Guild Wars 2

So, I thought about the following after the changes to conditions shortly after the July Patch, but since I’m just a single player what does it matter what I think right? So, I didn’t post it back then.

Quick reminder: before the change Burning and Poison didn’t stack in intensity, but duration. And Bleeding, Confusion and Torment were capped at 25 stacks per target! That made multiple condition builds that applied e.g. bleeds pretty much useless since one player alone could usually apply 15 to 25 stacks of bleeds.
I’m not entirely sure how burning and poison damage from multiple sources was calculated back then, but that doesn’t matter anymore, right?

Today Burning and Poison stack in intensity, on a per character basis and the limit for conditions that stack in intensity is high enough that it is very unlikely that a zerg in an open world situation will reach it.
That’s all great and stuff, it made condition builds viable to some extend. Some really shine, others not so much.

Why is that? Because it’s kitten (I really wrote kitten) hard to balance conditions as they are right now. We have insane burning damage. Builds that can apply and maintain a ‘healthy’ amount of burning stacks are usually the ones that are considered good. Builds that don’t fall a little short or at least feel less powerful. I’m sure ArenaNet has some fancy charts and know how wrong I really am.

Back when they mentioned that they work on ways to remove the condition cap I imagined that every player could apply a stack of burning and/or poison and everyone has to stack its duration for themselves, but I was wrong and I’m glad. To some extent.

That it just stacks in intensity made some PvE encounter (Half-Baked Komalie anyone?) really hard and opened up some lame burn-burst PvP builds that can kill in seconds if you can’t hit your condi cleanse fast enough or burning is buried beneath other conditions.

So, to ‘fix’ that I would make Burning, Poison and maybe even Confusion stack in duration again. Yes I just wrote that, but wait, hold your stones for now and read on. With that change I would add some stacking mechanic to it. Let’s take burning as an example here:

Imagine some evil Asura Engineer sets your sleeve on fire, for science of course. It hurts bad, but it’s just your arm, right? You have a single stack of burning on you now.
The Asura is still feeding the flames, 5 seconds later your chest is partially on fire as well and it hurts more, you have two stacks of burning on you now.
Another 5 seconds later you’re completely engulfed in flames and you totally regret that you tried to earn money as a guinea pig for Asura experiments, but since dungeons aren’t worth it anymore, you have to earn your bread and butter somehow, right? You now have three stacks of burning on you. From now on it can not burn any stronger, but the Asura is still feeding the flames (still stacking duration).
Luckily someone rogue ALS Ice-Bucket challenged you and dumped a large bucket of ice cold water over your head. All flames extinguished. The Asura Engineer now has to start all over again. (Hint: Don’t let him do it!)

A bit more clearly (hopefully): Burning stacks in duration and after a certain duration the intensity increases and another stack is applied until a certain intensity is reached. That is per player that applies the condition! That way high damage conditions have some ramp up time and it’s not possible to burst something beyond expectations. It also makes it much easier to argue the real amount of condition damage a player can do against a single target cough Gorseval cough Berserker cough… Uah, Sorry for that silent cough … phew, much better.
If someone or something cleanses the condition and you apply it again you start from a single stack again and have to face that ramp up time again.

Same thing for poison, but why? Because we just assume this universal Tyria Poison doesn’t kill instantly, but makes you sick. You can feel it’s effect after a certain duration and it just gets worse until it reached it’s maximum intensity. Healing reduction should still be 33% right at the beginning, because PvP and stuff.

Same thing for deathly chill, but why? I heard freezing and burning feel similar, haven’t tried it myself I trust my source (Internet probably). Oh and more importantly, when you go outside on a cold winter morning you’re not instantly cold, right?

Same thing for confusion, but why? Well in this case it’s pretty much just for convenience, maybe?. It’s hard to keep up high amounts of confusion (I think?) and confusion is one of the weaker conditions in PvE already.

Heck, I’d even go so far and say make all damage conditions except bleeds (because lots of small wounds that bleed and uh… close/heal/stuff… can’t think of the proper term) work that way. Classes that don’t apply a wide range of conditions can get some tweaks to condition related traits similar to the Thief’s Deadly Arts Grandmaster “Potent Poison” that increases poison damage by 33% for their primary condition.
So e.g. for Mesmers: Rename Illusions Minor Grandmaster “Master of Misdirection” just for fun to “Master of Confuccus” (Asura that emerged a long time ago in Cantha and said weird stuff, typical Asura actually!) – “Confusion you inflict last longer. Your Confusion deals more damage. Reduces recharge of shatter skills.” Done.

I intentionally left out numbers whenever possible, because that would be subject to soooo much testing and fiddling with numbers. But I feel like conditions with higher ramp up times need to have a higher base damage for each stack.

TL;DR:
Seriously, why not? sadface
Make high damage conditions stack in duration and after a certain amount add another stack to increase intensity. Reduces burst potential of some builds but gives condition builds reliable sustained damage, if not cleansed. That makes it easier to balance condition builds overall and make more of them viable. It also makes it easier to predict damage output of condition damage builds on a single enemy. Balance! wakes up Huh?

Alright, thanks for reading my little wall of text, have a wonderful happy local time and remember we don’t make mistakes we just have happy little accidents!

Capas.9240:

@hoeppy

I think ArenaNet needs to fix this rather than me, but thanks!

I never said that you should fix it, it was just additional information for ANet, nothing else.

It seems that it only affects mouse bindings.
I use mouse 3/4/5 for my utility skills, auto-run/walk is bound to alt+mouse 4/5 which now also casts utility skill 1/2. My secondary key bindings for utility skills are alt+1/2/3 and when I press, for example, alt+1 it doesn’t trigger my action (weapon skill 1) bound to key 1.

I Hope this helps.

azurrei.5691:

Um what? So let me get this straight. Before Ascended gear existed, all the special Mystic forge weapon recipes were useful for what exactly? Didn’t they have the EXACT same stats as your run of the mill crafted exotic that cost 1/100th or less the cost? Why would I bother making Volcanus then? Oh wait, IT WAS FOR THE SKIN. How, exactly, is something that was PURELY CRAFTED FOR THE SKIN now useless? Answer: IT’S NOT

You’re right I exaggerated on that part quite a bit, but compared to their effort I would expect them to be possible BiS and usable without needing to transmute them first. If it’s only one tier of ascended gear it might be unimportant, but after they’ve catered to the stat progression crowd once they’ll do it again and then you’re forced to buy transmutation stones in the long run.

azurrei.5691:

Skins are fun…but having the ONLY way to progress your character is by playing dress up with a new outfit, it makes the game BORING. This is why it worked in the single/multi-player RPG GW1 but it does NOT work in an MMO-RPG – people need things to do AND things to work towards – I’m not saying that they HAVE to add gear power creep, but they sure as hell needed to add something.

You think playing dress up is boring and on the other hand you don’t think they had to add power creep, what’s your solution then?

Adding stats isn’t real progression as well, for each stat gain you have your enemies will get stronger as well. They’ll still design encounters with the same average encounter length as they do it now and adjust the numbers accordingly.
Tank&Spank with 50k NPC hp and 250 player DPS is the same as a Tank&Spank fight with 500k NPC hp and 2.5k player DPS.
The only thing you achieve with a item treadmill or vertical progression is that “old” content will get obsolete since you don’t have any incentive to do them at all.

azurrei.5691:

Honestly, I could care less about Ascended gear as I only do dungeons every so often (GW2 dungeons are just average…and are pretty kitten buggy still at that). What interests me more are the changes to rewards and a new zone that I might actually want to spend more than a half hour or so gathering in and getting my daily finished (Orr sucks, badly). Now if only they could come up with more useful uses for Karma besides poorly itemized exotic gear or sub-par legendaries that are no where near worth the time and cost, I’d be all set.

If ascended gear would just introduce infusion slots which are required to grind your brain away in new dungeons I wouldn’t have any problem with them, too, but that unnecessary increase in stats…
If they do it once they’ll do it again and in the long run it’s nothing optional it’s a requirement that forces you to do things you don’t want to do.

heavyscythe.9780:

Seriously I don’t get why people are so angry about new content being released.

If this update came 3 months from now we would be celebrating but instead we are complaining. All Areanet has done is keep things fresh by giving us things to work towards.

I am a casual player with only 1 lvl 80 character and 2 alts below 30 yet I find the challenge appealing. I’m not the type of player who skips straight to end game I spend most of my time playing through each level range of the game.

Considering the number of lvl 80 players with exotic or legendary armors that already exist, this update only gives players more activities to spend time on rather than getting bored and leaving as soon as they get to 80 and get 100% map completion.

The only people who would really worry about this new tier level are those who spend a lot of time in PvP and all it does in that case is to give people a bit more variety in opponents, instead of several opponents with the exact same equipment sets.

It also makes it so you have to challenge yourself to keep up with the new tier. The reason games are fun is because they are challenging, what is the point of a game that gives you everything with little effort on your part.

A new tier level just keeps the game interesting, if you want to continue to get the legendary instead of the new tier that is fine. But if you want to keep up with the rest of the players you should work towards getting the new tier equipment.

No one here complains about new content, unless content is equal to gear for you. And even then we’re not complaining about new gear in general, just about how they implement the ascended armor and mechanics associated with them (content gates, and possible gear grind/item treadmill in the future, rendering current content worthless).
Why are we complaining about that? Because that not what they’ve advertised for GW2 when we bought that game and for a lot of us that was the reason we started playing GW2.

shambo.3842:

Focksbot.6798:

shambo.3842:

why are all u crybaby’s getting so upset with a new tier of gear that is in between exotic and legendary? im lmao at all the im quitting post here and all the crying about a gear treadmill before the patch is even out please read this post.

Yes, well, if this is the calibre of player that is staying on for the treadmill, ANet is welcome to them.

why did you not quote the first part of my post? anyway the reason im lol at all the post is most of them will not quit and there is no gear treadmill please read this post

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/linsey-murdock-unveils-new-high-end-ascended-gear/

or if your to lazy here’s a quote from the post

By adding challenging new combat mechanics to end-game content and ways to mitigate those mechanics through gear progression for high-end players, we can add personal progression without making the game feel like an endless treadmill of gear that is just out of your reach.

Great you’ve only read that single paragraph of the blog post, don’t you?

“*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.

…

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)."
- Linsey Murdock

The three ascended gear pieces are just the start of a long term item progression, these items will give you an advantage in the new high-end content (primarily because of the infusions, but the stat increase is an advantage as well, isn’t it?).
You have to have a full set of ascended armor (as soon as all slots are introduced) to be on par with other players.
Ascended gear is just the start of their “item progression initiative”.

I don’t really care for infusions right now as you can play the dungeons without them as well, you’ll just hit a wall eventually. Don’t get me wrong I’m not a fan of this mechanic at all, content gates suck.
What bugs me more is that with increased stats on ascended gear they’ll render every content currently in the game obsolete. Crafting is useless, all the mystic forge recipies for unique exotic skins (which require a lot of effort as well) are useless as well as pretty much everything else that’s not ascended or whatever they might add during their “item progression initiative”.

MrDmajor.7084:

Lemuria.3195:

For all the MMO games which have a logical progression of gear, you’re really getting your rage on when Guild Wars follows suit.

Um, yes?

Thank you. I never understood why people think it’s “logical progression” when an developer makes their gear obsolete to milk money out of subscriptions.

Sirge.8934:

But one more tier of gear is alright. We can live with it.

Erm… No?

AN Dev: “Hey guys, this patch introduces the last pieces for ascended gear, oh and btw. this is our new uber-ascended gear, you can live with just one more tier, right?” ….

Lifelike.5862:

Didn’t the Guild wars team say that they were making the game for both hardcore and casual players?

If so, then why are the casuals complaining so much when the hardcore players FINALLY get some meaningful content? In case you haven’t noticed, every single design decision in this game so far has been centered around making sure the casual players feel comfortable and pampered.

Where is an increase in statistical power “meaningful content”?

A tank&spank fight with 50k boss hp and 250 player dps is as boring as a tank&spank fight with 500k boss hp and 2.5k player dps.

Meaningful content isn’t made by bigger numbers, meaningful content isn’t made by new gear.
Meaningful content is made by good encounter design, story and all the other little things to do, not by being forced to get X (infusions, and to use them ascended armor) to do Y (fractals of the mist).
The only thing that is increased with ascended gear is the gap between new players and old ones. It also limits the endgame content from pretty much everything to stuff where you can get ascended armor.
If you want to play an alt you have to do all the things again that you may have done too many times to reach the point where you can play with your friends again that want to play the new dungeon.

I always get the impression that the gear progression crowd is to bad to beat the content without the possibility to out gear it.

I don’t see where this is anything good. This is as game breaking as the SWG’s NGE for me to be honest. I feel bad for all the people I talked into GW2 and I’m really disappointed by ArenaNet. From hero to zero I guess.

Logun.2349:

The outcry over this reminds me of only one other MMO incident SWG’s NGE. So regardless if the community is right or wrong, ANet you might want to look up how that turned out.

That’s what came to my mind as well. The funny thing is, Lost Shores will be released on the 15th of November and the NGE was released on 15th of November, too.

Erasculio.2914:

For some time now, the MMO genre has seen the rise of a new phenomenon: the MMO locusts. Everyone know them – the players that jump from the next big MMO to the next big MMO, always complaining, always claiming that the next big thing will be the real deal. Why has this phenomenon been born, though?

This cloud of bugs is made mostly by WoW players (since WoW is the game that introduced most players to the MMO genre) who, whether they are smart enough to realize it or not, are actually seeking a new WoW. They jump to whatever new MMO has just been released, complain about how said MMO lacks features that they had seen before in WoW, and then leave the game, making it suffer a huge drop in players. There are many examples of such behavior, but the really interesting thing is that the locust cloud will leave a game even if it is mostly a WoW clone, as many examples show. In reality, they are looking for something that does not exist – a game that is more WoW than, well, WoW – so it’s little surprise that they continue to hop from MMO to MMO, endlessly and futilely.

What has happened in Guild Wars 2? The game released, the MMO locusts swarmed the game, and as expected, they began to leave. It’s not hard to guess that the number of Guild Wars 2 players has been falling. Again as expected, though, the cloud of bugs is not going away quietly – they were, and are, complaining in the forum about how Guild Wars 2 lacks what they see as MMO-defining features, which actually are features they saw in WoW (and since those players are basically looking for a new WoW, they want those features back).

Now it’s clear that, seeing how players were leaving the game, ArenaNet panicked; and as such, they tried reading the forum to decide why were so many people leaving. Anyone who has seen any MMO launch in the last few years would know the reason, but ArenaNet decided, anyway, to listen to the whining of the locust players, and so they began implementing WoW features in GW2. The first, although probably not the last, is the Ascended gear.

Lessons to be learned here:

1) Whining in the forum works, that’s how the WoW lovers convinced ArenaNet to add Ascended gear. Some of them are now saying that those against a gear treadmill are whining, which is just hypocrisy – that’s what they did, and that’s what we know works, so…

2) ArenaNet clearly has no idea of what its playerbase thinks. It’s bad enough that they actually decided to implement the Ascended items, but it’s even worse that they are paralyzed in surprise by the community outcry against those items. I’m sure they are still wondering what did they do wrong.

3) ArenaNet still has not learned that they currently have two opposite groups of players:

• WoW fanboys, who cannot conceive a MMO without grind-based vertical progression, in which the point of a MMO is to grind as much as possible for as long as possible, and to whom how good a piece of content is can be defined by how time consuming it is and how exclusive it is.

• Players who are interested in having fun instead of in grinding, who want horizontal-based content, more areas to explore, more interesting dungeons, and overall a better game.

ArenaNet cannot please both sides – they are antagonic to each other. If ArenaNet thinks the first group will be happy with whatever it is they do, they are wrong – those players will leave GW2, just as they have left every other WoW clone, while seeking a new, “perfect” WoW. Adding gear grind or raids or mounts or whatever won’t change that. What all those things would do, though, is alienate the latter group – those who are playing GW2 exactly because it is not WoW, and who make the playerbase that will remain in the game once the locusts leave. If those players are not enough to keep Guild Wars 2 around… I’m sorry, ArenaNet, your game has failed. Driving them away from the game by adding content diametrically opposed to what they want, under the illusion that it’s possible to catch the locusts, is only going to speed the demise of the game.

Regardless of what they have done, ArenaNet has lost their credibility under my eyes. The only thing that would make me believe in them again would be a complete reversal on the Ascended gear, together with firing Linsey Murdock.

And/or anyone else who is responsible for this nonsense.

Well written Erasculio, that’s what I’ve seen over and over again now.
I was hopping from MMO to MMO once as well, but I was looking for a game that was more similar to Star Wars Galaxies in its pre-CU (or at least pre-NGE) state and more importantly I left quietly as I realised that I’m not happy with the game.

niclas.7693:

An MMO is about making your character better and better to beat the upcoming content.

I disagree, I think it’s more fun to overcome difficult situations with tatics and your ability to play well, not by making it trivial through better gear.
The challenging and fun part of MMOs is that you have to get better to beat new content.
And that’s how difficulty should be implemented, through challenging and new mechanics and not by an increase of your statistical power.

I don’t understand why so many people are focused on big numbers…

krookie.6378:

hoeppy.4567:

I disagree Larger numbers make for larger variations in stuff. This allows for things like boss mobs to use higher damage moves and kill / not kill a wider range of people because the stats have a greater range in them. It opens the door for Ideas and mechanics that may have only had this or that out combs to have this or that or that or that because with higher stats comes more ways to combined them and come out with different numbers.

That can just as easily be done without bigger numbers. Just scale the new move to the current stat cap. No need to raise the stat cap just so a mob can hit harder. That’s the lazy/boring way to do things.

Harder content in terms of more interesting and varied mob mechanics, that’s how you make the game more interesting and fun. Just making the mob hit 10x times harder is just “meh.”

Just to be clear, you quoted the wrong person. I pretty much said the thing you said.
More interesting mechanics > bigger numbers.

Agien.9834:

P.S. In my opinion eventually the current exotic gear will be replaced with better gear. We will see new crafting recopies we will see new dungeon gear we will see new event gear. It allows for harder content and new ways to play. If that really angers people to the point they have to quit the game maybe an MMORPG is not right for you…

“harder content” is not made by bigger numbers. You make things difficult by new and difficult mechanics. Item treadmills are things for subscription based MMOs, not for free to play games.
Furthermore, new item tiers reduce the content you have at “endgame” since the usual MMO Bob follows the carrot on the stick, which is gear.

This entire situation reminds me of the “New Game Enhancement” (16.11.05) for “Star Wars Galaxies” which pretty much destroyed everything that most people loved, just to make it more appealing for the WoW crowd.

Well… I really don’t know what to say. It made me really sad when I read about ascended armor. I try to be patient and wait for an official response what this new amor tier is exactly.

First thought?
Wrong turn taken, leaving the trail can be dangerous. That’s NOT the Guild Wars way.

I didn’t received a gold seller mail with copper in it, yet, but I was always annoyed that the mail wasn’t auto-deleted when I reported it. So, why not just delete the mail when reported regardless of it’s content.
I think that’d solve the issue.