The most worrisome thing in the Reddit thread was actually the hint of a level cap increase. That would instantly make ALL gear obsolete.
A level increase is very likely to come in an expansion, based on what they said in pre-release interviews.
They did say that.
People really need to read everything - Ascended Items were suggested also. Nothing here is new. Yes, they did a bad introduction but that is all.
Do you think if they introuduced Ascended gear differently GW2 fans would have been more receiving?
After 2 1/2 weeks, I haven't heard Aerowyn weigh in on this one. I'm really surprised. People on this site seemed to like the way she/he explained things.
Don't get me wrong, I wish the Ascended gear didn't exist. But even a 5% increase in total stats is only a small factor in the game (especially since sPvP is not an issue here.)
The point is that I can't get too worked up about such a minor advantage.
The most worrisome thing in the Reddit thread was actually the hint of a level cap increase. That would instantly make ALL gear obsolete.
Was stated way before the game even had a release date.
I might get banned for this. - Rizel Star.
I'm not afraid to tell trolls what they [need] to hear, even if that means for me to have an forced absence afterwards.
P2P LOGIC = If it's P2P it means longevity, overall better game, and THE BEST SUPPORT EVER!!!!!(Which has been rinsed and repeated about a thousand times)
Common Sense Logic = P2P logic is no better than F2P Logic.
Actually, it's very likely this AMA was caused by the uproar on official forums. So, sometimes "whining" is a smart thing to do. If people don't complain, how the hell are devs supposed to know what their customers dislike? Of course, complaining here is quite pointless, but so is praising the game.
"we have never said there would be no vertical progression. We do intent to focus on horizontal but we will have vertical progression moving forward with the focus on zero grind and a very low power curve."
In other words, we are going to lie to you now and say we always intended to be a WOW clone and that our Manifesto was total BS the entire time, god its only going to get worse now, if you don't like grinding gear I advise you get a refund while you still can.
Before this patch there was vertical progression of gear in the game. Once you hit 80 you had to gear up blue to green to exotic. Why weren't you screaming about it and calling them liars then?
No you didn't those stat increases were marginal, Ascended not only ups the bar on the stats, it also creates a mandatory window to do the dungeons because of Agony. Hell even if the stats were the same adding agony alone creates its own treadmill. Not to mention the boost it will give in WvWvW. Before this patch you would have passively picked up applicable greens and blues anyway just by playing the game. Ascended gear forces the issue and makes what used to be optional dungeons into a mandatory grind. I wont waste too much time arguing about it since frankly I am looking/waiting for other games now. If you are happy with it fine by me.
Concerning stat improvement, let's look at 5 rings of the same stat type but of varying quality. I chose Chyrsocola (condi/power/vit).
Fine
Masterwork
Rare
Exotic
Ascended
Condition damage
41(14)
55(18)
59(21)
67(25)
71(32)
Power
29(10)
39(12)
42(13)
48(15)
50(18)
Vitality
29(10)
39(12)
42(13)
48(15)
50(18)
Total Stats
133
175
190
218
239
Stats in parenthesis are from gems of a similar quality. For ascended items, these stats are incorporated into the item itself and they come with a specific infusion slot.
The stat increase from Fine to Masterwork quality is 31.6%
The stat increase from Masterwork to Rare quality is 8.6%
The stat increase from Rare to Exotic quality is 14.7%
The stat increase from Exotic to Ascended quality is 9.6%.
So no, the stat increases between the other qualities were NOT any more marginal than the increase from exotic to ascended. And the statement "before this patch you would have passively picked up applicable blues and greens anyway by just playing the game" is rendered ludicrous any which way you meant it it. For one, you still passively pick up blues and greens. As far as them being "applicable," they were never applicable to anything at least as far as min/maxers are concerned, who are the ONLY people who have a reasonable issue with the new ascended gear. If you used "applicable blues and greens" before, you can still use them now; but they will be just as bad. And if you used green/blue gear before, you obviously weren't a min/maxer, you were already playing while extremely underpowered relative to many of your peers (and presumably either didn't notice or didn't care), and you have no more reason to care now. If you were actually doing WvW in "applicable blues/greens," then you were fighting enemies in exotics who had between 24.6 and 63.9% more stats from gear. If you didn't care about that, you sure as hell shouldn't care about the extra 10% gap.
Concerning min/maxers, many of them were the exact players looking for something else to progress toward because previous statistical min/maxing could be achieved so quickly after reaching 80 in GW2. I honestly don't think these people are the one's doing much of the complaining.
Lastly, concerning Agony and infusions, we really have no clue where Anet is going with these yet. Any speculation about gating content is just that: speculation. Currently, the only thing it "gates" is level XX of FotM. Once again, to min/maxers and hardcore progressionists, this probably won't be gated at all, as they will get the gear. To everyone else, especially those who are complaining about grinding FotM, the only thing this gates you from is doing MORE FOTM. Do you really care about this or are you just looking to take an emotional moral stance on something and get riled up over something that's largely inconsequential to you?
You need to research more items.
There are Ascended items with much greater gaps than you cherry picked.
Let's not even talk about the fact that no one is limited to only wearing ONE ascended item in the game. There is going to be an entire set of gear in the future and weapons.
You didn't include the gem with the Invader's Ring you linked, which gives an additional 25 power, 15 vitality and 15 toughness (or 25/15/15 of whichever stats you want), for the same exact total stats as the ring I included: 218. Ascended items cannot have gems put in them. This is 42 stat points less than the ascended equivalent, or 11%, most definitely not 48%. Now I'm sure you weren't intentionally trying to skew the stats in your favor, just as I didn't intentionally choose an ascended ring that had fewer stats, so I won't accuse you of doing so. I looked at 3 rings quickly and they all had the same stat breakdown. Not sure why the one you linked has 1 more point for each stat.
Asuming the % stat gain is the same or relatively the same for all ascended gear, your TOTAL stat-from-gear increase with a FULL set of ascended gear would be within that 9-11% range. Just the 2 pieces that are out now would only increase your total stats from gear by no more than 1.5% assuming you previously had full exotics. And remember stats from gear are only a portion of your character's total stats.
"we have never said there would be no vertical progression. We do intent to focus on horizontal but we will have vertical progression moving forward with the focus on zero grind and a very low power curve."
In other words, we are going to lie to you now and say we always intended to be a WOW clone and that our Manifesto was total BS the entire time, god its only going to get worse now, if you don't like grinding gear I advise you get a refund while you still can.
Before this patch there was vertical progression of gear in the game. Once you hit 80 you had to gear up blue to green to exotic. Why weren't you screaming about it and calling them liars then?
No you didn't those stat increases were marginal, Ascended not only ups the bar on the stats, it also creates a mandatory window to do the dungeons because of Agony. Hell even if the stats were the same adding agony alone creates its own treadmill. Not to mention the boost it will give in WvWvW. Before this patch you would have passively picked up applicable greens and blues anyway just by playing the game. Ascended gear forces the issue and makes what used to be optional dungeons into a mandatory grind. I wont waste too much time arguing about it since frankly I am looking/waiting for other games now. If you are happy with it fine by me.
Concerning stat improvement, let's look at 5 rings of the same stat type but of varying quality. I chose Chyrsocola (condi/power/vit).
Fine
Masterwork
Rare
Exotic
Ascended
Condition damage
41(14)
55(18)
59(21)
67(25)
71(32)
Power
29(10)
39(12)
42(13)
48(15)
50(18)
Vitality
29(10)
39(12)
42(13)
48(15)
50(18)
Total Stats
133
175
190
218
239
Stats in parenthesis are from gems of a similar quality. For ascended items, these stats are incorporated into the item itself and they come with a specific infusion slot.
The stat increase from Fine to Masterwork quality is 31.6%
The stat increase from Masterwork to Rare quality is 8.6%
The stat increase from Rare to Exotic quality is 14.7%
The stat increase from Exotic to Ascended quality is 9.6%.
So no, the stat increases between the other qualities were NOT any more marginal than the increase from exotic to ascended. And the statement "before this patch you would have passively picked up applicable blues and greens anyway by just playing the game" is rendered ludicrous any which way you meant it it. For one, you still passively pick up blues and greens. As far as them being "applicable," they were never applicable to anything at least as far as min/maxers are concerned, who are the ONLY people who have a reasonable issue with the new ascended gear. If you used "applicable blues and greens" before, you can still use them now; but they will be just as bad. And if you used green/blue gear before, you obviously weren't a min/maxer, you were already playing while extremely underpowered relative to many of your peers (and presumably either didn't notice or didn't care), and you have no more reason to care now. If you were actually doing WvW in "applicable blues/greens," then you were fighting enemies in exotics who had between 24.6 and 63.9% more stats from gear. If you didn't care about that, you sure as hell shouldn't care about the extra 10% gap.
Concerning min/maxers, many of them were the exact players looking for something else to progress toward because previous statistical min/maxing could be achieved so quickly after reaching 80 in GW2. I honestly don't think these people are the one's doing much of the complaining.
Lastly, concerning Agony and infusions, we really have no clue where Anet is going with these yet. Any speculation about gating content is just that: speculation. Currently, the only thing it "gates" is level XX of FotM. Once again, to min/maxers and hardcore progressionists, this probably won't be gated at all, as they will get the gear. To everyone else, especially those who are complaining about grinding FotM, the only thing this gates you from is doing MORE FOTM. Do you really care about this or are you just looking to take an emotional moral stance on something and get riled up over something that's largely inconsequential to you?
You need to research more items.
There are Ascended items with much greater gaps than you cherry picked.
Let's not even talk about the fact that no one is limited to only wearing ONE ascended item in the game. There is going to be an entire set of gear in the future and weapons.
You didn't include the gem with the Invader's Ring you linked, which gives an additional 25 power, 15 vitality and 15 toughness (or 25/15/15 of whichever stats you want), for the same exact total stats as the ring I included: 218. Ascended items cannot have gems put in them. This is 42 stat points less than the ascended equivalent, or 11%, most definitely not 48%. Now I'm sure you weren't intentionally trying to skew the stats in your favor, just as I didn't intentionally choose an ascended ring that had fewer stats, so I won't accuse you of doing so. I looked at 3 rings quickly and they all had the same stat breakdown. Not sure why the one you linked has 1 more point for each stat.
Asuming the % stat gain is the same or relatively the same for all ascended gear, your TOTAL stat-from-gear increase with a FULL set of ascended gear would be within that 9-11% range. Just the 2 pieces that are out now would only increase your total stats from gear by no more than 1.5% assuming you previously had full exotics. And remember stats from gear are only a portion of your character's total stats.
I didn't include a gem because I didn't count the infusion slot. Why would I count one on one piece of gear and not on another. Since you didn't talk about gems I had no clue you added them in. The comparisons we made weren't on everything so I still suggest that someone come up with their own numbers. There are consumables too especially for W3 that people use like http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Superior_Sharpening_Stone that would scale with stat increases. Now I'm not saying one piece of anything is likely to make your opponent he-man but you add all the gear set (that is coming) together and there will be a large difference. We can revisit the convo in the next year once it's all introduced if you like.
Heh, I highlighted the part where I talked about the gems and infusion slots in my original post. And you would count gems and not infusion slots for 2 reasons.
First, the ascended gear was balanced specifically by adding a little to the stats from the gear piece AND a gem of the same stat type. This is seen by the way stats on the rings are broken down, which is something like the following:
71 power
50 precision
50 vitality
32 power
18 precision
18 vitality
The stats repeat to highlight the increase in base stats and the increase in gem stats. It doesn't have to be displayed this way. I suspect Anet simply wanted to make it more apparent to players exactly where the stats were derrived from.
Second, aside from the specific content that requires the special infusion stat, that infusion adds absolutely nothing to the piece of gear. Currently the only infusion stat is Agony. A player can have 1 million agony resistance in WvW or any PvE area outside of high levels of FotM and it won't mean squat. I think the argument could be made that it would be an interesting gear dynamic if exotics had slightly higher total stats but Ascended gear provided infusions, offering a variety of effects (which we still don't know about yet.) But then I don't think players would be interested in ascended gear at all--at least not if infusion is only useful for what it is currently useful for, which is only to run a harder version of the same exact dungeon you had to run repeatedly to get the ascended item in the first place.
To summarize: Ascended gear's total stats are meant to be slightly higher than exotic gear with gems included. They were balanced specifically around that. The infusion is indpendent of the stat argument entirely because it is a non statistical bonus to help you combat specific content only.
I agree that this conversation can resume way down the road, which was part of my point. Most of players' fears are based on speculation about how this is going to play out, not how anything is practically being affected right now.
The most worrisome thing in the Reddit thread was actually the hint of a level cap increase. That would instantly make ALL gear obsolete.
A level increase is very likely to come in an expansion, based on what they said in pre-release interviews.
They did say that.
People really need to read everything - Ascended Items were suggested also. Nothing here is new. Yes, they did a bad introduction but that is all.
Do you think if they introuduced Ascended gear differently GW2 fans would have been more receiving?
After 2 1/2 weeks, I haven't heard Aerowyn weigh in on this one. I'm really surprised. People on this site seemed to like the way she/he explained things.
Probably would have been taken better, but a sh*tstorm would've also started because people in general love hyperbole, assumptions and rhetoric.
What I wish is that Anet did a better job explaining things the first time around and not after people start raging over nothing.
The most worrisome thing in the Reddit thread was actually the hint of a level cap increase. That would instantly make ALL gear obsolete.
A level increase is very likely to come in an expansion, based on what they said in pre-release interviews.
They did say that.
People really need to read everything - Ascended Items were suggested also. Nothing here is new. Yes, they did a bad introduction but that is all.
Do you think if they introuduced Ascended gear differently GW2 fans would have been more receiving?
After 2 1/2 weeks, I haven't heard Aerowyn weigh in on this one. I'm really surprised. People on this site seemed to like the way she/he explained things.
Probably would have been taken better, but a sh*tstorm would've also started because people in general love hyperbole, assumptions and rhetoric.
What I wish is that Anet did a better job explaining things the first time around and not after people start raging over nothing.
Agreed.
I might get banned for this. - Rizel Star.
I'm not afraid to tell trolls what they [need] to hear, even if that means for me to have an forced absence afterwards.
P2P LOGIC = If it's P2P it means longevity, overall better game, and THE BEST SUPPORT EVER!!!!!(Which has been rinsed and repeated about a thousand times)
Common Sense Logic = P2P logic is no better than F2P Logic.
Originally posted by romanator0 I really hope people didn't expect there to be no vertical progression at all eventually introduced into GW2. It was confirmed before the game's launch that ArenaNet would be raising the level cap with expansions.
Extending the power curve hand in hand with a level cap increase tied to an expansion is a very different thing than this new non-expansion curve/progression/treadmill extension/creation.
Read this old official blogpost and it should be obvious that something has gone off the rails since launch:
Legendaries represent a huge time/effort investment and even in the face of that, Arenanet made a big deal about the fact that Legendaries were all about cosmetics/prestige and would NOT be any more powerful than Exotic Weapons. This just supported other comments they made prior to release which pretty firmly implied that there would be zero gear stat inflation outside of a full expansion.
Ascended gear is a complete departure from this and also presents consequences related to the future stat progression when the first expansion does come out. Instead of the smooth progression between level one and the new level cap, there will be a rather large bump at level 80. In a game where level scaling is a key, core feature, this has to have a negative impact.
It seems likely that Eric Flannum and Colin Johanson are on the team developing the first expansion. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem the Chris Whiteside has the same grasp of and respect for the core design philosophy of the game. There is a lot of backsliding into old MMO design pitfalls, which is obviously going to anger a lot of people who have chosen to play the game, in part, because of the ways in which the game is different than the stale old MMO design.
To return to the linked blog post, is it fun? Well, Fractals of the Mist itself is fun, but it would have been at least as fun, if not more so, with out the attached gear inflation treadmill. Dito for the botched difficulty level system, which is completely fragmenting the GW2 community. A very nice dungeon and encompassing concept tainted by an inexplicable backsliding in the direction of old, failed MMO design tropes.
I still love the game. Fortunately, the game is so massive and there is so much to do I can ignore the elements I don't enjoy and still have fun. However, I'll admit it's hard to ignore a huge mis-step that might just represent a change in design philosophy that could deeply damage the nature and spirit of the game I've come to enjoy and admire.
Don't get me wrong, I wish the Ascended gear didn't exist. But even a 5% increase in total stats is only a small factor in the game (especially since sPvP is not an issue here.)
The point is that I can't get too worked up about such a minor advantage.
The most worrisome thing in the Reddit thread was actually the hint of a level cap increase. That would instantly make ALL gear obsolete.
I'm glad that it indeed appears that the rollout of the full set of ascended gear will take about a year. I'm disturbed by the hint on the AMA that while they aren't planing any new tiers beyond Ascended, that they are considering stat inflation with in the existing tiers. If this was tied entirely to an expansion and level cap increase, that's one thing, but the implication was that this new inflation would also be occuring over the course of the next year.
A continuation of the power curve beyond level 80 would have been trivial if they had stuck with the concept of level 80 exotics representing the pre-expansion stat cap. rare skins would still be valuable as skins and most players would have gained their exotic stat gear in a relatively painless fashion, (though the level of "grind" is arguably more than originally promised).
The introduction of stat inflation pre-expansion, tied to an extremely grindy process, does indeed set up the problem common to lesser MMOs, where gear people have worked very hard to acquire becomes obsolete the minute a new expansion hits the streets!
The entire mess was predictable and avoidable. In the AMA, Chris even says that they foresaw the negative reaction and the issues, but they (he) decided to go ahead with it anyway.
Bad design is bad design and it's sad when a designer has some idea that his design is bad and still decides to go live with it in the game. We have heard all about Arenanet's itterative proccess, even how seemingly good ideas have been trashed after taking up development time because they just did not work in the game. Well, my impression is that Ascended Gear and the current FotM difficulty mechanic would never, ever have made it into the game if it had been conceptualized and developed before launch.
If they are going to toss the design ideals aside in the live environment, just because a design lead didn't have the sense to quash a bad idea before they wasted development resources on it, things will not end well for this game!
Actually, it's very likely this AMA was caused by the uproar on official forums. So, sometimes "whining" is a smart thing to do. If people don't complain, how the hell are devs supposed to know what their customers dislike? Of course, complaining here is quite pointless, but so is praising the game.
That statement is stupid and you know it. No real developer asks you or anyone else how to design their own game. It is their baby. People like to play such games because they seem coherent, fleshed out and see behind that game a developer who knows exactly what to do next. Not because they ask continuously for player feedback, but because they play their very own game and see what is wrong with it.
It is fine to ask for player feedback on pressing issues, moreso if you lack the manpower to get metrics or deeper into the problem yourself (e.g. PvP), but it is wrong to set your sail to the wind that seemingly blows the strongest. There will always be a number of highly vocal people, who want X to be in the game. They complain, make suggestions and whine. Let the whiners out in the cold, but listen to the ones who complain and make suggestions. However you as a dev should always have a bigger plan, a bigger picture, you need to make sure everything fits together and stays within parameters.
They changed the design of their own game shortly after release due to player feedback. At least they said that, then expected a backlash, because they knew they offended one of their own major design choices. There is an uproar in the community, because ANet said multiple times there will be no gear treadmill and zero grind. A lot of people understood it that way, even media outlets. If you play the game, you know both are now lies.
This should be closed to because its a useless argument. It's happening it's in the game and it's not changing. So basically play the game or quit. We get it some of you care bears don't want to leave LA and want welfare gear. Well too bad this isn't wow thank god. This game has all types of content and addresses multiple players. You can either suck it up deal with it or go.
But don't constantly whine some where people have zero power to sway anything. Hell whining on the official forum does nothing as well. So give it a rest and move along with your life. Unless ofcourse your trolling then I say again mods close all the post like this. It's pointless banter and flaming a subject that is pretty much finished.
This should be closed to because its a useless argument. It's happening it's in the game and it's not changing. So basically play the game or quit. We get it some of you care bears don't want to leave LA and want welfare gear. Well too bad this isn't wow thank god. This game has all types of content and addresses multiple players. You can either suck it up deal with it or go.
But don't constantly whine some where people have zero power to sway anything. Hell whining on the official forum does nothing as well. So give it a rest and move along with your life. Unless ofcourse your trolling then I say again mods close all the post like this. It's pointless banter and flaming a subject that is pretty much finished.
Carebears?, what do people that are scared of pvp have to do with anything?
This should be closed to because its a useless argument. It's happening it's in the game and it's not changing. So basically play the game or quit. We get it some of you care bears don't want to leave LA and want welfare gear. Well too bad this isn't wow thank god. This game has all types of content and addresses multiple players. You can either suck it up deal with it or go.
But don't constantly whine some where people have zero power to sway anything. Hell whining on the official forum does nothing as well. So give it a rest and move along with your life. Unless ofcourse your trolling then I say again mods close all the post like this. It's pointless banter and flaming a subject that is pretty much finished.
The community does have the ability to influence the direction of the game, which is why many of us take the time to write on subjects like these.
They knew these things weren't going to be well received. They were right and they haven't been. There has been a complete failure on their part to explain and justify the about face on gear progression. Trying to claim that this was always their intention and they never said anything in the past to lead us to believe there would be no gear inflation outside of inflation tied to a level cap increase just makes matter that much worse.
Some of us were willing to give them the benefit of the doubt and awaited some well reasoned explaination and additional clarification that would put our concerns at ease. Well, guess what, they've failed completely at the half hearted attempt for explaining these design decisions. In fact, it's not hard to take away from the recent AMA that they know they messed up. They knew that the community wouldn't like it, they know these design changes were very problematic, they know these things should never have been rolled out "as is", but they did so anyway because they wasted a lot of development resources on the mess and decided it was better to release a mess than release nothing at all!
They have talked extensively about their internal, iterative process. While developing the game, they were willing to try ideas in game and if they didn't work, they didn't sweat the lost development time. They didn't let egos get in the way. If it didn't work in the context of the game, they removed it and moved on.
Well, now the game is live. It may be more embarrassing to have to admit a mistake to the world than it is to admit a mistake to your co-workers, but there is no reason they should abandon their proven process. They tried it. It doesn't suit the greater context of the game. Experiment tried. Experiment failed. Time to put the kibosh on it an move on.
Ascended gear is, was and will be a mistake. Luckily, they've only introduced Ascended Rings and back pieces. They should freeze it right there. No Infusion Inflation. No Ascended Accessories, Amulets, armor or weapons. Nix it and reserve future stat inflation for expansions and level cap increases.
The way they implimented the difficulty system for FotM was also a mistake. Rankings should have been designed with a reset and if they anticipated people reaching level 30 difficulty in a week, then the system should have been designed around tiers from the start. Given how aggressively they have squashed legitimate farming strategies every where else in the game, how did they ever decide that a persistant difficulty level stat, that never resets and guarantees players with higher rating greatly superior rewards was a good idea? It's such a mind bogglingly bad idea that it's hard to understand how it ever got off the drawing board, let alone into the game!
The game itself is a lesson in superb, thoughtful, holistic game design. Everything about the November update, except for the FotM dungeon fractals themselves, is just a lesson in bad, stale, thoughtless game design with no appreciation for the greater context in which those designs need to fit. Bad, bad, bad.
We get it some of you care bears don't want to leave LA and want welfare gear.
What i find hilarious about this is that all the people who are fine with the changes are the ones currently spamming in LA all day. As someone who is not happy with the recent changes, i hate going to LA for any reason now as its nothing but a reminder of why im thinking of quitting as soon as something else promising comes along. But in the meantime ill be playing the rest of the game, while everyone else enjoys thier "welfare gear" farming in LA.
Whining is not going to resolve anything, specially after Nexon claimed property in the A-NET real state. A-NET does not want to admit it, but its already out of the bag, the changes in the CS proved it. The changes are staying and new ones will be implemented soon. So enjoy what you like and just wait for the new MMO to come.
This should be closed to because its a useless argument. It's happening it's in the game and it's not changing. So basically play the game or quit. We get it some of you care bears don't want to leave LA and want welfare gear. Well too bad this isn't wow thank god. This game has all types of content and addresses multiple players. You can either suck it up deal with it or go.
But don't constantly whine some where people have zero power to sway anything. Hell whining on the official forum does nothing as well. So give it a rest and move along with your life. Unless ofcourse your trolling then I say again mods close all the post like this. It's pointless banter and flaming a subject that is pretty much finished.
Carebears?, what do people that are scared of pvp have to do with anything?
Is this some gear grinder revisionist history?
Where do you get this scared of pvp non sense from? Carebears are people who are too scared basically do anything outside of the box. It's not limited just to pvp its everything considered needing a little strength to do.They whine at the littlest amount of effort needed to be on par with the rest of the population. Which is EXACTLY what is going on right now whining. So if your going to quote me in BUTT in on a conversation atleast know wtf you are talking about in attempts to being humerous.
If you know anything about me and what I do which you don't obviously. You know even way before this I preached options and doing everything. That means PVE/Exploring/Hidden quest/Grinding/PVE....Look at all my vids I said it over and over and been posted in this forum over and over. Don't quote me if you know zip about me failure. And this is proving the point on these threads should be closed. People are just whining and have nothing more to say.
Originally posted by Sleepyfish Originally posted by SilentstormThis should be closed to because its a useless argument. It's happening it's in the game and it's not changing. So basically play the game or quit. We get it some of you care bears don't want to leave LA and want welfare gear. Well too bad this isn't wow thank god. This game has all types of content and addresses multiple players. You can either suck it up deal with it or go.But don't constantly whine some where people have zero power to sway anything. Hell whining on the official forum does nothing as well. So give it a rest and move along with your life. Unless ofcourse your trolling then I say again mods close all the post like this. It's pointless banter and flaming a subject that is pretty much finished.
Carebears?, what do people that are scared of pvp have to do with anything?
Really should have kept his mouth shut, these comments are not going to help the situation at all.
Biggest mistake was saying "we have never said there would be no vertical progression".
Then he says they intend to focus on horizontal progression but will have vertical progression. Slowly rolling out a tier over the course a year then introducing another higher tier doesnt count.
But he also insists that they design the game with everything having little to no grind. How can anyone lie that badly with a straight face? Its so laughably bad you cant get angry at it.
The thing that bothers me the most is he's lying right now about being rewarded for collecting. They nerfed mf so you have to have 250% + to get anything worth while and anytime anyone complains about it they oh well it's completely random...uhm no, mankind has never been able to make an algorithm that is "completely" random, it's not possible. there is ALWAYS a variable +- in our current system of mathematics. The only place this nerf didn't happen was in dungeons (not talking DR talking drop rates) so basically they want us all to run dungeons for progression, uh hello that's THE KEY reason i left WoW, LOTRO, Rift, SWTOR, AoC etc. Dungeon only progression is not fun.
Then they dramatically lowered the number of globs you get per salvage even when using their own store bought salvage kits. from 50-60% to 30% and acted like that didn't happen.
Then they kept DR in the open world even tho now (and it's obvious folks) they can detect bots and ban them without someone reporting them.
SO basically it's become a dungeon only game and until they fix that, those of us who never want to run a dungeon again will be stuck.
Really should have kept his mouth shut, these comments are not going to help the situation at all.
Biggest mistake was saying "we have never said there would be no vertical progression".
Then he says they intend to focus on horizontal progression but will have vertical progression. Slowly rolling out a tier over the course a year then introducing another higher tier doesnt count.
But he also insists that they design the game with everything having little to no grind. How can anyone lie that badly with a straight face? Its so laughably bad you cant get angry at it.
The thing that bothers me the most is he's lying right now about being rewarded for collecting. They nerfed mf so you have to have 250% + to get anything worth while and anytime anyone complains about it they oh well it's completely random...uhm no, mankind has never been able to make an algorithm that is "completely" random, it's not possible. there is ALWAYS a variable +- in our current system of mathematics. The only place this nerf didn't happen was in dungeons (not talking DR talking drop rates) so basically they want us all to run dungeons for progression, uh hello that's THE KEY reason i left WoW, LOTRO, Rift, SWTOR, AoC etc. Dungeon only progression is not fun.
Then they dramatically lowered the number of globs you get per salvage even when using their own store bought salvage kits. from 50-60% to 30% and acted like that didn't happen.
Then they kept DR in the open world even tho now (and it's obvious folks) they can detect bots and ban them without someone reporting them.
SO basically it's become a dungeon only game and until they fix that, those of us who never want to run a dungeon again will be stuck.
I didn't like the near lack of PVP questions or answers. Hell the gear grind and drop % nerf would not have been all that bad if they had done some worthwhile pvp fixes at least for a good number of us. Even if they had -just- fixed all the necromancer bugs and useless skills that alone would have been a decent carrot for the sPVP players. There has just gotta be more class diversity amongst the supposed "hybrids".
Where do you get this scared of pvp non sense from? Carebears are people who are too scared basically do anything outside of the box. It's not limited just to pvp its everything considered needing a little strength to do.They whine at the littlest amount of effort needed to be on par with the rest of the population. Which is EXACTLY what is going on right now whining. So if your going to quote me in BUTT in on a conversation atleast know wtf you are talking about in attempts to being humerous.
If you know anything about me and what I do which you don't obviously. You know even way before this I preached options and doing everything. That means PVE/Exploring/Hidden quest/Grinding/PVE....Look at all my vids I said it over and over and been posted in this forum over and over. Don't quote me if you know zip about me failure. And this is proving the point on these threads should be closed. People are just whining and have nothing more to say.
Hah thats a load of shit. Carebears are scared faggot ass matt farmers who get asshurt when you PK them. Its been that way since the dawn of mmorpgs you fucking cunt. I don't give a fuck about you enough to want to give a shit what you think you vile skank. You can try to redefine Coward as many ways as you want or try to edit wiki pages or that bullshit urban dictionary crap. A carebear crybaby will always be a carebear crybaby just jump your sorry ass on any world pvp game, wait for the ones who start bitching because they got killed while mining ore, those are the carebears. Fuck you bitch.
Mike O'Brien on the Manifesto and the quote that's often used to prove ANet lied:
"Obviously the key phrase I’m going to point you to in that quote is, “if someone wants to play for a thousand hours to get an item that is so rare that other players can’t realistically acquire it”. That really is the litmus test we’ve used. That’s why, at ship, we gave better stats to exotic gear and didn’t give better stats to legendary gear. More generally, I hope we’ve been clear that GW2 is not a game with virtually no stat progression in it like GW1 was. That’s why GW2 shipped with a higher level cap, and with a hard separation between PvE and PvP. In GW1 we never advanced the level cap through four campaigns/expansions. The game design didn’t allow for it. But GW2 was designed without those restrictions, and we’ve always expected that we will someday raise the level cap in GW2. That’s why we’ve always said that GW2 rewards players through both progression and collection, whereas GW1 primarily rewarded through collection. Presumably players aren’t shocked that GW2 rewards through progression, since it has a level 80 cap.
Stat progression was never the issue here. To me this part is irrelevent marketing lip-service.
I wonder if the core sentiment is more this: It’s only been two-and-a-half months! We don’t even all have exotics yet, and already you’re introducing another tier. Is this the start of a power progression curve that I’ll never be able to keep up with?
I certainly appreciate that worry. I myself don’t want a constant struggle, as exists in some other games, to keep my equipment viable.
Then we’re left with a balancing act. Some progression is ok, but pushing players onto gear treadmill isn’t ok and isn’t what the game is about.
You exactly did push your players onto a gear treadmill focused on only one specific dungeon. You created fragmentation in the playerbase and turn Lion's Arch into Gear Check central. "We need x players must have y build and be z far along in the fractals".
So I would ask you to judge us by details, and not by making slippery-slope arguments. We introduced a ton of new content in November, and the sum total of new progression rewards we added to go with it provided a 5-10% stat increase in 2 of 12 slots. I hope you’ll agree that that kind of very shallow and gradual progression does not force people onto a gear treadmill.
Details, fair enough.Your TP continued from the day it came online to now to go thru fits of bugginess. You implemented anti-farm code that punished players more than the intended botters, and overall made it that much harder for the player to afford items on the TP that inflated due to goldseller/botter activities. Many of your questlines and DE's are bugged and instead of concentrating on those "details", you added more bugged content. The swath of ruin the goldsellers caused before you finally removed the vast majority has not been addressed and continues to wreck the experience of the regular player. This is no slippery slope. This is a pattern of failure in addressing the details.
I think it’s important for GW2 to be able to have this kind of gradual progression. Of course we made some mistakes with the way we introduced ascended gear. (See ChrisW’s answers for details.) But those are addressable issues. I don’t think they invalidate the fundamental concept that GW2 can have gradual stat progression without being a gear treadmill game."
Your ability to take care of "addressable issues" is exactly why your playerbase has a hard time taking you at your word that you aren't turning GW2 into a gear treadmill game.
Comments
Do you think if they introuduced Ascended gear differently GW2 fans would have been more receiving?
After 2 1/2 weeks, I haven't heard Aerowyn weigh in on this one. I'm really surprised. People on this site seemed to like the way she/he explained things.
Was stated way before the game even had a release date.
I might get banned for this. - Rizel Star.
I'm not afraid to tell trolls what they [need] to hear, even if that means for me to have an forced absence afterwards.
P2P LOGIC = If it's P2P it means longevity, overall better game, and THE BEST SUPPORT EVER!!!!!(Which has been rinsed and repeated about a thousand times)
Common Sense Logic = P2P logic is no better than F2P Logic.
You didn't include the gem with the Invader's Ring you linked, which gives an additional 25 power, 15 vitality and 15 toughness (or 25/15/15 of whichever stats you want), for the same exact total stats as the ring I included: 218. Ascended items cannot have gems put in them. This is 42 stat points less than the ascended equivalent, or 11%, most definitely not 48%. Now I'm sure you weren't intentionally trying to skew the stats in your favor, just as I didn't intentionally choose an ascended ring that had fewer stats, so I won't accuse you of doing so. I looked at 3 rings quickly and they all had the same stat breakdown. Not sure why the one you linked has 1 more point for each stat.
Asuming the % stat gain is the same or relatively the same for all ascended gear, your TOTAL stat-from-gear increase with a FULL set of ascended gear would be within that 9-11% range. Just the 2 pieces that are out now would only increase your total stats from gear by no more than 1.5% assuming you previously had full exotics. And remember stats from gear are only a portion of your character's total stats.
Heh, I highlighted the part where I talked about the gems and infusion slots in my original post. And you would count gems and not infusion slots for 2 reasons.
First, the ascended gear was balanced specifically by adding a little to the stats from the gear piece AND a gem of the same stat type. This is seen by the way stats on the rings are broken down, which is something like the following:
71 power
50 precision
50 vitality
32 power
18 precision
18 vitality
The stats repeat to highlight the increase in base stats and the increase in gem stats. It doesn't have to be displayed this way. I suspect Anet simply wanted to make it more apparent to players exactly where the stats were derrived from.
Second, aside from the specific content that requires the special infusion stat, that infusion adds absolutely nothing to the piece of gear. Currently the only infusion stat is Agony. A player can have 1 million agony resistance in WvW or any PvE area outside of high levels of FotM and it won't mean squat. I think the argument could be made that it would be an interesting gear dynamic if exotics had slightly higher total stats but Ascended gear provided infusions, offering a variety of effects (which we still don't know about yet.) But then I don't think players would be interested in ascended gear at all--at least not if infusion is only useful for what it is currently useful for, which is only to run a harder version of the same exact dungeon you had to run repeatedly to get the ascended item in the first place.
To summarize: Ascended gear's total stats are meant to be slightly higher than exotic gear with gems included. They were balanced specifically around that. The infusion is indpendent of the stat argument entirely because it is a non statistical bonus to help you combat specific content only.
I agree that this conversation can resume way down the road, which was part of my point. Most of players' fears are based on speculation about how this is going to play out, not how anything is practically being affected right now.
Probably would have been taken better, but a sh*tstorm would've also started because people in general love hyperbole, assumptions and rhetoric.
What I wish is that Anet did a better job explaining things the first time around and not after people start raging over nothing.
Agreed.
I might get banned for this. - Rizel Star.
I'm not afraid to tell trolls what they [need] to hear, even if that means for me to have an forced absence afterwards.
P2P LOGIC = If it's P2P it means longevity, overall better game, and THE BEST SUPPORT EVER!!!!!(Which has been rinsed and repeated about a thousand times)
Common Sense Logic = P2P logic is no better than F2P Logic.
Extending the power curve hand in hand with a level cap increase tied to an expansion is a very different thing than this new non-expansion curve/progression/treadmill extension/creation.
Read this old official blogpost and it should be obvious that something has gone off the rails since launch:
http://www.arena.net/blog/is-it-fun-colin-johanson-on-how-arenanet-measures-success
Legendaries represent a huge time/effort investment and even in the face of that, Arenanet made a big deal about the fact that Legendaries were all about cosmetics/prestige and would NOT be any more powerful than Exotic Weapons. This just supported other comments they made prior to release which pretty firmly implied that there would be zero gear stat inflation outside of a full expansion.
Ascended gear is a complete departure from this and also presents consequences related to the future stat progression when the first expansion does come out. Instead of the smooth progression between level one and the new level cap, there will be a rather large bump at level 80. In a game where level scaling is a key, core feature, this has to have a negative impact.
It seems likely that Eric Flannum and Colin Johanson are on the team developing the first expansion. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem the Chris Whiteside has the same grasp of and respect for the core design philosophy of the game. There is a lot of backsliding into old MMO design pitfalls, which is obviously going to anger a lot of people who have chosen to play the game, in part, because of the ways in which the game is different than the stale old MMO design.
To return to the linked blog post, is it fun? Well, Fractals of the Mist itself is fun, but it would have been at least as fun, if not more so, with out the attached gear inflation treadmill. Dito for the botched difficulty level system, which is completely fragmenting the GW2 community. A very nice dungeon and encompassing concept tainted by an inexplicable backsliding in the direction of old, failed MMO design tropes.
I still love the game. Fortunately, the game is so massive and there is so much to do I can ignore the elements I don't enjoy and still have fun. However, I'll admit it's hard to ignore a huge mis-step that might just represent a change in design philosophy that could deeply damage the nature and spirit of the game I've come to enjoy and admire.
Want to know more about GW2 and why there is so much buzz? Start here: Guild Wars 2 Mass Info for the Uninitiated
I'm glad that it indeed appears that the rollout of the full set of ascended gear will take about a year. I'm disturbed by the hint on the AMA that while they aren't planing any new tiers beyond Ascended, that they are considering stat inflation with in the existing tiers. If this was tied entirely to an expansion and level cap increase, that's one thing, but the implication was that this new inflation would also be occuring over the course of the next year.
A continuation of the power curve beyond level 80 would have been trivial if they had stuck with the concept of level 80 exotics representing the pre-expansion stat cap. rare skins would still be valuable as skins and most players would have gained their exotic stat gear in a relatively painless fashion, (though the level of "grind" is arguably more than originally promised).
The introduction of stat inflation pre-expansion, tied to an extremely grindy process, does indeed set up the problem common to lesser MMOs, where gear people have worked very hard to acquire becomes obsolete the minute a new expansion hits the streets!
The entire mess was predictable and avoidable. In the AMA, Chris even says that they foresaw the negative reaction and the issues, but they (he) decided to go ahead with it anyway.
Bad design is bad design and it's sad when a designer has some idea that his design is bad and still decides to go live with it in the game. We have heard all about Arenanet's itterative proccess, even how seemingly good ideas have been trashed after taking up development time because they just did not work in the game. Well, my impression is that Ascended Gear and the current FotM difficulty mechanic would never, ever have made it into the game if it had been conceptualized and developed before launch.
If they are going to toss the design ideals aside in the live environment, just because a design lead didn't have the sense to quash a bad idea before they wasted development resources on it, things will not end well for this game!
Want to know more about GW2 and why there is so much buzz? Start here: Guild Wars 2 Mass Info for the Uninitiated
That statement is stupid and you know it. No real developer asks you or anyone else how to design their own game. It is their baby. People like to play such games because they seem coherent, fleshed out and see behind that game a developer who knows exactly what to do next. Not because they ask continuously for player feedback, but because they play their very own game and see what is wrong with it.
It is fine to ask for player feedback on pressing issues, moreso if you lack the manpower to get metrics or deeper into the problem yourself (e.g. PvP), but it is wrong to set your sail to the wind that seemingly blows the strongest. There will always be a number of highly vocal people, who want X to be in the game. They complain, make suggestions and whine. Let the whiners out in the cold, but listen to the ones who complain and make suggestions. However you as a dev should always have a bigger plan, a bigger picture, you need to make sure everything fits together and stays within parameters.
They changed the design of their own game shortly after release due to player feedback. At least they said that, then expected a backlash, because they knew they offended one of their own major design choices. There is an uproar in the community, because ANet said multiple times there will be no gear treadmill and zero grind. A lot of people understood it that way, even media outlets. If you play the game, you know both are now lies.This should be closed to because its a useless argument. It's happening it's in the game and it's not changing. So basically play the game or quit. We get it some of you care bears don't want to leave LA and want welfare gear. Well too bad this isn't wow thank god. This game has all types of content and addresses multiple players. You can either suck it up deal with it or go.
But don't constantly whine some where people have zero power to sway anything. Hell whining on the official forum does nothing as well. So give it a rest and move along with your life. Unless ofcourse your trolling then I say again mods close all the post like this. It's pointless banter and flaming a subject that is pretty much finished.
Carebears?, what do people that are scared of pvp have to do with anything?
Is this some gear grinder revisionist history?
The community does have the ability to influence the direction of the game, which is why many of us take the time to write on subjects like these.
They knew these things weren't going to be well received. They were right and they haven't been. There has been a complete failure on their part to explain and justify the about face on gear progression. Trying to claim that this was always their intention and they never said anything in the past to lead us to believe there would be no gear inflation outside of inflation tied to a level cap increase just makes matter that much worse.
Some of us were willing to give them the benefit of the doubt and awaited some well reasoned explaination and additional clarification that would put our concerns at ease. Well, guess what, they've failed completely at the half hearted attempt for explaining these design decisions. In fact, it's not hard to take away from the recent AMA that they know they messed up. They knew that the community wouldn't like it, they know these design changes were very problematic, they know these things should never have been rolled out "as is", but they did so anyway because they wasted a lot of development resources on the mess and decided it was better to release a mess than release nothing at all!
They have talked extensively about their internal, iterative process. While developing the game, they were willing to try ideas in game and if they didn't work, they didn't sweat the lost development time. They didn't let egos get in the way. If it didn't work in the context of the game, they removed it and moved on.
Well, now the game is live. It may be more embarrassing to have to admit a mistake to the world than it is to admit a mistake to your co-workers, but there is no reason they should abandon their proven process. They tried it. It doesn't suit the greater context of the game. Experiment tried. Experiment failed. Time to put the kibosh on it an move on.
Ascended gear is, was and will be a mistake. Luckily, they've only introduced Ascended Rings and back pieces. They should freeze it right there. No Infusion Inflation. No Ascended Accessories, Amulets, armor or weapons. Nix it and reserve future stat inflation for expansions and level cap increases.
The way they implimented the difficulty system for FotM was also a mistake. Rankings should have been designed with a reset and if they anticipated people reaching level 30 difficulty in a week, then the system should have been designed around tiers from the start. Given how aggressively they have squashed legitimate farming strategies every where else in the game, how did they ever decide that a persistant difficulty level stat, that never resets and guarantees players with higher rating greatly superior rewards was a good idea? It's such a mind bogglingly bad idea that it's hard to understand how it ever got off the drawing board, let alone into the game!
The game itself is a lesson in superb, thoughtful, holistic game design. Everything about the November update, except for the FotM dungeon fractals themselves, is just a lesson in bad, stale, thoughtless game design with no appreciation for the greater context in which those designs need to fit. Bad, bad, bad.
Want to know more about GW2 and why there is so much buzz? Start here: Guild Wars 2 Mass Info for the Uninitiated
What i find hilarious about this is that all the people who are fine with the changes are the ones currently spamming in LA all day. As someone who is not happy with the recent changes, i hate going to LA for any reason now as its nothing but a reminder of why im thinking of quitting as soon as something else promising comes along. But in the meantime ill be playing the rest of the game, while everyone else enjoys thier "welfare gear" farming in LA.
want 7 free days of playing? Try this
http://www.swtor.com/r/ZptVnY
Where do you get this scared of pvp non sense from? Carebears are people who are too scared basically do anything outside of the box. It's not limited just to pvp its everything considered needing a little strength to do.They whine at the littlest amount of effort needed to be on par with the rest of the population. Which is EXACTLY what is going on right now whining. So if your going to quote me in BUTT in on a conversation atleast know wtf you are talking about in attempts to being humerous.
If you know anything about me and what I do which you don't obviously. You know even way before this I preached options and doing everything. That means PVE/Exploring/Hidden quest/Grinding/PVE....Look at all my vids I said it over and over and been posted in this forum over and over. Don't quote me if you know zip about me failure. And this is proving the point on these threads should be closed. People are just whining and have nothing more to say.
Carebear Definition
Is this some gear grinder revisionist history?
bro your feels are showing. /hug
Sleepy you just got head shotted again with the Urban Dictionary no less just stop.
I haven't seen a forum ass kicking this bad since Aion went F2p. You may want to look at the dudes channel, and definition
number 2 on that link. And just walk away before you get owned any further.
The thing that bothers me the most is he's lying right now about being rewarded for collecting. They nerfed mf so you have to have 250% + to get anything worth while and anytime anyone complains about it they oh well it's completely random...uhm no, mankind has never been able to make an algorithm that is "completely" random, it's not possible. there is ALWAYS a variable +- in our current system of mathematics. The only place this nerf didn't happen was in dungeons (not talking DR talking drop rates) so basically they want us all to run dungeons for progression, uh hello that's THE KEY reason i left WoW, LOTRO, Rift, SWTOR, AoC etc. Dungeon only progression is not fun.
Then they dramatically lowered the number of globs you get per salvage even when using their own store bought salvage kits. from 50-60% to 30% and acted like that didn't happen.
Then they kept DR in the open world even tho now (and it's obvious folks) they can detect bots and ban them without someone reporting them.
SO basically it's become a dungeon only game and until they fix that, those of us who never want to run a dungeon again will be stuck.
I didn't like the near lack of PVP questions or answers. Hell the gear grind and drop % nerf would not have been all that bad if they had done some worthwhile pvp fixes at least for a good number of us. Even if they had -just- fixed all the necromancer bugs and useless skills that alone would have been a decent carrot for the sPVP players. There has just gotta be more class diversity amongst the supposed "hybrids".
Hah thats a load of shit. Carebears are scared faggot ass matt farmers who get asshurt when you PK them. Its been that way since the dawn of mmorpgs you fucking cunt. I don't give a fuck about you enough to want to give a shit what you think you vile skank. You can try to redefine Coward as many ways as you want or try to edit wiki pages or that bullshit urban dictionary crap. A carebear crybaby will always be a carebear crybaby just jump your sorry ass on any world pvp game, wait for the ones who start bitching because they got killed while mining ore, those are the carebears. Fuck you bitch.
Mike O'Brien on the Manifesto and the quote that's often used to prove ANet lied:
"Obviously the key phrase I’m going to point you to in that quote is, “if someone wants to play for a thousand hours to get an item that is so rare that other players can’t realistically acquire it”. That really is the litmus test we’ve used. That’s why, at ship, we gave better stats to exotic gear and didn’t give better stats to legendary gear.
More generally, I hope we’ve been clear that GW2 is not a game with virtually no stat progression in it like GW1 was. That’s why GW2 shipped with a higher level cap, and with a hard separation between PvE and PvP. In GW1 we never advanced the level cap through four campaigns/expansions. The game design didn’t allow for it. But GW2 was designed without those restrictions, and we’ve always expected that we will someday raise the level cap in GW2.
That’s why we’ve always said that GW2 rewards players through both progression and collection, whereas GW1 primarily rewarded through collection. Presumably players aren’t shocked that GW2 rewards through progression, since it has a level 80 cap.
Stat progression was never the issue here. To me this part is irrelevent marketing lip-service.
I wonder if the core sentiment is more this: It’s only been two-and-a-half months! We don’t even all have exotics yet, and already you’re introducing another tier. Is this the start of a power progression curve that I’ll never be able to keep up with?
I certainly appreciate that worry. I myself don’t want a constant struggle, as exists in some other games, to keep my equipment viable.
Then we’re left with a balancing act. Some progression is ok, but pushing players onto gear treadmill isn’t ok and isn’t what the game is about.
You exactly did push your players onto a gear treadmill focused on only one specific dungeon. You created fragmentation in the playerbase and turn Lion's Arch into Gear Check central. "We need x players must have y build and be z far along in the fractals".
So I would ask you to judge us by details, and not by making slippery-slope arguments. We introduced a ton of new content in November, and the sum total of new progression rewards we added to go with it provided a 5-10% stat increase in 2 of 12 slots. I hope you’ll agree that that kind of very shallow and gradual progression does not force people onto a gear treadmill.
Details, fair enough.Your TP continued from the day it came online to now to go thru fits of bugginess. You implemented anti-farm code that punished players more than the intended botters, and overall made it that much harder for the player to afford items on the TP that inflated due to goldseller/botter activities. Many of your questlines and DE's are bugged and instead of concentrating on those "details", you added more bugged content. The swath of ruin the goldsellers caused before you finally removed the vast majority has not been addressed and continues to wreck the experience of the regular player. This is no slippery slope. This is a pattern of failure in addressing the details.
I think it’s important for GW2 to be able to have this kind of gradual progression. Of course we made some mistakes with the way we introduced ascended gear. (See ChrisW’s answers for details.) But those are addressable issues. I don’t think they invalidate the fundamental concept that GW2 can have gradual stat progression without being a gear treadmill game."
Your ability to take care of "addressable issues" is exactly why your playerbase has a hard time taking you at your word that you aren't turning GW2 into a gear treadmill game.