Guild Wars 2

Ditton.3149:

Columba.9730:

Danikat.8537:

Seriously?

The only reason you need Ascended gear is to do the higher levels of Fractals. And it really is only the higher levels. I’ve heard of people getting up to at least level 10, which is more than enough to have seen each fractal at least once, without ever needing Ascended gear.

If you don’t intend to try and reach the higher levels of that dungeon then you can completely ignore Ascended gear, and the only reason to try and reach the higher levels is to get Ascended gear more easily. So in other words it’s grind for the sake of grind for those who want it and everyone else can just ignore it and play as normal.

Wrong. The ascended gear is 20-50% more powerful than exotics.

show me a ring that is 50% stronger than the exotic version…

Well considering there’s stat distros on ascended that don’t exist for exotic, not too hard. let’s say you want cond+/crit/tough. can’t get that on an exotic! gotta get in that dungeon bro. and you’ll get one with more condition damage than an exotic cond+/x/x exotic, and with more stats to increase your damage, and and and oh gosh.

fact remains they knew they were going to alienate a lot of their players by introducing a new tier of gear, because they knew a lot of their players were here because we didn’t want to have a never-ending chase after new loot.

they mislead us for 5 years, basically. and knew it. and knew we’d be mad.

but i’m the bad guy here.

Rolando.9437:

…is exactly what will do most of the people who menaces with leaving the game due their perceived betrayal of the manifesto by Anet.

Its, ok.
The game changes, some things are gamebreaking now for you, but down the road I am sure you will find again the lost love.
And I will be here, along some other hundreds thousand more gamers, ready to wellcome you, no questions asked.
Everyone makes mistakes, the developers and the gamers.
But if you actually find another MMORPG better than this one (less grind, less elitism, no suscriptions, etc), please tell us.

I dont want your stuff, I want you back.

I won’t be finding a better MMO — I simply won’t be finding an MMO, period.

I don’t play games to engage in a never-ending chase for newer, better gear. In my opinion it’s one of the dumbest mechanics. It’s cheap, it’s simple, it’s basic, it’s low, it’s common, it’s pointless.

Here I thought I had found a skill-based MMO, where I could be exactly as good as I am — but I was wrong, and there is stat-based progression, a gear treadmill. Maybe it doesn’t make a big difference, but that still means that even if I’m the absolute best at this game ever — someone who isn’t quite as good as I am can in fact BE better than me, if they are willing to grind for Ascended gear. I, obviously, am not willing to grind for gear.

And that’s it. That, right there, I cannot accept. I don’t play games where such things exist. GW1 had it right — leveling should be little more than a learning experience to familiarize a player with the game world and gameplay concepts, so they can slowly learn things piecemeal rather than at once, eventually and shortly dropping them off at max level.

And that’s it.

Don’t patronize me by telling me I’m going to start playing again because GW2 is just so good. It was so good, when it wasn’t a traditional MMO — it’s now no different than the rest of the market, save for WvWvW, which will be affected negatively by ever-increasing gear stats (mudflation leads to emergent balance issues, as the ultimate effect of larger stats depends on what stat you’re looking at, that is, condition damage scales pretty linearly but power/crit%/critdmg scale at an exponentially increasing rate with one another).

I haven’t been, and won’t be, playing any other MMO — so why do you assume I will eventually come back? Why would I play a game which is not the game I want to play? I’ve not so much free time that I will spend it playing things I don’t like.

And why would I come back? If that was something I thought possible, I simply would not leave. Coming back 6 months after not playing would be painful. People already complain about having a hard time finding low-level Fractals groups. Can you imagine the charity I’d have to find 6 months from now, the hours I’d have to devote to getting caught up? Mind you, catching up simply isn’t playing as much as everyone else. Nope, all that will do is keep you in the same place you currently sit. You’ve got to play MORE than everyone to get caught up.
And there’s no way to play smarter, or play better, more skillfully, more tactically, more strategically — the ONLY THING that matters is TIME.

I didn’t leave the MMO market, the MMO market left me.

/edit:
And the terrible part is, if Ascended gear was just an Exotic item with an additional upgrade slot and if Infusions were nothing but Agony resistance or other effects only relevant to dungeon progression…
if that were the case, neither I nor, I believe, nearly all others who have left over this would have left.

And there it is, too — would that scenario have been so awful? it’s simple, it’s item-based progression for PvE that has no effect on player power outside of specific content, and everyone could always be exactly as good at this game as they are at this game.

I’ve never changed servers and have never gotten those bonuses, so, yeah. But hey, who cares, going forward the only thing that matters is ascended gear and there’s no bonus for that so, uh, yeah

all necros only have 1 underwater elite skill

wanna trade for the human elite? lol.

LoL, NS2, … probably about it really ;\

Raine.1394:

Stick around. Once they implement the dungeon finder, the game will be just like WoW. Sure, it will take awhile to smooth out of the grind, but they’ll get there eventually. No need to go to another MMO.

No need to go to another MMO?

If this one will turn out just like that one, why make this one in the first place?

JDGumby.7685:

You obviously haven’t played the Personal Story, have you? Gods, Trahearne just won’t shut up… Ugh.

This won’t end well. /goes charging face-first into bad guys

I much prefer the zerg to a raid.

Why? I can’t be bothered to find that many people who:

Aren’t incompetent
Have schedules that match 19-39 other people’s schedules — CONSISTENTLY WITHOUT INTERRUPTION
Aren’t going to /gquit as soon as they get the gear they were after and are now suddenly acceptable to a larger raid group

With a zerg, if you have to go afk because your cat is on fire, it doesn’t bother me one bit. you don’t have to tell me. i don’t have to wait for you. With a zerg, if I get bored, I just.. leave. That’s that. I don’t have to say bye to anyone, I don’t have to feel bad about letting the rest of my raid group down just because I need to wake up early, it’s just.. bam! Who cares! Have fun for as long as you’re having fun.

Raids… man that garbage is for the birds. I don’t even like being around that many people at once IRL, why should I enjoy being around that many in a game. Hell, you find me 19-39 people I can actually even tolerate to be around, you’ll get a cookie.
Naw man, naw. No raids. I’m not going to depend and be depended on by people I don’t care to associate with.

haviz.1340:

Were you expecting different outcome? It’s for levels 80 with full exotics. It’s an elite content, you can’t just wander in with level 2 with no skills unlocked, no traits unlocked, no weapon swap unlocked and most importantly not good enough gear. This game seriously needs gear checks. Less QQ, more pew pew. Get level 80 and appropiate gear first. Then you can enjoy gw2 to its fullest

Yes, MOAR GEAR CHECKS! I know when I want to spend time in a game, what I want is to be told I can’t spend time in that game until I’ve spent more time in that game!

Player skill is meaningless, ALL HAIL THE GEARSCORE! Equalizer of all! Monkeys in Ferrarris! Huzzah! Huzzah! Huzzah!

Hydrophidian.4319:

Keep in mind also that NCSoft has its own ideas of what makes a successful MMO, and those ideas are informed by the Korean market, which is notoriously grindtastic.

Yup.
Now here’s my point.
If that model worked well here, NCSoft would already have a presence here. It does not, they do not.
If they were smart, they would have let a company that HAS been successful here BE successful here.. but nobody is ever smart.

It’s like getting lost, asking for directions, and then interjecting with your own directions. The ones that got you lost in the first place.

Now they’re both lost.

haviz.1340:

Wreckdum.8367:

Power creep doesn’t work when you only need one set of gear… You get ascended then you start running regular dungeons for the cosmetic gear… The same thing everyone has been doing since September when they already hit the gear ceiling. It doesn’t change anything. The game is still easy and short.

Mate, no one runs dungeons for cosmetic rewards. People want shinies with stats, not just shinies. How many people actually transmutate dungeon armours/weapons? Probably not much. Check how desolate are areas with old dungeons, they became obsolete. Yesterday I couldn’t find 2 people for arah and once I did they wanted to skip every trash mob so they left -.-

I was running dungeons largely for cosmetics.
Of course, no reason to now.
May as well just wait a month or two until you can get Ascended gear.
Sure they said it would be a slow rollout. They said a lot of things.

Sinphul.3091:

Start your own group? I understand a lot of anger about this patch but this is just kinda silly.

And who would join it?
The people who don’t want to start from the beginning already?

Fortuna.7259:

There is absolutely nothing wrong with targeting a niche market that has little competition, from a company perspective. Apologists act as if a company has a moral obligation to target the biggest audience. This is simply not true.

Selling 300,000 sandwiches to customers who never come back is the same revenue as selling 100 sandwiches a day to customers who come back daily for a year.
except after that year, with the latter model, you still have customers coming back regularly. sure, 300,000 a day would be even better, but it’s unrealistic.

Especially when half a block away there’s an existing sandwich shop that most of those 300,000 frequent daily.

Find your audience, find your customers. First keep them, then find more if you can — but offering something to people they can get nowhere else keeps you afloat and is much better than chasing after someone else’s business model.

Hell look at Apple. They had a niche market (HAVE a niche market). They’re not exactly abandoning their ideology to chase after a larger market share by emulating Microsoft, they’re making a quality product some people love and letting that quality speak for itself. .. and I say that as someone who doesn’t like Apple, won’t buy their stuff. It’s still good stuff, just not my kind of stuff.

I certainly would never suggest Apple abandon their business model, alienate their customers who DO like it, and try to woo me to their side by providing a product that’s functionally identical to one I already own and enjoy. Aside from it just not working like that, I’d feel bad for the people who do like their products, who got tossed out in the cold because hey, they’re already customers who cares, let’s try and change everything they like so maybe someone else will like us too.

ckeeton.4907:

they never said they would never add it either so that argument can go both ways. wow theres vertical progression omg worlds going to end because someone has better gear then i do. i really dont care about having the best gear if im HAVING FUN.

And I’m trying to have fun.
And I’m sure the new dungeon is at least as fun as the others.

I’m sure I’d even have fun running the dungeon… for a while, at least.

Here is the issue. I don’t like treadmills. I don’t like hamster wheels. I already know this, and it’s why I bought GW2.

Even if the content is fun, I ultimately will despise it. Maybe not this patch. Had I not been so set and so happy to not have mudflation here, I’d probably not be throwing a fit and just jump in and try it out. And I’d probably have had fun, too. I really like this game. It’s been a blast.

But then there will be more Ascended gear. And after Ascended? You can claim there won’t be anything after Ascended, but Anet has never said that, never even implied that. The way gear progression works is.. it keeps going up forever. They’re introducing gear progression. Ascended gear will not be the last tier of gear.

Even if it’s fun, it’s not for me. One day, I’d come to and realize that I’ve felt obligated to grind for this gear to keep up with content and peers, even if it wasn’t fun for me. Then I feel bad because I was playing a game to have fun, but was NOT having fun in a quest to get to some point where I COULD have fun.

So what options do I have? I quit now with fond memories of a great game, or I keep playing and at some point in the future hate every minute I spent in this game running in some developer’s little hamster wheel all so that I could later run in some developer’s little hamster wheel..

populationcontrol.5072:

Some people, like me, also like better stats, so we can do better in the game world, take down bigger mobs. Do things we weren’t able to do before.

You mention you play guitar.

When tackling a song that’s very hard to play, do you ever find your equipment is what prevents you from playing it (aside from, y’know, if it requires effect peddles or that neat thing that Frampton sticks in his mouth or a 7-string with splayed frets like Charlie Hunter)?

I’m guessing no.
I’m guessing that as YOUR skill increases, so does your ability to play harder and harder songs. Your guitar isn’t holding you back — at worst, it might look chintzy and sound bad, but getting a better one wouldn’t change the fundamental fact that it is YOUR ABILITY ALONE that determines what you can or cannot play.

That’s all I was looking for here. Not just another game where skill is determined by your gear, where player ability is meaningless and all that counts is your gearscore.

It’s kinda interesting. B2P and F2P aren’t really too different in how they collect money over time.

There’s games with working F2P models. Some are terrible pay-to-win setups, and then you’ve got.. Dota2 and LoL and TF2. Pay money, get fancy hats. Thats uh, pretty much it.

Can’t tell me those 2 games aren’t successful. Can’t tell me those business models aren’t working well.

You don’t get people to give you money by making it painful if they do not. You get people to give you money by making them have fun and WANT to give you money.

I wonder how long before we see cash shop items of unbelievable numbers (stats) and limited duration :[

Hawken.7932:

I assume you’re talking about the ascended tier and the fear of them adding more in the future. It’s a baseless fear, as they have already made “Legendaries” which are an insanely long grind for most players and laid out in the game as the ultimate achievement. They’re not going to be able to make gear which has higher stats and is perceived as a better reward than those items, so they are naturally capped in how much they can add.

Ascended gear is really much like resistance gear in other MMOs anyway — a set of gear which you accumulate to counter a specific mechanic.

Until they added Ascended gear, Legendaries had the exact same stats as Exotics. Now they’ll be boosted. They’ve said Legendaries will always be top tier — but not that Ascended will always be top tier. They’ll just adjust Legendaries upwards after they release the next tier of gear.

Ascended is nothing like resistance gear in other MMOs, it has higher total stats than an Exotic WITH an upgrade slotted, AND they have their own unique upgrade slot.

Eibl.8592:

Crater.1625:

All new content will be designed with the maximum player power in mind.

Old content will not actually nullify the higher stats that players gain from Ascended gear.

To continue playing the game, I am forced to run on the treadmill to get back to where I started, relative to the game in the case of new content, and relative to other players in the case of old content.

It’s a treadmill, definitionally.

You seem to misunderstand treadmills, see on a treadmill you don’t Acctually go anywhere like new dungeons or new content. It’s not that I disagree but I don’t think “vertical progression” and “gear treadmill” are synonymous.

You’re being intentionally dense. A gear treadmill is simply describing a type of gameplay common in MMOs — not the only way to do things — in which new gear that outclasses existing gear is repeatedly added with a variable interval between additions.

It’s a treadmill because you hop on, you get your gear, and you KEEP GETTING GEAR FOREVER. That is the game. The entire game is just a quest for gear with bigger numbers. There is no end. The entire game is nothing but “keep getting better gear” — but of course, that also means the bad guys keep pace with you. You never actually progress, because the game progresses with you — the only thing that changes are the magnitude of the numbers you see when you open your character sheet, but here’s the thing.
If you’ve got 10 bucks, and can buy a sandwich with it, you have one sandwich worth of money.
If you’ve got 10,000,000 bucks, and can buy a sandwich with it, you have one sandwich worth of money.

10,000,000 is a lot larger than 10, but if by the time you reach 10mil everything else has as well.. well, you made no progress at all. You simply stayed in place.

Just like if you were on a treadmill.

Ascended gear is the beginning of a gear treadmill.

I for one was hoping they put in something like in GW1 where you’d form a team and go against multiple teams at the same time. Honestly, that was pretty fun for me, and pretty unique. wtf was that.. hall of kings? >_< my memory doesn’t do names, every thing is a thing.

but even without that — this is the first game to do 3-sided PvP in a big open field since DAOC. That was a major reason I jumped in. The other was that my gear would be good forever, that once I hit 80 and settled on a build and got the gear for it, I was done getting loot unless I wanted to try a different build. That’s a biggie.

The first is still here, but problems aren’t exactly addressed, and the transfers.. the transfers ruined it for several weeks at the very least for my server. it’s not as bad, now, but there was no reason transfers should have been going on daily for 3 months into the game. that. is. dumb.

the latter is gone. gone gone gone.

i haven’t logged in since the blog post. i’m mad, sure, but that’s not why i’m not logging in. i just have no interest in getting back into the hamster wheel. i have absolutely no desire to get in there. before i had heard that a new gear tier was being added, i was running several dungeons a day, running around in WvW when there were fights to be had, trying to get guildies to run some tournies.. all the time, playing. spent some cash.

can’t even bear to log in and have some developer throw a leash around my neck and pull me where they think i should go.

tyu.9470:

Non-Casuals: Let us have this small tiny piece of content to do hardcore and hard stuff and push the limits.

You wanna push limits, try doing harder and harder content in the SAME gear. Getting better gear doesn’t mean you’re doing any better, it means you don’t HAVE TO do any better. Your gear is carrying you.

Malvagite.3254:

you dont have grandmaster traits

gotta speak up here — as a necro, none of our 30-point traits are really that compelling. for a long, long time i ran 10/20/20/10/10 — it was the strongest condition build for everything really, i only swapped because i felt the coming Mark of Evasion nerf.. which is a shame, really, because it was very interesting gameplay IMO.
Overall I’m ~100 cond dmg higher now at 10/30/20/0/10, but honestly no stronger or weaker — just a little less versatile.

30 point traits? maybe for some classes, but don’t speak too broadly.. for at least 1 class there’s really no stand-out must-have 30 point traits.

mantrunks.4810:

I have a feeling it’s the same people posting on this forum, for all I am reading is the same people quoting eachother, and just spitting out the words again in a different form. It almost looks like high school again.

Just get the new gear and call it a day or stop playing. I’m pretty sure that ANET has already read the posts, if not the main “theme” of this thread, and will figure something out. They can’t just pull the plug on the ascended gear as it has the infusion aspect which would just make new dungeon even harder. They can’t just pull the plug on the new dungeon they spent hours on developing, coding, testing etc. There is no magic switch in programming and business.

Well, they could just normalize Ascended gear stats down to normal Exotic levels, and leave the Agony resistance in place. Do the same for Infusions.

Now you have 1 tier of gear, split horizontally between “good for almost anything” and “specialized for grinding dungeons”, but there’s no difference in power between the two outside of those grindy dungeons like Fractals.

Won’t happen though! It’s too unlike the standard gear treadmill model.

Deth.4109:

warmonkey.8013:

fellyn.5083:

Because it’s not a gear treadmill. Yet. It’s one additional tier of equipment. Wait until next time if it happens again to react.

nope.

this IS a gear treadmill, that IS what they’re adding, and they’ve SAID that’s what they’re doing — but they’ve been insistent that it’s not a gear treadmill, because that’s a nasty word. We’ll just call it continual progression via equipment upgrades.

There’s no reason for me to wait around and still play this game until they add another tier and I’m proven right. I’ll just get out now before I have too much time invested in this game.

The menu very clearly and proudly stated no pickles. The restaurant very clearly advertised themselves as pickle-free. Two days after opening it, and after hearing a few people wander in and complain that there were no pickles — and despite a large crowd enjoying the pickle-free atmosphere — they’ve decided to add pickles.

Well I’m allergic to pickles.

The rest of you can suffer through this garbage alone. Gear progression is 100% derpmode gameplay.

get over your self, you act as though one model of a video game is some how objectivley better than any other<which is no the case games are games>. and GOD forbid some one has skill & Gear!!!

God forbid there be 1 MMO on the market that doesn’t kowtow to the status quo and actually tries to distinguish itself as something different, not just another “me-too” game. God forbid there be variety in the market. God forbid there be one single MMO that doesn’t include mudflation and a gear treadmill.

Fun part is this is going to destroy any illusion of class balance before too long. You think condition builds have problems now? Just wait. Conditions don’t scale too well, but power/crit/critdmg all scale each other as each increases.

This is what happens when you start putting ever-increasing numbers on gear.

Rangle.2539:

warmonkey.8013:

Rangle.2539:

Well, isn’t infusion is part of the story too in GW2? So, what’s the different?

you don’t see a difference between added “INFUSED!” under an item’s name, and adding gear with stats inflated over what you had previously stated would be the top tier of gear and promising to continue to add better gear in the future?

GW1 never increased levels or stats on gear.

You don’t see the difference?

Good. So let’s take the increased stats off this new garbage. You won’t see the difference, so it won’t matter, right?

Ok, So, they are trying to keep the spirit of GW1 while simultaneously evolve their game with progression. I can’t see anything bad coming out of it.

See my above post, if the spirit of GW1 was vegetarianism, they’re choosing to evolve the game by adding meat to everything.

Sure, some people will love it, but their existing customer base, the ones who were excited to finally have an option that catered to them instead of to the rest of the market — they’re not just going to not like it, they’re going to abstain. They’re going to be gone.

Anet had a captive kittening audience of people who were playing this game and HAD NO OTHER OPTIONS. They’re instead choosing to cater to the people who can find what they’re looking for in EVERY OTHER MMO.

I dunno, seems a bit foolish to me. Seems like if you’re the only one in town offering a service, and if there’s enough people to keep you in business you try and keep their business rather than abandoning them to try and directly compete for the larger pool of potential customers with every other business in town.

nofo.8469:

Steve.5034:

nofo.8469:

So we are going to need some form of gear score, publicly viewable agony resistance or inspect. What is your plan to address this ANet?

Also, what kind of player number cap are you putting on these dungeons? I mean 5 players is all well and good but it doesn’t feel anything like as epic as killing a mighty dragon with say, 25 or 40 people.

Why not just call it WOW as well. Put in your changes and people like you can stand yelling “LFG. Come to Lion Arch for inspection” and “LFG, Gear Score 2000 required”

When will you people realise that the vast majority don’t want that type of crap anymore and we found it here. Until now!

nofo.8469:

Thanks for reading, and thankyou arenanet for finally listening to the community ^^

They did the opposite.

Majority of people don’t want this kind of content?

How many people play WoW?

How many people play guild wars?

People standing in the middle of LA asking for inspection is just a natural part of any progression based game, no sense in fighting it.

The majority of people eat meat. Some people don’t.

You just walked into a vegetarian restaurant, told everyone they were idiots, and convinced the owner to add meat to every dish.

Grats. You’re ruining things that other people enjoy so that they match up with things that already exist that you enjoy.

This is why we can’t have nice things. No, really. This. Literally, this.

Rangle.2539:

Well, isn’t infusion is part of the story too in GW2? So, what’s the different?

you don’t see a difference between added “INFUSED!” under an item’s name, and adding gear with stats inflated over what you had previously stated would be the top tier of gear and promising to continue to add better gear in the future?

GW1 never increased levels or stats on gear.

You don’t see the difference?

Good. So let’s take the increased stats off this new garbage. You won’t see the difference, so it won’t matter, right?

fellyn.5083:

Because it’s not a gear treadmill. Yet. It’s one additional tier of equipment. Wait until next time if it happens again to react.

nope.

this IS a gear treadmill, that IS what they’re adding, and they’ve SAID that’s what they’re doing — but they’ve been insistent that it’s not a gear treadmill, because that’s a nasty word. We’ll just call it continual progression via equipment upgrades.

There’s no reason for me to wait around and still play this game until they add another tier and I’m proven right. I’ll just get out now before I have too much time invested in this game.

The menu very clearly and proudly stated no pickles. The restaurant very clearly advertised themselves as pickle-free. Two days after opening it, and after hearing a few people wander in and complain that there were no pickles — and despite a large crowd enjoying the pickle-free atmosphere — they’ve decided to add pickles.

Well I’m allergic to pickles.

The rest of you can suffer through this garbage alone. Gear progression is 100% derpmode gameplay.

Clever.7918:

This patch with dungeon will bring back players who stopped playing. Even if for a couple weeks still good.

and once they spend their 8 hours a day playing and get done collecting new gear in a few weeks they’ll be gone again..

except the game will have lost all the people who played this because they did not want endless gear progression. and those people are never coming back — but had this crap not been added, they would never have left.

nofo.8469:

warmonkey.8013:

nofo.8469:

Rangle.2539:

But all MMO need progression. New tier will give that progression.

Yer there has never been a successful MMO released without progression content, we need new tiers but patience, we need for the majority of people to have at least experienced ascended first.

lmao.

i mean you’re just so wrong i don’t even..

good god, but you’re just so wrong, haha.

keep talking kiddo, i’m sure your exhaustive knowledge of the last 3 years of the gaming market won’t let you down
haha

Really? Please list one.

I am more than willing to be corrected, just provide some substance please.

daoc.

fellyn.5083:

toomuchtatose.6874:

fellyn.5083:

I’m excited for the ascended stuff. Looking forward to it.

People still completely over reacting.

So objection = over-reaction.

You are also over-reacting (excited).

No, saying you’re going to quit and Anet are baby killers and all the other nonsense people are saying when they haven’t tried it is over reacting.

I’m just excited for new game content.

What’s there to try about it? I’m familiar with the concept of a gear treadmill, of mudflation, of tiered content. I don’t like that garbage. Why should I try it? Every other MMO out there right now has that stuff. I already know I don’t want it or like it. That’s why I bought a game that told me there wouldn’t ever be this kitten.

I’m sure the new content is fun to play, but I’m not going to do it, because I’m not a hamster and I’m not getting in that wheel. That is not fun for me and so I won’t do it — and because that’s how the game is going to play out, I won’t play it, either. Never again will I put myself in a position where I need to eternally chase after gear. If you’re going to do that, might as well remove the level cap and continue stat increases on level-up — after all you’d be getting ‘rewarded’ for time spent playing the game, and that’s all this gear bullkitten is anyway.

And then, years from now, whoever is the most skillful at the game wins!*

*skill determined entirely by hours logged on the account.

nofo.8469:

Rangle.2539:

But all MMO need progression. New tier will give that progression.

Yer there has never been a successful MMO released without progression content, we need new tiers but patience, we need for the majority of people to have at least experienced ascended first.

lmao.

i mean you’re just so wrong i don’t even..

good god, but you’re just so wrong, haha.

keep talking kiddo, i’m sure your exhaustive knowledge of the last 3 years of the gaming market won’t let you down
haha

Aylpse.6280:

I thought it was a decent update… at least thieves got nerfed! And we have a new area to explore! And a new endless dungeon with a REWARD FOR THE EFFORT. Its not catering to the WoW fanboys or the Content locusts.. What do you plan to do in your full uber 1337 full runed exotic set? There is nothing you can do. Farm Orr… thats about it.. PvE wise anyway.. Everyone just sees a half empty glass.. that’s the real problem. /anti flame suit on

There’s only one thing you want to do at end-game, and that’s chase loot.

I don’t want to do that.

I had plenty of things to do at end-game. I didn’t have any gear left to gather. I was quite pleased with my skins, though eventually I would want a set of Arah gear.

Nothing gave you better gear, though, so all those hours I was spending ingame having fun, well, to you that’s all “nothing to do”.

You’re the kid who wants to go to a movie but goes to a party instead and then complains how boring it is and how great it would be to sit down shut up and put a movie in to watch. It was only boring because you wanted something else — one has to wonder why you don’t just go watch a movie and not kitten on other people’s fun.

There was plenty for me to do, and I was having fun doing it. It’s not my fault if there’s only one thing that’s fun for you, but the entire rest of the MMO market caters to what you’re looking for. The entire rest of the market. All of it. Grats on kittening up another MMO.

IonicBlaze.7948:

My guild of 30 mates is dead since yesterday.

same here, except since the blog post.

and after that we can add the pandas!

it’s brilliant.

Power creep. Gear treadmill. Mudflation.

0% excited. I’m playing other games until Anet removes that garbage.

GW2 was a niche game, unlike the rest of the market, where I’d throw my money.
Now it’s all the same, and I’ve not been giving this type of game my money previously and have no intentions of starting now. I’m not playing that kind of game for a reason. This is now that kind of game.

Dear Anet,

I did not wish to play a game with a gear treadmill and mudflation and always-better-gear-around-the-corner. I bought this game specifically because it was not going to have any of that.

Haven’t logged in, won’t be logging in, enjoy needing to churn out more and more content constantly and constantly being told by players that they are bored by your content. Enjoy needing to rebalance stats in the future because your model was not designed for mudflation — none ever are, because nobody wants to think it will happen, but then everyone winds up introducing mudflation regardless. Enjoy not getting a dime for me so long as I won’t be able to gear out a character easily and sit on it for a year and not come out in gear that isn’t worth jack squat compared to the new status quo.

Asglarek.8976:

warmonkey.8013:

Euthil.5209:

Plague.5329:

Is it possible for games to maintain a sense of personal progress without tying that progress to an investment in gear numbers?

Creativity and innovation say “yes.”

No, accountants and execs who look at the numbers in the MMO market currently say “yes”. Because WoW is huge, and the entire market is catering to a single design decision — tiered gear progression.

There’s plenty of other ways to go about it. In fact there’s nothing that says a different type of game can’t be bigger than WoW. Fact is, nobody’s even tried. GW2 was trying — and IMO they were succeeding — but they’re waving the flag of surrender.

Long and short of it? No, there’s other ways of doing it, but no, we’ll never see them. Game industry is ridiculously risk-averse at the moment — RIDICULOUSLY risk-averse, that’s why some certain companies are only producing sequels to existing franchises right now — and the MMO market is even more risk-averse (my completely uneducated guess is because it’s a riskier investment, it’s a larger thing to make and maintain and the accountants and execs get their fingers into things tighter and force “safe” decisions more frequently which is code for “copy this other game that did well”).

So sir, while your answer wins on snark points, it loses on reality points — there hasn’t been any serious challenge to the gear-treadmill paradigm since… GW1. And this. But they gave up. So no, friend, innovation doesn’t say “yes” — no MMO since WoW has really been very creative or innovative, merely emulative.

Makes me a saaaaad panda

Obviously you never played anything before EQ or WOW. Back in the days before EQ and its clone WOW back even before UO you didn’t rely on items per say you relied on scrolls and potions that granted you a temporary spell or a piece of armor or sword that maybe and 2 or 3 uses but alas turn based MUD’S a wonderful part of online role-playing lore has been lost to you youngster.

LOTRD? I played turned-base stuff on BBSes, yes. I played text-based RPGs as well, MUDs, MUSHes (they didn’t even have stats or anything, hell one of Mythic’s old games, dgate, i played a ton.

.. created a thief the day i discovered i could outrun anyone because I type like a madman, had memorized the in-game world, and happened to be closer to the server than anyone else.. simply by queuing up where i wanted to run.. i’d always get there faster. but then, that was back in the days when you could actually reasonably roleplay in those things, nothing against anyone who still does that but I vastly preferred a game world with just a few hundred people — that way, I could know people, they could know me, and at worst we’d know the same people. you could build a reputation, and learn others, and it was rad

vespers.1759:

If this was a FPS i wouldn’t care because those games revolve around the fun of simply playing, but people aren’t entertained for long in MMOs with a similar design. the point of an MMO is that you never complete it or if you do, it’s right before the next patch.

Dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. There’s no reason we can’t play an MMO for fun just as we play an FPS for fun. No reason whatsoever outside chuckleheads like you who just cry and cry when something doesn’t conform to your expectations.

There’s plenty of other games living off WoW’s scraps. GW2 should not be one of them, but it seems they’ve decided that’s the best course, so we’re getting gear progression.

Not with a boom but a whisper — it might only be a few stats here and there now, but it’s the start. Once you start down the course of mudflation, there’s really almost no way to stop it. It simply continues. There’s 30 years of online RPG gaming to back that up.

The difference between Ascended and Exotic will be roughly the same as no WvW orbs vs. 3 WvW orbs.

That difference was too great, and so they removed the orbs.

Now you can get that same level of completely-overpoweredness, you just will need to make sure you’ve always grinded your gear to top-tier and find yourself some targets that haven’t!

Or, more likely, I’ll get tired of re-running content to try and keep up, give up, try to just stick to WvW and find that because I didn’t run their treadmill, I can’t compete. So maybe I’ll just live out the rest of my days in the Mists doing sPvP, and come out once per year to laugh at how out-of-date and useless my exotics are compared to Ascended’s successor tier (LOL@U if you think this is the end. I’m pretty sure they stated in their blog that this is just the beginning. Go check it out. they did.)

Death Reincarnated.3570:

One of the reasons people play such games (and in general) is so that they can strive to achieve set goals/tasks – which ends with a feeling of fullfilment and joy. Whether be it reaching lv80, getting best armor stats/looks or completing all of the achievement challenges.

At some point, however, a person(s) may feel that the conent is running dry. IMO the introduction of ‘ascended’ quality items just adds a fresh perspective to this game.

I really would like to hear someone give legitimate reason(s) on ‘How can this have a negative impact on the persons gameplay experience?’

I’m just curious…

You’ll never consider any answer you hear to be “legitimate”, because you disagree with them.

Silentstorm.7531:

I would never want to play a game where I stagnate on gear just pallete swapping it every month.

Funny, that’s how GW1 operates, and that’s what we were told GW2 would be like. Why did you buy this game again? It wasn’t hidden. They didn’t wait 3 months to spring that design decision on you, like they’ve done with this. They were upfront and vocal about capping stats and a gear plateau at endgame — protip: plateaus are flat, they don’t continue to rise — and now?

Huh. Now we’ve been lied to, and you’re gloating because you bought a game you knew nothing about, walked in, told everyone who had been supporting the game previously based on what it was that they’re idiots and the whole thing should conform to you instead and be nothing like what was promised and rather be everything like every other MMO on the market.

Take your conformity elsewhere, square.

CETheLucid.3964:

For some perspective, the halloween event did all of the things the new content update is due to bring gear wise. How did they handle it?

Halloween did not introduce gear with stats greater than Exotic, it just introduced some pretty rad skins and a limited-time dungeon..thing.

I’m pretty sure the Halloween thing went off pretty well. Maybe I’m wrong, but it seemed like a success, people liked it.

And it didn’t introduce mudflation to the game.

Imagine.

Zoolad.9748:

RoChan.1926:

Zoolad.9748:

What I don’t really understand is why everyone is calling this a “gear treadmill”. If I’m not mistaken, a tier above “exotic” already exists in the original build of the game (legendaries). There is currently a massive gap (progression-wise) between standard exotics and legendaries, and the “Gift” exotics don’t help much. The ascended stat improvements seem marginal at best (likely not affecting game balance outside of Fractals in any meaningful way), and Anet has stated that legendaries will be boosted to remain the “best” tier. If everyone is already working towards a legendary, the established “ceiling” for in-game progression, and existing legendaries get upgraded, all this update really does is even out the progression curve a bit.

Legendaries are not higher in tier than Exotics currently. They will be when the next tier Ascended comes out and they will be bumped up. So no…. there isn’t a current higher tier as Legendaries = Exotics.

What I meant was, Legendaries are higher in the sense of “progression”. Something people work towards after reaching high level exotics (kind of like how obsidian Armour was a “higher” tier than standard Droks gear back in GW1.)

If what you say was true, then Ascended armor would not be an increase in stats over Exotic armor, it would be merely cosmetic as it was in GW1.
That’s not the case unfortunately.
I wouldn’t mind this one bit if that WAS how things were — if Ascended was just Exotics with an Infusion slot that would only be used for PvE content, just to damage / not be damaged by the new dungeons. That’s.. whatever, I could totally live with that by never taking part in it and never being punished for not taking part in it.
That’s not the case, unfortunately.

Fortuna.7259:

Togashi Jack.9531:

My biggest issue was not that there was no progression, it was that loot was inherently meaningless. In all the time I’ve played, I have not seen a single exotic drop. Not one. While its great that there’s a gear ceiling, GW1 had the same thing, and yet it would actually happen that from chests, or even regular monster drops you could see a weapon or item that was on par with what you already have. This never happens in GW2 and as such all loot at 80 falls into the category of Vendor Trash, Crafting Mat, or Items you salvage.

Don’t give us new tiers of stuff that will make loot even more useless, make loot better.

Max gear dropping quickly makes max gear worthless, especially with a market system like GW2 has. Loot is all relative.

And why should max gear not be worthless? This game was not supposed to be about gear acquisition, aside from purely cosmetic changes so your dude would be holding and wearing stuff you thought looked cool.

To me, max gear being worthless is actually priceless. Max gear being “worth something” means “it’s hard to get” and “it’s hard to get” NEVER means “hard as in difficult”, it only ever means “hard as in time-consuming”.
Because it’s easy to make something time-consuming, but hard to make something difficult — and if you DARE make anything difficult, that would take some cleverness to overcome, DEAR GOD THE TEARS.
Which of course, is understandable — gear treadmill people don’t want to be challenged by anything other than the RNG that determines if they get loot or not, and if they’ve won that, they DESERVE to win at killing the next boss.

100% dumb gameplay, that right there.

Wreckdum.8367:

Gear grind used to be a way to show initiative. You could tell who actually cared about the game and would put in the work. Now you have people who have no idea how to play but they are wearing the same gear as you…

Funny, I’m more used to people wearing better gear than me, who have no idea how to play.

There is absolutely no reason for them to be increasing the stats on anything. If there was a gap between exotic and legendary, it was NOT the stats, they had the same stats. They could have introduced Ascended armor as merely another ascthetic upgrade, between exotic and legendary.

Nobody would be mad at that. There wouldn’t be these threads complaining about being lied to, about gear treadmills.

We’re all down with grinding out skins, because it’s for fun, because we want to — not because we need to in order to keep pace with the game. I don’t want to keep pace with the game. I want to keep pace with myself, and only be as good in-game as I am good at playing the game.

Gear treadmills are for people who never want to improve their game, who want to just do the same thing over and over and get cookies for it and to blow through content that’s too hard for them by simply smashing their head against it over and over until they’ve collected enough gear that their mushbrained tactics finally win.

Me, I’m more of an FPS guy, and not a console FPS guy with the lovely built-in aimbot those have — harsh stuff, old stuff. fun stuff. If I win, it’s because I’m smarter, faster, just plain better than someone else. If I lose, it’s because they’re better than me. Not because I spent more time collecting garbage stats than them, or them than me, but because it’s player skill against player skill with all the intervening layers stripped away.

Back in WoW, pre-expansions, I’d run around in my dungeon gear — there wasn’t tier 1.5, there wasn’t tier 1, there was just scholo/strat/UBRS, and MC that I never got gear from (aurastone hammer, actually, that was it..). Up until Naxx, I could still beat pretty much anyone in a 1v1 (on a PvP server, I used to flag myself as /afk in moderately high-traffic areas — I called it thief-fishing, and it was wonderful, because they’d pop on me from stealth and then I’d drop them. lulz). At that point, their gear advantage outweighed my skill advantage, and I began to completely hate the game and realize that a game with a gear treadmill is not for me.

Euthil.5209:

Plague.5329:

Is it possible for games to maintain a sense of personal progress without tying that progress to an investment in gear numbers?

Creativity and innovation say “yes.”

No, accountants and execs who look at the numbers in the MMO market currently say “yes”. Because WoW is huge, and the entire market is catering to a single design decision — tiered gear progression.

There’s plenty of other ways to go about it. In fact there’s nothing that says a different type of game can’t be bigger than WoW. Fact is, nobody’s even tried. GW2 was trying — and IMO they were succeeding — but they’re waving the flag of surrender.

Long and short of it? No, there’s other ways of doing it, but no, we’ll never see them. Game industry is ridiculously risk-averse at the moment — RIDICULOUSLY risk-averse, that’s why some certain companies are only producing sequels to existing franchises right now — and the MMO market is even more risk-averse (my completely uneducated guess is because it’s a riskier investment, it’s a larger thing to make and maintain and the accountants and execs get their fingers into things tighter and force “safe” decisions more frequently which is code for “copy this other game that did well”).

So sir, while your answer wins on snark points, it loses on reality points — there hasn’t been any serious challenge to the gear-treadmill paradigm since… GW1. And this. But they gave up. So no, friend, innovation doesn’t say “yes” — no MMO since WoW has really been very creative or innovative, merely emulative.

Makes me a saaaaad panda

Jestunhi.7429:

It appears games are no longer a form of entertainment. People do not play them for fun.

If the number in your character window isn’t increasing then there’s no point playing! That’s the purpose, not entertainment but increasing a number.

For people who think this way I have some advice:

1. Buy a calculator.
2. Turn it on
3. Press 1
4. Press +
5. Press 1
6. Press =

Now, at this point I find most calculators will let you spam the = button and each time you do the number will increase. And if you buy a good calculator the cap is stupidly high!

You could “play” for months!!

I’ve been suggesting these people play Progress Quest. Basically the same thing you suggest..

Azarul.2064:

aliquis.9180:

Creating fun for some while ruining it for others. Interesting strategy there, Arenanet.

Are you currently having fun ingame? Because as far as I have seen not a single thing that is ingame now is going away. So just keep doing what your doing and ignore the new stuff its that simple.

I really dont get all the negative at all. Trust me I understand not liking the gear treadmill, but no one is forcing you to do it either. Just continue to do exactly what you were doing 2 weeks ago for the next 2 or so years it will all still be there.

you could do that in wow, too, you know.

you’d just have the same problems you will have here. if you don’t follow their progression, you don’t have access to all content. you are not on par with all other max level characters. you do what THEY want, or you fall behind.

falling behind was never supposed to happen here. you proceed to exotics and then you are done — you move forward, and the finish line doesn’t ever move, the race never gets any longer.

but now it is, so whatever. liars telling lies..

most the “nothing to do” threads were overwhelmed with people posting that they were enjoying the game and that the OP’s statement was nothing more than “I don’t have a gear treadmill”.

so even in those threads, the gear-treadmill faction was a minority. the rest of us were usually too busy playing to bother.

now we’re not playing, we’re here. posting. angry.

not playing, though.

I guess a new term will need to be invented if you ever want to release an MMO that isn’t a WoW knockoff, or all the kiddos who want their gear ladders will cry and cry and cry until they get their way (and then quit and go back to WoW anyway)

Hunterdan.4921:

Fungalfoot.7213:

Hunterdan.4921:

TL;DR – This is not about adding vertical progression. It’s about balancing the gap (Of difficulty in obtaining) between exotic and legendary gear. As far as the stat increase…I have no idea. So you’ll want it more?

So they’re going to balance the effort gap by adding a statistical gap and that’s not vertical progression because…? You don’t fix one gap by adding another.

Certainly not. You fix the gap by either making one side more difficult to obtain, the other easier to obtain, or adding something in the middle. They seem to be going with the latter. But again, we’re only speculating until we actually get to check it out.

they are not going with the latter. if they were, ascended would have stats no better than exotic, but would look cooler.

Djinn.4396:

I kinda hope they do away with the idea of eliminating the trilogy and bring it into the game even if in a different form and make dungeon running a legit form of progression.
If not I will probably have to go get Storm Legion…

seriously, you come across one single game that is unlike the one/s you’re used to and you want to hammer it down to fall into line with the others?

that’s simply demented.

what would YOU do to this game? ‘cause I get the feeling that what you want already exists in the MMO market. why aren’t you there instead of here trying to ruin the kitten i was enjoying.

Hunterdan.4921:

TL;DR – This is not about adding vertical progression. It’s about balancing the gap (Of difficulty in obtaining) between exotic and legendary gear. As far as the stat increase…I have no idea. So you’ll want it more?

this is absolutely about adding vertical progression
if this is about balancing the gap in difficulty of obtaining exotics and legendaries — that means ascended will be harder than exotic to acquire, which means, yes, gear treadmill.

The stat increase, yes, gear treadmill. They added it because there’s some people who just can’t play a game without endlessly increasing their numbers relative to their old numbers. Exotics were supposed to be it, the cap, the top-end — and legendaries were equal to that, but looked awesome.

If all they wanted to address was the gap in the time needed between exotic and legendary, they could have done it without a new tier. Add hard to find exotics that look slightly cooler (OH, WAIT, THAT ALREADY IS A THING), add legendaries that look less cool but are easier to get.

This? This is just them trying to reshape their game into a WoW clone.

Thats because their own vision isn’t something that is what MMO players want. Part of the reason that we play these stupid things is that there is always some sort of next plateau to keep logging in to get to.

LMAO really, really. No. You didn’t do any checking on this game before you spent money on it did you? Just saw “MMO” and thought “I liked WoW!” and bought it?

No, many of us bought this game BECAUSE OF their vision, that there was not going to be endless gear progression.

I’ve got enough kitten in my life that’s never-ending and always unfinished. I don’t need some kittened game doing the same thing.

Screw it, maybe I’ll just go steal my NES back and beat Battletoads again

Liars, liars, liars.

Malediktus.9250:

I asked in my guild and friend list. Most people are in favor for a sensible (small, like anet is doing with ascended) itemspiral. The rest of the people didnt care. Not a single person said they hate the idea.

that’s funny. i’ve got a single person that doesn’t care, a single person who loves the idea (he quit already and went back to d3. do not cater to this man, for the love of god).

The rest? I don’t think any of us have logged in since that blog post, and we’re dusting off our LoL accounts. Fortunately, none of the champions or runes I’ve picked up in that game have become eclipsed by a new tier. We’ll just go and spend several times what a new game costs for gems over there rather than here. Shame, really.