Guild Wars 2

If the maximum selectable difficulty level was based on the average level of the party members, it would help a lot, with out trivializing the intended progression.

That said, I really think this entire system has the potential to crush the game. I really don’t understand what they were thinking of when they decided to go this route. It’s a very cool concept and will probably be duplicated by other MMOs, where it might actually be a more natural fit, but it’s a complete mismatch for GW2, at least this early in the game’s life span. A year or two from now, when most of the population is already playing at the level cap and the community has adapted to the issues related to having a large percentage of the population concentrated in one aspect of game play? Sure. Just not now.

I really fail to comprehend how this happened unless Mike O’brien, Colin Johanson and Eric Flannum have somehow lost their control over the ongoing development of the game. They all spent the last few years explaining exactly why segregation of the playerbase was a cardinal sin of MMO design, then we get a system less than three months after launch that probably does more to segregate the population than any other form of content ever to appear in an MMO?

::boggle::

I really wish we would get a very in depth explanation of the reasoning behind this from one or all of the big three mentioned above, because many of us just do not get it.

I also want to know where Eric Flannum has gone. I think Ree might be taking some personal time, but where is Eric? I trust Eric Flannum and would like to hear him discuss the various challenges the game is facing the game and have him address community concerns over what seem to be some pretty serious design reversals going to the core of the game’s design philosophy.

I’d also like to hear more from Mike O’brien.

brokenserenity.4638:

Cant help but think they introduced the new dungeon about a year to soon and have thus ruined the higher level pve areas by rendering them desolate places only those seeking to finish the storyline will venture, maybe they should hold off on adding more ascended gear into the game unitll they figure out how to make the none fotm parts viable again for those who dont care for ascended gear.

I feel the same way. It’s a great Dungeon, but they didn’t seem to give any thought to all the ways it would impact the rest of the game and, to a degree, turn the core game design on it’s head.

The game would have been much better served with a redoubling of focus on the game world, fixing broken events, adding new ones and adjusting drops in order to expand the options for players in the phase of game play where farming gold and mats has become the order of the day.

I’m really starting to be concerned about the goal behind nerfing farming opportunities. If I’m ever convinced that there is a transition to a model where players need to buy gems for gold in order to progress, I’ll be gone. I’m not nearly there yet, but I’m concerned.

Jaer.1029:

I don’t mind a new dungeon, I actually welcome it (generally), I love PvE content, I’m not much of a pvp’er, so I have several alts (2 lv. 80’s etc.etc..)
I went to Orr, and other areas and they’re completely abandoned, very few (if any) people tend to look for a dungeon for tokens anymore. All it is is “LFG FotM”.
As if the event wasn’t enough poor planning, it seems Anet didn’t think ahead on this issue either. It’s really a shame, I <3 Gw2, but at the same time, I see my interest wane every time I log in.

I love the concept of FotM, but in my opinion it’s an idea that should have been reserved for a much later time in the game’s life-span. We really didn’t need new content sucking people out of the game world right now.

I have to agree with those who have been critical of the complete nerfing of various farming opportunities. Moderate them a bit? Yes. Keep them rewarding enough that they can attract people into the PvE world? Definitely.

World PvE needs to be made a lot more attractive all around. I’m hoping that’s one of the goals that they have in mind for the level scaling improvements, rather than changes to the system that might make playing in the game world less appealing.

I appreciate the general outline of future plans and the mention of ongoing issues in the bullet points. However, while new, ongoing content is important and welcome, I think that too many existing issues have been able to slide far too long due to improper allocation of development resources.

There are still a lot of broken DEs that have been broken pretty much since launch. The professions are still not up to par with levels they should have attained prior to launch. “Invulnerable” and related bugs are out of control, to the point that turning the entire system off and allowing the occasional “kill by terrain exploit” would be far preferable to the major amount of frustrations these bugs are causing the community.

Load times seems to increase with every passing week. Performance issues remain, with some players seeing performance decreasing with many patches, rather than an evolution on the issue.

As I said, new content/features are important, but there are enough ongoing issues that seem to see very little progress that I think priorities and resource deployment really need to be reconsidered.

I also think better dialogue on highly debated issues among the community of all kinds need to be better addressed all around. A lot of us have a great love for the game and a great respect for everyone over at Arenanet, but the general lack of communication just alienates fans who really want to feel engaged and appreciated as partners in the ongoing evolution of the game. Engage the player base and you will find people will be a lot more patient all around and the overall energy surrounding the game will improve.

JonathanSharp.7094:

A while ago Jon Peters said something that has been taken out of context. He said that only two people were working on the things he was working on (which was true – but he meant it differently than how it was received) and people have taken that to mean that we only have 2 people working on balance, or PvP, or both (at this point it’s morphed into different things in different threads). …SNIP…

I just wanted to clear this up to let you guys know a little bit more of what happens here inside the studio so you understand more of what Peters was trying to say. He’s just as busy as we all are, and with a lot of us gone for Thanksgiving (he’s not here right now), I just took it upon myself to try to clear this up a little.

Cheers

I’m glad you clarified this, but it still raises some serious questions about staffing. When other MMOs have a designer devoted to each class/profession, with people above them and below them bringing everything together, the lack of developers dedicated to each profession in GW2 seems to be serious deficiency, especially since it has been acknowledged that there is a lot more on in the pipeline for each profession than the limited staff can handle in a timely fashion.

I see GW2 as balancing on the edge of a very sharp blade right now, with the difference between snowballing success and dwindling interest hanging in the balance. I don’t think you guys have six months to fix balance and content issues that should have been fixed yesterday. Profession balance is an ongoing thing, most of us get that, but the current profession issues are fairly massive and are having an impact on the success/failure trajectory of the game.

I don’t see how you can do what needs to be done in a timely manner with out addressing the issue of insufficient personnel assigned to key tasks necessary for the ongoing health of the game. Whether it’s new hires or re-assignment of existing personnel, something needs to be done.

I love the game (over 500 hours logged so far), love Arenanet, but I can’t shake the feeling that the massive potential associated with this game is slipping away as many key issues go unresolved due to issues with development resources.

Balance issues aside, there are still dozens of DEs that remain broken since launch and every time a player runs across them and finds them still broken, it sucks a little more life from the game.

I want to game to be a huge, ongoing success, but I have to admit I’m worried.

How bad were these chests? Bad enough that I will never, ever, ever buy a similar item from Arenanet ever again unless I see a clear indication from those buying them that some future iteration actually offers something worth while.

I want to support this game via gem purchases, but the store in general is just bad. Very few things are even near worth the prices and you guys have completely dropped the ball on the importance of sales and specials to drive cash shop sales.

Take a look at the Lord of the Rings Online cash shop strategy. They know how to do it. I never felt cheated by a single purchase there and their frequent sales drove maybe 80% of my purchases.

I even bought the occasional boost, because they were occasionally worth the money. I look at the cost of the boosts and black lion keys in the GW2 cash shop and just scoff.

Finding the proper price point is such an important part of any product driven business model. A dullard might open a business, charge full retail for everything, regardless of what competitors are charging, then rage when their shop goes out of business. “Why would I sell this lamp at 10% profit, when the full retail price nets me a 30% profit”? Well, 30% of 5 sales is a lot worse than 10% of 100 sales!

With virtual items, there is no per unit production cost. They should always be aggressively priced to find the sweet spot where a high volume of sales generates more revenue than a small volume of sales at a higher per unit price.

I haven’t found anyone that buys boosts or finds Black Lion keys worth the price after a few initial trial purchases. I’m sure there are a few people out there that buy these things, but wouldn’t it be better to have a larger portion of players making weekly purchases at lower prices than a handful making purchases at what most of the community considers unfair to outrageous prices?

/rant -over

Anyway, yeah, those chests are a supreme rip off. I have to wonder if the concept is close enough to gambling that state and federal authorities might want to take notice? Definitely seems like these things are really just thinly disguised lottery tickets.

Grind! Also, since the threshold for gaining XP/loot was not adjusted to account for the masses of people who would be participating, most of us got zero XP or loot from 95%+ of all the Karka we participated in killing!

Add it to the big list of fail that needs to be part of the studio wide Post Mortem analysis of the event that I really hope will take place at Arenanet this week.

If they learn from the vast multitude of wrongs associated with this event, the entire thing will at least provide some value for improving future events. If they just sweep it back under the rug and hope that things go better next time, a huge opportunity will have been wasted.

I would hope and assume that there will be a number of non-event DEs that will be activated in the zone now that the event is over. I really hope it will also be fleshed out with PoIs, SPCs and Vistas. The optimist in me says that these may just have been disabled until the permanent, post event version of the zone goes live. However, I have a feeling that they just didn’t have time to complete the zone in time for the event and if we ever get those things, it may take a while.

::sigh::

So, the event is over and they still find another way to pile on to all the ways the event was broken/flawed? Starting to wonder if the entire affair wasn’t meant to greatly lower our expectations for competence RE: all future live events?

Looking forward to going back to playing the regular game this week, so I can remind myself of how awesome the game and the developers really are, while trying hard to forget the complete mess of a weekend we just experienced.

I really, really hope that most of the free trial people completely ignored this event. I can’t imagine any better way to convince trial players that this superb game is actually a complete joke than to subject them to this event…

neoxide.7320:

metaverse.6821:

neoxide.7320:

I don’t like the notion that everyone should be a winner. This attitude is a real issue with people these days because in the real world, not everyone is a winner.

You see, this is a game though.

It is understood, by anyone that is maybe 12 years old that life isn’t fair. Some people are born beautiful and get handed everything to them. Some people are born into terrible situations. We could go on all day about how and why life isn’t fair…

But games…games are escapism. Studies show that people play games mostly to take a break from their real life. Whatever their real life is, everyone has issues and games are a break from that.

That’s why people always want games to be fair, they want competitive balance. Life isn’t fair, but games should be. The main reason so many people gravitated towards this game was to break from the old MMO mold that the dedicated and hardcore were and always would be the winner, they would get the most out of the game…those that have things to do in RL…well when it comes to MMOs are usually the losers.

Now, this one time event wasn’t for the dedicated hardcore…but it was based on luck, no matter where you are or your timezone. It asked you to drop whatever you were doing in RL to play a videogame. I just have a problem with it, I live in America, central time and I usually play the game at around 7, 5pm pacific time. This is not by ‘Choice’.

I just think they should have at least done a one day 24 hour event. One day 24 hour event where you can only open the chest once account wise. Apparently I missed a pretty awesome event…and I guess if they continue to do events like this I should just not play because there is a good chance that I’m going to miss most of the story and big stuff that happens in the game.

TL;DR except the first line. This is a game however it is a good example of a crucial problem with some of society of how some people will not accept anything less than what others got, in some cases earned, in other cases given.

My point is that ANET should not cave in to the people complaining that they deserve things because others achieved them. At first the excuse was that precursors were simply too expensive and unrealistic to acquire which can be debated. Now that ANET has made them significantly easier to acquire and virtually given them away to a lucky fifth of the people who showed up, there are people now demanding to be given precursors to everyone, or no one at all (but really everyone because I want one plzzz).

It’s a shame.

I normally tend to agree with your view on the general issue, but I think the one time nature of this event tips the balance. One time events should never have something like a chance for a precursor attached. People who can’t make the one time event window are already understandably disappointed, it made much, much worse when you learn that there was a chance for a precursor item for completion.

Also, I suspect that the precursors were awarded on a pure RNG roll, which sets up the situation where someone joining the event for the last ten minutes can get a precursor, while someone that made it through the entire 3 to 3 1/2 hour buggy/laggy slog walks away with out one.

Not to mention that some people lucky enough to be on a shard that completed the event earlier than other shards were able to re-log until they found another overflow with the event still going on in order to loot the chest more than once!

Just another amplifier to the multitude of issues that degraded or ruined this event for many. Just a really, really poor job all around, from event design, to event programming to event Quality Assurance. Any game developer would rightly hang their heads in shame over this very flawed event, but I know I expect much, much more from Arenanet!

There should not have been a chance for a precursor for the event. The OP is right, it’s a hugely disproportionate reward for the event and just creates a huge amount of resentment in the player base for those that did get one.

Also, yeah, the final event was already frustrating enough with all the issues. It was made even more so due to the fact that 95% of all kills produced no XP and no Loot for most people. The participation thresholds for XP/Loot need to be completely adjusted for events that have 50-100 people attacking each mob. I believe the normal threshold is 5% of a mobs HP done as damage in order to get XP/Loot. Obviously, that doesn’t work when there are 50-100 people! It’s likely that for most mobs, no one got XP/Loot!

Add it to the list of ways the event was flawed/broken.

Arenanet. You’ve read all the criticisms. Many of you experienced the issues for yourselves. It was a mess of bugs and poor design decisions and hopefully you guys will do everything necessary to ensure no events go down like that ever again!

For me, this is the bullet list of lessons to take from this event.

• Quality Assurance Testing. Where was it for this event? The multitude of bugs are as big a failure for your QA process as they are for game design and programming. Public test Server? Yes please.

• No more weekend only events. No more one day phases. No more one time events. Don’t do it. You alienate many more players than you please.

• No more events with tons of enemies swarming the screen. The servers handled a hundred players fine, but a hundred players plus a couple dozen mobs? Server lag to the extreme. If the servers can’t handle it, don’t design it.

• No more events that take 3 to 3 1/2 hours to complete! The rewards, for those that were not cheated of them were ok. The 20 slot container, for people that look at the 13 Gold price for 20 slots on the TP and wonder if they will ever, ever be able to afford one, was a nice reward. The random mix of rares and exotics was ok. It says a lot about how frustrating the long slog of a laggy event actually was that many were unsatisfied with the rewards!

• No more one run events. Ever. It just isn’t fair to most of your players. The persistent idea that peak time scheduling equals “fair and inclusive” has been flawed all along, going all the way back to stress test timings during beta. The logic is flawed and it ticks a lot of people off. No one cares if a single run “makes more sense for the story”. Repeats for people who play off peak is good. Events that can be completed over the course of a week at each players own pace are even better.

• Game designers and programmers. Most of us are scratching our heads at the game design for this weekend’s events. May be time to re-examine who is assigned to what, with the goal of having game designers suited for special event design working on special events. Programmers. From beta, to launch week, to DEs still broken from launch to the slow turn around time on fixes this weekend, it’s clear that you need more programmers. Maybe many more. (You need more Profession Designers as well, but that’s a separate story). Some staffing areas are just too crucial to skimp on. Bugs and flubs are to be expected, but the speed in which they can be fixed makes the difference between understanding customers and frustrated/angry customers. You should have been able to fix all the Phase One Bugs in under four hours. That your programmers could only fix some of them in a 16+ hour troubleshooting effort makes it clear you are lacking in programmers. Of course, a solid programming dept. probably wouldn’t have produced an event with so many bugs in the first place. The game is incredible and someone programmed it all, so maybe the issue is just that the programmers are overworked and the dept. (obviously) understaffed?

Love you guys. Love the Game. Want to see the game snowball into a huge success. It’s just not going to happen if you don’t have the staff and resources necessary to grow the game and ensure a solid reputation for the product. Mostly broken special events and DEs that take months to fix will not get you where you want to go.

Arenanet knows what they did wrong with this event, which, sadly in this case represents the majority of the major and minor elements that made up the entire weekend event. (I’d be surprised if 30% of all the elements would be rated “acceptable”, with too much of the rest being “broken” or “just plain horrible”).

I won’t pile on.

However, for the love of all that is good in the Universe, please, please do what ever you need to do at the staffing level to make sure no future monthly events ever peg higher than a 10% unacceptable rate. Hire more programmers, reshuffle your game designers, set up and make full use of a Public Test Server, do “All Calls” to have every single Arenanet Employee swarm your internal servers for multiple tests and simulations of events to weed out bugs before going live, etc… What ever it takes to ensure that we never have a fiasco like this weekend ever again.

Oh yeah, weekends are actually a horrible idea. Week long+ events are better, so that everyone can participate. No event chains that get disabled after a day, even though they couldn’t be completed by most players due to bugs. No one time, non-repeating events.

Also might want to reconsider events with massive swarms of mobs. The servers just couldn’t handle it. It didn’t seem that the number of players had any effect on server lag, it only kicked in when there were tons of mobs spawning at once in a small area. If the servers can’t handle it, don’t do it.

Ok, so maybe I couldn’t resist adding some of my own criticism. You still know that this event was a complete mess with out me and a thousand other people telling you what went wrong. The key thing is that you do what ever you need to do to ensure that this type of mess never happens again.

Nothing in this event was so special that it would have been “ruiined” by spoilers. I really hope you will set up a public test server and fully test future events in their entirety, multiple times, before unleashing them on the world.

Oh, one last thing, if you ever do another free trial, please don’t schedule it during a monthly event. Not only does it seem that the trial window put constraints on your event timing, but after this weekend, I find myself praying that most trail players ignored this mess of an event and just played the game. I can’t imagine any better way to ensure that a trial player will never return than to thrust them into a disaster like this weekend’s event. I’m just glad that the friend that finally checked the game out this weekend did indeed take a pass on the event and had a great time playing in good ’ole Queensland!

I was revived by a guildmate and was able to get to the chest just in time. I was there when the chest disappeared and saw a number of people on my server who were too late getting back for the reward.

Just the final icing on the mess of a cake that this even represented.

I actually had fun with the nearly three hour, server lag ridden slog to complete the final event, but there were more things bugged over the weekend than were working and there were many very questionable design decisions for the entire event. Having the final chest not stick around long enough for everyone who earned the reward is another big one to add to the list.

I really hope that the devs who worked on this have really taken to heart all the lessons to be learned and we will never see the design flaws repeated in future special events. I also hope that Arenanet will hire as many more capable programmers as needed to ensure that a.) we never again see an event with even a tenth as many bugs and b.) to ensure that if there are numerous unanticipated bugs, there are enough programmers to facilitate all the needed fixes in an hour or two.

There also needs to be someone on future event development teams that has the forethought to realize that the reward chest should stick around for more than three or so minutes!

For the change of scenery? The map is ok. Not great, but ok.

However, where are the vistas? (Guess they didn’t have the staff needed to add some vistas to the map).

Why are the drops so absolutely horrible?

Why were the “new crafting mats” so hyped, only to have them be so few and far between, with no recipes in sight? (I’m hoping post even this will all come together, but it’s just one more element of the event/content that they completely flubbed up on with the lack of proper communication).

I agree with others. This needs to be a level 80 zone worth farming, or it will be a pointless addition to the game.

Me and a guildmate, level 65 Thief and level 66 Warrior, didn’t have much trouble with the Karka as a Duo. We avoided the Veterans, most of the time, unless there was at least one or two other players around, but we got caught a few times and squeaked by most of the time.

The only Mobs we found over powered were the Reef Drakes, (I think that’s what they were called). Non-vets, they would rip us to shreds in about 5 seconds every time we tried to take one on. I think they really need a looking at. I’m guessing someone stuck an extra zero at the end of their damage numbers!

I love Arenanet, but I have to agree. this entire event has been a very sad bust. I cringe at the fact that they chose this event to host the first free trial the game has seen since launch. I just hope most of the trial people have ignored the event and checked out the otherwise superb game.

Still broken for me as well. Talk to him before he moves. talk to him while he moves, which opens up the ability to actually say something to him. Defeat him once he goes hostile. talk to him while he’s on the ground. Again when he stands up. Three tries and no mail.

The fact that more steps in these event chains are broken than working just adds to the frustration. Let me sneak in another call for a Public Test Server, or at the very least multiple “all hands” internal testing events for these live events to make sure they actually work before the event goes live?

Do we have any idea yet when Difficulty resets for each character? I assume it has to reset, or everyone would hit the wall and not be able to play the dungeon anymore unless they find some way to boost their power.

I do know that Difficulty level for a group is based on the average difficulty level of all the characters in the group. Assuming that the average rounds up at some point, 4 level 2s may be able to add a level 1 and still have a group level 2.

So much potential for ire and disaster here, I really hope Arenanet knows what they are doing and will quickly react to technical and community issues that arise from this new “feature”.

ASP.8093:

Permanent.

The “temporary” stuff for this weekend are the one-time events and some of the extra level-scaling they put in to allow everyone to do the new stuff.

The level scaling in LA and this weekend in Sea of Sorrows is just for the weekend. The level scaling up in FotM is a permanent feature. Just wanted to clarify.

The FotM weapon skins will probably remain exclusive to the FotM dungeon, but Arenanet has already said that Ascended Gear will be available outside of FotM in the near future. There will even be a way to get Ascended gear via WvW.

It would be fine IF they didn’t include the ability to die by falling to your death in an unreachable chasm and had taken full precautions to ensure that no other deaths could leave you out of reach for a revival by party members.

I understand the reason for no waypoints, but am dumbfounded they didn’t realize that that would require some special care on their part to ensure that players would always be left in a position to be revived by surviving team mates!

After this event, it’s time for Arenanet to beef up the Quality Assurance team! Seems that there are lot more bugged steps than working steps! Doh!

I’m hoping that they will be able to fix the bugs with a patch in the next few hours. My impression is that this phase of the event may only last 24 hours and if so, they need to somehow get all the steps working pretty soon before US prime time and before the EU goes to bed!

(Might also be a good time to stop worrying about event spoilers and get a public test server up and running to hash out these events before they go live)!

Where is Subdirector Noll? Been scouring LA, no luck. No one in chat seems to have been able to find him either. Anyone?

First off, I understand and appreciate the situation from Arenanet’s end. They can’t rush in changes they don’t have time to properly develop and test.

However, I also have had the reaction that Arenanet very obviously needs to do something at the staffing level to greatly improve the speed and efficiency of future profession changes and fixes. It seems obvious that Jon Peters and Isaiah Cartwright need a.) more developers on the profession team to streamline the ongoing profession development process b.) need to be freed from any other development duties that interfere with their ability to focus on profession development c.) need a small, dedicated team of playtesters that do nothing but test profession changes being developed.

Profession capability, stability, functionality and balance are key foundational elements of the game as a whole and there is no excuse to be understaffed in the area of ongoing profession development.

Fritz.5026:

just for instance.

warrior 1 has 20,000 health, 1000 power, and 50% crit rate
warrior 2 has 22,000 health, 1100 power, and 55% crit rate

warrior 2 is 10% superior in the three listed aspects

you run those 2 combatants through a simulator and warrior 2 will consistently win the majority of the encounters. you cant argue that he wont.

its a mathematical fact.

You are completely leaving out the human factor. I routinely take out characters in WvW that, judging by their armor skins, are level 80 and well geared, with my level 63 Thief. I don’t always win, it may be 50/50 1 vs 1 when taking on such opponents, but if you were to pre-judge the match up just by looking at the stat difference, which is huge between level 63 gear and level 80 gear, you would calculate that I would always lose!

Altair.6109:

Fiontar.4695:

Slic.2406:

Derk.3189:

its +5 condition damage, on top of the already higher base stats. and thats with a FINE infusion. Imagine what an ascended infusion would do?

That’s only a blue-level infusion? Umm…

…

Ok, well. That means an orange-level infusion would be ~4x that, so.. ~20 cond damage. No concrete evidence in this case, but if you compare blue to orange on existing pieces of gear, that’s about right.

So actually. It’s not just a 40-50% increase to primary stats. With the high-end, grind-your-face-off infusions (that they are saving ’till we grind-our-face-off getting these crappier ones), the overall primary stat increase of ascended over exotic would be closer to 75%. GG? Ah, if I could spend the 60 bucks I spent on GW2 on a time trip back to GW1 instead…

You are making a lot of assumptions and your math makes zero sense on top of it all.

Tomorrow we will have the ability to earn Ascended Rings, Ascended Back Armor and Fine Infusions. NOT a big deal. As the system expands over time, (perhaps over a pretty long time, considering they’ve already said that FotM will be expanding over the months and years ahead), Arenanet will make what ever adjustments to the system they need to make.

You and others are imagining the worst possibilities when you fill in the vast blanks that exist in our knowledge of Ascended Gear and Infusions, extrapolate forward on those negatively biased guesses and then assume that the entire thing is set in stone, with no adjustments to ensure that the quest for ascended gear does ruin all other elements of game play.

Rings, Back Armor, Fine Infusions. Example stat comparison showing an ~ 8% stat boost between Exotic Rings and Ascended Rings. That’s what we know. Let’s fill in a lot more blanks with facts before we start crying that the sky is falling and also offer Arenanet some benefit of the doubt before deciding that they are somehow determined to ruin the game with some new arbitrary gear inflation!

yea let’s just cry after it’s too late. Ata boy!

Do you really think that if tirades don’t somehow stop Ascended Gear before this weekend that it will be somehow “too late”? Really? Meaningful analysis and dialogue between the fan base and the developers can’t even begin until we know a lot more than we know now and we have the chance to evaluate these initial toe dips into gear inflation within the context of the game.

It’s not a levy that once broken sets in motion a flood that can’t be stopped or attenuated.

Overly aggressive gear inflation is likely to be opposed by many and the community will have a good chance to rein it in as part of a give and take between players and developers.

Freaking out based on so little fact and so many fears/assumptions is pointless and counterproductive.

True debate will start once the initial stage of the system goes live and we have time to really understand it with in the context of the game. Spoiling the new system will no longer be a concern and a more complete explanation and the potential for meaningful dialogue with the developers will be possible.

NoZaku.7120:

Fiontar.4695:

NoZaku.7120:

the biggest thing i hate about the infusions is it will basically make runes, sigils, crests and gems obsolete.

because you have to use infusions to further progress in PvE.

No, they don’t. Infusions are specifically geared to allowing players to push deeper into the difficulty of Fractals of the Mist. They have nothing to do with any other form of PvE play; world PvE nor non-FotM Dungeons.

FotM is a pretty unique take on the Dungeon Crawl. I see FotM as almost separate mode of play in the same way that sPvP and WvW are almost games with in a game. Some people will dedicate much time and effort to FotM. Some will dablle and others will ignore the dungeon entirely and find there fun elsewhere.

I will be shocked beyond belief if Infusions ever are needed for progression in World PvE or in any of the other Dungeons available in game. I can’t rule out some other form of PvE content in the future that would take advantage of infusions, but Arenanet seems committed to expanding FotM on a fairly regular basis in the months and years to come. It’s possible we may see more stand-alone dungeons in the future, but I have a feeling that FotM will be the main focus for ongoing Dungeon development.

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/linsey-murdock-unveils-new-high-end-ascended-gear/
read the “The Future of item progression”

As we release more new end game content in the future, you’ll see more Infusions and Ascended item types being added to the game. Eventually, you’ll be able to kit yourself out with a full set of Ascended gear and high end Infusions to help give you the edge in end game content.

its heavily implied that infusions is needed to further progress in end game PvE content

It’s heavily implied by piecing together all the Arenanet and officially sourced third part articles that FotM is the framework with in which evolving “end game” content will be housed. I have to keep going back to the article that stated that FotM will be regularly expanded over the months and YEARS to come.

It is entirely possible, if not probable, that the eventuality of full sets of Ascended Gear could be a year or two down the road.

Look, I am really hoping there will be some degree of isolation between the gear inflation introduced to provide progression through FotM and the rest of the game world. A semi-isolated gear treadmill is a lot more acceptable to me than one that bleeds heavily out into the rest of the game. If this is not the case in actuality, it’s something I will push for. I don’t want out of control gear inflation ruining this game.

To be honest, I just can’t imagine Arenanet risking the game with anything other than a very measured approach to introducing an ongoing end game progression for those who desire such a thing. If I’m wrong and we are on the path to Ascended Gear that will completely trivialize Exotics and becomes a requirement for content outside of FotM, I’ll be grabbing my own pitchfork.

However, we do not have enough information to make that determination. IF we should be able to discern a clear, ongoing path to spiraling gear inflation, it will be a very good thing that the introduction of the system is just Rings and Back Armor, as it will be much easier to win a scaling back of future inflation due to the incomplete nature of the initial “sample” of the new system.

I have to give Arenanet the benefit of the doubt until proven otherwise. If we do need a fight, we’ll have plenty of time to try to shape the direction of the new system with out throwing up our hands and boycotting or rage quitting.

The subject is currently 90% speculation and rage/fear/recrimination are wasted with out more fact and meaningful dialogue with the developers.

Slic.2406:

Derk.3189:

its +5 condition damage, on top of the already higher base stats. and thats with a FINE infusion. Imagine what an ascended infusion would do?

That’s only a blue-level infusion? Umm…

…

Ok, well. That means an orange-level infusion would be ~4x that, so.. ~20 cond damage. No concrete evidence in this case, but if you compare blue to orange on existing pieces of gear, that’s about right.

So actually. It’s not just a 40-50% increase to primary stats. With the high-end, grind-your-face-off infusions (that they are saving ’till we grind-our-face-off getting these crappier ones), the overall primary stat increase of ascended over exotic would be closer to 75%. GG? Ah, if I could spend the 60 bucks I spent on GW2 on a time trip back to GW1 instead…

You are making a lot of assumptions and your math makes zero sense on top of it all.

Tomorrow we will have the ability to earn Ascended Rings, Ascended Back Armor and Fine Infusions. NOT a big deal. As the system expands over time, (perhaps over a pretty long time, considering they’ve already said that FotM will be expanding over the months and years ahead), Arenanet will make what ever adjustments to the system they need to make.

You and others are imagining the worst possibilities when you fill in the vast blanks that exist in our knowledge of Ascended Gear and Infusions, extrapolate forward on those negatively biased guesses and then assume that the entire thing is set in stone, with no adjustments to ensure that the quest for ascended gear does ruin all other elements of game play.

Rings, Back Armor, Fine Infusions. Example stat comparison showing an ~ 8% stat boost between Exotic Rings and Ascended Rings. That’s what we know. Let’s fill in a lot more blanks with facts before we start crying that the sky is falling and also offer Arenanet some benefit of the doubt before deciding that they are somehow determined to ruin the game with some new arbitrary gear inflation!

NoZaku.7120:

the biggest thing i hate about the infusions is it will basically make runes, sigils, crests and gems obsolete.

because you have to use infusions to further progress in PvE.

No, they don’t. Infusions are specifically geared to allowing players to push deeper into the difficulty of Fractals of the Mist. They have nothing to do with any other form of PvE play; world PvE nor non-FotM Dungeons.

FotM is a pretty unique take on the Dungeon Crawl. I see FotM as almost separate mode of play in the same way that sPvP and WvW are almost games with in a game. Some people will dedicate much time and effort to FotM. Some will dablle and others will ignore the dungeon entirely and find there fun elsewhere.

I will be shocked beyond belief if Infusions ever are needed for progression in World PvE or in any of the other Dungeons available in game. I can’t rule out some other form of PvE content in the future that would take advantage of infusions, but Arenanet seems committed to expanding FotM on a fairly regular basis in the months and years to come. It’s possible we may see more stand-alone dungeons in the future, but I have a feeling that FotM will be the main focus for ongoing Dungeon development.

Crater.1625:

Fiontar.4695:

By the outrage expressed by the vocal minority, you’d think that they had spent hundreds of hours earning the Exotic Gear that will no longer be the pinnacle of power as Ascended gear enters the game! The easiest to acquire Exotics just do not take very long, no matter which of the available paths you chose to take in acquiring them. Arenanet isn’t trivializing some extremely long and difficult Exotic gear grind with some arbitrary gear inflation treadmill.

As of now, with full Exotic gear I have maxed out equipment.

Once Ascended gear hits, I am one tier under maxed out equipment.

Functionally, this patch is exactly the same as if ArenaNet had taken away all of my equipment, and replaced it with Rares.

And to get my ‘Exotics’ (ie: top-level gear) back, I have to run on the arbitrary gear inflation treadmill for what seems to be, according to all concrete information released so far, hundreds of hours of grinding.

I have three level 80s. I play all three. One is fully equipped with Exotics. One is half equipped and one has only rares. I have zero problem playing what ever content I want with my Exotic free character. I pursue my Exotics for the sense of progression, not because I need them.

The only people who ostensibly “need” Ascended gear will be people pushing the difficulty limits in Fractals of the Mist and those people will aquire it as part of the natural progression. Arenanet has said that Ascended Gear will be available via other routes, not just FotM, including WvW. For the WvW-centric players, that gear will come as they play the game.

If you plan on delving deeply into FotM, You’ll get your ascended gear in a natural progression, your exotics just being another stepping stone along the way, like every other piece of armor you aquired from levels 1-80. If you WvW, you will eventually aquire your Ascended gear and maintain your gear parity with the other WvW-centric players. If you aren’t interested in WvW or FotM, you’ll still have some ways of acquiring Ascended gear, but let’s be honest, outside of WvW or FotM, there is no actual need for Ascended gear, other than to provide a sense of progression for those who want/need it.

As to what changes tomorrow, let’s put things into perspective. Yes, with the shortage of back armor in the game, the ascended back armor will be desirable. However, as far as I’m aware, there are no current exotic or even rare back armors in the game, so ascended back armor is not trivializing your previous efforts by offering something new and improved. The only other Ascended gear at this time are rings. Are people really going to get bent out of shape because there will now be upgrades to pursue for two exotic rings? Really?

Perspective.

Besides, what gear inflation there is in the jump to Ascended Gear is miniscule compared to the routinely ongoing gear inflation in almost every other MMORPG we’ve seen in the last ten years and is literally nothing compared to the gear inflation seen with full expansions for games like WoW, where the new Greens often render obsolete gear that took hundreds of hours progressing through multiple tiers of raids to acquire.

Perspective.

If you like very active game play, roll an Elementalist. To get the most out of an Elementalist, you really need to master all four attunements and know when to switch to which one.

Necros are a bit less complex. I like the profession well enough and sometimes it suits my mood, but I personally prefer Ele.

Now, that’s just my perspective. I’d strongly support the poster who recommended trying each to at least level 20. Each Profession/build has a particular play style and you really want to find a match to your personal play preference. Also, even though the GW2 professions have obvious stylistic similarities to other classes in other MMOs, they don’t always play the same way as their apparent counterparts in other games. Liking Mages in other games doesn’t guarantee you will like GW2 Elementalists. The same can be said about most of the GW2 professions. Trying a couple or a few professions out in order to try to identify a good personal match is well worth the effort for most players.

Profession adjustments were pre-hyped, (“five pages of profession updates”, must have been double spaced pages?). Not the level of adjustments and fixes most were expecting.

I’m really, really hoping the Events section is very, very incomplete. There are many dozens of DEs through out the game that have been broken pretty much since launch. IMO, they should hve been fixed at a rate of one a day, with patches every two or three days, until they were all fixed. The list in the patch notes? Maybe one of the dozens of broken DEs I’ve seen over and over again was on that list. So, yeah, I hope it’s incomplete, because if all those broken DEs are still broken, something is very wrong at your end.

So far, I have no issues with any of the specific profession changes. No building nerf rage, so that’s a good thing.

I’m also looking forward to the new content and am praying there are no broken DEs, as I’m not looking forward to a new list of broken DEs that won’t be fixed three months from now.

Love the game. Love Arenanet. Please make fixing or replacing broken DEs a high focus priority. they all should have been fixed/replaced at least a month ago. Every broken DE sucks some life out of the game and there is zero excuse for them not to be fixed/replaced by the end of November.

BlackDeath.8106:

OEXTRA.1780:

Fritz.5026:

OEXTRA.1780:

I’m greatly disjointed in how most of you forum gamers are behaving. Yeah sure the new armor rank has its ups and downs but why are ya’ll acting like it’s the end of the world?

first off most people would have stuck with a dedicated pve game if they wanted to grind items like its their job. there are already several fully fleshed out games dedicated to grinding items that cater to the no-lifer crowds making them feel like spending their life in front of a monitor is rewarding in some way.

and secondly, its been 3 months and they already have the next ‘tier’ of gear released. do you honestly think this will be the end of it?

It seriously doesn’t take much time to attain any piece of exotic. I’d be full exotic out if I decided to collect the other dungeon sets, but alas the dungeon set I want (CoE) is hardly played by anyone on my server. At 1st I was just going to go ahead and get the CoF armor since that always gets played but after getting 3 pieces in like 2-3 days, I decided to stop since I don’t really like how the armor looks. Since then I’ve been logging on to see if I could get a CoE party and if I can’t I log off.

Long story short, if I wasn’t stubborn and picky, I could’ve been had full exotic in a week tops. But it’s not really necessary. And as I said yeah, I highly doubt new ranks will be added later, if anything just new infusions (which sound like runes/sigils to me).

Send me 30+ gold i use on my sets since they are so easy to get, i will not mind if you can send me more since you sir is a farming god. Or even 15 hours of farming one dungeon. 15 hours of my life gone in a flash!

Exotics are already overkill for all the content I’ve experienced in the game in nearly 500 hours of playtime. Two rings and a back piece that are a fairly minor step up from their exotic counterparts is nothing to rage about.

For people who pass on Dungeons and other “End Game” level content, preferring to take advantage of the expansive, dynamic world and level scaling to enjoy Tyria as a free form experience, end game gear inflation means nothing.

For people who actively pursue Dungeons and other end game level content, the new gear progression is something that will just happen during the course of their ongoing game play, while incentivizing ongoing play. Saying that the inflation means the acquisition of Exotics was a waste of time would be like saying that all the armor you acquired from level 1-80 was a waste of time. It’s just part of the natural, ongoing progression of game play. That’s it.

For WvW, they’ve already said that Ascended Gear will be available via WvW and other means as well, so, once again, just an extension of the gear progression that already exists from level 1-80 in the game.

A lot of people wanted some form of post 80 progression and this new system provides it in about as benign a way as possible. IMO, Arenanet seems to have struck a very good balance here and I’m sure that if the level of inflation needs to be adjusted, they will adjust it. They aren’t trying to force an extended progression on people who don’t want it. They are trying to provide some progression for those who do want it, while minimizing the impact on players who could care less.

Do we know that infusions have any effect outside of Fractals of the Mist?

Is +5 condition Damage worth a rage quit?

Some have bemoaned that they will have to do the FotM Dungeon to get ascended gear. That’s actually not the case. They have already stated that they will be adding other ways of getting Ascended Gear outside of FotM, including via WvW.

I would prefer that Infusions only function within FotM. I hope that’s the case. If not? Well, I still don’t see it as a big deal. In a genre where expansion packs routinely trivialize hard earned raid gear with insane gear inflation that sees new greens trumping the old top tier gear, this very minor gear inflation is close to nothing.

We still don’t know what their big expansion strategy is. Will they raise the level cap with a yearly expansion? Or, will they stick with 80? If there is no level cap increase, do you really think the game would thrive with out some form of ongoing progression?

By the outrage expressed by the vocal minority, you’d think that they had spent hundreds of hours earning the Exotic Gear that will no longer be the pinnacle of power as Ascended gear enters the game! The easiest to acquire Exotics just do not take very long, no matter which of the available paths you chose to take in acquiring them. Arenanet isn’t trivializing some extremely long and difficult Exotic gear grind with some arbitrary gear inflation treadmill.

The inflation is minor. Starting with just Rings and Back Armor, with additional pieces providing a horizontal progression to the ascended tier of gear, Arenanet can add some sense of progression to match the expansion of Fractals of the Mist over the months and years to come.

I do get that some people latched onto the announced design approach that would have duplicated the GW1 ceiling on gear power. It was a feature that sounded pretty good to me as well. However, they need to be able to adapt to the live environment and respond to the needs of the player base. The game’s design looked close to perfect on paper a year ago. On paper is the operative qualifier, because once a game goes live and hundreds of thousands or millions of people start playing, some of the things that looked good on paper just won’t hold up in the live environment.

We shouldn’t be looking to hamstring Arenanet as they seek to adjust and expand the game in a way that will maintain or increase it’s popularity and financial viability.

They aren’t adding this new tier of gear to thumb their noses at players and the original game design. They are doing it in an effort to improve the game. If the inflation where more drastic in nature, I’d probably be right with the people expressing outrage. However, this is such a careful, measured implementation of “gear inflation” that I just can not see the “outrage” expressed by some as anything other than a gross over-reaction.

Give Arenanet some benefit of the doubt and give the new system a chance. I think Arenanet and the game deserve at least that much.

Ok, let me share some of my thoughts on all of this.

Yes, it looks like we will get Ascended Gear from sources other than Fractals of the Mist, which is a good thing for those who will want the minor stat increases for Ascended Gear, yet have no desire to play FotM. This is a good thing and fits with the overall game design. So, no forced Dungeon Runs to get Ascended gear.

This initial FotM release only includes Ascended Rings and Back Armor. This greatly dilutes the “gear inflation” factor introduced by the Ascended Gear.

It seems pretty clear, putting all the information released thus far together, that future Ascended Gear items will be released to compliment major content additions to Fractals of the Mist. Fractals of the Mist is slated for ongoing expansion over the “months and years to come”.

I would speculate that we will not see full sets of Ascended gear any sooner than one year from now. It’s possible the interval could be even longer.

This is about as mild and manageable an introduction of purpose driven “gear inflation” as we have ever seen in an MMO and I can’t imagine a more “gentle” method of gear inflation than what we appear to be getting for GW2 via Ascended Gear.

Yes, there is a minor stat boost involved here, but it seems clear that the biggest purpose of Ascended gear will be the introduction of Infusion Slots and direct Agony mitigation, which, at this point, seems will be exclusively relevant to the FotM Dungeon Experience and more specifically relevant to players who will be seeking to push the incremental difficulty/reward boosting system for consecutive FotM runs to the absolute limit.

Some, but not all, non FotM players may eventually wish to acquire basic Ascended Gear for the stat boosts. Some, but not all, FotM players will actively pursue Agony Mitigation in order to push their FotM experience to the absolute limits. (Many players may be perfectly happy to complete one to three waves at a go, with no time/desire to push deeply into the difficulty progression).

By no means is this new, measured “gear inflation” a necessary progression for most players. Most of the future inflation is horizontal, via introduction of new gear slots sporting Ascended Gear options, rather than vertical. We have no idea how Arenanet plans to expand the game through major expansions. Will they raise the level cap? We just don’t know. There could be further vertical progression in the years ahead, but if the inflation between Exotic and Ascended and the slow horizontal build out of Ascended Gear is any indication, any future vertical progression is likely to be very shallow.

Arenanet has already intimated that they will be adding other means of earning Ascended gear outside of Fractals of the Mist, including WvW.

I think people need to remember two things here with Ascended Gear:

1.) The level of “stat inflation” is fairly minimal. (Compared to WoW Expansion related gear inflation, it’s not even a tiny blip).

2.) Ascended Gear is initially limited to Rings and Back Armor. Due to the general lack of Back Armor in the game, the back armor may be fairly significant for many players. An ~8% stat increase on two ring slots factors down to a very minimal over all power increase when compared to a few set of Exotics.

We have heard that Fractals of the Mist will be expanded fairly regularly over the months and years to come. It makes perfect sense that we will see additional slots of Ascended Gear to coincide with major content updates to FotM. I’d be surprised if we have full armor/weapon/trinket sets of Ascended gear any sooner than a year from now and it could take even longer than that, depending on their FotM progression plans.

Also, we have zero indication that non-FotM content expansion will be tuned to assume that level 80 characters have all the ascended slot gear currently available. (Nor do I ever expect content to be tuned to assume a character has Legendary Gear). Things may be sightly easier for someone with all available Ascended gear slots filled, but I honestly don’t see that as a big deal and certainly not as something that should bother casuals who may not have the time/resources to aquire full sets of Exotic/Ascended gear.

TLDR;

The stat increase from Ascended Gear is minimal. We only have Ascended Rings and Back Armor in this release, which minimizes the impact of Ascended Gear on “Gear Inflation”. Future “Inflation” will be via the introduction of new Ascended Tier gear slots, but this will almost certainly be tied to major updates to Fractals of the Mist Dungeon, which Arenanet has already indicated will be updated over the months and years ahead.

This entire hub-bub is just a lot to do about nothing.

Exotics offered a big boost over rares, which made my characters with exotics more powerful, making game play more efficient, so, yeah, they were and still are worth it.

The ease/difficulty of obtaining Ascended Gear, I’m sure, will impact Exotic pricing and the willingness of players to pursue Exotics through other means. Plus, for now, Ascended is only offered as Rings and Back Armor. The Back Armor will probably be worthwhile for almost everyone. The rings will probably be pursued more for Agony mitigation and Infusion slots buy those actively participating in Fragments of the Mist. They do appear to offer ~ an 8% stat boost over Exotic Rings, at least based on the one example shown. Is someone who isn’t otherwise interested in running FotM going to play it just for an 8% stat boost on their rings? Maybe, maybe not.

I’m not sure what the stat boost between rares and Exotics figured out to, but I know when comparing Rare and Exotic armor, Exotics offered a significant boost. Even level 78 Exotics offer a noticeable boost over level 80 rares.

I’m just glad that the “gear inflation” from Ascended gear is minor, (compare to WoW Expansion related gear inflation, where the new green gear at (Old Level Cap +1) where usually more powerful than gear people had spent hundreds of hours grinding for). Also, they are starting with just two armor types, Rings and back Armor. It appears that Fragments of the Mist will be expanded on a fairly regular basis over the months and years to come. I wouldn’t be surprised if we don’t see full Ascended gear sets in the game until a year or two down the road. In the mean time, all the Exotic gear in every other slot remains at the pinnacle, unless there is a Legendary variant available.

Will the update make me want to upgrade two rings and a back piece? Sure, but that’s really not a big deal, or even a little deal. I’m even going to guess that those looking for Ascended only for the normal stats boosts will be able to get those three items fairly quickly. It will be Ascended gear with Infusion Slots or built in Agony Mitigation that will likely require the most time and effort to acquire and Infusions/Agony will have zero purpose outside of FotM.

Go play Fragments of the Mist and earn your ascended gear like everyone else.

I find this topic to be truly bizarre.

You do know that in the beginning the only ascended gear will be rings and back armor, right? The back armor has, perhaps, the most appeal. I think you will find the rings have a miniscule stat advantage over fully enhanced Exotic rings. Infusions mean ZERO/NADA outside of Fragments of the Mist, so they don’t even figure into the equation for those who don’t plan on running the dungeon.

In case you missed it, FotM is accessed via a portal in Lion’s Arch, so is very accessible and it even offers level scaling to level 80, in a similar fashion to WvW scaling, which will make it easy for more players to participate, even if a true level 80 with exotics will have a much better chance of getting deeper into the dungeon.

Put in proper context, Ascended gear isn’t anything to complain or worry about. FotM is a very exciting addition to the game and it’s too bad so many people are missing that because they have become obsessed over what is essentially a non-issue.

It’s safe to play. Don’t bot. Don’t be abusive, crude or obnoxious to others and make sure you have a really good password you don’t use anywhere else and you will be fine. Bans are a tiny portion of the playerbase and legitimate players getting bans almost always goes back to their account being hacked because they used a password they’ve used elsewhere.

Enjoy the game!

The blame for the hatred lies squarely with Arenanet.

His main dialogue and his actions in the story are completely suitable. His incessant negativity and whining in his idle dialogue is not only obnoxious, but would completely disqualify him as someone capable of earning and maintaining the level of respect needed to lead an army!

All his idle dialogue should be completely re-written and re-recorded. I love the Arenanet writers, but some one really kittened up on this one!

I think most of the posters in the thread need to re-read the information on ascended gear and Fractals of the Mist dungeon, including the blog post, over and over until they actually understand it. there is nothing here to be up in arms about. Nada.

Ascended Gear has stats on par with Exotic Gear that has enhancements already applied. Ascended gear removes enhancement slots in order to be able to provide infusion slots. This gear will not be more powerful, outside of Fractals of the Mist, than properly enhanced Exotic gear! Ascended gear will provide another method for players to acquire exotic quality end game gear, but some may miss the opportunity to customize their stats via enhancements.

Where Ascended Gear shines is when equipped with infusions, or when the item comes with resistance to the new FotM exclusive monster condition built in. This system will allow players who play a lot of FotM to get deeper and deeper into the FotM experience on a given extended run.

It’s an end game dungeon progression, but the gear progression provides zero gear inflation outside of FotM!

I look at FotM as another form of adjunct game play in the same vein as WvW and sPvP. They are optional forms of alternative game play meant to appeal to people with particular play styles and content preferences. You can completely ignore FotM dungeon, if you wish, and you will not see the rest of your game play suffer as a result. Others may play FotM almost exclusively. It’s just another way for the game to broaden it’s appeal and offer players more game play options to suit thier changing mood!

Crazylegsmurphy.6430:

I’m not sure why they don’t have different EU and US start times for these events. Using the excuse that players will upload the video to YouTube is not a very good excuse.

That’s like saying that if they release The Hobbit at different times throughout the world, someone might read about it on the internet. If players don’t want content spoiled, they shouldn’t be looking for it on the internet.

The three things that ANet could do to make this easier on all players are:

1. Space events out so they don’t require such a large time commitment all at once. I think most people can plan for these things, but not many can dedicate entire weekends to playing a video game.

2. Be more transparent about all the events coming up. Put a calendar online, and in the game showing upcoming events and times. Even if it just says, “World event!” with a time, that would be enough for people to look months down the line and book time off, or whatever.

An extra step would be sweet iCal/Outlook integration so we could manage them like any other task and ANet could change, or adjust them as needed.

3. Be a bit more transparent about WHAT it is that is going on. We all like surprises and such, but not everyone will be super happy to dedicate the time, only to find out it’s a cutscene.

Anecdote: Last week my girlfriend and I were on the road traveling to California. We knew there was an event at 12 PDT, so we planned our travel day around it. We rushed to a McDonalds (free WiFi), and sat there frustrated as it took over 30 minutes to update the client. We eventually got in, only to find out it had been a cutscene.

Again, these events are super awesome and I applaud ANet for putting in such amazing effort (the Halloween theme was quite cool), but they need to be a little more flexible for all their players.

This!

There are two data centers 5+ hours apart. Each data center should have it’s own start time for the region it’s in. I could care less if the event is “spoiled” for those in the US unable to stay away from spoilers before the event kicks off here. At least more people would be able to participate!

I finished all the WvW zones in about two weeks with out server hopping, but I can appreciate that this may be a lot easier on some servers than on others. (Two weeks, but only sporadic participation during those two weeks).

I always queued up for WvW when I logged in and once I got over there , I would look for any map points I needed that were controlled by my server. Usually, if there were no points I needed, I would queue for the next zone. I’d go through this maybe once a day, I wasn’t constantly visiting WvW through out an entire game’s worth of play, I just made a point to try to check each zone at least once a day.

The last few points took the longest, but as I said, I managed to complete all four zones in about two weeks.

I agree that there should be some mechanism to try to maximize color shifts for each server. I also think that exploration is just one more reason why we would probably be better off with weekly matches, rather than the originally intended two weeks.

Something like 100% map completion should be considered a long term goal. Getting frustrated that it may take weeks, or even months in some cases, seems a little pointless to me. Heck, even though I finished the Mists exploration, I still haven’t gotten 100% world completion on any character in almost 500 hours of play because I’m taking my time enjoying the world in an organic manner, rather than obsessing over completion of the achievement. (I feel the same way about Legendaries as well. If I get mine by the end of the first year, I’ll be happy).

I don’t like it. We were not supposed to have end game gear inflation, but here it is.

I’m going to speak a harsh truth. I love Arenanet and the game, but sometimes truth needs to be spoken to power.

The concept of cosmetic skins as incentive for dungeon “grind” was not an unreasonable alternative to stat inflation. The concept fell apart, however, due to two things:

1. Dungeons that were advertised as being non-grindy where made grindy at release. Running a dungeon a few times for skins was reasonable. Running a dungeon several dozen times for skins made the reward seem not worth the time investment.

2. (The Harsh part). Cosmetic Skins as incentive for “grind” relies heavily on said skins being worth the effort to acquire. Unfortunately, a very high percentage of dungeon armor skins are mediocre to horrible. The game and even a large percentage of armors show great artistic skill and aesthetic appeal. However, it seems that some of the artists tasked with making armor for the game were just no where near talented enough for the task. You can’t expect armor skins to provide incentive for grind when so many of those skins are just plain bad.

I guess adding gear inflation is a lot easier than finding artists talented enough to make armor skins actually worth grinding for, but I find it pretty sad. Here’s to hoping this is a band-aid approach and the plan does not rely on future gear inflation as the game moves forward.

Arenanet, please do what ever you need to do to get artists into the fold that can make armor skins people would actually want to work hard to earn. This would also benefit the gem store armor skin model as well, as the current offerings there are really not up to par either. (The light armor is horrible and the other two have unnecessary flaws).

Maybe even with awesome skins the community will demand gear inflation, I don’t know, but I do know that the “cosmetics as incentive” model didn’t really have much of a chance to succeed when more than half of the dungeon armors where pure kitten aesthetically!

I just can’t believe the OP. I stopped reading after he said he hit 80 and had all his exotics after 70 hours. yeah, it might be possible for someone who bought a ton of gold, legally or otherwise, but if that were the case, there still would be zero basis for the argument being made.

I have around 475 hours played so far and have no problem seeing myself exceeding 1,000 hours of game play from the current world PvE content alone. (I’ve barely touched WvW, only played a couple hours of sPvP and haven’t touched a Dungeon yet).

I’ve been cutting down my hours to achieve a better balance between GW2 and Real-Life, which has just redoubled the feeling that the game has way more to do than I have time to do it in, even after 475 hours of play!

Now, if the OP had said they had hit level 80 and outfitted themselves in exotics after 170 hours, I could believe that. I could also believe that someone still stuck in the old MMO mindset might be at a bit of a loss for what to do once they hit that point.

If you play the game a little more like Skyrim and less like WoW, you’ll find that there are hundreds and hundreds of hours of game play here, even for those who prefer to focus on a single character, rather than looking to alts for replayability.

I understood the game’s design going in and still needed a day off from my main after hitting level 80 just to readjust my thinking. I now have over 225 hours on that character and once I get my level 76 and level 62 alts to 80, I anticipate spending hundreds of hours of play in the coming months with my level 80 characters.

Everyone is different and all the professions have their good points.

My first level 80 was a Dagger/Dagger Elementalist and I love the way it plays. I have a level 30 Engineer and actually had good success in WvW even at level 20. Both can be complex professions. Elementalist with the four Elemental Attunements and Engineer with the various kits, but that’s part of what I like about them.

I’m now playing a Melee Ranger and having a blast, but it’s not as fun pre level 40 as post level 40. Similar experience with Thief, absolutely loved my Thief post level 50, but it was a bit less fun up to that point.

Elementalist is a pretty solid choice if you enjoy complexity, as I found it fun from start to finish.

It may just be coincidence, but I have noticed streaks along a particular theme, but I don’t think it’s profession related.

If you’ve accumulated transmutation stones through play, you can find a lot of extremely cheap higher level blue armors on the TP that look great. I was using level 80 skins on my Ranger at level 60 and it was very inexpensive to do, assuming you have been accumulating the stones.

If you google GW2 crafted armor sets, you’ll find a number of sources that show all the crafted sets in each armor class. Or, you can head to the PvP locker in the heart of the Mists and preview the various sets there. All the crafted sets have PvP equivalents and some of the other skins also have PvE versions that aren’t too expensive to acquire.