Showing Posts For rickalodeon.9842:
Dear ArenaNet,
A direct quote from the AMA:
“Ascended Gear is designed to fill the ‘Time’ gap in regard to the distance between exotic and Legendary in terms of progression and in retrospect would have been better to have been rolled out pre launch.
I would also like add that we have never said there would be no vertical progression. We do intent to focus on horizontal but we will have vertical progression moving forward with the focus on zero grind and a very low power curve.”
Well, there is the loophole. Its true, you never explicitly promised only horizontal progression. Probably smart on your part. Did you think it would ever work to begin with? We will probably never know. However i now feel pretty confident moving forward that it is only a matter of time before new “tiers” of gear become available, and raids are released under the guise of “guild events/dungeons”. Which is fine I guess. A million other games are totally successful using this approach. But at least they are forthcoming about it. The whole tone makes me feel like you are backhandedly saying “we tried to do something different, but this is what you wanted.” when in fact, i think there is a massive amount of room for a more lateral approach.
http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/75995-guild-wars-2-and-progression/
I completely agree with the above article that you took all the great horizontal progression elements of the first guild wars, and threw them in the kitten trash. Why can’t we progress in terms of weapon skills? Why can’t my guardian unlock the sword skills of a warrior, simultaneously giving me a meaningful goal and giving my class exponentially more viable possibilities in both pve and pvp settings? Why cant i work toward unlocking permission to wield new types of weapons for my class to the same end? Why does it have to go directly from “horizontal progression, but not much of it” to “vertical progression, based out of one dungeon and one activity (for now)”? I feel like this can only be the result of pressure from NCSoft. I know a large number of people LOVED the game, played their hearts out to 80, then went “meh” and found something else to play. That, of course, is devastating to the revenue stream of an MMO. Retention isn’t only important, its the ONLY thing. I feel like the big wigs at NCSoft came down, asked why more money wasnt coming in, and when they asked you guys what could be done, someone half jokingly said “we could put in better gear for people to grind for”. Except the big wigs didnt get the joke. They just saw dollar signs pouring out of your mouths, and set you to work. I dont know why else you could so drastically change your whole philosophy about this game. Anyway, rant over. I unfortunately wont be contributing to the success of Guild Wars 2 anymore. I will likely uninstall it tonight, and check in on whats new from time to time to see if you can recover from the foundation shattering blow you have dealt this game of such massive potential. I truly wish you the best, and I sincerely hope you can find your way again.