Guild Wars 2

Vayne.8563:

Ashen.2907:

Vayne.8563:

I still say people who PvPed have a lot more reason to be annoyed here than people who PvE.

We did both really. Some were PvPers who dabbled in PvE, others were PvEers who dabbled in PvP. It was a great alliance.

To be clear, I am not trying to claim that my own experience in this regard was at all representative of, “most,” or anything of the sort.

No, I get that, what I’m trying to say is that there’s far more to the PvE experience here than there is to the PvP experience. There are two forms of PvP here and only one small scale. The biggest, most popular forms of PvP from Guild Wars 1 aren’t really represented at all.

As a person who predominantly PvE’ed in Guild Wars 1, I don’t feel that I don’t have enough variety. There’s always something going on. I can do fractals for challenge, or some of the harder dungeon paths. I can farm in certain areas, do events, explore…all the stuff I used to do in Guild Wars 1.

I’m not sure most PvPers can make that claim.

I can queue up for TPvP and wait for 15 minutes because Oceanic PvP is about as active as Alliance Battles in Guild Wars 1 if you logged in right now…

Variety? Is that another word for conquest?

B-b-b-but my progression! ……… Leader boards are progression for PvPers. Maybe they should fix those first.

“… but we absolutely are going to do sweeping new features that you would traditionally only get in expansions – large regions, content and progression additions to your characters in the form of growth and professions and races. *Those are all things that you will see in the lifespan of Guild Wars 2.”*

>In the lifespan of Guild Wars 2.

tldr; soon.tm
real tldr; when it’s too late

GvG please, thanks.

I was feeling optimistic. Optimistic they might finally catch on and add some content with re-playability and enjoyment. (i.e. FUN PvP, GvG, Ranked GvG, Death Match etc) The collaborative CDI threads had me on a relative high, with the back and forth between player and developer.

Then when I started thinking about it, and saw the recent Interview with Colin…. Final LS ‘season one’ event finishes or starts on the 21st of March, or something like that. In which after taking a “short break” they’ll release a bigger content patch.

For someone invested primarily in PvP (WvW, TPvP)… That’s a long time to wait for nothing new.. and even then we may not get anything specific to PvP. So, my interest is probably going to fade really fast, really soon.

Additionally, I can literally quote the article… which essentially said something like.. “Oh yeah, WvW was full/the game population spiked during WvW Season 1… but we won’t do a Season 2 until we fix the current issues with WvW” – So, we’ll see Season 2 in 2017?

The Oceanic/SEA PvP community is pretty baron. I don’t pay for the game, so it’s no real skin off my back… just a shame that they’re so lax about PvP when this game has the metrics to be.. and should be great.

Player discontent is visible on the forums – but they’re forums. The silent and forever playing in-game player far outnumbers the forum user – and Arenanet will go off the statistical evidence that their game is doing fine, and take their time.

So, I would say I’m as dissatisfied as one can be for a product they don’t pay for.

The GvG in this game is fun.

One wildstar beta key and i’m out of here ….

But not really. But really. Maybe. Probably.

Fix my WvW and add GvG in the next 3 months. Wildstar PvP looks far too interesting to stay in this unevolving PvP game with the focus on everything but.

Oh uh yeah, video looks meh.

#Don’tcareaboutlivingstorybecauseIhadathesistodoandmissed14weekswithnowaytoreplaycontent

In all honesty? Of course it’s still worth buying. You will get significantly more play time out of this game than you would a single player game on console, for example.

Even if you play this for 100 hours, that’s more than your average RPG/Single player, non-multi-player game.

Most of the players talking smack in this thread probably have at least 1,000 hours on the game themselves. I hate PvE, I hate LS, personal story is a snore…. but between WvW, sPvP and a few other niche activities… there’s enough. Not sure why complaining.

Jelger.6758:

Only if you allow them to actively fly and let me jump from mine on top of yours and have the ships be PvP zones.

RedCobra.7693:

a pvp instance you could enter with your guild ship……

please jelger youre making me drool

Basically what Wildstar are doing with ‘Warplots’.

Essentially movable fortresses that you can challenge other fortresses with in some sort of 20v20/40v40 GvG scenario.

Would have been great in GW2, too.

Lately I essentially got sick of having T3 cultural, and it’s sort of become really common/not even prestige any more. So I looked to mixed sets to try and be more unique.

Changed up my appearance from my last post a couple days ago.. hah. I’d have liked different legs, but it’s really hard to find nice leggings on a female that match the other pieces. I scoured the PvP locker to no real avail.

Also my alternate legs, for #datass

Snowballing random idea on adding flavour to current classes….

With regards to the notion of improving the feel of professions with sub classes and what not, what about a ‘weapon specialisation’ system – or something of the like. A toggle on-off ability that changes the specialisation of your weapon.

I.e. Guardian staff original role – support / minor control.
New role – mid ranged melee weapon (far-fetched example, but you get the idea)

So this toggle alters the role of an existing skill-set for a particular weapon.

The issue I see with adding new weapon skills to existing weapons is the overall balance of those weapons – as they would have been carefully tuned to be the way they are. If you allow players to add a heavy dps skill to the Warrior’s hammer – balance would go out the window even more so.

To put a damper on my own ‘suggestion but not a suggestion’.. The more you think about it, implementation reveals itself to be rather difficult. Weapon skill-sets are in part what separate professions. If the warrior is granted a more defensive hammer, and the Guardian a more offensive – the lines are blurred.

Another far-fetched example; the warrior’s offensive hammer is very CC orientated, whilst the Guardians could be based around AoE burns, etc. (given their love for blue fire..)

Approaching implementation:

I will say that weapon specialisations would be quite approachable through horizontal progression. There could be a whole line of activities (and perhaps an interesting story) involved in the learning of the specialisation. Though this could be applied to the implementation of a new trait line – sub class, or any number of examples.

Where we are learning a specialisation, we may be sent on a grand adventure by a master swordsman that has you scaling difficult JP’s to find an ancient weapon, defeating a difficult enemy or enemies that proves your worth (thinking queen’s gauntlet style – but obviously locked the into 1 weapon for extra challenge/specialisation), besting a master swordsman… winning a handful of PvP matches (PvE’rs would whinge on that one) etc. These activities could (and probably should) be scattered throughout Tyria. (as I’m sure has been suggested countless times)

As for how long these activities may take – time gating should be discarded on this one. You may add enough content and an interesting story to the acquisition of the new specialisations which take a few hours to complete, but as long as that content was fun and engaging – nobody would complain. They’d also get a new toy to play with at the end of the day. Additionally, you have a large number of weapons and fun little stories to work with… but given how many weapons, I can see that such a feat would take a up a large amount of time and resources, potentially. Although, if well written, the writers could probably do it in a way that has us re-visit existing content.

That concludes my probably terrible idea.

Too*

Come on, the thread you made this in response to even demonstrated the correct spelling.

Healing signet is fine, just needs a slight reduction. Nothing major.

Useless traits?

All of Zeal.

Yeah! Like…

With heals on a guardian? or DPS on a warrior?

…Oh

NoTrigger.8396:

Manifibel.8420:

Some of you guys talk like the zerg gear is going to be useless. Its not, they wont nerf it to the ground and make Controle and Support build the only viable options. You will still be able to do dungeons in zerg gear. Now with your brain too

Farming new gear? I dont mind. The money we make have to be used sometime. I like haveing a lot of sets to do different things.

sorry son, but you do realize that this post makes you look like you are stupid, right?

you HAVE TO use your brain when using berserker gear.
you HAVE TO dodge at the right moment.
you HAVE TO use blocks and other stuff at the right time.

tanky gear lets you turn off your brain.

get your facts straight.

>talks about facts
>gives opinion

I turn my brain off when playing in Berserker’s all the time. Last time I checked I could clear high end fractals with one hand on my ‘….’. Content in this game will forever be too easy without seeing some serious patchwork.

Take what you said, and apply it to PvP or WvW when running in 10v10/15v15 coordinated GvG’s, and I’ll say it’s true. Apply it to PvE and I’ll laugh in your face.

Jesus. When did running Berserker’s gear become synonymous with a player being skilled?

There’s simply no reason to utilize any gear typing outside of zerkers, because no content is challenging enough to punish players who sacrifice defensive stats for damage.

You trade survivability for damage output and need to utilize dodging etc. more… but its hardly applicable when you can steam-roll most content with 0 risk.

Reducing the effectiveness of Berserker’s gear would do nothing, increasing the effectiveness and viability of other gear typings would do nothing – revising the games content across the board? DING DING DING. SUCCESS IMMINENT.

That’s why WvW. You can actually run gear types other than zerkers and create synergy between builds… something all but irrelevant in PvE.

Warlord.9074:

Edge of the Mists is too late. It’s somthing that should have been implemented long ago. A-Net spent more of its resources on PvE/Living Story than it should of and neglected WvW more than it should have.

Let me just fix that up for you.

WvW updates (i.e. bloodlust) came before sPvP changes.

Indeed. As the above poster said, the chest uses a regular vision crystal.

Therefore you needed 4 lesser and 2 normal.

thefantasticg.3984:

I suggest the forge because that is where my and others in my guilds success has come from getting precursors.

Baels.3469:

CureForLiving.5360:

I though legendaries were suppose to be hard to get? Go figure.

Not really a valid statement.

It is valid. If they weren’t hard to get they’d just call them “Ordinaries” instead of “Legendaries” because every single player would have them… just like the no level white weapons every character starts out with.

You know what’s great? Context. I love context, it’s so great.

CureForLiving.5360:

I though legendaries were suppose to be hard to get? Go figure.

Not really a valid statement.

With increased inflation within the economy over time, the resultant inflation on precursors serves to make the gold gating on obtaining one extremely high.

The gathering of the other components (i.e. the gifts, lodes, doubloons and everything else they entail) is the ‘difficult to get and time/effort’ part. Those aspects can take months to obtain – the same rate the crafting of a high end weapon in most generic MMO’s. (See Aion, PW, every other MMO ever)

If the complaint was about gifts etc. Then i’d say, no, you’re right. Otherwise they’d be too easy to obtain. If I had everything but the precursor right now, and had to stop playing for 2-3 months… if those precursors rose another 400g due to inflation, it’s not exactly generating more riveting gameplay, is it? It’s just inflation causing a larger gold time gate

I wish they would have just left SAB active 24/7.

I loved the first SAB release but missed the second SAB release entirely, whilst busy with uni. Pretty disappointed about that.

@Bobby or whomever, not sure why SAB isn’t just left open permanently? To stop the devaluing of the weapons or? If that were the reason could there be a version of SAB available 24/7 that didn’t drop rare weapons from the chests?

Yes. For a low low price of $9.99 for 5 trait save slots.

..probably.

Ahuehue

In her dreams m8

No complaints in the Oceanic and SEA time zones.

No queues, not even on EBG. Fights against TKG, FB, Ph to name a few. If anything, it’s too quiet and we struggle to find competitive fights as everybody seems to want to play the PPT game or sticky tapes themselves to some pugs once they lose a fight.

Closest thing to a blob is maybe a 35 man force, or the (sometimes large) pug blob on EBG which is still maybe 40 at best.

Don’t blame Blackgate as a ‘server’.

Its the NA time zone thats frequently queued and blobby. It is an MMO primarily aimed at Americans, ran by Americans, on American servers. If you’re playing in prime time, it’s busy everywhere. Just more so here in tier 1 with the highest concentration of players.

We players are partly to blame, but your listed issues and concerns are technically not the fault of the players; but the way in which these issues are created by the 24/7 WvW game type. Arenanet could quite easily implement a number of suggested systems (which they hopefully will based on the CDI threads) that address these issues.

Until then, we grit and bear with it.

I-I-I was just minding my own business.

Nekk minnit.

OWN HILT THROUGH HEAD.

Too far, too far.

balloonfight.1735:

Norn Guardian

Vigil pauldrons
AC gauntlets
Dark chestplate
Dark leggings
AC boots

I personally feel that the pauldrons could be different, what do you guys think?
I have been unsucessful thus far on all attempts to find a perfect match

Splint pauldrons? AC Pauldrons?

If you’re trying to stick to that minimalist/semi realistic aesthetic.. maybe even consider changing to splint gauntlets?

Dis be me guardian.

Probably got 2-3 in the first few months of the games release from drops. Maybe 10 total factoring in personal story + map completion.

If you want keys farm level 10 personal story.

Unfortunately it’s your only option for consistent keys outside of germ purchases.

Kain Francois.4328:

I wouldn’t mind darker areas of the game, where it matters to use a torch.

Seriously though. Drop full screen gamma to about 0.65 and everything is darker, whilst torches/fire appear brighter.

Full screen gamma is your friend. Let’s just pretend.

If you drop it to like 65-70%, pretty much night time.

The only relevant alliances in the Guild Wars universe are the Luxons and Kurzicks.

#Turtlenaughtpower

Alliances that have substance and meaning are the only alliances I’ll ever subscribe to and care for. Personally, I’ve missed most of the LS with finishing my degree and since I’m back I have no idea what’s going on. However, I have read summaries and can safely say… nothing has occurred that even remotely makes me feel a sense of awe or amazement at the awesomeness of the Guild Wars 2 universe. So much depth from the first game/books/lore…… and we get these random, off the wall LS scenarios…. So, I couldn’t care if the alliances vanished into thin air. I’ll just pretend they never happened and hopefully they come out with something that adds actual depth to Tyria.

Each of you have validity in your comments, you should just agree to disagree; even though I would be leaning toward Bagel.

Yes, it’s stupid that we ‘need’ (used loosely) to grind in order to obtain gear that allows us to achieve enough AR to tackle high end fractals.

Yes, you don’t ‘have’ to grind that AR.

But, the validity in the concern with the player imposed -must have xx AR- is something that does happen. Even if Anets intent is to not impose these limitations, the current agony resist system does enforce this among the player base itself.

I’m sure had they taken the time or reflected on the current agony system and methods of obtaining them, they could tweak, balance and amend… but given the expansive nature of the game, I’m sure they’ve got an infinite number of things up on the whiteboard.

I feel like actual meaningful discussion on horizontal progression is being rail-roaded by ‘sub class’ discussion.

I’m not saying that sub classes don’t provide interesting and thought provoking discussion, just that in the grand scheme of things and those things which are likely to be considered and acted upon; they’re probably not up there.

Additionally, we can discuss the pros and cons of sub classes all day every day, but unless people are making actual proposals on how the system would work, it’s all just theory.

….

Could we have a profession/class development CDI at some point to appease the sub-class enthusiasts?

Chris Whiteside.6102:

— Sociopolitical Diversification: Player housing, Guild Halls, and Faction Alliances leading to new game play opportunities, rewards and content.

This is definitely the one to focus on. Socio-political Diversification provides a platform to potentially address the other two areas, as well as a near infinite number of other areas.

Promote guild play and expand the current reward set of existing content

If we a had gate/portal within guild halls that allowed members (and guests) to directly travel into a dungeon/instance, by recognising that you are accessing the instance via your guild hall, we could gain the opportunity to unlock new skins, achievements or titles tied to this. This could potentially involve a new skin set for each dungeon, for example. This idea could translate into various areas of the game.

What about alienating solo players? To this I say – if they wanted the new reward badly enough – they can a) join a guild or b) guest with a guild for guild hall access. Enough hand holding. Guilded players form a larger group than unguilded. (Guesting was a feature available in Guild Wars 1) http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Guest

Guild halls + PvP
Guild halls can be directly tied to GvG and other PvP modes. Guild Wars 1 saw guild halls also function as GvG maps. Although the scale, format, layout etc. would differ for Guild Wars 2, it is still a very real and useful function.

Guild queue-able world bosses
Provide guilds with the ability to start an instanced version of world bosses such as Tequatl, Claws of Jormag and The Shatterer. Can be queued once per day, you can do these bosses with your guild and challenge yourselves with difficult raid-like content. This gives Arenanet the ability to tweak theses bosses far better at more reasonable player number scales. Tequatl is a decent example of how all world bosses should be.

For example, if 20 skilled guild members take on The Shatterer, he has exponentially less HP than he currently has. but uses a lot more skills and is far more threatening than he currently is. These bosses should be difficult. The current elite-1-2-3-4-5-6-1-1-1-elite-1-1-1 world boss chain simply isn’t fun – it’s just obligatory if you want dragonite ore at a reasonable rate.

World bosses should still function as they do in the open world, spawning regularly; but this gives guilded players and even WvW guilds the opportunity to take a break and do some actual challenging content. Again, participating in guild orientated content can offer new achievements, titles and skins.

Guilds need to be severely addressed in my humble opinion. The multi-guild system was awesome on paper and does work in many facets of the game – but can really hamper and limit our ability to form strong bonds and a sense of community within them. More guild orientated content outside of guild missions (which many of us haven’t bothered with post ascended trinkets) would see people enjoying the game far more. At the end of the day, we play MMO’s because we like playing with (or against) others.

I am the most aesthetically appropriate Guardian in the game.

…and my warrior tacked on.

Pixelpumpkin.4608:

What you want is to support this thread… https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/Gendered-armour-splits-design-maxims/

Yeah but I’m referencing helmets specifically, something much more likely to be looked at as opposed to a set in its entirety.

Phalanx armor…. The helmet on male (humanoid) characters is awesome. Female…… not so much.

Now, that’s my subjective opinion so others may disagree. Lets get to my suggestion.

Why not allow us the option to choose between the helmet types? Yes, the male helmet may look out of place with the remainder of the female set – but it gives us the freedom to mix and match with armor sets which actually do go with it.

I’m not suggesting you allow us to choose between the male and female armor sets in their entirety, I imagine that would involve a lot of work. Simply the helmets, which should be pretty easy, i’d imagine.

See the comparison in the attachment below.

At the end of the day, the helmet is the one thing keeping me from sinking $10/800 gems on the set.

Lel. Go ultra with supersampling.

Palador.2170:

StriderShinryu.6923:

Harbard.5738:

• Alts as followers

I like this idea a lot. That would be one of the most awesome things to ever hit mmos in decades and a great incentive for “alting” as horizontal progression.This is horizontal progression if you think player, not character. For every alt you level you unlock a new hero, the alt himself, and you could play with them. as a full group, in instanced areas, such as dungeons, like in GW1, but those heroes would be your own alts as npcs. I could even play those instances with little or no coin/item rewards (if that’s used as a measure against botted farming, for instance). But it would be still every bit as awesome.

This is a brilliant idea. While I’m not 100% personally sold on the idea of helpers/followers in GW2 in the first place, this would be an excellent way to do it if it was done. I would love to see my main joined by even just one of my alts while out adventuring.

I too like this idea. It’s … disturbingly great, actually.

Never seen a game do that, ever. So new, so amaze.

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Mercenary

A Mercenary Hero is a special type of hero that players can create after purchasing a Mercenary Hero Slot at the NCsoft store. They behave exactly like any other hero, but are copies of your own characters.

It was pretty good in the original game, but given they’d probably do similarly and charge you in the gem store to do so, mehhhhhhhhh. Also remember them stating that henchmen/heroes didn’t for GW2 in the early development days.

Submit a support ticket and see if they can switch it over for you. The others are being factitious.

Your other option, if you were fine with spending in game gold or $10, is to buy the primeval set off of the gem store*. Assuming you’re a new player, the in game gold to gems option is probably not going to work for you.

So your option is to a) Submit a support ticket. b) Spend $10 and buy 800 gems to get the primeval set for your guardian, to which I would tell you to get the Phalanx set instead, because it’s kitten.

To be honest, I wouldn’t sweat it. Those three sets are pretty meh.

Merry Christmas!

Had a handful of good apps, still recruiting <3

Bumpity bump, Merry Christmas

Vanguard of Exiled Mercenaries [MERC] is an oceanic open field WvW guild seeking exceptional/skilled individuals to join our ranks.

What we do:

Our guild mainly runs untagged, focusing on the thrill of the fight and using skilled play and coordination to better our foe, regardless of numbers. We currently run in and around the 15~ man mark, wanting to move closer to 20. We currently participate in the GvG scene, which the NA standard is 15v15.

When we do it:

As an oceanic guild, we raid at 7-8pm AEST or 5-6pm AWST. (GMT+6 and +8)

We mainly run on weekdays, giving our members the weekend to do as they please/have a social life. This isn’t iron-clad, as some nights are weaker than others in both our attendance, and the attendance of our enemies on the battlefield.

GvG’s are generally organized a week in advance, with GvG sign up available on our guild forums. GvG times are generally within the same time slot.

Our aims:

As a guild, we don’t want to be known for our ablity to pull 60 people into a TS channel and blob away – spamming 1. We want to be known for our skilled play and ability to conquer greater numbers.

Community

We’re a friendly bunch of people, and a lot of us have been gaming together for a year now, a few of us even longer. Our roster is quite neat and small, as we monitor inactives etc. leaving us with a strong core group of members and officers who we each view as friends.

Being Aussie, we talk a lot of …shi-…. I don’t need to fill in the blanks; there’s a lot of banter and a lot of fun to be had. We have fun and always want others to join us and do the same!

Our expectations:

We’re looking for skilled and intelligent players to join our ranks. Ideally, they would use Ts3/Mumble and be vocal through the use of a microphone. We do training for members who feel they need more experience, as well as have a bunch of instructional information, willingness to help and build guidelines.

Whilst player skill is important to us, these players should positively represent our guild and ideally have the following traits:

- Ability to follow instructions
- Regular activity
- Use Teamspeak 3/have a microphone
- Loyalty
- Friendly, mature attitude

In closing:

We’re all about skilled play, wrecking face, and having fun whilst doing so. If you want to do the same, send me a message or visit our website voem.enjin.com and submit an application!

See you on the battlefield!

Fannwong.3059:

Hello all,

SOR has received queries with regards to our rebuilding and what is our focus for the next year.

We are on track at 89.35% completed with rebuilding and prepping for 2014.

We will be moving into the new year with the resolution to keep our community fights and not PPT focused.

FW

Good to hear.

Have a word to HIRE and GC who won’t fight my 15 man without one or the other hand holding and bringing 60. I’m not attacking SoR, just sayin’ they’ve been doing it a lot lately and seem to have moved away from being fights focused.

Had a lot of good fights with ph and a few other good guilds who like to roam untagged, hopefully the mega blobs aren’t going to become a thing again. Definitely moving away from that meta in BG OCE/SEA with perhaps ND on thursdays (their CTA) as the exception, though they field 70+ pure ND on their cta… (It’s ridic)

Anywho, it’s the holidays so don’t super stack this time around :P

Recruitment still open.

Currently seeking:

1-2 skilled thieves
Mesmers
Necros
Elementalists
Guardians
Warriors

Yes, when you’re downed and they’re stomping in stealth? That’s what i’m saying. If you have a guardian or a necro you can still hit them with KD/fear while they’re stealthed.

With guardian and necro, or any class that has an AoE disable/stealth.. yeah. Otherwise nope.

1. GvG
2. GvG
3. GvG
4. GvG
5. GvG

1372. GvG

For the love of god listen to Nike.

Sub-classes will be the death of this game. They’re un-needed and should be the last thing Arenanet looks toward.

This isn’t Guild Wars 1, it’s not going to work out all sunshine and rainbows as it did there. I’m sure Guild Wars 1 wasn’t easy to balance either, in fact I know it wasn’t because they’ve stated it was a nightmare at times.

Even adding a single new skill to each class can have a significant influence on the balance of the game. I don’t want to see the train wreck that sub-classes would lead to.

I call for the return of the Fissure of Woe and the Underworld.

A sense of vertical and horizontal progression in one. Originally, only good players could complete them, and the potential rewards gave those who completed it a sense of prestige and accomplishment.

They were only skins, yet they were skins that were obtainable ONLY from the instance, at a small but not too small rate. It never felt like a grind because you weren’t doing the run over and over for the chance at these weapons; but there were several systems and rewards tied together. You could earn obsidian shards, ecto, chaos axes/other exclusive skins, as well as the final chest reward. If you weren’t in it for the skins, you were in it for the money you stood to make, or to craft obsidian armor.

Does this go against your aims for Guild Wars 2? No, I don’t think it does. In a game where people are satisfied with way pointing across a map and auto attacking champions for 5 hours a day, every day; at least this would cause them to actually engage with the game and their brains. FoW and UW were exponentially more fun than zerging around in a blob of 50 people PvDooring, or grinding champions.

The right choice was 100% made with the token system and making it easily accessible to everyone after a few runs, however, if you layer enough reward content within each dungeon; people would still run them if there was only an RNG chance at the skin they want. That is, if each dungeon provided not only the potential for a dungeon specific skin at the end of the dungeon, but other skins that only appear in that dungeon dropped throughout, people would be more willing to run those dungeons. With that you would have less complaints about end game where people have additional carrots to chase.

With that said, majority of players want new content, not re-hashed content with added skins that people may or may not like based on their own subjective opinion.

I feel as though horizontal and vertical progression needs to be viewed as overlapping, and what needs to be addressed is how these two modes of progression can be combined and work together.

Thanks Ferris /ninja bump