Nice. Gratz on that one. Beautiful!
Someone preferring D3 to GW2 can’t really complain about GW2 drop rates (or quality of the drops). Know what I mean, nudge, nudge, say no more.
I have four level 80’s and I’m happy with the Elites on each. The cooldown seems about right for the power of the Elites. This is one area I’d like to see remain an area of minor tweaking rather than revolutionary overhaul. It just doesn’t need it.
Can someone explain to me why Ascended gear is such a big deal? I mean, did a couple of rings and backpack really obliterated this game? Is this game that fragile? And we don’t know how armors are acquired, either. How can they break the game when they’re not even in yet?
Here’s what I understand from Ascended gear.
- Slightly better than Exotic, slightly worse than Legendary. Mostly a negligible difference in PvE and WvW. If a handful of stats is making you lose at WvW, I think you’re doing something wrong.
- No upgrade slot. Which means less versatility than Exotic gear. If armor continues to not have upgrade slots, then we make use of our Runes with special effects on them. This makes them slightly worse than Ascended gear depending on the type of runes you prefer to use.
- Has Agony resistance and takes Agony increasing infusions. This is only relevant in Fractals. People are crying because they can’t get ascended gear because they don’t play Fractals. Why do you want a stat restricted to a mode you don’t play?
Then people are saying that Ascended makes Exotics obsolete, except we don’t know how we get Ascended armors? Maybe we use Exotics to craft Ascended. Who knows?
The problem is not the degree of progression they’ve introduced with Ascended gear. The problem is that they have committed themselves to vertical progression. Vertical progression “progresses” by periodically raising the power-level. This won’t stop, ever, and you will find that if you don’t hop on the treadmill at some point, you will not be able to play the new content. That’s the way all WoW-like games work. You can ignore it for a time, but eventually the difference between you and the environment will simply be too great for you to play. Let me repeat it since I see so many posts on the insignificance of the stat increase: The degree of vertical progression with Ascended gear does not matter in the slightest; what matters is the introduction of vertical progression.
I am still playing but not enjoying it as much. As they have inserted a gear grind for “end-game” content it means, paradoxically, I won’t have a lot to do. I have no interest in hopping on a gear treadmill no matter how conveniently they’ve located it to my play preferences. My best case scenario is for them to read their pre-release statements on GW2 and get excited about what a game like that could be for players. Sadly, I don’t think they can stop the gears from grinding at this point though; having started down that path it would be very hard to reverse themselves, especially with all the justifications they’ve made on it. Oh well, their vision still stands. A game that fulfilled the original vision would be a great game.
Point out another game which was completely and absolutely flawless 3 months after it released.
Guild Wars 1.
Pong.
Pong, it just worked.
You forgot the most important problem with the new botting technique. The old bot trains would often help, unwittingly, with certain DE’s, and they were always a handy way of trading off aggro when you needed to. They were perhaps annoying to see so many of but you could incorporate them into your gameplay.
But, don’t be too worried, botting behavior is very easy to detect through data-mining techniques. They shouldn’t have any problem due to the players inability to right-click report them.
Good post OP. Agree with all. Reward for play, in-game, not in-store, needs to be added to the game.
Hopefully, the devs are taking a hard look at their game and trying to restore its luster. The open world is still gorgeous, the art is fantastic, a ton of work went into the DE’s, the zones and many other things in the game. The game is flat out fun to play. Hopefully, they will get back in touch with their vision for the entire game being fun, and fix the issues that make that not so for many of their customers. I don’t know what happened to their priorities, but I would like them to read their own pre-launch blogs, recapture their intent for “the whole game is endgame” and in the spirit of Jean Luc, “Make it so.”
Well said. I still have hope for GW2 as they got so much right. Lost Shores seems more like lost souls to me. If they can recapture their vision, GW2 will be a great game.
It’s not so much where you place the treadmill. The offense is having the treadmill in a non-grindy game.
In jumping puzzles it does because of camera. Asura have an easier time on low clearance jump puzzles such as Troll’s End.
When I first considered the topic, I thought no, there is no effect to height, but you are right; character navigation is an effect of character size. My Asura is a breeze with puzzles or challenging vistas. My Norn would often prefer to fall to his death. Maybe you can RP into this that Norn’s are too proud to be subjected to something as silly as a jumping puzzle.
It’s nice to be able to feel like a hero somewhere. The devs apparently thought that level 80 zones were for making hero’s run around like sissies. At least it’s nice to know that a hero can feel like a hero somewhere.
I do hope they rethink all level 80 areas and certainly everything beyond the Straits. It would make it better to have more players and I always tried to attach myself to other players when leveling to 80. Problem is there often aren’t other players around. And, I actually just did a server transfer to a higher pop server; it’s much better but doesn’t solve the problem of the areas—they need to be redesigned to keep fun in the challenge. It’s always a difficult balance.
Same experience as OP. Truth is, I wouldn’t have anything in this game if it weren’t for the gemstore. This certainly is a unique experience for me as I was able to support myself wholly in-game in other games just fine. Well, I couldn’t support myself in Diablo 3 either, but I’m not playing that game anymore.
I’m having disconnects sometimes followed by a crash. This is new for me today. Have had 2 disconnects in the last hour.
I’ve had 2 disconnects in the last hour. I didn’t have any issues last night after patch.
Same. I seem to be getting disconnects every 10 minutes or so in the last hour.
Seriously this thread is stupid. Nobody is forcing you to buy ectos.
And even if you want them, farming both supplies gold, and possible ectos! Not to mention crafting materials.
It kills three birds with one stone. That’s a pretty nifty trick if you ask me.
TLDR; L2P.
If you engaged with the thread you would find that farming is tedious and unrewarding in terms of finding the necessary mats to craft.
TLDR; L2R.
That is completely YOUR personal opinion. It has nothing to do with facts. Fact is if you farm, you will get materials.
Whether YOU want to farm, or find it tedious, is completely irrelevant to that discussion.
The nature of farming, whether it is rewarding or not, is central to the discussion. Do you remember the thread title? Ectos are essential and the price is high. The price is high because they are relatively rare compared to the need for them. In another post I contrasted it to my experience in another MMO where in 2 hours of intense farming I could gather the mats for an entire set of armor. It’s how I made gold in that MMO. When I contrast that to my experience (and others experience) in GW2, it’s a relative mat wasteland. So, yes, this is essentially the OP and it’s my experience as well. That’s why you see threads like this. There will be threads like this until crafting becomes a rewarding experience. No one wants gold to fall in their laps; they want to work toward a goal and be rewarded for their efforts.
I never understand these sort of threads…
if you don’t enjoy playing with others, why play an MMO? Pick something like skyrim instead, there you have all the fun of a big pretty explorable world without the need to group
Then perhaps you are unfamiliar with MMO’s. In every MMO I’ve played you were able to solo all content minus instances very easily. Not only solo in terms of leveling, but more importantly solo in terms of farming. The farming aspect is very important in an MMO as that is how you maintain yourself in the game. GW2, in terms of stated objectives supports the solo player as well as those who like to group with others. The problem is that as you cross the straits of devastation you find the content less and less solo-friendly. Karma farming depends on whole areas becoming non-contested; good luck doing this without a group of players. See, the problem is there aren’t always players around and the content was developed presupposing there would be other players around. This is an area GW2 needs work and it doesn’t have anything to do with the fact that it is an MMO. It needs work around being more solo-friendly because it is an MMO.
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Seriously this thread is stupid. Nobody is forcing you to buy ectos.
And even if you want them, farming both supplies gold, and possible ectos! Not to mention crafting materials.
It kills three birds with one stone. That’s a pretty nifty trick if you ask me.
TLDR; L2P.
If you engaged with the thread you would find that farming is tedious and unrewarding in terms of finding the necessary mats to craft.
TLDR; L2R.
Nobody has cornered the market on Ectos. Essentially, the availability of all mats in the game is controlled by Anet. If you could go out and farm for mats, it would be totally irrelevant what someone wanted to charge for the mats. In WoW, I could farm savage leather and blackened dragonscale for a couple hours and have enough to make a set of armor. It was my principal way of making gold. It was easy to grind out mats and it didn’t matter what the cost was on the AH. Some people didn’t like to farm and there were plenty of people willing to farm and sell for reasonable prices. But, you could always farm.
Anet needs to understand that a grind needs to be reasonable and all mats should be farm-able for the purpose of making gold through crafting. In WoW, the zones where you farmed contained mobs that were easily farm-able and nothing like the tedium of what you find in Orr or Southsun. Who wants to even go there. Anet has fully embraced grinding as a design principle; they now need to look to WoW again to understand how to make a grind rewarding and endurable, both for gear and mats.
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With each new tier, (remember that’s what Vertical progression is), you will hop on the treadmill wherever it’s implemented closest to your preferences. And, you will then prepare to have fun for the length of the grind, long or short. When you hop off you’ll have all the shinies that everyone else has also acquired. Most MMO’s have defaulted to this system because of the success of WoW. In time a game company will come along with a vision and hopefully help move us out of the rut we are stuck in.
Interesting topic…made me look. Pure PvE (no pugs) here.
Elementalist(50): 49 hours, 9 deaths, 0.18 Deaths/Hr
Mesmer(80): 132 hours, 43 deaths, 0.33 Deaths/Hr
Ranger(80): 115 hours, 24 deaths, 0.21 Deaths/Hr
Warrior(80): 94 hours, 28 deaths, 0.30 Deaths/Hr
I wouldn’t have guessed this at all. I knew Ranger would be low, but Elementalist lowest? She is only 50, but I don’t remember dying a lot 50-80. Oh well, we’ll see. My highest death rate is my Mesmer and I always feel pretty untouchable playing her. Very interesting!
Have to agree with the OP on this. There is a balance that makes challenge fun and it is not to be found in Southsun Cove. I’m on a high pop server—I had to transfer after the patch because my server went dead in the open world—and, I only run into a couple people here and there when I go. In reality I have no desire to go as it’s not fun. Throughout the game I could solo most DE’s. In Southsun forget about a vet with adds. There needs to be difficulty curve as you level but the game shouldn’t feel as though its a different game at 80 when you are in good gear and know how to play your profession.
This is by design, though. If there aren’t players willing to fight to hold the land from the undead, the undead will reclaim it. It’s the dynamic in Dynamic Events.
You can always go and fight to uncontest the waypoint. You could even ask in /map for people to help out too. I’m sure there are people that want those waypoints to get uncontested too… maybe they just need a point person to rally around.
It is by design. I like the goals: getting people to fight together to win back the area. But, this only works if you have players in the area. They’ve drained players from the open world with FotM, but even without that you should never design without the reality-testing that would tell you there will be times with no players, regardless, and content needs to be considered from a solo perspective as well as a group perspective. There are many problems with Orr and I would vote that it gets the attention rather than the next event of the month. The events are a major contributor to the basics not getting handled.
Not much in the way of substance, and pretty much what you would expect from a non-gaming source. He doesn’t like the story, he likes character creation, he feels he moves too slowly. The review doesn’t really engage with significant issues positive or negative, and there are plenty of each. GW2 broke significant ground in addressing players playing with other players. Non-competitive quests and resource nodes (and others elements) are a huge contributor to creating a good in-game culture that sets it apart from WoW dramatically. While the differences appear small, the effect is dramatic. I would certainly have mentioned those aspects. He did get the title right and it’s appropriate that GW2 now gets the grindy tag. It’s the direction they have chosen to go and it begins the cultural shift to one more like WoW.
Not sure I would try to focus Anet on patience. They seem to be evidencing plenty of patience as they wait out the storm. The thoughtful action was a very good idea. I went from praising them to all, to wondering whether anyone there had their lights on in the course of one week.
I think it will change over time. From the time you hit the Straits the game ceases to be fun. Sadly, it has nothing to do with challenge; it’s just badly designed zones.
I almost made it through, but stopped at “There are NO BABYSITTERS”. Sorry, tanks and healers are not babysitters. Tanks are tanks; healers are healers. It’s actually pretty straightforward and has absolutely nothing to do with anyone needing a babysitter. And, by the way, anyone “reading the box” knew that which was factual in your post already.
These issues—and more—are why I’ve argued against monthly events. Do you know the development resources it takes to do these events? As a paying customer, they are like a slap in the face given the game quality post-launch. Had they stayed true to their vision I would have happily cut them slack as it is a new game and bound to have “new” issues. But, the events happening with the “new” issues is unacceptable.
Great! Enjoy it while you can.
Vertical progression is what it is; a gear treadmill that never ends. There are different, more modern, ways to approach gaming. This is tired and it makes people tired. I say enjoy the game while you can.
Arenanets big mistake was allowing free transfers for too long.
What I would have done:
“You will have 10 days of free server transfers, with one day cooldown. After this time, server transfers will cost X amount of gems, resulting in a one week cooldown”.If I wnated to transfer servers in WoW, its 25 bucks(back in the day at least). A deterrant not to, but the option is there if I wanted to…
Server pops were never a huge problem there, and they have 100-200 servers.
WoW is an interesting case as they implemented cross-realm zones around the time MoP was introduced. Basically, all zones except pandaland were instanced so players from several servers played together. In WoW this was a horrible idea and it was gamebreaking for me and anyone who wanted to quest, farm, collect rare pets, etc. as most know these are all competitive in WoW. They just added more rats to the cage and it wasn’t fun at all. This would work well in GW2, however, as the more the merrier. GW2 really nailed the player playing with other players aspect of the game.
WvW based server hopping was certainly an early factor in shifting server populations. If you’ve been away awhile, the most recent patch caused an exodus from the open world to the FotM dungeons. I was one who hopped to a higher pop server after the patch just to have any population in the open world. There definitely needs to be some better management of the servers and better reality-testing of proposed content.
I actually don’t think it’s best for a game company to make their decisions based on popular feedback. It is by far preferable to be guided by a commanding vision and then evolve the game on its DNA coupled with player input on ways to improve the game. Think about the political process in your nation-state. Is everyone satisfied with the direction the country is going. How about the politicians who try to satisfy everyone? How is that going?
I would be more inclined to want the quality of the content of communication to be improved. “We don’t make grindy games” is a communication I can wrap my mind around. “We make grindy games that aren’t grindy” is still a head scratcher for me. I would prefer for the communications to be clear for the person of average intelligence.
I’ve found I am much stronger when scaled down than I was going through the content. Gear(more stats on gear), traits, etc. are fully exploited in the scaling process so the tendency is to be a little or a lot stronger than the lower level content. Don’t have any numbers on this, just my experience of it. Sometimes, some aspects like personal story seem to be much more challenging (or cheap depending on your take on this) than other content, but that’s another discussion.
the number 1 problem is people rushing through the content and not enjoying the journey.
This is kind of the problem, but you’re looking at it from the wrong side. The Dev team should have lowered the lvling WAY down in this game from what it is.
I’ll get a lot of hell for saying this, but that’s what’s wrong with pretty much all MMOs nowadays. They spend all this time making a wonderful world to play in. After that though? They allow everyone to get to max lvl within like 2 kittening weeks.
Bottom line is this. Should take hardcore players like 4 months to get to max lvl. The rest longer.
One of the main reasons I hardly play anymore. Nothing to do.
Agree the post you were replying to looked at it from the wrong side, but disagree about dragging out the leveling process. I would sooner have no leveling grind, perhaps a tutorial story line and then be released upon the world as a “max-level” character. It wouldn’t be max level actually as there would be no levels. And it wouldn’t set a grindy precedent. It would be different.
Great that you are enjoying the game. Many elements of game design contribute to solving player playing with other players problems. Those ideas are brilliant. There has been the introduction of countervailing forces with the last patch which you will notice over time, but enjoy the game now for all the things they did right. I have 3 level 80 characters and am now leveling another. And, I’m experiencing all those good things you mention again. If the open world starts getting empty try a server transfer to a higher pop server as they are free. I had to do that after the patch to address the dead world problem but my new server now feels like the old one used to.
So long answer is no they dont want you to have gold. They want you dependent on them for you next fix/grind.
like any other commercial company.
In your previous post you shout: " IT IS JUST A GAME NOT YOUR REAL JOB! ", now you are saying it’s just business. You seem to be all over the map on this one.
Not saying that there aren’t people playing the TP aspect of the game, but there is only one significant controller of the economy and that would be Anet. And the primary mechanism for control is the drop rate.
Magic find should be the stat bonus that has ascended gears have over exotics: ascended stats = exotic stats + MF.
Lower tiered gear shouldn’t have MF at all. It should be replaced with something else.
As others have noted, this is far and away preferable to the increase in primary stats. However, Anet has embarked on the treadmill of vertical progression and your solution doesn’t provide that. Good idea though.
I think your two questions are already answered by considering the nature of power progression. Power progression, or vertical progression, progresses. The current degree of progression doesn’t really matter so much as the introduction of vertical progression; it’s the direction that matters not the degree. The progression of the power level will not stop, and it will bring with it all the cultural aspects of another major MMO that many came of us came to GW2 to escape.
GW2 still has one of the best in-game communities I’ve seen. Often bad actors are chalked up to human nature and people don’t appreciate the role of the game design in shaping a culture. I think Anet has had some brilliant ideas like shared resource nodes and quests, DE’s—they all combine to make you want to see people on the map and help them out. You even are rewarded for rezzing people. These are game features that contribute to a good game culture. Sadly, more and more we are seeing the results of the introduction of game features which contribute to a bad game culture. Gated content (FotM) and vertical progression fragments the community and breeds both elitism and impatience with other players. There have been good examples given so I don’t need to offer more. My point is that the incentives for playing well with other players are being diluted by the introduction of elements in game design that contribute to the creation of a toxic culture. I honestly don’t know what happened to Anet around this, the change is glaring and I don’t understand what they were thinking. They had such a clear vision; I don’t know what’s occluded it. But, we are starting to see the culture emerge that many of us wanted to escape in leaving another major MMO. From all public statements, and especially the AMA, good news is not on the horizon.
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It’s a grind. They’ve introduced vertical progression which defines a grind. A rose by any other name…
Yes, try a polar bear for stick around and best damage for a tank. Also be sure to put 5 points into Beastmastery or mobs won’t be interested in your pet post lvl 35 or so. Risen are another matter entirely as they are never interested in your pet. They make a beeline for you regardless. Part of the tedium of Orr.
To Anet adding Ascended gear was a bugfix in a way. They though the “time gap” (not power) between exotics and legendary needed to be filled. It should have been there from day 1. They admitted they messed up with how they implemented it making it unavailable to many play types and that they will fix it.
I play WvW almost exclusively. If they add a system whereby I play WvW and over time can acquire this new gear there is zero problem. Maybe remove the agony resist aspect from WvW acquired ascended gear so WvW doesn’t become an easier path for PvE players to get it and we are good to go.
I’m not sure I understand your first paragraph about fixing a bug. Are you saying that they filled a time gap by creating a power gap? Do power gaps fix time gaps? And why would they have Legendary items with the same power level as Exotics at launch if they knew they were going to introduce Ascended gear with stats higher than Legendary? Legendary wouldn’t be so Legendary would they? No, they had to fix Legendary after they introduced Ascended. I just can’t wrap my mind around this as it just doesn’t fall together into any kind of logical cohesion.
Your second paragraph makes perfect sense to me. I did a fair amount of PvP in WoW and with each new tier I’d grit my teeth and hit the battlegrounds to grind out the new honor gear. They said they would make the new tiers available everywhere and I trust them on this, so if you don’t mind the grind I’m sure PvP won’t be excluded.
And so, as far as these rough numbers show us (and I’m willing to accept that I may not be considering the most accurate or representative calculations if someone can show me their own), the actual impact that having Yakkington’s over the above Exotic is fairly negligible based on raw stats alone. Infusions might be significant and I’m not particularly knowledgeable about the most efficient builds, items available, etc, but I doubt they could add more to the weight than another few percentage points.
Otherwise, and presuming that these calculations are accurate and representative, I’m not going to tear my hair out over a <5% increase in the statistics of a single character. I’d rather save the time I’d need to get that increase and do something else.
[Edit: And while this increase will naturally become more weighty as more pieces of armour are added to the Tier, the time investment likely needed to acquire them will mean I just won’t bother]
I always find posts by those who make this argument interesting. They always point to the change in power level as insignificant. Have you wondered why the devs would spend so much time developing and delivering insignificant game features? Ascended gear is a major product enhancement after all, and the best supporters can say about it is that it’s insignificant.
And, yes, you answered yourself in your edit. Little changes, over time, add up to very large changes. Let’s pull a number out of the hat and say the rings and back only represent a 5% increase in stats in their respective slots. Only three slots are impacted and the change in total power level will be small. However, when you have it fully implemented, 7 armor slots, 1 or 2 weapons, 5 jewelry, infusions, and of course sigils/runes will probably be affected at some point. The impact is huge versus the player before the grind in simple exotics.
I notice Anet asking the players to avoid slippery slope arguments when considering the Ascended gear. There is no need to resort to them actually, as we known full well the impact of Ascended gear fully implemented. And, with vertical progression now firmly ensconced in the design philosophy you can look forward to further, well, vertical progression which will be accomplished by further power creep. The major issue is the change in direction, not the degree to which they have gone down the road.
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A very nice piece of writing, worth reading even without the experienced horror of Orr as a backdrop. I’ll join you in saying loudly that Orr is not a fun environment to spend time in. Game companies often confuse the concepts of challenge and tedium. Orr is tedious…beyond measure…and certainly not fun.
There is always vertical progression. What makes it a grind is if it’s a chore. Even Guild Wars 1 had a modicum of vertical progression.
Actually, it’s even simpler than that. What makes it a grind is having a grind.