Gear-Attribute Management

The number of available attribute combos for gear continues to grow. Unfortunately, as the number of options continues to grow, it provides more and more disincentive to experiment and collect different ones, which is bad for the game. It's also just overwhelming to newer players.

At exotic and below, it leads to excessive inventory clutter and gold expenditure. Ascended just takes too much investment to get anything that isn't considered meta. This means that it's the primary incentive of chasing Legendary, which I frankly just think is sad and uninteresting, and also a questionable payoff for the legendary journey on its own.

I do, however, think we should continue to get new attribute combos as it's one of the best ways to progress the game in a way that results in, at most, a very shallow power curve. So, I propose a few changes to the underlying foundation moving forward:

1. Group different stat combos into themes or roles and, for all tiers of gear, allow players to swap freely between various stat combinations that are tied to the same theme. So, a piece of exotic or ascended gear might be able to freely swap between Rabid, Dire, Sinister, or Viper stats (once you unlocked them). Legendary would retain the unique ability to swap between the different groupings.

2. Since this reduces the convenience gap between non-legendary and legendary gear, give Legendary gear another special feature (a more interesting one) to make them more attractive to chase - such as access to unique legendary sigils/runes that act as an interesting form of horizontal progression.

That is all.

such as access to unique legendary sigils/runes that act as an interesting form of horizontal progression.

There can be two scenarios that can happen by introducing exclusive sigils/runes:

1. They are useless to the meta builds and are therefore worthless, bringing you back to square one; or,
2. They are meta runes and therefore make Legendary equipment the next "requirement" people look for in raiders, thereby invalidating your claims of horizontal progression.

@Ojimaru.8970 said:

such as access to unique legendary sigils/runes that act as an interesting form of horizontal progression.

1. They are useless to the meta builds and are therefore worthless, bringing you back to square one; or,
2. They are meta runes and therefore make Legendary equipment the next "requirement" people look for in raiders, thereby invalidating your claims of horizontal progression.

Who cares? This argument is just pedantic. Concern over the impact to metas is not a reason to not do interesting things that would be an overall benefit to the game. It's more important to make the different legendaries interesting to pursue and obtain than it is to keep them perfectly equal to Ascended at all times. If your argument was valid, we wouldn't and shouldn't have ever gotten elite specs.

Legendary still has the same stats as Ascended, so even if the effects from unique sigils/runes is "meta", it won't matter that much. You'll still be about as effective with Ascended, and it's not like toxicity will grow in the game as a result of it. If they aren't meta, then it makes it even more of a non-issue. It then just becomes a fun thing to make Legendaries feel more unique.

Honestly, though, even if I were to concede to this argument, it doesn't change what I feel needs to happen with #1 above. The number of stat combinations has grown too much to not group them more effectively and allow for more experimentation without buying an insane number of sets of things.

The game would be simply better, if it wouldn't have Gear Stats at all.

Characters should naturally become more powerful in regard of character progression. Gear should provide only its Defense Value, Upgrade Slots that should provide Effects only, not Stat Bonuses, Visual Effects and Gameplay Mechanics for specific Modes, like Fractals (Agony Resistance)

The Attribute Stats that we have, should players manually deside by each level up from 1 to 80, how you want to distribute your Stats, just like players were able in GW1 to manually decide, how you build up your character and put your points into various values to improve this way your character - together with an option that players should ALWAYS be able to reset their Build Settings completely, so that you can redistribute your Attributes again newly as you like.

If GW2 would get rid finally of Gear Stats, then they could get rid also Ascended Equipment, everybody would be again equally same as powerful once you'd reach Max Level automatically in regard at least of Stats, Armor Value still not, but at least for Stats, cause thats then the only point left for why Anet could keep Ascended Stuff then in the game to let Ascended bit the tiny bridge between Exotic Stuff and Legendary in regard of Armor Value minus visual effects.

If Gear would not have Stats in GW2, then there woudl be also no need to have a gazillion of "Stat Set Combos" that make more and more the game complicated to balance, so more Set Combos Anet adds to the game.Yes, such a change would mean a lot of changes to economy, remobing alot of then useless content (dead weight!!) and reallocating materials that were part for recipes ect in regard of craftign to new recipes ect. that will take the role as replacement content, so that the games economy doesn't fall in like a house of cards from this change, so that lots of materials ect. still stay in demand..

If GW2 would have no tons of Stat Set Combos and Stats on gear, would be implementign a Build Template System also a big step mucxh easier for Anet, if there wouldn't be anymore the huge point of having to handle with such a system tons of equipment changes in just a button click, just only to change your Stats, when its basicalyl only your Stats as a Setting, that needs to get changed per button click, not neccessarely all your worn equipment on your character as well.

Removing Gear Stats from the game woulld allow Naet also to redsign the concept and gameplay effects from Upgrades to make them for more interstign and useful for Character Builds, if not half of their effects woudl bve all based only on boosting only your silly stats.Especialyl Rune Sets could become a much more interrestign Build creator Tool for all of us, if not half of all their effects would be wasted on boostign our Stats only, but wouzld be focused and designed around the concept instea,d of making individual changes to the gameplay of our class instead, our skilsl and traits, how they would work for us, based on which upgrades I use.

The whole combat system of GW2 could be potentially designed alot more fun, interestign and player skill orientated, if there wouldn't exist Gear Stats in this game.Thats just my opinion.Gear Stats is an obsolete game design concept, from which ANet should have stayed away imo from begin on, instead they continued to follow the path of the Stat Combo Set treadmill and made it over the years only larger, more complex and harder to keep balanced.... absolute wrong desicion

@Einlanzer.1627 said:

@Ojimaru.8970 said:

such as access to unique legendary sigils/runes that act as an interesting form of horizontal progression.

1. They are useless to the meta builds and are therefore worthless, bringing you back to square one; or,
2. They are meta runes and therefore make Legendary equipment the next "requirement" people look for in raiders, thereby invalidating your claims of horizontal progression.

Legendaries won't feel more unique by having "Legendary runes" you would simply swap away and toss into the back of your bank. On the other hand, if these exclusive runes/sigils are meta, which imply they are better than any available rune/sigils, then you would have made Legendary equipment a tier above Ascended, and therefore cause it to be part of vertical gear progression.

@Ojimaru.8970 said:

@Einlanzer.1627 said:

@Ojimaru.8970 said:

such as access to unique legendary sigils/runes that act as an interesting form of horizontal progression.

1. They are useless to the meta builds and are therefore worthless, bringing you back to square one; or,
2. They are meta runes and therefore make Legendary equipment the next "requirement" people look for in raiders, thereby invalidating your claims of horizontal progression.

Hyperbole on both sides. Legendary runes would be fun to play with if they have unique effects, even if they aren't meta. if they are meta, it won't make enough of a difference to matter much. One easy option would be for them to have effects that benefit solo players a lot but are of less value in organized high end content. Runes of the Privateer are a good existing example of this. They aren't even close to meta, but they convey a really interesting theme and really effective for solo play on non-pet classes, so I run with them a lot.

Sorry, I just don't think this is a good argument, and you are very, very unlikely to change my mind.

One easy option would be for them to have effects that benefit solo players a lot but are of less value in organized high end content

Any effect that hugely benefits a single player will have value in organized high end content. As a matter of fact, all runes and sigils used by DPS builds benefit only the wearer, e.g. Rune of Scholar, Rune of Nightmare/Trapper, Rune of the Renegade, etc. I will concede that the Rune of the Privateer has a strong theme, but if you are suggesting the legendaries have some additional particle effect--on top of their existing effects--then how does that address the loss of functional uniqueness your proposal removes from them? If new "unique" effects are what you are after, why not just hard-bake them into the armor, rather than constrain them to a rune set that you are likely to not use?

Your original argument bemoans the cost to make "non-meta" ascended equipment, while fearing the clutter of sets of exotic equipment. Yet stat-swapping of ascended equipment has existed since 2015. The major cost components, i.e. the inscription/insignia and sigil/rune, will likely require some expenditure of gold to acquire, but that's general good for the game's economy.

@Orpheal.8263 said:The game would be simply better, if it wouldn't have Gear Stats at all.

... snip

Good post, agreed with most of it. +1

Generally feel that GW2 went a step backward when it came to stats, from GW1, where you could adjust them freely in the cities. Personally I've just fallen into the idea of "I run celestial on everything, so I don't have to bother with this....". And I've posted some ideas on how to remove them before. Unfortunately I think ANet's precious "Game-Economy" is dependent around all these basically trash items, so they're not likely going to do anything about it.

• Remove stats from weapons and armor. And either retain stats on trinkets only, or change the trinkets into a menu to change the stats manually.
• Or let me use the PVP build system in the rest of the game, I'm ok with not having ascended stats. (Especially miss the Sigil/Rune system from PVP)

@joneirikb.7506 said:

@Orpheal.8263 said:The game would be simply better, if it wouldn't have Gear Stats at all.

...

snip

• Remove stats from weapons and armor. And either retain stats on trinkets only, or change the trinkets into a menu to change the stats manually.
• Or let me use the PVP build system in the rest of the game, I'm ok with not having ascended stats. (Especially miss the Sigil/Rune system from PVP)

Yeah. If I was designing the game from scratch, I'd have an altogether different approach that would probably eliminate stats from gear. My suggestion was largely based around the recognition of what we have currently and ways to tweak it without redesigning the whole game.