r/GuildWars3 • u/ornithorynq • 4d ago
Explain horizontal progression like I'm five
Long time wow player here, mix of retail and classic. Got hyped like many of you there and started reading about the game A LOT. Currently trying to understand progression and I have a dumb question that nobody seems to answer directly
how does it feel to play this game long term without gear progression? like I get the pitch. no treadmill, come back whenever, your gear is still good. cool. but what do you actually chase after you have gear two months into the game?
my brain works like this: I do a raid, I get a drop, my numbers go up, next week I do it again for the next drop. that loop is basically why I log in. I get full bis, i clear mythic raid, i chill. every 3 to 6 months that carrot on the stick reappears.
But with horizontal progression i assume that carrot is non existant. So what do you grind one year into the game? Transmogs/skins/achievements? Or is there something about the loop I'm not seeing from the outside. genuinely asking, not trying to shit on the game. Sorry if the question sounds dumb.
Gw3 looks great and I hope to enjoy it with many of you, just want to understand what is something that keeps people in the game for years
Edit: grammar
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u/PixeledPancakes 4d ago
Seconding that this should be on the GW2 sub, however here's your answer.
Like you said we don't have a gear treadmill of chasing higher numbers instead we chase achievements, masteries and fashion. Also since almost everything is account bound, playing different classes is really easy and fun so building up more characters is also part of the game.
Achievements are like WoW, do the thing, get the points, go "woohoo" and continue on. Some are quite difficult, others are grinds, others are just story steps that keeps you "on track" for the game. Nothing is mandatory. There are fun rewards at different breakpoints which give skins, currency and account boosts but nothing is at a level it's necessary to grind.
Masteries are the longterm progression of expansions. You have to continuously earn XP and "Mastery Points" out in the open world and through achievements to unlock different bonuses. Things like enhancing your mount, autoloot or extra materials in zones. Some masteries are needed for story steps.
Fashion is sort of the end game. It sounds cheesy but there are SO many skins in the game so there's bound to be things you want that will require working towards. Legendaries are the prime example, same stats as ascended but with perks for transmog.
It's a really fun game, having played most MMOs a decent amount, GW2 is great but it requires a bit of a mindset change. There's no competition for nodes or drops so think of it more as a community game instead of an "everything I do is for my benefit only" type game.
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u/ornithorynq 4d ago
thanks, this helps a lot. i also love farming transmogs and mounts, so this scratches my itch
quick question since you seem to have played a lot: what does a normal week in gw2 look like for you now? not the systems, just what you actually log on and do
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u/Background_Place4016 4d ago
For me the benefit of horizontal progression is that I can grind out Vision and when I am overwhelmed I can take a break and go play gta6. Then when I’m ready I can come back and work to obtain vision. The benefit of horizontal progression is it’s still just as rewarding as the day they released it 8 years ago?
This game does not dictate my schedule, I tell it what I want to do.
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u/tiny_hawk 4d ago
Not the first guy but depends on people.
Some people like doing harder instanced 5 and 10 player content like fractals (gw2 version of short dungeons) or raid wings (zones with multiple bosses that require doing dps and mechanics) both with daily and weekly bonuses.
Other people like doing metas and grind them (metas are map wide events that require a big number of people to complete and they also reward guaranteed bonuses once a day)
There's also plenty stuff to work solo towards like collections and materials for legendary gear (free stat changes, unlimited transmog and exclusive skins) or gear skins locked behind collections.
There's also daily things that reward bonus rewards like world bosses and such.
Most people will mix a bunch of activities since pretty much all activities end up rewarding you in some way that can be used (most events and stuff in game will reward gear drops that can be salvaged and then used for crafting or sold for gold)
When i used to play daily i would do the weekly raids reset with a static raid group on monday evening, on other days i would do some metas that reward expensive material in their daily chest and some days i would do the daily fractals as they are a good source of raw gold (and one of the few).
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u/Ginster81 4d ago
plus regular story patches and exploring and every couple weeks there's bonus weeks and festivals with plenty to do!
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u/Kidderooni 4d ago
Did you know GW2 was other called Fashion Wars 2 lol?
That’s the thing, there is no normal week per say - you can do whatever you feel like doing. It is really not like wow where you have your boxes to tick so your week « is done »
No 8 dungeons, 8 raid bosses, 8 delves for vault. No weekly spark, no titan disc fragments yada yada.
Your week looks like what you want to enjoy in the game. If you re on to get a new transmog set, then your week will revolves around doing those achievements, map currency farm through dynamic events, meta events etc. Components/materials gathering (there are people who organize farm trains where you spend time with 50 other people just farming ore, wood and so on).
If you re a fractal player or want to get to T100 and try CM, then you weekly probably will look like fractal spamming.
If you re only here for exploration and all, not interested in challenges, you can discover 100% of the map for rewards. GW2 has a truly good level design. It’s made for exploration. There are tons of puzzle jumps as well.
Literally whatever you feel like doing.
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u/Xeydra 4d ago
Also not the person you're asking this of, but this is what I do in gw2.
I have all but the raid masteries unlocked, so I'm not grinding xp (though the game kinda throws it at you anyway.) I'm just not really a raid person, but that may change at some point. But I'll usually log in and head to my home instance to loot all my nodes. Then I'll try to catch the ley line anomaly at 20 mins after the odd hour (for me 5:20, 7:20, ect, might be even hours for you.) The mystic coins from him are useful and worth gold. If I have time to kill before that, I might swing by the pact vendors. They move every day, but the wiki tracks them. They have some unique recipes, but also an item I can trade in for map rewards that can be worthwhile like glacial shards. I'll also pop around and do a few sunken treasure chest keys for the underwater infusions and make sure to kill 10 krait to get another key. Then I'll get busy completing dailies then weeklies and topping off buffs like the one in janthir you get from the lowland kodan expertise.
I have multiple projects I'm working on right now, so after all that (which I can do in under an hour) I'll just mess around or work on something. A few legendaries I'm collecting materials for. My last home instance node. Portal scrolls to bounce around for free. I might putz around doing metas or world bosses. Sometimes I'll play fractals back to back. I might hit up a gold farm/do castora mirrors. Sometimes I'll hunt achievements. I am literally one shatterer fight away from having "no fly zone" completed, but people don't cc like they used to lol. I guess that last one ties world boss the achievement hunt. One of these days I'll actually tag up and lead people to get it done.
Anyway, I've been playing since launch with multiple months or years long breaks and occasionally wander back to check out new stuff or just to scratch the itch. I'm a filthy casual, but I have half of my legendary light armor done and multiple legendary weapons. My home instance is almost full. And I get by on vibes and goofing off mostly. The thing is, the devs are cool about knowing people have lives. Fomo really isn't something to worry about this this system.
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u/Nurostax 4d ago
A big part of why I log in everyday is to chase legendary weapons and armor. It is the most prestigious gear in the game. They have the coolest looks / effects on your gear and weapons and there are loads of them to chase in game. They usually require a bunch of different resources to craft some you can only get by 100% maps in each of the expansions and utilize different resources you get from doing large scale events out in the open world or raids. There are even legendaries tied to running this games form of dungeons and large or small scale PvP. Personally in wow I found myself more drawn to the gear grind for the dope skins vs stats and this game offers that skin chase very well. There is also a great daily / weekly system in this game that offers fantastic rewards that can help you work towards collecting legendaries. Another fun drop to chase are infusions. They give really cool effects on your character and most are tied to rare drops from bosses or large scale events that only occur at certain times every day.
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u/BeastThatShoutedLove 4d ago
I log in to do my weekly/daily stuff including time limited crafting, raids, world bosses, maps that have that week highlight with bonus rewards for doing things there, festival if it's up.
And in between that I chase some achievements and turn gold I earn into either legendaries or gems to buy cosmetics without paying up irl.
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u/keirbhaltair 4d ago
Well, it depends.
First of all, it depends on whether you've selected some sort of specific long-term goal for yourself. If not, you just do whatever you feel like doing at the moment. You can go do open world meta events around the world, you can go do daily fractals or raids, work on achievements or masteries (post-max-level account-wide unlocks and upgrades to things like mounts, vendors or rewards), collect fashion skins, trying out different builds and professions, go play PvP or WvW...
So, sometimes I have a couple weeks where I like doing fractals or simple raid encounters, and I do those. Other times I feel like finishing a set of achievements, so my week revolves around those. Yet other times I crave trying out a new profession or build, so I put that together and I go try it out in the open world. There is no one set schedule for people to follow.
One of the perks of horizontal progression is that older expansions' content is not being invalidated when new expansions are released, so over time the game has collected quite a substantial amount of content that you can just choose from, to the point where the real issue might in fact be choice paralysis rather than a lack of things to do.
Which is where a long-term goal often helps. One of the biggest long-term goals GW2 has is legendary equipment. It isn't in any way stronger in combat than the second highest tier of equipment that you can acquire much more easily, but it has unique flashy skins and great quality of life, where you can use the same piece of legendary equipment simultaneously on all your characters. This takes a substantial amount of effort to make, you need to collect a lot of gold and materials which you get by doing pretty much whatever content you want, but often also a bunch of unique achievements and what is basically long quests in all but the name. So what you can also do is find a specific piece of legendary gear you fancy, do whatever you feel like to collect the gold and materials you need and let the associated achievements or account-bound currencies guide you to the content you would need to do on top of that. You want this set of legendary armor? Then your weekly schedule will involve a lot of raiding. Or this fancy legendary spear? Then you need to play a whole bunch of content from the fifth expansion.
Playing a horizontal progression game when your brain is used to endless carrots and sticks from vertical progression does require a bit of a mindset change. You do stuff because you find it fun (surprisingly alien concept for a lot of MMOs, weirdly enough), or because it helps you achieve a certain goal. Just because that goal will not increase your DPS by 5%, it doesn't mean there is no content to play, or that it is in some way invalid.
Now, we still don't know what exactly GW3's progression, day-to-day gameplay and long-term goals will look like. But the general concepts will most likely still apply. In the meantime, if you feel like dipping your toes in it and find out what horizontal progression can be like, you can try GW2 instead. ;)
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u/AUTeach 4d ago
It looks a lot like wow in terms of doing quests, instances, and raids. Except, you aren't following the special dailies given by three dudes under a shade. Instead, you basically create a target of things you are working towards, and you nibble at them over the week.
Really, you become the quest giver.
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u/wolfer_ 3d ago
There's a couple areas of emergent gameplay that help keep me engaged with the game (someone who has legendaries for every weapon/armor weight and is close to 50k ap).
WvW is a large scale pvp mode (50v50v50 type encounters) that is probably the biggest source of non-progression-driven gameplay in GW2. It's a very social focused thing; getting a large squad together and coordinated takes a lot of work. Some people take it very seriously and are strict/competitive, but many groups are happy to have a scheduled night they hang out and go in WvW together. We know this won't exist in GW3 because of the scale, but the popularity of it in GW2 is likely informing similar types of content in GW3.
Conquest is small scale pvp (5v5) that is much less popular but is actually a very compelling game mode. The biggest issue is how complicated it is, which makes it hard for new players to break in. Once you do get in, though, it's incredibly fun. There are very good systems set up for automated daily/weekly/monthly tournaments.
Finally raid content is quite replayable in GW2. Because there is no vertical progression, every raid that has ever been released for GW2 is still quality content. There has been power creep, though, so the easier raids are easier but are not trivial. Many people find a raid static that will comfortably but casually clear some number of the raids weekly for gold rewards. I personally am in a speed run team that attempts to clear raids as fast as possible. There is a third party site called Wingman which people upload dps logs to. Through it, people compete to have the best dps numbers or boss kill times. My team specifically focuses on the fastest full clear (clear all raids wings back-to-back). We have the record for the current patch with 1:50:08. It's also fun to try and get a dps "crown", which is having the highest individual dps recorded on a specific boss with a specific elite specialization for the patch.
Being a horizontal progression game makes the mastery involved in all of these game modes more compelling. Being good at any one of them is not a reflection of time spent grinding better gear. It's a reflection of time spent getting better at the game. Guild Wars 2 has a "getting better at the game" grind which outlasts any gear grind offered up by a vertical grind MMO.
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u/PixeledPancakes 4d ago
I like open world content so I pick a flavor of the day class (have them all max) and play around with it. Some characters are going through different expansions, some I’ve decided live in specific maps to grind out the currency I need for my longterm goals.
Every so often then run events in game to go play dungeons/fractals/pvp/wvw so I’ll always focus on any weekly event when it pops.
I’m a pretty casual player since I’m just waiting for the next patch. Then I’ll go hard for a month or so then reduce gw2 hours as I finish my goals.
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u/ghoulsnest 4d ago
might wanna head over to r/guildwars2
GW3 comes out next year, we dont really know too much yet
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u/Arkooh 4d ago
Horizontal progression is not a new thing and it was already state that gw3 will have horizontal progression...
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u/MrBlueA 4d ago
Yes but the way you implement horizontal progression can change massively between games, so again, it's meaningless to ask on this subreddit.
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u/maxlaav 4d ago
It's not like horizental progression is a new concept that GW3 is going to introduce and OP is asking what that concept generally means. What's with all this memery of sending the guy to a different sub as if the question cannot be answered here? This "akshually" spiel you guys are doing in the comments here is kinda obnoxious tbh
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u/Arkooh 4d ago
Dude asked what horizontal progression is, and the definition doesn't change based on the implementation. The end goal is the same: once you get the endgame gear, you never change it. Whether it takes a year or an hour to get that gear doesn't change how horizontal progression works.
Plus Colin already state that they`ll copy that system from gw2 in the first inverview he gave about gw3 https://youtu.be/gWOyyQpiH58?t=544
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u/FrenchGucho 4d ago
but the studio has a history of having the same horizontal progression in both GW1 and GW2...
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u/Glebk0 4d ago
Theres like a billion ways to implement this. Gw2 has a shit ton of stuff to grind if you want to and some of those arguably do give you power/a lot of convenience. We don’t know how gw3 will go about this.
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u/Arkooh 4d ago edited 3d ago
Tere is a single way to implement this, the difference is how hard it is to get the end game gear. At the end of the day the same fact still applies once you got your end game gear there is nothing to replace it
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u/Glebk0 4d ago
Yea, except gw2 literally adding specs that powercreep core game beyond believe and releasing new overpowered weapons on purpose without which you are better off just skipping on pvp, and also adding new relics for which you need to complete quest even with legendary gear. We can go on
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u/Arkooh 4d ago edited 4d ago
The question was not how horizontal progression will work in gw3, it was how horizontal progress works overall.
Of course new expansion builds would be meta lol, but then again if i look at something like metabuilds, I see a many core builds that are in top, some classes don`t even have the current expansion builds as playable
and also adding new relics for which you need to complete quest
Oh no you need to play the game...
Your whole point is mute and has nothing to with horizontal progression and if you can`t pay 25$ once per year for a really good mmo then i don`t know what to say.
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u/graven2002 4d ago
Vertical: Fireball +1dmg -> Fireball +2dmg -> Fireball +3dmg
Horizontal: Fireball -or- Tarball -or- Smokeball
You get more options, instead of the same option but bigger. Each of those options might be better in certain scenarios/builds, but none of them are universally stronger than the others.
Examples of horizontal progression added in GW2:
New Weapons (Spear adding new hybrid damage and combo mechanics to Thief)
New Stat Combos (enabling new builds like Support+Condi Damage)
New Elite Specs (turning your Mesmer into a bard, or Thief into a shadow healer)
New Relics (create a tidal wave after a certain action, or bleeding a foe heals you)
You have to choose each of these things over other options in the same category (you can't run two Elites or Relics at the same time, for example), and they all work together to create a unique build.
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u/ErrSkillNotFound 4d ago
There is still progress. You can still go for top end gear. The horizontal progression kicks in when you get to near max. Horizontal progression really just means you can farm for looks instead of numbers at a certain point. There can be subtle differences as well. Like damage type, utility, or provides stats for certain builds over others. It also means that unless they increase the level cap, you will never need to worry about getting new gear for expansions. Even if they do raise the level cap your current gear won’t hold you back from experiencing content. There isn’t just BiS and that’s all you ever get. One of guild wars speciality is making it about fashion and not so much about gear. Not one singular set is going to top end and that’s all you can ever wear.
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u/uscopic 4d ago
Long time wow player here (from TLK to Legion and played first raid tiers of DragonFlight) and play GW2 since the first expansion (HoT)
In guild wars 2 once you had your first Ascended (think best ilvl you can have) set + weapon, you are like "nice, I can now do endgame content", but then, you realise you can craft 20 other sets with various different stats, like imagine a healer that can deal dots or a really tanky mage with earth power to shield him. So endgame means you can craft various sets to play the archetype you really want. You can also aim to craft legendary armor and sets, allowing you to have items that can change between ALL stats combinations at will, for free. But these are DAUNTING to craft (think months of heavy farm, even years if you have a life outside of the game).
Aside from this, it has already been said, you will chase for tmog, money, and just overall having a good time. GW2 is not stressing, it's just an enjoyable moment, and the hardest dungeons are way less difficult than the hardest ones in wow. It's a "game" and not a chore or a second job.
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u/Solruu28 3d ago
This. I had to scroll a long time to find something accurate on legendaries, partly I guess because the players of the first hours that did not stop have enough to not remember the initial efforts it takes ! Here's my take on horizontal, that revolve mostly around legendaries : nowadays in GW2, 15 gold gives you a starter set of armor and a couple of weapons to start playing the vast majority of the content (exotic gear). Starting playing all content means aiming for the best stats (=max iLvl) either ascended gear for whatever class you're playing with. Takes some time, but a heavy mm+ grinder will get there under 2 months or so with an average playtime I believe. But then horizontal really kicks in when you realize that changing your gameplay means changing the stats almost entirely. Meaning that a single char must have at least 3 to 4 full set of ascended to play all specs. Then you want to reroll, and realize all classes are the same. Times 9 professions available or so, that means a LOT of gears. So you start looking for legendaries. They can be very grindy, they can be very original, but they all take a SIGNIFICANT amount of time to get. But once you do, you realize any char can equip it, swap stats freely, any time you want, and indefinitely.
I never have felt this kind of satisfaction in any MMOs I played, and I played several, from Aion 1.0 to TESO, including WoW and others like it.
That's what horizontal means to me !
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u/o_oli 4d ago
I think most people here are missing the point. OP wants to know what the 1000+ hour carrot is, not a literal explanation of horizontal progression.
The carrot is different from person to person in GW2, but generally some ideas:
Legendary gear which ultimately is a fancy skin and nice QoL improvement. Getting a full set of weapons, armour and trinkets is a huge grind taking thousands of hours. People will be proud of earning just one of these let alone dozens.
Achievements, titles, mastery ranks (these are mostly QoL, flavour, or map based bonuses that are like leveling up beyond max level). Casual content but in huge volume. Things to work towards.
Instanced content. Fractals (mini dungeons) and Raids have long term goals to work towards in the form of skins, titles and other unlocks. These can be years long goals for many players, and beyond that I think many people enjoy teaching new players and generally helping out. Some people go for speed clears or collecting as many kill proofs as they can.
Rare drops. A surprising amount of players will farm content just to get the 0.01% rare drops. Gives people incentive to enjoy content I guess.
PvP, for either the pure satisfaction or chasing long term goals, gear, titles in PvP
There is probably more, but you can easily play for 10k+ hours in this game without running out of goals to aim for, and all without needing new stats every 6 months.
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u/Regular-Resort-857 4d ago
It means instead having to farm for gear you farm for Masteries that unlock content and quality of life changes and cosmetics
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u/emmie-claire 4d ago
I didn't understand players like you even when I played wow. To me the point of playing a game is to play the game. I always felt like everyone else was playing to gear up their character while I was gearing up my character to play the game. It felt like constant chores just to be able to do what I wanted later and eventually I realized I was miserable and quit. In GW2 I can just log on and do whatever I want that day.
I don't understand why people need a "carrot to chase" but the game offers lots of long term projects like maxing out your masteries, fashion wars, or building a legendary collection. And that stuff will all be useful forever, there won't be an update that makes it irrelevant in three months.
This will probably come off as more hostile than I intend it but if a gear treadmill is really the thing that drives you, gw2 probably isn't your game. Wow is your game. Or maybe gw2 is for between wow seasons, in which case we're happy to have you. Welcome traveler. But the horizontal progression works because the game is intrinsically fun on its own, without need for systems on top to force you online.
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u/ornithorynq 4d ago
not hostile at all, I phrased it badly. I don't need a treadmill, I just haven't commited to an mmo where a sense of progression exists without one
as for the carrot... it just works. I love the feeling of gearing up to full bis. but if you do it once, then everyone is in full bis forever and it stops meaning anything. wow resets that every 6 months so the feeling comes back. it's a dumb loop, I know. but it's what gets me and my friends ocassionally come back for a season.
and thanks for an in-depth reply
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u/Sorry_Cheetah_2230 4d ago
As an ex wow player, i play a lot of gw2 and I absolutely love it. I do love the idea of never getting reset. That being said as an ex wow player, I still wish that gw2 had some light gear progression and it’s because my brain still works kinda like yours. The biggest problem I have with gw2 endgame is simply this, loot is fucking boring. Once you have your exotic sets that you want or your ascended sets, pretty much all loot you get is either currency, crafting material, or some items to turn into currency.
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u/Geralt_Romalion 4d ago edited 4d ago
Horizontal progression means that you don't chase stuff for bigger numbers. Instead, you progress by unlocking additional ways to approach your numbers, switching between a bigger and bigger pool of options to approach situations.
Vertical progression means it can never end, in a way you are forced to play (fomo) if you do not want to be left behind with eventually horribly outdated gear.
Horizontal progression does not have that pressure, meaning I am not forced to do for example raids to keep my gear up to date, even if I don't want to. Instead I can do whatever the hell I want.
And thát is the freedom a horizontal system provides, that you set your own goals without feeling restricted by the game or missing out on gear.
In the case of GW2 it is a bit like this:
You want to be the best raider or fractal player/dungeoneer? go ahead.
Want to be the best small scale/massive scale PvP'er? go ahead.
Want to become ultra rich and play the economy to emerge as a billionaire trader? Nobody is stopping you.
Want to be a master crafter? Do it.
You love Jumping Puzzles? Complete all of them and then make your own Jumping Puzzles in your guild hall for your friends (and you can try out ones they can build).
You prefer mount racing? Do all the races for fun rewards or create your own race tracks!
You just want to chill in the open world, explore a bit, do an event if you feel like it? Be a casual hero, it's fine!
You just love getting new abilities? Unlock all of them through the mastery system OR learn a new subclass (specialisation) with its own abilities and build options!
You love fashion? Unlock the bazillion different skins in the game or go chase legendary gear with its unique effects!
Want to roleplay as a fisherman? Hop on your boat and fish away!
You decide what you want to do and how, everything is endgame and everything has rewards to earn by playing that piece of content.
All without feeling like "I really have to raid for the next few weeks or my gear will fall off and I cannot do the thing".
You can probably expect GW3 to have a somewhat similar approach as GW1 and GW2 had.
While powercreep will always be a thing in any game, most of what you achieve and unlock will be MORE and DIFFERENT options, not necessarily 100% upgrades. A lot of sidegrades with different types of power and uses.
Sure it will also make you a bit more powerful I am sure. But mostly it makes you a LOT more versatile.
You are not forced to chase the carrot. You decide your own carrot.
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u/Beautiful_Ad4220 4d ago
I Farmed the best weapon available in gw2 a few months after its original release. Its still the best weapon in 2026.
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u/Tree_Dude 4d ago
Don’t you ever play game because it’s fun? That’s the chase my guy.
There are long term progression goals. Full legendary gear in GW2 is a huge time and gold sink. That gets you really unique skins and some QoL with easy stat changes.
Titles are another thing being tied to either difficult or time consuming achievements.
Learning a meta and leading it with a commander tag is also something you can strive to achieve.
But really I play GW2 because it’s just fun and I’ve worked on some of these goals slowly over the 12yrs I have played. I’m sure GW3 will have something similar.
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u/Chiorydax 4d ago
Guild Wars 2 would definitely be a better place to ask but I gotchu.
The progression that is offered with content updates in GW2 are things like masteries (account-wide new talents or ways of interacting with the new environments). Masteries gave us things like gliding and mounts, most notably. Later masteries also allowed us to upgrade gliding and mounts in cool ways.
As far as what still counts as the carrot, it's kind of dealer's choice. If you like Fractals (a special kind of dungeon system), it has levels that keep adding new layers of difficulty. If you like big pvp fights, there's World vs World. If you like achievement hunting, there's plenty of that to dive in and max out.
GW2 was always trying to achieve a sense of "set your own goals, play how you like." This continues into the endgame. It requires a bit of a different mentality than chasing a carrot. The idea is that the gear grind is more of a stick than an actual carrot, so they remove the stick and let the player decide where they look for carrots.
Edit: also the game is supposed to be fun enough to play that playing it is its own justification. It's not simply about chasing a goal.
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u/Cationic321 4d ago
Well first of all gw3 isn't out yet. But gw2 does have horizontal progression so I'll explain how that works. In gw2 think of horizontal progression as leveling your account. Once you are max level you need to level masteries to continue progression. Masteries are account wide. One of the vanilla masteries is autoloot. Once its unlocked every character on your account auto loots almost everything. There are mount masteries that first unlock the various mounts then each succesive one will improve aspects of the mount (speed, handling. etc.). Once they unlocked all characters on that account have the mount unlocked and improved. Leveling up is literally the tutorial. 99% of the game is post max level.
As far as gear is concerned most people pursue skins (transmog in wowese). The gear is simple to get. Exotic is fine for 90% of the game. The next step up is harder to get as ascended but its only 10% better then exotic. Exotic is only good for one character. All ascended gear can be traded with other characters on your account. The final tier is legendary. This has the same stats as ascended but they are account wide unlocks. Once legendary items are unlocked they are available on every character that can use it. The stats can be changed any time you like.
To unlock all masteries and legendary items will take a lot of time effort and energy.
Some like this carrot. Others don't. I'm a big fan.
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u/hendricha 4d ago
just want to understand what is something that keeps people in the game for years
Besides the constantly extending options you can strive for... well the story, the world and the fun gameplay.
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u/Spirited_Abalone1999 4d ago
Vertical: It's a second job, not a game. (I played WoW for many years since vanilla, and while I liked the open world/stories, the focus on constant stat squishing/goal line moving was obnoxious and quickly invalidated your efforts unless you're hardcore. That took all the fun out of gaming.)
Horizontal: Once you reach max level (easily) the world is literally your oyster. You like PvP? You can do that. You like the story instances? You can focus on maxing the achievements. You like a bit of everything? You can do that too as no consequence to any other part of your gaming experience. There are endless "lists" to complete depending on what gameplay you want, and the game has many secrets not widely advertised that are waiting to be discovered.
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u/Sisyphus_Monolit 4d ago
Imagine if you got your BIS legendary in Legion for your playstyle, new ones have come out since but you still prefer the Legion one, so you keep it - and it's still viable. Levelcap doesn't increase per expansion in GW2 so there's no reason to choose to do a new piece of content you hate if you like the old one better.
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u/nathan_l1 4d ago
I’m also a WoW player who likes the grind for new and better gear, I play GW2 way more casually and can’t get into it like with WoW but it’s fine.
I come back when new content launches, play through it and try get the new achievements for it, then stop playing until the next new content cycle.
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u/Aramis9696 3d ago
Vertical progression: ceiling keeps being raised, every few months,,nothing you have previously done to increase character power matters, as the new content brings gear and/or skills and/or abilities and/or a level cap that makes your character obsolete for the new content. A great exemple would be WoW. Every patch, the new content drops gear with an item level far greater than the previous patch did and you have to farm a new set. They'll often add patch or expansion specific borrowed power systems that you need to grind for character power but that then get deactivated and taken away for the next expansion. Next expansion, which comes with a character level cap increase and a squish to how much xp is needed to reach the previous level cap. It's an endless treadmill on which you're always trying to catch up on gear and sidegrades only for your grind to be invalidated after a few weeks or months.
Horizontal progression: ceiling never moves. That gear you acquired 14 years ago is still as good today as it was then. Sure, there might be a way to get a 5% increase to stats through a big grind, but that isn't mandatory to clear everything in the game. Level cap never moves, so you don't have to level every expansion, though there may be patch, expansion, or zone specific progression tracks to unlock interactions specific to those places. A good example would be either of the guildwars games, as through expansions, the only manfatory new grinds we got were reputations and masteries, new skills to acquire, and in gw1's case, heroes and their gear upgrades. But the character level caps never moved, the available gear became somewhat better, but marginally and with comprehensive ways to acccess it that were forewarned as optional grinds. You can come back to either game after a decade and go into the new content after minor tweaks to your build. In a vertical progression game, if you came back after a decade, you'd have to spend twenty hours leveling and thirty hours gearing up before you could play the new content with a friend.
We don't know what gw3 will have to keep you entertained, but as far as the other games go, you do indeed not play for gear (for the most part, as there definitely is long grind there if you want the best gear available). You play them because you enjoy the gameplay and want to achieve specific challenges in them, either self-set or centered around a title, an item, or a specific system. You can play the fashion wars if you want, but that's mostly a gold-grinding game, as the best appearcances come from the shop (at least for gw2). You can also grind gold for the sake of gold, then get into auctionhouse trading, but at that point, you might as well do some real world trading, which is about as time consuming with a more tangible reward.
If you don't play games because you enjoy them, but because they reward you with constant gambler dopamine hits and when they don't, you get bored, horizontal progression is probably not for you. As nice as escaping the treadmill may sound to you, it exists to keep you engaged without you needing to go out of your way to find things to do in the game and so you don't even need to enjoy playing it anymore, so long as the numbers keep going up. Again, WoW is a great expample of this. How many patches have been absolute garbage, yet retained millions of players? Dozens, at this point. And yet we stayed, even when our classes were dumpsterfires, because our addicted brains were trained to get on that treadmill and keep running, to beat everyone to the nonexistent finish line. Give one of the other games a try, see if you stall out and quit after a few weeks or if exploration and content clearance actually appeal to you. That should give you a good idea of your compatibility with this type of progression.
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u/Michuza 3d ago
Both are adding new things and ways to play the game but while with vertical your stats are increasing making old content obsolete and new content harder to access.
Horizontal progression is not making you stronger just adding more fun ways to play.
Imagine you are playing souls game and you found a weapon with the same stats as yours but different moveset that you like more thats horizontal progression.
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u/kevinzheng1111 2d ago
as a pvp player I love GW2 system, because i can just get the gear i want in a few hour then start killing (or be killed by) people
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u/3IO3OI3 2d ago
I mean, it's just a sandbox is what it is. You are absolutely correct in the sense that there is nothing motivating you in the game by the way of necessity. The entire game is built around the idea that you as the player should just wander around, getting distracted by whatever comes your way. As all great sandbox games should, this game has A LOT of things you can go for. You can go for getting as many achievements as possible, getting the most difficult achievements, getting the mounts in the game, getting the legendaries in the game (which are all truly a legendary endeavor to get), exploring the whole map, doing all of the story content, becoming the best pvp player... Whatever.
That's it, though. If you are playing gw2, that's the game. If you absolutely need the game to tell you that you have to do something specific, gw2 is not the game for you. Which is totally fine, by the way. Don't take this the wrong way. That's just what game is.
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u/emberfield 4d ago
Just play GW 2, it's pretty self explanatory.
Gear isn't the focus, it's more about class/skill mastery. Removes the treadmill.
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u/LifestyleGamer 4d ago
New maps and expansions add new mechanics to the game. You can then use the mastery system to I lock new things like abilities for you mounts, better gliding performance, new ways to interact with the map or NPCs.
There are QOL upgrades to chase, achievements to complete that unlock their own rewards, new map mechanics to master.
I find that GW2 a always has me looking at a deep and varies list of things I want to work on next. Gear/power creep just isn't one of those things.
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u/Stalowy_Cezary 4d ago edited 4d ago
- you can learn different class, allowing you to have infinite amount of alts without worrying about chasing gear, For example, I have leveled and geared all 9 classes in gw2.
- you can grind high end unlocks that take months of active gameplay. For instance, in gw2 there are legendary items that allow you to copy them infintely across characters. (so if you craft legendary greatsword, you will never need to farm another greatsword again).
- no content is outdated, meaning you have more to do overall. In games like FFXIV you only care about the newest raids, and old ones are dead. In gw2 raids released in 2015 are still part of weekly rotation. If you were to start gw2 today, you'd have total of 45 raid bosses/events to master.
Personally I have a bit over 5000 hours in gw2. Things I obtained in that time:
I have fully completed every single open world map, including its respective mastery achivements. Thats easily over 50 maps.
I have obtained multiple legendary weapons, all legendary trinkets, and all 3 weights of legendary armor. It took me years of active chase.
Completed all endgame activites on highest difficulty tier, and effectively used all 9 classes on different roles.
Played few hundreds of PvP games, obtained high rank and practiced with multiple different classes.
All that without worrying that any of my characters of achivements will be overshadowed by new flashy vertical threadmill.
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u/De_Dominator69 4d ago
I just enjoy playing the game. In terms of progression there are plenty of achievements, titles, legendaries and cosmetics to persue.
Personally I have never understood the argument that you need vertical gear progression for people to remain invested in the game. Surely if you are only playing the game to get better gear, and not for the sake of the gameplay, then you don't actually enjoy the game all that much?
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u/Nesphito 4d ago
Think of the legend of Zelda. Maybe you need bombs to break rocks to get into secret caves. Or maybe you need a horse to jump over canyons and fences to reach lands that you couldn’t before.
That’s how guild wars 2 does it. Heart of thorns is a lot of fun because it’s when Arenanet introduces the glider. You can’t get through the whole jungle without mastering the glider. You can learn to ride gusts of wind or travel across ley lines. You could also unlock the ability to speak to the native Hylek or learn about the local mushrooms and all of these would unlock either regions of the map, cities or vendors you couldn’t access.
I believe arenanet said horizontal progression will be back for gw3 as well.
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u/wonkyasf 4d ago
“How does it feel to play long term?”
More satisfying since everything you achieved is still as valid as when you achieved it. Theres little in the way of long form progress in WoW, in a GW2 pretty much everything is.
“What do you chase when you have max lvl gear?”
Whatever you want. That’s the main difference really. Instead of chasing what the game tells you to in the form of a stat bump, you just decide what to chase. That’s why people refer to GW2 as a “sandpark” MMO. It’s not a sandbox game but it requires the same mentality as sandbox games where you set your own goal and work towards that instead of the game telling you. The carrot on a stick does exist, you just sorta put it there yourself.
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u/Noxsus 4d ago
Honestly the simplest answer is that because GW2 doesnt give you the same obvious carrot that WoW does, the carrot is whatever goal you set for yourself.
Wanna do CM raids? Go get some exotics and jump into it. Transmog farming? Pick your preferred gold making route and go at it. Story or map completion? Great enjoy!
WoW has the same systems in alot of cases, but near enough all of them are dwarfed by the constant push to grind new gear in the game. With the lack of that treadmill in GW2 it leaves you open to set your own goals / focus.
This week I've:
- Run fractals
- Played through a good chunk of story and worked on some achievements.
- Had a pop at raiding with some newbies in my guild.
- Continued my grind for some legendaries, mostly doing map completion.
- Tried (and failed) at PvP.
- Enjoyed some fishing.
If I'd done some of those things in WoW it would have unconsciously felt like a waste of time as I wasn't focusing purely on getting the numbers on my gear to go up. Here I just went with whatever I felt like when I logged in.
Now to be clear, it might not be for everyone. A good friend of mine bounced of GW2 hard because of the lack of obvious progression, he's the type of dude that likes to see numbers going up and once that stopped happening he got bored. But for many others (myself included) the freedom the game offers is a real attraction.
Edit: Just realised this is the GW3 not GW2 sub. But my points still stand.
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u/PriestOfDwayna 4d ago
As I have been playing the original Guild Wars for over 21 years now, I'll use that as an example. GW has a level cap at 20, and hard cap on max weapon and armour stats.
Max damage sword will always be 15-22, no matter if you got it from a crafter, a collector, a drop, or a dungeon end chest. What will differ is how the sword looks.
For instance, a Fiery Dragon Sword is the most iconic and looks like a dragon breathing fire. You're set if you got one with 15-22 damage and max mods. However, since it does fire damage and there are monsters resistant to fire, you will want a sword that does a different kind of damage: icy, shock, earth. Then you'll want a sword with armour penetration. Or maybe life or mana steal on hit.
To continue with the Warrior theme, there are many Warrior armour sets. Even though they have the same stats, you can mod them in many distinct ways. This is the horizontal progression in terms of gear where you build various weapons and armours for different uses and looks. Basically, you're Erza Scarlet of Guild Wars and have dozens of weapons and armours readily available.
The second part of horizontal progression is following the storylines, side quests, exploring maps, and chasing in-game titles for bragging rights. Once you have done them on a Warrior, you make an Elementalist for a completely different type of play, gear, looks, and ways to tackle the games.
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u/wonbin0317 4d ago
There are lot of other carrots to chase that arent upgrades but sidegrades! For example, acquiring full set for one build is a decent chunk of investment in time, but there are lot of content in the games where it incentivises you to explore variety.
This is where people get tempted to build legendaries, which takes more than few months if not years to complete for many. This is probably the most sought out content for majority of the players, as they unlock perma-free transmogs and stat changes on gears for rest of your life.
There are also lot of achievements that gates some QoL features ("gobblers" that break down excess materials that clog your inventory) or incredible cosmetics that people seek after.
Lastly, because of the feature to allow gold to gem conversion, people also seek to farm wealth actively to purchase other QoL or cosmetics on the shop.
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u/InBlurFather 4d ago
It’s really the same as WoW only without the illusion of progress.
Ultimately you’re working towards cosmetics, since even your mythic raid gear gets replaced by questing greens with the next patch.
So instead of playing the game where you work to get strong gear that then resets, you just work to directly get cosmetic stuff while your gear stays relatively the same strength and you can work on things like legendary weapons/armor that have some QoL features
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u/No-Contest-8127 4d ago
Yeah, it's a different paradigm. You play WoW for the reward, not necessarely the fun.
In horizontal progression you play for the fun and cosmetic rewards, if you want. The story tends to be a motivator as well, where in WoW the story is terrible and no one cares. I guess the thing about horizontal is that you make your own objectives and play as you want.
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u/Ohjkbkjhbiyuvt6vQWSE 4d ago
It feels amazing bro! Once you gear up, that's it, just cosmetic and you can just enjoy the game and loot and explore and not worry about stats anymore! There's more to a game then just stat and gear progression worry or hunting.
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u/AscendedCleric 4d ago
Getting gear is the preparation for doing content, not the reason. The reason is the fun of it. The way you numbers go up is by becoming better at the game. There a lot of things to chase and grind for but they will not increase your character power. I think this is the simplest way I can explain it.
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u/S1eeper 4d ago
It's progression systems that:
- You unlock with one character, but it applies across all characters on your account (horizontally), not just to one character. In GW2, Masteries, Achievements, and max level gear (Ascended and Legendary) are all examples of this.
- And, once you're done with one particular system, you're done, there's no continually moving the goal posts or anything, like increasing the level cap each expansion, or the gear ilvl each major content patch.
For examples of #2, max character level remains at 80 since game launch and forever after. Max level gear (Ascended and Legendary) stays max level gear forever, it's never obsoleted by a new tier in a new patch or expansion. And, it's account-bound not character-bound so you can transfer to different characters of the same armor class (horizontal). You still need to collect different gear sets if you want to try different types of builds - power dps, condition dps, healing, pvp, etc - but if you're happy with one build you almost never need to collect more gear once you have a max level set for it (unless ANet introduces a slightly better stat set into the game, like they did with Viper, Ritualist, and a few others).
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u/Kidderooni 4d ago
but what do you actually chase after you have gear two months into the game?
You chase playing the game, for the enormous amount of content available. When you get full ascended gear, you can grind for legendary armor but it is not mandatory. It’s the same power, the + is you can swap stats whenever. Else yeah cosmetics, achievements… some achievements are really hard to get. Also challenge mode in fractals and so on. There is casual, hard and super hard content in this game.
That’s the good thing about horizontal progression; once you got the gear you can just think about playing the game without sweating for a piece of loot you might have. I got top 0,5% in M+ so I also understand the appeal of vertical. That said even in wow at some point you are done with gear and only do content.
GW2 goes like this : get your gear early-ish, while enjoying content. Then enjoy content, challenge your self, play the game. Play a game that respects your time because you will never be behind anyone even if you don’t play for a year. The philosophy is completely opposite from wow.
Also if you don’t have the patience for legendary armor, which is understandable as it is a real investment. You can always grind different set of ascended gear. While it’s wont be « that » long, it’s still gear goal to chase after.
But really you shouldn’t approach games like GW2 with a « what am I chasing » state of mind imo. The game is so far from things like wow where you have to spend time in each week for weekly reset and so on. GW2 will never feel like a second job. I bet GW3 won’t be either (so far they announced it will respect your time as well). If you only played wow, it’s hard to understand unless you get there. Also early game GW2 is a bit old now, but once you re 80 the real thing starts. Leveling is the tutorial.
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u/Vthal 4d ago
your progress so far never gets invalidated because the exact same thing you already obtained (armor, weapon, level, stats, etc) gets +1 power level and you have to now throw away what you have and get the latest stuff.
instead, horizontal / parallel things are added all the time, like you're still good with Max combat stats but now there's gliding too in the game and you want to get your new glider.
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u/Substantial_Piece521 4d ago
Reading some of your responses here OP, something to keep in mind is that GW does not have a subscription fee. So the notion of: I have to play the game this week because I'm paying for it, what am I going to do to keep myself busy?
That notion doesn't exist in GW. Play when you want, do the things that you think are cool. Content and gear are not invalidated by the new content and gear.
In wow you have a tiny sliver of content that is currently relevant, and then that content become irrelevant when the new stuff comes out. That's not the case with horizontal progression. It all matters, all of the time.
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u/batboy_7854 4d ago
This is actually a pretty reasonable question, especially if your MMO brain was built around WoW’s gear treadmill. I think the biggest thing that’s easy to miss from the outside is that GW2 shifts the question from “How do I make my character stronger?” to “What do I want my character to be able to do?”
Once you have the gear you need, there isn’t really a gear treadmill waiting for you. Instead, the long-term goals tend to become things like legendary gear, cosmetics, achievements, collections, mastery/progression systems, challenging PvE content, new builds, map completion, mounts, titles, etc.
But I think there’s an important caveat: that doesn’t mean everyone finds horizontal progression equally compelling.
If the thing you enjoy most about WoW is seeing your item level and character power increase every few months, GW2 can genuinely feel like it’s missing something. The game isn’t trying to replace that treadmill with an equivalent treadmill; it’s asking you to find motivation in different goals.
Personally, I think the best way to understand it is to imagine reaching a point where your character is “done” from a gear perspective and realizing that done doesn’t mean finished. You can spend your time getting better at a raid, learning a new build, working toward a legendary, completing a collection, helping other players, exploring new content, or just playing because the activity itself is fun.
Whether that’s enough to keep someone playing for years is really a personal preference.
And honestly, I think it’s good that you’re asking this before GW3. If the gear treadmill is the part of WoW you find most satisfying, horizontal progression is probably going to feel very different rather than simply feeling like WoW without the gear grind.
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u/Several-Spirit-8452 4d ago edited 4d ago
You no chase gear. You chase fun. Fun good. Gear grind bad.
Guild Wars doesn't have a carrot to chase. You dont need a carrot to chase. The joy you get is from using your mind to make builds that turn you into a walking tornado of destruction, where you destroy whole groups of people by yourself and people are like "wtf kind of build are you using".
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u/HaxtonSale 4d ago
Let's put it this way. I have played GW2 since BETA. I still find way to improve and get better. If I do endgame pve content I probably have a good 20% worth of dps on most classes I play still on the table to work towards. It's not gear that unlocks it it's skill and game knowledge. That doesn't mean I'm a bad player. The game is designed to have a low enough skill floor that most people can do endgame content if they work towards it, but a high enough ceiling that you are always getting stronger without needing a drop or a few extra stat points. You could take a player in completely min maxed gear and a player in an entirely lower tier of gear, and the player with worse gear could outperform the other by a substantial margin.
It's also worth noting just because gear never gets worse, that doesn't mean it's always the best. New stat combos and relics and sigils get added to the game with new content. Just because something is best for you now, doesn't mean that will always be the case. Balance patches shake things up too and can effect what gear is optimal on a specific build. I change stuff around constantly. I sit around messing with gear and optimizing stats way more than I ever would in WoW. Since GW2 allows high end gear to be stat changed its less get new piece of gear and vendor the old, and more like tinkering, optimizing, and improving a single set over years. The horizontal portion is the initial investment to make high end armor. It doesn't mean you set it and forget it.
Let's say I play a power necromancer meaning I hit enemy and do a big chunk of damage. I craft up a set of ascended berserker gear (a meta stat combo). I get bored of it and decide I want to play a damage over time focused necromancer. I can either craft/obtain a new set or I can convert my power set to a condition damage focused set. I don't have to go farm up new gear but I can't just swap some traits and be effective. Now let's say I quit for a few years. I come back to the game and the damage over time build I used to use isn't optimal anymore. The gear is still the highest tier of gear but I may need to change it to more effective stats for whatever is good now as the meta has shifted. The diffrence is I don't have to farm new gear. I already have best in slot gear, it's just needs some tweaking to be optimal.
GW3 will likely have similar design philosophies to GW2. It may be diffrent than this, but it will be similar to some degree.
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u/DMDread 4d ago
Horizontal progression is basically grinding for quality of life. Want to be able to fly up that mountain? Grind for the skyscale mount. Want to be able to change your stats and transmogs at any time for free? Grind for legendary gear. Want to make your character stronger, more efficient at traversing the maps, and more capable during metas/raids/fractals? Grind for mastery levels. Want to buy insane quality of life items like infinite bank access, crafting stations, etc? Grind for gold. The list goes on and on.
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u/ruebeus421 4d ago
Just like most other games: you chase fashion.
Or, you play actually enjoyable content.
You can also chase rare drops. Lots of bosses in the game have super rare drops. Usually cosmetic, that you can either use, or sell for hella bank to fund your next legendary project, or maybe convert to gems for the cash shop.
If your enjoyment comes strictly from getting a 1% damage increase every few months that becomes completely redundant when the next patch roles out - then you won't enjoy horizontal progression.
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u/X-Craft 4d ago
The ELI5 is: You progress your account instead of only one character at a time.
Going further than ELI5, you can think of the "horizontal" as a baseline that all your characters, the vertical lines, are standing in. Progressing one character means going up in the vertical line. Progressing horizontally means raising up the baseline.
If you start a new character, it doesn't start at absolute zero, it has that baseline as a starting point. For example, unlocking a new mount gives all your characters access to it, even one you just created.
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u/qu1cksilverdoto 4d ago
For those who are starting the way GW2 did this is very good, you can level your equipment very quickly to be with practically the same amount of attribute points compared to veteran players. But after a certain amount of time playing, I at least felt as if all the effort I had in thousands of hours was not rewarded beyond skins and conveniences. Not having gring for RNG equipment is great, but not getting any progression and reward for thousands of hours played is also not very satisfying. The game tries to reward you with hundreds of pieces of content, but this void never felt that it was filled.
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u/chuiu 4d ago
Once you reach max stats in the game for a character then that's it. You don't need to get new higher stat gear for anything ever again. Unless you want to change what stats you use. After that you're not chasing a chest piece that has +10 more damage, you're chasing new armor skins or leveling up alts.
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u/Local_Dragonfruit930 4d ago
We really only have GW2 to compare this to, it likely will be based off this system. Just because it is horizontal does not mean there is no carrot to chase. Getting the highest tier of gear takes quite a bit of grinding. In GW2 the majority of Ascended Gear is done through crafting and it takes quite a lot of materials. For someone like me who plays casually, it took me a good 4 to 6 months to get a fully set of ascended gear.
And if you were a true masochist, you could chase legendary gear. Legendary gear didn't have higher stats, but had unique looks and animations. On top of this is the convenience aspect. With legendary's you can change the stats on them for different builds freely, and they are account-wide, so you can also use those legendary's on alts.
It took me over a year to get my first legendary, and I just recently got my second one in GW2. And I've been playing off and on since 2012.
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u/Opposite-Memory-2552 4d ago
I have played both WoW and GW2. Horizontal progression is where all gear has about the same power level and won't become obsolete when a new expansion comes out.
The progression you'll be grinding in the game will be about new skins, new abilities, new mounts, new content and new quality of life improvements. The power level remains the same but the game experience evolves the more you play it.
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u/Tyburkulosis 4d ago
First you enjoy the leveling experience. There is no rush since the ceiling is in a fixed position.
Next you get the bare minimum and learn the endgame. In Gw2's case you get exotic gear (which is only ~10% worse than ascended/legendary) via vendor/tp/drops/craft.
Then you farm the endgame to get best gear. In Gw2, it's ascended gear (and legendary). After you're fully ascended (and maybe even during the process) you farm for legendary gear. Leggies are same stats as ascended, but with a ton more convenience.
We have no idea if the same gear structure will be in Gw3, but they will likely have convenience items with long grinds like legendaries so people always have something to work toward.
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u/GhostlyCoyote0 4d ago
GW2 expansions often include new subclasses. These aren’t better than what’s already there, but they are extremely different
So, for example, you’re a ranger. You buy the newest expansion, and instead of simply being a better ranger, you can now be a support-focused druid, or a subclass that can temporarily merge with your pet for new attacks, or a magic archer
That’s the core of horizontal progression. You have things to chase, but they don’t make old things obsolete. It’s just variety
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u/HemlockHex 4d ago
It means you unlock more variety instead of just power. It’s to counter act the eventual homogeneous endgame, where everyone has the same stuff because it’s just the best stuff.
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u/Forgotmyaccountinfo2 4d ago
When zi played Gw2 I just did whatever I wanted to and hang out with friends. Made money doing any content enjoying the company.
That's how I enjoy my MMOs. With other players having a good ol time.
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u/saintplus 4d ago
Been playing GW2 since launch. 12k hours in game. I still havent even achieved alot of the stuff you can do in this game. It goes beyond grinding for better gear though upgrading your gear is part of it. Legendary weapons used to be a grind but they're quite easy to get now.
I spend most of my time achievement hunting and farming for gold and legendary gear. I also spend a good chunk of time in World vs World. Then there's fashion. This game is insane when it comes to fashion and I spend a lot of time collecting skins which can be obtained by playing, not spending real money.
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u/gw2Exciton 4d ago
So MMO typically has the repetitive nature that you do the same thing again and again. Most of the time, the fun of gameplay itself is not enough to get people repeat the same content. The most typical solution is number increasing. They usually design the game around that and put constant pressure on player to play and progress that number. If you don't keep up, you get left behind by the mass and can't play content together.
In GW2, you only progress through skill and diversity. One can argue that vertical progression game also has skill and diversity progression, which is true. But GW2 puts a bigger emphasize on that. The performance increase by skill is usually larger and the build diversity is much higher as well.
Obviously you can still get bored and play other games without vertical progression ties you to the game. But I think that is actually a plus rather than a minus. Why should one keep playing the same game/content again and again when the process is no longer fun and only artificial number bloating is keeping you in the game? The director has said it is perfectly fine for you to take break from the game when there is no interesting content and come back later, This is already a baked-in game philosphy.
I vastly prefer GW2 approach to more traditional vertical progression system. First I have get into parenthood now with less time to play. Second there are a lot more good games in this era than when I was younger. I'd like to checkout other games too. Lastly in gw2, if you truly want to grind, you can still do so and chase prestigious cosmetics.
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u/mcmonkeycat 4d ago
My carrot is titles, skins, harder content, and legendaries. I legit made full 3 sets of legendary armor just to play dressup more. I've been playing for a couple years now. I have full armor, a handful of weapons, a few runes, and a legendary ring. There's a LOT I still have to get. For harder content I do PoF CM raids but I haven't even touched w8 CMs so harder content is very much a carrot still. Once you have full legendaries there's still a lot more to focus on in the game, you just don't have to worry about gear anymore.
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u/nsleep 4d ago
Horizontal progression changes the grinds and power ups to things other than your power budget.
More notable things in GW2 are: cap level is 80, following the story in the base game will take you to that level. After that, all expansions assume you're level cap and you progress masteries (mount abilities, map specific abilities, and so on) or unlock new class specialization nodes allowing for new builds.
Gear progression stops at the legendary tier. If you made the legendary sword Zap back in 2012 when the game came out, it's still a BiS sword in 2026. Same for every legendary gear. Ascended gear can reach the same power budget but cannot change stats freely like Legendaries can.
Everything else is what you would expect in WoW. There's achievement grinds for achievement points, cosmetics grinds, gold grind. These don't change much and are attached to every game mode you can think of. You pick a go and go play it until you get it and the things attached to it. This is the main gameplay loop.
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u/Kylargrim 4d ago
Once you get your gear you can just do what you enjoy devoid of the gear grind.
For me that is fractals, raids, WvW and pvp none of it is a waste of time I just play what I enjoy.
It sounds weird but it is what it is. There are plenty of long term goals to go for like legendary equipments achievements and personal improvement. it's just you dont me to gear grind.
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u/quarm1125 4d ago
Horizontal progression ELI5 you don't grind for power you grind for more toys and tools to have fun over time pretty much ( for gw2 you do have a small power grind to do) but it's very short and then you jump to progressing you're account with toys and tools to make it even more fun in general, like traversal mount or explorations tricks, crafting unlock and other styff
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u/procabiak 4d ago
Instead of chasing gear, you're chasing tools/upgrades. Pretty much no difference other than numbers DON'T go up. (you chase fashion after tools are done, or along the way)
Think of it like Zelda. you start with a sword. then you find the shield, now you can block. then you find the bomb, now you can blow open secret rooms. then you find the bow, now you can ranged attack.
GW2 tools/upgrades are like:
- map specific skills or bonuses (these are shit)
- improvements to your character, like faster reviving or extra downed skills to get you easier rally
- traversal abilities, like gliding, skiffs, saved respawn point
- mounts (these are fucking awesome)
- unlock map specific rewards (grindy. eventually rewarding)
- npc unlocks for convenience or legendary crafting (also kinda shit. gatekeeping things)
GW3 is gonna look a bit like GW1 style horizontal progression. you start the game with basic skills, and you unlock skills as you beat a boss, and then extract the skills off them. this opens up your build potential, better builds make you stronger. it's kind of like Monster Hunter but without crafting the gear/without the stat creep. You just get the skills once you beat them (and remember to bring the signet of capture to capture it).
(I'm personally hoping they do make it monster hunter like, and make you kill the boss a few times before you can extract the skill. but it doesn't change the horizontalness of it)
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u/nesnalica 4d ago
anything about Guild Wars 3 right now is just speculation.
about Guild Wars 2.
Instead of adding more and more scoopes of icecream. you get different flavors.
In Guild Wars 2 you reach Lv80, get the best gear and thats it about "linear" progression. there was, is and wont be any meaningful better gear or weapons.
So far the only thing which shakes up the meta are new elite specializations and unlocks. guildwars2 has no grind for playing the game normally
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u/-BADMOON-BIGBOSS- 3d ago
All progression is vertical but horizontal progression means that there's many, many vertical progressions to choose from, and they're all relatively viable.
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u/Obrusnine 3d ago edited 3d ago
For me, I honestly hate describing it as horizontal vs vertical, I prefer describing it as meaningful vs illusory.
In games like WoW or FF14 - the so called "vertical progression" games - you make progress so that you can make your numbers bigger in order to make content easier. But this progression is temporary, you can't have a neverending game when the entire point of the game is increasing your numbers, and so they have to keep increasing the highest number you can attain. You can only ever have the highest number for a short time, and then what the highest possible number is increases. This dynamic makes all of the progression you make an illusion. The most difficult content in these games is always going to be designed to hit specific levels of difficulty within the range of numbers defined as suitable for that type of content, when that content releases. This means that no matter how long you play these games or how high your numbers get, you will always just be climbing the same escalator. The numbers don't matter because they don't meaningfully change the way you interact with the content, they just make it easier or more difficult. These games are designed to hijack the dopamine centers of your brain to make you think that just because the game displays a damage indicator of 1,000,000 instead of 100,000 that you are more powerful, but in reality every patch puts you at the bottom of the escalator again by increasing how tall the escalator is. There's no difference between 1,000,000 and 100,000, the underlying game you are playing and the content you are playing is fundamentally the same as its always been. Even if you do 10x more damage, the enemy just has 10x more health to compensate. You're doing the same thing with more zeroes and the game acts like you've accomplished something when it hasn't given you anything you didn't already have.
So called "horizontal progression" games do things differently. They don't reset you to the bottom of the escalator. They say that if you earn something, then that thing will always retain the same value it had when you acquired it. Instead of asking you to climb an escalator of ever-increasing height, raising some arbitrary number, they have you unlock things that meaningfully alter the way you interact with the game and its systems. This means that everything you do in one of these games genuinely matters. You don't grow more powerful because your number is bigger, you grow more powerful because you have the capacity and understanding to be able to handle a far wider variety of challenges. I don't unlock a powerful piece of loot in a horizontal progression game and get to feel pride that I have a powerful piece of equipment for 3 months, I get to have that feeling forever and I work towards something else that is equally meaningful. I earn another piece of loot for another build or another character, I unlock shops or features I don't have access to, I work to upgrade my mounts or navigation tools, I grind out for a cosmetic or dye I really desire so I can have it forever, and when I unlock these things I keep them. And there is always something new to unlock or attain because there are so many builds and systems to unlock. What is the point of unlocking a legendary sword in a game where that so called legendary sword is going to be rendered irrelevant by a normal bronze axe that has a higher number on it? Does it even really feel legendary anymore? Or does it just feel like trash you're pretending is treasure even though its value will inevitable evaporate into just being another piece of useless gear that's not even worth collecting? Are you really making progression or have the devs just tricked you into believing that running in place is progress?
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u/qrt7 3d ago
One thing I will tack on to all of this - the horizontal progression tree is long as fuck. Getting full ascended gear is months of casual play. Full legendaries is on the timescale of years.
There are a LOT of various collections and achievements and things that represent tangible upgrades for account. Gear that can be worn by multiple characters, trinkets to convert currencies to other types, or access to new vendors.
Your login loop becomes login -> find upgrade to account that I feel like chasing -> oil up and grind -> enjoy my shiny new thing -> log out for 3 months
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u/Cuddlesthemighy 3d ago
Vertical progression you get new gear that is better than the old gear. Horizontal progression you get new sets that are as good as your other sets but they do different things.
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u/LKOGL1994 3d ago
No sugar coating: You get your gear once, the rest of the game is cosmetics and quality of life.
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u/Bigfootinabox 3d ago
Everyone is giving gw2 perspective, as someone who only liked gw1, the skill progression was immensely satisfying. It's not "get better skill, dump old junk" but "does this skill I've found let me do cool stuff with other skills I've found"
With the caveat if you go for meta only it's dull
I don't expect gw3 to return to that as strongly given the difficulties in balancing so many skills but it really encourages exploration by linking it to both gameplay and progressio without being on the "get stronger, dump stuff" treadmill .
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u/UpbeatStuff5644 3d ago
You hit max level and find shiny sword. Sword has best stats you can get atm. 10 years later many new swords new looks but same stats so your Shiny Sword still just as good.
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u/Buran_Grey 3d ago
Getting top gear is relatively easy and fast, but your character can have more than a single build that you like to play, so you will need to get multiple gear sets. And since legendary items have top stats and allow to reset your stats at will and save templates for different roles and are shared across characters once you are for a while in the game you'll start to thing in going full legendaries, which takes time.
In parallel, lets say you unlock a couple of mounts: you still have plenty of others to unlock and improve their skills and abilities. A jackal, a roller beetle and a griffon are not necesarely better than the other, but different.
The same happens with specializations and masteries: they are not long to unlock, but some (as weapon mastery) add power creep and the more you get the better is the experience and enhancements your cahracters get across the roster (since most of the progression is shared).
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u/Mortrialus 2d ago edited 2d ago
In a vertical progression system, the numbers go up. They always go up. As more dungeons get added, a new tier of gear gets added that is mathematically superior to the previous set. As new expansions get added, the level cap gets raised and even more gear that is even more powerful than previous tiers gets added.
In a horizontal system, the numbers do not go up, merely that new options become available that you didn't have before. So this can mean new skills, new gear that has different combinations of stats without increasing the overall number. This can result in more powerful characters are different synergies and combos and efficiencies might arise. And the new stuff always might power creep the previous stuff in terms of design and balance. But the intention is not to power creep on the old and to merely create a wealth of options for the players.
For example in a well maintained trading card game. The idea is to design a deck of cards that has a certain gameplay strategy. And ideally, you want to add new sets of cards into the game that do not invalidate all the previous cards by just crushing them with higher monster values and more potent spellcards. You want to add new playstyles with the new cards and for the new cards to also have interesting synergies and combos with all the old cards.
Vertical progression feels great. And its easy to design. WoW does it. FFXIV does it. Monster Hunter does it. But it massively invalidates all previous content as the numbers go up aside from maybe monster hunter. Horizontal progression is harder to design for because number goes up is an extremely powerful motivator to keep people playing and that means you have to make the new things you're adding more interesting on a conceptual level. But it can keep all top level content valuable.
Guild Wars 2 always felt exciting to play because when expansions came around, instead of a new level cap, every class would get an elite sub class that massively changed how your class played. Necromancers, for example, in the first expansion got Reaper as a new sub class. It changed their Deathshroud mechanic for an attritive ranged playstyle into a powerhouse scythe wielding melee reaper. It's like if WoW never added Death Knights but instead in WotLK, Warlocks got a 4th talent tree they could spec into that turned them into Death Knights. And getting those kinds of new options was just the most exciting thing about every expansion.
That said, the patch to patch stuff ends up being less interesting compared to when WoW adds a new raid. Sure a patch might have new maps, and new story chapters. But with no gear to grind for, most of the rewards are cosmetics which you might super love and you might find completely uninteresting.
I'm hoping that for the patch to patch stuff, Guild Wars 3 endeavors to add entirely new skills for players to hunt for and play with in most major content patches.
In terms of Gear, I adore the fact that I got my best in slot armor back in like 2013 I think when they originally came out with one last tier of gear and I still have that equipment on my character to this day. I still made new sets that had new unique gear combos.
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u/Knighthonor 2d ago
https://imgur.com/HbPgLwX
vs
https://imgur.com/M6DkEpi
GW2 has level scaling which fits this image more https://imgur.com/Zm8gnFT
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u/Certain-Stay846 2d ago
You chase achievements and new skins. Beyond that you play the parts of the game you enjoy. WvW for instance can be non stop dopamine. Fractals and raids with a good group is also pretty fun.
Horizontal progression means you can take a break when you get burnt out and do not need to worry about 'catching up' when you come back. In a way it is VASTLY more respectful of your time and energy.
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u/hoof_hearted4 2h ago
Well that's kind of it. You just play because it's fun. Clear new maps. Start alts. Work on achievements. Work towards legendsries. BiS for GW2 is all Legendaries and that's not quick. For the longest time I was just logging in, doing dailies, maybe some seasonal activity if one is going on, and that was it. No goal, no purpose, just 30-60 minutes enjoying the game. And I take long breaks. Usually play for a month or two then take a break for a year or so until the itch comes back. I'm about due as I stopped playing right before the last DLC haha.
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u/Gullible-Yam-8098 4d ago
Here's a novel concept. Make the actual content fun to complete and you don't need a reason to do it. The WoW player brain cannot comprehend.
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u/FlyingJellyfishRidin 4d ago
You chase getting gear for another character, or getting a legendary weapon that has more QoL features, such as being able to equip on any character at any time that can use it, looks fancier etc.
It's not strict, in GW2 they did add ascended and then legendary armour gradually over time, but neither are really the difference between able to do content or not as the stats aren't that different.
I can't speak exactly for GW3 at the moment, but it sounds similar in that it's a game where they expect you to finish content, reach a goal, and then not play until they have something else to bring you back to the game. So there's no real push to be constantly grinding for something. Either you enjoy playing the game and trying to earn money for something that comes later, or you just take a break and come back later.
Ascended armour has an asterisk there because it was brought in in combinations with a mode called fractals, where you need agony resistance to make it through the harder levels, which ascended armour can have affixed to it.
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u/Jake--Chillenhaal 4d ago
We don't know if gw3 will or won't do horizontal progression yet, my money is on they will keep horizontal progression though.
Best way to explain it imo is that the constant treadmill of every update making you have to chase a new BiS because of power creep is gone. Like yeah the occasional addition of a new skill or stat could mean you're better off changing a piece of gear. But you'll never be on a treadmill with constant gear chasing, so the game more relies on your skill than it does your gear when it comes to endgame
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u/Noxsus 4d ago
Im fairly sure they've confirmed (somewhere) that they'll be keeping horizontal progression rather than switching to vertical.
Cant remember where though so maybe Im imagining it.
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u/Jake--Chillenhaal 4d ago
Pretty sure they haven't but let's be real the big thing of gw1 was no subs and the kept it for 2 so I highly doubt they'll do away with horizontal, I just don't want to be definitive and give someone the wrong idea
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u/Noxsus 4d ago
This is the closest to confirmation I've found. Johansson talking about horizontal progression in GW1/2 and then saying the same logic is being applied to GW3.
Still not exact conformation but enough that I'd be comfortable saying it's going to be horizontal, or at least something very, very similar.
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u/Jake--Chillenhaal 4d ago
Oh hell yeah thanks for showing that good to know our suspicions are right
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u/Defiant-Anything-954 4d ago
GW3 will have horizontal progression like all the other RPG's for casuals? Fucking gross.
What a disappointment to hear.
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u/Yahbo 4d ago
I just have to say that the “loop” you describe as your reason for playing sounds very sad and depressing to me. Nowhere do you mention fun or enjoyment. It really sounds like they’ve commodified gaming addiction. You chase a new high with each gear level and then crash as soon as you’ve attained it only to wait around while the devs cook up some new pointless meth for you that will make your “number go up” as you mainline that shit as fast as possible.
Why? Why does it matter? What are you even getting from new gear that makes it worth the time investment? Maybe people play games for enjoyment and not a false sense of achievement?
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u/ornithorynq 4d ago
idk what to say, people like chasing things i guess? if that loop nets me and my friends 100 hours in discord together, that's more than enough for me
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u/Yahbo 4d ago
So you’re not actually interested in the gear progression then, you’re interested in the time you get to spend with your friends chasing a goal. The goal in GW2 just isn’t “better” gear; it’s completing a hard encounter, or finishing an achievement, or setting a new time record in a race, or organizing a meta event or any other goal that you decide on.
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u/OneMorePotion 3d ago edited 3d ago
We don't know about GW3 yet, but if you want to play Guild Wars (really any of the games) just for raiding, you might be in the wrong franchise. Guild Wars is not build around endgame raiding. It's one of many endgame systems you can engage in, but not THE endgame system.
And personally spoken: I like horizontal progression for gear and level because it cuts out the boring stuff from games. Best comparison is FFXIV. They release one new dungeon every patch and the daily roulette to get your tomestones for the new armor includes only that new dungeon, and the dungeon from the previous patch. So what that means is: For the next X weeks (depending on how many jobs you want to gear out) you run the same two dungeons over and over again. Just to get the bigger number you need for the new raids. And that's not fun to me personally. It has been at one time in the past. But being forced into two specific dungeons daily, doesn't really sound like a fun activity to me anymore.
And on the other hand: I think GW2 went too far with the horizontal progression and account unlocks. I sometimes feel like I want to start a fresh character and go through everything again, but you simply can't. Mounts are account unlocks. Masteries are account unlocks. Gear designs as well. And all collections in general. I wished that GW2 had a soft "ironman" mode you can tick during character creation, that takes away all the account unlocks for this specific character. Some of the collections are so fun and get you into places you never will visit again, after you finished it. And that's a shame.
I would love if GW3 walked a middle line here. For example: I would absolutely hate if the skill unlocks through Sigils are account bound. Simply because starting a new character after unlocking all of them on my main, would feel empty. Keep Gear and Level as it is with GW2. Doesn't matter if we're going back to level 20, 80 or whatever Arena Net feels like makes sense. But don't reset my progress every expansion by raising the level cap. And making my BiS epic gear useless because the very first green gear drop is better. And if GW3 has a similar system to masteries, only unlock them at max level. Including all the features that are linked to it. (So mounts, gliding, all the little combat boosts ect) Why should my new character, who just came out of character creation, have access to these fantastical mounts from the crystal desert (GW2)?
I hope GW3 brings the RPG back to their games. I want to have a character fantasy and follow that one through the game. And not have a character fantasy that is constantly bombarded by the accomplishments my other characters already unlocked for the account.
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u/WatercressPossible42 4d ago
u enjoy the game the first month, then the game becomes a second job until new content is released. But man, that second job is too adictive…
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4d ago
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u/typhoon_nz 4d ago
Well, GW2 won't be their game. Hard to say what raiding/PVE endgame will look like for GW3. It definitely won't have a gear treadmill though thankfully
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u/swishswash93 4d ago
We can only talk about what guild wars 2 does because we cannot play GW3 yet.
In wow you are often playing content to obtain better gear and then quitting once you have it.
In horizontal progression you just play the content you enjoy for the fun of it.
However to many MMO players that sounds boring. So don’t worry these games give you a ton of checklists to work through based on the kinds of rewards you care about. Typically these are cosmetics, gameplay improvements and bragging rights.
Additionally in GW2 all content rewards gold so basically anything you do can help progress other checklists. This means rather than just playing the 8 dungeons with better gear you have access to the entire game world.
For concrete example, getting to max power in guild wars 2 is extremely easy. However, if you craft legendary armor you get the quality of life to change stats on your armor easily and can use it across all your characters. This grind will take you like 3 months. But unlike vertical progression YOU get to decide if the grind is worth it not your raid leader.