Guild Wars 2

All soul binding gear to a particular character is punish those of us who create alts.

I understand the need for sinks, and I understand that people with alts are probably a cash cow, but, I think it’s not fun that I can’t pass off an old sword to a new character.

Draknar.5748:

Dante.1508:

Yes incredibly unfriendly

I have 11 characters and many parts of this game have been made to be Alt unfriendly Ascended gear being the latest in a long list.

Laurels
Dungeons and Fotm
Commendations
Map completions
Bound items
Crafting now after Ascended weapons
Build making
Karma since the nerf.
Guild events and Living story are all alt unfriendly and even level unfriendly.
etc etc

I think you are trying to say that the game is farm-unfriendly, not alt unfriendly.

You seem somewhat upset at the fact you can’t just switch between your 11 characters and farm the same content each time to get 11x the pay-out. That really has nothing to do with alt-friendliness. They are time-gating content. Karma is about as alt-friendly as it gets. If you want to farm karma, then probably not. Living Story alt-unfriendly? You share the achievements between characters lol, how is that unfriendly? Same with guild events. I’m sorry you can’t farm commendations 11x more than everyone else.

The game is alt friendly, it isn’t farm friendly. They want things to take time to complete, some players want to get them ASAP and are kitten they cannot. This is not an alt-friendliness issue, it’s a farming/time-gating one.

I understand where you are going from, but I think that account wide time gating is alt-unfriendly.

This isn’t well thought out, so I apologize for rambling / lack of coherence. But I think anytime you have a reward that is for a character (e.g. soulbound gear) that is purchased using a currency that is time limited at an account level (e.g. laurels) it’s alt-unfriendly.

Honestly, I think the entire issue I have is tied to the fact that items can’t be shared across the account. If they could then there would be little difference between having 1 toon and having 7. Having extra gear would be a convenience item to save time swapping.

But currently if I want a berker sword for my warrior, guardian, mesmer, and thief then I need to get 4 beserker swords, no sharing.

Knote.2904:

eisberg.2379:

Zepidel.5349:

Vespirisa.1497:

200g? The amount I spent was no where near that number. I just refined ori and ancient wood I gathered, made some sharpening stones and crafted a few exotics. I think I spent less than 25. Also the 200g on the website is due to the inflated prices that will eventually drop. oh from 450 I just refined ascended mats I got from champ loot bags.

Yes 200g. You speculated in wood/ore, as did I thankfully. Regardless its 200g.

Collect the stuff yourself and it is significantly less than 200G

WHY?!?? Why does this flawed logic always pop up in MMO’s?

It’s called opportunity cost.

It’s not limited to MMOs. People will drive 10 miles out of their way to save $1.40 off their gas bill. It’s ridiculous.

The problem is that people don’t value a) what they have and b) their time.

How do you release “harder” content when they just released “better” gear without it being seen as a treadmill?

Obviously ascended weapons are going to make “harder” content easier.

Unless ANet ways in (and they probably won’t) there is no way to know.

This is fine until the first dungeon group insists on ascended weapons and the elitists start complaining that if you don’t have zerker ascended you are bad. As if gear = skill.

Yaki.9563:

The weapon doesn’t make that much difference. The only reason you “need” one is for fractals, but they haven’t even opened 50+ yet.

We don’t Almost no one plays this game to feel mediocre. Everyone Almost everyone wants BiS gear. If they didn’t there would be no reason to add this stuff.

Edited: edit to avoid stupid pedantic arguments.

To figure out a cost of crafting you have to look at the total value of the input to the total value of the output.

For example, crafting an ancient wood plank requires 3 ancient wood logs.

The market gives a value of between 5s86c and 5s85c to an ancient wood log.
The market gives a value of between 16s and 17s 49c to an ancient wood plank.

So it takes at least 17s55c in value (3 ancient wood logs) to craft an ancient wood plank (worth at most 17s 49c). So each time you do it, you lose (at least) 6c in value.

Your actual bank balance is irrelevant to the cost of crafting, because it ignores what it could have been had you gathered and sold versus crafted.

Fragment.2793:

Stop moaning, would you rather have no ascended and have a huge gap between exotics and legendary.

Simply put, yes. A couple of points everyone seem to forget.

1) Before ascended gear legendaries had the same stats as exotics, so there was not a huge cap in stats.

2) Currently people argue that there is not a huge gap between exotics and ascended, therefore, without ascended there would still not be a huge gap between exotics and legendaries, even if legendaries kept the same stats as the current Ascended.

3) Nothing about crafting an ascended item helps you craft a legendary. So, to me, using the huge gap argument to support the introduction of ascended gear is like saying there is a huge gap between a Toyota and a Ferrari so we’ll introduce a Mercedes. If you get a Mercedes, you have in no way shortened the gap to getting a Ferrari, in many ways you’ve made it longer.

Ahlen.7591:

I really doubt the horizontal progress people are the ‘majority’ of the playerbase.

The majority of the playerbase is people who don’t fall into the hardcore OR horizontal groups.

Since the majority is neither wanting (or not wanting) horizontal or vertical progression, let’s do horizontal.

Evilbeavers.3964:

TooBz.3065:

Maybe, but if it’s only Omega blue prints that have tanked. And it’s creeping back up, so maybe someone quit the game and liquidated the stock.

Why would they quit the game and sell stock? I could understand this if prices were high and you planned on coming back. Currently the price, from what I gather, is stupid low so that doesn’t really make a whole lot of sense.

Good point. It almost must be a bug. But shouldn’t ANet just stop trading of this item until they work it out? Honestly, the response makes no sense to me.

Maybe, but if it’s only Omega blue prints that have tanked. And it’s creeping back up, so maybe someone quit the game and liquidated the stock.

I feel like ascended weapons invalidated all the work I put into getting different exotic skins. I know, transmutation stones… whatever.

@Draknar (sorry the chain was getting too long to post).

I haven’t created a new character since I started to feel this way.

They weren’t a burden when I created them. They were fun and different. I would get an alt, get them to 80, “finished” them(gear and a look) and move on to another character.

This was doomed to failure as MMO’s aren’t really set up for finishing characters (This is entirely on me, so I’m not complaining just typing).

First, new gear is added. Frankly didn’t expect that. Nothing about ascended gear has gone the way I thought it would. Everything makes perfect sense in hindsight, but I was naive about how MMOs work.

Second, changing builds / nerf buff cycles. Absolutely necessary for the health of the game. But when a build gets nerfed to the point where the character isn’t viable anymore (glamour mesmers are the most obvious) then the character is no longer finished. For a while it was exciting to get new gear for a toon and try out a new build based on whatever has been introduced. While exotics are still cheap and relatively easy to get, all my money goes toward ascended items now. And that doesn’t leave much left over for experimentation. (It kills me that I can’t salvage temple armor or anything that I got from WvW vendor. It seems needlessly cruel to make those items useless once you touch them.)

FYI, I think 2-3 is a good number of characters for this game. Enough that you can still gear them out, but not so much that it’s a huge drain.

I think there is something broken about the general treatment of alts. There is a haphazard approach between things that I, as a gamer, achieve, and things that my character’s achieve.

For example, why is it that slaying a skelk adds to the “skelk slayer achievement” for the account, but killing a guard in WvW only adds to my toons WXP. And saying achievements are for the account and XP is for the character isn’t a sufficient explaination, because that’s just a tautology

Dailies are by a laurels are by account, world boss reward chests are by account, but the items you get for doing that end up soul bound to a character.

As a final note, I don’t think the argument “they need to limit the amount of rares in the world” holds much water given the endless champ farm they’ve set up.
.

On polls:

Sorry if someone said this already (it’s a long thread). But what if the polls were available at the login screen where you select your character. You aren’t really immersed in the world at that point.

I would love to kill that guy!

Draknar.5748:

TooBz.3065:

I disagree. If you read the posts most people have said that their are alt-friendly aspects and alt-unfriendly aspects. The only question is how much weight you give to the different things.

For example, as you say, gold / karma / laurels / dungeon tokens are shared for the account. So you can earn gold with one character and spend it with another. In contrast, laurels are limited per account and dungeon tokens have serious diminishing returns. What’s more important to you? If the later, then it’s alt-friendly, if the former, then it’s not.

I also think the game is much less alt-friendly than it use to be, and I think that factors into peoples perceptions.

I was directing my comments to the ones with sentiments such as “lol GW2 alt friendly? NOPE”

I don’t see how the daily laurels is alt unfriendly. Because you can’t complete daily quests on each character individually? That seems like standard issue. If you honestly have done the dailies/monthlies since they released them, then you’d be like me insofar as you have multiple characters with every kind of ascended laurel item you could need.

How is that unfriendly? Because it takes time to do it? At 80 the XP gain from dailies is lost anyway, so its even MORE alt friendly because you can hop on any alt character to do them, and thus level up even easier and gain that laurel. Heck you can character hop to complete the daily. I have a character logged out at a JP. I hop on that alt when it’s Puzzle Jumper daily, easy. My alts contribute to the same exact end-goal.

Laurels are currency like anything else and is shared. That makes it friendly. Time-gating something doesn’t make it alt-friendly or unfriendly. The fact that any character at any time can work toward that content makes it alt-friendly.

Diminishing returns on dungeon tokens? Huh? I need some explanation on that one as I’m not quite sure what you are referring to. You mean DR if you want to run the same dungeon path over and over? That’s a very different discussion and has nothing to do with alt-friendliness. I have 2500+ CoF tokens in my bank that any of my characters can access that would disagree that dungeon tokens aren’t alt-friendly. I can gear two alts that have never even set foot in CoF with those tokens, how is that unfriendly?

I haven’t been able to put my finger on why, and certainly not to the level of detail required to explain it to people looking to poke holes in my opinion, but when I see alts as a burden rather than an asset, then I start to think the game is not alt-friendly.

I’m not sure exactly when that happened, but sometime in the last six months.

Other people disagree, but that’s why it’s an opinion as opposed to a fact.

For me, I enjoy variety. Ascended gear, dungeon token nerfs, and karma nerfs have made it more difficult for me to gear an alt or change builds. This more than anything else will ruin the game for me.

So, I need a way to be able to play different classes and different builds on a regular basis. I don’t know how to reconcile that with people who enjoy “working” toward a long term goal.

leng jai.2961:

Mind boggling to think that anyone could say GW2 is alt friendly with a straight face.

I think it’s mostly people trolling. But I respond anyway just in case I’m wrong. Besides what else am I doing to do, I already finished my daily. :P

Direksone.3867:

Joshua.9346:

Please convince me why I should not just use the most efficient group in the game. The trinity is not dead, just back in a different form. Why should I waste my time with subpar classes in Dungeons and Fractals? The faster I do dungeons the more loot I get the less time I have to spend grinding towards the next piece of ascended gear / my legendary.

What does something like a Condition Necromancer or Flamethrower Engineer or D/D Thief bring to my party besides a lack of clear time?

If you need to ask these questions then I’m not sure any answer will sway you away from them. It is obvious you find finishing stuff fast and efficient fun, that’s fine, but then there’s not much more you can do.

I play Engineer because of the versatility, it is very, very fun, but nowhere near as efficient as other classes, but then again I personally don’t give a rats kitten .

Well put. Efficient does not always equal fun.

Draknar.5748:

Skan.5301:

If all you’re wanting to do is stand in LA and stare at the forge, then GW2 is very alt – friendly.

If you’re even thinking about playing the game, then you might want to stick with one character and pretend you only have one character slot and the rest cost <x amount of dollars that you cannot afford>.

Is that all you do with your alts? Stand around in LA? lol sad

The fact I can use my main character to get BiS gear for my alt characters = alt friendly. I can literally play any of my characters to progress any other character. They all share the same currencies.

I think the forum warriors here saying it isn’t alt-friendly have the mindset that if it isn’t completely interchangeable, then it is unfriendly by default. They completely ignore the alt-friendly facts, find the one or two things that aren’t alt-friendly, then label the entire game alt-unfriendly. These are the “what have you done for me lately” people. Don’t hear a peep out of them when things are good, but the moment something doesn’t go the way they want, suddenly its the worst game in the world and Anet is terrible and the game is dead and there’s no reason to play “Grind Wars 2” with all the gear treadmills and temporary content sucks, etc etc.

It’s getting soooo old.

I disagree. If you read the posts most people have said that their are alt-friendly aspects and alt-unfriendly aspects. The only question is how much weight you give to the different things.

For example, as you say, gold / karma / laurels / dungeon tokens are shared for the account. So you can earn gold with one character and spend it with another. In contrast, laurels are limited per account and dungeon tokens have serious diminishing returns. What’s more important to you? If the later, then it’s alt-friendly, if the former, then it’s not.

I also think the game is much less alt-friendly than it use to be, and I think that factors into peoples perceptions.

The problem is that then you wouldn’t have the endless item sink that is soulbound gear. ANet wants you to create new weapons and new armor everytime you want to try a new build. They want you to destroy sigils and runes and replace them with other things. It’s an item sink. Otherwise, items like runes of divinity would be dirt cheap.

I don’t agree with this, because I think variety is great and has more potential to keep the game interesting to me than grinding out a single build. But I’m a minority in this.

Do what you want, just allow me to do the same. We don’t need a forum post to show that we shouldn’t group together.

I’m sure there will be horizontal progression, but first we need to grind vertically. Adding gear with new stats is much easier than adding new skills.

Inspired.6730:

In keeping with the theme of this thread. This is similar to why I stopped giving Xmas gifts…self-entitled brats.

Anyway, if the gods see fit to grant me an ascended weapon drop, I’ll be grateful regardless of type or stats. Thanks in advance.

You’re a mean one, Mr. Grinch.

I’m against them. Lately I’ve noticed a shift in the forums from “what should I do” or “here’s what I do” to “here’s what you must do”.

A dmg meter will only make that worse.

If you tell us exactly what class to play, exactly what weapons to use, exactly what build to use, exactly what skills to use and when to use them you are killing the fun of the game. Go away.

There’s no good way to see how much actually changes hands. But items with a price fluctuation in their recent history are a good bet.

In general, it’s best to start with a small order just to see how quickly the market moves.

Oxxy.7068:

TooBz.3065:

It would be better if they removed zerkers.

Clearly zerker gear is OP. Otherwise, why would all the other sets be considered bad?

But the other sets are bad, pve wise. I don’t agree with OP, but it doesn’t mean that cleric, soldier, giver, dire etc are good in PvE. And, remove zerk and we’d use valks, assassin, cavalier or rampager, most likely assassin.
Inb4 “but they’re good in WvW!” Yeah i’m aware of that, i’ll probably put dire gear on my warrior for the lulz while roaming, i’m not using it to pve tho.

In all seriousness, if I were to re-balance the gear, I would make it so each piece has at most two offensive stats and one defensive stats or two defensive stats and one offensive stat. So no assassin or rampager either.

This would present an interesting question in terms of how to balance the different pieces, do you want power and precision, power and crit, precision and crit? how much of each?

If I were going to be a real pain, I would make it so if there were two offensive stats, they were minor stats and if there were two defensive stats they were minor. (Think knight gear).

But I’m not in charge and I run zerker’s also. But the more people talk about how you shouldn’t run anything else, the more I think it was a mistake to include it.

Edit: yes, I’m trolling a bit. But the idea isn’t entirely without merit. If only to obfuscate the best choice.

haviz.1340:

What’s satire?

It’s a Greek mythical animal, half goat half man.

sinzer.4018:

TooBz.3065:

sinzer.4018:

Things like this is obvious that people are mistaking effect for cause.

How so?

The notion that the problem is stat combinations as opposed to easy encounters littered with incredibly predictable AI thus the pointlessness of running anything other than gear/builds to maximise your damage once you know when to dodge.

I’m pretty sure if bosses were alot more unpredictable most people currently running zerkers would build for more defense. If it doesnt result in increased build diversity atleast we’ll have more difficult PvE content.

Here’s how I see it. People post threads saying “Zerker only.” In response,
I post “remove zerker.” At this point one of three things will probably happen. 1) I annoy them as much as they annoy me – win or 2) zerker actually gets nerfed, which would serve as a massive deterrent to posting those threads – win or 3) nothing happens except that I have amused myself for a bit – win.

TheDaiBish.9735:

TooBz.3065:

I haven’t played an MMO with a trinity before, but tanking doesn’t make sense to me.

Why would creatures focus on the tank instead of the glass DPS or the glass healer. We all know in games it’s better to knock down the number of attackers rather than the toughest guy.

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2007/09/21

It’s a little known secret that the Tank calls the bosses mum very nasty things.

What they do is run up, hit them in the face and yell ‘Oi, Zhaitan, yer mums a beep!’, which causes tunnel vision in the boss.

Ah, reality at it’s finest. Thanks.

sinzer.4018:

Things like this is obvious that people are mistaking effect for cause.

How so?

Mesket.5728:

TooBz.3065:

It would be better if they removed zerkers.

Clearly zerker gear is OP. Otherwise, why would all the other sets be considered bad?

So… should we start opening threads “Assasin gear is OP!” now? or wait for it? or should we just jump to “Knight gear is OP!”.-

Point is, its not the gear itself that is too good but the content too bad that in the equation of risk vs reward; there is too little risk for too much reward.

I hope not (on the Knight’s gear is OP). Hopefully once they get rid of zerkers then the people who have been fouling the forums with “zerker only” posts will get the hint and leave the rest of us alone.

It would be better if they removed zerkers.

Clearly zerker gear is OP. Otherwise, why would all the other sets be considered bad?

I haven’t played an MMO with a trinity before, but tanking doesn’t make sense to me.

Why would creatures focus on the tank instead of the glass DPS or the glass healer. We all know in games it’s better to knock down the number of attackers rather than the toughest guy.

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2007/09/21

Vena.8436:

Why do people misuse “treadmill” every time?

Treadmill is what WoW/Rift/Aion/etc does: Raid to get new iLvl gear to be able to do new Raid to get new iLvl gear to be able to do new Raid…

The state of this game is just alt unfriendly to some degree. The ascended crafting is probably the least alt unfriendly since once its leveled, you can churn out the items if you have the coin/supply stock.

I think MMOers have some weird fetish for their own Jargon. A treadmill is merely a device that for walking or running while staying in the same place. As applied to games, I view it as the illusion of progression. For each bit of increased damage is offset by a countering increase in armor or vitality.

So far this does not apply to PVE. Ascended weapons just make easy content easier.

It does apply to WvW. For ascended trinkets, defensive stat allocations can compensate for offensive stat allocations. One person gets more power, the other gets more toughness. At best, fights end sooner cause everyone uses zerker trinkets.

Ascended weapons also increase damage by an extra 5% through increased weapon power. Once ascended armor comes out, I bet we see that armor is increased by 5% to compensate. Net effect. Nothing changes, but we do a lot of work to have nothing change.

That, to me, is a treadmill.

RyuDragnier.9476:

Anet has already said they are NEVER doing expansions for this game. Deal with it.

They actually didn’t, deal with that.

This is what I’ve been running.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQNAsYVlYmSOHfS6E/JFx2jeuTeyVwpaFoZnCuaVA-jUyAYLBRyCEVAkQAk8ya2bIiVxioxqrxUuER1SBExyI-w

(yes in WvW)

Lahel.6381:

Pyroatheist.9031:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

I"d like to help, but there isn’t any build listing or description in the video or in the description for the video. This is all I can tell:

Scepter/Focus, Sword/Torch, possibly perplexity runes. Ether Feast, Decoy, Blink, Arcane Thievery, Mass Invisibility.

I believe it is 20/20/30/0/0

Dom: V, IX
Dueling: I, X
Chaos: V, IV, XII

It’s not perplexity runes, and the condition damage is too low to be undead. I’m thinking travelers.

Sword/torch: Superior sigil of corruption/superior sigil of doom
Scepter/focus: Superior sigil of corruption/superior sigil of doom

Lots of crits, but they don’t hit super hard, along with pretty much base hp. I’m thinking full rampagers with possibly maintenance oil and rare veggie pizzas. Still not sure about runes though.

Looks really weird to me, cause even with travelers rune in a condition dmg based armor set, torment should hit for around 90~ and bleed around 100~

My own bleed tick for about 110 maybe a little more and torment 107 or something and I have perplexity, but perplexity shouldnt cause such a gap in condition damage.

I might be wrong, and if I am I stand corrected.

just realised you wrote rampagers, and if that is the case I can understand the low damage ticks

I don’t think its a sigil of corruption either, because the bleed ticks stay pretty constant whether there are 11 or 19 stacks. Maybe perception?

Levels are only meaningless because MMO’s reuse character models and therefore level’s lack a sense of progression.

If you look at dungeon’s and dragons (circa 1987, I have no idea how it’s changed since then), you’d fight things like kobolds at low levels. But at higher levels you never saw them again or they were trash or they’d run away in fear, eventually you’d fight a hydra or dragons, etc… This provided a sense of progression.

In an MMO, you fight a blue kobold from levels 1-15, green kobold from levels 16-30, yellow kobold from levels 31-45, orange kobold from levels 46-60, veteran orange kobold from levels 61-75, and the veteran orange kobold with the kungkittengrip from levels 76-80.

With the first expansion you’d get to fight the pink kobold.

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

EverythingXen.1835:

I honestly cant think of an aspect of the game that is outright alt-friendly save the AP system.

what about the laurel system? you can buy ascended items with laurels
what about the karma system? exotic endgame gear with karma from Orr vendors
what about the dungeon token system? exotic endgame gear

you guys are complaining about the small bonuses from WvW-xp levels, fractals and the dye-system? O_o

What do you want guys? Gear being accountbound = not having to work for BIS-gear on a character? Seriously? I mean you already can play entirely on your Guardian and equip your Thief BIS by spending karma, laurels and coin. In which other game can you do this?

First, I don’t give a kitten about another game or a comparison of games, I’m talking about this one. Just because other games are also not alt-friendly doesn’t mean anything here.

Second, I took the question to be whether or not I would recommend someone create an alt. I would absolutely answer no. Under no circumstances would I ever create an ALT. If I knew then what I know now, well, I probably would not buy the game. But if I had already bought the game I would play each class to level 20 and pick one, deleting all others.

If you asked a reason I would say. 1-15) Ascended gear grind 16) WvW ranks, etc…

Third, the problem isn’t “working” for BIS gear (we can talk later about the pathology that makes people think working in a game is ok), but instead, that the amount of work is such that I absolutely don’t want to do it twice.

Forth, Laurels, you earn 1 laurel per day per account, you are better off having 1 toon here. No alt-friendly. Karma → yes, alt friendly as we have said you can easily get soon-to-be-not-BIS gear more alt friendly than it was at launch because of the wallet, Dungeon tokens → yes alt friendly BUT less alt friendly than it was at launch (when you could get daily tokens on each toon / path)

Yeah, not saying he was manipulating anything. Just saying that there is a scenario where manipulation is possible.

Agreed. There is a great video out there of a thief with only an off-hand pistol killing people with these runes.

Galen Grey.4709:

Imagi.4561:

Draco.2806:

Galen Grey.4709:

which other MMOs had JPs? None

Well thank god for that. They’re horrible.

Without reading the entire third+ page of back-and-forth arguing, I’d like to chime in here and say that I love the jumping puzzles. They’re fun, and I’ve never felt more accomplished in a game than I did when I reached the top of the Mad King’s Clocktower last year. I hope they bring it back again.

me three

Four

I think you also have to look at the progression of the game. At launch very alt-friendly. Fractal level and ascended gear made is less alt-friendly, but not terrible. Laurels / daily’s made it much less alt friendly. Changes to world boss reward chests – less alt friendly. WvW ranking less alt friends. Ascended weapons —- kitten!

Basically each change they’ve made has made the game less alt-friendly. As a consequence, I strongly recommend not getting invested in an alt. Unless you want to create a level 11 toon as a crafting bot.

Junkpile.7439:

Why don’t you make 70 man blob train and kill t1 70 man blob train?

Because there aren’t 70 people left play WvW on the servers that have been abandoned by the WvW guilds.

Sorry, even with a title I can’t see any reason to play anymore. Getting rolled over for 7 weeks doesn’t sound like fun.

Do we have any idea what the prizes are going to be for last minute stacking of servers to gain an advantage placement in the WvW competition?

History suggests that they could be anything.