Guild Wars 2

nGumball.1283:

Ascended gear got introduced around 1 year after MoP and the population didn’t get affected by much at all, the game was at it’s peak at that time. MoP released 1 month after GW2 and it bearly had an effect.

MoP Release: 9-25-2012
Ascended Gear Announced: 11-13-2012

That’s less than two months later.

EDIT: Ninjaed by ZudetGambeous

They can’t delay Season 2 due to account-bound WXP not being ready. It’s timed to start right before another game launches with three-faction siege warfare.

timmyf.1490:

Solutions for fixing these problems vary, but include “saving” Fractal progress so single shards can be done at a time, a Practice Mode that allows groups to choose a single Fractal to attempt, some sort of AR-avoidance mechanism as a group buff or bundle, or even account-bound AR.

Thanks! This helps me to know that what I was asking has been addressed somewhere in this long thread.

I’m still very interested in hearing someone from ANet explain why they decided to bundle Fractals in groups, as it’s vitally important to any discussion of how to make them more accessible to those unable to do four in a row.

I haven’t been able to follow this thread in detail. I also, at this point, don’t have a proposal, but a question.

What is the design purpose behind requiring players to do three fractals plus boss in a row in order to get rewards? How does it enhance Fractals to gate rewards behind dungeon roulette?

My question comes from a place of being willing and able to take on challenging content, but not necessarily to commit to the time needed to run through three fractals plus the boss fractal.

Is there a different way that whatever design goal the 3+1 fractal grouping answers could be satisfied?

I suppose there is a proposal in there somewhere, but I don’t know fractals enough to really be able to anticipate problems, and I don’t know why the 3+1 grouping was originally created, so I feel unprepared to put forth a proposal by which those of us who don’t even bother with fractals due to single session time commitment might be able to tackle them one at a time.

Thanks.

1. ANet abandons their need to create linear “living stories” and goes back to developing wholisic, web structured story by creating new zones with interesting DEs.
2. ANet abandons their attempt at herding players into various areas of the game by sprinkling high-end mats and currencies around the game and returns to their philosophy of “play how you want”.
3. ANet abandons vertical progression and implements a robust and deep horizontal progression to the game.
4. ANet does a comprehensive profession bugfix effort before attempting to rebalance them.
5. ANet overhauls WvW to discourage massive zergs.

They could put fishing rods in the gem store. They’d break after a certain number of casts, causing a constant revenue stream. In order to get the higher tier fish you would have to upgrade them with dragonite ore and refined ectos.

There’d be an extremely rare chance that you would reel in the precursor for any underwater Legendary weapon.

DarkSpirit.7046:

When would ArenaNet actually come up with items that financially makes sense, other than converting our gems into gold?

It’s a lottery, it’s not supposed to make financial sense.

Escadin.9482:

I fail to recognize any dissonance here. It just says ascended gear doesn’t serve it’s purpose.

Except those statements are being used to defend ascended gear.

Kaiyanwan.8521:

OK, who remembers what Mr. Johanson said about gear, BiS and who should have it right before launch?

Did he say, only the most passionated grinders deserve the best gear? Casuals shall burn in hell?

Was it that way?

Unfortunately all that kind of reasoning is going to get you is responses along the line of “Things change”, and “that post was from so long ago”.

A good chunk of the community seems to have no interest in expecting ArenaNet to follow through with anything they say.

Yargesh.4965:

It is variable gravity, depends on where you are and what you interact with.

Except you can always double jump, so the baseline gravity, without any loftite around, is still explained as being low. Not that it really makes any sense from a physics point of view, because floating still doesn’t give you something to push off of mid air to do a second jump.

While debating what does and does not make sense in a game is fun I just really liked the ability.

Fair enough, but then there isn’t much discussion to be had beyond “I like it” and “I don’t”.

One could offer the suggestion that GW2 implement sparkly rainbow vampire sloths, but it wouldn’t be a very meaningful suggestion without a reason behind how they would fit into the game and improve it.

PvP will always have more lasting power than PvE. It requires much less developer input to keep fresh.

If you don’t like PvP, it’s unfortunate, but until someone comes up with a really good way to get the playerbase developing quality PvE content, it will be true.

Shockwave.1230:

Increasing the level cap is a such A blatantly obvious carrot on a stick design cop-out that it’s pretty offensive.

People with experience gaming know that when developers add to the grind to achieve something (max level in this case) it’s the laziest way to incentivize people to offer up their money.

I agree with this. I don’t, however, understand how you can say:

Shockwave.1230:

Realistically though, ANet isn’t about vertical progression.

They’ve said they are committed to gradual vertical progression. They made it clear when they first started implementing Ascended that they plan to continue adding vertical progression. They’ve also made it clear they expect to increase the level cap at some point in the future.

“Ascended gear is there because something was needed to entice people to keep playing the game.”

“Ascended gear isn’t enticing because it’s such a minor stat boost.”

The cognitive dissonance in this community is strong.

“If you want something, you have to work for it.”

This is why MMORPGs stay what they are. There are enough people who want it to feel like a second job so they can get the feeling that they’ve accomplished something meaningful while playing a video game. Combine them with the people who grit their teeth and say “it’s a necessary evil, because that’s just the way MMORPGs are” and there’s no pressure on developers to come up with better ways to engage players.

So those of us who don’t fall into those camps try the occasionall MMORPG because we like the idea of playing in a community, but ultimately head back to complex, deep, challenging single player games where loot isn’t just handed to you, but it’s not locked behind endless repetition, either.

Double jump is explained in that “other game” by saying that the planet on which it takes place has low gravity.

Really, it’s just a game convention that doesn’t make much sense. There’s no reason to add it to GW2.

Judge Banks.9018:

Literally never happened.

Wow, thanks. I missed that one. Weird that they didn’t say “if” rather than “when” after Colin’s expression of his fervent hope that they would never add a new tier as long as he was around.

And, I’ll repost my answer to the OP above, because I violated the forum rules by using another forum members name in my post. So hopefully this is more compliant with the posting guidelines.

First we’ll work our way up to ascended level runes, sigils, and infusions.
Once we get there, there will be no room for ArenaNet’s gradual, vertical progression. At that point, they will announce a level cap increase. At first, there will only be Rare gear at level 90. They will carefully balance it so that level 90, Rare quality gear is only a little better than level 80 Ascended gear.

A few people will, stop playing, and write a half dozen threads on the forums in which they decry the level increase. These threads will run to several hundred posts mostly because a few apologists will continue to defend the level increase as a minor stat boost, unnecessary to play most of the game.

ArenaNet will keep consolidating those threads while occasionally reminding us that they have always said there would be a level cap increase, and that they are committed to a gradual, vertical progression. They will reassure us that everything is good, and there is no treadmill, because they will really try to never introduce a gear tier higher than Ascended.

The rage will die down to a simmer, with most of the forum community rolling their eyes that there are still people around complaining about level cap increase, when it obviously is a done deal, and doesn’t really provide that big of a power bonus. Besides, as part of the level cap increase, ArenaNet also patched the game so that level 80 Ascended gear is much easier to get, to the relief of a lot of people who still haven’t managed to fully outfit their characters.

A few months later, we will start to see the first level 90 Exotic gear introduced into the game in the form of trinkets.

This is how vertical progression works, especially since ArenaNet has committed to not producing a new tier of gear while also committing to continuing vertical progression. At some point, the only thing left is a level cap increase, something they’ve said they’ve always expected to do.

Alukah.2063:

I’m perplexed with the overall responses here.

I’m kinda hoping for a level cap increase (20 levels or so?) to get rid of all these gw1 fans that still can’t get over the fact that this is not gw1.

Honestly, I think that portion of the player base (not necessarily all GW1 fans, but the pre-launch believers, let’s call them) are subconsciously hoping for that as well.

We’re the codependents, secretly wishing that the relationship will get bad enough to motivate us to be done, rather than hanging on with unrealistic hopes that things will somehow get better.

Almar.9786:

Is this game still worth getting into?

I’d say no. ArenaNet still seems to be at a crisis point where they are figuring out what the game is supposed to be. I’d wait three to six months, and see what happens after the game weathers the launch of several competitors, finishes the first living story season, and gets into its next stage of development.

By then, it should be clearer where GW2 is headed, and what kind of player it wants as its audience.

Judge Banks.9018:

Announced in November 2015, Transcended Gear November 2014.

Unlikely. They’ve said they expect to do a level cap increase, while heavily implying they won’t do a new tier of gear.

As much as people don’t want a level cap increase, it would be less of a publicity stinker than adding a new tier of gear. When people complain about level cap increase, they can point back to past interviews and say that they always said there would be one eventually. When people complain about a new gear tier, they have to backtrack and make excuses.

If you were in charge, which would you choose?

Sir Arthur.8905:

But can you clarify on how exactly it will be different from previous season, or even from the regular WvW matches? Unless there is some sort of forced server balance, there is no way you can stop it from being a blow out. Are you saying it will be like EOTM teams instead of seperate Servers?

All I’m saying is that the loot adjustments probably have less to do with appropriate rewards for effort and more to do with sweetening WvW one week before a competitor launches their own version of three-way, massive siege battle.

It’s more marketing than game design. And no one expects to be compensated because they bought something last year at a higher price than the hot sale offered this year.

Sir Arthur, you are missing one very important difference between Season 1 and the new Tournament.

During season one, there was no competition for WvW. The upcoming Tournament, however, starts one week before a new game launches featuring three way, massive siege warfare.

Better loot, more easily obtained, is your enticement not to jump ship.

1) Search by armor class in Trading Post.
2) Wardrobe to store town clothes.
3) Wardrobe to store alternate armor and weapon sets to easily change out of combat.
4) Way to easily switch out trait builds.
5) Ability to toggle an option that makes my town clothes appear whenever I’ve been out of combat for a significant amount of time.
6) Ability to get information on guild member activity. Last login. Time represented. Etc.
7) Ability to turn off achievement list completely.
8) Fully customizable UI.
9) Expanded mat storage to stack sizes that make sense for the amounts required for Ascended crafting.

RainbowSyrup.4130:

If you want BiS gear, work for it.

I’d love to. But for some reason ANet wants me to join world boss zergs instead.

I enjoy world exploration and WvW.

But ANet only wants to give me loot if I farm champs, farm dungeons, farm Orr event chains, farm world bosses, farm fractals or play the trading post.

They ask me to choose between having fun immersing myself in their massive world and massive siege warfare or getting rewards by repeating the same small content over and over.

Minos.5168:

Gold-to-Gem conversions do not make ArenaNet any money.

More people buy gems with gold, the price of gems goes up.

The price of gems goes up, more people buy gems to trade for gold.

ArenaNet makes money.

Good news for people who like GW2 the way it is. Bad news for those hoping it will change direction.

I love that Human guy that keeps asking the Skritt for things, and she keeps giving him a curt, “No” for an answer. Please keep them, even if they have new dialogue (but along the same lines) in the future L.A.

I have no need to ever hear the face squished and weird/raisin conversation ever again. Nor would I miss being enlightened that L.A. doesn’t have outhouses, and that all of the sewage of the city is flowing through those open canals.

AcidicVision.5498:

Caithe was always Sylvari. There was a big Sylvari redesign that made them look “less like forest elves” in Anet’s words, and more like plant people. There were mixed reactions to this. A lot of people liked the more traditional elvish look and the point still got across they were plant people. Seemed like change for change’s sake and race population suffered slightly. A lot of people that usually play the elvish type races just rolled a human instead.

Funny. I would have written something similar in answer, but with a very different spin. From my viewpoint it looked like…

Caithe was always Sylvari. People rightly pointed out that the original design for them didn’t really look much like plant people, but more like knock-off elves. Kristen Perry did a beautiful job redesigning them to look unique, which was celebrated by a great many people who were tired of seeing elf retreads in every fantasy game.

Amazing how our perceptions color things.

Astralporing.1957:

And Radiant set, while looking nice, is completely useless unless it is complete, as it doesn’t mix well with others.

Partial Radiant looks great with other heavy, plate looking armor dyed with Celestial dye.

Reverence.6915:

Eh, skipping 8 pages of fluff.

Nice dismissal of everyone else’s contribution to thread.

Grolfang.8356:

What about those unused asura gates?

What about that shooting gallery in Divinity’s Reach?

Or the gate in Rata Sum to the polymock arena?

Or the interactive player personality system?

Or the Guild Wars 2 Extended Experience™?

The game is littered with projects apparently abandoned. Those gates could be used in the future, or they could be some developer’s orphaned creation.

Suddenflame.2601:

GW2 tried not putting any steps to nowhere, but the majority of people were not playing by November 2012 just before (FOTM and Ascended release which was a rushed release to counter the declining player base). Not sure you were playing than, but it was pretty quite back then.

I was playing then, and it didn’t look like that to me at all.

I’ve also since gone back and read through the first few months of forum posts to see if there really was a great hew and cry for gear progression. There wasn’t. Anyone can go back and look for themselves. You’ll find as many people, if not more, defending GW2 as different in a good way because of its power plateau as people complaining.

Most of the complaints were about not having new things to do, not new carrots to chase, and even those weren’t a majority of the forum traffic.

The forums have been telling themselves that GW2 was crashing and burning two months after release, but the only evidence we have for that is that Ascended got introduced, which is awfully circular.

“Ascended was released because population was crashing. You can tell because Ascended was released.”

There are several, basic quality of life issues like this in the trading post that have been brought up since the betas.

It’s unfortunate. Hopefully, one day, they’ll be fixed.

I’d say grind at its purest is engaging in activity purely for the extrinsic rewards. If there are no intrinsic, you’ve got grind. No repetition required, though repetition and/or a lengthy process do make it more intolerable.

Of course, nothing is this black and white. It’s possible to still have grind when there is small intrinsic reward, but the extrinsic reward is still the predominant reason someone engages in the activity. At some point if there is enough intrinsic reward it ceases to be a grind, but that threshold is different for different people.

When people say “it’s a grind” they’re not really saying that it the activity has crossed some point of repetition. Their saying they don’t enjoy the activity, but feel the need to do it anyway to get the extrinsic reward. Hence the “daily grind” of a job. If it’s not something you would do without a paycheck at the end, it feels like a grind.

If the act of doing my job is rewarding, and I also get a paycheck out of it, then I don’t think of it as a grind, even though there is plenty of repetition and it is a, for all intents and purposes, endless task.

I don’t get it.

We already have plenty of lotteries. Black Lion Chests, Dye Packs, The Mystic Toilet.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

When scarlet attacks LA almost certainly the mystic forge will blow up. What do people think will happen when this occurs?

Thousands of frustrated mystic toilet gamblers rejoice and deify Scarlet?

Omg Im Target.3095:

This is funny, people always complain about the living story cause it is never really doing something, now it finally does something big and people whine.

I think you’re missing the point that when players asked for more permanent things, they meant permanent, replayable, things.

The big problem wasn’t that the living story didn’t change things. It’s that it didn’t add anything to the game. So much content that is in the game for two weeks, then goes away, while other games slowly accumulate more and more dungeons, more zones, more quests over time.

Maybe the new, burnt LA will have a bunch of new stuff to do. Or maybe it will just be LA, except ruined, so the players can say “I was there when” according to one of ArenaNet’s stated development goals.

When I started playing GW2, I felt like a hero from a fantasy novel saving the world.

I stopped playing GW2 when I felt like that guy I see in front of the cigarette counter at my local grocery store, slumped from his eight hour shift working an assembly line, joylessly scratching at the ten lotto tickets he buys each day on his way home from work.

Nephelai.3610:

Well actually this is the first MMO where I’ve seen this vast differences, I’ve played several USA based games and never saw before that the usd was equal to the euro even if the VAT would be an issue, but since I would buy it in game it would never even reach my hands(basically it’s an electronical service not an good and Vat can only be issued over goods) so it would still all stay on USA soil.

Huh. Rift, Allods, and several games I’ve beta tested but didn’t go on to play all had threads like this. Guess we’ve played different games.

Malediktus.9250:

I think the Zenit weapons are a problem, because a skin you can have with infinite use at just 1k AP bears no value to me.
I never ever use them anymore after the hype died a few days later after the first people got the 1k chest.

IMO, this is the way all armor should be.

Strutting around in armor you don’t care for because it is “prestigious” is just silly.

I use the Zenith skins on one character because I, shocking, I know, like the way they look on that character.

Agreed, SonicTHI and Tigirius.

People who are unhappy with the big change in vision that happened after launch need to stop bringing up the Manifesto. The Manifesto itself is too general to provide decent discussion, and conversation centered on it just devolves into a discussion about what was meant by “grind”, which goes no where.

It’s a lot bigger than the Manifesto. A vision of the game was presented through countless blog posts, interviews, and developer comments. Most of the really exciting stuff, the things that made me and many others talk up the game on fora, has been abandoned, indefinitely postponed, or outright changed.

Eventually, those of us who were excited about what ArenaNet wanted to do will disappear and stop bringing this stuff up, but for those who are still clinging to those grand ideas and hoping that somehow ArenaNet can be convinced to steer the game back that direction, it would be best to abandon the Manifesto, and focus on the more detailed elements that were presented to us.

Of course, Vayne will still be here to remind us that those posts were made over a year and a half ago, so they are too old to matter, and that things change. But at least we can point to some things that are a little more concrete as a reminder that at one point we agreed with ArenaNet’s direction for the game, and some of us were even its original white knights.

Teofa Tsavo.9863:

Finally, I wonder “why?”. Nothing in this Living Story merits the destruction of LA. Nothing about the living story is worth it. Not the premise, not the characters, not the antagonist, not the motives. All I see is using a pretty poor excuse to do something that someone deems “kewl”.

Agreed.

Big, climactic, destruction of familiar city would be interesting if the story had built toward it. Instead, it just feels cheap.

I like LA, and can imagine a story in which it’s destruction feels like the inevitable conclusion, allowing me to mourn it and yet have the satisfaction of a story well played.

Instead, it feels like, “Hey, what’s there left for Scarlet to do after making the Asura colleges look like kindergarten, bringing together alliances out of factions that have every reason to hate each other, and generally being invincible as all Tyria tries to fight her? Oh, yeah, she can do what the Charr, Mursaat, Abaddon, and Zhaitan failed to do!”

In the end, it feels kind of cheap to me. Kinda like Brett Ratner killing off half the X-Men in The Last Stand.

I always liked the GW2 version of LA. A city built of scavenged ships was a great concept, and wonderful to look at. So now they’re going to destroy it to say, “Hey, guys, look how cool we are that we can wipe out chunks of the world permanently!”

I’m not sure that’s what people were asking for when they requested new, permanent content. Perhaps the community didn’t stress “replayable” quite enough. I guess destroying a city takes a lot less resources than creating a new zone, though.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

They know we (that is, most of the people on the forum) don’t like Scarlet. They know there were problems with her. What they’re doing is saying “hold your noses people and let’s just get through the first ‘season’ then we will attempt to do better come round two”.

I guess we’ll see.

If Scarlet has a dramatic death at the conclusion of this, then you were right.

If they write in an escape for her so that she can be brought back into the “living story” at a future date, not so much.

The honest answer is probably “because they can”.

Every MMO I’ve ever seen has had the “why do Europeans pay more for the box/sub/cash shop currency” threads. In every single one someone brings up VAT, and in every single one someone does the math and demonstrates that VAT can’t account for all of the price discrepancy.

But every single MMO continues to do this. If it made people mad enough not to buy the game or cash shop currency, they’d stop doing it. It doesn’t, though. People are by and large used to it, and, other than the periodic forum post, unwilling to do anything about it.

It’s kinda like cash shop RNG that way.

Other markets have no problem with the technical requirements to dynamically calculate conversion rates or taxes for specifical localities, so that argument rings hollow as well.

Dawdler.8521:

That said, I definetly see a population problem coming up…

Around the beginning of April?

Do not blashpheme against the Free Market™. The Free Market™ can do no wrong. The Free Market™ is salvation!

Malediktus.9250:

And who knows what Anet will make after that.

I think we could use a few more back pieces, myself. Preferably fire themed.

DarcShriek.5829:

Gibson.4036:

“Play how you want” died long ago.

Now it’s all about luring players into every area of the game to try and keep them all populated.

That’s what devs are supposed to do!

If only they could do it by making it so much fun…

Instead of making sure you don’t get rewards unless you do.

The game was advertised with the idea of being able to chase the rewards in the portions of the game you most enjoy. Instead, we have the usual, MMO-standard of “You don’t really like this, but if we make it the only way to get the shinies, we know you’ll do it anyway”.

These boots are made for walking.

And that’s just what they’ll do.

One of these days these boots
are gonna walk all over you.