Guild Wars 2

Didn’t see any real use now – dungeons are easy with just exotic, on wvw matter only zerg and bit tactics, Fractals just boring with same and same dungeons over and over to up level.

Gear should be upscaled with new content, where you really need it, not just to be.

Soloing dungeons?

infusion slots – ie fractals

casual players always make this mistake.

ascended is for fractals. thats why agony infusions was the FIRST infusions to be added.

we need ascended gear to do higher lvl fractals.

they just made new non agony resistance based infusions for the ppl who complained us skilled players had shiny things and they dont have shiny things.

same thing happend with liadri.

so TLDR

ascended for fractal runners for agony resistance

Ascended items are increased grind/progression for the game. It exists to create the illusion of more content and to wedge in a new tier of gear that is time gates. They want to make players feel like doing something they’ve already done is a new or rewarding experience. To do this they create repetitive grind to acquire ascended items. To prevent players from working hard to acquire them and possibly being done with the game sooner, they time gate them to draw the process out as much as possible.

Agony is for fractals, not ascended items. Agony resistance could have been added to anything.

Burst damage in WvW for roaming is already stupid. Adding just more powerful weapons is just going to make this even worst.

And i very much doubt you can get an ascended weapon just from playing WvW. So, once again, the WvW player is at a gear disadvantage aswell.

There are poeple who like to work for better gear. Exotic is extremely easy to get and doesn’t give the feel of achievement. It is very common to RPGs (not only MMOs) that the BiS gear needs work to get. Also, it is here to keep players busy until there is new content.

Besides there will be future content that may be harder. Also, not all dungeons are ‘easy’ – especially Arah and higher fractals need some coordination and aren’t usually done by pug groups. Do not compare your own experiences with the whole community. Sometimes the better stats just give the players what they need.

Exotic gear is far too easy to get. I have 6 80’s and I’m just about fully geared on all of them.

Terrahero.9358:

Burst damage in WvW for roaming is already stupid. Adding just more powerful weapons is just going to make this even worst.

And i very much doubt you can get an ascended weapon just from playing WvW. So, once again, the WvW player is at a gear disadvantage aswell.

Well they should be cheaper with badges, so there might be a small reason to start wvw for people who havent.

Shiren.9532:

Ascended items are increased grind/progression for the game. It exists to create the illusion of more content and to wedge in a new tier of gear that is time gates. They want to make players feel like doing something they’ve already done is a new or rewarding experience. To do this they create repetitive grind to acquire ascended items. To prevent players from working hard to acquire them and possibly being done with the game sooner, they time gate them to draw the process out as much as possible.

Agony is for fractals, not ascended items. Agony resistance could have been added to anything.

This. Exactly this. And they will simply make content harder to compensate for the fact that players have better gear, so you end up right where you started — hence the term “gear treadmill.”

A LOT of players fall for this — look at all the people just on the forums who want to see progression, or rather the illusion of progression.

Never mind the fact that Anet said originally that they would not do this, the real problem is the time gating and its effect on build diversity and alts.

Even this is far away from a gear treadmill. Usually you get laurels naturally and can buy the ascended stuff pretty easily. I really don’t get the negativity with terms like ‘illusion of more content’ and ‘gear treadmill’.

As playerbases grow it seems more and more casuals enter games who want fast progression, fast and easy to get rewards. I don’t blame them they haven’t learned how games were 10-20 years ago. It almost seems that most players just want to enter a game, have maxed out and then don’t know what to do. I must admit there is a lack of content (new dungeons, areas, campaign, races, professions etc.?) and most temporal content is a zerg hyper train hunting for achievements and drops.

ProtoGunner.4953:

There are poeple who like to work for better gear. Exotic is extremely easy to get and doesn’t give the feel of achievement. It is very common to RPGs (not only MMOs) that the BiS gear needs work to get. Also, it is here to keep players busy until there is new content.

You want a achievement? Craft skins, not stats. Harder skins look better.

We need more places with agony mechanics to even justify acsended tier existence. Without expanding game with more agony mechanics in different places i see no point in new gear.
Im sure some hamsters enjoy running on their wheel (fractals) with occasional new item piece threwn at them so they could run faster on same wheel (higher lvl fractals?) but fractals are just a tiny part of game and if new tiers of gear are beeing introduced just for fractals, then Anet you can have my badge back…

kRiza krimos.1637:

We need more places with agony mechanics to even justify acsended tier existence.

Exactly. Made entire tier of gear for just fractals is bs

krixis.9538:

casual players always make this mistake.

ascended is for fractals. thats why agony infusions was the FIRST infusions to be added.

we need ascended gear to do higher lvl fractals.

they just made new non agony resistance based infusions for the ppl who complained us skilled players had shiny things and they dont have shiny things.

same thing happend with liadri.

so TLDR

ascended for fractal runners for agony resistance

Skilled players and fractals?, good one i must say haha, Liadri was kittenly because of bias towards certain professions, i did her on mesmer after 4 tries, had to try 50+ on necromancer, somehow i am MORE skilled with a mesmer in rare/exotics than necro in ecotic/ascended?

Ascended gear is only here because some idiot at arenanet thought it would be cool with a gear grind/gear treadmill to please all the criers that have to be handheld all the way through the game and have to be told what to do at “endgame” also.

Ascended gear is not only for fractals, it’s for every one that actually wants to be usefull in most areas of the game, if you don’t have ascended in WvWvW you will lose to the guy who have, balance right there, in PvE/dungeons, yeah Rares are enough really, even greens, but the dungeons just become so easy and faceroll in Exotic/ascended that people are gonna want to have that.

And again, high level fractals isn’t even hard as a necromancer atleast, i did 24+ with 15 AR for a while not dying to Agony, so yeah it’s not about skill, it’s about gear and gear only, which sucks as that’s just what WoW, Rift, SWTOR and so on is about, gear gear gear gear gear, get some better gear to do some more stuff, gear gear gear.

Why a player needs to run fractal after getting all his ascended gear ? To complete same boring maps over and over and get a little reward for it ? I have shining fractal capacitor(infused) on my 2 mains, no one can show me a point to do fractals again.
So no, I don’t think ascended weapons are only meant for fotm or agony resistance since fotm is not for endgame players.

knbBlackTemplar.3059:

kRiza krimos.1637:

We need more places with agony mechanics to even justify acsended tier existence.

Exactly. Made entire tier of gear for just fractals is bs

Yes, please, more kittened mechanics to justify introduction of unneeded gear. That’s exactly what this game needs.

Astralporing.1957:

knbBlackTemplar.3059:

kRiza krimos.1637:

We need more places with agony mechanics to even justify acsended tier existence.

Exactly. Made entire tier of gear for just fractals is bs

Yes, please, more kittened mechanics to justify introduction of unneeded gear. That’s exactly what this game needs.

Oh wait, you are right it needs more farmfests and unconnected stories with bland events, acompanied with cash shop skins that cost a fortune.

aspirine.6852:

Terrahero.9358:

Burst damage in WvW for roaming is already stupid. Adding just more powerful weapons is just going to make this even worst.

And i very much doubt you can get an ascended weapon just from playing WvW. So, once again, the WvW player is at a gear disadvantage aswell.

Well they should be cheaper with badges, so there might be a small reason to start wvw for people who havent.

Irrelevant. Ever since they released the Achievement Chest reward people everywhere are showered in badges.
I got over 2500 BoH from my achievement chests, and i only got upto 5k. PvE’ers typically have more AP so theyd get even more.

So even PvE’ers have a ton of badges. So doing WvW specifically for that is utterly pointless. If anything dedicated WvW players might very well have spend most of those bagdes to gear alts since they dont do dungeons, to fund their war effort selling siege or just using siege for themselves.

Meanwhile PvE players likely still have their stockpiles. So any badge discount will likely help PvE’ers more then WvW players.

krixis.9538:

casual players always make this mistake.

ascended is for fractals. thats why agony infusions was the FIRST infusions to be added.

we need ascended gear to do higher lvl fractals.

they just made new non agony resistance based infusions for the ppl who complained us skilled players had shiny things and they dont have shiny things.

same thing happend with liadri.

so TLDR

ascended for fractal runners for agony resistance

Did you just equate fractal farming with being more skillful? o.O (Just something I noticed that I hoped was joking/sarcasm lol)

Anyways, besides that comment, people here are right. Ascended is for fractals. If ascended weapons don’t have sigils, then they’d be much less powerful than exotics with sigils in pvp/WvW and PvE (though honestly in PvE for dungeons stuff like sigils rarely matter as long as you have a decent group…). Ascended gear was made basically for the people who came from the more “traditional” MMO’s that really like having a vertical grind, so they made fractals and ascended gear to let those players farm a small set of content for their vertical grind. If you’re not interested in farming fractals, theres very little benefit to getting ascended gear.

This is the point: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_creep
Anyone telling you something else is deluded or lying to sell you something.

The introduction of ascended gear turned me from “fanboy” to disillusioned cynic instantly.

To those still under the impression that higher numbers equals higher skill, I’m sorry, not trying to offend you, just trying to show reality.

Charak.9761:

infusion slots – ie fractals

It will be really useful for fractals. I need more AR.

For the rest of the game, not so much.

Simple. To give people who want a gear treadmill something to work towards.

Thrashbarg.9820:

This is the point: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_creep
Anyone telling you something else is deluded or lying to sell you something.

The introduction of ascended gear turned me from “fanboy” to disillusioned cynic instantly.

To those still under the impression that higher numbers equals higher skill, I’m sorry, not trying to offend you, just trying to show reality.

That power creep definition is way off on what is going on with Ascended gear. Look closely.. it states the “successive additions”. We aren’t getting successive additions of gear… Look at DCUO. Launches with T1, then T2 comes out, then T2.5.. and now T3. That would be a power creep. The T1 gear, originally the best gear in game, has now become irrelevant.

Ascended Weapons are not the same as this at all. Seeing as Legendary Weapons were here upon launch and were the highest gear you could get, that still will hold true with Ascended Weapons.

Delvoire.8930:

Thrashbarg.9820:

This is the point: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_creep
Anyone telling you something else is deluded or lying to sell you something.

The introduction of ascended gear turned me from “fanboy” to disillusioned cynic instantly.

To those still under the impression that higher numbers equals higher skill, I’m sorry, not trying to offend you, just trying to show reality.

That power creep definition is way off on what is going on with Ascended gear. Look closely.. it states the “successive additions”. We aren’t getting successive additions of gear… Look at DCUO. Launches with T1, then T2 comes out, then T2.5.. and now T3. That would be a power creep. The T1 gear, originally the best gear in game, has now become irrelevant.

Ascended Weapons are not the same as this at all. Seeing as Legendary Weapons were here upon launch and were the highest gear you could get, that still will hold true with Ascended Weapons.

Legendary weapons had (and still have, until the update) the same exact stats as exotics. With the update they will get higher stats. Their POWER is CREEPING higher.

Successive additions = rings first, then backpieces, then amulets, then accessories, now weapons, soon armors……

Successive. Additions.

All time gated (and/or grind gated in the case of rings and backpacks).

Due to the time gating effect, this heavily discourages alts. It also heavily encourages buying legendaries to have the highest stats as soon as possible. This makes the game “pay to win” for the first time, something which I have defended ANet from accusations of many times on this and other forums. Those who can afford to drop thousands of dollars on gems to outfit several characters with legendary weapons will now have a statistical advantage (and be months/years ahead of those who can’t/don’t spend as much). It may not be huge, but it is quite disturbing (or would be if I had any hope for MMOs left at all).

I see what you’re saying Thrash.

I don’t fully agree with it though. I think we are both looking at that definition and fitting it into our own thought process.

My experience with MMO’s is small, only recently playing DCUO and SWTOR, and both failed greatly in my eyes. I wasn’t a fan of the the Raid and token collecting of DCUO and I never even got up to gearing in SWTOR as the servers were to dead to keep me playing. GW2 has been great though. The Ascended gear doesn’t upset me in the least. I wish all of the community felt the same.