Loot is worth it progressing from 1-80. As for endgame being balanced item stat wise, and sPVP having set gear is a good thing I feel. Playing Guild Wars I can just jump into pvp, find the build that works for me and right away have a decent, balanced time. It is a refreshing change to jumping into pvp and in straight fights against someone getting trounced because they have all the pvp resistance gear and stamina from farming pvp. Not to mention Arena (in WoW) having exclusivity on the best tiers at any given moment.
To get competitive in PvP requires a great deal of farming *in* PvP. And then content patches just add new tiers anyway to make you have to progress over and over. It is an issue when people who are legitimately skilled are outplayed simply because they haven't played enough. And in the case of WoW they are actively excluded by people purely on the basis of their gear score not being high enough. It is a frustrating, artificial treadmill.
It also penalizes new players granting the ones who play/practice the most progressively better gear while someone going in new for the first time simply wouldn't be able to hold their ground at all. With a level playing field in terms of stats on gear you can simply dive in and play without worries about needing a certain tier of armour, specific pvp resistance gear, etc.
You still get outfits and weapons that are different on a purely cosmetic level which is nice to have. You stand out, without that translating into making you inherently better than the competition. It is a skill based system, rather than gear based which I am certainly glad for. I got fed up with the artificial treadmill on WoW. I would raid regularly and slowly get gear over months. Then the next content patch would come out and everyone would just immediately be able to farm that set. The old content becomes worthless, as the better stats are in the next place, etc. Essentially culling off the games content in it's wake. It was a frustrating experience and I grew very tired of it.
I gladly welcome the idea of loot ultimately becoming a matter of cosmetics. That way all content can remain relevent, along with all the outfits. And some gear can remain a truly deep challenge to get. Which makes you stand out. Beats the gear tiering system in WoW, especially after months of hard work raiding going into a pug and having someone do 90% of their dps as auto attack, concussive shot a boss a bit. And stroll around with aspect of the cheetah. And they outgeared me.
There have been plenty of compelling competitive multiplayer games around without the detrimental gear feedback loop.
Anyway, as for Guild Wars 2 you have legendary weapons to work towards, hard to get armour sets (even though the stats are the same, you would still look impressive in them), pvp for the level playing field and enjoyable competition. The constantly cycling World vs World large scale conflicts between servers, etc. There are things for people to do and there is gear to get. It just dosn't equate to a statistical advantage over someone else. So there should be things to do and persue, it just dosn't make you inherently better than the competition, which I think will be a good thing :)
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