Guild Wars 2

Ursan.7846:

I would personally not have named the tier “Legendary” so that people would stop taking it so literally.

Do you feel exotic when wearing your exotic gear?

Have you seen some of the exotic armors? I don’t think there’s a better word in the English language to describe some of them….

And it’s not a matter of how they named it, it’s a matter of how they pumped “legendaries” up as something big and meaningful and exciting, then delivered something that’s bland and boring and grind-happy.

Lest we forget, it was the DEVS, not us, who first spent all their time hyping up “legendaries” as the most super awesome things ever.

The lesson here is not “don’t name things literally”, it’s “don’t overhype your product”. Don’t hype your product as gold when you’re only planning on giving us bronze with gold paint on it.

I love how pretty much every single person here voted no.

Of course the devs will completely ignore this, because they’ve already stated publicly that they built the game to allow for planned level cap increases, most likely for expansions. So it’s a valiant effort but all for naught.

Get ready to vote with your wallets when the expansion comes out.

Hawkian.6580:

You can “completely gear” two characters in about 15 minutes.

Blatantly false statement is blatantly false. I can’t believe no one called you on this yet, but I’m going to go right ahead and do it.

Ascended amulets are only accessible via the laurel system, and cost 30 laurels. At best, you could earn 11 in a single day (one daily + one monthly), since achievements are account bound. Ergo, your claim is completely impossible. At best, you can get one amulet in about three weeks of dedicated daily play right now.

I know that you were exaggerating for the sake of brevity, but exaggeration to the point where your statement is easily proven false doesn’t make you look like you know what you’re talking about.

Hawkian.6580:

I don’t know how you can possibly know what the percentage increase in damage output of an Ascended set will be when not a single piece of Ascended armor has been released yes, but fair enough.

It’s relatively easy to calculate the overall gains from Ascended equipment.

The developers have stated that every piece of Ascended gear would be between 5% and 10% stronger, statistically, than its Exotic counterpart. Ergo, you multiply existing Exotic gear by 1.05, then re-calculate your average damage, armor, etc and see where they end up.

A mere 5% boost yields about 13% more damage on Berserker builds. If it’s as high as 10%, then it’s even worse. And keep in mind that even though this is a Berserker-type build, you still get 5-10% better armor, too (and obviously you get even more if you go for a tank setup instead of Berserker).

So the difference is more certainly not a slight difference as the devs have led you to believe.

The argument then becomes “well, is the grind significant enough that it’ll become a problem” and the answer is….hard to say right now, because we don’t have efficient examples of what armor will look like. However, if the amulets and rings are going to cost 30-35 laurels, it seems reasonable that actual armor pieces will be at least double, if not triple that. I’d personally be rather shocked if the armor pieces were any less than 100 per item….in which case you’re now investing more than 3 months of work into just one piece of armor for one character.

By the time you get all of that gear (about 2-3 years later), you can bet that they’ll have raised the level cap and/or introduced a new tier of gear by then. Notice the careful wording in Colin’s last public statement on the subject: “we won’t introduce a new tier of gear this year” doesn’t mean “we won’t introduce a new tier of gear ever again”. By 2014, most players won’t even be remotely close to a full loadout of Ascended gear (save for the most hardcore players), which will make it the perfect time to introduce MORE gear.

All gear treadmills begin with a single step, and no one has a problem with that. It’s not the first step you need to fear, it’s the trend thereafter. The reason treadmills get started is because that first step is never enough to placate the hardcore crowd, so they take another soft step. And then another. And no one recognizes that they’re on the treadmill until long after it’s started.

I don’t like Ascended items because their introduction looks an awful lot like the first step. And knowing that the dev team does plan to increase the level cap AND also knowing that they believe in vertical progression (both of which they have stated publicly), I think it’s in my best interests and in the interests of every player in this forum that I express my dissatisfaction with what I see as the start of a future trend in which we all get to grind for tier after tier, year after year. You may not believe that this is a trend and that’s fine, but recognize that this isn’t all just “conspiracy theories”, it’s based on what the developers themselves have said.

Pandeh.5248:

Yes, them introducing 2 pieces of equipment that are a few % stronger made you quit the game. I CBA to do the math, but if you really quit over 1-3% stats, well no comment.

Someone didn’t read any of the posts before his.

critickitten.1498:

1) Each individual piece of Ascended gear is 5-10% stronger than its Exotic variant. While this seems relatively small, even a mere 5% boost to every single piece of equipment can yield significantly higher damage (nearly 13%), not to mention you’ll be taking at least 5% less damage (more if you’re built to tank instead of berserk, as the linked calculations are). That is not the insignificantly small margin that people claim it is.

Good that they finally admit there’s a problem with the way loot is handed out. It was very frustrating hearing so many people (devs and players alike) claiming that nothing was wrong.

Let this be a lesson to the lot of you: The game isn’t perfect and it does have problems. And if we don’t complain about those problems, they can’t get fixed.

Lemme lay out why Ascended gear bothers me:

1) Each individual piece of Ascended gear is 5-10% stronger than its Exotic variant. While this seems relatively small, even a mere 5% boost to every single piece of equipment can yield significantly higher damage (nearly 13%), not to mention you’ll be taking at least 5% less damage (more if you’re built to tank instead of berserk, as the linked calculations are). That is not the insignificantly small margin that people claim it is.

2) Ascended gear was released with the intention of “filling the gap” between Exotic and Legendary. In other words, it was an attempt to provide something mildly grindy to the hardcore crowd while still being “accessible” for casual audiences. Unfortunately, in its present state, it doesn’t achieve that goal: it’s still too much of a grind for casuals and it’s much too small of a grind for hardcore players. As such, it alienates casuals while trying to appeal to a crowd that has long since left the game.

3) Ascended gear represents a concerning trend in the future of the game. While Colin has stated that “no new tier of gear will be released this year”, that’s not the same as “no new tier will be released ever”. And we know they intend to raise the level cap in future expansions to the game. They have expressed a strong belief in vertical progression for this game, meaning that we can expect to be going after new tiers and levels of gear for the remainder of the game. This is a far cry from GW1’s horizontal progression model. And when we were told that GW2 “takes everything we love about GW1”, it’s natural that some people will feel as if they’ve been lied to, because horizontal progression was one of GW1’s most treasured features.

Something that people need to remember: I’m not complaining about this because I hate the game, I’m complaining because I love this game but I see it taking a very worrying path towards WoW and other MMOs, instead of being the shining example of next-gen MMO gaming that it claims to be. GW2 can’t call itself a “revolution” if it’s just going to do a lot of the same things that other MMOs do (even if it does them better), people will call them on that and it’ll hurt their image.

Red Falcon.8257:

If he feels hollow that’s his problem, doesn’t make it an objective issue of everyone just because the guy has, uh, 6k views?
GW2 is played by 3 million people.

Agreed up to this point.

No, GW2 is not played by 3 million people. It has sold 3 million copies.

Yes, there is a difference.

Writetyper.1985:

Because if they were good then good ranger pets would be exclusive to those who played GW1, and they don’t want that. It’s the same deal with racial skills.

No, it’s not the same, this is an entirely different situation.

The pets in question are significantly weaker than the pets they’re intended to be clones of. So why would anyone ever bother to use those uniquely skinned pets if they’re not identical in stats to more common pets?

Soulstar.7812:

but still I have all this stuff… so what does that tell you?

That you’re not a casual gamer.

I work two jobs myself, and GW2 usually gets what free time I have. But I still wouldn’t call myself a “casual” gamer by any stretch of the term, because I’ve logged quite a few hours by this point, and I still find time to play almost every day.

Lemme make it simple for you: if you’ve owned the game since the official release date and have logged 350+ hours into this game, you are not casual. Why? Because that’s just over 2 hours a day on average, or 14 hours a week….that’s not “casual”, that’s almost creeping into part-time job territory. >_>

Eh, to be fair he has a point.

Then again, Ascended is supposed to be a grind. It was an attempt to fill a “gap” between Exotics and Legendary, and it was meant to help sate the hardcore grinders while still being accessible to casual players. Unfortunately, it doesn’t do either of those things in its current form: too much grind for casuals, and too little for any hardcore player.

sostronk.8167:

Considering a casual gamer plays about 8 hours a week, the best gear level is completely achieveable for them, at least in terms of stats.

Er, got a source for that stat, or is it completely made up off the top of your head? I’m pretty sure that not every casual player plays 8 hours a week, and not every casual player has time to log in 30-60 minutes every day for a month.

But that’s what they’re expected to do, to get a single piece of Ascended gear. That’s 3 full months just for two rings and an amulet. And I can only see it being worse for armor when that comes out. So….sorry, the existing model doesn’t sound very “casual” to me at all.

Now one could argue that casuals “don’t deserve” it if they’re not willing to “work for it” (feel free to do so if you feel that way, I don’t care either way). But I think if the entire point is truly to make the gear obtainable for casual players, it should actually take into account the fact that not all of them are able to log in every single day for multiple months just to spec out a single character. I think it’s a bit unreasonable, myself.

fellyn.5083:

I understand what you said perfectly well and you didn’t address what my post said at all, as well. So maybe we’re both even as far as that goes?

No, I did address your post, even if you don’t like my response to it. The reason my post reads as it does is because I’m pointing out to you that you’re not actually listening to what has been said in this thread. You’re attacking a fictional problem instead of addressing the actual one.

Yes, having over a hundred players dropping AoE in one area is going to cause lag, which is fine. That happens in every game. But no one is arguing about that. No one here is saying “my low end computer should handle hundreds of players in WvW without any trouble whatsoever”. So I don’t know why you even bothered bringing it up. It’s not what we’re talking about.

What we are saying is that the game should not have character rendering issues when it’s only a handful of people. I once got jumped by a gang of 7 players who dropped out of stealth and got several hits on me before I could see any of them.

And I have friends whose computers aren’t great, but they’re well within the minimum specs….and they literally cannot enter WvW without losing nearly all their framerate. Not in mid-battle, mind you, but from the very moment they enter, their framerate drops significantly. So forget large pitched battles, it’s nigh impossible for them to play in any sort of combat.

Things like that are not the computer’s fault, especially if the computer fulfills the minimum specs that the devs advertised. That’s the game’s fault for being poorly coded and poorly optimized. And if the devs aren’t going to do more to fix these sorts of problems, it’s only fair they seriously consider raising the game’s specs. I don’t think customers should have to pay for a game they can’t fully enjoy because of incompatibilities between their CPU and GPU, or inefficient programming that leads to overstressed CPUs, or other such problems. If the devs won’t fix their optimization problems, then they need to stop misrepresenting their game’s minimum specifications.

I had a friend who gave up the game over problems his PC had with the game, because his CPU and GPU don’t cooperate when playing this game (worth noting that no other game he plays gives him these sorts of problems). I’d like not to see any more people have to do the same simply because the game is incorrectly advertised as being playable on lower-end systems that it’s clearly not meant to be played on.

fellyn.5083:

I’m not sure what you expect when you have 150+ in an area all throwing down their skills at the same time..

You obviously didn’t read the post you quoted.

It’s got nothing to do with how many people are playing in WvW. It’s a problem with the way the game engine is programmed. It’s not optimized well and it relies too heavily on the CPU.

This is why even my PC, which is well above the technical specs for the game, still runs into culling in areas with only a dozen or so people in that general area. It’s the engine’s fault due to poor optimization and programming, it is NOT the computer’s fault that the engine doesn’t properly render its character models.

Meowwilson.5106:

aww yeah. eat that downers saying “gw2 losing people in droves” call Colin a liar all you like, but he said it right out.

Which is great. It’s good to hear that there are more players, absolutely.

Except he didn’t give any actual numbers. Did you notice that? The ANet team was out bragging to every news outlet about their sales and concurrency figures at the end of August, when the game was making money super-fast….but they’re not doing that now.

Have you noticed how we’ve not heard anything about the game’s concurrency numbers, except that “they’ve started going up again since the holidays”?

So let’s see….GW2 had 400k concurrent users prior to its official launch. So they could have dropped to 100k by December, then climbed to 105k in January. Yay, the concurrency numbers have “gone up”….but it’s not a very meaningful increase, is it?

I don’t doubt the truth of Colin’s statement, I just question how meaningful it really is. Usually when a company goes from bragging about their numbers to suddenly being very, very quiet about them, they’re doing it to hide a net loss. I’d be willing to bet that the concurrency numbers as of February are a hell of a lot lower than the 400k they had in August. Anyone want to try that bet?

And we know that ANet is okay with keeping hush hush on their numbers. Notice how they were really vocal about the 2 million mark in September, but then we didn’t hear anything more about how many units had been sold until January, where they finally revealed that it was 3 million. Why keep that quiet? Well, because it means they went from 2 million sales in two weeks….to only selling a bit over 1 million more over the course of over 4 months. That’s a huge drop off, and I’m betting the concurrency numbers are similar.

So yeah, they may have more people playing than in December, but that’s not a meaningful statistic. How many are still playing as compared to August is the stat I’d like to hear, because I’m betting it’s not as rosy. And there’s a reason for it. So hopefully the dev team will turn their act around and fix the problems that led to that decline.

Gasoline.2570:

WvW is tough on high-end systems as well. Please do realize it’s a game released in 2012, no matter what, it will be rough somehow on every system. There is no way around it, that’s just how games are today overall.

“New games are always tough on every system” is not only a false statement, it ignores the real problem.

The problem is that the game relies heavily on the CPU instead of the GPU for a lot of its functions. Which is something they’ve known since back in the betas, but never optimized the game’s code to fix. That combined with culling only getting worse means that the “minimum specs” probably are a tad dishonest right now. I have a friend or two affected by this problem, they literally cannot even play in WvW at all because it slows things down too much.

They need to optimize their game or else raise the specs to more appropriate levels. It’s not fair for people to buy the game thinking they can play it well, only to get a nasty surprise after buying. It’ll taint their image of the game.

goldenwinga.5417:

oh, and how many would let the player die so you could revive them for that daily?

Considering that the daily counts both dead and downed as successful revivals….no, I probably wouldn’t, and any person who would allow you to die rather than get the achievement while you’re downed is basically useless anyways. I’d use a waypoint immediately just to deny them the free rez.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

. . . and show of hands, if Ascended Gear only had the statistic boost while in Fractals and everywhere else it had Exotic stats, who’d still be complaining?

I’d still be complaining. My complaint is about the trend of vertical progression, not Ascended gear specifically.

Worth noting, though, that if Ascended gear is always equal to or better than Exotic gear, that makes it better than Exotic gear by default. If the absolute worst it can do is exactly the same as the best case scenario for Exotic gear, then it’s hard to argue that it’s not still superior.

Illustration: I have two pieces of gear, one that raises my Power by 80, and another by 80 everywhere except Fractals, where the boost becomes 90. Which one are you more likely to go after, assuming that you will, at some point in time, want to run Fractals? The only scenario in which the Exotic version “wins out” is if you literally never run Fractals, in which case the Exotic gear is more desirable due to less grinding needed to obtain it.

But that’s irrelevant, since my complaint really isn’t about Ascended specifically, but rather the trend it establishes.

DreamOfACure.4382:

Your solutions can be simplified with one simple step.

Apply a diminishing return to players reviving a defeated player so that having more then 4 players contributing would be a waste

• 4 being the magic number since dungeons can only hold 5 players, making having 4 the highest possible group of healers (With 2 healers being the recommended number, while everyone else keeps fighting)

That’s already built into the game. The game won’t allow more than 4-5 people to resurrect one target.

Zerbo.5381:

In my opinion, yes.

Points for honesty, but you immediately lose those points for having a point of view that is impossible to respect.

To imply that “only bad players like it” is essentially insulting everyone who disagrees with you.

Kakeru.2873:

It really is possible. TES is an amazing franchise with a massive fanbase.

Was said about SWTOR.

Remember TES is loved by not only MMO players but western RPG lovers and console gamers, unlike GW2 so it has a much larger demographic.

Was also said about SWTOR.

Also certain devs on the dev team worked on DAoC so the 3v3 faction pvp will be done right.

This is speculation, not fact.

Remeber also, Diablo 3 sold 6Mil on it’s launch. TESO could easily sell 3 to 4 mil within 1 month or on release of it’s launch.

It certainly could. But I don’t think it will, especially if they do end up going with a subscription model.

Zerbo.5381:

Down state in its current form is only good for bad players because they aren’t punished for bad play as long as they’re around other teammates.

….

Down state in its current form is simply lame and if you like it as it is, well, too all his own, but in my opinion you should probably really learn how to be a better player so you don’t have to rely on it in the first place.

So the core of your argument is that if you like the downed state in its present form, then you’re obviously bad at the game and only like it because it allows you to get away with poor play?

That’s not only false, but it smacks of severe elitism to boot.

Bri.8354:

And also, if a player was able to down a player even when he had multiple allies supporting him, I say he deserves a good chance at finishing off the player, not 5 people running over and bringing him back up in a second even though that player failed to keep himself alive and those players failed to support him while he was alive. The ability to interrupt reviving players would allow this.

Why?

Why should one player be able to defeat the combined efforts of six players with minimal effort or skill?

Let me answer that for you: They shouldn’t. And in any 1-vs-1 scenario, if you’re not reliably finishing off anyone you drop into the downed state, then you are doing something very wrong. Even on my ranger, I can finish off virtually anyone I manage to drop into downed.

Bri.8354:

But that second chance is too forgiving and has too much impact on the game which is the whole point behind this thread.

I’m fine with a second chance, and a weakened downed state will still provide that.

No, it won’t, because despite your claims, the downed state is already too weak to begin with.

If a guy goes down in front of me in WvW, there’s only two ways they’re turning that fight around:
1) They have multiple people helping them back up as I slap their face with my sword
2) They had previously reduced me to such a low amount of health that it would only take a few blows to knock ME into my downed state.

In the former case, I was likely going to lose that fight anyways because I’m outnumbered, and in the latter case, I still have the advantage because I’ll have more HP than he will in his downed state, so if it comes to swapping blows, I’ll outlast him.

In any other situation than the two stated above, it’s a relatively quick assassination, whether I use a finisher or simply pump him full of damage until he keels over.

Similarly, in PvE, the downed state lacks significant firepower to kill a mob that is at 100% health unless you’re down-leveled by quite a lot. Downed state only offers enough damage that you could potentially kill an already-weakened mob, but that’s about it.

And your proposals make the game significantly worse, because it means that one player with sufficient AoE can keep an entire group of enemies from helping their one downed friend back up. That’s a terrible suggestion. You, by yourself, should not be able to stop an entire gang of players from helping up their buddy.

The only place where downed state is a significant problem is sPvP, and that whole area needs to be rebuilt nearly from the ground up to begin with. Downed state is the least of its problems.

It sounds like you’re completing missing the point of the downed state.

The whole point is to provide players with a second chance, an opportunity to fight your way back up, or to have an ally help you back up. You’re proposing changes that would basically destroy the downed state simply because you’re having trouble finishing people off when they’re downed. I don’t usually have any problems with that unless there’s several guys healing the one downed person, in which case why exactly should a single player be able to singlehandedly defeat the combined resurrection efforts of several other players?

If anything, what needs to be changed is the fact that players can use finishers while in stealth, or shrunk, etc, as this takes the fight completely out of the downed player’s hands and renders him completely helpless.

I noticed that I had about a 50 MB download when I logged into the game a moment ago.

The only information on the forums is that the servers had maintenance….but I can’t seem to find any patch notes. Yet clearly there was a patch if I need to download new files, since maintenance generally doesn’t force me to re-download files.

So….what got changed? Even if they’re small changes, I’d still like to know what sort of changes are being made. Or, if it’s just stuff being added to the game ahead of time as part of the upcoming Feb patch (and thus you can’t talk about it for fear of spoilers), just tell me that, then.

But please, don’t patch the game and tell me nothing about it. That opens the door to rumors and hearsay.

Mirta.5029:

optional means you are not forced to do it, not that the content is not there. The same way that I can’t claim that Skyrim has no side quests just because I’m not forced to do them, the same way that I can’t claim that WoW has no battlegrounds, because I’m not forced to participate in it.

And I agree.

So now let’s stop claiming that “optional” is a valid excuse for not making content work properly.

Because right now, any time anyone asks to change ANYTHING, the #1 guaranteed response is “it’s optional so it’s fine as it is”.

Avatar.1923:

Teso will grab a lot of people.
will they stay there ? or come back to gw2 as people came back to wow everytime?

thats the question.
Teso have enough “pull” to grab 5+mil players right off the bat.
if the first few gameplay videos are convincing.

5+ million right off the bat, eh? Methinks you grossly overestimate.

I seem to recall a lot of people saying the same thing about SWTOR. Being a huge single-player game franchise doesn’t mean that your MMO will sell well.

There are more productive discussions to be had on ascended gear than whether or not they need increased stats, which is why I’m trying to persuade people who can’t get over that fact to move on.

It’s a tried and true reward structure that is appealing to a large amount of the player base, not just content locusts.

Actually, if we look purely at the data, it suggests that vertical progression models are appealing to less and less players every year, because players get bored of it more quickly (because everyone’s doing it) and look for something else. Look at WoW’s rapidly falling numbers. Look at the shift to F2P structures for many well-established MMOs, as well as newcomers like TERA and SWTOR. And look at the rise of LoL, a game built on horizontal progression, a regular influx of new heroes, and conceptual intangibles rather than bigger numbers.

Falling back on a model that’s “tried and true” in the modern MMO market isn’t as safe and secure as it used to be, because there are hundreds of competitors out there now who offer the same experience for free. Companies that move forward with subscription models need to make adjustments and stand out to retain players. Why do you think TESO is copying GW2 rather than WoW? Their devs have seen the trends. :p

Mackdose.6504:

My source is Colin Johanson in a guest spot on MMOFTW, wherein he stated that after the population drop from the initial sales surge, that the concurrent player base and leveled out and had actually been increasing over a 6 week period following the holidays.

Got a link?

Also, you may have to forgive me if I don’t take everything Colin says with the fullest amount of integrity. Just recently he was saying in these forums that they were “adding new ways you can earn precursors as rewards via new reward systems taking advantage of our open persistent world”, then days later he was caught saying that he never actually said that precursors would be buyable through the new rewards system of laurels. Didn’t technically lie, but left a lot of people with a sour taste in their mouths because it wasn’t technically all that honest either.

So when Colin says “our numbers leveled off and then went up after the holidays”, my next two questions are “leveled off at how many total players exactly” and “increased by how many total players exactly”. Because if the game sold 2 million units in the initial weeks, it could very well be that they “leveled off” at 200k active players and then grew by a few thousand due to holiday sales, and that would still “technically” fit what he’s saying….even though it would still be indicative of a very serious problem if only 10% of the game’s initial purchasers were still playing it months after release.

So my immediate reaction to the vagueness of that statement is “let’s see some numbers”. Because we don’t have any right now, and I’m not going to rely on vague statements like that.

Looking at potential maximum damage separate from actual game play (and yes, the damage will be higher, no denying that) poses an argument that doesn’t really apply: that the higher gear will somehow carry a low-skill player.

Not really my point at all, actually.

My point is that given two approximately equal players, the player with Ascended gear has the clear advantage. This fight wouldn’t be one that’s on the tipping point and could technically still go either way, the Ascended player would almost certainly win because he/she is stronger in both offense and defense by a statistically significant margin.

I’m not blindly defending anything here, just trying to move the conversation to bigger issues than increased stats such as:

1. Ascended gear being bad for alts due to calendar gating.
2. Ascended Infusions requiring the same mats as legendaries, extending the grind.
3. Ascended gear not being available by crafting.
4. Ascended gear still not available in enough venues.

Those are all issues, I don’t disagree. I just think you significantly underestimate the problem that is automatically incurred when you push for a vertical progression system. There’s no denying that GW2’s vertical progression isn’t as bad, but I personally don’t think “not as bad” is good enough. Especially when its predecessor all but did away with vertical progression.

Yet we know for a fact that GW2 will feature (at the very least) level cap increases, meaning the grind will begin anew as soon as the first expansion comes out, even if they keep to their word and never introduce another tier of gear again (and I’m not entirely sure they’ll keep to that, either).

At the end of the day, the increased stats don’t matter to anyone but horizontal progression purists when the gear is easily accessible and available. It’s not accessible enough yet, and that is a problem.

The problem is that it’s never going to be accessible. As you yourself put it, this was supposed to fill a “gap” between Exotics (which require little to no grind) and “legendaries” (which are an obscene grind). The net result is an item that has a significant enough grind to deter most casual players, but a grind much too small to sate the tastes of a hardcore grind fanatic. This is what happens when you try to please two diametrically opposed groups of players: neither side is happy.

The issue with making ascended gear accessible quickly is that the time gap to the gear cap is back to being too short. This was obviously an issue (not just my opinion), else why would ArenaNet rush to move on it? I remember the exact statement being “Players were hitting the Exotic wall faster than we anticipated.” So clearly, they want there to be some time between level cap and gear cap.

And because they rushed it, they alienated a significant portion of their playerbase, possibly forever, significantly damaged their reputation across the internet, and possibly lost future sales. And they still lost most of the gear locusts, who had already begun to move on long before Ascended was introduced.

Sometimes it’s better to stop, take a few deep breaths, and collect data before you go making sweeping changes.

Rieselle.5079:

It’s ok for the whole game to be optional. That’s the point. GW2 isnt sandboxy enough for me, but the freedom you have in choosing what content to enjoy is a good thing.

Was somewhat in agreement with all except this first part.

Because it’s not okay for people to claim that everything is “optional” but then to also say that the game has a significant depth of content. If all of that content is “optional” and thus doesn’t need to be fixed (which, btw, is bad logic: a broken feature should be fixed whether it’s optional or not), then the end result is that there’s no game left to play once you max your level. But then when you point out how you have nothing to do except this “optional” content, their only reply is to all of these “optional” bits of content that you were told you didn’t have to do, and to remind you to “play as you want”. And so the circular logic continues to circle. It’s all “optional” so you don’t have to do it, but it’s all that the game has left to do once you max your level out. So it’s either play all this “optional” content that may be running at sub-optimal status, or just quit.

As to the rest: not everything boils down to a matter of opinion. For example, there are folks on this forum who have defended the game’s problems with culling as a “legitimate strategy” even though the devs themselves have said that it’s an unintended glitch in the way graphics are rendered. I’m pretty sure that in that particular debate, there’s only one right point of view. But this is what I’m talking about: even the devs’ own words, in many cases, is not enough to sway the minds of some of this game’s vehement defenders, who will defend outright broken parts of the game as “fine” when no one, least of all the devs, think it’s “fine” as is.

Speculation? Do you have any evidence for these claims besides hearsay?

The problem here is that “evidence” for any claim of this nature isn’t going to exist. All we, as players, have to go by are the trends.

And here are the trends:
1) Less players sighted in the game and the forums.
2) A significantly negative backlash to the Lost Shores event not only in the forums, but across the internet.
3) The developers themselves admitting that Lost Shores was not a fully successful release, and vowing to fix this for future content.
4) A significant shift in the way the developers interact with players since the Lost Shores.
5) An early declaration that the next several patches would be focused on fixing old content rather than adding new content.

Games that are experiencing wild levels of success don’t tend to behave in this fashion.

So, no, I don’t have “evidence”, and neither do you. We have trends. And the trends highly suggest that the game isn’t doing as well as has been suggested.

If you don’t agree, that’s fine. I’m not going to go out of my way to prove speculation and theory based on trends. But I will continue to use that as an operating thesis until data is presented that suggests otherwise. That is the nature of history, science, and mathematics: you operate under an existing assumption until you have data to help prove otherwise.

Mackdose.6504:

No, unless you count a single long grind to a pretty effect with purple text as progression.

It’s called “horizontal progression” for a reason.

And it wasn’t fun in my opinion. Some people hit the plateau early, ran out of things to do and left the game, and everyone else who didn’t want a boring grind just ignored legendaries entirely.

Fixed for you.

Could this have been done without a stat increase? Sure. Would it have been fast or easy? No. Compromise.

Are you asserting that it would have been more difficult to create new gear with identical stats to existing gear than to create all new gear with all new stats?

I certainly agree that it might have been more difficult to add Agony Resistance to existing gear as an optional upgrade, but the alternative as proposed by the OP (just making the new gear have AR and nothing else) would most certainly have been easier than making up brand new numbers. So if it boiled down entirely to what is easiest, why not do that instead?

Hardcore types aren’t getting the grind they wanted? Are you advocating more grind for the hardcore types? Or is this a nonsensical baseless argument pulled from nowhere?

They’re not getting a significant grind, no. They’re getting a much smaller grind which they will finish in much less time than it took them to get their “legendaries”, and that’s not going to be enough to sate them.

The forums are full of complaints. Welcome to the internet, and as for the lower in-game population you have a source for that? I could have sworn the population leveled out after the post-launch surge, and was retaining more players every week.

Ah, so if I state the game’s population is down (which, if you weigh the circumstantial evidence from the players and other sources, is likely true) then I need a guaranteed source for that information, but if you state that the game’s retention is increasing rather than decreasing, then there’s no sources needed?

Different games are different. This is a slippery slope fallacy.

No, it’s only a “slippery slope” if it’s leading to a conclusion that is untrue. Power creep is a real thing, and every other game that has followed a path of vertical progression has had to deal with it. GW2 will be no different.

Fixed that for you. I played GW1 as well, but I wasn’t a fan of the gear system. I don’t mind VP with a shallow power curve.

Except that the power curve is not shallow. 5-10% for every item leads to significantly higher than that in total damage yields for Berserker-style builds. 5% increases, for example, yield at least 13% more damage due to the way Power, Precision, and Critical Damage stack in a multiplicative fashion in the game’s damage calculations.

http://boycottncsoft.com/2012/ncsofts-stock-plummets-11-at-the-opening-bell/

No.

Psst, you’re looking at the wrong dates. That is just one of many recent stock plunges that NCSoft has experienced.

Their first occurred near the start of September, a little while after GW2 had hit its initial peak. That one led to a continued dropoff that they have yet to recover from, such a massive drop from their original figures that the one you’re linking to was a drop in the bucket by comparison.

Take a look at the 6 month trend: http://www.reuters.com/finance/stocks/chart?symbol=036570.KS

They had another big one in November that dropped them under 200k following a poor earnings forecast, since by this point GW2’s sales had been dropping off significantly from the initial weeks, such that even their significantly high initial sales weren’t enough to help offset the falling sales across the board.

I agree, it’s a great game. Which is why I complain.

Yes, that does make sense. Because you see, as great as it is, it could easily be so much better, and it’s never going to get better if we keep telling the devs that everything’s fine and dandy and perfect when we know it’s not.

There are a multitude of things this game needs to work on. It needs to fix culling. It needs to have a better tutorial system for new players. It needs to stop designing content around OHKO mechanics. It needs to make major bug fixes. It needs to add more horizontal progression and unlockables, and less vertical progression and grind.

Your post illustrates what I think is perhaps the game’s biggest flaw: the people who defend it. It’s okay to defend a game you love, and to this date I’ll defend this game’s good decisions. But I don’t defend bad design and bad decisions. Yet many people in these forums do just that. For example, the notion that you can do “anything you want” is often brought up when people complain about a lack of content, and yet when someone points out the flaws in various pieces of content, the immediate defense is “it’s optional”. Well, you can’t have it both ways. Either the game’s content is all optional (thereby leaving not much of a game left to play, once you beat the personal story), or it’s meant to keep you occupied. In either case, though, some of the game’s problems need fixing, and just ignoring them or saying “it’s optional” isn’t addressing the problem. It’s one thing to defend a game, it’s another thing entirely to defend it blindly, and I don’t encourage the latter.

This is indeed a great game, and because it’s great, we should strive to make sure it only gets better from here. But if we ignore the game’s faults and flaws, the game won’t get better, it’ll get worse.

Jrunyon.3012:

Lol attacked? I was just having a laugh.

So was I.

I won’t say anymore regarding thieves since I’m biased. I will however comment that thieves are in a precarious point constantly and always will be. I believe that no stealth changes should be made until culling is completely removed. Then the devs can collect their data and make changes as they see fit.

This is coming from a thief who’s only stealth skill is heal.

My point is that there’s no “failure” status for a thief’s stealth.

If I drop one of my AoE skills and it doesn’t hit anything, I don’t get to instantly recast it, I have to wait for it to recharge. Thieves can literally continue to spam their stealth skill until it deals damage. That’s not appropriate design, that’s holding their hand. “Oh, it’s okay that you missed, here, have another chance” when no other skill in the game operates like that. They should, at the very least, drop out of stealth if they use the skill and their target evades or blocks it. That alone would be a change that would force thieves to think hard about how they use their stealth and what the opportune moment is….which, so far the game’s initial design suggests, is how stealth skills are meant to be used.

And I think waiting for culling to be removed is a bad decision since culling will never be removed at the rate they’re going. Every time they’ve made changes that were supposed to make it better, it’s gotten worse.

Jrunyon.3012:

This specifically needs to be fixed.

If I hit someone 13 times, a couple of those should have hit.

It’s illogical for me to not be able to hit you after attacking you 13 times.

This is a videogame, please don’t try to apply logic.

This specifically needs to be fixed.

If I post a valid complaint, it shouldn’t be attacked by players who don’t understand the validity of the complaint.

It’s illogical for players to defend the game from a complaint they don’t understand.

This is a game forum, and people are going to post complaints once in a while. Don’t get your feathers ruffled because someone posts a complaint. And to the poster’s credit, he’s right: If you attack while in stealth, you should drop out of stealth instantly, regardless of whether the hit was blocked or evaded. There’s no gamble to using stealth right now, because failure is still acceptable. Making it so that a failed stealth attack still drops you out of stealth would make stealth a greater gamble in combat, and would force you to choose your opportune moment to strike instead of just spamming your stealth skills mindlessly as many thieves tend to do (especially in WvW).

Vol.5241:

The culling has always been like this. The only reason why it’s worse is because many people farm there now. Don’t expect a fix anytime soon until they get the WvW culling fixed.

No, it’s actually worse than before because of other changes they’ve made.

The January patch was supposed to improve culling a little (according to the devs), but it’s been even worse since that time. I can’t even spot ten people dropping out of stealth now, when I could easily keep track of nearly 50 people in WvW in the past.

tigersrule.5309:

i was thinking about this as well. but what kind of weapons could they introduce that wouldnt ruin the “old time weapons” feeling?

Claws for Thieves, Scythes for Necromancers, some Spears that we can actually use on the land (or maybe a Halberd)….

There were a lot of medieval killing instruments.

Mackdose.6504:

False.

Except that you actually said that. On multiple occasions. So it’s not false, it’s just repeating exactly what you said in your own words.

Quotes:

If it isn’t cosmetic, and it only gives resistance to a passive effect, do you really think people would try to achieve the reward? No, they wouldn’t.

The fact remains that the gear’s effects without a stat increase would be mechanically hollow (read: NOT FUN), and therefore bad design.

Not everyone would like to spend hours of their free time for a useless piece of gear because of its lore.

Playing higher level fractals without the stat increase (progression) would not be fun or satisfying.

If that’s not what you meant, it’s time for you to start clarifying and correcting, because what you said is that you think those items, and indeed the entire dungeon as a whole, would be useless (your own word choice) without stat increases on the gear.

Please be intellectually honest if you intend to continue discussing this subject. Stick to what you’ve said rather than trying to change it, or if that’s not what you meant, then clarify. But don’t claim you didn’t say something when there are several quotes of you saying precisely that.

It doesn’t accomplish filling a few holes in the gameplay that ArenaNet wanted to include for a certain portion of the userbase, namely hardcore PvE progression types.

Wasn’t this the point of “legendaries”?

It doesn’t fill the gap of time that existed between finishing the exotic set and attaining a legendary, leaving a large portion of the player base feeling like all there was to do is commit to grinding out a legendary for “PvE Endgame.”

This “gap” doesn’t actually exist for most players. You’re either the sort of person who is willing to grind for gear, or you’re not. The whole point of having “legendaries”, originally, was to implement something that hardcore grinders could go after, while leaving the core gaming audience able to attain max power without significant time investment.

Now, instead, they’ve created a system whereby everyone must grind to reach max power, even their casual players. This means casual players are obligated to grind for gear (which they won’t like), and hardcore players aren’t getting as much grind as they wanted (which they won’t like). Neither crowd is being catered to with this model. This is an attempt to please both crowds, and it’s not worked so far, judging from these forums and the lower in-game population.

It takes a lot of time (design, prototype, coding, testing, iterating, testing, iterating, testing, polish, ready to release) to completely recode an infusion system to go on top of the currently existing gear system and have something you could show off outside of the dungeon.

Which goes back to the point I’ve already made: “bigger numbers” development is easier, but it’s also lazier. It doesn’t ever sate the “hardcore” crowd because they’ll always obtain it much faster than you can produce it, and it alienates your “casual” players over time as the gap between their gear and the top gear continues to grow and pile up. It also leads to power creep, which is another game design problem that WoW struggled with, to the point where they had to redesign much of their older content to keep it from being rendered utterly useless.

Let’s illustrate with an example: the previous in-game dungeons, while not exactly well-designed, did have one advantage over Fractals: they each had a set of uniquely-skinned gear that the players could obtain with repeated runs of the dungeon. This created a system whereby players could grind for cosmetics rather than power, precisely the sort of system that the bulk of their players wanted.

Non-optimal? The PvE is balanced around rares! Anything at exotic is over-kill except in fractals.

I’m not talking about “non-optimal” in the sense of the game mechanics, I’m speaking of “non-optimal” as a business.

Non-optimal in the sense that their game now has an extremely bad word of mouth by many of the players that were heaping praise upon it. Non-optimal in the sense that their player count has dropped, and their sales to boot. Non-optimal in the sense that their decision indirectly led to a significant slide in the value of NCSoft shares, which they have yet to recover from.

The whole reason that the Jan/Feb/March (and now April) patches are focusing on “strengthening the core game” rather than new content as they’ve been doing is that they’re pulling back on the reins a bit and trying to get their players to come back. They see other games on the horizon that threaten their market share (TESO, aka “GW2 Skyrim Edition”, being the main one). The problem is that they’re trying to appeal to people who have already left, most likely for good, so their success will be limited in that endeavor.

Mackdose.6504:

I’m not attached to anything, I’m not sure where you get off telling me what my own position is on a minor statistical upgrade. I’m a casual player who is running around in crafted exotic armor and rare everything else. If anything, I’d be on your side, except for the fact I like having goals to chase in the long term.

The problem here is that you don’t seem to think that something can still be a “long-term goal” unless it has higher stats attached to it. I assure you that it can.

There are entire games built around the concept of “horizontal progression”, that is, providing more customization as opposed to more stats. GW1 is one example, but cosmetics aren’t the only way to achieve this effect. LoL uses new heroes as its form of horizontal progression, and the constant shifting of which heroes are ‘best’ at any given time constructs their metagame. GW2 has the core for another such method already built into it: additional weapon types, skills, and traits that you have to unlock would be an example of ways to introduce progression without increasing player stats one bit.

Ascended tier isn’t a bad idea in concept, it’s just a bad implementation of something that could have been done without a new tier of gear at all. They could’ve reintroduced Agony as a single-armor-unit infusion system like it originally was in GW1, and that would’ve kept Fractals entirely intact without having to add any gear at all. Less work in general, less hassle, and less complaints from their players. What’s not to love about this idea?

But instead, we got the Ascended gear. The higher stats were primarily added to satisfy a crowd that has already moved on, and it damaged the staff’s reputation quite significantly with players who were formerly quite loyal to the game. Now they’re stuck with a non-optimal situation and they need to make the most of it.

I’m not particularly upset about the stat increase so much as the precedent it sets, and how it’s such a stark contrast from the design of its predecessor. There are so many ways they can give us progression without having to resort to the oft-used-and-somewhat-lazy design of “bigger numbers” that it’s a shame to see them following a path that every other MMO on the market is following, especially when GW2 is portraying itself as “the MMO revolution” and trying to set a new standard.

Mackdose.6504:

Okay, since you are now officially straw-manning my arguments, play the high-level (25+)fractals without ascended at all, let me know how much fun you had and if an item that literally does nothing but reduce agony damage would feel rewarding.

It would still feel plenty rewarding.

The concept of Agony and Infusion came from GW1, and boiled down to simply killing a particular monster and bringing his essence to a particular NPC to get it “infused”. And while it was implemented in a clunky way at first, it was an easy way to introduce “progression” without changing the player’s statistical strength at all. Suddenly this mighty enemy that crushed you in combat was significantly weakened, making him seem more killable. That’s story progression and power progression without ever actually increasing your power at all.

If they had implemented it in the same way in GW2, people would have been fine with it. Gather X Fractal Relics to infuse one piece of armor with Agony Resistance, making you that much more resilient to the effect. Poof, your desire for “progression” is answered without even adding a new tier of gear at all.

You’re much too attached to this extra tier of gear to realize just how poorly this whole thing has been implemented.

Mackdose.6504:

Playing higher level fractals without the stat increase (progression) would not be fun or satisfying. If you can’t see why this is a big reason, I’m not sure why you want to talk about game mechanics at all.

So clearly I’m doing something wrong then, because (and stop me if you’ve heard this crazy idea before) I was actually playing Fractals because….it was actually a lot of fun to play in. Not for gear, not for some deluded sense of “progression”….but for FUN.

Imagine that.

Mackdose.6504:

…But Guild Wars 1 wasn’t a AAA mainstream MMO either. It was niche.

Thanks for completely disregarding the substance of my post to instead reference an entirely different game with different design goals. The fact remains that the gear’s effects without a stat increase would be mechanically hollow (read: NOT FUN), and therefore bad design.

Not everyone would like to spend hours of their free time for a useless piece of gear because of its lore.

Time to use that age-old argument that this forum is all too fond of using:

“WoW is over there, go play that instead, lawlz”

People bought GW2 on the promise that it would continue the design beliefs of GW1 (as the developers themselves said it would). So naturally people are probably going to want one of its core principles to be retained across games. Just sayin’.

Mackdose.6504:

The gap that you say wasn’t there before wasn’t a stat gap. It was a time/effort gap. Ascended gear takes more time to acquire than exotics, less time than legendaries.

Correct, but that still ignores the core question. Why bother making them have higher stats when exotic and legendary items had no gap between them in terms of stats? Why introduce a stat gap when there wasn’t one to start with?

Because “people won’t go after them if they don’t have stats”? I really hope you have a better reason than that.

Why is it 5-10%? Because that’s the power difference between rarities. It’s consistent.

Now I have an urge to draw a picture of a GW2 player trying to decide whether to replace his equipped Exotic G3 Rarity with an Ascended tier G4 Rarity. Alas, my lack of drawing talent….

eisberg.2379:

No I think it would be a great thing, a fantastic thing. But the problem is that Arenanet wants legendaries to be an item that the vast majority of the players would not get, to make them “special” and comparatively rare. What is the only way to make sure a small minority of your players get a “special” item? Make it really boring to get =D

Let’s respond to that question with another: What’s the best way to retain players long-term?

Not sure? Here’s a hint: It’s not to bore them with pure tedium, only to then throw in their face how all of it is “optional” and how they don’t HAVE to do it, even though it’s the only thing left for them to do once they max out their level. But that’s what I see in this forum all too often. The response to everything is “but it’s just optional”….to which I say “sure, it’s optional….but once you use that excuse on everything, what’s left to actually PLAY in this game?”. And the answer is “not that much”.

I can tell you right now that in five years, when the game’s population has mostly settled to its final levels, everyone who has been playing all this time and honestly wants a “legendary” will have one. And they’ll be so common that people will be begging ANet to do something about it. But it’ll be way too late by then to fix the problem.

If we’re destined to end up in a world where everyone has a “legendary”, I’d rather it be a world where everyone who has a “legendary” is also an experienced player who can be trusted in tough combat situations. It seems far preferable to “legendary” owners who still struggle to understand the dodge mechanic.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Look, even if you make a Legendary acquisition “skill based”, what’s going to happen is the same as if it were a scavenger hunt or a quest you could “look up the FAQ for”. People are going to look up what they need to do and do it until they get it. Ninety percent of them won’t even really let the lessons stick with them, they’ll just do it until chance makes it happen.

Again, it’s just repetition until you get it which . . . is what we have now.

So you admit that, at its absolute worst, a skill-based model is at least equal to the current model.

Considering that at its best, it produces a far superior game world, I’d probably be the sort of developer who would go ahead and do it, if the absolute worst I could do is make something that’s equal to the current model, which so many people have complained about. But that’s just me.

Mackdose.6504:

I don’t know why you’re so arrogant, but the reason it needs better stats is to give people a tangible reward for their time. Duh.

If it isn’t cosmetic, and it only gives resistance to a passive effect, do you really think people would try to achieve the reward? No, they wouldn’t.

Yes, because really, what other game out there had an entire game built around cosmetic rewards that players would go after simply because they looked cool?

Oh, right.

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Prestige_armor
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Voltaic_Spear
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Mini

“But rings can’t be shown on the character”, I can already hear you saying. To which my reply is: “what makes you think that the reason everyone pursues extraneous things is so that they can show them off?”.

Because really, if you think people won’t automatically pursue something simply because the very idea of owning it is appealing, then you don’t understand human nature at all. Sometimes it has nothing to do with showing it off. Sometimes it’s simply about having one because you decided it’s cool.

For example, if Yakkington’s Ring weren’t a grind to get, I’d get one, even if it was statistically no better than any other ring. It has a rich nostalgic lore behind it that I am able to appreciate.

eisberg.2379:

Make it skill based, and people would practice and learn to be skilled enough, far more people would be willing to do that, then the number of people willing to go through a massive RNG grind.

And we’ve come to the root of the problem, right here.

By making “legendaries” require a vast array of in-game knowledge and skill, players will have to work hard to learn and master the game before they can attain their “legendaries”. They will learn new things, master old skills, and in general they would need to be much better at the game in order to break through that skill barrier.

Assuming that you are correct and that players (which I think is a load because I’m proof of how false your assertion is, but let’s roll with it) will all seek out “legendaries” PURELY because they are more fun to get now….then they would have to learn a greater array of skills and be able to adapt to changing conditions. Ergo, at the end of the day, this leads to a player base that is smarter, more skilled, and generally more knowledgeable.

And you feel that this is a bad thing simply because it might mean that a lot of people will end up having “legendaries”?

Because personally, I think a game full of Lvl 80 players that don’t know how to complete their dailies because they don’t know how dodging works(1) but still are running around with these “legendaries” anyways is way worse than what I’m suggesting.

(1): Which, I’ll point out, is actually a complaint that was made on the first few days of the new daily….that tons of map chat people were asking how to dodge because they didn’t know how to do it. Some of whom had even ‘beaten’ the game. I was as appalled to learn of this as you no doubt are.

eisberg.2379:

I would love it to be skilled based. But with it being skilled based, that means all people have to do is practice, perhaps get on the internet and watch people do it, or read about it. The point is that a crap ton more people would end up getting it because skill based really is more fun then just grinding through the RNG.

I know for me I would get one if it was skill based and I know I would succeed at it, and I know a guild full of people who would also. But instead, at least in my guild, we have very very few people going for it, because everyone else just does not want to do something so boring.

At least for my guild, skill based would easily add about 23 other people to getting it, grind based, and there is 23 people who choose not to get it because it is so boring.

Get it now? It is just boredom that is stopping people from getting a legendary, everyone who wants a legendary and is working on it will eventually get it, it is just a matter of time. Make it skilled based and a whole lot more people will get it and there by decrease the “special” status of the legendary.

I don’t think you understand how “skill” is defined.

You are referring to tangible things, like a scavenger hunt, where the answer can simply be posted somewhere else and thus anyone can do it. But that isn’t “skill”.

I’m referring to intangible, unmeasurable quantities. Things that can’t be measured but are clearly demonstrated in reality. If I go and watch other people play Call of Duty for a few hours, I don’t turn into a master of first-person shooters who can lob grenades with a perfect arc into any window. I still have to practice, get better at the game, and eventually learn how to do it myself.

And really, shouldn’t that be precisely what “legendaries” are all about? Demonstrating that you’ve attained enough experience and skill in the game that you can complete difficult challenges?

You assert that people would find it easier to get “legendaries” if they weren’t a boring grind, whereas I assert that in five years time, everyone who wants a “legendary” will most certainly have one because the current system has absolutely zero difficulty. If you want to make an item rare, you don’t just make it expensive….you make it hard to find in the first place, and you make someone work their butt off to get to it.

Jason King.2647:

If you’re not receiving loot from a champ/vet, it’s most likely because you’re not getting kill credit. We’re currently working on some improvements to this so that it will be easier to get rewards when you kill a creature.

Jason, this is blatantly false, and anyone who has been playing the game recently could tell you that. You may want to correct this information for future responses, too.

And it may help the company’s general PR standing to stop giving false information to us in public responses in the first place. Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure you’re a good guy and that you honestly didn’t know about this. But….the only way you couldn’t have known about this is if you haven’t been playing the game much. Because this has been a problem since the game’s release, and long after the patch notes claimed it was “fixed”.

Giorgos.4962:

Bowing truly is amazing, I guess it makes you feel much better after being defeated by someone. I have yet to see anyone do it to me, I have had a thief “beat” me and start laughing after I decided to stay for a minute. I guess thiefs are unable to bow after a fight since they cant win a fair one, hehe

I had that happen, but in reverse.

Killed a guardian from the AD guild in Devona’s Rest, and then a bunch of his buddies dropped out of stealth behind me (abusing culling) and killed me. He got back up and started /laugh’ing at me.

I was like “Dude, what are you laughing about? You got beat as a guardian by a RANGER. You may be the worst guardian on your entire server!”

So he may have got the last /laugh, but I got the last genuine laugh. :P

Mackdose.6504:

The “core argument at play” boils down to:

“My opinion > Your opinion, because my opinions are facts”

Wrong. The core argument at play is “why bother having better stats on Ascended gear if the entire point was to introduce the Agony mechanic?”.

Granted, it’s somewhat flawed since the second stated reason for Ascended gear was to “bridge the gap” between Exotic and Legendary….but on the other hand, there was no actual statistical gap between those two sets of gear whatsoever. The only “gap” was a perceived gap in the amount of grinding, which….was supposed to be the point, I’m pretty sure.

So the question being asked is entirely fair: why bother increasing the stats?

If you’re not going to read the discussion, don’t bother posting in it.

Vasham.2408:

TheDaiBish.9735:

Well, I used to raid.

I much prefer GW2’s design over just standing there, filling health bars (I used to heal). Maybe occasionally use a skill that reduced damage taken.

Most encounter designs from the trinity could be implemented without the trinity as well, outside of the obvious keeping aggro, filling healthbars and keeping the tank up.

So you fear responsibility. Got it.

I do hope you’re kidding.

Because the assertion that every player having to self-regulate their own health, damage, and control statuses somehow makes them less responsible than a player who just shifts that job off onto the healer’s shoulders is laughable.

Mackdose.6504:

The rarity of gear that was meant to fill a time/effort gap between exotics and legendaries is working as intended? Say it ain’t so.

Good job totally misunderstanding the core argument at play in this thread.

If you’re not actually going to try and listen to the opposing argument so that you know what you’re even arguing about, then why bother posting here?