I love how people cried there wasnt anything end game, and now that End game is added and people can have something to work *harder* towards to, people starts Crying that they made end game and some sort of gear progression...
I personally wish at this point in time, Game Makers would stop listening to the headless chickens that now populate their games.... people are just never happy anymore.
It's amazing how truly dividing this issue is. For me it's a step in the right direction, but not quite enough to get me committed to GW2 again. But even such a small step is enough to put some people into a rage. If the ascended gear is available as world drops, as they seem to sugest, and is also craftable, I don't see the issue.
The game badly needs character progression, if they have some clever way of making it appealling without resorting to gear treadmills then that's great. Otherwise, a mini gear treadmill isn't a huge deal. Each so called tier in GW2 is so very close to the next that it would take a year of such gear improvments to actually represent a full tier between say rare gear and the top level.
As a gamer who loves to adventure casually, I do not find it in the least bit rewarding or incentivizing to have my adventuring rewards come through crafting or as a 0.00001% random world drop. If you used that same argument for top end raid gear being only attainable through crafting and ultra rare world drops, you'd hear a niche gameplay audience make more noise than the entire gaming population combined.
People need to slow down and just breathe a bit. Anet never promised there would be no gear progression in GW2. They only promised that it wouldn't be as prominent, and I'm pretty sure it isn't. If they want to keep players for the long haul, they have to dangle some sort of carrott in front of their faces. The illusion that so many people had of being able to play GW2 without an exterior motivation was simply laughable.
I think people associate any kind of progression with gear a "gear treadmill". Which is funny b/c everyone were fine with green>yellow>orange system already in gw2. Suddently it is not ok.. hmm
Since this is all just one part of a bigger package, why don't we all chill out a bit and see how it works out. If it ends up being a gear treadmill, we'll find that out pretty quickly. However, until the content comes out, we have nothing but speculation.
And, as I found in another thread about this very issue, many people opt not to read an entire post before going off the rails. So far, Anet has been pretty good about listening to people but still following their "inner compass". Hopefully that hasn't changed.
I personally have faith in them but I do admit to being a little worried, especially at first, about what the new dungeons/armor/infused items mean for the game. So far from what I've read, my fears seem to be unfounded, but we'll know for sure probably by Monday.
You want me to pay to play a game I already paid for???
I think people associate any kind of progression with gear a "gear treadmill". Which is funny b/c everyone were fine with green>yellow>orange system already in gw2. Suddently it is not ok.. hmm
If the gear is part of your natural character progression through the game (new gear and new stats as you level) then it's not a treadmill, it's a natural function of the game.
What I think most people mean by treadmill is the idea that you have to continually run dungeons, or some other content, so you can continually get better gear. And it repeats over and over for each new content release.
So, gear progression while leveling = ok.
Gear progression so you can run a dungeon so you can get better gear to run another dungeon and repeating that over and over = not ok.
You want me to pay to play a game I already paid for???
It doesn't have to be one or the other. I have no qualms with occasional gear progression as long as it doesn't keep players out of content. I am a casual player with long term goals. I will be playing far into the future to meet those goals. However if GW2 becomes a gear grind with strict content gear Rex'ss to keep the 'I don't have a life' players happy then it wil be time for me to go. Personally I doubt it will come to that.
Why didnt they just make the stats the same as exotics ? It already has the 'infusion slot' for whatever is needed for agony, so why make it any stronger at all?
I dont care how much it is. "We'll start small guys, add a few points here and there, a slot for more upgrades, let people get to liking those, then BAM! Tiered gear and we have a winner!"
I think people associate any kind of progression with gear a "gear treadmill". Which is funny b/c everyone were fine with green>yellow>orange system already in gw2. Suddently it is not ok.. hmm
If the gear is part of your natural character progression through the game (new gear and new stats as you level) then it's not a treadmill, it's a natural function of the game.
What I think most people mean by treadmill is the idea that you have to continually run dungeons, or some other content, so you can continually get better gear. And it repeats over and over for each new content release.
So, gear progression while leveling = ok.
Gear progression so you can run a dungeon so you can get better gear to run another dungeon and repeating that over and over = not ok.
So I would have to run the same dungeon over and over and over untill I get all my gear and then do it again when the next dungeon comes out? I wouldn't want to do that either. But then this question pops up in my mind. Is the gear BOP or BOE? If it's BOE then I'll just buy it when I save up enough coin. But then I would always be broke if I constantly had to keep buying the new gear.
They just need to make it so that you can only run the dungeon once a week. Then the raiders will be happy. There will be tons of endgame because it will take a long time to acheive because people won't be doing 50 dungeon runs each night so they can be the first to complain about how little content it amounted to be.
All of my posts are either intelligent, thought provoking, funny, satirical, sarcastic or intentionally disrespectful. Take your pick.
I get banned in the forums for games I love, so lets see if I do better in the forums for games I hate.
I enjoy the serenity of not caring what your opinion is.
Seriously, I dont get why some people play MMORPGs.
The whole idea of the rpg-part is to grow a character and make it distinctive from other characters.
It is ok to have leveling from 1 till 80(characterprogression) but after that it is forbidden?
What is the fun in THAT? Why would you stop progression at a certain point?
It doesnt have to be levels : new skills, alternate advancement/abilities, gear, the possibility to take on harder or different content.
Some of you sound like you want an actiongame: start at maxlevel and never change; only bashing things on the head and be happy with your achievement of having killed 1000 or 5000 of the same mobs.
Sorry if I sound a little bitter but for me characterprogression and differentation is what has kept these games interesting all those years and the last years I see a big push to make every character the same: characters must be perfectly balanced, classes being clones of eachother ability-wise; being able to do everything on one character.
Am i the only one who thinks that Character progression is not one umbrella term for all kind of progressions but a specific category?
Having said that you can also make content gates with skill (progression) or even character "feature" stat progression.
An example would be a 100d lock in D&D, you can't unlock the door and the dungeon before you can get 100d and that's when you are lvl 12 with + x tools and 20 points spend into unlocking.
People don't like treadmill systems and that all winds up on GEAR is due to what EQ/WOW did to the mmo genre.
To me, the issue of treadmills isn't resolved even if ANet decided to get those upgrades into my "character" rather than the items. That is for me where ANet failes and violates their own agenda.
They promised progression without treadmills, yet all they do is tradmills, adding pun to the issue by even beeing GEAR treadmills.
All the ressources gone into this disaster could habe been used for real dynamic events, or even fixing & introducing what is still not working at all.
* Level Scaling * Dynamic event scaling (seriously a core feature that isn't workign at all, we all love the same 10 corps groups spawns when there are 50 people or 5 - no we don't) * Guesting * Character Story (the disgracing endfight with zaitan..urgh) * fixing every damn dungeon, all of them are so damn bug ridden it's not even funny etc,,,
People complain about the ascended gear like its some end all beat all gear that you MUST have. It serves but ONE purpose, it's statistical difference is minimal compared to the exotic and legendary gear(literally like 3-7 point differences in most areas), Will mostly be for aesthetics and to help players combat the new "agony" condition (which I've seen none of the complainers mention which tells me they haven't read squat!), and won't affect PvP whats-so-ever.
So with all of this in mind...what's the issue? Are you afraid to rustle your jimmies and work for something new? Or do you just want to stick with the same content you have now and never have anything added to the game. Honestly if Arenanet had just added dungeons and a new map you would be crying about how they're not adding any new skins or new weapons to work for and saying that GW2's progression is shallow.
Get over yourselves already. It's coming. Is it a gear grind? hardly...I mean we don't even know what steps are involved in getting them yet. [mod edit]
Originally posted by TheIronLegion People complain about the ascended gear like its some end all beat all gear that you MUST have. It serves but ONE purpose, it's statistical difference is minimal compared to the exotic and legendary gear(literally like 3-7 point differences in most areas), Will mostly be for aesthetics and to help players combat the new "agony" condition (which I've seen none of the complainers mention which tells me they haven't read squat!), and won't affect PvP whats-so-ever.
Oh they all mention Agony, we even have specific threads for it, it's rather more a delusional fanboy hater denial thing so they can make fallacy arguments
Originally posted by TheIronLegion People complain about the ascended gear like its some end all beat all gear that you MUST have. It serves but ONE purpose, it's statistical difference is minimal compared to the exotic and legendary gear(literally like 3-7 point differences in most areas), Will mostly be for aesthetics and to help players combat the new "agony" condition (which I've seen none of the complainers mention which tells me they haven't read squat!), and won't affect PvP whats-so-ever.
Oh they all mention Agony, we even have specific threads for it, it's rather more a delusional fanboy hater denial thing so they can make fallacy arguments
*hands you the winning lottery numbers* i like your answer...
I never understood the adversion to end game charcter progression. How on earth can someone do the exact same thing over and over and over in a PROGRAMMED game, a game with no real variations do to natural causes and get nothing out of it?
The pat on the back for doing it only goes so far. Sorry you can play the socialist angle where everyone is equal and you get nothing for your effort, but Im a capitalist, I want real progression and rewards for my efforts. Not a useless achievement marker in some screen Ill never look at.
What is wrong with rewarding people for their efforts? Nothing.
I dont mind progression, I do mind when the company states it is going to be different and not have it.
Besides Anet was created to innovate, so why not innovate on character progression. Instead of gear progression go charachter progression. GW2 is dieing for some Alternate Advancement system or Realm Rank systems.
Sandbox means open world, non-linear gaming PERIOD!
Subscription Gaming, especially MMO gaming is a Cash grab bigger then the most P2W cash shop!
Bring Back Exploration and lengthy progression times. RPG's have always been about the Journey not the destination!!!
I never understood the adversion to end game charcter progression. How on earth can someone do the exact same thing over and over and over in a PROGRAMMED game, a game with no real variations do to natural causes and get nothing out of it?
The pat on the back for doing it only goes so far. Sorry you can play the socialist angle where everyone is equal and you get nothing for your effort, but Im a capitalist, I want real progression and rewards for my efforts. Not a useless achievement marker in some screen Ill never look at.
What is wrong with rewarding people for their efforts? Nothing.
I also am a capitalist and I believe in rewarding people for excelence not persistent mediocrity. The gear treadmill in other games is a problem not because you get better gear but because the means to get it are not based on skill but on time spent. The first step in destroying this incredibly destructive gameplay mechanic is to remove it entirely. The next step (Not Sure if Anet will succeed) is adding back in better gear but making it legitimately difficult but not require huge amounts of time. The dungeon gear is close enough to reward the people who mindless spend hours playing now hopefully they will try introduce legitimately better gear that is skill based rather than time based.
I also am a capitalist and I believe in rewarding people for excelence not persistent mediocrity. The gear treadmill in other games is a problem not because you get better gear but because the means to get it are not based on skill but on time spent. The first step in destroying this incredibly destructive gameplay mechanic is to remove it entirely. The next step (Not Sure if Anet will succeed) is adding back in better gear but making it legitimately difficult but not require huge amounts of time. The dungeon gear is close enough to reward the people who mindless spend hours playing now hopefully they will try introduce legitimately better gear that is skill based rather than time based.
Anything introduced that is based on true gamer skill will spark a fire that makes this Ascended nonsense seem like a match. Look what happened when Arenanet put in a genuinely hard jumping puzzle for Halloween - dozens of complaint pages in dozens of thread. Now imagine the result if there was an advantage to be gained (better gear, more skills, etc) by completing that puzzle. Armageddon.
The reason RPG systems are popular is that it's usually possible to outgear a given encounter if allowed sufficient time. That way people of poor-average personal skill can still complete the content. If something is permanently gated behind a skill-barrier, people will drop the game in frustration by the hundreds.
Remember the old NES games that were genuinely tough? I remember reading some abysmal stat on the number of players that actually "beat" those style of games - well under half just quit the game at some point and tossed it on a shelf forever. A very bad plan to follow for an MMO.
There has to be some kind of progression that illustrates your character getting better over time. No MMO can survive without some goal to achieve once the leveling experience ends, and that goal has to have a lot of repeatability built in as development takes many times longer than playing the content.
Ascended gear seems to be trying a new spin on progression, with the better gear only being relevant to the content you are trying to progress through. A player with Ascended gear and max infusions OUTSIDE of the Fractals dungeon will be effectively indistinguishable from someone who has only slotted exotics. At least, that's how I read it, and if so - the plan is to do the same thing with future content (which will presumably be focused on other playstyles).
As the saying goes don't take a devs early "promotional wording" as final.. We have seen it countless times before, so why did most give arenanet the benefit of the doubt based of a single merit title (GW1) they had before, pfft... this progression can work to some extent, here's how.. Since they have the means to stat scale base on the area your in and lv.. They could make these new items stats go up when your in a dungeon, and out in a zone scale the stats back to the norm of other high level items..
Comments
I love how people cried there wasnt anything end game, and now that End game is added and people can have something to work *harder* towards to, people starts Crying that they made end game and some sort of gear progression...
I personally wish at this point in time, Game Makers would stop listening to the headless chickens that now populate their games.... people are just never happy anymore.
As a gamer who loves to adventure casually, I do not find it in the least bit rewarding or incentivizing to have my adventuring rewards come through crafting or as a 0.00001% random world drop. If you used that same argument for top end raid gear being only attainable through crafting and ultra rare world drops, you'd hear a niche gameplay audience make more noise than the entire gaming population combined.
I want to know what a "gear treadmill" is.
I think people associate any kind of progression with gear a "gear treadmill". Which is funny b/c everyone were fine with green>yellow>orange system already in gw2. Suddently it is not ok.. hmm
Since this is all just one part of a bigger package, why don't we all chill out a bit and see how it works out. If it ends up being a gear treadmill, we'll find that out pretty quickly. However, until the content comes out, we have nothing but speculation.
And, as I found in another thread about this very issue, many people opt not to read an entire post before going off the rails. So far, Anet has been pretty good about listening to people but still following their "inner compass". Hopefully that hasn't changed.
I personally have faith in them but I do admit to being a little worried, especially at first, about what the new dungeons/armor/infused items mean for the game. So far from what I've read, my fears seem to be unfounded, but we'll know for sure probably by Monday.
You want me to pay to play a game I already paid for???
Be afraid.....The dragons are HERE!
If the gear is part of your natural character progression through the game (new gear and new stats as you level) then it's not a treadmill, it's a natural function of the game.
What I think most people mean by treadmill is the idea that you have to continually run dungeons, or some other content, so you can continually get better gear. And it repeats over and over for each new content release.
So, gear progression while leveling = ok.
Gear progression so you can run a dungeon so you can get better gear to run another dungeon and repeating that over and over = not ok.
You want me to pay to play a game I already paid for???
Be afraid.....The dragons are HERE!
Why didnt they just make the stats the same as exotics ? It already has the 'infusion slot' for whatever is needed for agony, so why make it any stronger at all?
I dont care how much it is. "We'll start small guys, add a few points here and there, a slot for more upgrades, let people get to liking those, then BAM! Tiered gear and we have a winner!"
The Deep Web is sca-ry.
Arena.Net just dropped the ball.
Next patch: Instanced Raids.
So I would have to run the same dungeon over and over and over untill I get all my gear and then do it again when the next dungeon comes out? I wouldn't want to do that either. But then this question pops up in my mind. Is the gear BOP or BOE? If it's BOE then I'll just buy it when I save up enough coin. But then I would always be broke if I constantly had to keep buying the new gear.
All of my posts are either intelligent, thought provoking, funny, satirical, sarcastic or intentionally disrespectful. Take your pick.
I get banned in the forums for games I love, so lets see if I do better in the forums for games I hate.
I enjoy the serenity of not caring what your opinion is.
I don't hate much, but I hate Apple© with a passion. If Steve Jobs was alive, I would punch him in the face.
Seriously, I dont get why some people play MMORPGs.
The whole idea of the rpg-part is to grow a character and make it distinctive from other characters.
It is ok to have leveling from 1 till 80(characterprogression) but after that it is forbidden?
What is the fun in THAT? Why would you stop progression at a certain point?
It doesnt have to be levels : new skills, alternate advancement/abilities, gear, the possibility to take on harder or different content.
Some of you sound like you want an actiongame: start at maxlevel and never change; only bashing things on the head and be happy with your achievement of having killed 1000 or 5000 of the same mobs.
Sorry if I sound a little bitter but for me characterprogression and differentation is what has kept these games interesting all those years and the last years I see a big push to make every character the same: characters must be perfectly balanced, classes being clones of eachother ability-wise; being able to do everything on one character.
These are all things that kill my fun.
Am i the only one who thinks that Character progression is not one umbrella term for all kind of progressions but a specific category?
Having said that you can also make content gates with skill (progression) or even character "feature" stat progression.
An example would be a 100d lock in D&D, you can't unlock the door and the dungeon before you can get 100d and that's when you are lvl 12 with + x tools and 20 points spend into unlocking.
People don't like treadmill systems and that all winds up on GEAR is due to what EQ/WOW did to the mmo genre.
To me, the issue of treadmills isn't resolved even if ANet decided to get those upgrades into my "character" rather than the items. That is for me where ANet failes and violates their own agenda.
They promised progression without treadmills, yet all they do is tradmills, adding pun to the issue by even beeing GEAR treadmills.
All the ressources gone into this disaster could habe been used for real dynamic events, or even fixing & introducing what is still not working at all.
* Level Scaling
* Dynamic event scaling (seriously a core feature that isn't workign at all, we all love the same 10 corps groups spawns when there are 50 people or 5 - no we don't)
* Guesting
* Character Story (the disgracing endfight with zaitan..urgh)
* fixing every damn dungeon, all of them are so damn bug ridden it's not even funny
etc,,,
People complain about the ascended gear like its some end all beat all gear that you MUST have. It serves but ONE purpose, it's statistical difference is minimal compared to the exotic and legendary gear(literally like 3-7 point differences in most areas), Will mostly be for aesthetics and to help players combat the new "agony" condition (which I've seen none of the complainers mention which tells me they haven't read squat!), and won't affect PvP whats-so-ever.
So with all of this in mind...what's the issue? Are you afraid to rustle your jimmies and work for something new? Or do you just want to stick with the same content you have now and never have anything added to the game. Honestly if Arenanet had just added dungeons and a new map you would be crying about how they're not adding any new skins or new weapons to work for and saying that GW2's progression is shallow.
Get over yourselves already. It's coming. Is it a gear grind? hardly...I mean we don't even know what steps are involved in getting them yet. [mod edit]
Oh they all mention Agony, we even have specific threads for it, it's rather more a delusional fanboy hater denial thing so they can make fallacy arguments
*hands you the winning lottery numbers* i like your answer...
I dont mind progression, I do mind when the company states it is going to be different and not have it.
Besides Anet was created to innovate, so why not innovate on character progression. Instead of gear progression go charachter progression. GW2 is dieing for some Alternate Advancement system or Realm Rank systems.
Sandbox means open world, non-linear gaming PERIOD!
Subscription Gaming, especially MMO gaming is a Cash grab bigger then the most P2W cash shop!
Bring Back Exploration and lengthy progression times. RPG's have always been about the Journey not the destination!!!
I also am a capitalist and I believe in rewarding people for excelence not persistent mediocrity. The gear treadmill in other games is a problem not because you get better gear but because the means to get it are not based on skill but on time spent. The first step in destroying this incredibly destructive gameplay mechanic is to remove it entirely. The next step (Not Sure if Anet will succeed) is adding back in better gear but making it legitimately difficult but not require huge amounts of time. The dungeon gear is close enough to reward the people who mindless spend hours playing now hopefully they will try introduce legitimately better gear that is skill based rather than time based.
Anything introduced that is based on true gamer skill will spark a fire that makes this Ascended nonsense seem like a match. Look what happened when Arenanet put in a genuinely hard jumping puzzle for Halloween - dozens of complaint pages in dozens of thread. Now imagine the result if there was an advantage to be gained (better gear, more skills, etc) by completing that puzzle. Armageddon.
The reason RPG systems are popular is that it's usually possible to outgear a given encounter if allowed sufficient time. That way people of poor-average personal skill can still complete the content. If something is permanently gated behind a skill-barrier, people will drop the game in frustration by the hundreds.
Remember the old NES games that were genuinely tough? I remember reading some abysmal stat on the number of players that actually "beat" those style of games - well under half just quit the game at some point and tossed it on a shelf forever. A very bad plan to follow for an MMO.
There has to be some kind of progression that illustrates your character getting better over time. No MMO can survive without some goal to achieve once the leveling experience ends, and that goal has to have a lot of repeatability built in as development takes many times longer than playing the content.
Ascended gear seems to be trying a new spin on progression, with the better gear only being relevant to the content you are trying to progress through. A player with Ascended gear and max infusions OUTSIDE of the Fractals dungeon will be effectively indistinguishable from someone who has only slotted exotics. At least, that's how I read it, and if so - the plan is to do the same thing with future content (which will presumably be focused on other playstyles).
this progression can work to some extent, here's how..
Since they have the means to stat scale base on the area your in and lv.. They could make these new items stats go up when your in a dungeon, and out in a zone scale the stats back to the norm of other high level items..
Did you even look at the stats, William Murphy? There's definitely more than "one or two" points difference between exotics and ascended.
If you're going to write an article on it, please actually do your research.