Guild Wars 2

Another idea regarding horizontal vs vertical progression could be something as simple as a “Legendary class” like for instance you could do a series of quests (as well as craft certain items “gifts”, in the mystic forge) which would culminate in something truly heroic and the reward would be an entirely new class. This would be an easy way to introduce new class’s into the game “prestige classes” for people to work towards. This class would be balanced with the other classes, but yet would still be “hard to get” and as such be something for people to work towards if they wanted to play it. (it could be a “cool” class like a dragon lord, or vampire, or Quaggan-tamer.

This method could also be used to unlock additional races to play….do a series of Tengu quests to eventually unlock the Tengu race to create a character as.

Again, so many methods of horizontal progression.

Lheimroo.2947:

Sytherek.7689:

Addendum to my prior post:

Ascended armor should have selectable stats. The current grind kills any interest in build experimentation.

Yes, this is about progression. Making ascended == progression.

Thanks for agreeing with me.

To me that stat-switching idea hits the right ‘sweet spot’ between not being forced on players, and being very attractive. I’d also feel far better about a grind if it were less about a sense of falling behind as stats progression is. Combine it with convenient trait swapping and you’ve got something everybody apparently loved in GW1 – the build experimentation and flexibility.

I will also throw my vote at this…it would put more meaning into me making ascended gear for my characters and I wouldn’t feel so stressed about picking the right set of stats to work for my character in “most” situations that I find myself in.

People would still go for legendaries simply for their looks! (face it, twighlight looks a heck of a lot better than the current ascended sword and when legendary armor comes, it could have amazing looks as well to get people to go for that over “vanilla” ascended armor).

I really think that so many players would be satisfied with far more in-game content being released that had unique rewards for completing it. I’m not talking about living story 2-weeks and it is gone (better earn that backpiece quick) content…I am talking about adding challenges (could be another tab under achievements). A Challenge could be something like “defeat X champion solo” and the reward could be a unique item….I’ve mentioned before like a new pet for a ranger, or a unique looking piece of armor. Another challenge could be “complete X dungeon with only 3 people in your party” and this could reward ascended versions of the regular dungeon armor…or even a “hard mode” that people are asking for where every dungeon mob has 2x hps and hits for 2x damage…and this would reward ascended armor.

Horizontal progression (which it sounds like the majority wants) means having things to do, which grant you things for the things that you do….standing in lions arch and crafting is not my idea of fun….give me a challenge, or a quest, or a puzzle to get my ascended armor! Give me more ways to get it other than grinding for materials and then standing in lions arch!

It seems like a lot of recent updates are catered to removing gold from the economy by making people buy a lot from the TP. Rather than doing that, how about giving us ways of getting things that CANNOT be done through the TP. Make me do a quest for that armor….instead of buying the mats and crafting it….if the only way to get it is by doing a “hard mode” dungeon, or doing a specific quest, it doesn’t affect your economy one way or the other. The problem with making things be acquired from the TP is that it means that gold-farming is the most important aspect of the game….and if that is true, then that is all people will do….gold farm…which then means that you have to somehow get rid of the gold from the game…its a vicious cycle that can only be ended by getting people to do things other than gold-farm.

Isaiah Cartwright.8569:

Fractal Progression Reset

As we were looking at the fractal reworks we wanted to change the relative values of how hard it was to work through the fractals, because of this we wanted to bring everyone to a common starting point. We knew this was going to be controversial but we really wanted everyone to be on an even play field and once we got the feedback about it we started looking into ways we could mitigate this risk. This is a common practice we do with all releases and risks and sometimes like with this one we were not able to do anything due to time constraints and tech. It’s wasn’t our goal to devalue peoples time and effort and when reworking stuff sometimes these types of tradeoffs happen. We wanted to create a new scaling paradigm that would give us more room in the future for adding fractals and we felt the current systems was harder to scale. Our original design was for players to go past 50 but this wasn’t able to happen in time.

Thank you for a response. That is all we were asking for in the fractured forum (and countless threads) since this release. I do though still think that this could still be addressed as a retro-active title or something for the people that did lose levels, similar to what is being done with the PVP levels.

This was an area where we had vertical progression, but then that vertical progression was taken away…that hurts…and some acknowledgement of this goes a long ways in any discussion of vertical vs horizontal progression….

What we need is more compelling reasons to do content to get things like skins / rewards. I would LOVE if we started getting quests (even time-sink quests like do X for 10 days straight) to get rewards of a cosmetic or unique variety.

Example would be the Tequatl weapons…..people do Teq just for the weapons…however, I have yet to see someone get the weapon / stats that they actually wanted. If they could somehow be guaranteed the stats they wanted after X amount of kills, everyone would be doing it that likes those looks X amount of times…the RNG sucks for this.

An example of something I would like to see in the game: Someone suggested above unique skills or even unique looks to skills based off of fighting a particular boss. That would be amazing! If you are worried about skill-creep how about just changing the look of a skill….like you do with PVP finishers, but for other things….for instance, if you beat X boss, you gain the “Bamf” teleport on your Mesmer or Theif….now when your theif or Mesmer (or other class with tele) uses a teleport it puts the comic “Bamf” in the place you teleported from. Or maybe change the smoke to purple, or grant you the ability to Dye the smoke…

Or a quest to go defeat the Ogre pet trainer champion (in Fields of Ruin) solo…if you do this as a ranger, you get your choice of one of his pets (like the rock-dog or a unique Moa, or unique crawler). This rewards skill with a vanity item that while not increasing their stats, does let someone show off that they accomplished something that is difficult to do.

I just see so many possibilities for horizontal progression that I would love to see in this game…things to do that would grant titles or unique skins….ANET needs to give players something to do…but they need to do it in a way that doesn’’t alienate the other players away from content.

First though, they DO have to fix ascended…there is no way you will get anyone to grind towards a cosmetic upgrade while they are already grinding to get the materials to make ascended and the time-gating is ridiculous. Being able to make only 1 of a certain material you need per day (and then requiring 18 of those) not to mention laurel cost is absurd….when you start adding up different stats / combos / armor types / weapon types…it will take years to outfit a set of characters with this method…unless of course you buy everything from the TP…which is also absurd to expect people to buy things from the TP.

Which reminds me. ANET really needs to stop making players HAVE to go to the TP for things. The Halloween recipes are a prime example of this. If you were to play 24 hours a day / every day for the entire Halloween event, you would not have been able to get the 10,000 candycorns required (not to mention the other mats)…so the only way to achieve that was by buying things through the TP. This is wrong, it is rewarding players for gold-farming rather than playing the content. It was easier for someone to champ-farm throughout the Halloween event and buy the materials than it was to do the content to earn the materials…that is the wrong way to do it.

I really like the idea of Changing current ascended /exotic to what some people have suggested with ascended having same stats as exotics but being changeable like Legendaries, however….this would cause a complete hell-storm for the people that made ascendeds to be on the same page as the legendaries.

As someone who has 2-3 sets of armor on each of my characters for different circumstances (one of these circumstance…tequatl…was actually created by ANET)…we need a way to get ascended armor and weapons easier than now. I guarantee with the current system I will be making a single set of armor…which completely negates any build diversity / changes for different content…not to mention my ALTS becoming moved to second-class citizens…since they probably wont have ascended at all. Ascended armor should not be a grind to get…leave Legendary armor and weapons be the grind. It should be easy to get Ascended items for all characters so that we can enjoy the CONTENT of the game, and not have to grind Mat’s every day just to get the decent gear.

ANET needs to decide which type of game they will be. And then we as players will decide if that type of game appeals to us. If they continue vertical progression, okay…those who don’t like that will move on. If it is horizontal…those who don’t like it will move on. You really cannot be both.

I still believe, Horizontal can be made compelling for the hardcore. I saw many a hardcore player attempt Tequatl again and again simply for the title. I saw many a hardcore doing Arah again and again, for the exclusive Arah armor….you CAN appease hardcore players without vertical progression…while still appeasing the rest of the players.

There is an idea that floats through the minds of many players of other MMO’s that you can only ever have one Main, and the rest are Alts. The reason for this is simple, in most MMO’s the gear progession is so steep that you can only ever afford to progress one character. When I started GW2, I really hoped this was different, I wanted to be able to enjoy EVERY class and EVERY race…to be able to switch and play through the different stories…and this was true, until Ascended came out.

The vertical progression has killed the game for me, I look at the time and money needed to outfit all of my characters and suddenly it is impossible.

Horizontal progression is infinitely preferable in my opinion and I feel that GW2 still has a ton of potential in this aspect. Right now, there are very few armor sets, and even fewer vanity sets outside of the gem-store. This needs to change. Give us some really amazing armor sets (particularly sets that could be mixed-matched) WITHIN the game to work towards…give us cosmetic things to work towards and I bet you would satisfy everyone within the game. Those that want to grind towards things, can grind towards that awesome glowing armor, while those casual players will not be left behind. How about new pets for rangers (Rockdog for instance), that they could work towards…it could have the same stats as other pets (like black-widow vs jungle spider), but look cool….give Thieves a cool new hood or mask they could work towards,

The potential for horizontal progession is infinite! You could keep putting more and more “looks” and other “cosmetic” items into the game, giving people more and more things to work towards, while at the same time, not alienating anyone who needs to take a month off from the game, or the casual players. You could keep everyone happy.

As for how to “fix” the current Ascended issue: Give us more ways of obtaining it. Start throwing Ascended weapons and armor into dungeons, fractals, make it not account bound so that we can make sets for guildmates, let us buy it with pristine fractals…get it out there so that everyone can have it….it’s ugly…so you can still do this while adding horizontal progression with better “looks” to apply to it.

Make money in the Gem store with transmutation stones, un-transmutation stones, upgrades to banks, etc….I am all for ANET making money…its the only way to pay for new content in the game…but start giving us some cool cosmetic upgrades outside of the gemstore (I would have gladly done the tower another 50 times for Kasmeer’s staff…putting it in the gemstore actually made me not want it).

I will start with two statements: First is that I played GW1 all the way through and loved it. I loved the story, I loved the fact that I could level all of my characters and enjoy the content without the grind….at least it never felt like a grind.

My thoughts regarding the loss of progression in fractals is well documented…I am more upset that no Dev took the time to post anything in the Fractured forum than anything else in GW2 right now…and it colored the way I look at GW2 now as opposed to prior to the fractured patch…and not favorably. CDI means you talk to us…even if you don’t agree with us, you can at least explain yourself…that never came regarding removing of our progression with no thought to how we would feel about it….regardless of reasons.

Okay, back on full topic:

I look at vertical vs horizontal progression as work vs enjoyment. Horizontal progression to me should be about cosmetics. If you gave me some really incredible looking armor in the game (multiple sets that I can mix and match pieces from) as well as some incredible looking weapons (like legendary used to be before they upped the stats on it), all while leaving the stats alone and unchanged from the other armor and weapons in the game…I would have STILL felt compelled to work towards those items…but at the same time, it would not have felt necessary to work towards those items. Like the Fractal capacitor. at one point, you gain all the stats you will get on that item…after that, you work more to make it glow (you add looks without stats)…it gave me something to work towards, while at the same time, I was not inferior to those people that already had the glowing backpiece….it didn’t feel like work to go for it, it was enjoyable because I didn’t have to do it…I wanted to.

With Vertical progression, it is work…it becomes a second job…why? because now I have to have it…and I have heard all the arguments that all content can be done in greens…but these people have obviously never done a PUG fractal or dungeon run where people complain if it takes 15 seconds longer to complete than with a different group. There is a reason people dump rangers or necros from dungeons, its not that they couldn’t complete the dungeon with a ranger, its because it would take longer…with vertical progression, if you are not wearing the BiS, you WILL be shunned…maybe not from every group…but just as anyone who has ever asked a girl (or boy) out knows….a “No” still hurts…so you HAVE to get BiS…this becomes now “work” as opposed to “playing”.

My point is, you could have still satisfied the people who wanted something to work towards (myself included) without introducing a gear grind…by introducing cool new armor sets that perhaps are time-gated to get, or require personal quests, etc….but did not provide increased stats.

As is, I will never be able to equip all of my ALTs with BiS gear…and this means that any of my ALTs that is not wearing it (or wielding) is a second-class citizen in the world…whether I enjoy playing them or not.

The fact of the matter is, the game has definitely become non-alt-friendly. Only a few months ago (before ascended weapons) I had all of my alts outfitted with exotics and I was enjoying swapping characters for Fractals / WvW and PVE often using different characters for different things…living world story, jumping puzzles, I ran with a different character almost daily and would swap in fractals if I needed a theif or Mesmer, or my guard…same in dungeons. After Ascended weapons came out, I found I was using the character that had the ascended weapon far more for “harder” content that I was using my other characters…Tequatl, etc….whenever I needed that extra little bit, I only had one character to choose from….now that there is ascended armor, it is going to narrow me down even further to one character….since I will most likely put the ascended armor on the same character that has the ascended weapons…to make a “best” character. It is sad for me since I genuinely like playing my other characters, but it is necessary. And yes, I know I can play my other characters still, but when I am doing dungeons, or fractals or even WvW with my guildmates and friends, I owe it to them to put my best effort forward to help the group…and that means now I am stuck with a single character for all of this.

I would have MUCH more preferred a horizontal progression…add some really incredible looks to things (imaging a smoking black armor, or one that glowed like a star), these looks could have been extremely time-gated and could have required the same grind to work for as ascended and etc…they would have still given me something to work for…but not meant I couldn’t still play my other characters when I wanted to…because all of my characters would have still been “equal”.

This would have been infinitely preferable in my opinion…since it gives me something to keep working for (outfitting all of my characters with the “cool” armor and weapons).

The problem with Ascended being implemented as another higher tier is that it is mainly done to satisfy the hardcore players…these are the same players who constantly complain that content in the game is too easy…so now you give them a BiS class gear to work for…and they get that…which then makes the content even EASIER for them…so then ANET has to implement more content that is difficult….well now the people that do not have the BiS gear cannot do the content, which annoys the other players…and sooner or later the Hardcores will figure out the easiest way to do the new content and will complain it is too easy again…

You will NEVER satisfy the hardcores…look at any game, they are always wanting more.

I also really love the fact that they are taking a break, it allows me to take a break and enjoy the wintersday content! Not rush through it like we had to with everything else. (I didn’t rush through Fractured either btw…was too mad about the changes so I didn’t bother with the achievements).

eleshazar.6902:

If you guys do the math, scepter/torch actually has higher dps than any other weapon combo on guard (on par with GS). Focus isn’t a dps weapon, it is a defensive weapon.

Scepter 2 and torch 5 deal a ridiculous amount of damage with low cooldowns. They offer the best dps for a guard. I’ve never understood why people seem to think sword is better dps when the research is out there showing that this isn’t the case….. (Actually it is because a lot of people are comparing auto-attacks, which of course scepter falls into the second to last lowest for guardian on the auto-attack chain, but if you take into account the other skills is quickly rises to seconds best. And best when you add torch offhand.)

http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/70080-guardian-effective-dps-tests/

I agree whole-heartedly, just from my own playing I noticed I did far more damage with Greatsword / scepter-torch, plus I have the mobility and distance attack to kite if necessary. Running with full zerker armor and weapons and Runes of the Traveler I do pretty significant damage and still have the mobility to get around even without using Staff SoS….I’m traited 10 25 0 10 25.

Seemed Warriors weren’t overly upset (saw a couple new builds to try on my war)

The tower (and this achievement), has I think been around for a month. I have become an extremely casual player (about 2-3 hours a week) and still managed to achieve this within the time that they gave us.

Not saying it doesn’t suck that you didn’t get it…but there will be other events, and other items to get. I missed out on a few also when I wasn’t playing.

“IT’s Celery!”

Estriella Faerie.4029:

For those who continue to say going over 49 was an exploit…

When they introduced the lfg tool, quite recently, they put fractals into differents scales.
- 1-9
- 10-19
- 20-39
- 40+

If going over 49 was an exploit, why did they implement “40+” and not “40-49” ?
By the way, they really should change the scales now, as saying that between 20 and 39, the difficulty “don’t scale up drastically” (like they said when they first put LFG in-game) isn’t so true anymore.

I actually don’t think it ever was true. 20-39 always scaled pretty drastically (I don’t think anyone could argue that even in the old fractals there was a drastic difference between a 20 and a 38. It goes along with the minority / majority thing again. With most players being below 30 and probably a majority of those being below 20 they did the 20-39 for the simple reason of having enough of a player pool to make the cut worthwhile. 40+ was just for the hardcore in their eyes (vast minority), so that is why they got their own.

It really should be for every 10 though now, especially since you can do a separate 10 for every daily..

There seems to be (this is my opinion only based off of what I have seen) an effort by the RNG system to get people the fractals they need for the achievements…so if you are grouped with people who don’t have certain fractals it puts more weight on those fractals when it rolls for the new one. This is pure speculation based off of talking to the groups I was doing fractals with and us saying which ones we need…and then coincidentaly getting the majority fractals (those that the majority needed).

Romo.3709:

I find it quite interesting that people still after a week of Fractured are still denying us the right to any kind of compensation. Logical thinking is a thing of the past it seem, where it’s being replaced by “If I don’t get anything, you can’t either”. It is saddening to an extent looking at some people’s way of thinking and rationalizing things.
True, the “new” fractals are under the new system. But the work that was put into the “old” system was basically taken away and thrown out. Compensation would be a logical thing to discuss in that manner.
If you’re putting out a system where people can progress and reach certain heights and goals, just to take it away saying “hey we reworked it, so try again” is not quite fair from any perspective. Regardless if you think we don’t “deserve” something you clearly don’t deserve yourself.
On the bright side it is enlightening to see that the community that was affected (and I mean really affected) is still standing strong even after those hateful and “unpleasant” responses they get from players just like them.
I myself am a veteran fractal player. I used to love doing fractals daily. Now I only hop in groups of friends that need guidance and an extra party member that knows what he’s doing. I found myself doing lower level fractals with friends of mine that are just getting into the whole thing, taking it slow and explaining every battle. Leveling my progress is not something I pursue anymore. That’s because of that underlined feeling of worthlessness in such task being placed upon us. What is the point to value something that can be taken away without any concern nor compensation. Rewards are simply not motivating, gold you get for completing an hour long fractals is just “meh”.
Balancing and tweaking the levels to make them a little more even never actually happened, hence all the fractals are still the same. Except for dredge, since they’ve made it more annoying (with people teleporting off buttons upon death, flattening the pipes in clown care room) and nowhere near shorter as they have promised. Practically nothing major has been done in terms of “balancing”.
Regardless, the new levels are fun to say the least. But Anet left a whole community with a deep hole in their hearts that showed us that they really don’t care for players like us, rather than majority.

Well said.

I want to add that I hope we did make a difference with our arguments for compensation. Had we not had the discussion here would they be giving the titles to the ‘old school’ pvp’rs? Would they have just re-set WvW ranks so everyone started on an even footing (or perhaps just made all your characters equal to your highest WvW rank rather than adding all your ranks together). I like to think that our discussion here at least had some impact on the game. Maybe it did, maybe it didn’t…but they ARE using some of the constructive feedback we put here for other aspects that while not exactly the same are similar (equity in the form of time-spent in game being lost).

rozcinana.7249:

Yeah it’s pretty easy if people relax about it. I see others running around frantically too much during the aoe everywhere stage. Just relax, take a couple steps foward, stop, rinse, repeat, don’t stop to rez. Usually don’t even need to dodge that much during those phases.

What annoys me most about that boss is people spreading out so much causing Mai Trin not to be in the shield draining aoe most of the time.

I actually rezzed during it. If a person is completely downed, they are no longer a target…so I was able to take a few steps out of the circles….rez….take a few steps….rez…..take a few steps….rez, always staying right around the downed person in safe areas. I had them up before the cannon phase was over.

kekuso.5837:

zerotwo.4731:

If the leader DC’s or go’s offline he no longer is party leader and it does not effect the remaining members of the group. The person who opens fractals can even leave the instance to repair now as long as they don’t change the character they are using. Are you sure your not being kicked?

I thought this too, but I (party leader) tried to switch to my alt during a fractal and my party got kicked out of the dungeon. They were not happy, and neither was I.

The party leader can indeed leave and repair….as long as they do not switch characters or log out of the game entirely (log out to desktop). If this happens, the party is kicked.

I too had this happen….while we were fighting the final boss (person who opened the fractal actually disconnected before we fought the boss)…we decided to 4-man Mai Trin and had her almost defeated when we were all suddenly kicked to Lions arch. It very-well could have been the 15 minute thing that someone mentioned above since we sat around and waited for a while before deciding to 4-man it. If that is the case, we probably would have been better attacking her right away since we would have certainly beaten her before the 15 minutes was up…and at least gotten the advancement / rewards.

Ethics.4519:

Estriella Faerie.4029:

As the reset of PvP ranks had been used to express our feelings on our own level reset, it is interesting to see that Anet is now saying they will put out this ranking system. Yet, the way they are handling this seems quite different from the way they handle us…

“Once ladders are implemented, ranks will be retired. To honor the effort that players have put into the rank system, existing players will be able to keep all unlocked rank finishers and will earn a special title based on your rank to show that you were there from the start.”

Lol, jeesh, I wonder where they got that great idea from…..

Certainly not all the haters in here saying it’s different, we deserve nothing.

Boy do I feel like the unwanted child…..yet again, they are doing something that we had asked for ourselves (almost the exact proposal I had way back in the beginning), for another group…but not a single post here.

I keep thinking that they just didn’t have time to implement anything for us…that they truly thought they were doing a “good compromise” by letting higher ups stay at 30 rather than leveling everyone down to 1.

And since they didn’t have time to implement anything before going live with the patch…and the patch successfully “wiped” all progress from the databanks, it is too late for them to do anything now….since they have no way of recovering that lost data (what levels we were) and as such, they don’t reply or comment here for the simple reason that there is nothing they can do and are worried that commenting would only open another can-o-worms.

In their minds its better to stay silent and hope that someday we forget what happened and live with it.

Did this with a PUG Friday night with no deaths for the party, and finished easily. I admit it was a good PUG though…we face-rolled the entire set of fractals and afterward were exclaiming to one another how good the group was…it is a beautiful thing to do a 30+ run with a PUG that just feels easy…

Original Fractal weapons never had stats. They were “skins” without being skins. That was why we had to use Transmutation crystals to give them stats. New fractal weapons are skins since they now have the technology to make skins (but for some reason lack the technology to allow us to trade our old fractal weapons for skins).

I have become even more disheartened by this level reset. When I first did my levels I did them with PUGs. It was hard, it was a lot of work and it was sometimes dealing with some really unsavory characters. But I got it done….I had the sense of accomplishment at even being invited and doing fractals above 50.

I tried over the long weekend (holiday here in US) to regain some of my lost levels. I did 5 fractal sets…yet my personal reward level is still only 33. I got kicked from two groups over the weekend at the final boss. One told me they were kicking me to bring in their guildmates so that their guildmates could advance (without having to spend the hours beforehand getting to the final boss)…the other kicked all of us at the final boss when the person who started the fractal suddenly disconnected (we had Mai Trin almost dead) whether on purpose or not we do not know.

So for about 8 hours of “work” to regain my lost levels, I gained 3 levels. Did I have fun? Not really, I am mainly doing it for the achievements right now. I used it as a “teaching” moment for 2 of the runs since the people were fairly obviously new at running fractals so I showed them some tricks that helped. Rewards? 3 infused rings that I already have a couple bank vaults full of….only these are the “new” infused rings.

I am still extremely bitter at this. All of my forward progress that I worked hard for is gone, and I will probably never get it back because of the PUG issue. I hate even running dungeons because of the griefers who grab the final chest and quit out closing the dungeon on the group…Fractals just makes it worse.

TPMN.1483:

It doesn’t matter if the last 19 or 20 levels were not the same,
All people are going to do in a few weeks is lvl 50!

People will level up there personal level to 50 this way.
They will be skipping all the difficult instabilities and not seeing most of the content.
People will see one instability (lvl 50).

It’s still equity lost.
I don’t see the point – I really don’t.

There is nothing stopping another reset down to lvl 30 again in 6 months (with no warning) .
I would like ANET to give an iron cast guarantee that they will not do another equity loss like this again.

Note: WvW are going to account bound – let’s see if they reset your WvW ranks to lvl 10 (this is another form of equity loss). This for many people would be a massive loss of WxP points.

The whole episode has been very badly handled, badly thought out and poorly implemented.

They wouldn’t dare reset WvW levels because they care about that player base. Every day there are Dev posts in the WvW forums…that is one of their babies. Lets face it, we were the minority. Maybe if this increases popularity of fractals it wont happen again next time….but the point of this excersize was to get more people playing fractals to the detriment of the ones that had been playing fractals.

Its just like watching the “CDI” on the classes. Some classes (Necro, Warrior, Thief) got a ton of posts by the devs, and some (Guardian) got one post in the 2 week “Cooperative” development cycle. It just doesn’t seem that the minority class’s, or parts of the game are ever actually heard. The Guardian class section gave some real constructive feedback on what could improve guardian, in this forum we gave some real constructive feedback (for a large portion of it) on what they could do to satisfy Fractal players…both were ignored.

I understand it when they say they do not post in “inflammatory” topics…but this one didn’t become inflammatory until they DIDN’T post.

I still believe in this game. It is still the best one out there for me. But they have already lost a couple friends of mine, and they will lose me also as soon as something better comes along. They lost my loyalty the minute they showed they were no longer loyal to me….which was these last two weeks by showing they just don’t care about ALL of their players…only some of them.

Lets see, I have Fractal weapons being currently used: Torch, Sword, Spear, Spear, Dagger, Dagger, Trident, Mace, Shortbow, Harpoon gun, scepter, scepter, so that is 12 transformation crystals that I have used! I still have 10 fractal weapons in my bank…so that means I have to use 10 more to use those!! That is 22 Transmutation crystals I will have to use to use what now can be gotten with skins! Lets see, They are what 500 gems for 3 crystals? So that would be 2100 gems that ANET owes me for my year of doing fractals.

Maybe that is the way to talk to these guys….complain about gem costs? I have no idea? It’s funny, if you look at my past posts…I start out very positive, and defending of ANET and their decisions….but have ended so negative and bitter….I don’t like this me. I think I am going to make a conscious decision to try and go back to being positive again.

Lilith Ajit.6173:

Wethospu.6437:

conn.2097:

Hahahahahaha
They’re totally listening to ‘our’ Feedback.

Stupid skin way more important than the effort people put into leveling fractals to 80.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/info/news/Flamekissed-Armor-Skin

Clearly stuff happens with enough support/whining.

Thanks for all the people who didn’t let us have a chance. Hopefully you feel good about yourself.

This. If you had let us ask rather than devaluing us and our claims we could have been considered, instead you ruined our chance at it. Thanks.

I honestly don’t even know what to say. I agree with their decision on the T3 armor….it became devalued (time wasted) to grind for it as a human when they released it in the gem-store….so they SHOULD change it. But the fact that they still don’t even acknowledge that we exist or have a valid concern still bothers me immensely. We have been talking for over a week, with 16 pages of thread, most of which was valid discussions and we get nothing. People complain for 1 day with barely half the size of the thread, and they not only get a response, they get action.

JMar.3254:

Kal Spiro.9745:

In what alternate reality does the word was indicate the future? You’re still being short sited.

I refuse to read your walls of texts anymore due to how erroneous you are.

If I said “This coin was never going to land on tails, ever, period” because it landed on heads. Well, that’s obviously wrong.

I think that all Kal has been meaning all along (please forgive me for speaking on your behalf Kal) was that there was never enough time to implement a major change, and that has been his stance, that no matter how much people wanted it, there simply was not time and as such it would never happen.

I personally disagree and posted in the past under that vein. If you look at my old posts, they started with more drastic changes when the devs had 1 week, and slowly moved towards simpler and simpler things as the week progressed to the point where they had only 1 day prior to the patch…where I suggested a title…which honestly could have been done patch day even. I worked with game developers for 5 years….I am simplifying this but basically it is a database Query (for fractal level) with a line of code added to anyone in the query into their “titles” bar, the longest part about this change was following through on a change process (requiring QA time, etc) before implementation.

Something COULD have happened prior to patch….but as the days went on, but it could never have been to the patch itself…it had to be “external” to the patch. Granting bonus chests is something outside of the patch and even bug-fix people can do that and have done that to make up for mistakes that were made (“i’m sorry we lost your gem-purchase, here are the gems purchased as well as a bonus chest for your trouble”).

phys.7689:

you still have experience and knowledge. Its still more valued than dungeon experience and definately champ train experience.

But i do note, even had they not increased level, the addition of instabilities, various changes to mechanics, and 2 new bosses/3 new fractals is actually the biggest thing that would make you lose your expert title. Do you feel the should not have made these changes at all, even if you had kept your levels?

Because honestly, your level 50, doesnt actually mean you are an expert in levels 1-50 anymore. If people go to ask you about thaumanova, how to best fight molten at 40, or deal with exploding enemies in the cliffside fractal, you have no valid answers that a new expert, a new 50 would have?

I’m not going to disagree with you there…the past experience would not help with the future experience, but isn’t that true with every aspect of life? If I had a history degree from 1960, it would still be a history degree even though a lot of “history” has changed since 1960. Even had I not finished my degree back 20 years ago, I could have still rolled the credits into an associates degree and have a degree….I would have something to show for the time and effort put in. By simply erasing the levels without any title or acknowledgement whatsoever it is like going to college for 4 years and earning enough credits for a degree…but then the college decides that they are changing the curriculum and as such, you now have to start over as a junior (1/2 way through college) to now obtain your degree once more that you qualified for with the previous curriculum…

JMar.3254:

Btw guys, I think this explains all we need to know about kal

Kal Spiro.9745:

My Fractal level is 5. That’s nothing at all. I typically run level 2, though, because I PUG and that’s what I get. I don’t want to do stuff with Agony since I have no resistance yet.

That’s not really fair, he is allowed his opinion…regardless of fractal level. It is true that he might not have the investment in time as some of us, but he is still welcome in the discussion. Nobody should be excluded and he could just have easily said his Fractal level was 50, we would not be able to verify, so I applaud his honesty.

Kal Spiro.9745:

Wethospu.6437:

I could have spent that time working and getting money.

Would that have been preferable? If you had known six months ago that Fractal level would eventually be wiped to 30 and too bad for anyone that went beyond 30, would that have stopped you from going beyond 30? Would you have said “Screw it, I’m going to go to work instead. I’ll come back after the wipe.”? Or would you have done Fractals anyway, and maybe gone beyond 30 anyway because why not? It was harder and that difficulty made it more interesting to you. Would foreknowledge have changed your actions, or only your disposition about the results?

To be honest, I think I would have spent my time elsewhere and I would have a legendary already. I was un-employed and used it as a time-waster, but I also used it as something of a status symbol. I held fractal classes with guilds and would use my high fractal level as a way of showing that I knew what I was doing…and people did listen to me because of it. I taught an aweful lot of people how to do fractals as a group and did them with many different classes so that I could learn the ins / outs of each class and what to do for different situations in it. I considered myself an “expert” in fractals and others considered me that as well based off of my personal reward level. I had honestly thought that they were going to open up the “infinite” aspect of the fractals as well as increase the rewards (which would have increased the people doing them), by me having a higher PRL I would have stayed slightly ahead of all the newer players when this happened and my hard work would have paid off….I gambled and lost, I admit that, but it doesn’t mean that I don’t feel the loss, or feel that I was cheated…the most loss I feel is for the 20 levels below 50 because I felt these were “safe”. I always felt that the above 50 were a risk…it turns out none of them were safe.

I don’t have the time now to re-claim my levels. So they are truly gone for me.

Knowing it would all be wiped out…I would have worked on becoming an “expert” in dungeons instead and have a lot more money to show for it…or an expert at champ farming….

time required is a huge problem for me now. Previously I had plenty of time, but now I don’t and so when I can get time to jump on the game, I just can’t spend 2-3 hours anymore on fractals. I really had hoped they had shortened them some.

goldenwing.8473:

Vena.8436:

Moshari.8570:

The question was not whether the fractals 30+ had value…the question was does the time you put into it have value? Your opinion on whether the Fractals example has value does not actually further the question. It could be tiddlywinks that you spent 300 hours collecting. Does that have value even if it is meaningless to other players? Should that time-value be a concern to devs?

Tiddlywinks have been changing in value with every patch cycle, everything in this game has been fluctuating in value since launch since nothing is off the table for being used, re-used, retired, or un-retired.

There is no universal “time-value” to try and develop around such a non-universal concept is impossible. To some people, Fractals as they were, were stupid and adding new rules actually make them “not the same thing just with bigger numbers” is a positive step that gives higher value to their time. To others, like yourself, it comes at a cost of losing some time value on what they had already achieved.

goldenwing.8473:

Yes. In a “normal” MMO they do.

No they don’t.

EVE is the only game that fits your criteria. Any other MMO doesn’t give a rats kitten about how much time you spent or will spend beating a raid/dungeon before introducing the next set of gear which trivializes past gear and, particularly, devalues the harder to achieve gear.

The new gear introduced in expansions (for multiple MMOs) is required for new content. This is consistent with progression in a gear-centric design. The old gear has not been taken away, is still available and still useful for old content (PvE).

Signing up for those games based on that design, the customer is aware, expecting and usually wanting that style of progression. Levels are not taken away.

- Final response to you.

I think that was part of my disappointment. Since I have a life, I thought GW2 would be different, have less of that gear-grind of other MMO’s and more of a play for experiences aspect, where the things you do matter more than the things you have. Looking back, I think this is exactly my attitude within GW2. My experiences have value and the accomplishments I had within those experiences. Level 50 (or higher) in Fractals was one of those accomplishments. I could say “I did that” and even show it off when I joined PUGs and they commented “wow, we have an expert with us”. I lost that re-affirmation that I accomplished something that I used to get fairly regularly….now I am just another guy at 30 (I have not done the new fractals yet…not sure I am even going to).

And it is that way with other things as well. I am proud of my 100% exploration. It shows that I did this thing. If they suddenly removed this from the game as well, I would be disappointed. It was the time it took to accomplish this that has the value…not everyone has done it because not everyone takes the time.

I do think that ANET needs to look at time spent as a value commodity when they re-do things. Before they change anything in the game…they need to look at how much time people spent on that particular thing…I’m sure the metrics are in the game. They then need to establish a value based on that time spent. It shouldn’t matter if it is a dungeon path, or a level in WvW or even an achievement. Face it, the achievement of world exploration is harder to get (more time spent) than the achievement of “open up 10 mail items”. And in this aspect, the high level fractal runners did more of an achievement than the “dungeon master” achievement in simple time-spent…but yet, it didn’t garner a title, yet dungeon master does.

Kal Spiro.9745:

JMar.3254:

Kal Spiro.9745:

The size of the thread, and the vehemence with which a handful of people on either side continue to argue about something doesn’t have any impact on the actual worth of the argument in question. There was only ever one possible outcome to all this, and it was the one that occurred. Some chose not to recognize that.

1 outcome? I see two possible

1) No compensation given
2) compensation given

I could give several others, but only two is needed to prove you wrong again.

That’s the problem. Compensation given was never going to happen. Never. Period. You chose not to see the truth of that, but it is a reality. The only actually legitimate outcome in all this was 1) No compensation given. You can and have disagreed about this, but it is a fact and always has been.

But I think that is the whole argument / discussion / problem with it all. The feeling of nihilism, this very defeat prior to even starting. The fact that you believe that this was the reality. Those of us arguing on behalf of the FOTM level losing crowd really thought that there was a chance that we were being heard. It turns out you were probably right and that nihilism was the proper way to look at things, but that is where my disappointment comes from. I wanted to think it was different now.

I too am disappointed that a thread that garnered 15 pages didn’t get any responses from Devs at all. We even had a very valid and constructive section in the middle (without flames and / or anger)…so they can’t even use the excuse that this was a flame thread and therefore should be ignored. They had ample opportunity to at least weigh in on the discussion while it was a discussion.

I was really excited for the new direction (with CDI) that ANET was taking, but to not take notice of something that was obviously a hot-button topic for a lot of people (while responding in threads that only had 5 posts) to me tells me that they don’t want to take on hot topics…they would rather remain silent than actually discuss important matters….but will gladly discuss unimportant / or / fluff content.

I’m disappointed….and probably will slow down my posting on the forums because of it. I have a day job also…and if they don’t have the time for something important to us, then I guess I don’t have the time either.

Vena.8436:

goldenwing.8473:

Yes. Arbitrarily changing the “rules of the game” is a concern for multiple reasons, not the least of which is trusting the Game Master. This can lead to the question: “what next?”

But Fractals past 30+ were nothing more than arbitrary number changes. You could have just as easily replicated the experience by taking off a piece of armor to simulate being on level X. To change the rules by actually adding rules… would usually be deemed a positive change.

The question was not whether the fractals 30+ had value…the question was does the time you put into it have value? Your opinion on whether the Fractals example has value does not actually further the question. It could be tiddlywinks that you spent 300 hours collecting. Does that have value even if it is meaningless to other players? Should that time-value be a concern to devs?

goldenwing.8473:

Wethospu.6437:

Moshari.8570:

I’m also trying to understand the mind-set. For me, losing my fractal levels was a huge blow because I felt like I worked very hard to earn them. But honestly, this is the first game I felt that way. When I played WoW, it never bothered me when they added another tier of armor…I just got started on that one…even though I worked countless hours on the one I have. Maybe its because my time is more precious to me now that I have a career, a job, a family…so I have less time to play and as such, my time is more valuable to me now?

Its been something I have been asking myself. WHY does it bother me so much now, when it never did in the past?

Perhaps because the rules changed. If you know there is going to be new tiers at least you know what you are getting in to. And old gear still gives you an advantage. Imagine if they actually took away your gear.

Yes. Arbitrarily changing the “rules of the game” is a concern for multiple reasons, not the least of which is trusting the Game Master. This can lead to the question: “what next?”

I have to admit, that’s what goes through my mind….what next? Should I bother?

I like it! this is a great explanation!

jbrother.1340:

I think that the reason you feel that way now when you did not in the past is rooted in things that deal directly with this game and whether it will decline or expand.

The answer is so simple and is something that we all overlook and underestimate at some point in our lives. If we learn and grow with it rather than fight against it we become someone more capable of shaping our own future rather than allowing only the wind of chance to do it for you. That thing is perspective and ones ease of ability to change it.

Some of us are good at changing our perspective naturally and others learn it over time. For the rest…well those are the people that clash with any idea of change. Change is the best thing that ever happened to any of us and in this case you have changed your perspective of time.

Your perspective on time is now based on a different formula than it was in your youth. Now you value the time you spend with your expanded reality more than you enjoy your time spent inside of a virtual reality. While both can be very amusing one has a return on investment that yields far larger emotional gain.

I quit playing this game for almost the last 10 months and came back about a week ago. There is only one reason can play this game now. I would give you a guess but I bet anyone that just read this already knows the answer is I changed my perspective on what Guild Wars 2 meant to me and my time. Now I can have fun with it again for different reasons and in a more limited amount. It means less to me but I find that I enjoy my play time more.

Don’t let it bother you one bit. You have made choices that diverged your path away from this game and into the beauty of life and the diversity of choice. If you get the best gear great but think nothing on it if you don’t because when you see your wife and family and if you are lucky enough to like your career you are a lot better of than many people that I have met and work with. I applaud you for doing it and for having the strength of will to ask why it is affecting you.

I will come down off of my soap box and hope that I don’t incur another infraction for it. I was very negative on the forums when I played before and I am trying to start anew. I got a lot of infractions ankitten ot sure this won’t but I was discussing this very thing not five hours ago and who does not like to share.

(edit for confusing sentence, post in reference to Moshari.8570 post)

Good answer!

Vena.8436:

goldenwing.8473:

This game has moved from honoring the two cornerstones of an MMO (persistence and time investment) into something more closely resembling an old video arcade game: just insert coin to keep playing.

The only place this was violated was Fractals… where coin isn’t even involved.

Your time investment meant zilch to some armor to buy with gold, it has never meant anything to anything marked with gold as the only price.

Althought to be fair to the armor people, to buy human T3 armor, didn’t you have to be at least level 75? And now, you can get it at level 1 with gems….that would be time invested, if it was something you were after.

I’m also trying to understand the mind-set. For me, losing my fractal levels was a huge blow because I felt like I worked very hard to earn them. But honestly, this is the first game I felt that way. When I played WoW, it never bothered me when they added another tier of armor…I just got started on that one…even though I worked countless hours on the one I have. Maybe its because my time is more precious to me now that I have a career, a job, a family…so I have less time to play and as such, my time is more valuable to me now?

Its been something I have been asking myself. WHY does it bother me so much now, when it never did in the past?

I’m starting this thread because my post was deleted from the cultural T3 thread when I responded to someone who mentioned that all the time they spent getting T3 cultural human armor was wasted now that they put that look into the Gem store.

My post mentioned that Time spent does not seem to be a metric that the dev team takes seriously. They removed the levels from people who spent literally hundreds of hours in fractals gaining, and now they removed the uniqueness of the human T3 armor by trivializing it in the gemstore.

So I ask the question to you, the players, in the hopes that we can give some constructive feedback to the developers of the game:

Does the time you spend working towards something matter to you?

Should ANET take into account how much time it requires to do something prior to them changing it / putting it into the gem store / getting rid of it all-together?

Should popularity matter? For instance, I am sure they put the Cultural T3 human armor in the gem store because it is probably the most popular T3 armor out there (at least from what I have seen), you have to remember that they need to make money to pay their developers…so popularity matters to them…if it sells well, it makes them more money.

Again, I don’t want this to turn into a flame-fest against the devs. I actually want to see arguments for / against, however you feel in an effort to give people some constructive information.

You know….I think I might actually laugh out loud if it turns out that Scarlet accidentally woke up the elder dragons, and that she was responsible for Zhaitan raising Orr, and that these “thumpers” are her attempt to bring Primordius up….and that it really has been her all along, it never had anything to do with the dragons at all. GW2 is the story of Scarlett.

yeah, the Pay2Win argument is only valid if you gain an advantage from gem-store items. So far, it is simply looks. Looks in the gem-store I don’t mind. If they start selling special skills, or special weapons with exotic or better stats….then you will see me find a new game pretty quick.

Skins are not Pay2Win, Skins are Pay2Lookpretty…which is fine, at least the skins have a unique looks where everyone can say…look at that guy, he paid for that armor whether it is through gem purchase or gold / gem purchase.

Malik.6781:

Bravo Anet. Now please make something about… hmm refund maybe? For those ppl who spends over 100g for t3 cultural light human set, or make others t3 available for every race.

But 100g is only a number….so many people said to those of us who lost our levels in FOTM…when we warned that it is not the loss of levels that is the problem, it was the cavalier way that ANET chooses to trivialize something we worked hard for….

First they came for our fractal number…and we said “its only a number”
Then they took our T3 cultural….and its “only a skin”.

LOL, sorry to be so dramatic, but this patch has kind of ticked off a lot of people! Some of the same people telling the FOTM people to quit QQ’ing are now QQ’ing themselves over the loss of Human T3 specialty!

Fror.2163:

Taking the example for 39, how is exploding corpse relevant when we skip more than half the mobs on our paths? This will only force more people to skip more mobs.

You obviously haven’t done many fractals. Most mobs in fractals can’t be skipped. The vast majority you have to fight. Even in Ascalon, or Dredge, or Cliffside, you fight most of the mobs and skip maybe 10% if you are lucky. Youre thinking dungeons like COF and COE where you just run through all the mobs all the time and only fight the boss’s. Most fractals have mechanics to prevent you from doing that.

Neil.1034:

I was in eb the other day and there was 3 of us defending, and a lone elementalist using a dual dagger weapons attacked us.

This elementalist was constantly spamming might/regeneration/swiftness/protection boons on himself. Although elementalists can give themselves these boons I don’t believe there is a single ability, or at least I couldn’t find one, that would give all 4 of them at the same time, and definitely not at the rate he was using them.

I presume he was therefore using an item that allowed him to gain these benefits. Anyone know what it is?

Nope, he was just a really good player. Ele’s can get all of these things with a certain trait setup and by switching elements a lot. I played a D&D ele, it is pretty awesome if you get good at the rotation. But basically, you get might from fire, Regen from water, Swiftness from electricity and Protection from Earth. SO if you are good at playing your Ele, and have the right setup of traits / runes (runes of divinity or traveler work good for boon duration as well as high stats, or runes of the scholar even) you can keep these boons up almost constantly and do pretty massive damage.

Go to the Elementalist forum and look up D&D build and you can see for yourself how it works. no item needed.

As far as Caithe’s Secret that Scarlet has…if you listen to all of her dialogue with Caithe in the TA Aetherpath….only two words come to mind. “Sex Tape.”

ThiBash.5634:

Kal Spiro.9745:

I would like to think it’s pretty self evident. You’re going to get an AR only upgrade item. If you have the slot it goes into you can put it there. The value is infinitely upgradable, but it is mind meltingly awful to actually do it past a certain point, and requires Artifice to do at all.

What else is needed.

Tell that to people that never did fractals and never had ascended gear before.

Imagine you know nothing of how to get agony resistance.

Now, in order to survive agony resistance, you have to:

-Get your personal fractal level to 10 or higher.
-You only get that by doing a fractal level equal to or higher than your personal level.
-Fractal level isn’t the same as character level.
-You can get the ring as a drop but you can also get pristine fractal relics to buy them at a vendor at 10 relics each.
-No, pristine fractal relics.
-You can then upgrade those rings to an infused version.
-Yours already has an infusion slot, true, but this is a new slot.
-To do so you need to gather vials, globs and shards of mists essence.
-You get them as random drops but you can also convert them to the other types in the Mystic Forge.
-You then upgrade the ring to an infused version.
-You also get agony resist drops that were worthless up and until then, but now can be combined by artificers only, starting at level 100.
-By combining 2 of the same level you can get an upgraded version of the same resistance.
-Now put that in the special infusion slot, and you’re done!

Yes, not complicated at all!

NOW, try explaining how the backpiece works…. lol

Wait, a Beta fractal capacitor isn’t a fractal capacity isn’t a fractal capacitor (infused) or wait, which one do I put the 250 ectos into…okay, wait, there is ANOTHER level? what do you get for that? oh, it glows now? but it doesn’t have any more AR? Howcome I lost my infusions when I upgraded it….

JMar.3254:

Greatsword damage (does not apply to FGS) does 50% less damage. Bye wars/guards =).

I wonder if instabilities will apply to ranger pets. Could bearbows be the new meta?

My guard carries Mace, Hammer, Greatsword, Staff, Sceptre, Torch, Shield, and Longsword….all used for different parts of different fractals and dungeons depending on need by the party (who I am partied with and what they bring to the table).

Something like this would actually be fun and force people to change up their builds / weapons more.

I had the hardest time convincing one of my guildmates to simply take different Skills based on different fights within fractals and not just run with his default set!