Guild Wars 2

Keep PvP gear in SPvP, A-Net actually put some decent thought into the design of WvW, PvE and SPvP. They made a statement leveling the playing field in terms of SPvP for gear. WvW with the capability of PvE gear enabled allows actual WORLD participation.

Essentially, Fellyn is correct.

Hi, Jornosh here. Doubt anyone knows that Norn Banner Warrior from YB that’s here and there…meh, who cares. I walk yaks, I throw banners, and a tear is shed everytime blue or red take one of the camps I upgrade myself…

(Need a moment.)

Ok, sadness aside, just want to say that on this little discussion between “Gank Squads” versus “Map Objectives”, let me say that under MOST circumstances, making a small group to dedicate themselves to a point on the map, or a few points for killing enemies is perfectly acceptable. Two reasons for this: Supply Runners, and Killing Yaks. There is a third reason of “Stealthing towers/keeps” but at this tier that really doesn’t happen…I hope >.>

Mag thieves laying waste to Yaks, although not a ganking example, is the perfect example of how even a few persons attacking certain points could influence the map. When however, you spend too many resources ganking at skritt…like really in the corner…you might be wasting your time. For the most part though, gank squads from what I seen typically do not waste time attacking locations on the map of heavy travel for supply runs and other things.

Just my two pennies. Fight on servers!

At some point there will come a time where Low-Level Fractals Requests will be met with silence, over the fact that everyone will be busy trying for ascended level Fractals or even Fractals in the levels of 7-9.

The only reasonable solution I could consider would be to have the level cap of the group be an AVERAGE of the party’s current levels, and upon completion those who were far less than before go up to that difficulty and so forth.

- This reduces the number of times a party needs to level up their groupmates to actually start progressing.

- Might provide more flexibility when forming groups, although there will be cases where players will dictate ‘Fractals 11+ only!’. However, cutting the time of progression by a couple of runs through an averaging algorithm might give generous high-level players an incentive to help their low level friends out.

Of course, the biggest concerns would be:

- The Time Investment would be cut down immensely, a huge high-level party could make a level 1 into a level 9 in a few runs.

This is true

However, considering the fact that the players who get ‘leveled’ in this manner wouldn’t have a better deal with relevance to rewards like tokens or loot than those who worked with players closer to their level. And, considering the nature of the Fractals rising difficulty, a fresh 80 with no oranges might be in a bit of trouble trying to go for Ascended Gear. Inevitiably unless the player was quite skillful and his peers were generous enough, the said fresh 80 would still have to gear up from other areas first.

- Original Fractal Players feel left out considering they went through multiple levels to reach their current state.

These players (myself included) also have an immense amount of experience, loot and tokens from doing so. We are also far more prepared for going for the Ascended gear than those players who might not have done the time we have invested into Fractals.

- “But then what is the point? Have them going through the levels prepares them-”

The point is to bring the option to average the levels, and players who already are geared for Ascended are forced to go from level 1 to do so.

Right now, and I am really sorry for saying this, the Fractal leveling seems like a bit of a wait and a grind, both are things no player really likes. This solution helps with the wait by giving low-level players a chance to barter with their high-level comrades for a few runs, and in that regard halts the time-grind of doing said dungeons.

I think that is all what I wanted to say, thanks for reading this far

There is a lot of hate going on in this thread and although I agree largely with many of the points listed, like the manifesto being breached or content shifting towards grinding…why aren’t we offering a discussion on ‘how to make the new content work’ as opposed to ‘the new content should just be tossed’?

A lot of the complaints have a basis on the following premise, that Guild Wars 2 would allow multiple paths in its end-game content to reach the optimal. You could spend karma, run WvW, PvP, PvE all for the highest tier of gear. Heck, if you had enough money you could craft or buy your way to it!

The only, real issue that came with this patch isn’t really the fact that the Ascended gear was a step up in stats, if anything the stats are as A-Net said, a tier between Exotics and Legendaries. People might have assumed the stat changes weren’t going to be that different, well that was an understatement. No, the real issue people are having is the fact you can only get this kind of gear through dungeons. What A-Net should have done, their biggest mistake was not from day 1 of releasing new content was implement vendors or some mechanism that you could get Ascended gear through other means.

OR-

Better yet, make it similar to how you get Legendaries and force you to hit multiple levels of involvement, maybe on a slightly lesser scope. For example, you could use karma to buy items that would act as materials with T6 materials to craft said gear, OR spend WvW badges on items that merged with current exotics for an upgraded ascended item…and so on.

I feel A-Net wanted to fix the cry for end-game, but only resulted in gathering hate from every non-PvE dungeon player. Speaking from a player who likes the new dungeon I believe A-Net shouldn’t have neglected to allow players to explore different paths to this new tier…

Just some thoughts.

Of course I don’t expect this in any minor patch, but I do believe something like this is plausible for Arena.net to come out with.

- Concerning Claw, yes he is a few notches above the others in terms of mechanics, but I still advocate something like this in a major content patch or expansion.

- I won’t argue with the fact that people might sit out just to do the dungeon, but there is an incentive to complete the event as quickly as possible, and farmers won’t be able to access the limited dungeon and do all the paths in two hours. It won’t nearly be as farmable as the other dungeons currently in game.

- People would wait an hour before Shatterer for a 6-8 minute easy boss. I don’t expect people to pass up this world boss if the incentives of the chest are good enough, bear in mind the gear in the chest would have a much larger chance at exotics and nil chance at blues dropping.

- Yes, minion scaling is important and that would be addressed in tests internal and when released.

- BUGS, oh yes we all know, I acknowledge!

Stop.

I know what the critics are already about to say, and my response is just hear me out first.

The World Event for the Elder Dragon occurs in a specifically planned lair, effectively a mini-zone JUST for the encounter. Going to use Kralkatorrik (Elder Crystal Dragon, Branded one) as a prime example of how it would go down.

Every Half-Day a notice from the mini-zone sent to the adjourning zone(s) informs players that Kralkatorrik has made an appearance, and through whatever means to get there (Waypoint, walking, dancing), the heroes arrive in the zone. Now, naturally it would be chaos, Branded enemies everywhere, from normals to champions running about, Pre-Event quests involving killing foes or repairing broken siege machines. After all that is done, a pause….

Suddenly, dozens of normal and veteran Branded begin to come into different locations across the zone, and one of the three ‘inconspicuous’ mountains that encase this small zone move. Seems like Kralkatorrik was watching all this time (this is where you gasp) and IMMEDIATELY takes flight.

The Encounter Starts…

Of course, it would be not just if the Elder Dragon were to fall like his Lieutenants so he would not be targetable until shot out of the sky/his minions fall/some pre-existing condition occurs that requires heroes to run across the zone to fulfill. And this dragon isn’t pulling punches as he leaves a trail of crystal and smoke under his flight, while breathing huge flames that linger on the ground for minutes, and HURT (Close to One-Shot)! But even THEN that wouldn’t be enough, maybe toss in a few LEGENDARY mobs that guard the objectives required, or provide a buff to the Elder Dragon similar to Claw that vastly reduce damage until killed. Toss in a few phase changes with different abilities (Just an idea, have Kralkatorrik debuff players who are downed so that when they die, a veteran mob of their race spawns, or normal if that is too hard).

Finally you take out the last of the Elder Dragon’s health, of which he roars with agony as he retreats back over a mountain range crashing, revealing not only a chest with at least a guaranteed exotic for fighting about 40-60 minutes straight, not including pre-events but…

A Dungeon

That’s right, you ain’t done yet, you get some of your best buddies and group up for the LIMITED TIME DUNGEON (2 hours after death, let’s be a little fair) with its own tokens, very difficult bosses, and a final encounter to finish off the weakened Elder Dragon!

The Low-down (for my idea of a well-crafted World Encounter):

- Encounter happens every 12-15 hours (because of the duration, and the fact it is an Elder Dragon not simply one of the Lieutenants.)
- Fairly substantial pre-event for encounter when mini-zone where the fight is held notifies players in adjourning zone(s)
- Upon completion, players fight large amounts of normal, veteran and a champion or two mobs.
- Elder Dragon shows up in a bit of flair, you cannot easily hurt him unless you fulfill an objective or two. Maybe a Legendary Mob needs to die first or something, forcing heroes to work across the entire zone dodging the Elder Dragon’s attacks.
- Elder Dragon comes down or gets knocked down, you all fight together, using tools to make the boss take more damage to actually be killed!
- After Dragon is defeated, he retreats heavily injured, unveiling a really nice chest and a limited time dungeon (2 hours). There, a small group must force their way through a difficult dungeon to finish the dragon off!

…So?

Not bad eh?