Guild Wars 2

NovaanVerdiano.6174:

phys.7689:

so heres my next question, what exactly does personal reward do now?
looks like there is only one chest?

…the exact same it did before?

do you still get daily shaky chests? or is it just from the achievements?

if you get the daily shaky chests, whats in the drop now?

problem is they put progression behind maze maps. Then added exp grind to maze maps Maze maps are ok when you can do it at your liesure, but making it an impediment to your first hero points is a bad look.

Also, starting people off unable to travel is bad.
Games that design travel unlock based maps make sure that you have the new travel ability as you go through the content you just got access to.

so heres my next question, what exactly does personal reward do now?
looks like there is only one chest?

Sizer.3987:

vespers.1759:

Sizer.3987:

So instead of posting in the thread about this exact topic in the dungeon forum section you had to come here to talk about it?

Things like that make the endless whining of dungeon farmers a lot harder to take seriously.

Using the example of dungeons to illustrate a point does not make the thread about dungeons. Perhaps you should invest in some reading lessons if you are not able to understand the OP.

Then what is this thread about? Fractals are HOT content. So you need to buy HOT to get access to the full experience. The main non-HOT content that was heavily nerfed was dungeons.

So either he is complaining about dungeons, which there are other threads about, or he is complaining about fractals, which makes zero sense, as you SHOULD need to buy the expansion to get access to content related to it.

Maybe you get some of these reading lessons you mentioned.

hes talking about fractals, which they added nothing to, besides loot nerfs, and possibly the ability to un-nerf your loot.

His point is that taking away from the core fractal experience and putting it behind Hot only is dirty.

localghost.9145:

I stopped playing because the thought of having to grind so much to get elite spec on one of my charcters, not even considering several of them, was too much.
And the thought how I have to play and what parts of the game I have to play to get the hero points simply is not fun for me. Call me lazy or spoiled, but the fact is I turned off the game two hours into launch day of the first expansion because I was bored.. I play to have fun, elite spec is fun. I bought an expansion and now I have to grind and grind to gain access to that expansions content, or at least the content that interests me. And this is the MMO that’s supposed to be free from grinding. Nice job.

nah, that was initial gw2.
its now 100% about grinding.
grind masteries or be kitten .
how do you grind masteries? grind events.
the end

Ven Zehn.6573:

I’m fine with the 1g per ascended, right now it hits us hard in the wallet because we’ve saved up so many rings, but over time, it’ll level off.

As far as mats you get, rings yield sellable mats, price is probably gonna fluctuate quite a bit, but they were 20s per approximately when I last looked. And you got 5 on average I think, so you make a gold back at current prices.

Different types of gear can give different salvage, I salvaged 2 boots n got mats for making the legendary. (Nother version of dark matter)

Only issue is the RNG affecting certain things you can salvage out, I salvaged like 100 rings, n didn’t get the collection item. I salvaged 1 amulet, and got the collection item.

i dont think the rings give the item.

Pezz.4758:

did you guys try grinding hero points? i wanted to play elite specs in HoT but i need 400 hero points maybe if you grind more hero points rewards suck less?

mastery points will have some effect on the chest, but i havent heard what that effect is yet

PlatinumMember.5274:

It is not a disaster just because you are too cheap to afford an expansion. The fact of the matter is, Arena net seems genereous when you compared to other companies.

Also, if you are not going to buy the expansion why bother run dungeons? Those things are never going to be improved and it makes everything pointless.

hes talking about fractals, not dungeons. Do you even read bro?

Ven Zehn.6573:

Hmm, I’ve only really done a bit of Verdant Brink before I went to work. Which I actually enjoyed, and I was looking forward to running some 50’s with friends when I got back.

Sounds bad from the way you’ve described it, but I’ll see for myself how it is.

The Key costs weren’t too horrible in my opinion, I bought a bunch using the crap ton of salvaged mats from the rings.

Cost of salvaging the rings, 1g each, while pricy now because we had soooo many things to salvage, in the long run, it wont be as noticeable in my opinion. These are, afterall, the top lvl gear in the game, that not many people have stockpiles of, unless they ran fractals a lot.

uhhh you spent 1 gold to get 2 items that saved you 20 silver?
what do you get and what amounts from ascended salvage?

mrstealth.6701:

phys.7689:

basically core is f2p now. They are deliberately saying kitten off if you dont buy the game and grind masteries.

they literally take the rewards and content from basic, and put it into expansion.

I thought mike obrien said he didnt need to force people to pay. Oh well

I wouldn’t be too bothered if free accounts had some of these sort of restrictions. I don’t really like it when games go that route with their free vs paid players, but it’s kinda hard to complain when you’re playing the game without having to spend a cent.

But we’re not free players. I bought my core game 3 years ago, and everyone else able to post here has paid for their copy of it as well. We should not have to pay again to get rewards for content that is part of the core game.

I’d rather just be prevented from doing fractal 50+ than have rewards for lower scales cut off. Without the rewards, there isn’t really a reason to be doing them anyway.

yeah its the same model.
usually when they go hybrid, they have some sort of legacy for people who bought the game, its like one step above f2p, but you will constantly be reminded to subscribe, and get gimpi exp/loot/etkittenil you subscribe.

thats essentially the plan now, if you dont buy the expansion you will suffer. basically if you arent buying hot, they dont mind if you quit

Kal Spiro.9745:

phys.7689:

Kal Spiro.9745:

Dynasty.5127:

Kal Spiro.9745:

Aidenwolf.5964:

Honestly I feel like this is BWE4. There’s no way if they tested this system in betas it wouldn’t have made it to the live game.

I have 8 level 80 characters (welcome my latest revenant) and I tried Druid on my 100% mapped ranger and only was able to unlock half of the spec, making it unplayable. Now I hate the design of the Druid, I think Anet screwed that one up. Since it’s such a chore to unlock it, I won’t bother with the spec.

Does this make sense to anyone? Show us something, let us try it, then release the game with us expecting to be adventuring on our new toys and then tell us we need to complete the content on our old specs to unlock the new one?

How it is unplayable, exactly? You get the heal, and I assume at least one of the skills, plus the staff. You get the specral mode just by fitting the trait line, what else do you need to be able to play it? Not to be able to play it fully, but to be able to play it at all?

Pretty sure it’s playable, you just want the whole thing.

You want to know what isn’t playable until it’s done? Herald, because at least for all the other classes you can fit other skills in until you can get the ones you want. Herald can’t do that at all, so until it’s complete the Glint line is only partially functional.

Many people tried pointing this out, you were to busy being ignorant to them to notice it seems.

No one pointed anything out, because until just today no one actually knew precisely how it would even work. My plan had been to unlock herald then put all my points into the skills, having a completely unfilled trait line isn’t ideal, but it’s not bad if I have the skills to go with it. Now that it’s clear how the system actually works it’s clear that Herald, exclusively, is not entirely functional until all 400 points are spent into it.

Only now, after the information is known to be true is it fair to make that claim. It was clear, though, that Herald was always going to be some amount of a problem because no Revenant could come into the game with any extra points.

This isn’t about Herald, this is about Druid, and all the other elites and anyone claiming that the elite is unplayable because they couldn’t completely fill it out immediately. That is entirely untrue.

Scrapper is tied heavily to skills daredevils dodges are gm traits.
Essentially if your traits mattered you are kitten , if your good utilities mattered you are kitten .

But that was the design intention. That you must heavily invest time in hot for progress.

The system would probably be ok if they didnt make masteries a progressive grind.

In other news does mastery earning feel slow and grindy after the first couple ones?

Daredevil and Scrapper are the only ones I have slotted right now, and it’s just what I expected. Not using staff and utilities on Daredevil, I’m doing it for the extra endurance. And yes I want the grand master, but it doesn’t ruin the character just because I don’t have it yet, it’ll just be that much better when I do. Still a fully functional thief. On Scrapper I’m just running the Hammer, which I have at one point into it. Still a fully functional engineer, though.

so your saying, that an extra endurance bar is the main point of DD?
you realize the acrobatic line essentially gives you more endurance via feline grace and endless stamina?

You basically are a kitten thief.

also, last i played engineer, the point was utilities and trait use.
using the same utilities basically makes you a gimpier version of an old engineer, cause you have key traits missing

basically core is f2p now. They are deliberately saying kitten off if you dont buy the game and grind masteries.

they literally take the rewards and content from basic, and put it into expansion.

I thought mike obrien said he didnt need to force people to pay. Oh well

Kal Spiro.9745:

Dynasty.5127:

Kal Spiro.9745:

Aidenwolf.5964:

Honestly I feel like this is BWE4. There’s no way if they tested this system in betas it wouldn’t have made it to the live game.

I have 8 level 80 characters (welcome my latest revenant) and I tried Druid on my 100% mapped ranger and only was able to unlock half of the spec, making it unplayable. Now I hate the design of the Druid, I think Anet screwed that one up. Since it’s such a chore to unlock it, I won’t bother with the spec.

Does this make sense to anyone? Show us something, let us try it, then release the game with us expecting to be adventuring on our new toys and then tell us we need to complete the content on our old specs to unlock the new one?

How it is unplayable, exactly? You get the heal, and I assume at least one of the skills, plus the staff. You get the specral mode just by fitting the trait line, what else do you need to be able to play it? Not to be able to play it fully, but to be able to play it at all?

Pretty sure it’s playable, you just want the whole thing.

You want to know what isn’t playable until it’s done? Herald, because at least for all the other classes you can fit other skills in until you can get the ones you want. Herald can’t do that at all, so until it’s complete the Glint line is only partially functional.

Many people tried pointing this out, you were to busy being ignorant to them to notice it seems.

No one pointed anything out, because until just today no one actually knew precisely how it would even work. My plan had been to unlock herald then put all my points into the skills, having a completely unfilled trait line isn’t ideal, but it’s not bad if I have the skills to go with it. Now that it’s clear how the system actually works it’s clear that Herald, exclusively, is not entirely functional until all 400 points are spent into it.

Only now, after the information is known to be true is it fair to make that claim. It was clear, though, that Herald was always going to be some amount of a problem because no Revenant could come into the game with any extra points.

This isn’t about Herald, this is about Druid, and all the other elites and anyone claiming that the elite is unplayable because they couldn’t completely fill it out immediately. That is entirely untrue.

Scrapper is tied heavily to skills daredevils dodges are gm traits.
Essentially if your traits mattered you are kitten , if your good utilities mattered you are kitten .

But that was the design intention. That you must heavily invest time in hot for progress.

The system would probably be ok if they didnt make masteries a progressive grind.

In other news does mastery earning feel slow and grindy after the first couple ones?

So, basically no reason to do a fractal at all if you have no daily?

Man. So the economy guys dug their mitts in to fractals, and decided it should no longer earn money, but cost money.
Why?

Whats the items you can sell on the tp in fractals that is supposed to justify this?

Straegen.2938:

What stings is that a player has to pay and then grind a considerable amount of play time just to be able to access these Elites. Had I known I wouldn’t be able to enjoy the elites until hundreds of hours of play time, I certainly wouldn’t have bought HoT.

might not be hundreds of hours, lets see how much masteries are needed

Black Box.9312:

Gonna be quite a hefty grind for Herald. I guess I don’t need any of the other ones THAT badly…

at least for revenant all the gameplay is new, while you are playing it

well regular isnt as bad

RedDeadFred.1256:

Gankez.2731:

the issue is we shouldnt have to “work for it” who enjoys grinding? its a pain in the kitten for no reason

If exploring the new maps (and that’s all you really need to do) is grinding to you, you’re probably just not enjoying the game anymore. Maybe play something else?

you need more than exploration, you need to level masteries.

DoctorDing.5890:

Rikkado.7321:

This is like buying a brand spanking new car and then someone tells you:

“Wait, you have to learn how to drive this old crappy machine you’ve been driving for years while earning stamps for every checkpoint you drive past,

No, it’s not like buying a car at all. It’s like buying a derelict plot of land off your neighbour. It’s a blank space into which you can extend your current garden. If you want the garden, you have to create it.

Or, if you want a much more pertinent analogy, it’s a bit like buying the original GW2, or any other similar game. You get a bunch of empty character slots in which you can create a level 1 character with one rubbish weapon and one bag. When you bought the that original game did you expect to be able to insta-create lvl 80 toons with max bags, max weapons and all the skills available? AT the start, you don’t get to disintegrate the mobs in Queensdale with your Huge Blazing Sword of Doom. You get to scratch them to death them with your Insignificant Dagger of Bluntness.

And, yes, I get that if you have loads of alts that there will be some level of repetition but, you know, that what alts are!

The intent of the game designers is obvious. You are meant to fairly easily reach the first rung of the elite ladder and then spend a bunch of time and effort making your way up it. That’s the game. No likee, no playee.

except gw2 wasnt supposed to be extending the level cap, but thats basically how this plays out due to mastery reqs

problem is your best bet is not to play the elites, until you finish the content. Usually the way they design content is such that the best way to make a new job stronger is to play the content appropriate for that job to get stronger. instead you play a different job, and by the time you are done, you dont really have much to play that job with.

essentially it doesnt play out the way you said, it plays out where you play your strong job until you beat the game, then you can play the elite, too bad you already rocked the game

GreyWraith.8394:

Aomine.5012:

Mo Mo.1947:

If you’ve been playing the game for a while your main characters should be good to go to unlock all the new trait lines. Yeah it won’t be too fun farming hero points, but that’s why you should just not farm hero points and play your alts as much as you enjoy them.

If your main character(s) don’t have enough points right away you’re pretty new to the game. The elite specs are for enhancing your fully developed level 80. Spend a little more time fleshing out your characters and you’ll be running that elite spec in no time.

Did you even log in and try it yourself?

With 210 points (ALL THE POINTS YOU CAN GET FROM TYRIA), you’d only able to unlock to ADAPT TRAIT for your specialization.

It’s totally unusable before you acquire all 400.

No it isn’t. I had 213 and I’m playing dragon hunter in the new $%&#@ vertical zone right now. You don’t need all traits to play it, the traits just improve it.

depends on the elite, thief and engineer get very little from the basic unlocks

robertul.3679:

Yes it is true. It’s pretty fun stuff guys.
I’m sitting at 10k+ fractal relics. Thank god it only costs 1 relic per use or I might run out of this very useful currency.

As for gold..what is even the value of gold nowadays?

is it fractal relics or pristine fractal relics

kinda interesting it takes two pristine to salvage one ring. basically looks like goal is to make it totally worthless to run a fractal on average.

and yeah those ring will still clutter for some time unless you pay up

Behellagh.1468:

I expected an 80% reduction.

It certainly not the “THEY REMOVED ALL THE GOLD” hysterical players like the one I got into a … discussion with about what the change would be. Insisted a dev confirmed it was all gone.

i thought it would be lower as well, but still pretty much kills dungeons

GragorR.9768:

Everything that has been contributed so far is plausible, whether it’s because mmo news don’t generate enough clickies, or because no monetary incentivising has been done, the result is the same. An expansion is usually a pretty big deal for any game, and an opportinuty to attract new players to the game.

I would be curious to know what percentage of the current playerbase decided to give gw2 a shot after reading the glowing reviews published on IGN/GS back then, because as it is now, anyone who hasn’t heard of HoT today still won’t know what the kitten a HoT is tommorow.

They know people werent as interested in it as they thought. They have data with hiw much clicks previous hot news generated.

Also anet may habe beef with ign after that accidental spoiler release.

If hot was buzz ing in the streets they d talk about it.
They will eventually regardless im sure anet has interviews planned with media post release

gavyne.6847:

Ashen.2907:

Is it possible that HoT just isn’t seen as very much of a big deal (outside of current GW2 players)?

If these sites don’t operate on advertising revenue, they would’ve posted about it. Because it’s not up to them to decide of it’s seen as a big deal or not. News is news, an expansion for a MMO is news.

But like I said before, these gaming sites operate on advertising revenue. They’ll gladly talk about games & news from gaming companies if they pay for their space & time.

News is never news, all things happening in gaming are competing for the same attention. They publish the stories people are most likely to be interested in.

Anyhow gw2 has contracted a lot. Its no longer the everyman game, and no longer claims to be an mmo that will break into non mmo markets.

They ll review it eventually, but its not a big deal in the gaming world. Not even that big in the mmo world.

Ayrilana.1396:

phys.7689:

Ayrilana.1396:

phys.7689:

Ayrilana.1396:

phys.7689:

Ayrilana.1396:

No. You may have to wait until December but most likely next year.

Its already on sale for up to 36.00 us.
Shop on google.
And no a site that has been legitamate for years isnt going to suddenly become shady just for one game.

May get lower later though.

If only anet offered prices people would get at first sight. Oh well!

I’m referring to directly from Anet obviously. I’m not going to price check every online site and whether they’re legitimate or not.

Ah, then you misunderstood his purpose, he simply wanted to know when/if he could get a better price legitamately

Edit: And this is one of several review sites I found on the company that had many listings of the expansion for $36 on google like you suggested I look. Yeah…

http://www.complaintsboard.com/complaints/mmoga-c295057.html
http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/archive/index.php/t-2712198.html

But hey. It’s your money. If you feel getting the cheaper price is worth the risk then go for it.

Lol i wasnt talking about that one. I said legitimate for years.

Scaring people by talking of boogeymen. You realize some of these companies have been retailing games longer than gw2 existed right?

Then name one rather than make a blanket statement to check google shopping.

This is what I saw when doing the search you recommended. Only one came up for the price you mentioned or rather close to it.

They ll lock the thread if i link a sale. Its happened in the past

Its close to that price maybe 37 or so
In the same family

HappilyInsane.5840:

Serebus.7314:

If I buy from this EU site will I be able to apply the code to my NA account. And will there be a delay on the transaction? (I’ve never purchased anything from EU vendors)

I’m pretty sure you’ll be able to yeah, I don’t see why not. It’d probably be best to check first, though…

Cant apply eu codes to na game.

Ayrilana.1396:

phys.7689:

Ayrilana.1396:

phys.7689:

Ayrilana.1396:

No. You may have to wait until December but most likely next year.

Its already on sale for up to 36.00 us.
Shop on google.
And no a site that has been legitamate for years isnt going to suddenly become shady just for one game.

May get lower later though.

If only anet offered prices people would get at first sight. Oh well!

I’m referring to directly from Anet obviously. I’m not going to price check every online site and whether they’re legitimate or not.

Ah, then you misunderstood his purpose, he simply wanted to know when/if he could get a better price legitamately

Edit: And this is one of several review sites I found on the company that had many listings of the expansion for $36 on google like you suggested I look. Yeah…

http://www.complaintsboard.com/complaints/mmoga-c295057.html
http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/archive/index.php/t-2712198.html

But hey. It’s your money. If you feel getting the cheaper price is worth the risk then go for it.

Lol i wasnt talking about that one. I said legitimate for years.

Scaring people by talking of boogeymen. You realize some of these companies have been retailing games longer than gw2 existed right?

Ayrilana.1396:

phys.7689:

Ayrilana.1396:

No. You may have to wait until December but most likely next year.

Its already on sale for up to 36.00 us.
Shop on google.
And no a site that has been legitamate for years isnt going to suddenly become shady just for one game.

May get lower later though.

If only anet offered prices people would get at first sight. Oh well!

I’m referring to directly from Anet obviously. I’m not going to price check every online site and whether they’re legitimate or not.

Ah, then you misunderstood his purpose, he simply wanted to know when/if he could get a better price legitamately

Ayrilana.1396:

No. You may have to wait until December but most likely next year.

Its already on sale for up to 36.00 us.
Shop on google.
And no a site that has been legitamate for years isnt going to suddenly become shady just for one game.

May get lower later though.

If only anet offered prices people would get at first sight. Oh well!

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

I think it was said during the stream that it takes about a month(?) to make a legendary, give or take a couple of components. So I’d think seeing a new one every 6-8 weeks would be ‘acceptable’ by my standards. Depends, of course, on if they have ideas for the other 13 or not.

Was just thinking about this, and i really hope they lying or fudging the information, because that is a ridiculous turn around time. People make whole games in that time. (2 years to make 24 items)
Unless legendary aquisition is as entertaining as a whole game, thats too inefficient.

It makes it feel like it will be impossible to get content on the level of ffxiv or wow or dark souls from this studio.

Well lets hope that precursor hunts feel different than just a large collection scavenge hunt. Otherwise, huge waste of time.

Vayne.8563:

mrstealth.6701:

Vayne.8563:

They’re giving the game away for free. It would be insane for them not to encourage people to buy the expansion. It’s unreasonable to think they wouldn’t. There are probably hundreds of thousands of people who play the game now without spending a dime. At what point would you, as a company, not make it so that the paid content rewarded players better.

They’re not actually nerfing the rewards. They’re simply not upgrading them.

Free players are already heavily restricted and getting less rewards. They don’t even get the daily login rewards that paid players get. If Anet is worried about giving free players the new map rewards, they can simply block that feature off from free accounts. I might not be buying HoT right now, but I’ve certainly paid for my game several times over.

And, as mentioned above, rewards are most definitely being nerfed. Dungeon rewards are being reduced and salvage is being changed, with the new map bonus rewards system being part of the reason for the changes.

Dungeon rewards should have been nerfed ages ago. The reason stated was valid. Dungeons create gold. They add cash to the economy directly, which isn’t good for the game.

Actually you are wrong according to john smith

The main reasons was not because dungeons generated too much gold. They plan to give people almost the same direct gold in new places.

The main reason was because they no longer want to encourage people to do dungeons, and want them playing different content.

He answered this question directly in the forums. The liquid gold non issue was player theory.

They are closer to correct than you are based on what john smith said

Lirale.6437:

Personally, I almost do nothing but PVE and have been doing GM ever since I started playing back in 2014 so it should be obvious how close to my heart it is. However, isn’t all this commotion about the first week of missions being random PVP and WVW a bit too much?

After all, the devs have clearly explained that this is only for the first week and that as soon as HoT rolls in you can remove PVP and WVW from your guild mission slots for the week after and any week behind it. How is a one week loss of mission worthy of all this clamor?

Plus, as PVE guilds you are in a strong position : PVE guilds will have tons of devoted players available during mission time to push for claiming of your Guild Hall as soon as week one of the expansion by doing the expedition. Why not canalize your guild’s energy in that if you really can’t live without missions for a week?

Not to mention Halloween will be there for tons of RP and labyrinth farming if it so pleases you. Tons of stuff to do with friends and guildies.

I find it a bit unfair for the devs and wonderful Colin that people get that worked up for barely a week of minor inconvenience that can easily be played around for even funnier group adventures…

If there mere thought of colin fills you with wonder an merriment you may be biased.

Its not actually that crazy to be anoyyed something you paid for isnt working as planned.
That said, though some will get left out, you may have to grin and beat it and do some pvp.
If you really want to get the guild halll asap.

It sucks and you can hope they will be beyter prepared in the future, but not sure what they can do in 4 or 5 days

Ashen.2907:

phys.7689:

Ashen.2907:

Astralporing.1957:

Still, he’s wrong. A good puzzle is one that remains hard even after it has been done few times already.

What puzzle retains its difficulty after you not only know the solution, but have practiced its implementation?

calculus, programming, piano playing, painting, illustration

that aside, in this case has little to do with the puzzle, its really going to come down to execution, and how tight the tolerance is on mistakes or non optimized party structure.

the puzzle will be solved fairly quickly.

Give someone trained in calculus or programming the same problem over and over again and see its difficulty evaporate.

Piano playing, painting, and illustration are not puzzles. Even if they were ask someone to play the same piece of music that they have already learned to play a few dozen times and see them manage it half asleep.

thats what people think, but its incorrect. Doing difficult tasks at a top level always requires work.
master pianists practice for months before recitals
basketball mvps, train throughout the year and shoot 1000s of shots, and still come up short when it matters some times.
artists and painters spend great amount of time creating things, and still get it wrong/are unsatisfied.
programmers discover their old solutions were ineffecient and not well thought out.

calculus, well if you do the same exact problem, it will be easier. However within the same family of problems, it can still be incredibly difficult.

now make no mistake, things get easier, but sometimes even if you have a solution, executing it can be difficult, and sometimes solutions change based on new variables. Also there is solution optimization, where time, effeciency, or quality becomes a factor.

really it depends how deep you go.

NikeEU.7690:

Iozeph.5617:

NikeEU.7690

I knew the last two weeks were too good to be true. The longer the forum cryhards go without shedding tears the more overwrought and pathetic their inevitable outburst becomes.

In all the complaints I’ve read as of this announcement, I haven’t seen dungeon enthusiasts calling for raids, fractals, wvw, or spvp be removed or to have their rewards lessened. Yet it’s open season now to dump on the dungeon community and label them ’cryhards?

Just FYI, I am in the “dungeon community” too. I’m not dumping on the dungeon community. I’m dumping, specifically, on the regular cast of characters that come to this forum and cry about every change in the game and wailing about how much anet hates them and ignores them and so on. The sad display has repeated itself so many times that you’ll forgive me for being unmoved by their crocodile tears.

Case in point, we don’t know how fractal rewards will work. We don’t know how raid rewards will work. We don’t even know how dungeon rewards will work. And yet the tearforce is out in strength wailing and moaning about their sad circumstances without having the faintest clue how it will actually affect them. There is simply no pleasing these misanthropes, they manage to find the dark cloud inside every silver lining without even going outside to look at the weather.

So no, I don’t have any patience for the bellyaching. I’ve suggested time and again if you’re so unhappy with the game uninstall it and stop posting on the forums but I think that making QQ posts on these forums is the sum total of social interaction for many of the individuals in question and they won’t part from it.

youre bellyaching about bellyaching. All you are really saying is that you are salty and prefer to be optimistic.

Not knowing what anets detailed plans are has no logical connection with them being good plans, and people who raise points based on the information provided/past history are actually more logical than people who dismiss complaints based on the information they dont have, and assumptions of new developer genius.

And yeah, its very possible that people spend a lot of time and energy thinking about the game and discussing thier opinions, maybe too much time by your standard. It doesnt make them incorrect though.

So basically, be salty, and angry at “whiners” it wont change their whining, and it wont make them wrong/right.

I do find it interesting though that the whiners have actually succeeded in shifting the combat parameters, and predicting anets future moves, while you railed against their opinions, and condemed them as you do now. And yet now, here you stand defending the new world order they created.

I guess you are more a defender of the status quo, whatever that happens to be at the time. whereas whiners end up creating the future you will one day defend.

Ashen.2907:

Astralporing.1957:

Still, he’s wrong. A good puzzle is one that remains hard even after it has been done few times already.

What puzzle retains its difficulty after you not only know the solution, but have practiced its implementation?

calculus, programming, piano playing, painting, illustration

that aside, in this case has little to do with the puzzle, its really going to come down to execution, and how tight the tolerance is on mistakes or non optimized party structure.

the puzzle will be solved fairly quickly.

Windsagio.1340:

No phys, you’re missing my point.

Point 1 goes like this: Prior considerations of Ascended advantage only focused on DD DPS to the negation of all other effects. This is likely no longer be the case, in which case the impact of ascended gear is lessened.

As to the rest, I’ll repeat my feeling on that tweet and it’s follow-ups: Either the dev was talking out their kitten and not thinking (as shown by the retraction) OR It’s a marketing derived statement because they want to give raiders considering buying HOT the feeling that the experience will be familiar as possible.

Shortly, it’s a mistake or it’s a PR scam

~~~

I don’t have a horse in this race, I do fractals regularly so I have ascended armor out the yin-yang.. That being said, the claim that ascended matter will be ‘required’/‘heavily reccomended’ makes no godkitten sense based on our current understanding of the game.

I’ll grant your point that they could hamhandedly shoehorn a side-effect that gear gates on ascended (shades of the resist fights from early wow, epseically the SR gate in Black Temple), but if they were gonna do that , why not just use agony? For the reason that they have an effect they could use and they’re not, I doubt that will be their answer.

EDIT: Sorry for abusing bold, my posts tend to be wordy, so I use it to apply the key points for people skimming

i have no horse in the race, i just think you are basing your beliefs on an old paradigm. The old battle system, sure that one gear was about speed. But this is not the old system. They got guaranteed dmg, fights that take a 8/10 zerker might stacked team 7 minutes.
They are definately trying to design to the upper limits of what is capable. Some parties simply wont be able to succeed, based purely on party composition now. You principle is correct, they wont be able to make ascended matter unless they incredibly limit build diversity and viable groups, as well as balance it for top end performance.

The difference is you think they wont do that, i think its highly likely they will try. They may not succeed, but that is their intent.

like i said, right now they are tweaking it based on the performance of highly coordinated boss hunters and speed clearers, and whatever they can come up with. Their intention is that the top 5% will feel ascended is valued in this fight.

basically it will get easier, but mostly cause people will know good team compositions, and they will get better at the game.

AzureSky.3175:

Here’s a dev response to this whole “ascended required for raids”-thing for you guys:

“A good puzzle is one that starts out hard and then after playing it and learning how it works it becomes easier. I mean when Teq came out it was hard now it’s on farm. […] Clearly after something is on farm it’s easier to do it with less gear, or with some number of people on a quaggan tonic.”

sauce: https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/3mz8ta/crystal_reid_raids_will_be_balanced_around/cvk562n

this was a PR response, not a design intent.
He basically is saying once people learn how to play they will probably be able to do it more easily, because thats what usually happens.

He is not saying that is the design intent.

The other person who is actually on the raid team said, that they expected people who play the first fight to be doing it with a mix of ascended and exotics(based on tests she achieved this) but that later wings they excpect people to want to have full ascended.

her statement is more a description of their design intention, whereas his is more a statement that im sure players will surpass our expectations eventually

Windsagio.1340:

And the question of the stats difference is really up in the air too.

Still, a few guidelines:

1) The difference for physical DPS is greater than the difference in stats. This didn’t matter previously, but it could possibly now.
2) The vast vast vast majority of the advantage in ascended gear comes from the weapons and secondarily the trinkets. Ascended Armor is essentially meaningless.

You keep saying this, but you are ignoring that defensive mitigation can easily be made to matter with undodgeable attacks

You also ignore that healing and extreme defense lowers dps.

Before mitigation wasnt that big a deal, but now? It easily could be.

Also what raids eventually lead to is optimization. They may not have done heavy math and iteration for statiatics fight ing before, but they will now. And they ll get better at it.

They basically are optimizing the fights as we speak with high end guilds.

You think its unlikely for them to develop around specific groups, but looks like that is the intent.

They may not have done it before, but the paradigm shifted

What that dev essentially told you, is it is totally their intention to design the final battles so that ascended armor makes a difference. Essentially you are doubting their capability to pull that off.

But the intent is there. And remember anet is not above using obvious simplified tactics to achieve this.

See agony and aoe unavoidable damage pulses in the first fight.

They could easily make the last boss have unavoidable aoe that does curved damage based on armor rating.

Ohoni.6057:

While neither one of the two games you mentioned specifically have leveling as their progression tactic, they both do still require progression of some type.

As true as it is irrelevant.

Nobody is arguing that there shouldn’t be “progression of some type.” The point of contention is those who do not believe that this progression should be locked behind grinding out XP.

In the case of Castlevania, I suppose the argument can be made that one can progress through the game without acquiring any kind of upgrade at all,

In the SotN+ games, to fully unlock the map you do need to earn the upgrades, but while many of those games did have an XP system, you could theoretically unlock the entire map on level 1 if you could manage to beat the various bosses. All XP did was increase your combat stats, leveling did not unlock any of the required traversal options.

The point is, if you’re going to compare HoT to a Metroidvania, yes, you would need to unlock masteries in the wild, like that point on the pinnacle you can see right inside VB, but once you get those you could apply them instantly, and not have to grind out millions of XP first.

I mean, you can defend the current system if you like it, fair enough, but don’t besmirch Metroid of Castlevania by using them as justification for it.

I think a lot of your disappointment has to do with you not hitting masteries fast enough, but it looks like you were able to finish BWE3 averaging a mastery a day

Remember though that the rate seems to slow down the more you have, so a mastery a day is decent enough for the first few days, but that sounds like it would translate to a mastery a month once you get deeper into the trees.

this is the truth, the reality is the mastery system is essntially opposite of metroid/vania/zelda systems which have progression through goals, and exploration, whereas mastery give you progression based strictly on exp.

It does have its strengths though, i am surprised you dont like it Ohoni? it basically lets you play how you want to progress. While zelda/vania/metroid focus on unique rewards for going places and doing things, masteries focuses on doing whatever you like doing many times to move forward.

I do feel like its gonna feel bad for HoT though, with only 4 maps, you are basically guaranteeing tons of monotony.

maddoctor.2738:

MyriadStars.5679:

Well, let’s see if HOT will receive a higher review rating than vanilla GW2, to see if gating stuff is truly the most amazing thing in gaming industry ever.

Reviews by who? I doubt any of those reviews will only depend on “gating” but rather judge HoT as a whole.

So know I see, your problem with HoT is the Mastery system and how you’ll be required to unlock things like Gliding before you do certain things in a zone. I don’t think that’s a bad thing, it gives much more replayability on older zones, you pass and follow your story, then once you get a higher mastery you can go back and reach places you couldn’t before. That’s how a lot of good RPGs actually work and it’s a great way of adding progression in HoT, progression that doesn’t affect old zones, by invalidating builds and content. The alternative would’ve been a level cap increase, new gear tiers or adding a bazillion of new skills that cause different kinds of problems.

people keep comparing the mastery system to classics like castlevania, metroid, zelda. Its not analagous at all. Those games were based around exploration and finding things in order to progress, and get access to new areas.
not based on racking up experience.
killing 1 million octarocs wasnt going to progress you very far in an old rpg.
heck even exp based rpgs used monsters to be the check on progress, and specific goals or story points to be the gates for abilities/exploration.

Not to mention old rpgs are designed so that exp comes naturally as you go through the story/dungeons etc. This is designed so you must repeat things to get far.

I understand why they did it, however its not like metroid or castlevania, or an old school rpg at all. And honestly i think they should have stuck to cosmetic/convenience gains, not hard gates.
grind for unlocking new charachter animations
grind for unlocking exp buffs, running speed buffs
grind to unlock bestiaries
grind to unluck minis
grind for unneeded special abilities

grind to unlock long jumps to get to a new map? ehhhhh I mean if the grind is not noticeable thats fine, but if your gonna be doing the equivalent of silverwastes or old orr for karma. Its kind of a bad model.

A lot of it will come down to the degrees, and how gated you feel/how much grind to alleviate it. But yeah the concept alone isnt really a great one.

John Smith.4610:

Reposting Izzy’s and my reponses from before:
John Smith:
This is interesting, but I would point out some things to look into if you try this again. As Izzy said, we make a lot of balance changes so you have to keep major changes from balance changes in mind. Running weights on the goods is something you should do, unfortunately the weighting can be slightly arbitrary and that drastically changes the results, so you end up with results entirely hinged on a series of variables that don’t necessarily have a scientific backing. Lastly, be very careful of putting variables in a model that feed into each other, that will cause the model to over-represent changes in a single set. Arguably you could fix this by proper weighting, but this gets really tricky when there’s a lot of variables mixing together. Oh, actually lastly, don’t use precursors, really don’t use anything that doesn’t trade at a reasonable velocity or anything that’s too much of a luxury.
Overall though, I think this is a great effort given the resources you have to work with and a really interesting read.

Izzy:
Neat stuff some things to keep in mind is in a game economy players control then printing of currency irl governments tightly control that.
Also demand on items change greatly based on updates which can look like inflation but is just a shift in demand (this is more clearly seen in the precursors, or silk) this makes it hard to judge purely on an index alone.
We spend a lot of Econ balancing on managing supply and demand of each material and currency and tweak both sides of that equation. For example butter was rock bottom at the start but we rebalanced its in/outs so it’s increase is not from inflation.
Just some other ways to think about this stuff

ehh, id say legendaries are the equivalent of buying a house. Sure you can rent, but its fair representation of value/goals of players.

Now, from a pure numbers running infltion value his stuff may be imperfect, but i think his goal is more to get an idea of how regular players feel inflation in their game lives. The fact that iron ore could be really stable doesnt effect the real feel of inflation.

They are done with dungeons no new investments in it will be made.

But yes it would be good if there was a more clear endgame goal-/progression. But at this point it would need to be tied to new content, which seems unlikely

Dasturdly.7145:

So i guess ppl wil now farm only one quick path over and over again like the good old days (SE P1, COF P1)

Yes, unless you only get decent gold from the daily chest, in which case they will usually do the same easiest 3-5 fractals

But thats the point, to make fractals into dungeons

Behellagh.1468:

They aren’t removing the time gate on the boss chest. And they are only reducing, not eliminating the direct coin that’s dropped.

Which john Smith described as a large decrease in gold.
Not moderate, large.
I fully expect like 20 silver the first time

Thaddeus.4891:

Astralporing.1957:

shion.2084:

log in … get Laurels… have trinkets.

repeat that for 5 months for a set

84 days so less than 3 months and that’s the maximum. You can cut down with

- Achievement Chest give you between 1 and 10 laurels each 500 Achivement pts.
- In your daily there is Fractal. You can only do the first island and get a Pristine. Each time will take you 15min max and you can even do it with two friends at level 1. In 2 months you probably be able to get 1 ring from that instead of laurel.
- In your daily there is Fracal 1-10. Doing all 4 islands on the weakest difficulty give you 2 Pristines in around 30-45min.
- Doing Guild Missions will give you both Accessories in 1 months with only 1,5 hour per week max. Even small guild of 5 people can 3 Commendations per week and get both accessories in 2 months.

So really, even someone that doesn’t like Fractal and in a very small guild can get a full set in 2 months with zero problem.

1 to 3 months is an excessive time for a level 80 to gear up for the first raid.
Point of comparison ffxiv takes about a week or less.
I hear wow is also a week or less
So basically log in join fully upgraded guild to leech from once a week.
And after 4-8 weeks youll be ready to play!

Thats pretty lame. Its ok to make people play 4 weeks of appropriate well designed content, but 4-8 weeks of attendence awards?

Thats pretty bad

Nike.2631:

phys.7689:

Nike.2631:

I’m sure there will be groups that cater to your inability to do your homework.

Just not mine.

Of course, i dont really expect anyone to let people in exotics in on their serious attempts at beating raids.
but do you really think creating interesting challenging content should be about doing your homework, or writing your times tables 20 times?

I do. And I realize this in an unbridgeable gulf in our expectations and perceptions. Which is why it’s good the system allows groups of both sorts to form. And say all you like about the fairness of it, the group with better gear will progress faster, all else being equal.

do you really think someone who writes books will find much purpose in writing the definition of the vocabulary words 5 times for a month?

did you know irl they realized that having non challenging homework/classwork often lead smarter students to disengage and lose interest?

If you are designing a course for intellegent students, you test them, or give them difficult tasks. You dont give them wrote repetition or accept them into high end programs based on their attendance records.

Believe me I am aware of the joys of being ensnared in public school navigating a curriculum designed for goldfish. HOWEVER, as I’ve matured I’ve also gained an appreciation for the value of persistence. There is a lot to be said for the personality types who can do exactly that, and that sort of steadiness in the face of adversity is a desirable trait in a raid group. Like I said earlier, if you can’t manage the commitment of a whole 39 log-in days to bang out a set of armor, I’m not expecting much from your attention span in an environment where you can only earn rewards once a week. Find a group more to your liking.

The system allows those free spirits to try it. It also allows me to look at them very skeptically. All parties are well served.

Well, if you are looking for consistency and dedication, ascended is a fair arbiter of that. And you can use whatever ideas or concepts that you think make a good team.

And as i said this is not about me personally. I have a fully ascended char all crafting maxed and some legendaries.

But i dont expect everyone is like me, i know a lot of people who are not, who lapsed playing or lost interest. My goal is to get all the type of people who would be interested being able to play without cursing the systems at play.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

phys.7689:

yes this is the other big flaw with the ascended changes and requiring different gear sets.
The devs didnt experience this because they can auto create any set they need, but ascended aquisition and inventory rune sigil etc are huge headaches an impediments to the lets figure this out and use whatever classes/stats/builds we need to exceed type of gameplay they said they wanted people to do for raids

short version:
trial/difficulty based ascended aquisition
better gear swapping/inventoy/rune/sigil system for the game as a whole.

A couple of things.

• 1) Ascended gear is not hard to make. It’s just time consuming. If you play the game normally, you’re rewarded with Mats that you can use to craft your Ascended gear. I have a full set for each weight class. Most I crafted. Some I used Ascended armor chests. Same goes for the weapons.

• 2) As a convenience item, you can purchase Gem Store items that can remove runes and other stuff. But from a value standpoint, it’s cheaper just to buy another few rune sets. Then after you swapped your Ascended gear stats, slap on the new runes and you’re good to go. When you succeed at a Raid, you’ll be rewarded with gear that you can swap stats on the fly. That’s the best incentive of all to succeed. If there were gear swapping outside of Legendary gear, you take away from the prestige of those luxury goods.

yes, as i said ascended aquisition is primarily a time/ loyalty reward, which makes it a pretty poor gate for challenging group content. I never said it was hard

The type of systems i think it would be best to design would be based around obtaining the gear or upgrading the gear, or unlocking stats.
This would mean a legendary would unlock all stats, whereas an ascended item would only unlock one stat.
There fore the legendary is still superior, = to like 14 different prefixes, wheresas the ascended is only 1/14 a legendary. Not to mention legendary is future proof.

Zenith.7301:

Lome.8239:

I’m confused by the people who are against the grind to get Ascended gear for raids.

Raids are supposed to be endgame content that takes commitment, investment and dedication. You will be spending a lot of time in raids learning the encounters and running constant trials until you and your guild finally succeed.

If people are willing to commit so much effort into doing the raids, why aren’t they willing to put in the effort into getting Ascended gear? At least the weapons and trinkets, anyway.

I got all classes at lv80. With exotic you were able to switch class, and build on demand (condi vs. power, and now with druid you need cleric stats).

So what you’re telling me is that it should be fine for me to grind 3 armor class ascended sets, on top of that at least 3 more sets for condi builds for a total of 6 ascended sets.

If my characters are different races, since my ele is norn and uses norn racial armor and my mesmer/necro/ranger/warrior are sylvari and the thief/guard human, that means I also gotta craft separate ascended sets for those since you can’t just equip ascended armor with a racial transmutation, and you can’t even transmute it into your own since you can’t equip the gear so you can’t transmute it to be usable by another race.

So instead I gotta grab that racial gear, go to hall of monuments, get the old school skins, apply them over the ascended armor, transfer them to the other race toon, and then transmute those.

In essence, ascended is a putrid idea that only serves to restrict and create goldsinks for no reason whatsoever. The whole appeal of guild wars is switching builds and classes on the run, which exotic allowed you but ascended doesn’t.

What’s more, you can say ascended armor can change stats, but not without losing runes and infusions costing upward of 60+ gold for strength or scholar runes or 13 gold per sigil of force for weapons.

yes this is the other big flaw with the ascended changes and requiring different gear sets.
The devs didnt experience this because they can auto create any set they need, but ascended aquisition and inventory rune sigil etc are huge headaches an impediments to the lets figure this out and use whatever classes/stats/builds we need to exceed type of gameplay they said they wanted people to do for raids

short version:
trial/difficulty based ascended aquisition
better gear swapping/inventoy/rune/sigil system for the game as a whole.