Guild Wars 2

I was hoping the queen would introduce the “mysterious biological properties” we see on the back piece, but instead we have a standard looking Champion karka indiscernible from the others rampaging around the area. The mechanics are alright, but didn’t Researcher Levvi develop weapons already for getting through their shells? If there was going to be a required environmental weapon, I would have thought it would be the acid guns, not the karka’s own eggs. A multiple staged battle with changing tactics would have been preferre.

On the positive side it’s nice that it isn’t a stationary boss, which many have complained about and that it requires some coordination to summon, though not defeat.

I agree with your suggestion. A title or name should be given to you for getting the “legendary”¹ weapons when it was harder to do so. I just wonder if they’ll have to do this every time it gets easier. For example, in the future an expansion may be released that introduces tier 7 materials. Whatever drops tier 7 materials will probably drop them rarely, but drop T6 in abundance. The legendaries in existence now will become much easier to acquire in such a scenario. They could always bump up the recipes to T7, but I don’t want to be there for the outcry when someone who has collected 233 T6 materials is told, those are no longer good, get 250 T7 materials.

¹ – I scare quote legendary, because these weapons actually have no legends behind them, they just look pretty and require a lot of gold and effort. Looks and effort alone do not make a legend.

I’m much more in favor of the scavenger hunt type quest they have proposed in the past as it has the potential to establish lore and background for these “legendary” weapons that have no legends associated with them.

I agree. Ever since I read Arena Net’s philosophy on the holy trinity I was excited. I knew I wanted to be a controller as that was very close to the tank role I took on in other MMOs. I also loved that their ideas for traits and skills would allow me to switch my role on the fly, if needed, and that professions would be capable of performing any of the roles, just in different ways, as needed. Unfortunately, the delivered product did not meet all the hype in this circumstance. Traits are no longer switchable on the fly, making it hard to change from a build using a support weapon/utilities to one focuses on DPS weapons/abilities. As the video points out, boss encounters are also not built in challenging or interesting ways that make it a requirement for someone to take on a controlling role, or others support.

I feel that I’m at my best as a controller when it comes to normal mobs in dungeons, but on boss encounters I falter. For example, my guardian’s wards are fantastic for bunching up the spiders in Twilight Arbor for the AOE DPS classes to take down, but my wards rarely affect a boss with defiance (and when they do it is only a temporary hindrance). I might as well not bring them over something to boost my party’s DPS further.

Katreyn.4218:

I’m assuming you are talking about male light tier 3 SirMoogie, that does clip so very bad. Female tier 3 light isn’t near as bad. There is some minor clipping for the shoulders that you can barely see.

Medium tier 3 clips pretty bad too. At least on male.

Yep, my Sylvari is male. It’s just a bit disappointing as thematically the fervid censer fits the rest of my armor, but the clipping prevents me from wearing it. Not a huge problem. Just posting to report it, and maybe get it some attention.

I like the fervid censer as it fits with my Sylvari’s armor theme. Unfortunately it clips with the shoulders on the tier 3 light armor pretty badly. Is it like this with the other cultural armor sets?

Just writing to show my support for Cantha’s return, whether through a district in Divinity’s Reach or the continent.

Now that Flame & Frost has kicked off it is getting my interest from a lore perspective. I also liked the Lost Shores, but it needed more story and more attention post-event (which it looks like it will get with Flame and Frost’s refugees). My primary interest is experiencing a story and adventure, so these events interest me the most. From a fun perspective, Halloween was my favorite.

Lady Dragon Blade.5986:

When your going back over a map area to get your areas you missed because you were doing your storyline. Then for no reason they added a chest you see and just happen to try it. […]

It wasn’t for no reason. The reason is provided in the event information. The red circles you are seeing are from the surveillance towers the dredge have constructed:

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/the-game/releases/march-2013/

The chests and creatures inside are the result of a bug in Moto’s Super Adventure Box causing parts of it to leak out across Tyria. Since the Super Adventure Box is Asuran technology it employs magic, and sometimes magic does crazy stuff. This is perfectly consistent with the lore and world GW 2 has created. The animals look like old school video game characters because that is what the Super Adventure Box is built to display, and because Arena Net thought this would be a fun April Fools activity.

“I’m a princess and I can do what I want!”

There is no defeating them. They want your death and they will have it.

Lutheran.9687:

Part of the problem is that the Wintersday you know and love arrownin is a human holiday. We have 5 races now. How does a holiday about Grenth and Dwayna with their big fight between snowmen and grentches have do with Asura, Sylvari, Charr or Norn?

It doesn’t, but just like in real life we can have different cultures with different holidays. Just like in real life people from differing cultures can choose to honor their friend’s traditions and holidays. I see no reason why humans can’t get Wintersday largely to themselves, and in other months the other races get holidays crafted towards them. It would also give reason to actually visit the capital cities.

I’m looking forward to the new content, but I also wouldn’t mind holidays that are celebrated primarily by one of the five races.

Here are my suggestions:

• General Issues
  • Time to take a dungeon should exist between 15-45 minutes for a good run.
  • Most players skip mobs they can. If the mechanic of the dungeon isn’t a stealth game (like with the bees in TA) then you need to incentivize killing these mobs. Lower their health, increase their rewards, or remove them. Players skipping them indicate they are not fun or rewarding, and thus they are unnecessary.
  • Work on the AI. Many bosses have exploits that prevent them from attacking players (e.g., the centaur in CM being attacked from under the raft, and the Destroyer in SE being attacked from the rafters). This is not creative use of the environment as necessary for defeating the boss. I’m all for making bosses puzzles that need to be solved through the environment, which brings me to…
  • Better mechanics. Make more of the bosses puzzles to figure out.
  • Less reliance on bosses as culminating event of a dungeon. Dungeons don’t need to have bosses to be fun, they can be about obstacles and puzzles too.
  • More waypoints or checkpoints are desperately needed for some dungeons
  • Remove reliance on gear checks (e.g., Agony resistance). This is an uninspiring method of providing challenge. It would be different if you told a story why we needed to get empowered armors, and had a quest for getting a one time protection spell on our toons; but it’s not implemented that way, it’s implemented as a gear check.
  • Improve durability and AI of helpers, especially in story mode. Destiny’s edge is quite sad, and do not live up to their legend.

“We didn’t want the endgame to be something you could only experience after a hundred hours of gameplay or after you reached some arbitrary number. " ~Mike Zadorojny

• Rewards
  • Scale to expected length of the dungeon
  • Token exchange. I realize that this will cause players to go to the easiest dungeon, but your diminishing returns algorithms and general dungeon balancing should address any dungeon being perceived as “the easiest”.

• Grind (Any of these would work to address feelings of grind)
  • Lower token costs
  • Token exchange
  • More paths

TWMagimay.9057:

But that is about personal understanding of a word and what that person associates with said word and not so much about the actual definition.

Irrelevent. To foster communication we try to frame our language to our audience. MMO players use “grind” to mean a laborious, tedious activity. It is not an endearing term. That someone personally thinks “grind” means an activity full of fun, excitement, and whimsy is neither here nor there when speaking to an audience that thinks the opposite. At the very least they owe their audience a disclaimer that says they are using this word in a way the audience doesn’t typically hear it.

And here I thought that with all your “English Speaker” stuff you’d have opened a grammar book or a dictionary at some point in your life. Smb is short for somebody.

Thanks for taking the time to laboriously inform me. I’m sure it was enjoyable for you.

That’d be what we, non-English speakers, call a connotation, not definition.

No, I’m very much talking about the denotation of the term in MMORPG communities, not the extra baggage. I never accused you of not speaking English, so don’t start down that road.

Oh, so you are not the same person I quoted and directly asked for source… Then why did you assume that role by putting words in his/her mouth?

I never attributed to them my position. Your charge of false attribution is also unwarranted. Don’t blame me for your mistakes.

TWMagimay.9057

1. Nothing about enjoyment
2. Nothing about enjoyment

You will find few who consider “laborious” synonymous with “enjoyment”, and many who consider laborious activities unenjoyable (i.e., “tiresome”, “arduous”, “tedious” are synonyms, not “amusing” or “delightful”) . For example,

Speaker 1: I just spent my day laboriously washing dishes.
Speaker 2: That must have been enjoyable.

Most English speakers would take Speaker 2 to be sarcastic. You would be one of the rare English speakers that takes Speaker 2 seriously.

3. Smb’s personal definition,

What does “smb” mean?

not the official one. Since this is the only one that actually mentions lack of enjoyment as part of the meaning,

There are no “official” definitions. Words are not carved out in nature for us to discover, they are vehicles of communication developed, used, and sometimes codified by communities of social creatures and can vary substantially in their use between communities. In the Guild Wars 2 community, and probably among English speaking MMORPG communities as a whole, “grind” is mostly considered to be an unenjoyable, repetitive activity performed to accomplish a goal. Chris Whiteside’s definition closely approximates the common usage among MMORPG players.

you should’ve said “by Chris’s definition” instead of the misleading “by definition”.

I didn’t say “by definition”, your charge of misleading is unwarranted.

TWMagimay.9057:

Hydrophidian.4319:

Grind, by definition, lacks enjoyment.

Can you quote the source of that definition?

It’s a usage of the term among English speakers ¹, oft heard in common parlance in the phrase “the daily grind” ². It was also defined this way by Chris in his recent AMA ³.

¹ – Grind – Definition (v.tr. 6 and n. 4)
² – Daily Grind
³ – Reddit AMA – Grind Definition

Blackwolfe.5649:

An mmo is only as social as you, the player makes it. Well, not one person, but the entire community of a server.

True, but there are many tools an MMO designer can include that foster socializing. I can think of a few things that would help Guilds:

- Integrated message board
- Integrated events calendar
- Custom event generation with rewards
- Extended experience app

This extra credits video also had some novel ideas:

http://penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/transgaming

Flynch.6034:

Some players have been quoted as saying that their /timeplayed is 1000+ hours.

Simply put, there is no game out there that, after a few months, can be expected to keep players busy for that long without some degree of repetition. Player-made content is the only thing that can create this massive amount of content for a decent amount of time, and currently GW2 is not set up for this. Nor should it be.

For 500-1000 hours of entertainment, there really are no ground for the ‘lack of content’ argument. This is not an attack btw. I think the perception of time vs effort is skewed because of the compressed time people have been playing without reasonable time-outs.

Hope that makes sense!

It does make sense, but it misses the point. Some people are playing a lot, but still finding it difficult to obtain goals before tiring of the repetitive tasks (i.e., experiencing grind). You can say people have played for 1000 hours or 10000 hours and it is meaningless when not taking into account goal achievement and player interest. For example, let’s say a particular look is my current goal, and it happens to be the Ascalonian Catacombs set. I’ve played through multiple paths six times, but it’s starting to wear on me. It sure would be nice if there was more varied activities I could do to get that set, but there isn’t. I must continue to run this one dungeon despite it no longer being interesting, fun, or challenging.

I have played the game for 450+ hours, and found my time enjoyable. I agree there is a lot of content, but I also think there isn’t enough varied activities I can perform to achieve some of my goals. As much as I’d love obtaining The Juggernaut for looks, the current methods of obtaining legendaries are uninteresting. What would make them more interesting, for me, is adding narrative and exposition to their acquisition. To me, legendary weapons aren’t just about power, but also have legends about them. Make their acquisition a long quest (common usage of the term, not MMORPG exclamation variety), and not random luck + grinding if you want my interest in continuing on in Guild Wars. This formula could be applied to anything, not just legendaries, to keep my interest while accomplishing my goals.

Several others and I on Fort Aspenwood just spent an hour unsticking the southern invasion force (they get stuck around the fountain frequently) by chaining the risen giant to them. After getting them killed we foolishly decided to stick around for the risen giant, letting the pact forces die on the way to Balthazar. However, we felt relieved that the event was unstuck, at least. After trying the escort event again the southern force again locked up, this time near Rally Waypoint by shrine to Dwayna skillpoint.

There was an update for the new Cash Shop item that allows player to change their appearance.

Edit: I guess that was the update on the 27th. I don’t know then, it could have been emergency maintenance.

In WvW jumping puzzles I always tip my mesmers for having the patience to sit there offering players a shortcut.

I did my first explorable dungeon today, it was SE path 3 and the person leading it did all these exploits, like skipping mobs and fighting bosses on ledges. The destroyer of worlds was in particular exploitable. You could jump up to a ledge on his right and just shoot him with basic attack until he fell. Not very epic.

I like playing games for fun, not easy mechanics, so I thought I’d point this exploit out

gadenp.7586:

So I would like to ask:
1. Who here, still come to forums but play the game much less?
2. When did you start playing less?
3. Why / What caused the decline in time spent?

I don’t play too much less, but I have become demoralized. I was going to start going for some cool skins for my guardian, and then the patch hit. I made a decision not to hinder my journey to the cool skins I want in exchange for vertical progression gear. However, the player base has seemingly hindered the journey for me, thus the feeling of being demoralized. It’s hard to find groups for other dungeons than FotM now, and my favorite content (the open world meta-events) are hardly run by anyone. I really love fighting epic bosses and solving mini-dungeon puzzles along side my server mates, but now many players just hide away in instances all day while the world goes stale. I thought GW 2 was to be a game that had open world content as its focus, and not instanced content like every other MMO of the WoW variety. Now it seems their direction has shifted to incentivizing instanced dungeons, while the open world dies and their dynamic events go unused.

That was the post that was the impetus for this one. I guess I don’t read scavenger hunt as necessarily having a story associated with it. I hope it does and that Bolt/Juggernaut/etc. all have stories about them…Why they exist, who made them, etc..

With Arena Net acknowledging that they are working on the method of acquiring a Legendary I thought I’d discuss my thoughts on what legendaries should be. I am not an avid MMO player, I can probably count the MMOs I’ve played on one hand, and my most played MMORPGs are Guild Wars and WoW. Whether or not you think Guild Wars is an MMORPG is not the point of this thread. That thread is here: Guild Wars IS an MMO .

In WoW I never acquired what would be considered Legendary weapons, I remember aspiring to Quel’Serrar though. It was an impressive looking blade in itself, and had great stats (at the time) for a tank, but these are not what I consider important for a legendary weapon. I think legendary weapons need legends. What sets something like Quel’Serrar apart from Bolt is the method of acquisition and the story behind it. In WoW, after finding/buying a rare tome you get told a story by Lore Keeper Lydros about the history of the blade, how it was forged, why it was forged, and eventually how you would go about forging your own from the untreated blade you are gifted in exchange for the tome. This process involved going into one of the difficult raid encounters at the time, having Onyxia breathe on the blade to heat it, and after defeating her plunging the blade into her side to finish the process. To acquire Bolt you go through a lengthy grind and are given an impressive looking weapon with no background. Hardly a legend to speak of. The process was huge, but large tasks do not a legend make.

Not all weapons in WoW of similar caliber were acquired this way, but they did have quite a few, like Atiesh. When I see Guild Wars 2 legendaries I do not see a legendary weapon, but an impressive skin after and impressive amount of grind and luck. What I’d like to see is lore, exposition, and some player driven story to create and craft the blade (either through instances, in the world, or a combination of both). This is not to say they should remove the grinding aspects, but that it’d be nice if there was something a but more predictable and progressive about making the blade, such as a story told as you fashion different parts of the weapon. As it exists now, it’s basically just collecting mats, dumping them into the Mystic Forge and out pops a weapon.

Shadoekin.3928:

I’m not sure how dungeons are meant to be played. They were initially advertised as challenging encounters that players would earn tokens to get unique looking skins. These were to be the “legendaries” or the armor world. You’d know someone by looking at them that they did explorable mode of X dungeon and conquered it.

For resistance gear that becomes mandatory to go deeper into ONE particular dungeon and little use anywhere else, it makes no sense to make that a random drop. And the player can only try to get it ONCE a day, so you can go on for days—or heaven forbid weeks—not progressing anywhere.

It makes sense if you’re trying to slow down the fastest players from progressing their characters to the max, getting bored, and leaving the game. By making ascendant gear they have introduced something that requires heavy amounts of grinding for materials (for the backpiece) and time/luck (for the rings). Now they can of course go too far the other way and make it too long to progress one’s character, and thus players just will refuse and quit out of frustration. It’s a delicate balance one must play once they’ve decided to sustain their game through character progression.

Shadoekin.3928:

This is frustrating for them AND for me. How is this supposed to be fun? Making the rings and mist essences drop ONLY on RNG is stupid. Players are artificially held back from going further, or continue playing with their friends.

It is meant to be fun in the same sense that Diablo III is fun. Many people enjoy Diablo III, I am not one of them, and will continue to play it for the random gear drops just to progress to higher difficulty. They will run the same level of difficulty over and over again until they get the gear needed to go tot he next difficulty level. I don’t know why Arena Net thought a Diablo inspired dungeon crawl, which focuses on grinding for gear, would be a good fit for a game that was sold as lacking significant grind for best-in-slot gear; but that’s the question of the week isn’t it?

I like one-time events as they keep the world fresh, dynamic, and engaging. I disagree that they should reward players who can make it. Rewards, if any, should be cosmetic (like the witch hat).

The new survey asked what we thought about repeating the Ancient Karka event. I think the zone lacks a strong meta-event to make it exciting, like other zones in the game, and I wouldn’t mind something like it returning. Not necessarily this event, but something like it. What do you think?

Chuo.4238:

Wait wait wait:

So what you all are saying is if I want 12 Ascended pieces of gear with infusions, I need to come up with:

To craft 12 Ascended items:
3000 tier 6 fine crafting material
12 vials of condensed mist essence
600 globs of ectoplasm
288 skill points

To infuse 12 Ascended items:
3000 Passion Fruits
1200 Vicious Claws
12 Eldritch Scrolls = 600 skill points
240 Mystic Coins = 240 daily achievements

Seriously? I mean, seriously? To get better gear I need to do this?

I didn’t mind the Obsidian Armor grind in GW1 – the stats were IDENTICAL to the cheap stuff you could get from the merchant. But THIS? For gear with HIGHER STATS?

Who are you people who designed this, and what have you done with ArenaNet?

I get your point, and agree it’s a grind, but some pieces we know cannot be crafted in this manner. The rings are random drops for example. This may make it worse for you. I don’t know what the drop rate is as I have lost interest in the dungeon after seeing all the fractals. I don’t do well when it comes to having to perform the same activity over and over again.

Do not forget:

“When we looked at the concept of “endgame” for Guild Wars 2, we designed it the same way. We didn’t want the endgame to be something you could only experience after a hundred hours of gameplay or after you reached some arbitrary number. We wanted it to be something that players got to experience every step along the way, spread out across the entire world of Tyria, so we’ve introduced game elements that you’d normally associate with “endgame” at every level and every possible opportunity.”

~Mike Zadorojny The Endgame Reimagined

Mike Zadorojny the went on to say, “Agony resistance is some cool kitten though. We know you’ll love grinding for that.”

I’ve played through FotM a few times now, talked with Dessa and explored her dialogue options, and I’m still lost as to what/where/when most of these fractals are. The only one I can place is the Urban Battlegrounds Fractal, but it’s not because the fractal does a better job than the others in its exposition, its because I’m familiar with GW lore. The solid ocean fractal looks like the Jade Sea/Quarry, but I could not glean what is going on there and why.

All of the fractals could use some better exposition. As they stand now they seem to be just there as a infinite Diablo-esque dungeon crawl with little care for storytelling. To me this makes the endeavor feel flat, and with little purpose as there is no information the glean on how this affects the Guild Wars 2 universe.

Just to be clear I think the dungeon is fun the first few times, but I like to be told a story and have my character be part of it.

The lore in the FotM dungeon is non-existent, except for the Siege on Ascalon as Charr, which is also poorly explained by the fractal for anyone who doesn’t know the backstory. In my opinion it is the worst dungeon lore wise as it adds nothing to the story. Like D3 killing hordes of monsters endlessly comes first, while writing and story take a back seat. It’s fun to do a few times, but I don’t think it adds anything to the GW 2 universe… yet.

How do you get Tier 6 materials? I’ve been playing the game for 410 hours on my main and the most I have are 24 ancient bones. I feel overwhelmed by the new ascendant gear, I thought I was done with gear, but we know how that went. I’m looking for advice to make this easy, fun, and not a grind. I like doing varied activities; so having objectives across multiple zones, events, and game activities (WvW and crafting) would help. Thanks!

I think the social aspect is key and at the same time it’s something that seems to be given less thought than other aspects by developers. Guild Wars 2 has taken many (small) steps to bringing players together. It’s still in a way that makes it feel more like we are playing along side each other, than with, but it’s a start. Some things that foster playing together (along side one another):

• Everyone has access to supportive abilities and can resurrect defeated players
• Few skills are without side effects that benefit your allies
• No mob tagging
• No resource stealing
• Dynamic events (automatic shared questing)
• Large raid-like encounters “in the world” (well, instanced zones with overflow instances to control population)
• Dynamic level adjustment based on zone/activity
• Mini-dungeons
• Guild achievements/unlocks

What it does to interfere with social aspects. Note these are not necessarily bad, but I don’t think they should be the focus in my ideal MMORPG/Guild Wars 2:

• Personal story
• 5-man instanced dungeons
• Gated, gear checking content (recently added)

I think one of those needs more explanation. I am not a big fan of instanced content, as I think it goes against the MMO in MMORPG. I noticed when playing WoW that the open world only serves as leveling tool, and once one reached the “end game” a town (Ironforge or Stormwind) became the only MMO aspect where players would gather to form groups or show off their gear, only to go play a 5-40 (later 25) player game somewhere hidden from the rest of the player base. (Note: In GW, sometimes wrongly considered being outside the MMORPG genre, it is the case that towns/outposts act as social hubs for instanced content. Not so different than the “endgame” in the current batch of MMORPGs).

I much prefer my threats to the world to be visible to all players, and defeated by the player base coming together. I understand that instancing needs to be used to some degree due to technical hurdles, and that there just isn’t enough world out there for players to not bunch up in huge, unmanageable clusters in some cases (see recent karka invasion for huge, unmanageable clusters of players).

What it could improve on:

• Multi-objective “in the world” boss encounters that require coordination and communication between players (i.e., the difficulty of instanced raids/dungeons, but for everyone not just the organized guild of 10/15/25/40 players)
• Less zerging, more thinking in dynamic events. This goes hand in hand with the above. I’ve had much fun solving mini-dungeon puzzles with random groups that stumble upon them with me. Dynamic events that require players to use more of their environment and less of the skills they’ve been using can aid this.
• More mini-dungeons
• Outward scaling in dynamic events: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/events/We-need-Outward-Scaling-not-just-Upward/first

What it is missing:

• Guild halls
• Player customization in their home instance
• Horizontal progression other than armor sets and weapons (e.g., things that could be done with player housing/guild halls, skills, emotes, etc.)

mulch.2586:

I think it could have been really good done as a small-group instance.

The way it actually played out, just soo very badly revealed the weaknesses of the system (culling and very shallow repetitive combat system in big groups).

Long fights doesn’t mean fun fights, even if the game weren’t so crummy at it.

I don’t think the solution is to take a game that has started to embrace open world content and drive it into small group, instanced content with towns acting as hubs. Rather, they have to tweak the open world instancing they have. Technically speaking, the open world is an instanced. Zones have a capacity that once reached, new players entering the zone are pushed into an overfull zone that has a capacity. Once it’s capacity is reached a new zone instance is created and new players joining are funneled into there. So on, and so on.

This zone capacity may be good when players navigate around to things they find interesting, but it is clearly causing performance problems when they all funnel into one location. I can think of two approaches:

1) Adjust zone capacity during events like these.
2) Seamlessly transfer players/parties to overfull servers if too many gather in one location (they may not have the capability to do this easily, or without a load screen).

The karka are a new enemy type that have a shell you have to crack to expose their vulnerable bodies. once cracked they exhibit different attack styles. This is an interesting mechanic that becomes burdensome when fighting scaled karka, as they get two very large lifepools. I think a good adjustment would be to have stacks of karka armor (scaled by number of players surrounding the karka, maybe 5 per player with max of 150) and have weapons infused with the Hylek potion strip the stacks. One attack from an potion coated weapon removes one stack. Each potion coating provides a player with 15 stacks of anti-karka shell potion. Weapons can be recoated for free at nearby outposts, or at cost with potions sold at vendors (or crafted by players). Environmental potion gun weapons with more stacks can also be provided (as they are now, but don’t seem to be needed).

Take this idea as malleable and not a specific unchangeable one. If the numbers are too low/high adjust as you see fit when responding.

This zone ahs a special place in my GW 2 journey. It has a nice little mini-dungeon tucked away at the end of a dynamic event chain and it was my first. You always remember your firsts. The zone made me appreciate the fun of coming together with a group of strangers to solve a puzzle or overcome a challenge. It may not be my favorite zone, but I have returned to it to do that dungeon with friends/guildies who never have. Most zones have something for me that I find memorable.

Harbard.5738:

“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. As we release more new end game content in the future, you’ll see more Infusions and Ascended item types being added to the game. Eventually, you’ll be able to kit yourself out with a full set of Ascended gear and high end Infusions to help give you the edge in end game content.”

- Lindsey Murdock, Game Designer

3 Months Earlier

http://venturebeat.c...s:guildwars2-16

“Here’s what we believe: If someone wants to play for a thousand hours to get an item that is so rare that other players can’t realistically acquire it, that rare item should be differentiated by its visual appearance and rarity alone, not by being more powerful than everything else in the game. Otherwise, your MMO becomes all about grinding to get the best gear. We don’t make grindy games — we leave the grind to other MMOs.”

-Mike Obrien, President of Arenanet

People should start pasting this left and right

Arena Net quotes that show they have no consistency are a dime a dozen:

“When we looked at the concept of “endgame” for Guild Wars 2, we designed it the same way. We didn’t want the endgame to be something you could only experience after a hundred hours of gameplay or after you reached some arbitrary number [like Agony resistance]. We wanted it to be something that players got to experience every step along the way, spread out across the entire world of Tyria, so we’ve introduced game elements that you’d normally associate with “endgame” at every level and every possible opportunity.” (my emphasis)

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/the-endgame-reimagined/

These aren’t mutually exclusive. You can have world raid content with multiple objectives that a coordinated group of players need to achieve.

Logun.2349:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=0Zn81sY7pqI

Why is he not working at Arena Net, sounds like they need him.

Still stuck… Many people are awaiting a resolution to this event that is one time only. Can you confirm whether or not this will be a repeat event? It looks like it’ll be the main event for the island with an epic encounter, like the dragons. If so I will leave and come back another time, but if not I guess we’ll have to stick it out until someone fixes it on our overflow server.

Our demolition squad for The Lost Shores event on an Overflow server is stuck on the ramp down to the bottom of the Karka hive. They are just sitting there. I have no idea how to tell you which overflow it is.

Amirio.3802:

I get where you all are coming from regarding the issue with ascended gear causing vertical progression but think about it…if we had to jump from having exotics straight to legendary gear( if that ever comes out) that would cause a gap between players. This is the issue Anet is trying to avoid with ascended gear I personally dont have a problem with it so long as it doesnt give a huge advantage compared to what we currently are geared in now.

I’m not sure what you mean. Legendaries have the same stats as exotics as of this day. They are set to get an increase in damage/stats when ascendant weapons are created and introduced. There was no statistical gap between a player with a legendary weapon and a player with an exotic weapon (all other things being equal). The only difference was impressive visual distinction. So, following this formula, how would adding Legendary armor create a gap?

I can see why you’re confused as Arena Net said they were filling the gap between exotic and legendaries. What they seem to mean by this is that they want a shorter more obtainable goal that is longer than acquiring an exotic, but shorter than legendary. However, they seem to only think it becomes a goal if you bump the stats and attach resistance checking content, not the looks.

Legendary suggests a weapon that has a story, so I would hope for something more lore driven and less grind driven. Who made these weapons? Why? What were they used for that made them legendary? I very much welcome a quest-like journey to craft a legendary.

Please keep them. I like a world that has an involved storyline that brings about change. Just consider decreasing max zone population when you do them.

Hydrophidian.4319:

And by the way, having a level 80 and 100% map completion does not mean one has explored the whole of the world.

Your whole post was good, but this is worth emphasis. After hitting 80 and world completion I still have yet to do an explorable mode dungeon, and there’s several neat out of the way places that have events that are fun to follow. Just last week my guild devoted our weekly guild event to mini-dungeons. The mini-dungeons often get a pass by the players, but they are my favorite kind of dungeon. As a preference, I prefer more open world, sandbox content that the server does together as opposed to instancing. It’s fun to just stumble across other guild doing the same thing, coming together to fight Vexa or solve a dungeon’s puzzle. Or going back and helping players solve puzzles you know (I never give away a solution, just hint).

Edit: Hyperbole, “more than true” is a weird idiom.

They would like to appeal to everyone, unfortunately appealing to those that want vertical progression (who already have tons of MMOs to choose from) stifles the goals of those who want to remain secure in the GW method of handling things, which was to add non-comparables (e.g., new skills, new looks, new titles, new dances, new story) and not greater stats for character progression. If I take a break, as I have done with other MMOs like WoW, and come back a few months later or a year later will I be able to still play with friends, or will we be playing a huge (and overwhelming) game of catch up, as was the case when I quit WoW?

GADefence.5634:

Then the next dungeon comes out that needs infusion, did you get good infusion from fractals? No? Go do fractals until you have enough infusion since this dungeon is 40% harder. Done fractals and the new dungeon? New new dungeon. 80% harder then fractals, go do fractals to do the new dungeon to get enough infusion to do the new new dungeon.

My interpretation was that each new dungeon they add in future content updates would require different infusions. So, fractals would require agony resist infusion, the next one may require fire resist infusion, nature resist infusion, etc. The goal being that there is not a requirement to do prior dungeons. I’m still against gated content and think upping challenge by increasing mob stats that players have to overcome by upping some other stat (whether it is infusion level or vitality) is thoughtless design that gives the illusion of challenge, but I don’t think the gating will be as significant as other MMOs.

tkalamba.2541:

Kaiyanwan.8521:

tkalamba.2541:

kistell.5684:

" So say you’ve completed a few fractal runs and have access to scale 3 difficulty, your group disbands, and you head back into Lion’s Arch to form a new group. If one of the group members is currently only at scale 1 difficulty, that will be what the rest of the group is set at until you complete more fractals to advance the difficulty scale higher "

So how can any one say players will not be locked out, this is not a gateing mechanic.

Say i take a break for a few months i come back all is see is

LFM FOTM lvl 13 only!

Talk about dividing your community.

People will hit a difficulty wall in an infinitely scaling dungeon. You will need to go back to lower difficulty runs, which will mean there will be a demand for low difficulty people.

Who are you kitten. In a grind, players go the most efficient way. They will do lower level difficulties with higher gear level players to farm faster. If you think they will just take “lowbies” with them, you might be very young in matters of MMOs…

Do you not understand how this dungeon works?

The difficulty will increase constantly, and is determined by the LOWEST common level of difficulty. 4/5 guys can be at level 15 difficulty, but 1 at level 2, the dungeon will then be at level 2. This means you will NEED lower level people for efficiency. You can’t just toggle the difficulty, its based on the a common level achieved. If you entire group is at level 15, the difficulty will be 15, and if you can’t progress, you have no choice but to take lower level people.

Currently, you can adjust the level to what you want it to be, so long as you’ve unlocked that difficulty. At least that is the case according to this article:

http://www.guildwars2hub.com/guides/basics/complete-guide-fractals-mists

Sylv.5324:

The dungeon gear was mostly for its looks, not its stats, anyway, so I don’t see why they’d become obsolete.

I also believe that they were advertised as legendary-lite. That you’d know someone worked hard if they had a dungeon look. They should definitely have an ascendant upgrade available since they were meant to be, and are, an effort to get.