Issues with GW2

[Jim Hunter]

Edit: With "nobody" I actually meant the people you think need gear progression. Not the ladies that like to farm armor for actual looks. Haha.

But it makes me feel so pretty

I do think They would have been much better off implementing some raids or at the very least changing the dungeons so you couldn't just respawn and run back into the fight. The only way to fail was if people quit trying. Honestly there wasn't any set of armor you couldn't complete in a weekend and they wonder why people were bored at 80.

[Greyfeld]

Actually, for almost everyone that I play with, that would be a false statement. The people I know like to play in a team. On goals that require a team. The bigger the team and thus the challenge of coordination, the more fun. Hence raids as a special (big) party size. And challenging content translates into being less forgiving of mistakes. The goal is in the accomplishment and... well, fame and glory. That's all there is to it. Gear... is a) a tool to achieve that and b) the visible token with which you can display said fame and glory. But nobody... and I can't stress it enough in writing, NOBODY farms gear for the sake of farming gear on a long term. Trust me on that. So this change from ANet solves nothing.

P.S.: We're really now talking about the same thing in two threads, aren't we?

Edit: With "nobody" I actually meant the people you think need gear progression. Not the ladies that like to farm armor for actual looks. Haha.

Just to add my own experience to this...

Back when I used to play WoW (this was during Burning Crusade), I did a lot of pvp. I loved the Arena, and I played in it as much as I could convince my partner to do so. Between arena matches, I spent hours every day farming honor in the handful of battlegrounds. I grinded honor day in and day out, until I hated playing in the battlegrounds. At one point, I even found myself siding with the AFKers who just queued up to leech honor off the backs of those who actually did the work during the matches.

I did this, all because I needed to buy the top tier pvp gear, in order to stay competitive.

I didn't do it because I wanted to, I did it because I needed to, if I was going to stay competitive.

At the end of the day, the only piece of gear in my whole set that I was actually proud to earn was my healing mace, because it was score-locked to 1800+ arena score, and it was the visual representation that I had actually achieved something. The fact that it was a top tier pvp item was just a bonus; the most exciting part were the bragging rights of having an 1800 rating team and being able to prove it by showing off that visual "token" of my achievement.

[Lagger]

Well, first off, we're talking PvE here. And if you're into competetive PvP, you wouldn't play on live servers but on arena servers. You kinda walked into that grind trap, which surely is there, but there was an alternative where you got handed the top tier items and sent off to the arena just with a few clicks.

There is a chance that I'm misremembering the timing, but I'm fairly sure that arena severs went into the whole game system together with arenas. I was never that deeply into the PvP side, so I could be wrong.

But I think you're agreeing with me, so I'm not going to argue with you.

[Fey]

Well, first off, we're talking PvE here. And if you're into competetive PvP, you wouldn't play on live servers but on arena servers. You kinda walked into that grind trap, which surely is there, but there was an alternative where you got handed the top tier items and sent off to the arena just with a few clicks.

There is a chance that I'm misremembering the timing, but I'm fairly sure that arena severs went into the whole game system together with arenas. I was never that deeply into the PvP side, so I could be wrong.

But I think you're agreeing with me, so I'm not going to argue with you.

Uhhh.... Are you talking about the illegal fan servers?

[Ruse]

At the end of the day, the only piece of gear in my whole set that I was actually proud to earn was my healing mace, because it was score-locked to 1800+ arena score, and it was the visual representation that I had actually achieved something. The fact that it was a top tier pvp item was just a bonus; the most exciting part were the bragging rights of having an 1800 rating team and being able to prove it by showing off that visual "token" of my achievement.

This is pretty brilliant. Because this is what GW2 is really lacking, progression wise. There's very little that you're proud to own or display, because there's very little that can't be accomplished with time and/or money. Imo, there should be a title, for instance, for doing the Mad King Clocktower. It was pretty easy for a few platformers I'm sure, but it absolutely wasn't easy for most players and it wasn't something that you could outgear or outlast. You either got better, or you didn't.

Dungeon gear? Meh. Matter of time, even to someone who does dungeons very rarely and who goes into many encounters blind (because the guildmates with me don't do them much either). It's not hard to muddle through. The only exception I can think of is bringing several condition builds to kill the skelk nests in AC, but that still wasn't hard, just annoying.

Legendaries? Even there, there's nothing actually difficult or skillful about getting them, except in the sense of being skilled at amassing personal wealth. Mystic Forge rare skins? Make money. PvE/WvW titles? Invest time and you'll get them.

There's no rankings in WvW tracking who has the most kills or escorted the most caravans or whatever broken down for each class/server. There's no really difficult PvE content so that rewards from that dungeon/encounter have any prestige. There are a few titles related to sPvP tourney wins, but those are capped kinda low and earning skins/glory/ranks is a matter of time spent, not necessarily skill.

So...yeah. I'm driven by cosmetics/fun, but for people who want prestige, there's really nothing there for them. That, imo, is the "gap" they should have targeted; not created an artificial one involving stats.

[Fey]

This is pretty brilliant. Because this is what GW2 is really lacking, progression wise. There's very little that you're proud to own or display, because there's very little that can't be accomplished with time and/or money.

The problem is, the only way any of these ideas really work in an MMO are the very reason why you stopped playing

Quite literally. If a game is designed to be accessible where everything is fairly easily obtained (even legendaries compared to WoW legendaries) then it creates a situation where everyone has access to everything and thus, nothing is unique and that lack of accomplishment is gone.

Some of the guildies and I killed a really neat bonus boss in Fractals tonight. That sense of accomplishment that we started from level 1 difficulty since some of them were first timers and pushed upward, we were presented with a boss none of us had seen and some really cool loot for beating it.

Progression works, it's not a bad thing, it gives people that sense. I've said it before and I'll say it again. Progression is only bad when nothing else is available to do.

you want to come back and play with meeeee

[Vayne]

But adding titles would certainly be an optional grind, if those titles didn't give anyone an in game advantage. I do think this game could do with more meaningful titles. Stuff you can show off about specific accomplishments. I'd like to see more titles to the existing achievements even.

[Centaur]

Centaur wants the entire map to be relavant and it is. List yesterday there were tons of people where they were being directed. What you can't have is a fully open world and in that world, thousands of players going where they want, and expecting to have enough people in each area. People WILL have to be channeled, or there won't be enough people in the open world to do content. There won't be enough people to make groups.

When the game goes live, it's not a problem. Everyone is in the same zones. At level cap it IS a problem.

No it isn't! And actually, when the game went live it was a problem, as having everyone in the same few zones resulted in having way too many people in all the starter zones, so that every single event turned into a huge zerg-fest. The starter zones were overflowing, multiple overflow servers were operational, and most of those were overflowing as well.
There are thousands of players on each server, and there's only 25 zones. So if ArenaNet made all zones equally relevant, it should be easy enough to constantly have a few hundred players (as opposed to a dozen or so) in every zone. Instead, what they are doing is funneling all the thousands of players into a few specific areas/zones. So sure, during events like this one there will be thousands of players in some specific zones again (more zerg-fests), to the extent where you have multiple overflow servers kicking in again. And the other zones will be even emptier than usual.
What ArenaNet originally told us was that at level cap, all the zones would be relevant. That simply isn't true. There is absolutely no reason why anyone at level cap would want to revisit the lower level zones unless they need to farm crafting materials there. That is what they should be addressing.

The problem is, the only way any of these ideas really work in an MMO are the very reason why you stopped playing

Quite literally. If a game is designed to be accessible where everything is fairly easily obtained (even legendaries compared to WoW legendaries) then it creates a situation where everyone has access to everything and thus, nothing is unique and that lack of accomplishment is gone.

All content should be available to everyone, but not all rewards have to be. I wouldn't have a problem with legendaries becoming more rare and harder to obtain, and there being an intermediate type of gear (ascended) as mid-term 'achievement' goal for those who want it, if those sets of gear had the exact same stats as exotic gear, and thus were completely optional. Rare and unique gear doesn't have to differ in stats and was never supposed to. Its looks (the 'visual representation', as Greyfeld called it) are much more important for recognizing the achievement, than the stats associated with it. Ruse, I and many others wouldn't have a problem with gear that is rare, visually unique and requires a lot of grinding, but is entirely optional and is no different in stats than anything else in the game. But as soon as you start giving these items higher stats, it means the majority of players will want that gear (that's just human nature), and they will want them now. And if you then even start introducing endgame content that requires that gear, then you've introduced tiered content and a required gear grind.

[Lagger]

Uhhh.... Are you talking about the illegal fan servers?

No, I am talking about the official tournament arena servers. You pay 15 bucks or so and have fun.

[Vayne]

No it isn't! And actually, when the game went live it was a problem, as having everyone in the same few zones resulted in having way too many people in all the starter zones, so that every single event turned into a huge zerg-fest. The starter zones were overflowing, multiple overflow servers were operational, and most of those were overflowing as well.
There are thousands of players on each server, and there's only 25 zones. So if ArenaNet made all zones equally relevant, it should be easy enough to constantly have a few hundred players (as opposed to a dozen or so) in every zone. Instead, what they are doing is funneling all the thousands of players into a few specific areas/zones. So sure, during events like this one there will be thousands of players in some specific zones again (more zerg-fests), to the extent where you have multiple overflow servers kicking in again. And the other zones will be even emptier than usual.
What ArenaNet originally told us was that at level cap, all the zones would be relevant. That simply isn't true. There is absolutely no reason why anyone at level cap would want to revisit the lower level zones unless they need to farm crafting materials there. That is what they should be addressing.




All content should be available to everyone, but not all rewards have to be. I wouldn't have a problem with legendaries becoming more rare and harder to obtain, and there being an intermediate type of gear (ascended) as mid-term 'achievement' goal for those who want it, if those sets of gear had the exact same stats as exotic gear, and thus were completely optional. Rare and unique gear doesn't have to differ in stats and was never supposed to. Its looks (the 'visual representation', as Greyfeld called it) are much more important for recognizing the achievement, than the stats associated with it. Ruse, I and many others wouldn't have a problem with gear that is rare, visually unique and requires a lot of grinding, but is entirely optional and is no different in stats than anything else in the game. But as soon as you start giving these items higher stats, it means the majority of players will want that gear (that's just human nature), and they will want them now. And if you then even start introducing endgame content that requires that gear, then you've introduced tiered content and a required gear grind.

On your first point, games going live is always the exception to the rule. What's needed is to funnel people into different areas. For example, the event, after the main event, funneled people into Lion's Arch, Caladan Forest and Kessex Hills. It split the zones into 3, but it wasn't a zerg at any of the ones I'd been to. It's not about putting everyone at one place, so much as consolidating places to some degree. If no one has that, everyone will just be in the final zone or two, which is what you don't want.

On the issue of mandatory grind, what I've seen so far isn't mandatory. You're making assumptions I'm not making. I don't have to go for the new gear and I probably won't. I'm not likely even going to get exotic on every character, because it doesn't necessarily make sense too. At least, I won't be getting exotic that quickly.

People have been complaining the game's too easy. Not getting that gear makes the game more challenging anyway, so how is it mandatory.

By the time you need that gear, I'm pretty sure it will be readily available. That's the way way Anet has always works. I think you're being blinded by numbers.