Guild Wars 2

Avatar.1923:

EVE, is indeed the most revolutionary mmo on the market, and its like 8y old…

seems like no big studio is willing to risk making something innovative and different;

for whatever reason; i say; watch out Blizzards Titan. this probably will be the next big thing as Blizzard (like them or not) are capable of innovation.

Eve is a battleship simulator. Never saw anything revolutionary about it. Its an accountant’s dream, my friend who is a CPA spent hours on that game just making spreadsheets for all his future battleship costs.

My best friend has a 6 year old girl, she gets on the game sometimes with her mum’s characters and she loves it when I just walk around and follow her. She will find hidden places and refers to vistas as triangles and waypoints as diamonds and has so so much fun simply wandering around and enjoying the game’s visuals and achievements. Its amazing to play with her because her joy is contagious.

Conner.4702:

Ditton.3149:

Conner.4702:

Sky.9347:

http://www.reddit.com/user/Mike-OBrien-ArenaNet

-Snip-

“Because ArenaNet (sort of) held a hard line against all VP with GW1 — no VP ever, year after year — and it wasn’t that fun. It was stagnant.”
- Mike O’Brien, November 2012

I am very interested in how you can combine horizontal and vertical progression (progressing in two different directions?) for the same content… I believe it can not be done, and instead you can only create a very slow, very bloated vertical progression.

I’m out. I haven’t requested refunds, and so I will keep an eye on GW2 over the years just to see what happens. I can’t see me ever coming back to “catch up” with the treadmill.

Mister Mike O’Brien does not speak for me. I never felt GW1 was stagnant or not fun due to no vertical progression. On the contrary it was liberating to be able to do anything without the pressure of wondering if my gear was good enough.

I doubt I’m the only one that feels that way.

I never saw the difference between skill creep and power creep honestly.

One gives more versatility the other more power. More skills never gave more outright power. Sure some builds were overpowered for a month or 2 until nerfed into oblivion. Gear only ever gets nerfed when they introduce a new tier.

Versatility and power in a game are the same thing, different method of finding it. Im goal oriented, its the same process to me. You are using a skill to negotiate an ability or health of the mob. You push a button, use an ability and either do more damage or make the enemy do less damage. Its vertical progression, its just hidden the rails a bit better.

lotharic.9513:

I’m annoyed that so much of the discussion focused on ascended gear. While that sucks, it’s not even in the top 5 of problems I have with GW2. They would be:
1) Bugs, bugs, bugs. When will our classes work as intended? When will events reliably work?
2) WvW. WvW is boring. When will it be made fun? All the focus seems to be on esports.
3) The levelling process is super painful now that zones are empty. What are the plans to fix this?
4) Class balance. I understand this takes time, but certain classes are simply terrible, and others are one-trick ponies.
5) FoTM. This dungeon takes too long to run to advance levels, and the level splintering is stupid. Why can’t I hop in and run a single fractal at whatever level my group wants to run? I don’t have 3 uninterrupted hours to play.
6) Economy. Everything is super cheap except legendaries, which are stupidly expensive (mostly because everything else is super cheap). Was the loot at the end of Lost Shores an attempt to deflate the economy?
7) The Lost shores event was boring, laggy, and buggy. Then you reward people who had a high tolerance for BS with a precursor.

He talked about FoTM and LS and its issues. Everything else wasnt his department and he said he would try to get more people to talk from Anet and more AMA’s, especially on WvW and PvP

Well obviously the returns are not near as much as many want them to be or NCsoft would be out of business by now.

Amonde Daneren.2380:

Good to see your dojo is full of pawning noobs with your crushing skill. Be sure to keep up the good work in GW2.

actually people that came after the purple gear were usually vets because they were doing what I was doing..and it didnt come out until SB was FTP which meant pretty much everybody left was a killer…no noobs left, they didnt survive noobie island.

stof.9341:

Ditton.3149:

I never saw the difference between skill creep and power creep honestly.

Well, getting new skills that aren’t just “old skill +1 damage” at least gives you some variety above the plain “sword +1 found, now go farm dungeon +1 to get sword +2”

abstractly its the same thing..being able to mitigate or do damage in order to negotiate new obstacles. To me horizontal progression would be something like being able to build a city that was yours, owning a house that was more than simple decoration and or putting together an army, a ship etc. When you think of heroes..yeah sometimes items like excalibur come into discussion, but deeds are really what makes them heroic to me.

Denim Samurai.2379:

definitely want to reevaluate the length of the dredge dungeon, cliffside and the mad asura one before fixing the “exploits” people are using to make some of them closer to on -par timewise with other fractals.

yeah no..they are supposed to be longer..just because something takes more time and cant be shortened via skipping mobs doesnt mean its wrong.

Conner.4702:

Sky.9347:

http://www.reddit.com/user/Mike-OBrien-ArenaNet

-Snip-

“Because ArenaNet (sort of) held a hard line against all VP with GW1 — no VP ever, year after year — and it wasn’t that fun. It was stagnant.”
- Mike O’Brien, November 2012

I am very interested in how you can combine horizontal and vertical progression (progressing in two different directions?) for the same content… I believe it can not be done, and instead you can only create a very slow, very bloated vertical progression.

I’m out. I haven’t requested refunds, and so I will keep an eye on GW2 over the years just to see what happens. I can’t see me ever coming back to “catch up” with the treadmill.

Mister Mike O’Brien does not speak for me. I never felt GW1 was stagnant or not fun due to no vertical progression. On the contrary it was liberating to be able to do anything without the pressure of wondering if my gear was good enough.

I doubt I’m the only one that feels that way.

I never saw the difference between skill creep and power creep honestly.

tkalamba.2541:

Harbard.5738:

First of all: They DID say what their intentions for the game were, and you should really read Mike O’s answers. They came out and took the time to tell us where the game is going. That was due and very appreciated.

I suggest you guys read EVERY answer by them before you claim they say something they didn’t or reducing this to a PR spin and the other words people are spurting so often that they’re losing their meaning.

Chris:
http://www.reddit.com/user/ArenaNetTeam
Mike O:
http://www.reddit.com/user/Mike-OBrien-ArenaNet

To people believing there’s no treadmill: They already said the level cap will increase at some point, probably in expansions. Guess what? gear stats will increase too. Chris was also VERY careful and made a disclaimer every time so people don’t call him liar later. Stats WILL increase, rarity tiers will not increase FOR THE FORESEEABLE FUTURE. Wake up!

Honestly, people just need to see this game never actually had true horizontal progression.

The best example I like to use of Horizontal progression is Planetside 2, and its an MMO FPS. Battlerank (pretty much levels) only unlock emblems. You get certification points as you play, pretty much in lieu of actual experience, to unlock new gear, which only serve as what they called sidegrades (serve different purposes, but don’t necessarily mean they are better).

No stats, no tiers of weapons, and you could play the game, and play it really well, with never unlocking a single gun.

I just cant get into FPS games, and I hate sci fi..so that game is just not my cup of tea at all. I dont think GW2 is what it said it was..teh manifesto has little to do with it though at least the part people are up in arms about. I wanted a game that was much closer to a pen and paper rpg than anything ive seen.

Amonde Daneren.2380:

To the people saying: two players are never equally matched, so there is always an imbalance, the ascended stats are not that much higher, it should not matter:

Personally I feel it comes down to this: If one gets outplayed, that’s fine. You both had access to the same things, same number of trait points, same gear, so if you got beat, it’s on you. You need to improve.
Having people out there that can potentially have better stats then you is like being stupid rich and dating… you always have that nagging suspicion that maybe, just maybe, they only like you for the money.

Not surprisingly, many rich people prefer not to let on that they are rich when meeting potential dates; while conversely others like to throw their wealth in people’s faces.

Can you see how it could matter now?

No I dont. When I played shadowbane and everyone had the new shiny purple rogue gear..I used to like wearing the older gear with slightly lesser stats and owning them. I used to hunt the purple gear all day long and kill people in the area with the mobs that spawned it just to kill everyone who came with it on. I got killed several times by people who had the gear and some who didnt that just had greater skill, i tipped my hat and sent them a tell saying “hey man, great fight”.

I didnt need a crutch or excuse to lean on and I still dont. An extra 20 pts in 3 different stats is a joke to be talking about balance over right now. Being angry over the principle of being lied to, I get it..I never bought into the manifesto and I never liked Gw1 outside of PvP, I still understand believing in something. Saying its over not being balanced seems like inviting weakness and excuses into your dojo.

2k for ring
5k for weapon ..thats about commensurate with their RNG

rchu.8945:

how can anyone trust them once they introduced ascended gears and slot upgrade progression? People get fooled by it’s just a slot item, but those upgrades going into the slot could potentially have so much stats on them that it will make a difference in both PvE and PvP that everyone must get (aka grind) them.

because I dont play for potential or speculation, I play for fun and to use whats available now.

Amonde Daneren.2380:

It’s OK, only the loyal fans of Arena.net and GW1 were really affected. And considering the amount of fun that game offed us, i for one do not regret my pre-purchase in the least, even if I am never going to play this game again because they added vertical progression.

As far as the logic of the refund, here in the EU, you have 6 months after purchase to evaluate a product and see if it meets your needs, if not you can ask for a refund, no questions asked.

Wow…no wonder there are less options and companies. You have immeasurably more loopholes for consumers than we do.

LordByron.8369:

Ditton.3149:

LordByron.8369:

oh yes i played them

lineage 2 and many others that makes wow seems a no grind game….

And again yes if you extend the amount of farming required to few secondary pieces to the whole set, suddenly any korean mmorpg isn t so scaring…..

i won t comment on the usual misonformation people like you puts in their post because the importance of ascended gear have been discussed so many times already…

Forcing people to repeat what everybody knows doesn t makes your post seem more valid at all.

I’d love to see a normal player playing all the content to find 50 ecto, 250 vicious claws but most of all the vial of essence without grinding fractals….and 2 rings

This in few weeks

Few are lucky, most simply needs to grind the dungeon…..

Not to mention there are 2 overcosted upgrades for the backpack ….what the cost of that?
more than a precursor.

if all you are worried about is your gear, I could own you in greens. Your argument is paper thin and without merit. You have no significant contribution and only speculative garbage parading around as something remotely substantial. it doesnt matter what is out next year, you dont base a character now on what might be out next year. What is out right now is rings and back slot..that is not a lot of advantage and in no way forces you to do the dungeon to succeed in other parts of the game , if it does than your skill is subpar and you should be working on improving that instead of dungeon running all day.

Lol as said many many times, RNG and “progression” defenders mostly rely on personal attack and misinformation…

You are not the exception…

But you know what people learn reading your post?

Simply that you don t have a clue on basic mechanics of the game….
Not to mention the lack of text formatting and netiquette…..
This is the perfect example of how not to write a post on a forum for both context and appearance.

FYI: i need the ring to play with friends -.- and help the guild do you feel satisfied now?
Also as said SOME classes have to rely hugely on equipment…..those few more HP is the difference between being oneshot or being able to heal back to full health…..reverse for offensive purposes…
Obviously some other classes are more beginner friendly you should try some other profession…..

I could care less about how you feel things should be formatted. I also didnt insult you, I insulted your argument, of which you did the same by calling me misinformed.

Please show me the concrete facts that state there is a huge disparity of power between what you can get with exotics and the entire 3 pieces of even infused gear that you can get with ascended. Then do me a favor and put those in context to the entire statistical ratio and not simply the gear related one.

I dont recall mentioning a class I played or how I played it. So enlighten me as to how you can make any supposition or intelligent guess as to my nature of play? Is this indeed more speculation based on implicitly derived heresy that you have conjured up to sound like something substantial when in truth it is not when put in context to actual facts?

As for the guild, Im sorry that you dont have the equipment to run with the guild. Its a bummer, I think they missed the boat as far as their distribution of ascended and they have admitted as much. That being said, dramatic hyperbole and assumptions based on items not yet in the game seems like little more than useless conjecture.

LordByron.8369:

oh yes i played them

lineage 2 and many others that makes wow seems a no grind game….

And again yes if you extend the amount of farming required to few secondary pieces to the whole set, suddenly any korean mmorpg isn t so scaring…..

i won t comment on the usual misonformation people like you puts in their post because the importance of ascended gear have been discussed so many times already…

Forcing people to repeat what everybody knows doesn t makes your post seem more valid at all.

I’d love to see a normal player playing all the content to find 50 ecto, 250 vicious claws but most of all the vial of essence without grinding fractals….and 2 rings

This in few weeks

Few are lucky, most simply needs to grind the dungeon…..

Not to mention there are 2 overcosted upgrades for the backpack ….what the cost of that?
more than a precursor.

if all you are worried about is your gear, I could own you in greens. Your argument is paper thin and without merit. You have no significant contribution and only speculative garbage parading around as something remotely substantial. it doesnt matter what is out next year, you dont base a character now on what might be out next year. What is out right now is rings and back slot..that is not a lot of advantage and in no way forces you to do the dungeon to succeed in other parts of the game , if it does than your skill is subpar and you should be working on improving that instead of dungeon running all day.

Shikigami.4013:

He did not agree that it was an exploit up above. Maybe you should actually read what he wrote instead of just assuming what you want to hear.

He said they are aware of “the two” without labeling the reported issues as exploits or confirming that they actually are exploits. He could have meant “the two mechanics”, “the two repeatedly reported unusual solutions to the objective” or “the two issues that are regarded as exploits by some players”. Even the person reporting it admitted that he was not actually sure if it is an exploit or intended.

The fact that it does not “seem to” be working as intended to you or to other players does not make his statement a confirmation that people shooting a seal that is visibly losing its defensive shield should be considered an exploit.

And what is wrong with calling people slow-witted? There are plenty of people who just go brain-afk while fighting boss mobs, not realizing anything “subtle” like a shield being disabled on an item they are striving to destroy. Maybe the guardian of the shield is upholding it by force of mind and cannot manage anymore because of the fight, and those people who do notice that the shield is gone are rewarded by a quicker completion?

My point is, there is no way for a player to know if the shield should drop or not. If there is no way for a player to know that what he does is wrong, it cannot be considered “exploiting”.

Slow witted is a derogatory term, im sorry that it has escaped your attention, allow me the opportunity to let you know its an insult. He lumped an obvious exploit of jumping through a wall in with the whole idea of the shield dropping, also at no other point can you attack those shields, the hammer has to. Logically, its something unintended, taking advantage of an unintended situation is an exploit. They said as much during the entire karma merchant venture. I will give you that at no time did he explicitly state that it was an exploit. Your perception is not the only one that matters and neither is mine, however, the general perception seems to be that it is unintended and thus an exploit.

subseven.6950:

GW2 my friends…is nowhere near the perfect MMO. Can’t even live up to it’s name.

That is your opinion. I couldnt stand GW1 for anything but gvg with my guilds on weekends..the rest of the game bored me to tears.

Gehenna.3625:

Razarei.2809:

OH my god LEAVE the ascended horse alone. It’s dead, stop beating it. This was a great AMA and you doomsayers can either leave or stay. Either way most of us who have a brain won’t care about your selfish ways.

I feel sorry for Chris having to apologize on behalf of himself and the company for issues and exploits and segregation brought on by the players themselves. Even before the patch there was constant segregation.

The lack of intelligence in this whole thread is just outstanding.

Please don’t mistake your opinion for intelligence.

Anet have now in the AMA admitted that they knew this reaction would come. That means they already knew that their communication before doesn’t match the current reality of the game.

Also they said that in retrospect elements have not been released in the way it should have been. You cannot claim that something went wrong in retrospect when you expect a kittenstorm. That means you intentionally or at least knowingly released things before they were ready.

I do wonder why they didn’t release ascended gear in the beginning but did bring out legendary gear. Logically that’s the wrong way around and would have avoided a part of this discussion.

Lastly they say that they thought they were clear that this game would have stat progression and this is the biggest lie of them all. Again if you know you will get so much negativity over something before you do it, then you know you haven’t clearly communicated it.

I read a lot of interviews before release and this was in fact news to me. It’s dishonest to say this now.

They are not even really apologising if you read properly. They are dodging bullets.

Aside from boredom and not being happy that GW2 does in fact NOT bring “everything I love from GW1” because part of that was the lack of stat increases or power creep…..and trust me there’s more but I’ll leave that to another discussion.

So, the AMA clarifies to me that Anet is not able to be clear and honest still and that there is no reason for me to trust them. It’s just as well I think.

For those who love GW2 as it is and where it’s going….I am happy for you.

Me, I’ll be happy in another game where the company’s dishonesty limits itself to embellished marketing and delayed release dates. The stuff you expect basically.

Excellent, wish you well. Happy for you too, can I has your stuff?

RedBaron.6058:

Hello all,

The best MMO ever will use extensively player designed content and will allow players to have a real impact in the world around them. Will be a permanently changeable world, with immense maps for exploration/adventure and permanent conflict areas directly impacting the players life in-game like not having access to cities/areas/dungeons/etc unless you conquer them.

Will allow players to be whatever they like, to develop the skills they want with no defined classes or weapons or gear. You can develop any skills and train in whatever weapon suits you and wear whatever armor gives you advantage for your chosen skills/weapon combat style.

Will have land, sea and aerial combat (on vessels, mounts or creatures).

The crafting system will allow you to create an infinity of armor and weapons skins (combining partial skins from a in-game library always in constant evolution) with adequate stats to balance the game.

Will have GM’s permanently in-game, playing the game alongside players and starting out a multitude of events with variable rewards, kicking bots and being part of the community. Why do we generally have permanent staff managing the forums and do not have permanent staff playing the game identified as GM’s? After all the game is the top priority.

This will demand a huge team of permanent staff for the game to be always fresh and continuously renewed.

The only way of doing it is to introduce a new model of business for MMO’s, that I forecast will be the future: Subscription + Gem shop.

With both options, the company will guarantee a constant revenue plus a variable revenue that hopefully (if the game keeps high standards) will fund my proposed model.

This model will balance the unique currency of any MMO: available TIME.

Thank you and best regards,

Red

This is like a 200 million dollar capitalist venture here…and the sub would need to be more than other games..something like 30/month.

Apathy.6430:

Ditton.3149:

That is boatloads of programming and Neverwinter was a series of games they let people run on their servers via a toolset. Making this game open source would be a big mistake, its not a single player RPG. As for the random dungeons..I think FoTM basically is discovering the possibilities with that.

While FotM is new and pretty refreshing (the jumping puzzle type of things, and the “dungeon” aspect are great), it will lose it’s luster and just become going through the motions. I’m sure people delving into level 20+ are already bored out of their minds regards the laser ramp thing and the harpy platform jumping.

Not to say FotM is flawed, it is a great jumping off point. It allows them to easily add in new set pieces to keep things fresh, and being “in the mists”, they aren’t exactly tied to the lore of Tyria or the location, which is fantastic…it lets them design everything from a clean slate.

But yeah, it will never truly be random. It will just be different orders of set pieces in which each set piece loses it’s luster. That said, expecting a truly random dungeon that is interesting every time is a pipe dream at this point in time. It just isn’t possible with current technology.

that is why I say discovering possibilities..I think it would be interesting if every dungeon had a bit of that mechanic in it. say..3 different random endings for each path taken or something to that effect.

kistell.5684:

Chuo.4238:

Well, I read the AMA text.

TL:DR – ArenaNet is going to do what it wants with Ascended gear, no matter what anyone says, and they won’t grow a spine and actually stick to any principles. They’re wishy-washy, difficult to pin down, and don’t appear to have a clue.

I’m done here. Goodbye ArenaNet and GW2. I waited patiently for this AMA in the (vain) hope you’d realize that the game you sold me and the game you have now are COMPLETELY DIFFERENT. I’m sick at heart that I was actually stupid enough to spend money in your gem store thinking that this was going to be a long-term game for me.

Boy, was I a sucker.

Enjoy your $40. It’s the last you’ll ever get from me, and hopefully many other people. You don’t deserve it.

Not that you will read this, or care. You’ll just ignore this thread until you think you can get away with locking and deleting it. You’ll give virtual “infractions” to anyone who speaks up against the about-face in principles that you just performed.

Point is, you don’t care any more about your game. And your target audience is clearly not your original Guild Wars fan base.

Yes, I’m angry and disappointed and frustrated. I’ve wasted money and time on yet another RIFT/Aion/SWTOR type crap game.

The Spirit of Guild Wars died on 15 November 2012. RIP

Edit: Added an afterthought.

Second this post.

I was holding off for the AMA and it was exactly as i had expected, sufficient to say GOOD BYE.

As for Anet you will no-longer get any more funds from me ever again. I applied for a refund and was refused a refund on my game but told i could get refunded on all my gem purchases but they would PERMANENTLY BAN my account.

Well your idle threats mean nothing i have instructed them to do so id rather have some thing back than have egg on my face for believing the manifesto which was sold to the user base, when behind the scenes they knew it was just PR spin and totally untrue.

Good bye and i have the others staying enjoy it, and for those who tell people good riddance don’t forget the more people who leave the more you destroy your own community, although fan boys like that are to daft to understand that.

Actually the better the game becomes the more people will come in, but you can keep spouting incessantly negative speculation if you like. Good bye, wish you well.

kineticdamage.6279:

So … while I salute Chris ultra dedication for this AMA (9 hours straight, wow) …
He didn’t give answers on the most important topic about current boredom :

“PD1: GW1 had hundreds of skills for each of it’s classes. Can we expect skill additions for GW2 as well? If so, will they only be added in expansions? Are there plans to add them with major non-expansion content updates?”

(and moreover, PD1 to PD4)

I was waiting for this precise answer to know if I’d log on again …

People were so maniac with the gear questions that he duplicated the same answer about it around 10 times. I don’t play for gear, I play for playing the game. It’s crazy how majority of players are still obsessive with the shiny armor syndrome.

He said in a post that class changes, balances, bugs, PvP and WvW were all handled by a different department and he didnt want to give answers he was not sure of, but would try to get separate AMA’s for all of those parts of the game as well.

Jairyn.6913:

A good way to rapidly generate additional content is to host player generated content as exemplified by the Neverwinter Nights toolset or Architect Entertainment in City of Heroes. I believe some other MMOs (EQ2? STO?) also leverage this feature.

Of course, AE in CoH was also an example of players abusing this feature to gain unexpected amounts of xp and currency and needed to be checked, so a token/currency system would still probably work better then awarding singular items. The real appeal there is the novelty of different scripted experiences and player storytelling. Free content.

In theory, a robust system of cascading dynamic events and meta events that breadcrumb through the world and/or randomized instanced dungeons a la Diablo or City of Heroes could also provide a great deal of replayable content that remains somewhat fresher.

That is boatloads of programming and Neverwinter was a series of games they let people run on their servers via a toolset. Making this game open source would be a big mistake, its not a single player RPG. As for the random dungeons..I think FoTM basically is discovering the possibilities with that.

I think without a unifying purpose like open world pvp or something of that effect that horizontal progression gets incredibly boring. Without GVG, GW1 would never have been half as interesting. So they need to beef up WvW and SPvP..and other things will plane out imo.

Esrever.8613:

Carltonbanks.1754:

Amonde Daneren.2380:

Random people don’t just walk up to you and say things like that. Someone has to feel very cheated to get that kind of emotional response.

I for one would stop and ask myself if i had maybe done something wrong.

Considering the level of self entitlement and melodramatics the people on this forum display, it really wouldn’t take a lot to set someone off like that.

People are so entitled when they pay for something they were advertised and they get something they didn’t want. I mean wow, what were people expecting right? Everyone should just accept everything and anything that happens and buy more black lion keys. I mean, playing the game for 1000 hours and getting screwed over is completely good. People should really stop being so melodramatic. I mean its not like they have anything invested in the game or anything.

Being completely negative just makes you look like a whiner. They have answered your questions, said what they intend to do. Leave or dont, stop posting negativity about the same topic..its just lame at this point.

Distaste.4801:

EndlessDreamer.6780:

Distaste.4801:

Death Reincarnated.3570:

zippo burntfur.9307:

Imo the biggest screw up they did was limiting how you could get ascended gear, making running FoTM did not score much imo. If they would have made craftable version’s, and pvp version’s from the get go, I think alot of this firestorm could have been negated or atleast deminished.

ANet initially introduced Ascended gear via the FotM. They have written that this, perhaps, was the wrong way to go about. However, this new gear tier will roll out throughout the game; which will mean it will provide more accessible ways to get it.

The major problem with that is if we apply the current grind for ascended items to other avenues all you’re looking at is more flavors of grinding available. Think about it, 2000 badges of honor for 1 item, 1 million karma per item, or 20 dungeon runs for 1 item. Not to mention that both karma and WvW have severely limit stat combinations. They could add 20 different ways to get ascended items but if the current grind is any indicator they still wouldn’t be more accessible.

Read the AMA. They stated that they realized that the price of ascended items were disproportionate in certain ways to the amount of work they wanted people to put in for them in comparison and they’re looking in to it.

Here is the problem, exotics are already pretty grindy to obtain for most people. Even at 3g per piece of gear(cheap!) you’re looking at 36g for 6 armor pieces, 2-4 weapons, and 5 accessories. At 1g an hour(assuming no exotics/loadstones/etc drop) that’s 39-45 hours of grinding. But wait! we have to put runes in them! Want the rune of divinity? That’s another 36g, or 12g for another decent rune set. Then yet another 4-8g for weapon sigils. At least So upwards of 60 hours of grinding at the low end for a single set of gear.

Want just a dungeon set? If I remember correctly it’s 30 dungeon runs over 10 days at 3 new paths a day to get 6 pieces of gear(20 runs) and 2 weapons(10 runs). So if you’re doing a short dungeon(30mins) you can get it in 15 hours, IF that dungeon set has the stats you want. Otherwise you’re looking at 1hr+ dungeons and upwards of 30 hours. Remember that this is also the NERFED version, the grind used to be something like 90 dungeon runs. To give you a better idea, back in WoW vanilla I never did any dungeon more than 12 times to get a piece of loot I wanted(dire maul north orge staff only staff with +damage at the time!). 30 raids of MC would gear everyone out.

Karma? Limited stats and grinding takes just as long as money. At 387 karma per event(iirc) it takes 651 events to get a karma set. If someone saves all karma while leveling that’s ~60k upon hitting 80, leaving 496 events to go! Even at 5 minutes per event(not likely!) that’s 41 hours, 82 hours at 10 minutes. Anyone is free to do the math with karma jugs!

Badges of honor? LOL, you’ll get the karma for karma gear in WvW before you’ll get the badges.

My point is that for most people 30-80 hours for a single set of gear is already out of reach. I know many people who quit upon reaching 80 because they simply didn’t want to grind to get top statted gear, mostly because this game was touted by having easy to gain max stat gear and horizontal skin progression. Now they are putting in ascended at it’s 30-80 hours PER PIECE. Even if they lower the grind on it, it’s still going to be above current exotics, thus out of reach of most. I don’t even want to grind for a 2nd set of exotic gear set because it’s already painful and now we have ascended? If they are looking into things then they need a really drastic overahul of all current items to ease people into gear grinding.

ArenaNet failed at vertical loot progression if that is what they wanted to go for. WoW is very good at progressive tiers of gear so you feel like you’re constantly accomplishing something. GW2 you go from hodge podged gear at 79 to 80 rares right away because they are cheap. The jump from rares to exotics is huge. A full set of rares takes all of 3-4 hours(4g maybe using orbs for runes/sigils). You go from 3 hours to 30hours in a single gear jump. In WoW the investment was pretty even. The end result might be an epic set taking you 60 hours to get, but you got 2-3 upgrades getting there most of the time.

Exotics hard to get? Ive equipped all 4 of my 80’s in pure 80 exotics in less than 2 days after getting 80…you can run a dungeon all paths and get 180 a day..that is a piece a day..so yeah..this holds no validity. Not to mention you get about 12 if you complete all the 60-80 areas..which will get you to your 80 sets. There are plenty of ways to get exotics easily.

Shikigami.4013:

In a game that encourages thinking “around the corner” (some jumping puzzles), getting to hard to reach places (jumping puzzles and vistas), finding out unusual mechanics (fractals) I find it weird that hitting the seal is just labled as an exploit without giving it any thought.

When I did this fractal for the first time, someone said “once the seal loses its shield, destroy it”. The seal lost its shield, I targeted it regularly and just attacked it, the group destroyed it and the goal was reached. I do not see anything unusual or exploitive in this. Did anyone actually tell the players “you may not attack the seal, it is not intended”? How do players know that it is not just another mechanic that rewards players who are observative of their surroundings (notice that the seal is unprotected) while letting the more slow-witted players who just mindlessly pound on the boss continue the fight for some more minutes before letting them reach the goal too?

I object to being indirectly being accused of exploiting just because I am hitting a seal that loses its shield!

Well, the GM who designed them just agreed that it was an exploit up above. He’s probably not upset at all because its most likely a bug that he will fix..it seems though that its not working as intended. And oh yeah..calling people “slow-witted”..just a nice touch. Im pretty sure you are jumping through the solid walls in the Dredge Fractal.

LordByron.8369:

farming lvl 10 since a week…..
Still ANY ring .-.

in the meantime i m spending all i have to that 60+G backpack that requires minimun aount of grind….

Basically i put all i had in 3 months for the few new items and i m stuck to a single daily activity -.- since the patch release…

That is perfectly comparable to korean grinding games…..

yeah not even close… Youve obviously never played one of them. These items are meant to be collected over weeks or months and legendaries over even more months. Most of the people who are angry want them right now. He also said a few times that that he was sorry they put out ascended with few options to get it and that it would be remedied. The power curve isnt high enough that you need to do that dungeon..if you are doing it and only it..its your own choice.

Conner.4702:

Sadly the AMA was far from relieving concerns for me. Saying they never intended ascended items to be such a grind yet implemented such a steep cost increase over exotics say otherwise. You do not increase the cost by a magnitude of at least 10 if you don’t want it to be a grind. No one can convince me they didn’t realize this when they put it in, because if true they will need to look for people with more forsight to start calling some of the shots.
Also it seems they think progression only comes from gears, levels and other stat related things.
To me they are just trying to rewrite history. Sure they never said it wouldn’t have vertical progression, but on the flip side they never said it would. If they truly had planned this they would have been upfront about it and all of this could have been avoided. He was severely downplaying the effect ascended gear had on the community in my opinion.

Actually yeah no..read the whole thing. he said they wanted to add all kinds of progression, vertical and horizontal.

Bregah.7365:

Azjenco.9425:

But as question nine states, as of now ascended gear doesn’t fill that gap efficiently. It’s far closer to the legendary grind than the exotic ease of attainability.

It also pushes the Legendary even further because it uses the same mats, and for some of them in the same quantity.

Let’s just say that pre-Ascended, exotics were a week away once you dinged 80, and a legendary was 6 months away.

So they add in Ascended, and it looks like a piece is like 2 months away (using the above time scale) for an infused piece. But that also pushes a legendary to now 7 months or so.

So much of what they say really doesn’t make much sense and it feels like they simply haven’t thought anything through.

If you want to fill the gap, the gap filler really needs to be something you can do concurrently with a legendary, not as a “precursor” that pushes the legendary further, because right now each piece of infused Ascended does push that legendary a bit further, just widening the gap.

Everything about this patch just oozes “We know this patch isn’t ready, but we MUST put it out before Thanksgiving, no matter what” and we’ll just fix it later. Every aspect of the patch is/was bugged, just like so much of the 3 month old content that’s sitting around not being done (especially now that FotM has best in slot for 3 slots).

Except they haven’t done anything for a week now, and the AMA really doesn’t say anything beyond “yeah, we know we messed up, we’ll get to it, promise!”.

Then leave. The guy was up for hours answering the questions while people insulted him and still all people can do is give him a hard time. Seriously man, if you’re not happy, leave. They admitted they made several mistakes, said they want to build a rapport and better level of communication and design a better quality process in general. Its all they can do..they are not magic, they cant undo their mistakes.

Edge.4180:

I’m a little disappointed that questions regarding grinding, ascended gear, and ANet’s philosophy on those two points seem to be dominating most of the Q&A. It’s like.. how many ways can the same questions be asked and answered? Let’s move on to something else, already.

totally agree..

lookitsandrea.8531:

GW1 was/is one of the best MMOs ever (in my opinion)… I loved it! If you found something better, I’d be really impressed.

only thing I cared about in GW1 was GvG, the rest of it was pretty mediocre to me. I do have to say the lore is pretty cool though.

Shieldbreaker.4012:

Ditton.3149:

With what they think its DNA is. DNA is composed mostly of host material IE parental. So what you are saying is you want it to evolve from GW1..alot of people believe it or not didnt play or like Gw1 and they want GW2 to be its own creature entirely. You are presenting the manifesto which was a blog or journal created two years ago during development as the building blocks for the entire game, I find them at best a guide line.

Go into a restaraunt, look at the menu, and order a meal. When the meal that arrives is something different from what you ordered, just remember that the menu is just a guideline, it was created before that meal was prepared. Don’t forget to tip.

Thats the worst analogy to try and prove a point Ive ever seen. Show me a restaurant that puts out its menu 2 years before its launch, while its menu is effectively being developed. I know what you are doing a horrible job of stating, that it was a case of false advertising. I just dont agree with you, get over it.

Raine.1394:

Ualtar.5047:

UnderdogSMO.9428:

Ballistic.4531:

Ditton.3149:

Ballistic.4531:

UnderdogSMO.9428:

Ballistic.4531:

Astralporing.1957:

Yep, no new tiers… they’ll just deploy rares with exotic stats, exotics with ascendant ones, and ascendants with even bigger ones.

This is exactly what I’m worried about too. You don’t need to call it a new tier but it’s the same thing. Better stats are better stats – call it ascended 2 tier or ascended tier but with better stats than previously released ascended gear. Core of the idea is to calm the vocal anti-treadmill players by masking the treadmill under the same tier (tier-name).
That being said, the PR-answers Chris gave us actually did calm me down. A lot. He admited that they made several mistakes with this patch. And he actually admited it several times and appologized for it. Which is far more than I expected from this AMA.
I might get back into the game now, but will still hold on to gem purchases and will know what to expect in the future.

man… if i let every little thing that MIGHT happen worry me my life would suck and there would never be any enjoyment in it.

Chris actually said himself that this WILL happen.

No..he said they werent against it and he wasnt going to promise that it would not. Anything else is inference.

Actually nope. You are plain wrong. In his answer to E2 question he sais:
“That is why there is no plan for new Rarity Tiers of loot but there are plans to enhance or gain items within the existing rarity design whose properties continue on a shallow power curve.”

yeah that’s not new to this game though……

Of course they plan to add items within the tiers. Otherwise we would have the same gear for years. Do people really want to play a static game that never evolves in any way? That is a single player game, not an MMO.

Is the choice really around 1) keeping our gear at it’s current power level, and therefore having a static game that doesn’t evolve. Or 2) having increasing levels of power and therefore a dynamic game that evolves.

The way you presented it is known as a false dilemma or false dichotomy fallacy. No one is asking for a static game and everyone desires a game to evolve over time. So, we also have a straw man argument here.

The issue at hand is the manner in which a non-static game is to evolve. When an organism evolves, it does so in alignment with its DNA with small changes that give it, over time, a cumulative advantage in terms of its environment. If I were extending the metaphor I would liken the Manifesto to Anets DNA. Ideally, the game won’t radically depart from its DNA, and if we were talking about an organism we would probably be talking about a cancer if we were seeing a radical departure.

The key to understanding the Manifesto is to understand horizontal progression versus vertical progression. I believe everyone desires a dynamic game that evolves, so your question really can’t be answered. Many here would have liked to see the game evolve in alignment with its DNA.

With what they think its DNA is. DNA is composed mostly of host material IE parental. So what you are saying is you want it to evolve from GW1..alot of people believe it or not didnt play or like Gw1 and they want GW2 to be its own creature entirely. You are presenting the manifesto which was a blog or journal created two years ago during development as the building blocks for the entire game, I find them at best a guide line.

Reaver.9256:

Sounds like you want to play an adventure game or some sort of single player rpg with online like gw1 or a diablo. Dark Souls is pretty good.

Dark Souls and Demons Souls are both fantastic..totally agree here.

Jabronee.9465:

I dont know bout you guys but this mmo called RIFT is the closest to GW1 in terms of Skill Combinations. But over there they called it Souls Combination.
But its specific to a class. For example a War cant use Mage skills for his build.
Unlike GW1 its all around skills combination.

But be warned! RIFT is a grindfest… but they are easing up on the grind with the recent Storm Legion Expansion. Meaning new players could level up faster than before and get new items or equipment that is way powerful than those who had maxed it out before the Expansion.

Just a suggestion. Since you asked

rift is a complete and utter treadmill…if you dont like what little power curve this game is creating you will HATE Rift. Oh..and its gated too..by several factors across the different roles for classes.

Tumbero.3945:

lol dude i only see pve contents , wheres the colliseum the pvp more wvw maps , also remember gw1 faccions pvp, here nothing i only see more pve.

this I agree with..i wish the ascended fury would go somewhere else for at least a few questions. Its muddying the waters of a beautiful opportunity to ask some more pertinent questions.

judeobscure.2537:

Ditton.3149:

Eirik.9145:

Everyone always brings Ascended gear as vertical progression which some say goes against the game manifesto. What about the fact that that they said that they didn’t want gear to be random drops in dungeons?

http://www.arena.net/blog/is-it-fun-colin-johanson-on-how-arenanet-measures-success

In either case, their answer of saying that Ascended gear will be available other ways in the future is pretty meaningless when “future” has no time period attached to it. When the next set of Ascended items are released for FotM? When hell freezes over? Who knows?

Frankly, the most telling thing that has come out of this AMA is that Anet “knew” before releasing the ascended gear that it wasn’t the right thing to do and that it was going to cause problems but did it anyway. What kind of company knows that something will alienate, divide, anger, and whatever other term you want, it’s customers and knows it’s not what they really want to do, and yet does it anyway? That’s just callous disregard for your consumer no matter how you look at it. A company that does such has no credibility whatsoever in my book as actions speak much louder that words. They did this on purpose full well knowing what was going to happen. They can try to PR this into an “innocent mistake” all they want, but it seems the only mistake that was made was by me in trusting the words of a company and in believing that there are still companies that have integrity and do business honorably.

I dont read any of that in his statements..like at all. I read they realize now it was a mistake then..to not make the items accessible. He doesnt say they made a mistake putting it out..he said they made a mistake not putting it out on release and then not making it accessible. Where are you reading that he said the entire thing was a mistake?

http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/13tuac/im_the_studio_design_director_on_guild_wars_2_ama/c776lvv

That quote..states exactly what I said..that it should have been in launch and accessible..not that it was a mistake. Thanks for proving my point

Eirik.9145:

Everyone always brings Ascended gear as vertical progression which some say goes against the game manifesto. What about the fact that that they said that they didn’t want gear to be random drops in dungeons?

http://www.arena.net/blog/is-it-fun-colin-johanson-on-how-arenanet-measures-success

In either case, their answer of saying that Ascended gear will be available other ways in the future is pretty meaningless when “future” has no time period attached to it. When the next set of Ascended items are released for FotM? When hell freezes over? Who knows?

Frankly, the most telling thing that has come out of this AMA is that Anet “knew” before releasing the ascended gear that it wasn’t the right thing to do and that it was going to cause problems but did it anyway. What kind of company knows that something will alienate, divide, anger, and whatever other term you want, it’s customers and knows it’s not what they really want to do, and yet does it anyway? That’s just callous disregard for your consumer no matter how you look at it. A company that does such has no credibility whatsoever in my book as actions speak much louder that words. They did this on purpose full well knowing what was going to happen. They can try to PR this into an “innocent mistake” all they want, but it seems the only mistake that was made was by me in trusting the words of a company and in believing that there are still companies that have integrity and do business honorably.

I dont read any of that in his statements..like at all. I read they realize now it was a mistake then..to not make the items accessible. He doesnt say they made a mistake putting it out..he said they made a mistake not putting it out on release and then not making it accessible. Where are you reading that he said the entire thing was a mistake?

grumbles.5412:

I’m curious if the implementation was such a mistake and so many aspects around ascended gear was done wrongly and they knew it wasn’t how they wanted to go about doing things Why did they push it through?

Never used Reddit so perhaps someone could ask this for me.

They know NOW that they made a mistake THEN..hindsight is 20/20.

jinroh.9217:

1)
why dont you use your own channels to communicate with your own gamers?
do i need an account at facebook, twitter, reddit etc. to stay up to date?
make that optional, but not mandatory.
2)
why do you close/ merge / delete all threads with constructive feedback?
the op cant do anything bout flame, offtopic, etc.
dont infract him, infract the ones who fale or go offtopic, but dont close or delet threads.
3)
do more communicate with your costumers.
" thanks for your question" is like politics.
4)
dont use the “Moderator”-account anymore.
tell us who posted and why.
5)
Answer:
http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/13lio6/prepare_for_the_chris_whiteside_ama_here/
If you just would answer these questions,
alot of ppl would know if they will stay or leave.
greatings

he has answered 6 of them..and they have used reddit since beta to communciate with fans and others who might be interested

Logun.2349:

I’m reading through the answers and all I hear is a soft peddle of “we screwed up”. What I don’t understand is how just about any veteran MMO player on the planet could have predicted how this patch was going to impact the community and the game, yet it got released.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/The-New-GW2-Flavor-Rocks/first

So I just have 2 questions left. When are you going to fix this mess you made, and how can I trust that you’re not going to lose all common sense again?

Arena Net, Congratulations you have simultaneously taught aspiring game designers how to drill down a genre, dissect it, and find solutions to its core flaws, ….. and how to completely 9/11 a game in 3 months with a single half baked patch.

I think they have been pretty transparent about their philosophy. You obviously dont like it, they arent going to roll back or take the items out of the game. They want to expand the items and make them easier to get and more accessible to everyone including lowering ingredient requirements. If its not the answer you are looking for..then it just isnt, spouting hyperbole and being overly dramatic by comparing an experience where 5k people died in a burning tower of death to a video game and its changes..is silly and has no place in constructive conversation.

TimeBomb.3427:

Karizee.8076:

Hi Chris, my question is about the major cities. Are there any plans in the works for attracting people there? Since you decided to make LA the main city, we feel the other major cities are being left out: Divinitys Reach, Black Citadel, Rata Sum, The Grove and Hoelbrak. If you were to give each city an unique activity, do you honestly think that will fix the problem of ghost-capitals?

In GW1 there were several poles of main cities, for several reasons, and that worked astounding! Lions arch, Ascalon city (where the new guys, lowlevels gathered) Great Temple of Balthazar, Hall of heroes, Temple of Ages, Domain of Anguish, Eye of the North, Kaineng City, Kamadan (the main commerce city).

Perhaps moving the krytan dungeons to a waypoint in Divinitys reach and the ascalonian to Black Citadel, and so on? Having populated cities is always a strong factor in strenghtning bonds between people, and raising communities. Thank you for your time

We have been discussion this topic for a while. There are lots of things we have brainstormed but are not firmed up on a direction yet. However here are some ideas to wet your appetite or not:

Events and activities related to town clothes Cities as dungeons! Player created events and activities. Non confrontational material gathering for crafting.

These are just a few of the top of head.

Exciting stuff!

FYI the AMA is not happening in this thread, it’s happening on Reddit. Chris won’t see/respond to your questions unless you post them on the Reddit thread.

the guy just didnt format it correctly…the bold is Chris’ answer..this was a question he answered already

Eleazyair.5716:

So how many of those list questions did Chris answer that was posted on Reddit? Those were good questions we needed to know.

I think 5..he is still answering them.

arcaneclarity.5283:

tkalamba.2541:

TimeBomb.3427:

tkalamba.2541:

arcaneclarity.5283:

Chris Whiteside

That is why there is no plan for new Rarity Tiers of loot but there are plans to enhance or gain items within the existing rarity design whose properties continue on a shallow power curve.

So your Ascended gear will eventually be outdated as they replace it with Ascended gear with higher stats. Also, if anyone thinks the +13% increase in power from Exotic to Ascended is shallow, I have a bridge I would like to sell them.

+13%? Have you actually looked at the increase to your total character stats? It’s roughly 1% with all 3 available items which is shallow. Do not look at the individual item, but its proportional effect to you overall stats.

Once all ascended items are released, if the stat differences are similar to the rings, then it will be a 13% difference if you have a full ascended set. (ascended item w/ blue infusion vs exotic item w/ top quality gem).

Taking into account all item slots, then yes, I see the 13%.

However, we still don’t know how runes and sigils will factor into it, so exotics can currently technically outweigh that 13% increase.

Actually, we do know how runes will factor. They will be included with the Ascended item itself.

Ascended gear works a little bit differently than other gear types. The stats and functionality normally added to gear through upgrade components are actually built into Ascended items.

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/linsey-murdock-unveils-new-high-end-ascended-gear/

Basically, you are going to have to grind your kitten off via the RNG to get a full set of Ascended gear with the full rune set you want.

except that he said they were going to put many different ways of getting the items several times and you like ignoring anything he says that might be possibly construed as positive.

Wintyre Fraust.6534:

Creslin.1758:

Wintyre Fraust.6534:

Rococo.8347:

’So I would ask you to judge us by details, ’

Hell on a hot tin roof – isnt that what we HAVE been doing? and why so many are unhappy?!

Don’t judge us – hey, eyes up here – on the treadmill, judge us – hey, HEY. look at this – on this tasty looking carrot.

I dunno…I think that the betrayal, liars, etc. QQ fest about Ascended items has run its course at this point.

The stark reality is just as Mike O says:

1. They added items for 2 slots that offer a 5-10% stat increase, so the power differential that these items grant is seriously not that much.

2. Currently these items require a large grind to get, but they have admitted that it may have been excessive.

3. They are planning on adding multiple ways to get Ascended items so that you will not be forced to grind FoTM.

Now…if you have a huge problem with those three facts, I guess feel free to whine. But honestly…I think you would be being unreasonable. Just about every argument made against Ascended is a slippery slope argument, because the reality of the current situation just isn’t that bad.

You’re right in one sense. The reality has been laid out by ANET, in no uncertain terms.

I won’t be “whining” here any more. I have a policy about not complaining or attacking games that I don’t play. Even though I might play GW2 now and then to kill some time, there’s no reason to continue campaigning for a true stat-capped game here. I’ll take that fight back to my blog on MMORPG.com.

sounds good, at least you are an honorable fellow. Wish you the best.

Ballistic.4531:

Ditton.3149:

Ballistic.4531:

Ditton.3149:

Ballistic.4531:

UnderdogSMO.9428:

Ballistic.4531:

Astralporing.1957:

Yep, no new tiers… they’ll just deploy rares with exotic stats, exotics with ascendant ones, and ascendants with even bigger ones.

This is exactly what I’m worried about too. You don’t need to call it a new tier but it’s the same thing. Better stats are better stats – call it ascended 2 tier or ascended tier but with better stats than previously released ascended gear. Core of the idea is to calm the vocal anti-treadmill players by masking the treadmill under the same tier (tier-name).
That being said, the PR-answers Chris gave us actually did calm me down. A lot. He admited that they made several mistakes with this patch. And he actually admited it several times and appologized for it. Which is far more than I expected from this AMA.
I might get back into the game now, but will still hold on to gem purchases and will know what to expect in the future.

man… if i let every little thing that MIGHT happen worry me my life would suck and there would never be any enjoyment in it.

Chris actually said himself that this WILL happen.

No..he said they werent against it and he wasnt going to promise that it would not. Anything else is inference.

Actually nope. You are plain wrong. In his answer to E2 question he sais:
“That is why there is no plan for new Rarity Tiers of loot but there are plans to enhance or gain items within the existing rarity design whose properties continue on a shallow power curve.”

Since..said items would be a power curve anyway if introduced as a full set, he still isnt saying they will have another tier or more powerful items. If he said there was “no” power curve for the sets in the future, people would crucify him when a chest plate had better stats. Its awfully PC, but he isnt really saying anything other than new stuff is coming out within the tiers already present.

But isn’t he saying that new, better stuff is coming out within the same tier. Because he said there will be no new tiers for forseable future, so the only way I see it is that you will get new, better gear within the same tier (speculation: through better infusions?). Because I don’t see how you equate power curve to an already existing tier (granted not entire set is in yet, but he was talking about new gears in the future).

exactly that..there are 13 other pieces of gear not present in ascended I think, so to me that is increasing the power curve just by releasing those. And ascended is already out of the bag.

Ballistic.4531:

Ditton.3149:

Ballistic.4531:

UnderdogSMO.9428:

Ballistic.4531:

Astralporing.1957:

Yep, no new tiers… they’ll just deploy rares with exotic stats, exotics with ascendant ones, and ascendants with even bigger ones.

This is exactly what I’m worried about too. You don’t need to call it a new tier but it’s the same thing. Better stats are better stats – call it ascended 2 tier or ascended tier but with better stats than previously released ascended gear. Core of the idea is to calm the vocal anti-treadmill players by masking the treadmill under the same tier (tier-name).
That being said, the PR-answers Chris gave us actually did calm me down. A lot. He admited that they made several mistakes with this patch. And he actually admited it several times and appologized for it. Which is far more than I expected from this AMA.
I might get back into the game now, but will still hold on to gem purchases and will know what to expect in the future.

man… if i let every little thing that MIGHT happen worry me my life would suck and there would never be any enjoyment in it.

Chris actually said himself that this WILL happen.

No..he said they werent against it and he wasnt going to promise that it would not. Anything else is inference.

Actually nope. You are plain wrong. In his answer to E2 question he sais:
“That is why there is no plan for new Rarity Tiers of loot but there are plans to enhance or gain items within the existing rarity design whose properties continue on a shallow power curve.”

Since..said items would be a power curve anyway if introduced as a full set, he still isnt saying they will have another tier or more powerful items. If he said there was “no” power curve for the sets in the future, people would crucify him when a chest plate had better stats. Its awfully PC, but he isnt really saying anything other than new stuff is coming out within the tiers already present.

Rococo.8347:

I suspect that the actual artistic people involved do want a non grind game that isnt ‘wowlite’
I also suspect he’s sitting there with a boat load of linguistic word managers with an open phone line to those with the purse strings – and having spent most of my working life having to deal with PR types who would rather chew their own foot off than call a spade a spade the cynic in me says that the current named tiers may not be added to but we will have new ‘mini tiers’ in terms of the upgrade slots infusions etc
Jusy is still possibly out for me but hell i have 80,000 gold sitting on 12 characters in Wow if i want that type of ‘progression’ ( read tier grind)

I suspect that the actual artistic people still need money so they do what their bosses tell them to do or they open their own studio and live on pennies.