Guild Wars 2

To be fair to people who are reacting, the way this is implemented does force you to pay for something you don’t necessarily need to get access to new content.

Someone looking to get change their character’s look gets the new hairstyles free along with the change. Someone looking to get the new hairstyles for a new character is paying for a makeover they don’t actually need.

How about this compromise?

A permanent item that unlocks one stored trait build on your character. Ever after, you can switch to that build as long as you aren’t in combat, but that build is locked in.

Players get more than one silly retrait out of it, gives the convenience of switching directly to a build already entered in, and gives ANet a continuing revenue source as people change up the builds they want and buy additional copies of the item for new stored builds.

This is the problem with the cash shop, living story, no expansion model.

Perhaps, down the road when they’ve exhausted people willing to buy gems to get a lot of this stuff someone at ANet will look around at a year’s worth of assets no longer making any money and figure out how to bundle it into an xpac for a reasonable price. Then the rest of us can just plunk down a tidy sum to get access to the last year’s worth of goodies without having to participate in the nickle and diming.

The tricky tightrope with this kind of payment model, however, is that ANet needs to keep the rest of the player base in the game as well. They can cater to the group you mention, but if the majority jumps ship, that minority eventually will as well.

Romek.4201:

Elthurien you simply play the wrong genre than

MMORPG´s was like this since beginning and even first rpg games 25 years ago you needed time for lvling or crafting or whatever

you should trie some single player games or shooters

seriously

This was supposed to be “the MMORPG for people who don’t like MMORPGs”.

There’s a lot more difference between an MMORPG and single player RPGs or shooters than time-consuming progression.

Not to mention, you’re using a false dichotomy here. Months of casual play (or weeks of targeted farming) or no-progression shooter aren’t the only two options. As an average player (too much time to stricty be casual, too little to be hardcore), it took me several weeks after hitting 80 to get my characters into full exotics. That’s not too bad. There were also several avenues to get to exotics, so I could play what I wanted and get there.

If I want ascended weapons (and presumably armor), I’m required to spread my game play out among several areas of the game, rather than just the thing(s) I enjoy doing.

It’s silly to say you can get the mats by just playing like normal. Getting the orichalcum and wood requires being in one of three endgame zones, and it will take an extremely long time to gather the hundreds of mats required to level 400 to 500 unless you are specifically hunting the nodes. The alternative is earning a couple hundred gold to pay for them off of the TP. Neither of these things happens “just playing the game” unless you happen to really like Orr, or are willing to wait months before you are maxed in one craft. All the while, your inventory is getting cluttered with mats you can’t refine until you hit 450, or you are throwing them away.

Yes, they gave us some variety in obtaining dragonite, empyreal, and bloodstone. Still, they target specific areas of the game, and unless you want to wait an extremely long time to get your ascended weapons, you’re going to need to intentionally hit those specific areas. If you immerse yourself in the world, casually exploring, how often do you happen to be in the area of a world boss when it pops? How frequently are you doing jumping puzzles if you just do them when you run across them?

I tend to avoid farming, but I’ve dabbled in a little here and there to find out. Yes, if you spend some time hopping world bosses, park your alts at the end of a good-paying jumping puzzle, do a little champ farming, these mats add up pretty quickly. As far as I can tell, however, the assertion that these things will accumulate in any sort of reasonable time “just playing the game” only works if your idea of “just playing the game” is running events in Orr and porting to bosses when they pop.

The worst part, by far, however, is getting from 400 to 500 in the craft.

TL;DR It’s a false dichotomy to say grind or shooter. There can be middle ground, as shown by leveling and exotic acquisition.

Yumiko Ishida.3769:

I want a level cap! I got to 80 too fast and gear grinding is boring.

I rather level grind than gear grind any day!

What a breath of fresh common sense. I needed that.

It means the Chinese restaurant is willing to serve Americanized Chinese food no one actually eats in China as well as more authentic dishes that aren’t listed on their menu if you know to ask for them. They’ll also serve sushi, even though it’s from an entirely different country, not to mention steak and fries for the family member that lost the vote on where to have dinner and macaroni and cheese for the kids.

And for good measure, there will be a vaguely pizza-like thing on the buffet, because, hey, who doesn’t like pizza? And of course there will be ice cream and fudge sauce for dessert.

No one will claim it’s a great restaurant, but hopefully they’ll leave with a nice over-full feeling and a craving for MSG that will bring them back again.

Randulf.7614:

I suspect when/if the more vocal side of the community calm themselves somewhat, they will become less reticent to communicate their plans in detail.

I doubt it.

IMO, this has very little to do with the community and our forum habits. Back before there was an official forum, there was GW2Guru, where ANet read community feedback and even had a presence with developers talking back to us. People were crazy vocal back then, dissecting every new announcement about development of the game and usually providing heavy criticism of every little choice.

And yet, ANet still happily continued making bold statements about what they wanted the game to be.

I don’t think it’s the community that’s changed. What’s changed, is that excited developers are happy to wax poetic about their dreams when they are designing, and the money people are happy to let them when everything’s up in the air. Then a game launches, and a revenue stream kicks in, and it’s time to get business like. Suddenly supervisors are taking designers aside to have private conversations about not saying too much in public.

I saw this happen in Allods Online. Like many pure F2P games it had a ridiculously long “beta” that was really a soft launch. People were gaga over how grind-free it was at the beginning. It didn’t have the hallmarks of a bad F2P game. Then, several months in, they implemented the cash shop. After a brief honeymoon period, a new level cap was introduced with terrible grind just to get the next few levels past the old cap. Everything went drastically downhill. You could see the work of game designers trying to make a great game in the early months. In later months, the game was clearly being influenced by the people who watch the bottom line.

I don’t think the Manifesto consists of lies at all. I think it is a picture of enthusiastic game designers who really want to make the game they want to play, being allowed to gush about their vision while the practical people stand quietly back and let them, knowing it is great PR.

Then the game launches, and it’s a very different story.

I don’t do much work in the game industry, but I’ve experienced this very thing as an artist in other entertainment industries. It’s worth noting that I have a lot of respect for the people who do the producer kind of work. It’s not the kind of thing I’m good at, and would hate doing. Someone has to make sure the books balance at the end of the day, and I’m glad someone else has that job so I can do my crazy dreaming, even if it occasionally has to be tempered by budgets and audience retention.

Still, I do think it would be healthy for the game and the community if we could hear a restating of the vision for this game as it now has evolved. We need a new Manifesto, not to set up unrealistic expectations, but to give us the big picture of what ArenaNet wants the game to be. So much communication from them at this point is focused on details. Features they want to implement, things that they know needs fixing. We’ve been talking about the trees for a while now, but haven’t stepped back to look at the forest for a good long time.

It means the table legs shattered.

It means we passed the little town of Bold Vision For a New Kind of MMORPG several miles back and are now stuck in stop and go traffic trying to figure out how to get the GPS online while trying random off-ramps in hopes one will get us to Everybody’s Happy Street in the shining city of WoW-Killer.

Red Falcon.8257:

Because most of this very community demanded for it during the first 2 months of release, threatening to quit in mass if it wasn’t introduced.

Funny, that’s what Vayne seems to remember as well.

I remember some threads asking for vertical progression, more asking for something to do at “endgame” that didn’t necessarily have anything to do with new levels of gear, and quite a number of people on pointing out to the posters in those threads that this game was supposed to be different.

Yes, there were people shocked that this wasn’t like every other MMORPG they’ve experienced with new loot to grind. I don’t remember it flooding the forums, however.

I’m too busy at the moment to dig back into the post history to try and get a better picture, but it’s amazing how perception colors things.

It’s also amazing how people are quick to say complainers are a “vocal minority” on the forums who don’t represent the people playing the game then turn around and say changes were made because most of the community on the forum was demanding it and threatening to leave.

Vayne.8563:

With Guild Wars 2, a portion of players, possibly a good portion weren’t staying. If you can’t keep your player base for three months after launch, what’s the game going to be like in a year. That’s the problem Anet developers were faced with.

I wonder about this.

They keep telling us that sales were far greater than their economic models suggested. They got more players than they planned. How much more, we have no idea, but it’s a curious idea in conjunction with the idea that they were losing a lot of players shortly after launch, and therefore completely rethought some of their vision for the game in order to retain them.

The idea that they were losing a lot of people shortly after launch is something the people have put together based on anecdotal evidence and the need to find a reason for some of the “180s” that ANet has pulled. Not sure how true it actually is.

But assuming both are true, I sure wish we had some inkling of the numbers. What was ANet’s expectation? How far did sales really exceed that? How big of a player drop off was there?

Imagine ANet expects to sell 750k units, and instead gets 2m. Then, shortly after launch, 500k disappear, and whatever crystal ball they look into tells them it’s because of a lack of gear progression.

That would still put them at twice their projection. At that point, ANet could say, “Hey, we got way more in sales than projected, but it was partly due to our refreshing vision we sold before launch. We lost some players because they ultimately don’t like the vision, but we’re still sitting pretty at twice projected sales. Lets move forward and secure the players we still have by continuing to build the MMO for people who dislike MMOs.”

Then again, looking at the same numbers, someone could read, “Hey, we had great sales, but a full quarter of our players abandoned the game in the first three months. Clearly we need to do something better, and the crystal ball says those people left because of a lack of item progression. Get to work on Ascended, quick! Oh, and someone memo the players that we were planning on adding it all along.”

I know that’s all hypothetical, but hopefully it demonstrates why things aren’t so easily dismissed by “ANet clearly looked and saw that they would be in better shape with gear progression, so just accept it and move on.”

It’s more complex than that.

I know you have a lot of faith in ArenaNet, but people and (perhaps even moreso) organizations do make choices against their own best interests. In an ideal world, we all sit down and carefully weigh the evidence and make a choice based on cool, rational logic.

Anyone who’s been part of a business with any sort of hierarchy and significant number of people knows that doesn’t always happen. Personalities get involved. Vanity, fear, politics can all muddy the waters.

Again, not saying that’s the case here. As you and I have both acknowledged in other posts, we don’t really know what went on behind the scenes.

But I am tired of frequent dismissal of minorities as “moot”. It’s not just your post, but a frequent argument made throughout the forums whenever anyone wants to write-off someone’s opinion.

Your follow up post is fine. “Perhaps the people who dislike ascended gear is just not significant compared to the people ANet can keep by implementing it”. Sure, but that’s different than, “You said ‘many players get kittened off’..and while that’s no doubt true, if those players are a minority, then your point is moot.”

moiraine.2753:

It’s good that dungeons are time gated.Before the Gold change i was farming only CoF P1 and TA path Up.

Time-gating treated the symptom, not the cause. The problem is a dungeon path that gives a reward out of proportion to the effort required to do it, not some innate desire on the part of players to repeat the same content ad nauseum.

Vayne.8563:

You said “many players get kittened off”..and while that’s no doubt true, if those players are a minority, then your point is moot.

Not entirely. There is such a thing as a “significant minority”. I’m sure ANet would be reluctant to lose 30%, or even 15% of their player base.

There’s also the damage that a “vocal minority” can cause in spreading information. Discontent can build on forums and cause people who are on the fence to decide not to try the game after all.

Not saying either of these is the case here in this situation. Just that it is too easy to dismiss minorities as meaningless.

During beta, one of the developers of The Secret World got on my case for calling the game “horror” themed. He told me it was impossible to create a “horror” MMORPG.

So at least one developer of a game that is full of haunts and demons and other dark nasties feels MMORPG and scary just don’t go together.

4 level 80s.

I have 2 level 60s and an empty character slot I bought right before Ascended weapons. I was going for an 80 of each profession, but with the gear treadmill I don’t think that’s going to be fun for me any more. I still haven’t decided whether I’m down to one character, or whether I’ll be able to realistically keep three on the treadmill.

Since my top two don’t use any Huntsman weapons, I might get away with two.

Erick Alastor.3917:

To sum it up:
If you can’t reach your carrot or can’t plan when you will reach it, it’s a gear treadmill.
If you can reach your carrot and then we give you a new carrot to chase, well that’s not a treadmill.

Not sure if he was serious or just trolling. :|

Yes. Even if you accept his definition that it’s not a carrot on a stick as long as players catch the carrot before they offer a new one, he’s failing to take into account the different ways people play.

Some people already have ascended weapons. For them, his definition says no treadmill. I play ten to twelve hours a week, and am allergic to farming. It looks like I might be able to get my guardian geared in ascended weapons before armor hits. I prefer, however, to play three or four professions, and there’s no way I’ll get them into ascended weaponry before the ascended armor grind is patched in later this year. By all indications I won’t have the armor before we get a level cap increase or the next tier of infusions.

That means, unless I give up on playing more than one character, I have a treadmill, even by his definition.

eisberg.2379:

Gibson.4036:

Ascended: 188major/ 134minor 1062-1173 weapon strength
Exotic: 179major/ 128minor 995-1100 weapon strength

That’s a 5% increase in the major trait, 4.6 increase in minor traits, and 6.7% increase in weapon strength.

Where did you get 1% to 1.5%?

The 9 more points in Major stat wouldn’t be 5% increase when you take into consideration of the total the player had in that Major stat prior to having an ascended weapon.

Ah, so we’re talking before the introduction of ascended armor, which is slated to be in game before the end of the year. Got it.

Anyways, don’t see why people are complaining specifically of the difference between Ascended and Exotics, when the difference between Fine and Exotics on the day the game released is huge, so huge it makes the difference between Ascended and Exotics very negligible. Why no complaining about this disparity on the first day this game released? I have no doubt, that if Ascended was in the game as is on the day of release of the game, nobody would be complaining about it, just like nobody complained about the disparity between Fine and through Exotic.

Look at the steepening of the curve to get said items.

Greens can be had for pocket change. Sneeze once you hit 80 and you’re in rares. Spend some karma, a little gold, and you’re in exotics. Spend accumulated laurels and guild commendations, and you’ve got ascended jewelry.

Now spend 200g in mats to get from 400 to 500 in a craft, probably more than one, salvage exotics for more mats, and wait through time-gates to refine others to get yourself ascended weapons.

And who knows what getting ascended armor is going to be like.

The requirements to acquire each tier steepens dramatically when you come to the most recent, ascended weaponry. You didn’t get complaints about fine through exotic because there isn’t a sudden grind presented to you. It’s not until you hit ascended that suddenly the game is trying really hard to make it take time for you to get fully outfitted.

It’s very clear that there was one design philosophy from fine through exotic, and then suddenly the design philosophy changes. That’s what people are ultimately complaining about. Not percentages. We went from “easy to get BiS, endgame is chasing cosmetics” to “BiS needs to take time so people keep playing”.

Brimstar.9036:

Regardless, you do not need Ascended Weapons to experience 99% of this games content. So, people are whining over something that is truly irrelevant unless they are in extremely high lvl FOTM, which I doubt less than 20% of the games populace is thay high and if they are, they mote than likely have a legendary anyway.

Or in WvW.

I know, I know, WvW isn’t about balance and it’s all about zergs and therefore everyone should be happy to run around in gear that gives them a 5% disadvantage over other players.

You don’t “need” exotics either. In fact, you don’t even “need” rares to do most of the content in this game. Lets put rares behind a stupid grind.

Hey, for that matter, you don’t really “need” to play the game at all.

And, it seems, ANet doesn’t “need” their original vision for the game anymore.

Brimstar.9036:

Lol. People are whining about a 1% to 1.5% difference if that in stats. Oh god, laughing too hard.

Ascended: 188major/ 134minor 1062-1173 weapon strength
Exotic: 179major/ 128minor 995-1100 weapon strength

That’s a 5% increase in the major trait, 4.6 increase in minor traits, and 6.7% increase in weapon strength.

Where did you get 1% to 1.5%?

I was suprised to not find my name on Erick’s list, because I’ve made sure to chime in on this topic elsewhere and have read all 24 pages of this thread. Apparently I just failed to post in it.

As is clear by my signature, I feel the way ascended gear has been implemented is terrible. I went from ecstatic that this game was promoted as not having gear to chase at endgame, to disappointed by ascended trinkets, but resigned because they weren’t overly burdensome to acquire, to finally deciding to cut off my financial support over the roll out of ascended weapons.

I recognize, as Vayne frequently reminds us, that companies change direction. I also recognize, however, that companies often sacrifice long term health for short term gains, and give up on a bold vision for a perceived sense of security. He’s right that we are in no place to judge why they’ve made the changes they have. We don’t know what forces they are responding to.

We do, however, have every right to judge the product of those choices. Like any consumer, we judge whether we are interested in continuing to buy a product or not.

Research has shown that for every customer who complains, there are twenty-six of like mind who do not. That means, according to Erick’s numbers, this thread represents about 3600 people who dislike ascended gear. I know of at least a few who don’t post here, but have voiced their complaints on fan and guild sites.

If you ask any worthwhile businessman, they’d rather hear customer complaints than have their customers just quietly leave for other businesses. Voicing our displeasure over the current direction of the game is a service to ANet.

Yes, it’s entirely possible that we are a tiny minority, and are expendable. Perhaps the money I used to spend in the cash shop is being made up tenfold by MMO traditionalists who are happy they have carrots to chase. I really like the original vision for this game, however, and am committed to calling ANet back to it for as long as I continue to enjoy enough of the game to keep playing.

I loved my Mesmer, until there was a heavy nerf to condition builds shortly after I had invested heavily in Rabid gear.

I loved my Ele until ANet did a whack-a-mole balance hitting healing and mobility in many ways at once, rather than in small steps.

I love the look of my Engineer. Well, except whenever he equips a kit.

I love my Guardian, but the recent “improvement” of world bosses making fighting them as melee much tougher than as range has taken a bit of the shine off.

I can set ghosts on fire, and poison most undead. I can confuse an ooze, and chill an ice elemental.

But it’s impossible to do any of that to a door or a dragon. :-(

A: Players are too clever at creating invincible self-heal bunkers so we have to keep nerfing healing.

Q: Why are dyes unlocked per character instead of per account?

AntiGw.9367:

Speaking of diatribe, why no tldr?

I’ll help.

TLDR: The OP knows how to fix the game after being gone for 7 months. Most everyone else on the forums are idiots with bad suggestions. ANet needs to do what the OP says instead of making changes based on the idiot’s feedback.

TheJokester.4672:

also limit it to at most 3 weapons that can be grand mastered maybe only 2 (i say 3 because some do use a 2h weapon and then maybe sword shield or axe mace but that might be too much specially if at 50 it ends up adding around 200 to the more demanding purpose of the weapon like sword being able to tag those little muscles and tendons to cripple or bleed the enemy making precision its primary etc.

Please, no!

The way weapons are designed they fill specific niches in play. Unless you focus on one specific area of the game, you should be able to equip your support/aoe weapons for zerging, switch to single target spike for solo, damage mitigation/cc for WvW, and the like. Don’t make me choose which part of the game I want to have peak efficiency in, and force me to run below peak if I want a change of pace.

Not to mention, forcing specialization in a few weapons will hurt some professions more than others. Engineers only have three weapons (putting aside the fact that kits screw with things) so with a three weapon limit they could be specialized in everything. Elementalists, with limited weapon choice and variety in attunements could also specialize in most of their arsenal.

Warriors, on the other hand, are supposed to have a benefit in having access to a wide variety of weapons, but forcing them to specialize in just a few will undercut this.

Because of the way this game is designed with distinctly different areas requiring distinctly different playstyles, we need more ways to easily flow between builds, not more restrictions.

Oh, and back on topic, the interview with Colin had way to many qualifiers to make his statement even remotely reassuring.

Antara.3189:

The Wizards tower is one of my fondest mysteries in Tyria

Yes.

And for that very reason part of me hopes they never develop it. I want to know more about the tower, but I know that mystery can be so much more powerful than details.

Already some of the suggestions in this thread have made my heart sink. It’d be very sad if the potential of the wizard’s tower were thrown away on a base for Scarlet, for example. Is there anything in there that wouldn’t be a little bit of a let-down compared to our imaginations running wild with possibilities?

Khisanth.2948:

Fine in theory but that turns it into an all or nothing situation. That just kicks the impact from d/c and crashes up a few notches. The larger, more difficult the event the bigger amount of time wasted. You only have to check the bugs/tech support sections occasionally to see that those are frequent enough that they are an issue.

That is a good point.

There are also plenty of champions which aren’t related to any event. Most of the ones being farmed in frostgorge fall under this category.

Right. It seems like it would make sense to me for events to reward more than random champs standing around that you can easily rotate through in a circle.

Yes, farmers will always find the path of least resistance. There are things, however, that could be tried to make it take a little bit more work than running in a circle hitting the same three champs on a map.

There are things that could be done to make non-farmers get at least close to as much reward as well.

In the end, I’m not really concerned that people are running around in a circle auto-attacking the same few champs ad nauseum. I am concerned that activities like these far outclass the rewards you can earn doing other things in the game. I am concerned that Ascended gear seems to be balanced for those people, which screws those of us who actively play through the world, doing things here and there, and following our sense of fun.

The problem here is that the game seems to keep going in an direction that asks you to choose between intrinsic and extrinsic reward. Forgo intrinsic reward, and get extrinsic reward faster. Choose intrinsic, and it will be a long time before you see the intrinsic.

Surely there is a way to allow for both.

Vol.5241:

In a dynamic world in MMOs it is impossible to balance rewards for casuals and hardcore (farmers)

And you have your reason why some of us appreciate efforts to disperse easy farming.

kRiza krimos.1637:

There is whole world full of events nobody touches, some of them really fun and well written. It would be really good to be able to go and do events you like and be at least nearly well rewarded like people that just kill champs.

Sadly true.

How many times have I soloed an event while out leveling, sweating it out as I got overwhelmed by too many mobs rushing in, finally tasting glorious victory, only to be given a tiny amount of money and a thimbleful of karma?

But I can zerg around auto-attacking Champs or world bosses and build stacks of T7 mats and a receive a steady supply of gold.

sanictoofast.9317:

you don’t NEED to have ascended gear, you also don’t need to complain about nothing on the forums but you’re here anyways. you will continue playing and continue paying goyim

I don’t NEED to keep playing, and I don’t NEED to keep paying.

For the moment, I’ve decided to keep playing, but I’m no longer paying. I’m glad the game is B2P with a cash shop for just this option.

Vol.5241:

Neural.1824:

How about increase the loot quality from a box proportionate to the amount of time the champ has been around?

10minutes: generic loot
30minutes good loot (i.e. chance at yellow)
1hour : good loot plus T7 mat
90minutes: great loot plus T7 (chance at orange)
2hours: best loot plus T7 (better chance for exotic, equivalent to how loot currently is)
1day+: same as 2hours, but increased chance for precursor.

Then people who play prime time get less loot than those who play during off-peak hours. Not exactly how you want to segment rewards.

Or people who move to less populated servers, which is what ANet would like to encourage. Hmmmm…..

And I’m on one of the most populated servers in the game, but I still like the idea.

There are plenty of corners of Tyria where people who happen to be leveling run past champs because there are never enough people around to do them, even during prime time.

If nothing else, this might at least encourage bigger farm loops. Imagine the zerg sweeping through half the zones on the map in a certain order rather than just spinning around three or four champs.

Another idea would be to create travel paths for a lot of the current champions in game, similar to how guild bounties work. Imagine if the farm train had to fan out and locate the next champ in line, coordinating through map chat, instead of knowing exactly which WP to hit next.

Vol.5241:

And then the hardcore farmers will find the most efficient way to make gold either way. Maybe that involves doing those events, maybe chain-event farming, maybe dungeons. And then people will still complain about what they do.

I don’t know why people want to stop these champ trains. It’s a player choice. No one is forcing you to go there and join in.

It’s as if people keep checking in at these hardcore farmers and want to nerf every single thing that they are doing just because.

Farming doesn’t happen in a vacuum.

Farmers rake in huge amounts of rewards, and in a very short time have their characters maxed out in all the best stuff. ANet looks at that, thinks, “We have to keep these kids in game with something” and introduces new things for them to chase, scaling the requirements to suit a farming income.

The rest of us look at the new BiS gear, and realize that if we play the game “normally”, it will take months and months to get back to BiS, and realize that the only way to get back to a completed character in any sort of reasonable time frame is to go join the farmers killing Champs in little, endless circles, or hopping from “meta boss” to “meta boss” at the dictate of the timer websites, or running the easiest dungeon ad nauseum.

Farming warps the game design because the game starts to be designed around keeping the farmers going.

Either a developer works to steer the farmers into doing a variety of activities, or develops the game with farming as the norm against which material requirements and token costs are balanced.

Neural.1824:

How about increase the loot quality from a box proportionate to the amount of time the champ has been around?

10minutes: generic loot
30minutes good loot (i.e. chance at yellow)
1hour : good loot plus T7 mat
90minutes: great loot plus T7 (chance at orange)
2hours: best loot plus T7 (better chance for exotic, equivalent to how loot currently is)
1day+: same as 2hours, but increased chance for precursor.

What a sense of exploration to suit up with a bunch of other players and go out to try and find those champs no one has defeated for a while.

Could be kinda awesome.

Vol.5241:

-people would continue to ignore champs and focus on killing off easier mobs for loot, defeating the whole purpose of risk/reward

If enough people do it, the event fails, and no reward. At least this way there would be incentive to make sure it succeeds, rather than just farming the champs involved.

-end-game, difficult events would be focused on and no one would bother doing any other event on any other map

You mean, unlike the champ trains that seem to focus around Frostgorge and Cursed Shore? Doesn’t seem like a loss here.

-hardcore farmers would probably find the most efficient route and ignore all other events

Like they do with Champs, amirite? Again, no loss, just a focus on event chains instead.

Or, as has been repeatedly suggested, loot could scale based on how often and how easily events have been done in the past. That event farm loop just posted on Youtube? So many people will be doing it, the loot won’t be worth it. Best to get together with guildies or in LFG and go hunting in obscure corners of Tyria for that event chain nobody does, because of the bonus loot attached to it.

-people would tag an event, kill a few mobs, then hop off to the next event and hope the remaining people will finish it for credit

People did this for karma farming way back, did it for portal closing credit during the invasions recently, and yes, people often find ways of leeching. What if the end reward for an even was plopped on the ground for you to loot like champ chests? If you bug out after tagging enough mobs, you’d have to at least stick close enough to get in and loot at the end.

MikaHR.1978:

I would like to point out little phrase “vote with your wallet” but since you cant do that, vote with not playing, not logging in.

Of course we can. I’m by not means a big spender in the cash shop, but ANet has earned over the box price again since launch from me.

I’m trying to make it as clear as possible to them through these forums that the reason they are no longer receiving any cash (though I know it was not a huge amount to start with) from me, is due to their implementation of Ascended gear.

I’m voting with both my wallet and mouth, and my current displeasure with the game has made me log in less recently, though is till continue to play. I’m hoping enough other people are doing these things that they will show up in ANet’s metrics and cause them to reconsider.

I don’t like ascended gear, but I can live with the compromise of relatively easy to get ascended gear. If ascended weapons and armor were reworked to be as easy to get as ascended jewelry, ANet would start getting money from me a lot sooner. As it is now, I expect I will not be spending real cash on gems until the middle of next year.

Instead of an artificial time gate, why not just move the boxes off Champions and to the successful completion of events, instead?

The larger, more difficult the event, the better the box.

…continued.

Let me make a distinction between talking about things they want to implement that aren’t finished yet, and what they hope to achieve in the game. I completely understand their reluctance to talk about the former. When you go on about specific features that then have to later be scrapped, you set yourself up for extra grief. We’ve seen it plenty of times. It makes sense to stay vague on these things.

General direction, however, should be expressed clearly. What is the core audience their aiming for? Do they really feel like you should be able to get rewarded for playing any part of the game, or has that principal been replaced by the idea that you should get rewarded for playing all parts of the game (as it seems to be)?

We, as players, deserve to have these meta-goals, so to speak, clearly expressed so that we can react to whether the concrete changes meet or undermine those goals. That’s why people keep going back to the “Manifesto”. It was a Mission, Vision, and Values statement for the game. It’s necessary to have something like that so you have a touchstone to talk about the things you are experiencing.

Since the Manifesto seems to be outdated, a road-map the game is only partly following, if at all, now, we need a new statement of Mission, Vision, and Values, and ANet doesn’t seem willing to provide that anymore beyond saying “we know this area of the game needs work, and have things on the drawing board to make it better”.

Better for whom? Better in what way?

Without something like the Manifesto, every forum discussion comes down to a pointless back of forth. “I want mounts! Mounts sux! Ascended rox! Ascended sux! WvW is kewl! WvW is a mess!” If there was a semi-clear statement of overall vision, we could have much more meaningful discussions and give clear feedback as to whether each choice they make is the right choice to bring that vision to pass, rather than thousands of disconnected statements of personal preference.

Unfortunately, I fear this boils down to political soft-speak. If ANet came out clearly at this point with a vision, it would confirm for some part of the player base that this game is just not for them.

So they continue to implement things that seem in random directions. Give the altholics the account wallet! Then slap them with some time-gating. Smack the farmers with diminishing returns, then make up with a shiny bouquet of Queen’s Pavilion and Champ Loot Buff.

The ship continues lurching left and right, so that we all feel that it must be headed to the destination we want to reach, but losing a few more people over the side with each sudden change in direction.

Vayne.8563:

You have a choice when they do to leave or stay, to complain or accept.

Thankfully, with the B2P/Cash shop model, we also have a third choice, support the game with additional cash, or don’t.

I still love a lot about this game, which is why I will keep playing, but for now I will no longer spend money on gems. Hopefully having spent money in the cash shop in the past and by continuing to play I keep my voice relevant, and by choosing to complain and withhold my financial support I send a clear message.

If I’m alone in sending the message in a game with hundreds of thousands of players, then ANet has every right to just ignore me. If enough people, however, also send the same message, they may listen.

This game has changed a whole lot since its release. Whether those changes have been a mistake or not is largely a matter of opinion.

Sort of. For now it is, but those changes will add up, and eventually have consequences. If the game thrives and the creators are satisfied with their creation, then those changes were not a mistake. If the game struggles and/or the creators decide they aren’t satisfied (even if they are making plenty of money) then those changes were a mistake.

We have no objective way to judge now, but that doesn’t mean there won’t be a clearer way to judge when we get to view all this with hindsight.

Without knowing their reasons for change, I don’t see how we can judge the change. And, for the most part, Anet isn’t sharing their reasons.

We may not be able to judge the people at ANet who made those choices, but we can certainly judge the changes themselves. Each of us needs to judge them for ourselves, and as you said, make the three big decisions. Stay or go? Be quiet or complain? Continue to provide financial support or not?

I think it would be nice of patch notes would include not just changes, but notes behind the rational for changes.

I think this might help diffuse some of reactions people have to them.

I think you’re on to something here. I was thinking about this recently, and realized this is one of the biggest changes the game has gone through. Before launch, ANet were very willing to enthusiastically talk about the game they want to make. What were their ideals? What kind of answers did they come up with when they asked, “Is it fun?”

Now, they seem very reluctant to do that.

To Be Continued, message exceeds forum length restriction….

Don’t make the mistake that it’s always the same people complaining.

A month after launch, when there were people complaining that they’d done everything, maxed their stats, and there was no “endgame”, I was happily playing.

Six months ago when Ascended was announced, I was wary but hopeful.

Now, with Ascended in full swing, I am complaining.

Yes, there is always complaining, because we all like different things. The game has shifted from appealing to one sort of audience to appealing to another. Whether that is good or bad all depends to which audience you belong the most.

I love a great deal of the game. That is why I’m still here making sure ANet knows that I dislike Ascended gear, and am willing to put my money where my mouth is. If I thought the game sucked, I’d be playing something else.

Jatacid.3725:

If they didn’t have ascended gear, or even legendaries for that matter. EVERYone even casual players. Would complain about the lack of end game gearing. You just get a basic crafted exotic and thats it? Nothing more to it?

No, not everyone. Some of us were very happy to get BiS gear relatively easily, and just enjoy the game without a to-do list.

Luckily, they released the game with Legendaries, which gives the players a big, long term, difficult goal to work towards.

And luckily, it was a purely cosmetic reward, no more powerful than exotics, so those of us who don’t need a long term, difficult goal to work towards could just ignore them. Unfortunately, that changed.

If Guild Wars 2 released with the Ascended tier in place, there wouldn’t be anyone complaining about it.

Wrong again. Even if it had been in the game at release, as currently implemented there is a bizarre steepening of requirements at the end of the gear progression. Remember the big deal ANet made over their even level progression from 1 to 80? It was one of the landmarks of the game that experience costs wouldn’t get steeper as you got higher in level. It’d take about the same game play to get from level 79 to 80 as it did to get from 20 to 21.

Not so gear. Masterworks rain down on you as you progress through leveling. Hit 80, and you can pick up rares without thought. A short while and you’ve got exotics. Compared to those, getting to Ascended is like going from walking up an ADA approved wheelchair ramp to climbing Everest.

Level crafting from 1 to 400 with about 15 gold worth of mats. But getting from 400 to 500 is over 10 times that cost!

It seriously makes sense that you have all slots with just your run-of-the-mill ascended items as a casual to moderate player. Exotics just simply don’t cut it for that ’I’ve reached the last tier’ feeling.

For you and some others. For the me and some others, exotics were perfectly satisfying. We moved on to leveling and gearing alts, getting multiple exotics for different kinds of builds, and getting the cosmetics we desired.

Guild Wars 2 needs ascended gear. While yes, it DID go against their ‘Manifesto’ or whatever about adding a gear treadmill, but don’t blow it out of proportion.

No, it didn’t and doesn’t.

This gear is no harder to obtain than a Legendary, it’s not completely necessary to obtain them, and it really does standardize their offerings for end game gear.

Many of us were happy to ignore Legendaries, because they offered no stat bonus. Therein lies a big difference.

Why would you have ascended backpieces or jewellery, but not any other slot?

Those of us who aren’t happy with ascended weapons and armor weren’t happy with ascended backpieces or jewelry, either.

Instead of complaining about how Ascended is bad, try thinking of ways where they could make horizontal progression if you don’t want them to continue adding tiers beyond this.

There have been myriad threads offering suggestions for horizontal progression. There is no shortage of ideas.

They explicitly said they wouldn’t add tiers above this – this is really just completing the game tbh.

No, Colin said he “hopes” there won’t be tiers above this. They’ve also made vague noises about increasing level cap down the road, which would likely mean the need for getting new Ascended gear at the new level cap.

Turn your unconstructive and completely misguided complaints about Ascended gear into a positive direction for GW2. Tell the devs what you want out of end game instead of throwing a bubble fit about an item tier that makes lots of sense for Guild Wars 2 as a game.

Not unconstructive, and not misguided, just because you don’t agree.

Horizontal progression can include:

1. New skills that need to be picked up by doing something specific in game instead of just buying with skill points.
2. New cosmetic sets to go for.
3. Player housing to design, construct, and furnish.
4. Mounts to acquire.
5. New weapons that aren’t currently available on a given class.

Still, I need to make it very clear to ANet that Ascended gear is the reason I have stopped spending money to support the game for the time being.

It’s a vicious circle.

1. Some players farm, because they are driven to chase goals in the most efficient manner.

2. Developers balance the money/mats/tokens/rng so that farmers don’t get things too quickly.

3. People who wouldn’t otherwise farm see that it will now take months worth of “regular play” to ever see a reward, so they are motivated to join in with the farmers.

4. Devs implement more rewards that require a great deal of gold/mats/tokens/rng rolls in an attempt to keep the farmers in the game.

And on it goes…

I’m not sure how anyone can consider watching event timers and porting around to auto-attack “world bosses” not a grind.

If you gather mats worth 200g to get from 400 to 500, you still put 200g into those 100 levels.

Just saying.

The deeper lesson of this thread is that ANet has been very inconsistent with this kind of thing, which leads to a measure of uncertainty for the players.

Some LS tokens/materials are vendorable after the event. Other sit around, and ANet comes up with new ways to use them to absorb the excess supply after the event is over. Others just get left to sit in our inventory taking up space.

Since we can’t predict which ones will become valuable later, we are left to either become hoarders or inevitably regret that we threw something away.

kitanas.3596:

can you name an MMO that doesn’t rely on time gating?

This was supposed to be the “MMO for people who don’t like MMOs.”

Time Gating exists because there is a type of player, commonly called a “content locust”, who will burn though content at the fastest possible speed and then call (loudly) for more.

Will it work? Or will the locusts simply move to the next shiny new game as soon as it launches?

This isn’t necessarily a defense of a-net, more-so an explanation as t why I think Time Gating was Implemented.

I think you’re right. Question is, will it be good for the game in the long run?

Many of us are still waiting on some official word on whether this issue is going to be addressed, and when.

This has been around since pre-launch. They just never got around to implementing it. Back when they were talking up the game and all they were going to do, your home instance was supposed to evolve with your character, reflecting your defeats and triumphs along the way.

Unfortunately, “When it’s ready” didn’t include a lot of things. There are things scattered around the game from back when ANet was dreaming big that fell to the need to launch the game.

*Home instance evolving
*Shooting range in DR (my that’s one kitten of a private party, to last a full year!)
*Polymock arena (evidenced by the portal to it in Rata Sum)
*NPCs with elderly voices but the same youthful models we use for PCs
*The alignment system (ferocity/nobility/charm) which was supposed to have an effect on how NPCs react to you

And probably more I’m not thinking of at the moment. Something caused ANet to launch before it was “ready”, and they’ve had bigger fish to fry ever since.

I was conflicted. I’m a fan of getting to the power plateau and being able to just enjoy the game. It’s what I hoped for when coming to GW2. I don’t like the new ascended weapons. I hate how alt-unfriendly they are.

But I really love a lot of things about GW2. There’s certainly no MMO currently running or launching in the near future that looks like it will be nearly as good.

So how do I keep playing while letting ANet know that I hate their new level of gear?

I’ve been the occasional gem buyer. I don’t mind supporting a game that I really enjoy. I want, however, to play a game where I don’t have to keep updating gear to keep my set BiS.

So I’ve decided I won’t be buying any more gems until the three characters I have decked out in full exotics and ascended jewelry once again have a complete set of BiS gear. I’ll work toward replacing all of my exotic weapons (about 11 across the three characters), but not farm, because farming bores me to tears.

Since we’re getting ascended armor before the end of the year, it doesn’t look like I’ll have those 11 weapons before that patch hits, so I’ll continue to work toward the weapons and add the ascended armor to my GW2 to-do list.

Eventually, when those three characters have their full Ascended set, I will go back to supporting GW2 through the gem store.

Hopefully Colin’s dream of Ascended being final will come true, and there won’t be a new tier dropped into the game at that point.

digitalruse.9085:

Sigh, Anet… just… sigh…

“Fixed an unintended damage increase that caused engineer kits, elementalist conjures, and warrior banners to deal more damage than intended.”

Yeah, just read this in the patch notes.

I just don’t get it.

Perhaps the intent is to go live with that damage increase in a patch or two, once a significant portion of the population actually has their ascended gear?