Guild Wars 2

I’m holding a fantasy coloring poster giveaway at the tarnished coast forums.

http://forthetoast.com/index.php?/topic/1079-rl-giveaway-of-25-fantasy-coloring-posters/

Check it out for details and entry instructions.

The personal story should certainly be soloable, and there should be solo dungeons in the game. I also think this is a great idea.

The art in GW2 is pretty amazing. Most every shot is like a character portrait anyway. I was wondering if anyone else just liked to play around with screenshots in photoshop to see what they can come up with?

Here’s a screenshot of one of my characters with some slight modifications.

Love that style!

Here’s a link to a gallery of original character fantasy and MMOG art I’ve created for various clients and purposes over the years, dating back to MMUD days when ANSI graphics were all you had to look at. Some of it was for in-game money, some for real world $$, some were my characters. There’s a couple of GW2 pieces in there, if you can find ’em.

http://www.fantasycoloringposters.com/art/

Desktop of Wintyre Fraust in action – this is just a good in-game pic and some photoshop manipulation.

Yeah, but with some actual mix and match optional properties.

Love the game. Played since the beta weekends. 6 level 80 characters, master craftsman.

When you look at how much this game offers that is new and re-invented, the crafting system appears to have been left behind. I’d like to see crafting modules that are available to master crafters (for a fee if necessary, real or virtual) that have increased crafter options for design, colorable areas, accessories, texture style and effects.

I’m not looking for some kind of TES forge tool kit, but just something that at least allows me to have some variation and control over what I create.

1. Dancing animations.
2. Alternate walking, sitting, running, jumping animations.
3. Animated emote & pose packages
4. Skins, skins, skins
5. Ability to rename characters
6. Alternate PVE battle animations with ability to customize effects
7. Musical instruments & music you can play
8. Characterized voice packages

Juyoon.7984:

Wintyre Fraust.6534:

I understand if one cannot change the name of their main character as it is connected to all their account information, but we should at least be able to change the names of our alts.

Ah really?? Uhmmm.
Isn’t it different thing? the name of character with the name of ID?
How can character name connected with player account information?
Mind to explain?

Well if it’s not, then I don’t see what the problem is.

Lots of great ideas in here, especially the gem shop. The gem shop should be FULL of character customization kits and appearance/skin/animation/emotes upgrades for both PvE and just hanging out in town.

I understand if one cannot change the name of their main character as it is connected to all their account information, but we should at least be able to change the names of our alts.

I’m pretty encouraged by this. Looks like several steps in the right direction (towards “play as you want and get top rewards” and not “grind dungeons hardcore for superior rewards”).

That’s actually pretty encouraging.

Gear that is equal to the best should always be available for gold, karma, skill points, via regular crafting mats, and/or as very rare drops that can be gathered/earned in any zone in the world.

IOW, “Play Your Way”, and “The Whole Game Is The End Game” as was originally marketed, not “the best stuff is reserved for the most dedicated players”.

Evalia.7103:

Do you use food buffs?
Do you use wrench buffs?
Do you stack stacking sigils , then wield a weapon with different ones in actual wvw combat?
Do you buy stat karma boosts from wayfarer foothills?
If the answer to at least one of these question is NO,
you can’t grumble about ascended gear because

…

Unless, of course, the reason we’re grumbling has nothing to do with your assumption about why we’re grumbling.

If you’re looking for reasons to stop reading, you’re not really interested in meaningful debate. I mean’t "you’ll see LFG’s for “must be full ascended”, because ANET has flat stated you cannot survive those levels without Ascended.

maddoctor.2738:

Wait and see?

I prefer observe and advocate over wait and see. They have said why they introduced Ascended gear; if that is true, then that reason directly implies that I will never have a maxed out character, even if I play this game for 10 years, unless their game philosophy reverts back to what they marketed it as.

Anet has said that they inserted Ascended Gear as a tangible reward for their “most dedicated players”, or hardcore gear-grinders (HCGGs)._ The philosophy behind the gear is that these HCGG’s must always have a tangible power-based (not cosmetic-based) reward that is exclusive to that playstyle.

This means that casual players (non-HCGGs) are necessarily excluded from those rewards.

I can go play any other MMORPG to experience the joy of being 2nd or 3rd rate when it comes to maxing out character power, which is why my GW2 playtime has fallen off by 80-90%, and my cash shop purchases have fallen off 100%.

maddoctor.2738:

Getting those rings isn’t “Harder” or more grindy than getting any other piece of exotic gear. In fact you can get those rings faster than you ever got your exotic items, unless you grind for money and bought them the instant you hit 80. But that would take a lot more grinding than getting the rings.

Grinding = “doing something you don’t want, over and over, to get something you do want”. I don’t enjoy dungeons whatsoever. I’ve never done a dungeon. When I play the game, I do things I enjoy. Doing what I enjoy in the game naturally builds up karma and cash. That is what I use to buy exotics. Can I use karma or cash to acquire agony gear?

I don’t understand this, if you like the gameplay, the mechanics, lore whatever why is gear affecting your “enjoyment”?

It affects my enjoyment because a necessary part of my enjoyment is the knowledge that I can, over time, as a casual player, achieve maxed out characters. Whether or not you understand it is irrelevant.

And why is that? If getting your full exotics took an X amount of time, getting your current Ascended items requires X/10000 time. If your casual playstyle allowed you to get your exotic you can certainly get the rings as well in a fraction of the time.

Not if I don’t do groups/dungeons, which I do not. Furthermore, ANET has said that powercreep is a part of the game now. Before power creep, I had the opportunity to – over time, perhaps over the course of a year or two – to max out a character or two via my casual playstyle. With ongoing power creep, I will never have a max character – ever.

That’s why they are adding Ascended gear rewards everywhere.

Promises are just that – promises. That is not the state of the game as it is. Also, the very point of ascended gear in the first place was to give hardcore gear-grind players (“most dedicated players”, as ANET said) a tangible increase in power to reward their hardcore, gear-grind efforts.

If not, then there was no reason to insert more powerful gear into a system that already offered cosmetic rewards. Thus, the power-creep system of providing tangible increases in power to reward hardcore (“most dedicated”) players necessitates that any other forms of acquisition of such rewards must be (1) reserved for the “most dedicated” players, or (2) be instantiated for casual consumption only after another power creep rung has been added for the “most dedicated” players, which only they can consume .

This is what you don’t get: the philosophy behind why they inserted Ascended gear in the first place (by their own word) necessarily means that I – a casual player – must always be regulated to 2nd best or 3rd best gear, or else what they are offering their “most dedicated” players cannot achieve the purpose it is intended to serve – giving hardcore players something tangible to reward their playstyle.

You cannot please both people who want hard-cap, limited vertical progression and those who want unlimited vertical progression. Period.

ThiBash.5634:

klesk.1790:

In a gaming world even 0.0001 increase in gear increase makes a huge difference…

That’s 0.01%…at 20,000 health, that’s 2 health. At 2000 damage, that’s 0.2 damage. That doesn’t matter at all.

But let’s assume for a moment that it’s 1% difference. That would be 200 health and 20 damage. Sounds like a big deal, but consider this: how often do you fight someone where you both go down at the same time? Because that is the only time where the 200 extra health would have saved you.

The problem is that the primary reason a lot of people bought into GW2 was because they believed they would be able to max out the power of a character, over time, without grinding, and not have to re-max those same characters later every few months. How small the difference between their character and a max character is simply isn’t relevant to the fact that many of us now have no hope of ever maxing out a character.

The effect is largely psychological, not mathematical. Many of us don’t play games because of how the math adds up, but rather whether or not the game offers us the enjoyment we are seeking – whether or not the game serves our playstyle and satisfies our goals.

After FoTM, for many of us, GW2 can no longer satisfy our desired goals via our playstyle. If my goal is to have maxed out characters via my casual playstyle, it doesn’t matter if the difference between what I’m capable of getting and what is possible for others to get is 1% or 20%; I cannot achieve a maxed out character.

I could achieve it before FoTM; I cannot achieve it after. 1% short of max is still short of max.

Ethics.4519:

I like FoTM and I think it’s good they implemented this gear. Like somebody said before me though it should have been here since the beginning of the game, which Anet admitted.

Almost everybody was complaining how there was no end-game. You get to 80, grab your exotics from a couple days of dungeon running or whatever, then boom you have nothing to do. People wanted something to challenge them and something to work for.

Anet implements ascendedgear/fotm which does exactly that and then everybody starts kittening about how they have to get new gear and work for something.

If you enjoy FoTM and want the gear then do it. If you don’t then don’t do it. It’s not going to hurt you in WvW as long as there are under 80s there, which there always will be. I have not seen a single dungeon LFG that says “Must be full exotic” so you’re not going to see “must be full ascended”. The only thing you’ll see is “Must have +X AR%” due to high level FoTM

Except that the deeper levels of the fractals, you cannot survive without the ascended gear. So yes, you see LFG’s for “must be full ascended”.

BTW, the game was marketed as not having an end-game that was different from the rest of the game . The game was marketed as “not having to grind to increase power”; saying that, well, you don’t have to if you don’t want to obscures the intent of the claim in the first place. You don’t have to grind for increased power/gear in any game. The intent of that marketing was clearly to distinguish GW2 from other games where, to have the most powerful gear, you had to grind.

In order to have the most powerful gear in GW2, you have to grind. Period. Promise to change that are just that – promises. People are reasonably upset over being misled about something that was an important part of their decision to play GW2 in the first palce.

Before FoTM, my time in-game was about 50-60 hrs a week and I spent @$10/week in the shop. After FoTM, my time in-game is about 10-15 hrs a week, I haven’t spent another dime in the shop, and I’m actively looking for some other game to play.

FacesOfMu.3561:

Anet have stated Ascended gear was added because it was always intended to be in the game from the beginning, it was just late. In that sense it has a natural place in gear progress, but implemented in a delayed way.

They never said that. What they said was that in retrospect they should have had it in before the game went live.

In the context of the rest of the game, it has no “natural place in gear progress”; it is clearly an aberration that was thrown in to pacify players that require endless power progression. Every indication before was that there was a hard cap as far as gear was concerned represented by exotics.

Peetee.9406:

Gehenna.3625:

Peetee.9406:

Of course its at the top of the charts, its an amazing game

After 15 years of chasing a carrot and being yelled at by 12 year olds I would hope that a vast majority of the MMO community would be open to change.

So, why is it different? Chasing the carrot has been introduced here too. It’s called Fractals/Ascended.

GW2 has a lot of positives, just not the ones that matter to me, but the carrot is here.

You are not forced to do anything in this game.

You could play the entire game in blue gear and you’d be just fine.

Fractals are not a forced loot chase and a Legendary is not a grind, if you don’t want to do those things then don’t do them.

The Fractals/Legendary are here for the players that want to chase after the better gear. People have been brainwashed by WoW into thinking you have to chase after better gear, you don’t.

If you willfully subject yourself to doing something that you don’t want to do, that’s your fault. That’s not ANet’s fault.

Saying you’re not “forced” to chase after better gear is disingenuous. You’re not “forced” to chase after better gear in any MMOG game – including WoW. By your standard, WoW didn’t brainwash anyone into thinking that they had to chase after better gear – it was the players “willfully subjecting themselves to doing something they didn’t want to do”.

When people say that they are “forced” to grind for better gear, what they mean is that in order to develop a character that is maxed out power-wise, they must grind. It doesn’t mean anyone has a gun to their head or that any company is physically forcing them to do anything. It doesn’t mean that there is nothing else to do in the game.

If game mechanics require you to grind content in order to max out character power, then the common phrase for that – which even ANET developers have employed – is “forced” grinding.

GW2 has forced grinding in the same sense that WoW has forced grinding.

ArcTheFallen.7682:

What’s funny is all this time you spent talking about on forums, you could’ve gotten quite a few pieces of ascended gear by now or enough gold/badges/ whatever to invest in it in the future. If you think you need ascended gear now; does that mean you think others need ascended gear as well? Are you the kind of person to reject people without the top-of-the-line gear? Just like how I don’t care what people wear, I don’t think people should either unless they can really help themselves (staying in green, getting carried the way through, while hoarding gold—bad manner). But seriously, the need for ascended gear now is what is killing you guys; you do not need it now and it hasn’t been a game changer for anyone. And as they reported they are going to make it a lot more available in the future. I’m just going to wait 1-2 years from now and bump this thread up so people can be embarassed on how much ascended gears did not become a starting point for a endless progression theme for this game overall.

It has nothing whatsoever to do with how much or little ascended gear actually affects character power; it’s the principle of the thing and how it makes people feel about playing.

I have over 500 hrs played. I don’t have any exotics yet. Never really planned on it. Ascended gear and the fractals doesn’t impact my actual gameplay one bit, but what mattered to me was the principle of a capped-stat system and the knowledge that my characters would always be approaching the top grade and always be right where I left them in relationship to the power structure.

What’s important is how a power-creep gear treadmill – no matter how slight the incline is set – makes me (and others) feel about playing. It makes me feel like I’m always losing ground, and so gives me a sense of being 2nd rate and makes my time in the game feel useless. That’s ultimtely how I felt in every MMORPG I played before GW2, why I left them, why I stopped playing for a few years, and why I bought GW2 – because I thought (mistakenly) it would have a capped stat/gear/level system.

I don’t know that anyone has argued that vertical progression is “evil”, only that they thought GW2 was going to be without it, and that is why a great many of us bought the game. Some people cannot enjoy a game without endless vertical enjoyment; others cannot enjoy a game with endless vertical enjoyment. Right now, virtually all modern AAA MMORPGs have a gear treadmill/power creep/endless vertical progression, leaving those of us who don’t want a vertical progression game out in the cold.

tkalamba.2541:

Here’s an interview someone did on guildwars2guru back in September 2011 directly addressing the increase to level cap

http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/19473-interview-gw2-qa-cd-projekt-conference/

you’ll have to dig in for the information regarding the level cap

Thanks! You are right – apparently they did mention future “progression” and the potential for raised character levels in expansions as early as September of 2011.

tkalamba.2541:

Reaver.9256:

mulch.2586:

So… did anyone from ArenaNet ever actually say there would be a stat cap?

No, they have said the exact opposite. They have planned higher levels and expansions from day one. With those come stats raises.

Not to mention this was actually stated in 2011, which people who claim they followed the development of this game seem to have missed.

I’d like to read that. I’ve been looking for it by googling Do you have a link?

What I have found after a brief exploration via google/bing:

“We will not be retaining the level 20 cap. [from GW1] We will announce the exact nature and level of the Guild Wars 2 level cap early next year but let me state that our philosophy of allowing players to play the game without grinding their life away is something that is unchanged from Guild Wars 1.” – Lead designer Eric Flannum

You can see here that implication; they are connecting “an unchanged philosophy from GW1” to answering a question about the level cap. In GW2, there was a hard cap of 20. A reasonable inference is that that philosophy (of a hard cap) would continue on in GW2.

mulch.2586:

So… did anyone from ArenaNet ever actually say there would be a stat cap?

Whether or not they said it, and whether or not it is what they meant or implied, is entirely irrelevant to the point of this thread. As I have said in this thread, even if we were entirely mistaken about what we believed their game philosophy to be, that doesn’t change the fact that many of us perceived that this is what they meant, and because of that perception a lot of us enthusiastically supported the game and helped make launch a success.

ANET has made it clear in the AMA on Reddit that this not a stat capped game and it will be stat-progression going forward and that they believe it is in line with their original philosophy.

I started this thread before that AMA. Even if GW2 will not have a stat cap, this thread serves as an examination why so many people are so upset about this, and why it matters so much to them. Many (if not most) of them are not quitting out of protest, but rather because – as I explained in the O.P. – the lack of the stat cap ruins the game for them.

Let’s remember that GW1 sold over 6 million copies. MANY of those people came over to GW2 largely on the assumption that it would carry over those same fundamental principles. That assumption was at least tacitly encouraged by ANET in many posts and blogs in what they said.

I don’t know how much of GW2 population is made up by stat-cappers; it may not be much at all. However, if it is made up in large part by stat-cappers, then threads like this might help ANET understand changes in their gameplay data if a large portion of the player base is not playing anywhere near as much as they used to.

Also, it might help future developers going forward recognize that not everyone want’s endless progression in MMOGs.

Reaver.9256:

“The interesting and somewhat odd fact is that you have literally scores of games that serve your interest; as far as I know, there is one MMOG on the market that serves mine – GW1 – and it’s 7 years old.”

Not trying to start a fight or anything but what are these scores of games that I can pay for once and get a mmo experience without needing real cash for the cash shop. Eve online I guess you could save up the hundreds of millions of isk and pay for your sub, but that’s a totally different type of game.

The “interest” I was talking about was “endless progression”. How they gather revenue is a different topic.

Reaver.9256:

I gotta disagree OP. I love vertical progression and it’s the reason all my friends and I play. Not one of my friends and I played gw1 for over a month because there wasn’t a thing to do after you hit 20 and got a few skills. All the people I know don’t want some barbie dressup simulator that just hands us everything when we login. We want to keep getting better cooler stuff as the game goes on and I don’t mean just some fancy new dress with the same stats. That just doesn’t cut it for most people. GW1 didn’t keep people interested for long except a few diehard fans and bots.

There is no disagreement. I said in the O.P. that there are a lot of people – perhaps a majority – that love endless vertical progression and don’t fee satisfied unless they can vertically progress their character. There’s nothing wrong with that. There is another group that cannot enjoy an MMOG unless it has capped stats, as this thread, the 11,000-post thread, and countless others on various sites attest.

The interesting and somewhat odd fact is that you have literally scores of games that serve your interest; as far as I know, there is one MMOG on the market that serves mine – GW1 – and it’s 7 years old.

If nothing else, this sequence of events has demonstrated that there is a market for a stat-capped MMOG.

You see, here’s the salient point: whether we were mistaken or not, what the manifesto and other info provided by ANET (including years of GW2 game philosophy) meant to many of us was that GW2 was going to be a game with hard-capped stats. That was our perception. We saw nothing in five years of development to change that perception, and much that reinforced it, like Legendaries having only a cosmetic variance from Exotics, and their statements about how “grinds” should only lead to cosmetic variances, and how players shouldn’t “feel” like they have to grind to keep up with a power treadmill.

Perhaps that perception was wrong, but the perception of a hard stat cap brought many of us out of MMOG retirement, dragged many here from GW1, and got many others to leave other games for GW2. For the first time in perhaps a decade of playing MMOGs, many of us loved and enjoyed an MMOG because of how our perception that there as going to be a hard stat cap in GW2 made us feel about investing time and money in the game.

If nothing else, even if GW2 is lost to us, we at least know what we want – a game with a hard stat-cap. Personally, that means the developer must explicitly state that their game has a hard stat cap – that is relatively easy to attain – for me to try/invest in another MMOG. By “we”, I mean nothing more than those of us who have realized that this is really what makes the difference between enjoying and not enjoying an MMOG.

defi.4127:

So the OP suddenly pulls out abstract terms like Stat-progression players and Stat-cap players, treats them as obvious distinctions within the playerbase and gets a little following to toot his horn. I am more than sure that the players who agree with the OP have never looked at themselves as Stat-cap players. To put it bluntly, this “article” is just a politely written vent regarding ascended gear with made up excuses to what anet should or should not do in their game. It is completely unhelpful to explaining how the game actually is, that is the good as well as bad parts and instead tells a tale of how a certain mystical order of players, who call themselves “Stat-cap”, were betrayed. Willing to tolerate vertical progression up to 80 plus exotic gear because there was an “end”, and not because you actually liked playing the game? Please do explain what is there for you not to tolerate anymore with the arrival of 2 ascended gear with 5% increase in stats (with more to follow)? Do tell which content are you suddenly locked out of now? Tier 3 of fractals? It’s the same as tier 1. Should I not tolerate the game anymore because I am doing level 16 fractals with green back item, blue amulet and no ascended rings wearing MF gear on a thief?

Please, thinking that you are locked out of any content in the game only because not having maximum stats gear is nothing more than an illusion you created on yourself. The crafting mats requirements for making/upgrading ascended gear is a whole other topic, though.

My point is not about being “locked out of conent” because of stats. It’s about examining the motivations different groups of people have when playing games, and evolving a lexicon with which to articulate and understand those motivations. I myself didn’t really fully understand “what it was” that made MMOGs enjoyable or not enjoyable when I played them. I used to make “casual vs hardcore” arguments, but through this experience I recognized there was a more objective, quantifiable motivational difference that is best described (IMO) as the difference between what a hard stat cap means to many players, and how it makes them feel about a game, and what an endless power gradient means to many players, and how it makes them feel.

I realized that no matter how much people play, or if they enjoyed PvE, or PvP, or WvW, or were explorers or achievers, etc., there was a large number of people that felt dissatisfied, felt like there was no content, and felt like there was nothing to do unless they could constantly be moving up a power curve. On the other hand, there was a large contingent of players, from a broad base of things they found enjoyable in games (raiding, grouping, dungeons, pve, pvp, WvW, exploration, etc.) that abhor the idea of an endless power gradient, and “nothing is fun or enjoyable” unless there is a hard cap on how powerful you can be in a game.

Does this represent all players? Of course not? Do most players fall into one or the other category? Probably not. But the fact is, there are virtually no hard-capped MMOGS in existence; the fact is a lot of players here (mistakenly or not) felt that GW2 was going to be a hard-capped game, and now there’s a lot of players that are upset that it is not going to be hard-capped – they feel betrayed (justifiably so or not) because of this very issue: they wanted a game with a hard stat-cap.

So what I’m doing here primarily is trying to better articulate a debate that used to be subsumed by the “casual vs hardcore” debate that has raged for years. I realize now that I don’t care how much other people play or how fast they get to that “best” status, as long as I feel like, eventually, I can build and dress up several max-stat characters just like them and have various kinds of game content (pvp, wvw, dungeons, events, quests, etc) to play them in and through horizontally.

As long as there is an eternal power curve, I’ll never be able to do that, and currently there is no modern, world-size MMOG that offers it. I had a taste of it for 10 weeks or so in GW2 (whether I was misinformed or mistaken about their intentions or not), and the difference the perception that it was a game with a hard stat-cap made in my enjoyment of the game was enormous. It was a joy to log in because of how that perception made me feel about playing the game. I never got this joyful feeling from any game since I first logged into EQ vanilla.

I think many others feel the same way, so they are understandably upset when they perceive that it was taken away from them without good reason.

mulch.2586:

So the point of this thread is to debate whether a Cap or variable ceiling in possible stats is important or not.
My claim is, whether you think it is or isn’t important, what truly matters is the effect on your character will be too small to notice.

“What truly matters” is a matter of individual perspective and playstyle (reasons why people play the game). For you (and many others), an ongoing 2-5% (even if true) power curve installed over a period of months or a year (if true) doesn’t matter because it wouldn’t represent a significant functional difference affecting any combat your character is involved in – PvE or WvW.

Do you think most players are familiar with the math (even if true)? No, all they see is a stat increase and reasonably assume that it makes a difference or else there would be no reason for the developer to put it in. Thus the effect on the community and how it interacts with each other and the game becomes the same as if the stat was significant.

People that have it are stat elites, everyone else is a scrub. Psychologically, people that were planning on leveling up alts and trying out different max-stat gears over a long period of time are – psychologically – devastated (as far as MMOG’s go), because now (whether functionally true or not) they feel like they have to constantly grind basically one character just to keep up. WvW players now feel like they have to grind out Ascended to stay competitive.

I suggest that what “truly matters” to players is “how they feel” when they play, not a mathematical analysis of damage output. If they feel like they have become 2nd rate scrubs or falling behind because of gear checks or because they won’t grind (read: do something they don’t want to do over and over to get something they want) for it, or if they feel like they cannot accomplish their goals of leveling up several characters to max stats and playing with builds, or feel that they are becoming non-competitive in WvW, then a lot of them will be unhappy with the game whether there is a significant, mathematical, functional difference between Ascended and Exotic or not.

If they perceive there is a difference, and that perception makes them feel negatively as a result, then it doesn’t matter if that functional difference is 1% or 20% for most players – it generates the same psychological and community effects. For example, I believe that the statistical difference is probably very minor, but it makes no difference to how I feel about the game now. I used to play about 5-6 hrs a day and was excited and enjoyed it immenselly. Now I play about an hour every 2-3 days, and that’s really just to occasionally kill time.

That is why a stat cap matters, and why a “nearly-flat” power curve cannot be a substitute for many players. Humans are not mathematical logic-machines. More things matter to us than just raw numbers. A stat cap means something; a never-ending power curve – no matter how slight – means something else, whether the two are functionally equivalent or not.

Creslin.1758:

Wintyre Fraust.6534:

Rococo.8347:

’So I would ask you to judge us by details, ’

Hell on a hot tin roof – isnt that what we HAVE been doing? and why so many are unhappy?!

Don’t judge us – hey, eyes up here – on the treadmill, judge us – hey, HEY. look at this – on this tasty looking carrot.

I dunno…I think that the betrayal, liars, etc. QQ fest about Ascended items has run its course at this point.

The stark reality is just as Mike O says:

1. They added items for 2 slots that offer a 5-10% stat increase, so the power differential that these items grant is seriously not that much.

2. Currently these items require a large grind to get, but they have admitted that it may have been excessive.

3. They are planning on adding multiple ways to get Ascended items so that you will not be forced to grind FoTM.

Now…if you have a huge problem with those three facts, I guess feel free to whine. But honestly…I think you would be being unreasonable. Just about every argument made against Ascended is a slippery slope argument, because the reality of the current situation just isn’t that bad.

You’re right in one sense. The reality has been laid out by ANET, in no uncertain terms.

I won’t be “whining” here any more. I have a policy about not complaining or attacking games that I don’t play. Even though I might play GW2 now and then to kill some time, there’s no reason to continue campaigning for a true stat-capped game here. I’ll take that fight back to my blog on MMORPG.com.

Rococo.8347:

’So I would ask you to judge us by details, ’

Hell on a hot tin roof – isnt that what we HAVE been doing? and why so many are unhappy?!

Don’t judge us – hey, eyes up here – on the treadmill, judge us – hey, HEY. look at this – on this tasty looking carrot.

There’s simply no way to reconcile the statements promoting/reiterating (1) “zero grind”, “non-grindy”, “play the game your way”, and “rewards distributed throughout game content” with (2) the FoTM/Ascended implementation.

Well, we got our answers. May not be what we would have preferred, but it was what I expected.

This is the part I don’t understand though. He wants no effort to get to the top, hell he’d rather just be the best when he logs in the first time. He doesn’t want a game, he wants a chat room essentially. I want to actually play the game, that’s what I paid for.

An activity doesn’t require vertical progression to be a game. Millions of people literally spend hundreds of hours every year (each) playing games that have no vertical progression whatsoever. Just because you and others need “vertical progression” in a game doesn’t mean that something is not a game unless it has vertical progression.

If my friends and I play many FPS shooter games together – us against the computer, or PvE, so to speak – in many if not most of them there is no vertical progression – or at least, there didn’t use to be back when I played those games. Was cooperative play in Doom not a “game”? Most of those games used to be constructed around the concept that all players had to differentiate themselves was their skill.

League of Legends has no vertical progression to speak of (it’s very minor and really only exists to ease you into an understanding of the game). Is it not a game? Are the sPvPers in GW2 not playing a “game”? There is no vertical progression whatsoever in sPvP.

Like I said before, you might not understand why we want to play a stat-cap game, but the least you can do is attempt to accept that it’s a perfectly fine gaming concept that a lot of people would prefer.

That way you still progress, yet it nearly doesnt matter because its so easy for anyone to do it. This makes both sides happy.

Vertical progression of any sort doesn’t make a stat-capper happy, and I sincerely doubt that vertical progression that “nearly doesn’t matter” will make many stat-progressives happy.

“No, let us all face the truth. Guild Wars 2 as advertised has failed. It’s a failed business model, as other posters have stated. They cannot make enough money in non-traditional ways to satisfy their investors while covering costs. The MMO industry is locked into this formula of dungeon running from now until that fails to make money, too (and may that day come soon)."

The fact is that we don’t know that to be the truth, and available evidence contra-indicates it. ANET has never said that they weren’t making enough money off of GW2, and I don’t know of any reputable source that shows this to be the case. All we really have to go on was Launch, which from where I’m sitting looked to be a success, since they had to actually stop digital sales to get capacity up, and since after launch they had to add servers.

Saying that you’re making the change “because of players hitting the Legendary wall before they were expected to” is not the same as saying that changes were being forced by lack of projected revenue.

I’ve seen several people post statements and references about industry information concerning customer retention and keeping customers in-game. The problem with this information is that it is all predicated upon (1) the current, playing customer base of what is essentially a stat-progression market, and (2) games that are entirely geared around keeping players active and in-game and cash shops formulated primarily around players that are fundamentally interested in endless stat-progression.

This explains the puzzling assortment of goods offered in the cash shop and the utter failure of the black lion chests filled with boosters. That’s probably a much better seller in games where staying ahead of other people in a progression grind is more meaningful. It’s like they had absolutely no idea what kind of products to sell in a cash shop in a stat-capped game.

Mulch,

If the actual net power increase is 2%, as you say, then ANET needs to just say so, so that people on both sides of the issue can make informed, good-faith decisions about what to. Otherwise, it is reasonable to conclude that ANET is simply trying to fool parts of its playerbase into staying with GW2.

Lady Vireo.5189:

This is the best post yet in the Ascended gear debate. Very well said, OP, and said with intelligence and respect for both sides of the argument. I wish everyone could express their heartfelt opinions in such a thoughtful and courteous manner.

I hope everyone reads and emulates this post, whatever side they are on. And I hope Anet will read it, too, and keep in mind all of us who loved the horizontal progression of GW1 or who came to GW2 from vertical progression games hoping for something different.

The real problem ANET faces (or, if the choice has been made, faced) is that these two different kinds of players – stat-progressives and stat-cappers – have an irreconcilable difference in how they require their game to be fundamentally structured. One game simply cannot serve both.

I think it is highly unlikely that GW2, which focused so much of it’s original content philosophy, integrated design and mechanics on a stat-capped system, can simply switch over and significantly compete in a market saturated by stat-progression titles that are created from the ground up to be just that very thing. The game might continue on, but I doubt it’s going to enjoy a larger revenue from the saturated stat-progression market than it would have garnered being the only modern AAA MMOG on the market with capped stats.

Syfin.6875:

Thank you for the great answers. I now understand. But now it makes me wonder. How would horizontal progression not become stale. It sounds like you arent working towards anything beneficial to your character… Does the game stay interesting. If so, how?

Some people require vertical progression in order to enjoy an MMOG. IMO, there’s nothing inherently wrong with that – it’s just what they enjoy. Nothing else is the game is really enjoyable – for them – without the fundamental structure of ongoing vertical progression, so trying to tell you how a game without it can be entertaining in the long term is like trying to tell you how one can enjoy chocolate cake when they just don’t like chocolate cake. You cannot convince people to enjoy chocolate cake if they just don’t like it.

Tens of millions of people enjoy League of Legends that has no vertical progression to speak of; it’s really all about arranging your core build, learning how to play each particular hero, and dressing up your character in cool skins. Then you learn maps and strategies where you compete against other players (or bots) and figure out how to counter what you run into.

What I would really like in an MMOG is to log in and have the ability to build a maxed out character and gear with an assortment of core abilities/traits/skills from scratch as part of the original character creation process. Horizontal progression would be a process of collecting non-comparable skills or traits to include in my growing library. There could be many, many ways of collecting these non-comparable horizontal attributes. Perhaps I could also collect variant battle animations and emotes, weapon and gear skins, special effects, non-comparable pets]

I can see myself creating a whole stable of variant, maxed-out characters to enjoy in pvp, or WvW, or to go into events or other PvE content with, just to have fun with my fully customized character, and never ever have to think about any vertical progression.

But, if that kind of thing doesn’t appeal to you, no amount of explanation or salesmanship is going to convince you otherwise, just as no amount of explanation or salesmanship can convince some people to enjoy vertical progression systems.

proxy.7963:

Wintyre Fraust.6534:

The problem is that many of us have no place to go. This was it – the reason we came out of MMOG retirement, the reason we updated our computers or bought new ones, the reason we bought a new gaming mouse and headhphones, the reason we put $100’s of dollars each into the gem store even though we didn’t really need it; this was our AAA shining city on the hill that would actually have a permanent cap on stat progression at a point that was realistically attainable even by casual players. We sold our homes (figuratively speaking), packed our stuff and moved into Shangri-La.

10 weeks later, we are thrown out of paradise. Unfortunately for you, the time we would have been spending playing other games is now being used to vent our frustrations and attempt to change things back, because now those other games are just not worth playing any more.

I legitimately feel sorry for these people. I sympathize. I enjoyed GW1 for a while and then realised I was chasing after something I didn’t honestly care about, so I stopped playing. I’ve never played a MMO between then and GW2. If anyone invested hundreds of dollars based on what was essentially sales spiel and good intentions, that’s a terrible position to be in and I hope that perhaps they make their investment opportunities with a little more consideration in the future. I honestly wish you didn’t feel so disappointed.

An issue I have with this is not that people are expressing their disappointment, but the feeling that they are choosing to do so in a way that could be considered to involve souring the community by their actions – actions that they may feel are warranted. Those who are strongly against recent changes have exhibited dismissive and occasionally mocking attitudes towards those who don’t share their opinions when they should – by all rights – be taking a higher moral ground. The forums aren’t just for feedback – they should be about building and maintaining a positive community as well, not simply to be used as a podium for people to voice their upset. I’m fine with that upset in itself, I just question the use of moderation and sensitivity towards those who would rather not see dozens of repetitions every day of the same topics by the same posters.

Well, let me provide another perspective: perhaps you should be upset right along with us, even if you are still enjoying the game, and even if you prefer the new item progression direction of GW2. Holding people and companies accountable for their good faith representations should be something we all stand up for, regardless of whether or not we personally happen to enjoy their product or the particular features that come and go.

Kirito.3591:

Really well written.
I see your point. Would you be objected to new gear having different combinations of stats? Or the addition of stat manipulation, ie discovering your own recipe for inscriptions that could be composed of any which stat (assuming the combination doesn’t already exist).

I don’t know what being able to arrange your own stats would do to balancing issues, but exotics with upgrades already allow you to customize stats to some degree. I’m not sure how gear with, say, all the stat pool piled into condition damage on every piece would affect PVE and WvW, but in theory I’m not opposed to the idea, as long as it didn’t become in practice the only viable gear. I’d also have to see how it was implemented.

deSade:

I understand and feel your pain, brother, but here’s the thing: even if our outrage falls upon deaf ears at Arenanet, and even if we are mauled by the progressive-stat players here and in other forums, if there are enough of us, and if we make a loud enough ruckus, and if we can make a sound enough case why and how a stat-capped, 3A MMOG can be successful, perhaps some developer, future developer, or finance group understands it, realizes it can be successful, creates it, and sticks with it.

Look at it this way: GW2 proved, if nothing else, that not only could one be made, but it generated huge excitement and a very successful launch. That shows that it can be done, and even that it should be tried again by a company that won’t drop the ball 10 weeks into the game. ANET could have had the stat-cap player market, but even if they have permanently abandoned it, that leaves the door wide open for other developers. GW2 release, launch and this immense, very public reaction proves that there is a market for a stat-capped MMOG beyond what GW1 has been able to accrue.

I’m not so much trying to change ANET’s mind (although that would be nice); I’m contributing to the long-term cause -here and on other sites, like MMORPG.com – of getting developers (and future developers) to see the potential and expand the genre like ANET did for 10 weeks here.

“Leave this community pure, and without so much hatred, anger, or whatever disappointment you may feel. It’s a game, a free one at that aside from the initial purchase price. Let me enjoy my game, and have a nice day.”

The problem is that many of us have no place to go. This was it – the reason we came out of MMOG retirement, the reason we updated our computers or bought new ones, the reason we bought a new gaming mouse and headhphones, the reason we put $100’s of dollars each into the gem store even though we didn’t really need it; this was our AAA shining city on the hill that would actually have a permanent cap on stat progression at a point that was realistically attainable even by casual players. We sold our homes (figuratively speaking), packed our stuff and moved into Shangri-La.

10 weeks later, we are thrown out of paradise. Unfortunately for you, the time we would have been spending playing other games is now being used to vent our frustrations and attempt to change things back, because now those other games are just not worth playing any more.

“I simply don’t see how Anet or anyone else for that matter can keep a game going and making a good profit by simply doing Skins forever when it took all of a week to get to level 80."

Answer: League of Legends. GW1. The huge mod industry around Skyrim and Oblivion.

Yes, there are a lot of people who play MMOGs who can’t see a reason to play IF there is no vertical progression. There are also a lot of people who want to play MMOGs if there is NO vertical progression, or if there is a permanently capped, relatively easy-to-achieve vertical limit.

That was the fundamental selling point of GW2, whether you agreed with it or not. That was the core philosophy. Whether it would have succeeded financially or not is something we may never know, but I hear League of Legends is doing quite well, and GW1 did quite well for 7 years with that philosophy.