Guild Wars 2

Im sorry, Ive been away for a week or two. What is happening to zerker gear? Link please?

timmyf.1490:

Very true! I’ve just not seen a subclass proposal yet which adds substantial horizontal progression without adding extra grind or power creep that adds to the game in a way the current systems cannot support.

Im not sure I necessarily want a subclass system at all. Id rather play the mesmer that I have,but with more abilities. I would rather play a ranger with more abilities rather than the ability to shapeshift into a druid, for example.

I think finding and/or unlocking additional skills is good enough.

The scavenger hunt for precursors has been in the works for many many many months…I understand the need to get it right first, so they want to take their time.

But to this end, this is why I cannot see any HUGE changes coming from the CDIs. I can see a few things like scaling back achievements needed for LS or something, but major system changes or additions that take a few weeks or month to talk about concept, a few months to develop and test, etc…I just dont think it will happen fast enough.

I wait to see what big changes come from the CDI in january and in the first few months.

Ah. Yeah, I knew about the gift for purchasing something during December…but the wording of the email was confusing. I thought it to be a replacement for a lost item..maybe for some other player and GW2 support sent it to the wrong person.

I was being the good Samaritan and reporting it

Hi, I just logged in and received a green quaggan backpack from the GW2 customer support team, though I do not know why. Was this meant for someone else?

ColinJohanson.2394:

The global dominance is a really interesting concept, and something we played with a bit back in Gw1 with the luxons/kurzicks but never really pushed far enough to make into a compelling system. Some questions and challenges that immediately come to mind with this would include: How would players playing in an overflow map make a difference, or feel like their time is being well spent? How would this work if we pursued underflow servers? How would this work for worlds that have relatively medium/low populations, or for players who play at off hours (say Australians). ? How would new players understand, and be motivated by this system, and should they be? And most importantly: How would this result in unlocking an advanced profession or advanced horizontal progression for your character? [I get how a system like this could be used for more world bonus specific rewards which is really cool, but I don’t fully see the character specific journey which was my original question]

Hi Colin, I’ll respond in a list fashion:

How would players playing in an overflow map make a difference, or feel like their time is being well spent? — Treat this as you do the WvW system. Queue for the zone, and head to another zone in the mean time. There are many great zones to choose from. I highly, highly doubt every zone will be so populated that you cannot play in any zone. Keep in mind people will still be in other parts of the game such as sPvP, dungeons, WvW, etc. This is just to get some of the players out of LA and into the world.

How would this work for worlds that have relatively medium/low populations, or for players who play at off hours (say Australians). ? — Are you able to tune event frequency per server? If so, thats something to explore and tweak overtime as you see the population ebb and flow of servers. But then again, this is an issue dealt with in WvW. How are you handling it there? If the answer is that you aren’t due to XYZ reasons, then the same applies here.

How would this work if we pursued underflow servers? — I honestly don’t know and is a very big ‘what if’ if you chose to go with underflow. I suppose you wouldn’t be able to. Its a trade off, but one that I think is OK because with the GD system you wouldn’t need underflow servers…many people should be out in the world at that point.

How would new players understand, and be motivated by this system, and should they be? — Utilize the scouting system. You put these scouts into the world to show us key points of interest in the local area. Expand that system further to show us some more of the events that contribute to the GD system.

How would this result in unlocking an advanced profession or advanced horizontal progression for your character? — As some other posters have suggested…have zone based skins that are unlocked by participating in many zone events. Also, as you continue to level at max level, via skill points, you can also open up a GUI that has a honeycomb, triangle, or some shape that has vexels or boxes or something that require skill points to be spent to work toward horizontal progression skins. So if Greatswords are in the upper right hand corner, you spend your skill points in that direction until you reach the unlockable Greatsword skins.

Aside from the last paragraph, most of these systems are already in game for you to expand on. BTW, I never played GW1, but it sounds like something I would have been interested in, especially with a system like this.

ColinJohanson.2394:

A lot of the ideas boiled down into variations of one of these two options, and really both have a lot of cool concepts and ideas. Can folks think of anything else that’s a bit more outside the box for something bigger?

I had suggested several times about Global Dominance system. Similar to WvW…we as players and as a server, complete events across the entire map of Tyria and receive passive bonuses based on the % of the map that we control as players. So if we leave entire zones(say the lesser traveled zones) to be completely occupied by centaurs, for example, we won’t be receiving maximum benefits. And you can use most of the existing dynamic events to accomplish this. There are many DEs that take over way points and camps that we as players can complete and push enemy NPCs back…thus acquiring a larger portion of the world.

This encourages players to play in more than one zone, get sthem out in the world, etc.

On top of this, put in a reward system for completing unique(different) dynamic events in a month. I.E. Complete 90 unique dynamic events in January and receive a Cesmode mini(just kidding). But you get the picture.

Is that big enough and outside the box?

On my way home, I will think on true contribution to this thread because I like it..

But I’ll leave with this…(a joke) Which arenanet developer would you like to see in game as a boss? What kinds of mechanics would they have? Maybe…like, very big smiles that take up the whole room and if you don’t move out of the way…you die?

Please MR. Developers, light hearted fun! Don’t smite me!!

VOLKON.1290:

cesmode.4257:

Its deathwing!!

They wouldn’t waste our time with a little dragon like that.

How was deathwing little exactly? If Im not mistaken, just the act of him coming up from Deepholm shattered Azeroth and transformed the entire world..burning everything creating large cracks and valleys and reshaping everything. I wouldn’t dismiss the concept of deathwing as little because you may not like WoW. Now, whether or not you consider the fight itself difficult is a different story…but the concept and idea of deathwing was epic in scale and had strong ties to lore.

Arenanet could learn something from this and pull a large boss/monster out of lore instead of trying to invent one.

Its deathwing!!

I never played GW1, I dont know who primordus is…or what he is. But he sounds way more kitten and epic than a tiny sylvari. I just couldn’t get around Scarlet as a villain…but I could definately dig some sort of true epic destruction of the world.

So..
I smell a jumping puzzle
something involving sylvari(again??)
Tyria being destroyed, or burned or something.
Some burning epic monster NPC dude.

The Lost Witch.7601:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Having trouble jumping in here, what’s the current discussion topic on Character Progression, please?

I recommend that you start with the link in my signature. It was up to date until yesterday. Especially Bezagron & Guhracie’s summaries are useful.

The current topic has evolved from Colins question as to what would be good systems to obtain horizontal rewards. Currently we seem to be talking about skill currency as one such system. (But that is only one of the discussions going on today so far. So don’t be afraid to respond to other posts made earlier.)

@lostwitch: Im not sure if you checked out Chris Whitesides interview that he posted in this thread a few pages back…he gave you big kudos for the summaries and all.
.

The Lost Witch.7601:

So some questions about this skill based currency or skill-gating even perhaps:

• What defines skill?

Defeating many of the Queens Jubilee gauntlet bosses, getting some of the unique achievements like..kill X monster before it reaches 100 stacks of PWNYOURAGE. Or defeating Liadri…

I think the gauntlet has been one of the only TRUE skill testers in the game so far, PVE wise.

We need many more of those to gate folks to gear. Defeat Liadri, get a skin. And its done solo too so its not like you can get your guild to zerg it down.

Edit: The gauntlet fights have been regarded by many as a great addition to the game. Developers have stated that they tested each fight with many builds…so it is possible that a more tanky or support build could have defeated liadri…its possible…but this idea of skill testing like this is a great avenue to go down.

Infact, when I first heard of skill points in beta, I was like “awwww yeah, a place to test my meddle solo against some PVE baddies….” But many of them are so faceroll…“drink X to get skill point”…“defeat the slow old norn warior bathing in a spring”…

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Legendary weapons used to show you had mastered the game, now they just show that you saved up 1000g.

We need less dependence on gold and more dependence on team work, skill and challenges.

Until this is done nothing else matters because regardless of how you implement it it will quickly be bypassed and done by gold farmers. Farming gold currently gets you basically unlimited “skill” points, and unlimited gold. Karma isn’t far behind. If you use any of those currencies then there is no progression, just more grind.

This is so true and has been beaten to death on the forums since release. Things like this are just plain “duh” moments. I understand that, especially after watching Chris Whitesides recent interview, that sometimes the “duh” moments are blurred by everything else going on. I definately get it. It just seems that there are so many of them. I can list about a dozen off the top of my head right now. Its hard to swallow that this wasn’t forseen during conceptual design of the game.

Having 1000 gold and or having 1000 hours to play the game doesn’t make you legendary nor does it entitle the player to a legendary status. Skill and masterful play of the game, defeating the most epic solo battles should do this. Even the scavenger hunt, while an improvement to the current design of precursor acquisition, might still pale into comparison to what we need. It still might be an egg hunt and we eventually get the precursor, rather than a list of hard bosses to fight or something that depicts our skill.

Horizontal Progression idea – unlocking skins…

A Rift-esq honeycomb(or whatever design you want/GUI), where the player uses skill points to unlock areas of the…‘design’ to reach the area where she/wants to unlock skins. So you start in the middle, and the greatsword skins are in the upper right hand corner. You start spending points to get to those skins that you want. But you can only spend points in a box that is adjacent to one you already have unlocked. Each box might take 3 skill points to fully complete.

Yes?
Quaggan happy?

Edit: This idea could be morphed into more than just skins, where the player can unlock other non-statistical horizontally based…things. Maybe unlock minis, or consumable swiftness(on a cooldown), or skins, or universl abilities that any class could use, or waypoint cost reduction…keep it horizontal, put it in the honeycomb(or whatever you choose..maybe a triangle!)

The Lost Witch.7601:

Septemptus.7164:

I mean having system that would progress your character after level 80 with some horizontal progression by adding to it points that you participate in or another set of xp like Wxp.

Is it horizontal though? Is not vertical? The WvW wxp system is vertical. You become stronger the more you play.

Septemptus.7164:

Somehow people in WvW weren’t scared off but they were very excited by the idea.

The specialisation is pretty cool. I like the idea of being good at shooting cannons or carrying supply. And I think that it is the specialisation bit that the WvW crowd is most excited by. The problem for me lies in the fact that it is not just specialisation. Unlike the trait system there is no maximum to it. It works like this: play more = become stronger. Which may still be really cool for WvW veterans and progression fans. But not so much for players like me. (Who still play a lot, but not as focused on one thing)

I would like it to work in a way where you can easily reach the maximum amount of points, and spend it through specializing. (Perhaps you can respec by using excess specialisation points gained through WxP)

I guess I desire to one day be able to say: My character is complete.

Instead of an ongoing strength progression like the one in WvW.

I disagree that the WXP system is verticle. You become stronger but not in the sense that it makes it verticle. In a straight up fight between you and me using only the class abilities at our disposal, pure skill (and, yes gear) will determine who wins. Having a fully maxed out Siege Mastery or Guard Mastery(I cannot remember the name) will make little difference.

What septemptus might be looking for is the system in Rift. You hit max level, you still gain levels(althought your actual character level never changes) similar to how we ding and get skill points. But in Rift you can spend those points to beef up your preferred style of gameplay. For instance, if you are a warrior that used axes, specifically, you can put points into axe mastery to increase crit chance, increase crit dmg, and whatever else. Its actually a honeycomb(literally, the GUI is a honeycomb) of skills that you unlock via points.

That may lean more toward verticle… Maybe a modification of this idea is needed. Instead of power increases, have other sorts of buffs or horizontal progression changes. Like a consumable(infinite amount but on a CD) for a speed/swiftness increase(I know most classes have switfness at their disposal..just throwing a thought out) or unlockable skins(put points into the honeycomb to reach the weapon skins you want to unlock). Holy crud, I actually like my own idea there, I will post in its own response.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Hi All,

I am back at work now and was just enjoying the last few days of my vacation.

It is awesome to see you all discussing the ‘Journey’ side of Horizontal Progression with Colin. Once that discussion has finished I will help us put a proposal together for both the ‘Journey’ and the ‘Reward’ and we can go from there.

Meanwhile Lee from GW2 Hub has posted an interview with me about the CDI. If you get a chance check it out and enjoy the fruits of your hard work:

http://www.guildwars2hub.com/features/interviews/exclusive-video-interview-chris-whiteside-cdis

Chris

Hi Chris!
I am listening to your interview while at work writing SQL and making reports.

I want to give you kudos for answering some of those ‘put you on the spot’ questions because thats the sign of a good interviewer! He asked a few loaded questions and kudos to you for not ending the interview.

I’ll probably post back when I have more comments..only 27 minutes in.

Edit: #1— Good point about staying close with the community and PART of your reason for it…keeping your idea the first and best before other developers try to cash in on your learning mistakes. Good point, I bet none of us ever thought of it. While, I don’t think the ‘living world platform’ is necessarily genre-defining yet, it is a good start. I just think the Living Story aspect of it was executed poorly and I personally am not a fan of it. I think you can make a living world with the current content that you have as I have pointed out in previous CDI posts. But, again..learning curves, and kudos to you for answering some of these hard questions.

Edit #2— Swimming in December?

Vaxx.3178:

Blude.6812:

The living story new content in no way whatsoever qualifies as an expansion or does it even mimic an expansion. It’s just additional repetitve content in a different package.
An expansion would bring a new world/maps with new content,pve,quests etc. Going around old maps getting old socks and hats, or dragon scales or whatever is not.

This, this, and more of this. QFT.

I agree. And most of it has been temporary, or a lot of cash shop stuff(which is OK, but don’t dare to tell me earnable and achievable skins/content/gear/etc/whatever has been added to the game and still is there.

As far as I am concerned, minimal perma content and acquirable “stuff” via playing the game with a realistic chance of earning it, has been added in 16 months.

Ascended gear isn’t exactly customization/horizontal progression sir, so you can take those three off the list.

Essence Snow.3194:

VOLKON.1290:

Isaiah Cartwright.8569:

morrolan.9608:

How about some of the more egregious vertical progression imbalances get fixed before implementing purely horizontal progression suggestions such as the fixing ascended armor crafting so that it is more equitable instead of light armor taking 36 days to craft, medium armor 24 days and heavy armor 25 days due to the time gating on bolts of damask.

The goal of the T7 materials is not to be a pure time gate for crafting it’s to allow those materials to have value above their cost. This does mean weapons and armor that only take one material take longer to craft if you craft all the T7 mats yourself but you could also buy those mats thus it isn’t a time gate.

We do recognize that cloth prices are a bit high this is a factor of how hard it is to focus farm for leather and cloth. This is something we are looking into.

I have to disagree a little wee bit on the time gate comment… someone had to spend the time, the gating is there regardless although I can see what you’re saying as well. But that’s actually a pretty weak argument… sorry.

However the gating comes into play when you have people that don’t have the in game gold to purchase all the mats nor the real world resources available to convert gems to gold to make up the difference. I think of it as a time gate with work arounds. The gate is in crafting yourself. The work arounds are purchasing off the TP with earned gold or doing the same with purchased gold.

I’ll have to echo this with a lil bit added. If the purpose of a time gate is to keep the hardcores from running away from the casuals (so to say) they allowing gold to bypass it completely invalidates the gate. Silk has become a secondary time gate that does this exact thing. Casuals cannot go out and farm 300 silk per day, nor do they have the resources to buy as much. Thus effectively the gap between the hardcore and the casuals is only widening, which is the exact opposite to ya’lls intent. I am baffled by this as we were told something was black and it turns out white, yet there seems to be no concern….why?

Adding to this discussion…
Does anyone consider the Vision Crystal a time gate? If the ‘run of the mill’ world bosses and temples only get completed by enough players X amount of times per day, wouldn’t that almost qualify as a time gate as well? A player could not zone into an area, and farm nodes for what he needs for ascended crafting. He/she is reliant on the following:

1. The temple/world boss must be available to fight.
2. The server must have enough players to complete the event.

And you can only complete, for example, Temple of Lyssa X amount of times in a day. It isn’t like you can buy dragonite ore or empyreal fragments off the TP.

So you are reliant on the above two factors, there are only so many times each event spawns per day, and the fact that you cannot purchase the ore/fragments off the TP. Does qualify vision crystals for time gate as well?

VOLKON.1290:

Oh, and one problem with players/guilds taking over areas of the world… You effectively shut down the events related to those areas. Taking and controlling a centaur area would ‘turn off’ the centaur related events for example that spawn from those centaur. There’s a very real risk off entire event chains never being seen again. Just a thought to consider.

Not necessarily. Would other events kick off, or restart? Lets say you and other players take control of an area from centaurs. Then wouldn’t other events kick off where the centaurs try to re-take ?

And I don’t think its necessarily possible for the players to be so spread out and well organized to control 100% of Tyria. There are other parts of the game still: Dungeons, fractals, spvp, wvw, chillin’ in LA, etc. I think this idea is to get more people into the open world working together but I personally dont think that as a server you will be able to lock down every zone so that events are unable to kick off. Just dont think theres enough players for that.

@Rin’s nemesis idea:
Sounds like a good idea BUT this sort of also sounds like the personal story. Aside from the part where the nemesis’ minions attack you randomly, theres character creation, and “personal story” for the missions. Personal Story support/additions have all been abandoned by Arenanet it seems, in focus of Living Story. There has been a lot of requests to add onto the current living story which have not seen the light of day, so I am skeptical if they would take on something like this.

This also sounds similar to the Companion system in SWTOR. Only, the companion is a friendly not an enemy NPC. The companion system you would literally gear out your companion in real gear, I cant remember if you can spec the companion out or not…but your companion choices shaped your gameplay. For example, my Maurader I chose Quinn who was a healer. Or if I wanted, I could have chose a more DPS or tanky companion depending on my gameplay.

I definately like the idea of some sort of companion or nemesis system. Adding story and lore to it…Im just going to guess that it would not be cost effective for arenanet since they have already said in these CDI threads that voice narration is/was too much $$. The story telling could be dumbed down to that of the current method in Living Story, and we know how thats turning out.

So, yes I vote for some sort of nemesis/friendly companion system. Question is: Which way to go with it? More story telling? Or gearing out the companion?

Dark Catalyst.1028:

Reverence.6915:

cesmode.4257:

Reverence.6915:

Or maybe Maplestory, to remind yourself what grinding is. Because there’s no grind in GW2. At all. Seriously. People who say there’s any kind of grind in gw2 is deluded.

Theres no grind in a game like WoW then either, is there? You dont need BiS raid gear for any part of the game other than raiding. Much like GW2 where you don’t need ascended gear for anything other than fractals. Am i right?

What? If you play naturally for 1 or 2 months you’ll naturally get the mats to craft a piece of ascended gear. If you “grind” for it (i.e. do a few dungeons and buy the mats), you can get an entire set in that time period. Not quite sure how that constitutes a grind. It’s about the same amount of time it takes to level a character up to max level from scratch, without crafting or doing champ trains.

I don’t even do fractals so I don’t know how much ascended gear helps there.

In WoW, you need BiS gear to do anything, whether it’s PvP, raiding or just general PvE. Otherwise you fall behind everyone else and can’t compete for mobs and resource nodes. That’s not the case in gw2. The only things that slightly resemble grinding in gw2 are dungeon farming and champ training. Both are highly optional.

Also, try playing Maplestory for a month, then tell me GW2 has grind. Seriously. That game has decent action based combat, but oh my god the grind!

Not true for WoW. Please stop lying.

In which way…that BiS gear is required or not required for any content? Because Im pretty sure I can get some mediocre gear, run all normal and heroic dungeons, as well as all scenarios, dallies, and questing, as well as middle of the road gear for LFR. The only time BiS is required is non-LFR raiding.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

cesmode.4257:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

My number one would be “Zone Progression” / “Order Progression”

Something that gives players a purpose to explore the zones.

• A lot of people miss quests, my main guess why this is the case is: they miss stories. Dynamic Events are cyclical in nature, so those stories have no real end – climax if you want. Time to give your writers something more to do and let them design unique events.
• even the most simple idea could make people exited. Today I leveled in Kessex Hills when I saw a bear walking alongside a skritt. Awesome I thought… until I found out that I can’t interact with that npc at all; it’s just a guild mission boss. Why not spawn such rare characters (dozen of them, but rare spawns) in the open world, give them a loottable and a few interesting dialogue-options or even a small event associated.

Fill the existing maps with tons of things to do. I mean: tons and tons of things. And may these be just little things… the world has to feel more alive.

…and then combine this with progression. The more people find, the more they unlock. And the more they can unlock for others (in the sense of triggering new events).

summary: progression in specific zones via a huge variety of things to do (something for everyone – fighters, explorers, collectors, lore-lovers, treasure hunters,…………

People should have some goals for each of the zones. Not for the world in general (Legendary – mats from everywhere). Zelda reference: the Master Sword is in the Lost Woods, not everywhere in Hyrule.

This idea makes me excited, it could also tie into nearly every Horizontal Progression idea that has been put forward in this CDI.

It is just a good global ongoing goal to have, and one I think we have been doing but dependent on priorities could do a lot more of, especially from the point of view of using/evolving the Map Completion Meta Game system.

Chris

Chris, if you remember, I suggested something to this regard about global ongoing goals within the living story CDI thread. I think I titled it, global dominance where depending on how much of the world the players control, we receive certain benefits similar to WvW.

Hi Cesmode,

I certainly remember the title (Global Dominance) but am fuzzy on the details. I will go back and read the idea. Sorry for not remembering and calling this idea out to.

Chris

Ah, no thats not the reason I brought it up. I just thought that it is nice to see someone else had a similar idea in the horizontal progression thread when I had posted the same idea in the LS thread…I really feel something like this can go a long way to putting players into all zones and just play the game. The content thats already there, already developed and existing…this system would work perfectly for it.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

My number one would be “Zone Progression” / “Order Progression”

Something that gives players a purpose to explore the zones.

• A lot of people miss quests, my main guess why this is the case is: they miss stories. Dynamic Events are cyclical in nature, so those stories have no real end – climax if you want. Time to give your writers something more to do and let them design unique events.
• even the most simple idea could make people exited. Today I leveled in Kessex Hills when I saw a bear walking alongside a skritt. Awesome I thought… until I found out that I can’t interact with that npc at all; it’s just a guild mission boss. Why not spawn such rare characters (dozen of them, but rare spawns) in the open world, give them a loottable and a few interesting dialogue-options or even a small event associated.

Fill the existing maps with tons of things to do. I mean: tons and tons of things. And may these be just little things… the world has to feel more alive.

…and then combine this with progression. The more people find, the more they unlock. And the more they can unlock for others (in the sense of triggering new events).

summary: progression in specific zones via a huge variety of things to do (something for everyone – fighters, explorers, collectors, lore-lovers, treasure hunters,…………

People should have some goals for each of the zones. Not for the world in general (Legendary – mats from everywhere). Zelda reference: the Master Sword is in the Lost Woods, not everywhere in Hyrule.

This idea makes me excited, it could also tie into nearly every Horizontal Progression idea that has been put forward in this CDI.

It is just a good global ongoing goal to have, and one I think we have been doing but dependent on priorities could do a lot more of, especially from the point of view of using/evolving the Map Completion Meta Game system.

Chris

Chris, if you remember, I suggested something to this regard about global ongoing goals within the living story CDI thread. I think I titled it, global dominance where depending on how much of the world the players control, we receive certain benefits similar to WvW.

Vol.7601:

cesmode.4257:

Are those official arenanet dev tweets? Didnt seem that way…seemed like a few players getting excited for nothing.

I now cringe when an arenanet dev gets excited for features because it normally means something earthshattering in the game, and not in a good way.

They love to fuel the hype train that eventually never leaves the train station.

Read behind the names and the text. Lewis B is an editor for TenTon Hammer.

Oh. So how does he have the inside scoop on what Arenanet has in store? Seems silly that a media/fan site would know things early(way way way early possibly).

BTW, I cannot help but read your thread title in the same voice of a Hylek…..similar to when Tequatl appears…‘somethings in the waterrrrrrr’

Skills/traits discoverable throughout the open world of Tyria. By this, I mean being able to find a new skill for your class(or it could be a skill that could be used for any class) by completing dynamic events in the world. These skills are zone specific.
Skill A can only be found in Fireheart Rise. Skill B can only be found in Bloodtide Coast. Skill C can only be found in Metrica Provice., etc etc. I.E. you cannot farm the queensdale champ train into oblivion for all skills. That defeats the underlying point.

Are those official arenanet dev tweets? Didnt seem that way…seemed like a few players getting excited for nothing.

I now cringe when an arenanet dev gets excited for features because it normally means something earthshattering in the game, and not in a good way.

They love to fuel the hype train that eventually never leaves the train station.

VOLKON.1290:

To run with the bizarre analogy in the OP, I still feel like Norm when I log in. Maybe you just need a new bar… the one I’m in keeps adding new items to the menu, new beer to the tap and the patrons are as raucous and fun loving as ever.

Would you say the glass is the same?
:)

Yeah, mimizu is on the right track with sterile. And I agree OP. Specifics and Statistics aside. While there a lot of things to do in the game, they always end in the same thing. Are you having fun, or getting loot? I think WvW is the only dynamic ever changing aspect of the game. You can have some really good fights that diversify themselves from the previous one, and you could never see the same sort of fights, zergs, defends again as long as you play WvW. But the dungeon runs…speed run past things, to boss…pop timewarp, dps down, dodge things done. World bosses…dps dodge things done. Living Story: Follow the leader, dps dodge things done. I could go off exploring and I do find little interesting things. But then I also find myself alone in zones. I dont like that…so I gravitate toward where other people are(dungeons, LA, Living Story, WvW).

Its mundane, run of the mill, same old same old. WvW offers the only unique experience in the game, at least for me.

Reverence.6915:

cesmode.4257:

Reverence.6915:

Or maybe Maplestory, to remind yourself what grinding is. Because there’s no grind in GW2. At all. Seriously. People who say there’s any kind of grind in gw2 is deluded.

Theres no grind in a game like WoW then either, is there? You dont need BiS raid gear for any part of the game other than raiding. Much like GW2 where you don’t need ascended gear for anything other than fractals. Am i right?

What? If you play naturally for 1 or 2 months you’ll naturally get the mats to craft a piece of ascended gear. If you “grind” for it (i.e. do a few dungeons and buy the mats), you can get an entire set in that time period. Not quite sure how that constitutes a grind. It’s about the same amount of time it takes to level a character up to max level from scratch, without crafting or doing champ trains.

I don’t even do fractals so I don’t know how much ascended gear helps there.

In WoW, you need BiS gear to do anything, whether it’s PvP, raiding or just general PvE. Otherwise you fall behind everyone else and can’t compete for mobs and resource nodes. That’s not the case in gw2. The only things that slightly resemble grinding in gw2 are dungeon farming and champ training. Both are highly optional.

Also, try playing Maplestory for a month, then tell me GW2 has grind. Seriously. That game has decent action based combat, but oh my god the grind!

So..you need BiS gear to do anything in WoW? Like run a simple 5 man dungeon? Are you sure you played WoW? You don’t need BiS gear to do..ANYTHING in WoW other than raid. You can run a 5 man normal or heroic in blues. You can do dallies in greens and blues. You can do PvP/battlegrounds with any gear you want.

Raiding is the only place in WoW that has a gear requirement.

And yes, you NEED ascended gear for fractals. Ascended gear has the only Agony Resist infusion slots in the game. You need agony resist in order to mitigate the Agony mechanic in fractals. At the start of the bonus fractal, upon entering the fight there is now an agony check that will drop you in 5 seconds if you dont have proper agony resist. You NEED it. the agony check is there to weed out people that are just tagging along for the ride and when they go down before the fight even begins, the group knows that the person doesnt have enough agony resist for the fight. <— Not even opinion…fact. If you are in my fractal group, and the agony check drops you I will vote to kick you from the group because if you dont have enough AR to mitigate agony, you are a complete 100% detriment to the group.

Also… to your other point about running a few dungeons and buying the mats for ascended gear..this will still net you nothing. You NEED to do temple runs, world bosses to get enough dragonite ore.

Dee Jay.2460:

I think they’ve been deliberately holding back on expansive changes so they can release them all at once to retain players once TESO launches.

I hope we will see quite an extensive rework of some mechanics. Maybe a new weapon-set for most classes, a rebalance of traits, reworking of condition mechanics, new PvP game mode and others.

Ther’s plenty of aspect ANet can improve to retain players during the launch of TESO.

Then again, GW2 does not really “complete” the same way other games do. We pay no monthly subs so ANet doesn’t require us to play in order to turn a profit. Those most likely to switch are probably the ones who don’t buy many Gems anyway.

Following TESO is going to be interesting. Apparently it has a 200 Mio. $ price-tag and yet many players have voiced their discontent with it. Then again it has 3 way PvP and people are hungry for new MMOs after the drought of the past years.

Haven’t really had a major launch since SWTOR (excl. GW2) and we all know how that went.

There are people that are saying TESO is nothing like skyrim/elderscrolls. I believe it it is a spitting image of skyrim, just set in an MMO space which is great!

As for myself, Ive given GW2 1400+ hrs of my time, 16 months since release. In 16 months, while the game might have garnered some more players, the direction has declined(for me). And seeing patch and patch of things that I don’t like, I am spent. I feel that Ive played enough and seen enough of the game to know that while it launched with hope and aspiration of being “the new one” for me…the design direction isn’t where Im going. I left WoW for this reason, and I feel like I’ll be leaving GW2 for this reason soon too. WvW being my only saving grace atm(and I never thought Id even step foot into WvW)

Maybe the cadence(2 weeks) has helped speed along this process of disdain. I now experience frustration every 2 weeks when they introduce more controversial things and horrible living story…vs a traditional game that would give you content every few months. Maybe its just that I feel PO’d more often with GW2, due to its cadence. Maybe its backfiring…hadn’t thought about that until now. Curious

Rym.1469:

Entitled to your opinion…

But my opinion is that youre 1000% incorrect. Carbine is making sure every aspect of Wildstar is viable. Heck, the majority of its playerbase will be the hardcore raiders from vanilla wow, and disgruntled hardcore raiders of current wow. Id say they are too focused on PVE and especially raiding. 40 man raids, and they said they will not be nerfing content so if your guild cannot do it “tough”(almost verbatim).

Graphics are intentional, as are WoWs…to be played on a myriad of computers.

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

However, if they simply give us more ways to obtain it, I think it might make people less cranky.

The fact that it required an official arenanet created forum thread under the umbrella power of the CDI, for them to have an “aha” moment and realize that we would like more ways to acquire ascended than crafting…angers me. No, change that..it just frustrates me. I am dumbfounded that they, again, could not see this coming. It seems that very little future planning goes on when they make decisions because something like this is a no brainer. Either they didn’t see it coming, or they knew it but didn’t give us alternatives because they thought they knew better. Either way, it leaves many frustrated players in their wake.

Same thing happened with the initial rollout of fractals and being player-gated. They said they quickly realized the error of their ways, that they had created a system that was player gated and were already discussing remediation solutions. Me, being a simple minded player, saw this as a problem as soon as the patch released, yet they as developers had months to work on it.

QA?

Edit: I tried to make sure that this response was not attacking any one person or persons(in order to avoid it being removed and getting infracted). But the point needs to be heard…it is curious that the developer has an “aha” moment after we point things out to them immediately after release of said content.

Reverence.6915:

Or maybe Maplestory, to remind yourself what grinding is. Because there’s no grind in GW2. At all. Seriously. People who say there’s any kind of grind in gw2 is deluded.

Theres no grind in a game like WoW then either, is there? You dont need BiS raid gear for any part of the game other than raiding. Much like GW2 where you don’t need ascended gear for anything other than fractals. Am i right?

GuildWarsPlayer.5608:

cesmode.4257:

GuildWarsPlayer.5608:

Agreed. As of right now GW2 is unchallenged in the mmo market ( IMO )

I too have played those mmo’s you’ve mentioned and more. Since playing GW2 i have uninstalled them all.

First, Blizzard/World of Warcraft would disagree that GW2 is unchallenged in the MMO market…as well as Eve online will has been around longer than any of the games mentioned, and still pumps out expansions.

Second, popular titles like Wildstar and TESO have yet to enter the market.

Third, The MMOs he mentioned, aside from maybe Neverwinter and Rift, are garbage not just by my standards, but majority of people as well. It is why they have shrunk servers, changed pricing models, and why if you ask anyone that plays MMOs or knows anything about MMOs, games like aion and swtor are associated with failure. So if you compare a relative successful game like GW2 with a relative failure of a game like Aion, you’re not proving anything. You have to compare against legit games like WoW.

I said " IN MY OPINION". As far as wow goes, that was the first successful mmo out on the market, so with being out that long of course they will have the largest population, which is slowly declining thanks to alternatives like GW2.

Again, sort of incorrect. The first “successful” MMO was EQ. It didnt have 10 million players at one point, but it was still successful, and with help from games like Ultima Online, it re-shaped MMOs and laid the ground work. Even if it has/had less players than GW2, it gave the ground work for a game like WoW to emerge which definately put the genre on the map. So Id say EQ was the first successful MMO. Not the first MMO altogether, but first successful. BTW, SOE looks to be re-shaping MMOs again with EQN in 2015. Curious to see how this sort of discussion will play out on WoW’s forums and GW2’s forums when EQN hits the market .

You are correct that GW2 is a solid,(and the most solid) alternative to WoW in recent years. I think they are the two top MMOs. I think GW2 has rooted itself firmly in a good place in terms of popularity, unlike the other MMOs listed which faded off in 3-6 months (aside from Rift and Neverwinter which are going pretty well right now in terms of production…)

Well, according to the list you typed out, no they didn’t. The new healing skill hardly qualifies for ‘new skills’ because it barely impacts any gameplay whatsoever. I was hoping for a lot more than one skill, and more impactful than a healing skill which often has no impact on build diversity or gameplay.

Still no scavenger hunt. No light at the end of that tunnel yet.

No new legendary weapons, although some current ones got new models and effects.

Eh, I would say they definately over shot for their goals this year. Was it a legitimate case of being over-zealous? Or another tactic to generate some hype…much like pre launch?

ZudetGambeous.9573:

People always complained about how WoW had this horrible endless gear grind that was the source of all evil in the world. However as far as I can tell GW2 has a much longer, less rewarding and more frequent gear grind then WoW ever had.

In WoW you got a new set of gear every ~6 months. It all launched at once and it came with the introduction of 1-2 new raids each containing 8-12 bosses. It took 2-3 weeks to figure out the strategies and then another 2-3 weeks to get them down pat. By that time you had about 1/3 of your new gear. Then it took another 3-4 weeks of farming the raids to complete your gear set. All told it took ~8 weeks to get the new gear but you also got dozens if not hundreds of hours of new gameplay, new story lines, and new mechanics from the raids.

Switch over to GW2… here we have released new gear every 3 months, it came with NO new content at all. Was put on a gear grind that takes 2-3 weeks PER PIECE and does not even really require playing the game, just the market, and worst of all it doesn’t even make you hardly any more powerful in PvE since the game is so poorly balanced.

So why is it that WoW’s model was the root of all evil yet GW2 is claimed to not have a gear grind? As far as I can tell GW2 is 10x more of a gear grind then WoW was and it doesn’t even come with new content to make it exciting.

I dont know…I wonder the same sometimes.

People that play Guild Wars 2 complain that WoW has a massive gear grind and treadmill. Then in GW2, its even more so, and less rewarding. Then these same people will say “well in GW2 you don’t need ascended gear/gear grind unless you run high level fractals”. And I then say “Well in WoW you don’t need BiS Raid gear unless you…raid.”

I wonder why , according to many GW2 players, this is unacceptable in WoW but acceptable in Gw2.

GuildWarsPlayer.5608:

Agreed. As of right now GW2 is unchallenged in the mmo market ( IMO )

I too have played those mmo’s you’ve mentioned and more. Since playing GW2 i have uninstalled them all.

First, Blizzard/World of Warcraft would disagree that GW2 is unchallenged in the MMO market…as well as Eve online will has been around longer than any of the games mentioned, and still pumps out expansions.

Second, popular titles like Wildstar and TESO have yet to enter the market.

Third, The MMOs he mentioned, aside from maybe Neverwinter and Rift, are garbage not just by my standards, but majority of people as well. It is why they have shrunk servers, changed pricing models, and why if you ask anyone that plays MMOs or knows anything about MMOs, games like aion and swtor are associated with failure. So if you compare a relative successful game like GW2 with a relative failure of a game like Aion, you’re not proving anything. You have to compare against legit games like WoW.

Vol.7601:

That “other game” is going to fail hard. Not as kittenWTOR, but it’s going to be terrible. A game that is not based on lore, looks absolutely terrible and is not only B2P, but subscription based AND microtransactions?

Yeah, no.

GW2 will be coming out with expansion content sometime this year. Book it.

Your veiled threats against GW2 will go unfounded. You will probably play that game for a month and then come back to GW2.

GW2 players are spoiled and they don’t know it.

I have played ‘that other game’ already. I am in the beta and bound by NDA not to discuss it. I will give one vague comment about it: I believe it has a very specific target audience.

From the outside looking in, even had I not played the game and without breaking NDA, you can watch videos on youtube and see what kind of game it is. You can see that it is doing things differently with an MMO, similar to how Arenanet tried with GW2 and lack of trinity.

They are trying to bring a different “style” of gameplay and MMO to the genre. It won’t be for everyone.

Also, who cares if it is B2P? GW2 is buy 2 play as well, but after that free to play. But most people spend as much in the gem store as you would on a sub for a year.

I am one of the few people who don’t see a problem with a subscription model.

BTW, WoW has a sub model and microtransactions and 8 million subscribers.

Sylv.5324:

cesmode.4257:

Amiron.1067:

Well said, OP. GW2 isn’t perfect, but it’s a far cry from terrible and it’s a darn good game to look to. Did anyone mention the non subscription fee factor? Because that is also a huge reason why I love this game. I can put it down and come back whenever I like, without feeling obligated to play as much as possible since I’m trying to get the most out of my 30 days.

Why do people say they like a game because it has no subscription? The fact that a game is free does not make it any more fun or any less fun. Financial model does not factor into whether ot not the player will enjoy the game. One has nothing to do with the other. You may like the fact that its free to play, but when people say “I like GW2 because it is free to play”…puzzles me. The free aspect makes it fun? Please explain.

I will assume you like GW2. If GW2 was subscription based, would you then consider it not a fun game to play…or no longer like it?

This phenomena puzzles me

I like it (in part) because I can afford to play it! Whereas WoW is not fun because I had to stop playing it because I couldn’t afford to.

Did you find the gameplay, combat, content, etc of WoW fun?
Do you find the gameplay,combat,content of GW2 fun?

Pandemoniac.4739:

cesmode.4257:

Why do people say they like a game because it has no subscription? The fact that a game is free does not make it any more fun or any less fun. Financial model does not factor into whether ot not the player will enjoy the game.

Just because it doesn’t impact your enjoyment doesn’t mean that it’s not a factor for other folks. I like no subscription because I’m a game hopper and it frees me from having to pay for a whole month when I just want to play a weekend. Some folks can’t stand free to play games with a cash shop model because they feel like they’re getting nickeled and dimed.

The financial model affects the game design. Games with cash shops have to have some sort of mechanics for things to sell in the those cash shops. Games with the VIP model have to have ways of distinguishing between those folks playing for free and the VIPs that are either paying a subscription fee or have purchased something else.

The financial model may affect the game in ways that are unimportant to you, but it still affects the game and some of the folks playing it.

Here we go.. the famous “just because you think so doesn’t mean everyone else does” argument. Over-used and does not apply here.

The financial cost of a game does not determine if it is FUN. The GAME determines that, not the dollars and cents you pay(or don’t). A 5 dollar application on my droid could be just as fun as the $65 dollar GW2 or WoW box price. The money amount does not matter. The content and the game itself does.

Whether or not the game is monterarily supported via a cash shop or a sub, means little if you do not find the content fun. If you don’t like raiding in WoW, you simply won’t play WoW becuse you don’t like it regardless if it is 15/per month. If you don’t like (picking a part of the game here) materials gathering for ascended gear in GW2, you very well may not play the game regardless if it is free to play and supported by a cash shop or not.

Think how silly it sounds… “WoW is not a fun game to play because they make us pay 15 dollars per month.”

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

there are holidays… respect that, please! Chris already mentioned (in his leisure time) that he will be back soon and discussing with us what’s important.

Seriously, O_o

I have acknowledged the holidays already. Im not one of those people crying because the devs can’t be bothered to post every single day like some people have done. Im pointing out the simple fact that in this horizontal progression thread, we have been asked to post our top 3 ideas and thats it. Thats the extent of the interaction, in 11 days since the thread was created(which was a few days prior to Christmas I might add). And I can’t remember the last time, if any, if a dev other than Chris Whiteside posted in this horizontal progression thread.

Im comparing this thread to verticle progression and living story threads where we had much more participation.

Please do not mistake this to be some mis guided sense of entitlement. Im pointing out the facts that the thread has been created for 11 days with little to no interaction from anyone besides Chris Whiteside, and if all that was wanted from us was a list of our ideas, they should simply refer to the Suggestions thread and be done with this if they aren’t going to give us feedback…

Israel.7056:

I started playing about a month after launch and I never saw the point of the legendary weapons so I’ve never made one. I haven’t done any of the ascended weapons and I don’t plan on doing the ascended armors either. I hate crafting and I don’t particularly like the PvE in this game so I’m not going to try to force myself through the PvE grind necessary to make this stuff.

I enjoyed the achievement point hunt even before the chests came out so I do that. I enjoy spvp so I do that. I enjoy WvW so I do that.

Just do what you like man. At least that way if you’re grinding it’ll be a fun grind.

Obviously, this makes sense and I agree.

In my many years of playing MMOs Ive been a PVE player at heart..95% PVE and 5% PvP. The PVE content has become so watered down, so mind numbingly dull and boring and such a grind..that I don’t want to do it anymore. My only enjoyment in the game is now the awsome epic battles of WvW, but only if you can get behind a good commander. I joined a guild to do just that. So hopefully WvW will fill the gaps for me between GW2, and now Warframe.

I’ll probably re-install skyrim in a month or two, drop GW2 completely, and gear up to try TESO. After that, its onto EQ Landmark or Wildstar(which will be my mainstay for many years).

Sadly, GW2 is almost done for me. WvW is the only thing keeping me going.

islarose.7356:

cesmode.4257:

I just see that traditional content updates offer far more than what we have been getting in the 2 week updates. Example: If you aren’t into winters day, and if wintersday was the only content added with the last update, then theres absolutely nothing new for you. Vs a traditional content game where the majority of the content added involves combat, which is the biggest reason we play these games…combat.

But those content updates usually take 6-12 months minimum to develop (more for quality and quantity) so the period of “nothing new” you mention in your comparison for this LS update would essentially last at least half of a year, most likely longer, in a tradition content cycle. It’s also completed almost just as quickly as an LS patch.

True, traditional content patches require far longer to develop. But I bet that they perform WAY more QA on those updates than what we are seeing here. These LS updates are just buggy as hell sometimes.

Also, with 6-12 months of dev time, you will simply get more I feel. I will enjoy an entire new zone with new quests, and gear to acquire…than “the nightmare ends”, where its a 10 minute intsanced story, and then achievement grinding in Kessex. Thats quality? I was done in a day or two and haven’t been back to Kessex since.

Amiron.1067:

Well said, OP. GW2 isn’t perfect, but it’s a far cry from terrible and it’s a darn good game to look to. Did anyone mention the non subscription fee factor? Because that is also a huge reason why I love this game. I can put it down and come back whenever I like, without feeling obligated to play as much as possible since I’m trying to get the most out of my 30 days.

Why do people say they like a game because it has no subscription? The fact that a game is free does not make it any more fun or any less fun. Financial model does not factor into whether ot not the player will enjoy the game. One has nothing to do with the other. You may like the fact that its free to play, but when people say “I like GW2 because it is free to play”…puzzles me. The free aspect makes it fun? Please explain.

I will assume you like GW2. If GW2 was subscription based, would you then consider it not a fun game to play…or no longer like it?

This phenomena puzzles me

I hope Q1 of 2014 is special because hopefully, we see the end of Scarlet and a change to the Living Story structure where it moves away from achievements and grind, to more of a story that can be played out at our own liesure.

I have five 80s. I am(sort of still but waning) re-invigorated with the game by playing WvW. I suppose I’ll continue to still play, but with 2014 and a TON of new games coming…my thought process has been "Why am I grinding out mats for ascended weapons or making sure I have my daillies done? " I should just log in, have fun in WvW since its the only fun aspect of the game anymore (and I am a PVE player at heart, definately)…and log out. I don’t see much return on my investment if I can see myself completely leaving in a few months for other games. (and leaving because it’ll be far too long before I see any legit changes from the CDI discussions concerning ideas that have been fleshed out in the forums for a year).

I see the OP point, but unlike him and unlike many other disgruntleds, I will not turn to the forums to say “bye bye” when I make the decision to delete GW2 from my computer for good. I’ll simply stop logging in every day, eventually deleting the game. And that’ll be that.

The Lost Witch.7601:

cesmode.4257:

Hi,
I am quite disappointed with this CDI thus far. (the horizontal progression piece)

I understand that it is the holiday season and people, including arenanet, have personal lives, vacations, etc. However, it dawned on me that this CDI is scheduled to end on January 6th, 4 days away. Where has the collaborative discussion been? We have had little to no interaction with arenanet since the Horizontal Progression discussion began. If all that was wanted from us was a top 3 list, why bother with a thread? Comb the suggestions forum/history for our ideas. Suggestions like Wardrobe are certainly to be there.

The verticle progression thread was much more spirited and we saw a great interaction between players and developers. But this thread has been almost entirely player driven, merely posting our top 3 ideas. If you wanted just a list of our top ideas, you could have sent us a survey. If this discussion was going to be so impersonal where we just list out our ideas, then why bother with a forum thread? If there is no interaction with arenanet on these topics, then why bother creating an ‘official’ discussion…you could simply review the threads we have posted during the previous entire year to obtain our ideas. The lack of feedback from Arenanet’s side has caused me to stop reviewing the thread, where previously in the Living Story and Verticle Progression threads I was quite active in because every now and then, a dev would respond to some of our feedback.

I would hope that with the holidays behind us, and only four days left for this thread, that we see much more back and forth between players and developers.

I believe Chris mentioned that it may very well go on for some time past the 6th.

Ah, missed that one. Ok, well thats half the battle. That alone does not change the fact that there has been little to no true give and take in this thread, like there was for Verticle Progression or Living Story. We need more true discussion, otherwise this is just an area where we spit out our ideas and walk away because there isn’t any feedback or criticisms to our suggestions. And if this becomes the case, why bother with the thread at all? There are countless great suggestions in the Suggestions forums.