Guild Wars 2

“At 500, crafters will be able to craft ascended weapons and armor. Once you reach 500, a new tier of crafting materials will be available to you; this new tier of materials will be made by combining lower tier materials. This tier is time-constrained, so each item can only be made once per day in order to help give high-level crafters their own economy of items to build and sell that retain their value and rarity.This new tier of crafting material, along with the new guaranteed material rewards mentioned earlier and some other materials we introduce will be used to craft ascended weapons, armor, and more. These weapons and armor will also be able to be found as rare drops from locations in the world. Ascended weapons and armor will remain account-bound like other ascended gear.”

warning, this is a wiifm (what’s in it for me) post but I gotta tell ya, the extremely transparent money grab agenda that gives back little in return is wearing players like me pretty thin.

given the dr and reward drop systems, access to more weapon sets in the future and the way crafting is set up, players will essentially be forced to craft ascended gear and break out their credit card even more. all of this means that players will have to learn and pay for at least 3 crafting methods for a single profession to stay competitive. not to mention players with various professions in need of specific gear having to learn and pay for most, if not all, crafting methods. either way, you are forcing players to be crafters because it will be advantageous to their gear progression and that is a bad business. also, the terrible reward drop system will not be a balancing factor and to think so is delusional. any customer here with half a brain can see that every decision and content update made is to strongly encourage forking over more cash to keep up with things because the alternatives of gathering and rng are not very realistic.

now I don’t mind breaking out my cc once in a while, but if you expect the majority of your player base to craft all this ascended stuff, grind for and buy mats with time gates and spend hours in front of crafting stations and on the bltc, I hope to grenth that the powers that be make some kind of effort to strongly improve the abysmal and over limited profession systems and add much better content to play in return. also, there are a carp ton of essential features missing that need to be implemented to make this a more respectable mmo.

long story short… don’t be cheap and greedy, putting more effort into core essentials of your game will make players happily part with their hard earned cash and not question your integrity when you want them to buy more stuff.

thanks for reading

Only casual players are “forced” to bring out their credit cards to keep up with the best gear and that’s only because they’re so casual that they don’t realize how easy it is to get the best gear (and/or don’t have the time to get it, even though it’s superbly easy).

Your entire wall of text is countered by the logic of players actually, you know, playing the game.

The quotes are:

We’ll also add a new set of account-bound crafting materials to the game. You’ll receive these materials as guaranteed rewards once per day per unique location for completing content within a category of gameplay in Guild Wars 2.
For example, capturing camps, towers, and keeps in WvW will earn you these crafting materials. In the Living World, you can earn them for killing giant world bosses, defeating dungeons, completing jumping puzzles, completing mini-dungeons, finishing some types of guild missions, capturing temples in Orr, and other activities.

[src]

Yup this is one big fuss over nothing.

I don’t understand the argument. People have this tendency to use the cash shop as an excuse not to play the game, get upset when they don’t get what they want from the cash shop, and then blame the developer for not having the content that they chose not to play in favor of RNG gambles. Who’s at fault? How is this a problem with game design? How is this new crafting method unfriendly to casuals when it’s time gated to daily rewards?

Also, how can you say

don’t be cheap and greedy, putting more effort into core essentials of your game will make players happily part with their hard earned cash and not question your integrity when you want them to buy more stuff.

You are selectively neglecting the fact that there is a plethora of methods (stated in another posters comment) that can score you the materials you need on a strictly daily basis.

What are you possibly planning to buy with your credit card? Is it crafting 1-500? We’ve had a year to progress our crafting levels and if you’re upset about having to do so now that it’s more relevant, that is certainly not a design flaw.

Also, it sounds to me like you’re against the idea of the ascended gear being crafting entirely. How is that fair and/or reasonable? That is the method of acquisition. Would you be so quick to criticize people who choose to do fractals to get ascended rings? That is also a time gated process that grants top-tier items. It’s the way it’s done. Would you argue that it’s unfair to do dungeons for exotic gear if you were stuck in rares? Certainly not.

I don’t understand why you feel entitled to gear that others are willing to put diligent work into.

I don’t have time to respond properly so i’ll leave this for now…

forcing players to spend time and resources leveling up multiple crafting methods is wrong.

forcing players to become crafters for gear to stay competitive is wrong.

providing no other alternatives besides crafting and abysmal rng lucky drops is wrong.

forcing players to not play their way for rewards is wrong.

transparent money making schemes and over the top gold sinks like this are wrong.

forcing players to do things without equal reward alternatives is wrong.

forced crafting is wrong.

fundamentally there are a ton of things wrong with the way ascended gear has and is being handled.

Okay so basically what I’m seeing is you saying you shouldn’t have to work for gear. People use “play how you want” as an excuse to call any idea bad but you are simply being unreasonable. No one is forcing you to do anything. You want dungeon armor? Do the dungeon. You want ascended armor? Craft it. You’re being dramatic and asking for hand outs and you’re not even being subtle about it. Oh well. Enjoy your exotics.

Gnat.9405:

Okay so basically what I’m seeing is you saying you shouldn’t have to work for gear. People use “play how you want” as an excuse to call any idea bad but you are simply being unreasonable. No one is forcing you to do anything. You want dungeon armor? Do the dungeon. You want ascended armor? Craft it. You’re being dramatic and asking for hand outs and you’re not even being subtle about it. Oh well. Enjoy your exotics.

Crafting isn’t /work/ its a time sink.

A time sink? It took me less than 30 minutes to craft weaponsmithing to 400 by following a guide and that includes buying the materials I need off the tp

Yeah I just leveled tailoring last night in about 40 minutes from 1-400. Now, seeing as how this content has been available since launch, calling it a time sink is just absurd.

Gnat.9405:

Yeah I just leveled tailoring last night in about 40 minutes from 1-400. Now, seeing as how this content has been available since launch, calling it a time sink is just absurd.

It is a time sink, all it costs is time and money, money is made with time.

Its not work, its a credit card swipe mostly.

Daecollo.9578:

Gnat.9405:

Yeah I just leveled tailoring last night in about 40 minutes from 1-400. Now, seeing as how this content has been available since launch, calling it a time sink is just absurd.

It is a time sink, all it costs is time and money, money is made with time.

Its not work, its a credit card swipe mostly.

What are you talking about? I have never converted money to gold in this game. It cost me roughly 12 gold and 30 minutes to go from 1-400. Gold is very easy to come by, especially now.

Calling it a time sink and making reference to having to spend actual money is absurd.

If you’re so casual that making enough gold to level a craft profession (or eight) is unreasonable, then you’re so casual that “being competitive” shouldn’t matter. If you’re so concerned about “playing the game the way you want” that taking the time to level a craft profession (or eight) is unreasonable, then you’re so laid back that “being competitive” shouldn’t matter.

I could go on.

There is absolutely no reason to justify wanting the stat increase of going Ascended that doesn’t also justify putting in the effort to do so.

I will, however, agree that having more than one way to get gear of any stat tier is a good thing. I’ll note here that there is already more than one way to get all the existing gear – including Ascended. They already said they’ll keep adding methods as time goes on. Back to being casual or unconcerned to just waiting it out and getting it in due time.

^ Aka first response to this thread.

Good news for you, Anet isnt planning to release any content soon where you would need ascended gear. It doenst fit in their living zerg concept.

can arenanet make one kittening move with out people kittening complaining about it, holy kitten, this isnt a kittening money grab in the slightest, its a way to expand on whats already there by increasing the level of professions, and giving people something to work for profession wise, all the ascended gear isnt going to be profession only…..just wow….

honestly, if this game has “time sinks” like crafting, you should just not play games then….like for real, go play cod or something, oh wait, you have to grind in that game too, so therefore its also a time sink, maybe the sims? oh wait, you have to build upon your character and do stuff cause its a life simulator, i spose thats a time sink to, well your kittened, go play minesweeper, oh wait, you have to figure out where the bombs are, those kitten time sinks…