Guild Wars 2

As a long time GW vet, this patch is giving me a weird sort of flashback. I recall the first major content patch for the original game. It was the Sorrow’s Furnace update. And it also came just months after the games launch, and introduced a new tier of weapons (green in this case).

Green weapons were much like Ascended gear in the way the stats were max for their level, but were “baked” into the item and could not be changed. They had unique skins and were really neat if you found one that had the exact stats you wanted (Victo’s Battle Axe and Wenslauss Faith FTW). But a lot of people still used rare (yellow) items for their ability to be customized. In fact, as more diverse and creative builds were discovered, more eccentric stat combinations were needed and greens became inferior to the tier beneath them.

Green weapons did not introduce power creep even though they were initially superior to what most players had. This update did not start a vicious cycle of ever increasing item stats. But they were neat for what they were and people continued to “hunt for greens” for the entire life of the game, and probably still are today.

In other words the update was fun and it worked. Players were excited for a while, then they just became a thing to do. You got to wonder if this named boss would “drop his green” this time.

Keep in mind this is only A.net’s second game as a studio. And they are following the pattern they know. Release, content update, expansion. The Sorrows Furnace update introduced a new area on the map that was just smaller than a total zone, and so is Lost Shores. Sorrow’s Furnace introduced a new dungeon and so is Lost Shores. Sorrow’s Furnace introduced a new tier of gear, and so is Lost Shores. Sorrow’s Furnace introduced chest keys…ok, if Lost Shores has chest keys, then im out :p

On paper, A.net has pretty much stayed consistent with their habits. It’s more that the players have changed. Maybe that’s the new audience scared that this game will turn in to the one they left? To them I say, it didn’t happen seven years ago, it likely wont now. Maybe its other former GW players that didnt experience the game pre-Sorrow’s Furnace? To them I say, this has already been done and you continued to enjoy the game for a long time afterwards.

Thank you for taking the time to write this. Obviously people are going crazy right now, while we don’t have the full picture in view. I’m sure that in time we’ll see that these changes are not going to be nearly as drastic as they seem now.

if i recall correctly, people did go bonkers over the green items, saying that gold items would then lose its value beccause greens where easier to get than gold with perfect stats and reqs.

only difference is that ascended gear IS a little bit better than exotics, whereas greens wherent any better other than accessability.

personally i dont have a worry about the ascended gear, cant wait to see it and ahev it

I think people are doubting the new changes, because unlike GW1’s greens, ascended equipment is going to be stronger than exotic.

Having ascended gear with higher stats than a fully upgraded exotic really bugs the heck out of me.

But I’m on board with ascended gear matching a fully upgraded exotic, while having an infusion slot that is dungeon specific.

But what if the new armors have built in stats much like the ring and allows infusion but cannot put in runes? Then they’ll deffntly wont be better outside of the dungeon..dunno just thinking out loud.

But in GW1 the green weapons had the SAME stat as every lvl 20 stuff, the EXACT same stat. only the 20% chance of… was differents.

For the ascended stuff, its NOT anymore the case, many did the math, and the global power have something like a 10% increase compare to a exotic item.

Its NOT like in GW1 with the green stuff. It turn out into a gear grind, because ascended stuff will be MORE powerfull than exotic stuff…

Is that so hard to understand ?

Fail history lesson.

Incorrect. Get out of your little box for a second and consider the system as a whole…

*Exotics can be upgraded with runes…runes provide set bonus effects to offset smaller set bonuses compared to jewels and crests.

*Exotics can be upgraded with crests/jewels…these provide the highest possible stat bonuses across multiple combinations of stats on a single item

*Ascended gear has higher base stats than exotic with preset stats. You do not get the flexibility of crests and jewels, and you get no bonuses from a rune set.

The trade for each choice from the top down is a slight boost in stats in exchange for flexibility and customization. And just like with green weapons as the game and players evolve, customization is going to end up being more valuable than a set of perfect numbers.

Is that so hard to understand? It involves a perspective of the entire game rather than tunnel vision focused on a single change.

@Acidid

i was thinking the same, taking notice of how the, slots the ascended armor have that is for infusion elements, if the ascended armor cant be slotted with the runes/sigils/crests, its a fair trade off, AT THE MOMENT, as we do not know how or what does the infusion do, it may give some stats, it may only give resistances, but one thing is for sure, we do not know what it will give.

so far too, this ascended armor will only be necesary in this dungeon, which makes me think about if it is really worth it, because aside of this ONE dungeon, it has no other place yet, unless future expansions add this, and IF they do add this, im sure they will also add more ways to get ascended or equivalent armors.

we just have to wait and see, 2 more days

Ascended gear is a new tier of gear to the full extent of the word’s meaning:
They are more powerful in the same way that exotics are more powerful than rares.

this is completely different from green items, green items didnt introduce a new tier. thats the issue here, no one would complain if ascendant had the same stats as the exotic items.

These Ascended gears are nothing like Guildwars greens, these are much better than the Current, the greens were the same thing with a sexy new stat…

Saying this is like GW1 is a pretty big lie. Its much closer to the WoW treadmill to me.

The history lesson should be how Turbine introduced a similar content system in LOTRO or Blizzard did in vanilla WoW. Both failed miserably and had to revert the changes. Difference here is the introduction of Ascended gear goes against one of the basic principles of the Manifesto (yeah, people remember that). Also, as others have pointed out, the new gear is superior to exotics.

If their design strat holds true, if the dungeons give tokens to be used at a vendor for ascended then yes it is just as bad as we are all claiming because it won’t be their design they used in GW1. It will be much much worse. People are already starting to request the features the completely destroyed other titles communities in that dungeons were the only means of progression to the top gear, and they had things like gearcheck and dps meters to allow for discrimination.

That’s what we’re worried about. It might be premature to expect this but I’ve seen way too many game titles start off with a great idea and then a couple of patches later completely go back on their original design which ended up in disaster. I do NOT want this to happen to this game and not because of $60 but because of the type of game we were promised this would be.

If they want to keep to the original design in their videos they need to address DR/MF malfunctions and give us a recipes for karma that don’t require any crafter to set foot inside a dungeon or PVP to craft. That would offset the balance. And I’m not saying this because I want the gear, I don’t want it, I’m just saying this is what they should do to keep this from becoming a gear grind fest to keep people from discrimination.

AcidicVision.5498:

On paper, A.net has pretty much stayed consistent with their habits. It’s more that the players have changed. Maybe that’s the new audience scared that this game will turn in to the one they left? To them I say, it didn’t happen seven years ago, it likely wont now. Maybe its other former GW players that didnt experience the game pre-Sorrow’s Furnace? To them I say, this has already been done and you continued to enjoy the game for a long time afterwards.

You don’t work for ANet so clearly you can’t speak for them.

This game is not GW1 and not a direct sequel to GW1 since it’s aimed at being a more mainstream (but different, or was) type of MMORPG for a wider audience.

ANet did speak for themselves with their oft touted manifesto and clearly different philosophical vision for this game.

Being new to Guild Wars and not playing that other game from Blizz I must say that I’m a little confused. I see posts complaining about no end game and Anet adds what I consider new endgame content here comes all of the negative comments. Talk about mixed messages from the community.

I for one look forward to the new gear, as more of a casual player which borders on hardcore at times I now have something else to look forward to, but hey what do I know. If I don’t like the direction this game is going I can always stop playing it.

OP- great post and I appreciate it.

DeathLust.6579:

Being new to Guild Wars and not playing that other game from Blizz I must say that I’m a little confused. I see posts complaining about no end game and Anet adds what I consider new endgame content here comes all of the negative comments. Talk about mixed messages from the community.

Gear progression isn’t end game content. It’s artificial and lazy.

New progression can be many non gating things including:

New skills.
New zones.
New dungeons.
New mob specific conditions.
New enemies with interesting mechanics.
New player mechanics.
New options for progression, such as having a guild instanced zone only for the guild members in the party.
Class challenges.
Arenas.
Mini games.
Titles.

None of those require that new gear be added with extra stats. None.

Nah, OP, your math is way off.

See, these new items are way better than exotics.
The yakkington ring, for example, has +5 in two stats more after adding the stats of the gem, and 3% more magic find, the main stat.

The later translates into an additional 42 points (because, as we’ve established, 1% magic find translates into roughly 14 points of a stat). The superiority of a new item (which comes in a variety of stats, as confirmed) over a fully gemmed exotic is, in other words, 52 points of a stat. Over 20% of the total stat budget of the exotic item.

That’s pretty kitten big.

The guild wars greens were not better than yellows. In fact, they had the exact same stats. No difference there.

Hence, you fail history. If the greens had been 20% better, the complaints back then would have had merit.

I see posts complaining about no end game

Yeah, a minority was crying loudly over it. Arenanet did not notice that most customers were happy, and caved to this minority.

What is going on now is the majority noticing this, and predictably disagreeing with the change.

Think of it as a restaurant. Most patrons eat happily. But suddenly, one person jumps up, and DEMANDS that all dishes are to be replaced with McDonalds hamburgers.

If the restaurant agrees, then predictably, the other patrons that were happy are going to complain. Loudly. And are going to leave.

Exactly what is happening here. The people crying about endgame, and the people pointing out that what just happened removed the reason they bought this game ae different people.

Shocking, I know.

Voqar.2349:

You don’t work for ANet so clearly you can’t speak for them.

This game is not GW1 and not a direct sequel to GW1 since it’s aimed at being a more mainstream (but different, or was) type of MMORPG for a wider audience.

ANet did speak for themselves with their oft touted manifesto and clearly different philosophical vision for this game.

First, people are still going on about “superior stats” without acknowledging my second post and the stat/customization trade off. Until those people have time to read, I don’t have time to educate them any more.

Second I refer you, in particular Voqar, to the golden rules that talk about GW2 being a sandbox that they intend on experimenting with and trying new ideas and approaches. They would rather try something and see it not work than dismiss something for fear it wont work. That helps them learn and come up with something better next time. This is one of those experiments.

At the same time you can look at the manifesto and cry foul, I can look at the golden rules and tell you this type of thing was to be expected.

*It still stands, that this release is on par with what they have done before.
*The stat boost from Ascended gear looks to be offset by their total lack of customization options.
*Players who are so vested in the rules and manifesto should have read the bit about growing, changing, experimenting and playing.
*The precedence for introducing new tiers has been established, the precedence for gear power creep has not. So there is nothing but total and pure speculation that this will lead to that.

Now, what reason do you have to cling to that misinformed and hastily made opinion, other than personal pride?

AcidicVision, please get of your high horse.
As it was pointed out to you already, your math is way off: Ascended items have higher base stats that Exotic have agumented with jewels. Over a whole set, you can mix and match to get the stat balance you wish: in the end, higher stats per item still win because you score higher overall.

I didn’t do math. You can’t be off on something you didn’t do. But I like you assuming that I did. That shows again people are quicker to toss their opinion out there than read something that might contradict it.

Will ascended gear with it’s baked in stats ever give you 15% increased swiftness duration? Hmm? What was that…oh right…no. Will the ascended gear ever proc a utility skill equivalent effect under certain conditions? oh…well….yep, its still no. But surely those stats will reduce condition and stun duration, or grant a damage increase to opponents that are under the effects of one of your skills….oh. Kitten. They Dont.

Well, at least you have the flexibility to use a jewel so the Ascended piece can boost it’s inherent stats and you can put in three other stats to move some trait points around and…wait NO you cant!

This is where the comparison to green weapons came in. That they were a new tier of gear that had SET IN STONE perfect stats. The trade: They were easier to acquire than perfect rares, but NOT CUSTOMIZABLE THUS LIMITED IN EFFECTIVENESS. Enter Ascended gear with SET IN STONE STATS, the trade off being slightly better stats but unable to get rune effects or augment the same number of stats you can with crests, THUS LIMITING THEIR EFFECTIVENESS.

*The stat boost from Ascended gear looks to be offset by their total lack of customization options.

That’s actually not the case, because no amount of customization is better than 50 points of a stat, which is what the difference boils down to. (total difference fully gemmed: 3% magic find, 5 precision, 5 power, and since magic find is worth 14 statpoints, the total result is 52, an increase in power of over 20% of an exotic)

Why do you keep lying about it :o

Will ascended gear with it’s baked in stats ever give you 15% increased swiftness duration? Hmm? What was that…oh right…no.

That’s the thing: It doesn’t need to. The overall difference in power is bigger than 15% swiftness duration could ever hope to be. It’s not even close, in fact

In GW1 you could get perfect stats weapons simply by trading five collectible items with a trader. Imagine that in GW2, you get perfect exotic gear for five ancient bones. That is how lenient GW1 was. You could get perfect stat items at every corner from traders.

Green weapons in GW1 were a good compromise between a bit of grinding, nice skins and, naturally, perfect stats. The patchnotes of that update even clearly say “availability” of perfect weapons was to be raised, which is the exact opposite of the “players leave when they hit max” statement we got now.

GW1 did not create +1 weapons and then +2 weapons. Instead, GW1 grew broader with each expansion. More skins, more options, more upgrades, more of everything except power level. And this was great.

The infusing slot pretty much sounds like something you want, provided getting it is not excessively grindy.

But there isn’t a single announcement which explains properly what we can expect. All texts are trying to get us excited without sharing details, leaving much to our imagination. Hey, newsbreak, in 2012 leaving to imagination is not a good thing, people are more negative theses days. Blame the economy, FoxNews, Greece, Merkel, whatever, but consider this negativity. For the sake of contrast, look how Blizzard excruciatingly lists every percentage point in their update notes of D3. Anet obfuscates a lot, starting with diminishing returns, and that is not a good thing. It is one of the reasons i like grinding in D3 but fail to connect with it in GW2.

Irrationality is part of everything. Great that Anet recognizes that a dungeon needs to get harder and the better players get, the more challenge they need to retain any fun of smacking their head against the wall. Weird that anybody would consider handing out a easy mode ring to those who play the most and thus have proven more than anybody else that they are the last persons to require such a ring of +1.

I should calm down, watch Idiocracy, maybe feel better.

Zefiris.8297:

That’s the thing: It doesn’t need to. The overall difference in power is bigger than 15% swiftness duration could ever hope to be. It’s not even close, in fact

And that’s an opinion. Which again comes back to the original post on how the game will change and how play styles will change. In dungeons in particular monster health pools are huge. And they either have an obscene toughness rating or encounters have mechanics that increase their toughness.

So what good does that extra power do you? How much of a difference is it actually making? It doesn’t matter. Because it still isn’t making as much of a difference as the person that is traited to stack conditions, and runed to increase their effectiveness and duration or augment them on crit.

Toughness. Is that toughness boost going to matter if you get caught multiple times by the Alpha’s AOE? Or how about the Lupicus projectiles? No. You know what would help you with those? 15% swiftness duration or invulnerability when hit below 25% health.

Their is an unhealthy fixation on numbers regarding this update that isn’t considering how the rest of the game works and that there is a point where trait points see diminishing returns on effectiveness, so slots are better used for complimentary effects.

Zefiris.8297:

That’s actually not the case, because no amount of customization is better than 50 points of a stat, which is what the difference boils down to. (total difference fully gemmed: 3% magic find, 5 precision, 5 power, and since magic find is worth 14 statpoints, the total result is 52, an increase in power of over 20% of an exotic)

Why do you keep lying about it :o

I have to ask, since you seem to have done the math for this. Do you know what the difference would be between exotic gear with exotic runes/sigils/etc?

AcidicVision.5498:

Zefiris.8297:

That’s the thing: It doesn’t need to. The overall difference in power is bigger than 15% swiftness duration could ever hope to be. It’s not even close, in fact

And that’s an opinion. Which again comes back to the original post on how the game will change and how play styles will change. In dungeons in particular monster health pools are huge. And they either have an obscene toughness rating or encounters have mechanics that increase their toughness.

So what good does that extra power do you? How much of a difference is it actually making? It doesn’t matter. Because it still isn’t making as much of a difference as the person that is traited to stack conditions, and runed to increase their effectiveness and duration or augment them on crit.

Toughness. Is that toughness boost going to matter if you get caught multiple times by the Alpha’s AOE? Or how about the Lupicus projectiles? No. You know what would help you with those? 15% swiftness duration or invulnerability when hit below 25% health.

Their is an unhealthy fixation on numbers regarding this update that isn’t considering how the rest of the game works and that there is a point where trait points see diminishing returns on effectiveness, so slots are better used for complimentary effects.

And how do you know that the infusions won’t give you those options that you have from runes?
Oh wait. You don’t.
Higher base stats with the potential to be customized through infusions is what we’re looking at now. Ascended items are better.

castlemanic.3198:

I have to ask, since you seem to have done the math for this. Do you know what the difference would be between exotic gear with exotic runes/sigils/etc?

The math in most threads has been done including the best in-slot +stat gear (exquisite gems for accessories) and it lacks by roughly 28-49 stats depending on how you look at it. They picked the most nefarious stat to present as the major, Magic Find, because it “looks” like its only changed a little but anyone who knows this game knows that 1% of Magic Find is worth anywhere between 10-22 stat points. At 3% increase, that’s anywhere from 30-67 increase in stats.

No sixth slot of a rune will match this will match this stat increase, Divinity at +60 stats & 12% critical damage is the only one that even comes close (but even then you’re still off by hundreds of stats total), all others pale in comparison by a wide margin especially with many having 90s cooldowns on their sixth slot.

That is the most romanticized and incorrect interpretation of Guild Wars 1’s Green items that I can possibly imagine.

1) There was no particularly noteworthy backlash against Green items. A few people may have whined – I don’t remember seeing any, but maybe you do – but drawing equivalency between that and the overwhelming negative response to Ascended equipment is just being dishonest.

2) Green weapons, as introduced, were not “Better than what most players had”. Even in the early Prophecies days, when getting weapons was almost entirely a matter of the RNG smiling on you, it was incredibly easy to cobble together a weapon with max stats. People still used Yellow weapons not because they were “able to be customized”, but because they were exactly as strong as Greens, and much, much easier to find. Getting a Green was, 95% of the time, a matter of grinding for the weapon skin.

3) This bears very explicit repeating: Greens were exactly the same, stat-wise, as the weapons that people already had. There was no superiority whatsoever. You got them for the skin, because you didn’t want to hunt down the proper affix/suffix/inscription for the weapon you wanted, or (later on) because you were given one for free upon completion of any campaign.

4) There was never any dichotomy between ‘This one is stronger’ and ‘This one is more customizable’. Green weapons were available in essentially every single upgrade combination (That people actually used – sorry, ‘of Charrslaying’), and yellow weapons had the exact same level of power. Greens were not ‘above’, Yellows were not ‘below’, and nobody ever hated Elementals enough to use their ‘eccentric’ slaying upgrade over “+15% damage while health is over 50%”.

The parallels between Guild Wars 1’s Green items and Guild Wars 2’s Ascended equipment fall down as soon as you start to actually compare their mechanics. Ascended equipment is a straight upgrade over Exotic equipment. The Rune and Sigil effects that are novel enough to make up for an 8% improvement in raw statistics are few and far between, and those effects are all moot at this point anyway, because the initial batch of Ascended equipment only includes Accessories, which can only ever use jewels to upgrade anyway – making them strictly superior to the Exotic alternative.

For PVE, flat stats are always better than the weird cooldown things on the runes, that is why exotic gems or runes of divinity are the best pve upgrades. And these new items have flat stats built in + additionaly stats you have no way of getting otherwise. It’s not an “opinion” as someone said – it is math, these items are more powerful.

ExpiredLifetime.1083:

And how do you know that the infusions won’t give you those options that you have from runes?
Oh wait. You don’t.
Higher base stats with the potential to be customized through infusions is what we’re looking at now. Ascended items are better.

Ready for this…Im gonna do a magic trick…its this thing I have been telling everyone about in this thread for a while now. Its called reading…

“The stats and functionality normally added to gear through upgrade components are actually built into Ascended items. Instead of upgrade slots, Ascended gear has Infusion slots, and rarer versions of the items also come with additional Agony Resistance built into them.” – Linsey Murdock on November 13, 2012

Lest we forget, this is a gimmick added to deal with Agony. So, since everything in the first three pages of this thread is based on speculation anyways…it’s safer to speculate the infusions will give defensive/offensive bonuses to certain effects and the creatures that use them. Also, since the baked in stats are considered a replacement for “normal” upgrades, it would be unlikely that they would duplicate every existing rune.

So what is more believable? That Ascended armor is going to be a tier that is the equivalent of a piece of exotic armor that has a higher base + crest stats with a slot that provides rune + infused bonuses, or that its just another tier that falls between exotic and legendary and that higher baked in stats are the trade-off for not having rune bonuses or crest/jewel versatility?

If you are having trouble, just read that last bit out loud a few times and eliminate the option that sounds completely game-breaking and stupid! …Because that will probably be the one that’s wrong.

Or at least we all hope.

AcidicVision.5498:

ExpiredLifetime.1083:

And how do you know that the infusions won’t give you those options that you have from runes?
Oh wait. You don’t.
Higher base stats with the potential to be customized through infusions is what we’re looking at now. Ascended items are better.

Ready for this…Im gonna do a magic trick…its this thing I have been telling everyone about in this thread for a while now. Its called reading…

“The stats and functionality normally added to gear through upgrade components are actually built into Ascended items. Instead of upgrade slots, Ascended gear has Infusion slots, and rarer versions of the items also come with additional Agony Resistance built into them.” – Linsey Murdock on November 13, 2012

Lest we forget, this is a gimmick added to deal with Agony. So, since everything in the first three pages of this thread is based on speculation anyways…it’s safer to speculate the infusions will give defensive/offensive bonuses to certain effects and the creatures that use them. Also, since the baked in stats are considered a replacement for “normal” upgrades, it would be unlikely that they would duplicate every existing rune.

So what is more believable? That Ascended armor is going to be a tier that is the equivalent of a piece of exotic armor that has a higher base + crest stats with a slot that provides rune + infused bonuses, or that its just another tier that falls between exotic and legendary and that higher baked in stats are the trade-off for not having rune bonuses or crest/jewel versatility?

If you are having trouble, just read that last bit out loud a few times and eliminate the option that sounds completely game-breaking a stupid! …Because that will probably be the one that’s wrong.

Or at least we all hope.

What did hoping get us? We hoped that they would stay true to their word. 3 months later they do exactly what they said they wouldn’t.
At the rate things are going, I wouldn’t put it past them. This is the fastest I’ve ever seen a dev throw their ideals out the window to attempt to retain players.

Exactly the reason that I no longer have any desire to stick with this game.

AcidicVision.5498:

So what is more believable? That Ascended armor is going to be a tier that is the equivalent of a piece of exotic armor that has a higher base + crest stats with a slot that provides rune + infused bonuses, or that its just another tier that falls between exotic and legendary and that higher baked in stats are the trade-off for not having rune bonuses or crest/jewel versatility?

If you are having trouble, just read that last bit out loud a few times and eliminate the option that sounds completely game-breaking and stupid! …Because that will probably be the one that’s wrong.

Or at least we all hope.

Okay, I’ll do that. Here goes, eliminating the option that sounds completely game-breaking and stupid:

So what is more believable? That […]
or that its […]
?

… Um.

It´s true, we don´t know the outcome compared with runes – but now take a look at the tradepost and see what by far the most expensive rune is: rune of divinity = pure stats with biggest budget, nothing else.

ok so people have done the maths, i havent read the mega thread, but whats the difference in effects between

1000 and 1050 in power? do we know if there is a soft stat cap? at the very least with a base model like the warrior, whats the max stats that he can have, what are the soft and hard caps, and how such changes would make the damage increase?

AcidicVision.5498:

If you are having trouble, just read that last bit out loud a few times and eliminate the option that sounds completely game-breaking and stupid! …Because that will probably be the one that’s wrong.

Or at least we all hope.

As much as I appreciate your interesting view of GW1’s history, you’re just trying to invalidating opinions that are other than your own at this point. No developer that I know of has never made the mistake of introducing gamebreaking stuff to their games, and that includes ArenaNet. I’m sorry for that you don’t see the implication of 8% raw stats increase of Ascended gears and the stuff that’s promised to come afterwards. Just because green weapons didn’t break GW1 doesn’t really mean anything to whether Ascended gears will break GW2. If you want to make assessment of the latter, I’d say the current information (such as the devblog) contains much more useful information.

“As we watch Guild Wars 2 mature in its Live environment, we have found that our most dedicated players were achieving their set of Exotic gear and hitting “the Legendary wall.” We designed the process of getting Legendary gear to be a long term goal, but players were ready to start on that path much sooner than we expected and were becoming frustrated with a lack of personal progression. Our desire is to create a game that is more inclusive for hardcore and casual players alike, but we don’t want to overlook the basic need for players to feel like they are progressing and growing even after hitting max level. Adding item progression is a delicate process normally undertaken in an expansion, but we feel it’s important to strive to satisfy the basic needs of our players sooner rather than later.
We have always worked hard to create a sense of satisfying progression rather than gear grind and this new item progression initiative is no exception. By adding challenging new combat mechanics to end-game content and ways to mitigate those mechanics through gear progression for high-end players, we can add personal progression without making the game feel like an endless treadmill of gear that is just out of your reach.”

Yup, that is a direct copy and paste of the news story. I post it for 2 reasons:

1. Most of you DON’T SEEM TO HAVE ACTUALLY READ IT.

2. There WERE a LOT of people complaining on these forums about end game content. So….is the problem that people just were complaining because they like to complain, but didn’t actually want any changes made? Or are you just attempting to convince Arenanet that responding to your complaints will only cause those complaints to drastically escalate, thus making it more effective to ignore your complaints in the first place.

“Original Guild Wars fans may recognize that we took a familiar approach to our new progression. The first end game mechanic we will introduce is Agony, which will be encountered in the Fractals of the Mists dungeon, and is mitigated by Infusions.
New Condition: Agony

In the upcoming Fractals of the Mists dungeon, we’ll introduce a new monster condition called Agony.
This extremely dangerous condition ticks percentages of player health away and can’t be cleansed by normal means. Players who wish to delve deep into the Fractals will find that Agony makes progress increasingly difficult, until they reach the point where some defense against this condition is a must. The only way to mitigate Agony damage is by building up resistance through Infusions, a new type of upgrade component that can be acquired in the Mystic Forge."

Yup. That’s another direct copy and paste. I’m sure half of you didn’t read it upon being presented with it this time either. But if you could possibly try doing so, you might notice that the news post does seem to indicate that these additional gear items do seem to have a very limited scope. From MY reading of the preceding paragraph, I am understanding that the changes are going to add a new condition that only occurs in The Fractals of the Mist Dungeon, that adds a need for players to have equipment with an additional slot, and in order to compensate for this a new requirement, obtaining equipment which meets the requirement will provide a very small reward to the people who desire to go to the effort of obtaining it.

How does that create a treadmill? 1-2 numbers difference doesn’t REALLY make a difference to anyone except someone who is so uber-competitive about their stats that they are also the kind of person who will have managed to obtain the equipment within a day and a half of the release, and be back to complaining about there being no endgame content 5 minutes later.

Could you at least wait until the update drops to throw these high school prom queen broke a nail hystrionic personality disorder kittenfests?

CrazyGoNuts.9536:

For PVE, flat stats are always better than the weird cooldown things on the runes, that is why exotic gems or runes of divinity are the best pve upgrades. And these new items have flat stats built in + additionaly stats you have no way of getting otherwise. It’s not an “opinion” as someone said – it is math, these items are more powerful.

Diminishing returns. As I have already pointed out. There is a point where monsters hit so hard your toughness does not matter, there is a point where mobs have so much health or toughness so high, that your min/maxed power is less beneficial than the guy that stopped 50 points ago and upped his crit chance a bit.

So yes. It’s still opinion. I can upgrade numbers to get my crit chance over 80% raw, or I can leave it at 76% and rune so my conditions do 15% more dmg on top of whatever stacks of corruption I am sitting on. Which do you think is more efficient? Think for a minute people.

Cleopatra.4068:

“As we watch Guild Wars 2 mature in its Live environment, we have found that our most dedicated players were achieving their set of Exotic gear and hitting “the Legendary wall.” We designed the process of getting Legendary gear to be a long term goal, but players were ready to start on that path much sooner than we expected and were becoming frustrated with a lack of personal progression. Our desire is to create a game that is more inclusive for hardcore and casual players alike, but we don’t want to overlook the basic need for players to feel like they are progressing and growing even after hitting max level. Adding item progression is a delicate process normally undertaken in an expansion, but we feel it’s important to strive to satisfy the basic needs of our players sooner rather than later.
We have always worked hard to create a sense of satisfying progression rather than gear grind and this new item progression initiative is no exception. By adding challenging new combat mechanics to end-game content and ways to mitigate those mechanics through gear progression for high-end players, we can add personal progression without making the game feel like an endless treadmill of gear that is just out of your reach.”

Yup, that is a direct copy and paste of the news story. I post it for 2 reasons:

1. Most of you DON’T SEEM TO HAVE ACTUALLY READ IT.

2. There WERE a LOT of people complaining on these forums about end game content. So….is the problem that people just were complaining because they like to complain, but didn’t actually want any changes made? Or are you just attempting to convince Arenanet that responding to your complaints will only cause those complaints to drastically escalate, thus making it more effective to ignore your complaints in the first place.

“Original Guild Wars fans may recognize that we took a familiar approach to our new progression. The first end game mechanic we will introduce is Agony, which will be encountered in the Fractals of the Mists dungeon, and is mitigated by Infusions.
New Condition: Agony

In the upcoming Fractals of the Mists dungeon, we’ll introduce a new monster condition called Agony.
This extremely dangerous condition ticks percentages of player health away and can’t be cleansed by normal means. Players who wish to delve deep into the Fractals will find that Agony makes progress increasingly difficult, until they reach the point where some defense against this condition is a must. The only way to mitigate Agony damage is by building up resistance through Infusions, a new type of upgrade component that can be acquired in the Mystic Forge."

Yup. That’s another direct copy and paste. I’m sure half of you didn’t read it upon being presented with it this time either. But if you could possibly try doing so, you might notice that the news post does seem to indicate that these additional gear items do seem to have a very limited scope. From MY reading of the preceding paragraph, I am understanding that the changes are going to add a new condition that only occurs in The Fractals of the Mist Dungeon, that adds a need for players to have equipment with an additional slot, and in order to compensate for this a new requirement, obtaining equipment which meets the requirement will provide a very small reward to the people who desire to go to the effort of obtaining it.

How does that create a treadmill? 1-2 numbers difference doesn’t REALLY make a difference to anyone except someone who is so uber-competitive about their stats that they are also the kind of person who will have managed to obtain the equipment within a day and a half of the release, and be back to complaining about there being no endgame content 5 minutes later.

Could you at least wait until the update drops to throw these high school prom queen broke a nail hystrionic personality disorder kittenfests?

Did you even look at those pictures comparing the two items?
The Ascended item is BETTER. You will be required to grind for it to get it. They even said they are “best in slot”.

Oh and by the way, that reading thing that you speak so highly of? Try it.
“This is just the beginning. In November, we’re only adding the first level of Infusions and Ascended Rings and Back slots, so that leaves us a lot of room to build upon these levels of Item progression in future content.”

ExpiredLifetime.1083:

What did hoping get us? We hoped that they would stay true to their word. 3 months later they do exactly what they said they wouldn’t.
At the rate things are going, I wouldn’t put it past them. This is the fastest I’ve ever seen a dev throw their ideals out the window to attempt to retain players.

Exactly the reason that I no longer have any desire to stick with this game.

Go back and read your golden rules. Particularly the bit about raking risks, trying new things, and seeing what will work and what won’t instead of just not trying anything at all.

This implementation might blur two principles. But that has to be expected when your design philosophy essentially has one bit that says “we will never do this” and another that says “we are willing to give anything a try”.

So they kept a promise and broke one at the same time. Worth being conflicted over? Yes. Worth tossing out the baby with the bathwater before you have even actually seen the baby? No.

AcidicVision.5498:

ExpiredLifetime.1083:

What did hoping get us? We hoped that they would stay true to their word. 3 months later they do exactly what they said they wouldn’t.
At the rate things are going, I wouldn’t put it past them. This is the fastest I’ve ever seen a dev throw their ideals out the window to attempt to retain players.

Exactly the reason that I no longer have any desire to stick with this game.

Go back and read your golden rules. Particularly the bit about raking risks, trying to things, and seeing what will work and what won’t instead of just not trying anything at all.

This implementation might blur two principles. But that has to be expected when your design philosophy essentially has one bit that says “we will never do this” and another that says “we are willing to give anything a try”.

So they kept a promise and broke one at the same time. Worth being conflicted over? Yes. Worth tossing out the baby with the bathwater before you have even actually seen the baby? No.

There’s a difference in taking a risk and trying something and doing something you said you wouldn’t. One of the major selling points they made with this game was in their manifesto, trying to not copy things from other games because they wanted to be different. Now they’re completely throwing that out the window in an attempt to keep a larger portion of the players busy.

You may be fine with developers trying something that they said they wouldn’t do, but I however, am not.

ExpiredLifetime.1083:

Cleopatra.4068:

“As we watch Guild Wars 2 mature in its Live environment, we have found that our most dedicated players were achieving their set of Exotic gear and hitting “the Legendary wall.” We designed the process of getting Legendary gear to be a long term goal, but players were ready to start on that path much sooner than we expected and were becoming frustrated with a lack of personal progression. Our desire is to create a game that is more inclusive for hardcore and casual players alike, but we don’t want to overlook the basic need for players to feel like they are progressing and growing even after hitting max level. Adding item progression is a delicate process normally undertaken in an expansion, but we feel it’s important to strive to satisfy the basic needs of our players sooner rather than later.
We have always worked hard to create a sense of satisfying progression rather than gear grind and this new item progression initiative is no exception. By adding challenging new combat mechanics to end-game content and ways to mitigate those mechanics through gear progression for high-end players, we can add personal progression without making the game feel like an endless treadmill of gear that is just out of your reach.”

Yup, that is a direct copy and paste of the news story. I post it for 2 reasons:

1. Most of you DON’T SEEM TO HAVE ACTUALLY READ IT.

2. There WERE a LOT of people complaining on these forums about end game content. So….is the problem that people just were complaining because they like to complain, but didn’t actually want any changes made? Or are you just attempting to convince Arenanet that responding to your complaints will only cause those complaints to drastically escalate, thus making it more effective to ignore your complaints in the first place.

“Original Guild Wars fans may recognize that we took a familiar approach to our new progression. The first end game mechanic we will introduce is Agony, which will be encountered in the Fractals of the Mists dungeon, and is mitigated by Infusions.
New Condition: Agony

In the upcoming Fractals of the Mists dungeon, we’ll introduce a new monster condition called Agony.
This extremely dangerous condition ticks percentages of player health away and can’t be cleansed by normal means. Players who wish to delve deep into the Fractals will find that Agony makes progress increasingly difficult, until they reach the point where some defense against this condition is a must. The only way to mitigate Agony damage is by building up resistance through Infusions, a new type of upgrade component that can be acquired in the Mystic Forge."

Yup. That’s another direct copy and paste. I’m sure half of you didn’t read it upon being presented with it this time either. But if you could possibly try doing so, you might notice that the news post does seem to indicate that these additional gear items do seem to have a very limited scope. From MY reading of the preceding paragraph, I am understanding that the changes are going to add a new condition that only occurs in The Fractals of the Mist Dungeon, that adds a need for players to have equipment with an additional slot, and in order to compensate for this a new requirement, obtaining equipment which meets the requirement will provide a very small reward to the people who desire to go to the effort of obtaining it.

How does that create a treadmill? 1-2 numbers difference doesn’t REALLY make a difference to anyone except someone who is so uber-competitive about their stats that they are also the kind of person who will have managed to obtain the equipment within a day and a half of the release, and be back to complaining about there being no endgame content 5 minutes later.

Could you at least wait until the update drops to throw these high school prom queen broke a nail hystrionic personality disorder kittenfests?

Did you even look at those pictures comparing the two items?
The Ascended item is BETTER. You will be required to grind for it to get it. They even said they are “best in slot”.

Oh and by the way, that reading thing that you speak so highly of? Try it.
“This is just the beginning. In November, we’re only adding the first level of Infusions and Ascended Rings and Back slots, so that leaves us a lot of room to build upon these levels of Item progression in future content.”

Yup. I looked at em. There is a 3% difference to magic find, a 5 point difference to power, and a 5 point difference to precision, which, depending on your overall trait and equipment setup, could make anywhere from a completely undiscernable difference to a barely discernable difference. Or you could just get legendaries like you originally planned and ignore the new equipment, thus making it all irrelevant since legendaries are going to be adjusted to match…..thus making the whole argument irrelevant…..

Cleopatra.4068:

Yup. I looked at em. There is a 3% difference to magic find, a 5 point difference to power, and a 5 point difference to precision, which, depending on your overall trait and equipment setup, could make anywhere from a completely undiscernable difference to a barely discernable difference. Or you could just get legendaries like you originally planned and ignore the new equipment, thus making it all irrelevant since legendaries are going to be adjusted to match…..thus making the whole argument irrelevant…..

I’ll post this for you again, since you seem to have overlooked it a second time

“This is just the beginning. In November, we’re only adding the first level of Infusions and Ascended Rings and Back slots, so that leaves us a lot of room to build upon these levels of Item progression in future content.”

That leaves the room for them to add more tiers of gear, and it also strongly implies that they’re considering it.

ExpiredLifetime.1083:

One of the major selling points they made with this game was in their manifesto, trying to not copy things from other games because they wanted to be different. Now they’re completely throwing that out the window in an attempt to keep a larger portion of the players busy.

You may be fine with developers trying something that they said they wouldn’t do, but I however, am not.

And that was the entire reason I made this post. In the last day I have heard people saying this content patch was rushed out to give people something to do.

But the SF patch also came out within months of launch. And as far as features go, they are nearly identical. New area that leads to new dungeon with new gear and new enemies that have their own mini story. The blue prints are the same!

This was not a reactionary move to dump out content, it’s the same kitten thing they did before.

Some people cannot see the correlation between adding a perfect unmodifiable item that could be easily obtained, and a higher base stat unmodifiable item that is difficult to obtain. But I promise it’s there. 10/10 software engineers, 50% of which play GW2, agree. If I just had a white board to draw some of you a picture…

Ascended now doesn’t mean another tier of Closer to the Stars is coming next. Just like greens didn’t usher in magenta super weapons. The Ascended junk will roll out slowly along side new stuff, probably an expansion that introduces the Mursaat if they don’t make an appearance before that, and that will likely be the last core gear change we see besides new weapons.

Sure, some people can say it could just as easily go the other way and stat caps will keep going up with every release, but that is just wild speculation. There is nothing to back that up at all or even think this would lead to that. I know myself saying that wont happen is also a fair bit of speculation, but what they are doing now so closely mimicking what they have done before gives more weight to my theory than the other.

They are following their pattern. It’s not broken yet. So relax for now. And if they ever announce double or triple socketed zodiac ascending armor of the lightbringing doppleganger…then ill pick up my torch and pitchfork and be right there with you.

AcidicVision.5498:

ExpiredLifetime.1083:

One of the major selling points they made with this game was in their manifesto, trying to not copy things from other games because they wanted to be different. Now they’re completely throwing that out the window in an attempt to keep a larger portion of the players busy.

You may be fine with developers trying something that they said they wouldn’t do, but I however, am not.

And that was the entire reason I made this post. In the last day I have heard people saying this content patch was rushed out to give people something to do.

But the SF patch also came out within months of launch. And as far as features go, they are nearly identical. New area that leads to new dungeon with new gear and new enemies that have their own mini story. The blue prints are the same!

This was not a reactionary move to dump out content, it’s the same kitten thing they did before.

Some people cannot see the correlation between adding a perfect unmodifiable item that could be easily obtained, and a higher base stat unmodifiable item that is difficult to obtain. But I promise it’s there. 10/10 software engineers, 50% of which play GW2, agree. If I just had a white board to draw some of you a picture…

Ascended now doesn’t mean another tier of Closer to the Stars is coming next. Just like greens didn’t usher in magenta super weapons. The Ascended junk will roll out slowly along side new stuff, probably an expansion that introduces the Mursaat if they don’t make an appearance before that, and that will likely be the last core gear change we see besides new weapons.

I’ll just keep spamming this quote everywhere, since it seems that people have overlooked it entirely.

""This is just the beginning. In November, we’re only adding the first level of Infusions and Ascended Rings and Back slots, so that leaves us a lot of room to build upon these levels of Item progression in future content.""

She is talking specifically about the rest of the infused set. Everyone has already come to that conclusion. If you haven’t noticed, most of us have been discussing full level armor bonuses vs. full infused gear for the last 15 or so posts.

You can safely delete your spamming double quote non-sense from my thread. Kplzthx.

Somehow I doubt you were even there for the release. This sort of reaction never took place. At best, people were concerned that introducing greens would cause people to think of them as being superior because it was creating a separate kind of item in the game world. That, and actually getting a perfect rare was often annoying in PvE because they had the tendency to appear with req 10 or +14% innate and so on. The greens were there to basically resolve that problem.

The roles there were reversed, with the elitists who were obsessed with grind basically being against uniques because they would no longer be special, and the everyday player getting sick of having to try to track down a perfect version of an item “you don’t need to progress.” (As some of you kittenes from other MMOs are so fond of hee-hawing at everyone.) The difference is that GW1 Anet saw this as being a problem with grind – even a minor one that most GW2 players would see as being whining – and solved it. Whereas GW2 Anet freaks out and completely obliterates their game philosophy by introducing game concepts that older MMOs tried and did away with years ago. To top off this situation, rares eventually became a little more prestigious anyway, because of that random element in getting a perfect one, and because their stats were exactly the same. Yet, most people didn’t care either way, and were just happy to have a weapon that was perfect and looked cool.

Even then, in that situation, there was only a small portion of the fanbase complaining about this on sites like GWG. Elitist, grind-focused players who were chased from the community, because the game was clearly about skill and horizontal progression. Certainly not five thousand people screaming about it and calling for blood in one thread.

Any time I see someone outright lie about the first game in an effort to support the foolish decisions of whoever these people are today that call themselves Anet, it gets on my nerves.

AcidicVision.5498:

She is talking specifically about the rest of the infused set. Everyone has already come to that conclusion. If you haven’t noticed, most of us have been discussing full level armor bonuses vs. full infused gear for the last 15 or so posts.

You can safely delete your spamming double quote non-sense from my thread. Kplzthx.

Right, and I see nowhere in there that it talks about the “rest of the set”, but instead where it talks about building upon the levels of the set.
You seem to love trying to tell everyone to read, yet can’t do it yourself.

Plague.5329:

blah, blah, blah, something valid and well worth reading but way too long to quote

This is the SAME thing. Honestly…when I get home I am going to need to get on youtube and illustrate this for people.

In GW you traded availability and perfect stats for the ability to customize. In a gold req 9 max weapon you could put in the staff head, wrapping and inscription you wanted. But creating that weapon took time or gold; however, you could run right out the door of Grenth’s footprint and get one of four green items in about five minutes and they would be max, but you had no control over stats.

In GW2 you trade a small stat boost and availability for the freedom to customize. Ascended gear will be hard to get, yet alone the exact stat combination you are looking for, and when you do get it, you can’t modify it with normal runes/jewels/sigils/crests.

Your rose tinted nostalgia glasses are getting foggy.

ExpiredLifetime.1083:

""This is just the beginning. In November, we’re only adding the first level of Infusions and Ascended Rings and Back slots, so that leaves us a lot of room to build upon these levels of Item progression in future content.""

I see no part of this quote that implies any tiers beyond Ascended. At all.

Auesis.7301:

ExpiredLifetime.1083:

“This is just the beginning. In November, we’re only adding the first level of Infusions and Ascended Rings and Back slots, so that leaves us a lot of room to build upon these levels of Item progression in future content.”

I see no part of this quote that implies any tiers beyond Ascended. At all.

Really? So saying that they will “build upon the levels of item progression”, key word being levels, means nothing to you?

Let me clarify with a word you used. Look at definition 3
tier
1 ? ?[teer] Show IPA
noun
1.
one of a series of rows or ranks rising one behind or above another, as of seats in an amphitheater, boxes in a theater, guns in a man-of-war, or oars in an ancient galley.
2.
one of a number of galleries, as in a theater.
3.
a layer; level; stratum: The wedding cake had six tiers. All three tiers of the firm’s management now report to one director.