They need to offer more flexibility in the progression system. You should be able to play at the highest level possible and progress. Players should also gain progression for going backwards and helping players…. I think there’s suggestions about how to make this work because the current version has a lot of negative consequences to more casual players or those who take a break.
What are the titles battling for specifically? Biggest let down? Then mass effect 3 wins hands down.
They’ve already stated they’re gonna make obtaining Ascended gear possible for WvW… they just haven’t implemented it right away. Chill, I doubt your server will suffer because a handful of people have a piece (or all 3) Ascended items. Pretty sure it still takes a zerg and some siege weapons to take a point (other than supply depots maybe).
Let’s see, six silver for a ram and about 25 people can take a tower almost before a defense can be mustered if this is done off-peak hours. Less if you have truly focused efforts spearing through to the Lord. For keeps and garrisons, this is a lot more complex and requires more since players will likely be on hand to be defending. Zergs don’t do so hot here compared to focused sieges and a pool of around two to three gold can make the difference between “look at the gate inch down!” to “wall is down, move a ram to the inner gate”.
WvW still rests in the hands of those who can pull together four things: manpower, strategy, tactics, and leadership.
Edit: removed an extra word.
Thank you for expanding on my simplified statement? The point I was making is that regardless of a few folks with “higher stats”, it takes much more than that in order to capture/defend a tower/garrison/keep.
I think people are in this mindset that the gap is like WoW where the difference between tiers is huge…. and with a small amount of players per map it does make a big difference. WvW and GW2 has a much smaller gap between gear by comparison and players with “top gear” are flooded in a sea of players not in optimal gear (or even level 80). The “advantage” your server has is minimal unless a huge portion of your server has Ascended gear and your opponents do not (making the assumption that skill is equal across the servers even though we know this isn’t true).
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idk… 10 globs of ecto for one piece of gear (used to be 5, though jewelry stayed the same). That seems a little steep.
It’s kinda funny that the big thing about karka are there shells that are supposed to get harder, yet they don’t drop scales as frequently as they do blood? Anet must really be anti-knight gear to make them so infrequent of a drop.
It should be obtainable doing things we enjoy. I hate doing dungeons so I am at a huge disadvantage now in wvwvw.
They’ve already stated they’re gonna make obtaining Ascended gear possible for WvW… they just haven’t implemented it right away. Chill, I doubt your server will suffer because a handful of people have a piece (or all 3) Ascended items. Pretty sure it still takes a zerg and some siege weapons to take a point (other than supply depots maybe).
True but your looking for it non the less. To make a game that just hands you every thing will be dead with in a month that why there are no more games like that other then the 6hr story games and even they have some build in “work for something.”
I played a game for 8 years that didn’t subscribe to this mentality. When I maxed out a character, got the build to where I wanted it, that character was done. I then went and did other things. Like, for example, making a new character (I had 36 of them by the time it was all over). I also built a guild, I designed in-game spaces, I PvPed, I played the market, collected titles, wrote content, and roleplayed.
In 8 years, my main was “upgraded” twice, and those weren’t even entirely vertical upgrades.
The mentality you’re describing just isn’t universal.
Agreed… there were a lot of avenues to explore without going vertical, but they weren’t explored (at least not that we’re aware of). I know there were tons of interesting suggestions/discussions on this forum for all sorts of progression schemes that didn’t involve gear upgrading/incentives. One of my favorites was driving the post-Zhaitan story through content and having servers be unique based on actions they took collectively (and consequences unfolding within their servers); maybe a little ambitious in scope, but certainly a neat idea.
Yes. As mentioned in the marketing literature, GW2 takes all that is good from GW1. In GW1 it was easy to get the best gear in the game because GW1 was not a grindy game and Anet doesn’t make grindy games. (Haha.) So, the same should be true of GW2.
Whomever said GW1 had no grind in it didn’t want Obsidian Armor, or the Treasure Hunter title.
No they weren’t required to progress, and they had barely any effect on the game play. (I think Treasure Hunter affected Lockpick break chance, but in HM it could only approach 50% chance to retain.)
Obsidian armor was optional. It didn’t have better stats and was basically a status symbol. Sort of like legendaries are in GW2. Ascended gear and the grind that goes with it are going to become mandatory pretty fast.
Right now, with only 3 slots having ascended items, it’s no big deal. But when the rest of the slots get ascended items, the combined stat boost will pretty much guarantee the necessity of having ascended gear in order to remain relevant in dungeons and WvW.
Based on…. ???
As far as I can tell nothing has been scaled to factor in Ascended gear.
Yes, I suppose fractals with agony ratings do factor in Ascended gear, but more for the agony res than the +stats. Also, by it’s nature of being an endless dungeon, it ramps up difficulty until a certain breaking point so +stats are helpful but I’m gonna go ahead and guess not for very long in fractals.
In terms of WvW, I would ask if someone could produce a good survey of gear folks are wearing in WvW. I bet that while you have a good portion of level 80s in some exotics (if not full exotics), the majority of your base is not lvl 80 and likely has greens/blues…. How many people are we expecting and in what timeframe to get Ascended gear? When does this gear “shift the balance”, when 10% of a server has guys in Ascended gear? 20%? What kind of time will that take? Will the competition in the meantime get more skilled and more geared (in levels, rares, and exotics)? When the Ascended gear becomes available for WvW, how long will it take those folks to get gear via WvW? Does the gear shift the balance any more than what’s currently present with a certain mix of lvl 80s in exotics against lvl 80s and non-lvl 80s in blues/greens?
As far as I can tell, nothing is mandatory. There was no mandatory need to get exotics or to level 80 before Ascended gear, yet somehow Ascended gear has somehow changed this point.
The best mechanic Anet could do is remove the lowest player level achievement. At a very basic standpoint, a level 1 person could jump up to 10+ if they join the right group. Yes, it’s a little unfair to the people who had to get to the higher levels, but it makes catching up easy to do. My guess why they don’t do this is because the rate of progression would be faster than they’d like…. The problem I see though is that it really divides and gates the community severely.
Well now that’s the interesting thing… They actually increased the crafting requirements of exotics (at least in terms of globs of ectoplasm for a bunch of recipes) where they should be cheaper; same with the cost of dungeon exotics. They should also make the fractal area not so rigidly structured in how you gain access to higher levels.
Nonetheless, this dungeon and new tier of gear still invalidates some of the effort and money folks put into their toons based on the premise, which seemed and certainly gave the appearance of being fact, that exotic was the limit. Had folks known there was a potential of their gear not being the best within a few months, I’m sure BLTC sales would’ve looked rather different.
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As one of the players who didn’t get a precursor even though I was participating in the event from start to finish (which took our server a little over 2 hours), it was kind of a let down that some players got real lucky while others didn’t. It is what it is though… I’d prefer they just make a precursor formula that was like one crafted exotic and 3 dungeon exotics of the same weapon type (but different dungeon) or something like that…. Demonstrating “skill” in a crafting profession and skill in dungeons. Yeah, there’s the gift for dungeons, but the same is true for professions as well… I’d much prefer grinding tokens with some material grinding for a sure bet over grinding for rare/exotic mats for RNG (and hopefully I’m not alone on this).
So you’re saying they never ‘promised’ it if they even put it up in a blog at june 19th, 2012? Barely 6 weeks before the game has released…
Forgive me if I missed something from that blog, but Yes… nothing in that entire body of text was a promise. He’s also talking about the game in it’s current state and makes no assurances that these principles a guaranteed to remain constant. He also doesn’t lie about the loot. He says that the gear grinds aren’t mandatory and I don’t see fractals being mandatory even though there’s a clear incentive to do them.
Agreed… but it was also the fault of the readers to assume these things as concrete to the point of being law. I would’ve preferred that they tried other options before opting into this path, but I can’t really say I’ve been betrayed because no actual promises were made other than “we promise to give you services if you pay for them and follow a certain set of conditions” (aka the EULA).
You’re right about this, but then again, as previously stated, it still remains False advertising.
Which is, in most (if not all) occidental countries code of laws, punishable, even if the contract states otherwise (i.e.: there isn’t written anywhere, in the final contract, that the company will deliver the promises spoken out loudly in their advertising campaign) .
Trust me if you try to take this to a court of law, you’ll fail. Advertisers have gotten extremely good at deceiving customers while still staying within the legal boundaries. In this case, they actually didn’t falsely advertise the product to you at the time of purchase and there’s nothing in the body of advertisement that assured customers that the product would stay a particular way forever (other than maybe it’s genre type).
Notice the words like “we believe” and “we think” and “manifesto” are not “promise” and “binding contract”. Also, Colin was talking about the game in it’s current state at the time of the interview, not about how it would be in a future state. I guess the “we don’t need to make grinds” can be taken as something they won’t do moving forward…. but can anyone assert that this grind is mandatory? Because technically, it isn’t mandatory even though there’s an obvious incentive to do it.
Wording is essential. Engineers are taught to always say “think” and “believe” because anything stated as fact (something that is and can never be anything else) can potentially be used against you. Nothing in all the interviews and blogs, and manifesto, and whatever were promises, just nice words that people ate up and assumed as a promise.
What people actually say is important followed by interviewers who are actually worth their salt (as in didn’t get their journalism degree from Phoenix Institute Online or some BS school and do real journalism as opposed to writing fluff pieces because they’re part of the PR department or some hack media source) and challenge/scrutinize what the interviewee says….
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I think we’re over emphasizing the stat increase. I’m not saying it isn’t substantial, or that it should even be allowed in WvW, but I don’t think it’ll have the cataclysmic impact that folks seem to give it.
It’s not the stat increase alone. It’s the gate that ANet opened which they promised they never would.
There was no promise…. a manifesto is not a promise or binding contract/document… it has no weight in forcing the author or reader to follow it. It’s generally a bad rule of thumb to stray from your guidelines, but it’s perfectly within their right to do it.
At the least it was false advertisement
Agreed… but it was also the fault of the readers to assume these things as concrete to the point of being law. I would’ve preferred that they tried other options before opting into this path, but I can’t really say I’ve been betrayed because no actual promises were made other than “we promise to give you services if you pay for them and follow a certain set of conditions” (aka the EULA).
I think we’re over emphasizing the stat increase. I’m not saying it isn’t substantial, or that it should even be allowed in WvW, but I don’t think it’ll have the cataclysmic impact that folks seem to give it.
It’s not the stat increase alone. It’s the gate that ANet opened which they promised they never would.
There was no promise…. a manifesto is not a promise or binding contract/document… it has no weight in forcing the author or reader to follow it. It’s generally a bad rule of thumb to stray from your guidelines, but it’s perfectly within their right to do it.
I do enjoy the dungeon, but this new patch isn’t without some serious negative externalities.
The progression system is way too rigid… you have to do lvl 1 to get to 2, 2 to 3, 3 to 4, etc etc…. This makes catching up a pain and gives you no incentive or way to continue progressing by doing lower levels.
The higher stats make the other dungeons and content less desirable; I mean at the rate I’ve been getting globs, money, and some T6 mats (and I’m only fractal level 7 now), any level 80 player can just play this dungeon and craft rares/exotics if they really want to up my stats a bit as the difficulties increase.
The nature of this dungeon being an infinite dungeon basically would always trump explore dungeons anyway since the rewards alone would net you coin and mats to just craft/buy exotics. Without making something super restrictive like “having unlocked the dungeon master title” or having a certain number of achievement points, I’m not sure how you integrate such a dungeon yet have all the other content still be viable.
I think we’re over emphasizing the stat increase. I’m not saying it isn’t substantial, or that it should even be allowed in WvW, but I don’t think it’ll have the cataclysmic impact that folks seem to give it.
I mean not everyone in WvW has full exotics and the battles aren’t one-sided. Why are we saying that Ascended will really tip that scale when this hasn’t even been demonstrated yet between exotics and greens/blues? Yes, on a player per player basis exotics will generally give one player an edge over the other… but often defense/offense rarely relies on the abilities of one player; and even a handful of players in Ascended gear are only so effective.
Speaking just for people scaled up to 80- I’ve done about 5 attempts at fractals with a member of the team who is below 80 and 5/5 times the person below 80 has shown that they do not know how to follow orders, lack understanding of the game mechanics, and obviously a lvl 80 will have higher stats and better armor than a person who is lvl 20 scaled up. Is this a case of a few bad low levels ruining it for a whole group of good low level players? Maybe but I think its more that the majority of players below 80 are not very good.
This…. In my entire experience, I get better cooperation from players in explore mode dungeons who aren’t downscaled by much, if any, than players in fractals who are upscaled. I don’t know why that is, but after awhile it starts to get annoying. And this isn’t like “oh he didn’t execute perfectly the first/second/third time”, it’s more often an almost willful ignorance of not looking at the chat and understanding what we’re trying to do.
I’m sure there are sub-lvl-80 players out there that have competence to do a fractal… But I haven’t found many of those players at fractal level 7; I think the progression system of fractals is far to rigid which also makes it hard for sub-80 players to progress.
Big difference between a Guardian and a Necro, survivability wise, even with full on glass cannon gear.
Yea i agree, but with me running 12000 HPs at lvl 80, no tgh and i can still semi-tank on my pure glasscannon guardian not using my defensive abilities. A proper spec’ed/yellow geared lvl 80 necro should be able to run around in lost shore without getting one-shot-down’ed.
My necro was in full exotics of precision/toughness/condition dmg gear (except for accessories) and was getting half my health (which sits around 21,000) cleaved off from certain attacks off normal mobs…. the vets were doing a lot more than that (rolling maneuver aside)
There’s also a flaw when PvE enemies have auto-locking ranged attacks and abilities that ignore player abilities. I hate that I can’t always strafe a ranged effect when there’s such limited dodging. If the move is super telegraphed, like Kudo’s sniper shot in CoE story mode, then fine. But a AC ranger auto-attack auto-locks as well? Come on.
As for ignoring player abilities… Love mesmer feedback that doesn’t work on Old Tom or on some golems/mobs that throw projectiles. It’s not a description thing… it literally says it rebounds projectiles back at the enemy. Whenever an enemy has reflect projectile active and an engineer is tossing grenades right on top of the mob, those grenades get lobbed back. Why some enemies get special treatment regarding feedback is dumb. Oh, it makes feedback OP? Yeah, for all of a few seconds on a 40 second cooldown in a PvE encounter when a mob is doing a particular action… Seems like the whole point of creating utility skills, you know to counteract these particular actions that occur from time to time?
Should just make a recipe to put 4 similar weapon types from 4 different dungeons to get precursor…. Yeah it’s grindy, but at least the luck is somewhat replaced by some skill.
Well no offense, but that Lost Shore event took a few hours for some servers… so to DC at the very end is really lame. The loot in question was a good chance for precursors, which are worth a hefty penny in the TP; even in a devalued market, it’s still a nice chunk of change. The 20 slot bag ain’t bad too considering making a 20 slotter is over 10g. So if you were one of the unfortunate people who couldn’t log on or, even worse, got DC’ed at the last minute…. it’s a real downer.
The FotM progression system is set up so much in the same way story and explore mode are in dungeons; no sense in doing the former when you’re at the latter stage. The problem is that this issue is further propagated by the fact that the only way to progress is to do a fractal at your max level; which is further propagated by parties only being able to do the max level available to the player with the lowest level of progression. Even if you try to help someone out, you have to run them through each level until they reach your max level… have fun running someone new to FotM 20+ times just to be at your level.
The fact that this loot exists creates it’s own problems seen through different viewing glasses, whether it’s imbalance issues, devaluing of older content or real money purchases, a gated-community, etc. Yes, there’s fussing about the loot, but it’s a combination of it’s existence (and the problems it creates) as well as the rigors of trying to get it (which create an incredibly inflexible and tedious progression system).
This is why guild exist, ask around I for one joined my guild when they were at lvl5 and they helped me reach a few levels, it your fault you choose to ignore the guild u were in, it is “guild” wars (could be implemented so much more)
Ok, well say after a week or so you get a guildie who took a break and now everyone is at level 20 except him…. You have to run that person 20 times just to get the player to the guild’s level. It’d be nice if you could set it to level 20 or maybe 10-15, run the player a few times and essentially “power level” him through to be at, or close to, the guild’s general level.
Same goes for the “LFM” system of finding groups. Hard to find 4 folks of a certain max level depending on what level you are…. and if your timing is off or you take a break, you might end up way behind the curve.
The progression system “as-is” is far too rigid.
You should have a way to build up levels rather than doing 4 to get to 5, 5 to 6, etc…. That way you still get some progression for doing lower level fractals.
You should also not have the max fractal level be based on the lowest level any one player has achieved…
The two pieces in tandem allow “fresh” players to progress through the levels quickly and allow “veteran” players the ability to help out without running players 10+ whatever times just to be of equivalent level (and still get something out of it that progresses them).
Auto upgrade doesn’t make any sense considering there’s this thing called bank slots and transmute stones… Use them if you really want to keep your legendary “up to date”
I think the biggest problem with FotM is that you can only play at the minimum level that any one player has achieved rather than the reverse…. There’s no system in place to really make it worthwhile to even go back and help since you need to beat lvl 4 to achieve lvl 5 and so forth.
The two things I would tweak to the system to make it less of a hard gated effect:
1. The highest level your party can go is the highest level any player has achieved
2. An “xp” system for the fractal levels that’s tracked in the hero tab.
The idea being that regardless of doing a lower lvl fractal, you still get credit towards progression. However, if you have someone who’s in the higher levels, he/she can basically “power level” you through so long as you can perform at his/her level.
So let’s say the following:
Lvl/xp req/xp for finishing
Lvl1, 0, 100
Lvl2, 100, 200
Lvl3, 200, 300
Lvl4, 300, 400
…
Lvln,(100*n)-100, (100*n)
So if I’m level 6, but can’t find a group for level 6 to instantly jump up to level 7, I can still get to level 7 by doing some combination of the lower levels.
Similarly, if I’m lvl 2 and I hop on board with a level 10 group, I can basically jump from lvl 2 to lvl 5 and only need to do one lvl 1 run before I’ve unlocked lvl 6.
I don’t think this totally solves the problem, especially in the long run scenario, but it certainly mitigates the effect in the short run.
I’m sure a question might arise that goes something like “well why even have levels to achieve anyway”? I’m not sure I have an answer to that, but maybe there’s someway to work with what we got with small tweaks (maybe achieving levels bumps your magic find in fractals or something like that)…
For everyone that cant get groups:
1) Join a guild
2) Make a guild group
3) Go to LA
4) Enter FotM
5) ProfitNote: if you cant get a guild group, you need to join a better guild. Its called Guild Wars for a reason and you can even join multiple guilds.
I don’t see how this negates the gated community effect…. it just gives you a better opportunity to find people willing to take a few steps backwards in order to go forward. I mean I wanna help my buddies out… but it sucks that I’m going to have to run lower fractals 7 or more times just so that they’re at my level; whereas my proposal above could shave that to more like 3-4 runs.
I think the biggest problem with FotM is that you can only play at the minimum level that any one player has achieved rather than the reverse…. There’s no system in place to really make it worthwhile to even go back and help since you need to beat lvl 4 to achieve lvl 5 and so forth.
The two things I would tweak to the system to make it less of a hard gated effect:
1. The highest level your party can go is the highest level any player has achieved
2. An “xp” system for the fractal levels that’s tracked in the hero tab.
The idea being that regardless of doing a lower lvl fractal, you still get credit towards progression. However, if you have someone who’s in the higher levels, he/she can basically “power level” you through so long as you can perform at his/her level.
So let’s say the following:
Lvl/xp req/xp for finishing
Lvl1, 0, 100
Lvl2, 100, 200
Lvl3, 200, 300
Lvl4, 300, 400
…
Lvln,(100*n)-100, (100*n)
So if I’m level 6, but can’t find a group for level 6 to instantly jump up to level 7, I can still get to level 7 by doing some combination of the lower levels.
Similarly, if I’m lvl 2 and I hop on board with a level 10 group, I can basically jump from lvl 2 to lvl 5 and only need to do one lvl 1 run before I’ve unlocked lvl 6.
I don’t think this totally solves the problem, especially in the long run scenario, but it certainly mitigates the effect in the short run.
I thought the event was pretty neat… but I have to say some of those karka were super beefy which made the reinforcement phases some of the longest and most boring pieces of the event. But nothing like a whole bunch of vets/champions insta-spawning around the zerg and using there big moves right away to wipe 90% or more of the pack (I laughed).
while I like the fractal dungeon being a set of mini dungeons that are all fairly unique… I have to say looking for people of similar level is absolutely frustrating. It should be like explore mode, where the fractal level can be set to the highest level a player as achieved rather than the lowest…. That way even if you set it to lvl 4 or 10, everyone who’s not at those levels still can participate and “lvl up” (maybe not jump from say lvl 4 to 10, but at least if they participated in a 10, they’d move from 4 to 5).
I think the worst part of fractals is that the level available is only as high as the person who’s progressed the least…. to me this is a surefire way to get people left behind.
A manifesto, in general, is not a binding contract so what’s said and written down doesn’t mean execution must follow rigidly… Or at all
But at the same time, I think Anet did jump ship a little too quickly… I feel like there were a lot of possible strategies that could’ve been used which stayed in the confines of the manifesto. Whether or not they were better options than what got I suppose is debatable.
I would say I was one of the pro-stat people… but only for legendary items since they were an absolute grindfest with only a handful that were actually cool looking. I’m really not a huge fan of the idea of all sorts of gear with pumped stats.
Inscriptions could’ve been neat ways to augment your gear towards certain dungeons you liked to run (not necessarily the one in Lost Shore) and done more than just resistance… But like a certain boss effects are less effective or you do more damage against mobs in the dungeon, or whatever… Lost Shores could’ve offered exotic jewelry, backpacks and even some exotic-equivalent sets with stat combinations we previously didn’t have (like power/precision/vitality) on top of some neat skins.
I’m not going to totally write it off, but I think they were a little quick to jump ship rather than try using what was available and within the confines of their original design guidelines.
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If the only thing you get from new sets and new gear in new content updates is a new look, what the hell is the point in doing the new content other than “Oh wow I have all these pretty USELESS sets”?
You could’ve made this new dungeon all about getting inscriptions, with the Ascended armor just being exotic gears with different stat variations that didn’t previously exist (I know some condition folks were looking for some more variations)… As well as offer backpacks, jewelry, even a breathing mask… things that weren’t originally dungeon gear.
Inscriptions could’ve been a new feature, with all level 70-80 gear having inscription slots, that makes your current gear more attuned to a dungeon and doesn’t necessarily have to be attuning for Lost Shores dungeon… Maybe I, or some other players, love CoE. Well there might be inscriptions that are like “increased loot off chests in CoE” or “5% less damage from enemies in CoE”.
Point is, there were lots of options to go with this that could’ve reached a compromise between players that like the game “as-is” and players who wanted “more”. I don’t this option as being the compromise since voice of opposition is heavily one-sided…
The ‘MMO Manifesto’ is looking more like an ’MMO Rough Guideline".
Let’s be clear, a Manifesto is merely a declaration of intentions, motives and perspectives by the author…. not a binding contract that locks them into a set of conditions.
While I don’t think this is necessarily the best solution for Anet, let’s recognize that they have total freedom in terms of deciding how they wish to move the game forward…. Total freedom doesn’t mean that all possible decisions they can make are good ones, there are still consequences and this decision might not shake out they way they want it to.
I love how the mods are just throwing all the threads made to protest this kitten into this thread to mitigate the extreme negative view that this change in manifesto has garnered.
Keep up the good work, maybe no one will notice that everyone hates this.
Or it could be a way for them to aggregate numerous opinions and dialogues on the matter into one post?… <shrug>
Seriously though, 104+ pages in about a day or so since it’s creation…. Somebody better be looking at this or there’s gonna be all sorts of flak.
::TLDR:: Just my two cents beow, but I think Anet’s solution only answers the endgame piece while furthering the problem of keeping the current content worth engaging/playing.
At first I was all for this idea, but I forgot to consider the impact on the rest of the game… and that has changed my opinion to be not for it. I will say that this is speculation cause I haven’t seen anything, but consider the following:
If this dungeon offers armor, will the Ascended gear have the 8 or 9 stat variations (berserker, valkarie, knight, rampager, etc.) or will it introduce new stat variations like power/precision/vitality (pretty sure that doesn’t exist)? If it’s the original 8 or 9 variations, even if the ascended gear has exotic stats, then why would a player do any of the former explore mode dungeons (other than for kicks or nostalgia purposes)? Rather than going to CoE for this, TA for that (and wherever else for whatever purpose), you basically “one stop shop” for Ascended gear of the stat variation you’re looking for. The stat inflation just furthers the shift of players not wanting to do the older dungeons…. look, I want something fresh, but not necessarily at the cost completely abandoning the current dungeon content.
So Ascended gear is basically to build up resistance to “Agony” as well as a small stat pump… doesn’t this create a “gated community” effect not so much in terms of + stats that we’re familiar with, but more “agony resistance”? I guess you can deal with it, but as more parts of this dungeon get unlocked over time, and I’m guessing each new section having greater need for Agony resistance, what’s in place for fresh players or returning players to catch up?
IMO, though it’s probably too late, all level 70-80 gear should have a slot for inscriptions. Ascended gear shouldn’t have extra stats and only offer backpacks, jewelry, and any weapons/armor with stat variations that don’t current exist (like power/precision/vit)…. If you like the Ascended skin, transmute it. The Lost Shore dungeon should be grabbing these pieces and getting inscriptions, while all the original content should still be about building your “ideal” set of gear (stat-wise) through crafting and/or explore mode dungeons. Inscriptions should also be earned through other means like WvW server victories (assuming you participated that week) or story/explore mode dungeons, or whatever…
SWTOR failed for many reasons other than being a WoWclone.
I’m sure you are going to say Aion went free to play for other reasons, Age of Conan lost more than half of its subscribers within 3 months for other reasons, Warhammer Online has been dying for other reasons, Vanguard closed due to other reasons, and so on…
Is there any really successful WoW clone?
No?
And so you want Guild Wars 2 to become a WoW clone why, exactly?
I never said I wanted GW2 to be a WoW clone… and you cherry picked what I said, leaving out the part where I said gear progression wasn’t the sole reason for it’s failure, which was what the person I quoted was trying to say…
Your response to my post is actually a great example of taking a little thing of something, blowing it way out of context, and ultimately accusing that person of something never actually stated.
I wonder where I’ve seen this before…. hmmm
Reality is the majority of MMO players want a gear treadmill.
So explain to us why all WoW clones have failed, with the latest being The Old Republic. It’s easy to say “the majority of MMO players want feature X, which is just like WoW”, ignoring how WoW clones are dying all around.
SWTOR failed for many reasons other than being a WoWclone. Mainly, it was rushed through by EA…. So it had barely any content at launch (esp. @ lvl 50), was lacking tons of features folks would consider “standard in MMOs”, and not a great combat system. Though, the story was incredible and the classes were well designed (though some might argue that).
Sorry for being off topic… but I figured with all the accusations and wild statements going about, I’d at least defend something I know quite well. You can hardly blame pure gear progression as the route cause for many MMO failures.
(edited by Bruno Sardine.2907)
Yeah no offense to players that bought stuff… but in an ever evolving game that might have an expansion, did you really think the items you had would be the best forever? That’s like buying an Audi or whatever and thinking they’re never coming out with a better model.
How does this effect WvW? If my opponent has Ascended Uber Armour, the skill of the player goes out the window and it becomes the best geared who will win.
Not true.
A guy in full exotics/ascended armor can just flat out suck.
Skill still owns gear, if your gear is reasonable (don’t go into wvw at level 80 wearing whites).
Yeah I think people are over speculating the stat-increase…. assuming of course there even is one or that it will somehow translated into any part of the game other than that dungeon. Personally, i think it’s just a mis-interpretation and likely is more inscriptions with the treadmill being related to improving the equipment to tackle the dungeon… but hopefully this blog post will clear matters up.
Mostly just zerg or defend against zerg…. You should really open up the maps for so much more. Everything in the map should offer some sort of resource that’s valuable in all sorts of upgrades, whether it’s specific to a defense, maybe to upgrade towards a champion “attack squad” or patrol… Point is if more people need to be doing various things in order to capture points or bolster defenses, then you minimize the effectiveness of a zerg.
Absolutely hate the jumping puzzles now that people just camp it with sieges and mobs of players…. pathetic. I like the idea of a PvP jumping puzzle, but it’s execution totally ignored certain things relating to your movement speed when in combat, among other things.
Ultimately, nothing tangible for winning. Just like how an event tracks your contribution, WvW should do the same and reward you based on that and your server’s success…. So that doing a lot and being the top server gives you like 100 badges and maybe some other things (like black lion keys or whatever).
While we’re all going back and forth on the stats… I think we can all agree that these skins better be awesome looking; cause honestly, I’ve found the majority to be a little lackluster (yes you can mix and match to make some uniquely cool, but on aggregate a lot of pieces are just lame).
Also, people quoting the philosophy and manifesto… first of all, it’s a guideline in terms of designing the game and not some fiat that must be rigidly followed. Second, if you really want to hold to that manifesto/philosophy, there are a couple of things within those bodies of text that are not carried through into the game, just saying.
idk why people keep saying this, maybe i need to post it again, it’s on the first page because i hoped people would read that at least before posting:
Dies ist eine Abkehr vom Prinzip, dass eine Verbesserung derGegenstände im Spiel nicht vorkommen sollte – eigentlich sollte das Ende derWerte-Fahnenstange mit den exotischen oder den gleichwertigen aber vielhübscheren legendären Waffen erreicht sein. Arenanet begründet diesesKurswechsel mit dem Feedback der Fans und Spieler. Die Aufwertung der eigenen Ausrüstung sei für viele eine große Motivation.
in english:
This is a departure from the principle, that an improvementof items should not be in the game rather the exotics (and the more beautiful butequal legendaries) should be the end of the value-flagpole. Arenanet reasonedthis change of course with the feedback from fans and players. The appreciation of equip is a big motivation for many
a dev has explicitly stated they are addign gear progression to the game.
I deleted everything else I said except for this last paragraph that was ignored. Departure from principle isn’t necessarily bad if it makes all parties happy. Ending slavery about two centuries ago was a “departure from principle” for Europe and the US, you think more or less people are happy about that? Similarly, if the “treadmill zone” has no impact on any other gameplay aspect (think of it almost like a HoTM zone), then why does it matter so much to the people that don’t want to participate in it?
Again, philosophy/principles are guidelines…. They’re not written-in-stone, unbreakable laws.
I mean if the stat stick and inscriptions only apply to that dungeon (let’s say that outside the dungeon, the gear is only as good as exotics), then should we really care? Treadmill folks get their treadmill without affecting everyone else’s experience… why is that bad?
Though my statement holds on the if part…. which I could see Anet getting (and deserving) a lot of flak if they don’t confine this treadmill to the treadmill only area.
Just out of curiosity…. if this dungeon offers a “gear treadmill” but is totally contained within the dungeon itself, meaning none of the “extra stats” earned work anywhere except in the dungeon, how many people would be opposed to this?
Is there truly no room in this Tryia to have a “treadmill zone” especially if it doesn’t spill over into the rest of the World?
The reason why I ask is because I’m not sure why people are so adamantly opposed to Anet making something to create happiness for as much of the player-base as possible. Saying that, even if the above holds true, that you’ll quit because you don’t want it is rather selfish especially if it has no impact on your ability to enjoy the game.
Also, people quoting the philosophy and manifesto… first of all, it’s a guideline in terms of designing the game and not some fiat that must be rigidly followed. Second, if you really want to hold to that manifesto/philosophy, there are a couple of things within those bodies of text that are not carried through into the game, just saying.
Rare gear is nearly just as good as Exotics, you can do anything in this game in Rare gear with no problems.
This sentence makes me wonder if our friend “knote” is even playing this game. Blue gear nearly as good as exotics? If that isn’t misinformation and nonsense…
I’ve been doing CoE, Arah, SE, TA, AC just fine in blues; just fine as in doing dps, keeping players up when I can, and not downing/dying often. The gradual shift from blue to orange is noticeable, but not game changing. I don’t see these Ascended gears being game changing, especially if the stats are confined to the PvE parts (not WvW) and future content isn’t scaled towards players having Ascended-gear… This creates a pseudo-vertical progression (that actually already kind of exists) while still maintaining a mostly horizontal one; so long as the challenges provided in these new dungeons are that much more challenging (mechanically, not inflated numbers-wise).
I’m sort of on the fence… mainly because I know nothing about Anet’s intentions for where to take this game moving forward. Does this mean in another 3 months or so there will be another dungeon? If so, will that gear be Ascended level equivalent or will it be even higher stats? It’s sort of a slippery slope.
If this is a slight gear pump with the next major content being some expansion with some new levels (80-85?), skills, and possibly traits then I don’t care. If these stats have no effect in WvW, because the scaling mechanism disables the inscription and makes the gear effectively “exotic-equivalent”, then I don’t care. I don’t care because the PvP aspects will still be preserved while the PvE landscape will change; some will say for the better, others for worse… Point is, though, that you can’t say it creates an imbalance because players will still be fighting players on equal footing (stat-wise).