So our means to getting ascended items would be (the more the merrier):
Crafting
Badge of Honor vendor
Dungeon vendor
Fractals vendor
Skill point vendor
Guild vendor
Laurel vendor
Karma vendor (Crafting mats only)
Cultural (money) vendor
Faction? vendor
One time living story event rewards
Personal story completion revamp reward
RNG on a number of chests (world events/dungeons/wvw rank up/whatnot)
Mystic forge recipes
RNG on specific instanced mobs with specific rewards (< my favourite, like GW1 greens)
Certain achievements (world completion? fractal level 50?)
Epic quest chains
PvP victories of some sort (Maybe)
What did I miss?
Just my preferences
Would you rather not have them available? Or prefer to have the devs work on your favorite options first?
(I can see arguments being made for both cases, but they are quite different)
I’m saying you shouldn’t be able to obtain Ascended gear these ways. If Ascended gear is too common it’s not as awesome when you get it. In your list, you want to make it as common as Karma, lol.
Do not get up so high with tokens & points.
5000 Token? That’s a month of hard CoF Grind… really want that?
Don’t think so…
But it already takes a month of grind to craft ascended gear anyways. Giving it to Dungeons or other accountbound currencies just gives us another way to obtain it.
Anyone here have a huge complaint against the idea of being able to buy Ascended Weapon/Armor Chests with some of our account-bound currencies?
Maybe~
Guild Commendations – 150 commendations, any stats
Badges of Honor – 800 badges, any stats
Dungeon Tokens – 1,000 w/ stat combinations matching the each dungeons’ existing flavors
Fractal Relics – 1,500 w/ stat combinations matching the current capacitors
((all quantities subject to change and offered only to inspire thought))
Nike,
This is a great suggestion! But what do you think would be an appropriate number of dungeon tokens (we’ll use that as an example) to buy Ascended armor? Right now it costs 1380 tokens to buy a dungeon armor set. Should you be able to buy Ascended armor with tokens from just one dungeon or should it require tokens from all dungeons to purchase Ascended armor? i.e. 690 token from each dungeon (5520 total), or something. This would be a great step away from the “need gold to buy anything” mentality.
EDIT: Another thought, they could add new Ascended armor skins for each way you could unlock it. This would add prestige to Ascended armor not just because you have it, but because of the way you unlocked it (i.e. you excel at dungeons, WvW, farming gold, etc.)
I agree that gold>everything else is an issue in this game. I do not agree however the solution to it is to make more binded items.
When an item can be bought and sold in the Trading Post its drop rates have to be balanced around that concept. If the drop rate is too high then the item becomes too common and the price drops. This means that, no matter the drop rate of an item, it will almost always be cheaper/more time efficient to buy it off the TP than to farm it yourself.
The way around this is to make an item Soulbound/Accountbound and raise the drop rates high enough that you can farm it in a reasonable period of time, OR to make the item tradable for an Accountbound currency, like dungeon tokens or Karma.
This is why I am suggesting making more Accountbound/Soulbound rewards to fix the gold problem this game has.
Thus all progression must be complimentary, enhancing your current roles, perhaps creating new ones rather than just making you more powerful.
This feels wrong to me. I think it’s “complimentary.” I don’t care that wvw progression doesn’t help me kill a world boss. Having different progessions that don’t stack with each other isn’t a bad thing.
I think he meant complimentary as in “compliments your current role/build rather than obsoletes it with new gear” as opposed to “all forms of progression are tied together.” At least that’s the way I took it.
Yes! The idea of prestige classes would be great. Maybe not quite so… deep, but what about Grandmaster traits with a huge bonus, but also negative?
Vampire Lord
You take on the form of a vampire. While in this form your lifesteal and healing effects are amplified. Your attacks heal nearby allies. However, you take increased damage from conditions, particularly burning.
What if certain pieces of ascended gear could be crafted and sold on the TP such as gloves and boots?
Chris
No. GW2 has a distinct lack of rewards that are earned only through playing the game, and far too many rewards that can be bought with gold. This is is why I want some kind of BiS/BiA character progression in Fractals.
I am assuming that you wouldn’t want a progression system in which new skills and traits superseded/replaced existing skills and traits.
Thus all progression must be complimentary, enhancing your current roles, perhaps creating new ones rather than just making you more powerful.
So therefore the idea of statistical power creep is redundant?
Chris
Yes. I don’t want the game to change from its core philosophy that content is skill, rather than gear gated. That’s why I’d like to see a progression system that adds depth to existing roles rather than obsoleting them.
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
I like the idea, but I think it should work with infusions instead of gear. I wrote a post about how Infusions could work like Materia in FFVII (combining Infusions to create infusions of higher power, or a different type of infusions). I know you read it… or at least will get around to reading it eventually. Ha.
I’ll quote it so others don’t have to hunt for my post.
Agony-Resistance is an arbitrary stat though. It doesn’t make your character more powerful; it simply allows you to play at higher Fractal levels.
It would be interesting if Agony Resistance was replaced with Infusions with unique effects (like sigils) that drop in Fractals and can be combined to create new Infusions of higher power or different types. At higher level Fractals more types of infusions would drop.
I think Infusions that increase your level of power would be more fun than Agony-Resistance, and give you a reason to buy ascended gear besides the minor stat increase.
Please can someone tell me if I’m missing something. Do your choices ever show up in the game anywhere?
I think it would be a nice form of horizontal progression.
These choices determine your character’s personality, which serves no purpose other than role-playing and has no effect on gameplay.
There are ten personalities: Scoundrel, Brute, Barbaric, Militant, Honorable, Noble, Diplomatic, Charming, Captivating, and Unpredictable.
The only way I can see this being used for horizontal progression is if they added personality specific helms. In order to do this, your character’s personality would have to be locked while the helm is equipped (because your personality can change, obviously).
Someone suggested the idea of mimicking Materia from Final Fantasy VII. At first didn’t like this idea, but then I realized how similar Materia are to Infusions in Ascended gear.
For anyone who doesn’t know “Materia” are spells that can be combined to create Materia that are more powerful or from a different element. This system already exists in GW2 in the way you combine Agony-Resistance Infusions to create more powerful ones.
Agony-Resistance is an arbitrary stat though. It doesn’t make your character more powerful; it simply allows you to play at higher Fractal levels.
It would be interesting if Agony Resistance was replaced with Infusions with unique effects (like sigils) that drop in Fractals and can be combined to create new Infusions of higher power or different types. At higher level Fractals more types of infusions would drop.
I think Infusions that increase your level of power would be more fun than Agony-Resistance, and give you a reason to buy ascended gear besides the minor stat increase.
I see your point, and I suppose the Ascended gear stats address that issue.
My comments were in response to a post that suggested Ascended acquisition should be keyed through Fractals. I’m just saying I don’t think that’s a good solution because Ascended gear is desirable in multiple game environments.
hehe, I was the one who wrote that post, hence my reply.
ArenaNet included Ascended gear for players who are motivated by statistical progression. Exotic gear was originally supposed to accomplish this, but it was too easy to obtain so they added Ascended. Fractals of The Mist are also catered to these players because you have to increase your agony resistance in order to progress.
The only thing I’m baffled by is that players who normally like running dungeons (such as the guild DnT) dislike Fractals, and that seems like a major failure on ArenaNet’s end.
If Ascended gear was intended for Fractals play, then it should have had the same stats as Exo gear, but with the addition of infusion slots for increasing Agony Resistance… and dramatically reduced acquisition costs.
Since Ascended gear has roughly 5% higher stats than Exotics, it has value in all play environments. Linking accessibility to Fractals would have been a good idea if they did not increase stats, but it is not a good solution given the current state of Ascended gear stats.
But the game is also designed to completed in Rare level gear (still), and as I said in my previous post enemies scale in power as you progress in Fractals so you need the power boost too.
Honestly, at this point I almost want WvW to go with the sPvP gear system. Just drop all those stats and simplify it and standardize it. Of course I also don’t like consumables in there so I want that dropped as well, but I don’t see either happening.
It’s an interesting idea because it might make the transition from WvW to sPvP easier. It would also make WvW easier on people with a lot of alts.
I basically agree. Now, I don’t like the idea of too much being account based and levelling an alt is in my opinion a pain in the behind, but you’re right that ascended gear is a problem for altaholics and the stat system does pigeon-hole us into a small subset of builds. That’s why I don’t like stats on gear.
I think something people misunderstand about Ascended gear is that the stat increase is only 6% over Exotic gear and it is designed for Fractals, since enemies in Fractals grow in power as the Fractals scale.
A suggestion I might make about Ascended gear, and maybe I’m way off, is to reduce the crafting requirement and link unlocking it to Fractals since this is what Ascended level gear is designed for.
This would solve the problem with people feeling like they have to craft Ascended to compete in WvW, and it would allow people to focus on having fun instead of feeling like they have to farm gold (grind) in order to craft Ascended gear.
As long as PVE and PVP balance are not separated this will not happen.
Because something that will make a class viable in PVE can completely break it in PVP and vice versa.
I don’t think they care about PvE balance. I think the game is balanced for PvP.
I think I do not feel like I progress at all. I already have a great appearance I designed for my character and exotic Berserker gear. Since I am mainly a PvE player, I’ll never really need anything other than the Berserker gear. There are more skins I’d like to unlock and continue to grow my character and evolve is appearance, but they are so expensive I don’t feel it is worth it. The example I’ll single out is the greatsword FoeFire’s Essence; I’d like to craft this for my Guardian main but it costs almost 200 gold to craft! If I farmed for a couple hours everyday that would take me one month to get! and I would be playing repetitive content I don’t enjoy the entire time. And I want to have cool appearances for my alts too!
That is the design philosophy I don’t like about GW2. I’d like to have something to shoot for that takes longer than exotic gear to get, but not as long as Mystic-Forge crafts, reaching L500 in crafting, or crafting a Legendary. Another thing is that all these rewards costs gold, which means I can’t work towards them and something else at the same time.
It would be nice to have more rewards for Karma. Right now it feels like gold is the only thing that matters and this creates a mentality where if I’m not farming gold I’m wasting time, and that is not fun.
What are some of your favorite progression systems of all time in other games? Be they horizontal, or vertical, just which ones really got you excited and were fun for you to continue to progress in?
Loot is my favorite progression system in RPG’s. I really like games like Diablo 3 and Monster Hunter 3 that are extremely loot focused. Customizing your character with loot is fun because unlocking a new item makes you want to try new a build.
Another cool progression system is “support” from Fire Emblem, where two characters have a relationship that grants them fighting bonuses. In GW2, each class could get a buff when a specific other class is present in your party.
To clarify I am looking forward to hearing the communities thoughts on speed of acquisition such as how long crafting time takes? or drop rates in fractals and other areas of the game etc.
In PvE, You can get full exotic gear and cool cosmetics in one month, and after that there is only except mystic-forge skins, legendary weapons, and ascended gear. These all take over a month to get just one item. I want something “in-between” in terms of the time it takes to get.
3. Depth in builds and choices (the ‘progression’ part of character development) is pointless if the content doesn’t utilize that depth either through lack of mechanics, mechanics being able to be brute-forced through sheer damage, or having to use a specific set of skills.
This summarizes an important point for me. Vertical progression is arbitrary if your “build” doesn’t matter to begin with. Currently, I can beat most PvE content in a bad build.
I don’t agree. When I first reached L80 I used rare Knights gear with Ruby orbs. Once I had enough money to buy exotic I switched to Berserker.
You have to remember that AH is still a selfish trait that doesn’t contribute to a party. There are other survivability builds (such as hammer builds) that do.
I suggest using Knight’s gear with Beryl orbs, slap Signet of Judgement on your tool bar, and run one of these builds with Hammer as your primary weapon:
15/15/0/20/20
15/15/0/30/10, or
15/25/0/30/0
And that will be terrible, because the delivery so far has been absolutely horrid, not indicative of such a conclusion at best and inconsistent with it at worst (DIE DIE DIE!).
Which is why people say the problem with the Living Story isn’t Scarlett’s character, it’s the exhibition/unveiling of the story.
Wow, that’s some terrible writing right there. Reminds me of the “History never lies” line
Ever heard the saying “Never judge of book by it’s cover?” Maybe you should read the quote in context of the entire story.
I think Scarlett’s character is fine; she is a chaotic character that refuses to see the world in moral boundaries which makes her a natural antithesis to the Sylvari themes of dream and nightmare.
That’s pretty good, actually.
But it’s not Scarlet.
I think when her arch completes you will find that it is Scarlett.
In the short-story Scarlett says “No system, no matter how complex, can perpetuate itself indefinitely. Those that do not evolve inevitably fail.” referring to the Pale Tree reproducing Sylvari, but I also think she is referring to the Sylvari’s moral code a.k.a. Ventari’s tablet.
My prediction for 2014 is Scarlett will attack the Pale Tree directly. In the end we will save it, but I wouldn’t surprised if Ventari’s Tablet got permanently destroyed.
The Tower of Nightmares spanned 4 patches, including a teaser patch.
Each patch had a cutscene, an instance, and new open-world content.
We had the same currency for all 4 patches, so it allowed us to earn rewards over time.
When the event was complete it left a permanent effect upon the zone, changing Kessex Hills forever!
Nice job ArenaNet. If you keep up this quality consistently it will change people’s perception of the Living Story. I think something like ToN will be the new pattern for future Living Story patches.
I think Scarlett’s character is fine; she is a chaotic character that refuses to see the world in moral boundaries which makes her a natural antithesis to the Sylvari themes of dream and nightmare.
The problem with her is purely execution. Mainly, that her unveiling has been slow paced. We waited 1 year to learn what normally takes 4 months in a TV show.
Well its 250 free healing power points, without having to go into honor. So technically it frees up a lot of points that could be put else where.
Do you feel there are other alternatives to healing through honor? There is faithful strike, which provides a neat party heal and scales relatively well with healing power and there symbol of faith, virtue of resolve (active) and healing breeze.
As I already said above, I personally don’t run the build, but the idea of it is a min/max healing spec. You don’t just go into Honor for the healing you also go into it for Writ of The Merciful and Battle Presence.
I feel like this build is only good for fulling the fantasy of playing a Cleric archetype and if you’re going to change it around why would you use it at all? Just go full Berserker instead, but a Healway Guardian won’t run Berserker anyways…
In any case the valor points are somewhat wasted…… the 150 toughness+honorable shield really only synergies well for you… In certain situations yes shield is better but focus is usually the better off hand thanks to the blast finisher blind and condi clear.
Yes, I know focus is better, but I don’t run Healway so don’t need to defend it.
You are better off putting 20 into radiance which gives you some vulnerability reduced CD on your signet heal, and some pretty sweet blinds on vuln (if you go 20) or you could go 15 in and put 5 points on any one of several other lines for the minor bonuses.
But if you change trait-lines too much the whole build falls apart and it’s not long a “min/max healing spec” anymore which is why people run it. A lot of things are more optimal but if someone cares about optimization they aren’t using this build to begin with.
Would it be better to just pick up mace of justice to get +5% dmg and +250 healing power? And use points that you would put into honor else were?
Honor is the core of the build. You need it for Writ of the Merciful and Battle Presence. If you’re not going to go into Honor why are you running Cleric?
The mace trait might be better, but shield skills have a longer cooldown so I picked that instead.
Can’t cleric gear users gain access to blinds, vulnerability and damage modifiers too?
In order to trait to get those damage modifiers you’re gimping your build. Even though the build is suboptimal in PvE the trait synergy still makes sense. link to build
And for the love of all that is Holy, do not say Berserker’s.
“By all that is Holy do you see that build over there? Glorious!”
All Diablo 3 references aside, Mixing WvW and PvE builds generally isn’t a good idea, but if you’re only going to use one build buy the gear that works best in WvW because PvE is easy.
In PvE Knights gear is the best of the one’s you listed. I’m not sure about WvW; Brutaly could tell you that. If he doesn’t see this thread send him a PM. link to his profile
But “expansion content” like new zones, races, weapons, levels, etc? Nah, I don’t expect that in a “feature only” release. If they want to open new zones and races, and do it correctly, they would put a story behind it. Why are we gaining access to the zone now? Why are we meeting a new playable race? That needs to be story driven.
That’s the point though. The patch is following the last 4 patches of Scarlett’s story-arch, which ArenaNet is taking time off to make it “as polished and exciting as possible” in their own words.
To me, that sounds like an expansion that has story-content that takes a month to get through and adds new features.
Personally, I was excited at the prospect of what the Living Story has to offer in early 2014.
Everyone should take note that they are breaking from their mandatory bi-weekly schedule. I think it’s worth discussing whether this will make a difference.
I’m excited for the potential the Living Story has next year. I think with the CDI discussions a lot of positive things could come from GW2.
If you see an elitist today give them a hug because they rely on playing a video game for the sake of their self-esteem and they need to know that they valuable because they are a human being, and not because of their race, class, or crafting profession.
What do you mean no plot? It’s simple, two women get together to destroy a large phallic symbol that’s spewing toxin everywhere! Yeah, it’s kind of anti-male.
Leveling areas are pretty empty; you will usually only run into 2-5 people. More central areas, such as farming or dungeon locations, are pretty populated. What server you’re on is also a factor, of course.
I love how I changed the title to this thread and suddenly it gets noticed. The old title was “Expansion content in 2014?”and the thread died. Now that I changed it to “EPIC Content Is Coming In 2014” I’m only attracting vitriol, and no one has replied to anything I said in the OP.
I’m not sure what your reason for making these charts is, but if you look at the wiki you can see that Exotic gear’s stats are 65% more power than white/basic L80 gear, and ascended gear is 75% more powerful than white/basic L80 gear.
That should mean Ascended gear is a 6% stat increase over Exotic gear (175 – 165) / 165 = (10) / 165 = .06 = 6%
Some important things were said the Living World 2013: The Year in Review blog post, by Colin Johanson. I just want to summarize it here for the sake of discussion.
First off: We now know Scarlett’s storyline is ending on March 4th. ArenaNet says they have 4 more patches left in her storyline. Today’s patch was the last patch in 2013, and they will be resuming their bi-weekly schedule on January 21st 2014.
Colin Johanson: After December 10, there will be just four releases left in the current major world story arc, which we like to think of as season one of the Living World. Our first release in the new year will be on January 21 as we begin our countdown to the end of this story arc. We’ll use the longer break to spend extra time to ensure that our final four releases are as polished and exciting as possible.
Second off: It is possible we’re going to see expansion-type content in early 2014. ArenaNet says that after Scarlett’s story arch ends they’re going to release a “features only” patch.
Colin Johanson: Due to the size and scope of the final four story releases in season one, the next round of major features will be bundled together into a large “feature only” release that will come after the first season of the Living World 2014 has finished.
ArenaNet has said in the past that the Living Story and expansion-type content aren’t mutually-exclusive. It sounds to me like that’s what we’re going to see in early 2014 from this “features only” patch and Scarlett’s last 4 patches.
What do you guys think about ArenaNet’s approach to these next 5 patches? It’s an obvious a deviation from their mandatory bi-weekly schedule. Do you expect these last 5 patches will differ quality-wise from what we’ve seen in the past?
Here is a link to the full blog-post if you want to read it.
Just that it is the core-reality of Tyria. It’s not so much that Tyria would die without Magic as it is that everything on Tyria would die.
5) About the Mists and multiverses, the fact that multiverses exists has been known since Prophecies, in the Prophecies manual excerpt about Lord Odran – “Over the years, Lord Odran learned to use the Rift to travel across the multiverse.”
Yes, but literature deals with themes, not laws of physics. Even science-fiction literature uses themes, although those themes are built upon hypothetical rules created in the story. To me the “multiverse” of Tyria is just a justification in the story for why we’re able to battle cross-server through the Mists. When you take it too literally I think it becomes absurd (i.e. they could make an expansion where we warp to an alternate reality where the bloodstones were never fractured, the Forgotten rule Tyria, and humans are extinct)
