Guild Wars 2

Suggestion: If you want more players to participate in WvW, everyone who commands in TS should be as proactive about encouraging players to group as Agress is.

Doing this will bring players back and make them more useful because they will have money for repairs and siege and will get badges for siege and armor as well. The difference in drop rate between players who team up and those who don’t is huge.

Conner.4702:

Corvindi.5734:

This Ascended gear treadmill follows from the gems to gold revenue stream.

I was in the vast minority when I posted my displeasure over the gems for gold announcement on Guru.

Other players tried to downplay the pay to win aspect by pointing out that the top tier level 80 gear was so easy to get it would never matter.

Other players said we were foolish and worried for no reason when we said they would find ways to get people to buy gold by making the game grindy for those who didn’t.

Other players said botters and gold farmers wouldn’t be an issue because of gems for gold.

Other players said a lot of not so nice things about us over this issue.

Now I have one thing to say to all of them:

We told you so.

Sorry but you are connecting 2 separate things. Sure some bought their way to the top, but most didn’t. The more hardcore players simply don’t have to pay their way to the top.
On the contrary if what you are saying is true they would have taken longer to do this as it is still very early in the games life and profits no doubt have been good from gems.

Explain to me how grinding 60-100 hours at 1 gold per hour for one back slot item versus buying the mats with gems exchanged for gold isn’t pay to win? That’s standard pay to win. Either unreasonable grind or open your wallet.

This Ascended gear treadmill follows from the gems to gold revenue stream.

I was in the vast minority when I posted my displeasure over the gems for gold announcement on Guru.

Other players tried to downplay the pay to win aspect by pointing out that the top tier level 80 gear was so easy to get it would never matter.

Other players said we were foolish and worried for no reason when we said they would find ways to get people to buy gold by making the game grindy for those who didn’t.

Other players said botters and gold farmers wouldn’t be an issue because of gems for gold.

Other players said a lot of not so nice things about us over this issue.

Now I have one thing to say to all of them:

We told you so.

Osprey.6587:

Corvindi.5734:

I think they’ll get away with it longer and more profitably than Mythic did (unfortunately) because they lack new competition with the polish and engine improvements that WoW had.

But in the end, yes, I think they will lose the business of those who were supposed to be the target audience in the first place and then they will lose their new targets when they perceive that GW2 isn’t as popular as whatever the next big release will be and/or when they get tired of going back and forth to the cash shop for gold to craft the latest greatest gear.

Time will tell but I think the PvE in this game is not really as good as most other games (I haven’t seen the new dungeon nor do I intend to) so if it’s vertical progression in PvE content you are after, there are many, many better alternatives to GW2.

Good point. For me there certainly are better options if I wanted to gear grind in dungeons since I like dungeon finders.

I do enjoy solo leveling alts in this game for the most part, except when a DE or skill point challenge is too difficult to solo on some classes. But I don’t enjoy doing that enough to do it much longer or to spend more money on character slots and bank space.

A lot of people seem to like the new dungeon hub, but it’s brand new, give it a week and I expect posts complaining of the grind will start to pop up.

I think they’ll get away with it longer and more profitably than Mythic did (unfortunately) because they lack new competition with the polish and engine improvements that WoW had.

But in the end, yes, I think they will lose the business of those who were supposed to be the target audience in the first place and then they will lose their new targets when they perceive that GW2 isn’t as popular as whatever the next big release will be and/or when they get tired of going back and forth to the cash shop for gold to craft the latest greatest gear.

Schnuffles.5369:

Equal gear scaling in the WvW environment.

This would work for me. Not that I’m leaving, I’m just not spending any more money.

One thing that makes it harder to justify forcing dungeons on those who want to be equal in WvW is, this game was never marketed as mainly PvE and no one can say it was. So no one can come in and say why did you buy this game, PvP is just a side thing. PvE is the main thing.

ArenaNet on the other hand has tried to marginalize WvW by pointing out that sPvP isn’t affected by these changes. I suspect they want WvW as a side item for PvPers and sPvP to be the main dish.

Unfortunately, their sPvP isn’t nearly enjoyable for many of us as WvW has been. Their mistake, not ours. They should have designed bigger scale sPvP for one thing. For another, they should never have allowed premades in the unrated games, yet they are there, making pugging not an option for those of us who don’t like getting rolled.

Shut them up, oh please shut them up! They disagree with me and there are so many of them!

Yeah…okay.

They should do it like sPvP, especially in light of this new gear treadmill. But I don’t think they ever will because that raider mentality they seem to want to attract now is a mentality that demands stat advantage over those who don’t grind dungeons.

Cerise.9045:

There’s a supply of less than 20k of the T6 materials needed for ascended backpacks and infusions on the trading post.

That means only 40 out of the 2 million+ people who play the game will be able to craft the backpack and the infusion.

That’s 0.002% of the player base.

No gear disparity? Yeah right.

And people are saying the drop rate for those mats just got nerfed, too.

vox.5019:

mulch.2586:

Columba.9730:

GADefence.5634:

“Well you can seemingly run t1 and get the one item that you need from these dungeons but if you cant do that much may be you do not need these items because its just so painful that your reward of the “self view” ideal that your week in wvw. Its on you to get your gear to what level you want its no one else job to tell you how to play or what to do.”

O.o

Dear god, the community’s collective intelligence must have flatlined after the WoW locusts returned.

Do I really have to tell you why this is really a bad statement?

This game should not be a JOB. T6 mats are goign to skyrocket. These people probably bought gold (and considering how conditioned they are to it in WoW I doubt from ANet’s gem store), the dungeons are 50% boring, and this is going against ANet’s do anything (WvW sPvP real PvE dungeons) philosophy.

So wrong, so many levels.

Agreed. So I am forced to endure misery to compete in WvWvW now? Isn’t this the opposite of their promise to us?

You’re not forced. Even more, you’ll compete just as well in WvW if you don’t endure misery.

WvW is not like pvp in GW2. Your build, your gear really doesn’t contribute very much to the whole endeavor. A few stat points isn’t going to matter a lick. And if you’re the kind of player who needs every point he can get, you’re still gonna suck no matter what.

Relax and trust that by the time ascended gear gets past 3 accessory slots, by the time it makes a statistically-discernible difference, there’ll be a bunch of ways you can get that gear.

It doesn’t matter as much at the zergs, but whether you’re running supplies, scouting, ganking yakks, taking the pve objectives, or just getting back to the zerg after dying there are still plenty of instances where 1v1s or small fights occur. Yes it will matter.

It also matters when running with the zerg. Thanks to Anet’s loot and badge drop algorithms you need a team to keep up with badges and repairs, much less siege. Who is going to want an undergeared player in their team?

My level 80 in rares couldn’t get a team the other day when I asked in TS. I got not one badge. Not one loot bag.

My next alt to go to 80 and get retired will probably longbow warrior thanks to these changes. She was pretty kitteny before and I don’t like the other weapon choices except rifle, which would be my offhand but then I’d have to sacrifice my runspeed or carry a darn banner around.

mulch.2586:

Rejam.3946:

mulch.2586:

Rejam.3946:

mulch.2586:

The cool thing in GW2 is if you don’t want to grind that gear, you don’t have to. Exotic gear works just as well as it ever did.

Anet : “The only way to mitigate Agony damage is by building up resistance through Infusions.”

We can’t use exotics to do this. So, unless we join the treadmill we can’t enjoy challenging new content. Not much room for choice there.

Honey, if you want to enjoy the new content, you’ll get the infusion gear, while enjoying challenging new content.

Are you implying it is easy to get and doesn’t need to be run repeatedly?

I’m saying if you do the process of enjoying the new content, the gear you need for it will happen as a side-effect.

Sorta like how you don’t need to grind karma. I never have, yet have 2 sets of karma armor. Just go play, have fun, and it piles up, almost by accident.

Same thing with infusions. Play the game. Enjoy new content as it comes each month. Trust in the system that you’ll have what you need, just the same as getting exotic gear. You can buy it if you’re that sort of person. Or you can just play and it comes along.

Yeah, I tried that. In WvW. Badges. Because I wasn’t always teamed, I have I believe at this point over 1500 kills and less than 200 badges. That’s playing WvW on many characters. Yet I can’t buy a full set of level 80 badge gear for even one of them. Not only that, but the WvW badge gear comes in one set of stats only.

So playing the game my way already hasn’t worked out. I wanted to get my gear through badges by doing what I enjoyed, which was WvW. But even before this Ascended gear came along I was penalized for doing so and especially for trying to do so without manually making or joining a team.

I was already getting fed up, this Ascended gear is just the nail in the coffin.

replicant.3620:

You are correct in that with the current direction of high end gear creation it is very much treading on the Pay2Win market. Legendary and Ascended are gotten so fast currently because of people paying lots of RL cash for gems converted to gold, guilds funding the person, spectators funding the person, simply buying gold, etc… The current trend of the game is insanely against the original philosophy for the game.

I was told that Exotics were easy to get even without buying gold, and I didn’t care about Legendary weapons that were supposed to be cosmetic only. So I wasn’t worried. Of course maybe I was lied to, but regardless, I know for sure that this backpack isn’t easy to get without opening my wallet.

The party is over. I have no intention of jumping through social hoops to do dungeons I never wanted to have to do in the first place.

Aside from leveling alts, this game is done for me.

morbidillusion.2759:

250 T6 mats
50 Ectos
24 skill points
1 Mists essense

This is easy to obtain? Considering you still need an infusion for it and it is a single item slot?

Quick calculations, before prices have even sky-rocketted, show that this would cost you 60 gold for one item using Powerful Bloods and Ectos each at 20 silvers, which both are higher than right now.

Add in the fact that drop rates have been obliterated and this will soon cost 100g+ and it will be 100g that is insanely difficult to gain, as if it wasn’t already.

So 60 hours just for the mats at a fairly good rate of one gold per hour. And diminishing returns makes efficiently farming a gold an hour unlikely. And if the drop rates don’t change back to an un-nerfed state, it will be 100 hours. Just for the mats. For one item.

Does no one else see a problem with this?

Heh. Lucky me, I like to explore on my alts, it won’t really impact my pitiful amount of silver by making waypointing to those areas completely not worth it.

I suggest if you don’t like that level 80 gear grind that you cultivate a love for leveling alts.

I still intend to play. I intend to get far more than my money’s worth. I’ve always been an alt player. I’m sad that the only time I’m likely to ever go into WvW from now on is to farm, though. I’ve never gone there to farm before, I’ve always gone to fight, but I don’t care anymore about it since I know I’ll never have on par gear.

So if you see me in there, don’t bother asking why I’m not doing anything useful, I won’t be on TS and I’ll probably be visiting the Krait, maybe kill a bot or two for badges if I see one.

Don’t worry, I won’t do that if there is a queue.

xtorma.1283:

I’ll be honest op. I really don’t think Anet cares how to win anyone back at this point.

I don’t either. I think they’re chasing whales.

It’s very clever how they’re doing the backpack, reminds me of when I’m crafting and almost to the next tier but I don’t have enough of that one ingredient that is on the TP for too much silver, so of course I give in and buy it, just to get me to the next crafting level.

Only in this case it will be players who have everything they need except maybe one or two components, only they don’t have the gold to buy them on the TP and they don’t want to grind the mats themselves, so guess what they do? They buy gems and exchange them for gold, just to finish this one item.

Rinse, repeat, profit.

I can’t stand MF, I wish it weren’t in the game at all.

Because a good player against an almost as good player can lose thanks to gear. That’s garbage pvp.

The gold cost on that guild backpack, as presented in the guildmate already has guild backpack is the nail in the coffin for me.

I’ll still goof around leveling alts (just because there are ants on the dessert bar doesn’t mean the rest of the all you can eat buffet is ruined), but any thoughts on maybe getting this gear through other means in the future are pretty much gone. The cost is ridiculous.

Of course I could just buy the gold with gems, right? Making this pay to win as far as I’m concerned, since the grind is much more severe than the exotic grind.

Check out the guildmate already has guild backpack thread for the info on what it takes to make one.

Logun.2349:

Corvindi.5734:

I’d be much happier with Ascended if I could get it with the same time investment through other means, although it is a bit soon after launch to be adding new gear.

But it’s too late to do it that way now for WvW players unless they add that immediately because no one is going to want to be behind the curve, fighting PVE dungeon hamsters decked out in the best gear.

Can players even take Ascended gear into PvP and WvW?

Yes. WvW. I couldn’t care less about that other pvp.

Also, I just changed my mind. No compromise is possible, at least as far as I’m concerned. The new backpack is a major gold drain. Making this gear pay to win since you can buy gems from the store to exchange for gold and unlike exotics it isn’t an easy grind to do it yourself.

Edited: Can’t type, need coffee…

morbidillusion.2759:

250 T6 mats
50 Ectos
24 skill points
1 Mists essense

This is easy to obtain? Considering you still need an infusion for it and it is a single item slot?

Quick calculations, before prices have even sky-rocketted, show that this would cost you 60 gold for one item using Powerful Bloods and Ectos each at 20 silvers, which both are higher than right now.

Add in the fact that drop rates have been obliterated and this will soon cost 100g+ and it will be 100g that is insanely difficult to gain, as if it wasn’t already.

Ah, there is the gems for gold tie in! I knew it was there somewhere.

I’d be much happier with Ascended if I could get it with the same time investment through other means, although it is a bit soon after launch to be adding new gear.

But it’s too late to do it that way now for WvW players unless they add that immediately because no one is going to want to be behind the curve, fighting PVE dungeon hamsters decked out in the best gear.

If there was any justice the next pieces of Ascended would be available only through WvW. The outrage of PVE-only dungeon runners would make for some serious entertainment on this forum.

I would enjoy a system with more skills to choose from. To be honest, I also would enjoy being able to use more skills at once. I’m one of those players who hates the tradeoffs I have to make when deciding what goes on my skill bar. I constantly swap weapons trying to cast more skills, too. Six more skills to play with would make me very happy.

Balancing for PvP would be a horrendous nightmare, but hey, not my problem. Other devs have managed it. Sort of. Minus a few nervous breakdowns probably.

I don’t have a craving for this gear, but I do now wish to avoid contact with all other players. I don’t want to try to find teams because I don’t have gear and now I know I never will. I sure don’t want to jump in WvW and fight alongside or against people who will always outgear me.

I was already on the less social side of things for an MMO player, now I never want to interact with other players ever again.

siepher.9408:

you know after reading a lot of the ideas shown in this post, made me really wanna go back to GW1. seriously though, the ideas here are great, if they even implement half of them I would come back in a heartbeat. I think I am going back to GW1 for a while. maybe see some of you peeps there.

Tempting. At least my heroes would team up with me no matter what gear I had on. And after we finished doing something none of them ever pestered me to join their guilds, either.

IllegalChocolate.6938:

I’ve been really thinking about this change in direction a lot more thoroughly and to be quite honest, I really do like it now. Allow me to explain.

I’ve been playing this game waaaay too much for my own good. I used to live in WvWvW, dungeon crawl endlessly, spend much of my time in Lions Arch and explorable areas helping people and just outright feeling good about myself and the amount of time I spent in this game. I was addicted to say the least, I felt really good. The problem with this was that I’ve been neglecting a lot of other things in my life, I didn’t hang out with my friends very often anymore, I just simply didn’t want to do anything else but play Guildwars 2. Now that this change in direction has rolled out, my attachment to this game has simply disconnected, my itch to play this game is no longer there.

So thank you for setting me free, I can continue to write my book, paint, and pursue something else that I can enjoy. I’ll be on here and there but my focus has realigned because of this change, and I’m quite happy that I can put down this game without the never ending lust to get back on.

I hear playing a game that it’s easy to walk away from on a regular basis also cures the dreaded butt numbness!

Seriously, good for you, though. I need to spend less time with MMOs in general.

Wintyre Fraust.6534:

Colin Johanson, June 19, 2012:

“Now let me pose a second question: If the success of a subscription-based MMO is measured by the number of people paying a monthly fee, how does that impact game design decisions?

“The answer can be found in the mechanics and choices made in subscription-based MMOs, which keep customers actively playing by chasing something in the game through processes that take as long as possible. In other words, designers of traditional MMOs create content systems that take more time to keep people playing longer. If this is your business motivation and model so you keep getting paid, it makes sense and is an incredibly smart thing to do, and you need to support it.

“When your game systems are designed to achieve the prime motivation of a subscription-based MMO, you run the risk of sacrificing quality to get as much content in as possible to fill that time. You get leveling systems that take insane amounts of grind to gain a level, loot drop systems that require doing a dungeon with a tiny chance the item you want can drop at the end, raid systems that need huge numbers of people online simultaneously to organize and play, thousands of wash/repeat item-collection or kill-mob quests or dailies with flavor text support, Lthe best stat gear requiring crazy amounts of time to earn, etc.

“But what if your business model isn’t based on a subscription? What if your content-design motivations aren’t driven by the need to create mechanics that keep people playing as long as possible? When looking at content design for Guild Wars 2, we’ve tried to ask the question: What if the development of the game was based on…wait for it…fun?”

“If we chose fun as our main metric for tracking success, can we flip the core paradigm and make design decisions based on what we’d like to play as game players? Can we focus our time on making meaningful and impactful content, rather than filler content meant to draw out the experience? Can we make something so much fun you might want to play it multiple times because it’s fun, rather than making you do it because the game says you have to? It’s how we played games while growing up. I can’t tell you how many times I played Quest for Glory; the game didn’t give me 25 daily quests I needed to log in and do—I played it multiple times because it was fun!”

I do feel sorry for any of the devs who really meant all of this. Maybe they were just wrong and there aren’t enough of us who aren’t interested in stat carrots to keep this game going. I know, I know, Guild Wars. Right. But it couldn’t have cost nearly as much to develop as this one did.

But I’m still angry they limited ways to get the new gear. There are only three possible reasons for doing that:

1. They were in a huge hurry to get the gear out in order to retain more players and didn’t have time to figure out how to put it in for crafters, open world PVE players, and WvW players.

2. They plan to make money off the people who hate doing dungeons by selling this gear to them somehow, either by making getting it in other ways incredibly expensive in gold cost or outright in the store (probably the former and note to Anet, that won’t work, at least not on me!).

3. They wanted to funnel players into one area and get them teamed up so they wouldn’t quit over feeling lonely. (I think this is likely even if one of the others is also true. The game world is big and sectioned off and some areas seem very empty even when the server is showing full. Personally, I’m fine with it except when the DEs or skill point challenges are too hard to solo on my squishier alts, but some people just can’t stand wandering around hardly ever seeing anyone.)

Well, there is one more reason. They might be trying to attract that dungeon running hamster mentality crowd, people who insist that the best gear only be in dungeons that must be run over and over again. That would be a really stupid reason, though, because those players already have their games. They aren’t going to leave their Heroics and their raids for GW2.

I just want to know one thing, OP: Did you know it was a hornet’s nest when you kicked it?

I’d report someone I knew was playing at work just out of sheer spite. How dare someone have an awesome job like that?

There is a very long thread filled with people who got banned and got their accounts back after a few days. It’s in the account issues thread, I believe. Send your lucky friend there, and then tell him to write me a nice, glowing referral so I can get a job where he works.

psirca.9452:

It’s not just gear now, tonight I went into the dungeon foyer (right there in the big portal) and there were rewards for 20 slot bags and some item that when used gives you an instant skillpoint.

It’s not just gear, it’s not just gear, it’s not just gear.
I’m going to be chanting that tonight.

This is the first friday night that at 9pm I turned off the game.

Poor crafters! Now they won’t even be able to sell bags.

Ah, I see. No box fee is what you meant. I suspect you’re right, they will drop it or greatly reduce it (GW2 on sale now! all over the net). Who knows, they may have dropped it already in some markets that are used to cash shops and not subs.

Panda Shepard.1248:

nofo.8469:

Natural part of item treadmill.

Catch up or get left behind, your call.

Gear treadmill’s the cause? This has been happening for a while now. I only see people asking for lvl 80 for dungeons. That’s why I laugh at this gear treadmill crap. People think the game was equal all around before but it most definitely was not. People were asking for exotics only and lvl 80 way before this new armor tier.

And why the heck do you people think it’s casuals? The dungeon lvl is 30? Let 30’s in. Casual has nothing to do with it. People can be fine in a dungeon if they’re lvl 30.

Really? Turning down level appropriate players for dungeon groups? That’s disgusting. I’m so glad I don’t run dungeons in this game, I don’t want to play with people like that.

It’s fine if you just want to run it with your level 80 buddies and guildmates for skins, but to ask for 80s in chat? Ew.

Plague.5329:

I’m also of the opinion most of this is the result of money. No developer is this stupid. Although ANet does have a history of taking problems with simple solutions and “fixing” them in stupid ways.

There’s nothing to be done, though. NCSoft is crashing and burning, and dragging GW2 with it, which is only making the problem even worse. I imagine GW2 will go F2P sometime next year.

I can’t tell if you’re being sarcastic or if you mean they’ll drop the box fee and give the game away.

I think the entire industry based around the MMO genre is in trouble, actually. The market is saturated, for one thing. I decide I don’t feel like dabbling in GW2 today? That’s fine. There are so many free games out there right now (many of which used to be AAA sub games) that I can barely choose which to play.

Sure, if I were to stay with one long I’d have to pony up some cash, but you know what, I never do stay long enough because either the cash shop annoys me into leaving or another game pulls me away before I really need to think about spending money.

The hundreds of dollars a year in box and sub fees I was spending every year are over, thankfully. I welcome our new free to play overlords and I’m done with paying $60 box prices for games that I won’t spend two months in. The problem for those new overlords is, none will get much money from me, and most won’t get a dime.

Deleted by me for being off topic.

psirca.9452:

Even better, I peek into that dungeon foyer tonight.
Dungeon runners can get 20 slot bags and something that gives them an instant skillpoint so it’s not just gear, it’s other goodies.

All we can do is hangout until it becomes taxing then vanish.

I don’t know how many more ways we can state that this is what we chose as our end-game. There are pages and pages of it. The dungeon runners are already starting with elitist mc-crapple. After they get their shinies, they will go, then cycle 2 will start.

Seriously? They even get more bag space?

This is going from ridiculous to ridiculously stupid really fast.

I always thought MMO devs were rabidly eager to have players socialize with each other, but this makes me wonder.

The friendly factor is going to flee this game quicker than players who only WvW with this new gear tier. New players and players behind the curve due to time constraints or a less focused play style are about to become outcasts.

They won’t be able to do dungeons because they won’t have the gear. They won’t be able to enjoy WvW because they won’t have the gear. They won’t be able to get into open world grind teams in Orr or wherever because teams will want the best possible geared players so they’ll get more loot.

No one would have cared if the pellets being dispensed for running like a good little hamster didn’t affect those who don’t want anything to do with it. But it does affect us. It affects us in other dungeons, in world PVE and in WvW.

Otherwise, believe me, there wouldn’t be a bit of fuss. You guys would have been free to run around that hub until you died in your chairs from forgetting to eat, drink, and have a life.

Only if the gear didn’t affect other parts of the game, you guys wouldn’t want to run the dungeons, would you? You’d complain that the gear isn’t meaningful enough. So basically, you only want your hamster wheel if you get pellets that will aggravate the crap out of other players who don’t run on it.

Strifetoe.4502:

Oh for the love of God, please stop posting on this thread, they are releasing it and theres nothing anyone can do..quit if you dont like it…you bought the game they have your money already. The people who dont like gear progression will quit and the people who do will start playing.

I could at least understand this from a business perspective even if I don’t like it, except that I don’t see why anyone who hasn’t already bought the game would follow it closely enough to know about this change and then suddenly decide to purchase it.

No, I don’t think this is about attracting large numbers of new players. I think it’s an attempt to funnel players into the same area (the new dungeon hub) and to bring back players who reached level 80 and stopped logging in because they didn’t want to do anything except chase power.

The question is, how many of the players who like vertical progression will stay and spend versus how many who dislike vertical progression will quit?

I think ArenaNet made a bad decision, but there is no way to be sure right now. The forums are not representative of the MMO population as a whole.

Shayde.2564:

Wreckdum.8367:

Ascended gear will be available through WvW you dippity doos.

“Ascended and infusion rewards will be available in both PvE and WvW over time.”

So it sounds like there might be an artificial gear disparity to keep the new, shiny, entitled target demographic just ahead of the pack. Gotta make sure hardcore raiders can display their kittens in Ironfor…er Lion’s Arch before anyone else. I really hope this is just some huge misunderstanding and Anet hasn’t really abandoned Gw2’s best selling point.

Yep. Same old same old. This must have been done to attract raid hamsters. I don’t even think it will work. Why bother with GW2 when there are actual raids in WoW?

Then again, I’m waiting for the first GW2 raid. They’ll probably tout it as a guild event but it will be a raid just the same.

Curlybaby.6258:

biggs.4702:

You guys need to remember 3 things:

1) ArenaNet has access to data you will never see and your opinion means nothing compared this data (not in a mean way but because facts > opinion).

2) ArenaNet is way smarter than you are. And they’ve proven this time and again. This is compounded by the attempt at doing something different which people just aren’t getting (or worse, think they get it but really don’t). When it comes to these philosophical outlook points, ArenaNet is going to stick to their guns (such as with dungeon difficulty). In other areas they’ve proven they listen (more back slot items in game and FOV changes are just two quick examples). But for any point where they seem to not be listening, see point number one above.

3) You’re not a game designer, and what you want to see in a game only speaks for your own desires and not the rest of the player base. You never speak for anyone but yourself. And in case you think you know more about game design than ArenaNet, please refer back to point two above.

The same was said for the NGE Star Wars Galaxies developers.

Do a little research on them, then get back to us.

This is what I think of every time the ‘information players aren’t privy to’ defense comes up. That, and SWTOR. They really thought they were going to make a bundle off that game. Oops.

Just because they have more numbers and info than players do doesn’t mean they can’t make mistakes.

Slic.2406:

biggs.4702:

To those of you saying “I thought this game was about skill not gear,” why don’t you try sucking in your new Ascended gear and see how well that works? For a game to be about gear, not skill, would mean bad players (no skill) could still do well because gear makes up for their lack of skill.

Do you really think this is the case with Ascended gear? And due to down-leveling, would it ever be the case?

So for the sake of the community please spare us the overblown soundbites. They do not help this conversation at all.

I’m going to once again use the berserker exo vs berserker ascended spiel. exo zerker is 50% crit 104% crit dmg, you can 2-3 hit (with autoattacks) anyone whos geared in less than rares. Now, ascended will have around 150% crit damage and 5-10% more crit, if we extrapolate the stat increases in rings/back to all other trinkets/weapons/etc. And they ARE adding more ascended gear.

So what do you have now? Anyone in less than exotics in WvW will get 2hit. Anyone with exotics only will get 3-4 hit with autos if enough of them crit.

Does this sound like an even playing field at all? Does this sound like those stat differences do not matter? 50% more crit damage from zerker, and god knows what else for other stat combos. I’d say it’s even worse with condition builds and tanky builds (unkillable by anything below exo, insanely hard to kill by exo only).

All of a sudden it’s not so trivial anymore, right?

Yep. Anet better hope these GW2 ‘raiders’ who love their dungeons so much also love WvW, because they’ll soon be the only ones filling it.

So, before I start leveling my necro cook (doesn’t that combo make you wince?), are there currently any recipes or mats in the Craptal dungeons that will destroy cooking for those of us who have no intention of grinding those dungeons?

Lothair.8942:

krieb.6039:

Was hoping gw2 would also be a game about skill, not about getting OP gear like that other MMO with pandas.

The new stuff isn’t in the game yet so it’s hard to say yet, but imo it doesn’t seem right to contradict the manifesto that attracted many players to this game.

The new stuff is indeed in the game – look at it here:
http://www.gw2db.com/items?filter-item-date-added=11%2f15%2f2012

Look how powerful some of those items are in comparison with what we have now. How in your right mind are you supposed to compete without grinding for these new items?

I’m not even going to try. Not going near WvW until I can get this gear some other way. And since the GW2 version of the raiding crowd will have it all first, that means not trying to get it by doing WvW. Which means it will have to be through crafting.

And since I’m not spending a dime on gems for this gear I never wanted to have to get in the first place, I reckon that means I’m going to have to get very rich somehow in my alt wanderings. Unlikely, the way I see it, very unlikely. This game has gone from the centerpiece of my MMO activities to, ‘meh, I’ll log in and goof off’ with one foul patch.

Edit- I suppose it’s barely possible we’ll be able to buy it with karma at some point, but by then if the GW2 ‘raiders’ are working on the next tier of gear, WvW wiill still be pointless for those of us who don’t grind dungeons.

cephiroth.6182:

Too bad ignore lists are still not working on this forum. Who pays you for praying the same crap every now and then, MrLee?

Whoever it is! Needs to explain! To him! That! Excessive! Enthusiastic! Punctuation! Makes you sound like a crazy person!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

;)