288 replies to this topic

[Maarius]

some of you may have the same question as a user lately:

Quote

How is slowly introducing more and more elements of CEVP respecting the player? I made an informed decision about this game based on the number of hours you told me I would need to play it per month to remain at the absolute top of the game - zero, and that the top would be achievable by anyone, only cosmetic stuff needed significant time investment.
What happened to that? We liked that.

Now you plan to release more power in tiny increments, first ascended, then infused, then super infused, then something else, and on it goes. I'll need to keep playing or else eventually I'll fall significantly behind my guildies, WvW opponents and friends. By the time all the ascended gear is out, you'll increase the level cap and the CEVP starts anew!

And why on earth do you want people to play for so long anyway? Why 30 levels of fractals? Why 250 mats? It's not like we're paying a sub fee here, I don't understand why you want us farming mats for so long!

this is the official response from Mike OBrien:

Quote

I loved your post and was about to answer it before you edited it. I'll continue still.
How is introducing VP respecting the player? Because it's fun to be challenged and rewarded. Because it's fun to have the character you play grow and evolve over time. Because ArenaNet (sort of) held a hard line against all VP with GW1 -- no VP ever, year after year -- and it wasn't that fun. It was stagnant.

We use purely cosmetic rewards for things that would be outside the reach of typical players. I have an oft-quoted line about that: "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 rare item should be differentiated by its visual appearance and rarity alone, not by being more powerful than everything else in the game."

Since you're describing yourself as an average player and asking about average players, it shouldn't be out-of-bounds for us to give you something new in the game that's more meaningful to your character than a purely cosmetic change.

"The number of hours you told me I would need to play it per month to remain at the absolute top of the game - zero."

--> No. No one said that. It would be pointless to design a game for those who want to play it zero hours per month.
But rephrase, perhaps to something like this: I want to play a reasonable number of hours per month and still be competitive, not falling behind a power curve that's only accessible to those with the most time. Then that is more along the lines of what we said, and we intend to stick by it.

"I need to keep playing or else eventually I'll fall significantly behind ..." Why on earth do you want people to play for so long?

Well, obviously there are many reasons why it's good for any online world for people to actually play it. But the design motivation here is simple. --> We're intending to build content that's most fun for people who are playing the game, not that's most fun for people who are not playing the game. If you want to take a break for a year, that's fine, but we're not going to freeze the game for you while you're gone. I'm sure we'll make it reasonable for you to catch back up when you return. After all, it's clearly in our best interest to do so.

Why 30 levels of fractals? Because 30+ levels of fractals is good for players who enjoy fractals, and meaningless for players who don't play fractals.

"Why 250 mats? "

That's really core here. It's fine to say that non-cosmetic VP isn't supposed to be grindy or outside the reach of normal players, but then we price some new items at 250 ectos with no other ways to get them, and it's hard to interpret it as other than that. That's a mistake. The design team has committed to fixing that.

~ MO

This post really makes sense for me. It's also in line with the "there is no endgame" quote which says that gameplay doesn't switch from one system to another (like the sudden raid appearance at max. level in other games) but stays the same. You'll do at 80 what you did from level 1-79. This is what they told us from the beginning.

hence there is no change in design decision. From 1 to 79 my character slowly gets stronger without the mandatory grind in order to get to content I couldn't get otherwise.

There is grind in the game, yes:

• optional grind in order to get better looking gear
  
• grind for better gear (Ascended gear) which was clearly stated as mistake -> they are working for balancing this

Edited by Maarius, 27 November 2012 - 01:32 PM.

[Briar]

This seems reasonable to me, I would prefer only horizontal progression (mostly because it adds more to the game) but I can understand the direction they are going

I don't like it but it does not bother me that much and I can support it more than the alternative

[Nox_Aeterna]

Hum , at least now i know who to hate and think is a retarded Dev... focused hate , always better than not knowing who to focus.

Well then , all that is left is to see if the "no grind for top stats hold".

If it does , fine , if it does not, time to leave.

[Jairyn]

I'll believe it, in theory. A developer saying "that was a mistake" is often as close to an apology as one can get. So thanks to them for that.

[raspberry jam]

Quote

Because it's fun to be challenged and rewarded. Because it's fun to have the character you play grow and evolve over time. Because ArenaNet (sort of) held a hard line against all VP with GW1 -- no VP ever, year after year -- and it wasn't that fun. It was stagnant.

But vertical progression isn't growth. It's apparent growth that doesn't actually do anything but count up stats that is put against other counted up stats...

GW1 wasn't stagnant, it was just difficult to make money on it for years and years. He's lying through his teeth - again.

[BrettM]

Despite his statement to the contrary, there was VP in GW1. It simply wasn't in the form of gear. New skills, title effects, PvE-only skills, and consumbables were all forms of VP.

Then to say that GW1 wasn't fun, but stagnant? Say what? How many people played that game for years? Is he saying they must have all been masochists? The only stagnation that set in occurred after the release of EotN when they announce that there would be no further expansions. Even then the Live Team eventually came up with some fresh, new content -- War in Kryta, Winds of Change, Zaishen dailies, Embark Beach -- so the stagnation wasn't total.

[Corvindi]

Two things annoy me about the statement:

The obvious assumption that everyone who is worth catering to likes doing dungeons (otherwise they would never have dared release this gear only for dungeon hamsters).

The disingenuous refusal to mention the ability of players to exchange gems for gold if they are short on time and willing to open their wallets to buy that ridiculous number of mats.  Don't tell me they weren't banking on making money off that, because they were, they probably already have made plenty from people who have done the current Ascended grind, and unless players put a stop to it by refusing to participate, what makes anyone think they won't be tempted to keep some serious grind around to tempt people to shorten it with cash in the future?

[Maarius]

raspberry jam, on 27 November 2012 - 01:51 PM, said:

But vertical progression isn't growth. It's apparent growth that doesn't actually do anything but count up stats that is put against other counted up stats...

not true: take for example the precision stat. You need enough precision on a lv.80 character with certain tier2/3 traits to get reliable proccs of certain effects. A low level character hasn't enough precision or that specific trait in order to play a certain playstyle. Your character evolves to be able to play it a new way.

[raspberry jam]

Maarius, on 27 November 2012 - 02:00 PM, said:

not true: take for example the precision stat. You need enough precision on a lv.80 character with certain tier2/3 traits to get reliable proccs of certain effects. A low level character hasn't enough precision or that specific trait in order to play a certain playstyle. Your character evolves to be able to play it a new way.

Once you hit the balance point (level 80 in your example) there is no way to do vertical progression without either unbalancing the game, or just putting stats against stats. Example, if you add more precision or whatever, and the ever increased amounts of procs is significant, the game loses balance (unless the enemies have something to defend against it, but that just means that the progress was illusionary after all).

If you evolved to be able to choose more and different playstyles instead of being forced into them, now that would be growth... That's what we had in GW1, but apparently that is "stagnant".

Edited by raspberry jam, 27 November 2012 - 02:13 PM.

[FoxBat]

Corvindi, on 27 November 2012 - 01:57 PM, said:

The disingenuous refusal to mention the ability of players to exchange gems for gold if they are short on time and willing to open their wallets to buy that ridiculous number of mats.  Don't tell me they weren't banking on making money off that, because they were, they probably already have made plenty from people who have done the current Ascended grind, and unless players put a stop to it by refusing to participate, what makes anyone think they won't be tempted to keep some serious grind around to tempt people to shorten it with cash in the future?

This isn't happening much now because you need a fairly silly amount of account-bound tokens before you can even use your ill-gained T6 mats. I'm sure some people have still taken the shortcut, but the kind of people that make enough money to throw away on 10% stat increase usually lack the time to grind those mist tokens. This is potentially going to be an issue depending on how it is introduced beyond FotM though.

[Corvindi]

FoxBat, on 27 November 2012 - 02:17 PM, said:

This isn't happening much now because you need a fairly silly amount of account-bound tokens before you can even use your ill-gained T6 mats. I'm sure some people have still taken the shortcut, but the kind of people that make enough money to throw away on 10% stat increase usually lack the time to grind those mist tokens. This is potentially going to be an issue depending on how it is introduced beyond FotM though.

Good point, however pay to win games are notorious for going after a few big spenders more than they concern themselves with the average player.  It seems that all it takes is a few of those to make it worthwhile.  Still, it does seem they shot themselves in the foot by making the required part of the grind so long.  It wouldn't surprise me a bit if that's the part of the grind that gets shortened in the future, leaving the mat grind mostly untouched.

[Ritualist]

I have better games to play if I want to satisfy my vertical progression-needs.

[Nox_Aeterna]

Protoss, on 27 November 2012 - 02:24 PM, said:

I have better games to play if I want to satisfy my vertical progression-needs.

Yeah ... i guess only Anet did not notice this ... yet.

But the game is B2P , we already paid , i hope that is really all they had need for.

[MazingerZ]

Corvindi, on 27 November 2012 - 01:57 PM, said:

Two things annoy me about the statement:

The obvious assumption that everyone who is worth catering to likes doing dungeons (otherwise they would never have dared release this gear only for dungeon hamsters).

The disingenuous refusal to mention the ability of players to exchange gems for gold if they are short on time and willing to open their wallets to buy that ridiculous number of mats.  Don't tell me they weren't banking on making money off that, because they were, they probably already have made plenty from people who have done the current Ascended grind, and unless players put a stop to it by refusing to participate, what makes anyone think they won't be tempted to keep some serious grind around to tempt people to shorten it with cash in the future?

Not to mention the obvious choice lack of repair opportunities between Fractals.  It hadn't occurred to me before the question was asked because I've done FOTM only twice, but yes, you can use repair canisters.  Chris's wide-eyed look of "let me check our metrics" and "that wasn't intended to cause people to buy canisters" is bull, imo.  Unless you're not testing (and I'll buy that) you content, I'm sure you were aware of that.  It's another, albeit small, cash grab.

Corvindi, on 27 November 2012 - 02:22 PM, said:

Good point, however pay to win games are notorious for going after a few big spenders more than they concern themselves with the average player.  It seems that all it takes is a few of those to make it worthwhile.  Still, it does seem they shot themselves in the foot by making the required part of the grind so long.  It wouldn't surprise me a bit if that's the part of the grind that gets shortened in the future, leaving the mat grind mostly untouched.

Not to mention that once those suckers are tapped, they can lower the costs and be looked upon as heroes by the community.  They were just too quick on the draw with the release of the grind.  The community hasn't been properly trained yet like WoW's, and they had to do an AMA to snuff the community outrage andnget us back in line with promises.  Release horrible grind, milk suckers, lower grind, look like heroes.  WoW's released three expansions on steps 1, 3 and 4.

[TGIFrisbie]

Nox_Aeterna, on 27 November 2012 - 02:51 PM, said:

Yeah ... i guess only Anet did not notice this ... yet.

But the game is B2P , we already paid , i hope that is really all they had need for.

If you want your vertical gear sooner, you buy the mystic forge required items off the BLTC (stones, etc.).  Thus it becomes a pay to win, sure you can get your gear grind on, but for how long can you tolerate that?  Also, as they stated (and coated with liberal amounts of spin), the gear tread mill is never ending.  Peeps think this Ascended is it, but they have clearly stated time and again since the about-face, they will be adding more "Progression" over time.

Cutting corners by introducing lame mechanics due to laziness is just pure win.

$15 per month or $50 every 3 months?  Thats what it comes down to with Anet.  WoW or 4k gems to buy stones/coins/whatnot.  The problem here is as everyone knows, when it comes to "Vertical Progression", gear grind, WoW beats them hands down.  If my problem with WoW didn't end with Acti-Blizz, I would still be playing it.  Once a company sours on me, I am done with them.  Same with Anet.

Currently just plugging along getting my last 3 toons to 80 so I have one of each profession, while waiting on something to interest me.  Not a single penny will I toss to Anet, screw them.

Edited by TGIFrisbie, 27 November 2012 - 03:27 PM.

[Var]

raspberry jam, on 27 November 2012 - 01:51 PM, said:

GW1 wasn't stagnant, it was just difficult to make money on it for years and years. He's lying through his teeth - again.

Of course it wasn't (yes it was), because it had vertical progression too, lest we forget:
- Stronger skills in Factions.
- Stronger skills in Nightfall.
- Introduction of PvE only skills with Nightfall.
- Rampant overpowered PvE only skills in EotN.
- PvP became a veritable disaster because of the power creep introduced by new skills, new professions.

It may have had a different paint of coat but it was there, each expansion upped the power of skill types, meaning that a player with only prophecies was outdated and inferior to a player with all campaigns in just about every single format in the game. This was and is exceptionally apparent on the PvP side of things and its much easier to run PvE content with PvE skills on your bar than it is with standard skills. (That isn't to say its impossible, much like it isn't impossible to do Fractals into the 20+ levels without a single infusion or any Ascended gear.)

Sure, no need to get a new level of gear, but you had to get a new set of skills and, come Nightfall, grind out a new set of PvE skills that made the game much, much easier.

Edited by Var, 27 November 2012 - 03:30 PM.

[Ritualist]

Also, I honestly do not understand this:

Quote

"Why 250 mats? "
That's really core here. It's fine to say that non-cosmetic VP isn't supposed to be grindy or outside the reach of normal players, but then we price some new items at 250 ectos with no other ways to get them, and it's hard to interpret it as other than that. That's a mistake. The design team has committed to fixing that.

They created vertical progression that would satisfy the grinders. I don't agree with this idea, but that's what they went for. So why the hell are they now talking about reducing the amount of grind needed? Those of us that hate vertical progression will hate it regardless if it takes 100000000 mats or it takes 1 mat. It shouldn't happen.
At the same time, why are they cutting the bone, that was thrown to the grind fans, in half?

What's the point of grindy vertical progression if it doesn't satisfy the grind-fans and at the same time, pisses off the people who hate grind for its sole existence?


Come on, A.Net - pick a patch and stick with it. The whole reason why we are in this mess right now is because you guys want to suck more *s than you can fit in your mouth.

[Astalnar]

Nox_Aeterna, on 27 November 2012 - 02:51 PM, said:

Yeah ... i guess only Anet did not notice this ... yet.

But the game is B2P , we already paid , i hope that is really all they had need for.

The thing is, their current moves do nothing for consumer's trust in the future. Even though how they argument their decisions makes from their standpoint whole lot of sense, we as consumers, especially those that consider themself casuals feel like they were being decieved and Anet went back on what they said. And this, to my reckoning is never a good thing for a dev that intends to stay in business.

[Dasryn]

Jairyn, on 27 November 2012 - 01:49 PM, said:

I'll believe it, in theory. A developer saying "that was a mistake" is often as close to an apology as one can get. So thanks to them for that.

i think when a dev says something is a mistake, it means they fully meant to implement/do what they did, but because of an overwhelmingly negative response from their playerbase do they actually try and ReNeg.

[Racthoh]

Rickter, on 27 November 2012 - 03:44 PM, said:

i think when a dev says something is a mistake, it means they fully meant to implement/do what they did, but because of an overwhelmingly negative response from their playerbase do they actually try and ReNeg.

Pretty much this. The fact Anet didn't think 250, or even 50 ectos was quite a bit more than 5 shows a massive disconnect between their developers and the game they've made. Their team is clearly not on the same page here and that's troubling.

[raspberry jam]

Var, on 27 November 2012 - 03:26 PM, said:

Of course it wasn't (yes it was), because it had vertical progression too, lest we forget:
- Stronger skills in Factions.
- Stronger skills in Nightfall.
- Introduction of PvE only skills with Nightfall.
- Rampant overpowered PvE only skills in EotN.
- PvP became a veritable disaster because of the power creep introduced by new skills, new professions.

It may have had a different paint of coat but it was there, each expansion upped the power of skill types, meaning that a player with only prophecies was outdated and inferior to a player with all campaigns in just about every single format in the game. This was and is exceptionally apparent on the PvP side of things and its much easier to run PvE content with PvE skills on your bar than it is with standard skills. (That isn't to say its impossible, much like it isn't impossible to do Fractals into the 20+ levels without a single infusion or any Ascended gear.)

Sure, no need to get a new level of gear, but you had to get a new set of skills and, come Nightfall, grind out a new set of PvE skills that made the game much, much easier.

While there was power creep in both Factions and NF, the main power creep (in PvP) did not come from the strength of the skills themselves, but from the new combinations that could be created with them. Frenzy, Reversal of Fortune, Distracting Shot - these were staples in PvP from 2005 to 2012. Ritualist heals on their own were not significantly more powerful than monk heals, but became so when used together with for example SR. Scythes, the dervish-specific weapon, was most of the time best used by non-dervish professions. There were absolutely straight up power creeps for some professions, but I wouldn't call that vertical progression.
While it's true that Prophecies-only players were at a disadvantage, that goes for all the chapters; if you only owned one chapter you were at a disadvantage no matter what, even if it was Nightfall. That in itself means that it was horizontal progression more than vertical.

PvE-only skills, on the other hand, were vertical progression, and disliked by many players because they restricted the viable build space, even though the devs seemed excited about them because they allowed them to "make levels". GW1 derailed more and more as the original GW1 team left and new people came in at ANet.

[Biz]

I wouldn't put Epeen Enlarger gear and Ascended items in the same category. For one If you have the option of spending 250+ times more on armor with Exactly the same stats (think Obsidian/Chaos) - it doesn't make getting any armor a grind fest.

If what they are saying is true and they did make a mistake; Perhaps, possible albeit unlikely, they looked at market prices for ectos and t6 before "Bot Ban" and though that 17s*50 for ectos and 250* 0,20s-ish (t6 bones were as good as junk) - 9-ish s for T6 was reasonable price to pay for something that is better then a 5gold backpack. Then we should see number of tradeable items needed to craft Ascended lowered soon™-ish.

Edited by Biz, 27 November 2012 - 04:33 PM.

[raspberry jam]

Biz, on 27 November 2012 - 04:13 PM, said:

It was never particularly difficult to make money, original 55monks, post nerf 55 monks (pre and especially post Factions), Ranger Duo trappers as well as W/Rt (post Factions) and later W/D (Post Nightfall pre Derv redesign) Could all (reliably) make enough money in few days to outfit max level character(s) with functionally best (Max stat) armor and gear. Not to mention Running - which was always very profitable and easy to learn albeit somewhat unreliable.

I meant actual money, as in profit on the product that was Guild Wars. ANet had to create content and then sell it in the form of expansions in order to make money, and that was difficult for them. There was an in-game store, but it was quite far from what the GW2 cash shop is, including not having a secondary currency.

Unlike GW1, but like most MMOs, GW2 is built like a cash machine.

Edited by raspberry jam, 27 November 2012 - 04:19 PM.

[DuskWolf]

Quote

How is introducing VP respecting the player? Because it's fun to be challenged and rewarded.

...

/deskflip

It's a sad state of affairs when ArenaNet themselves are being as intellectually dishonest as the fanboys. For me, this is the final nail in the coffin. Let me translate, so that you may understand my ire. What he's said is this: A game that doesn't have vertical progression isn't challenging and/or rewarding.

Okay, so... Grand Theft Auto: Vice City wasn't? Saints Row III wasn't? L.A. Noire wasn't? Portal wasn't? Alan Wake wasn't? Left 4 Dead wasn't? VVVVVV wasn't? I'm sorry, but that's like insisting to me that the sky is always the same shade of green no matter what the time of day or night. It's ridiculous. Unless you're touched, you're going to see the obvious truth here. That all of these games were fun, challenging, and rewarding without the necessity of any form of vertical progression.

Here is a truth: Vertical progression is what you do when you're too lazy to create a good game, because there are always weak-willed saps who'll be easily conditioned to believe that they're having fun with vertical progression.

(Bah, this was riddled with typos. Fixed now. That's how much this has annoyed me, really. To say what he's saying is to spit in the face of every awesome game that has done away with vertical progression. He's a bloody charlatan.)

Edited by DuskWolf, 27 November 2012 - 06:04 PM.

[Brizna]

People who like vertical progression is very respectable, that they wish GW2 had more of it is natural.

What is not acceptable is selling a game under the premisse that vertical progression would be very limited and then changing your mind once you have customer's money.

And I don't care how small the difference is, I know at this point it is barely noticeable outside fractals, but you know what, just outside Kay Santuary in "Prophecies" there was a buddy who sold armor just barely short of top gear and no one bothered to buy it becuase top armor was just around the corner and it was just a waste, ascended gear does that to exotics, the only reasson exotics are worth a dime now are: Ascended gear is limited to rings and backpack (for the momment) and ascended gear is ridiculously hard to get and can't be traded, if they could be traded exotics would already be worth merely their average ecto worth to get ascended stuff as is anything under exotic right now.

Horizontal progresion lovers are prevented any progression until they get max tier equipment, it's stupid losing your time geting a skin you'll be throwing down a sink next week.

Edited by Brizna, 27 November 2012 - 05:55 PM.

[Var]

raspberry jam, on 27 November 2012 - 03:59 PM, said:

While there was power creep in both Factions and NF, the main power creep (in PvP) did not come from the strength of the skills themselves, but from the new combinations that could be created with them.

While this is certainly true, we cannot dismiss things like obvious power creeps in dps (or just general utility like eps/pips) from skills like IoR vs. Clumsiness AND Conjure Phantasm (this one was a pretty big point of discussion back in the day), or the climb to such heights as SoAF. Heck, I even remember the discussions on the iQ boards about the blatantly obvious power creep in the skills themselves, no just the fact that new potent skill combinations opened up. This goes to the monk line, the mesmer line, warrior skills, introduction of Blinding Surge and Searing Flames, and the list goes on and on. Some new skills were just flat out better then other skills to a startling degree. (Back in that day, people didn't even want new skills; just new maps.)

And, yes, while it is true that each chapter had the "problem" of being inferior (so in a way, between chapter to chapter, you have variant but not vertical progression so to speak, though all three vs. one is certainly a case of some sort of negative progression), where one must look for a more apt comparison with GW2 is in the expansion changes rather than stand alone to stand alone motions. Is someone with Prophecies/Faction/Nightfall better or worse than someone with Prophecies/Faction/Nightfall + EotN? The answer is obviously yes because they do not have access to the marketably better skills (and this isn't just in terms of synergies but simply overall better skills). (Likewise for someone with all three chapters vs. someone with just one. This notion of "always being up to date" in GW is fictitious.)

You were pretty much forced to buy the new chapter if you wanted to remain competitive in PvP and a bit of a nonstarter for PvE since you'd have had no access to anything had you not bought the content.

raspberry jam, on 27 November 2012 - 03:59 PM, said:

PvE-only skills, on the other hand, were vertical progression, and disliked by many players because they restricted the viable build space, even though the devs seemed excited about them because they allowed them to "make levels". GW1 derailed more and more as the original GW1 team left and new people came in at ANet.

Hence my point, why are people surprised? EotN came out years ago. YEARS. This isn't an overnight change, its been occurring since the release of at least Nightfall where progression was introduced not through changes in armor but changes in PvE skills that made people more and more powerful.

People may well have been unhappy (and are free to be unhappy now, I'm not arguing against people's opinions) but I'm not sure where the surprise is coming from.

Edited by Var, 27 November 2012 - 06:29 PM.

[Ritualist]

Var, on 27 November 2012 - 06:23 PM, said:

Hence my point, why are people surprised? EotN came out years ago. YEARS. This isn't an overnight change, its been occurring since the release of at least Nightfall where progression was introduced not through changes in armor but changes in PvE skills that made people more and more powerful.

People may well have been unhappy (and are free to be unhappy now, I'm not arguing against people's opinions) but I'm not sure where the surprise is coming from.

I think the anticipation was that A.Net would remove the things that destroyed GW1 and focus on the things that worked when they decided to re-boot the game with GW2. But, as it turns out, it seems that the things that destroyed GW1 were actually the things that A.Net thought were worth building GW2 on, and the things that made GW1 what it was, were the things that were holding A.Net's vision back and needed to be removed.

Edited by Protoss, 27 November 2012 - 07:57 PM.

[ScoutMATH]

what keeps people playing a subbed game is the subscription that they pay. they make every penny worth. guild wars 2 has no sub and they must make a way people play the game. and vertical progression is the path that they chose.

valid? yes.

does it suck for players like me who bought the game because of the manifesto? yes.

but gaming is about community. if a community chooses to play with exotics only and play on certain maps only as their unwritten rule, that's great. that means the community is cohesive and strong. they could always get the next tier at their discretion. no need to rush and to keep up with the joneses.

Edited by ScoutMATH, 27 November 2012 - 07:54 PM.

[Daesu]

BrettM, on 27 November 2012 - 01:52 PM, said:

Despite his statement to the contrary, there was VP in GW1. It simply wasn't in the form of gear. New skills, title effects, PvE-only skills, and consumbables were all forms of VP.

The issue isn't with whether there is VP or not.  There IS a cap on GW1 VP, but there is no cap on GW2 VP.  VP would just go on until the game dies.  When you hit level 80, they will make level 100, then 200, 300, etc.  So you are on a perpetual treadmill to get the best gear for your level 100, 200, 300, etc as your old level 80 gear would be subpar for your new higher level.

Edited by Daesu, 27 November 2012 - 08:42 PM.

[raspberry jam]

Var, on 27 November 2012 - 06:23 PM, said:

While this is certainly true, we cannot dismiss things like obvious power creeps in dps (or just general utility like eps/pips) from skills like IoR vs. Clumsiness AND Conjure Phantasm (this one was a pretty big point of discussion back in the day), or the climb to such heights as SoAF. Heck, I even remember the discussions on the iQ boards about the blatantly obvious power creep in the skills themselves, no just the fact that new potent skill combinations opened up. This goes to the monk line, the mesmer line, warrior skills, introduction of Blinding Surge and Searing Flames, and the list goes on and on. Some new skills were just flat out better then other skills to a startling degree. (Back in that day, people didn't even want new skills; just new maps.)

And, yes, while it is true that each chapter had the "problem" of being inferior (so in a way, between chapter to chapter, you have variant but not vertical progression so to speak, though all three vs. one is certainly a case of some sort of negative progression), where one must look for a more apt comparison with GW2 is in the expansion changes rather than stand alone to stand alone motions. Is someone with Prophecies/Faction/Nightfall better or worse than someone with Prophecies/Faction/Nightfall + EotN? The answer is obviously yes because they do not have access to the marketably better skills (and this isn't just in terms of synergies but simply overall better skills). (Likewise for someone with all three chapters vs. someone with just one. This notion of "always being up to date" in GW is fictitious.)

You were pretty much forced to buy the new chapter if you wanted to remain competitive in PvP and a bit of a nonstarter for PvE since you'd have had no access to anything had you not bought the content.



Hence my point, why are people surprised? EotN came out years ago. YEARS. This isn't an overnight change, its been occurring since the release of at least Nightfall where progression was introduced not through changes in armor but changes in PvE skills that made people more and more powerful.

People may well have been unhappy (and are free to be unhappy now, I'm not arguing against people's opinions) but I'm not sure where the surprise is coming from.

Yes, as i said, some skills are obviously more powerful than others. Especially, I'd say, elementalists saw this (compare Nightfall's Savannah Heat to Prophecies' Mind Burn). For other professions it was simply not so: the biggest thing to happen to warriors, for example, across all updates was that Flail allowed hammer warriors to use a non-suicidal IAS that didn't suck, and that Crippling Slash made pressure easier... even then, though, you could set up a 100% viable warrior bar using just Prophecies skills.

Your second paragraph is very confusing. Could you tell me what you mean by negative progression or what you mean by a fictitious notion of always being up to date?
I do agree with you that EotN skills... no, actually, just one EotN skill, we all know which one, was not only truly marketable but actually, I'd think, a sales trick. UB was PvE-only skill though, I wouldn't say that EotN was a revolution for PvP...

Anyway, I think that people are mostly surprised because ANet seemed to claim that they were making a low-grind, horizontal-progression game which almost seemed to revolve around an "unlock to own" kind of design when it came to reward structure. Now, Mike O'Brien is right when he says that they never said that it would be horizontal progression. They just gave the impression of it, implied by the design decisions that they did tell us about. Design decisions that they later reversed, but quietly so.