Guild Wars 2

I’m creating this thread here for now, because the most people will see it and I want to include as many people as possible in the discussion. The purpose of this thread is to share ideas using art (concept or otherwise), or other pictures to share what you want with the community, and ArenaNet developers alike so that they may potentially draw inspiration from our ideas & also get a good sense of where their player-base stands on the types of looks we want for our characters.

PLEASE keep the discussion civil, and open minded as many of us are bound to have different tastes and opinions so please be respectful

Everyone is welcome to join in the discussion, you do not have to post art if you don’t want to, but please do be constructive and descriptive.

We cannot expect everyone to be a deeply talented concept artist who wants to openly share their own works in our conversation so please don’t be shocked and bewildered when we post art and designs from other games & forms of media as a source of inspiration. I think it goes without saying that you are more than welcome to share your own pieces with the community as well if you wish to.

My first contribution is an idea for a mesmer-friendly set using concept art from AION’s bard class.

I am krait and want to make friendsss.

I have come to Divinity’ss Reach to make friendss and learn to ssociety. I have learned the human language.

What sshould I ssee? What is bessst in human life?

Pleasse, I need your help!

While responding to another thread, I was reminded of a long-term issue that ascended gear may create within GW2. This response is a bit long-winded and off-topic for that thread, but merits discussion from the player base. Please try to keep this thread about the long-term future state of ascended gear (instead of the short-term discussion about the Dec. 10th patch):

One interesting thought on ascended gear. Anet has stated that they have no plans for a tier beyond ascended gear. This means that eventually, GW2 will reach a state where a large percentage of the current player base has full ascended gear.

However, this may cause an issue with new players joining GW2. For players just buying GW in late 2014 or beyond, they will be woefully behind the ascended power curve. Additionally, it will be very difficult for them to catch-up to the current player base due to the expensive and heavily time-gated nature of ascended gear.

Ultimately, this gear wall will likely discourage new players from joining the GW universe.

As GW2 moves forward and ascended gear becomes increasingly prevalent among the population (i.e. 2015 and beyond), I see two actions Anet can take to ease the burden for new players to catch-up with the old player base.

1. Make ascended gear easier / faster to acquire.
2. Obsolete ascended gear, likely by raising the level cap.

Option 1: As seen in other MMOs, when a new tier is released, the developer often raises the restrictions on previous tiers to allow more casual and/or newer players the ability to stay close to the power curve. In theory, this strategy would allow newcomers to GW2 to more quickly catch up to the base ascended level, where they could then engage in additional progression alongside the older player base.

For example, let’s assume that ascended gear is common among the long-term player base in mid 2014. Anet then decides to add higher rarity infusions to allow continued low-power curve vertical progression. A new player joining GW2 in late 2014 would still be a good 6 months away from acquiring the base set of ascended gear, making higher rarity infusions pointless, and placing them behind the long-term player base on the power curve indefinitely.

Conversely, if the cost of the base ascended gear were also lowered when the next segment of progression was released, it would allow new players to catch-up and join in the latest wave of progression (something that is good for the longevity of MMOs).

Option 2: The other common method to level the playing field in MMOs is to obsolete all of the current gear. This is usually accomplished via an expansion that raises the level cap. Once the level cap is raised, higher level gear of any rarity obsoletes the best gear from the old level cap. Hence, every player, old and new, is reset to an even playing field.

In my experience, this is even one of the bigger selling points of expansions in MMOs. I have seen several friends quit MMOs because they cannot keep up with the gear curve, only to rejoin when an expansion is released because they are on par with the rest of the population. Again, this option can be good for the longevity of MMOs as a gear reset may rejuvenate the MMO community.

TL;DR from here down:

As an MMO player and GW2 customer, which of the methods do you prefer?

Do you think Anet should consider lowering the cost of ascended gear as additional progression mechanics are introduced?

Do you think Anet should consider resetting the playing field (via a level cap raise or other means) once the old player base gets too far ahead of the newcomers?

Do you think Anet should leave everything as-is long-term (2015 & beyond), even if new players have a difficult time catching-up to the current player-base on the power curve?

There’s already an armor box in chat code. I want to say we’ll be crafting boxes which does have the downside for those that mix and match.

I just barely got a second weapon crafted for my Guardian (the one I use in Fractals). Really, I should level Artificing to get a Scepter/Focus so that I’ll have agony resist when I’m ranged (looking at you Jade Maw), but really, I’d still rather have ascended daggers for my thief to keep up in WvW.

But I couldn’t keep at the grind necessary for this. I can’t bring myself to follow the mind-numbing auto-attack champ zergs to grind what I need for more ascended stuff and sPvP certainly hasn’t helped on this endeavor either. Yes, there will be a gold reward starting Dec 10th, but if you can earn gold doing sPvP at a rate anywhere near what you need to get ascended gear, it’ll be a near miracle.

…and now ascended gear hits Dec 10th. I can’t even comprehend crafting 6 pieces of ascended gear after going broke for 2 weapons (still more than what many people have).

I love this game…but this is depressing. =(

It’s pretty clear from what we’ve seen over the past few weeks that Gold League should have had the 3 tiers, and Silver the two tiers. Yaks, SBI and FA pretty much facerolled everyone else by about 100-200k points in every match up where they were not fighting each other. Something to probably keep in mind if ever this league misfortune is to be foisted on us again. As much as I like a challenge, I don’t think any of us wants to spend another 2 months helping one or two servers level their alts.

Like, she is everywhere, i hope we didn’t see her at leaset on Wintersday

crosknight.3041:

snip

They look even worse on a Charr.

Gwalchgwn.1659:

The basic salvage kit also is getting higher drops of runes and sigils though.

So the issue is not with the CFSoM, but rather with the base kit being broken? Heh.

In any case, interested to see what comes of this. I hope there was nothing intentional about it, I’d hate to essentially be forced to buy the thing because it’d be so cheap. I guess in 2-3 months I’d have saved gold, sure.

Why even anything else.

the new infusion progresion system is very good but lacks one thing.
- The ability to keep your progress instead of flushing it down the toilet.

What do I mean ?

- say I craft a +6 infusion and place it in my ring, than I start crafting a new +6
- In the current system my 1st +6 is useless and is flushed down the toilet, I need to craft 2x +6 to get to +7 completely disregarding the time and money placed on crafting the one in my ring.

what it should be like

craft the 2nd +6 and combine it with my 1st crafted +6 that is now in my ring, to get to +7, this way my earlier progress is NOT simply flushed down the toilet.

Please allow partially used Mantras to regenerate back to full charges out of combat. It is frustrating as hell to use 2 of my 3 charges during a fight and then when out of combat have to burn the last one, wait the cooldown, and then recharge the mantra.

Lothirieth.3408:

John Smith.4610:

Essence Snow.3194:

…PS increasing something like .0000001 to .00000012….

That’s a 20% change. I don’t understand your simile.

It’s still a ridiculously low chance. It seems quite obvious what he was getting at… and what trying to get a precursor out of the forge can feel like for people.

The devs don’t look at the game from one player’s perspective, they have to consider the game as a whole. A 20% increase means 20% more precursors entering the market. Since they made the change there have been hundreds of precursors created that wouldn’t have existed without it.

What would the prices be like now if those players were still competing for a precursor in a market with 20% less items available?

John Smith.4610:

After that post the Mystic forge rates on precursors were increased. We’ve moved into more longterm plans for precursors (we’re still watching), as you know, but that promise was upheld.

It makes me pine for a streak-breaker mechanic like the Pristine Fractal Relics:

If each combine of 4 exotics (or 3 and a mystic stone) also returned a “Zomorros’ treasured shiny” and you could spend 250 of them at the Mystic forge vendor to buy the precursor of you choice, this whole process would be a LOT more satisfying.

“Hey let’s rez this old thread to point out the promises not kept and hope that this time they will take a hint and change things for the better.”

To which I can only say : Roflcopter.

Milennin.4825:

GW1 has been pretty much a single-player experience for the past few years. Since GW2’s release not many people are playing it anymore, and the few that still do go in full Hero parties (heroes = NPCs).

Still, GW1 is a pretty decent single-player experience, but it’s nothing like GW2, and I’d strongly advice to not set your expectations too high if you try it out. It’s more of a strategy game than an action game or RPG. You either like it or hate it.

Agreed. It’s nothing like Guild Wars 2. The only thing they have in common really is the lore. Even the landscape has changed dramatically.

You can try it and may like it, but go in as if the two games were completely unrelated.

Nope. You buy them from the master crafters. Welcome to Goldsink Wars 2.

Skeletor.9360:

They won’t improve WvW ever.

Well to be fair, Anet thinks that Ruins, Toxic things and Do Not Touch Towers are an improvement to WvW, and our opinions are not welcome.

An item that lets you toggle on/off auto consume food/applies oils when it runs out. Every WvW-er would buy it.

Well, I used to buy town clothes and toys.

While we are on this subject, is there a place to buy precursors at half price?

Cotheer.2806:

Soooo, buy 50€ worth of gems (~3x monthly subscriptions in other games) and get a mini?

How about NO.

how about u buy 4000 Gems, then buy things with it in the gem shop and get a quaggan back item AND a mini mr. sparkles on top?

it’s NOT 4000 gems only for the mini…

They’re not changing it because it “looks bad”. That’s subjective anyway. Admittedly I don’t care for the medium armor (or any of them, honestly) but I’m sure some people like it.

They’re changing it because a lot of people don’t want cultural armor to become available to all races at a cheaper price than real cultural armor.

All you have to do A-net is make it a new item type where you can let people transmute a T3 cultural human armor into the flamekissed version at a lower cost of 400gems. This will let everyone who wanted that skin to keep the skin yet have everyone who purchased the original still happy.

The cultural skins stay CULTURAL and exclusive. It also allows you to sell them in different colors for various races while having the gold skin to help the economy, not to mention you can be lazy since reskins are less work but not get anger people as buying the cultural set for 120 is still a prerequisite.