Guild Wars 2

You know what, those questions to Celesica apply to everyone.

Is arenanet executing their vision of the game by reversing their stance on gear tiers?

If this IS their vision, why have they never told us about it during 5 years of blogs and community info, during a frenzy of sales leading up to; and immediately after launch?

If you think this is their vision, do you feel betrayed or supportive that no mention of this has ever been made before?

If this is NOT their vision of the game, why are they doing it?

If you think this is NOT the vision they have for the game, how much confidence do you have in the leadership moving forward if they caved after only 3 months on such a major issue?

Don’t quote what other people said as if no one here has read that.

I’m asking YOU Celesica.

Is arenanet executing their vision of the game by reversing their stance on gear tiers?

If this IS their vision, why have they never told us about it during 5 years of blogs and community info, during a frenzy of sales leading up to; and immediately after launch?

If this is NOT their vision of the game, why are they doing it?

Seriously, quoting Chris’ comment about how they’re creating the first steps of a gear treadmill while specifically saying they’re not calling it a gear treadmill is not adding anything. We’ve all read his “we’re doing what we said we wouldn’t but we don’t want it to feel crappy and we’re calling it something else” comment.

What do YOU say?

Celesica.5790:

It’s fine! You’ll see
So far ANet hasn’t let me down. It’s still 3 months, so I can understand why some of the bugs aren’t yet fully fixed. But overall, it has been really awesome, for me. And about the new gears and stuff, I can’t say they’ve let me down just because of pure assumptions bases on words posted in a single blog post. I’ll have to see and experience it myself first starting on the 16th, before I judge. I’m so excited!

I appreciate the sentiment that things have been fun. Lots of games do fun gear grinds.

Arenanet has been 5 years browbeating everyone about why their no gear grind philosophy is superior. From the ground up and as far back as gw1 prophecies they’ve advocated horizontal content scaling. I’ve offered plenty of video clips of Colin and Eric stating this as well as quotes from many on the design team.

So regardless of whether you found the game fun….

Do you think arenanet is executing their vision on the game? Why the sudden change of heart if not? Why hide it from us during presales if so?

Answer those if you want to contribute anything to this thread.

XodoK.8734:

Looks fine to me. I guess it is just very subjective.

So, you prefer a gear treadmill, or you think this won’t be one?

Genuinely curious.

@latinkuro They did actually, the videos and quotes are all from Colin and Eric and all are exactly the opposite of power creep or gear treadmill. There’s no weaseling out of it. They didn’t ‘work around’ what they said, they went back on it.

Skillful players I know prefer not to grind. They know that stats are meaningless. They know that after X hours, they’ll have the ‘best’ stats. They would prefer not to waste their time getting to the end.

There is no step in between exotic and legendary. They have identical stats. People who keep saying this I gotta wonder if they don’t understand, never seen a legendary, can’t differentiate the way something looks from how powerful it is or what. It really seems to be a concept that is way above and beyond the grasp of a few people.

@tjockis wat? lol.

Pochibella.8394:

Some good ideas here. I love the gravity and awkward silence debuffs! The infusion for gravity could be helium. With enough helium, you would just float to the top of the jumping puzzle. For awkward silence, what would the infusion be called? Personality? Outgoing? Extrovert?

Ummmmm… Icebreakers. Of course.

All the way from crummy whites and blues “say don’t I know you?”, “Is your dad a thief?”

All the way up to ascended “do you have a little asura in you?”

Encaladus.5291:

i think what u are trying to say is skill>gear, which i completely agree with….. but that begs the question how is an extra (from the screenshot posted) 5 power 5 precision and 3% magic find going to make an unskilled player better than a skilled player….

That is not the topic of this thread, though to be accurate, the 7% MF on exotics is worth 92 stat points per piece of exotic jewelry. If it increases the same as the MF does (let’s say 7.9% rounded down7% and 9.1% rounded up to 10% to be as generous as possible… still a 15% gain) Then that major stat becomes 105 each, or going from 552 to 630 in just that primary stat, on just jewelry alone. Secondary stats see the same % increases, though obviously of lesser values.

The thing is though, why should the players trust arenanet’s game direction when they do not trust it themselves? They can’t stick to their guns for 3 months without capitulating on a core design choice…. who’s to say that once people quit whining now that they have a boring gear grind that they won’t whine about mounts next…. then what……… ?

JBleezz.2697:

Snow.5269:

After this change, anything stated is subject to change. When a playerbase is specifically told “Here is our mission statement” and then it changes to the exact opposite how can the playerbase continue to trust?

Ok I’ll bite please quote the statement in the mission statement where they promised they would never add a tier of gear.

Ok I’ll bite, please point out where everything needs to be pinky sworn and promised on hallmark cards to be common sense.

Keep narrowing down the list of acceptable answers until none are left to satisfy you then claim victory…. it’s a weak tactic for when you’ve already lost an argument but are too stubborn to give up.

How about this though:

“Finally, since combat is such a core part of the gameplay of any MMO, we’ve put a lot of emphasis into rethinking combat. So much of traditional MMO combat is rote and repetitive. You execute the same strategy over and over again, just augmented over time with better and better gear. After a while it starts to feel like you’re playing a spreadsheet.”

You can find that tidbit at http://www.arena.net/blog/guild-wars-2-design-manifesto

But I guess it doesn’t apply because they didn’t end every sentence with “we promise!!!”, right? Ad besides, grinding 9 rooms for gear tiers couldn’t possibly get “rote and repetitive”

The thing is…. all over the site are all of these quotes and articles and interviews and videos all explaining how they feel that level gear playing fields make the best games….. then this.

WE’re not making things up or misquoting arenanet on this issue.

They came out and said “we’re making an mmo with purely optional grind and no treadmill” and then they introduce the first steps of a treadmill less than 3 months after launch.

It shows that they don’t have faith in their own product or idea.

Encaladus.5291:

that begs the question what is the point of a legendary weapon if it is exaclty the same as an exotic…. why bother spending an age to make it look slightly different

but this is just my opinion…

Why don’t we let Colin and Eric the project leads answer that for you?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=Yjxvj2I_CCA#t=468s

“forging precursors is proof that rng IS fun”

“This is just the beginning. In November, we’re only adding the first level of Infusions and Ascended Rings and Back slots, so that leaves us a lot of room to build upon these levels of Item progression in future content.”

Honestly. To Jamais and JBleezz. That’s verbatim copied and pasted from Linsey’s blog post. First level. Not first pieces. First LEVEL. building upon these LEVELS, not these pieces.

Quit telling me she didn’t say that. She said it.

And to quote Chris verbatim:

“Our goal is not to create a gear treadmill. Our goal is to ensure we have a proper progression for players from exotic up to legendary without a massive jump in reward between the two. We will slowly add the remaining ascended gear items and legendary items in future updates to allow people time to acquire them as we add exciting new content that deserves exciting rewards. We will not be adding a new tier of gear every 3 months that we expect everyone to chase after and then get the next set and so on.”

So their goal is not to create a gear treadmill, so they’re going to create a slow gear treadmill instead and stretch it out over months. Wat?!

Massive jump in reward? What massive jump? Do legendary weapons come with hidden stats? No, there’s no reward jump. Cosmetics? Oh ok, a 200g foefire isn’t middleground enough between pearl and eternity? sigh.

Jamais vu.5284:

No, and I this is where the massive paranoia on this forum stems from. You cannot extrapolate from two data points that this will lead to additional tiers being added, and that this isn’t the final tier forever.

I honestly think many people have the same impression you do.

Go re-read linsey and chris’s blog post and forum post. At the end of the blog post linsey states explicitly that this is only the beginning. The first tier. Not the first pieces… the first tier…. and that as they release more content they will release more tierS.

Then go read chris’ forum post. Then tell people they’re just paranoid.

The thing is… even once is bad enough. Even once is against everything they said they were building this game around. This thread isn’t about power creep or gear treadmills being bad, this thread is about the fact that arenanet spent over 5 years carefully designing a game with horizontal scaling instead of vertical, then took it out at the knees less than 3 months after launch.

“We’re a community building company that just happens to do so with games” — why add gear tier separation between your community members then?

JBleezz.2697:

at the same time kinda off put by how so many seem to ignore the reason ANet is implementing this in the first place.

Ok so then lay it on us. What exactly is the reason this is needed? I’m honestly curious.

What is the reason that doing a complete 180 on their manifesto is now required?

Theplayboy.6417:

Infracted quote

Yeah they sticklers for the rules when anything negative comes up. People posting “I agree, calm down” don’t seem to be getting infracted yet. Use the +1 to bump posts instead of posting “I agree”. At least for the most part they’re letting people be heard so far, so put it in your own words and for god’s sake don’t paste these warning messages.

JBleezz.2697:

[STUFF]

Its a carrot to make the road to a legendary seem not as bad. Unlike the brick wall a lot of players are currently hitting after easily getting all of their exotics and seeing the insurmountable path to the legendaries.

Also where are you getting the first of several tiers? I read the blog and she was referring to adding new Ascended gear over time not adding new tiers.

Yup, it’s a carrot on a string. The thing they told us they hated about every other game out there. Well put.

So are legendaries too tough? Aren’t they supposed to take a year or two each? Aren’t there already players rocking 2 of em? Too easy or too hard to get… which is it?

“This is just the beginning. In November, we’re only adding the first level of Infusions and Ascended Rings and Back slots, so that leaves us a lot of room to build upon these levels of Item progression in future content.” – Linsey Murdock

That’s pretty clear. Am I misreading it? November update gets a few accessory pieces. More come later. More “levels” later. Lots of room to grow. I mean… please, tell me my misinterpretation here.

So me and my friend were talking on the IRC and he came up with a great idea. We both really liked Ascended Gear / Infusions for PvE so we though it should extend to other areas of the game.
-The Idea-
Add vertical progression / ascended gear infusions to cooking. Basically, have recipes give higher debuffs the harder they are and require you do do a bunch of easier dishes to get infusions for ascended cooking utensils so you can do harder dishes.
Lets call this defuff “Tasteless” and you need infused ascended cooking utensils in order to ignore it. The more you have, the more stacks of tasteless you ignore. If you don’t have any infusions to counter it and try to do a hard recipe your food gives you a green tinge and has reduced effectiveness.

I feel like we need clear progression on cooking recipes as I have no motivation to do them without it.
Please limit feedback to constructive only.

Initially fractal runs only.

There was a dev post saying that eventually it would come to wvw and pve.

For now though you’re going to have to grind those 9 rooms until the ascended gear and infusions you want drop for you.

Apparently you can mystic forge ascended gear too. Maybe throwing in 4 exotic rings has a 20% chance to be ascended, maybe not, details on that are not known yet.

JBleezz.2697:

Ok so I have been seeing posts on this for a while now and I have to ask.

How is this added tier to bridge the time acquisition gap between exotics and legendaries a gear grind or a treadmill?

its only a gear grind if it takes an insane amount of time to get and is required for content. From whats been shown Fractals will only require the gear to survive staying in a really long time not required to enter or even to see and experience the content inside.

And its only a treadmill if they continue to add tiers which they have made it clear they have no intention of doing. So why then is there such a fuss.

P.S. Before anyone tells me I don’t understand GW I was a GW player since launch and I hate gear grind but I don’t see this being a gear grind.

Sure thing man.

Well there are already tons of costmetic bridges, so this “gap” is artificial. There is no gap. So they’re not filling a gap, they’re adding tiers of gear, the first of several with lots of room to grow.

Well it’ll be more effort than exotics and less than legendaries. How much time is ‘insane’ to keep up with the joneses? Fractal gear is not only required for high level fractal runs, but is also best in slot gear for all other pve and wvw content now.

They’ve made it completely clear that they WILL add more and more tiers as time goes on.

Good on ya

Anyways, yeah, no one cares about 1 tier of gear. People care about arenanet changing the game plan without warning. People care about creating strife between players in dungeon groups for not being geared enough to run Magg in under 10 minutes so you get booted. etc etc.

ArcTheFallen.7682:

Ah, sorry I think you took it out of context. I’m saying it wouldn’t hurt to add another layer of rarity ontop of exotics inbetween legendaries. Regardless of stats. I later mentioned that for issues with stats I cannot say anything about it.

Like a series of teal texted ‘fractal’ skins which are existing named exotic models but with cooler fractal auras and particle effects? Stick to the flat gear stats and no content gating or elitism separation by adding power creep? Make them 1/4 to 1/2 as much effort as legendaries?

kitten yeah. I’m on board for that.

Kaizz you’re BANG on about most things until you state it’s only a 5 point difference. That 5 points in part of a minor stat. It’s going to be a 8-15% difference per piece overall with rings and backpacks now and all the rest of the pieces and further tiers to follow.

Moreover this is about beginning a treadmill and the fact that arenanet don’t have the confidence in their flat content system or the player community to let things ride out for half a year before they throw all of the game design away to try and mimic all of the other failed MMOs taking on WoW.

ArcTheFallen.7682:

But it doesn’t hurt to add more.

But… it does when “more” is just stat levels over time. It’s the very core of gear treadmills that anet opposed so strongly up until now. They went to great lengths to make videos and Q&As describing in detail why they thought this was so bad.

So… why are they backtracking so hard over 5 years of game design?

Kelvingts.2035:

You sir need to get your head outta your kitten Your long summary of cluster Eff and garbage isn’t even worth reading but I can already flame your first sentence and that alone means you needa “Get the hell out”.
Who are you to represent the gw1 community and say “Fine” to a lvl 80 cap? From what I can see it’s not a simple “It’s fine” but more like “It’s AWESOME”

Hey, there was a lot of upset gw1 players over the 80 level cap instead of the lower level cap of gw1. At that time I was of the opinion that 80 didn’t represent endless level grinding that people were worried about at the time. And it turned out ok. I’ve almost always been in favour of anets initially unpopular decisions, but this time it’s so bad I can’t get behind it.

Arc, if tiers are about attainability then there are already dozens of tier bridging named exotics of varying prices.

Rusttooth all the way up to Foefire. 2g to 200g. That “gap” between exotics and legendaries is already filled with all kinds of attainability options between exotics and legendaries.

Arc why are you considering legendaries and exotics different tiers? Statwise they are identical. There’s no gulf, no separation, nothing that needs bridging.

The original plan was to have top tier, and top tier with very rare skins. The only gap they’re filling is one they’re creating just to fill. And they’re filling it with a core game mechanic that gw2 was built to avoid. It’s this kind of wishy-washy direction that anet is showing that has us worried.

You have no idea how many copies I’ve purchased for friends and family. $60 isn’t even close. Nowhere near.

You obviously didn’t read the post. It’s not about thoughts on ascended gear. That’s what you get for replying before reading though.

Deimos what you’re missing is where linsey says “This is the first level” “lots of room t grow” “as we add more pieces and more tiers” “rare and special infusions” “more to come”

So yeah.

It’s pretty much wholesale whoring the franchise out after only 3 months on the market and a gear treadmill without any interesting or redeeming mechanics at all.

OP is vocal minority.

Stick to what you said for years in blog posts, AMAs, manifesto videos, interviews, at the gamescoms.

Gear grind is lazy bad game design and it ruins fun.

Ryth.6518:

You don’t pay for the game. You bought it. If you don’t like the direction don’t play it.

This is not a gear grind like WoW had. This is not something where you have to grind grind grind the dungeon and hope your gear drops.

And all the people complaining, you GRINDED YOUR LEGENDARIES…so please stop whining about a gear grind when that is exactly what you did.

People sitting here thinking they wouldn’t add new gear and new stats..are you serious? So you get some stuff in month 1 and expect your character to stay the exact same over the life of the MMO?

You get the new upgrades by doing the new content.

Don’t know wtf people are complaining about. This isn’t a gear grind like WoW has.

We do pay. In gems.

It is.

Only a very few people grinded legendaries by now. Most people won’t bother, ever.

Yes, because that’s exactly what they said for years and years in plain english. Why would we expect them to be lying?

And only that. You have to farm 9 rooms over and over for gear tiers for now. Sounds like anti-fun.

About a poorly thought out gear grind being forced on us after years of explaining why gear grinds do nothing but ruin fun from the devs themselves. Thing is, I agree that it’s not like WoW’s because WoW’s gear grind is well thought out and implemented. Gear grinds themselves aren’t the problem…. but when you build a game to not have one, then shoehorn in a poorly laid out one 2 months after release to quiet a handful of whiny kids who grind all day every day then it becomes a problem.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

stuff

> building on Guild Wars 2 through a series of live releases. So it’s important for us to be able to add an expansion pack’s worth of progression and rewards to support that content.

New weapons. New races. Fix FOV. Fix wvw culling. Fix pvp defensive rewards. Fix downlevel loot scaling. Fix broken voice acting. Fix everything about necros. Fix half of the things about rangers. Balance the rest of classes. Release the ios/android apps. Make a proper LFG. Add skins. Add guesting. Remove free transfers. Add the airships. Add the guild halls. Add first person view. More PVP maps. More PVP modes. Add pvp spectator. Add more activities like keg brawl. Add duel arenas.

> Our goal is not to create a gear treadmill. Our goal is to ensure we have a proper progression for players from exotic up to legendary without a massive jump in reward between the two

Up to? Massive jump? I thought they were equal except for looks. There is no ‘up to’ or jump of any kind unless you’re creating a gear treadmill.

> Ascended and infusion rewards will be available in both PvE and WvW over time

But at first we need to grind 9 rooms over and over? Sounds pretty anti-manifesto. You guys did spam this rhetoric pretty ridiculously hard to drop it so shortly after release.

So… Jrunyon and Valtameri, are you two saying then that this is a good idea?

Like, of ALL the ideas in the entire world, this is a really… just good idea.

So what if it was kitten in every other game that tried it… right? Whiners got no sense! amirite?

BACK TO TOPIC PLEASE

Things we still haven’t gotten that were promoted up until the release of gw2.

Don’t need this merged with the “qq less/anet lies” reaction thread.

Valtameri.2075:

I think Anet should just stop bothering making any content to this game since it appears that no matter what they do, people are still crying their eyes out in here.

I think you’re dead wrong. People are pouring money into this game like crazy, at least people I talk to. They want content, not treadmills though. So anet should make content like crazy.

Other games do treadmills. And they do them better. No one who wants treadmills wants this, because none of those people still play.

So this isn’t a thread about the manifesto-ignoring kneejerk gear grind system that makes paragrind levels look like the pinnacle of game design and ingenuity. This thread is for all of the features we were supposed to be getting. All the things that “didn’t quite make release”.

Feel free to add your own people, I’m missing tons.

• tablet/phone app with live updates of guildies and chat.
• air ships that we could own
• guild halls
• downlevel loot scaling so “everyone doesn’t bunch up in one or two zones”
• more pvp maps (thanks for the… one?)
• more pvp modes
• spectator mode
• guesting
• city activities (each city was supposed to have some type of keg brawl thing to participate in)

With so much awesome stuff left to put finishing touches on… why has anet put dev time into a gear grind system to make players who’ve already left happy? When are we getting these things?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=35BPhT-KI1E#t=100s

kitten every single thing about this.

Why not fix the downleveling that you advertised so much?
Why not go back and rewatch all the videos that YOU made detailing why gear grind games suck anet?

Seriously, and for a gear grind game, this system isn’t even done well. No customization and RNG all your time away until you uck into an ascension upgrade that fits.

“LFG COF MAGG FULL ASC ONLY”

kitten off.

nice double post Sold. Try high fiving yourself next time for added street cred.

No one’s saying they want free epics and tons of loot. But what we all agree is that for beating the game we get nothing but a few silvers; since the likelihood of keeping anything from loot bags is very small by the time you get them.

Make it a title.

Make it a cosmetic skin.

Make it a minipet.

Make it anything that a player can take with them to have some personal pride in.

EDIT: though yeah, a single unique item was the best. And I always sat through the credits whenever I beat a campaign in gw1. Do you know how many times I sat through the credits on Zaishen quest days that made you beat imperial sanctum?!

Not having it in gw2 definitely gives me the feeling I haven’t completed anything yet.

Taz.2394:

Oh? So players don’t want lvl 30 sell-to-npc crappy items? Fine!
Let’s give them some lvl 80 sell-to-npc crappy items! That should work!

pretty much this.

Thanks for the update Jeffrey, but somehow, knowing that anet looked at this, said “hey let’s fix that so the players feel good about beating the personal story” and then made this the fix is somehow worse.

Garbage rewards, working exactly as intended…

My issue took 14 days. This is a long, but understandable amount of time.

What I cannot understand, is why there is 0 communication between opening a ticket and resolution.

Thank you for the response; please consider sending out a mass mailer to those with open tickets letting them know you are not ignoring them and their issue will receive attention; I think it would go a long way to appeasing those of us who need support.

13 days without a single response.

still screwed out of 2000 gems.

Posted here every day, ignored.

Posted to the reddit account, ignored.

Opened email tickets (and reopened), ignored.

Still not one word from arenanet.

Every chest was whites and blues beating zhaitan. Now this with the bags.

Can we get updated when this is fixed Jeffrey?

12 days without acknowledgement of getting my issue.

Not one update/reply/response.

Gems store ate 2000 gems and I can’t get a “thank for letting us know, we’re looking into it”

Rude. For a paying customer to wait 2 weeks without you even acknowledging that your system put them out money is nothing but rude.

Can’t fix it right away? No problem.

Ignore them for 12 days? It’s getting to be deplorable. I’m not the only one.

Tamer of beasts.2975:

[Incident : #120914-001120]

I already had the digital deluxe upgrade from when I had pre-purchased the game but I thought I could still buy it from the gem store and get the items to use again.. So I bought 2800 gems for 35 euro and spent 2000 on the upgrade to get the items.

I logged out and back in and didn’t receive anything.. I created a new char and didn’t receive any items at all.. It has been 2 days now and I have yet to receive anything.. My mail is empty so no problems with that end.

It was not stated anywhere that people who already had the upgrade could not purchase the one from the gem store so I thought it would still work for me so I could get the tome and the glory..

My question(s) would be: Will I receive any of item I am due or will I be refunded the 2000 gems to use on the gem store?

You should be. It’s an oversight that the button was enabled at all.

I have politely been asking through every available channel for a reply about exactly this for over 10 days now and have been completely IGNORED.

I’ve spent over $300 on gw2 for myself, friends, gems, and cupcakes that got delivered on launch day; and the flat refusal to even acknowledge that they got my email is really aggravating. No reply here. No email reply. No reply on reddit, the reddit account browsed and read my comments and chatted with someone else in the same thread and left me hanging, this was after nine days without a response.

Sixna.6420:

Hey there folks, I recently purchased myself 4000 gems. Spending it happily on some few things, I came across two bugs.
One froze when it said “Click to Confirm”, but my biggest concern is the second bug.
I purchased the Digital Deluxe Upgrade, I already had the deluxe edition previous. I believed that since it could still be purchased by a deluxe account that I could receive the items such as the pet, tome and chalice again. Once purchased and my gems gone, I relogged and found nothing added; I then got off the game completely and reopened it, still no items.
Is the Deluxe Upgrade buffed when purchased? Or was its presence in the gem store a bug when I already had the upgrade?

EXACTLY the same bug I had.

It should not have appeared in the store if it cannot be gotten, yet it was. I am out the 2000 gems for a DDE upgrade on an account that already had DDE (and my poor retail copy for my GF still doesn’t have the DDE upgrade)

I have emailed, left messages here, PM’ed their reddit account, reopened closed tickets 3 times. It feels like they are actively ignoring someone who has spent over $300 on this game buying it for friends and loved ones and gem store purchases.

120904-001722

Still missing 2000 worth of gems that went kaput.

I’ve bought 2 digital deluxes, 1 retail, $75 in gem sales, and cupcakes.

Can’t get a reply.
11 days now.

:(

:(

9 days! No reply. No one has offered any kind of response whatsoever.

After successfully buying gems, the gem store took them in return for nothing.

Please reply!!!!!!!! 120904-001722

Tons of us are affected.

I’m sure they’re sounding the air raid sirens trying to get things back up and running.

edit: annnnd it’s fixed!

8 days. No response. They tried to tell me they fixed my issue again and close my ticket with a script.

No one’s read my issue. I’m still out $25. Still waiting for support to actually read my problem.

120904-001722

120904-001722

7 days. No reply. Still missing $25 of gems that the gem shop screwed me out of.

120904-001722

6 days now without ANY response.

Not so much as a “we’re looking into it”. Just $25 of missing gems. This one isn’t hard. I know exactly what happened. It’s not a credit auth issue like you guys are fighting with. It’s that your gem shop has no check to make sure that the item can actually be gotten. It’s easy! Please refund asap. I actually wanted to spend those on something I can USE.