Guild Wars 2

Just a quick question: What are your thoughts on Agony and Agony Resist and what direction would you expect mechanics like Agony to take the game in the future?

They’ll add more items and more AR so you can get past the kitten blocks.

In the short term they’ll add Ascended accessories, weapons, and armor to allow further “legit” progress in Fractals.

The longterm is what interests me:

Will they just add new Fractals?

If they add something that requires Agony outside of Fractals, would it be pointless since we’ll already have our Agony Resist?

If it required even larger amounts of AR, would we see +10 AR infusions? Would this not gate the content from players who have not farmed Fractals?

Would it require a new Resistance, and if so, would we have to choose between having Agony and the new one on our gear? If yes, how do we participate in both dungeons?

They have added more items that can be infused. Like the Amulets. Once gamers have made up enough laurels their will be a lot more resistance added to our gear. Currently, I switch items and equipment depending on the dungeon I am entering. So It is easy to adjust to the differences that Anet has laid out for us.

What I hope:

A set of new dungeons down the road, that require a specific amount of Agony Resistance to be doable, so hardcore players can have some sort of “vertical progression” without any stat benefits – which brings me to the ascended gear: I hope that future ascended items will NOT be better than exotics, meaning that the only advantage one has from having ascended gear is the infusion slot.

More skins for hardcore players. There’s far too little stuff in the game to be proud of.

I hope for more dungeons, and not just more fractals.

What will happen: They keep adding new ascended items and casuals will whine, while Anet lets us bore ourselves to death in the Fractals even more.

I hope they take agony, and ascended gear, the right way, by simply making a sort of “false progression” for those who want it – so hardcore players can work their way through dungeons that require a specific amount of AR – then acquiring gear from said dungeon, and thus being equipped for the next dungeon down the road, and hopefully not having a stat-advantage over casuals.

The only thing that irritates me is their clear statement that ‘There will not be any tier beyond ascended in 2013 ’. While on one hand, a long term vertical progression could be neat? It’s also, if that long term, complete bullkitten. So this RRoD and Crystalline Band, and Distinguished Circle of Logic, and the 250 ecto backpieces, they’ll eventually be nill? That’s cool, thanks Anet. Given their profuse defecation on the manifesto in soooo many departments (I’m trying to avoid ranting here), I won’t act one bit surprised when they implement yet another tier of gear.

On the more optimistic side, hopefully they’ll add a hard mode to dungeons (a la GW1) that incorporates agony, and a new title to go with it, and new super rare weapon skin drops, or recipes, or something! (Nah j/k incoming easter gem store minis)