Guild Wars 2 Endgame: You Actually Get to Eat the Carrot

[Malthurius]

From what it sounds like, it would be more accurate to say that there is no carrot, rather than that you get to eat the carrot. If there's no "raid gear" at level 50, then there's no getting stronger after you hit level cap, and iirc, that's the way it was in GW1 as well. You hit cap and then... you had the best gear in the game. The look of the gear was the only thing that changed. That just seems silly to me. There should always be a path to make your character stronger no matter what level you are.

At that point your own skill and knowledge is how you become stronger. It turns into a matter of personally improving vs improving avatar strength.

and what Mif said.

[Squirrelbanes]

Gear progression doesn't ever make your character stronger in relation to relevant content, all it does it make older content irrelevant.

And frankly I've had enough of shiny cars for Christmas. I wouldn't mind if I didn't need to change the tyres every month. And the constant road tax! Jeez...I thought shiny cars were supposed to be fun...

[Hoticehunter]

Gear progression doesn't ever make your character stronger in relation to relevant content, all it does it make older content irrelevant.

Huh? You don't start a new tier of content wearing that tier's gear. You start wearing the gear from the tier before. You start T2 wearing T1. The gear from the current content most certainly does make your character stronger in relation to relevant content because one almost never full gears their character out in current gear. There's usually a piece or three that just never drop or you have competition from others that get that slot before you.

Besides, your defense isn't trying to defend my point. There's no in game way to make your character stronger at max level, ergo, there's no carrot. In WoW, each piece of gear is a carrot and each tier there's more carrots. Every time you get an upgrade in WoW you "get to eat a carrot". You never get to eat a carrot in GW2 because there simply are no carrots to eat.

Progression doesn't have to simply be a gear thing too, the way WoW does it. Take Asheron's Call. There's 275 levels as well as at least two other types of alternate advancement systems. You technically can get the best possible gear in AC long before level cap because the dungeons don't give the best gear. Loot is randomly generated and the random generated loot has the best potential. So you're not playing for gear there, you're playing to make your character itself stronger, and ya, making older content irrelevant is one of the perks of progression. Being able to wade through a sea of mobs that would have killed you one on one ten levels ago is fun. It shows progression. It gives you a purpose.

The selling point of "purposefully make yourself weaker to experience more content" is an incredibly strange idea to me.

[Mif]

You start wearing the gear from the tier before. You start T2 wearing T1.

And you start T3 in T2, and T4 in T3, and T103 in T102. The gear upgrade is between T1 and T103 is pointless because they have moved the goal posts every tier.

If you were truly stronger, the game would get easier each tier, but it doesn't, the difficulty level always stays the same, your power relative to relevant bosses is always the same. It's a classic tree falling in the woods, "if you got stronger but only fight stronger opponents, are you any stronger?".

The only thing you are actually stronger than, is former content tiers, which are now redundant and aren't worth playing any more.

[Pull My Finger]

nobody's forcing you to read it!

As quoted from the guidebook bestseller: How I do make people not listen to me?

[Malthurius]

Huh? You don't start a new tier of content wearing that tier's gear. You start wearing the gear from the tier before. You start T2 wearing T1. The gear from the current content most certainly does make your character stronger in relation to relevant content because one almost never full gears their character out in current gear. There's usually a piece or three that just never drop or you have competition from others that get that slot before you.

Besides, your defense isn't trying to defend my point. There's no in game way to make your character stronger at max level, ergo, there's no carrot. In WoW, each piece of gear is a carrot and each tier there's more carrots. Every time you get an upgrade in WoW you "get to eat a carrot". You never get to eat a carrot in GW2 because there simply are no carrots to eat.

Progression doesn't have to simply be a gear thing too, the way WoW does it. Take Asheron's Call. There's 275 levels as well as at least two other types of alternate advancement systems. You technically can get the best possible gear in AC long before level cap because the dungeons don't give the best gear. Loot is randomly generated and the random generated loot has the best potential. So you're not playing for gear there, you're playing to make your character itself stronger, and ya, making older content irrelevant is one of the perks of progression. Being able to wade through a sea of mobs that would have killed you one on one ten levels ago is fun. It shows progression. It gives you a purpose.

The selling point of "purposefully make yourself weaker to experience more content" is an incredibly strange idea to me.

depends on the person whether you like it or not at that point. Personally, I would of had more fun if my power scaled back in WoW while I was doing Loremaster on my Death Knight. Questing for that achievement was a chore, and wasn't fun because there was no challenge to be had, and I didn't feel empowered by all the 'carrots' I ate throughout WotLK and the first part of Cata because it was content that was trivial to me at the point of my character's creation.

But really, that's all gear progression does. It trivializes older content, like questing. You're 'technically' getting stronger, you have more health, do more damage, heal higher numbers, and the new content reflects that change. but it doesn't matter because by the time you get the best gear it means nothing other than "Now when the patch hits, I can get the newest gear a little bit faster than the guy that didn't raid last patch." And the older content becomes less fun because there is no sense of fulfillment from doing it anymore. Why are you doing the old content when there is a new patch and a new raid? Because it's fun... or... at least it would be if I didn't 2 shot everything. (Well, some people might enjoy stomping over old content, but that's just personal opinion.)

[Deleted]

Great article, thanks for taking the effort of writing it up!

[Hoticehunter]

And you start T3 in T2, and T4 in T3, and T103 in T102. The gear upgrade is between T1 and T103 is pointless because they have moved the goal posts every tier.

If you were truly stronger, the game would get easier each tier, but it doesn't, the difficulty level always stays the same, your power relative to relevant bosses is always the same. It's a classic tree falling in the woods, "if you got stronger but only fight stronger opponents, are you any stronger?".

The only thing you are actually stronger than, is former content tiers, which are now redundant and are worth playing anymore.

I see what you're saying, but it's something fundamental that we disagree on. From what I can tell, you're looking at just the difficulty of the next tier in relation to the tier before it being the same, thus no progression. I see me going back to a constant (say, a training dummy or a previous tier) that confirms that I'm stronger in T2 gear than I am in T1 gear, thus progression. I see doing T3 in T1 gear as being more difficult than in T2 or T3 gear, thus, there's progression in character power going from T1 to T2 to T3. You would simply question why the gear needs to be better from T1 to T2 to T3 when they could all have the same stats and simply make the bosses not scale.
My answer to the implied question is: "There's a bunch of carrots that you get to eat in other games that simply are not there in GW2" which is different from the OP's position of "you actually get to eat the carrot in GW2". That's been my point all along. That the OP is incorrect in their stance.

[VincentWolf]

tldr
/10char

Infracted; Minor Spam -- Post constructively next time.

[Kakokun]

From what it sounds like, it would be more accurate to say that there is no carrot, rather than that you get to eat the carrot. If there's no "raid gear" at level 50, then there's no getting stronger after you hit level cap, and iirc, that's the way it was in GW1 as well. You hit cap and then... you had the best gear in the game. The look of the gear was the only thing that changed. That just seems silly to me. There should always be a path to make your character stronger no matter what level you are.

In GW1 you gathered abilities and not gear.

[Darkademic]

From what it sounds like, it would be more accurate to say that there is no carrot [...]

The carrot is an analogy for any and all rewards, so there most certainly is a carrot, many of them in fact. The constantly increasing power aspect is what turns it into a carrot-on-a-stick, as whenever you reach the carrot, it gets further away (well technically a new one appears - it's not a perfect analogy, but most people get the idea).

[...] There should always be a path to make your character stronger no matter what level you are.

As Mif said, this makes content obsolete, nothing more.

Besides, your defense isn't trying to defend my point. There's no in game way to make your character stronger at max level, ergo, there's no carrot. In WoW, each piece of gear is a carrot and each tier there's more carrots. Every time you get an upgrade in WoW you "get to eat a carrot". You never get to eat a carrot in GW2 because there simply are no carrots to eat.

You're missing the point of the analogy, see above.

WoW constantly moves the goal-posts to make content a challenge, no matter how big your numbers are. Numbers go up, challenge remains constant. If you took away the constantly increasing numbers (for both the players and the enemies), you wouldn't notice the difference, except for the slight differences you had previously due to over/under-gearing - which actually makes it impossible for the developers to finely-tune the difficulty for everyone.

making older content irrelevant is one of the perks of progression. Being able to wade through a sea of mobs that would have killed you one on one ten levels ago is fun. It shows progression. It gives you a purpose.

I disagree completely. Firstly, I doubt many people purposefully travel back to old content for its supposed entertainment value when you can one-shot everything; how can that possibly be fun? Sure you might do it once in a while for a laugh, but never as a consistent activity. Secondly, one of the most disappointing things for me in WoW was not being able to go back and do old raids as they were intended to be done.

The selling point of "purposefully make yourself weaker to experience more content" is an incredibly strange idea to me.

Nobody gets weaker.

And why is it strange to you? It's basically what happens in reality. For example, a child who starts doing taekwondo at age 5 will get physically stronger as he grows up, but there will be a point where he can't get any stronger, only more skillful and experienced.

[papajohn4]

As Mif said, this makes content obsolete, nothing more.

I have both feelings in this...from the one side as someone mentioned above, I started to play a hunter back in wotlk and was determined to do all quests while leveling to be loremaster..for each 5 levels there were 4-5 zones to go and once you completed one zone the other 4 zones was a joke (technically all zones was a joke since wow leveling became extremely easy ). That got me bored to hell..the very very easy mobs of my level , turned out to be critters when I had to complete subzones..So from this point of view, scaling content would be awesome.

From the other side, I can't say that I don't like to feel overpower sometimes..one of my best activities was to farm all raids/dungeons for well looking gear and actually it wasn't easy but it was doable and many times very challenging..but you could do it solo. Also it is weird to reach the level cap and from there don't see your character getting stronger.

So I guess that scaling is awesome for leveling and open world zone, but when it comes to dungeons and raids I think a feeling of progression through levels is needed..and of course it needs to stay linear, not to reset it every 3-4 months..replacing the carrots is not bad...but giving the carrots you managed to reach free to those who didn't is not good for me.

But we still haven't seen the game, we are talking out of our imagination...maybe gameplay/combat/graphics will be a blast and last thing that will cross your mind will be better gear

[Hellgaunt]

I reported this thread for sticky and to be locked

I find the discussion in here quite good and healthy and could serve as an educated example of construtive forum-behaviour

[Darkademic]

From the other side, I can't say that I don't like to feel overpower sometimes..one of my best activities was to farm all raids/dungeons for well looking gear and actually it wasn't easy but it was doable and many times very challenging..but you could do it solo. Also it is weird to reach the level cap and from there don't see your character getting stronger.

This probably comes down to preference, however rather than looking at it in terms of losing a particular type of gameplay, I'd look at in terms of which offers the most additional enjoyment.

For example, I'd assume nearly everyone likes to feel overpowered every once in a while, but how many people actively go around low-level content one-shotting things as a primary mode of play?

I farmed gear for transmorgrification in WoW too, and I did enjoy soloing or 2-manning the TBC raids, but it comes down to whether I'd get more out of that, or out of being able to actually do those raids as they were intended. Personally, I'd get a lot more enjoyment out of the latter.

[tibben]

The carrot is an analogy for any and all rewards, so there most certainly is a carrot, many of them in fact. The constantly increasing power aspect is what turns it into a carrot-on-a-stick, as whenever you reach the carrot, it gets further away (well technically a new one appears - it's not a perfect analogy, but most people get the idea).

I was about to say a similar thing. There are plenty of carrots in GW2. Maybe your carrot is maxing out all crafting professions. Guess what? You can eat that carrot. Maybe your carrot is collecting the coolest looking set of gear and dying it to look even cooler. Guess what? You can eat that carrot too. There are plenty of things at max level that people can continue striving to achieve, but the coolest part is, they can actually achieve it. The carrot is within reach. If you've gotten all the carrots you wanted then perhaps you set the game aside and wait until the next expansion, or you can just play the game for the fun of it since you aren't paying a monthly fee.

[Howard Moon]

Good read! Makes the game model definitely sound interesting! Concerning the article, some headers and subheaders would have helped the readability. I appreciate the small paragraphs, but without visible hierarchical structure, it feels like a wall of text. Well written, though!

[Darkademic]

Good read! Makes the game model definitely sound interesting! Concerning the article, some headers and subheaders would have helped the readability. I appreciate the small paragraphs, but without visible hierarchical structure, it feels like a wall of text. Well written, though!

Thanks! Yea I used headings in my previous one, but with this one there didn't seem to be any intuitive places to put them, as every paragraph more or less flows on to the next. Don't suppose you have any suggestions for the headings and where they'd would fit in?

[papajohn4]

This probably comes down to preference, however rather than looking at it in terms of losing a particular type of gameplay, I'd look at in terms of which offers the most additional enjoyment.

For example, I'd assume nearly everyone likes to feel overpowered every once in a while, but how many people actively go around low-level content one-shotting things as a primary mode of play?

I farmed gear for transmorgrification in WoW too, and I did enjoy soloing or 2-manning the TBC raids, but it comes down to whether I'd get more out of that, or out of being able to actually do those raids as they were intended. Personally, I'd get a lot more enjoyment out of the latter.

you know I always thought of that really..how if I could go now and do Black temple scaled on my level/power..it would be epic..So many dungeons, so many raids are wasted through the time..just because they don't drop the right loot..well you are very right here..If I had to chose to 2-man TBC raids instead to do them with my guild in high difficulty I would chose the second closed eyes.

Every time I see QQ posts in all others MMO about content and why they don't add content faster, I think of all those dungeons and raids wasted...

[nbm02ss]

you know I always thought of that really..how if I could go now and do Black temple scaled on my level/power..it would be epic..So many dungeons, so many raids are wasted through the time..just because they don't drop the right loot..well you are very right here..If I had to chose to 2-man TBC raids instead to do them with my guild in high difficulty I would chose the second closed eyes.

Every time I see QQ posts in all others MMO about content and why they don't add content faster, I think of all those dungeons and raids wasted...

Not only that but could you imagine being new to WoW, getting to level 70+ and actually finding people who still do old raids? When I still played I had a hard time getting people interested in playing around WotLK because they had to drop quite a bit of money at once just to level to cap. They felt they were wasting money on TBC just to be able to get to and play endgame content.

[papajohn4]

Not only that but could you imagine being new to WoW, getting to level 70+ and actually finding people who still do old raids? When I still played I had a hard time getting people interested in playing around WotLK because they had to drop quite a bit of money at once just to level to cap. They felt they were wasting money on TBC just to be able to get to and play endgame content.

that would be awesome too...I think every company that respect their work should have this system...working on content to just throw it in garbage after 3-4 months is sad..