Way I read this.. and I haven't seen anyone else suggest this yet.. is that for, say, a Ranger, you'd have to choose between Ranger or Druid.. depending which you are, certain skills won't be available and traits might be different. Seems sensible to me.
I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it.
"We will never add more levels to the game, we will never add more tiers of gear to the game. The tiers and levels we have today will be the tiers and levels we have for the rest of the life of Guild Wars 2."
So, the real question becomes....which Mike O'Brien should we believe? The one who insisted that they were eventually going to raise the level cap back when the game was riding high on its success, or the one who is now saying they'll never do that now that the game needs an expansion to bring back some of the people it's being losing? And, ultimately, what's to stop him from changing his mind again two more years from now?
I think the last one was Colin Johanson but it doesn't matter.
In a couple of years things change.
At the point in time where the first affirmation was made they were expecting to increase the level cap.
Since then they have experimented with both Fractals agony resistance and WvW ability upgrades.
The mastery system is an expansion of those systems.
While it is kinda of a vertical progression it is compartmentalized opposed to new gear and levels that aren't.
Better stats are better everywhere but something like Agony resistance 1000000 only works in fractals - in Queensdale a guy with 1000000 AR is just as powerful as another with 0 AR.
Masteries will be similar - Combat Mastery will only work in HoT.
The day you stop learning is the day you die.
This is a case of someone at Anet have an idea.
Currently playing: GW2 Going cardboard starter kit: Ticket to ride, Pandemic, Carcassonne, Dominion, 7 Wonders
I think the last one was Colin Johanson but it doesn't matter.
In a couple of years things change.
At the point in time where the first affirmation was made they were expecting to increase the level cap.
Since then they have experimented with both Fractals agony resistance and WvW ability upgrades.
The mastery system is an expansion of those systems.
While it is kinda of a vertical progression it is compartmentalized opposed to new gear and levels that aren't.
Better stats are better everywhere but something like Agony resistance 1000000 only works in fractals - in Queensdale a guy with 1000000 AR is just as powerful as another with 0 AR.
Masteries will be similar - Combat Mastery will only work in HoT.
The day you stop learning is the day you die.
This is a case of someone at Anet have an idea.
The second quote is indeed from Colin, but O'Brien was very clear on the matter too:
"I will commit to you that your max-level characters with your top-tier gear today are still going to be your max-level characters with your top-tier gear tomorrow."
There's also another quote somewhere from another interview that I can't seem to locate.
It's one thing to "learn from your mistakes", it's quite another to 100% reverse your stance entirely in two years. And I do mean a full 180 here, because the original stance was "we definitely plan to do it" and now it's "we're never going to do it". That's a full fledged jump from one extreme to the other. This is like a person who is 100% against gay marriage suddenly coming out and saying that he's 100% in favor of it now. Someone does that in the political arena, you tend to call him a "flip-flopper" and you tend not to be quite as trustworthy of what he says.
Most of the people who stuck around with GW2 after the Ascended incident were the people who actually supported the addition of more vertical progression (levels, gear, etc) into GW2, since they made it very clear at the time that there would be more. So the announcement that there will never be a level cap increase or a new tier of equipment doesn't seem to appeal to that crowd at all. It's not hard to conclude, based on this, that GW2 has lost a lot of fans over these last two years (probably a great deal more than they will lose by announcing the "end" of vertical progression), and this expansion is their attempt to win them back.
Don't get me wrong here, I doubt Mike O'Brien has reversed course out of sheer malice. I fully expect this is a reversal due to a significant loss of players. The introduction of the megaserver was the first real indication that GW2 had lost a fair amount of players and couldn't sustain its original server-based world populations, so it comes as no real surprise that the devs would change their stances to try and entice back players they've lost along the way. Everybody makes an effort to get their old players back at some point, after all. The issue I'm having here is that this is only two and a half years into the game's lifespan and they've already completely changed their established policy regarding vertical progression. Most games will throw shinies at their old players in the form of free gifts, XP boosts, etc, but it's rare for a game that is still so young to be radically altering its design structure to accommodate players it's lost to other games.
Thus, I have no choice but to reiterate my previous question: which quote do we trust? Because these are two completely different stances coming from the same man, only 2 years apart. If indeed this change was brought about by a desire to bring back players, who is to say they won't change their minds again later down the road, if the winds should change again and there's a sudden upheaval for more vertical progression? I think it's less a question of "did they learn from their mistakes" and more a question of "is this change completely motivated by a desire to sell more units, and if so, what's to stop them from changing again at a later date under the same motivations?"
Comments
I think the last one was Colin Johanson but it doesn't matter.
In a couple of years things change.
At the point in time where the first affirmation was made they were expecting to increase the level cap.
Since then they have experimented with both Fractals agony resistance and WvW ability upgrades.
The mastery system is an expansion of those systems.
While it is kinda of a vertical progression it is compartmentalized opposed to new gear and levels that aren't.
Better stats are better everywhere but something like Agony resistance 1000000 only works in fractals - in Queensdale a guy with 1000000 AR is just as powerful as another with 0 AR.
Masteries will be similar - Combat Mastery will only work in HoT.
The day you stop learning is the day you die.
This is a case of someone at Anet have an idea.
Currently playing: GW2
Going cardboard starter kit: Ticket to ride, Pandemic, Carcassonne, Dominion, 7 Wonders
The second quote is indeed from Colin, but O'Brien was very clear on the matter too:
"I will commit to you that your max-level characters with your top-tier gear today are still going to be your max-level characters with your top-tier gear tomorrow."
There's also another quote somewhere from another interview that I can't seem to locate.
It's one thing to "learn from your mistakes", it's quite another to 100% reverse your stance entirely in two years. And I do mean a full 180 here, because the original stance was "we definitely plan to do it" and now it's "we're never going to do it". That's a full fledged jump from one extreme to the other. This is like a person who is 100% against gay marriage suddenly coming out and saying that he's 100% in favor of it now. Someone does that in the political arena, you tend to call him a "flip-flopper" and you tend not to be quite as trustworthy of what he says.
Most of the people who stuck around with GW2 after the Ascended incident were the people who actually supported the addition of more vertical progression (levels, gear, etc) into GW2, since they made it very clear at the time that there would be more. So the announcement that there will never be a level cap increase or a new tier of equipment doesn't seem to appeal to that crowd at all. It's not hard to conclude, based on this, that GW2 has lost a lot of fans over these last two years (probably a great deal more than they will lose by announcing the "end" of vertical progression), and this expansion is their attempt to win them back.
Don't get me wrong here, I doubt Mike O'Brien has reversed course out of sheer malice. I fully expect this is a reversal due to a significant loss of players. The introduction of the megaserver was the first real indication that GW2 had lost a fair amount of players and couldn't sustain its original server-based world populations, so it comes as no real surprise that the devs would change their stances to try and entice back players they've lost along the way. Everybody makes an effort to get their old players back at some point, after all. The issue I'm having here is that this is only two and a half years into the game's lifespan and they've already completely changed their established policy regarding vertical progression. Most games will throw shinies at their old players in the form of free gifts, XP boosts, etc, but it's rare for a game that is still so young to be radically altering its design structure to accommodate players it's lost to other games.
Thus, I have no choice but to reiterate my previous question: which quote do we trust? Because these are two completely different stances coming from the same man, only 2 years apart. If indeed this change was brought about by a desire to bring back players, who is to say they won't change their minds again later down the road, if the winds should change again and there's a sudden upheaval for more vertical progression? I think it's less a question of "did they learn from their mistakes" and more a question of "is this change completely motivated by a desire to sell more units, and if so, what's to stop them from changing again at a later date under the same motivations?"