only suggestion is to put your build/gear info at the beginning of the video. Great music choices too.

I quit taking the hidden thief trait because it almost never works for me. Autoattack on/off, ranged/melee, doesn’t matter. It’ll work now and then, but it’s not at all reliable. I just precast CnD because it’s the only sure way.

I’m a big supporter of more developer and designer transparency. It can only make the game better to get player feedback on all levels.

Getting it all the time lately. Sometimes I’ll wait 5 full minutes and end up closing and re-launching the game to clear it. Stealth doesn’t even work, so i can’t even use my OP thief powers of win to beat it. Nerf combat bug.

AlteregoA.9635:

I am new to MMOs….i have loved this game so far. Why is the new gear such a bad thing? Is it because everyone worked so hard to get exotics and now its obsolete? I just dont understand why having more armor options is a bad thing. Please don’t respond with an attitude….just asking an honest question.

You pretty much had it. Gear becoming obsolete is frustrating and if they do it once, it is likely they will do it again, causing you to endlessly chase gear. We’ll have to see what happens.

Letifer.4360:

Never.6014:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

I’d like to respond to concerns players have raised about ascended items. Please keep in mind that we’re releasing this as one portion of a massive November update that introduces and improves many aspects of challenge, progression, and rewards. With this and upcoming updates, we view ourselves as introducing large amounts of content with supporting systems and features, akin to an expansion pack, building on Guild Wars 2 through a series of live releases. So it’s important for us to be able to add an expansion pack’s worth of progression and rewards to support that content.

Our goal is not to create a gear treadmill. Our goal is to ensure we have a proper progression for players from exotic up to legendary without a massive jump in reward between the two. We will slowly add the remaining ascended gear items and legendary items in future updates to allow people time to acquire them as we add exciting new content that deserves exciting rewards. We will not be adding a new tier of gear every 3 months that we expect everyone to chase after and then get the next set and so on.

Ascended and infusion rewards will be available in both PvE and WvW over time, and be made available through all sorts of content around the world including existing content. PvP will remain unaffected to ensure our intended PvP balance going forward. We are also working on other reward and progression systems for the game that tie into current and new content and features. As you know we care very much about your support and opinion and are listening intently to what you say.

Finally we look forward to hearing your thoughts on the upcoming content, and we will ensure we share our thoughts with you on the experiences we share in the Lost Shores.

Chris Whiteside – Studio Design Director

So how about a straight up answer? Will you ever add gear with stats higher than Ascended gear? Yes or No

Yes. Legendary Armor sets. lol

No, they have the same stats as Ascended. But will they add a new Super-Ascended tier in the future (not 3 months, but a year or something) that will raise Legendaries again?

Chris Whiteside.6102:

I’d like to respond to concerns players have raised about ascended items. Please keep in mind that we’re releasing this as one portion of a massive November update that introduces and improves many aspects of challenge, progression, and rewards. With this and upcoming updates, we view ourselves as introducing large amounts of content with supporting systems and features, akin to an expansion pack, building on Guild Wars 2 through a series of live releases. So it’s important for us to be able to add an expansion pack’s worth of progression and rewards to support that content.

Our goal is not to create a gear treadmill. Our goal is to ensure we have a proper progression for players from exotic up to legendary without a massive jump in reward between the two. We will slowly add the remaining ascended gear items and legendary items in future updates to allow people time to acquire them as we add exciting new content that deserves exciting rewards. We will not be adding a new tier of gear every 3 months that we expect everyone to chase after and then get the next set and so on.

Ascended and infusion rewards will be available in both PvE and WvW over time, and be made available through all sorts of content around the world including existing content. PvP will remain unaffected to ensure our intended PvP balance going forward. We are also working on other reward and progression systems for the game that tie into current and new content and features. As you know we care very much about your support and opinion and are listening intently to what you say.

Finally we look forward to hearing your thoughts on the upcoming content, and we will ensure we share our thoughts with you on the experiences we share in the Lost Shores.

Chris Whiteside – Studio Design Director

So how about a straight up answer? Will you ever add gear with stats higher than Ascended gear? Yes or No

Letifer.4360:

Enikuo.9205:

If infusions only give you resistance to Agony, why would there be three types – offensive, defensive, and omni? Why not just defensive?

from the names of the infusions: offensive would add damage against a new mob, defensive add defense against the new condition and omni would do both this things.
this is all specific to the dungeon/new zone and wont work elsewhere.

I’m hoping this is the case. Your infusement would then be your ticket to tiers/level/difficulties of dungeon content (their version of progressive raiding, and irrelevant everywhere else) while your gear is just your gear. Still could have been done through a bunch of much better methods.

Conner.4702:

Never.6014:

RoChan.1926:

Lomax.2463:

good god you people cant read !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
i am amazed there so so many that cant comprehend what Anet is doing

OK FOR THOSE THAT HAVE NO CLUE.

1. There is no stat increase !!!!!! they took away the upgrade slot and put the points that you would have gotten from the upgrade slot into the main stats of the item!
that is right Ascended armor is worse then exotic as it is not as customizable as normal armor!

2. Infusion slot is for negating a new condition call Agony that will only be in this dungeon! that is right it is worthless in WvW or any place outside this dungeon.

3. getting exotic gear is easy and is full customizable with upgrade slots, Ascended armor is hard to get is less useful as real exotic gear outside of this dungeon.

4. this is a cool great new dungeon , it is scalable for the progression players but none of it is any use outside of this one dungeon. it will allow player to brag about i hit 27th level of infusion !!! woot for me but as infusion does nothing outside of the dungeon why would a WvW player even care ?

this is like a PVE dungeon version of the PVP ranking , i think its great .

False. Let’s re-read the blog shall we? I shall disprove your points with facts straight out of the horse’s mouth.

“Eventually, you’ll be able to kit yourself out with a full set of Ascended gear and high end Infusions to help give you the edge in end game content.”

Not an increase? Why then would they say it’s to give me an edge on end game content?

“You’ll also see more Legendary items in the future and an update to our existing Legendary weapons. Legendary items were always intended to be on par with other “best-in-slot” items. So fear not, all existing Legendary weapons, which are currently on par with Exotics, will be upgraded to be on par with Ascended weapons at the same time that we add Ascended weapons to the game. Thus Legendaries will remain “best-in-slot” items.”

Ok let’s do some math with words! It’s called the pathogram theory and this is how it works! If A = B and B = C then A = C. So if Legendaries are the best-in-slot items and they are going to mimic/reflect Ascended weapons wouldn’t that mean that Ascended weapons are also the best-in-slot items? Hmm… sounds to me like a stat increase!

The other half of this math is that they said that Legendaries would be on par with bes tin slot going forward. If they are changing to Ascended, perhaps that is the final change. You know… maybe.

Maybe the real plan is for us to eventually have a full set of legendary everything that keeps up with each tier of gear. That wouldn’t be so bad. You could get one set of gear forever if you want to (like I do) or just keep getting new pieces each tier. It COULD be a win-win.

Except they stated in the blog they want to add new types of infusions in the future. Meaning you will need Armor A for Dungeon A, Armor B for Dungeon B and so on ad infinitum.

It’s bad design. It would have been better the GW1 way to run a series of quests to get your current armor infused. I’d still dislike it though as it still gates content behind specific armor requirements.

Oh, I’m with you on bad design; I’m just trying to see enough of a bright side to keep enjoying the game if this turns out to be as bad as it looks.

RoChan.1926:

Lomax.2463:

good god you people cant read !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
i am amazed there so so many that cant comprehend what Anet is doing

OK FOR THOSE THAT HAVE NO CLUE.

1. There is no stat increase !!!!!! they took away the upgrade slot and put the points that you would have gotten from the upgrade slot into the main stats of the item!
that is right Ascended armor is worse then exotic as it is not as customizable as normal armor!

2. Infusion slot is for negating a new condition call Agony that will only be in this dungeon! that is right it is worthless in WvW or any place outside this dungeon.

3. getting exotic gear is easy and is full customizable with upgrade slots, Ascended armor is hard to get is less useful as real exotic gear outside of this dungeon.

4. this is a cool great new dungeon , it is scalable for the progression players but none of it is any use outside of this one dungeon. it will allow player to brag about i hit 27th level of infusion !!! woot for me but as infusion does nothing outside of the dungeon why would a WvW player even care ?

this is like a PVE dungeon version of the PVP ranking , i think its great .

False. Let’s re-read the blog shall we? I shall disprove your points with facts straight out of the horse’s mouth.

“Eventually, you’ll be able to kit yourself out with a full set of Ascended gear and high end Infusions to help give you the edge in end game content.”

Not an increase? Why then would they say it’s to give me an edge on end game content?

“You’ll also see more Legendary items in the future and an update to our existing Legendary weapons. Legendary items were always intended to be on par with other “best-in-slot” items. So fear not, all existing Legendary weapons, which are currently on par with Exotics, will be upgraded to be on par with Ascended weapons at the same time that we add Ascended weapons to the game. Thus Legendaries will remain “best-in-slot” items.”

Ok let’s do some math with words! It’s called the pathogram theory and this is how it works! If A = B and B = C then A = C. So if Legendaries are the best-in-slot items and they are going to mimic/reflect Ascended weapons wouldn’t that mean that Ascended weapons are also the best-in-slot items? Hmm… sounds to me like a stat increase!

The other half of this math is that they said that Legendaries would be on par with bes tin slot going forward. If they are changing to Ascended, perhaps that is the final change. You know… maybe.

Maybe the real plan is for us to eventually have a full set of legendary everything that keeps up with each tier of gear. That wouldn’t be so bad. You could get one set of gear forever if you want to (like I do) or just keep getting new pieces each tier. It COULD be a win-win.

We can only hope that this is a one-time course-correction to balance out stat distribution. I was just the other day defending ArenaNet to a friend of mine who was worried about how long they would keep the power plateau. I feel like an idiot.

“Thus Legendaries will remain “best-in-slot” items. All Legendary items going forward will be of Ascended power.”

If Legendary=Ascended, and Legendary=Best in Slot, then Ascended=Best in Slot.

Maybe this is all down to Anet’s really terrible way of communicating information to players.

I just want them to say something. If a red came here and posted, “Don’t worry, guys, this is just one final tier to smooth out the gear spectrum.” I would stop my concerns there.

http://www.arena.net/blog/guild-wars-2-design-manifesto
“So much of traditional MMO combat is rote and repetitive. You execute the same strategy over and over again, just augmented over time with better and better gear.”
“better and better gear.”
“better gear.”
“GEAR.”

I just can’t figure you out sometimes, ArenaNet. Either you are about to make a game design move that sounds like a kiss of death to me, or you’re so vague about the details that you’re allowing people to think you are.

This happened with the one-time events. If you had just straight up said that the one-time event was a cutscene, people would have gone about their lives and kept enjoying the game instead of getting all worked up about it.

So which is it? Are you destroying the fundamental principle that makes GW2 special by breaking the power plateau and introducing an endless gear chase? Or are you just adding that one last tier to fill things out, and being so vague about it that you have your community up in arms with worry?

I’m really hoping it’s the latter, as it’s at least less damaging in the long run, but before you do this again, please consider whether having a “big surprise” is worth all the discontent.

Steal is okay, but just. I was thinking of ways it could be more interesting and exemplify the “thief” a bit more. This idea probably isn’t unheardof, but I haven’t seen it, so I’m posting just in case.

Steal would actually steal the weapon currently being used by the target. It wouldn’t take the weapon from the target for balance purposes, but instead create a generic copy of the weapon.

If you steal a club from an ettin, you get related abilities, like the ground smash and tremor and regular melee swing. If you steal a greatsword from a guardian, you get the basic greatsword set.

Stolen weapons would last until replaced by another steal. Ideally through logout and death.

F1 would shadowstep to your target and steal their main hand weapon, or equip it again if you have switched back to normal weapons. F2 would drop the weapon, allowing F1 to steal a new one.

Balance would be achieved because a thief using a stolen weapon from another profession would not have access to the specific traits tied to the weapon or secondary mechanics like shatter, adrenaline, etc.

This makes the thief more thiefy, and gives the profession a unique adaptability, allowing for more variety at the sacrifice of raw power.

I don’t think this mechanic would be too powerful, and it is not very different from what we have now, just more fun.

Thanks for reading.