Guild Wars 2

In regards to vertical progression I feel like the ascended tier of gear is too steep for most players in term of time and money invested, specifically money invested. The cost of ascended armor through the crafting process is absolutely prohibitive to any average player, except for those who run a single character with a single gearset. I don’t personally believe that’s the norm in this game, I could be wrong but no one I know plays that way. I’m aware I’m not the norm either, but I run 8 level 80s and several of them have more than one gear setup. I don’t expect you to cater to me, but why not meet in the middle? What happens for the ‘middle’ player who has 2-3 characters they love to play, and maybe 4-6 different gear combinations they like to run?

This is my biggest issue with the direction vertical progression is going. It makes running multiple characters and/or multiple builds so expensive that it becomes illogical to even try it. It essentially punishes diversity and experimentation, and it kind of makes me dread balance patches too, personally – what happens when I dedicate 200 gold to a build idea, only to find it weakened substantially in a balance pass? I can swallow a set of exotic gear and switch out a few pieces easily enough, but if I need to re-gear for -any- reason and I’m running ascended, that becomes a massive obstacle.

Horizontal progression in terms of skins and appearance is also hurt pretty bad by this. While i don’t think the current skin selections in the game are the worst in the world, everyone in ascended is now going to look the same unless they invest in transmutation crystals. A lot of us have spent a good deal of time making a look for ourselves, and now if we want to be geared as best as we can we either have to get out the credit card, get really lucky on a map complete in Orr, or sacrifice our look. I don’t feel this is right or healthy for horizontal progression in terms of looks.

Guild Wars 2 appealed to me not just because I played 1 for so long, but because i was promised I would be rewarded for playing my way and doing what I liked to do. I feel that’s the kind of direction things need to go in again – players should be able to reach ascended level in a relatively (compared to the current ascended standard) inexpensive manner, and in a way that allows for a decent speed of progression. WvW kills and rankups, meta events, dungeons, fractals, jumping puzzles, and open world content should all be able to progress this, so players can have fun their way and still be moving forward. I have two ideas I’ll share before this gets too long.

First is the idea of a drop (only once you’re already level 80) that acts as a reverse item skin, let’s call it “ascended hardware” for fun. It combines with a current piece of gear, but that gear keeps its look and gains the new ascended stats. This would allow ascended crafted gear to retain its prestige because it would look totally unique, and players who could afford it would be able to craft it at their pace, but everyone else would be able to slowly ascend their characters as they play. Crafted gear could even get more of a makeover to make it even cooler looking, and the value of it would be reflected in the effort it takes to make it and in the looks. Nothing would end up on the trading post, so the economy would not be very affected. As long as the drop rates weren’t completely awful, it would solve a lot of problems.

Second idea would be a component drop that would combine with your armor or weapon piece, along with two other components in the mystic forge, which would instead return an ascended piece. This would have the added benefit of a cash sink (say one of the items needed was 100 ectos, just to throw a random number. A bit of a cost, but reachable for an average player with a little time played), as well as a time sink of sorts (say the other item was 50 obsidian shards, again as an example. This would mean karma would gain some more value in game, and would slow the rate of people ascending even if the base component dropped a lot). Again, it comes down to the drop rate. As long as it doesn’t drop like candy, or drop as slowly as current ascended boxes do, it could do a lot of good.

The combustive shot change for warrior is something I feel is going in the wrong direction. The skill is very strong, but making -all- pulses at 3 seconds makes it incredibly easy to avoid and takes away from one of its more useful features, namely the control aspect of making a part of the battlefield a temporary deadzone where enemies do not want to fight. I would suggest toning down the damage slightly, and keeping the burns at 3 second pulses spaced 3 seconds apart, but making the raw damage pulses weaker ones at one per second. The overall damage could be toned down, but in large group fights the constant damage ticks would work to keep enemy players out of the fire field. Skilled players would learn to use the damage ticks to dodge the burn tick, which would reward situational awareness. The size reduction at lower adrenaline levels has already done a lot to reduce its overeffectiveness.

As a thief main i feel like the changes to sword 2 and permastealth are both necessary for the game’s health. There’s nothing more infuriating than fighting a thief who -never- leaves stealth and only harasses, it’s a cheap playstyle and feels like an exploitation of mechanics. That being said, your stated goal of rewarding thieves who stay engaged in combat seems to be falling short. Assassin’s Reward as a grandmaster trait is a huge investment and not enough to keep me alive by a longshot. I run over 2500 armor on my thief and without black powder shot to make a blind field i get splattered in melee range without a stealth to disengage. With stealth and vigor both being reduced, we need a stronger and more accessible survival mechanic if you want us to stay engaged. Assassin’s Reward is not accessible enough at grandmaster. A small scaling buff to Signet of Malice to make it more appealing would be nice, and a trait similar to the Nightstalker’s Insignia from GW1 would be lovely, something that gives a toughness boost only when attacking in melee range. Between those three things i could almost abandon stealth entirely and be viable in melee without dying when someone sneezes on me.

This might only be tangentially related to the topic, but if any of you guys are missing the full mailbox hint despite having a full mailbox (as in, actually able to make it to 10 messages and still not getting it) i figured out an issue that might help. I had saved the 4 messages from halloween just for sentimentality, and those all counted towards my mailbox limit. Thing is, evidently the hint doesn’t trigger unless you have 10 messages from PLAYERS in your inbox. Reading this thread made me go back and look and sure enough, those 4 were buried at the bottom and i’d forgotten all about it. So even when i was at 10/10 in the box, the hint was treating it as though i was at 6/10. I removed those 4, had friends send me 4 spams, and the hint triggered. I deleted a message and got the achievement. I don’t know if this will be of any help to anyone, but double check to make sure all your mails are from players and not NPC messages being classified as mail. Might end up fixing at least one of the problems.

Jason King.2647:

While we weren’t able to fix this issue for the March update, we’re still working on it. Thank you for your patience!

Good news, glad to hear it. This has been bugging me for ages, with leaderboards displaying soon for our achievement points as well i hope it won’t be much longer, people are catching up to me and i dungeon a lot! =P

Replect.3407:

I understand your points here and I would be happy about constant good rewards as well, but if you can’t enjoy the game just because of this effected loot table, than… You know what I mean!

I actually didn’t realize that my rewards were effected that much, I just played the game.
I’m more concerned about things like dynamic events being no-brainers with many players, but the loot? That, what I get AFTER I should have had fun? That’s a bonus for me, so… If I can’t enjoy my actual playing-time (not the reward in the end), then I question if something is wrong with the game (like the missing challenge within 95% of all events).

So, I don’t disagree with you guys here! I just question your words like Why I’m playing the game with that DR, it’s wasted time!?

I think it’s because a lot of us have goals in this game aside from just the heat of the moment. Yes, the journey is supposed to be an enjoyable one, but we have a destination too. Some of us are eying a certain armor set, one that either costs X gold (119, T3 cultural), or maybe X karma (the exotic sets of those are what, 240,000ish?). Some of us are looking at rare weapon skins, some of the ones out of the mystic forge running almost into the triple digits of gold for the materials (there’s a greatsword that needs 250 orichalcum hilts to make and 250 ecto i think, do the math on that one, ouch..). Legendaries top out that list as astronomical time and effort sinks across every area of the game. Hundreds of hours of our time -before- the DR cap.

So yes, the loot, the gold, the experience, and the karma do matter to many of us i’m afraid. They are a big part of the fun, because we’ve found a goal and there’s joy in attaining our goals. Furthermore there’s an implicit understanding that our time is valuable, i think. I mean, we could be working a second job or spending time with the family or any number of other things, but we’re choosing to be here right? That time is worth something, even if you can’t put a number on it. It has value. And i’m sorry to say it, but 15 karma and 10 copper after following an event chain to its conclusion over the course of an hour or so, and opening the final meta event chest to get blue and white quality items is the equivalent of telling me my time is worth very, very little. We do enjoy the journey, but it’s like setting out on an epic quest and falling in a mudpit at the end instead of hauling away the treasure chest.

What kind of floors me in all this is that the DR system is actually punishing us for playing the way the game is telling us to play. We’re supposed to “see events out just happening in the world” and events are supposed to “cascade out in a chain that we affect,” but if we see events and do them, and follow the chain through to its conclusion, by the time we get there we’re no longer rewarded reasonably? That’s a bit like.. Well, beating a game and being rewarded with 3 vendor items worth 5 silver total.

Oh wait..

Seriously though, i’m just really lost right now. I feel like this company which i’ve stood behind, believed in, went to bat for to people in my life, is now telling me that my time is not worth anything. That if i invest more than maybe 30 minutes at a stretch in -anything-, i’m doing it wrong. And i’m truly worried too that out of all of it, we’re either going to get a very generic, PR, damage control-esque response that’s a way of saying “we hear you, but get used to it cause this is how it is” or just no response at all.

If it’s the intent of the game for exotic items to be the “legendaries” of other games because earning 4 or 5 gold takes a few months, and the real legendary items are so impossible to earn that only a few dozen in the game have them, then i think this DR thing makes sense. But right now i’m just not seeing a way for us to play the game like i thought we were supposed to. Maybe we’re all just doing it wrong.

In a single night i went from possibly seeing a legendary within less than a month to.. Giving up, i think.. Man, that actually hurts to say. That a company i’ve backed since 2005, and a game i’ve followed avidly for years waiting for it to be released, one which i went to bat for to my friends and convinced them to get in on too, would actually punish me for my dedication. Betrayed really is a good word. If i play more than about 30 minutes, i hit a fun cap that stops me from not only collecting reasonable loot, but karma now too? I probably need a million more karma for my shards and remaining clovers. I’ve sunk hundreds of hours in to get this far, and now a giant block is placed up like this, with no comment on how this helps the security and stability of the game world?

I’m so sorry to those of you who already shelled out more money for boosters that can’t even work their whole duration. I know “it’s just a game” and we should stop whining and all that other QQ mess that this thread will probably draw eventually, but the bottom line is this is important to us, and to shut down the most dedicated players with no explanation and punish those of us who are willing to sacrifice a lot of our time and energy to be here instead of elsewhere.. I just don’t see the sense.

I’d like very much to hear a dev comment on this as well. Till then i guess i’m hanging up my legendary hat. Maybe that’s what they want.

I don’t know if this is new or not, but i had a key drop off of a monster and when i opened one of my chests i wound up with a minipet pack.. I’m not sure of those are one of the new items or not, but yah. I was pretty surprised to say the least.