Guild Wars 2

This game was sold as a horizontal gear grind. It was lauded in magazines and on websites for this purpose. Many of us bought the game based on this premise, and it was the ONLY reason we left the game we were currently playing (and you all know what game that was). We looked past the lack of polish and the glitches, which is present in every new MMO, due to this selling point.

When Ascended gear required you to run instances, this game became a gear grind. When you add more ascended armor pieces/weapons, it becomes even more of a gear grind.

You have WvW going 24/7. You expect realms and players to spend all their time doing it, to stay on top and then you introduce a stat differential, that is only obtainable by doing an ABSURD amount of PVE content/instances.

Ascended gear should be obtainable from WvW and should have the same BASE STATS as instance ascended gear. We would care less about the “resist” or PVE bonuses.

Otherwise the name of this game should be changed to Raid Wars 2. Requiring people to do instances is NOT going to get more players to do them. It is just going to lose you subscribers. Also take into consideration that many people love this game because they can play an alt char with no penalty. Time constraints/jobs and RL issues will cut into the fun they can have in this game.

If this is about paying for server costs? There are plenty of other ways to achieve this. I do not see one thing on the gem store that I am interested in buying. Introduce WvW hat skins or something (like TF2).

Why would anyone ever buy town skins? 1) the whole reason we even farm for a legendary or a cool looking armor piece is so we can show it off in town or in WvW. Why would we even wear a town outfit? How would the game be broken if you let people where sunglasses or bunny ears in WvW? All you would be doing is making a TON of cash, and not ticking off a player base who joined the game, thinking there wouldn’t be tiers of gear.

Make the Ascended pieces plain looking for WvW and raise the price of fine trasmutation kits (these are WAY too low, for what they do for the player). Just like players are required to do some instances for a legendary (which has no advantage in stats), they may participate more in raids for “cooler looking ascended gear”.

There are so many creative things you can do, rather then force people into a playstyle/minigame that they do NOT want to do in the first place.

Please take this into consideration. I absolutely love this game, but if it becomes a pve/gear grind? I will just end up going back to the game where I raided with players for years (even if it was more of a business, and more about realm firsts then friendship).

About a month ago, ANET ran an AMA on reddit. They said this:

It is absolutely not intended that Ascended will make a discernible difference in WvW. However it is the certainly the perception. Again however we would have much preferred to have released Ascended Gear across the whole of the game than in one area.

Players in WvW will be able to acquire Ascended items within that area of the game soon.

“Soon”. That’s the last we heard about that. Still, ANET agrees with you.

Snoring Sleepwalker.9073:

About a month ago, ANET ran an AMA on reddit. They said this:

It is absolutely not intended that Ascended will make a discernible difference in WvW. However it is the certainly the perception. Again however we would have much preferred to have released Ascended Gear across the whole of the game than in one area.

Players in WvW will be able to acquire Ascended items within that area of the game soon.

“Soon”. That’s the last we heard about that. Still, ANET agrees with you.

Very happy to hear this. I wish they would post this on their “ascended armor page” or sticky this. It isn’t like I am a player who barely plays. I have a precursor rifle, I will have vision of the mists tomorrow (not a big fan of the legendary gsword animations). I just really like this game and the freedom it currently allows. Want to craft your armor? Go ahead. Instances? Go ahead. Farm solo? Go ahead. I was very worried ascended might break what makes this game really great. I am not falling behind in any area of the game currently if I feel like doing something. It feels much less like a job the other mmo’s, and is the first MMO I have truly enjoyed since Ultima Online.

After doing all this farming (for weapon skins), I finally felt like I could finally enjoy the game and WvW a lot more. Another gear grind, and one that might require instance runs x 1000? That sucked the wind right out of my sails.

Doing that grind in WvW? Would be a blast. Hopefully they create a new currency/badge in WvW though. Using the same badges as siege equipment could screw up things. As long as I can get equal gear in something I actually consider fun though? I will be a happy player.

You know the worst part about all this ?

Had they made Ascended gear and components tradeable from day 1 it would have been obtainable everywhere you earn gold. Instead, they decided to nerf all players who didn’t run FOTM.

I don’t think that the stat difference provided by the addition of Ascended gear will make that large of a difference in WvW. A well skilled player is much better than a well geared player after all.

TooBloodyBad.8904:

I don’t think that the stat difference provided by the addition of Ascended gear will make that large of a difference in WvW. A well skilled player is much better than a well geared player after all.

Some of the stats are pretty epic to be honest.

IMO, It will make a difference between 2 equally skilled players.

TooBloodyBad.8904:

I don’t think that the stat difference provided by the addition of Ascended gear will make that large of a difference in WvW. A well skilled player is much better than a well geared player after all.

It doesn’t matter how small the difference is. What matters is that, by introducing FOTM-only Ascended gear, ANET has made the balance of WvW worse by dividing the players into two groups:
– Those that grind FOTM
– Those that don’t. Which includes the pure WvW players.

If we didn’t have FOTM-only Ascended gear both groups would be balanced because their stats would be identical. Making things identical is the simplest way to balance things. Even 1 point of a difference in 1 stat makes the group with the higher stat overpowered. Slightly overpowered is still overpowered.

All we are asking is for ANET to balance WvW so that pure WvW players are put on equal footing with everyone else.