Guild Wars 2

No. I think it’s an artificial, gimmicky gear gate mechanic that takes skill out of high end PVE turning the game into yet another NEET-pandering WoW/Lineage/RO grindfest where people who are actually bad at the game but have no job or education (and thus TONS of time) get to be the elite.

I like the idea of facing the Mursaat again, but I absolutely detest this idea of a new rarity and hope whoever suggested it is taken off of the development team and put on bugfixes, release coordination, and/or community PR (posting here). The direction this seems to be going in leads to trivialization of player skill and the death of the game.

assuming you have to have agony resistance in order to survive it (i.e. it’s automatically applied to you, no matter what), i think it’s very … uninspired.
and i don’t like the fact that you need a certain stat on your gear to overcome it.
but i suppose they have to slow us down somehow, that’s what the article sounds like to me.

Regardless of the gear issue, this dungeon is going to have be a lot more fun than the dungeons we currently have if it’s going to have the longevity to grind it over and over again. I don’t see how agony increases the fun of the dungeon, or how it makes it truly more challenging in a skill based way. If it’s a constant debuff that can’t be cleared where does player skill come in?

I also hope the random paths are balanced so that there aren’t some that are super difficult while others only take 9 minutes. It would be pretty annoying if progress was blocked because the RNG didn’t like you and gave you that one dungeon that is impossible and your group breaks up.

Iehova.9518:

LFG Iron Mines infusion run.

This! Preach it brother!

Thank god they are finally putting in some type of progression for those of us who are strictly PVE players. I can’t wait to see the new skins! Cant wait to see the new dungoen!! I have no problem working my way in deeper as I pick up enough infusion to proceed…..it’ll finally give me a reason to log in every day. Thank you for listening to the dungeon/raid crowd Anet!

This should make PVE guilds more attractive as well instead of just as a glorified friends list.

Woot.

Its not about GW1 its that no one really wants to gear grind this early in. That being said the WoW guys are 100% right resistance gear was hated to no end.

I think agony is a step backwards. it’s already been done, so this is becoming “just another MMO.” and to top it off, with this new gear it isn’t just a dungeon mechanic.

if it was a dungeon mechanic, that’s be great. I’d love agony as a dungeon mechanic, but putting it on a new tier of gear means it won’t be just a dungeon mechanic (otherwise why have a whole slot for it?). What happened to the gear plateau? it worked great in GW1, and new skins are needed more than “more numbers.”

I think they should have spent the time it took making a new tier of gear and made better encounter mechanics and DEs/dungeons.

This might honestly be enough to make me quit, i don’t know yet, but i am seriously considering it.

will the ascended gear really be that much better even though they wont be able to stack sigil buffs?

@AHD:
It will be only Fractals’ mechanic right now and surely the devs will closely watch its reception to decide whether it should spread or stay only in Fractals.
Why a whole slot for it? We don’t know yet how infusion works, but given we will have three types of infusion, it will probably also grant additional things, not just defense against Agony.
Still, there’s absolutely no indication that Agony will be seen outside of Fractals, unless we’re to see Mursaat somewhere else.

Valhallen.1693:

Gab Superstar.4059:

I think it’s a good thing because anyone who starts playing 3 months from now will have a ton of infused gear to allow him or her into all the groups that form for Fractals of the Mists.

Basically what Arena Net is doing is opening up all the content to every player, new or old!

Until they release the next set of dungeons with “corruption” or “Agony Rank: 2”, requiring you to get new gear to mitigate it.

Pretty much what I’m expecting to happen and the single biggest reson I quit gear treadmill games like WoW. it’s not fun if you HAVE TO DO SOMETHING in order to get to the “good parts”. One thing that GW2 does right is the leveling experience isn’t linear its not a static trip of point to point quests its open ended pickup and play style of progression is very appealing. Introducing the equivelant of Raid gear progression will kill most of what sets GW2 apart from the rest of the MMORPG market place.

TheGuy.3568:

Its not about GW1 its that no one really wants to gear grind this early in. That being said the WoW guys are 100% right resistance gear was hated to no end.

Try being the ONLY person to grind out a full FIVE sets of reist gear for Burning Crusades. becuase no one else in the guild wanted to do it. Didn’t even get a thank you for it after we cleared the raid. :/

It’s not the game that is tainted with gear treadmills or gear progression right now – and knowing ANet, it will never be, judging from GW1 as well; it’s the people coming from other MMOs who see gear treadmills kitten everywhere, becoming paranoid about gear progression and being locked out of content even if it only means wasting 15 minutes to get your armor infused.
What about certain locations, like Oola’s Lab or the Displaced Ogre fight, which require you to find a random drop somewhere in the map? It’s also based on RNG, chance, waste of time and stuff – treadmill?

don’t forget your onyxia cloak guys

In GW1, Spectral Agony was a bit of a Skill-check because even uninfused players could be given some resistance to it with Protective Spirit / Angelic Protection if you caught it fast enough. We also had 8-player parties and the ability to give all our heroes Ranger-Pets who were already naturally infused against it (unlike other minions). This ensured that you could bring along 1 or 2 uninfused players so long as they were careful about their Aggro from the Mursaat.

Here…. it looks really bad/binary. Even the way Linsey describes it makes it sound nothing like a Skill check but purely as a Gear Treadmill. IE: in Gw1 it was mechanically a Damage over Time “attack”. (that lots of Mesmer & Asuran skills could exploit BTW). Here it’s a condition that can’t be purged or resisted with the help of teammates. It also appears from the picture to be applied the same way those extremely overpowered Orrion Illusionists attack which everyone knows… is basically the Quake Lightning gun powered by an Aimbot and can’t be reflected either.

I’m really starting to question whether Arenanet understands “the problems” that we’ve been citing with Dungeons. Especially since I can’t point to one single thread here complaining that we “Ran out of Treadmill” in dungeons. No, a lot, if not the majority of complaints here, are that most of the current encounters just aren’t engaging and already feel really grindy. (slowly whittling down a Battleship while rote memory handles all the red-circle dodging)

ilr.9675:

In GW1, Spectral Agony was a bit of a Skill-check because even uninfused players could be given some resistance to it with Protective Spirit / Angelic Protection if you caught it fast enough. We also had 8-player parties and the ability to give all our heroes Ranger-Pets who were already naturally infused against it (unlike other minions). This ensured that you could bring along 1 or 2 uninfused players so long as they were careful about their Aggro from the Mursaat.

Here…. it looks really bad/binary. Even the way Linsey describes it makes it sound nothing like a Skill check but purely as a Gear Treadmill. IE: in Gw1 it was mechanically a Damage over Time “attack”. (that lots of Mesmer & Asuran skills could exploit BTW). Here it’s a condition that can’t be purged or resisted with the help of teammates. It also appears from the picture to be applied the same way those extremely overpowered Orrion Illusionists attack which everyone knows… is basically the Quake Lightning gun powered by an Aimbot and can’t be reflected either.

I’m really starting to question whether Arenanet understands “the problems” that we’ve been citing with Dungeons. Especially since I can’t point to one single thread here complaining that we “Ran out of Treadmill” in dungeons. No, a lot, if not the majority of complaints here, are that most of the current encounters just aren’t engaging and already feel really grindy. (slowly whittling down a Battleship while rote memory handles all the red-circle dodging)

Agreed, the other Gw1’ers are being abit too optimistic. The way they implied infusion could had tiers also sounds alot like. If you asked me 2 months ago when I was still an avid GWAMMie fanboy I would’ve told you ‘Anet knows what they’re doing, don’t worry everything will be fine!’ but now I’m not to sure.

Everything item/reward based from dungeons to mystic toilet is just so broken I have trouble enjoying myself sometimes. To be frank, Gw1 was soooo much better after John Stumme took over too.

i thought gw2 was not supposed to be a WoW clone? introduce new gear every now and then to encourage people grind the kitten to stay competitive.. sounds alot like WoW though – which is a kitten farmfest -_-
if gw2 really focused on pvp why do they add only pve content? now it’s called GRIND WARS 2. .. or didn’t I get it?

Stumme definitely demonstrates a flare for skill checks … though I’m not sure it always led to more variety, especially when it came to my Dervish. I also find it weird that the so called nerf to Asuran scan… allowed me to scythe-farm several mobs that I had no ability to duo… much less Solo prior to that update.

But yeah, even with Resistance Tiers, they’re going back on their bigger Philosophy that you should always want to help (and be rewarded for helping) other players. Resist Tiers is just a fancy way of turning dungeon recruiting into Heroes Ascent because the “Big Payoff” comes only at the end of Consistent Wins. IE: your group is incentivized to completely remove any risk of carrying anyone “new” which condenses all of the experienced players into the “Haves” teams while the Have-Not teams do not have anyone to learn from. You aren’t going to want any “Rank 3’s” in your party when the whole reason you’re forming a team is to reach the end for those unique rewards. Players will be asked to Ping Gear first or will even do it voluntarily while LFG’ing just like /Rank emoters on B.I. …intimidating and eventually driving off anyone who can’t.

After thinking about it for a while. I think this is what’s happening with Fractals.

According to wiki: “Fractals of the Mists has no definite end. It is made of nine repeating mini-dungeons, each with their own story and environment, of which a random set of three dungeons will be selected for players to face at a time. After completing one cycle of three dungeons, the party is allowed to rest, repair their equipment and sell their loot, and the difficulty of the next set of three dungeons will be raised.”

So my thinking is that if you are in exotics or even level 80 rares, you will be able to do 1-2 cycles. However, Fractals is a literal treadmill that has no end. So for PvE players who stay on the treadmill, they are the ones who will need Ascended gear as the difficulty of the dungeon is upped.

I.e. Ascended gear is for the “farmers”. I have no issues with this. Not having Ascended gear is not going to disadvantage anyone in, 1. normal PvE, 2. PvP – including WvWvW because lets face it, Guild Wars PvP is not the same as WoW PvP were a guy in blues literally has no chance against a guy in Epics, 3. non-fractal dungeons as the infusion mechanic doesn’t matter in other dungeons.

Now of course, if you are a “numbers” person and have a compulsive need to have the “best” gear. You will run the fractals threadmill or failing to run it, come cry on the forums. But let’s keep everything in perspective here. Like everything else in Guild Wars, including the current legendary and exotic gears, this is optional. The slight improvement in numbers will not make much of a difference, you could achieve more pronounced stat improvement by eating a non-magic find food item.

The Fractal of the Mists dungeon is for “hardcore” PvEers to run endlessly. I see no problem with this. At the same time, I feel no need to jump on the treadmill. About the only issue I can see effecting me is that perhaps non-fractal dungeons might be harder to find PuGs for but that might be rectified by cross-server LFG system