Guild Wars 2

The Lost Witch.7601:

Mystic chemistry

Result: Either a bolt of damask or a gift of bananas. (Which can be used to craft something awesome)

Now of course, this is just something silly I came up with a 3 AM. I am quite sure that arenanet can do better.

But I’d like some puzzling potential with progression attached.

Shut up and take my money! I want a Gift of Bananas in game right now and for it to be used to craft something awesome. Chris, make it so.

And now… it’s time for my pet project: Engineers

You’re probably asking yourself, “But Guhracie, isn’t class-based discussion more in line with the vertical progression thread?”

• In part, yes. I think it’s shoddy to touch vertical progression without doing some much-needed maintenance on the professions first. And I believe that Engineers in particular have some severe disadvantages when it comes to vertical progression, but those disadvantages also extend to things like build diversity and cosmetic progression.

Build Diversity:

• Engineers can use pistols, rifles and shields. Not only do we lack a weapon swap, we lack interesting choices of weaponry to begin with.
• Our version of a weapon swap is kits. There are 5 attack kits in game (there’s also a med kit as a heal skill), and in order to have a weapon swap, we give up one of our three utility slots, at a minimum.
• To compensate, we do get a skill on our tool belt (F-keys) based on the kit that’s equipped.
• This kills diversity in the utility selection, because the tool belt skill is set. Any engineer using a particular kit will always have the same tool belt skill as any other engineer using that same kit.
• Our only diversity is relegated to four slots, at most- including heal and elite skills, neither of which are known for being exceptionally diverse (when compared to the amount of utilities available for 7, 8 and 9)
• This leaves us with cookie cutter engineers, and that’s not fun.

Also not fun? Not being able to play the aesthetics game.

Visual Diversity

• By taking a weapon swap, not only does build diversity diminish, but the whole look of the engineer is determined by the kit.
  The kit removes:
• Weapon(s).
• Back piece.
• Any sort of color palette/unity.

So not only do we not have much build diversity if we choose to have a weapon swap, but we also don’t have diversity of appearance. There’s no point to a legendary when a kit will cover it up. Oh, and if we just take the disadvantage of having no weapon swap, those three weapon choices also make for cookie-cutter engineers.

The class is broken and I’m to the point where the awesome idea of an engineer is eclipsed by the terrible implementation.

That stuff is in there to be used exactly as you’re describing. Maybe not for the reasons you’re describing, but that’s basically how the game works regardless of their intentions. It would be like getting mad that the other team is constantly knocking me down in keg brawl, even though I don’t have a keg. It’s a byproduct of the game.

With all that said, I’m not a fan of Crab Toss anyway. I don’t think it’s very well-designed.

HiddenNick.7206:

Am I the only one a bit disappointed… All that this community could think off is generally: “more of the same”. Where are the crazy ideas of some new progression systems? Or suggestions about something that could be copied from other games?

I think it’s better to start within the realm of the familiar to see how present systems could be adapted, because I think those things have a greater likelihood of being implemented. Gotta crawl before you run.

That said, I’d love to hear your crazy ideas for new progression systems.

Third party mods are against the terms of use.

Hey guys! I just wanted to note that I’ve updated my post with favourite links in it to include attribution. The attribution means I had to cut down on lots of the descriptions, though, to make up for the character count. (I sort of wish hiding links under text would make the forum not count those characters.) Anyway, it’s looking way more polished now! Here.

Gamblit.5041:

Thieves and rifles: When Anet changed Cluster Bomb from 1200 to 900 Range, they send a clear message they do not want Thieves to have more then 900 Range. Adding Rifle to the bundle would not change anything. Rifle doesn’t really fits with Thieves gameplay anyway.

Best try to give them ideas on brining new weapons to the table, instead of recycling old. It would create more impact on the playerbase.

Warrior: Two-Bladed Sword / Greataxe
Guardian: Polearm
Thief: Whip/Crossbow
Engineer:
Ranger: Crossbow
Mesmer:
Necromancer:
Elementalist:

If the rifle skills were more like sniper-type abilities, it could add a new dimension to thief aesthetics and gameplay. Although the idea of implementing a whip weapon for thieves is also extremely appealing.

I would also LOVE to see greataxes and polearms in game. I’m not sold on the crossbow.

And here are some of my favourite posts from the first 4 pages.

Marcus Greythorne.6843
Scavenger hunt
Utility minipets
LS NPCs in home instance

ArtemusHunter.9521
Legendary dyes

VOLKON.1290
Crafting with more flavor
Tinkering

Gulesave.5073
Traits rework

Soeki.9643
Customize skills

The Lost Witch.7601
Challenge Missions

Shanaeri Rynale.6897
Commentary w/solutions

Astral Projections.7320
book system, etc

Nike.2631
Runes/sigils

Karizee.8076
Commander tags reflect WvW rank/Achievements, etkitten

hril Ashwalker.6230
Why have 5 guilds but only the ability to help 1 at a time

Knaifhogg.5964
Dungeon Tokens

DanteZero.9736
modular gear customization
Follow-up

DiogoSilva.7089
Racial skills granted more power at home
dyes/skins
Armor pass

Dominus.2360
Item appearance levels

Sykper.6583
Enhanced cultural armor

Shunsui Jiraiya.9103
Multiple ideas

Louveepine.7630
Multiple

D I V A.6018
Build Diversity

Shockwave.1230
General ideas

Mixchimmer.7230
Sub-classes, etc

Tyops.5894
Weapon/elite skills
Single-use skins don’t feel like progression

Lheimroo.2947
Dyes

Wasbunny.6531
Feasible dual spec

Finnway.2183
Separate PvE skills from PvP and WvW

roflcopter airlines.7125
Titles with color, and more

Odd Magnet.3970
Account-wide bag slot, bring back the arena challenge, etc

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Who-Would-Like-2-Week-Update-Just-for-Polish/first

Haha, I thought you said “a female charr with a plunging neckline and more than ample bosom” and I was about to object to the idea of a charr with cleavage.

I’ll be disappointed if this is true, as I found the evony ads to be offensive to both women and men who are gamers.

Bezagron beat me to it with this post, complete with links. I’ll leave mine up just in case it might also be useful.

Here’s the summary of some of the most discussed topics in the first four pages of the thread:

• Horizontal progress should be the main form of progress.
• Everyone is nostalgic for GW1.
• Utilize Vanquishing from GW1, perhaps as a 3rd dungeon mode.
• Lots of people want Build Templates from GW1
• Many want skill hunting and the book system back from GW1
• We want to customize ALL THE THINGS. Including: Home instance, player housing, weapons, armor, emotes, town clothes, profession and titles. This includes things like dyeable and nameable weapons, more dye slots, profession-specific armor (like cultural armor), modified versions of currently available skins, titles based on personality type, craftable town clothes, a place to display achievements, more dyes, more ways to access dyes, personality/order-based character speech, let us craft or buy RP items, use skillpoints to customize skill aesthetics, emotes that are order/personality based, unlockable emotes, Legendary armor (pure cosmetics), etc.
• There needs to be some discussion of a wardrobe system for skins.
• Meta achievement skins should go into the achievement interface.
• Cosmetic progression is at odds with the current setup for runes, sigils and stat combinations. This feels punitive.
• Lots of people want sub-classes.
• Make player choices carry more weight by having them influence things like story progress, Order, and personality-based interactions.
• Minipets need to be more functional and accessible, rather than being shuttled to the collections.
• Many people want to be rid of the soulbound designation.
• Entice us to spend more time in the open world. (Maybe it’s not such a good thing that conveniences like the mystic forge are so centralized.)
• More skills, please.
• Elite skills should be more desirable, and the final slot should allow us to slot any utility, rather than forcing us into elite skills. We should want to slot them.
• New skills should not be gated behind a huge investment of skillpoints unless they are on par with skills of similar value.
• More weapon unlocks/availability to more professions
• Upgrade clunky interfaces- wardrobe, minipets, guild tools and the trading post could all use some love.
• Give us more options with available currencies, especially karma.
• Give us a feeling of progression through and continued connection with our chosen order.
• Use lore as a reward.
• PvE combat could use some higher difficulty. Underwater combat is hampered by an unfinished design. Conditions need to scale better in PvE. Separate PvE from PvP and WvW skills. Defiant renders many abilities worthless and it’s becoming more and more prominent.
• We would like a quick way to portal to and from our home instance.
• We want crafting to be via discovery, not from vendor-bought recipes.
• More character customization: The addition of things like scars, tattoos, makeup options, wrinkles, and accessories via their own slots would give greater weight to differences in characters.
• Mini-Games: Add more (polymock arena came up a lot) and keep old ones as permanent content.
• More zones to explore, and puzzles to discover. Get creative with the puzzles; think tomb raider.
• Guild vs. Guild
• Give Legendary weapons the ability to take on the cosmetic appearance (perhaps modified by the weapon’s effects slightly) of any other weapon of that type in the game.

Nickelton, “competition” fits your sentiment beautifully, actually.

I have two nominations. One is a person who was a stranger to me who took the time to walk me through the Lion’s Arch jumping puzzles when I was brand new to the game, and when I was even more terrible at jumping. I cannot tell you the amount of patience and kindness this person showed as I missed jump after jump, only leaving when they had to for work and promising to help later on. We’ve since become dear friends: Fruitygawd.9732.

My second person is someone I hardly know in-game, but who does a LOT of work for a guild I’m in [RPcd] and the community as well. He hosts a weekly tour of every zone in Tyria, open to everyone regardless of level (and does his very best to ensure that we protect the low levels as we reach higher level zones) or guild affiliation. He does this every week, and it takes approximately 12 hours to complete. There’s also a weekly (maybe twice a week?) temple/orrian cleanse, and many other activities. Despite being busy, he reaches out to answer questions, interact with a variety of people and generally help out: Shorok.9706 is a fantastic member of the community.

What a wonderful seasonal contest to run! If I had to nominate everyone who’s ever been kind to me, I’d be out of room. Tarnished Coast has a fantastic community.

The Lost Witch.7601:

Oh, she’s awesome, and I really like her work. But if she could delay her findings to say: a day after the content comes out, I would really appreciate it. Players might be more inclined to search for the clues themselves. That way we could more easily see how hard/easy it is to find such things on our own. Which could in turn give the devs some more accurate data on how easy or impossible their puzzles are to crack.

In short: I am afraid that her work causes puzzles to be too hard or unfun to solve on our own. (The average puzzler)

Then again, I prefer newspaper puzzles over puzzlebooks, since they don’t have the answers in the back.

Snipped for relevance. Thanks for clarifying this; I totally see where you’re coming from. It’s a little like how WoW changed raid encounters to account for all the mods people were using- eventually, it was just taken for granted that the majority of people would have a mod pointing them in the right direction. I just think it’s important to remember that dulfy is a person, not just the name of the website.

Skins are one-time use, with the exception of the achievement point skins.

The Lost Witch.7601:

VOLKON.1290:

Operative word… Yet. Just an idea for something new. Having Tequatl drop a recipe seems a bit weak. I’d find it more satisfying if Tequatl dropped assorted items and there were a few choices of things to make with them.

This could result in a new crafting profession (sub-profession that is always unlocked but not part of the two now perhaps?) as well. You could, for example, have armor smithing, jewel crafting and a third, tinkering, open. Tinkering would always be active where the current professions would remain ‘two at a time’.

I don’t quite understand what you mean with tinkering yet, but I do think that assorted items to work into new discoveries would be cool. That has always been the one thing I loved most about the GW2 crafting system: discovering new recipes.

(A joy which is for many players killed by dulfy, but available to those that enjoy the puzzle as long as it makes some sense)

Besides, it would be rather odd to have Tequatl carry a recipe on how to make a shield of his scales with him. At the same time, it would be odd to unlock crafting recipes based on killing him… perhaps we need to channel a source of power at his corpse to gain knowledge of the dragons anatomy, and discover which parts are useful?

Sorry, but what is dulfy “killing” exactly? (I personally think she provides the community with an invaluable service.)

Nike.2631:

Guhracie.3419:

Those guidelines are great to have! I’m way excited to get started on this thread. Here’s what I’ve been working on so far:

Make the Personality System Matter:

A lot of interesting potential there . I’m trying to decide if it a plus or minus that Personality can shift over time when held up against your suggestions. I think its a plus. Your emotes would shift with you, and if players discovered they had a favorite amongst the drops they wanted to get but were the wrong Personality, they could shift themselves to that type before farming in earnest.

Make the Order Decision Matter:

More good stuff. Only thing I would immediately add is as you climb in rank, you gain access to more information about your order. Maybe clickies in their headquarters, or maybe some sort of expansion to the story sub-panel of the Hero-panel.

The idea of lore being (part of) the reward for working up through an Order appeals to me lot.

And…

• Add access to soulbound or account bound Order exclusive dyes at the top rank.

THAT is unbelievably SEXY and I wantses it. Wantses it bad. The Precious!!

I also think that the way personality can shift is a positive thing. It’s reflective of real life, in that way. I would also like to have more meaningful ways than conversations to impact personality, but I don’t actually have any ideas for that right now.

See, this bit about making lore part of the reward never would have occurred to me. I am not a lore-hound, but I certainly appreciate the elegance of the idea. I also think there could be a couple of locations only accessible to members of an Order (and maybe features inside could unlock with rank, or maybe more of the area could unlock with rank… or both). Nothing game-changing, just thematically appropriate, and maybe we find out more about the background of well-known members of the Order, too.

Finally, I must take a moment to say that your idea of making some of the regular dyes available at Order vendors is BRILLIANT. Particularly the implementation that would not devalue the dyes by flooding the market or making them too readily accessible/account bound.

In the previous CDI thread, adubb.2453 brought up an interesting idea about giving profession the ability to choose the type of armor they use, with some trade-offs for each armor class.

Some restrictions I feel are necessary, first of all:

• No mix-and-match of armor class. If you’re wearing leather pants, you’re not wearing a cloth helm.
• I think the choice should be a permanent one, and I think it should be made after doing a quest line along the lines of Order selection- a chance to use all three and experience the benefits and drawbacks before deciding. Up to this point (I’m thinking it should start around level 10), the character uses the default armor each profession currently uses.

Actual Ideas

• Each armor class could be tied to a secondary stat. Maybe armor, health pool, and healing power? Obviously there’s a lot of room for discussion.
• As adubb proposed in the initial idea, maybe heavy armor decreases your movement speed slightly but increases your armor; medium stays as it is, and light armor increases healing power and very slightly decreases health pool. (These are all base stats that decrease/increase when armor type is chosen. Also, these are totally up for discussion- they’re in no way fully formed ideas.)
• If it’s feasible, you could offer a way to reset armor class.

Positives

• Allows for diversity without tying up concepts with sub-classes. Nike sums this up beautifully in two separate posts which I’ve found and now linked.
• Options mean replayability or, in this case, multiple characters of the same profession are suddenly more attractive.
• Armor would become more meaningful (given more impact via the advantages and drawbacks to each) instead of simply a cosmetic marker for a profession.
• If you do offer a way to reset, maybe there could be some sort of small bonus for sticking to an armor class. A tiny boost to money gathered, after a certain amount of time spent in an armor class. Or possibly this could vary based on armor type as well.

Potential Stumbling Blocks

• I clearly have no idea how difficult this would be to implement.
• This would have to be carefully balanced in order to keep each armor class attractive as an option, and yet still make it more than a solely cosmetic choice. I don’t know how difficult that would make things.
• I don’t know how this might impact sPvP or WvW.

Some additional thoughts I’ve had regarding horizontal progression and the living story: The LS would be a great place to add rewards like black lion chest keys, exclusive dyes (maybe a choice between 3), a black lion ticket on occasion, hair/makeover kits, namechange contracts- any number of cosmetic-type things that are not back-slot or skins that otherwise take up space.

And speaking of skins that take up space… Wardrobe. Reusable skins. (I’m sure other people will have much more developed ideas about this, I just wanted to add my voice to the throng.)

Miniatures need a better display system. I should, at the very least, be able to flag one or two items not to be deposited with “deposit all” instead of using one of my bag slots for those items.

Those guidelines are great to have! I’m way excited to get started on this thread. Here’s what I’ve been working on so far:

Make the Personality System Matter:

Emotes should vary based on your personality.

• The downside is that there are ten personality types. This would require a distinct effort at expanding the emotes system, because each one presently in the game would require nine variations.
• Solution: Hold a contest. List the ten personality types (or link to the wiki) and the emotes available, then ask for email submissions. Have a community leader type person select the best, then all you have to do is submit it to the proper editors to make sure there’s nothing inappropriate or misspelt in the final batch, so you don’t have to slog through all the entries. Winning IS the reward. Immortalize the winners somewhere on the website and they get to see their emote go in-game.

Personality-bound titles

• Maybe temporary based on current personality or maybe permanent. I can see arguments both ways. I think it would be a great starter title, and my preference would be for one that changes based on a character’s current personality.
• This might be hard to implement, since titles are account bound and I don’t know if there would be a simple way to introduce either version of this. Certainly achieving a permanent title seems like the easier option to implement.

Personality influenced drops

• I would lean toward this impacting cosmetic drops only, and only when multiple versions of one item may drop- notably like the three elemental back pieces in Zephyr Sanctum. This would work if the primary personality trait made a slight difference in which one dropped, and not in actual drop rates. I think this would need to be included in the patch notes when it does happen, so that people may plan accordingly.
• This would not exclude the chance at (in my example) any of the three back pieces dropping, it would just be a slightly higher chance that one of the three could drop. So it wouldn’t be like “Oh, I’ll play on my character who has Charm as the primary stat and be guaranteed the Wind Catcher.” Your Charm-based character could still get any of the three.

Make the Order Decision Matter:

Ranks within Orders

• Ranks could grant new titles. (Titles are such an inexpensive way to show progress, in my opinion!) Again, you could offer a contest for naming these ranks.
• Ranks could be obtained by doing extended quests for their Order- I’m thinking something on par with the monthly quests, but not linked to it. Maybe have a daily and monthly Order quest. This would need to be character-based, which would then motivate people to log in on more characters. Or maybe it could be account bound and characters in each Order would contribute to those quests. (Higher ranking characters could earn more “points” for these quests, maybe.)
• Order rank should be long-term, not something that can happen in a week.

Add tiered Order-based progression

• Armor skins, based on obtaining ranks within the Orders. Maybe even just back pieces and/or gloves.
• If this is too costly, new weapon skins for progressing through the Order ranks shouldn’t be out of the question.
• Add access to soulbound or account bound Order exclusive dyes at the top rank.
• Maybe the top rank should award access to a full set of armor skins. Again, I can see how this might not be cost-efficient, but the upside is that it could be a pretty major gold sink.

Boon: The opposite of a condition. Regen, might, vigor, etc.
Duration: how long it lasts.

Gorgeous, fun, roleplay.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Guhracie.3419:

No. I have read this entire thread, and I have no more patience for your run-around. I’ve done pay to win games. GW2 has one of the least invasive monetization models I’ve ever seen, period. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: Claiming that GW2 is in any way Pay-to-Win is just ridiculous.

This is indeed true. The people who claim that GW2 is Pay 2 Win are the ones who feel they are Entitled to BiS gear without having to pay or put in effort.

But they’ll one day realize that even with all the BiS gear on their characters, you can never buy skill from the Gem Store.

I know what you’re getting at when you say “skill,” but it just reminded me: In my first multiplayer online game, your skills would only go to a point (like, imagine you could only get up to the 3 point tier of utilities, or into the first ten points of traits) and you’d have to pay to unlock them further. They also made special items that would give just anyone access to a couple of skills from another class. And general resistance skills were paid for. Oh, and the skillpoints had to be purchased after a point, as well. There was also an item handed out at the discretion of the guy who coded the game that would take someone to a portal area (sort of like Lion’s Arch, but nobody else could access the gates on either side) with portals that led out to the most populated areas in the game. They eventually were put up for sale, I believe. Another game by the same company had an item that would allow the owner and his party (unlimited number) to portal directly to anyone in the game. The game (all of them by this company, as far as I know, in fact) was largely PvP and it was open world PvP, at that. If you were not flagged for PvP, you couldn’t engage in any violent acts, including killing mobs. That portal thing was a HUGE advantage, and it was almost impossible to counter when it was first introduced. Oh, and when it was introduced, it was via an in-game real-time auction, so one guy had it.

It was to a point that skill didn’t even actually matter.

No. I have read this entire thread, and I have no more patience for your run-around. I’ve done pay to win games. GW2 has one of the least invasive monetization models I’ve ever seen, period. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: Claiming that GW2 is in any way Pay-to-Win is just ridiculous.

azizul.8469:

LordByron.8369:

Guhracie.3419:

LordByron.8369:

Guhracie.3419:

Becka Williams.4978:

Guhracie.3419:

laokoko.7403:

An Siorai Tharian.4516:

Until you realize that you still need to do the time gated stuff to level up your crafting skills high enough to actually make the ascended equipment in the first place. Whether or not you can purchase the time gated mats off of the trading post you still have to get a crafting skill to a high enough level to actually make the ascended gear. And since the Ascended Gear is bound to you, you can’t simply have someone else craft it for you.

I’m pretty sure I can get to 500 crafting in a few hours if I have money. And if I dont’ it’ll take alot more than a few hours.

You still need to do “something” yourself, but with money it is much easier right?

Note: With MONEY. Gold. Easily accessible in-game.

Then WHY is it time gated? Please explain that.

First you’ll have to explain why the time-gating means the game is pay to win. Then we’ll see if I have enough context to provide an answer.

lets try:
one day
player A pays real money and get ascended weapons
Player B instead has to wait and craft it slowly in 1 month.

For 1 month player A is having advantage.

a month pass, player A and B are supposed to be on equal ground..
But Anet release Ascended armors taking 3 months

Player A buys them
Player B Waits some months.

Another 3 month of advantage of player A….
What will happen in 3 months? infusions….

This is the reason behind the trendmill we are seeying and the added grinding.

Now lets add that in NO WAY (with the ONLY small exception of market flipping) you can gain enough gold to be on par with player A.

Considering a reasonable amount of daily play….(i farm most dungeons daily………i still have to finish ascended weapons).

you will have to grind all our time and still won t be able to be on par….also we won t really “play the game”.

Player A cannot buy ascended. Your argument is invalid.

Player A can buy all GATED mats but few to get ascended

As said 2 days of farming against 36 per armorsets are P2W..

I d call your argument pointless.

Paying to have an unfair advantage is still P2W…bypassing 36 days of timegating and having to farm only 2 days (dragonite and the remaining T7).

You can do easily 5-700 dragonite per day…and most players have so much empyreal and bloodstones to trash it.

so basically finishing ascended faster is considered Pay-to-Win ? win against what ? there is no contest or competition who would finish their ascended first as far as i know, or am i missing any ?

You’re using gold to buy those things. None of those things are for sale in the gemstore. Here’s my link: Log into your game and bring up the gem shop. Search for any of the materials involved in making ascended armor/weapons/whatever. So, not only are they NOT for sale there, and thus NOT behind the ceiling of using real money to get them, your only argument here is that people can get gold for their gems.

100gold=~$20. If you think that’s a good, efficient way of making gold, then you’re either not paying rent/bills or you’re much better off than most people are right now.

However, here’s the biggest point I’m trying to make: Gold is the currency of all these things you’re bringing up, and Gold is not hard to come by in the game. And I say that as someone who was too poor to waypoint earlier today.

LordByron.8369:

Guhracie.3419:

Becka Williams.4978:

Guhracie.3419:

laokoko.7403:

An Siorai Tharian.4516:

Until you realize that you still need to do the time gated stuff to level up your crafting skills high enough to actually make the ascended equipment in the first place. Whether or not you can purchase the time gated mats off of the trading post you still have to get a crafting skill to a high enough level to actually make the ascended gear. And since the Ascended Gear is bound to you, you can’t simply have someone else craft it for you.

I’m pretty sure I can get to 500 crafting in a few hours if I have money. And if I dont’ it’ll take alot more than a few hours.

You still need to do “something” yourself, but with money it is much easier right?

Note: With MONEY. Gold. Easily accessible in-game.

Then WHY is it time gated? Please explain that.

First you’ll have to explain why the time-gating means the game is pay to win. Then we’ll see if I have enough context to provide an answer.

lets try:
one day
player A pays real money and get ascended weapons
Player B instead has to wait and craft it slowly in 1 month.

For 1 month player A is having advantage.

a month pass, player A and B are supposed to be on equal ground..
But Anet release Ascended armors taking 3 months

Player A buys them
Player B Waits some months.

Another 3 month of advantage of player A….
What will happen in 3 months? infusions….

This is the reason behind the trendmill we are seeying and the added grinding.

Now lets add that in NO WAY (with the ONLY small exception of market flipping) you can gain enough gold to be on par with player A.

Considering a reasonable amount of daily play….(i farm most dungeons daily………i still have to finish ascended weapons).

you will have to grind all our time and still won t be able to be on par….also we won t really “play the game”.

Player A cannot buy ascended. Your argument is invalid.

I was hoping the official thread would show up tonight.

Becka Williams.4978:

Guhracie.3419:

laokoko.7403:

An Siorai Tharian.4516:

Until you realize that you still need to do the time gated stuff to level up your crafting skills high enough to actually make the ascended equipment in the first place. Whether or not you can purchase the time gated mats off of the trading post you still have to get a crafting skill to a high enough level to actually make the ascended gear. And since the Ascended Gear is bound to you, you can’t simply have someone else craft it for you.

I’m pretty sure I can get to 500 crafting in a few hours if I have money. And if I dont’ it’ll take alot more than a few hours.

You still need to do “something” yourself, but with money it is much easier right?

Note: With MONEY. Gold. Easily accessible in-game.

Then WHY is it time gated? Please explain that.

First you’ll have to explain why the time-gating means the game is pay to win. Then we’ll see if I have enough context to provide an answer.

laokoko.7403:

An Siorai Tharian.4516:

Until you realize that you still need to do the time gated stuff to level up your crafting skills high enough to actually make the ascended equipment in the first place. Whether or not you can purchase the time gated mats off of the trading post you still have to get a crafting skill to a high enough level to actually make the ascended gear. And since the Ascended Gear is bound to you, you can’t simply have someone else craft it for you.

I’m pretty sure I can get to 500 crafting in a few hours if I have money. And if I dont’ it’ll take alot more than a few hours.

You still need to do “something” yourself, but with money it is much easier right?

Note: With MONEY. Gold. Easily accessible in-game.

Tybalt. Marjory. Lady Anise. And, of course, the vendor who says “I have everything you need” and then shows his wares to me: A cupcake. Dude totally knows me.

I totally hated Seiran. I’ve never finished the Priory personal story because of her, though given what I know of the personal story, maybe I ought to.

Protoavis.9107:

Shockwave.1230:

If you really wanted to make the game pay to win, you could pay someone to play the game for you!

Game over

Well, I can buy gems to get gold to get legendaries, to get the dungeon master title via path sellers, to get carried through fractals, to get wvw commanders to carry me to all the poi in wvw for map completion, etc….just saying.

You can also do that using gold you make in game. None of those things require gems first.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/What-exactly-do-you-guys-do-to-keep-interest/first#post3334515

This thread may help.

I find this thread to be terribly forward and inappropriate. I will NOT “get horizontal” with you!

^_^

(I’m drafting a post/series of posts in google docs, presently, or I’d participate. Gotta get some “sizzle” into my ideas, it seems. But I seem to fail at smilies, so we’ll see how I do.)

Becka Williams.4978:

If you can use real world money to get a competitive advantage (and yes, getting ascended gear is a competitive advantage, otherwise, why does it exist), then it’s pay to win. It’s not as bad as other pay to win games, but that doesn’t mean it’s not. It’s not a binary state, you can have super grindy pay to win games, and games like GW2, where you get a minor competitive advantage. When exotics were the best in class, this wasn’t a big deal, because exotics were cheap. But ascended gear is time-gated. But you can bypass the time gated part with gold. So, people who can afford to grind, or want to spend real world money to avoid grind can skip over the time gated part, and get a complete set of ascended gear on day one. And so, we ask: why is ascended gear time gated? The answer is: to drive people to buy gems to convert to gold so they can skip the time gated part. And thus, GW2 is pay to win. This is also why ascended gear is ugly as sin, so that people buy transmutation crystals.

Pay to win means you pay to have access to things that cannot be acquired by any means except real world money. I’ll accept “pay to skip the legendary grind” but you can’t buy ascended armor off the trading post. You can’t skip the time-gated parts of ascended armor because there are a number of ingredients that are account bound and cannot be purchased.

Also, to whomever said that there’s obviously an issue since p2w keeps coming up: No. There’s an issue with people understanding what it means to pay to win.

Thief
Engineer (if they ever work properly)
Mesmer
Guardian
Necromancer

Pay to win means that you pay to access something that gives you a clear advantage over other players, which they cannot obtain without spending real currency themselves. This might be access to zones, it might be access to the top tier of gear, it might be a new level cap. Your argument that people can pay to win because of the gems to gold conversion would only be valid if gold were a currency gated behind gems. Your argument that the cosmetic sets of armor constitute a pay to win game is invalid because there’s no way to quantify aesthetics in this manner. Your arguments that people can pay to win because of boosters? Boosters are available in game. I’ve never bought one from the gemstore and I have a tab in my bank that’s half full of them. They came out of black lion chests- and I use the keys that drop in game to open those, so don’t argue with me about keys being pay to win, either.

The first game I ever played online was pay to win. GW2 is not.

There are plenty of valid issues to take with GW2; pay to win is not one of them.

Gods Knight: You don’t understand what pay to win means if you think GW2 is pay to win.

OP: I’d stop playing in a heartbeat if they introduced a trinity. “LFH then g2g!” for hours on end is not my idea of a fun time.

Nike.2631:

One of the best thing this game did was firmly de-couple race from class. Don’t undo the gains of that philosophy by binding weapons to utilities. Even in the service of an awesome theme.

Snipped for space, but I’m in total agreement with everything you just said.

I just had to bring up this particular line, even though I know it’s unintentional, it does rather highlight some of my issues with engineer diversity, in particular.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Hi All,

This is my last day at work before the holiday season and I am going to be very busy!

Once I am on vacation I will have more time to respond and engage.

I am therefore going to postpone the focused discussion on Horizontal Progression until tomorrow. I will catch up post page 36 today (or at least try).

Meanwhile I have a question. This thread is BIG. Would the folks who have already commented on Horizontal want a new thread which is just based on Horizontal or should we just carry on with this thread?

Regarding my reminders from you about comments on some kind of reward for the Fractal reset, I am still thinking about feelings around it.

Chris

Yeah, I would really like to see a new thread, with a “Horizontal Progression” title on it. Also, don’t forget to use at least some of your vacation time doing some vacation-y things, Chris.

Septemptus.7164:

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

i’ll say this again.

allow us to have horizontal progression in our gear.
allow each gear to unlock stats one by one, swap stats when out of combat via a menu.
allow each gear to unlock skins one by one, swap skins when out of combat via a menu.

best horizontal gear progression ever!
thank you.

please help to spread and support.

also, please remove level cap increase off the table.
please also remove higher tier than ascended off the table.

this means the maximum level 80 will not be increased, ever. and the highest tier ascended will not be any higher. ever. please. yes. thank you.

I would love the idea to kinda divide ascended and legendaries like this:
Legendaries- you have everything like you want:
- stats change (full list)
- looks change (similar list with all possible looks from this kind of a weapon)

Ascended items:
- quest, do LS, dungeons, fractals, etc – to unlock stats change on the item one by one.
- quest, do LS, dungeons, fractals, etc – to unlock skin change on the item one by one.

Exotic items:
- pay for transmutation crystals to change look one time
- pay for stat change crystal to change stats one time.

I personally would go very much for it and I would have real means for progression.
The system would also give legendaries value of the ultimate item and ascended would be really between exotics and legendaries.
Basically this would ROCK BIG TIME! (for me)

Still new legendaries should be creatable only by BTA items (aside from those already in TP)

This sounds fantastic, and it would really motivate me to put some effort toward acquiring a legendary. Changing appearance on the fly in addition to stats seems like a fair option for the legendary items to have. +1

Nike.2631:

Guhracie.3419:

I’m in total agreement about consensus vs. balance, but I think it’s clear that balance isn’t being discussed here, on many levels.

Heehee. To me Balance is the only thing being discussed – not the balance between which character can throw 20,000 points of damage down range the fastest or who can push the highest green numbers over a 5 second ‘moment of crisis’ test because they have stats XYZ from gear ABC…

…Its about the balance between activities and their rewards.

Ascended gear represents a big general nerf to casual playstyles, no argument.
But its an even bigger targeted nerf to Gold Almighty.

When the gearing up meta-game became “You can run off a full set of Exotic Armor by running a dungeon roughly 40 times taking fully active play for around 7 hours vs. you can run up enough gold to buy the same Exotic Gear stat-wise in 10 minutes of marketplace orders” yeah, there were balance issues being addressed by the introduction of a new tier that cannot be bought and sold.

For example I’m glad there is now a way to get repeatedly get Ascended Back items without running fractals ever (the two crafted ones just introduced). The WvW players who didn’t enjoy fractals needed at least the possibility of getting one to regain true parity. OTOH I’m faintly disappointed that the method added is almost entirely gold-gated rather than keyed to Badges of Honor.

To me that’s still a balance issue. It starts with balancing numbers, but it’s not resolved until you’ve balanced opportunities.

((Hmm, suddenly I have a craving for fortune cookies ))

I still say that class balance should come before gear balance. But your point is well-taken- we are discussing balance after a fashion, and it is important in the sense that it relates to the “play how you want” idea that makes the game so appealing to many of us.

I do want to point out that my issues with class balance have almost nothing to do with balancing the numbers.

Delryn.7235:

Karizee.8076:

I don’t think there’s a huge demand for it tbh. I remember the Queen’s Pavilion, how there was an ocean of players down below and only a tiny handful of players doing the gauntlet and Lliadri events above.

The issue with that comparison is that below the gauntlet was the “champ zerg train”, you’re obviously gonna always have more people in champ trains – especially when at the time that was the best place to farm.

Those doing the gauntlet were the fewer players who did it for either the fun of it, or the achievements since the rewards were very low and got nerfed even further.

I know however that during the time the gauntlet was in game it was all over the place in the forums and Liadri was the talk of the town; a lot of people cared.

I agree with this assessment, and I’m sad that the arena did not stay in as permanent content, but with the meta rewards/achievements gone. I know it will be returning, but I think it could have been fun for people to slowly work their way up to different difficulties in it.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Hi Guhracie,

The point you made that bothers me is this:

‘And, truly, without more meaningful feedback than “Interesting ideas” there’s not much more that we can do with the discussion, in my opinion.’

We are very passionate about the game, the community and the CDI. As such a huge amount of effort goes into it both from a Dev and community standpoint. I am sorry if I have upset you, that is not my intention. The point I am trying to make is that the CDI isn’t about what the Devs say, it is about the discussion we all have and the conclusions that are drawn from this. Thus if I am saying that somehting is an interesting idea I am saying that I am thinking about it and that it is worth group discussion in my opinion.

I hope this makes more sense?

Oh and in regard to folks questioning how I play. Well that really is water of a ducks back, and I would rather expend my energy have a healthy conversation than spending time explaining the obvious.

Cheers

Chris

Okay, I see where we broke down, and I totally understand why that sounded insulting. That is absolutely not what I meant by it. I don’t believe you are brushing us off by responding with “interesting ideas,” but I feel like there’s a point where the discussion does become circular due to your own constraints of not making promises or getting into specifics (both are totally reasonable and understandable).

As for me sounding impatient…. that’s because I am. I came into this thread excited by the topics, and I feel like the topic has become “ascended armor” when it was supposed to be about progression. I am not even slightly interested in discussing ascended armor. If I have a single crafting skill above 400, it was on accident. I am in no way saying that it’s not a valid topic of discussion for vertical progression, please do not misunderstand me. I just had a different expectation of what this topic would be covering, and I wasn’t expecting it to be dominated by ascended armor.

I’d be totally happy to sit out of a CDI called “Ascended Armor” and let the people who feel strongly about it discuss it. But I currently feel like I have to plod through posts about ascended armor so I don’t miss something that might be relevant to my interests… which is why I mentioned a summary of what has been mentioned about vertical progression. I’m anxious to get to horizontal progression because it’s one of the biggest reasons I switched to GW2 from WoW. And if I knew I wasn’t missing out on any of that discussion (or other vertical progress ideas not pertaining directly to ascended armor), I’d probably be spending way less time in this thread.

I’m terrible at portraying tone in text, but I am seriously sorry you felt like I was diminishing your efforts in this thread. That’s not what I meant at all. Thank you for your clarification. I think I’m going to take a break from foruming for right now- sometimes I get too stuck in my own head, as well.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Guhracie.3419:

Nike.2631:

Guhracie.3419:

1. We didn’t want another tier of gear; you guys knew that and implemented it anyway, so now we’re stuck with it.

Players rarely ever want their pet class nerfed, but its still necessary to the health of the game to do it from time to time. Consensus and Balance are distantly related on the best days and full-blown adversaries on more than a few.

While I have some issues with the specifics of Ascended acquisition, it’s not that hard to recognize the pressures at work that convinced them that the concept needed to be introduced to the game.

Keep in mind that prior to the release of the first Ascended items, the single most efficient way to advance your character was play the Trading Post. Full Stop. If you spent your time doing DEs or running dungeons you were a serf laboring in the fields in the service of your Trading Post betters. It was soul-sucking. Nothing you could do swinging your sword came close, and even today most people have this obsession with amassing gold when doing so mostly fattens you up to get fleeced at the market. The range of rewards that must be earned rather than bought is still astonishingly thin.

If anything the current crafting-only model of weapons and armor is a bit of a backslide towards ‘TP-uber-alles’. I sincerely hope that the currencies of heroism like skill points, karma, and various tokens get moved back to center stage as the means and the measure of characters’ mechanical advancement ~ vertical or horizontal.

I really just set out to summarize the thread to see if anything new was actually being said about vertical progression, or if we were just going in circles, this far into the discussion about it. And, truly, without more meaningful feedback than “Interesting ideas” there’s not much more that we can do with the discussion, in my opinion. Regardless, that was basically the first sort of comment that was picked up and addressed in the thread.

I’m in total agreement about consensus vs. balance, but I think it’s clear that balance isn’t being discussed here, on many levels.

I’m all for progress, and there’s truly no way to please everyone, but given the possibilities for vertical progression in a game like GW2, it seems like a middle ground other than “gear treadmill” might have been a more viable solution.

Hi Guhracie,

Will all due respect there has been a huge amount of dialog, discussion, ideation, summary and proposals. If you want to add value to the thread then I suggest you read it. Until then I am going to take everything you say with a large handful of salt. Sorry.

Chris

I do not even know how to begin to respond to this. My hands are literally shaking right now, on account of the time and effort I have put into reading and responding to this thread, and generally into participating in the forum.

I wouldn’t want to give you heart trouble, so I’m going to go ahead and reduce your sodium intake. I’m done.

However, for what it’s worth, the previous statement was in no way meant to be an attack on you in any way, and I’m sorry it broke down our communication and/or made you feel badly. I’m truly and honestly not sure what you found to be so insulting. I just re-read what I wrote and maybe it was the bit about not discussing balance?

Seriously, there are people here who are mocking your ability to play the game you work on and obviously love, but I’m the one who gets a handful of salt? Stay classy.

Nike.2631:

Guhracie.3419:

1. We didn’t want another tier of gear; you guys knew that and implemented it anyway, so now we’re stuck with it.

Players rarely ever want their pet class nerfed, but its still necessary to the health of the game to do it from time to time. Consensus and Balance are distantly related on the best days and full-blown adversaries on more than a few.

While I have some issues with the specifics of Ascended acquisition, it’s not that hard to recognize the pressures at work that convinced them that the concept needed to be introduced to the game.

Keep in mind that prior to the release of the first Ascended items, the single most efficient way to advance your character was play the Trading Post. Full Stop. If you spent your time doing DEs or running dungeons you were a serf laboring in the fields in the service of your Trading Post betters. It was soul-sucking. Nothing you could do swinging your sword came close, and even today most people have this obsession with amassing gold when doing so mostly fattens you up to get fleeced at the market. The range of rewards that must be earned rather than bought is still astonishingly thin.

If anything the current crafting-only model of weapons and armor is a bit of a backslide towards ‘TP-uber-alles’. I sincerely hope that the currencies of heroism like skill points, karma, and various tokens get moved back to center stage as the means and the measure of characters’ mechanical advancement ~ vertical or horizontal.

I really just set out to summarize the thread to see if anything new was actually being said about vertical progression, or if we were just going in circles, this far into the discussion about it. And, truly, without more meaningful feedback than “Interesting ideas” there’s not much more that we can do with the discussion, in my opinion. Regardless, that was basically the first sort of comment that was picked up and addressed in the thread.

I’m in total agreement about consensus vs. balance, but I think it’s clear that balance isn’t being discussed here, on many levels.

I’m all for progress, and there’s truly no way to please everyone, but given the possibilities for vertical progression in a game like GW2, it seems like a middle ground other than “gear treadmill” might have been a more viable solution.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

I doubt it has anything to do with ascended armor. Those have been craftable for months and are pretty much at cost on the TP. They are also not the limiting ingredient, the Silk mat is. This is probably just speculation on them doing something to leather like they did to silk.

Ascended armor has been craftable for months? And they can be sold on the TP, now? Did I fall asleep and miss a whole bunch of stuff?

adubb.2453:

Here’s an crazy idea that’s a little out of left field:

What if any profession could use any armor type?
With this one change you would instantly have access to a wider range of aesthetic choice for their character. Not only would your characters get a wider aesthetic choice, but you could have some really crazy builds with it but it would completely squash the idea of the “trinity”.

In order to assist with balance, you could perhaps give certain advantages/disadvantages with each type of armor. Heavy armor would give you increased armor rating, but decreased movement speed. Medium armor would give a healthy dose of both. Light armor would give you the most movement speed, but lowest armor rating. The ability to mix and match would significantly widen the range of builds and survivability.

Bizarre use cases!
Guardians could switch to medium armor to focus more on DPS, then survivability. Ele’s could wear heavy armor to boost their survivability and perhaps encourage more melee Ele’s in PvE. When was the last time you saw a D/D ele in a dungeon? (It’s rare!) And imagine what would no doubt be everyone’s nightmare? A necro in heavy armor! Good lord, it would be glorious!

To me, this would work ONLY if you had to decide on one armor class either permanently or semi-permanently (like switching crafting skills), and you couldn’t mix and match. It has interesting potential, though. I like it.

Ashabhi.1365:

It’s been a long day at work, so please understand that if I come across as less than pleasant, it is not my intention.

When this thread was started, we were discussing vertical vs. horizontal progression.

We, en masse, were trying to discuss what types of vertical progression was acceptable and what kinds were not, and also suggesting ways to incorporate more horizontal progression.

What it has seemed to turn into is a large discussion of Ascended gear.
…..

Anyways, I digress. The point of this post is that we have pretty much forsaken the discussion of implementing any horizontal progression in favor of discussing the pros and cons of Ascended armor and how to go about getting it.

TL;DR:
Might it be a possibility someday to open a CDI solely on ideas for horizontal progression and leave this one to the discussion of Ascended gear?

Snipped by me to highlight my favourite bits. I, personally, would be happy to copy/paste and/or rewrite my posts on horizontal progression in a thread dedicated to actually discussing horizontal progression.

Here’s my summary of the vertical progression discussion:
1. We didn’t want another tier of gear; you guys knew that and implemented it anyway, so now we’re stuck with it.
2. We want more ways to acquire it and more ways for alts to gear up.
3. Do something with the rune/sigil system. It’s awful and punishingly expensive right now.
4. Don’t give us yet another tier of gear after ascended. It will burn up the remainder of any goodwill you still have.
5. Don’t reset vertical progression in the future. Doing the reset to fractal level without doing anything to acknowledge the work people did before the reset (a title, a helm, a little trophy in their home instance, a single post on the forum acknowledging the issue; ANYTHING) was shoddy, and you’re better than that.
6. Make use of karma and other currencies.
7. Remember the mission statement of “Play how you want”

I suspect it has to do with ascended armor. I have no idea if it could be rising further.

Here’s what I want to know: If kits aren’t part of our mechanic, why can’t we have weapon swap? And why do we only have access to three weapons? If we want to have a weapon swap, we have to sacrifice a utility slot for that purpose. Then we get an F skill based on that kit, which kills build diversity because we’re all using the same F skills.

Turrets in no way compensate for a lack of a weapon swap. Our terrible base weapons (one of which (a third!) is exclusively off-hand) don’t off-set the disadvantage, either. We’re losing too much for not enough gain, in my opinion.

I think it’s to make people panic and buy them up, much like the way they retired the first set of mini pets.