Guild Wars 2

I am fearing that ascended armor is going to follow in the footsteps of ascended weapons and be not only account bound but require Vision Crystals. Dedicating almost all of my play time I managed to craft five weapons at a rate of one per week which I gave to my two most used alts. Then I burnt out, and build a sixth a couple weeks later. Most don’t even have infusions because I started saving my laurels for ascended armor recipes.

If every piece of armor needs a vision crystal plus time gated components it will take an eternity to build 4 or 5 sets of armor for my top 5 alts. For weapons, the current system is not to bad, but with armor requiring SIX pieces, this is going to get ridiculous.

I am expecting many will say it’s not really needed, but with ascended weapons making a 5-10% difference, the armor will probably be even more important. I spend a lot of time in WvW, and I have to believe a fully ascended player will have a significant advantage over mere exotics.

I would have assumed that (generally) the more alts a person plays, the longer it takes for the game to become boring, the more gems Anet makes. So why is Anet making everything so alt unfriendly (ascended gear, WXP, for example) is a mystery to me.

If I played a game and I got max gear and beat every content in 3 months, I’d be pretty bored. Whe nthe game becomes so trivial that I can just roll over and throw some gold to get any set of armor I want, it’s trivial, there is nothing to look for to in the game.

Even wit htime gate, the game is already too easy, I would complain about the time gated crafting if there is actually challenging content in the game.

I’m not saying it’s cost effective, but can’t you transmute the Ascended items and then split them to transfer them to another character? Yes, that could be costly for a set of armor, but it IS possible (I think). It certainly seems like that would be simpler (possibly cheaper?) than raising multiple characters to 500 craft.

I think assuming they are intentionally making new content “alt unfriendly” is not really a justified point of view. I think it’s more of a side effect of doing what they need to in order to maintain players in the game to generate funds (their only source of income REQUIRES players in the game).

They HAVE done quite a number of things that are VERY alt-friendly:

1. Wallet Feature
2. Account Bound infinite gathering tools (with refunds for those that bought multiple sets)
3. Account Bound Fractal levels (coming next patch)
4. (more I just can’t recall at the moment)

Also, many here are calling things “alt-unfriendly” when it is just the side effect of choosing to play many different characters. I’m sorry, but it SHOULD take 5 times longer to gear up 5 toons than it does one. (Note that I have 9 characters myself).

I find it VERY disturbing that some on these forums seem to spend their entire time here trying to convince everyone that there are evil Devs in some dimly lit meeting doing nothing but thinking up ways to intentionally screw over players that have more than 1 character. It’s an absurd idea and a sad, sad hobby.

Why shouldn’t time gating be per character? If I take the time to level up a weapon smith, huntsman and artificer why cant they all make one of each time gated material?

Each alt can do the Dragonite events once a day and open chests once a day which is alt friendly, same with gathering.

Why is there time gating in the first place? If the results are account bound anyway why make us wait? I don’t see how forcing us to log in every day to craft materials one at a time gets them more money.

dont understand the OP

Ascendent weapons are ALT friendly too – i can craft this with one crafter for all my alts and can get them faster than i get rings or amulets for them

could understand this when weapon or armor is souldbound but they are accountbound so no point here – thread is just QQ

Seriously. I have nine toons, and while the task of fully hearing them seems horrifying, the fact that I can collect mats per character is super helpful. So I wouldn’t say alt UNfriendly.

Romek.4201:

dont understand the OP

Ascendent weapons are ALT friendly too – i can craft this with one crafter for all my alts and can get them faster than i get rings or amulets for them

could understand this when weapon or armor is souldbound but they are accountbound so no point here – thread is just QQ

Only not, the alt unfriendliness is due to the time gating on 2 critical components. I don’t see how this is so hard to understand. The fact that the process is faster than the time gating in relation to trinkets does not make either right.

And given that you can collect enough mats for the ingots and the wood to make 1 per day along with the time gated components on 1 character means the fact that you can collect the components on more than 1 character irrelevant.

Those who have divided their gametime to level up alts would be able to get their first character with ascende armor alot faster than those who have spent their time playing only one. Since every player has atleast that one character it is easiest to balance things around that instead of penalizing them for not having loads of full level alts.

The insane numbers of mats (probably) required means that only one of my characters will get Ascended armor. I’m just finishing picking up what will (probably) be needed. I need a few more dragonite ore and then I’ll look at the situation with ectos, dust and dark matter.

I say “probably” because we haven’t seen the recipes for armor yet but I’m certain things like the Vision Crystal will be repeated as is and ectos will be needed for Damask and inscriptions. Now multiply by 6 for a full set of gear, and multiply again by the number of alts I have, and it’s just not going to happen.

No matter what happens with WxP in WvW I will still only take one character there, because I’ve only got one character that is fully geared up. To me, that is the definition of alt-unfriendly.

I’m not getting ascended until the prices become reasonable. 200g for a craft… 60 per piece and a crap ton of time-gated kitten? No thanks. If the power creep continues I’m leaving with the next big game.

? Here are just a few problems with this:
Armour type: Medium, Light, Heavy – how to do conversion? (They are made using different crafting disciplines)
Prestige: Ascended armor and weapons are considered “elite” and should be hard to get.
A single person who has multiple characters would make it look like everyone has it.
The same is true for legendary items and ascended weapons.

Cost: This is subjective – some people find exotic armor too expensive (Seen the prices recently? They have shot up it can easily cost 30g now for a full set). Some people find ‘rare armor expensive’. These things are not designed so you can have it on every character from day 1. It currently takes less than two weeks to craft/find all the mats to make one ascended weapon – even less time if you are lucky (about a month or so for chars with multiple ascended weapons).

Crafting: This is only one route to getting ascended stuff – it also drops in the open world with a reasonable drop ratio (better than precursors !).

Drops: Ascended weapons have been dropping in FoTM and world bosses – the values of these will become lower if a player only needs one and can use across multiple characters. New dungeons paths have been dropping ascended weapons.
I have been lucky and received one from FoTM (box allowing me to choose any ascended weapon with celestial stats).
Ascended armor will also be dropping in FoTM when it is released (ANET have confirmed this)

Market: It would crash the current crafting market for ascended items (inscriptions etc) and affect a large player base of crafters. These people will feel betrayed and very hurt if the time-gated market crashs and their effort is now worthless. ANET promised that the time gating would help stabilise a market so people have a reason to craft to lvl 500.

There is nothing forcing you to have ascended items on all your toons.
I am afraid that I do understand this all too we’ll – the side effects and complaints will be massive in the player base.

Heck if you want ascended armor account bound, why not rare and exotics?

• Many new players also find that ANY equipment is too expensive from the TP until they figure out what a champ farm train is.

I have a multiple lvl 80s – I am HAPPY that it takes time to make each toon kitted out.

Elric Of Melnibone.4781:

…..
Why is there time gating in the first place?
……

I’ll try to explain it, but you have to be willing to look at this from a non-player (gimme, gimme, gimme) perspective.

1. Keeping the game running, new content flowing, etc. takes actual REAL WORLD MONEY that ANet must earn from operating the game (and selling new copies).
2. Anet only has TWO methods of generating the above needed money. Actual cash Gem sales and new game copy sales.
3. Unless players are IN the game, Gem sales (both from TP and retail cards) do NOT get made.

Like the model or not, Anet really does not have a choice with the direction they have chosen (no monthly fees, no current expansions for sale) but to continue to provide content that promotes logging in EVERY day to pursue in game player goals. Good or bad, the plan seems to be working (for now, at least).

Bingo Brother Grimm.

People used to be patient and like waiting for things.
Now its (gimme, gimme) now.

Society has been changing to an instant gratification of things – it used to be very different.

Buy some of the Ascended materials off the TP and negate the time-gated issue.

And someone with many alts will easily be able to collect the mats needed, whereas someone with only 1 character will be limited to the number of nodes in the world that day.

Reann.9480:

Those who have divided their gametime to level up alts would be able to get their first character with ascende armor alot faster than those who have spent their time playing only one.

Based on what?

Brother Grimm.5176:

1. Anet only has TWO methods of generating the above needed money. Actual cash Gem sales and new game copy sales.
2. Unless players are IN the game, Gem sales (both from TP and retail cards) do NOT get made.

Like the model or not, Anet really does not have a choice with the direction they have chosen (no monthly fees, no current expansions for sale) but to continue to provide content that promotes logging in EVERY day to pursue in game player goals. Good or bad, the plan seems to be working (for now, at least).

They have the fortnightly content updates to keep people playing.

Lord Kuru.3685:

I would have assumed that (generally) the more alts a person plays, the longer it takes for the game to become boring, the more gems Anet makes. So why is Anet making everything so alt unfriendly (ascended gear, WXP, for example) is a mystery to me.

They have different people in their company tasked with doing different things. Their internal communication and game direction is quite poor.

I am so discouraged from making and playing an alt that getting bored of GW2 will probably come quicker than most MMO’s I’ve played.

morrolan.9608:

They have the fortnightly content updates to keep people playing.

[/quote]
I agree they help with that, but different players have very different tastes. I know I ignore about 1 in every 4 of these releases (while I continue to log in for material gathering and the dailies).

Reann.9480:

Reann.9480:

Those who have divided their gametime to level up alts would be able to get their first character with ascende armor alot faster than those who have spent their time playing only one.

Based on what?

The fact that 8 characters can gather 8 times more materials in a day than 1? Possibly one of the reasons some material refinement has a 1 per day limit.

……
I am so discouraged from making and playing an alt that getting bored of GW2 will probably come quicker than most MMO’s I’ve played.

I’m unsure why some players appear to WANT to look at the game from this point of view (that ALT players are discriminated against) when I love having the option to play whatever character I feel like today. The idea that some players actually BELIEVE this is some intentional plan by ANet to discourage ALT players is baffling to me….I’ve never heard a decent explanation of WHY ANet would do this or what they have to gain (other than NOT selling more character slots).

Brother Grimm.5176:

The fact that 8 characters can gather 8 times more materials in a day than 1?

Like most normal human beings I find it rather hard to play more than one character at any time.

No matter how many alts I have, I can only collect about the same amount of material as you can, with the possible exception of the bosses and even those boxes usually amount to 1 green and 2 blues, with a bit of dragonite. They don’t exactly spawn often in prime time either. Maybe twice per night each.

Seriously, alts in this game are not an advantage, quite the other way around if you want to get them geared up.

Herr der Friedhoefe.2490:

Brother Grimm.5176:

The fact that 8 characters can gather 8 times more materials in a day than 1?

Like most normal human beings I find it rather hard to play more than one character at any time.

Login char 1, build “ascended armor crafting piece 1”, logoff, logon char 2, build “ascended armor crafting piece 1”, logoff, login char 3…

Now, if the crafted pieces would be character bound this would not matter since you would be fully geared at the same time with all characters. Having those items account pound creates a slight handicap for those who have dedicated their time for one character.

Reann.9480:

Like most normal human beings I find it rather hard to play more than one character at any time.

Login char 1, build “ascended armor crafting piece 1”, logoff, logon char 2, build “ascended armor crafting piece 1”, logoff, login char 3… [/quote]

And what exactly would be wrong with that? I put the time into those characters they should be able to build their own gear.

The point I made is, I can’t gather 8x more material than anyone else despite maybe having 8 characters. (I have 6). Ascended gear depends heavily on walking the maps, outright farming the nodes for basic mats. It’s time dependent and has nothing to do with how many characters a player has.

And what about those who have put all their time on one character? Why should you be able to get one of your characters geared faster multiplied by how many alts you have? Also, you do not need to run around gathering anything. Just buy from TP. If you prefer to gather, then that is upto you like having many alts.

You put the time to level up your alts, you put the time to gear up them as well.

“You put the time to level up your alts, you put the time to gear up them as well.”

Wait,wait, wait. That is the awful gear grind philosophy. Players should be able to enjoy the game without endlessly gearing up characters.

Vespa.1790:

If I played a game and I got max gear and beat every content in 3 months, I’d be pretty bored. Whe nthe game becomes so trivial that I can just roll over and throw some gold to get any set of armor I want, it’s trivial, there is nothing to look for to in the game.

Even wit htime gate, the game is already too easy, I would complain about the time gated crafting if there is actually challenging content in the game.

Then i must ask you why you stared to play this game? From all the begining it was promised that there will be nothing you expect from game. No hard to get gear to beat content and grinding and everything around it..
I just dont understand why someone who expect this in game which is supposed to be free of it.
Market is full of games that would suite you better.
Now people that like gear grind demands to have it in game and we people that started to play this becouse it was supposed to be free of it are frustrated becouse Anet is breaking promises.

I wish someone over there could understand that playing alts provides longevity via variety.

That aside, I’m still grinding out my weapons and will continue to be long past the introduction to armors.

Imo all ascended has done is to introduce mass grind to those with alts.

Herr der Friedhoefe.2490:

Brother Grimm.5176:

The fact that 8 characters can gather 8 times more materials in a day than 1?

Like most normal human beings I find it rather hard to play more than one character at any time.

No matter how many alts I have, I can only collect about the same amount of material as you can, with the possible exception of the bosses and even those boxes usually amount to 1 green and 2 blues, with a bit of dragonite. They don’t exactly spawn often in prime time either. Maybe twice per night each.

Seriously, alts in this game are not an advantage, quite the other way around if you want to get them geared up.

You are so caught up in making your, “Alt players are persecuted”, case that you are unable to even admit even a single case where Alt players may have an advantage…..so sad.

It’s pretty simple math. I CAN collect more raw materials with 8 characters than someone playing 1 character during a single node respawn period (it will certainly take me 8 times longer, but that is NOT to point being made). That fact is not going to change because you refuse to admit there just MIGHT be some aspect of this game where an ALT player might have an advantage over a MAIN player. I’m certainly not talking about ALL materials required for Ascended or any time-gated REFINING, but just general harvested nodes in open world zones.

The point I made is, I can’t gather 8x more material than anyone else despite maybe having 8 characters. (I have 6). Ascended gear depends heavily on walking the maps, outright farming the nodes for basic mats. It’s time dependent and has nothing to do with how many characters a player has.

I’m not sure you understand the concept of how material nodes are harvested or res-spawn when you post comments like the above…. I can ABSOLUTELY harvest more materials in a given respawn period with more characters and I’m not sure how you can argue otherwise.

“You put the time to level up your alts, you put the time to gear up them as well.”

Wait,wait, wait. That is the awful gear grind philosophy. Players should be able to enjoy the game without endlessly gearing up characters.

So you are seriously implying that you should be able to generate multiple LVL 80 characters with top level gear in the SAME time as someone does for ONE character?
How is that even rational or logical?

If you are being serious, keep in mind you CAN enjoy the game without gearing up ANY characters….most all content CAN be completed using only drops.

If you were being sarcastic, note that many irrational, crazy ideas being posted here and forgive me for not recognizing it.

Time gating of T7 production has limited us to ONE of each type per day. For armor with six pieces times say five alts times about five ‘bolts’ per piece that’s 150 days at least. They should make it at least one per ‘crafter’ per day so my tailor, leather worker, and armorsmith can be working on 3 sets in parallel.

Gathering the materials is NOT the problem, the T7 crafting is. NO, I don’t want to pay someone else to do it when I have the alts to do it myself. I invested the time and materials to get to 500 for all three professions, why can’t I use that???

Most of the work IS gathering all the materials so I don’t see why I have to logon EVERY day to craft ONE T7 or be forced to wait 150 days to craft them all once I get the materials.

Forcing me to logon doesn’t get them any more money, selling things in the TP that I want gets them money.

Because if it would work like that people would create level 1 alts and skill up the crafts only to craft those once per day items. No alts, just craft bots. This would enable such people to have full ascended gear alot faster, making it a no-efford compleatly. What would be the point to introduce new gear in the first place then?

Elric Of Melnibone.4781:

…..
Forcing me to logon doesn’t get them any more money, selling things in the TP that I want gets them money.

First, looking at it as if someone is FORCING you might be the problem here. If you feel that way, maybe you should seriously consider moving on to another form of entertainment. I’m not trying to be rude or trite with that suggestion, but am seriously trying to be helpful. If you are no longer enjoying what you are doing, you should ask yourself why you are doing it.

Next, if you DON’T log into the game, what are ANet’s chances your will spend RL money in the Gem Store? No matter WHAT items they offer or how you feel about them, if you are NOT logged in, they have ZERO chance of you spending money in the Gem Store (sans buying a Gem Card, obviously). It’s pretty a pretty simple economic concept (and I am in no way suggesting you have to like it, but that’s the economic model the game is based on).

Elric Of Melnibone.4781:

Why shouldn’t time gating be per character? If I take the time to level up a weapon smith, huntsman and artificer why cant they all make one of each time gated material?

Each alt can do the Dragonite events once a day and open chests once a day which is alt friendly, same with gathering.

Why is there time gating in the first place? If the results are account bound anyway why make us wait? I don’t see how forcing us to log in every day to craft materials one at a time gets them more money.

Il stop you there, Time gating is per character.. I can do one of each time gated item on all my maxed profession on my 2 characters.

Lets say the issue with those items is near zero since you probably wont have enough mats to get to 500 in 5-10 days anyway.

Currently you can only craft ONE T7 PER TYPE PER DAY, I am suggesting adding PER crafter toon. If you don’t have the materials you cannot craft them so creating a ton of alternates does not speed anything up.

If I only want to play on the weekends, maybe all weekend even, I can only craft two Lumps of Mithrillium a week. Why do I need to logon every week night to get the other five? It’s already account bound as are all the materials needed in a vision crystal so I don’t see why we have to play these games.

It’s up to me to decide how to accumulate the materials for vision crystals and how long that takes so why does Anet need to throttle me on T7 crafting? All Ascended gear MUST be ‘earned’ by playing the game so why do I need to jump through the stupid craft every day hoop?

I do happen to play pretty much every day anyway, but I have to worry about forgetting to do my T7 crafting chore today or I miss out on the opportunity. I should be able to just play the game letting materials pile up until I feel like crafting then craft everything I have the materials for.

Those are legit questions, but are issues EVERY player has to deal with. If you choose to gear up X characters, you will have to deal with those issues X times longer.

I think it’s pretty obvious that Anets intentions here are to make this process a long term goal and not a rush to gear up, but this effects EVERY player and the idea that it’s being put in place to “punish” or “discourage” Alt players is utter nonsense. Again, give me a good explanation as to WHY they would not want anyone to play multiple characters? Every “crime” must have a plausible motive.

If their motive is to ‘make you wait’, then players with Alts wait X times longer so we feel the pain of their decision that much more. With armor it is much worse than weapons. Each weapon is ‘atomic’ in that you can use it immediately, but with armor you need to build a complete set before the runes take affect unless you just build an exact match to the exotic armor you are wearing. Most of my alts have more than one set of armor also. This means I have LOTS of armor to potentially upgrade, but at one ‘Bolt of Damask’ a day my patience may wear out to fast.

Every day I login first as my huntsman to craft three T7’s, not even sure I need the materials, but because I might some day then I have to commit the time and resources. Once ascended armor drops that becomes two (or three alts if jewelry drops) and it gets even worse.

This complaint is coming from someone who loves to craft, what must all the players who have ignored crafting as a waste of time think? I used to spend hours a day crafting for profit, and I was fine with that, but now I can’t do that anymore and I have to craft for myself instead, one tiny piece at a time.

Gather on multiple characters, craft the one thing per day, sell the surplus gathered, buy more of what was just crafted, repeat daily. Or just gather and sell and then just buy what you’d craft – it’s usually the same or cheaper.

Not a hard concept. Those with more and more alts make that process easier and easier.

I think they ’ll make it so you do the full set at once like a box containing a set armor or either light medium or heavy armor

Pennry.9215:

Gather on multiple characters, craft the one thing per day, sell the surplus gathered, buy more of what was just crafted, repeat daily. Or just gather and sell and then just buy what you’d craft – it’s usually the same or cheaper.

Not a hard concept. Those with more and more alts make that process easier and easier.

The prices on the refined T7 are to high right now and anyway I don’t want to have to avoid ANet’s decision by paying through the nose. I don’t have a problem, and even prefer ‘earning’ the armor on my own, I just don’t like the kitten one per day model. It makes ascended crafting to tedious.

If you enjoy playing alts and are overwhelmed with the amount of time/effort required to sort them out with ascended gear, I’d argue that the simplest solution is to not bother with it.

I’m in a similar situation with >10 level 80 alts. With Anet’s commitment to (limited) vertical progression I’d be concerned that by the time I’d be able to gear up one third of them, they’d have introduced something new that would make me regret wasting the time to acquire it (I’m one of those evil individuals who does not find this aspect of the game enjoyable). And worse still, if I decide to try a build that requires a different primary attribute with one of my geared up characters to keep things fresh (e.g. switching from Power to Condition Damage), my only option would be to use lower tier gear.

Other than limiting your ability to run Fractals I don’t think the sacrifice of not having ascended armour, at present, is too bad. Roaming in WvW may not be a great idea, though the satisfaction of wiping baddies while using lower tier gear can be worth it (you get to blame your gear if you die). In the future, though, I can see not having the highest tier gear reducing your chances of getting into dungeon groups.

The original GW ruined me. xD

As it is, they already have too many Account shared features. I totally agree with some of their choices such as account shared wallet fractal levels etc. At the same time, I disagree with some of the account changes that take the feeling of character progression away e.g making WXP account bound.

If armour becomes account bound then weapons and accessories should become account bound as well… If a change such as the above is implemented, i personally feel that the feeling of character progression will disappear.

Inline with the above observations, If we make everything is account bound, XP (similarly to WXP) should be account bound as well… LVL 1 char to 80 and then make as many alts as you want straight at LVL 80…

The above scenario won’t differ very much to current PVP with the only difference that you once farm the set you want (if you farm legendaries 1 set will do for ever…)

Anyway to sum it UP I disagree with eliminating any effort players need to put with the excuse of “ALT – friendly”. Progress should be hard and rewarding.

To Anet: Stop adding new – useless stuff every 2 weeks… we DON’T care… Players need new Permanent- bug free content (don’t remove dungeons and stuff at the end of the event just to reuse it in future paches as new content…). Additionally, as other posts mentioned before, Effort needs to be rewarded. Make it hard for ascended gear but ensure players, that making one is an achievement and not something that needs to be changed within the next month.

Erm, crafting an ascended item is NOT that expensive. Its getting from 400-500 that can be.

If you feel ascended is too hard to get for alts then use exotic as people have been doing since launch and are still doing today. Its a whole 5% difference on weapon/armor and 8% on trinkets which are easy to get anyhow. A huge portion of gear stats is on your trinkets btw.

It is expensive to casuals… x__x

Oh boy, I didn’t even think of this problem. (I have 17 characters) Looks like I’ll be spending some quality time crafting

I’ve made a suggestion for this very thing,

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/Soul-bound-to-account-bound-NPC/first#post3306015

The prolem lies within the nature of stats. While many other (MMO)RPGs have classes which only use CERTAIN stats, in GW2 the Characters can have many different varieties.

So in the worst case, let’s say I play 3 characters which play PvE and WvW. For PvE I want Berserker Gear and for WvW I want PVT gear. This means I need to create 3×6×2 = 36 armor parts plus weapon sets plus trinkets. This is insane and stupid. Not even grindy games like WoW do that. It should be the complete opposite: as one of anets slogans was ‘play the way you want’.

ProtoGunner.4953:

The prolem lies within the nature of stats. While many other (MMO)RPGs have classes which only use CERTAIN stats, in GW2 the Characters can have many different varieties.

So in the worst case, let’s say I play 3 characters which play PvE and WvW. For PvE I want Berserker Gear and for WvW I want PVT gear. This means I need to create 3×6×2 = 36 armor parts plus weapon sets plus trinkets. This is insane and stupid. Not even grindy games like WoW do that. It should be the complete opposite: as one of anets slogans was ‘play the way you want’.

And you want to play with both sets. So either decide to want to play the game of making the sets or rethink how much you want them. (Honestly, for the PvE vs WvW sets, why even consider upgrading the PvE one? Maybe after the WvW sets, but even then, not a real concern.)

It’s not “play the way you want”, it’s “play the game the way you want”. See what I did there? There are rules and processes in the game that you have to follow, you can’t just ignore them because you want to.