GW2: All cosmetic? Definitely NO!

[Valeron]

With the scaling, makes you wonder why they have levels in the first place...

Bah, guess I'm still bummed that they put levels in there. Anyway, good post. However, I do think that most of the people that say the cosmetic gear stuff or that gear doesn't matter are referring to the power plateau at max level.

Most mmos have two progression paths, the first one is levels. Once they reach max level then it turns to gear. What people talk about is that second part.

[Lannden]

Maarius I am always impressed with your threads, thank you this should clear up a lot of things.

[Restos3]

Thank you for clearing this up, it was a mess to look around in the forums.

[Maarius]

With the scaling, makes you wonder why they have levels in the first place...

Bah, guess I'm still bummed that they put levels in there. Anyway, good post. However, I do think that most of the people that say the cosmetic gear stuff or that gear doesn't matter are referring to the power plateau at max level.

Most mmos have two progression paths, the first one is levels. Once they reach max level then it turns to gear. What people talk about is that second part.

Did WoW classic actually have gear progression? How many raids were in version 1.0?

Levels in GW2 are only to make sure, that you progress on a proper speed through the areas/story. It gives you a sense of progression too. But what's more important: you should be able to play with your friends. Anytime. So thats because there is scaling.

[Deleted]

I very much like the first bit, and I am more convinced with every day that this game will rock.

The part about scaling and boss-fight replay value, I'm not so sure about yet. I like that the challenge is still in the game, but I still worry that always having the same challenge for what is, in fact, old content, kind of removes a sense of character progression a little bit. When I play WoW, I am the hero who defeated Ragnaros (in MC), then put the head of Onyxia in Stormwind, and so on. I have no issues with going back to that content and pwning it with my updated gear, and without a challenge, because I am only doing it for nostalgia. RPG-wise, Onyxia is no longer in her cave for me (and ideally she would be phased out if I killed her, or at least there should be an option for it). So always being as strong as I was 80 levels ago, even if I go back to fight one of the first bosses will sort of feel like a bummer.

But I won't judge it until I've seen it in action. Who knows?

[Valeron]

Classic WoW did have gear progression but the gear inflation is no where near what it is today. Plus the itemization back then was so odd that you really didn't know how to improve gear wise (strength on caster gear, stuff like that).

Anyway, I understand why they put in the levels in GW2. I'm just complaining because I'd rather they didn't

[Fencers]

I can auto attack bosses in Molten Core to death as a a super geared 85. That's kinda like, not awesome game design when content tiers are over a month in waiting.

[Koshun]

I'm pretty sure we're going to need a compilation of all the threads dealing with common misconceptions. A sort of expanded "Top 5 False Assumptions" thread.

[Deleted]

I can auto attack bosses in Molten Core to death as a a super geared 85. That's kinda like, not awesome game design when content tiers are over a month in waiting.

Just saying, that doesn't really matter. The bosses are seen as dead to your character. The only reason they remain after the first kill is for farming purposes and because of the (then) technical difficulties of removing bosses to some players but not all.

I agree it isn't ideal to auto attack bosses to death, but it isn't really to do with games design as much as it is with the system itself. In three years you might call it super lame and bad design that some random low level boss can still kill you, a hero of Tyria.

[Maarius]

So always being as strong as I was 80 levels ago, even if I go back to fight one of the first bosses will sort of feel like a bummer.

I played the heroic deathmines a few months ago, it didn't feel like a bummer for me. But thats very subjective I still feel bad that I wasn't able to beat Illidan at the time. It was too late for me. I had a group for this encounter a year later, too bad.

[Fencers]

Just saying, that doesn't really matter. The bosses are seen as dead to your character. The only reason they remain after the first kill is for farming purposes and because of the (then) technical difficulties of removing bosses to some players but not all.

I agree it isn't ideal to auto attack bosses to death, but it isn't really to do with games design as much as it is with the system itself. In three years you might call it super lame and bad design that some random low level boss can still kill you, a hero of Tyria.

Actually it is bad design because players out strip content at a rate quicker than content is raised. The problem becomes exponential the further one goes back.

In encounter design they [Blizzard] have to commit more resources to develop new content with the current fixed rate of player power gains at a decent rate of newness. Two problems with this in practice: 1. time. it takes time to make things. lol 2. money. resources spent previously are now irrelevant.

Even during a short progression cycle, um say... Sunwell->Nax20.0, the power jump was such that there was literally no raid or encounter in the game anymroe that was meaningful relative to my guild's power gain. So we had like, no reason to play for weeks.

Although this is a problem to a lesser extent in other MMOs, gear inflation > content expansion realistically leads to lot of wasted assets & high commitment of future resources for content expansion. I am approaching that point soon in SWTOR where less than Nightmare mode is trivial to me. And got to that point in Rift a few months ago where I literally can no longer die-- and if I did die, the big boss would have had to get my HP bar to 0 twice.

There is nothing wrong with progressive gear models provided content expansion is kept at a quick pace. Most often, it is not.

[Maarius]

I agree it isn't ideal to auto attack bosses to death, but it isn't really to do with games design as much as it is with the system itself. In three years you might call it super lame and bad design that some random low level boss can still kill you, a hero of Tyria.

If you aren't skilled enough to survive a random low level boss in three years from now, then you actually deserve to die imho.

[Blitzdoctor]

a progress in power you have to a certain point.
but the only real reason why you need to have a progress in tiers: With new tier-levels (e.g. double the power as before) you will be allowed to play new dungeons. They aren't really harder. In GW2 you can play every dungeon from the get go if you have the min. dungeon-level.
-) they actually can make all of their dungeons really really hard, because you won't need to get through one to play another.

Agree. I like that all dungeons remain difficult even after x expansions and whatnot, and that you can never zerg through it. Like in WoW, Karazhan used to be a cool raid, but running through it 2 expansions later it has lost all its coolness.

[Deyadissa]

You know, this fight was epic. Oh, in GW2 it stays epic. You go into his halls and suddenly your gear gets scaled down to the dungeon level (lv.80, down from lv.85). Your character gets scaled down to the dungeon level. Oh, now, I can actually replay this hard dungeon again and again and again. It is still as hard as it was back then!

All dungeons in GW2 are this way. You can play them in 2 years and they will be exactly as hard as today. You will get armor-tokens from a sucessful run and you can trade this tokens at a vendor for the dungeon set. Transmutate it with a max.level Item and you look like coming straight out of Icecrown-Citadel, with the power of a max. level player.

You're forgetting the fact that every expansion adds new skills, just because the level is exactly the same it does not mean it will remain just as difficult before the expansion. They've also stated that downscaled characters are a little bit better compared to similar levels. So if you were level 85 entering in an 80 dungeon, you'd be level 82.


We have seen this with the expansions in Guild Wars, the level cap was never increased and the previous campaign became easier due to the new skill sets. You can also see this in World of Warcraft, once the new talent system came out every raid basically became ridiculously easy.

Guild Wars Prophecies was quite difficult. However, once Factions was released it became significantly easier due to the new skill sets and nothing was modified from the older campaign.


In addition, we have absolutely no idea how gearing is going to work at max level. You are pulling images of weapons before the attribute system was even redesigned. You should not convince people about gearing on data that is over 2 years old and no longer applies to the recent beta.



What you have posted is absolutely nothing but speculation, wrong at that as well.

[Glytch]

one note: you may want to add a disclaimer in the OP since the stat system has changed to power, precis, tough, vita since the majority of those pictures were taken

[Durzlla]

What about traits? Like +10% damage for wielding a certain weapon? That seems like it would be quite handy.

I'm not trying to poke holes in your argument. I rather like the idea of scaled dungeons, but I get the feeling that a level 80 with maxed skills and access to all or most of his traits would still have an advantage in a lower level dungeon over someone who is appropriate level for that dungeon.

Well seeing as how traits are bought with karma, or found around places (last I checked anyway) you can really have any trait whenever, and seeing how traits are just like increases dmg by x% which scale up and down automatically, and things like you summon X more minions with Y skill I don't think they will need to skill. Traits are pretty much just talents/glyphs in wow they change the effects of moves.

And anet has said that if you take a group of 80s to a lv 30 dungeon it'll be easier, but not by much. Every dungeon ha a lv cap, like 30 dungeons I think har a lv 35 cap anyone who goes in their past 35 will be bumped down to cap.

PS DEs and zones ALSO have these downscales.

[Maarius]

You're forgetting the fact that every expansion adds new skills, just because the level is exactly the same it does not mean it will remain just as difficult before the expansion. They've also stated that downscaled characters are a little bit better compared to similar levels. So if you were level 85 entering in an 80 dungeon, you'd be level 82.

There was no scaling in GW1. It makes only sense that new skills aren't more powerful than older ones since you had no real choice which skills to take. If new skills are more powerful, who would take older ones? Furthermore: Skills in GW1 didn't depend on a weapon - So if there are new skills, these would come with new weapons.

They would be pretty stupid, if they implement an 2H-Axe which makes more damage / isn't balanced with the other weapons. Your statement in scaling back to 82 is true for the open world zones, but when I remember correctly you will get scaled to the max. dungeon level. So your claim would be false.

We have seen this with the expansions in Guild Wars, the level cap was never increased and the previous campaign became easier due to the new skill sets. You can also see this in World of Warcraft, once the new talent system came out every raid basically became ridiculously easy.

read the above. Furthermore: this is not GW1 or WoW, there are scaling systems which both of the called games haven't.

In addition, we have absolutely no idea how gearing is going to work at max level. You are pulling images of weapons before the attribute system was even redesigned. You should not convince people about gearing on data that is over 2 years old and no longer applies to the recent beta.

It is irrelevant what the stats are in the picture above. Yes, there is no agility any more, so in the linked picture you would have to swap agility with power. Stats are still there, this was my point. It's only hard to find mid- to highres pictures from a weapon/armor.

if you insist:





What you have posted is absolutely nothing but speculation, wrong at that as well.
not really, only logical conclusions

/10 charrs

Infracted for not posting something constructive, i.e. this /10charr

[Deleted]

I played the heroic deathmines a few months ago, it didn't feel like a bummer for me. But thats very subjective I still feel bad that I wasn't able to beat Illidan at the time. It was too late for me. I had a group for this encounter a year later, too bad.

HC Deadmines is an entirely new dungeon, though. Lorewise and bosswise. The story progressed to his daughter.

True, about Illidan. But he's still dead by then, lorewise. So even if you did have scaled gear and beat him fair and square a year after TBC, it still wouldn't really be the same. He'd also been nerfed and so on.

[StationaryHawk]

I'm so glad we have people like you here to make threads like this. I was getting rather annoyed of people running around claiming that gear means nothing in GW2 as well.

[Blznsmri]

Don't the PvP battlegrounds scale in Star Wars? People don't seem to be taking that very well. (both those guesses from reading these forums)

The problem with TOR's is that they didn't scale gear, only the base effect of skills (Blade Rush might do 150*1.25AP - 250*1.25AP at level 20, but do 750*1.25AP - 1000*1.25AP at level 50) and your character's base health. So even though you did somewhat similar damage to a 50 as a 25, you don't have the advantage of gear and all the abilities and talents of the 50, that's what the major issue is/ was.

In Guild Wars 2 they scale everything.