ArenaNet hosted a live developer Ask Me Anything (AMA) chat on Reddit yesterday which was headed by Chris Whiteside, Studio Design Director, and President Mike O’Brien. Quite a few issues were tackled, but one of the most interesting was without a doubt Chris Whiteside’s reply regarding the addition of ascended gear, the brand new tier of gear introduced in November’s update.
Ascended gear is a controversial issue within the Guild Wars 2 community because it’s a new tier of stat-influenced gear in a game that was largely promoted as not having tiers of progression-based gear. A large amount of players gave Guild Wars 2 a try because they were tired of the gear treadmill prominent in almost every single MMORPG right now, and with this addition, those same players wondered what exactly was on the developers’ minds. There was little warning when the feature was added, and because of this fact, most players assumed ArenaNet had simply decided to go against their original philosophy.
So what exactly were the developers thinking? Here was Chris Whiteside’s reply following the original question, which can be found on Reddit:
E2: Ascended gears are making a lot of people worry about an ever-increasing gear treadmill. Many players did not want the exotic/legendary system to change, and they don’t like ascended gears. Was this expected? Can this be something fixed in a painless way? Can it happen?
Chris Whiteside: Yes the response was definitively expected. We did not intent for the information to come out this way. Going back to my previous answer the issue is that we believe in the vertical progression system we had pre launch and that the introduction of an element into the system post launch was going to cause concern but something we believe in. That is why there is no plan for new Rarity Tiers of loot but there are plans to enhance or gain items within the existing rarity design whose properties continue on a shallow power curve. This said we certainly don’t want to create a system where itemization blocks progression in the game globally and we also need to be careful of this in areas such as FotM if the primary reward isn’t available elsewhere in the game. So in short its an exciting problem but one that has been poorly communicated and handled.
And for this I take responsibility and apologies. However the future of this philosophy and the design challenges it throws up are going to lead to a pioneering world and one that we are very excited about.
So anyway I kind of went of topic here so in short. We don’t intend to have an item rarity gear treadmill, we intend for the progression for gaining these rewards to have lots of different avenues for different types of player and where possible lower no fun grind within the whole of the game.
In other words, ArenaNet added ascended gear to help close a gap between current gear sets, and unfortunately, the team didn’t communicate this fact very well.
Mike O’Brien later went on to mention “Some progression is OK, but pushing players onto a gear treadmill isn’t OK and isn’t what the game is about. I don’t think [ascended gear] invalidates the fundamental concept that GW2 can have gradual stat progression without being a gear treadmill game.”
Interesting stuff. Do you feel ascended gear goes against ArenaNet’s original design philosophy or are gear tiers somewhat necessary to keep players interested in the content?
LET'S GET SOCIAL