Guild Wars 2

The reason they took out secondary professions (as well as reduced the number of skills) because of balance. Considering they had to do the balancing, I’m pretty sure that they’re the ones who know how hard it was.

Boosting professions with other professions skills isn’t the answer to balancing the classes and skills.

I’d be more in favour of being able to choose weapon skills from a pool, rather than adding a secondary profession.

OK, I’ll put it another way.

You don’t like the armour and skill animations, I do.

Who should they listen to, given that we’re both paying customers?

At the end of the day, it’s down to preference, and they’re not going to be able to please everyone.

Given the amount of work it’d take to re-animate the skills, remodel all of the armour ect, they’re better off just adding more armour to please a wider range of people.

You are aware that the people:

• developing content
• in charge of the cash shop
• working on bugs and issues

are not all the same people, right?

I’d say yes to this as long as:

• Soloing didn’t give you the 80 tokens for first completion of the day
• Rewards would be 1 / 5th of the total (2/5th for 2 party members ect)

In order to make it less rewarding to do it solo.

If you want some of these skills in GW2, you should at least edit them so they’d work in GW2 (proper terminology [Swiftness / Quickness / Might], reasonable cooldowns for certain traits [Vigorous Shouts / Sure-Footed / Physical Training], categorised [Shout / Banner / Physical] ect), otherwise you could have just done a list of the names, and not bothered with the descriptions.

Personally, I think “I Will Avenge You!” would make a good Elite Shout (85 sec cooldown when traited): lower cooldown than Battle Standard, but with the added clause of needing to kill something before the revive takes effect.

Exterminans.9723:

You are. You have two sets of skins, the gem shop skins (wooden weapons) and the events skins (toy weapons).

Which is what I said…

Exterminans.9723:

You also have the 3 gem shop chest minis and the 4 or 5 event minis. You can ONLY use the gem shop chest minis to create the Quaggan mini.

Apologies, I was mistaken on this. Thought minis were guaranteed and Quaggan was RNG.

Exterminans.9723:

You can’t get the gem shop skins from any gift or regular ingame reward. It’s different with the Quaggan, as it CAN be in the regular gifts, but with a chance of less than 1:10.000.

Which is what I said.

You can get skins either from the gem shop or in-game (albeit, my fault for not making it clear that I meant two different skin types).

TRON.1085:

TheDaiBish.9735:

The boxes are way better than the Halloween ones:

• Weapon skins can be got in-game, or bought for gems
• Quaggan mini can be made by combining the festive mini’s and Wads of Stuffing
• These also drop throughout the world (I got 1 in about 3 hours gameplay)
• The only things that are exclusive are the tonics and mortars.

Hardly ‘scummy’ if you can get the stuff in the chests in-game as well.

You are sadly mistaken. Also this time noone has any way of getting them on trading post, they restricted it.

I am?

Pretty sure the weapon skins you could get from a vendor for Ugly Socks ect. There’s also skins in the gem shop you can buy for 500 gems.

Quaggan mini can be created by combining 3 festive mini’s and 50 wads of stuffing in the MF

I had one drop while playing.

Please tell me where I’m mistaken? You were kind of vague.

The boxes are way better than the Halloween ones:

• Weapon skins can be got in-game, or bought for gems
• Quaggan mini can be made by combining the festive mini’s and Wads of Stuffing
• These also drop throughout the world (I got 1 in about 3 hours gameplay)
• The only things that are exclusive are the tonics and mortars.

Hardly ‘scummy’ if you can get the stuff in the chests in-game as well.

Or add a filter for armour type [Heavy, Medium, Light], since there are no Profession specific armour.

This post is missing an ‘in my opinion…’. Also, if you’re going to use a source to back up your claim, you need to reference it. Someone a bit less generous might imply you made it up to back your claim.

Armour and weapon skins will be added over time (how old is Lineage 2 now?), and, imo, the skill animations look good as they are.

PvE and PvP gear was seperate in GW1 as well, and only serves to create an even playing field where skill and builds matter.

And Legendaries have no different stats to Exotics at the moment (will be boosted to Ascended when the Ascended weapons come out), and are merely aesthetic, meaning you don’t need to get them.

The GW2 wiki could answer most of your questions. Your salvage stuff is in the Collectables tab in your bank, and is also accessible through crafting stations.

As for your characters, what level are you? A few tips though that work with any profession:

• Big attacks have quite the charge time, so in that case, just move out of the way, and save your dodges.

• Vitality / Toughness gear is good early on to increase survivability.

• If going ranged, make sure to use CC (Cripple, Immobilize, Chilled), and open with them.

• Keep on the move, since you can use the majority of skills on the move.

Fairy Nuff.

I got a Warrior, Ele, Mesmer, Thief and Ranger all at 80. I’d probably say for all of them, I mostly play as:

Warrior Hammer / Mace + Mace with Healing Shouts

Double Dagger Ele with Aura’s and Signets

Shortbow / Sword + Dagger Thief, traited for Venoms

Sword + Torch / Staff Mesmer (yet to do much with her though, just hit 80)

Sword + Axe / Greatsword Trapper Ranger (sometimes I’ll swap to Spirits though).

I find these fun in PvE and roaming in WvW. Havn’t done SPvP yet though.

Fairy Nuff.

I got a Warrior, Ele, Mesmer, Thief and Ranger all at 80. I’d probably say for all of them, I mostly play as:

Warrior Hammer / Mace + Mace with Healing Shouts

Double Dagger Ele with Aura’s and Signets

Shortbow / Sword + Dagger Thief, traited for Venoms

Sword + Torch / Staff Mesmer (yet to do much with her though, just hit 80)

Sword + Axe / Greatsword Trapper Ranger (sometimes I’ll swap to Spirits though).

I find these fun in PvE and roaming in WvW. Havn’t done SPvP yet though.

More info would be nice:

Playstyle (melee, range, mobile, ect)

Play mode (pve, pvp, wvw)

Preferences (magic, sword + board)

Tolmos.8395:

Considering how quickly anet pushes out new content vs how slowly they fix bugs, I would think they could spare to shuffle a few devs from the content group to the bug fix group…

The bugs are caused by the tools the programmers make for the content development team. This meance, chances are, they don’t have an underlying knowledge of how the software works to be able to fix it, so ‘shuffling them around’ would be a complete waste of time.

Vendors tend to stock everything, so there’d be no need to have profession-specific directions.

As for most armour:

• Cultural is marked on the city map.

• Crafted is, well, crafted.

• Order armour is in Order headquaters.

If you aren’t sure, just ask in-game. We don’t need NPC’s for every little thing

The first one is to do with the forming of Destiny’s Edge.

moirweyn.9872:

Rukia.4802:

They should have gone 100% WoW clone and let everyone be any roll tank/heal/dps…

If you want this game to be a clone of that other game, why don’t you just play that other game and not bother with anything else?

I’m pretty sure they were being sarcastic…

• They’ll be adding Breakthrough events to WvW for Wintersday. There’ll also be a big WvW update in Feb.

• Ascended gear will be released throughout next year, as opposed to all at once, so players get a chance to get it. Also, they’ll be implementing different ways to get Ascended gear outside of Fractals

• Dungeon encounters are being overhauled. They’ll also be adding more Fractals.

That’s the extent to what I know.

It’s been suggested quite a few times

The problem with a suggestion like this is that it only moves the problem around, rather than solve it. Sure, Queensdale will be bustling on the day it’s a ‘Hot Zone’, but what about the other low level areas? And what about after it becomes a ‘hot zone’?

I suggested something like

• Nic the Traveler in GW1, where you’d have to get a certain amount of items from each zone, and then hand them all in for a reward. Can be done once a day, Nic stays in the area for a week, travelling around each day, and then moves to a different zone (rather than outright telling, he gives a clue, in which you’d have to hunt for him then).

• Order Missions – Randomised missions where people would have to go help out in different areas, with tasks that tie in with the theme of the Order. Would be given out at random.

• Area Ranks – Each area would give a number of tasks (redo a number of Hearts, find a Bounty, redo a jumping puzzle, do a number of different events in the area) in exchange for rep. Increasing rep lowers Waypoint costs and merchant costs for that area. Can be done once a day.

Sparky Sights.9174:

Ouroboros.5076:

Sparky Sights.9174:

Tiger.7506:

Gw1 is not an MMORPG!

Was it multiplier? Yes.

Errr … No ?

So you weren’t able to team up with other players and do missions then, and you weren’t able to go with a guild or random team for PvP?

Hm, that’s strange, all the people I teamed up with must have been just me.

Multiplier – a number that multiplies a value by that amount i.e. 2 multiplied by 4 = 8

Multiplayer – a game where you can play with other people

As for the ‘massively’ part, that refers to being able to play with everyone in an open world. Since GW had party limits, it was more a Online Co-Op RPG.

OT:

I’d have loved to see Utopia, to be honest.

In GW2:

I’d have also loved them to not give us any skills, traits or trait-points, and we’d have to hunt the skills / traits / trait points ourselves. No levels, and a full XP bar would just give a skill point, and unlock the use of an additional trait unlock point (as in, in order to put trait points into a line, you’d have to unlock it first i.e you’ve unlocked 2 in Arms, so you can only put 2 points in it).

Profession specific armour.

Map uncovers gradually, and not in big chunks.

A title track for the Orders.

Nhemin.1520:

Seriously people, wake the #$*& up, this game needs an aggro/tank system of some kind cuz as it stands now combat is boring without someone being the big beefy tank and grappling with the big boss.

ANET says they want you to play w/e you want, but if you want to play a tank or healer YOU CAN’T. If you do, you’re 0 help to you’re team. The only option is to be a semi support that maintains constant buffs. Which btw, is extremely boring to play as you’re not popping your 10 min CD ultimate heal to save someone at the last second. Which is where the fun comes in for healers.

I disagree with the majority of your post, tbh:

1) It’s unreasonable to complain that ‘you can’t play as tank / healer’ when they’ve said from the very beginning that they wouldn’t be there.

2) I disagree that there are ‘no roles’. I’d say it gives the impression because they aren’t as clear-cut as they’d be with the Trinity.
For example, an ally goes down and you knock away the mob attacking them, and then immobilize them. Have you just controlled the enemy or supported your ally?

My Warrior is specced Hammer / Mace + Mace (or Mace + Shield), with Healing Shouts / Banners. Because of the CC the Hammer and Mace gives me, I can interrupt the big attacks, burn through Defiance quite quickly, as well as apply Weakness + Vulnerability pretty much constantly, increasing the survivability of the group. I don’t do that much damage, but at the same time, I’m not useless either.

3) Fights aren’t boring because of the lack of Trinity. Fights can be boring because of the lack of fight mechanics. Introduce more fight mechanics that rely on you needing to be aware of your team-mates, and you don’t need the Trinity. In fact, I’d say just having one person keeping the boss pinned down while someone keeps them up, and 3 others just DPSing is more boring. I much prefer the chaos that it is now.

To OP:

The problem is, introducing the Trinity like that would mean implementing mechanics to make use of the Trinity challenging, thus either:

• requiring the Trinity if you have any reasonable chance of completing the content.
• making content trivial if a group had a Trinity setup.

However, I’m pretty sure that your blocking implementation works now, in terms of ranged projectiles. If they tweaked blocking for melee range as well, I wouldn’t have a problem with that.

I disagree with making character be able to take a tonne of punishment, and the implementation of dedicated healers. We already got a variety of ways with each profession to add a bit of top-up healing, condition removal and regen, and I’d feel that dedicated healers would ruin the game, simply because people would get lazy if they had someone keeping them alive.

I’m more in favour of more interesting fight mechanics that require positional and team awareness, than something that is a requirement to do content.

Business 101

When sales slow down, you need to add stuff to sweeten the deal.

As it is, coming up to Xmas, it’s the perfect time to go adding deals like this, along with it being B2P, would make for a very tempting present for a gamer.

TwiceDead.1963:

People have more than one character, and can easily share gear between them. Get one character to 100% completion, use him/her as a moneymaker then the rest of the characters will be handheld through the rest of the game since level 1. That’s how.

Again i’ll ask are we doing this for the challenge or for the rewards? Turning this game to hard mode won’t necessarily make it any harder whatsoever since the AI in this game isn’t exactly smart, more often than not it’s easily countered, that’s part the reason the game is so kittening easy.

Isn’t that every game ever though? I mean, even now, you can provide armour for your lower level characters. Hard Mode wouldn’t change that.

As for the AI, yeah, it’s better than a lot of games (mobs actually try to avoid AoE, and will attack those that are the biggest threat), but encounter mechanics could be improved.

That being said, a toggle that adds harsher conditions on the player for increased rewards (constant health degen in combat, reduced Endurance regen, reduced buff duration, increased debuff duration harsher scaling, reduced armour, reduced damage, increased cooldowns [things that can’t be controlled by the player]) for increased rewards (exp, Karma, coin, constant MF)

Surely something like that would be reasonable?

This would be pretty cool.

The entire zone being covered in lava / water except the parts you jump across. No waypoints (except the entrances to the zone) either (because that’s cheating).

Taking this post as seriously as possible, it wouldn’t work because:

• Timezone differences – be kind of unfair for people outside of the US to not be able to do this.

• ANet go to work to, well, work.

Personally, there’s two fractal idea’s I’d love to see:

• A dark-room labrynth where players are split up, and need to find their way to the middle.

• A gigantic jumping puzzle where the only combat is at the top, and the boss has a number of abilities that can knock you off.

Raine Akrune.8416:

I saw these hard mode/challenge mode ideas kill instances in other MMOs so no thank you. We just need a few more dungeons with a little more difficulty. Here’s the thing, when you get good enough to steamroll hardmode then what do we suggest for next? Epic mode? There is a point of no vertical progression.

How do they kill instances? And how is having MORE people in the world a bad thing?

In GW, the Hard Mode was created by increasing mob level, giving them extra skills ect.

Maybe a toggle that makes your effective level lower, slightly increases cooldowns, reduced endurance rate, reduced armour, constant health degen in combat, +50% XP, Karma and coin ect.

That would make it exclusive to the player without affecting others.

At the moment, why not just get some less than level appropriate gear (say, 7 levels less), and then do stuff? That’s what I tend to do.

However, I agree that they need to make scaling harsher, and events in higher levels harder.

Chances are they haven’t introduced new skills (and by proxy, weapon types) because they’re still balancing the current ones.

However, most (if not all) of these things will be introduced with expansions. They did say they were introducing 2H axes at some point, for example.

While I agree with more game-modes, I disagree with upgrading stats.

For the stat increase to be ‘meaningful’ (i.e. a significant increase), it’d then turn the game into where people with more time would have an advantage.

Kaimick.5109:

I personally think you should just leave the gold buying part out, as I already proven, if someone really wants to spend 800 dollars legitimately on gold then so be it. If they want to go to gold buying sites to get gold they risk their account. From what I have seen Arena Net is pretty good about getting most of the people that do this.

You can’t leave out something that is a factor.

Having gold as the primary resource (in whatever way it is gained) takes away the epicness of creating it.

Kaimick.5109:

The time factor is part of the hard part to getting it, I mean obviously so many people don’t even want to attempt the Legendary weapons because it takes to long. That is by definition of difficulty of task hard. The measure of weather something is hard or easy is not just measured by action but rather length of time and procedures.

I am a chef by trade, Making bread is easy, making Sourdough bread is hard. Why? I make the bread the same way as I would make white bread. It is harder to make loafs of Sourdough because of the time it takes to produce the proper dough before baking it.

Bolded: Exactly. Both need to be there ,but as it is, there is no difficulty. Just time taken.

As someone who took 11 years to get his 2nd Dan, not only did I have to stick at it, but kata’s, techniques and everything else also became more difficult.

In games, ‘difficult’ is not always the same as ‘time-consuming’.

If you got an encounter that has quite unforgiving mechanics that can one-shot you, make you deal with various things at once but only takes 5 mins, and a component that you can buy for, say, 100,000 Karma, which is harder in terms of difficulty?

Kaimick.5109:

I mean if the grind is not hard it is just playing the game normally then my suggestion should be right up your alley.

But that’s just it. ‘Playing the game normally’ isn’t something that you should do to get a weapon that is famous in Legends. ‘Oh yes, I was just doing my usual thing and lo-and-behold, I’ve almost created a weapon of Legend’.

As I said in the previous post, I am not opposed to a certain amount of grind. I do not want stuff handed to me. I want to work towards things.

However, when the only process for a weapon that is supposed to have a story behind it is an insane grind that is generic for every weapon, it feels pretty sad. Legendaries just don’t give the ‘Wow, they had to do some pretty difficult stuff to get that weapon’ vibe.

I agree.

Change it to Quaggen! or Pony!

Variety is the spice of life and all.

You can’t say that they ’aren’t hard to put in a game’ when we have no idea how many people they have working on stuff in each dept.

Remember, this is the first year of the game, and GW1 had 11 different holiday events, which some (Canthan New Year, for example) they need to re-create for GW2.

However, chances are, after this they’ll work on putting the most common suggestions in (stuff like Dueling ect).

Just a theory, but still.

Kaimick.5109:

These are forms of Programming, Balancing, work, and time.

???I am rather confused that you had to quote me out to say the same thing and suggest what I said was wrong. I mean I could be wrong in assuming tat is what your intent was, and if I am I apologize but that is how I see it.

Na, just correcting on the Programming part (since the code wouldn’t need to be created).

As for the rest, I agree with you (this wouldn’t be something I’d want to see implemented until they’ve balanced our present skills), but I also agree with the OP that more skill customisation is needed for weapons.

1) A small amount of Mats? Really? The majority of mats needed are available on the TP. The only things you can’t get are:

• Karma OR Fractal Shard thingys (for Obsidian Shards)
• EXP (for Skill Points)
• Badges of Honour
• Dungeon Gift

Everything else can be bought with Gold. Now, yes, people could do it in accordance with T+C (grinding gold in game, Gems for gold ect), but you also get the people who don’t, which, in turn, cheapens the effort needed, no?

I’m not mad. I just feel that given that they are Legendary weapons, the fact that the majority of resource needed is Gold doesn’t feel all that Legendary.

2) Clues can be supplied in a variety of ways (I used cinematics as an example, whereas given resources needed to create them [voice actors ect], these probably aren’t the most viable method).

Mail, in-game objects, talking to NPC’s, loot drops from specific mobs (mostly the challenging encounters) ect.

And you mention about ‘making it easier’. Legendaries aren’t HARD to get, just TIME-CONSUMING. There’s a big difference in the context of game-play. I have to work for a Legendary? Nope. I just play the game as I normally play it and I make progress towards it.

3) You mention about forcing people to do stuff? Who’s forcing? Legendary weapons are optional.

4) Why should Legendary weapons have only one way? Because they’re LEGENDARY.

Legendary:

1. of or relating to legend
2. celebrated or described in a legend or legends
3. very famous or notorious

As it is, most weapons of Legend have a story behind them in how they were acquired. Naegling, for example, was gotten when Beowulf slew Grendel and it’s mother, while Claiomh Solais was said to have shined with a thousand suns, and had been gotten when the hero performed 3 tasks (can’t remember them off-hand). It was also one of the four treasures of Tuatha De Danann.

Tell me, what makes Twilight legendary? What place does it have in the world? Even low-level Karma items have some sort of description as to what they are.

As it stands, the Legendary weapons are just Exotics that require more mats. There’s nothing ‘Legendary’ about them, aside from the effects, maybe.

So yes, a story-driven process has it’s flaws. So does a grinding one in which the only barrier is time.

A mix of both would be best: needing a certain amount of grind to get the generic materials, while the actual creation process (as well as the parts that make it unique) is story-driven.

Kaimick.5109:

Now I don’t have a problem with it but you have to realize that is a lot of programming, Balancing, work, time to try and re work every skill related to a weapon and make it work.

They’ve said in an interview pre-release they got tools to easily create / edit skills. Not only that, but they also got the code for selecting and slotting skills (i.e. Utility).

The main issues with it would be:

• Balancing so all skills are viable
• Giving enough variety to the skills, but also ensuring skills keep in with the theme of the weapon.

These would be the two biggest challenges.

However, I am with the OP in that I’d like more skill customisation, whether it be being able to swap skills, or customise skills by adding small, additional effects.

Kaimick.5109:

Even your idea has the potential to be a grind,

Run here do this, now run there do this, ok now over here do this here is your reward

How is this any different from run here do this event now run over here do this event, okay here is your reward
Now run here get this area uncovered, and this area, and this area, here is your reward.

I think you’re confusing the term ‘grind’ for ‘playing the game’.

‘Grinding’ is when you HAVE to repeat content in order to access other content.

‘Playing the Game’ is doing tasks in order to earn something, but aren’t necessary.

For example, if you had to do every dungeon and EM path once to get a component, is that a ‘grind’ or ‘playing the game’?

Is gaining difficulty levels in Fractals a ‘grind’ or ‘playing the game’?

Personally I see it as ‘playing the game’.

Kaimick.5109:

1) You can not get your Legendary in a few weeks or a few days, let alone in 20 through TP you may be able to get 1 or 2 mats to your legendary that way but not the legendary it self. Just saying.

2) How do you make it a requirement to follow a story-line, sure the first few people may have to but after that it will be on the internet and people wont have to follow any story just skip skip skip complete. You can’t force people into a “Story driven” field when the internet can fix null that.

1) If you got spare RL cash, you can get a lot of components towards your Legendary weapon, making it far easier than if you just played the game. Then, all you need to do is get XP, Karma, BoH and a Dungeon Gift to get the other components.

2) Easy:

• Make it so that completing sections of the story don’t mark the next location on the map. By doing this, the person has to take note of the story for reasons in the second point.

• You have randomised components to the process of creating the Legendary i.e. you have to figure out what PoI is being described, is drawn, and by doing so, you find a chest that contains a minor component (such as Icy Runestones are) ect. Given that each race will have a different view on the importance of PoI [for example, Humans and Charr will have a different view on the importance of Pyre Fierceshot in their respective histories], then you can make an abundance of clues.

• You make the content challenging [Note: Challenging is a lot different from Time-Consuming, which is what the current Legendary weapons are]. Not all content needs to be so merciless, but having a few incredibly unforgiving encounters forces the player to improve, pay attention, try other approaches ect.

• You add more components to the creation process. I’m not talking about ingredients, but content you need to do. More little things alleviates the feeling of grind, and as long as them little things are fun / challenging / both of the above, then I doubt people would complain as much about how long it takes (but I digress, people will always complain about something, whether it be content being too hard, taking too long or whatever.)

Totally agree with this.

While some grinding might be necessary (to prolong the process / provide the materials ect), the process of a Legendary should primarily be based of your Achievements in-game and an adventure.

Hell, make it so when you have a Legendary Questline you can’t use Waypoints, but you still got to gather certain things throughout the world anyway >:D

Dude, I think you’re living in a dreamworld:

1) “Good” is subjective, meaning while you may think some things aren’t good, other people might think they are.

2) Not the game they advertised? How so?

3) You don’t have the ‘right’ to demand anything. Doesn’t matter what they put in the small print? I be thinking you need to brush up on your law. You accepted them T&C, meaning you wouldn’t have a legal leg to stand on.

4) Wintersday was in GW1. They didn’t put it in especially for you. You aren’t a special snowflake.

5) You really can’t kill the big dragons alone. Haven’t a clue where you got that idea from.

6) You should be polite because they haven’t given you a reason NOT to be polite. Coming here boohooing and making demands doesn’t get you heard more than the rest.

7) Everyone thinks their ideas are good and would improve the game. Doesn’t mean they would though.

OT:

1) By ‘raids’, I’m going to assume you mean the big outdoor events. Yes, they could do with a bit of work to make them more difficult. However, if you mean ‘dungeons’, then they’re working on revamping the encounters.

2) Disagree on WvW names. You can say all you like that people who’d abuse this would be wrong, but it doesn’t change the fact that there are people who would anyway.

3) They’re working on more guild features. And as most have said, the Guild Wars was an event in the lore.

4) Disagree on making forts invulnerable. It keeps the team who just captured it on its toes. Making it invulnerable for any length of time would just encourage zerging (since the place wouldn’t need to be defended).

They’re working on Guesting, where you can play the PvE part on a server you have a friend on. Can’t do WvW though for obvious reasons.

Content designers are also not the same people who fix the bugs, meaning waiting for the bugs to be fixed would also result in the content development team just doing nothing.

Bugs in things such as events are caused by problems in the tools created for the content development team by programmers, meaning it’d be them programmers that will be able to resolve the problem, and not the content team itself.

The people who create the new content aren’t the same people who fix bugs in the existing content, so it’d be unreasonable to expect them to stop producing content while the others played catch-up.

On Karma:

They’ve also introduced Karma for Dailies and Dungeons now. If people choose to do Events, that’s up to them surely?

On Dungeon Gear:

Doing each of the 3 paths once a day will net you your entire armour set as well as 2 weapons in about 11 -12 days (180 tokens a day). I’d hardly call that ‘grinding’.

On Storyline:

I personally never had that problem, but then again, I wasn’t playing with the storyline specifically. I suppose if you only want to do the storyline you’d consider it a ‘grind’.

I think people are confusing the terms ‘grind’ (having to repeat content over and over in order to access other content) with ‘playing the game’.

xiede.8543:

I won’t quote and run through the whole thing, but you had good examples of both vertical and horizontal progression, as well as meaningful and unmeaningful progression.

You can put something in the game that players can progress then. Players don’t want just blind progression. I think most people want meaningful progression (unfortunately, what is meaningful changes greatly between one player and the next).

And putting meaningful progression into the game… is the hard thing… because it is so individual.

So, as a developer, it appears you try to cast your net out as wide as possible to catch as many of the average players as you can… trying to capture the extremes to each side I think is the surefire way to alientate a lot more.

The thing is with a lot of forms of the ‘meaningless progression’ (i.e. nothing that makes you stronger / more efficient i.e. ‘fluff’, I’m going to assume you’re referring to. Correct me if I’m wrong though), as long as you put a solid system in place for it, it’s something you can easily add to over time.

The Fractals are a good example of this: random dungeons in which more can be added to when and where.

Housing (going by my assumption you’re referring to as meaningless) is another one: we already have a Home Instance. With a bit more work, adding:

- Somewhere that you can display accolades (i.e. HoM)
- Redecorate to your liking
- Expand upon (i.e. Asura could get new lab equipment, while Norn could build their own Brewery)

Is something that can be done over time, when they have time, and therefore doesn’t alienate someone.

TL;DR – Well thought-out and constructed systems make expanding on various forms of progression easier, therefore increasing the ‘life expectancy’ of the game since they entertain between content patches as well.

As for your comment on ‘blind progression’, I’m not sure I follow. Are you referring to progression you HAVE to do (‘blindly following’, to use that phrase) in order to access content? Or is it progression that has no tangible evidence (for lack of a better word)?

GW also had specific armour art for each Profession, and I approve of this suggestion.

I’d love to hear your reasoning that SPvP is a ‘mini-game’. :P

I think they said we’ll be seeing Bar Brawls and Shooting in the coming months. As for Polymock? Couldn’t tell you sorry.

Looria.8019:

Please enlighten me. What actually makes legendary legendary? The staff looks ugly and reminds me of pony rainbow stuff. Why on earth would I want my character to have that?

1. Looks are subjective. What’s ugly to you might be good looking to someone else.

2. How does a rainbow staff named Bifrost remind you of ponies? Either you have ponies on the brain, or you’re not up on your Norse mythology.

I think the problem is because of all of the recent MMO’s with gear treadmill, everyone associates ‘progression’ with ‘getting better stats’. However, this shouldn’t be the case, since everyone’s aims are different, and don’t just amount to ‘becoming stronger’:

• As Sollith said, developers forgot the role-playing aspect. If your character works hard to gain ranks in an organisation, then technically your character is progressing.

• If you have a particular skill, and you work on improving that skill to give it additional effects, that’s also a form of progression (since the skill would be made stronger).

• With these new Fractals, gaining access to higher levels of difficulty is a form of progression (higher skilled players will be able to progress further without requiring Ascended gear, due to avoiding skills that cause Agony).

• If you have 70 Trait points, and you go out into the world, and then earn another in a long and arduous journey, then you’ve progressed. Same with finding Traits (which I’m still convinced should have been left in).

• If you enjoy the housing aspect, then increasing the size of your house / adding stuff to it ect would be a form of progression.

• If you enjoy crafting, then increasing your skill in crafting / learning new recipes ect could be a progression path.

• If you enjoy exploration, then finding new places (even if they don’t count towards anything) can be a form of progression.

• If you’re a PvP player, increasing your rank / rating on the ladder is a form of progression.

TL;DR – Anything that someone can advance in can be considered progression, since everyone has different motivations.

Chewablesleeptablet.3185:

A have have-not community I suppose that is in a GW2 world. 300g? how on earth does anyone get that much gold in only 3 months release? I am not accusing anyone here but I believe the only way to get that much is from buying gold from the outside market or you play 24/7.

Still casuals should have a chance to stumble upon a precursor , or legendary. Casuals like GW2 but they just don’t have the time to spend grinding.

1) Pre-cursors weren’t 300G in the beginning. You could pick Dusk up for 60G, and the others cheaper. Not to mention you could also get it from the MF.

2) Casuals have a chance of stumbling upon a pre-cursor. You should have to work for the Legendary though. Since it doesn’t provide higher stats that top tier weapons (Exotic ATM, Ascended when they’re implemented), what’s the rush?

3) They’ve said they’re working on some sort of scavenger hunt for pre-cursors to cut down on the RNG factor.

So in short: No, I disagree with your suggestion.

Why does no-one use paragraphs?

SmashMac.4268:

My plea is that you all at the Guild Wars 2 team will develop a way for all gamers, including the hardcore gamer, to have a diligent incentive to play Guild Wars 2.

They’ve introduced Fractals and Ascended Gear.

Fractals are dungeons that, as you increase the level of difficulty, so does the dungeon itself. Ascended Gear is pretty much needed at higher levels to deal with the Agony Mechanic.

When they introduced Ascended gear, they also said that this would be alongside other progression systems that they are working on.

We are also working on other reward and progression systems for the game that tie into current and new content and features.

They said in the AMA that they will be focusing primarily on horizontal progression, but will also include some vertical progression with minimal power curve.

As for your usage of the term ‘hardcore’, I disagree that ‘hardcore’ gamers need vertical progression. Rather, they need more difficulty content.

I’m going to try and convince myself you aren’t joking, and try to help you.

1) What Profession are you?

2) What build do you use?

3) What’s your playstyle?