Guild Wars 2

Unless you buy your way in the legendary grind! Then you are a “dedicated player”, the cream of the crop!

My point is: I choose my faction after doing some missions to know how each one operates. Then I got to know my mentor, because he had to die afterward (and who would care if you just met him). With Traherne there is none of that.

1) you didn’t choose him.
2) He’s a replacement of your mentor, because you need a NPC to guide you trough the story
3) You barely get to know him, and can’t relate emotionally. All you know is that he’s uncertain, thinks he might not be a good leader. Then suddenly finds a magic sword and all is k.

Traherne is poorly designed in my opinion.
Destiny Edge members on the other hand, have some background story and charisma.

And yes, keep calling others whiners, that’s a real argument.

MrMacAndCheese.3907:

I play a support/heals mesmer. I’ve always veered towards tanking or heals. If there’s one thing I’ve learned, there are two types of mmo’ers.

The selfish, rock star dps, who demands the spotlight, and the tanks/heals who really keep the ship afloat. If dps is the lead guitar, then tanks are the drummers, who set the pace, and heals are the bass, who hold down the line and keep it going.

Point being that I highly suspect that all the Traherne haters are rock star dps types, and they so hate sharing the spotlight. They so hate that anyone but them could save the world, and that in fact it takes actual cooperation and unity in order to dominate.

Eat rocks dps, cry me a river. Be ressing you soon.

I played 90% of the time as a healer in other MMOs, yet I still can’t seem to relate even remotely to Traherne. You meet him, your mentor dies, you’re stuck with him without being able to choose anything. I felt like he popped out of nowhere to replace my mentor, who had to die in order to create a dramatic feel.

So yeah, I’d definitely kill him if I could.

My point is: If you rely on the DR system to force player into things they don’t necessarily want to do, something is wrong. People do what they want when playing. Some people might farm somewhere, as boring as it may be, because they want their reward faster (farm 5 powerful bloods to craft an exotic weapon, etc…). And who can tell, doing two times the same path of a dungeon is not fun? The DR system should be here to prevent abuses, like bots. Not to force you into someone’s definition of “fun”.

And seeing how it fails to discourage bots, I don’t understand why it’s still here.

Mirta.5029:

How long till people understand that you’re NOT supposed to grind or farm? You will not get diminishing returns unless you sit there doing the same thing for hours. Which is not even fun!So why do you people do it? Want a good income? Rotate what you do. Do dungeons, then WvW, then events, then kill something. Why can some make money and some go to the forums to whine?

And how fun is it to set yourself a goal and deliberately NOT work toward it?

And to come back to legendary weapons, my bad, same stats as exotics, even if they were buffed for a while it seems. (http://www.guildwars2guru.com/arenanet-tracker/topic/244999-legendary-weapons-boosted-to-ascended-stats/)

Dogblaster.6713:

No they are still optional and cosmetic upgrade. They have exactly same stats like exotics And when ascended weapons arrive it will still be easyer to obtain them than Legendary weapons ..

http://www.gw2db.com/items/63469-twilight
http://www.gw2db.com/items/48101-invaders-greatsword

Doesn’t seem to be the same stats to me.

Dogblaster.6713:

And Legendary wepons wont ever have Infusion slots (main reason to have ascended weapons)

Wanna bet on that one?

Dogblaster.6713:

They dont want you to farm your legendary in 2 months. It is supposed to by long term goal =1 year for instance.

That was true when legendary weapons were only cosmetic upgrades. Now they are simply BiS with no equivalent, since ascended weapons are not there yet.

Don’t worry, that’s only ONE piece, there are 10+ more to come!

But it’s fine, since they will probably be available in WvW and for Karma.

My wild guess would be 1500 Honor tokens and 750k karma each.

And what exactly is the point of your thread?

To Alice and Galen Grey, since you want to know why some of us can’t simply ignore the ascended gear, I’ll invite you to read my previous post in this thread where I try to explain it.

(basically a shameless bump, but I know how things tend to be missed if it’s not the first or last post of a thread.)

Galen Grey.4709:

if they left because of this, they didnt want pure horizontal progression. They wanted to have the best gear without working for it!

pure horizontal progression means you dont care about the gear and Gw2 certainly allows you to do that safely! Wanting the best gear isnt horizintal progression its vertical progression and thats the problem! people seem to want easy vertical progression which is entirely differnet from wanting horizontal progression.

Let me clarify some things: People left because they wanted horizontal progression, and Anet added vertical progression, which is fundamentaly incompatible with horizontal progression. The point of vertical progression is that you always have to increase the stats, while horizontal means you want gear mainly because of its look and should not be penalized for it. Right now, someone who doesn’t like ascended items would still have to farm it, or be (slightly, I agree) inferior stats wise.

In the short run, I agree the difference stats-wise is little but in the long run you’ll run into this: The penalty for not farming “optimal” ( in a vertical progression way" ) gear will become large enough that 1) new content will be too hard to clear with exotics or 2) new content will be too easy to clear with top tier gear

It’s a matter of subjectivity / objectivity.

Horizontal progression is when you want subjectively better gear that are objectively as good as any gear (same stats, hence horizontal)

Vertical progression is when you want gear because it’s objectively better.

Those in favor of horizontal progression don’t want the new objectively better gear for free, they are against the very idea of better gear, especially when it takes a huge time to get (aka not achievable by everybody, thus creating inequality among players), without any guarantee there won’t be a new tier afterward (aka gear threadmill and power creep).

Exotics were easy to obtain for some players, hard for others, but still reasonable.
Ascended are a bit harder to get for some, and quite overwhelming for others (especially knowing you’ll have to get weapons armors earrings and amulet when it comes out)

The same was true for legendaries, but these had the exact same stats as exotics (=> you’re not penalized for not getting one).

TL, DR:

1)Horizontal doesn’t mean you don’t want the best gear, it means you want a gear cap.

2)Vertical means you don’t want a gear cap, since you can’t progress vertically if there is a gear cap.

3) There is no such thing as diagonal progression. you either have or have not a gear cap.

lordkrall.7241:

The “statistical evidences” you have can be statistically debunked by simply looking at the amount of accounts vs the amount of accounts complaining about Ascended gear.

Not even 1% of those accounts are complaining about it.

Here is one for you then:

1) there are more people complaining than praising on the forums.
2) even less than the “not even 1% of those accounts” are praising it
3) I have statistically proved there are more people against than for ascended gear.

See? That distorted logic of yours can be used for anything! We also just proved that over 98% of these people do not think!

And you know what? Bots do not think either! That must mean 98% of all GW2 accounts have actually been played by bots!

I may have taken it a bit too far, but hopefully you get the idea: if you take one ball out of a bag of 10 colored balls, and observe it’s green, you can’t conclude the 9 other balls are all red.

Naoko.7096:

MMORPG = An alternate world that’s accustom with the nature of humans.

It’s as simple as that. If players see mmorpg as merely another game with multi-player options, they’re so wrong. Mmorpg has always been a replica of how real world works. In the real world, which system has work the best? If elitism, democracy, meritocracy are the most successful system in our world, mmorpg should follow. Communism, egalitarianism and socialism in the real world are not in the top-tier because it doesn’t accustom well with the human nature and needs. If there’s a “better” system that accustom with human nature, the real world would’ve picked up that system earlier than new-gen mmorpgs.

To clarify, GW1 isn’t a mmorpg. It’s rated as corpg. A game that’s full of instances (teleported maps). It isn’t an open world. This is where it went different. GW2 is a mmorpg and can’t follow the exact same path as GW1. Corpg is very close towards console rpgs with multi-player options. Mmorpgs and console rpgs are being made differently for important reasons.

If players watch Sword Art Online anime, it projects how much human nature is developed and runs through a mmorpg. Only when there’s darkness, people can create their own light. Fun stuffs can only be created when it’s appreciated. It’s part of nature to appreciate what is lack the most. (That anime tops in Japan for good reasons).

I bought mmorpgs because I want to have an alternate life. I want to experience all kind of emotions. I want to experience how humans develop their bonds in the darkest times. The things that can’t be done in reality, I want it possible in the alternate world. I want to experience the nature of human in the alternate world. I play both console games and mmorpgs, but for 2 very different reasons.

If I read correctly: MMOs are a replica of the real world (aka, that can be done in reality) and you play them to experience what can’t be done in reality?

LeoXearo.3641:

I can’t stand how people keep bringing up GW1.

Gw1 was not an MMO, Gw2 is an MMO… They are not the same type of game.

You know, kind of like how warcraft is an RTS and WoW is an MMO… Different game type but same world and lore.

Who cares if GW1 didn’t raise the level cap? What’s that have to do with Gw2?

And why are people acting like an expansion is coming out soon? It’s going to be a really long time before that happens so all you people who can’t stand character progression can enjoy never needing to progress for many months to come.

I mean really, why even play an MMO if you don’t want to ever worry about upgrading you characters? Go play a FPS or something.

So, according to you we can’t discuss and idea if it’s not coming out soon? What harm does it do?

And what part of “Massively Multiplayer Online” do you exactly read as “upgrading your character” ? And RPG means you play a role not that you gain +3 health +2 power each 3h you play. Of course the character you play has to evolve in order to remain interesting, but evolving =/= raw power increase. The fact you’re used to evolve that way in MMOs doesn’t mean every MMO should follow that path. In fact that was one of the hem selling points hem of GW2, NOT being your traditional MMO.

My view on this is the following:

If they accept the idea of adding better gear, they might add even better gear in the future, eventually forcing me to acquire said gear to remain competitive in WvW, be able to participate in some of the future content.

And if the gear is not needed for whatever content they will add, why put it there in the first place.

Why implement better gear if there is no need for it? Which makes me think there will be need for it one day. (The most obvious being WvW, once the full ascended set is live / any other tier that might come late)

The best way for them to implement it is to:

1) Make it so that if you didn’t buy the expansion, you still are stuck at lvl 80
2) No upscaling after lvl 80 in WvW
3) Better gear, multiply all stats by 3 at least.

Or not.

Pustulio.8207:

wildcode.5403:

Ok correct me if I’m wrong, but doesn’t the addition of “better than exotic” lvl80 gear, below legendary, just add a between step with horizontal progression?

Yes, yes it does. The problem is, people WANT to believe it’s the worst case scenario, so they bombard the forums with their conspiracies.

So, assuming they upgrade legendaries (in the same way they did when ascended gear came out) to have, say 10k damage, and then add 500 items tiers between ascended and legendary, those are just “between steps” with horizontal progression?

If you think that’s horizontal progression, you should definitely rotate your screen 90° to the side.

dalendria.3762:

The manifesto came out in 2010 and was the start of their discussions about how they intended to make a “unique” MMO. In 2011 and 2012, they explained in more detail the core design principles of GW2.

There are so many interviews, blogs, articles and videos in which the Arenanet team make their positions clear about gear, end game, etc. Below are just two examples from 2012.

First, Colin Johnason, Lead Game Designer explains their position that max stat gear should exists and new gear should only be differentiated based on looks.
6/19/12
http://www.arena.net/blog/is-it-fun-colin-johanson-on-how-arenanet-measures-success

“This metric of success impacted a lot of our early content-related design decisions for Guild Wars 2. Some examples include:

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."

Second, Eric Flannum and Colin Johanson discuss end game, gear, etc.
7/14/2012
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yjxvj2I_CCA

They make it clear in the video that Exotics will have the max stats. They then explain that Legendaries will be the same as Exotics in terms of stats. They state that the only difference will be that legendaries will have cool looks and be harder to obtain.

I totally agree. They totally went against these quotes, and the best part is, now that it started, and since “all kinds of progression are important to them”, what do you think they will add, once the full set of ascended items is implemented?

And also, could we stop talking about numbers when the real matter is the very idea of vertical progression? If a 1% stats increase is so insignificant to you, then why should there even be a stat increase?

A dedicated player is a bot, and never complains about petty things like grind.

So they are actually banning their most dedicated players!

I personally don’t trust them anymore. They were a good company, but I can’t tell they still are. Marketing your game for several years, based on the idea of “no grind” & such, then going the opposite direction is certainly a mistake, but a good company would have aknowledged the mistake, apologized, and tried to fix it. I’ve seen none of that, only a “do like nothing happened” mentality.

Orion.7264:

Primal.9513:

Orion.7264:

Look, there’s plenty of statistical evidence to show that in situations like this, those who choose to voice their concerns represent a fractal microcosm of the whole. The ratio of supporters to dissenters is usually a fairly accurate representation of the community as a whole; the only faction not well-accounted for is the apathetic faction who doesn’t care one way or another.

So the fact you voice your concern about us being a minority means there is only a “fractal microcosm” of people who think we’re a minority? Good to know!

That’s not what it means at all…

But you said it yourself, there is PLENTY of statistical evidence!

My point is: Your argument can just aswell be reversed, and being a minority doesn’t mean you’re necessarily wrong or shouldn’t be listenend to.

Edit: Indeed, re-reading his post I realised I misread it, Thanks Eveningstar, and sorry Orion

Orion.7264:

Look, there’s plenty of statistical evidence to show that in situations like this, those who choose to voice their concerns represent a fractal microcosm of the whole. The ratio of supporters to dissenters is usually a fairly accurate representation of the community as a whole; the only faction not well-accounted for is the apathetic faction who doesn’t care one way or another.

So the fact you voice your concern about us being a minority means there is only a “fractal microcosm” of people who think we’re a minority? Good to know!

I know this has been said many times, but I feel I have to express it too, because the larger this thread gets the better the chances of an official answer.

The ascended gear is simply wrong in my opinion.

1)It breaks the promises of the manifesto.

2)If you add this now, what will you add once all the ascended armor pieces/weapons are added? More item tiers?

3)Agony, a gear checking mechanic has nothing to do in what was mean to be a skill (and not gear) based game. Will you add enrage timers to the bosses next?

4)Supposing I did agree with the ascended gear, how can you call your game a “no grind” game, seeing what it takes to get it.

5)In what way does adding gear tiers and thus dividing the players in power groups reinforce social interaction and gameplay?

On a personal note, I am currently waiting for an official statement on the matter and if it still goes against your manifesto, the ideas I very much liked and that made me interested in GW2, or in absence of such a statement, I will most likely try and get a refund.

I’m going back to minecraft / LoL.

It doesn’t mean I won’t ever play GW2 again, but in its current state, no.

I sincerely hope they will come back and stick to their promises (aka manifesto).

I would say the 31, maybe a bit on the 1th, if they update the gem store based on the US time.

So imo, your best bet would be until the 31. (But then again, they could decide to let it on sale for some more days, you never know, but i wouldn’t count on it)

And it’s a costume, you can only use it out of combat, or in costume brawl

Account.9832:

Primal.9513:

If you ignore them and don’t want to play with them, that’s your choice, If you want to think they are stupid, your choice too.

But if you decide to insult them based on your assumptions, that’s not what I call respect.

They’re not “assumptions”. I obviously don’t go around adding people to my block list based on the possibility that they might be thinking about asking for “a tank”. I do it when they actually do it.

And why would I bother to “insult” them? I just want to avoid them.

What I meant about assumptions was that part:

Account.9832:

draw some conclusions about the competence and intelligence of the people making those requests.

They most likely want to “optimise” their farm (And yes, lvl 80 groups almost always farm it, they won’t just do a single run) so their objective is to get the most out of their time investment.

To do so, they want lvl 80 because a group of level 80 will most likely be faster (Yes people can make mistakes, but that is not level dependent), while the bonus from gear or traits IS level dependent.

You certainly can see the logic into that, the only way your opinion differs is wether this “optimisation” is worth it or not, and that is a subjective matter

And I wouldn’t personally go as far as drawing conclusions on someone competence or intelligence based on a subjective matter.

But that’s just me

From what ive seen so far:

Everything you could find in a black lion chest (minus the mystery tonics)
that includes: keys, black lion salvage kit, revive orb, repair cannister, boosters, remote bank / trading post, all that stuff.

Exotics, including the 3 permanent halloween weapons

Halloween item skins (chainsaw & such)

All sorts of halloween tonics

A stack of 50 candy

green gear (what you’r most likely to get)

bags: trick or treat ones, but also those you can loot on regular mobs ( might be because of the diminishing returns? I first saw them after quite a bit of runs)

And I think that’s about it

Account.9832:

Absolutely. Same thing if they ask for a specific class or if they ask for a “healer” or a “tank”. And it’s my right to draw some conclusions about the competence and intelligence of the people making those requests.

If you ignore them and don’t want to play with them, that’s your choice, If you want to think they are stupid, your choice too.

But if you decide to insult them based on your assumptions, that’s not what I call respect.

I personally think that if they ask for lvl 80, that is their right. You can’t force them to play with a lower level if they don’t want to. It doesn’t mean I agree with them, but I respect their choice.

However, if they don’t say anything about levels and such, and THEN kick you because you’re not 80, that feels very wrong to me…

And if you answer to someone who looks for lvl 80 while you do not meet the requirements, you’re probably a little bit masochistic and I don’t think you have the right to complain if you get kicked. Just avoid them.

That’s about my opinion on this matter.