Because this is pretty much a “dress up game” when it comes to end-game content, stats don’t really matter, only the skin of all those weapons matter.
And where have you been since lost shores? Just check out a laurels vendor. What are they selling? Right, more powerful gear. You can now advance your crafting. Why? Again, more powerful gear. This game is not a “dress up game”. It’s simply about grinding for ever more powerful gear.
The game is not about “grinding for ever more powerful gear”, there is a reason why the power gain from exotic -> ascended is so pathetically low, the game was built around exotics and that did not and will not change even after having Ascended out.
power gain is so pathetically low just because it’s just the beginning.
it’s just the first step…
Yes, this is true. Vertical progression can be described by an integer series: 1,2,3,4…,n where each number represents an increase in the power level of the game. It really makes no difference whatsoever if the difference between 1 and 2 is material. Vertical progression does not progress by stopping. Eventually it will be material and that’s why it’s non-optional for you to follow the power curve. The usual term used for following the curve is “grinding” out the ever more powerful gear.
Because this is pretty much a “dress up game” when it comes to end-game content, stats don’t really matter, only the skin of all those weapons matter.
And where have you been since lost shores? Just check out a laurels vendor. What are they selling? Right, more powerful gear. You can now advance your crafting. Why? Again, more powerful gear. This game is not a “dress up game”. It’s simply about grinding for ever more powerful gear.
The game is not about “grinding for ever more powerful gear”, there is a reason why the power gain from exotic -> ascended is so pathetically low, the game was built around exotics and that did not and will not change even after having Ascended out.
Wrong. They didn’t add Ascended gear so much as they added vertical progression. Chris W said in the AMA that VP would be in the game going forward. What that means is that power is related positively with time. As time progresses the power level of the game will increase. Under vertical progression, because it increases the power level of the game, the only thing that matters—and it is non-optional by definition—is grinding out the more powerful gear.
Condition damage is completely broken and has been since launch. I really feel that this should be the first on the list of things to fix. All damage, whether direct or over time, needs to be managed by player. I really don’t understand how they thought the current implementation would fly.
In terms of zerker builds and the perceived problems with them, they exist solely because DPS is the only meaningful combat role and zerker best fits the role. It is not a problem with the gear, but rather with the conception of combat and combat roles.
Yeah, it would be easier to just remove Ascended gear, or more properly, vertical progression, entirely, from the game. It’s simply not in the GW DNA and it simply fails here. BTW, I think your name, Fistful of Bacon, is perhaps the best account name I have seen to date. Cheers. Sadder even than the fact that they added VP is the fact that I didn’t think of Fistful of Bacon.
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Player reporting of hacking/botting is perhaps the least effective means of identifying bots. Data mining easily identifies a bot and Anet has all the data. They seem to take this fairly seriously, so I don’t think a call for “more” action is required here.
Because this is pretty much a “dress up game” when it comes to end-game content, stats don’t really matter, only the skin of all those weapons matter.
And where have you been since lost shores? Just check out a laurels vendor. What are they selling? Right, more powerful gear. You can now advance your crafting. Why? Again, more powerful gear. This game is not a “dress up game”. It’s simply about grinding for ever more powerful gear.
Focus on:
1. getting onto an active server. WvW rankings will give you a clue.
2. getting into an active guild with people of like mind.
This should solve the presenting problem.
Good point here. This is, however, just one of the bizarre effects of managing vertical progression over time. But, good luck with that.
I would argue that regardless of the validity of the OP, condition damage should be fixed before anything else in the combat system. I can’t believe that they didn’t implement damage, by player, with damage over time from the beginning.
Story is really the only justification for not having race change in the game. I don’t know, but it would appear that Anet is currently de-emphasizing story so we may yet see the ability to change races. But take heart OP as any change in any direction appears to have an equal likelihood of happening.
Probably less than 100g. I learned fairly early on in life that lotteries were not a good investment of time or money. The MF is just a lottery in the middle of LA—nothing to see there.
This is really good news. The two week DLC value proposition is one of the larger missteps since launch. It is actually bad from a software development standpoint as well as being “distracting” to players. It simply can not be done successfully if you want a quality product. I’ve lobbied for a 2-3 month development cycle and would really prefer 3-6 months. Less than three and you can’t really think about what you are doing. This bodes well for the future.
It is not fine, not for PvE nor for PvP. I have supported the idea of body-blocking before and will again because that is about the only solution to stacking, the bad design that is killing both PvE (dungeons) and WvW.
I’ve done perhaps thousands of instances in another major MMO and “stacking” was an extremely rare event. The mechanics of the encounter dictate positional requirements, not the absence of body-blocking. I do agree it’s a design issue.
OP, your desire would seem to be a natural one. That is, one would expect that you would be able to travel to the place where an encounter takes place and participate in the encounter if it takes place in the open world. I understand your problem with the reality of this. What you have to understand is that Teq is an object lesson in how not to design an encounter in open world PvE. What I see there is an empty world where once it was populated. In a game that uses the term “living world” so often you would expect encounters that at least populate the living world in which they occur. No, there is really no justification for the encounter design, but as has been said, there are “guilds” created especially for it—another indication of the level of the design problem—and you can actually do the encounter if you are willing to jump through the hoops.
I seem to be the only one on this forum that knows how a story works. I’m so excited that this game actually has one that lasts, rather than being released all at once and then having nothing for two years.
I LOVE the living story. I pity the poor person who had to change their vision for the living story because of impatience on the part of the players. Releasing a little bit of story every two weeks is an amazing idea, and it seems that people here can’t connect the dots enough to realize that these story pieces aren’t random – they’re all part of a larger whole.
What I’m getting is that not only do most people not understand that the conclusion of the story is forthcoming, but that they want all their story at once, and then they want to repeat it over and over and over for a year until more story comes out. Then they can repeat that over and over.
I am legitimately confused. Why does this have to be all instant gratification? Why can’t we all just relax and let the story come as it does?
Because a good story is hard to put down, and you eagerly look forward to each chapter. This is not a good story. If this had been a book, I would have tossed it right after Scarlet appeared.
I want it over with, because until it is, this is all we are getting. I don’t care any more about the “finale” of this badly written formulaic pulp than I would care about the ending of a book thrown in the trash.
I’m still looking for the next chapters of the Tyrian story I started in GW1. Mordant Crescent. Joko. Cantha. Elona. What became of the Canthan empire, Luxons, Kurzicks. Evennia. Livia. The Sceptre of Orr. I’ve waited patiently for those things, the things they hinted in “The Changing of the World”, because those are compelling stories,.. or could be.
Note that I didn’t even mention Dragons. Far more than Dragons have been ignored to promote this Stale Story.
So are you saying Guild Wars 1 had a good story that you couldn’t put down? That wasn’t formulaic? I can’t name many MMOs that have a good story I couldn’t put down. This is because MMOs aren’t books.
When I want literature, I read. When I want game play, I don’t find it at the library.
There may somewhere be an MMO with a story I couldn’t put down, but I haven’t found it in WoW, or Rift, or Perfect World or DDO, or Lotro. I didn’t find it in AoC or Warhammer.
Games are centered generally around gameplay. Even TSW as good as the writing was, was something I felt I could easy put down. I didn’t try SWToR, because though it might have had good writing due to the Bioware influence, nothing else about the game appealed to me at all.
Isn’t it interesting, then, that Anet’s major focus here is on telling a story? And, not just a story, but a living story. They clearly believe that a story can be told within the genre.
I would agree with you generally that story has not been a major element of games. I loved the statement by the creator of Diablo that they kinda tacked on the story at the end. While they didn’t achieve greatness in storytelling, they did manage to create a mood and general ambiance. I do believe that storytelling can succeed to a larger degree than it has here. Consider a normal expansion in a game. A lot has happened, maybe even a cataclysm. Why would it not be possible to have the events of that cataclysm take place over time? Sure, you are not going to achieve the results of great literature as the medium won’t support it. But, I believe a lot more can be achieved than we’ve seen to date.
The living story has been changed to the living world to better reflect what it is, and it is living. It certainly changed Kessex Hills, and even the zones surrounding it.
If you look in the achievements section of the hero screen it says living world, not living story.
Anet said all along they want a living breathing world. That’s what they’ve been working toward. The word story, even though they used it themselves, is a red herring.
Sorry, Vayne, but I’ve been here since beta and know that the central focus of everything they’ve done to the present has been around story. Just look at the release titles; they all take place in the context of a story told. Sheesh, even the subtitle of the 7-Jan news item on the front page reads “Prepare for the epic finale to this story arc!”. How many times have you read the words “story arc” in the last year? “They said all along”, as though we haven’t been talking about story incessantly for the last year. Your history is a bit skewed.
I seem to be the only one on this forum that knows how a story works. I’m so excited that this game actually has one that lasts, rather than being released all at once and then having nothing for two years.
I LOVE the living story. I pity the poor person who had to change their vision for the living story because of impatience on the part of the players. Releasing a little bit of story every two weeks is an amazing idea, and it seems that people here can’t connect the dots enough to realize that these story pieces aren’t random – they’re all part of a larger whole.
What I’m getting is that not only do most people not understand that the conclusion of the story is forthcoming, but that they want all their story at once, and then they want to repeat it over and over and over for a year until more story comes out. Then they can repeat that over and over.
I am legitimately confused. Why does this have to be all instant gratification? Why can’t we all just relax and let the story come as it does?
Because a good story is hard to put down, and you eagerly look forward to each chapter. This is not a good story. If this had been a book, I would have tossed it right after Scarlet appeared.
I want it over with, because until it is, this is all we are getting. I don’t care any more about the “finale” of this badly written formulaic pulp than I would care about the ending of a book thrown in the trash.
I’m still looking for the next chapters of the Tyrian story I started in GW1. Mordant Crescent. Joko. Cantha. Elona. What became of the Canthan empire, Luxons, Kurzicks. Evennia. Livia. The Sceptre of Orr. I’ve waited patiently for those things, the things they hinted in “The Changing of the World”, because those are compelling stories,.. or could be.
Note that I didn’t even mention Dragons. Far more than Dragons have been ignored to promote this Stale Story.
So are you saying Guild Wars 1 had a good story that you couldn’t put down? That wasn’t formulaic? I can’t name many MMOs that have a good story I couldn’t put down. This is because MMOs aren’t books.
When I want literature, I read. When I want game play, I don’t find it at the library.
There may somewhere be an MMO with a story I couldn’t put down, but I haven’t found it in WoW, or Rift, or Perfect World or DDO, or Lotro. I didn’t find it in AoC or Warhammer.
Games are centered generally around gameplay. Even TSW as good as the writing was, was something I felt I could easy put down. I didn’t try SWToR, because though it might have had good writing due to the Bioware influence, nothing else about the game appealed to me at all.
Isn’t it interesting, then, that Anet’s major focus here is on telling a story? And, not just a story, but a living story. They clearly believe that a story can be told within the genre.
I would agree with you generally that story has not been a major element of games. I loved the statement by the creator of Diablo that they kinda tacked on the story at the end. While they didn’t achieve greatness in storytelling, they did manage to create a mood and general ambiance that served the game well. I do believe that storytelling can succeed to a larger degree than it has here. Consider a normal expansion in a game. A lot has happened, maybe even a cataclysm. Why would it not be possible to have the events of that cataclysm take place over time? Sure, you are not going to achieve the results of great literature as the medium won’t support it. But, I believe a lot more can be achieved than we’ve seen to date.
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Have you ever wondered what chaos would ensue if player abilities affected other players? We’d all immediately die from friendly fire in every encounter. Player body-body collisions are simply a small aspect of a more realistic model of the results of player behavior. Personally, I think the current model is fine.
This is just a bad idea. Removing grind altogether will kill any MMO..
mmo = massively multiplayer online, not massively grinding online
indoctrinated ppl like you shoud go back to the everlasting chinese grinding games
So what’s your solution? This game launched with almost no grind and people left in droves. They left much faster than Anet expected them to (at least that seems to be the case).
Everyone wants to offer commentary, but no one proposes a solution.
Sometimes when this is brought up (and don’t think this is the first MMO board this has been brought up on), someone suggests randomizing dungeons. But randomized dungeons aren’t scripted dungeons and you don’t end up with content people play anyway, because randomizing things like dungeons means a limited pool of creatures, tricks and traps, and the random elements get figured out and posted and people learn them and it’s the same thing. Scripted dungeons are better.
So since you think I should go back to where I was indoctrinated (which was mostly Guild Wars 1, btw), why not suggest a solution to the problem…because it is a problem.
You can’t have a MASSIVE multiplayer game without masses. And if everyone walks away…no masses.
All games have grinds. The key distinction around grinds is that there are optional grinds and there are non-optional grinds. Vertical progression, by definition, describes a non-optional grind. And, it’s called a treadmill for a reason. It doesn’t really take you anywhere; you get on and off at the same place. Horizontal progression, when well implemented describes a variety of optional grinds.
I played under vertical progression for years without really thinking about it. It actually wasn’t until I came into contact with ideas from GW1 that I started thinking about it. In my years playing WoW I saw my HP go from 10k to 500k, but nothing changed gameplay-wise. Mobs still took just as long to kill and I died just as quickly. Nothing had actually changed and I had a the emperor has no clothes moment. VP really wasn’t taking me anywhere progression-wise, it was just a forced exercise to keep me playing. And, herein lies the solution you asked for. When Anet saw players complaining about “nothing to do”, they should have recognized it as a teachable moment. I had come to GW2 precisely because it had superior ideas around character progression. Instead they immediately gave up superior ideas for inferior ones. I believe Anet should have at least attempted to educate the player base before succumbing to inferior ideas around character progression.
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Given that PvP and PvE often describe differing and sometimes mutually exclusive player populations, I’ve never really understood the PvP requirement for map completion. It would seem to be a bad design decision at best.
The whole issue around a realm or server based distribution of players was simply a response to then current technical limitations. The problem is always that some servers end up populated while others end up empty. Sure, servers gave some distinctions around server culture, but basically they are either populated or empty. GW2 has guesting to address this as a temporary fix and other games have tried merging servers, instanced zones, and “connected” servers to address this problem, but what we are really moving to is a single virtual server which current technology allows. It would be great if Anet made a decision about how to get there and put it on a roadmap.
If you take a step back and a step up you will see that GW2 does not have a zerker meta so it really can’t be ended. What GW2 has is a DPS meta and zerker gear just fills that role best. Notice I used the word ‘role’. That word has to do with the actual problem and the actual answer. DPS is the only meaningful combat role. Support/utility, while often convenient, is largely inconsequential and therefore largely unneeded.
The only answer to the DPS meta is to model combat around meaningful combat roles. That, of course, is a rather divisive statement on these forums, but that is what all these zerker threads are addressing. Not all people have a problem with DPS-only, but if you do, the answer lies in modeling combat more on IRL combat which is role-oriented. Humans always approach goal-directed group activity through role specialization. Why? It is generally the most efficient approach and it satisfies a human need to provide something meaningful to the mix.
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Ascended gear isn’t dumb, you just don’t yet understand that it’s an optional long-term goal meant for certain players who have the time and resources to pursue it. You are angry because you have been trained to expect something. Well things change. Different games are different. Is it not humanity’s ability to adapt one of its greatest strengths?
The same arguments could have been (and in some cases were) used to respond to the people who complained about nothing to do. Just as there is nothing sacred about a dislike for Ascended, there is nothing sacred about liking it, either. There is nothing inherently superior about either position.
Actually, I’d argue that a liking for ascended is an inherently superior position, because it does not take choices away from others. From those who like ascended item’s point of view, if you don’t want to work/grind/etc for them, you don’t have to, that’s your call. But those of you arguing against ascended aren’t just unwilling to work/grind/etc for them, you want to remove the option for others. That makes that side inherently selfish and inferior.
We are not talking about Ascended gear as a final point in time. We are not actually talking about choices either. We are talking about vertical progression where the power level of the game is related positively to time. That is, as time progresses, the power level of the game increases. In WoW, when I started playing, my HP was around 6k – 10k. Now it’s ~500k. The game still plays the same. Mobs take just as long to kill as they used to and I die just as quickly. The effects of VP haven’t actually taken that game anywhere; they have just forced a gaming population to ride a treadmill over time by artificially making current gear useless and forcing them to hop on the treadmill periodically.
That’s what VP is and it’s the selfish position to want to force it on a population that bought a game that was advertized as being “not about grinding gear”.
Without the grind, people would be done with it in a week and they’ve have nothing to do. That’s really the whole point of the exercise. If it was going to be something you can just do, it would not have been successful…not in the way that Anet needed it to be anyway.
It’s not saying much that this is the best they could come up with for that.
I understand the reason, but not the implementation. And the forgotten fact seems to be that some people did start getting it in less than a week.
It’s like they just assumed that because MMO’s and RPGS have had mindless grind in them for so many years now that people must love it.
To be honest, the addition of Ascended grind is the reason I am patiently waiting for new MMO’s to come out. The grass isn’t always greener, I know, but GW2 has proven that in itself by catering to this model of endgame. I came here to get away from the standard MMO stagnation of tier grind, but ended up in the same situation. If I wanted the Ascended experience, I could pick up any MMO from the last 15 years and get the same grind.Sure. But how many MMOs can you say that you can experience 99.9 % of the content without BIS gear is the question.
Most MMOs lock you out of content if you don’t gear up. Guild Wars 2 not so much.
All themepark MMOs are going to run into the same problem. There won’t be enough content to play, and therefore, people will have to repeat stuff until new stuff comes out. I don’t really see any way around that.
This betrays the most common misconception about vertical progression that you see on the forums, that it is optional. You can have BiS but don’t really need it to play the content. I’m puzzled as to why people don’t understand the dynamics of relating power to time in a positive manner. We don’t really know what the slope of the power curve is in GW2, but we’ve seen about a 10% increase in power in it’s first year in the game. Can you play the game successfully given the current increase? Sure. But that ignores the effects of the increases of year two and beyond.
I’ve found it helpful to use an analogy here. Instead of games and power let’s consider real life and body weight. Let’s say you live in a universe where your body weight increases 10% per year. A moments thought will reveal to you that if you want to remain slim, you will need to get on the treadmill and the sooner the better. And, this is why the treadmill of VP is “technically” non-optional. The debate here should really be about whether you like the treadmill of VP or not, not about it’s optionality. In fact, that’s the major downside to VP—it’s coercive requirement to ride a treadmill that goes nowhere.
You’re making the assumption that more tiers of gear will be added. We simply don’t know that. It may happen.
I might even leave the game if it does.
I still believe this was a stop gap measure while Anet worked on other things to keep people playing.
The only assumption I’m making is that VP will happen. And we can assume that because Anet said it would be happening. There is no need for new tiers of gear. In fact, when they introduced VP in the AMA they said they had no current plans for new tiers of gear and that they planned to carry VP out through upgrades (infusions) to existing gear once it was all out.
I, too, believe that they introduced VP as a stop gap measure to keep people playing; an incentive to play is one of the key reasons to introduce VP. But, at any rate, it’s here and will be here until it’s removed from the game.
Without the grind, people would be done with it in a week and they’ve have nothing to do. That’s really the whole point of the exercise. If it was going to be something you can just do, it would not have been successful…not in the way that Anet needed it to be anyway.
It’s not saying much that this is the best they could come up with for that.
I understand the reason, but not the implementation. And the forgotten fact seems to be that some people did start getting it in less than a week.
It’s like they just assumed that because MMO’s and RPGS have had mindless grind in them for so many years now that people must love it.
To be honest, the addition of Ascended grind is the reason I am patiently waiting for new MMO’s to come out. The grass isn’t always greener, I know, but GW2 has proven that in itself by catering to this model of endgame. I came here to get away from the standard MMO stagnation of tier grind, but ended up in the same situation. If I wanted the Ascended experience, I could pick up any MMO from the last 15 years and get the same grind.Sure. But how many MMOs can you say that you can experience 99.9 % of the content without BIS gear is the question.
Most MMOs lock you out of content if you don’t gear up. Guild Wars 2 not so much.
All themepark MMOs are going to run into the same problem. There won’t be enough content to play, and therefore, people will have to repeat stuff until new stuff comes out. I don’t really see any way around that.
This betrays the most common misconception about vertical progression that you see on the forums, that it is optional. You can have BiS but don’t really need it to play the content. I’m puzzled as to why people don’t understand the dynamics of relating power to time in a positive manner. We don’t really know what the slope of the power curve is in GW2, but we’ve seen about a 10% increase in power in it’s first year in the game. Can you play the game successfully given the current increase? Sure. But that ignores the effects of the increases of year two and beyond.
I’ve found it helpful to use an analogy here. Instead of games and power let’s consider real life and body weight. Let’s say you live in a universe where your body weight increases 10% per year. A moments thought will reveal to you that if you want to remain slim, you will need to get on the treadmill and the sooner the better. And, this is why the treadmill of VP is “technically” non-optional. The debate here should really be about whether you like the treadmill of VP or not, not about it’s optionality. In fact, that’s the major downside to VP—it’s coercive requirement to ride a treadmill that goes nowhere.
GW1 had skill or ability progression which is a key element in horizontal progression as opposed to vertical progression. VP is known for being grindy, while HP is known for being non-grindy. Because VP is periodically raising the power level of the game it is non-optional, while HP at it’s best can lead to class diversity and more interesting playstyles for everyone. The titles, achievements, and gear which were sought were purely optional. And, that’s the key distinction around grinds. If they are purely optional the game doesn’t feel grindy. If you have to grind to keep up with the power level of the game, it feels grindy.
Because GW2 has gone with VP, it can correctly be said to be grindy; GW1 was the very essence and definition of a non-grindy game.
2015? I would like to see Colin’s statement about giving us ability/skill progression to pursue instead of grinding out stats come to fruition. In the best of all possible worlds ascended would not really be an issue in 2015.
Many gamers prefer keyboards with mechanical switches as they give a tactile response that gives some sensory feedback when activating abilities. The GW2 keyboard did not have mechanical switches.
There is an excellent choice that is still available, I believe, from steelseries and that is the 6GV2 pro gaming keyboard. Once you try a keyboard with mechanical switches, you’ll be glad the GW2 one was no longer available.
Compared to a lot of other crafting systems, I do not think this one is bad at all, but that is just me.
Ascended armor is coming, everyone might as well just accept it and move an. I do not see it as that big of a deal personally.
it isn’t a big deal YET because endgame content is still balanced around exotic stats as an endgame gear.
The moment new content starts to be balanced with the assumption that ascended is endgame gear, well that’s when the crap hits the ceiling.
actually everything was originally balanced around rares as the gear people would be wearing. Only in the most recent LS updates has that switched to exotics.
Do you have a link for that information. I keep a close eye on such and have never seen a statement from Anet like this.
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”
Yeah, my question was largely rhetorical. The game in terms of the environment will always be balanced around the power level of the players. This is easy to see in a game that has a steep power curve like WoW but it will be so in any game. Otherwise the game would eventually become trivial and uninteresting.
Because of the bleed cap the question is largely moot, though I suppose there is a single-player theoretical discussion to be had. If you have more than one condition build in a group, you will likely be doing only white damage, as will any other condition builds. In terms of group play it is impossible to calculate the actual damage you are doing.
No, I don’t believe there will be any nerfs to be concerned about. In any game with vertical progression, you must balance the game around an ever-increasing power level. If the environment doesn’t match the power level of the players the game will become trivial and unsatisfying. I believe that buffs are the thing to be concerned about if anything (to the environment), and especially for those who have chosen not to pursue ascended gear.
I have all the professions at 80 and don’t expect any of them to be geared in Ascended. I tend to alternate my characters and play each for a week or so at a time. I have doled out ascended trinkets to them, but no Ascended weapons. I don’t even have one character with full ascended trinkets. And, I can already see the handwriting on the wall, that it will be impossible to gear them all, and so have chosen not to pursue the weapons and armor. I will probably continue to play occasionally until the power level of the game makes that impossible.
Compared to a lot of other crafting systems, I do not think this one is bad at all, but that is just me.
Ascended armor is coming, everyone might as well just accept it and move an. I do not see it as that big of a deal personally.
it isn’t a big deal YET because endgame content is still balanced around exotic stats as an endgame gear.
The moment new content starts to be balanced with the assumption that ascended is endgame gear, well that’s when the crap hits the ceiling.
actually everything was originally balanced around rares as the gear people would be wearing. Only in the most recent LS updates has that switched to exotics.
Do you have a link for that information. I keep a close eye on such and have never seen a statement from Anet like this.
They only said that there would be no more tiers in 2013. 2013 is nearly over, so adding another tier will soon be back within the realm of possibility. They’ve also talked about progression through better infusions.
Anyone that thinks they can now see the finish line for stat grinding is going to be in for a surprise.
Incorrect, I believe they said no more tiers. Period. They said ascended gear will be released within 2013, but ascended is the final tier.
To be completely accurate, they said, in the AMA, that they had no current plans to implement a tier beyond Ascended and that they intended to carry VP on through infusions. But, nowhere have they said that Ascended is the final tier—at least I have never seen a statement to that effect.
They did say that they did not see the need for more tiers of gear though. The power curve will happen through infusions. Once they hit ascended infusions, even that should stop.
What they actually said in the AMA was “we will have vertical progression moving forward with the focus on zero grind and a very low power curve.” (Chris W)
We will have VP in the game according to Anet. And, we will have it until and unless they change their mind and remove it
You misunderstand Ascended gear. It was simply the introduction of vertical progression to the game. They said the power curve would be low, but they never said it would stop. So, sadly, you won’t get your wish for Christmas. We will still be grinding out the power creep which they said would probably be carried forward through infusions to ascended gear. Nothing has changed with ascended armor; the grind will still be the same, and people will still complain, until they remove vertical progression from the game.
Grind generally has a negative connotation, but I use it more broadly to simply mean actions performed in the pursuit of a goal. To me, grinding is not bad as long as I’m doing it to pursue my own goals.
And, that’s the distinction I make; grinds are either optional or non-optional. Optional grinds are good; non-optional grinds are bad. Vertical progression, by definition, defines a non-optional grind. It’s surprising that so many on the forums argue that it is optional in GW2. Let’s suppose I told you that I was going to, by fiat, add 10% of fat to your body each year. Any rational person would understand that if they want to remain fit they would have to hop on the treadmill. This is what VP is, a non-optional grind and therefore ‘bad’.
Funny, there is a plethora of posts complaining about ArenaNet listening to their playerbase, and acting accordingly. What’s a company to do?
That’s actually quite simple. Every company needs to listen to their customers. They are your customers and without them you will have no company. Does that mean you do everything every customer suggests? No. You evaluate all feedback, consider the products DNA (read manifesto here—the reason the product exists), and make the decision that produces the highest value while not violating the products DNA. Every customer-facing software company knows this and does it. (In fact, internal groups within a company do this as well.) But, a company either does it well or poorly. When you have a lot of customer questions, as in this OP, it means you are not doing it well. And, the end result of the process is the responsibility of the company, not the customer.
(edited by Raine.1394)
I was actually very optimistic for a few weeks after Colin mentioned skill/ability progression as this is a primary form of horizontal progression. Since he announced this as a future direction we’ve seen ascended weapons and now ascended armor, but not a single differentiating skill (no friends, the heal that everyone got was not skill progression). I’m no longer optimistic.
OP, I know you mentioned fractals and agony, but what we are actually witnessing are simply the effects of power creep and vertical progression. Imagine someone with all the professions at 80. Vertical progression, at least as this one is implemented, becomes impossible. What’s worse, is that you are actually grinding for nothing. You grind and get more powerful (or more damage resistant) and everyone else grinds and gets more powerful. Meanwhile, to keep the game from becoming trivial, the environment becomes more powerful. There is no relative difference between you and other players or you and the environment in terms of the before state and the after state. You’ve gone nowhere and that’s why they call it a treadmill; you get on and off at the same place.
Since money in P2W would be spent chasing stats (to end up where you started) in any game that had vertical progression, I’d call it pay2lose.
The oath is a little scary if you ask me. But, I’m one who would prefer that GW2 was sub-based.
Having leveled six characters in WoW to max level (6 in cata, 2 in MoP), I have to admit that GW2 is much faster and less tedious leveling than WoW . However, personally, I don’t believe there is any need for traditional leveling in games. I would much prefer a tutorial that equipped you gear, gameplay, and lore-wise, and then simply launched you into your further adventures. Leveling itself sets a bad precedent if your intent is to scale a game horizontally, which is what I would prefer.
I have always played healer as my main role, and I don’t want to go back. In GW1, Aion, and WoW I played healers because I do enjoy party healing and people always need a healer. But after playing GW2 I wouldn’t go back even for the insta party invites and being mass added to friends lists. Why? Because it was tough to go out on my own in pve. True people would ask me for help and would help me in turn, but if I wanted to go out to some corner of the world and farm? I was half as effective as dps classes. I could solo most content by healing myself through it, but it took aaages! It might have been the easiest in GW1 because of the heroes (and the fact that I decked them all out in good gear), but kitten did I feel weak out in the wild in WoW and Aion.
I can appreciate your stated problem. In WoW, I actually leveled a disc priest to 82 in cata before switching to shadow to get to 85. And, this is the key: all the healing classes had alternate DPS specs that you could instantly switch to (dual talent spec) for questing, dailies, or farming. Holy or disc priests could go shadow and resto druids could go balance all using the same gear. It wouldn’t be ideal for DPS, but serviceable, and it would allow the healing classes to DPS easily when necessary.
1. Vertical progression. This is what people are referring to when they say Ascended gear. Tiers of gear really have nothing to do with this problem per se. The problem is scaling the game vertically as opposed to horizontally.
2. Two week DLC value proposition. This one comprises so many problems from QA issues to the lack of addressing many core game issues, to coherently telling a story.
3. Living story. What we have is an episodic TV model. What we need is an expansion, but delivered over time. The content (and achievements, items, etc.) should be permanent, and the story deeper and more progressive. The model should be around an evolving, living world.
4. Reward. There is far too much RNG and far less reward simply for playing the game. This is characteristic of B2P games where the player is largely made responsible for rewarding themselves. However, we’ve been conditioned to rewarding games through the sub model.
5. The lack of meaningful combat roles. It doesn’t need to be the trinity, but humans, in groups, generally organize around roles. The roots are in human needs and behavior. You violate human needs and behavior at your peril.
People should learn to play the game and build their characters not to achieve the best result, but simply for fun.
Some people have fun playing for the best result. That’s literally the only fun part in this game for me and others.
The problem is not a lack of the trinity; the problem is a lack of meaningful combat roles. When humans organize themselves in groups to meet an objective, roles are always the first issue sorted out, and I don’t care whether it’s a scavenger hunt, war, sports, or brain surgery. Humans always organize around roles. It is both more effective in terms of completing the task at hand and more personally satisfying knowing that each participant is a necessary component of success. The absence of meaningful combat roles is a problem in GW2 because it doesn’t model human behavior and that’s why threads on the topic will never end until there is a sense of meaningful roles.
Except you have roles.
You have offensive roles and support roles.
I qualified it by ‘meaningful’ combat roles. The only role truly meaningful in the game is DPS. And, you can know that from the current berserker dungeon meta which includes only one possible utility slot, not even support per se, but certain utilities that speed up the DPSing down of the boss or provide a general utility. The game is clearly about DPS, DPS, and DPS.
I will admit that certain roles (like anchor guardian) tried to emerge early on because, well, roles are what humans do, but the current meta centers around the highest possible DPS. Contrast that to the trinity, which I don’t necessarily support in that form, which has 3 clearly defined roles without which success is largely impossible. The trinity at least meets the reality test of IRL human needs and behavior.
The problem is not a lack of the trinity; the problem is a lack of meaningful combat roles. When humans organize themselves in groups to meet an objective, roles are always the first issue sorted out, and I don’t care whether it’s a scavenger hunt, war, sports, or brain surgery. Humans always organize around roles. It is both more effective in terms of completing the task at hand and more personally satisfying knowing that each participant is a necessary component of success. The absence of meaningful combat roles is a problem in GW2 because it doesn’t model human behavior and that’s why threads on the topic will never end until there is a sense of meaningful roles.
Dueling is an excellent way to increase your PvP skills and I heartily recommend it. However, the ability to duel is already in-game; the only thing missing is the ability to challenge random players in the open world.
It’s kinda like IRL where you have martial arts studios available to anyone who wants to train, but you wouldn’t challenge random people to fight on the way to the studio. Ideally, GW2 would model RL in this way—and currently does. Adding this to GW2 would be horrible in terms of game culture.
(edited by Raine.1394)
In terms of servers you really can’t go wrong with Blackgate, Jade Quarry, Sanctum of Rall, or Tarnished Coast. I’ve played on them all and they seem well populated across the zones.
I’m a little burned out with GW2 at the moment. I went back and played SWTOR for a while and just leveled an old 85 to 90 in WoW which was a lot of fun. I have hopes for GW2 given Colin’s emphasis on skill/ability progression in a recent blog post. I think if GW2 returns to its DNA it could be a great game. Hopefully they will be able to pull this off as a lot of competition is poised for a 2014 release.
One side-effect of Anet’s take on evolving a living world is that your gaming becomes simply ticking off items on a to-do list. The fact that this content comes and goes with a deadline makes it more akin to work than play.
I believe that they got the general idea of moving a living world forward right, but not the mechanism. The key is evolution—that’s how living world’s move forward. And, the product of evolution is a sense of permanence, even with constant change taking place. Anet has settled on episodic TV as a model. The world comes and goes with each release. Consider the old TV series Gunsmoke. We had 20 years of it and everything stayed pretty much the same. The characters had an adventure each week but at the end of a show everything reset and the next show started a new adventure. Dodge stayed pretty much the same and the characters only changed when someone died or moved on IRL. A living world just doesn’t evolve when people and place don’t evolve.
An alternate model could be found in delivering an expansion in terms of the living world, but doing it over time. Consider an issue of dire importance and consequence arising in, say, Cantha. Each release could be steps to opening new territory with its related story and character progression, all with a view to finally arriving in Cantha and saving it from a fate worse than death. All content would be permanent and achievements and rewards would be available to anyone at any time. There would be no deadlines, just unfolding story. Everything added would be permanent and achievements could be done at your leisure.
At any rate, this is how I relate to temporary items and content. I’d like to see it become permanent with deeper story and character progression through skill, ability, and story progression.