Guild Wars 2

STRanger.5120:

I’m absolutely aware of what you’re explaining here, that’s exactly the reason of my previous post, where I stated that this type of targetting is not an option now, the game has to be designed around it, which GW2 is not unfortunately.
I would be totally happy if the targeting system of GW2 would be fixed at last, it’s killing me when I want tab-target anything and have to tab myself to death although the target I want is the nearest to me and precisely in front of me. Not even mentioning the World bosses

Ah, I know what you mean there… however you can click your target you know, yes?

TwoBit.5903:

VOLKON.1290:

Oh, that’s right, you’re using the wrong definition of pay to win to try and make your argument. Sorry for the misunderstanding. Let’s shift back to the real definition. Show me something on the cash shop you must buy to compete.

None, but that’s not how most pay to win cash shops work.
http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/RaminShokrizade/20130626/194933/

Reading is cool, kids.

Well that explains a lot. You’re now confusing monetization efforts (which can encompass pay to win) with pay to win in general.

No one can argue that there are some efforts in the shop that are designed to make money. Wouldn’t be much of a cash shop if it didn’t, would it? However, there is no pay to win, which is a specific subset of the whole.

We’re not talking about how cash shops work. We’re talking about pay to win. They are not the same thing.

TwoBit.5903:

VOLKON.1290:

TwoBit.5903:

VOLKON.1290:

Corpus Christi.2057:

VOLKON.1290:

Guild Wars 2 is not even remotely pay to win. This discussion is not even worth having.

No one forces you to discuss it. Nevertheless, thanks for forcing your view onto us.

Cheers

A pleasure. Of course, I wouldn’t do it if I wasn’t right.

You cannot buy win.

Oh, and here’s the best part that people completely forget… even if you bought the materials for ascended gear using gold you got from converting gems… you’re not buying the materials from ArenaNet. You’re buying them from other players.

I’ll bet those that actually think there’s a P2W element in the game are incapable of understanding the significance of that simple, basic fact.

You can buy gold to purchase materials from ANet if you don’t want to go through the pain of grinding. In fact, in many games there are ways you can trade cash only items for goods earned within the games, a process that’s not so dissimilar from trading bought gold.

What mats are being sold in the cash shop that are needed to craft ascended gear? Am I missing something here? All the materials on the trading post are there because players put them there, not ANet.

Anet designed the trading post in mind to take advantage of the fact? So they can sell gems to help people to buy those materials? To reduce the pain?

Oh, that’s right, you’re using the wrong definition of pay to win to try and make your argument. Sorry for the misunderstanding. Let’s shift back to the real definition. Show me something on the cash shop you must buy to compete.

TwoBit.5903:

VOLKON.1290:

Corpus Christi.2057:

VOLKON.1290:

Guild Wars 2 is not even remotely pay to win. This discussion is not even worth having.

No one forces you to discuss it. Nevertheless, thanks for forcing your view onto us.

Cheers

A pleasure. Of course, I wouldn’t do it if I wasn’t right.

You cannot buy win.

Oh, and here’s the best part that people completely forget… even if you bought the materials for ascended gear using gold you got from converting gems… you’re not buying the materials from ArenaNet. You’re buying them from other players.

I’ll bet those that actually think there’s a P2W element in the game are incapable of understanding the significance of that simple, basic fact.

You can buy gold to purchase materials from ANet if you don’t want to go through the pain of grinding. In fact, in many games there are ways you can trade cash only items for goods earned within the games, a process that’s not so dissimilar from trading bought gold.

What mats are being sold in the cash shop that are needed to craft ascended gear? Am I missing something here? All the materials on the trading post are there because players put them there, not ANet.

Corpus Christi.2057:

VOLKON.1290:

Corpus Christi.2057:

VOLKON.1290:

Corpus Christi.2057:

VOLKON.1290:

Guild Wars 2 is not even remotely pay to win. This discussion is not even worth having.

No one forces you to discuss it. Nevertheless, thanks for forcing your view onto us.

Cheers

A pleasure. Of course, I wouldn’t do it if I wasn’t right.

You cannot buy win.

Oh, and here’s the best part that people completely forget… even if you bought the materials for ascended gear using gold you got from converting gems… you’re not buying the materials from ArenaNet. You’re buying them from other players.

I’ll bet those that actually think there’s a P2W element in the game are incapable of understanding the significance of that simple, basic fact.

Your ignorance is a bliss, really. Please, allow me to copy-paste your post to another thread.

Thanks again!:)

Go right ahead. When you do, try to explain the concepts of new power only acquirable from the company vs existing power transferred between players as well.

You flatter me with your special interest.

You will be famous, mate! Keep up the good work!

Best regards

Well dang. I thought I already was.

STRanger.5120:

andytango.2950:

I thought TERA’s combat was pretty bad actually. The animation lock made the combat feel extremely clunky. It was like every skill was a channel.

GW2 has one of the best combat systems of any RPG. The manual/auto targetting hybrid is a very smart implementation to combat lag but still support a skill curve.

Yeah, the animation lock (especially with sorcerer class) is quite annoying, but when you learn that it’s on purpose (balancing), you can deal with it.
The fact is that if GW2 had the targetting system like Tera (crosshair), it would be just super-awesome imho, no dumb targetting of neutral mobs, no problems with targetting a world boss or player among his minions etc. It could be even improved by some special options like target-locking or automatical ignoring of a specific target type (friendlies, neutrals etc…), and it will greatly support skillful playstyles

Actually a lot of skills in GW2 would suffer if the crosshair thingie was the only means of targeting. Some skills work differently depending on whether or not you have a target, and that can be used for specific advantages. Others require a target (think mesmer clones and phantasms as an example). The targeting system in GW2 adds more flexibility than people realize.

Let me offer an example of a skill behaving differently if you have a target: mesmer Feedback. With a target selected and in range your Feedback will put the bubble around your target. However, without a target, you place the bubble directly ahead of you at a set distance. That can be a HIGHLY desirable option (especially in WvW) depending on the circumstances. A bubble between you and the enemy can be better than a bubble on the enemy that they quickly run out of.

Corpus Christi.2057:

VOLKON.1290:

Corpus Christi.2057:

VOLKON.1290:

Guild Wars 2 is not even remotely pay to win. This discussion is not even worth having.

No one forces you to discuss it. Nevertheless, thanks for forcing your view onto us.

Cheers

A pleasure. Of course, I wouldn’t do it if I wasn’t right.

You cannot buy win.

Oh, and here’s the best part that people completely forget… even if you bought the materials for ascended gear using gold you got from converting gems… you’re not buying the materials from ArenaNet. You’re buying them from other players.

I’ll bet those that actually think there’s a P2W element in the game are incapable of understanding the significance of that simple, basic fact.

Your ignorance is a bliss, really. Please, allow me to copy-paste your post to another thread.

Thanks again!:)

Go right ahead. When you do, try to explain the concepts of new power only acquirable from the company vs existing power transferred between players as well.

You flatter me with your special interest.

Corpus Christi.2057:

VOLKON.1290:

Guild Wars 2 is not even remotely pay to win. This discussion is not even worth having.

No one forces you to discuss it. Nevertheless, thanks for forcing your view onto us.

Cheers

A pleasure. Of course, I wouldn’t do it if I wasn’t right.

You cannot buy win.

Oh, and here’s the best part that people completely forget… even if you bought the materials for ascended gear using gold you got from converting gems… you’re not buying the materials from ArenaNet. You’re buying them from other players.

I’ll bet those that actually think there’s a P2W element in the game are incapable of understanding the significance of that simple, basic fact.

Just real quick here…

Subclasses are a horrible idea. Absolutely horrible. The moment you begin to add too much specialization is the moment people start demanding that specialization for things that never required it in the first place. Someone will sit down somewhere with a calculator and convince themselves that the numbers indicate that with these certain professions and these certain subclasses you can clear a dungeon eighteen seconds faster, therefore no one else is acceptable.

Horrible, horrible idea for the long term health of the game.

Of course it’s not pay to win. I played a game once, forget the name, that was a space shooter type of game. You played through a leveling area, growing your ships, gathering resources and blowing people up, kind of a micro-EveOnline (with no wheres near the sophistication). However, once you maxed out (which took far too long), that was it. Unless, of course, you bought the ship they were selling, which was vastly superior to the best you could get in game. No comparison. To compete, you bought this ship. Oh… and the expendable ammo they sold. It was twice as powerful as the best you could get without cash. That is pure pay to win. To compete, you were forced to open the wallet.

Anyone suggesting that GW2 is even remotely pay to win makes me wonder if they’re either lacking in gaming experience (never actually experienced pay to win) or simply posting known fallacies for the sake of either generating arguments for fun or for bashing the game.

Guild Wars 2 is not even remotely pay to win. This discussion is not even worth having.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Hi All,

This is my last day at work before the holiday season and I am going to be very busy!

Once I am on vacation I will have more time to respond and engage.

I am therefore going to postpone the focused discussion on Horizontal Progression until tomorrow. I will catch up post page 36 today (or at least try).

Meanwhile I have a question. This thread is BIG. Would the folks who have already commented on Horizontal want a new thread which is just based on Horizontal or should we just carry on with this thread?

Regarding my reminders from you about comments on some kind of reward for the Fractal reset, I am still thinking about feelings around it.

Chris

Chris, I believe that horizontal chatter will explode and therefore will be worthy of it’s own thread. I’ll wager 23 copper that it grows larger than this one.

I just got word that the S.P.C.D. (Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Dolyaks) has strongly condemned the concept of using natures gentle beasts as modes of transport for the lazy. From their official release:

“While it’s barely tolerable as it is to accept these graceful beasts blessings for us to share in carrying our burdens, denigrating them to mere means of transport, especially for that of the larger (and of questionably hygienic) species would be no less than cruelty to the highest degree.”

No thank you.

VOLKON.1290:

Could always bring back the Eidolon in some fashion…

Let me embellish now that the grey matter has digested this a bit.

Every thirty hours, on all servers simultaneously (to prevent hopping) and in overflows a Meta event chain kicks off somewhere, possibly even in a new, small zone that is relatively dead otherwise. The chain takes your through a few events and, at the culmination, there before you stands… er… floats the Eidolon. In a battle of Tequatlesque fashion, the server comes together to take down the beastie. You loot from it (if you win) an “Eye of the Eidolon”, which you can use to turn in for a piece of ascended gear of the stats of your liking.

I chose thirty hours because that will rotate through the timezones for the server and not leave people out due to work or region, but that can be modified of course, say fifty-four hours for example if it seems too frequent.

Meta event, mega-beast, coordinated server efforts, alternative means to get a piece o’ gear.

Could always bring back the Eidolon in some fashion…

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Hi All,

Here is the next evolution of the original Vertical Progression proposal based on a summary of our discussions:

Regarding Ascended Gear we would like to see more ways to earn it and in terms of drop rates, a higher percentage chance of acquiring them through this method.

A review of current RNG metrics.

The ability to change gear stats (Note there is still a lot of discussion about whether people want this or not)

The ability to build up to Ascended Gear through drops rather than just relying on RNG.

Ascended Gear mats dropping more equally across the game, for example WvW.

No more new Gear tiers that make the existing tiers obsolete.

Additional ways to earn Ascended Gear at accelerated for Alts.

Note this is the formulation of a proposal for discussion. Once the proposal is finalized it will be discussed internally. However there will be no promise of actions or schedule.

Chris

Great summary Chris, I think that wraps up most of the vertical aspects nicely.

With regards to my idea of using t-stones to replace inscriptions and insignias, if it’s not a great idea to modify t-stones to do this I was thinking that a similar type of object could be created… let’s call them V-stones… <cough>

Or… being an Asura (which everyone knows are also geniuses), it could be conceptualized that a certain Asura developed the brilliant method to overwrite these incriptions and insignia called… wait for it… the Volkonizer! Available to public use, of course, for a really insignificant fee.

killcannon.2576:

VOLKON.1290:

I don’t see him making the “got a life” claim, just factually stating that with the reduced time he has to play waypoints allow him to see more content. Why anyone would want to remove accessibility to content from someone else is beyond me.

Not sure why you equate removing a few waypoints as removing accessibility to content. Because it isn’t by any stretch of the imagination.

The fact is, the sheer number of waypoints just increase the type of one , toxic play style in game. The zerg train. Cutting down the number of waypoints doesn’t remove anyone’s access to content.

Waypoints and zerging are unrelated. Go look at WvW for evidence of that… the zerg will form whether or not waypoints exist. The fact of the matter is that removing waypoints slows down access to content, and for someone with limited playing time this equates to access to content denied.

There’s an expression we had in my Navy days, but I won’t repeat that here because it’s unrelated to the topic and will get me banned. However, I will use a different expression… “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” Removing waypoints isn’t as simple as removing waypoints if I’m not mistaken. You then have to factor in things like the aforementioned accessibility to content, which can have an effect on mob types and densities in areas.

There are far more worthwhile things to devote time to (see the CDI thread) than messing with a system that most people like, use, and agree works well.

killcannon.2576:

ozmaniandevil.6805:

killcannon.2576:

ozmaniandevil.6805:

killcannon.2576:

remove half of them. especially ones near events/champs

I reject your idea wholeheartedly. None of you HAVE to USE the waypoints. If you don’t want to, then don’t.

The open world is way too big. You know how many world bosses would get done if there were no WPs? None. I’m not wasting an hour running from one side of the Tyria to the other just to do an event. Ever. It would be over before I got anywhere anyway. Oh, or maybe I could just make 30 characters, one for each huge map, and park it there. That sounds like fun…. NOT.

That’s nice. Long live the zerg trains , eh? lol

Has nothing to do with zerg trains. I have only so much time to play in a day, and harvest mats and and kills stuff and do dungeons and play wvw and do world bosses AND champs… I don’t want to spend my hour running from here to there, thank you. I’m not 19, I don’t play for 12 hours a day. With waypoints I can get to where I want to play for the time I have to play. Simple as that.

Oh…one of the “I got a life” elites. Don’t have the time to invest in an MMO? I don’t care. The lowest common denominator of gaming.

Give it to me now, cause I “got a life”. These players caused the rise of microtransactions, gold sellers, and rise of the cash shops in games. The faster a mmo can get rid of these types of players, the better.

I don’t see him making the “got a life” claim, just factually stating that with the reduced time he has to play waypoints allow him to see more content. Why anyone would want to remove accessibility to content from someone else is beyond me.

Servanin.5021:

VOLKON.1290:

Tera’s rooting is horrendous. Nothing destroys the flow of battle worse than not being able to flow in battle. I’ve completely lost the desire to ever experience stop action combat again.

Every action game has you stop to attack (Or only lets you use a weak attack while moving) to add decision and consequence to your action.

If you keep attacking carelessly, you might get stuck in a frame that you can’t dodge cancel out of. In GW2 thats simply not there. You get aggro from multiple hard hitting enemies or a champ, you just keep circle strafing at no loss.

That’s what people in stop-action combat games tell themselves… it has meaning. With the skills and cooldowns in GW2 “attacking carelessly” is just as (if not more) foolish than in stop-action combat. Skills often have secondary and even tertiary effects, and the right timing in using them can make all the difference.

If I’m paying attention, I can (and have) kill a warrior when I heal. If I time it wrong, or simply cast on CD, I can wind up dead instead.

cesmode.4257:

Pawstruck.9708:

Of course Tera has great combat. That’s ALL it has!

I literally did a quest in Tera to kill 10 XYZ’s, turned it in, and got ANOTHER QUEST TO DO THE SAME THING. lol. The combat system’s not archaic, but the questing system and the rest of the game is.

Well, if you thnk about it: GW2’s renown hearts are the same thing. Only, you can choose what you want to do. Kill bandits, plug leaks, bring X item to Y vendor. Dynamic events where a town is being taken over is the same…the amount of risen to take over a camp in Orr is the same static number hidden behind a progress number. Its the same stuff, just done a bit better.

Specifically about combat, Teras combat is way better than GW2 IMO but I personally feel that Neverwinter might take the cake.

Tera’s rooting is horrendous. Nothing destroys the flow of battle worse than not being able to flow in battle. I’ve completely lost the desire to ever experience stop action combat again.

Kevan.8912:

VOLKON.1290:

Conner.4702:

Estriella Faerie.4029:

Carighan.6758:

Honestly I see that as quite balanced, though. You have multiple toons fully decked out at the end, which gives you a very very high amount of flexibility in regards to gameplay. You can always relog to a character with specialized gear and trait setup and just the fitting utility skills.

That flexibility has a cost, in that you needed to spend the time for each character.

Seems fine to me?

Depends on how alt-friendly you want the game to be.

Most games have a pretty high vertical progression, so it’s extremly hard to equip many character, therefore you have only one main character, and your other toons are alts.

Gw1, like gw2 before, wasn’t like that. Equiping a toon to BiS was quite easy (the first one required a bit of time, after that it was easy to farm the stuff for the alts). So you could switch toons to play with friends, to have a team composition that was correct.

With the introduction of ascended, gw2 is taking the path most other games are taking, and it’s kinda sad, as the versatility we had before was really nice, we could switch to a guardian if the team needed it, or stay on our dps, etc. Now, with a new tier, we’ll feel compelled to stay on our only equiped character.

This is especially true with fractals. With the fractured patch, fractal level became account based. But now, the required AR is much more than before, so I can’t use my alts there, even if I want to. Kinda bad to make, in the same patch, a change to help alts (account based level), and one making it impossible to use alts (more AR required).

You are forgetting that in other games with high vertical progression you still have the option to gear up alts alongside your main. Depending on how much time you have to spare. This option is not available in GW2 unless you have an extreme amount of gold. Even then some items are still time gated.

Other games do not limit gearing of alts, for those with time, as much as GW2 currently does.

You’re forgetting that those games with the endless vertical progression you pretty much have nothing to do until the next latest raid (and tier of gear) is released in a few months. You raid, get geared, so you raid and gear an alt or two while you wait, only to start over again with the next raid. Ascended gear isn’t meant to be recycled every couple months or so… it’s a long term investment, especially when compared to vertical treadmill based games.

This is not disposable gear.

are you sure it’s not just the beginning of the endless vertical treadmill?
we do know right now there will be new max levels…new legendaries…maybe expansions.
i think it could be disposable gear.
it’s not the game anet announced. this is a typical-grind-mmo with just a bit less grind….disguised as events or other stuff.

In lesser MMOs I can see that as an issue, but it really doesn’t make sense to raise the level cap in GW2. You gain nothing from it and wind up,having to rebalance things, create all new gears and numbers… Far too much trouble for a game that down-levels you to keep lower content viable. I have no doubts they entertained the possibility of level cap increases but the game is built such that it is not only unnecessary, it would be damaging as a whole.

Based on that, I’m confident ascended gear, with all, the time and gold invested, will not be disposable gear… At least not for years.

Azure Prower.8701:

Yes? No? Why? Why not?

I’d rather they did to bring back immersion to the world. Instead of looking at load screens as abrupt transitions.

Actually, removing waypoints would break the immersion of the world. Map travel goes back to GW1 and is a part of the lore.

Azure Prower.8701:

Flissy.4093:

Azure Prower.8701:

Then every one would have the same chance, events would be made into a epic occurrence instead of another waypoint check list and traveling some where is meaningful.

Then “every one” would be about 10 people, because that’s all that would play the game. Nobody wants to waste their entire playing time running to do a 1-minute event where you only need to auto attack anyway.

As said above, this is a ridiculous question only asked to generate response.

Considering a certain mmo that is doing way better and is more popular than Guild Wars 2 doesn’t have teleport waypoints littered all over the world.

You mean that really old one that makes you go afk to ride a gryphon for 15 minutes just to catch up with your friends?

Yeah… that’s fun.

I don’t recall a single tower or keep capture in months where we didn’t say “Sweep for mesmers”. There may have been times where it was stated to not bother, we only wanted to break the keep, not hold it, but sweeping is just so… basic. WvW 101 stuff really.

After season 1 and with the Wintersday stuff out people are taking breaks. This was to be expected.

cesmode.4257:

Hi,
One thing I want to mention when discussion gear progression, or character progression in general…

Comparing two systems(brace yourself)… World of Warcraft vs GW2.

To acquire BiS gear in WoW:
-Defeat raid bosses and hope that you gear drops.
-This requires team work, communication, skill.
-Either the actual piece to equip drops, or it doesnt.
-There is no "Well I defeated X boss again for Y amount of materials. Probably another 10-12 kills and I have enough dragonite for one ingot…No No, Im either rewarded with the item that I need, or Im not. If I don’t get it, I might get it on the next kill.
-**Note, BiS gear is not required in anything but Raids in WoW.

To acquire BiS gear in GW2:
-Farm temples, world bosses, dungeons, jumping puzzles, nodes, and play the TP to acquire resources
-Level up crafting
-Sit behind the time gate until you have enough of the material to craft a piece.
-**Note, you do not need BiS gear for anything but fractals(similar to WoW…no?)

The difference between the two here: I defeated a boss in WoW for a drop. The feeling of “phew, we did it…time for loot. gasp, hold breath…Yay my dagger dropped! /roll”. Vs GW2 "<boss dead>, “Dwayna next?…need more dragonite ore”.

You farm the hell out of the bosses and events in GW2, whereas in WoW you might only fight a boss a few times before a drop. The reward drops in WoW are much more rewarding because after a hard battle, you may get what you need vs bread crumbs received in GW2. You truly feel a sense of accomplishment and reward…time well spent. Progression.

Just my 2 cents on RNG vs materials gathering. Many will disagree with me. But can these people honestly say that defeating Ragnaros in cataclysm or HM Lich King in WOTLK for that uber drop was less rewarding than farming SB/Jormag/Dwayna/Lyss/Grenth/Teq 100x? You would rather do this?

I recall raiding in WoW all to well. Raiding two or three nights a week, the same bosses over and over again, cycling through the rotation which gets locked into muscle memory as you beat the same bosses again and again and again hoping not only for the RNG gods to smile upon you but also that your group will all agree that you need the piece of gear you need and not some other guy. In GW2 here, I have control of what gear my characters get instead of other people and whatever DKP system they’ve come up with.

I can recall being invited to run a raid with a guild that had someone missing and accepting the invite. Things go well, a piece of gear drops I need, I roll on it and win the roll… but they give it to someone in their guild instead. They forgot to mention that guild members had priority on the loot and I could only get something if no one else needed it.

Not what I’d call rewarding.

Conner.4702:

Estriella Faerie.4029:

Carighan.6758:

Honestly I see that as quite balanced, though. You have multiple toons fully decked out at the end, which gives you a very very high amount of flexibility in regards to gameplay. You can always relog to a character with specialized gear and trait setup and just the fitting utility skills.

That flexibility has a cost, in that you needed to spend the time for each character.

Seems fine to me?

Depends on how alt-friendly you want the game to be.

Most games have a pretty high vertical progression, so it’s extremly hard to equip many character, therefore you have only one main character, and your other toons are alts.

Gw1, like gw2 before, wasn’t like that. Equiping a toon to BiS was quite easy (the first one required a bit of time, after that it was easy to farm the stuff for the alts). So you could switch toons to play with friends, to have a team composition that was correct.

With the introduction of ascended, gw2 is taking the path most other games are taking, and it’s kinda sad, as the versatility we had before was really nice, we could switch to a guardian if the team needed it, or stay on our dps, etc. Now, with a new tier, we’ll feel compelled to stay on our only equiped character.

This is especially true with fractals. With the fractured patch, fractal level became account based. But now, the required AR is much more than before, so I can’t use my alts there, even if I want to. Kinda bad to make, in the same patch, a change to help alts (account based level), and one making it impossible to use alts (more AR required).

You are forgetting that in other games with high vertical progression you still have the option to gear up alts alongside your main. Depending on how much time you have to spare. This option is not available in GW2 unless you have an extreme amount of gold. Even then some items are still time gated.

Other games do not limit gearing of alts, for those with time, as much as GW2 currently does.

You’re forgetting that those games with the endless vertical progression you pretty much have nothing to do until the next latest raid (and tier of gear) is released in a few months. You raid, get geared, so you raid and gear an alt or two while you wait, only to start over again with the next raid. Ascended gear isn’t meant to be recycled every couple months or so… it’s a long term investment, especially when compared to vertical treadmill based games.

This is not disposable gear.

Belenwyn.8674:

VOLKON.1290:

Allow the flexibility to change the stats on the ascended gear (as you can on Legendary) so that the time it takes for one character to get geared won’t have to be duplicated multiple times for that same character. Personally the idea I like best in this regards is being able to use t-stones (already in game) to change the inscriptions (weapons) or insignias (armor) on the gear (as opposed to combining two pieces of gear). For example, for a sword simply craft a new insignia and use a t-stone to put those stats on the sword, destroying the old insignia in the process.

Maybe t-stones become too expensive at the long run. May proposal was to add new stat combinations you can choose for via drop-down menu by using the Mystic Forge including mystic forge stones the ascended item, one insignia/inscription an one small vision crystal.

Well, let’s look at it from a business perspective as well. It’s not fair to ask ANet to completely toss away a bit of their revenue. I could see t-stones coming down in price through the gem store and possibly more means to get them (for example, added to the list of possible items in WvW rank chests) however if there is an issue with demand vs. cost.

munkiman.3068:

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

The time gating thing, ugh, I’m not a fan of the way it is implemented for ascended crafting. Currenty I’m at Artificer level 477, and there is nothing for me to do but to wait till I can craft the next material the very next day. Experience crawls up extremely slowly, and it feels like the time gating is only there to make the process take longer. If I could, I would pop a crafting booster, and just craft a ton of ascended materials in one go. My crafting xp would shoot up, and that level 500 would be in reach a lot faster. But until that time, it is a grind with gating slapped on top.

Just FYI if you’re leveling your crafting profession via ecto refinement, you’re doing it wrong. Doing all your discoveries will get you there in less than 5 minutes, if you have the mats on hand.

While i agree the time-gate on crafting is a bad move, it still is a soft gate, meaning you can work around it by just buying the stuff off the TP. It seems to be meant to provide crafters with a way to earn extra gold. They really need to come up with better solutions to make crafting more profitable than just sticking a time-gate on it, however.

Well… that can be done fairly easily, but it’ll take considerable effort. By that I mean we need more things to craft, and not just armors and weapons, and it can tie into horizontal progression quite nicely. Let’s say, hypothetically, you’re battling Jormag himself in an epic fight and possibly, if you survive (mwa ha ha haaa…), you find when looting a scale or tooth of the dragon. It turns out that with that scale or tooth you could possibly make a wall hanging, a table, a set of chairs, an ornate carving, something cosmetic of this nature to be placed in a personal instance (or guild hall if you wished). Now, if you were able to sell these cosmetic items on the TP you’d have access to a new market that someone who, for example, spends most or all of their time in WvW would likely not have access to (yet would now have access to the finished products). Conversely there could be things only acquired through considerable investment in WvW that could be created that the base PvE crowd would otherwise not have access to. That gives a nice, cosmetic and possibly profitable means of horizontal progression… although it would tax the ArenaNet artists, developers and testers quite a bit coming up with so many new things.

So basically we can combine crafting (and profit) with world activities and create a cosmetic form of horizontal progression… if we had somewhere to put our stuff.

You know… I could see having a nice sized home instance type area to decorate up be given free and expansions on the size of it being available through the gem shop… (a little love for the accountants there…).

I think we’re putting too much thought into “vertical” progression. It should be clear that hardly anyone (a vast minority) wants a continual power creep to be added to the game. So, for the sake of simplicity, let’s say that ascended gear is it. That is max “power”. If that can be agreed upon then the whole topic of vertical itself comes screeching to a halt and we automatically shift to the horizontal line of thinking… now that we know and have resolved ourselves to the idea that ascended is it, how accessible do we make ascended?

So we’ve seen a few things already mentioned in the thread… adding more viable means to acquire ascended gear and making the ascended gear more flexible such that someone with many alts or many build selections for their character doesn’t need to spend vast amounts of time getting the gear they want, however there still needs to be a notable investment in time to get the gear in the first place (otherwise everyone will be geared too quickly and start looking for “what’s next?”).

Ideas that I’ve personally liked so far –

Allowing more than just crafting to create ascended weapons and armor. This would include dungeon tokens to get dungeon specific ascended skins, pristine fractal relics to get Fractal based ascended gear, Badges of Honor for WvW, etc. Add more options, but still have a worthy time investment for each path.

Allow the flexibility to change the stats on the ascended gear (as you can on Legendary) so that the time it takes for one character to get geared won’t have to be duplicated multiple times for that same character. Personally the idea I like best in this regards is being able to use t-stones (already in game) to change the inscriptions (weapons) or insignias (armor) on the gear (as opposed to combining two pieces of gear). For example, for a sword simply craft a new insignia and use a t-stone to put those stats on the sword, destroying the old insignia in the process.

Now with regards to gearing alts the question that comes up is this… should each of your characters require a comparable amount of time to gear up with ascended gear? Logically it makes sense that they should… they’re each individual, separate characters after all. It’s quite different than changing stats on gear one character already has. But the concept of gearing alts at a different pace than mains I think could be a topic of its own.

But I think this is where we’re at, no? Cap vertical at ascended (at least for the distant future), open more paths to acquire ascended, add flexibility to ascended to ease the time-burden once you have a set but don’t speed up the acquisition process such that ascended becomes “cheapened” by being too easily acquired.

Thoughts?

munkiman.3068:

Sorry for replying to my own thread, lol. But ideas are flowing. So, actually change the functionality of transmutation stones to Locker access and fine locker access stones. This way they become more of a convenience item, change your stats/look anywhere in the world (for a cost, out of combat, etc.) with whatever is in your locker. Could even have a cool, drop out of the sky locker animation

I prefer keeping t-stones in and using them to replace the existing inscriptions in the armor. You want to change stats, craft the inscription you want (already in the game) and use a t-stone (already in the game) to overwrite the current one.

I know there was mention that this would require (hypothetically) people to carry around a lot of inscriptions… however I don’t think, at the ascended level, that we should be flipping stats every boss or encounter. Legendary you can already do that, so leave ascended a little step below legendary. You flip stats when you need to for something like a new build, not constantly (unless you actually want to put the time, effort and resources into being able to do so). If I want to carry a pocket full of inscriptions and stones about then sure, I could, but is that even realistic? How often would you be flipping stats without respeccing as well?

Regardless… well, there you go. It feels like a more simplistic solution as opposed to coming up with a bunch of new things and it gets the job done quite well.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Samhayn.2385:

Spawne.3128:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Is it fair to say that regarding Ascended Gear we would like to see more ways to earn it and in terms of drop rates, a higher percentage chance of acquiring them through this method?

Chris

I would say that is true pretty much about all items. However I see this strategy being problematic unless you increase the overall amount of items in the game. Supply vs demand basically. Scale it so that ascended weapons/armor only drop from the hardest of pve related events in the game, and exotics drop from lower difficulty events, and just leave the drop rate of precursors the same so that you dont diminish the rarity of legendary’s. PvE in this game has so much potential however has been largely undeveloped.

I like this idea of higher drop rates for harder content but it still neglects wvw so I would like to add. Higher drop rates in wvw from Player kills modified by the players rank. Higher rank = better chance to get something good from them. In theory higher rank players should have more experience and thus be more difficult to fight.

Interesting idea.

Chris

It is, but then again it punishes certain playstyles. I’ve been in WvW since it came out and I don’t have nearly the rank of many other even newer players. A large part of the reason is the time I tend to spend scouting and baby-sitting towers while the zerg runs amok getting the loot and booty. Time does not equate to experience in WvW. But the WvW rewards balances and imbalances is a topic for another thread I guess.

EnemyCrusher.7324:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Aeonblade.8709:

Lheimroo.2947:

Moshari.8570:

Give the ascended gear either “limited” stat swapping or full stat swapping like legendaries…or a way (a quest for instance) that would allow you to Add a stat for stat swapping.

If there were epic quests in place where you could unlock stat combinations for your gear that’d be.. awesome. That would be unbelievably awesome.

No more grind; make it about challenges.

I agree, would love to hear from Chris on this idea specifically, epic quest chains to unlock swappable item stats and new item stat combos.

This is a cool idea. Lots of logic problems to think about in regard to it. Need more time to think (-:

Chris

I like this idea. This would work best if each combo was account-bound. Each eligible item (possibly an upgraded ascended, similar to infused) would be able to switch to its original stat combo or any of the unlocked combos.

You could group stats combinations by primary attribute and allow players to unlock one in a specific group upon completing certain achievements. This way players could unlock the combo they want without having to play outside their norm, but to unlock all of them players would have to play all PvE/WvW aspects of the game. For example:

Power:

• Reach WvW rank 100
• Achieve “Dungeon Master”
• Complete 4 “Slayer” achivements

Precision:

• Complete 40 unique jumping puzzles
• Complete 3 “Weapon Master” achievements

Condition Damage:

• Achieve “The Sunbringer”
• Kill 2500 enemy players in WvW
• Complete one tier of the “Regular” achievement for four unique activities

Toughness:

• Reach fractal reward level 50
• Reach 5000 total achievement points
• Achieve “Been There, Done That”

Vitality:

• Complete “Victory or Death”
• Achieve “Master Crafter”

Healing Power:

• Earn 1000 achievement points from living story achievements
• Defend 500 objectives in WvW
• Complete the “Dive Master” achievement

Celestial:

• Unlock one stat combo from each of the other six groups.

This would, however, really have a negative effect on the “play your way” concept. For example, the dedicated WvW players tend to use PVT gear. However this model required Fractals level 50 to unlock toughness… and many WvW players rarely if ever step foot in Fractals. Forcing unrelated content to get stats desirable for completely unrelated areas will go over like the proverbial lead balloon.

cesmode.4257:

Tyrannus Blade.3408:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Aeonblade.8709:

Lheimroo.2947:

Moshari.8570:

Give the ascended gear either “limited” stat swapping or full stat swapping like legendaries…or a way (a quest for instance) that would allow you to Add a stat for stat swapping.

If there were epic quests in place where you could unlock stat combinations for your gear that’d be.. awesome. That would be unbelievably awesome.

No more grind; make it about challenges.

I agree, would love to hear from Chris on this idea specifically, epic quest chains to unlock swappable item stats and new item stat combos.

This is a cool idea. Lots of logic problems to think about in regard to it. Need more time to think (-:

Chris

If I’m understanding this right then the suggestion involves the idea of one piece of gear having many possible stat combos unlocked for it which can be swapped out on the fly so you don’t need a set of gear for each build. I wonder if it would be possible to also extend this idea to include swappable sigils and runes on weapons and armour so that one set of ascended really can work for all builds with the right unlocks.

While extending it to sigils, and we are talking about EXOTIC sigils here not ascended..right???, is a good idea… but one step at a time I think. Swapping some sigils out, few silver here and there, isn’t going to be game breaking for players IMO.

In terms of prioritization, Id rather see them get the stat swapping in first, and concentrate on multiple acquisition methods at the same time, rather than making sure we can swap sigils out with ease.

Sigils and Runes are Minor, Major and Superior, yes? I don’t think “exotic” or “ascended” make sense when talking about sigils and runes.

Malchior.5042:

Sorry VOLKON. I really enjoyed the proposal at first, with all of your details, but there are few things I hate more in MMOs than gates or requirements that aren’t established by the game design, but are initially perceived and ultimately accepted by the players themselves! Such one-dimensional thinking from players is what usually inhibits change, experimentation, and flexibility, and further leads these players to cookie-cutter meta builds that require minimal skill to execute.

Hey. You took an idea, muddled it around and came up with your opinions on the idea.

Never apologize for that. That’s how things get done.

I think I did a really, really bad job trying to explain what I was thinking regarding stat changes due primarily to having too much blood in my caffeine as well as a bit of a brain fart. So let me try again.

Right now, creating armor, a part of the process is creating the inscription which determines the stats of the armor. The idea I’m thinking may work well is simply this… let us take an ascended piece of armor that’s already made and slap a new inscription on it, thus changing the stats of the armor. The old inscription is destroyed and replaced with the new one.

Basically – I have a piece of Knights armor. I craft a Berserker inscription. I slap the Berserker inscription on the armor, changing it to Berserker armor. Knights inscription goes >poof<.

I don’t know why I failed to word that so simply earlier. Sigh…

The idea could, hypothetically, spread to cover any and all armor types, however I’m thinking from an ascended point of view.

Now… there is one potential problem with this… it could make transmutation stones obsolete, and I’m not sure how the accountants would like that. You could hypothetically require something similar to t-stones (or allow t-stones to do it) in order to replace the inscription, but you’d have to watch for complaints about money grabbing and all that, so a balance may need to be met. Need to look at these proposals from all angles, not just with tunnel vision about getting more stuff now.

OK… I don’t think this sucks…

I have a piece of Knights armor. I craft a Berserker inscription. I use a transmutation stone to replace the Knights inscription with the Berserker inscription on the armor, changing it to Berserker armor. Knights inscription goes >poof<.

What do we get…

1. Flexibility with our ascended gear stats, saving time over multiple sets for a single character.
2. ANet doesn’t lose out on T-stones, possibly sees an increase in their use.
3. We still have a sink for ascended and T6 items in the crafting of the insignias, and the crafting professions already make these.
4. I become famous.

Simple, elegant and solves and/or prevents many problems.

Nike.2631:

I remain (strongly) opposed to the ability to change their stats. It wasn’t necessary for Exotics and if access improves it won’t be necessary for Ascended.

If Ascended are supposed to occupy your time between a full exotic load-out and getting a Legendary, then amassing one set and being done forever puts them way, way, WAY closer to the Exotic side of that sequence of play. If we add some means to purchase them, filling out your Ascended tier one-&-only-once could easily end up taking less time than amassing 2-3 sets of exotics does…

The entire tier becomes fully self-defeating at that point.

I can’t possibly disagree more with this opinion. If accessibility becomes to easy you will soon enough find a new problem where some players have all the ascended gear they want. As a result they’ll begin to demand more progression past ascended. If you keep accessibility a long term thing but add flexibility to the stats you can alleviate that to some degree. If the stats are on items (inscriptions) that can be replaced and these are crafted items that can be traded you open up further uses for materials, new markets, expanded crafting options and more means of horizontal progression by simply being able to add new stat combinations on inscriptions

I worry about faster not always being better.

Lilith Ajit.6173:

VOLKON.1290:

Lilith Ajit.6173:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Is it fair to say that regarding Ascended Gear we would like to see more ways to earn it and in terms of drop rates, a higher percentage chance of acquiring them through this method?

Chris

Yes, that is totally what we want.

Not entirely all of us. I personally prefer the timesink aspect involved in getting the set. Without it it won’t be long before people start demanding the next set to come along because they have nothing left to shoot for now. Keep the timesink, add flexibility so that the time spent becomes more rewarding instead of feeling punishing for going after a set you didn’t ultimately want or no longer do want due to a change of build.

Well for me, I either have it dropped or I don’t get it. I’m not wasting my time playing parts of the game I dislike so I can craft armor (or weapons). I did the weapon thing, but I found that it was more tedious than anything and ruined my fun for a good 2 weeks. I’d rather play my fractals, and not have to farm world bosses or wvw to get the dragonite. No thanks. That’s why drops would make me happier. Regardless of the stats, if all I need is more AR I’ll use whatever drops when it is needed.

So what if you were able to get fractals related ascended gear for pristine fractal relics for example? Not just back pieces, but whole sets, weapons included? It would still take awhile but your dedication to Fractals would have definite goals in sight as well.

Lilith Ajit.6173:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Is it fair to say that regarding Ascended Gear we would like to see more ways to earn it and in terms of drop rates, a higher percentage chance of acquiring them through this method?

Chris

Yes, that is totally what we want.

Not entirely all of us. I personally prefer the timesink aspect involved in getting the set. Without it it won’t be long before people start demanding the next set to come along because they have nothing left to shoot for now. Keep the timesink, add flexibility so that the time spent becomes more rewarding instead of feeling punishing for going after a set you didn’t ultimately want or no longer do want due to a change of build.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Is it fair to say that regarding Ascended Gear we would like to see more ways to earn it and in terms of drop rates, a higher percentage chance of acquiring them through this method?

Chris

Possibly, or in lieu of that a means to add flexibility to the gear to allow for stat changes without needing to create a whole new set (see my inscription idea as an example).

Someone creates a whole set of berserker ascended and finds themselves getting rolled still (as glass cannons do) in WvW may have buyers remorse when that PVT set starts looking mighty tempting…

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

I will have to agree. No one in my guild has ever finished a fractal. Went in once, and never returned.

Did you send a rescue party? They could still be alive and waiting…

Amazingly well done.

Lil Puppy.5216:

VOLKON.1290:

Don’t quote me on this, but I’ve heard the .DAT file can become too beefy which can slow things down. I recall seeing that deleting the .DAT file can take care of some issues. I’d check with the tech forums before doing this, but it rings familiar.

the .dat file is everything there is to gw2, it contains EVERYTHING. Deleting it will force the updater to download the entire ~19gb again.
-repair is preferable to doing that.

Thank you for clearing that up.

OK… let’s call it a last resort.

So I was thinking a little more on the idea of inscriptions for ascended gear. Conceptually it feels like it has potential. In a nutshell:

1. All ascended gear (armor, weapons… maybe the others?) would have no stats. Instead they have an inscription slot.
2. All gear would come with an inscription included when crafted, found, etc. depending on the materials used in crafting, luck, etc.
3. Inscriptions would carry the stats for the gear. For example, Knight’s Inscription, Carrion Inscription, or more catchy names like Zojja’s Inscription of Extreme Displeasure.
4. Inscriptions can be crafted using T6 and ascended materials.

5. Inscriptions can be replaced with other inscriptions. There are two lines of thought with this…
a) Inscriptions are destroyed when being replaced. In this scenario, crafted inscriptions would be relatively “cheap”, i.e. use small amounts of ascended and T6 materials.
b) Inscriptions are salvaged when replaced. In this scenario, crafted inscriptions are fairly costly in materials, but not devastatingly so.

6. It would need to be determined, in either scenario, whether or not inscriptions could be traded on the TP. The amount of materials consumed should reflect this. My initial thoughts are that if inscriptions are salvaged when replaced then they should not be allowed to be traded, however if they’re destroyed when replaced they should be allowed on the TP.

Well… that’s the heart of the idea. You have additional sinks for ascended and T6 materials, you have stat flexibility on ascended gear and importantly (in my opinion) you get to keep the time-to-acquire pretty much the way it is now for ascended gear, which is an extremely valuable time sink when considering the long term health of the game.

Don’t quote me on this, but I’ve heard the .DAT file can become too beefy which can slow things down. I recall seeing that deleting the .DAT file can take care of some issues. I’d check with the tech forums before doing this, but it rings familiar.

I wonder how feasible it would be to take a little trip back to GW1 and look at inscriptions again. Inscriptions could serve as the “containers” for your armor/ weapon stats, could be crafted (and found via other means) and could be removed from armor or weapons through some means… either simply when out of combat or perhaps a new crafting profession could be introduced. Then when you have a piece of ascended gear you could remove and replace the inscriptions to get the stat combinations you like.

Nice thing with this is that it also ties into the old lore of the game, to a degree.

Shriketalon.1937:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Lets keep coming up with some awesome Horizontal Progression systemic ideas and also reward ideas?

Hmm……how about a Reputation System?

You keep trying to balance drop rates individually, but that results in people farming whatever turns out to be the best possible route to wealth. Meanwhile, adding block buffs doesn’t do anything for the out-of-the-way zones since people congregate in the optimal areas. But you could design a system where rewards were done from a top-down method and scattered across the world to encourage mobility. Like so…

Remove the champion reward boxes (don’t panic!), remove the world boss bonus chests (stay with me!), and remove the PvE Monthly Reward (hold on, don’t go anywhere!). In its place, add Reputation.

Reputation is a series of monthly meta achievements corresponding to the different factions. Each meta achievement has 100 tiers with a chest of goodies per tier, and is fed by a series of different activities for that zone. The individual achievements are logarithmic, becoming less rewarding over time. Reputation resets every month, though there is a permanent achievement reward for maxing it out. For example…

Seraph Reputation
-Slay Bandit champions.
-Slay Centaur champions.
-Slay Ettin champions.
-Slay Underworld and Demon champions.
-Complete unique events in Queensdale, Kessex, Gendarran, and Harathi Hinterlands.
-Complete unique group events in human territory.
-Defeat miscellaneous champion threats (anything not considered a racial foe) in human territory.
-Defeat the Shadow Behemoth.
-Defeat Ulgoth, champion of the Modniir.
-Explore unique jumping puzzles in human territory.

Every time you complete one of the minor achievements, you receive a tic on the Reputation track and a choice between several different bonus chests (for basic crafting components, rare components, ascended components, random valuables, etc). The requirements themselves go up over time. Initially you must defeat one champion for a single tic, but soon it becomes two, then three, etc. Likewise, the same event cannot be farmed over and over again since it demands unique events, and the world bosses stop providing the reward after a few tics.

Other Reputation tracks include the Sentinels, Wolfborn, Peacemakers, Wardens, Lionguard, and the Pact (unlocked through the personal story to make people stop skipping it), thus covering 100% of Tyria and the various Flame Legion/Branded/Inquest/Nightmare Court/Krait/Icebrood/Destroyer/Sons of Svanir/Risen threats encountered across the world.

With this system, the key to getting excellent rewards is to do things you haven’t done yet. It favors diversity rather than repetition, providing benefits for people who go off the beaten path. It also allows people to approach rewards at their own pace. You can spend an afternoon slaughtering champions and be well rewarded for your efforts, but you can’t farm champions for several hours every day the entire month and expect a consistent reward stream. The Wolfborn stop being impressed when you bring in the 274th Icebrood Quaggan head. On the other hand, you can just wander around and explore while still being rewarded for completing the new activities and new events you find through random wandering. Likewise, you can max out different Reputation tracks throughout the month in different ways, so you never feel too burdened by tedium.

Play Your Way suddenly becomes absolutely true and forms the backbone for rewards.

This looks so much like the WoW thing… and how’s it working there? Not too good… the complaints about having to grind one faction or the other for a desirable this or that…

Chris Whiteside.6102:

cesmode.4257:

StriderShinryu.6923:

Reesha.7901:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Ok another brainstorm idea.

What if certain pieces of ascended gear could be crafted and sold on the TP such as gloves and boots?

Chris

Yes please, or even better:
All pieces could be crafted and sold on the TP.
All pieces could change stats.
All pieces could be obtained outside crafting without relying on RNG.

Absolutely. Once again, no reason at all to restrict gathering of high tier gear to any one method of acquisition. Allow all pieces to be bought and sold. Allow all pieces to be traded for using a variety of the in game currencies that are already in place (dungeon tokens, karma, laurels, glory, etc.)

You do realize that even just one of these pieces will run well over 50 gold….Im thinking closer to 100. For one piece. If people have that much gold on hand, you might as well just buy your precursor as well while youre at it.

Whats interesting to think about is that if this went live and people started buying ascended gear off the TP, these are most likely going to be the people who have their legendaries already, and probably multiple legendariesalready because they have fat wallets in the real world and able to buy gems. Its amazing… people complain about legendaries being tradeable on the TP, but this would be acceptable?

Doing this would cause greater disparity between a RL richboy vs the normal joe, and the 24×7 farmer and the normal joe.

Yep this is definitely a valid concern. If the drop rate was higher though and it wasn’t just crafted then supply could be more deterministic in terms of demand.

Chris

But, of course, you run the risk of having supply be too high such that everyone gets it soon enough and starts looking for whatever is next. I think, personally, keeping them as they are as a primary progression time sink is the way to go. Now, perhaps the materials could be crafted on a 12hr cooldown as opposed to a 24hr one, I don’t know… you just need to be careful, I think, to not make it too fast or easy to get, otherwise you’ll start hearing the “now what” complaints. Then the temptation to go another level will creep in and you begin to slide down the slippery slope of a god-forsaken treadmill. The stat advantage with ascended isn’t so great that there’s a massive need to have it now or you can’t keep up, so I think there are advantages to keeping it time consuming. (This is from a guy that doesn’t even have his first ascended weapon yet, but I’m working towards it.)

Isaiah Cartwright.8569:

Art Progression
Art progression! It’s horizontal why not do it more!!! Well we do this a lot all ready and a lot of it’s constraints comes down to costs. Every single piece of art we make is not liked by everyone and so the amount of art you have to make to give everyone a smooth art progression curve is very high. The cost of making some pieces of art is also very high (Armor especially) sense very pair of gloves = 10 pairs of gloves due to race/sex. We think art is a great horizontal progression system but not something that can stand 100% alone due to constraints of creation.

I am way behind on this thread… but just to toss an idea out regarding Art Progression and the part I bolded… then don’t do it. No, no, don’t don’t do art progression… don’t worry about having to make 10 sets every time you add something new. Yes, there will be a few that complain because Charr had a new set released this cycle but Asura didn’t, however it’ll let you take a more realistic path to adding new styles in. If one of your amazing artists comes up with a new style for Norn, for example, don’t say “Now we need eight more before we can add it to the game.” Just add it and say “Let’s think about the other races now, ideas?” I think it may open up more artistic freedom as well. It seems unlikely (aside from a faction concept) for armors of the different races to coincidentally look similar. Charr may have heavy designs that simply don’t have an equal amongst the other races. So find your favorite Charrtist and say “Hey, go wild and don’t worry about converting this to a model for everyone”.

Don’t get caught in a “all must be equal or none gets it” mode. It seems too binding.

PopeUrban.2578:

TheDaiBish.9735:

Savoy.6824:

Now, jumping right into horizontal progression. Can the ArenaNet designers begin to design a game that incorporates the orders that we joined in our personal story. The designers may already be doing this to some degree, but it is my opinion that it is lightly used.

Personally, I think they missed a trick with the Personal Story, both as a way or making it relative to the open world and extending the pacing of the story, by not including a Order rep requirement.

For example, you start out as a grunt, and you don’t get the next Personal Story mission until you’ve made yourself outstanding among the new recruits (through doing DE’s and Order Missions [Order Missions aren’t something that’s actually in the game. Rather they are tasks doled out at random – say, every 1 – 3 days]). I mean, I found it kind of disjointed that you start in an order, and 5 missions later you’re quite high in the Order in terms of rank.

VOLKON.1290:

Anyone remember skill books in GW1?

Great horizontal potential there if they come back.

Were they the ones you did for rep and gold?

Or am I thinking of something else?

You’re thinking of journals/storybooks. Skill books were the things you got in hard mode that let you learn any skill already unlocked on your account. IDK how this system would be applicable to GW2 though, as all skills in GW2 are considered “unlocked” when you make the character.

I wasn’t clear, sorry ‘bout that. I just meant as a means to acquire new skills. Maybe a boss drops a ranger skill book that contains one of n new skills. No guarantee that you’ll get the one you want, or even for the profession you want, but it would be a different way to open skills up for your characters. If you get one for a profession you don’t have, either sell it or save it for later. Or maybe toss four in the Mystic Forge for a random book.