GW2: All cosmetic? Definitely NO!

[Maarius]

There is this big misconception going round, don't know who called it: There is only cosmetic gear in this game, you won't need progression because guild wars 2 is all for fun.

No guys, I agree on the fun part, but guild wars 2 has a gear progression. It has a character progression. It has a combat progression. The simple difference is: In competitive PvP (e-sport 5vs5 mode) gear gets normalized, levels too. Thats it. In the World PvP mode: WvWvW you play with the same PvE gear. With the same PvE skills and traits.

As you get lv.80 it takes not long to get the max. itemlevel. You won't get higher tiers of items in dungeons (the hardest parts in GW2). BUT you still will get different gear. Some weapons might be better in "Power", others in "Perception". Some will have very cool effects etc. etc. BUT no new weapon has a tier-jump. As a new lv.80 player you'll always stand a chance vs. someone who played the game for months. This doesn't mean that there is no better gear though.


I posted this over and over again, I feel I have to put this in a thread. Get informed guys!!

1.) gear does have stats.
It's only, there is a tier-frontier. So you will find better gear for your playstyle.



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different gear in GW2:

Armor xy lv.80 power: 244 precision: 212 toughness: 120 vitality: 204 lifegain +20 at night

Armor zx lv.80 power: 210 precision: 250 toughness: 200 vitality:115 critical hit +5%

a player in pvp has always a chance against an other player, regardless of gear






in other games it looks like this:

Armor xy lv.80 power: 244 precision: 212 toughness: 120 vitality: 204 proc. 0.5% +200dps

Armor zy lv.80 power: 500 precision: 200 toughness: 888 vitality: 600 proc: 0.02% +500dps

a lv.80 player may stand no chance against an other lv.80 player if one of them has farmed gear for countless hours.






2.) leveling does matter, you won't buy your skills in a shop (like in other games), you have to find certain challenges in the world and be successful there to gain skillpoints. With these points you will be able to unlock new skills. There are about 200 skill challenges hidden all over the world, so you won't have nearly all skills unlocked when you hit 80.

this is the interface where you can spend your skillpoints:



furthermore there are traits, these are modifiers like the skills in a skilltree. You will have to find/earn these too by exploring the world. As we speak they get a rework done, we don't know much about them yet.

You see, you can enter World-PvP in the WvWvW-mode without all skills, traits, weapons for your playstyle (for example a hammer with a lot of precision, the hammer I have has only decent power) etc etc. BUT you will still be able to beat the hell out of guys who aren't as skilled as you. They will be really scared if you have your build + weapons that you find perfect for your playstyle, though.


UPDATE:



---------- Post added 2012-01-23 at 04:31 PM ----------

I think the problem some had was how easy it was to get the best gear without having to grind in pvp or to beat the hardest pve fights,i personally do not care about gear in the slightest(personally i prefered topping dps charts and out preforming people with far better gear then me)

Well other games have those hard raids, who are really fun (I played a lot of WoW and I loved some of the older epic boss battles) BUT there is one thing, that destroys these epic raids: gear progression. You can't play those raids today with your favourite (maxed out) character because the fight is broken now. You outgear the battle.

Other problem: you currently have no time to play the game. You come back later and there is a new Dungeon that gives you better gear. Now the old raid is too easy and you won't get it with the difficulty you long for.

Imagine Arthas in GW2:



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.

[BlairPhoenix]

And yay, you finally made a separate thread for this.

[Maarius]

And yay, you finally made a separate thread for this.

I really tried not to, but it's soo frustrating... a someone spreads a false tone and suddenly the room is full of bad music.

[ddsad2212]

I think the problem some had was how easy it was to get the best gear without having to grind in pvp or to beat the hardest pve fights,i personally do not care about gear in the slightest(personally i prefered topping dps charts and out preforming people with far better gear then me)

[Deleted]

I really tried not to, but it's soo frustrating... a someone spreads a false tone and suddenly the room is full of bad music.

Wow.. I admire your ability to soften things up oO. If I would describe what happens, I would get banned for life and probably shortly after that profanity filter would be endorsed here ;s

[BlairPhoenix]

I really tried not to, but it's soo frustrating... a someone spreads a false tone and suddenly the room is full of bad music.

Pretty much. I can't count the number of times people post 'gear is just cosmetic/gear doesn't matter' around here. And these are from the pro GW2 people :/

[Maarius]

---------- Post added 2012-01-23 at 04:31 PM ----------

I think the problem some had was how easy it was to get the best gear without having to grind in pvp or to beat the hardest pve fights,i personally do not care about gear in the slightest(personally i prefered topping dps charts and out preforming people with far better gear then me)

Well other games have those hard raids, who are really fun (I played a lot of WoW and I loved some of the older epic boss battles) BUT there is one thing, that destroys these epic raids: gear progression. You can't play those raids today with your favourite (maxed out) character because the fight is broken now. You outgear the battle.

Other problem: you currently have no time to play the game. You come back later and there is a new Dungeon that gives you better gear. Now the old raid is too easy and you won't get it with the difficulty you long for.

Imagine Arthas in GW2:



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.

[Blitzdoctor]

Pretty much. I can't count the number of times people post 'gear is just cosmetic/gear doesn't matter' around here. And these are from the pro GW2 people :/

They mean the progress after having the base level 80 gear I suppose.
Gear (of the same 'itemlevel' to use a wow term) will have differing stats, so you can optimize your build, but other than that there's no progress in power.

[BlairPhoenix]

They mean the progress after having the base level 80 gear I suppose.
Gear (of the same 'itemlevel' to use a wow term) will have differing stats, so you can optimize your build, but other than that there's no progress in power.

I understand this, but the way people word things can easily give less informed people the wrong impression.

[Maarius]

I understand this, but the way people word things can easily give less informed people the wrong impression.

exactly this is the problem

[Eorayn]

Nice thread. Must have cleared things up a bit for many people ^^

[Aurimas]

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)

There are people who can cope, and people who cannot cope with this concept. Both of which are fine opinions. The problem lies with the people who jump on every bandwagon to be part of the "wow killers" and then start posting about how f-ing stupid it is. Hopefullly you get the point across, and people actually realize the implications before making decisions.

Personally I like it both ways. I like being able to go back and rape old content as I gear up, and I don't like that *current* dungeons become trivialized. However, I also like a hard current dungeon becoming easier as I get better gear.

See? Even I don't know how to feel about this method, though I have no intention of bashing it. Also, yes, I understand that even the idea of "current" tiers of dungeons go out the window in this system, I'm just trying to make my comparisons.

[tibben]

Question on this dungeon scaling thing you mentioned. Would it not make the dungeon a little easier having full access to all your level 80 skills/traits when attempting a dungeon that was opened up at level 35? While your character and stats may be scaled down to the dungeon, you would still have access to your full range of skills and especially traits that would probably make the dungeon easier for you than for someone who is level 35 and only has 1/20th of the possible traits and no access to skills higher than level 35.

I guess I would equate it to a level 35 on his first character in WoW with a mix of useless white gear and some green gear running a dungeon next to a twinked out level 35 with full enchants and heirloom gear. They're both level 35, but one of them is obviously going to have a much easier time. Err, maybe a better way to say it would be the "twink" has all his level 85 abilities plus access to all glyphs that would make his abilities stronger than the normal level 35.

Is my assessment accurate? Having access to the extra skills and traits seems like it would be a pretty nice advantage, although I don't know if it will necessarily "trivialize" the content.

[Maarius]

They mean the progress after having the base level 80 gear I suppose.
Gear (of the same 'itemlevel' to use a wow term) will have differing stats, so you can optimize your build, but other than that there's no progress in power.

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.

[Blazer]

Goof informative post I guess for people who didn't understood this.
Also the traits system has been reworked /is being reworked atm so things may change there.

[Maarius]

Question on this dungeon scaling thing you mentioned. Would it not make the dungeon a little easier having full access to all your level 80 skills/traits when attempting a dungeon that was opened up at level 35? While your character and stats may be scaled down to the dungeon, you would still have access to your full range of skills and especially traits that would probably make the dungeon easier for you than for someone who is level 35 and only has 1/20th of the possible traits and no access to skills higher than level 35.

I guess I would equate it to a level 35 on his first character in WoW with a mix of useless white gear and some green gear running a dungeon next to a twinked out level 35 with full enchants and heirloom gear. They're both level 35, but one of them is obviously going to have a much easier time.

Is my assessment accurate? Having access to the extra skills and traits seems like it would be a pretty nice advantage, although I don't know if it will necessarily "trivialize" the content.

the order in which you onlock your skills is how you wish. You can buy any skill from the get go, if you have the needed skillpoints. So you can give your lv.30 character the utility skill "frenzy". A lv.80 character will probably have more options, but it's up to you when you get the skills you want.

So a lv.80 character with all 20 utility skills unlocked has more options during the battle-breaks to react to following encounters. A lv.30 character with 4 utility skills unlocked has to make a hard choice, which skills he will buy next.

Skill-power scales too, a lv.80 damaging skill gets scaled back to dungeon level.

To summarize: a higher level character has more variety to react. Skills aren't better. He only has more of them to choose. At lv.30 you will probably have all skill-slots unlocked, even the elite-skillslot.

[tibben]

Skill-power scales too, a lv.80 damaging skill gets scaled back to dungeon level.

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.

[Maarius]

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

we can assume that they scale too, but we don't know much about traits. Maybe they cut the %Damage-traits... who knows. A lot of traits give certain skills new utility, this is where the fun begins... making your unique build.

[tibben]

we can assume that they scale too, but we don't know much about traits. Maybe they cut the %Damage-traits... who knows. A lot of traits give certain skills new utility, this is where the fun begins... making your unique build.

I am definitely looking forward to experimenting with traits. No question about that. Between utility traits and straight power up traits I have a feeling I'll have about a million different builds I use based on what I'm actually doing. Max control vs max support vs single target dps vs aoe dps vs hybrid of everything. There are so many possibilities it makes my head hurt, but in a good way. I'm also glad that gear and levels scale to ensure you aren't just facerolling everything. I like having to use cc and support abilities in dungeons instead of just aoe'ing my way through with little thought about what type of creatures I'm dealing with.

[Maarius]

I'm also glad that gear and levels scale to ensure you aren't just facerolling everything. I like having to use cc and support abilities in dungeons instead of just aoe'ing my way through with little thought about what type of creatures I'm dealing with.

I'm especially interested in how they handle gear-scaling. We've only seen characterlevel scaling and characterstats scaling in previous demos: