Guild Wars 2

Namu.5712:

Osprey.6587:

I can’t help but chuckle when I read people saying stuff like ‘they already said in the AMA they are going to do this or that.’ You all are cheap dates. You may recall they said a whole lot of stuff leading up to release that is all out the window now. It doesn’t matter to me what they say at this point, I will never believe them again. That’s the thing about trust. It’s hard to earn, easy to lose and kitten near impossible to get back when you do lose it. They have lost my trust and I could not in good conscience recommend the game to anyone without warning them that it’s just another gear grinder MMO now.

How was it earned??? By you watching PR videos leading up to release? lol please.

Thats like going out on a date with a guy you have heard about and him whispering sweet nothings in your ear all night.

You’ll have to forgive me if I took their previous body of work in GW1, combined that with what they were saying about GW2 and thought they were telling the truth in those videos, blogs and interviews.

Its not a gear grinder mmo, its almost like you want it to be just so you can sit there satisfied that you were right… but basing your opinion on things that have yet come to pass….. well its a bit ignorant dont you think. Them adding ONE tier of gear does not make this a gear treadmill. Now if in 4-6 months they come out with another tier pat yourself on the back. but until that happens… well.

Would you care to wager on whether or not this will turn into an ongoing treadmill? Logic dictates that if they thought having vertical progression was necessary in the first place to keep people interested (obviously they did since they added it) then having ongoing vertical progression is also necessary to continue to hold their interest. It may never be called anything other than Ascended just like WoW epics are still called epics but the numbers will go higher. I have zero doubts about that.

I can’t help but chuckle when I read people saying stuff like ‘they already said in the AMA they are going to do this or that.’ You all are cheap dates. You may recall they said a whole lot of stuff leading up to release that is all out the window now. It doesn’t matter to me what they say at this point, I will never believe them again. That’s the thing about trust. It’s hard to earn, easy to lose and kitten near impossible to get back when you do lose it. They have lost my trust and I could not in good conscience recommend the game to anyone without warning them that it’s just another gear grinder MMO now.

Well, I guess the bottom line here is what’s done is done and they aren’t going to remove it or rectify the situation. I’m a little saddened by that. I was truly excited to be able to play an MMO I didn’t have to work like a job to keep up with gear progression but that game no longer exists and consequently, I will not be returning.

I’ve gone back to playing World of Tanks the last week or so and I’ve spent nearly $50 in their cash shop. At least there I know my top tier tanks are still going to be top tier when I log in daily.

AcidicVision.5498:

Zenith.1234:

You really are clueless aren’t you? Maybe read that text again and let it sink in.

So the manfesto trailer said nothing of the sort. Thank you. Glad thats finally been settled.

50 seconds in: “Guild Wars 2 takes everything you loved about Guild Wars 1 and puts it into a persistent world.” I’ll keep watching for more examples but for now I will say “check”.

edit: 1:40 “We just don’t want players to grind in Guild Wars 2. No one enjoys that. No one finds it fun.”

So yeah, they don’t specifically talk about vertical progression but the 2 quotes I listed imply that there isn’t any. The first quote says “everything you loved about Guild Wars 1” and that certainly implies no vertical progression as one of those things. The second quote says there is no grinding which also implies no vertical progression because vertical progression is all about grinding.

http://beta.xfire.com/games/gw2

Pretty steep drop off in play time after the event was over. Many people don’t put much stock in xfire’s playtime statistics being indicative of the overall health of a game. I used to be one of them. When people were constantly linking them on the Age of Conan forums, I used to say well that’s not a random sample, not many people use xfire yada yada and then Age of Conan tanked. When they started linking them on the SWTOR forums, I said the same thing and then SWTOR tanked. After xfire playtime stats correctly showing a game in serious decline twice, I now put a little more value on them as a metric. It will be curious to see what the next update shows.

Tosha Daydreamer.9251:

Columba.9730:

It’s a treadmill. 90 hours to get the mandatory gear to compete is a treadmill. SOrry to burst your bubble.

That’s a grind, not a treadmill. A treadmill is something where you keep running, but never reach the max armor, because they implement a new tier shortly after the last one.

Introducing one new tier is not treadmilling yet. It’s a new grind, yes. But it’s only a treadmill if they keep coming up with new tiers. And only time will tell if this will remain a grind, or will evolve in a treadmill.

This is just the beginning. In November, we’re only adding the first level of Infusions and Ascended Rings and Back slots, so that leaves us a lot of room to build upon these levels of Item progression in future content.

As we release more new end game content in the future, you’ll see more Infusions and Ascended item types being added to the game. 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.

How exactly can you read this and not come to the conclusion that there will be more and more of this crap to chase after. It’s a treadmill and Linsey Murdock said so much in those two paragraphs.

Artorous.8573:

With the exception of three pieces of exotic gear all of my gear is Masterwork quality. I did just fine against people in full exotic gear before and I will do just fine against people in ascended gear now.

And you knew what their gear level was how? You can’t even see people’s names in WvW but somehow you are able to glean what kind of equipment they are wearing. Ok, sure…

The extra damage they will gain from a full set is not going to make any noticible difference so kitten about it already.

Yeah right. How many kills do you have in WvW. I’m asking because that is really the only metric available to gauge experience. I’m here to tell ya that I noticed a huge difference going from greens to exotics. In greens people just ignored what I was doing in large fights but once I got full exotics, I could make large groups of people back off areas due to the damage I was doing to them as a staff necro. I also died a whole hell of a lot easier in greens than I did in exotics. You probably gain 200 armor or so and that is very significant.

You realize ups called people can participate against decked out 80s now, and right? Where’s the QQ for the huge disadvantages they have?

You don’t have to go to WvW before you’re level 80. That’s a choice people make and if they don’t know what they are in for before they go, they will after the first time depending on what level they are (I’ve found that if you’re really low level you are actually more powerful than when you are in the mid-levels because they game compensates more heavily since your gear has little to no stats on it.)

slazzy.7309:

I posted that I felt progression was needed. I admit it. I had a whole post about it based on my development studies in The Art of Game Design. Absolutely! That proves I work for a game company? Maybe I feel you need progression to keep interest. It is basic design. Maybe Anet decided that was a good route to go.

Progression in an mmo….why, what a novel idea. Let’s give our players something to do at endgame.

Honestly, I’ve heard so much kittening about how there’s nothing to do at endgame for so many games, I never even conceived I would hear how progression might destroy a game.

And if you think Ascended gear is a treadmill, well, I submit that you haven’t even played this game passed week 1. You are a fair-weather gamer. You go where the mob is the loudest. Think for yourself for once, you’ll feel better about yourself.

Let me tell you a little story. For about 2-1/2 weeks before this game was released, I spent countless hours chasing after titles and collecting items in GW1. You want to know why I did that? I wanted to get my Hall of Monuments to 30 of 50. Want to know why I wanted to get it there? So I could get a bunch of armor and weapons that not everyone would have. Those weapons and armor were purely cosmetic; basically just free transmutes. I knew that was what they would be and I did it anyway. There were tons of other people doing the same thing as me at the time. That proves that you don’t need stat increases to motivate people to play your game.

I am so disgusted by the addition of gear with higher stats into this game that I have quit playing. I may or may not ask for a refund, I haven’t decided yet. I am leaning towards not getting a refund because I am holding out hope they will rectify this situation. If they were to introduce servers without vertical gear progession, I would jump all over that because I really did enjoy the game as advertised. What we have now is not at all what was described pre-release.

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.

Well at least one of you guys is posting on here now so kudos for that. The problem is that you keep saying that this was intended to bridge a gap between exotics and legendaries but what you are conveniently omitting is that there was no gap there to begin with in regards to stats. Now in bridging this heretofore non-existent gap, you have introduced a stat gap between exotics and ascended (and soon legendaries.) Forgive me if I think your logic went on Thanksgiving vacation early.

There’s a couple of things I would like an answer to since you’re here:

1. What do you intend to do for WvW players that only play for WvW. They are going to be forced to compete against people that will now have higher stat gear. I know the company has said that ascended gear will eventually be available in WvW but let’s not kid each other, getting gear in WvW takes much, much longer than it does in PvE so what is your plan there?

2. Why did you guys turn your back on your stated goals of having a game with no gear treadmill less than 3 months into the life cycle of the game? I am going to be really honest here with you when I say that I had pretty much given up MMORPG gaming because I hate gear treadmills. After reading your manifesto and other pre-release statements, I bought two copies of your game because I thought it would be like GW1 where I could easily max out my character. Please tell me why you have thrown thousands of players like me under the bus less than 3 months in?

Wilky.7521:

Eveningstar.6940:

I wish I knew. I logged in earlier today and all ~40 players that constitute my friend list and follower list were offline. That’s the first time I’ve seen that on a weekend; it’s pretty discouraging, especially as I’m on Tarnished Coast.

Almost my entire guild has quit over this patch. We were all excited for and paid for something different, I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s the case with other groups as well. It’s a bummer. “Where is every1?” — Off playing other games. LoL, WoW, Rift, etc.

World of Tanks here

Cercie.1025:

Anet seems to be clueless about the decision to make Fractals of the Mists accessible to people under lvl 80, because now you see advertised everywhere “lfg FOTM lvl 80 exotics only”

Does anyone else find it ironic that this new dungeon has the same acronym as ‘flavor of the month’?

I agree with you 100%. I haven’t logged in since Thursday as I am also sitting the event out. After it’s over, I will continue to play WvW until the game reaches the point where you either have Ascended gear in WvW or go home and then that is exactly what I will do. I don’t know how long that will be but I can promise one thing, I’ve made my last gem shop purchase or any other sort of purchase for this game. I pre-purchased 2 copies of the game and have spent around $80 in gems since launch but now I am just going to be a freeloader until I leave for good.

Karizee.8076:

Xpiher.5209:

That aside, it was already impossible to find people to complete the temple DEs in Orr most days. Now it will be even harder since Fractals offer better rewards; new gear that will be required for future content + random drops.

So they should never add new content because people will want to play with the new content?

Fractals only drop rings and some mats to make a backpiece.

People will still need kit out their gear with exotics from other dungeons or crafting.

So much drama.

This is true…..today. Unfortunately we know, because they have already told us, that this is just the beginning.

If you want to know why there’s drama, you need only take a second to put yourself in the shoes of the people that are disgruntled (probably the understated term of the year right there.) Lots of people like myself have full time jobs, family and various other obligations that require their time. They also happen to like MMOs and in GW2 they had finally found a game that didn’t punish you for not playing 10 hours a day. Everyone in this game knew that the top tier of gear was not only attainable for them but it wouldn’t require a ridiculous time investment to get there.

With yesterday’s update, that rug got pulled out from under them and GW2 took the first step into becoming just like a hundred other MMOs out there where you will be punished for not playing regularly as you will quickly fall behind the power curve. This wouldn’t have been nearly as big a deal if it didn’t fly in the face of everything they said during beta and even earlier than that.

What’s worse is that this game has only been out for about 2-1/2 months. Now I’m no game industry guru but I have a hard time believing that something that has as much polish as this new dungeon is reported to have (haven’t been there, won’t go there) was hastily thrown together in a couple of weeks, a month or even 2 months time (talking specifically about the content here, not the gear treadmill that came along with it.) I would wager that this agony mechanic for this dungeon was in the works from day 1 or even earlier. So we have gated content now which is something they said they would never do. Along with the gated content came a gear treadmill that they also said they would never do. Two broken promises, or lies if you will, for the price of one.

Now I don’t know about you but I don’t know anyone that likes being lied to and in fact, most people react very negatively when they find out they’ve been lied to. Trust is hard to build but easy to lose and they have lost a whole lot of folks’ trust with this move and not surprisingly, there is a large negative backlash over it. ‘But it’s just a game you say’ and that’s true but a lot of people, myself included looked at as more than just a game. We felt that it was a game made for people like us that didn’t want to be slaves to the grind and yes, we feel betrayed and we’re letting them know we feel betrayed. It really shouldn’t surprise anyone.

AnemoneMeer.7182:

Or, you know, instead of doomsaying, “Game is dead” stuff, we make it very clear what we want without saying “Undo everything you did”, and find a way to make it work for both parties.

It’s incoming, sure, but we should still demand that they hurry and add it atop the current ones instead of later so everyone has a chance to get that gear before the next set comes out.

A decent compormise would be to ask them to wait about a week or two, then release it for the masses. The people who want it NOW, can go grind for it and whatnot, but by the time the next wave rolls around, everyone has the stuff from the previous wave, in this case, before they release earrings, they make rings craftable, and the back item available from Karma/WvW, then release after a week or two of that.

This also keeps power creep to a minimum. MtG did this by rendering old, already mostly obsolete decks banned, but released alot of the core cards in the next deck. GW2 can do this by releasing the gear to everyone before adding the next set of grind gear. 15 power/precision/5% crit damage isn’t going to win you many fights on its own.

I don’t disagree with you but you are overlooking one thing. If they turn around and make it available to everyone through various means, all the people that have been grinding the dungeon are going to whine and whine hard. I’m not being a pessimist, I’m being a realist. I’ve been down this road too many times before. I remember the wailing and gnashing of teeth in WoW right before the launch of TBC when they made everyone able to get High Warlord gear for just honor without actually getting the rank. It still took a ton of grinding warfronts with a premade but it was doable and the people that had gotten it the old way were fit to be tied.

I’d love if they quickly made it where you could get Ascended through other means but then I look at how many badges exotics cost in WvW and I shudder how many Ascended would cost. I have about 4000 WvW kills and in all that I have gotten enough badges to buy maybe 2 pieces of gear (saying that because I bought one piece and I’m sitting on about 200 badges and used a whole lot to buy siege blueprints before I knew about the gear vendor.) I would guess that they would probably price Ascended gear at double what Exotics cost and man, that’s a lot of killing when not everyone drops a bag and not every bag has badges in it.

Colton.9460:

Snoring Sleepwalker.9073:

Colton.9460:

Sometimes people on this forum confuses me. How does rewarding players for playing the game not equate to people having more reasons to play the game?

Because we don’t want to play the same content over and over just to get the gear. Gear that is mandatory for the next tier of content.

Because ANET’s manifesto promised that this wouldn’t happen.

Because we play games to enjoy ourselves. Grinding the same content over and over is more like work than fun.

You would rather play the same content over and over again for nothing? Or do you really have fun playing the same dungeons over and over agian, if so why is getting a reward detrimental to that? The old system just left you a bunch of dungeons to redo or reexploring places you already went to before. Manifestos are not legal contracts with players, if your design isnt working you are crazy if you dont fix it in fear of breaking a “here is what we hope to accomplish” statement. And I do find it fun to do something till I progress, it is kinda my manifesto..

I don’t need to be rewarded to enjoy something. Fun is it’s own reward. I just got done playing a round of golf and at the end of it I got nothing but I still enjoyed every minute of it.

@ Osprey- Sure when a new game comes out Ill play it, just did with Borderlands 2. I dont think the game cares if I cheat on it a little. I will play the game as long as there are things to do and I am having fun. So I guess you are right, when I am through all the content I will take a break and then when more is released I will come back- some people just play to play? Ill just play when it is fun, thanks.

I’m not gonna say you don’t mean what you say but I have past history on my side and that history dictates that when players move on from a game for whatever reason they seldom come back and if they do it isn’t for long because they remember why they left. Just sayin’.

I would ask you what game with vertical progression has ever made it where the latest and greatest gear can be obtained without doing the latest and greatest dungeon? My guess is they will put in alternative methods of obtaining Ascended gear after they release a new tier of Ascended gear with better stats than the current tier has. At that point they will make the current tier giveaway items.

On the chance I’m wrong and they add it sooner, I’d bet dollars to doughnuts that it will be prohibitively expensive. They didn’t spend resources designing this new content so people can skip it and buy this stuff through alternate means. If they did that, the players would take the path of least resistance as they predictably always do and not do their fancy new dungeon.

Colton.9460:

Rooks Zaer.5846:

Satisfying you and gamers like you required ArenaNet to throw their entire fanbase under the bus. Are you ok with that?

Doesnt look like I will be able to play for a while so I guess I can keep responding:

Well I would argue that the entire fanbase wasn’t made of people like yourself. From the forum criticism of the endgame and lack of progression( which I am sure you also opposed) I would say at progressionist at very least are a significant part of the community( although majority/minority would be pure speculation from me).

I would assume they made the switch for a reason, either people werent happy, people were leaving( like my group), or that this is simply how they had planned to move forward from the beginning. If the decision was made because of the first two then yes I am okay with it; they thought it would be best for the life of the game.

If it is the last one then I can see how people would be upset; however, if your fanbase is large enough then they will change it again. I think a utilitarian approach is a smart financial move and important to keeping a robust population for MMOs. It seems people always want to think they are the majority though, and sometime it doesnt work that way.( not that you arent, just simply I think it is rather hard to tell)

The problem is that guys like you will be out of here in a heartbeat as soon as you get all the best gear again which probably won’t be too long. Either that or some new game will drop and you will all bolt for that because let’s face it, as carrots on a stick go, this one they’ve added kind of sucks. The rest of us that didn’t give a rat’s rear end about having a gear treadmill have lost the only MMO game we could call home and to me that really, really sucks.

Xsorus.2507:

Ostra.3927:

I left DAoC the moment the item upgrades were released.

I was in a large and top level RvR guild that has 150 members. 90% of us left without buying the expansion and without ever playing DAoC again until they added the legacy servers.

That’s great and all, But the games overall population increased by 25k after TOA was released, and was that way for an ENTIRE year before WoW was released.

TOA didn’t hurt DAOC, WoW did.. along with every MMO that was released at the time.

And if i see another person talk about how “Oh they released Classic servers and a bunch of people started playing again, that proves TOA is bad” I’m going to die of laughter.

Because people came back because they were new servers, That’s it….Everyone Dog piled onto those servers just like they did Mordred and Andred, and just like those two servers…After people got bored, they left those servers Husks of what they once were. That is why merged Classics into Regular Servers, there simply wasn’t enough people playing them to make them useful.

Only reason people cry about TOA items is they lost in a fight, and needed something to blame for being bad at DAOC.

You have to look at things in context. There were basically three big MMOs in the US at the time of ToA release and that was DAoC, UO and EQ. Asheron’s Call was still around but it was in steady decline by then.

Many DAoC players including myself had played EQ and we knew that as bad as the grind in ToA was, it was worse in EQ. It wasn’t called Evercamp for nothing. UO was a 2D game that didn’t appeal to everyone.

Furthermore, you have to remember that a very large percentage of the playerbase in DAoC were PvPers that played for the RvR aspect of the game. If you were a PvPer, you certainly weren’t going to go to EQ, its PvP servers were a joke. UO was in its post Trammel era and while I never played the game, everyone I know that did said Trammel killed UO’s PvP. PvP in Asheron’s call meant playing on the ruthless Darktide free for all PvP server or trying to play as a PvP flagged player on an otherwise PvE server and it takes a special breed to thrive in a FFA PvP environment. There was no other game that offered large scale PvP like Camelot had so if that was something you liked, you really had nowhere else to go so people held their collective nose and tried to do the Atlantis crap. When the next gen MMOs hit, people left in droves but I contend that they would not have left in droves if they didn’t think ToA sucked. You didn’t exactly endorse it yourself with your reply.

As for what you said about the classic servers just being mobbed because they were new, that is not true either, not the way I saw it. My entire guild returned to DAoC to play on those and the only thing that brought us back was that there was no ToA on them. We certainly weren’t unique in that respect. There were many DAoC refugees that returned to the game they loved except for that kitten expansion pack to play on the classic servers.

DegoLocc.5976:

What do you want? To hit 80 and have nothing to do? You want to eat the carrot on the stick as soon as you roll your toon?! People like to feel like their character continues to grow past level cap, it’s called end game.
If you don’t like progression and time sink, MMO’s are clearly not for you.

And for the record, I’m not from WOW, in fact, I think WOW killed mmo’s.

Go ahead and have a hissy fit and leave because of some minor issue, you’ll be back. As far as MMO’s on the market today, this one is the best. Sure you can go play your personal niche’ MMO, but face it, you’d be lucky to find ppl still playing them.

I have 3 level 80s in GW2 and I had no problem finding something to do. For the record, the reason I made the 2nd two 80s wasn’t out of boredom but because I was looking for something different in WvW than what my first class offered. Every night I logged in and every night I had no problem finding something that held my interest. I never once said to myself, ‘this sucks, there’s nothing to do’ because I didn’t have some piece of gear with better stats to chase after. I just played and had fun and yes, it was fun because I knew my character was finished and I could do what I wanted and not what I HAD TO DO to get better stats. I feel sorry for you that you need bigger numbers on your gear to give yourself a reason to play. I truly do.

DegoLocc.5976:

I loved DAoC, and from the start have seen how similar GW2 is, I love it! I am personally glad GW2 has grown from GW1, no gear progression means, hit max level and stop playing your level 80 toon. Gear progression means, you get to keep playing your main, and that is a good thing IMO.

Depends on how long an attention span you have. I can see yours is relatively short since you think hitting max level ended the game before this change. This just puts the carrot a little further out in front of you is all.

I personally do not equate seeing bigger numbers with progress and I would garner no satisfaction out of defeating someone I had a 15% gear advantage over either.

edit: Your use of commas borders on criminal. Please stop using them.

Cirroq.2531:

The premise that no gear treadmill has ever existed in this game is false when you consider legendary weapons. That being said there is no overwhelming advantage to getting a legendary other than bragging rights because the stats aren’t much better than exotics which are easy to obtain.

Actually you are wrong about this because you are confusing two terms that don’t necessarily mean the same thing; gear treadmill and item progression. Yes, the game has always had item progression that stopped at a point that was easily obtainable. It never had a gear treadmill however because think of what a real life treadmill does. It keeps turning and turning and never stops and if you stop walking, you fall off. Same thing with a gear treadmill. They keep adding gear and adding gear and if you take a break for even a month, you are going to have to play catch up. That did not exist in this game until last night.

Corvindi.5734:

I think they’ll get away with it longer and more profitably than Mythic did (unfortunately) because they lack new competition with the polish and engine improvements that WoW had.

But in the end, yes, I think they will lose the business of those who were supposed to be the target audience in the first place and then they will lose their new targets when they perceive that GW2 isn’t as popular as whatever the next big release will be and/or when they get tired of going back and forth to the cash shop for gold to craft the latest greatest gear.

Time will tell but I think the PvE in this game is not really as good as most other games (I haven’t seen the new dungeon nor do I intend to) so if it’s vertical progression in PvE content you are after, there are many, many better alternatives to GW2.

Hellkaiser.6025:

“They’ve also effectively entered into the Pay to Win territory since the requirements for Ascended gear can be bought on the trade post.”

Could you please elaborate on this claim, as it’s quite a controversial one unless it’s merely an opinion, which I feel you should state

Sure can. Here are the reported items necessary for making an ascended back item:

250 T6 mats
50 Ectos
24 skill points
1 Mists essense

T6 mats are the rare ones (ancient bones, blood etc.) Both those and the ectos are tradeable so once the recipe becomes widely known you can expect the prices on those items to skyrocket. Now as you know, the game allows you to effectively buy gold from the cash shop by allowing the conversion of gems to gold. That means if you have enough real life money to buy gold, those T6 mats and ectos are not an obstacle to you, hence pay to win.

edit: you may be tempted to counter that the person I describe could already do that with exotics but the difference is that exotics were 1) able to be obtained from multiple sources and 2) not that hard for even casual players to acquire so it’s not really an apples to apples comparison.

A little background first for those that are unaware of what I’m referring to. Some of us have been playing MMOs a long time dating back to the original Everquest era and beyond. Back then, EQ was the big kid on the MMO block and nothing was really close to it. Kind of like WoW is now but on a much smaller scale. A new game by a small developer hit the scene called Dark Age of Camelot. While still chock full of timesinks compared to today’s game, DAoC took a lot of the useless boring crap that everyone hated about EQ and threw it overboard. I wouldn’t say they broke the MMO mold but they definitely dragged it down the street a good ways. They became the most serious competitor to EQ in the market peaking at about 250k subscribers to EQ’s 400k+. They did things differently, PvP was a major part of their game and their was no endless gear grind (sound familiar?) This was circa 2001-2002 and things were going better than Mythic (the developer) could have ever hoped for.

Fast forward 2 years. DAoC has already has one successful expansion and is now set to release their latest expansion, Trials of Atlantis. Camelot players eagerly purchased the game but to their dismay, they found that rather than an expansion building on the game they had been playing, this was more like a whole new game with new powerful Artifact gear, a new progression system and new gated content.

Well it didn’t take long after the release of ToA before the population of DAoC started into a death spiral that it would never recover from. Some people argue that the spiral was caused by competition but as someone who was there, I can say that is only half of the story. I don’t know anyone that liked ToA in its release form and it was often referred to as Tedium of Atlantis. Mythic eventually came out with Classic servers that did not have ToA enabled in an effort to woo back players that had left and later on they basically removed all the grinding and gating in ToA and made everything soloable or doable with half a group and buffbots. Yes competition was a contributing factor as several new MMOs came out around the time DAoC started into it’s death spiral but the reason people were looking to jump ship is because they hated ToA! They figured if they were going to have to grind, they might as well do it in a game where the PvE was more polished and that’s what they did.

Fast forward to today and I see the same thing happening in GW2. They have completely set the game on it’s ear with this new dungeon and gear by introducing gated content and a gear treadmill. They’ve also effectively entered into the Pay to Win territory since some of the requirements for Ascended gear can be bought on the trade post. I don’t know how long it will take for the death spiral to start but I do know these things happen much faster these days (looking at you SWTOR.)

Mythic realized with hindsight that Trials of Atlantis was a huge screw up and tried to fix things but it was too little too late. GW2 can at least avoid that mistake. The question is, will they?

Ditrah.5128:

You sure like the term “lol”, good for you and why would I try to stop you?

No I am not PR just because I don’t share your opinion, talk about being childish. Get that out of your head, the world doesn’t work that way.
What I find interesting is that many of you seem so convinced that they WILL in-fact add a new set of gear and that you won’t be able to transmute that skin onto your old one. That you won’t be able to change an infusion of your gear either.
Even when you don’t have any evidence for such a thing or anything about any new gear-tier being added either. “Must be the case” is simply not good enough.
This could very well be the final gear model and be the same 5 expansions from now.

I hate to say this but you people that come into this thread trying to defend them really should better inform yourself. This is not the end of the road with the gear grind, it’s only the beginning. How can I know this you ask? Do I have a crystal ball? Well no, I don’t but I can read:

This is just the beginning. In November, we’re only adding the first level of Infusions and Ascended Rings and Back slots, so that leaves us a lot of room to build upon these levels of Item progression in future content.

As we release more new end game content in the future, you’ll see more Infusions and Ascended item types being added to the game. 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.

and here:

The new additions in November are just the start of our item progression initiative. We’re going to add tons of new high-level content to Guild Wars 2 in the future. As we introduce the new high-level content, we’ll also roll out complimentary Ascended and Legendary items (to say nothing of the other rewards you can earn by playing the content).

Those are both pull quotes from here: https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/linsey-murdock-unveils-new-high-end-ascended-gear/

So basically they have said themselves that this is just the beginning of the never ending treadmill and as the guy a few posts up said, when they obsolete this stuff, they will give it away via other means (ie: complimentary Ascended and Legendary items)

Aelelan.1639:

I had always thought that a gear treadmill was when a game consistently introduces a new set of more powerful gear as new content is added. I always figured that this implied that there had to be many content patches that introduced new tiers of gear to claim its existence but the Guild Wars 2 forums have proved me wrong. A gear treadmill is incurred the second that you introduce a set of armor that has more stats than previous sets, regardless of whether or not it happens as a consistent mechanic of progression for new content. Some would argue that because GW2 has not had any of these content updates with new tiers of gear and because Devs have explicitly stated why this was added a singular solution to a singular problem that it lacks the consistency that a gear treadmill contains, but that’s just plain ridiculous.

C’mon man, use your head. If they intended this to be a one time thing, why would they have bothered with it at all? Especially when you consider the overwhelming flood of complaints it’s caused (which only a fool couldn’t have foreseen) it wouldn’t even be worth the resources to do it if it wasn’t something they intended to build on but hey, don’t take my word for it. Straight from the source:

This is just the beginning. In November, we’re only adding the first level of Infusions and Ascended Rings and Back slots, so that leaves us a lot of room to build upon these levels of Item progression in future content.

As we release more new end game content in the future, you’ll see more Infusions and Ascended item types being added to the game. 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.

That is taken directly from here: https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/linsey-murdock-unveils-new-high-end-ascended-gear/

So I have to ask, why oh why do you think this is the end of item progression in GW2 when they clearly stated this is just the beginning?

Bellatrix.5402:

Erasculio.2914:

2) NCSoft is in trouble

See here - a massive fall in NCSoft stocks. I don’t believe this has been due to GW2, a single game (which is far from being NCSoft’s main game) would not have that much impact. Rather, the fall happened after the announcement of NCSoft’s Q3 quarterly report, as seen here.

With such a bad impact due to the latest quarterly report, I’m sure NCSoft is pushing all its studios to bring as much profit as possible. In the case of GW2, it’s hard to know exactly in which ways a bigger profit could be achieved, but it’s within reason to expect that more people playing means more money earned (since it’s likely that more people would buy something in the game store).

Right?

IMO, no. But I wouldn’t be surprised if NCSoft believed in that, and, under the current circunstances, that they are looking very disfavorably at how GW2 has been losing players.

3) Conclusion: the article Colin Johanson on How ArenaNet Measures Success would be true on an ideal world.

However, for NCSoft right now it’s far from being an ideal world. They need profits, right now; or in the absence of profits, at least big numbers. And considering how long ArenaNet had to make GW2, well, it’s not surprising that NCSoft would like to collect, and collect big.

Ergo – I would not be surprised if NCSoft were pressuring ArenaNet to bring as many players as possible to Guild Wars 2.

No matter the cost.

NCSoft is in trouble because as it turns out the F2P model in general doesn’t work that well in practice for 99% of games, which NCSoft has a huge stake in (GW2 isn’t purely F2P, there’s an upfront cost). It’s only REALLY worked for Dungeon & Fighter (the US localization was horribly mismanaged and never really caught on) and to a lesser extent Maple Story, ….

I would beg to differ. Most games that go free to play generate much more revenue than they did as subscription games. Dungeon & Dragons Online and Lord of the Rings Online are two examples I can think of right off the bat. Both just recently released new expansions by the way.

AzureNightmare.3914:

So just what /will/ you do if this really is the end of it? No, I’m not looking for “Oh well that’s never gonna happen this is a guaranteed 101% trend now no turning back blahblahblah” I’m honestly just curious- what will you do if this is a legitimately one-time-only tier upgrade and everything was just more content instead of tiers and they just want to add something new to the game?

I don’t know what I’ll do in that case just as I don’t know what I’ll do if I win the Powerball this weekend. I don’t make plans for contingencies that have little to no chance of occurring.

Edit: I’m sure they won’t add another tier of gear after this just like Blizzard never adds another tier of gear to their game. They just make the existing best tier even more powerful and I’m sure that’s what they will do here in some manner (their method seems to be the infusions.)

Taerik.3405:

Osprey.6587:

Taerik.3405:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/info/news/A-message-from-our-Studio-Design-Director-Chris-Whiteside/first#post721451

I got needlessly frustrated over the last few days it seems.
I dont understand why they felt they had to slowly bring the players UP to full legendary stats.
I am glad to hear this stuff is available through many more methods than just the new fractal dungeon.
I am bummed that I have to regear my toons.

First off, he made that post two days ago when this firestorm first hit the forums. It’s old news at this point. Secondly, he says it will be available through other means but doesn’t say when. You’ll note that it was not included in tonight’s patch. Finally, they also said GW2 wouldn’t have a gear treadmill and now we have one so their word means jack kitten to me. Bottomline is that if your first reaction to the news about ascended items was negative, there is nothing to find solace with in that post.

I read the article and then didnt log in since, I just saw that post today, no reason for you to get all jumpy over it. Yes the VAST majority of community response is negative, but I would rather play this than wow or starwow

I wasn’t trying to jump on you about it. You said you were needlessly frustrated the last few days and I was just letting you know that your frustration was well founded and that damage control post doesn’t change anything. As for choosing this over wow or starwow, I will probably opt for option 3 which is to quit playing MMOs altogether. It’s becoming painfully obvious that nobody has the balls to make one without a gear grind and I hate gear grinds.

Taerik.3405:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/info/news/A-message-from-our-Studio-Design-Director-Chris-Whiteside/first#post721451

I got needlessly frustrated over the last few days it seems.
I dont understand why they felt they had to slowly bring the players UP to full legendary stats.
I am glad to hear this stuff is available through many more methods than just the new fractal dungeon.
I am bummed that I have to regear my toons.

First off, he made that post two days ago when this firestorm first hit the forums. It’s old news at this point. Secondly, he says it will be available through other means but doesn’t say when. You’ll note that it was not included in tonight’s patch. Finally, they also said GW2 wouldn’t have a gear treadmill and now we have one so their word means jack kitten to me. Bottomline is that if your first reaction to the news about ascended items was negative, there is nothing to find solace with in that post.

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

Kudzu.7569:

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

what did you guys do from 1 to 80? Sit on the same gear for 80 levels? Get used to it: GW and GW2 were always games where you got better gear while playing the content. Now that there is new content, there is new gear. It’s a reward mechanism; you get your shiny because you do well.

Except that in GW1, the new gear you got was for looks only. So no, there is no comparing the horizontal progression of the original GW to the stat-increasing vertical progression they’ve just added.

I would have been happy if they had added a form of grinding so long as it didn’t add any stats to armor. With stat increases at end-game you always risk creating gated content and requiring players to grind long hours (even if they don’t enjoy that playstyle at all) just to see the parts of the game they do enjoy.

Really? I thought I’ve seen some green items somewhere when sorrows furnace was released…

Green items in GW1 weren’t any better than blues as far as damage went. They just had a built-in insignia or whatever it was called on them.

What do we know of tiers in GW2 so far? Do we have to grind those new tier items for weeks like in other games? So far: No. Why should it be different now? They already said that Infusion is the thing you will have to grind, not ascended gear. Do we have to use a new tier in order to play new content in GW2? Absolutely No. The new dungeon (all 9 shards) are entirely open to everyone; even to everyone without ascended gear. You’ll only need this gear in order to unlock a new difficulty – for the same content. So you don’t need to grind for new content but for a new difficulty.

Someone posted here earlier that you get 5 tokens per fractal and the ascended items take like 250 tokens to get (may have been more.) That’s a ton of grinding in my book.

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

drwookie.6391:

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

so this is positive:
-) all content available to everyone – horizontal progression
-) challenge mode for people who need vertical progression – something to work towards

Correction:

all content is available to everyone who wants to grind a dungeon

Those of us who play this game because we believed we could play the way WE WANTED without feeling left behind are screwed. I play WvW solely. I am now being set up to be at a statistical disadvantage to those who want to grind dungeons. I have no interest in grinding dungeons, I don’t play other MMOs for that reason and I play this one because I was told (by their manifesto and their overall original game design) that I would be able to play the way I wanted.

This is clearly not the case.

did you even read my post?

all content IS available, you don’t need to grind the dungeon. Every shard can be played with the gear you have before entering the dungeon. It’s only the harder difficulties of this shards (this is not new content, only the same content with more healthpoints) which you need to devote for – aka grind.

WvW is great. No need to visit the dungeon for best loot. Chris already stated that the new tier (ascended) will be available in WvW also.

Notice he didn’t say how it would be obtained. Currently there are two ways to get exotics in WvW. You can get them as loot drops off players (lol, yeah that happens frequently :P) or you can buy them with Badges of Honor. Only problem with the latter is it costs 300-400 badges per piece and they only have one stat configuration which is power/toughness/vitality IIRC. So if you’re a condition damage build, you’re SOL. Needless to say, I have only gotten one exotic piece across my 3 characters from WvW even though that is what I do the most. That wasn’t a big deal to me because I was able to get my exotics fairly easily through other means. With ascended gear, I won’t be able to. Whiteside can say it will be available in WvW all he wants but unless something changes radically with how gear is currently obtained from WvW, it’s not a viable source.

stpetemermaid.5947:

I bet this is getting a good laugh at some other game companies, and a few “I told you so’s” around their dev cubicles.

I bought GW2, so I intend to play it…my way. I actually like leveling, and personal story, map completion, WvW and sPvP. If WvW gets stupid over gear, then I’ll just stick with sPvP.

The problem with that idea for me is that sPvP is a totally different game from WvW with the small teams and control points (I like killing people, not running around capping points.) I do the public games for a diversion at times but I’ve never been able to really get into it. Still, good for you if you can find solace there.

barti.7685:

Arvid.3829:

Haette.2701:

icedutah.1752:

Now when you cast Dark Path you can’t leave death shroud during it’s cast time or it cancels the skill. Well, I guess that was kind of a bug. But funny as a Dev used that tactic in a post not too long ago

Leaving DS always canceled spells you were still casting. Leaving DS never cancelled spells in flight. Very different things, there.

Nothing broke there, you’re being paranoid. It still works fine, you’re just leaving death shroud too early.

Kirika.9120:

Yeah, noticed this too. Made me smile.
The only thing Anet are good at is trolling their necro playerbase, well maybe two things actually.. being clueless about their own game as well.

You too.

I can second that, this still works.

barti.7685:

lot of text lill change i can tell you one thing tho.. bloodfiend healing is pretty good now 574 that doesnt scale with healing for every time he attacks thats not bad thats not bad at all

also dark path seems faster the hand.. could be my imagination and wishful thinking tho. but since they made the staf animation faster.. it wouldnt suprise me this would be a lucky fix too and it got 33% faster.

I believe they made Spectral Grasp faster, not Necrotic Grasp?
Also, mine heals for 614, so it must scale with something or there some other effect in play?

ah thought they made the staff animation faster since that shares animation with dark path same hand .. ah well the pet doesnt scale iwith anything with me tho maybe you got inflated lvl 80 stats with gear.. i dunno switching to cleric amulet didnt increase the health it gave to me tho nor did bloodthirst.

Running around Orr tonight, it seemed the staff hand animation was faster to me. Could have been my imagination though as there is no way to test it for sure.

MissClara.6847:

Thank you Ostra.3927, Hilko.1760, Zaxares.5419, and Sirge.8934 . It’s been so easy to find photos of gear, but a lot harder to come across solid information.

I guess this doesn’t really affect me personally as a player too much (not a big fan of WvW), except that I really like to craft things, so it’s too bad they can’t be crafted right now (hope to see that changed!).

Sirge – I can see how this gear may make one player slightly stronger in WvW, and frustrate people as a result since it is competitive, but my question is why do you (and many others who share your opinion) find it concerning that a player may have a few extra stats in PvE? It’s not like anyone is ever rooting for the E to beat the P (okay, maybe with a few exceptions for the especially annoying people out there). Just playing. Also, thank you for your very informative response (and please don’t misconstrue this as trolling or baiting, I guess I just don’t see why people are too upset outside of the effects this may have in WvW).

It’s not a small stats advantage. See my post on this page for one item:

Yeah, not much difference between this:
http://www.gw2db.com/items/71366-red-ring-of-death
and these:
http://www.gw2db.com/items/58008-ruby-orichalcum-ring
http://www.gw2db.com/items/20923-exquisite-ruby-jewel-s
104 power, 69 precision, 8% crit damage vs. 92 power, 63 precison and 6% crit damage. Those are respective increases of 13%, 9.5% and 33-1/3%. Nope, not much difference at all.
/sarcasm off

13% increase on the primary stat. That’s a significant advantage when you consider there will eventually be ascended pieces for every slot. That means someone with 2500 power (made up number for comparison’s sake) would end up with 2825 power when upgraded to ascended gear. That’s pretty kitten significant. The best food only gives something like 100 power and every serious WvW player runs food buffs.

The worst part about this is the grind required to get this stuff. I simply will not do it, it’s way too much and I don’t have the time for it. However, there are plenty of people with a lot more time on their hands than I have that will do it and also do WvW so I’m left to either play WvW with a sub-par character or quit the game because WvW is my primary motivation for playing GW2. I really don’t want to fight uphill all the time with a sub-par character so I guess the choice is clear.

Xae.7204:

I like the idea.

Near Trivial improvement doesn’t bother me.

This ins’t Molten Core -> BWL.

The overall power creep seems negligible, and it is only being introduced a slot or two at a time.

Yeah, not much difference between this:
http://www.gw2db.com/items/71366-red-ring-of-death

and these:

http://www.gw2db.com/items/58008-ruby-orichalcum-ring
http://www.gw2db.com/items/20923-exquisite-ruby-jewel-s

104 power, 69 precision, 8% crit damage vs. 92 power, 63 precison and 6% crit damage. Those are respective increases of 13%, 9.5% and 33-1/3%. Nope, not much difference at all.

/sarcasm off

ckeeton.4907:

NaughtyProwler.8653:

ckeeton.4907:

IllegalChocolate.6938:

ckeeton.4907:

all of you people complaining really irritate me. its like you cant stand change. big deal they changed A PORTION OF THE GAME. IT ISNT THE END OF THE WORLD.

They made a change that was contradictory to their mission statement, for those of us who are responsible consumers and value corporate standards, that is a big deal.

You’ll understand that when you’re older.

no i just like to be open minded and i actually adapt to new ideas and dont just want a MMO that is suppose to evolve to just remain static. it isnt the end of the world. its 1 dungeon. there are other things to do. its nice to see some people are too close minded to figure that out.

There is nothing new about a gear treadmill. In fact, it is the exact opposite of new.

…it isnt the entire game. its one portion and it isnt a gear treadmill. its a form of vertical progression. it doesnt define the whole game.

You’re missing the point. People that only do WvW now have to grind this dungeon in order to stay on par with the best available equipment. Also, they have already intimated that this is not the last tier of gear they are going to add. So yeah, they actually are redefining the whole game.

Lopez.7369:

Infusions have stats. LOL.

I didn’t mouth off about it because I had no way to know prior but this doesn’t surprise me at all. So now the grindiest of the grinders will have the best WvW gear. Isn’t that great. Que incoming pvp only stat to reduce the effectiveness of PvE gear in WvW creating yet another problem. A-Net, you all are a bunch of fools for doing this.

Joshmans.8937:

Meh.

Depending on how different the stats are, it may bring me back to the game. Lack of gear progression is why i stopped played after hitting 80.

And this person’s reply sums up precisely why they shouldn’t have bothered with this in the first place. The increase is not big enough to make stat chasers happy but they are big enough to turn off a huge chunk of the core fans of the GW franchise. Lose/lose they have set up here. Tomorrow is going to be interesting to be sure.

Chackan.2813:

What a surprise! They DO care about us players! C’mon, maybe know everyone should rest a bit and just wait for things to happen.

It seems great that ANet is worried about the player base and already releasing such a huge update like this one!

Get up to speed man. That post from Whiteside was made two days ago and it basically says they are putting in a gear treadmill but not calling it a treadmill. It’s not new and it’s not good news.

Pandemic.3516:

nachtnebel.9168:

The fact there is nothing you have to do is what made GW1 so great, you could just log in, do what ever you wanted and then maybe played something else for the next two, three or even six month without losing power. This is what most of the old community expected GW2 to be like too.

The worst thing about the power creep or gear treadmill is that it is absolutely unnecessary. You don’t need increasing stats to do new or harder content cause mechanics don’t care about numbers, they work no matter if you have 20k or 50k HP.

this post is bs.

you could get level 20 gear in gw1 that was weak as piss and you would be slaughtered everywhere you went. you had to work extremely hard to be on a competing level. gw2 makes it so easy that those exotics people are complaining about being useless probably took no more than a week to get a full set.

I would love to see someone get max gear at max level in gw1 in a week or two.

I don’t know what gw1 you played but you certainly could get max level gear in a week in the one I played. Hell, it only took me a day. All you needed was a few crafting materials and like 15 silver per piece to make the common level 20 armor (and it was exactly the same as all the other armor.) Everything after that was tweaks like runes and insignias which were also easy to acquire.

Valento.9852:

Urmomzbf.2640:

For all the people who are complaining “GW2 is going against their word! NO! YOU CANT DO THIS??!! You are creating the gear grind you promised wouldn’t happennnn!!!!” Please think before you speak. It isn’t hard to obtain any gear including Exotics (apart from Legendaries which are only better cosmetically). It isn’t a gear grind. It’s just a twist to the game to make dungeons more exciting and add difficulty due to the “scaling to how you play” not the gear. The game STILL isn’t gear based, just skill based. . .

That is the point, Ascended Gear will only make such a great effect the further you go into the fractals dungeons, increasing the difficult. Casuals shouldn’t REALLY be bothered by this, I just can’t get what is going in.

If you think this gear is the end of the line of progression, you are naive. This is just the start of it and only 3 slots to ‘ease’ us into the transition. Kind of like the old story about how if you put a frog in a pot of water and gradually turn up the heat, it will cook to death but if you toss the frog in a pot of boiling water it will jump out. Well, newsflash, this is 2012 and these frogs have seen more than their share of pots over the years and as evidenced by this thread, they are avoiding all pots of water now.

Namu.5712:

I don’t know about you but when I hit 80 I had plenty of gold….. and karma.

Heres the difference you didn’t grind for it you got it along the way while questing and completing story…. that is not the same.

Now this new gear could be entirely rewarded based on your new content progression the further you progress the new content the more new gear you get…. that is not =/= to grinding.

When new gear is introduced and the way you get it is say through some point system that has nothing to do with story or progression THAT IS GEAR GRINDING. When new gear is introduced as part of the story line that you get alone the way THAT IS NOT GEAR GRINDING.

You’re basically being forced to do content to get the gear which is in opposition to everything they said leading up to the game’s release. They said you could pretty much get the best level 80 gear doing whatever you wanted to do and as of today, that is true. My most recent 80 is lacking 3 jewelry pieces from having all exotics. I got those pieces from crafting (most of them), karma vendors (1 piece), dungeon tokens (2 pieces) and named world drop (1 piece of Khilbron’s I bought on the TP.)

Now we’re going to be forced into doing this dungeon to get a reasonable shot at getting this new stuff. Yeah, I saw where Chris said it would be available through other means like WvW. Well here’s the thing with that. You can get exotics through WvW too as loot drops but they are extremely rare. You can also buy them with badges but there is only one stat distribution for ALL of the items on the vendor and they require a great deal of badges to get. If that’s how it will continue to work for PvPers then yes, we are going to feel compelled to run this dungeon for the ascended gear even if we have no interest in PvE. It’s a pretty crappy thing to do and it’s not going to make those wanting a skinner box happy for very long, guarantee it.

Naoko.7096:

Isn’t every 20 stats increment = 1% increment in actual combat?
Were they calculating percentage difference based on “stats” or “stats towards actual combat capabilities”?

If they did not take into consideration that every 20 stats = 1% increment, it would be off.

2. For your info, majority who doesn’t PVE much but played for WvWvW are using the masterwork tier instead of exotic.

Regarding #2, I would argue that is not at all true. Those in masterwork gear, which are greens, are the ones that are constantly downed. If you don’t like laying on the ground with your hand outstretched, you don’t use greens in WvW.

I guess I have to post this again since I just got a pm saying my original was deleted for too much italics (you guys are really trying to torque me off today aren’t you?) My thoughts on this change are basically this:

They are making a huge mistake here IMO. We have all heard the old saying that when you try to please everyone you end up pleasing no one and that is exactly what they are doing. They are trying to add item progression to appeal to WoW style MMO players but I would almost guarantee it won’t be enough to sate them and get them to drop whatever real progression game they play to come spend money in the GW2 gem shop (let’s not kid ourselves, this is the real impetus behind this move.) What it will do is alienate people that came to this game to get away from item progression games. WvW on my tier 1 server is already gotten to a point where we seldom have a queue for any of our borderlands. There are tons of players on Blackgate that only do WvW and this will drive even more players away because they are not interested in doing dungeons for gear progression.

Columba.9730:

As long as these are as easily obtained in wvwvw, I am fine.

You’re dreaming man. If they were easily obtained in WvW then nobody would bother doing the dungeon for them thereby defeating their purpose. I can see them making them obtainable in WvW but I would bet anything it won’t be easy. Those of us that PvP always take it in the kitten on stuff like this.

“As for the whole 2v1 thing, get over yourselves. It’s the appearance of a 2v1, happens all the time, in all the matchups. Here’s the thing though. I wouldn’t blame them if they chose to 2v1 you. BG had a great reputation (beastgate) as a server that wouldn’t quit, much like my own. Then they got mad transfers from HoD and started talking kitten to everybody on the forums. The last 2 weeks have seen the forums fill up with a bunch of garbage from a bunch of players who think they’re better than everybody. If i was on JQ or SBI, i would certainly tunnel vision on the kitten talkers too. Not that that’s what’s happening, just saying. Maybe try to put a little more sportsmanship into what you write, might get you further.”

There is truth in this. I don’t know if it’s something that is peculiar to Blackgate or not but we seem to have more than our share of conspiracy theorists that always think the other two servers are working in concert against us lol. I know the trash talking certainly doesn’t help. I’m usually laughing at the notion everytime it is brought up because it is foolish IMO but last night I actually had to scratch my head about what I was seeing on the Blackgate Borderlands map.

We were trading blows with SBI over garrison and after I had to respawn, I took a look at the map and saw everything in the south was held by the default owners yet I kept seeing JQ up taking our supply camps in the north and running around causing trouble. Not saying there was any funny business going on but I thought it was odd that they were not taking the opportunity to assault some of the stuff down south that had to have been lightly defended. I know I would have if I were in their shoes.

As for the 2 on 1 thing, I find it particularly laughable when people cry about it when their server is currently in the lead on points and/or holds most of the structures. What else are you expecting to happen? If you want to catch up to the first place team, you have to go after them. If the 2nd and 3rd place servers fight each other, it isn’t stopping #1 from gaining points and that’s the name of the game.

Dr J/Lord Osprey/Big Show Joe
Guild Leader of [HOGS]
Blackgate

Wow, just wow. I read through this whole thread and talk about a witch hunt. There have been some serious accusations of cheating here and unless I missed it, the only evidence presented is one guy claiming he saw his server’s orbs hacked 5 times but somehow never managed to get a screenshot of it despite miraculously being there all 5 times. Call me a skeptic but that just doesn’t add up.

For the record, I am one of the guild leaders in the Blackgate alliance. My guild is small and we are not an all-WvW-all-the-time guild but we do our fair share of it. I have never heard of someone from our server stealing an orb by using a hack. Now I’m not saying it’s never happened but I’ve never heard of it nor have I heard anyone calling someone out for it in map chat or on our forum.

To add to what Snow Aeth said above about quirky things happening in WvW with orbs, I will cite a personal example. When we were playing Ft. Aspenwood a couple weeks ago, they got our orb from the northern altar twice and we rolled them twice while they were running it back. The first time, nobody could find the orb and it reset. The second time however, I saw the orb on the ground and ran over and started spamming my F key and sure enough, I picked it up. FA still had people up fighting so I just did the smash and grab and took off running north as the rest of our people mopped up. It was over in a couple seconds and people on Mumble started griping about the orb resetting again. In other words, they couldn’t see me with it on the map. I announced that I had it and started running back south. The orb never did show up until we placed it at Garrison.

Now I don’t know how to hack nor any interest in knowing any hacks. I certainly wasn’t using any hacks that evening but yet something screwy happened. Had some of these witch hunters in this thread been witness to that, I’m sure they would have been on here accusing the whole server of hacking and they would be 100% wrong (I know, since when does that matter on the internet?)

The point here is that not every quirky thing you see happen is a hack and you shouldn’t just yell hack at the drop of hat. If you see something you think is a hack, especially if you see it 5 times like the one guy from SBI claims, you should probably present some sort of evidence other than just point an accusatory finger.

I have been on Blackgate since day 1 and my guild is proud to be one of the first few to join the Blackgate War Council. I have watched this server transform from a bunch of disorganized rabble with a lot of heart to a highly coordinated team. In other words, we don’t need hacks to hold our own against any server or servers. We have gotten our act together and we have solid leadership and we have always had a whole lot of ‘want to’. I’m a little dismayed that some enemy guilds have allegedly decided to mail it in this week over nothing but rumor and innuendo. All I can say is I’m glad I haven’t had the displeasure of seeing that on Blackgate. I would say this to those pointing fingers: put up or shut up. Until I see a screenshot or video to support your claims, you’re just reminding me of a story I’ve heard about a fox and some grapes…

Dr J/Big Show Joe/Lord Osprey
Guild Leader of [HOGS]