Guild Wars 2

The manifesto was abandoned. There is nothing to discuss.

Anet doesn’t care about the manifesto anymore, and I think it’s pretty obvious they don’t really care about the playerbase too much either.

I really like the “Guild Wars 2 Design Manifesto” posted on April 27, 2010.
What is vision for a good game, everyone should read it.

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/guild-wars-2-design-manifesto/

I also like following in “how ArenaNet Measures Success” posted on June 19, 2012.

“If our model was subscription based, we might be spending all this time racing to add as much filler content as possible to keep players chasing the carrot, but as content designers with the goal of making fun, we get to spend this time refining our content and making it amazing. As designers this is both liberating and refreshing in an industry where so rarely do developers get time from publishers to actually polish their games. (High-five, NCsoft!)”

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/is-it-fun-colin-johanson-on-how-arenanet-measures-success/

My view on progression:

• Legendaries Should Have Cosmetic Progression
  Like the Mad King’s Tome & the Fractal Back skins, Legendaries should have a satisfying progression to their looks. This does 3 things: makes it feel less grindy, shows how much you’ve accomplished & gives people who would otherwise not bother at all, a reason to try for them. Plus it’s just more fun. Heck, I may like the stage 2 Legendary more than the stage 4, either way, i’ll play your game more.
  I also think this should be done with the simple LS cosmetic rewards (backs/gloves/minis) make a much harder tier of Achievements so that your back piece glows. This makes the art end much easier & shows that you had additional commitment to particular LS releases that you really liked.

• Releasing 1 Skill/Skin/Item At a Time Doesn’t Feel Like Personal Progression
  When my next “progression” is simply about waiting for Anet to release that 1 thing that everyone will get at the same time, it doesn’t feel like I’m growing or progressing because of my adventures, it feels like everyone just goes up one notch on the set “progression day”. Unfortunately this is an inherent problem with Non-Expansion Development. Players need a large enough pool of activities so that everyone isn’t just unlocking the same things at the same time. This may also be the reason that permanent content needs always needs to be accumulating.

• I Want to SEE My Progressing
  I know this was discussed earlier in terms of how expensive the production of art assets is. Anything worth getting will have to be considerable in the making, this is unfortunately how things work. So players will always like Armor sets more than a helm. Unfortunately, because armor sets are sold & not earned, they have yet to be part of the horizontal progression. Ascended is the first set of earned armor in a game with cosmetic progression. This is good for revenue, but bad for progression. Also, there is a marked difference in the quality of the art on the Ascended armor & the Jem Store armor & the required use of Transmutation which is also bad for progression.
  However, there are some alternatives that help show your progression without as much asset production:

• Medals This would require going through all gear & placing 2-4 nodes on each set of armor where you could place earned medals & decals. similar to WH40k seals & skulls, a veteran player could have all sorts of cool medallions, awards, seals & fx located on either side of the chest or shoulders. It would be front loaded work to have to place these nodes but the work on making medals would be even easier than making back items & yet make your character look like a true vet without resorting to something as bland as titles. which many people find so boring they don’t even count as progression.

• Armor Progression Instead of selling the kind of cheap fx flavored reskins & garnering the “money grab” press, let us upgrade existing gear in the same way. I’m guessing doing those fx was extremely easy since you just need to make shaders particle emitters & some masks. Well, why not allow players to work towards upgrading current armor to have Grenth, Dwayna, Melandru, Balthazar, Lyssa& Kormir versions of existing skins. This is also a way to let people kind of tweak armor they might not like to be more flavored the way they do like instead of having to make more full sets.
  I don’t really expect this to happen because; why give away easy to make skins when you can sell them? Most importantly:

• Remove Repetitive, Archaic, Cosmetic Gating/Make skins Into an Easy to Use Collection
  This is one area I was extremely surprised that Anet is years behind the current MMO standards. DCUO is the prime example of how cosmetics should be handled. Having individual items with individual looks feels like nothing more than a reason to sell more bag slots. When I get an item, I should be able to use a transmutation stone to unlock the skin. I’m not talking about having skins like in the achievement panel or the pvpvlocker. Even that is pretty clunky. I should be able to right click an arrow next to an equipped item & see a window of my skins, like the skill bar. then I can just click the one I want to currently use. Anything else just seems like a waste of UI space & time. I have to say, I’m surprised Anet missed this MMO convention. They usually seem to want to be on the forefront with features & focus on cosmetics. But this time around it seemed 2 steps back.

I added a mock-up of this UI system below. The items you HAVE should fill up from the top down, as to get rid of unnecessary scrolling.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Aeonblade.8709:

Lheimroo.2947:

Moshari.8570:

Give the ascended gear either “limited” stat swapping or full stat swapping like legendaries…or a way (a quest for instance) that would allow you to Add a stat for stat swapping.

If there were epic quests in place where you could unlock stat combinations for your gear that’d be.. awesome. That would be unbelievably awesome.

No more grind; make it about challenges.

I agree, would love to hear from Chris on this idea specifically, epic quest chains to unlock swappable item stats and new item stat combos.

This is a cool idea. Lots of logic problems to think about in regard to it. Need more time to think (-:

Chris

If I’m understanding this right then the suggestion involves the idea of one piece of gear having many possible stat combos unlocked for it which can be swapped out on the fly so you don’t need a set of gear for each build. I wonder if it would be possible to also extend this idea to include swappable sigils and runes on weapons and armour so that one set of ascended really can work for all builds with the right unlocks.

Chris, could you or anyone else comment on something that is a splinter in many of our minds:

Are there plans for ascended runes and sigils? Taking that a step further, are there plans for ascended runes and sigils that can only be placed on ascended gear?

I think this question deserves an answer before a large amount of people pass on creating ascended weapons and armor believing it is the last bit of ascended only to, again, be sideswiped by more power creep and widening the gap more between ascended and exotic.

Im dying to know the answer to this :/

I disagree with proposals of adding a system which allows for progression in the lines of “combine two +1 dmg infusions to get a +2 dmg infusion”. What this would cause is an endless grind, a constant struggle to keep up just so that you can be competitive when it comes to the forming of parties for content.

Leaving the gear at a statistical plateau is extremely important, in my opinion, for this game to remain enjoyable for a larger portion of the population. With such system, it is extremely likely to see way more elitism and overall more toxic environment.

Vindicated.3491:

Character progression for most of us, who are now in the end game stage, is the goal of obtaining ascended gear. I am a casual player and I used to invest 1 hour a day doing my dailies and on weekends I spend my time in WVW and completing Living World contents. I soon came to realize that, such routine has brought me little progess in achieving my goal of getting ascended items. I hate grinding for materials. I’m sure the repetition in real life (eg. jobs, study) is enough for most of us and the last thing, the majority of us want is to slave away grinding for materials in a virtual world. And ANET is well aware of this I am sure, so this is where, the trade post comes into play.

Issues

Solutions and Ideas
1. Reduce the dependency on raw mats for ascended items. Enable tokens to buy materials need for ascended gears. This will stop inflation from going out of hand. A good example is the ascended accessories and trinkets.
2. Another option is to increase the drop rate for materials. At level 80, I would think getting 720 cotton scrap would be more challenging than 10800 silk scrap. In WVW, please increase the variety and amount of mats in a loot bag.
3. Rather than having a seperate set of ascended gear, it would be nice if we can upgrade our exotic sets to ascended gears. Maybe introduce a little cosmetic upgrade as well (eg. fractal back piece). It would be dull to see everybody in the same ascended gear.

While I agree that theres way too much crafting going on, and forced upon you if you want/need BiS gear… I do not think adding another currency into the game is the way to go. Theres way too much of it as it is. Have the items cost Karma instead, since its one of the universal currencies.

Isaiah Cartwright.8569:

Ascended Gear
So then why did we add ascended gear, well the reason is we wanted sometime between the transition and what we shipped with was very little time turns out global trading post has a lot more effect on this then we had original thought which made us need a non-tradable gear step. We still have some progression to smooth out around the rare -> exotic area as mostly you just jump from leveling greens to exotics and rare is really only used for salvaging into ecto. We have been spacing out adding each slot of ascended gear to make sure we don’t make our original mistake again and I’m sure we’ll need to continue to evaluate the time to gain this gear like we do all things.

Ascended creation time

We had a lot of discussion pre-releasing ascended armor to make sure the time to make ascended doesn’t blow out, We pull a lot of data and are watching how long it takes players and like we do with everything we will keep and eye on it but with anything with progression there are always a lot of tradeoffs when you make changes but we’re always looking at it.

Hi,
So I am confused. The way you make it sound is that you realized after the fact that people were obtaining exotics too quickly and needed something else to reach for. But back in November 2012, Chris Whiteside said ascended gear was always intended for the game. Well, if that is also true then why wasn’t this information shared with the playerbase at launch? People obtained exotic gear and many were content with their gear progression in its current state. We were then blind sided by ascended gear, and here we are now. There is still a big question mark as to 1.) Was it always intended? 2.) If so, why wasn’t this info shared at launch because in doing so, you avoid a storm of irate posts.

Regarding ascended creation time… To craft up to 500 is very time consuming and expensive. To obtain enough dragonite, is extremely difficult and time consuming. If you wish to evaluate how long it takes to craft these items, please focus your efforts on the glob of ecto requirements throughout, dark matter requirements, and dragonite. In addition to dragonite, I also say the glob of ecto and dark matter because we are then forced to salvage the exotics we created when leveling to 500. Unless you have a Black Lion Salvage Kit, you are at a huge disadvantage for a return of an ecto or dark matter. It is VERY VERY frustrating to even have a master salvage kit, salvage a level 80 exotic you just spend several gold to craft, and have it return 1 mithril ore.

The way you have ascended materials acquisition set up, I feel like it is more of a kick in the stomach than a rewarding experience.

Reading it all i just wanna state that i’m absolutely opposed the idea of ascended gear stat change via gem store item. That would be massive unfairness ingame (make anotehr ascended weapon/armor set or use gems), not to mention how would you feel if you had to choose between awesome skin in gem store or not flashy but practical stat change? Like kicked in the nuts in my case!

I actually have a question regarding a statement made earlier in the thread, saying that the amount of time it takes to acquire Ascended Armor will be watched.

Does this mean that if it seems easy for a majority of players, that another tier will be added “because we feel Ascended was too easy to get”?

I ask this not as a player with Ascended, but as a player who isn’t going to progress passed Exotic. I don’t play “to progressively get stronger” and all that stuff that keeps getting thrown around. Call me crazy but I like getting my character to the end point and continuing on to actually enjoying the game. Gw1 did an excellent job of this, and Gw2 did before all this Ascended was added.

I’ve already seen players that have full Ascended, due to either paying with money or having farmed the passed months to save up the required materials. I don’t have this luxury for my 6 characters (as a full time college student), and so I’ll be staying at Exotic. I’m already faced with the concern that I’ll be obsolete next to other players, but if Ascended is deemed “too easy” like exotic was and another teir is added I’ll be beyond left in the dust.

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

Harbard.5738:

but crafters will get an actual “do it yourself” experience and play the game, which is what most people like about making their own stuff, in the first place. Go, gather, craft. Not go, sit at tp for hours, craft.

I agree.

Imho the trading post, as it currently works, is poison for a lot of ideas in this game.

I cannot agree with this more. In the pursuit to have the model economy the tp has sort of castrated a lot of what makes this genre of game fun for a lot of adventurer type players. Evidently adventuring is acceptable collateral damage to having a robust trading environment in an adventuring game…go figure.

Malediktus.9250:

Stop suggesting stat switching for ascended. It should stay a legendary only perk. Most legendaries look terrible enough so there is no other reason to build them.

People made tons of legendaries when they were only cosmetically superior.

If you don’t want stat-switching on ascended, then can you offer an alternative solution that would turn ascended gear from a kitten-kitten ed obligation of a grind into a rewarding option?

Malediktus.9250:

Stop suggesting stat switching for ascended. It should stay a legendary only perk. Most legendaries look terrible enough so there is no other reason to build them.

This makes no sense. Legendaries had the same stats as exotic before. The only reason to get them is their look. That’s the point of them. So you are saying people in fact did not make them for their looks but because of their ability to switch stats? Excuse me if I’m super skeptical of such a claim. Considering how easy exotics are to get it seems like an awful huge grind just to get stat swapping. The stat swapping is a perk for Legendaries now that Ascended has been introduced. But that’s not the reason why many people went out and made Legendaries. Most people made them long before the introduction of Ascended.

Ascended gear needs stat swapping. Period.

Imho one of the best progression systems I’ve seen in any game is the HoM-achievement progression system for GW2 by playing specific parts of the game in GW1.

You could see your progression physically in the Hall of Monuments. You could see all the things you had collected. You could get awesome skins by unlocking specific milestones.

I love it.

I think it’s not important to create a whole set of weapons of the same theme. The HoM rewards are no sets either, but I love each of those weapons/skins. I don’t need a fiery staff or greatsword, the fiery sword has more character to me than any of the (fantastic) Jade weapon skins. (it has it’s own lore and connections (NPCs who wield it))

whyme.3281:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Ok another brainstorm idea.

What if certain pieces of ascended gear could be crafted and sold on the TP such as gloves and boots?

Chris

This would ruin the economy. People with money will get richer and richer and will dictate the prices in TP, like we have with legendaries at the moment.

I think Ascended gear wasnt needed in total. Exotics were obtained a bit too easy, but this could be compensatet by an increase of the crafting costs. Infusion slots could be simply edited by infusing them in the mystik forge if someone needs more agony resistance.
Acsended gear is too expensive and costs too much time to get, that playing an alt or even try a new build is made really hard and very expensive.

An alternative would be an Armor retrainer NPC, that can change your armor stats for 15s per armor piece and you can choose the stat of the ascended Armor afterward. This would make ascended gear a lot more buildfriendly. But you need to go to a NPC and pay him for respecing your armor.

This change would make Ascended gear a lot more interesting for all players. Yes you have to invest some time and Gold to get the gear, but after this, you have no downside if you want to test some builds. Even getting Ascended gear on Alts would be interesting.

This person is onto something here. I agree with every word.

-We’ll see the same price controlling with ascended armor that we do with legendaries. It won’t solve anything for people that cannot or won’t throw real world cash at armor, or people that dont have the time to farm endlessly.

-Ascended armor itself was a mistake. To assist with fractals, as the poster said, exotics could have been upgraded to include infusion slots.

-Armor retrainer sounds like a great idea. Do not have it cost an arm and a leg, but cost enough. Upgrade your exotic stats to ascended stats piece by piece, and have the ability to choose these stats. Have the cost be as much as 1-3 gold and 50,000 karma per piece.

This would:
-Enable people that don’t have hundreds of gold to acquire ascended pieces. 1-3 gold is relatively easy to come across even playing minimally. Karma is universal throughout the game. Anything you do, you are working toward this goal.
-Enable people with alts to acquire gear relatively easy.
-Enable people that run multiple builds to acquire multiple sets without putting a second mortgage on the house.

The gold cost is obviously the part that might need a tweak. But I think 1-3 gold, even as much as 3..or 5, would still be acceptable rather than the current system.

Randulf.7614:

Soeki.9643:

Horizontal progression:

I’d love to see some more use for skill points regarding our progression (not the current one where you add a new skill and it costs a lot for no real reason). For example you could add a new tab to the skill panel, where you can unlock your skills again (even weapon skills) but they would have different cosmetics. Like greater fireball, or bull’s charge summons a bull that runs with you towards your target, or add different colour to skills etc. These would have increased skill point costs, since they are only cosmetical, you could even tie some of them to some achievements/challenges or if you decide to use prestige classes to those as well.

Oh I LOVE this idea!!!!!

Its not a bad idea. I think I like it.

Wondering if it would be possible to turn off the new skill’s effects and go back to the old one..vice versa. If I got tired of that bull after bull charging so many times, could I go back?

Isaiah Cartwright.8569:

Grind
Alts

I group these together because I think they have some relation. Grind well I think grind is a kittene to fully describe because it really comes down to each person own personal feeling of I can only do x action so many times before its fun faction goes down and thus starts to feel grinding. For some this can be do something twice others 100 times, our goal with how to keep grind out of the game is the relation between time based and skill based gating. I think this is an area we are always trying to get a better sense on as we start to make things harder to add more challenge to the game sometimes we cross the time gate and skill gate too much and things feel more grindy then we intend. As for alts why I lump these up is I think often leveling up alts can feel grindy, our goals here are really about how we make things feel a little less grinding for some actions and we’ve been making a lot of steps with that combing WvW xp, adding tradable level up books, birthday gifts that level you up ect..I think we are not done with the initiative to progressing alts being a bit more smooth and it’s something we will keep working on as we move forward.

As a player with 8 characters, my problem is not leveling up my characters. My problem is gearing them when they reach top level.

Leveling is fun and it’s well done: you can raise your character doing a lot of things (events, hearths, crafting, WvW…) and, at the same time, you learn the techniques for playing it properly and for adapting him to your personal tastes.

But, when you reach lvl 80, you must equip him. And here comes the punishment: ascended gear is too expensive to equip every character if you have more than… ¿two?. And it gets worse if you want to change your build someday (After playing some months, I changed my necro from condition to power, my mesmer from staff to mastersword and my engineer from power to condition. I did that with exotics, but now, with ascended, i wouldn’t be able)

So, when you reach lvl 80, due to the amount of gold you need, you are forced to know what build are you going to use. Forever.

If you equip your characters using guides it’s possible (but I found it boring, because you transform a game in a mechanical math-fest), but not if you play using a trial-error method, exploring all the possibilities. And it gets worse if you receive XP scrolls, because you get lvl 80 so fast that you cannot learn about your character before you invest your gold on him.

So, in a few words, I don’t think leveling is a problem because you can play without too much penalty and you can enjoy your leveling in a lot of ways. The main problem is when you are at lvl 80 and your only option for gearing up is to fill an endless laundry list.

P.S.: Sorry for my english, it’s non native
P.S.2.: I have 13 XP scrolls from birthdays, I’ve never used them (by the way, I received some gifts twice. I should have only 8 )

Hi,

Well, touchy subjet here…

In fact, more than providing information what I would most desire is to obtain information from you developpers.

I can understand that you thought the game was lacking ascended tier and implemented it. I do not share this vision, but I can deal with it.

What I would like to know before knowing if GW2 is STILL a game for me is what awaits in the future.

• Is Ascended gear the latest tier that will be ever implemented in this game?
• Will the level cap raise?

Simple and plain questions.
Because introducing a new tier lately or increasing the level cap will mean that when in six months from now, when I get myself geared in ascended it will be useless:

- A new tier will render ascended useless
- New level cap would mean higher level ascended gear, making ascended lvl80 gear useless.

And please, saying that you go for vertical progression because it is ‘easier’ to implement feels somehow cheap for your customers. Even if it is true, hearing this still feels like we were cheated.

So, some points :

• make ascended the latest ever tier in the game
• make ascended switch stats like legendary
• Do not increase level cap

For horizontal, without creating new armors there is already a way to please soem players with the existing one : make an account bound skin locker. At least those like me that don’t care about stats will play the collector’s game.

I am seriously thinking if GW2 is still a game for me. I will be watching closely this thread and I believe it will give me the answer to that question.

Best regards.

How about “skill skins”. Finishers are a big hit so why not introduce something similar in PvE.

Each utility skill has a “skin slot” in the hero panel and has several (and more with passing time) “skin options”. Upon completing some difficult challenge (combined with paying skill points/ karma/ whatever currency maybe) you can unlock one new skin for one of your skills, making its casting animation visually cooler.

Examples:

Signet activation picture could be cooler – longer lasting, and surrounded by rays of light or dripping with blood, etc.

All kinds of shockwaves could be colored.

Any field could have a “fence”. From a ring of fire to an actual wooden fence.

Turrets/summons/illusions/pets/conjured weapons/spirit weapons/banners looking cooler is not really a new idea.

And best of all: you dont like it? leave it in default form.

You could start with elites to decrease the workload, then slowly expand.

The main reason why vertical progression shouldn’t be in GW2 is that the stat system is designed to reward players for using the right gear more than the strongest gear.

This has the result that someone could spend ages of time gating and power-grinding for mats to make a set of ascended gear and find that because they didn’t entirely perfectly optimise it there’s someone else using the same build more effectively in exotics, rendering all that effort worthless.

My concept for a horizontal gear progression system is as follows:

Using the mystic forge, players would be able to fuse level 80 exotic items together to add selectable stat-types, selectable skins or, with a more expensive recipe, both at once. Players could also use similar systems to add upgrade slots and an infusion slot, being able to add more agony resistance as well once an item is infused.

Items that have been fused in any way gain a fusion bar that fills up the more times you add skins/stats/slots/infusion and once full the item is designated as ascended. Once ascended, an item can then serve as a legendary precursor and be combined with the relevant gifts to make that item type’s legendary.

A legendary would be much the same as they are now but with the addition of gaining a new selectable upgrade slot any time a rune or sigil is slotted to it, rather than having to use fusion to add one.

Idea: Let my main buy tomes of knowledge from a vendor for, say, 5 skill points — which I can then use to level alts?

Isaiah Cartwright.8569:

Ascended Gear
So then why did we add ascended gear, well the reason is we wanted sometime between the transition and what we shipped with was very little time turns out global trading post has a lot more effect on this then we had original thought which made us need a non-tradable gear step. We still have some progression to smooth out around the rare -> exotic area as mostly you just jump from leveling greens to exotics and rare is really only used for salvaging into ecto. We have been spacing out adding each slot of ascended gear to make sure we don’t make our original mistake again and I’m sure we’ll need to continue to evaluate the time to gain this gear like we do all things.

snip

Ascended creation time

We had a lot of discussion pre-releasing ascended armor to make sure the time to make ascended doesn’t blow out, We pull a lot of data and are watching how long it takes players and like we do with everything we will keep and eye on it but with anything with progression there are always a lot of tradeoffs when you make changes but we’re always looking at it.

Ok so that was a wall of text and clearly needs a cool story bro, but I wanted to get my thoughts out there before I head home for the day. Thanks everyone for posting we are reading it and maybe I’ll jump on after dinner if I get some free time.

To me the mistake wasn’t how easy it was to obtain Exotic gear. In fact so what. I geared my characters and was done. I could spend my time where I wanted without being pressured into doing things I do not want. A common reply to this is just don’t do it. you don’t need it for anything. Well if that is true than it is pointless to have it in game at all.
The mistake was implementing ascended gear. Ascended gear does not in fact have a reason to exist. It has only and still does polarize the community. The stats are not enough for the vertical gear grinders and to much for the horizontal ones. You can’t serve two masters and expect to be able to give both what they want. It isn’t possible. Coupled with how over the top bad the acquisition is through massive timegating.
I have 2 characters with full Ascended Trinkets, but only because I used both for fractals and needed the agony resistance. Due to that fact I have 9 characters with ascended rings, because they dropped anyway. I have laurels and commendation to buy more, but I won’t because I vehemently disagree with the need for the extra tier.

What I would like to know is why did you really think Ascended gear was needed. Simply saying people got decked out in exotics to easy really isn’t a good reason, because again so what. To me the introduction of ascended gear was an extreme panic attack from your side. Basically it was Corporal Jones shouting: Don’t Panic, don’t panic. On and on, google it if you don’t know the reference. I can only speculate what the reason to this panic was, but I suspect naivety being the most common reason. As most developers can’t seemingly grasp the fact that they need to cut their projecting playtime by 75%. Meaning if something is expected to take a 100 hours, it will be done in 25. Couple this with a shallow game and yes GW2 is a very shallow game. The Living Story basically prevents any depth to be added to the game. Nothing wrong with that unless you try and force depth that is unnatural into the game.

As for creation time, drop it down to Exotic level. Yes I’m saying to completely and utterly make Ascended gear untime gated and extremely easy to obtain. You say you are monitoring acquisition time, but metrics will tell you nothing other than some people are getting it and others not. You will never get the why the reason it is done or not from metrics. To be honest delete all metric related data and start over. The why is infinitely more important than the acquiring or non acquiring.

The horizontal progression could go in many directions.

• More trophies from LW or world bosses for your home instance
• Methods to pimp up your gear with cosmetic effects like glowing or spikes etc.
• More exploration
• more story to read and more lore to learn
• new skills (here we could fall into vertical progression very easily if the new skills are too powerful or effective)
• new traits
• new weapons unlocked for the classes
• customisation of the home instance
• more skins via crafting or dungeons

I’ll try to make this short as you will have enough to work through anyway.

Vertical vs. horizontal progression:
Well, in short i am here because i got burned out of hunting the dragon. Aka get BIS gear, new tier released, enemy buffed according, rinse and repeat.
So i got hooked up to the idea of “easy to reach gear ceiling” originally displayed during the development of GW2.
I spent some hundreds of hours in GW1 before the release of GW2 hunting skins and more (Obsidian armor, elite charr hide, vanquisher titles, explorer, etc.). That is what i seek(ed) in this game. The ability to drop out and come back to the game without any disadvantage be it a month or a year.

Accessibility:
That’s your own decision. Cater to the players that have few time to spare or those that have 8 hours+ a day.
Just as input: would you rather grind skillpoints (for example, don’t get hooked up on it) to get that healing skill or do something you feel more like? Be it gathering, chatting with friends in LA, or some high lvl fractals?

Personal Notes:
To me progression has become a synonym for a flawed system, let me explain. It’s as if the game is not enough to keep you going so we slap at you stuff to grind out.
You know as they say, it’s not about the goal but about the journey.
If you want to take the route of carrot on a stick “that blizzard gameand it’s clones” is over yonder.
vague gesture (emotes, a kingdom for emotes..)

Yours sincerely,
Thyrm

Thighum.7295:

*Vertizontal Progression – taking the best from both worlds.

-Agony resistance is the primary form of stat progression, and starts being used in future maps, helping ANET gate the content a little bit.

…

New skills should come from achievements gain by killing a certain boss (Who better be using said new skill in a very flashy way to show it off! ./remembers signet of capture).

No agony outside fractals, mobs such as karka and reef drakes are challenging enough without having to cause agony too. No gated content in the open world.

They could have given the anti-toxin spray to everyone who completed the ‘nightmare within’ meta, and for players who didn’t, allow for it to be bought as it is now.