Guild Wars 2

250 ectos is too expensive for an item used for progression.

I understand the 250 ecto recipe to go from beta fractal capacitor(infused) to the glowy, sparkly one since it’s purely cosmetic without stat progression.

But to have to spend 250 ectos to go from prototype to infused is prohibitively expensive for an item that has a +5 ag res stat increase used to progress in the game.

It’s about 70 g for the ectos needed for this one item. And there’s no other way to upgrade it. There needs to be another route to upgrade a backpiece; even if it’s something time consuming like using 3000 relics or some number of pristine relics.

Or if there needs to be some RNG involved, then it would make sense to infuse a backpiece with shards of mist, just like the recipes used to infuse rings.

But something needs to change. The method to acquire rings has been fixed. Now it’s time to re-evaluate backpieces.

Expensive gold sinks have always been for cosmetic-only items, and it should stay that way.

Agreed, The price is just too much Anet said that Ascended was meant to be the barrier between exotics and legendarys but 250 ectos? that’s crazy for something that’s “needed” to progress to fractals lvl35+ and not die.

No, Slacker, that is incorrect. It costs 50 ecto to create the first level of the non-capacitor back pieces (whereas the first level capacitor costs only relics). It then costs 250 ectos to upgrade it to (Infused), which is necessary for the current maximum of 30 AR. The infusion costs a stack of ecto regardless of being a capacitor or book/quiver.

EDIT: Apparently Slacker deleted his post after realizing he was wrong, so mine doesn’t make much sense now. Suffice to say that I agree with the OP. I would be more than happy to shell out 10,000 fractal relics to avoid paying 250 ectos.

I agree as well, rings can come from the chest or can be upgraded with items that hold no monetary values i.e. shards/globs/vials

250 ectos for the cosmetic portion is fine, but 250 for the +5 agony resist is just dumb. It should be like rings that require shards/vials/globs as well, because there’s really not much else to do with them after you get your rings.

/signed here.
Agree with the 250 ectos just for the skin, but I don’t agree with that for only infused version of the item …

I agree, make it 7000 relics or 200 skill points.

that is what i’ve been saying. 50 skill points joke for an infusion was a VERY bad idea and they decreased it to 10. Ectos don’t even drop from mobs and all you can do is hope for a rare and hope x2 to get ectos from one. 50 ectos is the max amount of ectos the thing should require or i will never upgrade mine. Did over 500 fractals and never even considered to get 30 AR because 250ecto is LOL for something that doesn’t even change the appearance of your backpiece (mine’s a book). 250e req should be for kitten looking weapons/armors ONLY

the only time you really need agony resist is in jade maw and when it comes to other mobs you can easily dodge their agony. i used 250 ectos to upgrade to tier 2 back piece, so are you telling me that A-net should remove this? whats going to happen to people who already used 250-500 ectos to upgrade their back piece? Is Anet going to give back their 250 ectos? it wont be fair on me and so many other people who has already used this recipe.

250 Ectos to me is the same as the previous 50 skill points requirement.

Anatolian Turk.4057:

the only time you really need agony resist is in jade maw and when it comes to other mobs you can easily dodge their agony. i used 250 ectos to upgrade to tier 2 back piece, so are you telling me that A-net should remove this? whats going to happen to people who already used 250-500 ectos to upgrade their back piece? Is Anet going to give back their 250 ectos? it wont be fair on me and so many other people who has already used this recipe.

It happens every time in mmos Turk. An example could be when they changed the reward tokens to 60 per path. I agree that the difference in money is significant (toekns vs ectos), but it’s the same process.

Only way around it is… to see if people agree that a certain thing is wrong, wait for a dev, and then decide.
I for one won’t upgrade my quiver for 250 ectos, hell it doesn’t even change the skin or anything.

Anatolian Turk.4057:

the only time you really need agony resist is in jade maw and when it comes to other mobs you can easily dodge their agony. i used 250 ectos to upgrade to tier 2 back piece, so are you telling me that A-net should remove this? whats going to happen to people who already used 250-500 ectos to upgrade their back piece? Is Anet going to give back their 250 ectos? it wont be fair on me and so many other people who has already used this recipe.

As a developer, I would give a statement in advance so people won’t waste 250 ecto one day before patch. But just because people spent their ecto doesn’t mean nothing may change. Those people got the privilege of getting a certain item sooner, and apparently thought it was worth it.

Price for infusing backpiece IS pretty ridiculous – I could understand 10, 20, heck, even 50 ectos, but 250? I’ts like a bad joke
Just like price for infusion different than one you can get from vendor for 75 relics
250 passion fruit related materials, 100 t6 materials, 50 philosophrs stones and 20 mystic coins for… WHOLE 5 power/precision/whatnot.

I think people are forgetting that you do get a cosmetic upgrade as well. I also do not think ANET will downgrade the reciepe.

You do not get a cosmetic upgrade in the case of the quivers/books. Furthermore, the capacitor backpiece has an extra upgrade after the +5 AR for an additional 250 ecto. That last upgrade is fine, as it’s no better stat-wise and you’re paying for the shininess. The upgrade to get the AR, however, does not justify that price.

I’m hoping the infusion recipe for the rings, since it seemed to be added at a later date, are the direction they’re going with this crap. To upgrade a ring, you need the ring, 1 shard of crystallized mist, 3 globs of coagulated mists, 5 vials of condensed mists. They should of just made the non-cosmetic backpieces like that as well.

/Signed. 250 ectos is a rediculous amount. There are enough ecto sinks in the game anyway.

The amount of grind to get the gold or fractals to make the back was too high as is. Adding 250e on top of that is overkill for 1 piece of equipment with the lowest stats. All it does is gate players from proceeding which is not what was intended based off of previous statements made about your game and it’s intended design. The recipe to infuse the rings is fair and should be the same as the back. The second 250e upgrade for the awesome skin enhancement is more than fair though.

Rising Dusk.2408:

You do not get a cosmetic upgrade in the case of the quivers/books. Furthermore, the capacitor backpiece has an extra upgrade after the +5 AR for an additional 250 ecto. That last upgrade is fine, as it’s no better stat-wise and you’re paying for the shininess. The upgrade to get the AR, however, does not justify that price.

You do get a slight cosmetic upgrade along with +5 AR going from a prototype cap to a beta cap. Beta capacitor has clothes hanging from it and a floating rotating 3d cube in the middle of the capacitor. You then pay another 250 ectos to get the “shiny glow” which is only a cosmetic upgrade.

The crafting cost for complex infusions was flat out decreased in the last major patch. The crafting cost for books and quivers was effectively reduced by increasing the drop rate of t6 mats.

It would not be unreasonable for the crafting cost to infuse to be reduced now, whether it be by increasing the salvage rate of ectos or just flat out requiring fewer ectos, or preferably letting there be alternative methods to infuse.

Thank you for everyone’s feedback so far.

I agree with this thread complete, the cost is just too high! As other people have said, I would probably pay UP TO 50 ectos to do it but 250 is just insane. At that cost I’d rather be making parts of a legendary!

They really need to add an alternate crafting recipe just like the way to upgrade the rings.

I also agree that the purely cosmetic glow upgrade should stay 250 ectos, because at that point it is like crafting just for a skin: something the legendary weapons represent.

I would have to disagree with what is being said, 250 ectos is alot, but its not that hard to get done, takes about a week of farming/fotm/dung runs playing 3-4 hrs each day to get done (took me 5 days). 70g is not that much and by the time your looking to be making the infused level back there is likely nothing else you should still need to be spending the gold on (unless your looking for legendary, but if your willing to spend 900 gold for a SKIN you shouldn’t be QQ about 70g for AR).

where I disagree with everyone is the 2nd upgrade to make it glow, this should not be 250 ecto as it gives you nothing more than a skin, the upgrade to infused being 250 gives you AR so it is justifiable, but the just make it glow for 250 is a bit much.

Koga.7215:

where I disagree with everyone is the 2nd upgrade to make it glow, this should not be 250 ecto as it gives you nothing more than a skin, the upgrade to infused being 250 gives you AR so it is justifiable, but the just make it glow for 250 is a bit much.

I understand your line of thinking, but paying 70g for stat increases is approaching the dangerous territory of Pay-to-Win; whereas, paying another 70g for the sparkly skin is Pay-to-Look-Good which is why people are okay with it.

There are already really expensive skins, like T3 armor or Foefire weaps, or Anomaly or Vision of the mists, but none of these items have superior stats to other exotic items that can be had for much cheaper.

70g IS a lot of money to a lot of people. Stats should not be available only to the people who can afford it. Stats need to be available to everyone. And it’s a win for everyone, because you’ll never have to carry “poor” people because of a stat disparity.

One more thing I forgot to point out in my previous post – you can get ALREADY INFUSED ring from dailies lvl 20+, what (potentially) decreases cost of getting infused ring to ZERO (ok, 75 fractal relics for another 5 AR, but that is close to nothing once you hit lvl 20+ in fractals).

250 is the only number ANet knows.

I understand the discontent of players like the OP, but here are my two cents to the contrary, and I hope you can all take this to heart. The problem can be summed up in a few short points:

1) Players generally do not understand progression. They want the best, max stat gear quickly and easily because they feel that while those items exist, they are at a disadvantage. This is not the case. Item tier progression is intended to not only reward the player for time played, skill (ehhh, sort of), etc, but also to scale along with game content. Pay special attention to scaling with game content, that is an important concept.

2) Expanding upon the first point, the discontent fostered by players’ misunderstanding leads to one thing: pressure on the dev team to fix something that isn’t broken. In most cases, ANet is able to just turn a blind eye to silly complaints, and rightly so. But I want to caution you on this topic (as it is a new and volatile one), because the responses they receive from this initial wave of ascended items will shape their implementation of future items.

Solution to your discontent: Take a step back, and think. What is the purpose of ascended gear at this time? Marginal stat increases (to bridge the gap between exotic and legendary), and agony resist (needed purely for Fractals of the Mists dungeon).

Because this gear gives no advantage in PvP, and very very very minimal advantage in WvW (your skill as a player will play a much more crucial role), and that current content is really very easy if you understand profession design and play content at intended level requirement, then stat increases can be neglected. With that understood, then the purpose of ascended gear can be argued to be for the Fractals of the Mists dungeon.

The interesting thing about Fractals of the Mists is that it actually CAN be challenging content! Yay! But if ascended gear is designed for progression in Fractals of the Mists, you’ll need to get that in order to progress, right? Wrong. Playing in FotM, you will, of course, find ascended rings. These come in normal and (infused) versions. But, agony comes into play after level 10, you’ll need all the agony resist you can get right away so you don’t need to worry about it, right? Wrong, again. If you’ll notice, there’s even a progression for rings as to normal and infused versions. You simply don’t need an infused ring until you’re above level 20, and even then it’s not a big deal. Ahhhh but then you try out level 30, and the agony is just having it’s way with you. Gotta make sure you have at least 2 infused rings now, right? Absolutely correct. But you’ll notice that by game design, you may already have 2 infused rings! Great! Now there is only one item that can be ascended and infused. The back piece. But wait, all this time you’ve been playing FotM, by now you’re swimming in gold and ectos, buy the remaining ectos you need – boom, no problem. Progression. You don’t need the items until you NEED the items.

As a testament to the progression in Fractals of the Mists, I am currently at fractal difficulty scale 47. Using ONLY gold and items looted in FotM, I have: acquired my commander tome (100g), created my back piece via mystic forge (70g for ectos as per OP’s comment + cost of t6 mats), and then some. Maybe you should be more concerned about how easy it is to attain ascended gear, rather than how difficult it is.

Completely agree 250 ectos for +5 agony resist upgrade on the back piece is too much.

I believe a random chance item drop from 20+ (in addition to the shard of essence) may be less stressful than 250 ectos. Most people that run 20+ fractals have the 70 gold to spend on the cosmetic glow stage if they desire it. However 500 ectos to get to the glow back piece is a lot to swallow. I personaly want the backpiece, and I have everything I need to get to the glowing stage EXCEPT the 500 ectos. Almost to 250, and I will still wait in hopes that this will be changed.

So far the developers have been understanding with certain aspects of the game. Such as runes of holding were decreased. 20 slot bags were added as a reward to fractal’s dungeon vendor. These are items everyone uses and wants. The agony resist back piece is something players need for progression. This will not change even if accessories are added. Fractals is probably one of the most ran dungeons at this time. There will come a point that if players cannot progress or complete their items, they will loose interest.

Thank you all for your time and attention.

@ Aragorn

I’m on fractals 41, so I’m in about the same place you are. I have appropriate ag res, I’ve made tons of gold too. But I still stand by my post. There needs to be a method to infuse backpieces based purely on time, and not just money made from spending time — like dungeon tokens.

And off-topic but slightly relevent: The commander tome is the biggest farce they’ve put in the game. Now that is something that needs to be bought with time and not gold at all. Just think: a WvW-only item bought with a currency that you don’t even make in WvW since it’s virtually impossible to get rich in there. Talk about a mis-step.
You have to farm PVE to become a leader in WvW. You can be a commander when you first step foot in WvW if you want.

Now back on topic:

Gold should not be the only route to get items. Gold can be bought with gems.
Time cannot.

250 ectos are really too much.
Maybe I’ll infuse the rings (more affordable recipes) or I’ll drop them to get 25 AR. I’ll never waste 250 ectos for 30 AR, rather I won’t play in high level Fractals… However who cares!

And why don’t we talk about INFUSIONS too?
250 passion fruits (25 copper each), 20 mystic coins (17 silver each), 50 philosopher’s stone (can’t give a price to skill-points, but they are all time spent ingame), 100 tier 6 materials (let’s say… 10 silver each)… To get +5 to one stat?!
Guys, be serious… 14 golds for +5 to one stat?!
Let’s suppose you have 1200 power… +5 it’s a 0,4% increment!
Ridiculous…

Aragorn Son of Arathorn.4015:

Because this gear gives no advantage in PvP, and very very very minimal advantage in WvW (your skill as a player will play a much more crucial role), and that current content is really very easy if you understand profession design and play content at intended level requirement, then stat increases can be neglected. With that understood, then the purpose of ascended gear can be argued to be for the Fractals of the Mists dungeon.

The interesting thing about Fractals of the Mists is that it actually CAN be challenging content! Yay! But if ascended gear is designed for progression in Fractals of the Mists, you’ll need to get that in order to progress, right? Wrong. Playing in FotM, you will, of course, find ascended rings. These come in normal and (infused) versions. But, agony comes into play after level 10, you’ll need all the agony resist you can get right away so you don’t need to worry about it, right? Wrong, again. If you’ll notice, there’s even a progression for rings as to normal and infused versions. You simply don’t need an infused ring until you’re above level 20, and even then it’s not a big deal. Ahhhh but then you try out level 30, and the agony is just having it’s way with you. Gotta make sure you have at least 2 infused rings now, right? Absolutely correct. But you’ll notice that by game design, you may already have 2 infused rings! Great! Now there is only one item that can be ascended and infused. The back piece. But wait, all this time you’ve been playing FotM, by now you’re swimming in gold and ectos, buy the remaining ectos you need – boom, no problem. Progression. You don’t need the items until you NEED the items.

As a testament to the progression in Fractals of the Mists, I am currently at fractal difficulty scale 47. Using ONLY gold and items looted in FotM, I have: acquired my commander tome (100g), created my back piece via mystic forge (70g for ectos as per OP’s comment + cost of t6 mats), and then some. Maybe you should be more concerned about how easy it is to attain ascended gear, rather than how difficult it is.

Actually these rings that drop AND the back piece can be useful in WvW and general PvE/other Dungeons. Starting with the level 10 daily rewards, or turn in for 10 pristine relics for 1 ring. Those are better stats than the exotics. Depending on your build (lets say damage builds).

Red Ring of Death:
+71 power
+50 precision
+4% critical damage
+32 power
+4% critical damage
+18 precision

Ruby Ori Ring of Berserker:
+67 power
+48 precision
+3% critical damage
+25 power
+3% critical damage
+15 precision

So with a BASIC pink ring, that most of us have collecting dust in our bank, is better than the comparable exotic version. These stats are helpful in more than just Fractals, and it is more than “a minimal difference”.
The back pieces, you will find are comparable difference as well.

As for your level of fractals you are. I’m fairly certain most people in this thread have 40+ as well. They did not feel the need to point out what level they are on. This is a general discussion of 1 specific material required for the back piece at a specific stage in upgrading it.

Iridiana.9078:

And why don’t we talk about INFUSIONS too?
250 passion fruits (25 copper each), 20 mystic coins (17 silver each), 50 philosopher’s stone (can’t give a price to skill-points, but they are all time spent ingame), 100 tier 6 materials (let’s say… 10 silver each)… To get +5 to one stat?!
Guys, be serious… 14 golds for +5 to one stat?!
Let’s suppose you have 1200 power… +5 it’s a 0,4% increment!
Ridiculous…

If you think the current cost is bad, these infusions used to cost 50 skillpoints each. Now they cost 5, which is much more reasonable.

The cost of infusions was cut by 90%, just like how one piece of non-purely-cosmetic armor should cost 7g (25 ectos) at most — instead of 70g (250 ectos) if it can only be bought with gold.

DungeonDaughter.7391:

Iridiana.9078:

And why don’t we talk about INFUSIONS too?
250 passion fruits (25 copper each), 20 mystic coins (17 silver each), 50 philosopher’s stone (can’t give a price to skill-points, but they are all time spent ingame), 100 tier 6 materials (let’s say… 10 silver each)… To get +5 to one stat?!
Guys, be serious… 14 golds for +5 to one stat?!
Let’s suppose you have 1200 power… +5 it’s a 0,4% increment!
Ridiculous…

If you think the current cost is bad, these infusions used to cost 50 skillpoints each. Now they cost 5, which is much more reasonable.

The cost of infusions was cut by 90%, just like how one piece of non-purely-cosmetic armor should cost 7g (25 ectos) at most — instead of 70g (250 ectos) if it can only be bought with gold.

Well I have a Quiver and I bought it only for a cosmetic purpose (I have a Ranger as main characters and it’s a cool backpiece combined with longbow/shortbow)… I crafted the one with Ancient Bones, the cheapest… No way I’ll waste tons of expensive Tier 6 materials for the stats of the back (the lowest in game).
I wonder who is willing to spend 14 golds for 5 points in one stats… it’s crazy!
And I’ll never waste 250 ectos for an additional infusion cause there is no purpose in it… You need 30 AR only in very high level Fractals… I’ll just don’t play them :P

Poop, I got 300 ectos banked in for the day I’ll get the shiny backpiece, now you’re telling me I need another 250 for the cosmetic upgrade?

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