Chris WhitesideThat is why there is no plan for new Rarity Tiers of loot but there are plans to enhance or gain items within the existing rarity design whose properties continue on a shallow power curve.
So your Ascended gear will eventually be outdated as they replace it with Ascended gear with higher stats. Also, if anyone thinks the +13% increase in power from Exotic to Ascended is shallow, I have a bridge I would like to sell them.
+13%? Have you actually looked at the increase to your total character stats? It’s roughly 1% with all 3 available items which is shallow. Do not look at the individual item, but its proportional effect to you overall stats.
You do know that there is a full set of Ascended gear incoming?
I’m aware, but we have no idea how Runes and Sigils will ever factor into them if at all.
For instance, if the Armour and Weapons follow the Accesories in stats, that means that they will only take into account jewel upgrades, and not the upgrades a full set of runes or a sigil will offer. Remember, Runes further skew the stats of a set of armour, giving a full set an additional 200 toughness for example, or with sigils giving a AOE blast effect on crit or something.
We can’t account for those factors at present, so even the 13% is still speculation. The only hard numbers we have is the 3 accessory slots, and thats only a 1% increase.
Chris WhitesideThat is why there is no plan for new Rarity Tiers of loot but there are plans to enhance or gain items within the existing rarity design whose properties continue on a shallow power curve.
So your Ascended gear will eventually be outdated as they replace it with Ascended gear with higher stats. Also, if anyone thinks the +13% increase in power from Exotic to Ascended is shallow, I have a bridge I would like to sell them.
+13%? Have you actually looked at the increase to your total character stats? It’s roughly 1% with all 3 available items which is shallow. Do not look at the individual item, but its proportional effect to you overall stats.
Once all ascended items are released, if the stat differences are similar to the rings, then it will be a 13% difference if you have a full ascended set. (ascended item w/ blue infusion vs exotic item w/ top quality gem).
Taking into account all item slots, then yes, I see the 13%.
However, we still don’t know how runes and sigils will factor into it, so exotics can currently technically outweigh that 13% increase.
Chris WhitesideThat is why there is no plan for new Rarity Tiers of loot but there are plans to enhance or gain items within the existing rarity design whose properties continue on a shallow power curve.
So your Ascended gear will eventually be outdated as they replace it with Ascended gear with higher stats. Also, if anyone thinks the +13% increase in power from Exotic to Ascended is shallow, I have a bridge I would like to sell them.
+13%? Have you actually looked at the increase to your total character stats? It’s roughly 1% with all 3 available items which is shallow. Do not look at the individual item, but its proportional effect to you overall stats.
Mike O’Brien’s comment isn’t showing up on http://www.reddit.com/user/ArenaNetTeam/ Does he have a separate account or something?
Yes, some devs have their own account which unfortunately makes tracking responses a bit of a pain. I’ll see if I can track it down.
Thank you, was struggling to find it.
Mike O’Brien’s comment isn’t showing up on http://www.reddit.com/user/ArenaNetTeam/ Does he have a separate account or something?
Yes, some devs have their own account which unfortunately makes tracking responses a bit of a pain. I’ll see if I can track it down.
Mike OBrien just responded to my question, but it’s being hidden by a lot of other replies right now:
Hi! I’ll respond to the top part since it’s a quote from me.
Obviously the key phrase I’m going to point you to in that quote is, “if someone wants to play for a thousand hours to get an item that is so rare that other players can’t realistically acquire it”. That really is the litmus test we’ve used. That’s why, at ship, we gave better stats to exotic gear and didn’t give better stats to legendary gear.
More generally, I hope we’ve been clear that GW2 is not a game with virtually no stat progression in it like GW1 was. That’s why GW2 shipped with a higher level cap, and with a hard separation between PvE and PvP. In GW1 we never advanced the level cap through four campaigns/expansions. The game design didn’t allow for it. But GW2 was designed without those restrictions, and we’ve always expected that we will someday raise the level cap in GW2.
That’s why we’ve always said that GW2 rewards players through both progression and collection, whereas GW1 primarily rewarded through collection. Presumably players aren’t shocked that GW2 rewards through progression, since it has a level 80 cap.I wonder if the core sentiment is more this: It’s only been two-and-a-half months! We don’t even all have exotics yet, and already you’re introducing another tier. Is this the start of a power progression curve that I’ll never be able to keep up with?
I certainly appreciate that worry. I myself don’t want a constant struggle, as exists in some other games, to keep my equipment viable.
Then we’re left with a balancing act. Some progression is ok, but pushing players onto gear treadmill isn’t ok and isn’t what the game is about.
So I would ask you to judge us by details, and not by making slippery-slope arguments. We introduced a ton of new content in November, and the sum total of new progression rewards we added to go with it provided a 5-10% stat increase in 2 of 12 slots. I hope you’ll agree that that kind of very shallow and gradual progression does not force people onto a gear treadmill.
I think it’s important for GW2 to be able to have this kind of gradual progression. Of course we made some mistakes with the way we introduced ascended gear. (See ChrisW’s answers for details.) But those are addressable issues. I don’t think they invalidate the fundamental concept that GW2 can have gradual stat progression without being a gear treadmill game.
~ MO
I’m quoting this specifically so it has a better chance of being seen. I think this is probably one of the best answers provided about the whole ascended item issue.
Ahha – thank you to all who told me about the context thingy.
Didn’t realize I needed to learn to use Reddit to discuss or listen in to things about GW2. Seems I should have studied before hand! :P
I’d suggest learning reddit for more than just this AMA. It can be a valuable informational tool about pretty much anything, and posts you make have high potential for traffic. People have used it to get new indie games out into the market, or get their blogs known.
Meh its just more PR spin, the funny thing is once the math is explained the ascended items probably will have very little impact over exotics but anet won’t actually come out and explain the math.
People have tried to explain the math, and the difference comes to around 1% increase to your total stat pool. People either ignored it, or said it was plain wrong because it didnt match the increase of the individual item increase of a backpiece.
I haven’t used Reddit before. Followed this link
http://www.reddit.com/user/ArenaNetTeam/
No account or anything. I tap F5 every five minutes and get updated. What is everyone’s problem with how this is being done? I honestly don’t think having the AMA on the forums would be any easier to follow.
Because it’s a piece of poooooooooooooooooooooop. <- that’s gonna be kitten isn’t it.
No seriously, I go there and there are answers like:
Hi Plaid,
I agree whole heatedly and this is something we have and are continuing to have multiple discussions about.
Chris
——————-Oh. That’s nice. WTF was the question? o.o
Press the context button, and it shows you the exact question asked, with nothing else to litter the page.
Ahh well, i was doing a deditcated thread for all the questions that have been answered for easy viewing, it’s now been merged and is all over the place.
Just redirect people to http://www.reddit.com/user/ArenaNetTeam
although not here in the forum, should serve the same purpose
I was doing it for the people who don’t like to use reddit (like me
), all that was posted was the questions that had answers and nothing more – all in 1 go. After the merge the posts aren’t in line anymore (there are random posts inbetween) and it even made it look like i was spamming (as it randomly appeared i was posting “reserved” and “updated”).
This is the problem with blanket mergers, it can ruin actully useful threads just for having the same sort of name.
Can you not see his posting history without an account? Sorry, i legitimately do not know, as my account is constantly logged in.
“Hi Samurai,
I am going to take a quick break then answer one of your questions at a time then go pick another and come back to this list. Time permitting i will try to get as many done as possible.
Chris”
The list of questions is going to be tackled, just give him some time to go through it.
Ahh well, i was doing a deditcated thread for all the questions that have been answered for easy viewing, it’s now been merged and is all over the place.
Just redirect people to http://www.reddit.com/user/ArenaNetTeam
although not here in the forum, should serve the same purpose
ANet really needs to answer the important questions. The players don’t care what video games you play, they care about the one you’re responsible for.
Because that’s what someone (a player) asked…you might not like the question but let’s also remember not to play the elitist card either.
Seriously people…it’s not even over and the complaints, conjecture, and paranoia is piling in. Let’s all take a deep breath and try to relax. After all, it’s just a freak’in game.
You know what else players asked? That big list of legitimate issues at the top of the AMA. What was the response? “Please only ask one question at a time.”
I’m not playing any card here. I want to see answers for solid and concerning questions about a game I enjoy. It is just a game, yes, but I don’t want to play it if the developer team isn’t up front and informative about why things are the way they are. All we’re getting is “moving forward” deflection.
That question generally goes against the accepted format of an AMA. Really, it should have been posted as as series of individual questions.
I think they are tackling that massive list of questions to provide answers to.
Unfortunately, these should have been posted as individual questions versus a massive block, they will take a long time to read and answer, meaning most other questions will be glossed over if they choose to answer them all.
I would also like to add for anyone not aware, easiest way to track the answers is by visiting his Reddit user profile and seeing his post history.
Serious question: why do mainstream companies like Anet use Reddit to answer questions like this, when Reddit is most famous for being a site that people use to post creepy pictures of underage girls? Also: it’s a horrible site for organizing any kind of information. It seems like the sketchy nature and poor structure of the site would be a terrible match.
My thoughts exactly. Using reddit is a seriously stupid move on ANet’s part.
They have always used reddit for their AMA’s. Since before the game launched.
That was understandable back when they didn’t have the official forums open to the public. Not so much now, though.
Maybe Reddit gets more traffic than the forums?
The whole AMA seems a little scripted looking at the questions they listed 4 days ago as a final draft. Will other questions get answered?
Reddit will be posting alot of questions on their own, outside of people in this forum. They will answer as many as they can, as is usually the case with an AMA. Unfortunately there is bound to be alot of repeat questions and whatnot, so alot of questions may still get missed.
The people that are whining are the WvW because they think that the small increase in stats will effect WvW. They fail to realize WvW will never be balanced because it is zerg vs zerg… and and 10 people shooting you still kill you just as fast
You’ll get people who will argue about a 1v1 or 5v5 scenario, when truth is most battles don’t play out that way, and most peoples primary objectives end up being towers and keeps, which require a large number of players to take if defended. Small groups can take an objective, but generally, it won’t work, unless coordinated with the much larger group.
reddit.com/r/guildwars2
The AMA will appear there when the time comes.
Have your entire server fight naked, with level 10 characters see who wins. Heck, put blue armor on them all and see what happens…
Individual player stats will not affect the outcome of WvW. Overall server cohesion, tactics and leadership will.
Tactics are important, yes they are, but so are individual stats.
You made me lol
It’s not like the entirety of a server fights in exotics. Half my guild is leveling alts, some as low as level 20 at the moment, and still have no issues in WvW. No server currently winning in WVW is all level 80’s. Most are being upscaled.
I’ve seen plenty of people run naked and still net kills. Don’t forget, siege isn’t effected by stats, so someone manning an arrowcart, or ballista will do the same damage, and decimate a level 80 regardless if they were wearing anything or not. There isn’t enough of a difference between Ascended gear and Exotics to worry about it. The accessories give the smallest available increase in stats. Additionally, if stats mattered all that much, I wouldn’t have been able to trait my engineer to have +200 toughness with a flamethrower, or use food buffs. You also wouldn’t be able to successfully siege a captured keep claimed by a guild, as more often than not they are running buffs that further skew stats.
WvW by nature is unbalanced, and will never be equal in stats. It’s perfectly fine this way. Worrying over the +1% to your total stat pool is pointless.
Two things:
2) PvP is not affected by this (WvW does not use PvP rules, it follows PvE rules)Doesn’t mean it’s not player versus player. It is. Which means player stats affect the outcome.
Individual player stats will not affect the outcome of WvW. Overall server cohesion, tactics and leadership will. The reason any of the top servers in T1/T2 are there is because they fight as a team, now how to take advantage of situations, and communicate really well. We use a server wide TS for SoR where all the guilds can jump in and communicate with each other. We barely have infighting, and we work well together, be it in a zerg, or small roaming parties. I can guarantee you a majority of our server still doesn’t have 100% exotics, and some of our more prominent leaders, including many in my guild aren’t even worrying about the ascended gear. I have one piece, Koss on Koss, and you know what? Not even worth the cost. The stat increase is so minimal, it barely changes a thing.
Bullcrap. I’ve fought 1v1 or 5v5 many times in WvW. Stats matter. No, they probably won’t decide the weekly score, but that isn’t the important part of WvW anyway. The important part is the experience of each player. And my experience in past MMOs that allowed gear to matter in PvP tells me not to bother with WvW anymore unless I choose to grind out that gear.
They should have made WvW like sPvP from the get go, actually, it was dumb of them not to, especially if they knew at the time that more gear might get added on top of Exotics.
I’ve fought 1v1 and 5v5 too, but the fact of the matter is, most battles aren’t just 1v1 and 5v5. They often balloon much higher. Also, I’ve won plenty of 1v1 matches and lost plenty too, in different sets of gear, with different traits. Even fought guys using food buffs and still won. It won’t matter if you have +1% higher power, if i know my character and build, I can still come out on top.
Two things:
2) PvP is not affected by this (WvW does not use PvP rules, it follows PvE rules)Doesn’t mean it’s not player versus player. It is. Which means player stats affect the outcome.
Individual player stats will not affect the outcome of WvW. Overall server cohesion, tactics and leadership will. The reason any of the top servers in T1/T2 are there is because they fight as a team, now how to take advantage of situations, and communicate really well. We use a server wide TS for SoR where all the guilds can jump in and communicate with each other. We barely have infighting, and we work well together, be it in a zerg, or small roaming parties. I can guarantee you a majority of our server still doesn’t have 100% exotics, and some of our more prominent leaders, including many in my guild aren’t even worrying about the ascended gear. I have one piece, Koss on Koss, and you know what? Not even worth the cost. The stat increase is so minimal, it barely changes a thing.
Population is fine.
There are at least 4-5 servers that are almost full 24/7. And the rest are at the HIGH status.
LA is always overflow for at least 5-10 minutes each time I login.
There are still people over at AC, COF etc etc.
The game is not dying its still going strong.
What people need to realize however is that its been out for 3 months already. Which means most players are in high level areas and not spread across the maps…. why would they be after all? I mean there is nothing to do on old maps. This was true even before Fractals of the Mists came to be. The only places that had people were dragon events, AC, COF, and other dungeons like that, ORR for events, and of course Lions Arch has always been packed. Every now and then you might run into new players out leveling or someones alt…. or someone getting 100% map completion, or farming mats…. but other then that, not sure why people expect maps to be full…..
Its 10am mountain time here this Monday morning…. 7 servers are Full…. not sure how that translates to a population drop.
Exactly, my level 80 experience has been Orr and WvW. I haven’t gone anywhere else, as there was no real reason to.
Oh right totally forgot about Wv3.
Many people don’t even level out in the world they just do WvW nonstop every time they login from level 2 to 80… never leaving lions arch and the WvW area… and as you say…. there is a very large amount of people that everyone doesn’t see in those WvW maps.
I actually leveled my character in WvW for about 80% of my playing time, I left only to do my personal story to get some missing gear (ie back piece as the personal story was the only way to get it at the time, and a free golem at completion) and to get some skill points some of the time. I can’t be bothered to level an alt, and if I do level my alt warrior (who is only level 5) it’d likely still be in WvW.
I vote no. I don’t run dungeons and I don’t want my sword a year from now still being just a few stats. I want it to shoot dragons out my butt or something cool like that. You want boring items forever then go play diablo 3. If your sever is barren come join stormbluff cause the game is as popular as ever here…….
WoW and Rift do this just fine they are advertised as vertical progression games and do it well.
Gw2 was not advertised as such and we all knew this coming into the game if u liked vertical progression “gear grinds” so much why did u even bother with Gw2.
Ascended gear isn’t even useful, compare it to your total stats, not just a like item of exotic, and you find you only gain a 1% increase, if you have all 3 ascended items equipped, this will not change a thing, and is not the same as powercreep. It’s simply not worth the cost, unless you want to run fractals over and over again.
Not only this, but ascended gear also isn’t worth it because the amount of mats you need. 1 vial of condensed mist, 240 philosopher’s stones, 50 ecto, 250 T6 mat for a back item – yeah, that’s a grind I am not willing to do particularly and a grind for a small increase in stats.
Comparing a rare guild backpack with berserker’s stats and exquisite ruby gem to the quiver of swift flight, you get the following:
Rare guild back
*20 pwr
*14 prec
*1% crit dmg(from gem)
*25 pwr
*15 prec
*3% crit dmgno infusion slot
Ascended quiver
24 pwr
17 prec
1% crit dmg(from second stats where gem would be in exotic or below)
32 pwr
18 prec
4% crit dmgoffensive infusion slot
Let’s just say you have the vial, 240 philosopher stones, and 50 ecto, but need the 250 powerful blood. Right now , 250 powerful blood is 25 silver per about in the TP. Is 62g50s really worth this small increase in stats? I don’t think so.
I’m using the berserker back piece as an example because apparently players don’t realize there’s other decent stats in the game and easier to get materials. The ascended back that requires ancient bone is more plausible since bone drops a crapton in Orr and it will balance out a full berserker set with some condition dmg and toughness.
You can get 250 ancient bone for like, 6 -7 gold I believe, which means the Ascended backpiece is now a crap load cheaper than if you went for Koss on Koss, which cost something like 30 gold just for the Vicious Fangs, the ectos will remain the only cost prohibitive component.
Population is fine.
There are at least 4-5 servers that are almost full 24/7. And the rest are at the HIGH status.
LA is always overflow for at least 5-10 minutes each time I login.
There are still people over at AC, COF etc etc.
The game is not dying its still going strong.
What people need to realize however is that its been out for 3 months already. Which means most players are in high level areas and not spread across the maps…. why would they be after all? I mean there is nothing to do on old maps. This was true even before Fractals of the Mists came to be. The only places that had people were dragon events, AC, COF, and other dungeons like that, ORR for events, and of course Lions Arch has always been packed. Every now and then you might run into new players out leveling or someones alt…. or someone getting 100% map completion, or farming mats…. but other then that, not sure why people expect maps to be full…..
Its 10am mountain time here this Monday morning…. 7 servers are Full…. not sure how that translates to a population drop.
Exactly, my level 80 experience has been Orr and WvW. I haven’t gone anywhere else, as there was no real reason to.
The only explanation I have for the change, that a big part of the players of GW2 is not the targeted one or that they want to catch the players of other games too.
Ofcourse they want to catch players of other games, why wouldnt they?
This game requires alot of dev time for new content, and server upkeep. This costs alot of money, money they are not making from subs. In order for this game to remain profitable, they must attract all sorts of players. They cannot just cater to one type of player, they will simply not be able to upkeep this game the way people expect it to. They aren’t making this game for free, and they will do everything in their power to attract new players.
Lack of Progression leads to stagnation.
Guild Wars 2 needs progression if it is ever going to survive its infancy.
They have also stated that they do not have plans for players to grind for a new gear tier every 3 months. Ascended gear is a vertical progressive statistical step-up from exotic gear. By this definition, I think of ascended gear more like a flight of stairs to be climbed rather than a treadmill.
That is until the number grinders have aquired their ascended gear. Then they are again in the situation that there “there is no progression”.
Then what is Anet going to do?
Leave those people at the top of the stairs, or add yet harder content and more stats upgrades – and so come full circle into the threadmill trap?At any rate, wrt rpgs the threadmill analogy doesn’t mean it repeatedly goes around to the exact same position where it started. Rather it means it repeatedly puts the player in the position where after obtaining the next level and the next better gear, the player is pitted against tougher mobs, so that a lvl80 char has as hard a time dealing with lvl 80 mobs, as a lvl 10 players has dealing with lvl 10 mobs.
So far, not a single mob has been made excessively more difficult.
That was not the point i made, my point is that mobs become harder as the player becomes more powerful. Meaning that in essence it stays the same while the player proverbially walks in circles.
At no point did i mention “excessively”.
I understand, but just wanted to point out that currently, we do not have a treadmill, because we the mobs aren’t being made more powerful in relation to released gear. The increase is so minor, that there would be no point to make mobs 1% tougher.
Lack of Progression leads to stagnation.
Guild Wars 2 needs progression if it is ever going to survive its infancy.
They have also stated that they do not have plans for players to grind for a new gear tier every 3 months. Ascended gear is a vertical progressive statistical step-up from exotic gear. By this definition, I think of ascended gear more like a flight of stairs to be climbed rather than a treadmill.
That is until the number grinders have aquired their ascended gear. Then they are again in the situation that there “there is no progression”.
Then what is Anet going to do?
Leave those people at the top of the stairs, or add yet harder content and more stats upgrades – and so come full circle into the threadmill trap?At any rate, wrt rpgs the threadmill analogy doesn’t mean it repeatedly goes around to the exact same position where it started. Rather it means it repeatedly puts the player in the position where after obtaining the next level and the next better gear, the player is pitted against tougher mobs, so that a lvl80 char has as hard a time dealing with lvl 80 mobs, as a lvl 10 players has dealing with lvl 10 mobs.
So far, not a single mob has been made excessively more difficult… even the Karka, people just failed to realize the acid gun was so effective against their armour.
The incredibly minor increase changes nothing in this game, and doesn’t introduce a treadmill.
There are external factors that play into this more than anything else.
We’re in the pre-holiday season, which means many AAA game releases, from Halo 4 and Call of Duty, to many other titles across multiple genres. This game has no sub, so people do not feel obligated to constantly have to play, and can afford to take a break, play some other games, and come back.
I my self stopped playing for about 3 weeks to play some other games, I beta tested Planetside 2 and picked up Halo 4, and with all my life obligations, I cannot simply play all these games, and continue playing GW2 at the same time. It’s reasonable to assume people will play this game in cycles, people will take breaks with major releases and then come back. Just wait til games like GTA5 come out and whatnot.
I vote no. I don’t run dungeons and I don’t want my sword a year from now still being just a few stats. I want it to shoot dragons out my butt or something cool like that. You want boring items forever then go play diablo 3. If your sever is barren come join stormbluff cause the game is as popular as ever here…….
How about you go play one of the many other gear treadmill MMOs instead of GW2. Or they could do what the OP is reasonably asking and makes perfect sense. If you want to run dungeons then your stats only really matter there. Tie the new tier levels to dungeons specifically and keep that treadmill crap out of WvWvW.
If this bothers you then you’re clearly one of those people that wants to use gear as a crutch rather than skill or tactics in W3.
The stats offered by Ascended will not effect WvW in anyway… it’s already way to unbalanced as is. Skill, and tactics will continue to matter way more.
I play dungeons and i HATE with passion ascended gear….
I want to play dungeons for the sake of playing them and not to grind equipment.Just delete ascended stats at all….or keep them on separate servers…
You still have every single dungeon that you can experience…. and you can do fractals as much as you want below level 20 without worrying, so you can choose to ignore Ascended gear, and be perfectly fine.
ofc stats will affect it, assuming a 20vs20zerg with ppl of equal skill and same amount of classes, but one zerg er purely exotic, the other is purely ascnded, geuss who will win…?
Yes. That wont happen in wvw though. If it did happen, luck would decide who won.
ofc it wont realistically happen, it is merely an EXAMPLE on how it would be able to see a clearly advantage, in that one dream scenario, where you could be pretty sure the side with the ascended gear would win. and if it would matter in that particular scenario it will always have SOME impact, just in a less extreme degree
As for the ppl saying it is only 1%… well it might be FOR NOW, when we only have jewellery, but ANet have specifically said with time you will be able to equip a full set of ascended gear, and well the stat difference on rings of different rarities generally are bigger on armor and weps than on jewellery, so will end up with a LOT more than 1%
Armour and Weapons have sigils and Runes, which further throw the stats way out of balance. With the trend started with accessories, we can assume that Armour and weapons will not be upgradeable, so they will have some sort of built in stat mechanic.
The problem is, it’s unlikely they will be able to build it to match bonuses offered by Runes, as they stack based on how many runes you have, and offer non standard bonuses over what regular upgrades give you (such as bonus attack effects, such as AOE flame bursts, or birds attacking a player.)
What we will more than likely see is, a structure similar to how the rings and backpieces are now, very specific stat bonuses, but lack the abilities of runes, which provide even more bonuses ontop of the base stats, and allow for custom builds. Exotics could then remain useful for a vast majority of players.
How about you do away with stats altogether and just compete for skills.
This is exactly what Horizontal progression is… and if this game were only about it, then it would have been built exactly like this. This is also exactly what sPVP is….
The game was designed to cater to different needs of different players. It succeeds in this, but also means that parts of this game cannot cater to absolutely everyone.
Lev 5 and already tired of waiting for a group then doing the same dungeons over and over and over etc …
I’d like to go explore but i know that if i don’t do this now it will be much harder to find groups in the future and as i know Agony will be part of all future content it will be needed…
I juat wish they released the items with more ways to get other than gring for hours in the same dungeon.. :-(
Not happyIts the nature of the “Hamster wheel” gear progression. And yes, future content will consist of “new fractal parts” so, yea you will be needed agony.
As for not running FotM all the time, if you take a break you will fall of the train. I entered today after a week and i couldnt find anyone doing level 1-6 anymore, so i failed to find group. So yea, welcome to new and future content, as demanded from “Guild Wars 2 players”.Sad but true
Not all new content is going to be utilizing Agony. The dungeon has been very obviously designed around adding new fractals, which will use agony, new world zones, and whatnot will not use agony. You only fall off the train if you want to run the fractals. Anything else, Ascended doesn’t mean anything. Even the stats increase, its so small, you don’t even notice a difference.
Now that they added infusions I am sure that they will come up with all sorts of stupid little conditions the we will need the gear for. I sure do miss the vanilla GW2 when all I had to do was get the gear that I thought looked cool , it was a good couple of months I guess.
Sure, they can come up with a bunch of new conditions… to use in the fractal dungeons. There’s so many other factors to this game where it won’t matter.
They can add the conditions any where they feel like.
But what makes you think they will add them everywhere aside from some limited spaces? So far, the only thing they;ve done is add it into a completely optional dungeon.
So far all they have done is completely change what they said that GW2 would be.
Before the patch you could do everything in the game with any gear, now you are required to grind if you want to see everything just like every other kitteny mmo that has been released in the last 10 years.
You can still do 100% of the content right now, without Ascended… you can even encounter Agony, from fractal level 10-20 and still survive easily without it.
I fail to see where it’s a requirement, you aren’t missing out on a single thing…. and you can remain competitive in all modes where it matters (sPVP and WvW)
Please, tell me, what will I be missing out on without Ascended gear?
SPvP and WvW don’t matter to me.
The fractals are fun, they are so much better than all the other easy dungeons in the game but having to do level 10 and 20 everyday hoping we get lucky and get a specific drop (just like in every other mmo and something A-net said they hated themselves) we can not continue into higher levels of fractals and we can not continue enjoying the game.
So now, the problem isn’t the gear, but your willingness to only run a single aspect of a game that offers so many other options.
It is no longer an issue of anything else, but you choosing to run the same thing over and over again. You say you enjoy the fractals, but complain you are against doing the same thing everyday for a drop…. The fractals don’t change past 20 aside from how often you encounter the agony… so it’s still going to be the same thing over and over again…. Technically, you are imposing all the issues on yourself, the reason you see it as being as every other MMO is because you choose to experience the one piece of content that is specifically designed to be just that…. there are other parts of this game that are nothing like other MMO’s. Anet always stated this game would provide options for everyone.
Sounds like really, your only complaint is RNG… which is a valid complaint, but an entirely separate issue. Take a break for a bit, try something else in the game, and go back to fractals later, you’ll eventually get that ring you want, or enough fractal relics for the backpiece.
Lev 5 and already tired of waiting for a group then doing the same dungeons over and over and over etc …
I’d like to go explore but i know that if i don’t do this now it will be much harder to find groups in the future and as i know Agony will be part of all future content it will be needed…
I juat wish they released the items with more ways to get other than gring for hours in the same dungeon.. :-(
Not happyIts the nature of the “Hamster wheel” gear progression. And yes, future content will consist of “new fractal parts” so, yea you will be needed agony.
As for not running FotM all the time, if you take a break you will fall of the train. I entered today after a week and i couldnt find anyone doing level 1-6 anymore, so i failed to find group. So yea, welcome to new and future content, as demanded from “Guild Wars 2 players”.Sad but true
Not all new content is going to be utilizing Agony. The dungeon has been very obviously designed around adding new fractals, which will use agony, new world zones, and whatnot will not use agony. You only fall off the train if you want to run the fractals. Anything else, Ascended doesn’t mean anything. Even the stats increase, its so small, you don’t even notice a difference.
Now that they added infusions I am sure that they will come up with all sorts of stupid little conditions the we will need the gear for. I sure do miss the vanilla GW2 when all I had to do was get the gear that I thought looked cool , it was a good couple of months I guess.
Sure, they can come up with a bunch of new conditions… to use in the fractal dungeons. There’s so many other factors to this game where it won’t matter.
They can add the conditions any where they feel like.
But what makes you think they will add them everywhere aside from some limited spaces? So far, the only thing they;ve done is add it into a completely optional dungeon.
So far all they have done is completely change what they said that GW2 would be.
Before the patch you could do everything in the game with any gear, now you are required to grind if you want to see everything just like every other kitteny mmo that has been released in the last 10 years.
You can still do 100% of the content right now, without Ascended… you can even encounter Agony, from fractal level 10-20 and still survive easily without it.
I fail to see where it’s a requirement, you aren’t missing out on a single thing…. and you can remain competitive in all modes where it matters (sPVP and WvW)
Please, tell me, what will I be missing out on without Ascended gear?
Lev 5 and already tired of waiting for a group then doing the same dungeons over and over and over etc …
I’d like to go explore but i know that if i don’t do this now it will be much harder to find groups in the future and as i know Agony will be part of all future content it will be needed…
I juat wish they released the items with more ways to get other than gring for hours in the same dungeon.. :-(
Not happyIts the nature of the “Hamster wheel” gear progression. And yes, future content will consist of “new fractal parts” so, yea you will be needed agony.
As for not running FotM all the time, if you take a break you will fall of the train. I entered today after a week and i couldnt find anyone doing level 1-6 anymore, so i failed to find group. So yea, welcome to new and future content, as demanded from “Guild Wars 2 players”.Sad but true
Not all new content is going to be utilizing Agony. The dungeon has been very obviously designed around adding new fractals, which will use agony, new world zones, and whatnot will not use agony. You only fall off the train if you want to run the fractals. Anything else, Ascended doesn’t mean anything. Even the stats increase, its so small, you don’t even notice a difference.
Now that they added infusions I am sure that they will come up with all sorts of stupid little conditions the we will need the gear for. I sure do miss the vanilla GW2 when all I had to do was get the gear that I thought looked cool , it was a good couple of months I guess.
Sure, they can come up with a bunch of new conditions… to use in the fractal dungeons. There’s so many other factors to this game where it won’t matter.
They can add the conditions any where they feel like.
But what makes you think they will add them everywhere aside from some limited spaces? So far, the only thing they;ve done is add it into a completely optional dungeon.
GW2 also wasn’t “advertised” as a game without vertical progression, which has it to a degree anyways.
This is sad. You are so wrong it is not even funny. Arenanet has been advertising that GW2 would be based on horizontal progression for years. Even right before and after launch, they issued statements and videos explaining these core tenets/components in the game.
It is so sad that people bought this game without doing research. Then when they did not find the “cool MMO stuff” that all the other vertical progression ones have, they complained.
Arenanet made it clear that GW2 would not be like others and would be based on horizontal progression.
Pure Horizontal progression would mean we wouldn’t have had levels, or tiered gear at all.
Planetside 2 is Horizontal progression, levels do not exists, just ranks, that mean nothing aside from how long you’ve played. Certification gain unlocks different guns, that aren’t better, but cater to different play styles.
GW2, on the other hand still has leveling, from 1-80 and tiered gear. That is still vertical progression.
Planetside 2, I can be comepetive right from the get go aslong as I know the games controls.
I did my research, I understand the product I purchased, this game was never just about horizontal progression, if anything it features both types.
The only part of this game that features pure Horizontal progression is sPVP. Everything else, WvW included still has alot of vertical progression, to the point where at release, alot of players wouldn’t even participate until hitting 80. If you bought this game solely for horizontal progression, and you don’t only sPVP, then you failed to do your research.
I’m using PS2 only as an example of what Horizontal progression is.
(edited by tkalamba.2541)
I vote no. I don’t run dungeons and I don’t want my sword a year from now still being just a few stats. I want it to shoot dragons out my butt or something cool like that. You want boring items forever then go play diablo 3. If your sever is barren come join stormbluff cause the game is as popular as ever here…….
WoW and Rift do this just fine they are advertised as vertical progression games and do it well.
Gw2 was not advertised as such and we all knew this coming into the game if u liked vertical progression “gear grinds” so much why did u even bother with Gw2.
I don’t recall WoW or Rift ever actually being advertised as such…
GW2 also wasn’t “advertised” as a game without vertical progression, which has it to a degree anyways. If it were truly a horizontal progression game, it’d be closer to what Planetside 2 offers, where levels don’t exist, and all weapons and the like just allow you to specialize. We have level 1-80, with different levels of gear, there is and always has been vertical progression. This is how the game was sold, this is how you played.
Ascended gear isn’t even useful, compare it to your total stats, not just a like item of exotic, and you find you only gain a 1% increase, if you have all 3 ascended items equipped, this will not change a thing, and is not the same as powercreep. It’s simply not worth the cost, unless you want to run fractals over and over again.
We were told Exotics were the highest stats in the game, and the only progression would be for skins or different stat combinations.
From what I understand, they never said it would be the final, and a dev saying they would be doesn’t make it advertised as such. They specifically said that Legendaries would be best in slot, and they still are.
Lev 5 and already tired of waiting for a group then doing the same dungeons over and over and over etc …
I’d like to go explore but i know that if i don’t do this now it will be much harder to find groups in the future and as i know Agony will be part of all future content it will be needed…
I juat wish they released the items with more ways to get other than gring for hours in the same dungeon.. :-(
Not happyIts the nature of the “Hamster wheel” gear progression. And yes, future content will consist of “new fractal parts” so, yea you will be needed agony.
As for not running FotM all the time, if you take a break you will fall of the train. I entered today after a week and i couldnt find anyone doing level 1-6 anymore, so i failed to find group. So yea, welcome to new and future content, as demanded from “Guild Wars 2 players”.Sad but true
Not all new content is going to be utilizing Agony. The dungeon has been very obviously designed around adding new fractals, which will use agony, new world zones, and whatnot will not use agony. You only fall off the train if you want to run the fractals. Anything else, Ascended doesn’t mean anything. Even the stats increase, its so small, you don’t even notice a difference.
Now that they added infusions I am sure that they will come up with all sorts of stupid little conditions the we will need the gear for. I sure do miss the vanilla GW2 when all I had to do was get the gear that I thought looked cool , it was a good couple of months I guess.
Agree with this… Why they couldnt add another Story/Explorable mod dungeon like the Vanilla ones, just with new exotic sets? It is slim chance that it will happen in future, especially with ascended gear. Plus they announced “new fractal coming in future updates” :P
They are adding options, more dungeons will come, same with more personal story quests. They will just add more fractals into the existing dungeon… that’s all that says. We have 9 now, add another 3. Plus a full dungeon, it’s not unrealistic…
1) Any plans on extending the customisable options of for character further than having different armour sets and dying them? For example slots placed into the armour that you could put visual upgrades in to further enhance your uniqueness, being able to specifically dye each armour piece you have so that when you change sets you change colour and a visual indication (which can be turned off) of what accessories you are wearing.
2) (small one) Any plans on being able to use Basic Transmutation Stones in the Mystic Forge? Post-80 theyre useless so it would be nice to be able to transform 10/15/20 into a single Fine Transmutation Stone.
3) (small one) Any plans on being able to place exotic runes into the Mystic Forge?
4) Any plans on having a cheap, stackable or unlimited item that can reset trait points outside of the class NPC?
5) Are there any plans to better utilise maps such as Divinity’s reach to provide more content to these huge, beautiful places? One time events are great but if there was something persistent in these areas it would encourage more people to spend time there.
6) Any plans on increasing the numbers per server?
7) Any plans on balancing WvW based on the number of players participating? Nightcapping is a huge issue in my opinion. An example of this is that the French servers have a larger proportion of players participating at night time due to French-Canadians joining French EU servers. While this shouldnt be frowned upon, it doesnt represent accurately the player strength of each server, that that more players are playing at ‘unsocial hours’.
8) One issue that my server has is that time and time again we get drawn against two French servers who proceed to team up against us. Do you see this as an issue and if so would you consider bringing in filters that prohibit two servers from the same country from being placed in the same WvW matches?
All I can think of for now. Sorry if some have been asked before and feel free to weed out the unimportant ones.
On your point #4, buy the cheapest trait tome, you can find them pretty cheap on the TP. It will allow you to retrait all your traits anywhere, even at level 80.
I vote no. I don’t run dungeons and I don’t want my sword a year from now still being just a few stats. I want it to shoot dragons out my butt or something cool like that. You want boring items forever then go play diablo 3. If your sever is barren come join stormbluff cause the game is as popular as ever here…….
WoW and Rift do this just fine they are advertised as vertical progression games and do it well.
Gw2 was not advertised as such and we all knew this coming into the game if u liked vertical progression “gear grinds” so much why did u even bother with Gw2.
I don’t recall WoW or Rift ever actually being advertised as such…
GW2 also wasn’t “advertised” as a game without vertical progression, which has it to a degree anyways. If it were truly a horizontal progression game, it’d be closer to what Planetside 2 offers, where levels don’t exist, and all weapons and the like just allow you to specialize. We have level 1-80, with different levels of gear, there is and always has been vertical progression. This is how the game was sold, this is how you played.
Ascended gear isn’t even useful, compare it to your total stats, not just a like item of exotic, and you find you only gain a 1% increase, if you have all 3 ascended items equipped, this will not change a thing, and is not the same as powercreep. It’s simply not worth the cost, unless you want to run fractals over and over again.
Lev 5 and already tired of waiting for a group then doing the same dungeons over and over and over etc …
I’d like to go explore but i know that if i don’t do this now it will be much harder to find groups in the future and as i know Agony will be part of all future content it will be needed…
I juat wish they released the items with more ways to get other than gring for hours in the same dungeon.. :-(
Not happyIts the nature of the “Hamster wheel” gear progression. And yes, future content will consist of “new fractal parts” so, yea you will be needed agony.
As for not running FotM all the time, if you take a break you will fall of the train. I entered today after a week and i couldnt find anyone doing level 1-6 anymore, so i failed to find group. So yea, welcome to new and future content, as demanded from “Guild Wars 2 players”.Sad but true
Not all new content is going to be utilizing Agony. The dungeon has been very obviously designed around adding new fractals, which will use agony, new world zones, and whatnot will not use agony. You only fall off the train if you want to run the fractals. Anything else, Ascended doesn’t mean anything. Even the stats increase, its so small, you don’t even notice a difference.
Now that they added infusions I am sure that they will come up with all sorts of stupid little conditions the we will need the gear for. I sure do miss the vanilla GW2 when all I had to do was get the gear that I thought looked cool , it was a good couple of months I guess.
Sure, they can come up with a bunch of new conditions… to use in the fractal dungeons. There’s so many other factors to this game where it won’t matter.
I was invited to a fractal 1 time and was reminded of why i became the type of player I am today and why I loved the pre-Nov 16th release of this game in a single run.
We got the one where the Charr are attacking the humans and we needed to Zerg (at least according to the people i was with) the veteran shooting 2 arrow machines AND attacking us hand to hand while being almost impossible to damage since they had a push back, mages with interrupts, and a constant continuous barrage of arrows.
Died about five times before other members of my team decided to give up. I was relieved they did since it was ridiculous trying to do that over and over. I’m so glad I decided to swear off dungeons because that’s not a challenge that’s just redundancy in an instance format.
Open world events all the way for me. The rest of you can keep your dungeons.
People as a whole do not understand how to properly do that first part. From what I’ve seen, it;s much easier if you progress slowly, and work with the Charr NPCs to make it to Dulfy. You can thin out the enemies to the point where the 4 siege placements will focus on your friendly NPC’s and you can take out the boss. The firemages will help with attacking from range.
What you ran into is people just not understanding how to actually progress in that fractal.
Lev 5 and already tired of waiting for a group then doing the same dungeons over and over and over etc …
I’d like to go explore but i know that if i don’t do this now it will be much harder to find groups in the future and as i know Agony will be part of all future content it will be needed…
I juat wish they released the items with more ways to get other than gring for hours in the same dungeon.. :-(
Not happyIts the nature of the “Hamster wheel” gear progression. And yes, future content will consist of “new fractal parts” so, yea you will be needed agony.
As for not running FotM all the time, if you take a break you will fall of the train. I entered today after a week and i couldnt find anyone doing level 1-6 anymore, so i failed to find group. So yea, welcome to new and future content, as demanded from “Guild Wars 2 players”.Sad but true
Not all new content is going to be utilizing Agony. The dungeon has been very obviously designed around adding new fractals, which will use agony, new world zones, and whatnot will not use agony. You only fall off the train if you want to run the fractals. Anything else, Ascended doesn’t mean anything. Even the stats increase, its so small, you don’t even notice a difference.
I end up repeating lower level fractals pretty consistently even though I’m up to level 18. I get groups faster, and it’s more entertaining than sitting around with my thumb up my kitten doing nothing.
The minor reduction in token gain doesn’t really concern me. There’s no pressing need for this ascended gear, and I’m much too far away from my legendary rifle at this point to really mind not having the obsidian shards RIGHT NOW.
I’m in the same boat, although I’m at level 6. I’ve redone levels 1-5 so many times just because I couldn’t be bothered to wait for more people at my level, and figured I’d get some of my guildies up to speed.
Got any link for source where it says that Agony will be part of all future content?
If that is so, which i find little hard to believe, then i gotta jump on this exodus ship and leave game too.
I think its people completely misinterpreting dev posts about it. They did say Agony will be in SOME future content ie… additional fractals vs the 9 we already have. They did NOT say it would be ALL new content. Just like how it wasn’t part of Lost Shores, but only the dungeon itself.
ofc stats will affect it, assuming a 20vs20zerg with ppl of equal skill and same amount of classes, but one zerg er purely exotic, the other is purely ascnded, geuss who will win…?
The more skillful group? Having all 3 available Ascended items only creates 1% increase in your total available character stats, not even worth the effort really.
Besides, you can throw this scenario around, but a 20v20 in WvW will NEVER be equal. No one will run identical builds, so stats will never be identical, even if everyone ran the exact same gear, traits and the like still throw things out of whack. There is no balance at all in WvW, never will be, so the stats mean nothing.
Even in scenarios where its two smaller groups roaming, in the end it will still end up being the server with the larger group who wins.
I spent like 5 hours in the fractals and got <50 relics. How much time must I spend doing something I don’t like for a piece of gear?
And why would you even need the gear when you don’t like the area where it is needed?
Stats are outright better than exotic gear.
Have you done the math? If you even bother with all 3 available pieces, all you get is a 1% increase in total stats for your characters entire stat pool. It’s so small, you don’t need to bother unless you plan on running Fractals.
The cost vs benefit makes bothering to get Ascended gear pretty pointless aside from the agony resistance, which only matters in the fractals. I got the Koss on Koss, don’t think it was worth it, and all my other accessories are still rare. Honestly, the stats aren’t worth any of the costs, so don’t bother unless you really want to run Fractals.
Increasing the level cap shares some qualities with adding a new gear tier, but it’s also different in a number of ways that make it a lot more palatable.
- First: Increasing the level cap changes the game. Going from level 80 to 90 means every character has 10 more Trait Points. This changes the game already on its own – and it doesn’t stretch the imagination to think that it might come with more traits. Adding gear with better stats just makes the numbers go up, and doesn’t change anything.
- Second: Guild Wars 2 has a flat experience curve for leveling. If it only took as long to go from 80-90 as it did from 70-80 (or at the least, only took marginally longer), then that would be palatable (though again, only because the game is actually changing – if there were no trait points from 80-90 and all that happened was that the numbers went up, then it once again becomes unacceptable). If it suddenly took 5 million experience points to go up a level, the reaction would be very different.
- Third: Increasing the level cap, but not adding new tiers, would presumably mean that the rarity of ‘top level’ items would remain the same. If a level 90 Exotic is only as hard to get (at level 90) as a level 80 Exotic is to get (at level 80), then I think most people could deal with that. If it suddenly takes 15g and/or ten hours of grinding just to get one equipment piece, this suddenly becomes a lot less okay.
- Fourth: In the scenario described, the level cap comes along with an expansion. Generally speaking, I think people are more likely to give a developer more latitude to make game-changing design decisions when they’re coupled to a major, boxed expansion. In particular, a player is free to look at the features and content of an expansion, and say “Yes, I want that” or “No, I’m not interested”, and either buy or not buy the expansion pack based on what they think of the content it contains.
If a level cap increase can justify itself, and it comes at a point (an expansion pack) where people are already expecting to either re-commit, jump on, or jump off of the game, and it’s not too egregious of a grind, then I’m willing to give it a chance. If it’s just there to be a bullet point on the back of the box and to extend the amount of time that people have to play before they get to the fun part, then no thanks.
So I’m not saying your wrong, but the main argument against current affairs is that people expected a certain plateau, and they want to be able to take a break for 2 months, come back, and still not be disadvantaged.
Adding levels now increases the plateau, leaving anyone who took a break at a disadvantage they have to work to fix, and there is still an inevitable stat increase. Just like there is with Ascended.
Why would players be against a small increase now, versus accepting a whole new 10 levels, the need for a set of 90 gear and whatnot just because of an expansion? Even if optional, wouldn’t these level 90 characters still be in WvW? ( with upscaling, any level 80’s would be pushed to 90, but lack gear no?)
Wouldn’t this change in turn create more turmoil?
(edit: I would like to add for anyone who skips to this point in the discussion, I’m just trying to spur actual discussion, and none of what I am stating is actually known as fact. It’s all hypothetical and I am interested to see what people think)
(edited by tkalamba.2541)
See this is looking more like a Jay Leno interview than anything substantive. By letting them see the questions this far in advance they will have a team of PR people working the answers and him over till they get company friendly results. Seriously there will be a bit of hand wringing and grimacing to play up to the fact the understand the players plight and show there sorry during the 1 or 2 semi tough questions you have picket but it will be a farce. Believe me I see interviews handled day in day out. You do not show your hand no matter how relaxed the chat.
I think LoreChief has now made his position clear
“A question for those of you who are so incredibly pissed off about recent changes though – why are you still playing and talking in the forums/subreddit if you’re so blighted with the game? Seek help.A good Interview and journalism is Unbiased the above states quite the opposite.
Basically this Q&A is designed as another PR stunt for Anet we will not get any real answers.
Have you seen a Reddit AMA?
No one person asks a question, anyone who has a reddit account posts, asks anything they want and the person who is holding the AMA answers as he pleases. It’s not an interview like in a newspaper or anything.
Here’s the AMA subreddit, these are all various AMA’s, look at how they are structured, and how the process works