Guild Wars 2

Evans.6347:

Oh you’re quitting on patch day?
Well that makes you super special doesn’t it.

… you’ll come back. They always do.

Yawn….keep dreaming. Nothing for you to see here.

Solomon Darkfury.3729:

Given it took about an hour per craft to hit 400 I would say not long…

If you can afford to buy the mats. The crafting length is mostly determined by your gather speed…or buying power.

Ashabhi.1365:

No matter what ANet come up with, there will be those that complain.

Up until recently, there was complaints about the content being too easy, and that there was no vertical progression, and nothing to do.

So, now ANet has given us the Living Story (doesn’t matter if you like it or not, it’s there if you want to do it,) they’re going to upgrade Tequatl, and now they’re introducing ascended gear blah blah blah.

The key is that the difference between Exotic gear, Ascended gear, and Legendary gear is that their stats are not so far apart that the general joe can’t compete if they don’t get the latest and greatest.

I hope it stays that way, no matter how many tiers of armor they add.

Adding more content doesn’t make the game less easy. What a ridiculous argument. The game is still too easy.

And as far as the stats are concerned it doesn’t matter how big the difference is, although I suspect it’s bigger than you think when we have a full set of ascended gear. Perception is reality as they saying goes.

I fully expect in the future that people will only want to do things like dungeons with people in ascended gear because it’s easier and faster.

I also expect that the stats actually make enough of a difference in WvW for people to complain about it and feel like they can’t compete in WvW without it.

So even if you were right and the stat difference were negligible (which again I don’t actually agree with), even then will people still believe it makes a big difference. I don’t think that you can just change that perception and it will upset more people than Anet should want to upset.

I agree with the OP basically. I know all games have grind but it’s senseless grind to the point that grind has become the goal rather than the method. That’s what makes GW2 different and dead boring in my view.

Klawlyt.6507:

Gehenna.3625:

Yep, looks like we agree more than we realised so we can instantly bury that hatchet.

It’s a bad compromise indeed and I just wish they’d never gone this way. How do you feel about their intended level cap raise then, because they also said that was coming?

I’m still not thrilled about it, but IIRC, we were at least warned about that prelaunch. I had already accepted it at inevitable as part of the move to be more like a normal MMO, but not likely to happen more than once a year. A level cap raise by itself wouldn’t have been terrible, but coupled with the pace of ascendeds coming out, I fear it will just be one more step in the regularly scheduled power creep that ANet have resigned to.

Well my guess is that first come the ascended weapons as we know, then the ascended armour and then the level cap raise and it starts over again. Might take another year before the level cap raise is on the table but it’s what I expect.

MikaHR.1978:

Gehenna.3625:

stale.9785:

Gehenna.3625:

HiddenNick.7206:

Guys… I’m still pretty skeptical about AN supposedly claiming that they don’t want any progression in there game. All those quotes you gave me are saying more or less that better stats are not going to be locked behind grind or difficult content. And people who never wanted any progression understood that as they liked.

There is nothing about stopping progression shortly after launch.

There is nothing like the claims of EQ:Next developers who strictly said that there will be no vertical progression in there game. And they are trying to sell their game with that! It’s not inconvenient for marketing by any means! It’s used rather as a sell point. So that’s why I can’t understand the acquisitions about AN changing their mind to sell more copies of their game.

This was the whole discussion when Ascended gear was announced. It hit like a truck for a lot of people who thought Anet wouldn’t do gear tiers. Anet then turned around and commented they never said they wouldn’t. They told us there could be more tiers but everything at a very slow pace and they said the level cap would get raised.

All in all, they didn’t say they were against gear progression but basically said that they’d slow it down and do it in such a way that, pardon the interpretation, every idiot could do it. So far they’ve been true to that.

Remember, absolutely everything BEFORE that implied there would be no gear progression. It was brought up post ascended, as they desperately backpeddled to not look like complete lying tools – which made them look like complete lying tools.

Oh I remember and I remember how angry I was about it. I wasn’t against gear progression but was against it in GW2 because I felt it has no place in this game.

The point is that they never said they wouldn’t and they also didn’t exclude the possibility of more tiers of gear afterwards.

I think a lot of people wanted just that game where stats were not the point and go along their happy ways enjoying the game for it’s interesting lore, challenges and cosmetics. Guess that wasn’t meant to be.

Yup, but since there are games that do it much better and properly (not half-arsed) why exactly stay in GW2?

I just enjoy the forum discussions. I have stopped playing the game.

stale.9785:

EDIT: also, please note that there was no obligatory grind in GW1 until the end of it’s cycle – EOTN. Factions had it, in theory, but only if you wanted to top out a skill. Nightfall had it, again in theory, but only for topping out a pve only skill.

Grinding should be for cosmetics, not power. Having “he who plays the most will always win, because gear trumps skill” is counter to what the game was advertised as.

Well I didn’t always like grinding for stuff in GW1 but I really wanted that lightbringer title maxed.

That there’s grind in games is no surprise for me and I am not against all types of grind, but I do need to feel like there’s a point to it and that’s what’s missing in GW2 for me. I level to 80, buy exotic gear and then what? I have the look I want and the legendaries mean nothing to me. So I could grind to have more cash or get more trinkets but why? There’s no point in it to me.

I prefer grind with a goal that means something to me over grind without a goal that means something to me. That to me is the big difference between GW1 and GW2. I cared about stuff in GW1, I don’t really here. Not enough to keep playing in any case.

Klawlyt.6507:

Gehenna.3625:

I was not trolling at all. Just using satire to make a point. It’s not the same.

I do play another game where there is stat progression. My only gripe here is that Anet didn’t want to decide and made some horrible hybrid. My wish for GW2 was to have no tiers at all like GW1. Since they decided to go a half baked way I am not happy with it.

If anything I wish they never had introduced it to begin with. I am NOT asking for tiers in this game, I am just saying that the people who are so categorically opposed to it, don’t realise that leveling is very similar to gear progression. Leveling has gear progression by level and the gear and levels are needed to do higher level content. Please explain to me how this is so incredibly different?

I find it a kittenildish to call me uninformed, especially if you don’t even explain why.

So don’t just jump on my view as a rabid dog again simply because you have a different point of view, but try to actually think about this first. How is it so different? That’s what I want to know and if you make a good point, with argumentation, I will gladly accept it and learn from it, but if not, then I will understand you don’t actually have a point.

First off, I didn’t realize it was satire. In that case, I’d say we’re actually on the same side of the argument, if for slightly different reasons.

Second, i did explain why leveling, and post level-cap progression are two different things. At launch, a good chunk of the people who had been following the game thought that the goalposts were going to sit at 80, with reasonably easy to obtain exotics. At least for a good long time. In WoW, or ToR or any other “classical” MMO, there’s an expectation that the goalposts are going to be moved periodically. Some games get criticized for not doing it quickly enough. Folks like you and I, were not looking for those games.

And third, I s’pose you’re not among the uninformed, again, because I mistook your post for your genuine opinion. That doesn’t change the fact that the people who bought the game, got to 80, and started with the “OMG there’s nuthin to do here!” didn’t know what kind of game they were getting. But all those people were here, and were willing to spend money. So ANet gave them a reason to stick around and spend. And now the game I thought I was getting away from turned out to be exactly where I went.

And as I stated earlier, this whole state of compromise is ultimately a bad choice, I believe. I don’t think ascended gear goes far enough to make people who really do like WoW model happy, and it certainly ticks off the people who were trying to escape it. Ultimately, the only people who are content are the folks who don’t really have an opinion either way.

Yep, looks like we agree more than we realised so we can instantly bury that hatchet.

It’s a bad compromise indeed and I just wish they’d never gone this way. How do you feel about their intended level cap raise then, because they also said that was coming?

Daywolf.2630:

Gehenna.3625:

I am sure that if you removed all loot you will also remove most players. Without loot there is very little reason to do anything more than a few times.

Well say it dropped skills, power-ups, account bound gear or bound gear earned from tokens. Then game design focused on pure fun-factor rather than on driving RMT as part of it.

I mean wasn’t that part of why the recent living story – was more slanted towards zerg farming? Get more people involved in gold farming? It’s a market manipulation to move gems for a short period. How do you milk a cow the old fashioned way? You grab that utter and control it in spurts (so I’ve seen), the cow lives to milk another day as opposed to gutting it for it’s milk.

But yeah, if you removed it and left nothing, people would quit, which shows the design of pure fun-factor vs doing it to just buy gems etc (two extremes at least). But not all parts of the game are like that, and some reward is obviously a necessity here. This isn’t minecraft after all.

Well, that’s a different type of loot. The OP said no loot.

Having said that I find your idea much more interesting than his.

stale.9785:

Gehenna.3625:

HiddenNick.7206:

Guys… I’m still pretty skeptical about AN supposedly claiming that they don’t want any progression in there game. All those quotes you gave me are saying more or less that better stats are not going to be locked behind grind or difficult content. And people who never wanted any progression understood that as they liked.

There is nothing about stopping progression shortly after launch.

There is nothing like the claims of EQ:Next developers who strictly said that there will be no vertical progression in there game. And they are trying to sell their game with that! It’s not inconvenient for marketing by any means! It’s used rather as a sell point. So that’s why I can’t understand the acquisitions about AN changing their mind to sell more copies of their game.

This was the whole discussion when Ascended gear was announced. It hit like a truck for a lot of people who thought Anet wouldn’t do gear tiers. Anet then turned around and commented they never said they wouldn’t. They told us there could be more tiers but everything at a very slow pace and they said the level cap would get raised.

All in all, they didn’t say they were against gear progression but basically said that they’d slow it down and do it in such a way that, pardon the interpretation, every idiot could do it. So far they’ve been true to that.

Remember, absolutely everything BEFORE that implied there would be no gear progression. It was brought up post ascended, as they desperately backpeddled to not look like complete lying tools – which made them look like complete lying tools.

Oh I remember and I remember how angry I was about it. I wasn’t against gear progression but was against it in GW2 because I felt it has no place in this game.

The point is that they never said they wouldn’t and they also didn’t exclude the possibility of more tiers of gear afterwards.

I think a lot of people wanted just that game where stats were not the point and go along their happy ways enjoying the game for it’s interesting lore, challenges and cosmetics. Guess that wasn’t meant to be.

lordkrall.7241:

Gehenna.3625:

From Anet, already announced last year.

http://www.gamefront.com/guild-wars-2-level-cap-raise-confirmed-for-future/

That isn’t really a confirmation though.
All he says is that they are EXPECTING to raise the level cap in the future.

Take it as you will. They can always change their mind…about anything. They can also change their mind on making more tiers of gear or implementing a full treadmill after all.

Why? Because as a company they will have to go where the money is. Do you seriously think that if China is a success and they want more tiers, that Anet will just say no? Do you seriously think that if they were to lose more players again to the point where it gets critical, they might not reconsider what’s needed to keep the game alive?

I am not saying it will happen but I don’t think you can treat their statements as final to that point either. They are planning it. Usually people stick to their plan but anything can change. We might end up not getting additional levels but more tiers of gear instead for all we know. It just depends on what the future brings really.

Galen Grey.4709:

I m not comparing games or saying one is successful or not… I am using events that focus players as means of judging what 460k concurrent players would look like. I did say its not accurate but then again the same inaccuracies can be found in both games. Sure some players might not take the FATE shortcut but then again not everyone will take part in an invasion. Its not like WvW is empty or there are no dungeon groups running because of invasions. Its not like people dont do dynamic events or world boses because of invasions. You can even find people playing mini games while an invasion is running. Yet the difference in players is astounding. I am saying orders of magnitude here.

No the value given last year was 400k not 460k… the 460k was mentioned last week for the first time but we were given no context on when it happened. It could have happened last year or last week… in any case they decided not to mentioned until the collective 1 year of gw2 press release. Saying it happened at the start is no more or less speculation then saying it happened last week. We simply dont know.

No they’re not. 300k concurrent players would be a worth number but not one worthy of mention after you reported a bigger number previously.

The number given last year was not 400k, but it was over 400k. They now gave a more specific number but it’s still about last year.

It’s common for MMOs to have a spike in the beginning and then it drops. It’s not unusual and also GW2 is not immune to that. 300k would be a worthy number because it’s very high for a game that’s been out for a year.

If that 460k was recent they’d definitely emphasized it but they haven’t. The silly thing is that you have these pink glasses on to look through and it’s not even necessary. The game is doing well enough but not as well as you claim.

When sales drop to a less than 30% than the previous quarter and you know that many people will leave as they do in any game, there is no reasonable basis for your assumptions. You are right, no one has exact numbers but I am telling you, we don’t have any current numbers on concurrency and it’s simply not reasonable in any shape or form to assume that the 460k was not around the start of the game when it was reported to be OVER 400k.

It’s just not realistic to assume the 460k came later as a second peak. Not realistic at all.
Now you doggedly want to believe something, that’s your choice, but you have nothing more than your wish to support that.

Vayne.8563:

Gobhoblin.7582:

Ashen.2907:

Some of the PVE only skills tied to titles did provide a significant amount of power. They were easy mode approaches to powerful builds as top end builds without PVE only skills were capable of levels of performance at least comparable to PVE only builds.

You and I remember it quite differently. Lets agree to disagree, and let all these good folks get back to arguing about GW2, shall we?

I did give specific examples. Whatever your memory was of that, those skills existed and if you entered the meta game in PvE, you were expected to have them..and by many have them maxed out.

Anyone who played GW1 and has done things like DoA knows that Lightbringer levels were a requirement… but what I think he’s trying to tell you is that whatever happened in GW1 is irrelevant for GW2 and the manifesto and as a consequence for this discussion.

Now, I haven’t followed all posts here but is that relevant for this discussion?

GW1 did have grind but it had stuff I really wanted. GW2 has grind but for me it has no purpose so I don’t do it. I don’t mind grind always but the statement that they don’t want to make grindy games is a nice statement but I don’t think they managed to do it.

I am sure that if you removed all loot you will also remove most players. Without loot there is very little reason to do anything more than a few times.

Galen Grey.4709:

We have no way of knowing if thats the case or not. We do not know how many of those 3.5 still play and how many left and how many are merely on a temporary break.

I think you are clutching at straws here.

Galen Grey.4709:

But I would say one thing. We know there was the re-release of FXIV and I have been watching some streams of it out of curiosity. Seems like currently there is a sort of leveling short cut… People are farming what they call fates… (public events) because they give out a ton of XP and get you to max level quicker then quests… Obviously they’re very popular. The number of players you see doing them is no where close to the number of players you see doing invasions or world events. Never mind overflows. Same with the capital cities.

A new game with an exploit. Unusual. I wouldn’t use this as a comparison because FF is a very different type of game. People can play non combat classes and things and not everybody will use such events because it may be considered an exploit. You can’t really judge the full population of a new game on what you’ve explained here.

Galen Grey.4709:

this is not definitive proof of anything of course, but we do know that just last week FFXIV reached 200k peak numbers which makes the 460k peak numbers stated by arenanet something thats plausible to be close to recent numbers. If thats the case, I think a lot of people might be underestimating how many people actually still play the game.

The 460k concurrency was in the beginning of the game. Last year and have admitted to there being a big dip in sales as we can see by the financial reports anyways.

It just seems to me that you need GW2 to be on top of the world whether it’s true or not. The game is doing fine as far as MMOs go, from what I can tell. Isn’t that enough for you?

There is no way that they get anywhere near 460k concurrency today and I’ll give you a simple reason why: Anet hasn’t given out any concurrency numbers for this year. They are bragging only with their numbers from last year.

Truly, if they had over 300k concurrency today that would be a worthy feat and therefore worth mentioning. Apparently current numbers are not worth mentioning.

Vayne.8563:

And now that the game has the stickiness that they were missing at launch (even I felt it), maybe it’ll turn out there won’t be more tiers of gear, because they won’t be necessary.

But to assume they’ll be more than this, just because this exists is just an unwarranted assumption.

My guess is that the Chinese will get to decide that. If the game does well there, do you think they will be happy without any more tiers?

Klawlyt.6507:

Gehenna.3625:

The funny thing is that leveling is done via a quest line and yes, levels. Gear progression after max level is the same thing actually, just with gear alone and no longer with levels.

Think about it, you don’t do level 50 zones when you are level 10. You wouldn’t survive. That’s totally wrong and upsetting isn’t it?

Wait, it’s not upsetting?

So while leveling you don’t get upset that you need higher levels and better gear for content, but once you’re max level you do get upset about needing gear for certain content?

Interesting.

That’s just trolly and doesn’t show much insight into the situation. First off, I’m sure the number of people ticked off about ascended gear is roughly equal to the number of people who would be/will be ticked off at the inevitable announcement of a level cap increase.

We all knew there would be progression from 1-80, that was never in doubt. While I would argue it’s not absolutely necessary for the initial progression, (see EQNext) completely removing levels would indeed be a radical step for a game still claiming to be an MMORPG, and it’s not a step ANet were even trying to make. They did many things to devalue the leveling process, such as leveling scaling. Ok, just level scaling, but it is in many parts of the game, and in many cases implemented well.

The difference between progressing to level cap and progressing past the level cap, (via gear, just as you pointed out) is now the goalposts are being moved. Now granted, many MMO’s move their goalposts quite regularly. That’s not a bad thing, that’s what many games are built on, and there’s nothing wrong with that. The thing that rustles so many jimmies around here is that GW2 was marketed as though we were going to be free from that. While it’s true that everyone needs goals, not everyone needs the persistent, mandatory goal of getting better gear shoved down their throat. My goals, for example, are generally: increase my point per tick, take that tower, play sPvP to make ME a better player (and not to make my character a better character). This is the game that it seemed I was getting. If YOU need stat progression, that’s fine. Go play one of those games where that’s the emphasis.

ANet capitulating to the uninformed is only part of the problem. The other part is the uninformed.

I was not trolling at all. Just using satire to make a point. It’s not the same.

I do play another game where there is stat progression. My only gripe here is that Anet didn’t want to decide and made some horrible hybrid. My wish for GW2 was to have no tiers at all like GW1. Since they decided to go a half baked way I am not happy with it.

If anything I wish they never had introduced it to begin with. I am NOT asking for tiers in this game, I am just saying that the people who are so categorically opposed to it, don’t realise that leveling is very similar to gear progression. Leveling has gear progression by level and the gear and levels are needed to do higher level content. Please explain to me how this is so incredibly different?

I find it a kittenildish to call me uninformed, especially if you don’t even explain why.

So don’t just jump on my view as a rabid dog again simply because you have a different point of view, but try to actually think about this first. How is it so different? That’s what I want to know and if you make a good point, with argumentation, I will gladly accept it and learn from it, but if not, then I will understand you don’t actually have a point.

colesy.8490:

I’d like ascended haters to answer me this point I raised in another thread.

I will answer it from my point of view but please realise people have different reasons for not liking ascended gear. My problem is not the gear itself but how it’s being handled.

colesy.8490:

Situation:

Two players in Ascalonian Catacombs with identical gear. One player has a sigil of night on, the other has no sigil.

Why is it fine in this case, but the slight change in stats from exotic to ascended weapons is the end of the world?

Your situation is in a dungeon. That doesn’t help. In PvE content the differences between classes and gear are only problematic if it causes people to exclude players because of it. This may still happen. I fully expect that at some point ascended gear will be required to join groups even in the usual dungeons just to save time.

The trinkets may not make that big of a difference but the weapons migt make a bigger difference as they are part of a multiplier to calculate damage done. Multiplication can make a much bigger difference than simple addition.

Also by the time the full set of ascended gear is out, I do not know how much of a difference it makes then and it will be something that matters for new players. I also think that one of the bigger concerns is WvW. This is where players are pitted against each other. I am convinced that even if exaggerated, people will start blaming losing on not having ascended gear and may deter players to participate before they have ascended gear.

colesy.8490:

Secondly, you can get ascended trinkets easily, so it’s literally just the weapon which takes a lot of effort and resources to get.

This is part of the problem for me? This is one reason why I don’t like ascended gear. For me it takes too long to get it (time gated and weapons and armour aren’t in game yet). You can find multiple complaints about this very issue. To make it so easy but time gated and not give alternatives is just not helpful. It seems the back piece is in the same vain. It just seems to me that it’s better to stay away from the whole extra tier thing or to actually make it a sensible progression that people can work towards and have options to do so. My understanding is that for the back piece you pretty much have to do fractals. So you can get the trinkets just by showing up but for the back piece you need to do something specific? It’s just the lack of sense and logic in their approach that gets me, not the actual gear itself.

akamon.2769:

now where is talk of increasing level cap coming from?

From Anet, already announced last year.

http://www.gamefront.com/guild-wars-2-level-cap-raise-confirmed-for-future/

HiddenNick.7206:

Guys… I’m still pretty skeptical about AN supposedly claiming that they don’t want any progression in there game. All those quotes you gave me are saying more or less that better stats are not going to be locked behind grind or difficult content. And people who never wanted any progression understood that as they liked.

There is nothing about stopping progression shortly after launch.

There is nothing like the claims of EQ:Next developers who strictly said that there will be no vertical progression in there game. And they are trying to sell their game with that! It’s not inconvenient for marketing by any means! It’s used rather as a sell point. So that’s why I can’t understand the acquisitions about AN changing their mind to sell more copies of their game.

This was the whole discussion when Ascended gear was announced. It hit like a truck for a lot of people who thought Anet wouldn’t do gear tiers. Anet then turned around and commented they never said they wouldn’t. They told us there could be more tiers but everything at a very slow pace and they said the level cap would get raised.

All in all, they didn’t say they were against gear progression but basically said that they’d slow it down and do it in such a way that, pardon the interpretation, every idiot could do it. So far they’ve been true to that.

The funny thing is that leveling is done via a quest line and yes, levels. Gear progression after max level is the same thing actually, just with gear alone and no longer with levels.

Think about it, you don’t do level 50 zones when you are level 10. You wouldn’t survive. That’s totally wrong and upsetting isn’t it?

Wait, it’s not upsetting?

So while leveling you don’t get upset that you need higher levels and better gear for content, but once you’re max level you do get upset about needing gear for certain content?

Interesting.

Oh and there will be a level cap raise…maybe more. That’s not upsetting? Oh that’s right, because it’s leveling and that’s different.

@Vayne, life does get grindy. You speak about getting up every morning, but I know a lot of people who feel that way about their jobs. So yeh life is full of grind, but the question is do you enjoy the repetition and why? In game it’s fun vs progression. Why is that opposite. A lot of people actually like gear progression.

Now another thing is how people are stuck on stats vs cosmetics. It’s still a matter of progression either way. It isn’t as different as people think it is. It’s still something to work towards and once you have it, you generally start looking for the next project.

I am sure that there are some people who like just being there and doing things without a goal and call that fun, but I think I can safely state that most people have goals, they want to work towards something be it stats or cosmetic or both.

What makes gear treadmills annoying for some people is that it comes faster than they want or devaluates previous content they enjoyed. My guess is that if they managed that better it wouldn’t be such a problem.

Anet has chosen a much much slower pace of progression by releasing the ascended tier over a much longer period of time and time gating the acquisition, but I do wonder how long it will be before we see more content that requires ascended gear (and infusions) because at some point people will realise that having ascended gear doesn’t mean kitten all if it only makes existing content easier than it already is and nothing more. I would guess people will figure out it has no meaning.

Unless of course…well, we’ll see if the skins are amazing.

Well GW2 certainly made it’s mark in MMO history, so I wouldn’t call it a small game as such.

Of course, they are the first MMO that has a box price and no sub. That’s something that we can consider new but it’s also something that makes it easier for people to try it out.

They are the fastest selling MMO ever in the west, according to calculations they had done. Well let’s assume those calculations are correct. It would have been really disappointing if they hadn’t done that with this business model.

When GW2 came out last year there weren’t any really good fantasy MMOs out there and th mammoth WoW still made more money than GW2 will ever make. No one can beat that amount of box sales (with expansions), millions of subs for years and a cash shop as well now. Really with the business model they have and their timing it would’ve been extremely poor if they hadn’t sold so many.

But I see signs now that GW2 is just like any other MMO. It appeals to a much smaller group than advertised for and it’s holding steady at a fraction of those box sales. That doesn’t mean GW2 hasn’t been successful but it does mean it hasn’t done any better than other MMOs out there and I am also not convinced that they have a better profit margin. Their costs are probably lower but the revenue is as well. So I think that they are doing fine but there’s nothing revolutionary going on here either.

In essece it could be considered disappointing to see how many people have stopped playing even when there isn’t a sub. I don’t think anyone here can realistically claim that a majority of the 3.5 million box sales are still active players.

And I think that’s the reason why other companies have not chosen the same business model because I think they saw that GW2 doesn’t do better than other MMOs and may not meet profit margins they’d like to see. It works for GW2 but I don’t think it would work if the whole MMO market went B2P.

HiddenNick.7206:

It all gets back to our basic design philosophy. Our games aren’t about preparing to have fun, or about grinding for a future fun reward.

I just read this thread below.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/End-of-an-Era/first#post2759222

He is doing exactly that. I wonder why…

I’d like to hear the rest of your story if it ends up that Obsidian shards are not part of Ascended crafting.

But if you are correct you can probably craft you ascended gear on the first day it comes out and then you can quit the game cause you’re done.

Just realise that the best computer in the world is no guarantee for good gameplay, especially in zergfests. There is much more at play than just your computer.

I am just waiting for that first person to say he solo’d it.

Cyriss.1062:

I don’t mind colorfull mobs and humour but please Anet when something is dramatic, make it so !

This.

It’s ok to have some silly stuff in a game, in fact, you need it to balance things out a bit. But when it’s supposed to be dark or threatening, it just isn’t. That’s no good.

Galen Grey.4709:

But not everyone is like me or you.

Its not even the same between us who given the choice would have voted no Ascended armor in game at all.

Its not an easy thing to balance so many requirements.

On top of it all I loved the flexiblity and power gw1 gave to a class. No more locked to a single role. Gw2 did that even better in my opinion but unfortunately because the game was easy it never got a chance to shine. Well that seems to be changing if they follow up on what they said this weekend during the panel. So thats great.

I agree as such. We all have our personal preferences.

On the subject of classes, my view is that because they don’t have roles they all feel the same to me. What you can power for a class, I call lack of definition.

In essence it’s all dps with some support variations possible and that to me means the classes are meaningless. You could’ve had 2-3 classes to do what they use 8 classes for and even then it would just be a matter of look and weapon choice more than anything.

So yeh, everybody has their own preferences, but I like to feel that choosing a class matters, that what I do in the world matters and that my character is the hero and has many options to build up my character. That can be purely cosmetic as I enjoyed it in GW1 with many awesome looking armours to collect.

But to me GW2 feels a bit like a teenager who has all the flexibility and choices left but as he hasn’t made any real choices yet, but lacks character and definition.

Vayne.8563:

They said that legendary weapons were meant to be best in slot always. That was directly said. Maybe someone will find a quote, but they were always meant to be BIS. They’re raising the stats now because ascended gear is coming out. I’d be very surprised if they said to people okay, your legendary is now useless.

I just don’t see that happening at all.

And I fully expect legendary armor at some point.

Well, I remember reading that too, but I also remember noticing how they didn’t take the level cap raise into it. This was around the time that ascended gear was announced and they said that legendary weapons would be matched to any tier, but again not specifying anything about what would happen in the case of a level cap raise.

I am pretty sure that the current legendary weapons will forever be BiS for level 80, but I am not so sure it will be BiS for higher levels.

Considering how much of the crappy RNG stuff they are copying from Aion, I wouldn’t be surprised if a level cap raise will include a way to upgrade your current one to level 90 or whatever, but I’d be really surprised if they’d just auto-update it to the new level cap.

We’ll see of course but I think you read a little more in those comments than was actually written there. I would be surprised if you found a genuine link to any comments that include the level cap raise in that BiS commentary.

For a second I thought you said it’s for level 80s only and then I realised you meant it takes at least 80 players.

I guess this is the new version of time gating. Just create content that you need so many players for that it will rarely get done because either you don’t get enough people or you do and half of them get disconnected.

I can see the rage posts…..you know getting disconnected just before he dies, missing out on loot.

Sounds like a good idea.

Vayne.8563:

Obviously, to me, the whole concept of a treadmill is moving and moving and moving and getting nowhere. There’s always another tier of gear.

Well it’s just like your PC. There’s always a better one or a new graphics card. Some people look it something to look forward to and others will call it a neverending story.

Vayne.8563:

Now Guild Wars 2, at least with legendary weapons, means that if you get one, it’s always going to be on par with the highest stats in the game. That is to say, I have a legendary rifle. So when the ascended gear comes out, my rifle will move up to that level. It’s a cap on gear.

And if there is a cap on gear, can you call what’s going on here a treadmill? I don’t think so.

We don’t know for sure if that’s true. They said that they would match it to the ascended tier, but there’s one question they never answered. What happens when they raise the level cap (as they already said will happen)? Will the legendary weapons be raised to the highest tier of the new level or not? You see, they said they would match it to the highest tier, but tiers can exist at different levels. They never said that level cap raises would be applied to legendary weapons. So you are going on an assumption here.

Vayne.8563:

What we have here is a gear escalator. Yes, there is vertical progression…to a point. But after you get to that point, it stops. You get off. And once you’re there, you don’t have to worry about gearing up.

In fact, legendary weapons allow you to change stats out of combat, so that a legendary weapon is in fact all weapons of that type. You only need one.

So the real question is, if legendary armor gets released…is it going to be the same. Guaranteed best stats and the ability to change to different stat sets?

Because if it is, that’s gonna be amazing.

I haven’t heard about legendary armour yet but if the game would get gear that you can get and then never ever have to buy another set of gear as it automatically upgrades with level caps being raised, well, I’d say more and more people will find this game pointless….not everyone will find that amazing and I can’t imagine it being good for continued activity in an MMO.

This is actually quite a weak point in the game for the long term as I see it. Sure, some people will love it but I think it will cause the game to lose even more players over time.

Galen Grey.4709:

Depends on how you play the game. If you’re into vertical progression then sure you’re right. It felt done and people complained about that and they got ascended gear.

For me I got to level 80 looked around and though geesss I still have another 18 zones to fully experiance… Plenty of stuff to do… Fast forward 1000 hours later I am still not done… I still have 8 zones I didnt complete yet…

It all depends on how you play the game.

Yes for vertical progresions it’s totally crap, but as GW1 I was expecting GW2 to have interesting horizontal progression. That’s missing for me.

I completed all zones on a toon in the first two months. Never felt the desire to do it again because clearing them became boring to me.

You’re right that it depends on how you play the game but I am fine with horizontal progression as well as long as I feel motivated, interested to do so. There are so few armour sets to collect that actually look good that it’s taken the fun out of collecting them (GW1 I collected over 50 elite sets including a couple of FoW sets).

In GW1 I have 10 characters that completed all missions on all continents and also I did a lot of vanquishing, which was the GW1 version of completing an area. Not sure whatever does it but GW2 has some similar ideas but they just don’t inspire me.

Back on topic again….time gating is just lame, but perhaps it’s a necessity in a game where almost everything is too easy.

MikaHR.1978:

Thats why, if we compare Rift and SWTOR, Rift is success with its ~200k subs and SWTOR is failure with it since Rift costed 50m $ and SWTOR 4-6 times more, diectly impacting sub number to stay profitable enough.

Well, that’s not necessarily true. It’s clear that SWTOR didn’t do well last year but it’s current combination with subs, f2p and a rather successful cash shop, might net them more profit currently than Rift. I don’t know but it’s very possible.

Also Rift never sold as many copies as SWTOR so it’s hard to compare the cost investment vs box sales. Generally the idea is that initial box sales should cover the cost of creating the game as such.

What we do know is that BW didn’t handle the game well in 2012 and almost caused it to completely fail. Still f2p and the cash shop added a new influx and the game is doing well at the moment.

So yeh it was a disaster but it’s been turned around and I am not convinced that when the balances are made that Rift actually has done better and is doing better. Maybe they are, but maybe not.

In the end the key for each MMO is that they generate enough income to maintain the game and its development. It seems that Rift and SWTOR may have found that balance and it seem GW2 is getting there now too as the game is stabilising.

My main concern for GW2 is therefore not if they do well enough financially to survive, but how the game advances itself. The current direction of the game doesn’t inspire me to want to invest into it more and it’s that investment from players that’s needed.

Charrming Vase.4572:

Colin Johanson “A big part of our philosophy is to constantly evaluate how fun the game is”
Time to re-evaluate this boring boring boring, terrifyingly bad game design

Yeh but their evaluation process is also time gated….

You can never please the people who just rush through content. Would’ve been better off to give rare gear a more important role and make exotic gear take more effort to get.

Now, you buy exotic gear the moment you turn 80 and all that’s left to work for is ugly skins and some ascended stuff which is time gated. After doing dailies for a while, you just kinda forget what it was for again.

This time gating business is just symptomatic for a game that feels pretty much completely done when you are level 80.

Gizmo.8623:

@Gehenna:
Small updates is precisely what we get.
I’m beginning to think that there won’t be any substantial updates at all. Just some revamps from time to time and LW content which will be pushing story one mission at a time and having temporary (or partly temporary) fillers to appease the crowd.
Any gamechangers there? I doubt it.
That’s what the passing year accustomed me to.

But I still hope for a patch that will have a jawdropping list of changes and additions. Stupid me

yeh the biggest problem with these constant small updates si that they can’t revitalize a game like an expansion can. Now it doesn’t even have to be a full blown expansion but this stuff is just too small to really make a memorable impact in my view.

Nuka Cola.8520:

Gehenna.3625:

Nuka Cola.8520:

Only took over a year… at that pace we may receive end game by 2016.

Well a couple of thoughts.

1) Generally LFG tools are not introduced when people have no problem finding groups.

2) It is in time for China, isn’t it?

Do i live in China? Did i payed $60 for the game? I expect things like that to be there from day one because i payed $60 for a complete game and not pre-alpha testing.

To be honest it’s better if a game can do without it, but with lower populations on the servers than a year ago and content fragmented all over the place, the game needs it more now than before.

As far as China is concerned, if it bombs then it will be over soon, but if it does well then it will be the most important market for them. You already spent your cash, they are the new spenders and there’s a lot more of em there.

The funny thing was that I gladly paid the extra cash for the expansion because I wanted to spend money on GW1.

Two new classes, a new story line with a completely different continent and atmosphere by itself were worth it.

I dunno, when I look at both lists, the GW1 list is simply more appealing and had more substance to it.

Also the expansion added a complete new dimension to the game with new classes and faction pvp. It just refreshed the game. I don’t get that with these small updates in GW2.

Nuka Cola.8520:

Only took over a year… at that pace we may receive end game by 2016.

Well a couple of thoughts.

1) Generally LFG tools are not introduced when people have no problem finding groups.

2) It is in time for China, isn’t it?

Well, you know how it is with more content. Someone will always complain.

Now you could release a couple of big patches in a year and have people complain about it a few times a year. Or you could decide to do 25 smaller updates a year so people can complain all year long about it and never feel like it was enough.

Personally I think it’s good to be able to have big changes from time to time. Wake people up, refresh the game. With smaller updates the danger is that the impact is always relatively small and so it never really feels fresh and renewed I guess.

Zypher.7609:

Ohh look another thread about the birthday gift. It is great you feel entitled enough to complain about a free item. Glad you had to make your own thread instead of commenting on the other ones.

“Play more, whine less.” – Zypher.7609

My guess is, if people like yourself wouldn’t respond to these threads it’d probably be on page 3 by now at least. But hey, it’s bumped to the top again by me now

Spiderwick.1879:

Antara.3189:

Nothing on character creation screen “forces” you to slect human. No arrows point towards a human, neon signs, nothing.

Moral of story “Pick who you want to play”

Please read what is the issue then repost with less of an arogant voice.

Charr and I presume Norn have stupid camera issues in a 2013. game. I never had issues when playing a Human or Sylvari.

So actually what you were trying to say is: Anet, are you forcing us to play Sylvari, Human or Asura?

Their statistics show that more people play norn than charr…

Nuka Cola.8520:

Wolfheart.1938:

Nuka Cola.8520:

No endgame August 28th 2012, no endgame August 29th 2013.

GW1 best endgame ever rofl

not sure if you’re sarcastic or not but gw1 end game WAS good. This is a sequel to that game, released over half a decade later and its not on par, not worst, not significantly worst than what we had in gw1 but a royal joke…

Agreed GW1 endgame was good because they got the balance right, not perfect for sure but when you got something it usually was because you put some work in it and you could feel that satisfaction.

An ascended trinket is gained by logging in and doing a daily that is easy and doing that 20 times and a monthly which you buil up as you go along your dailies. I don’t get much satisfaction from that because it’s all easy.

Astralporing.1957:

For the rest of the game perhaps not, but on the forum knowing how stats work might prevent people from posting about how those increases “do not matter”. Because they do – see the post above.

Well, the reason I bring it up is because I think a lot of people don’t really do fractals or pvp.

I think that 11% will make a difference and that’s why I commented LFG, only ascended gear, because even though you don’t need it for normal dungeon runs, people will require it so the runs are faster and they will be.

This game is more about gold/hour than anything else and this stat increase if it is indeed 11% is going to support that.

It’d be interesting also to see if this will make a difference in WvW. Time will tell but I can imagine a group of 20-30 people in full exotics might make short work of most of the competition if they don’t have that gear.

congratulations for….whatever it is. Is this part of the invasion things or what?

Vayne.8563:

The open world, or meta achievement bosses, it’s very easy to confuse the two. I’m talking about the open world. Orr when it wasn’t zergy (and there have been times that’s been true). That’s also open world.

I don’t want a game with nothing but zerged boss battles. I want a game with open world content that isn’t zergy. It’s certainly not impossible.

Hate to say it but I think I agree with you on this.

It’s what I would want, although I also would like to see UW and FoW make a return.

I think where we perhaps differ a bit on your idea, is that I have sincere doubts Anet is capable of doing what you suggest. The reasons for that are twofold.

1) I don’t think the game mechanics allow for more than zerg content and a couple of lame tactics for bosses (500 red circles at a time and insta-kill moves). So whatever they make new in content will be more of the same. The key element is just what gives the most gold/hour. That’s where the players will be.

2) Resources. Lots of discussions on how much GW2 is making but management gets a budget. It’s not so much what Anet could afford as it is what they are allowed to afford themselves in development. So I think they could have a bigger budget but as long as the game meets their targets, they have no business need to increase their development budget.

Those two points is why I think that even though it’s technically possible what you propose, I doubt it will happen.

Waar Kijk Je Naar.8713:

GW1-style; pretty much only horizontal. Max stats easy to obtain, optional grind for cosmetics and titles.

We’ll see if the ascended gear that’s coming out will be easy to get or is time gated in some way. Either way I think it will tick some people off.

And then of course there will be another difference with GW1….a level cap raise. Don’t know when but they already confirmed that last year. Then you can start over again.

Do you think they will raise legendary weapons’ stats to level 90 (assuming that’s the new level cap) or do you think they will stay level 80 legendaries and then there will be new level 90 legendaries?

Vol.5241:

Guys, remember that sales is not the only metric to judge whether a company/game is doing well or not.

It is very unreasonable to expect a company to have increasing sales year after year after year. There will come a point where you hit a wall and you simply can’t get any more sales.

Anet/NCSoft have budgets and forecasts. They predicted a decline in box sales. Everyone should know that.

As long as Anet is operating according to or exceeding their plan, they are fine.

And yet that is what shareholders of each company expect. The increase in sales can come from subs and cash shops and what not but shareholders need their stock to go up. You can reduce costs to a point but going too far in that will cost you sales or revenue.

It was smart of them to predict a decline because that is realistict. I just get annoyed with people that see GW2 as a mold for MMOs. I see it as a niche game that’s doing just fine and that’s great for the fans.

marnick.4305:

Nope. In business, the cost of wages is the highest of all. Always has been and today more than ever. Infrastructure has never been cheaper, and A.net has almost no marketing budget.

I agree that the cost of wages is highest of all. If they have almost no marketing budget sounds like an assumption to me, but it doesn’t really matter. Wages are certainly not the only cost and it stands to reason that the mother company NcSoft invested into the game before it was released to build the game. They would like to see their money back as well of course.

marnick.4305:

The reason sub free MMOs can survive nowadays is exactly that … network infrastructure has become so insanely cheap that there’s no fair reason to ask a sub anymore. Add to that the real estate bubble burst and offices have likewise become just as cheap.

Sub free MMOs tend to be the usual brand of f2p’s. Generally poor quality and not what we could call a AAA game, which is more where GW2 would want to be positioned. I am sure it wasn’t cheap to build, but what I do see is that how the game is handled does show cost restraints. They are limited by their tools and resources, just like any game, but for me it is more obvious in this game. B2P is fairly unique as I see it and I haven’t seen anybody else pick it up as a good idea yet.

marnick.4305:

So if income is enough to pay wages for 5 years, rest assured it more than covers infrastructure.

If…..yeh who knows. I would guess that their massive sales at launch would cover their expenses to build it. But what you forget is that aside from the infrastructure Anet still has people on payroll that need wages. That hasn’t stopped.

A.net is extremely stable by their own words. Otherwise we’d have seen an expansion already. [/quote]

Words are cheap. What I saw is that they said the game is stabilising and there is slow player growth again. What that means and what it’s based on is anybody’s guess really. A company will not say different unless it’s blatantly staring everyone in the eyes that a game is dying.

Now I don’t think the game is dying and I think all things considered you could say the game is doing fine and is not in a danger zone or almost there.

But what I am arguing it is that it doesn’t seem to me that this game is doing better than other MMOs out there. Sure their subs didn’t fill the needs of enough players so they went for a mix and this has increased sales and populations in those games considerable, but the subs are still there and that is also important to realise.

GW2 is a niche game just like it’s predecessor, in that at least they are alike. That also means that they are not really trendsetters or changing the face of MMOs as someone said.

The start was amazing, the current situation is fine but I think that if more games would be B2P it would be bad for GW2. They have a unique system without any subs and that’s exactly the part where they don’t want competition and it looks like they won’t because every MMO that I’ve read about coming out now or in the near future (FF, TESO, Wildstar to name a few) all will come with subs.

LFM Need 2 more, only people with ascended gear!

@MikaHR Unless you are doing high level fractals or PvP there is no L2P in this game. For the rest of the game you don’t need to know how the stats work, because it doesn’t really matter.