Guild Wars 2

Alright cool. From what I’ve read it seems they have some stuff coming up.

Amazing it’s taken this long to get a ladder system established.

I guess I’ll give it a few more weeks before checking things out and seeing if it’s worth any time investment.

Thanks for the response.

Have they said anything about Ascended Gear in sPvP or not?

I read the new Colin Johansen blog thing, and some of the phrases he used in relation to sPvP make me wonder.

What does everyone think? Any sources to confirm or deny? Too much to ask, I know, but any chance someone official could (or has) comment on this?

Let me be upfront:

Ascended Gear ended my love affair with this game.

sPvP was in a kittenty state when they released vertical progression, and it instantly drained any possibility of me continuing to enjoy WvW or what little PvE I played.

I’m not here to debate that though, they made their choice on that and so did I.

I am here to find out from the community if sPvP has gotten any better. This is the only aspect of GW2 that still holds a sliver of potential for me.

Please share your opinions with a player who has been gone for months, and doesn’t want to return until I am able to evaluate sPvP fairly (before sinking hours into the game that will only go the Ascended Gear route and become more WoW like PvP-wise).

A PTR in which all characters have the option to immediately be set to maximum level and maximum gear, may be a wise compromise.

I didn’t see anything about “developers changed their stated core philosophies to chase the almighty dollar” on there, so I guess it doesn’t cover everything.

OP – instead of tossing heals, toss boons.

Or just wait 3 months, they’ll probably add it.

I always respect those who respect others. I will do my best to answer you honestly and succinctly.

Hawkian.6580:

1. <snip>

I see many (not just this thread) whom claim that Infusion is purely horizontal progression. This is patently false.
No, +5 increase is not significant at this point. The impact of the increase is really irrelevant, though. The fact that there is a power curve is important to me. I do not enjoy chasing gear. I would have preferred to start at level 80 with a full set of exotics, but knowing that the curve would plateau eventually made it bearable.
There are many reasons that I don’t enjoy chasing gear, but I will instead defer to someone who I think said it very well.

“Because, like Guild Wars before it, GW2 doesn’t fall into the traps of traditional MMORPGs. It doesn’t suck your life away and force you onto a grinding treadmill; it doesn’t make you spend hours preparing to have fun rather than just having fun; and of course, it doesn’t have a monthly fee.”
- Mike O’Brien

You see… I want to play the game, at the highest levels, where competition can be found in PvE completion times, in WvW server ranks, and in PvP tournament ranking. I want to log on and play the game. I do not want to chase gear. I’ve done it for years and I refuse to do it again. I don’t want to hear about “+1 doesn’t matter”, because it does when my concern is a level playing field and differentials of only skill, strategy, experience, and other human input. Would you play competitive chess -1 pawn? I mean… it’s just 1 pawn.

(Yes, I know PvP is still a level playing field, and I would continue to play GW2 for that reason alone, except that I feel betrayed and I am not so addicted to games that I would endure such disrespect just to continue playing – subscription fee or not.)

Hawkian.6580:

2. <snip>

Not all of my characters have full Exotic gear. That didn’t matter because I was taking my time and enjoying myself. Again, I would have rather not had to grind levels and grind gear, but knowing there was a plateau made it bearable. Also… I bought the game with the understanding that I would have to work my way up to 80, and earn multiple sets of Exotic gear. I was also led to believe that since the plateau existed there was no rush to get there until and unless I was ready to do so.

I was building a guild of friends (RL – some from previous games) and family. We all have other priorities in life, and those of us who do game a lot are not interested in an ever-moving power curve. Such a thing causes diminishing returns on investment (of time and gem $) and causes massive segregation in the community.

Hawkian.6580:

3. <snip>

You have to get out of the mindset of “now”. MMO games are generally, and especially in my case, played for many years. The full set of Ascended gear will be 15-20% better than Exotic. This is set to occur by the end of 2013. This doesn’t include future infusions. This doesn’t include level cap raises, or future tiers of gear.

In 12 months time, all new content will be 20% more damage and 20% more health. That isn’t new or interesting to me, it’s just inflated.

So what if in that time I have been struggling to stay on the cutting edge, and I’ve only been able to do it with 1 character and 2 builds? Not only has my time invested been for naught (because the power curve doesn’t stop, it’s a curve), but now every other profession and build is further behind.

It never ends. I never get to stop chasing +1 this or that and just ENJOY the game.

Hawkian.6580:

Obviously… <snip>

So, if I ignore it for the forseeable future I am just delaying the inevitable. Eventually, I will need to do something about my gear. And I will be behind everyone else.

I have a lot of experience in MMOs. I’ve been down this road, and I’ve played this game. I gave up on MMOs until GW2, and then they broke their promise. People can argue that they didn’t actually promise it or whatever… but I was there. I was there before the beta, and I played in every BWE. I was on the forums then, discussing the direction of the game. I read the interviews and watched the videos. They knew what they were saying. Everyone knew what they were saying. The fact that they are trying to use this “well, technically” horse kitten is insulting to those of us who were there and heard it, and discussed it with them in their very own official forums!

Ahlen.7591:

Halandir.3609:

Azure.8670:

people quitting the game over ascended gear is AMAZING to me. Yea, they said they didnt want to make the game a grind like WoW, but when people complain that there isnt enough content in a game… thats “free”… and they try to do something about it people still complain. Its a lose lose for Anet. Stop complaining. I completely understand your exotic gear isnt top tier anymore but you know what? congrats, we have more content to work with. IF you truly love the game youll understand its required to make the game live, just stop being a baby about it

You know what? It requires a special mindset to consider a +5 to stats “content”!

Don’t worry though. That special mindset will eventually be the majority once the rest of us leave.
I really hope that Anet’s metrics look a lot different than what can be found on other gametracking sites.

One stupid mistake should not hurt a great game as much as this and I am one of those in a holding pattern waiting for Anet to fix that horrible mistake!

Honestly, it doesn’t matter if you leave. It doesn’t matter if I leave!

Hopefully, anet will realize their mistake and add more vertical progression.

The “Horizonal progression” crowd is most likely such a teeny tiny minority in the game, and they’re also the people who hate the gem shop. So why should anet care if they ALL quit?

That’s funny, because 2 weeks after this fiasco went live I purchased a subscription to EVE for $20, and then spent another $20 on a PLEX. I will continue to pay at least $15 every month, just for the privilege of playing.

And that was my second choice of game. I would rather be playing GW2, and I assure you I would spend at least $15 a month (much more if the past is any indicator) on the game even if I didn’t need anything.

I have a job, a family, and a gaming habit. I play alts (all 8 classes in GW2), and I bounce around a lot.

My concern is related to “what if I take a break and come back” except I am not taking a break from the game – but rather from 7 characters while I play 1.

And for each of them, I played multiple builds.

So yea.. Ascended Gear and the future Infusion grind (because no matter what lies you people spout, the fact is that Infusions have stats in addition to Agony resistance) is a dealbreaker.

I will never, ever be able to keep up with 2-3 builds for 8 classes. Even if I played 24/7, I would spend most of my time grinding gear… and very little time enjoying the game.

This is the EXACT problem ArenaNet promised me they were going to solve with GW2. Then, they told me I wasn’t dedicated enough, and that they would not design a game for me. Instead, they want to pursue the very type of players who hated their philosophy and cried until they got the illusionary progression of inflated stats.

Avatar.1923:

Sky.9347:

Avatar.1923:

life aint fair i guess.

but a game must be?

Generally, if it wants to retain customers.

And ArenaNet has only 1 important metric – concurrent users. This is the only figure that matters to them, and they are willing to do anything to increase this figure.

If being fair, or unfair, results in more concurrent users, then you can be sure that is the way they will go.

on that i agree.
the problem is, the majority will never be happy.
whatever anet does.
you know how it is;
“you can only please 10% of the people, 10% of the time”.

voila.

Oh come on man… this isn’t a whiny gamer problem, this is a developer royally kittened up the fix to a royal kitten up.

If I go and piss on your Christmas tree, can I then say – “oh geez, I bring you a gift and you’re still not happy… you ungrateful kitten”.

Avatar.1923:

anyway, i get the idea.
its like if you parents buy your bro a toy and none for you.

i remember i would have been so angry!
we had to get the exact same.

Well, since they like to use the words “effort” and “reward”…

I would say this is more like payday rolling around and you don’t get a check while your co-worker gets 2 checks and a huge Christmas bonus.

You didn’t “qualify”.

Avatar.1923:

life aint fair i guess.

but a game must be?

Generally, if it wants to retain customers.

And ArenaNet has only 1 important metric – concurrent users. This is the only figure that matters to them, and they are willing to do anything to increase this figure.

If being fair, or unfair, results in more concurrent users, then you can be sure that is the way they will go.

Avatar.1923:

is that “bag” that important ??

This is the funniest part of the whole debacle.

They are giving away random shots at precursors… which sell for hundreds of gold.

They randomly gave some players 0 gold, and others hundreds upon hundreds.

Before that event & FoTM, gold wasn’t so common. Now, random people have been seeded with enough gold to buy multiple commander tags, just because.

Auron.9812:

Sky.9347 you know nothing about me, and i won’t allow you to call me a liar.

I am in no way lucky in this entire story, and no one who is experiencing this bad joke is surely no enjoying the game.

Please refrain from comment any of my post, even indirectly.

I wasn’t talking to you, or anyone really.

And my entire post was facetious. I’m with you guys on this, ANet is disspointing.

They thought they had it right. They thought you were all liars.

Until, of course, screen shots proved them wrong once again. (like hacking, bots, bugs)

These guys are good at what they do.

ASB.4295:

Duncan.7294:

One thing I don’t get is why not introduce less controversial grinds like reputation, epic quest chains, player character titles, timed dungeon leaderboards, or server firsts before jumping to gear progression?

All of that is not perceived by your standard MMO player as progression. The complain of “there’s nothing to do” can only be resolved by necessary item progression, because those players need the feeling of necessity to stay motivated. Horizontal progression can’t give them this motivation.

I don’t know if I agree with you, but I do know that we will never truly know the answer to that.

During the mega-thread, many of the staunch supporters of “endgame content” ended up admitting that the stats on the gear really weren’t important to them.

I wish ANet would have had the courage to attempt what they claimed they were going to attempt – revolution of the MMORPG genre.

Instead, they became afraid while looking at flawed metrics, and made very bad decisions that can not be undone. They never even tried horizontal progression.

And nobody will ever try it again, after this. ANet has single-handedly pigeonholed the entire genre into making WoW clones forever.

People find anything to whine about.

Be happy ANet even lets you play this game.

You’re lucky they even responded to you.

ANet is obviously a perfect company who never screws anything up and treats their players as if they were real human beings, instead of game-addicted piggy banks.

If they say you didn’t meet the requirements, I think it’s quite obvious you are just lying and never even participated. After all they have mountains of data to justify everything they do or don’t do.

PS – I feel for you guys, kinda. ANet seems to be proving to the world that they are either wholly inept, or in extreme disharmony over recent top-level decisions.

Don’t worry, before the year is up they will add the gear to the cash shop. That way everyone has access to it without having to grind!

Jaggedrain.6923:

Vectrox.1573:

I have replied to my ticket which was ‘under investigation’ and got a response (unacceptable):

—

Hello,

Thank you for your patience while the ArenaNet Development team investigates this incident.

At this time, we have finished delivering the rewards for the Lost Shores event to all accounts that qualified. If you have not received the reward, please make sure that your in-game mail is not full. If you are able to receive mail but have still not received the reward, it is because our records indicate that you did not meet the requirements to receive these items.

Please let us know if you have any other questions.

—

Too bad, no reward, I am not qualified for the reward.

GG!

Just got the same reply. They appear to be batch-mailing their copy-paste answers now lol.

So then some people should expect multiple responses, and some should expect no response.

What we really need is DPS meters, that way the warrior can prove that he is the most valuable member of the team.

Parisalchuk.9230:

Mad Rasputin.7809:

I realize they have separate teams.. but maybe they need to reallocate some of their resources (team members) to get some of these bugs fixed. Just my opinion though.

Throwing more people at bugs does not fix them. Coming from a profesional software engineer, trust me, more people is not always better.

Maybe they should throw better people at them then.

The bugs are very rampant, and mostly unchecked since release. In fact, some things I believe they will never be able to fix, such as culling in WvW.

They haven’t fixed bugs from the release of the game.
They haven’t fixed bugs from the content update.
They have completely trashed the economy with RNG based free precursors.
They have further trashed it via mailing more precursors out.
They abandoned their principles and insulted their former playerbase with the first update.
They have bled people since then.
They haven’t even managed to tell us how they are going to fix the “mistake” of only putting Ascended gear in a dungeon.

And what’s worse – apparently they didn’t see all of this coming. We all saw these things happening, but they didn’t. Or, they did, and didn’t care. One way or the other.

So… sure, why not. Quality isn’t important for ANet, quantity is.

EndlessDreamer.6780:

They said there are no plans in the upcoming future for any more gear tiers. So if we’re looking at the future, it’ll be the late late future.

Also shots for every time someone uses the word gear treadmill without actually understanding the meaning behind it.

The irony is delicious.

What they actually said about this:

Ascended gear will be slowly rolled out through 2013.
Future vertical progression will be achieved through Infusions. (current quality is Fine, or blue)
Vertical progression is important, because without it the game becomes stagnant and not fun.
The power creep will remain on a “shallow curve”.
They may eventually implement a way for people to “catch up”, but they will not make design decisions based on people who take breaks from the game.

In short: this is not a one time correction, but instead the beginning of a very long (grindy), very shallow (only 10-20% on a piece vs. piece basis) stat inflation plan.

This information I am relaying to you was stated by Mike O’Brien in the most recent Reddit AMA.

SneakyErvin.3056:

@Sylosi.6503: You should really calm down and stop being condescending to people. No one wants to see you play the overly used “career card” on the forums. I’m just waitng for a few “son” comments and its all wrapped up in a tidy box.

It doesnt matter how you look at it, ascended gear is not a grind. Fractals are easy, fast and fun. Sure the RNG sucks a bit and the current costs of things are a bit too steep, but all those things are being looked into by Anet.

Its 3 pieces you need to obtain per character, one and a half hour tops per day. Thats not asking much. You also make a few gold per run if you dont have the worst possible luck. Atleast fractals are well balanced with pretty fun boss encounters, except for the boring jellyfish. This cant be said about the regular dungeons, which mostly feel like WP bumrush crap. Bosses are poorly made, too much RNG when it comes to some boss skills and their leathality (Alpha for example).

Once they soup up the regular dungeons things will be much better and more fun.

Ascended gear is just a tier that IMO should have been there at release. Its also intoduced slowly over time.

You also say you’ve played the game for about 30mins since nov 15th patch, which means you havent done a whole lot of fractals, if even any at all.

You really shouldnt have an opinion about something ingame until you actually try it properly. You cant give proper feedback on what isnt working, what is bad, imbalanced, boring and so on unless you try it and play. Anet would do best in not listening to people spewing forth random nonsense without any real insight in the matter.

1.5 hours and you’ve gotten 3 pieces of ascended, infused gear?

Wow. Let’s say you aren’t lying.

1.5 hours x 16 builds = 24 hours, per every… 3 months?

That seems “reasonable” right? I only have to spend 8 hours per month to stay on the power curve.

What happens if 1.5 hours for 3 pieces becomes 3 hours? 16 hours per month minimum
What if it becomes 6 hours (thats 2 hours per piece of maximum quality Ascended Gear + Infusion) – 32 hours per month BEFORE I get to start playing the game

mulch.2586:

Sylosi.6503:

Ahlen.7591:

If someone is beating you because of the couple of stat points ascended gear has, it’s not the gear.

Perhaps you should re-read the post, because you clearly didn’t comprehend it.

The statement rings true, regardless of the posts preceding it.

It’s readily apparent in spvp where we all have the same access to the exact same gear, yet ranked players annihilate newbies. And in pve, the differences are so small as to be imperceptible.

That’s true, and yet it doesn’t mitigate the problem at all. In fact, the issue is “the differences”. This difference was introduced 3 months into the game. Mike O’Brien has stated that it was stupid to design the game around people who “aren’t playing” (I paraphrased); which means “the difference” will grow, at a very small rate. The difference between a character right now vs. a character 12 months from now is not going to be “imperceptible”.

And, what Mike said is very true. There’s only one problem… he forgot why his loyal playerbase was loyal.

Most of us aren’t casual by any stretch of the imagination. Most of us also can not bear to be stuck on 1 character; we play alts. We also tend to play multiple builds within one profession, and maximize our potential with each. We do this because we enjoy diversity and gameplay.

We buy character slots, and gems, and cosmetic crap. We sometimes get really into it and spend a month grinding out a Legendary, just to make our character feel cooler in our own minds. We would never allow our game to die completely – see EVE Online, GW1, UO, or any number of games who can tout massive success without millions of subscribers; that means we would spend money like it was donations if we thought the company was in trouble. We do this stuff because the game is our playground.

So, when you talk about level caps and gear tiers, you remember something. We have at least 8 characters and probably 2 builds minimum for each. That grind you don’t mind takes us literally all of our available game time, since we enjoy so many aspects and perspectives on the game.

You don’t know why this matters so much to us? I don’t think you’re really trying.

(Yes, I projected my opinion. I did it knowingly to make a point, and I am 100% certain that I do represent the opinions of my family and friends. )

Hey guys, good job at completely ignoring all dissenting opinion and re-stating the same dismissive comment again!

Obviously, I was just looking for a way to quit the game. I mean, god forbid I not have the official forum’s approval to stop playing. I absolutely needed to invent a complaint so that I could feel justified in not playing.

I don’t know if us stat-cappers are the majority or minority, but I know we are a large enough subset of the population to change the game experience for everybody else.

I also know we are better potential customers than carrot-chasers. Before you get your panties in a wad, here’s why: we have no other options.

tkalamba.2541:

Sotaudi.1265:

GregT.4702:

If you’re on the forums right now, you haven’t quit the game over Ascended Gear.

And you’re very likely not going to. You’re either going to:

( a ) quit the game because actually you’ve finished all the content you want to and you’re bored with it;
( b ) quit the game because as a hardcore player you have a high game rotation and honestly you were going to move on to another game soon no matter what GW2 did;
( c ) not quit the game, and keep complaining for another three years; or
( d ) not quit the game, and enjoy it.

Your stereotyping of people is nonsense. I left both WoW and Rift after reaching the level cap and realizing that, unless I wanted to slave myself to a playstyle I did not enjoy, the best gear in the game would be unobtainable. So, contrary to your stereotyping:

1. I did not leave because I had completed all the content or was bored with the game. I had plenty I could still do, and I was, in fact, still enjoying both games.
2. I did not leave because the next latest and greatest game came out. I left both games because of this issue, not “for” another game. In fact, in the case of leaving WoW, I went back to EQ2, a game I had left for WoW only because a friend I played with wanted to check out WoW.
3. I did not stick around and complain about it.
4. I did not stick around for any reason and I have never gone back to either game.

I don’t necessarily agree with the OP’s position. I am not ready to leave GW2 yet because I am waiting to see how they deal with this gear. While the gear is currently available only through running dungeons (which are not my favorite content), they are done with single groups and not larage scale raiding. Since I have people I play with, I can tolerate that, and, to my knowledge, they have not n yet stated that they will only make this gear available through this format. I am concerned that they are making it so that you have to get on a dungeon treadmill (higher and higher fractal levels) to get the best gear, but I can bide my time and see how this plays out and impacts the game.

However, if it becomes clear that the only way to obtain the best gear in the game is to run gear-gated content repetatively and that the gear-gating makes it hard to get with friends who have either moved on to higher tiers or have fallen behind (making it even more mind-numbingly repetative), forcing me to have to rely on PuGs to get the gear, I want nothing to do with it. If they do not make the gear obtainable through other means (or worse, add a raiding requirement) and if I have to start facing opponents in WvW who have better gear than I can obtain through means I enjoy (which was the case in WoW PvP), I will have little reason to stay with this game.

People do leave games over issues like this. Quit trying to marginalize them just because it doesn’t bother you.

It’s already been said by Devs they fully intend Ascended gear to be available in all aspects of the game. The limited release of the gear to just one dungeon was an admitted mistake, and they fully intend to open up acquisition methods.

I would possibly even expect the current available pieces to be opened up to new content as early as the Wintersday patch via new crafting recipes and an increased loot table.

Here is another huge question.

Okay, first let me say that I am not okay with Ascended gear no matter what avenue I can get it in. That being said:

Do you have any idea how long it takes a dedicated WvW player to obtain a single WvW Exotic item? Here’s a hint – a long kittening time.

Based on the current difficulty of getting Ascended gear vs. previously getting Exotics (assuming both done via dungeon runs), I can not imagine how much of a grind Ascended gear will be for a WvW player to get.

And you know what… for anyone who buys the whole “we always planned on Ascended gear!” bit, can you please explain to me why structured PvP caps out at Exotic and has no Ascended gear?

Maybe you could instead explain why they chose to release rings instead of gear that required actual skins? Backpieces we obviously didn’t have many choices for, and I am sure they were working on those assets before hand. Rings were an easy out, since they have ZERO cosmetic value and are 100% stat-sticks.

Just thought I’d add some thoughts here.

First of all, I loved this game. I brought in other players, and family. I haven’t played at all since Nov. 15. My young son still plays, and I am glad he absorbs bandwidth and prevents other players from getting into WvW.

For those who truly don’t understand how some of us can have such a hard stance on this, please realize that vertical and horizontal progression are mutually exclusive. It’s one or the other, never both (for the same content).

Most people have not paid as close attention to his as I and others like me have. You guys are wrong on so many fronts. Here are a couple:

No more tiers: wrong, they will be using Infusion to continue the VP until expansion time. Confirmed on Reddit.

Gear is optional: wrong, when the desire is to get to max stats and then play the game on equal footing, no stat increase is optional

Doesn’t gate content: wrong, even though the current gating is very limited, it is impossible to continue adding new challenging content without balancing that content around the current max stats. Every single content patch must increase the gear-gate, or else the content would become trivial to anyone in max stat gear

ANet won’t add more: wrong, Mike O’Brien himself stated that VP is important, and will be a major part of the future of GW2. He even said that GW1 was stagnant and not fun.

ANet didn’t break their word: wrong, you can twist words all you want but I have been following these guys for a decade now. These are the guys who told us what was wrong with the MMO market, and how they were going to fix it.

They had to do this, no other choice: wrong, ANet never released a single horizontal progression content patch. Never, not once. The first content patch introduced VP. They never even tried, they just gave up and went the easy route (not my words, THEY called this the easy route)

GW2 doesn’t need you: time will tell, but I will say this… when the bugs are too much, and the content is too little, the MMO Locusts will move on to another game. They always do, it should be expected. GW2 would have been fine though because it had a strong and loyal community who were willing to pull out their pocketbooks and keep this game going. They’ve lost that, and all they have left are people who are basically indifferent or looking for the next-best-WoW.

Archmortal.1027:

Sky.9347:

WoW is far less of a gear grind than GW2 is, currently.

This is hilarious, thank you.

It’s true. I played WoW for many years off and on, and some of my closest RL friends still run a large raiding guild.

It’s a very rare piece of gear in WoW that requires anywhere even close to the time investment one piece of Ascended gear requires in GW2 right now.

Oh… but they said they wouldn’t make the requirements so bad in the future, maybe.

But they have too. They can’t release content as bug-free and quickly as Blizzard can. They have told those of us who were loyal to their vision to go kitten ourselves, and the only players they have left will eat through their content so fast they won’t be able to keep up without using the “grind” mechanic.

If the grind is reduced to a level where normal players will get them reasonably, then it won’t be long enough for these vertical progression players. It must be substantial, or it doesn’t serve any purpose whatsoever.

They have decided to go this vertical route because in their data it appears to be the best way to keep a lot of people playing for a long time.

This is going to fail. There are so many reasons why, but mark my words – this strategy will fail. It might seem like it works at first, for a while… but it won’t.

WoW’s grind has been carefully fine tuned within a game that was designed entirely for that purpose, from day 1 of the first alpha test, over the last 8 years.

GW2 is a latecomer to that market, and now that they have lost that unique competitive edge they had over all other AAA MMOs, what they have left is: a buggy, unbalanced game which is missing a multitude of “basic” features and that is 8 years behind the industry leader with no loyal fan base to rely on, and no real direction other than “MOAR CONCURRENT USARS!!”.

Mackdose.6504:

Logun.2349:

Bluebird.1890:

No. What we can blame people for is not having some patience after the apology is made to give them some time to try and fix the mistakes they obviously want to correct. We can also blame them for blowing the mistakes completely out of proportion to make it seem like the current status of the game is grind FOTM or you will be weak in comparison to someone who has grinded FOTM.

Neither of which is correct.

True perhaps, but if players didn’t ring the alarm bells now “loud and hard” the live team may have stayed on course to turn this into another endgame dungeon grind game, since they seemed to be oblivious to the impact this is having on the rest of the game.

Arena Net made a lot of statements on their game design philosophies over the years. I suggest watching a few of their developer and GDC Panels and you might get why people felt like this patch stepped on some of their core design values and why people were shocked to see this at all never mind 3 months after launch.

I did watch the GDC panels. Religiously. I still don’t feel betrayed, or understand why other people do.

I think the idea that Anet was working towards a gear grind on the caliber of WoW is intellectually dishonest. It’s not like ArenaNet suddenly has a different studio culture or long-term goals since launch. The idea that they were just bait and switching is a popular unfounded opinion that needs to die.

WoW is far less of a gear grind than GW2 is, currently.

http://www.reddit.com/user/Mike-OBrien-ArenaNet

Well, finally Mr. O’Brien summoned the courage to address this.
Thank you for the answer, and thank you for 3 months of a good game.

I can see now that you never intended for GW2 to be like GW1, and your words were simply lies and manipulations to get us to buy into your game during the beta.

I can also see now that you’re not any different than any other 2-bit kitten hole studio, and will only chase the “majority” of MMO players. GW2 only puts slight variations on MMO industry standards, it doesn’t revolutionize anything.

GW2 was supposed to be a MMO for people who don’t like MMOs. Now, it is supposed to be a MMO that can get the most people online at once.

I’ve been waiting for a somewhat direct answer to this situation, and this basically sums it up for me:

“So if you love MMORPGs, you should check out Guild Wars 2. But if you hate traditional MMORPGs, then you should really check out Guild Wars 2. Because, like Guild Wars before it, GW2 doesn’t fall into the traps of traditional MMORPGs. It doesn’t suck your life away and force you onto a grinding treadmill; it doesn’t make you spend hours preparing to have fun rather than just having fun; and of course, it doesn’t have a monthly fee.”
- Mike O’Brien, April 2010

“Because ArenaNet (sort of) held a hard line against all VP with GW1 — no VP ever, year after year — and it wasn’t that fun. It was stagnant.”
- Mike O’Brien, November 2012

I am very interested in how you can combine horizontal and vertical progression (progressing in two different directions?) for the same content… I believe it can not be done, and instead you can only create a very slow, very bloated vertical progression.

I’m out. I haven’t requested refunds, and so I will keep an eye on GW2 over the years just to see what happens. I can’t see me ever coming back to “catch up” with the treadmill.

Posted 11 hours ago:

AndrewMcLeod.3857:

Derk.3189:

Stormleaf.1769:

Erulogos.2591:

Quoting you both as you both make the same argument, essentially, and miss the same issue.

The issue is not with -current- content. No Ascended gear is required to finish every dungeon and kill every boss currently walking Tyria.

The issue is with -future- content. It was stated, when Ascended gear was announced, that Agony (and thus Agony resist) was something that would be involved in content going forward. It was not stated, one way or the other, if it would be required to even attempt future content, and it therefore becomes a simple question: grind Ascended and Agony resist now, so you are ready for the new content no matter what, or wait and see if it will be required, and hope that, if it is, enough other people waited that you can get groups to grind it out.

It is true that as of this moment in time, the grind heavy gear is not required to see any of the content in the game. But we don’t know when or if it will be, and Anet has not said one way or the other. A lot of folks saying it is required are basically taking the cautious path, assuming it will be and preparing for the worst.

The issue with this is that ArenaNet could have easily made this content require Agony resistance from the beginning as well, by making it some Mystic Forge thing and introducing Agony at fractal level 1. They didn’t; heck, they even made it so low levels can participate. Exotics aren’t even a requirement for the early difficulty levels. If they didn’t do it now, why do you think they’re magically going to start doing it in the future? None of the content in GW2 has been restricted like that. There is zero indication of ArenaNet ever restricting content like that, and it’s simply not helpful to base your argument on an assumption that they’ll magically start doing it.

AHHAHA You really think they did that for the players? Its just there to draw out the content, an additional carrot on another stick. Oh you want to see what agony is like? Hit me up 10 levels.

The Agony mechanic wasn’t introduced at the start of the dungeon so that everybody can experience the content. While one of the goals of the Fractals of the Mists dungeon was to provide some difficult content for players looking for a challenge, we also wanted the dungeon to be available for everybody to experience. While getting far into the dungeon requires agony resistance from ascended gear, the content was designed to provide challenging content, and to allow players to choose what difficulty they wanted to play at.

As for ascended gear, to reiterate what Chris has said (https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/info/news/A-message-from-our-Studio-Design-Director-Chris-Whiteside), it’s not intended as a treadmill, but rather as a tier of rewards that can help bridge the gap between Exotics (a few hours of effort to acquire a piece) and Legendaries (hundreds of hours of effort to acquire one). They’re currently only available in the Fractals of the Mist Dungeon, but we’re going to be adding new ways to acquire them, both inside of WvW as well as elsewhere in PvE.

orresho.3197:

Sky.9347:

Nachyochez.9758:

So I boycotted the event, and am glad to see this thread still going strong today! ANet kept saying ‘wait and see’… We waited, we saw, and we’re still angry!

And not only do they not care, they don’t care so hard they won’t even read our posts or acknowledge our anger.

Take a chillpill. For real? You really don’t think they care nor read the posts? I’m 100% sure ANet will post a big blogpost or something about this very soon. This complaints are huge and they can’t make sudden changes. They really have to rethink everything now and the risk of giving a fast answer is that they will just make a bigger mess and have to re-do the whole thing many times = confusion in the community. There is a very big crowd who’s left the game because the lack of progression, let’s face it. And ANet has to balance it all out to bring back that crowd into the game. And that’s what I thing was ANets intention. I don’t think ANet was expecting this kind of rage.
Give them some time before complaining like 8yo kids.

Yes, I really honestly think at this point they are just waiting for the thread to die a quiet death. Which, it will.

They will not address the new tier of gear. They might address the massive lag and such for the weekend event, and may even decide to run it one more time.

They will never again speak about the Ascended gear. No, seriously.

I don’t think you quite understand what ANet once was. They showed me the problem with MMOs. They gave speeches on the subject. They wrote long, enlightening pieces about MMO issues and how to solve them.

And now, they have been bought out at a corporate level and pushed to the backseat.

Nexon/NCSoft/ArenaNet will never acknowledge what they have done with this addition. They aren’t going to address us. They may or may not be reading these anymore, and as much as they might or might not want to respond they simply won’t.

I’ll give them all the time in the world, but it won’t make a bit of difference.

GW2 is what it is now, and there is no going back. They will never again recapture that rebel attitude, that groundbreaking manifesto, or the adoration of thousands of gamers who came here on the rare bright promise of a development team with experience and success.

Nobody else has the political capital to try to pull off a move like this. If anyone could do it, ANet could do it. If ANet can’t do it, nobody can.

ArenaNet is now just a shell company.

Speak for yourself OP!

Nachyochez.9758:

So I boycotted the event, and am glad to see this thread still going strong today! ANet kept saying ‘wait and see’… We waited, we saw, and we’re still angry!

And not only do they not care, they don’t care so hard they won’t even read our posts or acknowledge our anger.

E Tan.7385:

Derk.3189:

I’d encourage everyone to change their forum signatures to something that disapproves of Arenanet’s blatant lying for starters. Lets go towards boycotting the game from there.

Signature updated !.

good idea.

Count me in a boycott. Started a few days ago. Not going to refund, because I honestly believe this is the fault of the “Live” team.

kaffaljidhma.1496:

Rhyse.8176:

kaffaljidhma.1496:

I’d like to see that other interview if you know where to find it.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Thoughts-on-Ascended-Gear-Merged-threads/page/197#post742562

that’s broken since the thread doesn’t even have 197 pages yet but if it’s on the dev tracker I’ll try to find it.

It’s because of the massive amount of deletion and suspension. I’ve been temp. suspended 4 times over the last 4 days. Across multiple accounts, mind you.

Ostra.3927:

Venn.8931:

Glad I dropped hundreds of dollars in computer upgrades to run a game I’ll probably uninstall this weekend.

Good news is there are some decent games coming that can take advantage of those upgrades.

Want an mmo feel with fps action? Try PS2 or Firefall (scifi style)
Want an mmo with the potential to be what we wanted? Keep an eye on WoD
Want a good action game? AC3, LoL, Smite beta are all options

Want a good treadmill MMO? WoW, Rift, Tera, Aion, LoTRO are all BETTER in that regard then GW2.

Yeah. If I wanted too, I could fire up WoW right now, press two buttons and instantly be in a 5 man dungeon perfectly tuned for my current power level that dropped the exact type of loot I needed for the next tier.

OR, I could log into GW2 and do the same dungeon for the next 90 hours to buy 1 piece of the next tier.

We finally got our answer. We did it by being bystanders to the newest marketing outreach to unhappy vertical progression MMO players.

I understand what happened. The development team was what we bought, the “Live” team is who is now in charge.

Beta through release was a fantastic game with some flaws.
The first content update, managed by the Live team, used “industry standards” to “respond” to their most “dedicated players”.

I do want to know where these two gentlemen who pioneered horizontal progression in Guild Wars 1 have gone, and if there is any legal way for the original developers to speak up I would like to hear it.

It’ s been fun.

cherrie.8907:

Rhyse.8176:

cherrie.8907:

Every time any conversation about ANet clarity back in GW1 days ends with bringing up the Polar Bear.

Soooo… the worst example they can come up with from GW1 days is about a cosmetic mini-pet. And this is supposed to undermine the argument that Anet has always been trustworthy until now?

I totally get that. Really, I do.

I also fail to grasp that.

Even the other PR mess-up I’ve mentioned was more of ANets self-confidence than last of clarity, since they were so convinced their system can’t allow for duping, they didn’t believe it despite markets crashing, until they were actually informed how the exploit works.
At least they didn’t try to cover it up afterwards.

But as a human being, I can see how that might happen to an otherwise honest and trustworthy group of people.

This however is a voluntary decision to go against all stated design philosophy without so much as a warning issued UNTIL there was already 30 pages of public outcry. Outcry which occurred, I would like to add, only because some developer let some information get leaked to a 3rd party German interviewer.

Loosifah.4739:

What you guys fail to understand with the “We want GW1” argument is that this game is so clearly not GW1.

There’s no GvG
There’s no Guild bases(yet)
There’s no guild capes
There’s no ability to obtain new skills outside of what they give you from the start.
There’s no dual classing

There is dodging
There is a combo system
There is jumping
There are dynamic events
There is multi-guilding.

This is not a carbon copy of guild wars 1.

And it shouldn’t be.

But you know, the one thing that truly defined GW1 was the gear and level cap situation.
And, when GW2 was first announced WAY back… they told us this was the ideal they were building it around. They told us it would revolutionize the genre. A lot of things would change between GW1 and GW2, but not this core philosophy.

They even stated things during development to assure us of the philosophy they would use to design and develop the game.

We believed them, and we bought it.

This patch destroys all of that. This patch takes that core philosophy and throws it out the window, which is something they waxed poetic about not doing.

Flynch.6034:

Cactus Brawler.7415:

Flynch.6034:

Cactus Brawler.7415:

Flynch.6034:

stof.9341:

Flynch.6034:

Looks very interesting indeed. Google translate butchers it, but it looks like they know what they’re doing, or at least are very aware of the audience.

Disappointing. No info about a compensation for the players that lost time and money in obsolete gear. Confirmation that they will NOT say Ascended is the last because they might want to make another level later …

My German is non-existent so i’ll have to take your word on them denying Ascended is the last tier but I think them not saying something in a hastily prepared forum post is not indicative of them ignoring it.

They’ve had three days to respond, three days is hardly a hasty response is it?

Sure it is – bearing in mind it’s only in German. If it was a well-though out response, it would be multi-lingual and posted by a higher-up?

Then we are arguing semantics, though perhaps you should use the word ‘official ’or perhaps ’authorized’ rather than ‘hasty’, hasty would of been several hours after this thread started, ‘timely’ left the building yesterday. After forty eight hours things start to get into the ‘delayed’ territory.

lol ok semantics aside though, I just hope this new post doesn’t create another 8k flamewar!

It won’t. At this point I am simply waiting for somebody with some executive authority to put out a blog or something confirming this is what all these low-level team members are telling us it is.

I don’t even want to argue about it anymore. I know where I stand. I don’t make these decisions lightly, and once I decide I am out, I will be out forever.

tkalamba.2541:

Cactus Brawler.7415:

Mega Messiah.1734:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/info/news/A-message-from-our-Studio-Design-Director-Chris-Whiteside/first#post721451

THE SKY IS FALLING! Oh no wait.
It’s not.

Kinda odd that the guy doesn’t know that currently, Exotics and Legendarys have the same stats.

So they are moving to bridge a gap, that isn’t actually there?

Makes me wonder if the guy is actually working there, or if some new starter borrowed his log on details to post that.

its not a gap in stats, but the actual acquisition of the gear. You can easily get exotics rather quickly, some people have multiple sets. I got my full stuff in 3 days. Legendaries on the other hand have a massive amount of time comitment and work required. Ascended is designed to close the gap between the two.

This was just a problem with wording.

You can get some exotics quickly. The better skins take longer.

They could have taken a whole group of Legendary Precursors and other nice T3 cultural stuff and whatnot, and called it Ascended with a new text color.

I would have loved it.

But, they changed the stats by 8%.

Now, I and many others are done. (assuming, of course, that this is not corrected)

Wintyre Fraust.6534:

To register my displeasure, I won’t be logging in for the Lost Shores event. Anyone else?

I won’t log in for it, and then I will continue not logging in forever.

Loosifah.4739:

Urxx.6840:

Loosifah.4739:

Again semantics. They said legendary is on terms with exotic. They also said legendary will equal top in slot gear. They never said exotic would always be top in slot. Therefore legendary = whatever top in slot is. Therefore legendary = ascended now.

Is it really that hard to comprehend that you may have misinterpreted?

It’s all irrelevant. They stated clearly we wouldn’t have ascended, and therefore exotics would still be best-in slot, if they didnt make a mistake.

You don’t need to interpret MIke O’Briend or Colin Johanson. Lindsay Murdock said that very clearly: we introduced ascended because we weren’t able to design endgame properly.

Show me some concrete evidence that they stated clearly “We’re not going to add ascendant gear”

It’s obvious you don’t want to see our side of this. We clearly posted information that says nothing was going to be stronger than Exotic gear. Hell, THEY clearly posted information that said they’ve changed that plan because people complained about the grind to Legendary gear.

When these things were said, everybody knew exactly what they meant. Go read them, Loosifah.

Now you are trying to convince us we weren’t duped because what they said can now be interpreted in different ways?

This is like me telling my wife it is okay that I have a mistress because I am not “love, honor, and cherish” ing her. Obviously, I only promised to do those things for my wife so as long as I haven’t violated that specific articulation she has no right to be upset with me.

Mr. O’Brien and Mr. Johanson knew EXACTLY what they were saying. They have neither addressed Ascended gear, and I want to hear what they have to say.

Do you think they will say what you are saying in order to explain this decision?

Loosifah.4739:

Sky.9347:

stof.9341:

chronus.1326:

You get 5 relics per run.

Technically, one run is at the minimum 3 fractals so 3×5=15 relics. At which point you are back in a safe room. Then you can do 3 more fractals at the higher difficulty, then you get a boss.

What is a run in a endless dungeon really?

It is something I do not want to do.

It is something ANet told me they wouldn’t force me to do in order to be “just as powerful” as somebody else.

“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 O’Brien

- Except Ascended Gear

“Fun impacts loot collection. The rarest items in the game are not more powerful than other items, so you dont need them to be the best. The rarest items have unique looks to help your character feel that sense of accomplishment, but its not required to play the game. We dont need to make mandatory gear treadmills, we make all of it optional, so those who find it fun to chase this prestigious gear can do so, but those who dont are just as powerful and get to have fun too.”

Colin Johanson

- Unless it’s Ascended Gear

Again I’ll state this:

They said you would be able to get ascension gear in more ways than just dungeons.

Or are you just willfully ignorant of that fact?

I honestly don’t care HOW they can be gotten. Aside from the fact that dungeon crawlers get first shot at it… and then the rest of us get the sloppy seconds…

The fact is they promised, clearly, that this would not happen.

Now, they have introduced Ascended gear BECAUSE the “grind” between Exotic and Legendary was different. I don’t care if they add a million billion new rarities.

Why wasn’t this Ascended gear statistically equal to Exotic gear?

stof.9341:

chronus.1326:

You get 5 relics per run.

Technically, one run is at the minimum 3 fractals so 3×5=15 relics. At which point you are back in a safe room. Then you can do 3 more fractals at the higher difficulty, then you get a boss.

What is a run in a endless dungeon really?

It is something I do not want to do.

It is something ANet told me they wouldn’t force me to do in order to be “just as powerful” as somebody else.

“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 O’Brien

- Except Ascended Gear

“Fun impacts loot collection. The rarest items in the game are not more powerful than other items, so you dont need them to be the best. The rarest items have unique looks to help your character feel that sense of accomplishment, but its not required to play the game. We dont need to make mandatory gear treadmills, we make all of it optional, so those who find it fun to chase this prestigious gear can do so, but those who dont are just as powerful and get to have fun too.”

Colin Johanson

- Unless it’s Ascended Gear

I can’t find the link to the video, would appreciate if someone could.

" Colin announced the Legendary Weapons that exist. Eric followed up saying that Legendary weapons are like exotic weapons, but better looking. Where Exotic weapons may have the best stats, Legendary weapons offer beauty – but never better stats."

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Talk:News#Eric_Flannum_and_Colin_Johanson_give_some_insight_on_End-game_activities.

Loosifah.4739:

Crapgame.6519:

Note to thread.

Not all of us want to run dungeons or a instance thereof. Some of us just want to explore the world environment and do a little bit of PvP/WvWvW. Along the way we earn enough to buy our exotic armor set and accessories.

We continue to explore and earn to add the pattern and/or skin with associated dyes for looks. Knowing we are doing this and stats are staying equal regardless of exotic or tier level (say tier 3). We can now enter whatever content we want and not be any different than others in the group + or 1 stat distribution (healing, toughness, condition, etc).

Now there is a new choice to be made. While only 2 pieces or so, it has been stated that more are to come. Weapons are next on the list. 175 pages later people have voiced their concern, fear, hate, dislike, love, like, etc hoping to be heard. One thing for sure is that there “appears” to be more dislike than in favor of.

It doesn’t matter because it is going in tomorrow. Oddly enough I have personally never set foot into a instance/dungeon nor do I plan to. I’m still wondering the environment and smelling the flowers. A minority here, but I enjoy that more than fighting scripted beasts.

Please don’t break the environment and WvWvW aspect of the game.

You must have missed where they said that they will be available by other means as well. Such as crafting for example.

“in time”

How much time? Why delayed? How many more times? How long will the grind be?