Guild Wars 2

Areann.1304:

Tl:dr:I dislike legendaries because they are a symbol of wealth instead of player skill/determination. But getting a legendary is the only goal left in the game.

You also managed to describe why most people hate the Commander title/map marker in that sentence. =D

Tshamblin.9278:

Why would you ruin everything and post this here?

This. I can assure you that Arenanet does NOT want you to be able to farm anything at any sort of an acceptable rate. This will now be nerfed into the ground in a fashion comparable to the Plinx farm. :-P

Jerk move is jerky.

Asglarek.8976:

I would of thought the difference between direct and condition damage would be obvious even to the not so bright people out there but obvious is as obvious was so I’ll try to explain in laymen terms. You can apply condition damage from range up to 1200 yrds away traited to even further direct well you have to be in melee range in most cases now do you understand ? No… ok I’ll go one further, you would be able to kill any mob, melee character before they could get in direct damage range even then all you would have to do is kite them around till they dropped.

I love posts that attempt to be condescending but then come out like this. It gives me a giggle and brightens my day.

Thank you

Several games in the past have had forced polls at login, and I absolutely loved the idea. No more arguments of “vocal minority vs vocal majority”. You knew who the majority was and who the minority was.

Unfortunately, the vocal minority wants to hold as tightly as possible to their grip, so every time this gets brought up you have one or two people scream, rage and cry that they’ll quit if everyone in the game is given the chance to vote equally, and not just forum dwellers.

Because that would obviously be the worst thing ever.

The condition damage stacks need to be independent for each player. BAM- problem solved.

As a condition specced engineer, I’ve never had an issue putting out massive damage solo. I can usually drop an NPC as quickly or moreso than other full exotic level 80s… but stick me in a group while karma farming? My kills don’t even register and I get 0 credit, despite being on the mob from beginning to end, simply because I am doing so little damage to it.

Solo condition damage is fine, IMO. But group condition damage is as broken as it comes.

Rather than merging servers, they need to shuffle anyone who hasn’t logged in for say 2-3 months off of whatever server they are on.

According to an Arenanet poster, the stat you see on your server that says “high” or “full” is based not on the number of people logged in, but the number of people who call that server home. So if I make my characters on Tarnished Coast, I am holding up a spot on that server and pushing it towards full regardless of whether I log in or not.

On a side note- when an expansion comes out and sales/logins boom again, they will be regretting raising the server caps like they have been (if what players are saying is true and they have been raising them). Sure, not many people are logging in now but what if all those people suddenly came back? 0_o

From CC Eva:

Hello everyone.

Connor, when you see a server FULL means that the people who’ve chosen that server as theirs, or players who have moved to that particular server, have reached the cap, independently of where did they create their accounts.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Server-Populations/first#post703192

As far as I’m aware, this was always planned. The only reason server transfers were free to begin with was because guesting had not come out yet.

Now, if they release paid transfers BEFORE guesting I’ll be standing with my torch and pitchfork right next to you!

I would also love to see ascended gear be purchasable on AH/sellable on AH. If I’m going to run fractals and end up with 500000000000000000000000 rings, I might as well get some cash out of the deal.

lol I wish they would hurry and give a concrete date on when they are releasing the open world dueling. I’m probably more excited about its release than anything else they’ve put out so far =D

Tbh, even if the devs don’t look at this video and say “thieves need to be nerfed”, the video will still balance the game. I can promise you the thief population jumped after this video was made =D eventually we will all run thieves and the game will be 100% balanced!

There is no way this bug will persist past the January update. If it does, Arenanet needs to really stop and consider new developmental leadership, because this is the definition of game breaking, exploitable bug.

Just hang in there until the january patch. They will fix it, no worries.

NightyNight.1823:

Didn’t read all the previous posts but I don’t have too.
No its not OP .
They had plenty of time to break out of stun and fight back.Or see her comming long before she was close to them.Its not like she was perma stealthed.Learn to play.

It took her less than 2 seconds to take players from standing at 100% HP to downed state. <2 seconds. How do you figure that’s balanced? 0_o

Try to stay on topic folks. This thread is getting derailed again. This is all stuff we have discussed before, so lets keep the focus on suggestions/solutions please

Healix.5819:

Dueling in the open world was something they were willing to do, but is a low priority.

Outstanding. That is definitely what I wanted to here. Can’t wait!

I would love to see duels, though with an auto decline toggle in settings for some of the above posters.

It seems like a pretty standard feature in MMOs so I was surprised to not see it here 0_o

Asmodeus.8491:

Just make it so that WvWvW uses spvp’s equipment system. You enter the mists, equip your gear from the vendor, and then enter WvWvW. Then, they can add as many tiers as they want! No competitive pvp play will be affected by pve gear tiers, and all pvp players, of all types will be on the same playing field, with the same stat budget.

The reason why some don’t want this solution (yandere.9716 posted the same solution) is that there are those who actually want to grind out a competitive advantage against those who are unable/ unwilling to spend the same amount of time. They want to slaughter under-geared opponents due to gear differences. They think that starting the race before the gun goes off, and then crossing the finish line first, is an example of fair play and a stroke to their kitten.

I 100% agree with this. I am full exotics, 2 complete sets to switch between as necessary, and it bothers me not knowing whether the person I just beat in 1v1 lost because of player skill or gear. I would much rather all of us be on an even playing field.

lol if I was a thief I would be furious this video was made. It gets a lot harder to argue against the incoming nerfs when those things exist =D

critickitten.1498:

Lambent.6375:

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/File:Fellblade.jpg (the hulking 1 hand version)

This one is already in the game. Only available to GW1 players with 23 Hall of Monuments reward points.

And is also 2H.

ASB.4295:

Astralporing.1957:

I’d phrase it a bit differently: “Let the ascended gear be easily available”.

“Easily” suggests that it should take less work, which would defeat the purpose of being something exclusively for the dedicated players.

In light of this, I would like to add to my own personal suggestion: make it not just for being exclusively for “dedicated” players.

I would rather see Ascended gear be focused on giving players who want Vertical Progression something else to attain, not just a subgroup of VP players who happen to play more than others. While I am not someone who like VP at all, I would rather see as many VP players as possible get the opportunity to attain this gear than only certain ones.

While I can’t assure you that there are more HP players than VP, I can assure you that if a large portion of VP players were knocked off the list because they weren’t “dedicated” enough to get the gear it would limit the number of people made happy by this new tier greatly.

No mention of either, though it is reasonable to assume that at least new races will be added. New skills, on the other hand, could reasonably go either way so not much chance of an educated guess there. Though I’d be willing to bet that more people want to see new skills than not. lol

Iruwen.3164:

Now Mr know-it-all may troll in and state that names cannot be copyrighted, which may be true, but it doesn’t matter because it’s not a legal issue but simply ANet’s rules.

Considering you quoted the rule saying names can’t be copyrighted, I think it’s a little more than “may be true”. lol

Reference names of copyrighted or trademarked characters, materials, or products.

Wesley.4590:

This gives it a lot more value yes, although that last reason is kinda on the edge I believe. But how would you accomplish multi-clienting GW2 if I might ask? I only have one account, but I had more GW1 accounts and for that I used: Guild Wars Multi-Launch. Is there a similar program for GW2 out already?

Regards

Guild Wars 1 could actually be done without 3rd party software. There were tutorials GuildWarsGuru that showed how to change the process name of a GW1 .exe so that it wouldn’t conflict with itself when launched. That said, it was a pain in the butt and required refreshing after every single update :-P

If I could dodge 3 times instead of 2, it would feel like an entirely different game to me. For some reason the 2 time limit feels… clunky compared to other action MMO type games.

Also, if we could switch between tab targetting and crosshairs I would probably never put the game down ever again.

GrandmaFunk.3052:

I’m curious.. what’s the purpose of running two copies and switching back and forth between the two? The only reasons I can think of all seem pretty sketchy to me.

Well, for one thing you could accomplish 2 tasks at once. Even if it just means having 1 guy in town crafting while the other is running around killing stuff. OR you could have 1 guy heal the other guy. OR one guy “tank” for the other guy.

Coming from EVE online, where dual boxing is a standard among most players (there are less players who don’t dual box than those who do), you get kind of used to it and start to find times where you think “man, sure would be nice to have an alt with me right now…”

Wesley.4590:

Why would you think it would not be allowed?

I could be mistaken but earlier in the game’s history, towards release, people were getting banned for making copyrighted names. In that case, I feel his question is quite appropriate. We are all very aware of how easy it is to get yourself permbanned in this game (far moreso than any other), so being 100% sure before you do ANYTHING that could come close to having that happen is a wise thing indeed.

Leablo.2651:

Mars.6319:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Q-Is-multi-boxing-allowed/first#post244389

Multiboxing is very simmilar to botting and 3rd party programming so according to Anet’s policy it is strictly forbidden. Please, refrain from making use of this and report any player you see making use of this.

Incorrect information being given by someone who has no authority on the subject. Please stop quoting such posts. This is the response you receive from contacting CS, the people who actually handle your account:

We cannot condone or support the use of any particular program or sytem for multi-boxing. However, we do not terminate accounts for multi-boxing, as long as — through the process — they do not breach the User Agreement or the Rules of Conduct, both of which you can find linked from this page: https://www.guildwars2.com/en/legal/ If an account is in conformance with the UA and the RoC, we have no objections to dual-boxing or multi-boxing.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Requesting-clarification-on-multibox-policy/first#post976343

Pretty much this. Forum moderators are god on the forums, but within the actual game they have as much authority as the secretary that greets people at the front door. The response that was given by that moderator was incomplete, at best. Multiboxing using keycloning software would fit the bill for what they are saying, but someone simply opening 2 windows on 2 monitors and clicking back and forth between them in no way requires 3rd party software to accomplish, and thus does not fit into the realm of that response.

Personally, my rule of thumb is: If your multiboxing requires you to use any software other than two guild wars 2 clients, I would strongly recommend against it. Otherwise, have fun.

maddoctor.2738:

Tolmos.8395:

If you are for it, then make a solution suggestion that involves keeping it, even if that suggestion is “Don’t change a thing”. If you are against it then make a solution to help us figure out how to make ascended gear more bearable to those of us who mainly wanted horizontal progression.

The thing is, there is no way that they will remove Ascended gear from the game. It has been stated numerous times, also Ascended WILL be better than Exotics, that has also been mentioned, however what we can discuss is how to get that Ascended gear, in a way that doesn’t require an amazing grind or playing a particular dungeon that people might not like.

I understand, and I did mention that in the OP. Though, there are other suggestions which could be put forth (regardless of how viable they are, everything is worth mentioning IMO) including limiting where ascended gear is functional, what sort of stats future ascended gear may have, etc. Honestly, any suggestion is worth posting here, because it gives more food for thought to the Anet devs.

Maybe it is all just a practice in futility, but it’s all we can do in a constructive manner. :-\ So I welcome any suggestion that anyone has, one way or another.

I love this game, it has just deviated from a direction that I feel I would enjoy. I am not alone, though I do not claim to be in either a majority or minority. So those of us who feel that way would love to see a compromise to regain some of the game we have lost.

Folks, many of the replies on this thread are great but let’s keep it on topic. We have debated this into the ground and are all aware how we feel on the topic, both pro ascended gear and anti ascended gear. If you are for it, then make a solution suggestion that involves keeping it, even if that suggestion is “Don’t change a thing”. If you are against it then make a solution to help us figure out how to make ascended gear more bearable to those of us who mainly wanted horizontal progression.

But please don’t derail the topic arguing over which side is right. We have done this already in hundreds of other posts and so far nothing new has been added to the debate. It is just derailing the thread.

maddoctor.2738:

Tolmos.8395:

That was actually confirmed by an Arenanet poster some time ago. I used to think it was based on people logged in, and would constantly suggest to players trying to get on my full server that they should wait until the middle of the night… but then a player pointed me to that post.

It is indeed based on characters made on the server, and NOT characters logged in at the time.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Server-Populations/first#post703192

CC Eva:

Hello everyone.

Connor, when you see a server FULL means that the people who’ve chosen that server as theirs, or players who have moved to that particular server, have reached the cap, independently of where did they create their accounts.

Answering to your second question: no, there is no chart that shows that kind of information at the moment, I am afraid.

I really wish they would confirm that again. If that was the case then why are some servers getting full on weekends (when more people play) and are high during the rest of the week? (and medium at “off hours”) it doesn’t make any sense and contradicts what is actually happening….

Without guesting, folks may be transferring all over the place. Free transfers do still exist, and they may be playing with one group one week and then going to another group the next week.

Starting us off:

For me, the issue is Ascended gear in WvW, so my suggested solution is that ascended gear be limited to instances, and (depending on player feedback and how the open world PvE players feel about ascended gear and gear progression), open world play as well.

This would give VP players what they want- gated content with progressively higher stats on their armor, while keep it out of other sections of the game like PvP.

Here’s hoping someone else comes up with a better one!

Since it seems that most anti-ascended gear thread seem to be becoming viewed as complaint threads and nothing more, I want at least 1 consolidated thread of nothing but constructive feedback on possible compromises that will make this easier on the GW1/anti-ascended gear crowd. With that said, lets keep this constructive as possible. We all know why we dislike ascended gear in its current form/assumed future form. There is no need to repeat any of that here.

Let’s keep this as simple as we can, and base the suggested solutions on 2 known facts:

A) Ascended gear was added on November 15th. It is a tier that is stronger than exotics, currently Bind on Pickup only (with no mention of this changing), and will eventually be completed with a full set but currently only contains 3 items

B) Arenanet has addressed the issue of Ascended gear only dropping from Fractals in a statement, and apologized for this. They have stated the intention to correct this by spreading the gear over more paths.

B is important because it will save us time with any complaints that involve only running fractals over and over. That is going to be addressed and fixed, so it is no longer constructive to talk about

So, on to the meat of the topic: To those who do not like ascended gear, as it is now: What do you feel Arenanet could do to help this situation and make it more acceptable to players of all types, and not just Vertical Progression players? Please remember that as with any compromise, the end result may not be that all sides are happy. But a compromise will need to be had. I simply cannot see ascended gear getting removed from the game, so while you are free to suggest it I feel it would be a waste of your energy. Instead, focus on realistic solutions that will give VP players what they want, but give us Horizontal progression players what we want.

I ask that players responding keep it civil and constructive. If we can make 1 giant consolidated “solution” thread, then maybe ONE of us will strike gold and give Arenanet something they agree with and will work with to help create a compromise over this situation. To that end, don’t derail this topic with arguments over ascended gear. Some of us hate it, some folks love it- I’m relatively certain we’ve covered all the bases on why for both sides. Lets duke that out somewhere else.

Happy suggesting, folks! Try to keep it short, sweet and to the point. If your suggestion is long, that’s fine. But otherwise don’t be long winded about producing a short suggestion.

Erasculio.2914:

Morrigan.2809:

If is also necessary for people who do like things to say so, otherwise you have a one -sided view and decisions get made about the game that could have been avoided if both sides where able to state their case with out harassment.

A great example of this is Ascended gear.

Before the November 15th update, we had two very vocal groups here:

• The vocal minority of grinders whining that they didn’t have anything to grind, that all MMOs are grind-based and that a real MMO has vertical progression.

• The vocal minority of haters claiming that everything in the game is rotten, and using the lack of vertical progression as an example of that.

People happy with the game were just playing the game instead of posting in the forum. However, ArenaNet then listened to the vocal minority, and rushed to rather poorly implement a new kind of vertical progression in the game, beginning the entire Ascended fiasco.

Tolmos, do you like the Ascended gear? Because that’s the kind of thing you get when the only thing running rampant in the community are whiners and haters. ArenaNet has proved again and again that they don’t understand the concept of “vocal minority” to be able to disregard the part of the community they should ignore, unless it’s made crystal clear to them.

Heh, fair enough. You got me there. I do still feel too many people are quick to rush to the defense of something they don’t know about/care about simply because they see red when someone “insults” their game with any kind of criticism, but I agree that there are also people whose hate posts border on absurd. I’ve seen anti-ascended gear threads so poorly written that I almost took up arms FOR ascended gear in the thread just to avoid being lumped in together with them.

Erasculio.2914:

Tolmos.8395:

Morrigan.2809:

Constructive criticism is a good thing, it gives suggestions on how to improve things, throwing your toys out of the cot is not.

Unfortunately, most fanbois/fangirls are unable to tell the difference

And most haters pretend there is no difference. All MMOs have a large amount of people who spend more time hoping a game will fail and trying to use slander as much as possible, instead of actually providing constructive feedback. That’s of course not good for the game, nor is it meant to be good for a game. I only wonder how empty could a person’s life be to waste time with sych behavior, but it’s a reality and it’s a common reality here.

Just as much that it is a reality that some people are so desperate for a pat on the back that they spend most of their day brown nosing a company that might even notice them. “Oh the game is fine as it is!” and any criticism is “the vocal minority complaining”. There are no brownie points to receive, and yet for some reason they desperately try to get as many as possible.

To me, those people are just as harmful as the ones who spend all their time complaining. They are giving positive reinforcement to destructive decisions that harm the game, simply because they want to be the “teachers pet”, as it were, instead of standing up and saying “You are risking losing this game’s population by going down this road. You should reconsider this!”. Maybe they weren’t loved enough as a kid or maybe they are hoping for some special in game treat, but either way it does no one any good. :-\

Morrigan.2809:

Constructive criticism is a good thing, it gives suggestions on how to improve things, throwing your toys out of the cot is not.

Unfortunately, most fanbois/fangirls are unable to tell the difference. Someone criticizes the game they love and suddenly they see red, screaming and flailing with a tantrum that most small children would blush at.

ANY kind of criticism on these forums usually gets brushed aside as “baseless complaining for the sake of complaining”.

Wasabi Kitty.8247:

The only time it would matter is in a 1 v 1 situation. Zerg vs Zerg it wouldn’t matter unless it was like 1 group of 50 with ascended and 1 group of 50 without, which is highly unlikely.

Ascended gear was added because people asked for it. Before the lost shores update the forums were filled with nothing but “I’m at endgame with full exotics which were too easy to get, and now I’m bored, I have nothing to go for but a legendary.” and anet responded.

Unfortunately, they responded a bit too late. By the time Nov 15th rolled around, almost all of those posts had vanished with the people who made them. So the folks that were left, the ones who were happy with how things were, got the requested gear of people who didn’t even play the game anymore.

Tosha Daydreamer.9251:

Killul.9685:

Tosha Daydreamer.9251:

Is there ascended gear in sPVP? I thought it was PvE/WvW only.

Personally, I don’t feel like I “need” to get ascended – only if I want to do a lot of fractals (which I don’t). For Pve, exotics are still good enough and no one notices a 1% increase in stats in the WvW zergs.

It is Spvp only but I think it is 14% difference which is quite a lot and can make a huge difference for smaller battles or when zergs have near even numbers.

When do zergs ever have near even numbers, and how can you tell anyway?

No rhetorical questions by the way (I am honestly curious). I am a very casual player who gets her behind kicked when I so much as look at WvW, so I rarely bother with the stats-and-numbers-game.

The zergs having even numbers doesn’t happen as often, but 1v1 battles and 1v2 battles happen pretty regularly. I run around looking for those whenever I do WvW and spend almost all of my time fighting. It really is a lot of fun.

Rather than posting this on multiple threads, I figured I would drop this here where it is more easily seen: I constantly see people on both sides of the fence in many arguments stating that their server is “Full” or “High” or their server is “Low” or whatever else.

Those are irrelevant.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Server-Populations/first#post703192

From CC Eva:

Hello everyone.

Connor, when you see a server FULL means that the people who’ve chosen that server as theirs, or players who have moved to that particular server, have reached the cap, independently of where did they create their accounts.

Answering to your second question: no, there is no chart that shows that kind of information at the moment, I am afraid.

In short: server “stats” are based on how many characters exist on the server, NOT how many are currently logged in.

Using the argument “My server is full so blah blah” is meaningless, especially if none of those people are logged in. A low server could have more people logged in at the current time than your full server.

Graill.8596:

The most common sense answer is the population indicators show characters made on those servers, not people logged in.

That was actually confirmed by an Arenanet poster some time ago. I used to think it was based on people logged in, and would constantly suggest to players trying to get on my full server that they should wait until the middle of the night… but then a player pointed me to that post.

It is indeed based on characters made on the server, and NOT characters logged in at the time.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Server-Populations/first#post703192

CC Eva:

Hello everyone.

Connor, when you see a server FULL means that the people who’ve chosen that server as theirs, or players who have moved to that particular server, have reached the cap, independently of where did they create their accounts.

Answering to your second question: no, there is no chart that shows that kind of information at the moment, I am afraid.

Michael.7943:

Open world is almost always empty for my on ehmry. Rarely bother with events or anything since they’ll take too long. This is consequence for poor reward systems in both dungeons and open world. No one can turn a decent profit from actually playing. Hoarding fine mats and selling them during spikes on fridays is the only real way to make gold aside from AC/FOTM runs.

Well, to Anets defense they do have a January content patch coming out, and any smart company would prioritize fixing that little boo boo (making Fractals >>>>>>>> Open world to the point that open world is almost dead) over anything else. I wouldn’t give up hope just yet, next week I imagine we’ll be seeing an announcement about how they will spread the population back out.

puffintoast.6501:

Got to love the double standards that constantly get applied in threads like this one.
“The game is great, ignore anyone who says anything negative, they just thrive on complaining, these forums are poison, everyone is so full of complaints… huzzah, let’s all say something positive in a huddle here!”
Gods forbid you let new players discover that the reasons for the complaints are valid; and people like Tigirius have come in here to point this out to them, in an effort to provide parity and an even point of view for someone who might be seeking such.
Funny how you are all allowed to be as negative as you like about the elephant in the MMO room, constantly lambasting this game over World of Warcraft, but woe betide anyone that voices criticism at your shiny new game here, even if said criticisms are clearly justified in regard to the seriously skewed design decisions that have been implemented since the developmental focus shift in the betas.
People coming into this game since Christmas will likely have little clue about how much they are being hindered in game to fulfill the gem drive. They have a right to know about what has happened.

Unfortunately, they’ll figure it out for themselves soon enough. This forum isn’t the only one filled with “complainers”. Fan forums, 3rd party forums… eventually it gets hard to explain away.

It’s a shame, too, because GW2 really is a good game. The amount of effort into making the player feel immersed is amazing. The cities are gigantic. The aesthetics and graphics are gorgeous. The music is absolutely beautiful (go google “Fear Not This Night”). It’s just being driven off course by someone in Arenanet who has lost a lot of focus on what this series was meant to be.

This is all de ja vu. For anyone who missed what Star Wars Galaxies forums looked like… here’s your chance to see. :-\

bluejay.6739:

The core problem is that the players complaining about ‘not having horizontal progression like in GW1’ are so off base about GW1 that it is confusing the conversation.

GW1, for example, had a MASSIVE vertical progression… it just wasn’t in terms of gear. Its true that gear capped out with perfect weapons, but if you took a character that had just hit 20 and had a perfect weapon versus one that had been 20 for a long time and had a perfect weapon there was no comparison. The vertical progression was in the form of grinding for skill points for buying a variety of different increasingly powerful skills, completing the missions for your extra attribute points, completing content to obtain more heroes, etc…

My newly minted level 20 with an awesome bow a guild mate gave me could barely solo Nightfall missions. After a long time grinding to build my skill list, obtaining heroes, etc… I could solo Glint’s Challenge AFK and I soloed all the points for my Kurzick faction armor by doing speed runs with just my heroes.

You were doing something VERY wrong in GW1. I rolled more alts than I would like to count, and before I hit 20 I already had a large compliment of heroes (and really only needed 3 to get the job done. After that I could run 4 henchmen just to supplement them since the 3 heroes + me could beat everything no problem.

For me, the moment I hit 20 I was gold. Eventually I would work up to more skills, but since I had access to BiS gear right off the bat I could make do with what I had. The amount of plat I would pick up from 1-20 was more than enough to cover my armor, some semi-decent skills and some weapons for my heroes.

And this is all recently. It was FAR easier still back when I started at release, in Prophecies, and then later when Factions released.

I’m not sure what in the world you did wrong in GW1, but your experience is VERY different from the rest of us. lol

A buff on a champion mob based on how many people were involved in killing it would be awesome too. Seriously, if you solo a champ mob that can 2 shot you, you deserve a mighty big prize for that. It gets old soloing champs just to get diddly.

Ironcloud.3892:

I’m still pretty confused on why everyone screams “VERTICAL PROGRESSION!!!” after the release of this update, when all it is, is just another stat tier added on to the 5 of which we already had, only difference being is that there is a slightly bigger jump in effort to get it. The game you bought before is the game you still have, a horizontal MMO with a little bit of non gated vertical progression.

It’s 2 things.

A) Its a jump in effort for something we never even knew was coming. First the game releases and they make no effort to correct any of us when we talk about how exotics are BiS. Then suddenly they drop a new tier out of nowhere and say “Oh no no this isn’t a new tier! We always meant to do this. Yea… always… /cough”. The level of belief that they won’t have “always” intended to drop yet another tier of gear after this one is not exactly great with us.
B) They have already expressed interest in raising the level cap with expansions. At the rate the ascended gear is getting released, and the time it is taking to grind them out, I wonder how long it will be until the expansion releases? And then what? Level increases and all our gear is rendered worthless so we can start the grind all over again?

Sounds a little like a… oh man, whats the word? Its on the tip of my tongue. A… treadmill! Yea, that’s it. Sounds like a treadmill.

That is what we are upset over.

DevilLordLaser.8619:

The above poster has been banned for saying the word ‘ArenaNet’ too many times in one post. And then banned again for saying the word ‘banned’ in a thread at all. His junk is so banned, the next five people who read this post are banned, too. Sucks to be those guys, man.

This made me laugh… even if saying so will probably get me banned, I had to give kudos to you. =D

Everyone is in fractals. Go to LA and you’ll find everyone. Just run those until 80, you’ll get better rewards anyhow.

Open world is still waiting for its stimulus patch from Anet. It might be a while.

Thomassassinate.9370:

Tolmos.8395:

Nappychappy.7046:

People loved the game they paid for and beta tested, that game no longer exists.

This. Guild Wars 2, the game that existed before November 15th, is not the same as GW2, the game that came after November 15th. That’s why people are mad.

As for the lack of subscription and it being a “risk” to themselves… I would be exceptionally surprised if they could have come even remotely close to the income they’ve gotten from their cash shop by using a subscription based system. Some of the folks on here have put ridiculous amounts of money into that, and continue to do so just to convert gems -> gold.

What did before november 15th gw2 have that this guild wars 2 doesnt have? Sorry got this game on christmas so idk what the difference would be.

Before Nov 15th no one knew of the plans to add Ascended gear into the game, and fractals didn’t exist. The game was all about open world play. Many players had achieved the best in slot gear (Exotics) and were working on getting varied sets of them since they would always be the best in slot, so they could change as needed.

Gameplay was focused on doing whatever you wanted without any pressure of needing to get newer, better gear and knowing that you could take as long as you want because, like Guild Wars 1, you would always be viable for content. Rushing was not required.

November 15th patch suddenly dropped a bombshell on all of that with “Oh btw guys here’s a new tier of gear that you’ve never heard of or knew was coming. We had been planning this all along, but decided against warning you.” After Nov 15th the mindset of the game and its players changed.

The forums degraded from everyone talking about how awesome the game is and how much they love it into screaming matches and constant QQ (which hasn’t let up yet, but is getting less so as folks start to shimmy off to other games), in game involved everyone huddled into Lions Arch (compared to before, when even open world zones would go into overflow- now just LA) screaming “LFG LFG LFG” for fractals, gameplay focus began to shift from “Do whatever because whether you take 6 months or 6 years, it’s all the same” to “GET NEW GEAR NAO”, and because fractals have such amazing rewards compared to everywhere else, folks slowly started vanishing from other zones.

The difference between pre-Nov 15th and post-Nov 15th is absolutely amazing. They are like completely different games. Just shuffle back a few dozen pages on forums to pre-Nov 15th and read up on folks thoughts on the game. There was some QQ: “I powerleveled, rushed through everything and now I’m bored” was the second biggest complaint only to “Rock is OP but paper is balanced”, though the number of those compared to the number of optimistic posts and “We told everyone this game would rock” was completely unbalanced. But just start reading random threads from mid october and then compare to now.

THAT is the difference.

Fyrebrand.4859:

Nappychappy.7046:

People loved the game they paid for and beta tested, that game no longer exists.

I think I should start a “Hyperbole Wall” where I collect statements like:
- “but obviously it’s still good enough to keep playing, or none of us would be here.”

Fixed that for you.

Nappychappy.7046:

Tolmos.8395:

Nappychappy.7046:

People loved the game they paid for and beta tested, that game no longer exists.

This. Guild Wars 2, the game that existed before November 15th, is not the same as GW2, the game that came after November 15th. That’s why people are mad.

As for the lack of subscription and it being a “risk” to themselves… I would be exceptionally surprised if they could have come even remotely close to the income they’ve gotten from their cash shop by using a subscription based system. Some of the folks on here have put ridiculous amounts of money into that, and continue to do so just to convert gems -> gold.

I said the game, not the title.

lol the game didn’t actually change titles. I was just using that as a …

oh nvm. lol I was just agreeing with you, though I seem to have done a poor job of it.

bluewanders.5297:

Look again… the quote I circled from the screenshot I took today says 3 weeks ago… well after the Nov. 15 patch.

Aha, so it is! I stand corrected.

Nappychappy.7046:

People loved the game they paid for and beta tested, that game no longer exists.

This. Guild Wars 2, the game that existed before November 15th, is not the same as GW2, the game that came after November 15th. That’s why people are mad.

As for the lack of subscription and it being a “risk” to themselves… I would be exceptionally surprised if they could have come even remotely close to the income they’ve gotten from their cash shop by using a subscription based system. Some of the folks on here have put ridiculous amounts of money into that, and continue to do so just to convert gems → gold.

bluewanders.5297:

Raine.1394:

CoRtex.2157:

For people who don’t know what vertical & horizontal progression is, watch this
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Zn81sY7pqI

Here are the issues with the vertical scaling:

1. It’s grindy
2. It creates brackets. You can’t do content with other players unless your character levels / gear scores are sufficiently close
3. It causes power creep. Content is initially too difficult, but once players obtain the gear to do the content, it becomes progressively less difficult until it’s trivial
4. It creates dead zones and content. This happens when the bulk of active characters are at level cap and whenever expansions are released with new content

Here are the benefits of horizontal scaling:

1. There are no brackets due to level or gear score. You can roll a new character and immediately group with other more-experienced characters
2. It levels the playing field in PVE and PVP. Performing well isn’t about your level or gear score, it’s about your ability to play your character effectively and work in a team
3. Content (zones, instances, etc) stays relevant forever

Read more: http://taugrim.com/2012/04/19/why-games-should-scale-horizontally-instead-of-vertically/

Thanks for this link! I’ve been following Taugrim through two games prior to this one and have benefited much from his theorycrafting builds and info on basic game mechanics. But, I somehow missed this video. He has great insights on this subject just as he does on others. I do hope the proponents of vertical progression and those who think its presence doesn’t matter will check out this video. Pretty good demonstration of the problems with vertical progression and the fact that it’s nothing basic to gaming that needs to be there for a game to be engaging and successful over time. Hope the folks at Anet give it a view as well. Thanks again, you made my day.

Well… I figured since you guys brought Taugrim into the conversation… and that video in particular… I would point something out to you.

Yep, I also notice how that was posted before the November 15th patch, when any illusion of horizontal progression focus in this game was dispatched immediately.

Bet he cried when that patch came out =D That was a nice reminder of the false hopes we all shared, and how much we loved the idea GW2’s horizontal progression focus. Thanks for that!