Guild Wars 2

Junkpile.7439:

Wonder why you can put dungeons weapons in forge or salvage them.

Because every part of the game is equally rewarding.

No, continue nerfing builds and skills. Do never stop.

I’m dreaming of a GW2 where it actually takes a modicum of skill to kill stuff.

Boonprot.6274:

Please stop. If you think guard stacks are in any way a determining factor in an even numbers engagement you need to WvW with better players.

Normalizing gear is bad. If you honestly think Ascended is much more powerful than Exotic you probably haven’t done the math. Hint: it’s not. Exotic vs. Rare vs. etc., though, is significant. Except Exotic gear is extremely cheap and takes no time at all to acquire. If you have difficulty gearing your char fully in Exotic gear there’s something seriously wrong with your playing.

Since according to you the stacks and the ascended gear do not determine the outcome of a fight, why not just get rid of it alltogther then? Since it does nothing it’s a useless addition to the game. Right?

Nothing is off the table. What we don’t know is that nothing was ever on it.

Mister Fluffkin.7358:

/snip

Don’t forget the passive heal from Backpack Regenerator.

But yes, Automated Response is at the core of the problem. I play Engineer almost exclusively but I never touch that trait. I hate it with a passion. I’m close to reporting everyone who uses it. It is just griefing.

Straegen.2938:

A lot of players prefer WvW because effort put into advancing a character pays off. Removing that concept would basically create another sPvP situation and drive off several WvW hard core players.

That’s just a non argument. Other people will show up and tell you many people quit because ascended gear was forced on them.

Also keep in mind that gear normalization doesn’t mean less gear choices. You would still have all the gear that you can also have in PvE (even Dire gear or Perplexity runes that create problems on their own). Only the number of stats and base weapon damage would be locked.

I also believe that the critical damage change only became necessary becuase ascended gear was introduced. Ascended gear totally threw off balance, giving players more power and virtually allowing them to one shot other people. Now it’s growing out of hand and a stat combination that was perfectly fine to begin with suddenly needs to be changed. Power creep only ever creates problems, it doesn’t create more depth or adds any extra value to the game.

Hot Join is the only fun arena left.

Everything else is just bunkers camping capture points and other bunkers trying to knock the camping bunkers off said points.

juno.1840:

I always wondered (and still do) why WvW does not have regimented gear/trait/skills. Remember Beta when sylvari “Grasping Vines” was AoE? — that was nerfed purely because of how OP it was in WvW (and it was better than the ranger elite).

Same applies to Confusion. Bringing it down to PvP damage levels made WvW suddenly a lot more enjoyable again. That was definitely a good change too.

320 something ranks and not a single ascended piece of equipment.

juno.1840:

/snip

I agree with everything that you said. That’s how WvW should work.

Razamatazz.9628:

I agree with your sentiment that we don’t want a huge gap, but we have somewhere where there isn’t a gap, and working to make your character better is a big parr of MMO’s for so many people, including me . Let’s not try to make WvW into sPvP.

But isn’t it way more rewarding if you work on “making yourself” a better player? I fail to see how overcoming an opponent only because your gear/buffs are better is rewarding at all.
And if power creep must be BiS gear should be obtainable at a reasonable rate in the chosen game mode. But right now if you want Ascended gear in a reasonable time frame you have to play PvE.
PvE power creep destroys the shaky balance in WvW. But why can’t I have my Strength/Fortitude stacks in PvE? Why does balance matter more in PvE than in WvW?

Razamatazz.9628:

but it has been stated since launch that WvW won’t ever be perfectly (maybe not even well) balanced. Frankly it’s probably better they don’t fret too much over it as the likelyhood of balancing WvW to the extent some players want it is probably impossible. WvW is imperfect, and it has a power creep.

No one asks for perfect balance or is naive enough to believe in true balance. But the goal of every game, especially every PvP game, should be to become more balanced over time. Not the opposite.

Johje Holan.4607:

Do more of this:
1. Fix things. You’ve fixed culling and skill lag is much better. Fix the other things that people have wanted since launch (party system, commander system, glitching into certain towers/citadels, building trebs in places you are not supposed to be able to build them in, etc.).
2. Map changes/new maps. You’ve changed the center of the BL and EOTM is coming out. But it takes too long. Do something about the worthless space at the NE and NW of the BL. Or even better new maps.
3. Experiment with different matchmaking systems. You’ve had different systems but all have had their problems. Change it up more often. Manually make the matchups.

Things to do less of:
1. Less Power creep. Superior siege, masteries of siege, Guard Leach/Applied Fortitude, Bloodlust, Ascended gear. Power creep is bad.
2. Less PvE. (Both spending your time on it and putting it into WvW.)
3. Less imbalance. Yes we know WvW is never going to be balanced like sPvP but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t strive to make it as balanced as possible. And don’t add stuff to WvW that makes it even more imbalanced than it naturally is already. Balance is good.

+1 to this. Couldn’t put it better.

Yes, please change the trait.

I don’t like it. As a player I need a challenge. Zerging doesn’t provide that.

WvW suffers from massive power creep: food buffs, Bloodlust, Guard Leech, World bonuses, ascended gear. The PvE gear choices make it worse. Some examples are: Dire gear (must be the worst addition so far), Perplexity runes (somewhat contained now). Then there is PvE traits and skills (Dhuumfire especially). All this comes togther to make conditions over the top.

Reworking Guard Leech (even PvE does not offer such powerful buffs) and Bloodlust would be a good start. Restricting gear another good step (especially things like Dire). Capping gear at Exotic level a relief. Making stacking weapon sigils only work off player character kills would be another step in the right direction.

There is so many things that could be done to improve the quality of the game and combat but I’m afraid we’ll never see it.

I’m playing a faceroll class.
I spam AoE.
I spam conditions.
The AoE I spam is mostly conditons.
Please send me your gold.

RedShipRaider.9560:

It is generally best to ignore strawman trolling arguments. But let’s follow this bit of nonsense to it’s end anyways.

The ideal goal would be 70 AR. You make the claim that you can ‘simply’ get there just from Infused rings. So we are looking at 5 AR on each of them from standard infusions, leaving 60 to go. That means you are looking for +30 Agony Infusions. The cost for the Thermocatalytic Reagents alone for each +30 Agony Infusion is over 8 million gold. This is ignoring the cost to get over five hundred million +1 Agony Infusions.

So let’s look for something a bit less trollish and at least closer to reality. Such as full ascended trinkets, infused back and rings. From the standard +5 Infusions you can hit 30 Agony Resistance, leaving 40 to go with three Agony Infusion slots. Getting +13 Agony Infusions isn’t as absurd as +30’s at least. But you are still looking at 4,096 +1 Agony Infusions for each of them. This is far more than you can actually farm on your own, forcing you to go to the Trading Post for at least a portion of them. At 15 silver each, you are looking at 614 gold, and then another 61 and a quarter gold for the Th. Reagents needed to combine them. So 675 gold for each Agony Infusion, and you need three of them. And at the rate that FotM give gold, you are going to be at it for years before you have gathered 2k gold for this.

And now we are back to where we started. The idea of ‘Just use Agony Infusions and you don’t have to grind anything but fratals!’ is absolutely absurd. No matter how you want to break it down, Agony Resistance is a very significant barrier to entry. Which wouldn’t be a bad thing, if there were other enjoyable endgame activities to GW2. But as it stands you have tPvP, WvW, and high level Fractals of the Mist.

And it seems like there are quite a few people who looked at the situation that the OP describes here and decided that the “we don’t make grindy games” MMO that they bought into isn’t really worth grinding up to the point where they could start playing effectively.

I just want to thank RedShipRaider.9560 for this post.

There’s probably no format in this game where we are getting close to balance but WvW is certainly the place where we are farthest away from it. Not even PvE (!) has trash like Guard Leech, Applied Fortitude or Bloodlust that completely destroy the little class balance we have.

The reason Thieves in WvW are hitting this hard even on rather highly armoured targets is the massive power creep we have seen over the past year. Food, WXP ranks and now full ascended gear make for a very unhealthy mixture. No matter how good you play you cannot make a comback after a 12k Backstab.

Power creep has a huge impact already and I’m afraid we haven’t seen much yet. I fully understand the concerns of the OP and everyone who tries to derail this thread into a “OMG L2P NOOB” troll thread has clearly little understanding of what’s happening.

Fortus.6175:

nope, i would be happy if we first fixed what we currently have.

All resources to it.

QFT

The entire addition of ascended weaponry and armour was unnecessary. Making it only available through time gated crafting makes it worse.

To those claiming it’s no needed, I dare you to go to WvW, find a Thief with ascended/legendary daggers and ask him kindly to Backstab you. You’ll see how not needed it is. We are basically back where we were at release, before the Thief burst got toned down. Going backwards is not how you make a game last.

(And please don’t derail this into a OMG nerf Thief thread, because it’s not. Ascended gear is asking for abuse, and that’s where we are.)

It’s downright scary that compared to some Necromancer builds, Warriors seem almost balanced.

Ascended gear, lack of balance, lack of meaningful additions to the game, no, I’m sadly not excited at all.

George Steel.1804:

But crafting, no no no! I’m siding with the dredge on this one. My Guardian who was once the best geared for the game will now fall behind. I too have lost most interest in WvW with roamers running around with ~10% stat increases and 5 stacks of each buff (I don’t GRIND WvW, I roam, so I’ll never achieve this either).

I couldn’t agree more. The power creep has come to a point where it’s really no fun anymore to go to WvW with a small party of 2/3/4 people if you don’t sit in your grinded ascended gear.

It’s a shame really.

As far as it goes for skins I think the new PvP skin merchant does it right:

-a limited number of currencies/ingredients: in this case gold and glory. Too many currencies are a pain to keep track off, yet alone to gather. Just looking at an asecended recipe makes me walk away in terror.
-no time gating. You can get it as quickly or slowly as you want. if you don’t play a game you don’t feel like you missed out on something.
-the price is a bit over the top for some sets, so that needs adjusting.

Easy to get, not time-gated, straight forward systems is what I want. I’d love to see something like that in PvE. I’d love to walk away from the current dungeon reward system for example, that forces you to grind the same place over and over again insead of letting the player decide how he wants to get his items. Freedom of choice!

MrSilver.5269:

I just can’t get over the cost of mats to make a single item, not to mention the time gating for the glob of elder spirit residue.

I will be getting a single ascended weapon for one character. PERIOD.

I was planning on doing ascended armor for one character as well. Forget it it. I won’t even consider it now, unless they introduce alternative ways to get the items.

This very much. While I have collected enough basic mats to level my crafting from 0-500 (been collecting since release but never crafted, don’t think it’s fun), I’m still way behind ascended mats. I came back a week prior to the ascended weapon update and in all that time I only collected around 350 Dragonite. PvE champion zerging is not very appealing to me, nor is WvW zerging. But as a roamer or scout I am basically stuck with getting Empyreal Fragments from camp flipping. The occasional tower my party captures isn’t enough to get the mats I need.

I think it’s a pretty fail addition to the format. The buff adds more power creep and no matter it again favours the more populated server.

Ruins should have been a seperate map from the start, with a rather low player cap for each server (around 20-30). The different ruins should have been spread out, each one in a very distinct environment that would force a server to bring a large variety of builds. For example a ruin in a cramped area with many choke points would favour stealth and AoE. Another one high on a mountain would favor knockbacks and stability. Yet another one in the open field would favour mobility.

Each ruin should be capped through a different mechanics. A capture the flag type ruin, another one through holding a control point, etc.

A match inside the ruins would only last for, lets say, an hour. The winning server would get +3 points towards total score for every player kill. No stat increase or other power creep that further imbalances the game. The buff would be active for one hour, during which the 3 sides fight for the buff for the next hour.

Since it’s hard capped at 20-30 players the zerg heavy server is not at an advantage. If you want add a different ruins area for every BL or even EB. The buff only applies to the map you fought on.

You get rewarded if you win a match, not for zerging through different objectives and standing on control points well protected within your 80 man group.

Actually some PvP. That would have been nice.

I love my hobosacks.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

VOLKON.1290:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Is it fair to say that regarding Ascended Gear we would like to see more ways to earn it and in terms of drop rates, a higher percentage chance of acquiring them through this method?

Chris

Possibly, or in lieu of that a means to add flexibility to the gear to allow for stat changes without needing to create a whole new set (see my inscription idea as an example).

Someone creates a whole set of berserker ascended and finds themselves getting rolled still (as glass cannons do) in WvW may have buyers remorse when that PVT set starts looking mighty tempting…

Yep thanks Volk for adding Stat changes to the proposal.

’Is it fair to say that regarding Ascended Gear we would like to see more ways to earn it and in terms of drop rates, a higher percentage chance of acquiring them through this method?

The ability to change gear stats.

The ability to potentially use tokens from encounters (allowing users to work toward acquisition of Ascended Gear) that would otherwise only offer RNG chances on Ascended Gear, allowing users to work toward the items (courtesy of Nike and others)’

Note this is the formulation of a proposal for discussion.

Chris

Sounds good but please do make the price reasonable. Having to play 2/3/4 weeks for 1 piece of equipment is terrible.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Personally i feel like it could be made more accessible through playing different parts of the game. Once we have concluded the discussion on the tightening up of Vertical Progression we will move onto Horizontal discussion. Huzzah (-:

I’m only talking WvW here since it’s the area that I’m interested in most.

It has probably been brought up many times before but just add GW1 type merchants. You give them X gold, Karma, Badges of Honour, Laurel and in return you get Y piece of armour/weapon. Of course the price needs to be mangeable, nothing like we have right now.

I am strictly against any vertical progression. But if it has to be, anything that even only slightly increases the power level of player characters needs to be easily obtainable (I’m talking days here, not weeks or even months). This remains true for a skill progression system. More potentially powerful skills mean more build diversity and more power for the player. A stable power curve is especially important in PvP (namely WvW) where imbalance created by more powerful items or skills destroys competitive play.

That said, progression should only be driven by cosmetic or convenience concerns. Weapon and armour looks, mods and sigils that you can change on the fly outside of combat, customizable weapon effects (make it glow pink or green, make it drop footprints or leave a cloud, etc.), bank tabs that you can unlock through quests or other means (limited to 1 or 2 tabs, I can see people go out of their minds for even only a half one), an increased wardrobe space unlocked by the same means (if we ever get one ), heck why not even “omni weapons”: a dual wielded “omni weapon” can become any dual wielded weapon in the game, some for single handed weapons, etc.

Anything that increases the power level becomes mandatory and forces the player to grind for the item with the better mods.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Here is a crazy brainstorm idea, not in anyway indicative of our direction.

What if there was vertical progression in the Fractals with gear that increased in stats but when outside of the fractals defaulted back to BiS numbers?

I am asking this because it is going to generate some left field conversation not because I think it is or isn’t a good idea.

Chris

This would be perfect for me. As a non Fractal player I find it irritating that a minuscule portion of the game spilled over to other areas destroying balance and forcing me to get BiS – again – something I have stopped doing alltogther since getting handed a recipe, a shopping list and a daily to-do list is not my idea of fun.

I am mostly sticking to sPvP nowadays since it is the only portion of the game that still sticks to the original idea. Which is sad since I enjoyed to WvW a lot.

cuge.5398:

sry but… didnt the OP said that its unfair that he only lost 5% hp against a mesmer dpsing him hard ?

Yup, that’s exactly what he said. And he’s perfectly right.

Sirendor.1394:

Hooray for farmers and tp flippers. Please remove it from WvW or find an acceptable way of acquiring it.

I second that.

While your at it, also make AR smarter. It’s both troll traits that add nothing fun to the game. Hard counters are plain aweful.

This is what I was afraid of when they announced wanting to bring the different areas of the gaming world closer together.

I’d be happy with 3:

1. remove ascended gear or turn it into something fractals only that does not spill over to the rest of the gaming world
2. remove power creep from WvW (world buffs, WXP ranks, Bloodlust, etc.)
3. stop the whack-a-mole balance

Thanks for the video. It definitely shows how aweful hard counters are. Why did AR need an uglier cousin?

Stats don’t matter. You don’t need ascended anyway.

Welcome to power creep. Introduced by WXP ranks, food, Bloodlust, PvE traits and ascended gear.

I wholeheartedly agree. It would make WvW somewhat enjoyable again.

MrSilver.5269:

Zoia.3678:

TainoFuerte.8136:

None. It’s nothing more than the laughable grinding nonsense of so many other MMO’s, the same ones I avoided and hoped to continue avoiding by coming to this one.

The more elements this game has in common with those “other” MMO’s the less reasons I have to stay. If I’m going to grind for gear, it might as well be in games tailor made for that type of content that do it much better.

I agree. That’s one of the things I don’t understand about ascended gear. Why do we have it?
In other games with vertical progression, you need better gear to be able to complete the next tier of content. The progression had a purpose. It wasn’t even that hard to decide what gear to get for your character, as most people were either DPS, tank or healer.

In GW2, there’s no purpose to ascended gear as I see it. We really don’t need any better gear than exotics, except maybe for fractals, but fractals are such a small part of this game. Why make ascended gear a part of regular PvE, dungeons and WvW?
Especially in WvW where every % counts. Despite what some might say, and how small of an increase each part gives, someone in full ascended will have a decent advantage over someone in all excotics. It goes against the whole concept of putting players at an equal playingfield. Spend hundreds of gold on crafting or be left behind!

One of the things I liked about GW1 was how many different builds you could make, how easy it was to change between them and how you could make a group with good synergy to beat difficult content. Different content might require a different group setup, but it was no problem for the group members to change their builds.
Exotics in GW2 aren’t too easy to get, imo. It makes it relatively easy to change individual builds and group compositions if needed, but we need several armour sets for that. Gearing a character up in several sets of exotics can cost quite a bit. With ascended gear and how costly and time consuming it is to get, it basically locks your character into one build.

I’m confused as to which direction Anet is taking with this. If Anet ever releases harder content, will they make it harder by requiring better group synergy from the players and their builds, or harder because we need ascended gear?
If the former, why did they implement ascended gear? It makes it much harder, if not impossible, to change your build for different content. Very few people will have several sets of ascended gear to choose between.
If the latter, ascended gear isn’t even that much better than exotics. Like several people have said before, it just locks us into one build, so what’s the point? Will they give us agony in regular content as well?

All I can think of is that it’s just to keep us occupied and play the game longer. Easier to make us grind time gated mats for months, rather than make some meaningful(permanent?) content, yea?

This is a brilliant post.

Certainly is. Much better than my usual old fool rambling. Thanks for the post.

Cassius.4831:

So… I don’t care if ascended are needed, I don’t care if they are a long-term goal, I don’t care if they wanted to implement them before the realease (even in the case they lied to us, then)

The whole ascended-was-planned-from-the-beginning argument is nothing more than a makeshift argument anyway. It was just as hastly thrown out as the gear itself to stop people from complaining. I’m the best proof it didn’t work.

Right now I don’t know whether I should be more upset that the entire manifesto was suddenly just a “declaration of intent” or that I was fed hollow arguments to make me shut up.

Body Blocking.

Just imagine your average 80 man zerg stuck in a choke point.

As has been said before it was added as a panic reaction to people wanting somthing to grind for.

Currently ascended gear is only causing problems, especially in WvW, where power creep is rampant making that game mode even less enjoyable. Ascended gear gives you a considerable edge over your opponent making it a requirement.

Furthermore you can only get the gear (weapon and armour) through crafting. Needless to say it’s not the most exciting way to get BiS.

Last but not least since it is time and cost intensive so get you need to spend a lot time to fit out even only one character. That is first extremely alt unfriendly and second forces you into one build. A build if it is considered too powerful will get nerfed requiring you to start all over again. Whack-a-mole balance is all we seem to get (Warrior, Necromancer, etc.).

Please add a merchant that sells ascended gear for badges and karma.

Or even better:

Please remove ascended gear from WvW. Power creep kills the game.

Ah well, infraction or not, this is just too funny.

Don’t worry! With your 100 Dragonite you can enjoy the other fun content: crafting stations!

Khayoss.2019:

/snip

As interesting as the discussion could be, I do not have the time nor the will to continue it. You will never change my opinion. I’ll never change yours.

So I’ll just throw this out one more last time in this thread: vertical gear progression is poison to any PvP format. It destroys balance. It destroys competitive play. A friend pointed out yesterday that once Thieves have access to full ascended gear, Bloodlust, Guard Leech stacks and food they will be able to burst you down in 2-3 hits even if you are sitting in a moderatly defensive spec. We will have the same situation as we had shortly after release. The progress made through skill balance will be destroyed by the power creep. Instead of moving on, we are regressing. But it is worse this time since it is essentielly a self created problem. (And please this is no OMG Thieves are OP rant. It’s not the classes fault we have to deal with power creep.)

Anyway have fun and I wish you good luck with all your future projects!

Khayoss.2019:

/snip

I on the opposite think that your attitude is totally wrong.

You make it sound like gaming was an epic task, a daily struggle to survive, like you were on a holy crusade for awesomeness.

But this is just a game. A video game. There is nothing epic to it. Nothing you can do or make in here is of any importance. Nothing what you did in a video game before is of any importance either. Same stands for what I did in video games before (your not the only adult in here, although you like to make it sound that way). So trying to make players think they are special when they go out day after day to farm champions is just lying to them.

Games should be about fun, having a good time with a couple of friends on voice communication, some laughs. That’s all what it is about. And that’s why this whole “work” argument in a video game is completely wrong.

But the point is I don’t want to PvE. It’s my free time. I want to spend my free time the way I enjoy most. The moment the game forces you to do a certain thing in order to keep playing something is definitely wrong. That’s the moment it stops being fun and it becomes a chore.

/EDIT
Apart from acquiring the gear I’m also dreading the massive power creep. Fighting is become more and more stale with every addition of ascended gear. Between food buffs, WXP ranks and Bloolust it all boils down to who brings the biggest gun. Comebacks unlike in sPvP (despite the absence of proper balancing) become far and few between.