Guild Wars 2

teviko.6049:

I for one am happy to hear about this.

I am coming back to the game to check it out to see just exactly what this entails.

And to all those threatening to leave:

No you won’t. This isn’t a deal breaker. Not for you.

Correction: It is a dealbreaker.

There are a few core nichés this game has:
Dynamic leveling system
Downleveling
No subscription
Combat/Trait system
No gear treadmill.

Take even one of those core nichés away from me, and Im gone. Its like all of the sudden charging a sub, or removing Downleveling, or installing quest hubs with a dozen quests. Its core, and if it is screwed with enough, it is definately a deal breaker.

Well, details or not, rage or not, I just logged out. Not sure I’ll log in before reading the blog.

Even if these are new pieces of gear specific for one dungeon, I cant see how this is a GOOD thing. If I take a break for a month, come back and want to hop in that new dungeon, all I will see are people looking for people with these ascended items. Since I’d be new, they wouldnt be keen on taking me. Its like gearscore checking.

@souldonkey: What you linked is nothing new. We are awaiting arenanet’s response to this thread, to everyone’s concern. To explain what exactly ascended gear is.

Even if it is gear specific to one dungeon, youre going to see “LFM must have full ascended, pst”. I go bye bye.

souldonkey.9534:

cesmode.4257:

Where is your source?

The blog post on the website:

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/the-game/releases/november-2012/#the-lost-shores

You quoted something that is a big more specific than whats on that page. Within this current thread they said they would be releasing a blogpost explaining their intentions (maybe about 45 minutes ago they said this). Awaiting THAT blogpost to explain what exactly Ascended gear is…

souldonkey.9534:

Directly from the blog post:

New Ascended Gear & Infusions
Introducing Ascended items, artifacts of great power that can be improved by a special new type of upgrade called Infusions, which can be found in dungeons. Look for more information about Ascended gear soon!

Ascended ITEMS with Infusion slots. These are whole new gear pieces people, NOT a new tier of armor. kitten the new dungeon deals with “fractals” that get harder the more you go in. Anyone think that maybe, just maybe, these new “ascended Items” are just gear pieces made for this particular dungeon (and likely for similar future dungeons), where you might have to upgrade your “infusions” based on certain fractals?

That actually sounds pretty cool. It’s basically a form of progression that isn’t necessary, but gives a reason to keep re-doing this dungeon.

Want to complete the dungeon once?
Cool, you can. You don’t need Ascended gear or Infusions to do it. You finished, have fun.

Want to run it multiple times and challenge yourself with higher difficulty each time?
Cool, go for it. Make sure you have your Ascended item and the proper Infusion.

This literally helps both sides of this coin. If you like to grind and like to max stats, you can grind the fractals till they become so difficult you start to bleed from the ears, and you can min-max on the infusions to your hearts content. If you just like to experience content once or twice you can run this dungeon a few times do that and you’ll have no issues with it.

Where is your source?

When is this blogpost coming out?

Where will the blogpost be? Main guildwars2.com page?

Stephane Lo Presti.7258:

Hi everyone,

We’re going to publish a blogpost about the new ascended items on the Guild Wars 2 website. This should answer most of the community’s questions before the content is live this weekend.

Thanks for your patience!

Thank you. I hope it is good news

MrLee.6892:

cesmode.4257:

Ever since I read this in the morning, I havent logged in. I just found it difficult to log in knowing that any gear I obtain on my main might be replaced in a few days.

Going to log in now, on my alts I’d imagine, but I haven’t had the urge to log in and obtain some dungeon gear today just because of this.

You play an MMO. MMO’s are about progression and additions. Stuff will change. If you haven’t figured this out by now, then I don’t think MMO’s are the type of game for you.

Not this MMO. Not verticle progression. If I wanted a gear treadmill I’ll do it via raiding. Not by simple fact of purchasing gear.

Ever since I read this in the morning, I havent logged in. I just found it difficult to log in knowing that any gear I obtain on my main might be replaced in a few days.

Going to log in now, on my alts I’d imagine, but I haven’t had the urge to log in and obtain some dungeon gear today just because of this.

Indeed clarification is needed. The only way Id be semi-OK with this is if this gear’s more “powerful stats than exotics” are activated as you progress through the new dungeon. If you are wearing this gear in any other dungeon or in the world, it has the same stat level as exotics.

One slippery slope this might create is that you’ll see people spamming LFG “LFG <new dungeon>, must have full ascended set…”

Are we back to gear scores now, as it was with WoW? Gear requirements to run the dungeon?

I dont want more stats and I dont want the ability to change the power of my character because I have a certain gear set on. This FORCES me to grind out this gear.

Tread very carefully.

I cannot express how disappointed I am to read this and if this goes live. I’ve defended the game from day 1 to the naysayers, and out of appreciation to Arenanet, a few days ago I purchased some gems. Not because I needed them, but to throw some money at Arenanet for making a great game and supporting it the way they have. They earned it.

If ascended gear makes it in, I wish I could take that money back.

I just made a post on this, not realizing this thread existed (I did skim two pages of threads!).

No to ascended gear. Absolutely no. There are a few cornerstones and nichés that Arenanet has going for them with Guild wars 2. No gear treadmill is one of them.

I log off at night knowing that if I do not log in for a while that my character wont be “behind” everyone in terms of stats.

If I wanted to worry about gear treadmill, I will return to WoW or Rift where I can earn my gear in raids and random drops, (most of the time). I probably won’t be playing Guild Wars 2 anymore. I already have a lot of pressure from family and friends to return to WoW. This would probably push me over that cliff

If it happens once, I can stomach that, I think. But not more than once.

What about the people that spent hundreds of thousands of kharma on gear, and dozens or hundreds of gold on gear…just to be erased stat wise for Ascened. What a waste. Complete waste of time.

Here I was thinking I am spending my time grinding for cosmetics and aesthetis, not statistics.

http://massively.joystiq.com/2012/11/12/guild-wars-2s-lost-shores-content-primer/

Obviously the accuracy of this article is not 100%, who knows…I hope it is not accurate.

However, to quote: "With great challenges come great rewards. The patch will introduce ascended items. Ascended armors are “slightly more powerful than exotics” and can, in some cases, hold slots for infusions. Infusions will allow you to increase your character’s power. Guild Wars players are familiar with infusing armor, although I’ll be my hat that the process doesn’t involve creepy Seers this time ’round."

Slightly more powerful than exotics… So, if I want to be top dog I need to get this ascended gear? And then reskin? What about the next content patch, after the mid-november one? Going to increase the stats slightly again? Is this the beginnings of the gear treadmill?

Also, @OP, look at all of the threads about servers being full, unable to play with friends. 2+ months into release and people are still having these problems.

Infact, just this morning I responded to a post from some guy who actually quit the game because the server was full and he could not log in to play with his friend.

The game is dead, far from it. Some zones might be, but the game is very much alive. And to whomever said “250k” players…probably completely wrong. Id still guess at least 1.5mil worldwide.

Id love to see some actual numbers from anet though.

Any zone that I am in, I see many people…My server is one of the more full servers though.

In any case, this boils down to two reasons:
-The population is dwindling
-People are in the higher level zones(70+, farming Orr, or sitting in LA)

Addressing the second reason, they need to give people more of an incentive to return to the lower level zones. Map completion, sure, but whatever the percentage of reward you recieve for completing a DE in queensdale vs Orr, it needs to be all the same. Once the map completion is done, why ever return?

Reward for completing DEs should be level based, 1-80 with the exception of events in Orr, being maybe 110 or 120% that of other DEs.

Id go back into the world then.

The problems you experienced are avoidable or not problems at all.

-Security: As you properly did, you set up security. I do hope they add RSA tokens in the future, but its a start. Took WoW years to do this.
-Your server is full at 6:30am. Thats a good thing. That means, obviously, that tons of people love the game, and are playing it even in the early hours(or peak time in their time zone). This means the game is thriving. Could have been patient, like my RL friends were, waited a few minutes, or an hour, and try again. The full simply meant that you couldnt create a new one at that time. I think if you waited a little bit, you would have been fine.
-It sounds like server transfers are no longer free. Good, but I am sorry you didnt check this real quick to see if they were free or not. If I had a thought to start a toon on a server other than where my buddies are, Id probably do a quick search or make a post here asking if they were free still. I wouldn’t have taken the chance.

so, your “worst experience” is somewhat self inflicted.

I like the idea of magic find, I liked it in Diablo 3 as well.

Ok, so we just got done with Halloween which was heavily centered in LA. The next small content patch later this month is also going to be within LA. I know it is still early, but I urge Arenanet to include other major cities in these events such as Divinities reach, Rata Sum, etc. Please do not allow Lions Arch to become the Stormwind/Orgrimmar of Gw2. I like LA but I would prefer some of these events to take place in other cities.

Thanks,

Hello,
While I understand that many feel this game is centered around PVP, there are many that do not agree with this statement. I think the enormous dynamic world 1-80 will support that. I think its clear that Arenanet wants this to be both a PVE and PVP game, but wants PVP to become an eSport. I understand that.

Since there are no damage meters in PVE, I am getting the sneaking feeling that every single class rebalance and tweak is centered around PVP. This is some what understandable, since if you have a completely OP class, PVP is where you’ll notice it. You might not notice it as much in PVE since theres no metric or meter to guage your effectiveness other than how fast you kill something, or how long you can stay alive.

My concern is that with all of the rebalancing around PVP, I hope the devs do not lose sight about the impacts those changes might have on the PVE experience. Changing some abilities around to make it less or more impactful in PVP might have an unintended side effect in the PVE world, and that is something that I do not fancy. I am a PVE player at heart, and I will become acclimated with PVP and participate more in PVP than I ever have before(and Im sure I’ll enjoy it!), but I hope that when they make changes that they consider the impact to PVE.

I am speaking generally and this is just a broad general concern with no evidence to necessarily support it. Its just the sneaking feeling I have since many consider the game to be more PVP centric(thus content and changes centered around PVP).

No. If I wanted gear progression I would have stuck with WoW, Rift, or Tera.

I love the fact that GW2 is a horizontal progressing game, not vertical. The moment I am forced to abandon what I have in favor of something that is more powerful, I leave.

Not to put down a suggestion thread because these threads prop up the game, but how is this different than an elementalist?

yeah, I turn down my volume.

Just a suggestion for a side game: Moa races. Similar to the chocobo races in final fantasy, I think this would be a neat competition. Catch moa’s, breed them, race them for reward.

@op: I guess because this is the way they designed it, much like the open world non instanced game of WoW is designed the way it is…

People need to stop believing that this is a PVP game, where everything must be catered to PVP and the Guild Wars 1 style of the game… It is its own game from the lore of GW1. Thats it.

Ive seen two posts that merit concern: One that related to the mist vendors with 100 rank gear, and the quote of Colin, which I cannot maintain as entirely accurate unless the poster provides a link.

The idea of “horizontal at level cap, verticle at expansions” is the same thing as any other MMO. In WoW, you level to 90, get max stat gear. Great. New tier of raiding releases, and the stats increase. Or an expansion is released, and the stats increase. How is this any different than raising the stats per expansion? Again, the only REALLY different between other MMOs, for arguments sake WoW, and GW2 is that GW2 has no raiding. Its all about aesthetics. Making me level another 5 levels, just to re-gear my self stat wise, is carrot on a stick…they just spread it out more than tier’d raiding as other games do.

Again, Im out of here if that happens.
And no, Im not some bratty kid with a knee-jerk reaction. 28, married, with my own kid. I’ve just played enough MMOs to know where value lies in a game, and in GW2 it lies in the fact that theres no stat progression once you get your max stats. I’ve also noticed a few “exaggerations” on arenanet’s part, as well as half truths, to the point where it would make me question their sincerity when stating their plans for the game(whether good or bad). While I cannot get enough of the game, I have been disappointed by the half-truths that Ive come to realize way too many times in the two short month’s of the game’s release. I don’t think any other game has done that.

Leveling cap should not increase. If it does, that leads to Carrot on a stick progression, verticle gear progression… Farm max stats and sets during this “tier”/“release”, wait for the next expansion, level up a few levels and then farm the next max stat set there. Its the same thing as any other game out there, the only difference is theres no raiding.

The cornerstone of this game’s endgame is horizontal gear progression, in that it is all cosmetic and the stats stay the same. If you increase stats, then who cares about cosmetics…its all about waiting it out until the next xpac. The only difference then would be that theres no raiding to test my “meddle” with my new max stats (and no Im not advocating that I want raiding, just making a point).

If Guild Wars 2 increased the level cap, thus increasing max stats, I quit on day one and I don’t look back. Ever. If I ever play another MMO again, it would be WoW because at least then when my current gear is useless due to an xpac or level increase, I can farm new gear for raiding purposes (which I do not want to do, but if there are no games that offer an alternative, that’s where Id be).

@ Roven Leafsong: I agree with a lot of what you said. Concerning the comment “I must not be as much of an explorer as I thought”… could it be because there are less and less reasons to actually explore? By explore I would like to say it means to wander aimlessly..finding interesting things in the distance and heading toward them. Once arenanet put in place points of interests, vistas, skill points, renown hearts, scouts, and circles on the map where dynamic events are happening…it became less of a game of exploration and more of a game of map completion.

While poi’s, vistas, hearts, and skill points are all very interesting and I like them, they drastically reduce the need to explore anywhere else in the game and simply “get lost” in the environment around you. Once you explore that point of interest, you turn around and run the other way, because mobs are most likely running after you. This is exacerbated in Orr.

Scouts are the worst feature added to the game, imo. “Hey we want you to explore and be immersed…but hey, explore HERE and HERE and HERE”. I do not use these scouts so I am largely unaffected, but by the majority it is a feature that deturs from random exploration.

With all of this said, its still a better game for exploration than ANY, and I do mean ANY, game out there. Its just not as immersive and captivating as I thought it would be, which is a serious disappointment.

Here is a great idea: Have a repository for all the armor sets you obtain. If you want to use a specific armor set skin, you go to this repository, use a transmute stone for each piece of armor, and spend a certain amount of kharma to transmute each piece of armor. This way I can use the skin whenever I want to, but it still costs me a transmute stone and a small bit of Kharma(say 1000 or so per armor piece).

In my opinion, unless you are going for a legendary or farming the God sets in Orr, theres little use for Kharma. This might help.

Please look into this Its a win win for everyone.

Oops, I just saw that there is already a post about this in the suggestions forum. I will copy and paste my post into that forum.

Hi,
Similar to the Armor closet you see in the Mists, I think the game sorely needs one for the regular world where we can store armor and skins that we like without taking up so much space in our bank.

Hi, in the patch notes Anet stated that they added 30 new events to the game. Are these Halloween-event specific events that will disappear after Halloween is over? Or are these 30 new events to be played outside of the Halloween event? The patch notes werent clear…

thanks.

I completely 110% agree with the OP. You type in the number of items to craft, and hit Craft…it makes only one. You have to click on the up/down graphic(new) to drag it up to the number you want and then hit Craft to begin crafting that number. Its really annoying. I noticed it the second I opened up my UI, and I hate it. In my opinion, crafting was fine the way it was, who requested this change?

Hi,
I am assuming these DE’s and whatnot are the Halloween event content that was added? Are these “instanced” DEs? Or open world DEs?

Need moar info!

Just curious what is actually happening during the halloween event…new dungeon? Halloween specific de?

Hello,
Ive noticed a few times now that when you come across an Escort event and the NPCs are dead/down, this causes the event to block and bug out. If you revive them, they stand there doing nothing.

I am not sure if this has been brought up, but this could me the rhyme and reason to why events such as escorts are bugged out often.

@celticwish: Transmute. Once I began transmutting my leveling gear as I ago to stuff I wanted, it became quite interesting.

I agree with the OP. About all of it.

I have near 350 hours of total play, one level 80, a 65, and a 53. Im heading in the direction of leveling up as many classes as I can stomach, and then choosing one or two, maybe a third, as my mains and alts to focus on gearing. I can do this and be on par with everyone in 3 months because theres no treadmill.

My only concern is, that while I am taking time(maybe months, maybe sometime into 2013), I hope that new dungeons are not released too soon where since a lot of people focused on dungeon gear while I focused on leveling, everyone flocks to those dungeons and leaves the current ones vacant and empty. At some point I will switch my attention to dungeon farming, and I dont want to be waiting for hours for a group.

I do think that as you release more content, a dungeon finder would be needed as the population is more spread out into more dungeons, and not clumped into finding groups for a few dungeons.

I agree whole heartedly with the OP. If you listen to the bickering and chatter between NPCs(which is often funny and interesting), youll realize an event is coming and for what reason. You follow them, complete the event, and follow them back to listen to the results. Another event might insue, and before long you understand the dynamics of that area, and learn a little bit about the NPCs and their history.

With regard to the OP about renown hearts feeding off of the events of DEs..interesting, I never noticed it. That makes the world that much more interesting.

With that said, I will say that I wish Arenanet would take the “living breathing world” concept a step further, and adopt what Rift has done with “invasions”. Hordes of centaurs raiding key points on the map…not necessarily DEs, where they invade a small town and kill some NPCs, but maybe attack way points as well, and wander the entire map destroying everything…give us incentive to band together as a server and as a zone community to take back those waypoints so we can travel around the map, so we have our vendors standing up right, etc.

@OP: So an ability that provides vulnerability or cripple has no depth to it. Sure, if you are taking the ability at face value and for what is on your action bar, sure…very one dimensional. Take a look at your traits, however, and you’ll see that there are a few traits to use that synergize well with those abilities that you deem flat.

@OP:

Arenanet has stated that since they do not require a sub fee, they are not bound to provide and endless amount of content. At some point, like all MMOs, you hit a wall and theres nothing to do. It will happen. Expect it.

At least you can put this game down in the middle of the month and not feel like you wasted half a month worth of a sub fee.

I think with medium armor, you are correct..either trench coats, little surgeon masks and a swash-bucklers hat(ok the hat was cool for about 15 levels..Its oh-so lame for the rest of your leveling experience).

Even at 80 on my thief, I was hard pressed to find sets I liked. The only ones I like are the cultural sets for sylvari(too expensive to consider), the TA exotic set, inquest exotic set, and CoF exotic set. Thats it. I wont even bother running the other dungeons.

Even the crafted gear is only so-so.

To Anet, please work on better medium armor gear, with more diversity. With the gear progression in the game being very horizontal and not verticle, and with it being focused on aesthetics not statistics, I almost dont want to log onto my thief because theres only a few sets that I enjoy looking at.

Does anyone else think that if you do not wear Heavy Armor, you kind of got the sort end of the stick in terms of armor aesthetics? I have three toons right now, an 80 thief, 60 necro, and 47 guardian. It took many dungeon runs to get my thief to look remotely decent with gear. For my Guardian, I just had to transmute some low level stuff to look good.

I think heavy armor looks the best, and, sadly, medium armor is terrible. I see many guardians and warriors running around lookin’ ballin…and every other armor type looking terrible. Was Arenanet asleep when they designed medium/light armors?
:(

@colin: Great game. I cant get enouh. I do think, however that you guys failed to deliver on some promises. Dynamic events are fun but not world changing and i thought they would be.

With that said, best mmo on the market and i hope to see content updates every 6 to 9 months. Also, the hunger games event would be cool for thanksgiving… And you could give me the royalties for that idea…make it work for thanksgiving.

Oh btw, awesome gotee.

@corian: I agree completely.By far the company that is in touch with their playerbase the most…

Hi all,

While this question is aimed to reach anyone, I guess the most informed would be guild wars 1 players as they have dealt with Anet before. How often, and how quickly does/will Anet pump out new content(zones to explore and dungeons to run)? An estimate?

Going along with this, I’ve had a level 80 for a while now, slowly gearing up a dungeon set. I have had the urge to level up as many toons to 80 as I can stomach, and then choosing a small few to farm dungeons for skins(whichever class felt the most “fun”.). I just dont want to be trying to get into “older” dungeons when everyone might off running the new ones. I know the progression is not vertical, it is horizontal, but I cant shake this feeling that once new content is released(which is a good thing!) a lot of people will stop running the current dungeons for the new ones for those skins.

I just dont want to sit in LA or DR for 2 hours trying to get a TA exp or CoF EXP run or something…

Thoughts, opinions?

Wow, some of you took this to an extreme and its sad. Also, you took something else to extremes when I mentioned farming nodes..that was just an example. All I really mean is: wandering…coming across a dolyak and making sure it is escorted for a while (helping wvw), wandering more, heres a small group of people, let me help out real quick…oh theres a straggler… All the while not paying attention to the self proclaimed god of WvW in wvw chat…

I.E. Doing your own thing, pvp and pve alike.
Who said I absolutely HAVE to listen to the “commander” in wvw… really?

Gustoril.4195:

Yes I will agree with the OP.

The endgame wasn’t really what my friends or I were expecting, As Ameepa stated with the “Traditional raids and better gear tier after tier” was pretty much right on the money as to what we were expecting.

I understand that this isn’t wow but it’s a system that works and people enjoy working for, all my friends have already reached level 80, attempted full exploration and have returned to wow for endgame content in mists of pandaria, mainly because they couldn’t find something to keep them playing.

We were actually surprised how the endgame of Guildwars wasn’t really there and that we couldn’t find a reason to work for gear. In our understanding we should be obtaining this gear to become stronger in order to take on tougher foes, and being that the zhaitan battle was completed so easily, We asked each other as to “what now?”

PVP and world v world are options but the benefits all go to the PVE world, but if the PVE world has nowhere to go(such as tougher bosses and higher level gear, something to work for) then the benefits don’t really profit the higher levels and only helps the leveling areas. really makes no sense.

So atm, my friends are off playing wow and I’m on the forums every so often to see what’s happening.

Hi,
Did you even bother to research the game before spending 60$+ on it? There wont be any raids. Ever. Not one. Thank god.

Guys I got this…I got it..

Let me respond with two simple words that might help you…

Not. WoW.

Ok, one is a word, the other is an acronym. You get my point. How many ways do we need to say it that the game isnt designed to have your run of the mill endgame. Or that Anet said they are OK if you put down GW2 and play another game for a bit. Or that Anet said that they dont expect you to play this 5 hours a day for 5 years straight. Or that the entire game is endgame, and your experience wont necessarily change at max level.

Let me repeat, there is no endgame that you like to call end game, and Im GLAD.

No sub, they arent required to hold your attention for 7 days a week, all year, for years on end like a sub-model game.