Guild Wars 2

So the amount of gold you can get for RL cash continues to rise, which makes it all the easier for me to throw a trivial amount of money down, skip through the grind to get to grandmaster crafting, and pretend that the game still has a gear plateau.

If we get to 1 gem = 1 gold, we can get from 400 to 500 in a craft on less than $3!

This is what I hoped GW2 wouldn’t be, but my will is weak, and I’m ready to kneel to my new Black Lion overlords as long as it costs me less than a subscription in another game. Please keep driving that gold to gem ratio higher so it won’t hurt my pocketbook too much.

;-)

Curse Drew.8679:

While the game needs prestigious & rare skins.

It’d be interesting to see an explanation of why the game needs prestigious and rare skins.

Truth is most casuals can’t have something really rare and prestigious, because once it’s easy to get it’s no longer rare and admired as much.

Not just casuals. Average players who log on a couple hours a day, most days a week.

I like how some of the legendaries were created. They almost look like a developer mocking people who need “prestige”. It’s too bad all the extremely rare skins aren’t jokes, and all the well designed stuff readily available. People who need to feel elite could run around shooting rainbow unicorns and waving disco-balls while everyone else was content with their non-exclusive, but cosmetically satisfying gear.

Behellagh.1468:

And it would equally sad if every knight in the kingdom had an Excalibur.

Which is why it’s important that Sting, Anduril, and Vorpal Blades are all available. When there’s enough variety to choose from, everyone won’t be wielding the same weapon (with the exception of whatever just got released, which will always be FotM).

What’s truly sad is that people need to get a feeling of eliteness from a video game. Especially when having that “prestige” item has little to do with skill, and mostly to do with spending huge amounts of time in game (or playing the market, which is a skill, just not the one you expect to be prominently featured when you see the flaming dragon on the box).

It’d be great if people could just choose the item they most like the look of, and get it with a moderate amount of play. I don’t want everything to be handed to everyone for logging in. When you have people willing to farm gold hours and hours a day, however, it means top tier stuff will never be attainable by the average player, and that’s just silly for a piece of fluff entertainment. It’s not like you can compare getting an elite skin with the effort required to do something real, like learn an instrument or become an accomplished athlete. It’s more like watching television marathons.

I’ll agree with one of the posts above. Some of the best looking items in game are easy to get. My ele has his starter armor look transmuted over exotic stats. Cobalt can be had for only 4g. That’s just my taste, though.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

You can save the world without the optional luxury items.

Yeah.

This thread had me thinking earlier this morning. I was imagining a novel where King Arthur had to kill thousands of White Stags for Stag Hearts and Stag Antlers to refine them so he can craft Excalibur in order to defeat the Green Knight once a day for a month to earn the gold needed to buy the Holy Grail from a wealthy merchant.

I don’t attack other players in JPs.

I have had a lot of fun, though, fighting other players who attacked me. There’s nothing quite like the cat-and-mouse quality that those maps can provide with all of the levels and hidey-holes.

It’s especially fun when I’m alone and a group comes in, feeling safe because of their numbers. Funny how Into the Void doesn’t care how many of them there are.

Snake dagger is far, far, far from an original concept.

https://www.google.com/search?q=snake+dagger&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=XFFxUoj5M-Lp2QWX4YBI&ved=0CAkQ_AUoAQ&biw=1424&bih=828

Can we make sure reward structure doesn’t get lost in the conversation about pacing?

Thrumdi.9216:

Actually, there was interview with Johansen where he said their “core player” was the guy who only had an hour to play each day.

Time-gated dailies for end-game gear were created with him in mind, so he could log in and still feel he was progressing.

That guy will get his laurel every day if he focuses on it.

He’ll never get an ascended weapon, legendary, run a fractal, or complete an LS meta-achievement, though.

I’m so very confused as to how Dynamic Events and Ascended Crafting somehow fit the Living Story forum.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

On the subject of feeling entitled to rare skins because other people can afford to get them: It’s like asking the government to pay for your filet mignon steak dinner, when you can only afford hot dogs.

Makes total sense in the real world.

Kinda odd in a game where every player is playing a hero that was instrumental in saving the world from an elder dragon.

I was so glad I’ve been processing silk and leather to stockpile in anticipation of Ascended armor.

tolunart.2095:

If you want to have access to everything in the game, play a single-player game. MMOs don’t work that way.

Which is too bad.

It’d be nice to have a multiplayer game that didn’t reward financiers and hardcore farming over the average player.

Early on, it looked like GW2 was that game.

Galen Grey.4709:

I have a honest question… Why do so many people play games for rewards rather then well for the game? Several people have said in this thread that they like dynamic events (or implied they like them) but said they’re not going to play them until their reward increases.

I use to play this game without caring for the rewards. I spent a lot of time exploring zones 1 through 80 and just took what came. I still do DEs when I run across them. I was content to play GW2 by just following my bliss, as it were, to whatever content seemed most interesting at the time.

It was easy, because I could stay geared that way. While leveling, I always had enough gold to keep my gear in level-appropriate greens. When I hit 80, I had enough karma to get most of my exotics, and racked up gold quickly enough to get the rest. I like doing guild missions, so I had commendations for some trinkets. I did go out of my way to finish of dailies, but a lot of the time that just meant letting them nudge me to a specific area of the map (Ascalonian killer, okay, guess I’ll visit the brand today for a while).

Basically, I want to get BiS gear at a reasonable rate, and as long as I do, I’m content to just do whatever seems fun at the time.

Then Ascended gear was implemented. The cost in materials to get from 400 to 500 is crazy. Then each piece requires that I either farm a lot of world bosses, or a ridiculous amount of keep lords. It was clear, looking at it, that it would take years for me to get just one character in weapons if I just played whatever I wanted.

So for the first time I’m farming. I hate farming. It’s the exact opposite of what I expected this game to be. It took weeks for me to get to 500 in one craft, and I sold off a lot of stored up mats to do so.

Yes, ascended weapons aren’t necessary. But neither is this awful grind to get them.

Lagg.3960:

Also every step of the way will be time gated.

And, of course, account bound.

And there will be a way to do it through WvW, but it will take approximately 248 times as long as farming a small part of PvE.

Galen Grey.4709:

Are you telling me you never EVER do a world boss? or play some WvW ? or do some Guild missions? you can even get some by AFKing an invasion now and then!

Just for the record, only Guild Challenges give dragonite, not all Guild Missions. It’s not likely anyone is going to do enough of those to be a reliable source.

In WvW, only Castle and Keep Lords give dragonite. Depending on your server and your matchup, you could do a lot of WvW and get very little dragonite.

The reliable sources are temple events and world bosses. So if you’re after ascended weapons, look forward to watching timers and porting around to zergs.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Not everyone can afford to buy a Lamborghini. Just as not everyone is entitled to one.

The cognitive dissonance here is mind boggling.

We play a game to be heroic warriors and spell slinging magic users. No one expects players to go through the years of training it would take to do these kinds of things, but when it comes to the economy, for some reason it needs to be realistic. People have to put in the time to earn their stuff, and any question of how the game is designed to reward players is met with scoffing at the clear ignorance of economies on the part of the questioner.

In an open market, the people with unhealthy play habits who spend as much time in game as they would in a job will always screw it over for people who treat it like a past-time. There only reason that the game can’t be designed so that the player who plays an hour or two a day gets the Lamborghini is because the players who play six hours a day would have theirs in the first week, get bored, throw a fit, and leave.

So we have the toxic skinner boxes that MMORPGs inevitably become. You have to keep the insatiable grinding away by keeping the Lamborghinis out of reach, which means the average player can reasonably expect to be riding around in their Ford Focus.

Sure, it’s just like real life. If you want a Lamborghini, you can either work your butt off, invest in markets, or probably both.

I just don’t get how that makes sense in a high fantasy adventure game.

Before the inevitable “welfare socialists want to log on and be handed everything” stupidity, let me make it clear I’m not talking about rewards raining down from the sky. I’m talking about people being able to play the game like a game, like a hobby, and get some of the coolest things in game, rather than the coolest things being restricted to the farmers and TP players.

I don’t expect to be handed the keys to a Lamborghini IRL. I don’t even expect to earn one even though I have a terminal degree and sometimes put in the work of two full time jobs because I chose a profession that doesn’t make that kind of money.

But why in the world does a fantasy computer game have to work the same?

Taku.6352:

2500 gems is roughly 160 gold, that is enough to fully level and gear a character from scratch with crafting.

No. 1-400 only gives 7 levels now. It will take more than 160G to get from 400 to 500 in the three weapon crafts, and you can’t get to 500 in cooking or the armor crafts yet, so you’d be short of 80 when you’d maxed all crafts.

zeromius.1604:

Fact: ArenaNet has stated there are no plans to release tiers beyond Ascended.

They’ve already given vertical progression through Ascended items. Additional set pieces that were planned since the introduction of Ascended pieces neither adds nor takes away from this.

Yes, exactly. They will continue to provide vertical progression through more ascended items, infusions, and a level cap increase.

lordkrall.7241:

But there still is no actual confirmation that there WILL be a level cap increase.
Other than that the statement would indeed work, but adding a future level cap increase as fact does seem quite incorrect simply due to the fact that they have yet to confirm that there will be an increase of level cap, only that they are (or at least were 10 months ago) expecting to do one.

Okay, so you’re going to stick to your double standard.

Based on the information we have, they are planning on not introducing a tier beyond ascended just like they are planning on increasing level cap at some point. You can’t accept one as any more “fact” than the other. Both are expectations they have expressed.

I’ve seen you dismiss a lot of things based on the fact they are old statements. What exactly is the statute of limitations on a developer statement? When do they expire? Shouldn’t we accept statements they’ve made as their intentions unless they’ve come out and said they changed, or it becomes obvious in game that they have?

@Raine, you’re right. The statement should probably be removed entirely, as future vertical progression is only tangentially related to information about Ascended Gear. There should probably just be a note that ANet has stated they expect Ascended to remain the most powerful tier of gear in the game for the foreseeable future, and that they will be adding Ascended Armor and Ascended Infusions to continue progression.

lordkrall.7241:

But saying they are giving us more vertical progression could suggest that they will give us another tier, but it is only a matter of wording I suppose. It is technically the same vertical progression that was added with the Lost Shores patch after all. It is just a bit more spread out than is normal.

I understand what you are saying, but there will be things added in the future that increase the power of characters beyond what is available now. Hence, new vertical progression. Yes, it’s still magenta in color. That’s the “no new tiers” part.

Ah, my mistake on the timing. That does however not remove my point.
They don’t confirm that there will be a level increase, they say that expected to raise the level cap. Not that they WILL.
And we haven’t hear anything at all about a possible increase of level cap since that comment, so saying that it will come would be classified as false since it has never been confirmed.

Except you’ve got a double standard here.

They say they don’t expect to add a new tier, so it’s okay to include “no new tier planned” but they say they do expect to increase level cap at some point, but you’re quick to point out that the comment doesn’t mean “they WILL”.

So to be consistent, it should read something along the lines of “a level cap increase is planned for some point in the future”.

So how about:

No additional tiers are planned after Ascended. Future progression is planned on the release of other types of Ascended gear, new skills, and level cap increase.

DusK.3849:

It is the game they originally advertised. The people making post after post, hour after hour, day after day about how “terrible” the game is are the ones that want to turn it into something it wasn’t advertised to be; either into GW 1.5, or WoW 2. These people misinterpret interviews and videos (you’d need to make some serious stretches to insist that the game in the Manifesto video isn’t the game we had at launch and continue to have now), they completely forget how iterative development works or simply pretend it was never a factor in GW2’s pre- and post-launch development, or they just had preconceptions about the MMO genre or Guild Wars and bought the game without learning about it before hand.

And then there’re those of us somewhere in the middle. Still enjoying the game, but still frustrated that ANet changed their mind on so many things that brought us to the game in the first place.

In between the white knights and the raging QQers is another population, not necessarily any less passionate, but with mixed reactions that aren’t easily labeled.

lordkrall.7241:

Wiki shouldn’t be based on what we “probably can expect” it should be based on actual fact.

Fact: They are giving us more vertical progression with Ascended Armor. No need for “probably can expect”, that was just my editorial thrown in after.

And the only actual fact we have is that there is no higher tier than Ascended planned at this time, and there is no fact about higher tiered runes and/or sigils.

I didn’t say any different in my revised quote. It doesn’t reference runes or sigils. That was in my comments afterwards. They are going to introduce more vertical progression with ascended gear in the near future in the form of armor.

There is however not a single confirmation that there WILL be a level cap increase. Only that they said that they MIGHT increase the level cap (this was also something that was said well before release of the game).

You’re wrong.

Mike O’brien said, “…we’ve always expected that we will someday raise the level cap in GW2.” on a Reddit AMA after launch. In fact, it was after the introduction of the first Ascended gear.

http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/13tuac/im_the_studio_design_director_on_guild_wars_2_ama/

No additional tiers are currently planned after Ascended, and future progression will be based on continuing to introduce Ascended rarity items in other equipment categories as well as introducing new skills and raising the character level cap.

That would probably be more accurate, as we will get more vertical progression in the form of Ascended Armor soon, and can probably expect to eventually receive ascended infusions. Magenta quality runes and sigils are also an option for further vertical progression.

And of course, there’s level cap increase.

Shanaeri, back in the original Collaborative Devleopment thread, he said if the initial topics were productive, they’d continue on with others in the future.

I want to second Xar’s post above.

It’s obvious part of the goal of specific rewards like cosmetic backpacks is to motivate getting involved with that LS installment. I like what we’ve heard about the new skill coming with the Krait installment tomorrow… namely that it will be easier to get during the two week chapter, but available afterward.

It’d be great if that could be true of every reward that is part of the LS. Festivals that repeat yearly are no problem, if you can work toward last year’s reward a year later. Other stuff, like molten alliance items, should be available forever. Make it harder to get, so there’s still motivation to do them during their chapter, but development needs to be creating more and more options for players of the game, not steadily mothballing each bit of variety after two weeks has passed.

Along with the backpacks, we need some way to store novelty items like the journal or zephyr model. They’re just not useful enough to use up bank space for, but it’s painful to delete them after earning them during a chapter. We really need some sort of trophy case in our home instance along the lines of the Hall of Monuments so that we can display these kinds of items, and interact with them years later, rather than cursing them for cluttering up our bank space.

If I could make decent progress toward ascended gear doing something else, I would.

Crafting to 500 takes stupid amounts of gold/mats.

I don’t know what things are like on other servers, but I’ve seen very little grief between champtrains and other players on Sanctum of Rall. The biggest drama seems to be between champtrainers themselves over whether they should be killing Quaggan or not.

As an player with play time somewhere in the 10 to 15 hours a week range, I find GW2 at odds with itself when it comes to the Living Story, two week rotation.

Back when it was pretty simple to get geared up, this wasn’t as big of a deal. I ignored the long-term legendary goal, and simply jumped into LS updates as they came available, and played them as long as they interested me. There was some tension, as my goal of getting world completion often felt sidelined while I was doing LS content, but that goal wasn’t pressing enough for it to be a big issue.

Now, however, that ascended weapons (and soon armor) is in the game, I have to way the LS content against my pursuit of crafting and replacing my gear with the new BiS.

Why does the LS always have to have it’s own set of specialized currencies and crafting materials that exist for that update only? With only a couple hours to play most days of the week, I can use my entire time getting my daily collection of dragonite ore or pursuing completion of LS achievements, but usually not both.

The two week LS rotation would have been a great idea in the hard gear-plateau game that GW2 looked like shortly after launch. Now that we have these long term goals that give gameplay advantage, it feels like the LS is competing with them. Since ascended gear is here to stay, and presumably not going to get any easier to achieve, it’d be nice if there were more synergy with the LS. The Living Story should be at least as profitable in gold and mats as doing champ trains or world boss farms.

Theftwind.8976:

I would like to know if any of those servers that are complaining about queues are the same servers that paid for guild to transfer to them. If so I have no pity for them but thanks for the chuckle.

Servers aren’t complaining, people are complaining. Are some of us on servers where someone payed another guild to transfer? Possibly? Are the complainers the same people who did the paying? Probably not.

Cyga.1246:

Why there is no information about: how many ppl are in queue. Is it really hard to implement ANET?

Surprisingly, yes. It’s a meaningless number because queues aren’t really queues.

DevonCarver.5370:

Queues will be fixed as part of the new map. They will continue to operate as they have since launch until then. The queue does not function as a typical queue and we are fixing it. It will just take some time. It has been a lower priority than the other things we have done and we’ve only now been able to devote the appropriate resources to it.

It looks like you are in line, but apparently you aren’t. You’re in a pool of some sort, so knowing how many people are in with you won’t mean anything.

lukasx.1749:

I have nothing aginst bring more players if are truly intrested at WvW however when they come for 1 weak to get all achivments and destroy server chance to win league and then 6 weaks does nothing is realy weird and extremly unfair to all players who make server best et EU.

Are you saying your server has a significantly larger number of achievement hunters than the servers that are against you?

If not, then aren’t all servers equally handicapped by achievement hunters?

CETheLucid.3964:

And here I thought you were gonna call me out for all those all nighters. :B

De blood clotz! De blood clotz!

Hule.8794:

Even if you are on server with queues from day 1, that dont approve you to blame Anet for queues. Blame players not Anet.

There’s blame to go around.

If my hometown decides to prioritize planting pretty flowers by the streets to make them beautiful over installing traffic signals, and obnoxious drivers blow through intersections without looking, causing accidents, who deserves blame?

It’s a lot more possible for the people in charge to implement things to curb the stupidity and selfishness of people, than to expect that people en masse will start acting intelligently, nobly, and with the long-term consequences of their actions in mind.

DevonCarver.5370:

Queues will be fixed as part of the new map. They will continue to operate as they have since launch until then. The queue does not function as a typical queue and we are fixing it. It will just take some time. It has been a lower priority than the other things we have done and we’ve only now been able to devote the appropriate resources to it.

Does anyone else get the sense that Devon would actually have made a different choice, but his hands are tied?

What I mean, is that I’ve had enough experience in the workplace where choices were made by my superiors or co-workers, and while I strongly disagreed, it was my job to show solidarity with the decision when facing those outside of the staff.

Quotes like, “It has been a lower priority than the other things we have done and we’ve only now been able to devote the appropriate resources to it.” sound like the kinds of things I say when I really mean, “I know this sucks, I wish I could have done this, but I was told to put it on the back burner in favor of something else, I’m sorry and we’re working on trying to do it now.”

His quote about balancing rewards across the game so that people do all parts of it felt the same. As the guy in charge of WvW, it’s possible he wants to reward WvWers equal to the rest of the game, but has to toe the official line that awards need to be better elsewhere to keep people playing there.

But, of course, he’s the one who has to face the forums for those decisions.

In a couple of weeks, we’ll have the next LS update and a new slate of PvE achievements to chase. People who don’t actually like WvW will either A) have enough achievements for the WvW meta achievement and be done or realize it’s not worth the hassle after playing a game mode they don’t actually like for two weeks and not getting the meta achievement.

For a little while it sucks for people who only do WvW, but the WvW craze won’t last forever.

We have every right to complain about the way ANet chose to handle this, but don’t despair. There is hope and WvW will settle back down sooner than most expect.

So if I’ve been on the same server since day one, a server that started out low but is now in the top three, a server with a community I’ve put down roots in, it’s my fault for not transferring off?

All because ANet warned me they were going to prioritize drawing people into WvW before fixing queues and creating the overflow WvW?

Gotcha.

Phantom.5963:

This is my creation! Are you ready to be mesmerized?

What’s that staff skin?

Vayne.8563:

Lawyers and politicians go into specific documents and take out individual sentences and try to attach importance to them that was never intended. This isn’t a court of law. This isn’t a legal document.

But this whole pendantic, Anet said X in one document thing has reached the point of ridiculousness. Hell, in other threads people are still bringing up the manifesto.

Funny, because that’s how your posts tend to come across to some people. You take what has been said and try to read the most favorable possible interpretation you can into it in order to say it’s not what most people took it to mean due to pretty clear context and repetition.

I’m not sure why you brought up the manifesto. I didn’t reference it, and specifically contrasted the manifesto that GW2 defenders love to dismiss as being ancient and therefore outdated by pointing out that Coin’s statement was made only nine months ago.

If you want more dragonite ore in WvW say it. Don’t go find a sentence in a document and say, look Colin said so. Because that only ends up weakening arguments.

Why not just say, listen, this is unfair, because I want to play WvW and not PvE and I’m at a disadvantage if I do that. So I’m being forced to do something I don’t want to do.

That’s a stronger argument. Bringing up what people said and trying to say, well he said it does NOT make your argument stronger.

You have a valid point. Leave the quote at of it and just make the point.

I can’t disagree with you more on this point.

If this game needs anything, it’s not more people picking apart individual decisions and saying “I don’t like the way this armor looks” or “I needz mounts!” or “My profession gets nerfed the hardest”. Thousands of voices shouting their personal preferences are, in the end, just a bunch of noise.

What the game definitely needs is a clear identity. A vision from the developers stating the game they want to make, and feedback from the community on how well they are achieving that.

“WvW needs better rewards” is a meaningless, contextless statement.

But when the devs say, “Hey, this is the game we want to make”, that’s worth talking about. When they say it repeatedly (contrary to your assertion that people are picking out isolated comments from single documents) then it’s clear it’s one of their goals.

And when they change it for a different design principle, it’s time to talk about why, and whether or not it was a good change.

I wasn’t trying to start a discussion on what the meaning of the word “is” is. I don’t think there’s much room for doubt that there is a clear difference between what Colin was saying and what Devon expressed. It’s not even that surprising, since any observation will tell you that they have made choices recently to get people to play in several areas of the game in order to keep their BiS gear.

I trying to start a conversation around the questions at the end of the post. Is it really desirable for a game to be designed to keep people playing in all parts, even if they prefer to play in just one? When is witholding or delaying BiS gear a reasonable tool for that purpose? Does it let the developers off the hook for not improving and expanding those parts of the game to entice players to play rather than leading them there with a carrot?

Vayne.8563:

Playing the game you want isn’t what you think it means. It doesn’t mean you can do anything and get EQUAL REWARDS. Because you can’t.

However, let’s pretend a person never wanted to leave Queensdale. They could level to 80 in Queensdale and they’ll never NEED a single ascended item to beat Queensdale. Never ever.

Vayne, you have a rare gift. I can’t think of many other people who could convince themselves that “the most powerful rewards” really means “rewards that are sufficient for whatever you did to earn them”.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Seems to me when he says ‘we want people playing all parts of the game’, he didn’t mean the same people, but that they want to reward people no matter which part of the game they choose to find most attractive. Doesn’t mean each particular reward will found everywhere, nor as easily attained in each and every section/mode/area of content found in the game.

I quoted the whole remark in hopes that context would help. I should have probably also pointed out that it is specifically addressing a thread complaining that dragonite is very slow to come by in WvW. He says that they are adjusting things to try and provide more ascended mats through WvW, but feels it necessary to give the caveat that they see the rewards system as a way to keep people playing all parts of the game.

I don’t see the need for interpretation here. It’s pretty clear.

I’ve never had a problem with certain cosmetics only being attainable in certain areas. It makes sense that you get themed armor with certain content.

When we’re talking about a straight power increase, however, it’s a very different story. WvW players are arguably in most “need”, to use Vayne’s word, of Ascended gear. As he points out, a great deal of the game’s PvE is pretty easy with Exotics. Unlike in PvE, in WvW, ascended gear has increased the power of the enemy.

Vayne.8563:

Most of the complaints we see about the open world is that it’s too easy. An ascended weapon would just make it easier.

However, if you do the harder stuff, Anet is making it harder to get the top stuff. Many of my characters are still running the hardest content in rares.

This might have some relevance to what I posted if ascended mats were being given out in proportion to the difficulty of the content. But they aren’t. An average hour in WvW is much more challenging and much less rewarding than an hour of popping around to world bosses when the timer goes ping. Running through the world solo or with a small group discovering chests and taking on less visible champs can be much more challenging than zerging Orr temples, but is definitely less rewarding.

Please put your straw man away. No one is suggesting that people earn ascended gear for playing entirely in a starter area. I’m talking about the major ways of playing the game, and how as early as the beginning of this year Colin was talking about players being able to get the most powerful gear in the part of the game they like, as opposed to being drawn into other parts of the game with differences in reward.

The perceived “need” or lack thereof for ascended gear also has no relevance on the disparity between “play the way you want” to “reach the most powerful rewards” and “we want people playing all the parts of the game, so there are always going to be optimal ways to get specific rewards”.

It’s extremely important that we stay true to our philosophy that you should be able to play Guild Wars 2 the way you want to play the game in order to reach the most powerful rewards.

You might think the above quote is from the much discussed manifesto or another statement made long before launch, and therefore easily dismiss it as one of those ideas that had to be rethought once the game went live.

You’d be wrong. It’s from the vision-casting blog post by Colin Johanson in January of this year. It was forecasting the roll-out of laurels and the items you can get with them, primarily ascended jewelry. The idea, presumably, being that laurels can be earned from your choice of activities, including PvE, PvP, or WvW dailies and including many dailies that fit all three.

Of course, after amulets we got ascended accessories, which have the pretty hefty additional cost of 50 ecto in addition to laurels, unless you plan to participate in guild missions.

Recently, of course, we have been given ascended weapons, which are clearly designed to steer us into certain portions of the game. While bloodstone dust is about as plentiful as QQ posts about thief stealth, dragonite ore and empyreal fragments clearly have optimal and suboptimal methods of acquisition.

Which brings me to a recent post in the WvW forums.

DevonCarver.5370:

The rewards included in season 1 achievements should help to address this. Very specifically the ascended crafting materials. It is also the case, that we want people playing all the parts of the game, so there are always going to be optimal ways to get specific rewards and those may not always include WvW. We are building the whole of GW2 and we try and balance things across all the game types.

We will continue to make strides, however, to make WvW feel more rewarding, especially in this type of area.

Is this This is clearly a 180 on a design principle stated, not three years ago, but only 9 months ago?.

Is it right that the game should be using rewards to push people into playing content in which they have no interest?

Isn’t the burden on the creators to make content enticing enough to draw people to it, rather than requiring they visit it in order to get the gear they will go back to using where they actually enjoy playing?

I don’t mind some soft leading. A daily here or there might get me to try an area of the game I’ve never done before, and I may find I like it. But if there are areas of the game I’ve sampled and decided I dislike, why should I have to choose between doing it anyway or getting gear a lot later than I would have otherwise?

Before the inevitable “people don’t want to work for rewards these days, you just want to log on and have your BiS gear dropped at your feet” ridiculousness, I’ll point out that I’m not talking about getting gear for nothing. I’m talking about having an equal opportunity to get it from the content that I enjoy.

DevonCarver.5370:

The rewards included in season 1 achievements should help to address this. Very specifically the ascended crafting materials. It is also the case, that we want people playing all the parts of the game, so there are always going to be optimal ways to get specific rewards and those may not always include WvW. We are building the whole of GW2 and we try and balance things across all the game types.

Another death of a core tenant on which the game was sold before launch. “Play how you want to play” is slowly becoming “play equally in all parts of the game if you don’t want to be punished with fewer rewards.”

Remember when it was trumpeted before launch that people who loved WvW could spend their entire game there? Gathering, crafting, leveling, gearing…

While still technically true, it’s too bad there wasn’t the caveat “…but rewards will be designed to encourage you to do other things”

1. Alt friendly account bound rank system
2. Incentive for players to disperse and attack/hold many objectives at once.
3. Rewards equivalent to similar playtime in PvE.

1. Ascended Gear- attainability, 400 to 500 crafting, alt-unfriendliness, build diversity dampening

2. Ease of use for Cosmetics – skin storage, portability between characters, split from stats, making town clothes usable

3. Non-weapon damage scaling with equipped weapons

Red Falcon.8257:

Astralporing.1957:

Only a tiny minority actually asked for a new tier of gear, and they were shouted down almost instantly. There were groups asking for things, that’s true (the majority of those people asked for mounts, holy trinity and raids, actually). Funny thing, most of those players have left long ago.

Saying that “we asked for it” is very, very far from truth.

No, just stop that.
I was here in September and October, the majority of this community threatened to quit if they weren’t getting a treadmill.

You’re wrong. As Astralporing said, you can go back and look.

I did.

Because there have a been a few posts saying the same thing as you, remembering a great hue and cry for for a new level of gear, I thought maybe my memory was inaccurate. I was an avid reader of GW2Guru two years before launch, was in game from BWE1, and have been reading (and posting to) the official GW2 forums from the day they went live, and I don’t remember this united playerbase screaming for new loot. So I went to find out.

The end of October’s forum postings hits on page 630. If you start at the beginning and work your way from the earliest posts on the forum to there, you’ll find the threads that covered this topic. Over those 140 or so pages, you’ll see it was a recurring topic, but watch out. Don’t just go by the thread titles, but open them up and look throught he content of the thread, like I did.

A lot of those thread titles that look like “Ize needz moar powerful lootz to chase!” aren’t about that at all. Some of the “where’s the endgame?” posts are asking for raids specifically without new loot rewards, or harder dungeons, or more cosmetic options to chase.

Even the ones that are about needing loot with better stats to motivate them are an interesting read. You’ll find as many people pointing out that this game was supposed to be different in that regard and defending the gear plateau as those who are saying only a treadmill will keep people playing.

Maybe massive amounts of people were leaving because there was nothing more powerful than Exotics. It’s possible ANet saw that in the metrics. They didn’t, however, see a majority of players calling for it on the forums.

Go check it out for yourself.

They put a speedbump in the way of the hardcore player, which is a mountain in the way of the rest of us.

clint.5681:

NIce guide bro, when i was guesting on SoR it seems like they have their own special rotation that doesnt really make sense to me. So just make sure to check if our server has a different champ rotation than the standard one most servers use.

Yeah, I was going to point this out as well.

SoR does Wurm last. Fish, Kodan, Norn, Drake, (Quaggan), Troll, Wurm

Also note that Quaggan can be divisive. I don’t know about the other servers, but the rule of thumb is that on SoR it is skipped unless it is “near the path”. Having said that, it can be almost right on top of Drake, people can be saying “quaggan next!” repeatedly in chat, and two thirds of the zerg will still port out when Drake dies and kill Troll and Wurm before the other third manages to down Quaggan.

Anyway, best to ask if you haven’t done the loop on a given server before.

Sounds like a great idea. We definitely need something to do with excess Bloodstone Dust.

Please title your thread so that it indicates the topic of the thread.

GoddessOfTheWinds.2937:

1) Mounts would kitten off people in jumping puzzles.
2) We have waypoints and asura gates to move around.
3) Mount are silly, horrible and useless junk
4) Did I say mounts are silly and I don’t want one? Never.
5) There will never be any mounts granting speed boost (we have skills for that) or that’d break so much content (such as jumping puzzles)
6) I prefer having a nice gear to distinguish my character to a silly mount that takes way too much space on my screen.

1) Automatic dismount in jumping puzzles. Problem solved.
2) I, and others like me, would use waypoints less frequently if we had a speed-boost mount to ride across country. In this way, contrary to the typical argument, mounts would actually increase the number of players crossing the persistent world.
3) Mounts can be awesome, wonderful, and useful additions to the game. Was there an actual argument in point 3?
4) You did. There are plenty of people, however who do. Soon.
5) You mentioned jumping puzzles already. What else would it “break”.
6) And others prefer to have mounts.

Please title your thread with something that reflects its contents.

Aberrant.6749:

I’m not a fan of the ascended stuffs, but lets all be realistic about it. Is it stronger? Yea. In the vast majority of situations will it be the main thing determining outcome no.

It doesn’t need to be the main thing in order to be a signficant thing.

A five percent buff to stats and weapon damage? Hey, we have 5% damage buffs that people find significant enough to make a part of their builds. They’re usually master level traits (20 points in a trait line is pretty significant) and restricted to particular conditions, like +5% damage when wielding a specific weapon, or when flanking your enemy. A full set of ascended gear will be +5% across the board.

No one’s claiming ascended gear is an automatic win button. It is, however, a significant advantage.