Guild Wars 2

nagr.1593:

to the 1st question: nah. i think its great the way it is. i agree that it sucks when your on the short end of the stick, but when your not.. I have been thankful for the way anet designed this on many a merry occassion, when ive opened the dung and a few mins in I find my group is a bunch of complete kittens, so I happily wish them the best of luck and leave.

to the 2nd question: I think that’s what makes PuGs so much fun. you never know what kind of awsome kittens your going to end up with. its like a bag of trail mix, really the thrill is in not knowing! In all seriousness, if the party leader disconnects I dont think it will kick everyone. Ive had this happen to me on afew occassions ive opened dungs, gotten horrendous lag and DCed, relogged to find my party is still safely inside.

to the 3rd question: because. punishments and rewards must be dished out in equal measure. its the anet mantra.

Are you kittening serious? There’s no reason for everyone to get kicked out because one player rage quit, is a troll, or just had to leave. That leaves nobody happy. If you don’t like the other players, they should be able to carry on without you without starting over.

Skarka’s law in action, here. There is no position that won’t have at least one person on the internet ready to defend it.

Content locusts. If you’re asking “why does this suck?” there’s a good chance the answer is content locusts.

The people who only play for rewards would farm stuff until they had all the gold and tokens they needed to buy whatever they want, and then they’d be bored. And then they’d quit. Wait. No, that sounds like an awesome idea. Let’s do this.

fellyn.5083:

If all of that is true I’m wondering how not only did I not spend 200g to get my weapon smithing to 500 but I made over 20g doing it.

You’re either lying or an unusual case.

diamondgirl.6315:

I agree with Neural that the Ascended crafting gives you a concrete goal to work toward. You have to work, you have to wait, but your hard work is not going to be utterly negated by random bad luck, like the precursors.

I look forward to discussing RNG.

They can’t please everyone.

I don’t want goals to work towards assigned to me. I don’t want people who have more time, or people who are willing to do unfun things many times, to have a numerical advantage.

The reliance on random rewards smells like cheap conditioning tricks to hook players.

Is this where I tell anet that time played should not equal power, and that’s why a lot of their systems really grate on my nerves? Ascended items, laurels, fractal and dungeon tokens. Hell, even the long time it takes to get to 80 (it’s far longer than a tutorial needs to be!). All of that’s the cheap thrill of “keep doing this simple task and you get a reward!” What am I, a dog?

I shouldn’t have numerical disadvantages compared to someone who plays more than me just because he put in more time. If he plays better (because of practice or research or whatever) then that’s fine. But now the guy who has a lot more free time is playing on easy mode, and probably acting smug about it.

Also you should put in some ‘hard mode’ dungeons, and put monsters in that use player skills. Don’t just give them bigger numbers, but make them smarter.

I’d like to see more events that matter. Let fort trinity fall if the players don’t do the events. Let the risen take sparkfly fen if that happens. Let that spread up to bloodtide coast. And if no one does those events to retake it? Let lion’s arch fall.

Events, especially if they change the world. I like retaking forts, getting rid of bandits, and so on. That feels more interesting and heroic than farming champions that have no story or context. I wish events mattered more, though.

I also like dungeons, sometimes. A but challenging, lets you develop some skill mastery. Some are better than others, though.

I like exploring sometimes. I like finding little hidden caves and secrets, like that unmarked charr that gives you a town clothing hat.

I like spvp. I like it for similar reasons I liked tf2. Competitive, no vertical progression. If I was anet I would put more attention on spvp and consider making it f2p like tf2. Make hats and skins, make money.

I don’t like leveling, grinding, dailies, rng, farming, people failing events on purpose to get better loot, or loot in general.

Healix.5819:

It was originally a feature, but then…

One thing to note is that, earlier we talked about how we were going allow players to sidekick up in level we actually don’t have that functionality in the game and the reason we don’t have it is because when we were going through the game we thought one of the really important moments in the game was kind of that moment where you ran into something and you weren’t quite powerful enough to overcome it, or skilled enough to overcome it, and we wanted to give people the ability to kind of be able to build their character in such a way that you could by those moments instead of just bypassing them by getting artificially side kicked up a level. And so we don’t have side kicking up anymore in the game anymore except for in WvW. So if you want to think of how our dynamic level adjustment works is that it automatically happens downwards in PvE and automatically happens upwards in WvW. And competitive PvP obviously you get set to equal level everybody. So that’s kind of how that works now

Basically, it cheapens the leveling experience.

Not being able to win a fight because you haven’t put the time in to level is bullkitten difficulty. Upscaling wouldn’t avoid cases where you weren’t skilled enough as a player.

Great idea, but would probably be ruined by people ignoring low level areas to go farm Orr or frostgorge. They need to do things to discourage farming and encourage playing varied content.

Jrunyon.3012:

This must be your first MMO. This is simply the way the genre works. We pay money to the publisher and the developers are given more of a budget to bring us new content and features. Intentionally shooting themselves and their profits in the foot is not something NCsoft will allow Anet to do, so this is the way it must be.

Honestly, I’m just grateful that it’s only optional weapon skins, they could have overpowered stat boosters hidden behind RNG.

Very condescending. “This is simply the way the genre works” is the laziest, least convincing, response to an issue you could give. No. “The genre” does not need to rely on slot machines and such conditioning to work.

On topic, the RNG worship in guild wars 2 (and many other games) is irritating, and sometimes insulting. But I guess enough people are sucked in by variable reward schedules that it works. (I think that’s what you call the kind of conditioning you get with slot machines, anyway.)

No. Vertical progression is undesired.

Quit because I dislike progression. Ascended gear was like a slap in the face, and the WvW progression is iffy, too. The way arenanet handled the reaction to ascended gear was awful, too. Merged all the outcry threads, then locked it without content.

If they focused on more lateral stuff, I’d still be playing. More classes, more weapon types, more skills. But that’s all hard work, so instead they can just add bigger-numbered gear and call it a day. Screw that.

Zynari.7192:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=umDr0mPuyQc

Best reply.

To put it lightly, “lol no.”

You built this whole level scaling system. Use it. Raising the level cap is just going to kitten off more of the players.

Red Falcon.8257:

But if you quit GW2 over this I wonder where did you go.
Other MMOs offer far, far worse formulas and are made with obsolete, childish mechanics.
I could never go back to play games with pidgeon-holing after I’ve been let be a tank, healer and DPS on the same char and at the same time.
I could never give up dodging/blocking with my real skills rather than it being a RNG calculation.
I could never look at a tank spamming the aggro rotation and gather all mobs while a healer refills him and not feel like that is ridiculous.
Let alone monthly fees, haha.
If I was to quit GW2 I think I’d stick to single players for a long, long time, because before we see a MMO with half the goodness of GW2 it’ll be years.

If the price to pay was a tier between exotics and legendaries then be it.

I played a lot of the single player and co-op games I’d been neglecting. I tried some other MMOs and barely got 2 hours into them. It’s true, GW2 is the best MMO there is. That’s why I really don’t want to see GW2 follow after MMOs I detest.

I somehow missed the announcement that they were going to raise the level cap. Wow. That’s really discouraging. I mean, assuming the new cap means new gear, that’s many many times worse than new ascended gear. Wow. Just… did they even play Guild Wars 1?

Jski.6180:

For fractal and its a non gold cost item its a time cost item. If any thing Ascended items should be hosted up to show this game is not a p2w as some ppl love to call it.
Now i am not saying ppl who do not like Ascended items want to get to be p2w but i am not comply sure after reading ppl post.

I’m sorry but I honestly cannot parse what you are trying to say.

Mackdose.6504:

55 points is make or break? Really? I guess 5 signet warriors are gods now.

I think you’re missing the point.

Can you answer “if 55 points isn’t important, why have it at all?”

Yes ascended are supposed to be better. Like has been said multiple times, its gear between exotic and legendary that is supposed to take time to get, and is acquired while you make legendary progress (ie Dailies for Karma, Fractals for Cores and T6 mats all result in progress towards ascended). But as you can see from the practical example, the stat bump isn’t so insane that it makes exotics redundant.

Hold on a second. Why is “better gear that takes a longer time to get” acceptable at all in Guild Wars? I thought one of the selling points was that you wouldn’t be chasing gear.

Guess it’s moot since they’re clearly going in that direction, but I just wanted to point out that that doesn’t need to be how the game works.

It does sound like it will take an awful amount of time to get a complete set of ascended gear for multiple characters. Especially since I don’t really like dungeons. I could ignore it, but as time goes on more content will be “tuned” with the assumption people will have the more powerful gear. They’ll have to, or max-gear people will complain that it’s too easy. (They could ignore those people, but what they did with ascended gear so far shows they’re more likely to listen to them.)

Plus if you want to change your build or playstyle, that means another large time investment to get different stat ascended items.

I also find it strange that people say the bigger stats don’t make a difference. Why have them, then? I know I had a lot of encounters (in PvE and WvW) where I just barely won, so I’m certain increased stats will matter sometimes.

I quit when they announced ascended items as the new gear ceiling. I was happy with exotics being fairly easy to get, and that being the end of the gear climb.

Do ascended items still have better stats? Do their improved stats still count outside of the fractal dungeon?

I’d like to play Guild Wars 2 again, but I really don’t like gear progression. Exotics are annoying but acceptable, so I put up with them. Quarantining ascended items to their one dungeon would be acceptable, maybe.

Chances are the people who stuck around on the forums are the people who like gear progression and endlessly increasing numbers, so I kind of expect a lot of “go home noob” and “do you want gear just handed to you!?!??” (yes).

Xeres.3724:

No. Getting the best gear should be an achievement or reward, not a given. My biggest pet peeve about gamers these days is they feel that just because they log into your game, everything should be handed to them on a silver platter. But actually put some effort into this? No. You can insert the typical reasons – lack of time, lack of desire to do what is required, etc. Sorry, that’s the way it goes – everywhere. Generally, you don’t get rewarded for doing nothing – unless you work for congress.

This is not a compelling reason why people with more free time should be given an advantage throughout the game. They already have more time to practice.

Gear doesn’t need to be a “reward”. It functions just fine as a choice, along side what weapon type to equip and what hair style you wear.

Best solution would be to throw out the idea of areas having levels. Scale everything like WvW, and you can put interesting content anywhere. Then you don’t have people swarming Orr because it’s the highest level.

I’m told players got confused by this idea, and didn’t know where to go, but that’s too depressing for me to believe.

Probably too radical to happen, anyway. Lots of MMO players are pretty reactionary.

Oh, and don’t put best gear in one single place. Especially a dungeon. Come on, that should be obvious anet.

Make ascended gear equal to exotics.
Change agony system to not depend on gear.
Add player housing and accompanying gem store items. Decorations, trophies, mini games, ++max guests.

A lot of people don’t put a lot of thought into game design. Something like gear grind is likely to be accepted by many people because a. it’s pretty common, b. the reasons why it is terrible take some explaining, and c. some people legitimately like it.

DegoLocc.5976:

Correct Naughty :P

Columba.9730:

DegoLocc.5976:

Revolution.6301:

caiomacos.1694:

Martrim.1078:

This is an MMO

MMO’s are based on “more effort, more reward”
Stop trying to destroy a perfectly good MMO with the constant whining that all should be equal.

Stop trying to destroy a perfectly good MMO with the constant whining that you deserve better stats because you have more free time.

+1

Look most of us have lives. So making it more towards the folks that can spend 6+hrs playing everyday is ubserd.
The only happy people are with those with to much time on their hands. As for the rest of us…

MMO’s aren’t made for casuals in mind, by design, not even this one. Nothing new here why are ppl surprised?

GW1 was.

But there is no debate, just fact.
GW1 wasn’t an MMO, it was listed as a co opRPG with some multiplayer tacked on. The actual game world was instanced, and you only seen other players who were in your group, no one else. Basically the game was hardly massive, and was more a giant dungeon, for your group.

GW2, is an MMO, and MMO players expect progression, casuals don’t want it. But by definition, MMO’s are timesinks, and not designed for casuals.

You’re defining MMO to exclude GW1 to further your argument. I’m sure there’s a fancy latin phrase for that trick.

Let me try. GW2 isn’t an MMO because it doesn’t include separate player factions.

Also “MMO players expect progression” is laughable. It would help your argument if the marketing for GW2 wasn’t pretty explicit about how progression was going to work.

“MMOs are timesinks”? You need to support that claim that MMOs are time sinks, and can be nothing else. Please provide evidence other than “past games have done it.”

Reonhato.5914:

aliksyian.7642:

Gear = time spent.
Gear =/= talent. Gear =/= skill.

In order to have a level playing field for players from “24/7 no sleep” to “a few hours a week”, gear should not be a factor in success.

Would you play chess if the other guy got three queens, simply because he’d been playing longer? (Some of you are probably saying ‘Yes, I love a challenge!’. Somehow I doubt you’d play that way for very long)

If you want a level playing field go play Spvp.

The fact is that even without a gear difference someone who plays 4 hours a day is most likely going to be much better than someone who plays 1 hour a day.

Players need things to aim for and some players like those things to be stats and I can guarantee you that far more people will aim for the armor with an extra +5 stats and keep playing than the number of people who will leave simply because of the items presence.

The amount of players who will exclude someone because of a marginal stat difference is a tiny tiny fraction of the player base and is certainly worth ignoring in exchange for the amount of players having something bigger and better to aim for will keep playing. You may not like it but you are a minority, most people do not care if someone in WvW has 1% more stats because they play 10 hours a day, to most people what others have is not important, it is what they have and if they do not have something to aim for then they will not play.

If this game was based around PvP, if WvW was the ultimate driving force in this game then you may have an argument for having the highest stat items easy to obtain, but that is not the case, the driving force is PvE.

This is not a compelling argument for an providing additional advantages to people who already have more time to practice.

Structured PvP is only a small portion of the game. Why should I be quarantined?

“A problem will only happen 1% of the time” is not an adequate response to a problem that was needlessly introduced.

Players who play to get the next tier of gear forever and ever are served by many other games. GW2 should be able to serve the people who don’t want that type of game. It was explicitly marketed to that group of people. It does not matter if there are more carrot-chasers. That’s not the target market.

Why are bigger stats necessary for PvE? Why not anything else as a carrot? Titles? Fancy skins? Trophies for housing? Raising the stat ceiling is toxic. The reasons why have been discussed at length, but they include faster obsolescence of older content, demoralizing players who had reached the old ceiling, and promoting elitism.

What do they add? They are a goal, yes, but an ephemeral one. Once it has been reached you’ve returned to where you started, but now you’ve poisoned parts of the game.

Gear grind is bad MMO design. Gear is the result of time spent playing and little else. There’s no compelling reason to reward players who have more time to spend with numerical superiority. They have more time to practice as an advantage already.

Gear = time spent.
Gear =/= talent. Gear =/= skill.

In order to have a level playing field for players from “24/7 no sleep” to “a few hours a week”, gear should not be a factor in success.

Would you play chess if the other guy got three queens, simply because he’d been playing longer? (Some of you are probably saying ‘Yes, I love a challenge!’. Somehow I doubt you’d play that way for very long)

AcidicVision.5498:

Dude…everything is RNG. Ecto for crafting high level stuff comes from random rare drops, T6 mats come from random mob drops, even if you buy those things it was from stuff you sold and the most profitable were still chance drops.

And from the recipes I have seen, you only need one essence to craft a Ascended item. You also get an ascended ring as a reward for beating level 10.

srsly. Just play the game and you will end up with what you need eventually. Every one I have been doing fractals with found in essence in the first 1-8 levels. But even if they didn’t find one until lvl 15, they still didn’t need it sooner than that because Agony isn’t a huge factor yet.

“Time=Power” is bad MMO design. Things that can be purchased via the trading post aren’t so bad, since you can do fun things to get money. Still not great design, but some people are old-timey in their thinking.

haviz.1340:

Columba.9730:

lol. what we have here is a failure to communicate. read carefully. all other things being equal -traits, etc (everyone gets those), the gear gives significantly better stats. stats matter esp in small scale wvwvw. I should be able to get those stats by doing things other than dungeon grinds.

How is that a failure in communication. People wanted to have gear adventage in wvw. And now they have.

People want a lot of things that are stupid. That doesn’t mean they should be implemented.

I’ve heard people say they want to use every trait at once, or every utility skill at once. There are a lot of bad ideas floating around in people’s heads.

Vertical progression and content gating, mostly. I put up with bugs and the slog to level 80, but this new ascended stuff is nonsense. I just want my gear stats to be complete so I can focus on actually playing and exploring. Adding bigger-numbers gear is just so unnecessary, and introduces some toxic problems into pve and wvw.

Excellent posts.

I also dislike levels. It’s such a relief to hit 80 and have the freedom to go anywhere, it’s a shame you have to slog through many hours of “leveling” to get there. Heck, if they scaled everything like WvW it would probably work fine.

I honestly don’t understand people’s obsession with “progression” when they just mean bigger numbers on their character sheet. Does that actually impress people? Player skill, talent, ingenuity impresses me. Not time spent.

Agreed that the whole item rarity thing is silly. You need to have the best items to be on equal ground with others, so that’s some unnecessary grind. I intensely dislike gear quality being a factor in winning or losing. If I had known about that during the beta I would’ve complained, but I was too enthralled with the events and world.

I’ve noticed how PvE is generally very easy. Enemies don’t do anything interesting like they did in GW1. They don’t form coherent groups. I guess part of that is because open world stuff needs to be solo-friendly, but dungeons don’t have that excuse.

But at this point it’s largely beating a dead horse. Anet (or whoever’s running it now) decided to turn up the vertical progression, so I’m taking a break from gw2. Maybe in a few months when the content locusts are bored something will change, but I expect it’s going to get worse before it gets better.

haviz.1340:

Were you expecting different outcome? It’s for levels 80 with full exotics. It’s an elite content, you can’t just wander in with level 2 with no skills unlocked, no traits unlocked, no weapon swap unlocked and most importantly not good enough gear. This game seriously needs gear checks. Less QQ, more pew pew. Get level 80 and appropiate gear first. Then you can enjoy gw2 to its fullest

Do you even know how GW2 is supposed to work? Maybe you would be better served by one of the many other gear-checking games.

This is the kind of complaint that should have died out with like Lineage2 and Maple Story. I thought Guild Wars 2 was supposed to be more advanced than that.

Anet really screwed the pooch with these changes.

@haviz.1340:
That’s not white knight. That’s devil’s advocate.
Also if you want to have complete gear you need to do the fractal dungeons. That’s a major departure from GW1 and the stated design principles of GW2.

Player segregation is bad design. I can’t believe anet wouldn’t see this as a potential problem, so they must think it’s worth the cost.

Magic find is toxic in pretty much any game it’s included. It contributes to a “rich get richer” problem, for one thing- People who have the time to put together a second set of +mf gear not only benefit from all that extra time of theirs, but from better drop rates. Poor casual carl who can only play for 2 hours a night falls more and more behind his friends. That’s not good for the community.

I’m opposed to the whole concept of new, higher-stat gear. I want to win or lose based on skill, not the numbers on my equipment.

They should be able to make more difficult content without mandating more powerful gear. If the monsters gain 100 damage and your new gear lets you ignore 100 more damage per hit, you haven’t really moved anywhere. And that’s the treadmill metaphor is apt.

Just thought I’d point that out, since a lot of people seem to have bought into the “need new gear to do harder content” myth.

Try doing something other than farming? Go explore. See the world.

Granted, many of the dynamic events don’t chain into anything interesting, and many repeat too frequently. But there are a lot of them, and I doubt most people see them all.

Capture the flag and Payload (a la TF2) are good game modes.

Fix downscaling. Make it so content that was challenging when you actually were the appropriate level is challenging when you return. Tell people who whine about not being powerful enough to learn to play better.

Dramatically reduce rewards for repeating the same event multiple times in the same time period. Like, cut xp/karma/money/drops in half each time you do the event per 12 hour period. Force people to move.

Allow level-appropriate drops no matter where you are. Allow resource nodes of any level to spawn anywhere. Don’t force me to go to Orr for fancy ore and exotics.

Lower drop rates for repeatedly killing the same type of monster. Raise drop rates for moving on to something new.

People who repeatedly do the same few events are missing the point of the game. Go. Explore.

Get rid of magic find as a stat because it is toxic, encourages farming, and reinforces an anti-casual “the rich get richer” problem.

Not that it matters since I’m taking a break over the ascended gear bs, but those are some ideas.

Don’t they have someone from Nexon doing their cash shop? Nexon games are notorious for abusive slotmachine-like cash shops.

Either way, a big random factor is annoying. Don’t treat us like idiots.

I am very opposed to the stat inflation and gear check introduced by the new patch. I derive no joy from increasing the numbers on my character sheet. Gaining another 500 hit points does not make me a better player. It’s not an impressive feat.

If I take down a champion alone, or win a 1 on 1 fight against an equal-level, equal-gear WvW invader, that can be impressive. That may be a measure of skill or talent. If I win because I have played longer, if my “gear” grants larger bonuses, then that success is lessened.

Aside from the gameplay implications, I rather dislike seeking out new gear for its stats. When I completed my exotic set (half from crafting, half bought outright) I felt relief. “Finally,” I thought, “I’m done with this. Now I can focus on the fun parts.”

I felt a similar relief when I reached level 80 and the world was truly open to me, but that’s a separate issue.

The other part of the new patch, the infusion-agony gear check, is also distressing. It segregates players. I’m discouraged from playing with my friends who haven’t progressed as far. Who benefits from this?

The core of the idea, an endless dungeon that gets more difficult as one progresses, is solid. But tying progress to gear? Gear that must be ground out? Terrible.

Personally, I would make the infusion process something limited to the dungeon, and something that reflects the players’ skill and ingenuity. Perhaps small events in the dungeon grant protection for a limited time. Perhaps something as simple as an ever decreasing time limit. I don’t know what would be best, but I tell you nearly anything would be better than a gear check. Gear does not measure skill. Gear does not measure tactics. Gear is a measure of time spent playing, and little more.

So what does this mean? They already have my money. I’ve enjoyed the game very much so far, I admit. I love dynamic events. I love the open world with its secrets and tricks. I like the WvW and how it (sometimes) brings the server together.

But I don’t like this. I don’t like what this hints at for the future.

Perhaps I’ll play something else for now. I have other games I have neglected. I’ll wait and see if favorable changes are made, or (less ideally) if the power level plateaus again. But if the power level continues to creep upwards with new equipment? No thank you.