Guild Wars 2

Greenbuddhas.4508:

You do know you don’t HAVE to get the gear right?

I see several ways that they could become mandatory:
1 – If I want to do Fractal dungeons with better rewards, getting the powerful infusions is mandatory.
2 – If I want to compete in WvW, I’ll need to have my stats match the enemies. Meaning best in slot gear is mandatory.
3 – If PUGs ever get into the habbit of asking for people to ping their gear, they will only take the people with the Ascended gear. Thus a third possibility of mandatory Ascended gear
4 – People will complain if ANET makes new content that is too easy. Scale any new content to exotics once full sets of Ascended items are out and they will be too easy. Thus I expect ANET to scale new content for Ascended items, making them mandatory.

But that isn’t what I was complaining about. I was complaining that ANET said that rarer gear wouldn’t have better stats. With Ascended stats it does. Therefore I feel lied to.

But it doesn’t matter if the gear is mandatory or not. Only that all the evidence says that the manifesto was a lie.

there are current lvl 80 dungeons that you can easily complete with just a couple exotics. ya the gear makes those experiences easier, but will you be one of those people that complains about that too?

Getting a full set of exotics was a bit of a grind, but only because I made mistakes. For example, sinking a lot of coin into crafting so I couldn’t afford them.

I hate a gear grind just as much as the next guy, but all the gear i got just sort of falls into place, i didn’t have to go out of my way and spend hours and hours focusing on one piece of armor. even if i did, that’s my fault. not anets.

Tell me, how long do you expect it to take you to get a single Ascended item ?
What about a full set ?

Now, once you have provided the numbers answer the following question: Does that much grind fit with the promises ANET made in their manifesto ?

bottom line?

IT WOULDN’T BE CALLED ASCENDED GEAR IF IT WHERE EASY TO GET

Eh ?
I fail to see how that line makes any sense as a response to my complaints. Even if you think the complaints are about the grind, instead of being about ANET lying.

Tifa Lockheart Ex.9614:

now something that I calculated was going to take me about 6 months to get, has now been extended by 3x if not longer.

Did you remember to take into account the time you would spend grinding the Fractal Dungeon for Ascended gear ?

ANETs statements is that Ascended items will be rarer than exotics.

TheMagickDoll.7594:

Maybe take a hit from steam, choose to support one distro and grow from there. Ubuntu for example. I know there are linux users who frown on them lately, but they are very stable Distro with flavors for different desktop manager of their choice (aka, other unbuntu flavors).

If you try Steam on other distros, does it still work ?

Because officially supporting one distro, while making an effort to have it work on others (for example, avoid any distro-specific features when you can) is the only way I can see Linux support working.

Mayam.8976:

I guess I’m wondering what the people unable to attend these one-time events want? To have them just eliminated from here on out? If we can’t all attend none of us should?

That, and the resources that would have been used to create them instead be put towards something that will benefit everybody. For example, bug fixes.

Genesis.5169:

The general consensus is casual which holds no ground to the game because they will eventually get bored and leave the game like they do with everything.

You heard it hear first.

And here I thought that the entire business model was based around people leaving for a while, then coming back. As opposed to subscription models where, once you leave, having to start back up the subscription is a major barrier to you returning.

Doesn’t the gear treadmill defeat the point of the increased difficulty by reducing the difficulty again when you get the better gear ?

Probably not. Scaling your gear would make exotics and ascended gear pointless.

I understand how you feel. It’s why I try to avoid gear treadmills because I know that, if I find it enjoyable, I will get addicted to that game.

If so, can they be sold on the trading post ?

One question: When your friend went AFK, how long did it typically take for his auto attacking to stop ?

Eder.9120:

will they be able to salvage all these customer relationships even if they were to reverse the gear treadmill decision?

The probably could salvage most of the players. They only need to convince players to redownload, not start paying a monthly fee again.

Reporting doesn’t directly get someone banned. It only gets ANET to take a close look, then they decide if a ban is required.

Chances are he was so botlike that he triggered the automatic bot detection code. False positives are always going to be a problem.

Having the ascended items tradeable would reduce the grind quite a bit. Now you only need a crap load of gold, instead of needing to keep playing till you find an ascended item with stats you like.

Cyric.7485:

Valid point, I’ll make sure to bring that up at the next Dungeon Runners meeting and remind everyone to slow down because we’re leaving other players behind. I think we’ll realize that sometimes it just takes people half a year to get familiar with content and we really need to make an attempt to drag ourselves down to accommodate you.

What about players who don’t buy GW2 for 6 months ?

Minion of Vey.4398:

It resets every week

Where did you get that information from ?

Because I really want to believe it.

Probably because it’s normally a karma only item, and those are all bind on acquire. So a minor oversight.

Bind on acquire doesn’t make any sense for drops. Report this as a bug.

Maybe it would have been fun if it was just cosmetic upgrades, maybe not. I’m not in a good enough mood to tell.

But what I am certain of is that, if it wasn’t fun, GW2 still would be because I could play something that is fun.

Amulrei.4973:

Snoring Sleepwalker.9073:

Oh kitten off. I play games to enjoy myself when I am not working. I do not pay for a game just for more work.

You will have to forgive him. WoW-type games have conditioned an awful lot of people to view this as acceptable.

Hence the swearing.

This thread got its title hit by the filter.

Seems I tripped the kitten filter in my title. Another forum bug.

As someone from New Zealand, all the one time events are at a time I can’t make. Thus I feel treated like a second class citizen compared to other players. On it’s own I would have been content adding my voice to those complaining.

Then there is ANET’s manifesto:

“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

Fun impacts loot collection. The rarest items in the game are not more powerful than other items, so you don’t need them to be the best. The rarest items have unique looks to help your character feel that sense of accomplishment, but it’s not required to play the game. We don’t 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 don’t are just as powerful and get to have fun too.”

– Colin Johanson

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

-Mike O’Brien

This manifesto is a major reason why I decided to buy GW2. But every piece of evidence I’ve seen says Ascended gear goes against that manifesto. I want to be wrong on this. I want to see evidence showing that Ascended gear isn’t so bad. But every time new evidence comes out, it makes things look worse.

Frankly, I feel lied to. I know I’m not the only one.

Joey.3928:

They did not release all ascended items yet so it will not cost 700 skill points. If a new person comes to the game months down the road, they aren’t forced to get this gear. They have this option though if they want some kind of stat progression.

Wait until ANET adds new content. Then they have two choices:
– Scale the enemies numbers to match ascended gear, forcing you to acquire it.
– Scale the enemies numbers to match exotic gear. Watch people complain that the new content is ‘too easy’

I will continue to be on the same competitive level with others in WvW because the game allows me to be. Everyone else can continue to complain.

Not without ascended gear.

Wasselin.1235:

Even if they haven’t gone against their manifesto—- they haven’t fulfilled it either. Either it’s not possible, they just didn’t have the talent, they decided it wasn’t profitable, but the game described in the manifesto is not what we got. I’m not saying that GW2 isn’t fun, it’s just not the game that I thought it was going to be based on their description in the manifesto.

It might just be that the vision they had for the game didn’t quit translate into reality.

The grind for exotics was a bit annoying. Then again, I was after a non-craftable set of stats and I had sunk coin into leveling crafting when I should have been able to see that it would just lose me coin. Maybe that lived up to the manifesto, maybe it didn’t. At worst, it was an acceptable compromise.

But then they went and moved away from the manifesto by adding ascended items. Which means that they stopped trying.

ChaosMatrix.1276:

its because they do not wish to “Work” to get this new gear, they dont even know how you acquire it and are already complaining.

Oh kitten off. I play games to enjoy myself when I am not working. I do not pay for a game just for more work.

bri.2359:

@OP
You should post this in the Ranger forum for more detail relating to how the class functions.

I agree completely. We could go on about comparing vitality, toughness and healing power* all we like. But the truth is that GW2 doesn’t let you take the stat on its own, the comparison will always be the stat, plus the other stat it comes with, plus the traits it come with.
For gear, you have to consider the other stats on the same gear.

*Why do people always leave out healing when talking about survivability ?

Lets take GW1 PvE as an example. There taking +hp gear would let you take 1 or 2 more hits before dying than +armor gear, while +armor did nothing vs various attacks. So a lot of people were saying that +hp gear was better.
Thing is, without someone healing you, you weren’t going to live long either way. When you add healing into the equation, +armor reduces how often you need a heal, +hp just let you live for maybe a second longer if your healing was insufficient.

Runiir.6425:

If you played GW1 you should be USED to one time only events!

I don’t recall any ANET run one time events. Especially not ones hyped as much as these ones were.

Vlaneykins.2654:

It would be totally okay if the gear is PvE only, though. Then its fun to collect them as prestige items in WvW.

I wouldn’t, because it would mean that I’d need to carry multiple sets of gear. Which means I’d need more inventory space.

Think how many people would see that as a blatant cash grab.

Judas.5432:

1. So start your own group and advertise it as a lvl 1 group. There will be a ton of people running this thing for the first time all weekend.

What about 6 months from now when most of the people have higher ranks ?

ley.8973:

See, that’s basically whole event summed up here for you. You didn’t miss anything. It was actually even less fun than it might sound from this summary.

That’s the other problem. If we do disrupt our sleep/work to take part, it means the event had better be of a higher quality than what we have seen so far. When they don’t meet expectations, we are less likely to make the next one.

Now what do you think we will do when we hear about one that was worth attending ?

urzen.7096:

Noobles.4325:

and do you get this upset when you cn not attend aconcert in your city beause you have school or work? come on get over it

Notice how concerts are usually scheduled for local evenings?

That and if you don’t go, you usually don’t pay for a ticket. While these one time events missing out has no relationship to how much money you have paid to ANET.

Why should we be happy being treated as second class citizens when we paid the same amount as the privileged players ?

Joey.3928:

Thing is you are allowed to use consumables in WvW such as food and boosters. As well as racial elites (Snow Leopard is “op” for escaping or chasing down someone). I don’t see nearly the negative reaction regarding these as I see with this “new gear grind”.

Because broken skills can be fixed with rebalalancing or countered with a large enough zerg. Consumables have been there since launch, so it’s not surprising to see people use them.

Fixing the gear grind after implementation is much harder.

I NEVER reached best in slot gear for any other MMORPG I played. I play Guild Wars 2 anywhere from 5-20 hours a week. I think that shows how Guild Wars 2 is NOT a game based on gear grind.

There is no way to prove me otherwise. How else could a “casual” player have exotic gear minus accessories with only playing that amount of time since August 25th?

Ascended items change that. Lets look at the cost of one infusion shall we:

Well i just tested this recipe :

1 Eldritch Scroll

20 Mystic Coin

250 Karka Shells

100 Ancient Bones

http://i46.tinypic.com/21nffvn.jpg

Results :

Vital Infusion
Stats:
+5 Vitality
+5 Agony Resistance
“ACCOUNT BOUND”

http://i50.tinypic.com/fxro5.png

Or as someone else put it, that’s 700 skill points to infuse all your gear. Plus materials and ascended items.

Mandrax.7342:

Snoring Sleepwalker.9073:

xtorma.1283:

No

but what can you do.

Contact a lawyer and see if you can file a false advertising complaint.

And if you can, what does that solve?

Depends on how strong the consumer protection laws are wherever he files it. If it causes any money to be taken from ANET, they might rethink this whole thing, especially when other people hear of it and repeat the claim.

Malediktus.9250:

You can buy skillpoints with tokens from the new dungeon.

How many skill points for how much grinding of the dungeon ?

xtorma.1283:

No

but what can you do.

Contact a lawyer and see if you can file a false advertising complaint.

Joey.3928:

Uh I see no difference with those quotes and what the game is today. Especially the last point. Guild Wars 2 is still very much like Guild Wars as far as gear goes.

By current estimates it will cost 700 skill points to get a full set of infusions. Plus lots of very expensive material. Plus the acquisition of the Ascended gear, which will be rarer than exotics. I have yet to see a single exotic drop for me, and I’ve been here since release.

All the evidence points to no for all these questions.
All the people saying that it isn’t as bad as we think have no evidence to support their claims.

Actually, I’ve thought of a way to compensate people who own MF gear while removing it:
– For consumables, just kill the recipe to produce them. Players will still have the consumables, till they consume them.

For other items, ANET just needs to look at the price the MF items are going for on the TP. Then give the players that much gold. If it’s a dungeon item, give them the tokens back. Don’t remove the items, just kill the MF stat on them.
This infusion of coin will give a brief inflation burst. But the TP tax will counteract that over time as it returns prices to the equilibrium of the tax taking about as much each day as players earn.

For reference, I’m not someone who has an MF gear.

The Pointless.3869:

arcaneclarity.5283:

If Windows 8 fails, it will be Windows 7 that will benefit.

Assuming Microsoft doesn’t cut support for 7 as a last-ditch effort to force users into upgrading.

(Oh yeah, paranoia.) >_>

It’s not paranoia to expect MS to repeat what they did with Vista.

Wiser with Age.3714:

ArenaNet has only classifed the Ascended access in WvW and open world PvE as “eventually”. It’s really up to you to guess what that means.

Lets see. ANET promised no grinding for better stats. Then they announced Ascended items.

Why should we expect them to keep a second promise regarding Ascended items ?

ZudetGambeous.9573:

It really wouldn’t be that bad if it wasn’t for the scroll… but if you need a scroll for each one there are 14 slots on your character =>

14*50 = 700 SP’s to get full infused FINE gear

And they say that these will be more common than Legendary weapons.

saurus.8290:

the +5 vit that makes you 8-46% stronger

well at last some math experts says soo…….

The 8-46% calculation was for the base stats on the item. Before the infusion.

Munrock.3092:

The team no doubt put a lot of time and heart into these one-time events, and masses of players will miss the experience due to commitments big and small. How is that fair on them? They paid just as much as everyone else to play the game.

They only paid as much if they bought GW2 through the official website. Anywhere else and Australia and New Zealand players paid more, because of the price gouging that most video games get down here.
I’ll give ANET/NCSoft credit for not gouging on their store. However, it still means that the players who paid more are being treated worse.
We only want to be treated equally.

Gergolot.4217:

People seem to expect ArenaNet to email everyone asking for a preferred time.
Not to mention, if they did do that .. the times would be the same. As, as they have said countless times, this is the higher peak hours for players. (I.E when the MOST players are online). So people stating ‘the masses’ will miss out. Er, no.

The west coast isn’t the only place in the world.
I feel sorry for Anet. Trying to improve the game, and just get moaned at….

ANET chose to make the one time events despite knowing that some players would miss out. They chose to make them all the same time, so the same players keep missing out. So they chose to treat players differently based on which country they live in.

They deserve all the complaints they get here.

Neferteri.7342:

This may be a crazy suggestion, but for people who apparently have had their lives ruined because they may miss out on a one-time-only event… Why not just once stay up late or get up early? Even if napping before/after, stay for half an hour or an hour. This won’t apply to people at work at the time, but for those complaining that it might be 9pm or 6am or something outside of work hours. It’s just a game, and I’d like to think that most people can deal with missing something here or there, but if it’s absolutely imperative that you get in on this, wouldn’t one night of ruined sleep be okay? It’s not like this is going to happen often. Especially as Matthew mentioned that it may be worth considering having future events at different times for different time zones.

That would be acceptable if we weren’t expect to do it every single time a one time event shows up.

Unspecified.9142:

I’d think a good solution would be have the event at 2 separate times. One for the NA servers and one for the EU servers.

And the Oceanic players ?
The players that have the hardest time making these events.

Guild Wars 2 has lots of mechanics designed to encourage cooperation between players. ANET has gone to a lot of effort to try and make the selfish option and the option friendly players would prefer you take to be the same one. Compared to all that effort, Magic Find is a very selfish mechanic that harms nearby friendly players in exchange for personal reward.

When you equip it you are weakening yourself, thus making things harder for your teammates on a dungeon run. In exchange you, and only you, get greater rewards.

When players are taking part an open world dynamic event the players with MF are less useful than an equally skilled player without MF gear. So they contribute less to the event, while getting greater rewards from drops.

Such a selfish mechanic doesn’t fit with the philosophy of cooperation ANET has tried to build into both the mechanics and lore of GW2.

So something needs to change. I’ve seen two possibilities:
1 – Magic Find gear boosts the MF of all players in the same dungeon, and all players within a specific radius in open world content. Probably with some heavy diminishing returns for MF stacking in open world events. At the same time, the MF each player gets from their gear should be clearly visible to everyone else. That way other players can decide if they want to party with the high MF player or not.
2 – Get rid of MF. But then the players who currently own it would need some compensation, and I have no idea how to do that fairly.

toomuchtatose.6874:

For this case, they had to do the one-time event to capitalise on new zones.

The events should last longer though.

No they didn’t. From what I can gather, the one time events are something invading Lions Arch. There are a few other options:
– No invasion at all. We just have a new area to visit. Just like Sorrow’s Furnace in GW1.
– Multiple invasion attempts, just like how the Risen keep trying to retake the temples in Orr. The only difference is that the raids can’t do any permanent changes, just changes that can be fixed.
– Write something that can take place in an instance, like the storyline missions, dungeons or pretty much all of GW1.

MatthewMedina.5419:

that means it’s impossible for us to choose a time that offers us a chance for everyone to attend.

So why have one time events when you know that it’s impossible for everyone to attend ?

Why schedule them in such a fashion that the people who miss out on one are likely to keep missing out ?
Why give the impression that your American and European customers are more important than your Oceanic customers ?

Having said that, this decision is something that we realized would not make everyone happy.

I don’t recall anyone ever complaining that a game didn’t have one time events. Only that they missed out on events when the developers chose to include them.

So that leaves one obvious solution that should please everyone: Don’t have one time events in the first place.

Mostly an improvement. Only thing that isn’t is the red icon to say I’ve got stuff to pickup.

I’ve always got stuff to pickup. I don’t like seeing that ugly icon all the time.

If not, why not ?

Making them bind on pickup is just going to make the grind even worse as it will take much longer to find one with the stats you want. With them being tradeable, you just need coin, say from selling the ones you don’t like.

lynspottery.6529:

Oh…and also have a pan out or pan in so you can change the view distance. Not being able to pan in closer is a pain. Current setup really does not show all the details as a closer view would.

That would be a good idea. Though it’s more of a change to the preview window, while my suggestion is more focused on a better way to browse through preview codes. So you really should put your suggestion in its own thread.

GW2 won’t be the first. Eve Online used to have one. CCP stopped that client because there weren’t enough people using it. There were a lot of Linux users who stuck with running Eve through Wine, instead of running the official client.

It’s still a good idea. But remember that for it to be worthwhile for ANET there need to be enough people who would play GW2, but can’t currently get it running on Linux.

SanctumSyte.5019:

Toughness defends against direct damage. Vitality defends against condition damage.

But there is one very important difference:
– Toughness reduces incoming damage. Allowing you to outheal a higher amount of incoming DPS.
– Vitality only increases your health buffer. If incoming damage is greater than your ability to heal, vitality only increases how long you have to deal with the enemies before you die.

Vitality and toughness are useful for surviving spikes which would kill you quickly. But, in longer fights, any vitality beyond what you need to survive spikes is of very little use compared to toughness and healing power.

Make the quests hidden so players can work hard to actually learn even where to begin.

Wikis say that won’t be possible.

Each class would have several available. But a character could only ever have one.

No. One big thing about GW2 is how flexible each class can be. By locking out options, you reduce that flexibility.

These weapons would unlock a New Experience Bar that would allow the character to unlock new abilities, so that the player could customize the weapon.

The problem isn’t gear grinding. The problem is grinding for stats. So your suggestion isn’t a solution.

Falcon.8509:

I could have a low amount struggling to make it

Why do you say you “could” be someone struggling to make coin rather than someone who is struggling ?

If you’re struggling, go ask for help. Expecting ANET to just make things better when you are the one making mistakes seems rather lazy. Laziness is also no reason to ruin the entire economy.