Guild Wars 2

I figure I’ll get ascended gear eventually…. Its not really necessary, and I don’t care for the look as a whole, so definitely no rush here. But, over time, I’ll have enough mats and such, so I’ll get around to it. In the mean time, I’m happy in my rares… (yeah you heard me, rares)

Elbegast.6970:

Oh, bring us some Grenthy hooding!
Oh, bring us some Grenthy hooding!
Oh, bring us some Grenthy hooding,
And bring it right here!

rolling

Hm…. gonna have to go do that tonight….

Gotta love a good explosion (thank you mythbusters for teaching me this ^.^)

GW1 was a niche game, and had a smaller fanbase than typical MMOs, from my understanding. So that would make them a minority to begin with.

Beyond that, yes many GW1 vets have left for various reasons. Many have also stayed for a variety of reasons.

Are we a minorty? Likely,
Does it bother me? Nope

Like Zoid, I gather the impression that Scarlet may be a dragon pawn. Between her powers, her army gathering, and the vision from her story, the pieces do seem to fall into place for it.

Since she is a character we love to hate, I could see her being made into a dragon champion, and another world boss after her master makes himself known.

Or he could simply kill her, her usefulness having passed. Considering she probably wouldn’t take to well to being someone else’s pawn, I could see her rushing in madly and getting herself slaughtered…although that wouldn’t quite fit with her insane, yet calculating manner. Hmmm…

Options, options…

Personally I like the living story. It’s not perfect and I think it could still use some work, but still like it. I find it amusing, and it makes for some interesting fan fiction. (What, you people think the devs are the only ones that can write a story? Hmph)

With the end of season one, several options are opened to the devs. They could end season one by leading into the next personal story sequence, and it’s associated dragon. Season two could then run concurrently with the new dragon story, and eventually lead into the third dragon. Or, they could wait until season 2 is in progress before even hinting at the next dragon, having the 2nd season entail the actual reconnaissance for determining which is the next biggest threat and determining how to go about the offensive.

Factoring in the effects of Scarlet, I could probably go into 2 or 3 more options, but we’ll wait an see I guess. Please note I said ‘effects.’ Everything has cause and effect, some of her ‘effects’ may still be rippling out into the world as yet, even if she may no longer be an active antagonist after the end of season 1. TV series do it all the time… ie, an event in season 1 takes ‘x’ additional season to see all the ripple effects.

Anywho, I do hope they continue with living story. It will be interesting to see where they go with it.

nowitsawn.1276:

Do people really stack that many materials?

My husband and I tend to. We’ve actually filled our maxed out guild vault with stack of materials and purchased additional personal bank space to hold stacks.

We’ve been saving materials since…well, since we heard about ascended a year back. We do use the materials while we’re upping our character crafting, obviously. We also share with the guildies that craft, or help out guildies that don’t craft by making them armor/weapons when they need an upgrade.

I don’t mind this honestly. GW1 has similar unique options available only through the store makeover kits. The upside to the kits in GW2 is that I can convert gold to gems, instead of having to use cash like in GW1.

Seras.5702:

Man, is everything going to be a gem store item? There’s more and more focus on the gem store with every patch. Pretty soon we’re not gonna get anything but balance fixes without paying the gem store.

New character customization? Nah, you can’t have that. Unless you pay the gem store.
Want more material space? Gem store.
Special holiday skin? Yep, gem store.
Snow Globe finisher? You guessed it, gem store.

And to entice players to buy even more gems:
bonuses inside BLC
discounts on items if bought as gift

To be honest, the collections expansion was data mined ages ago and we knew it would be a gemstore item. At the time we were ok with that.

While I would like to see it as a free QoL update, I am still ok with purchasing it. I think it’s just a little pricey though. I would have preferred to see them offer a single collection upgrade item that takes you from 250 to 1000 for $20. I’d have been ok with that.

annoyed

Ok there’s “long term” (which I can live with), and then there is insanely long term (which I’m not so ok with).

Cmon Anet, I know you want us to stretch it out, but geez!

Personally, I think this QoL upgrade should simply be added, but i guess I can understand making people buy it. Not everyone needs to hold more than 250 of a given material, some people don’t use them at all…

Still $30 to bump my collections to 1000? Might be asking a little much of my good will…

We’ll see more dragons, but that’s “personal” story content. Scarlet is “living” story content. The story of the crap going on in the world outside and beyond the dragons. What, you think bad stuff stops happening just because some other threat already exists? I would have liked to see additional things happening in the world, on top of Scarlet’s insanity. Really make the world feel like its alive. After all, just because there’s a war on in one part of the world, doesn’t meant the rest of the world simply stops going about its business.

Maybe we’ll get there, maybe we won’t. I’m still sticking by my ‘wait and see’ approach.

Konrad.9587:

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

Just have some patience. I know it’s hard.

Patience? How much patience do you think we need to cope with this 3 month interval until the next feature patch? To give you an example, last update revamped the fractals – however it also brought plenty of new issues and did little to solve the old ones. How can we feel about the fact that we will have to wait at least 3 more months for a dredge fractal revamp, on top of other pressing issues?

Just like cesmode.4257 said, revamping unattractive content, bug fixing, QoL improvements should have an absolute priority over the LS stuff. Too bad this does not generate enough gem store purchases.

And if they never revamp the dredge fractal? Perhaps they decide, short of a few tweaks or bug fixes, its fine as it is. That is their decision to make. You can either “swallow it” or “move on.” Those are your choices.

Yes, every update comes with bugs. Some are small, some are not. Bugs are not always the easiest thing to fix. I work on a codebase that is over a decade old, and still retains bugs from its original implementation because none of the hundreds of devs that have worked on it could figure out wtf was causing a specific issue to occur. In some instances a bug may not be reproducible 100% of the time, further compounding hunting down it’s cause.

We do not work for Anet. We do not own them. We do not make the decisions as to what is, or even should be, priority. We cannot change that. We can voice our opinions politely, to express our wishes and desires to the devs, but the final decisions are still theirs. So, we can either have some patience, or we can move on.

VOLKON.1290:

No one here can decide if you’re having fun but you. In that light, all our opinions are really worth a whole lot of not much.

So much this.

Step back, *determine what you find fun, determine if GW2 offers you that ‘fun,’ and go from there.

Do not let others dictate your play…

*stupid filter

Who says she dies or even goes away?

We’re all making some [big] assumptions here…

Edit: rofl @ the stupid filter

I like staff ele, gs mes, staff mes (depending on the situation), and lb ranger as ranged options.

I’m still building my guardian, but scepter seems decent on it.

aspirine.6852:

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

6 weeks of Wintersday…. boy this holiday has grown in celebration length over 250 years….

Now where did I put those snowballs…

It seems a bit long doesnt it? I cant remember how long the wintersday was in GW1. Where your ranger all of a sudden was the most popular class in the game.. Snowball fight…

About 2 weeks. It encompassed Xmas and New Years, with the finally being new years eve/day.

milo.6942:

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

You are not locked into a healer role, when they need additional dps. You are not locked into dps, if you need to step in and tank. However, you can still spec specifically for those things if you want….

what are you smoking
since when can you change your traits mid fight?
you talk as if gw2 system is some kind of super-flexible amazing thing, but it’s the same as all others. you can spec to be “flexible” but that has its own price, and you could do that with any other mmo like gw1 anyway.

No you can’t change your traits mid fight, but you don’t always need to…

Yes, there are pro’s and con’s no matter how you trait.

Jakzor.4160:

you are absolutely right.

too bad i love 2 aspects of the game(wvw & spvp) that are not taken into consideration enough, like pve is.

this always happens in EVERY MMOs i play and that makes me wonder if im the unlucky/wrong guy

Based on the pvp roadmap posted on the news recently…. I don’t think PvP is as unconsidered as you might think. It talked about laying the foundation for additional pvp modes if I recall. It might take some time, but they have it in mind, just to cite one example.

The game is only just a year old. Their plans seem to be rather large in scope. Such things take time (and aren’t always right on the first attempt).

cesmode.4257:

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

JohnnySupernova.9182:

lordkrall.7241:

Jakzor.4160:

so basicly, from 21th Jan we’ll have FOUR living story only release.

that means 2 freaking months(3 starting from 10th dec) without any feature update…

that makes me very sad…..

That is not what he is saying.
He is saying that there will be no MAJOR feature release during those 4 updates.

Which makes sense.
Major features are after all stuff like the WPX system, new maps types, new systems over all and so on.

The living story should not take precedent over actually improving the game, to be honest. If it has to be one or the other, features should come first, always.

Ever think that maybe some of the features might not be ready yet? So the living story buys time to complete them?

Perhaps some of the features are lead into by the living story, and thus the story needs to come first.

Several reason why they might do the story first. At least we know that they will be doing a large feature release in a few months. That’s at least positive news.

If the features, QoL improvements, overall improvements and polish are not ready yet, put more people on those projects and less on LS. This is what we have been saying alll along. Areas of the game go months upon months without attention but we continue to be fed breadcrumb LS. I hope with 2014, this way of doing things ends.

I want dungeon revamps, I want living world revamps(i.e. people in the open world in any zone playing), I want some more QoL, I want to see more bug squashing. There are bugs that are still in the game from release (Magg cof P2 magma fields comes to mind), there are failed temple events that are bugged out, failed regular dynamic events. Over one year after launch and these things aren’t fixed in favor of LS…

This should always take priority over living story.

In a development environment, more people =/= more productive necessarily. Just like adding another person does not make changing a light bulb faster or easier necessarily. In fact, it could do the opposite and hinder productivity instead. Development and testing aren’t done with a magic wand, they take time.

I understand the things you want, there are things I want to, but we don’t know how many people they have tasked to do the various components (big fixes, armor design, ls, etc). We know that they have teams. We also know that they have 4 ls teams, but we also have been told that they are small. We do not know how many people are doing other things, we also don’t know how complex their code is, although I’m sure it’s a monster. Just have some patience. I know it’s hard.

Jakzor.4160:

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

JohnnySupernova.9182:

lordkrall.7241:

Jakzor.4160:

so basicly, from 21th Jan we’ll have FOUR living story only release.

that means 2 freaking months(3 starting from 10th dec) without any feature update…

that makes me very sad…..

That is not what he is saying.
He is saying that there will be no MAJOR feature release during those 4 updates.

Which makes sense.
Major features are after all stuff like the WPX system, new maps types, new systems over all and so on.

The living story should not take precedent over actually improving the game, to be honest. If it has to be one or the other, features should come first, always.

Ever think that maybe some of the features might not be ready yet? So the living story buys time to complete them?

Perhaps some of the features are lead into by the living story, and thus the story needs to come first.

Several reason why they might do the story first. At least we know that they will be doing a large feature release in a few months. That’s at least positive news.

positive news indeed.

the question is: will players have the patience to wait?

my personal opinion is i’ll leave the game till march(as will probably do my entire wvw guild) if those patches will be seriously story only.

i may be the only one that will loose interest in the game but, what if i’m not??

i hope it’ll not be too late in 3 months time from now

READ CAREFULLY: this is MY opinion, might be wrong.

Most people do not know what patience is, honestly. They desire everything, and they desire it right now. ‘Patience is a virtue’ which is no longer taught in society.

Not every game is for every person, it is sad, however, it is also true. People get bored and take a break, then they come back and enjoy the game again, until they feel burnt out and need another break. Some will never be able to get ‘into’ it, or ‘back’ into it and move on. I make no judgments.

If you (general use, not “you” specifically) don’t like the game, then go play something else. Playing a game isn’t any different than ordering food at a restaurant. You don’t eat something you don’t like, you get something else you like better. If you get a game you don’t like, you find a different one you like better. There will be those that, like me, do enjoy the game and the “pathetic living story” and will stay put.

JohnnySupernova.9182:

lordkrall.7241:

Jakzor.4160:

so basicly, from 21th Jan we’ll have FOUR living story only release.

that means 2 freaking months(3 starting from 10th dec) without any feature update…

that makes me very sad…..

That is not what he is saying.
He is saying that there will be no MAJOR feature release during those 4 updates.

Which makes sense.
Major features are after all stuff like the WPX system, new maps types, new systems over all and so on.

The living story should not take precedent over actually improving the game, to be honest. If it has to be one or the other, features should come first, always.

Ever think that maybe some of the features might not be ready yet? So the living story buys time to complete them?

Perhaps some of the features are lead into by the living story, and thus the story needs to come first.

Several reason why they might do the story first. At least we know that they will be doing a large feature release in a few months. That’s at least positive news.

Stinja.9612:

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

“The addition of the final pieces of Ascended gear: Ascended armor.”

So does this mean that Jewelcrafting will never make it to 500? Seems…odd that Jewelcrafting and Cooking get stuck at 400…and don’t give the full 10 character levels, if I have read the complaints correctly…

Yes, we can purchase trinkets with laurels, but crafting them would be nice as well. Multiple options for acquisition, just like with exotics. I’m sure it would make some people happy…

Collin did say something about legendary jewelry in the future so i imagine that’s when we will see that get bumped to 500. Cooking I am not so sure about.. perhaps they’re planning to tie cooking 500 recipes with the mystic forge, wvw, fractals and dungeons? Would be neat if they did it somehow.

The blog just seems like more marketing hype over all which i don’t think will be enough to keep players who are fed up or losing/lost interest+faith in Gw2. Personally i just want more viable+desirable traits for all classes and new weapons for said classes and or a new class entirely and more interesting forms of pvp in the future but that’s just me.

Hmmm, I suppose with the advent of legendary jewelry and precursor crafting, we could see jewelcrafting 500 for jewelry precursors. I’d still much prefer to be able to craft ascended jewelry, instead of having to collect fricking laurels for it. Variety being the spice of life and all that. I guess we’ll see. If we holler loud enough, they might acquiesce to our desire for more acquisition options for ascended.

As for cooking, I haven’t a clue what they’ll do for that. Honestly, I felt they were silly for upping crafting to 500 to begin with, they could have simply made ascended another ‘tier’ at the 400 level and made us have to work for the recipes (ie, complete some quest or task to attain it) rather than simply buying it like we can exotics.

I too would like to see more traits, more skills, and more weapons. I’m not big on a new class, or even a new race, since they have more than enough to balance currently.

I also look forward to new areas to explore and new modes of pvp. JQ, FA? Please please?!

I guess all we can do it wait and see what 2014 brings us.

The way aggro works in the game, I don’t think a pure tank would truly be possible. Even though you could spec pure tank in GW1, it didn’t fair well there either (and really wasn’t necessary).

As for a pure healer, considering the rigidity of most players, think about how that would play out. I don’t think there is any possible implementation (skill based or otherwise) that could be implemented that would not result in the whole ‘glf monk’ scenario again.

Additionally, offering these ‘pure’ builds allows the ability to fall back on the same old trinity mentality, and you know people would do it, because that’s what we’ve been trained to. Anet has instead used the cold turkey approach, to ween us away from it. Those that can accept it will stay, those that cannot adapt will move on. Just how it works with games. Having no true trinity is too far outside some players’ comfort zones, and that’s understandable. I make no judgments.

Yes, tanking and healing offer distinct types of game play, in their rigid roles; however they are also extremely limiting in the bigger scope. Technically you can achieve similar ‘roles’ (perhaps not as effectively as a holy priest or a heal monk necessarily) in GW2, while still having the ability to swap to another role as needed by your team. Sure, you could swap from heal to smite in GW1….as long as you went back to town and started over. Sure, you could swap from holy to shadow in WoW….with some significant down time to regen… but not on the fly like you can here. Battle in GW2 is a much more fluid dance, where partners change lead without missing a step, unlike other games where the dance must pause for the change and then be resumed.

You are not locked into a healer role, when they need additional dps. You are not locked into dps, if you need to step in and tank. However, you can still spec specifically for those things if you want….

6 weeks of Wintersday…. boy this holiday has grown in celebration length over 250 years….

Now where did I put those snowballs…

“The addition of the final pieces of Ascended gear: Ascended armor.”

So does this mean that Jewelcrafting will never make it to 500? Seems…odd that Jewelcrafting and Cooking get stuck at 400…and don’t give the full 10 character levels, if I have read the complaints correctly…

Yes, we can purchase trinkets with laurels, but crafting them would be nice as well. Multiple options for acquisition, just like with exotics. I’m sure it would make some people happy…

They have mentioned leveling infusions to ascended rarity. I fully expect runes and sigils to also be leveled to ascended, over time. I am hoping that we will see the end of VP at that point, and see more of the ‘traditional Guild Wars’ model implemented:

More zones for the max level
More personal story for fully leveled characters
More skills
More sharing of weapons across the existing classes
More rare and unique armor and weapon skins in game to work toward

Perhaps we will see some elite zones (Like Uw of FoW), but I do not see this as likely based on comments made at Pax. We will see though.

Like many, I have my fingers crossed for no level raise in the future. This is GW, not WoW. If I wanted to play WoW, I’d go fricking play WoW.

Zeldain.5710:

Class interdependency is so important in an MMO, and here it’s really lacking.

I’d love to see a content patch or expansion that brings true group roles back into the picture. I think it would give the game an amazing shot in the arm.

But I think the point was to get away from so much class inter-dependency . That’s the whole issue here. Class inter-dependency is what makes us sit around shouting “lf healer to go” or “glf tank” for hours on end. We are trained to desire this, but we don’t need it.

Without the required inter-dependency we’re discussing, you can in theory simply take anyone and just play. However, we’re so rigidly trained in our required roles that this is a wall we seem to have an issue getting over.

You can heal yourself, so you don’t have to depend on someone else to keep you alive. How many times haves you been in a group with a subpar monk that just couldn’t manage their role? How many times did you wipe and have to start over, seeking a different healer in order to get through?

You can ‘tank’ and mitigate you own damage, letting another party member take the tank role when you need a breather. How many teams have you been in where the tank could not play his assigned role? Could not hold aggro? Could not sustain the dmg?

You can contribute effectively to the damage pool, you don’t have to completely rely on someone else to do it. How many groups have you ran in where the dps did not have enough punch to make it through because there wasn’t enough of them? Or they simply had the wrong build? Or where the fight took 4 times as long because they kept ‘messing up the rotation’?

You can do everything you need to do, be any ‘role’ to help your team as needed, while not being locked into one thing specifically (necessarily). We are not just “healers” or “tanks” or “dps” anymore. We are all of them, helping each other out, and fluidly switching from role to role as is needed in any particular battle. Inter-dependency is there, but its on the player not on the class anymore. We just don’t see it…

The problem I see is that we as gamers have been trained to desire roles. To desire some way of saying “My character does x.” The “this is my role, this is what I do” mentality.

“I am ele, therefore I am a nuker”
“I am a warrior, therefore I am a tank”
“I am a monk, therefore I heal”

It was this mentality that GW2 was attempting to break away from by breaking the ‘roles’ barrier. Any class could do any role, in theory.

However, the classes do not do all roles effectively, so we end up with a lot of these threads where the complaints arise the ‘x’ class does more dps, or ‘y’ class does more whatever. Thus we end up with the divide between those that feel certain classes are better, and preferred over others.

For people like me, who pretty much ignore ‘speed’ runs, and for whom the game is not all about efficiency, any class is perfectly fine. Everything can be done with any class, and we freely take any class on a dungeon trip. I regularly take my ele, my husband likes to take his ranger, I have a guildie that takes either her warrior or her necro, another that takes a guardian, and a 5th that typically takes a thief or an engineer. For the paths we tend to do, it takes us 15 to 20 minutes to complete (and that’s with massacring everything in our path. We don’t skip stuff). Considering speed runs of the same paths tend to take (on average) 10-15 minutes, from my understanding and observation, I don’t think we’re doing too badly for our motley, non-efficiency, group.

HiddenNick.7206:

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

Sometimes the leveling process can feel like a grind…

I really can’t imagine how can you consider leveling a grind? When your leveling your pushed around the world to do different things and develop your character! Where is grinding in that?!

Grinding starts when your level 80 and everything you can do is repeating the same things over and over again!

I was thinking more along the lines of if you’re doing say…the same map for the fourth, or fifth, or eighth time. People will get bored, and when they get bored, they slap the word ‘grind’ on it.

Generally, I don’t have too much of an issue when I level. I have lots of options to keep me entertained, and I rarely do it alone. Although, I do see lots of people doing it alone, and I can understand how they might not find that enjoyable.

I play the class simply because I enjoy playing it. I’m not even sure I can articulate it beyond that. I presently have 10 character, 1 of each class plus a 2nd mesmer and a 2nd ranger. 3 are 80, the rest are all over the board because I can’t focus on a specific one as being more enjoyable than the others.

My current ‘favorite’ (I think) is mesmer. It’s an interesting challenge to play well.

To each their own I guess. OP, you don’t like that armor and that’s fine, but there are many who do, and as such you have no right to demand its change. Underboob is no better or worse than massive amounts of cleavage. It is just skin, get over it. I can only imagine the fits you have when you character puts on a set of diving goggles. chuckle

This game is pretty balanced for revealing vs non-revealing armor imo. Additionally, it’s skimpy armors tend to be less skimpy than many other games I have perused.

As a women in real life, I have very little issue with that bit of underboob in pixels. As I said before, its just skin.

Im on the forums more during the week… only because they help pass the time while I’m at work. After I’m done with work for the day, and on weekends, I’m on the game for as much time as I can squeeze in. (Sadly, not as much as I would like since I do have a family and a life outside of work and gaming)

Sometimes the leveling process can feel like a grind… if you’re not doing it for the first time, and you don’t have anyone to hang out with to make it….uh, interesting.

I presently have 10 characters, 3 of which are 80. The other 7 are all over the board because I can’t pick one to work on next.

That said, I do a few things to level:

Avoid personal story until roughly lvl 60. Once you hit 60, you can just go from story mission to story mission to attain the last 20 levels very quickly. Speeds it right along…

Run dungeons with guildies on your lvl 80 chars, then swap in your baby char just before the end to snipe the XP. (From my understanding, this is actually very common practice)

Map clearing. 100%ing maps is excellent for XP as well as goodies. A bonus is that if you clear the maps necessary for the personal story, then you can just waypoint around the majority of it later (which saves time). Obviously, you won’t be clearing Orr, but there’s a ton of other maps to do…

DE hunting. Grab a groups of guildies, pick a map not usually frequented and see how many you can find and clear. Split up and see which group can do more in a set amount of time. Builds influence, facilitates some bonding, and can generate some interesting mayhem. Fun times.

Use crafting sparingly. When I need a break from map clearing, or when I need to upgrade my armor/weapons, then I turn to crafting. Since it only gives 7 levels now, between 0 and 400, you’re not going to see huge boosts from it, not to mention its an expensive habit to feed.

Gather, gather, gather. You’re out in the world anyway, if it’s in your path, stop and grab it. It’s easy xp. It’s one less thing you have to buy to craft or if you skip crafting all together, you can sell it for some extra money. Win win.

Check out the living story stuff. Even if you don’t get into the story, don’t like Scarlet, whatever…it’s still a decent source of XP (usually).

Hop on the train. When I’m feeling a little burnt out, I do this because it takes no thought. I can goof off and chat while still leveling.

Lot of options out there, you just have to look and find what fits your play style.

I can only aspire to be this nifty. You make wvw look fun…

Redenaz.8631:

Krait has been looking at many arts in Divinity’s Reach. Please, what emotion is this art meant to evoke?

Art elicits different emotions for different people. Even the same piece of art may cause different people to feel different things.

While some art is intended to get a specific type of response by the way it is designed, others may not be. They simply may have been done as a means of self-expression by the creator, and as such the piece may evoke something slightly different in each individual that views it.

That said, when it comes to art, there is no ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ feeling. What you feel is simply what you feel. Sometimes, you may feel nothing at all.

runeblade.7514:

-snip -

That was downright disturbing….

ASB.4295:

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

The key to keep in mind is how steep, how required, and where it stops.

True that those factors will make a difference. However, I’m still holding ANet to their original statements about no-grind and easy to attain BiS gear until they come out with a statement addressing these things directly. I’m won’t take their “exotics were too easy to get” statement as their way of telling us that their original philosophy was abandoned for one reason or another.

Ah but there really isn’t any grind for anything you need to play the game.

“But you need ascended for fractals” No, you need agaony resistence for fractals. You can get amulets and rings and trinkets just playing the fractals, which have some AR. Now that AR is its own slot and you can make AR only infusions, what is the cap per item that you can get for AR? Could you in theory create and place enough AR on just those pieces to be viable (for what it currently available, we can’t really say what will be necessary in the future). Thus, rendering the need for a full ascended set obsolete? After all, people are doing them now in exotics with only the ascended trinkets, so it must very much be possible.

Outside of that, you can do everything else in Rares. Even WvW.

Still, I’m not disagreeing with you on the easy to obtain BiS. I would prefer that as well; however we are the minority. The majority of MMO players are conditioned to desire the grind for BiS. They feel naked without it. As such, Anet’s approach had to evolve some. I don’t necessarily like it; however, as I’ve said before, if they have a clear end point I can live with it.

Excursion.9752:

I actually wish they had ascended runes and sigils.

We will like see this over time. Considering they have said that there will be some VP, and a shallow power curve, but also that they see no need for another gear tier, they can only accomplish this VP thru upping the available levels on runes, sigils, and infusions to ascended.

Eventually…. all of them. I’ll get there in time. No rush though.

I would simply like to see more ways of obtaining Ascended implemented. Honestly, it should be attainable in just as many ways as exotics, just more expensive and not tradable. This would help tone down the issue.

Additionally, I would like to see them give us a definitive end point for the power curve – ie, after ascended runes/sigils/infusions are released, there will be no more VP. I’d be fine with this. It allows for some VP, and a longer term armor goal than exotics provide, which some people like. Also, for those that don’t necessarily want to go straight for legendaries (or simply don’t want them for whatever reason), it does provide a BiS intermediate step.

Hopefully Anet does not go with option 2. While they have expressed that there will be a ‘shallow power curve’ they have still also expressed the desire to not completely negate all of the players work. Sort of hard to find a balance there, but we shall see.

I log on, once in a great while. When I miss my old mesmer, or when I’m missing my monk, or when I desire to an actual minion master. I usually only hang out in JQ or FA though.

Keneth.6490:

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

This thread only really shows that for every 1 that hates Scarlet, there is 1 that also likes her.

Actually it’s more like for every 2 people that don’t like her, there’s 1 that does like her (or at least tolerates her). Even if the ratio was 1:1, the fact that a whole 50% of consumers don’t like the character is not a good thing by any standards.

Have you taken a survey of people in the game? From my observations, and again its really all conjecture since only Anet has any real numbers, it balances out between forum and in-game community.

Also, seeing as she’s currently the “main” villain, since the dragons are apparently having a tea party and scratching their collective as­ses, the story needs her to be exceptional character to fill the role, not some poorly written, barely tolerated mess that’s compensating by being all-powerful for no apparent reason.

Do you know what a sub plot is? She is a sub plot, while the personal story is the main plot. Not all sub plots are good, but they do tend to lead somewhere. She has not finished her role, let them spin their tale.

So you don’t like her, that’s you’re right. Not every book or story will be to every person’s taste. To each their own.

Ascended Infusions – I expect these, have since last Nov

Ascended Runes/Sigils – I expect these as well, since the original announcement of Ascended

Rep Title bonuses – Wouldn’t be surprised, and these (likely) wouldn’t be any different than what we got in GW:EN, which had skills attached to them

Skills that have to be leveled up through use to reach maximum potential – I don’t think we will see this one. It doesn’t fit with what already exists. Now skills tied to reputation titles, as I just previously mentioned, sure.

Gear level 80+ – Maybe. Anet has not definitely said that they were raising the level cap. If they hold to ascended being the last tier of gear, and to their statement that they do not want want to get into the rut of releasing more powerful gear every 6 mo to a year (ie not negating previous work), then it is likely we won’t see this. To raise the level cap and thus gear, would negate there recent assurances that ascended is it [for now]. But, none of us have a crystal ball. All we can do is wait and see.

Every game has a treadmill. The key to keep in mind is how steep, how required, and where it stops. ANet may have a stopping point, we do not know as we do not work there, but there is still some hope based on relatively recent comments.

cesmode.4257:

I dont know about any of that…its true that you can do any open world content and regular dungeon in rares.

I’ll say that trying to solo the Tower of Nightmares in rares is folly and a load. I dont think you can do it in rares. Must have exotics, better have some ascended on you. Most likely there was only a small percentage of people that could roll through that place, come up to a passage blocked by an event, solo the event, and continue on. I highly doubt anyone could do that in all rares.

Bracing myself for the lies to come streaming in “Oh I did it in masterwork” “Oh I did it in fine gear”

I can’t solo the whole tower in rares, but I can do decent amounts of it. Although..I do have an exotic skirt now (playing an ele), everything else is rare I believe. Haven’t really felt overly inclined to go out of my way to upgrade as yet.

Anywho, the issue I run into is when people start just running through and the groups I end up facing are scaled for more people. Otherwise, I can usually manage the foes, and several of the events. Although that spider champ is impossible alone… I’ve not had the chance to try the wurm alone, usually end up with at least 2 or 3 other people by that point.

The tower is; however, completely duo-able. My guildie and I (her guard, my ele) have fought our way up from floor 1 to the top together (we were very, very bored). We took the krait champ on floor 1, the wurm on 2 (skipped that kitten spider), and contended with portal events on floors 2 and 3. It wasn’t always the smoothest, but we made it through. Then we went and beat up the hybrid, and got the krait mini for doing it w/o dying. I was ecstatic. We then repeated the process (for the instance) so I could get that achievement on my husband’s account. Honestly, I didn’t think we could do it… but we did

Ok 10k for one piece might be pushing it….

Astralporing.1957:

Belzebu.3912:

Ping.5739:

and finally people starts debating/complaining about something new?
seems legit

Nothing stop them of making new gear with improved aesthetic/effects but with the same status.

The top gear you could get in GW1 in the 1st year in the same you can get now, why it would be different here?

That was the question we asked in November 2012. We got answered that GW1 gear system was stale, and VP is in GW2 to stay.
If you think it will end with ascended you are naive.

Then don’t bother with ascended and just go straight for legendary. They has said time and again that legendaries will always be on par with whatever the top of the ladder is. And now, they even have stat swapping at will outside of battle.

ArchonWing.9480:

It creates some degree of separation; not much, but it still exists.

Yeah…. we don’t need anymore help that really. Players do enough of that on their own, armor doesn’t need to help it along…

My idea of a good reward system is that opportunity should always be there to players willing to display effort and challenge. If the game had more content so that it were a constant test of these things, then I think it makes for a more engaging rewarding system in which people don’t just get tunnel vision, but might actually seek to play well and god forbid, play the content just because it’s engaging in and of itself. A lot of people complain about champion training simply because you can do it half-heartedly and will have similar results, so they don’t really feel like they have to try harder.

People should look forward to Living Story updates as a challenge to be overcome rather than some hamster wheel running. And this being said, I think that content should linger on a bit longer than it has.

This doesn’t mean that each piece of content needs to be nail bittingly close without any sense of forgiveness and there needs to be breather content as well, but I actually do think they’re going to get this right eventually.

I can agree with a reward system that rewards you for being able to do challenging content. Although I don’t necessarily feel it needs to be a stat increase type of reward. An equally nice skin would be sufficient, just as the Liadre mini was sufficient. Some will be able to do it, some won’t. But you should never lock stats behind something like this, thus one of the things I loved about GW1.

Like you, I also believe that eventually they will find their feet, and find a balance, but the game is only just over a year old and that’s understandably not enough time to do the mountain of things they seem to want to do. So, in the mean time, I’ll kick back and hang out for the ride.

(I just have to remember to stock up on popcorn when I hang out on here)

ArchonWing.9480:

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

ArchonWing.9480:

They should really award ascended pieces by doing exceptional feats; (maybe have it as a reward for certain difficult or just inane, aka grindy, achievements). Something like beating a Liadri-like boss. Anything other than just tossing a lot of gold at the problem.

And for those that can’t do a Liadri type boss? Should they be locked out of having BiS gear? As a gw1 vet, that does not sit well with me.

I can agree with not making things excessively grindy. I can also agree with not making things too easy to obtain either. This makes for a very delicate balance to obtain, and no easy task.

Honestly, I wouldn’t care as long as they create new opportunities. There’s many rewards in games I never could get because I didn’t deserve them and I needed to get better, as opposed to I just have to play more. But because this game always adds new content, I don’t think it’s that bad, really.

I never said that should be the only way. They could still keep the crafting part, making a slow and easy way, or a hard and fast way. Like every decent game in existence.

If you’re going to introduce stuff like this that serves as a wall, then you should at least allow different ways to get around it.

I don’t see it as a wall, per se. There isn’t anything I can’t do without it. But yes, I do agree that we need to have more acquisition options. many more

ArchonWing.9480:

They should really award ascended pieces by doing exceptional feats; (maybe have it as a reward for certain difficult or just inane, aka grindy, achievements). Something like beating a Liadri-like boss. Anything other than just tossing a lot of gold at the problem.

And for those that can’t do a Liadri type boss? Should they be locked out of having BiS gear? As a gw1 vet, that does not sit well with me.

I can agree with not making things excessively grindy. I can also agree with not making things too easy to obtain either. This makes for a very delicate balance to obtain, and no easy task.

UrMom.4205:

I’ve never understood why people run the queensdale train instead of the frostgorge train. Whenever I run the frostgorge train i get significantly better loot. Is there a real logical reason to do the queensdale over frostgorge? serious question.

AR never seems to have a FGS train, at least anytime I check. shrug And typically, I don’t bother with guesting.