Guild Wars 2

So, people are not happy about the new ascended gear, I won’t rehash the complaints again, they’re all over the forum.

In the meantime, put yourself in Anet’s shoes: they have a patch coming out in two days. They’re all set up to go live with content that’s balanced around the new tier of gear; what’s more, for every one thing that they’ve announced, there are probably 3-4 more (maybe more) in the pipeline half done, all balanced around the new ascended gear.

At this late hour, just taking the gear out is not that feasible. So for me the next best thing is to take away the uncertainty. Here’s what I mean: I picked maybe the longest, hardest way to get exotics: WvWing for badges to buy invader’s gear. I’m still not done, and before I finish at least two pieces of that gear (the rings) are likely to be obsolete, maybe more. One of the reasons I chose the badge route is because I thought the gear would last me a while. My motivation to get ascended gear is gonna be hurt by the worry that by the time I’m half done the January patch (or whatever) will introduce new super-double-plus-ascended gear, and the closer I get to my goal the farther you’ll move it into the distance.

The solution in my eyes is to take away this uncertainty. Have Anet go on the record and say “ascended will be the highest tier of armor for the forseeable future.” Better yet give us a concrete amount of time, and make it long. I’m not against gear progression in principle. Maybe years down the road you release an expansion that raises the level cap and new gear will be necessary. But to do this three months after release is too soon.

Because right now, I have no reason to believe you won’t continue to add tiers. The fact that you haven’t said anything specifically about new tiers isn’t reassuring; this time last week I had no reason to believe there would ever be anything higher than exotic and here we are. What’s more, your reasoning – players were getting exotics and legendaries so fast we felt like we had to add a new tier – indicates that as soon as the hardcore get bored of one tier you’ll add another.

So take away this uncertainty Anet, please. You can continue to release what’s in your pipeline now – I’m assuming the plan is to release ascended gear piecemeal over several patches – but after that I personally would want some assurance that once released ascended gear won’t be obsolete again in another couple months.

This isn’t an ideal solution, but I think the time for an ideal solution to be feasible has come and gone. This is the next best thing.

Who would believe them after this?

xtorma.1283:

Who would believe them after this?

^^this

They said no treadmill, no gated content. 3 months later – we have loot treadmill and gated content.

They have lost quite a bit of credibility.

Then this is the first step to earning it back. Go on record saying in no uncertain terms “ascended is the highest armor tier and will always be.” A statement that’s concrete and measurable will inspire more confidence than PR-speak.

Yougottawanna.7420:

Then this is the first step to earning it back. Go on record saying in no uncertain terms “ascended is the highest armor tier and will always be.” A statement that’s concrete and measurable will inspire more confidence than PR-speak.

They already said that about exotic, so I ask again….who is going to believe them?

Well I did say this solution was flawed.

But before when they talked about there being no gear grind they did so in pleasing generalities, now they can say “no armor released from here on in will have higher stats than ascended armor.”

Why do I get the feeling ANET thought they were doing us this huge favor and are now surprised people don’t like it?

Are new people working on the game now and the old ones gone?

Maybe they should have ran a poll before assuming what people wanted. I want to expand and have goals but not for stats on PvE gear.

The more tiers the better. I like item progression.

Yougottawanna.7420:

The solution in my eyes is to take away this uncertainty. Have Anet go on the record and say “ascended will be the highest tier of armor for the forseeable future.” Better yet give us a concrete amount of time, and make it long. I’m not against gear progression in principle. Maybe years down the road you release an expansion that raises the level cap and new gear will be necessary. But to do this three months after release is too soon.

Nope, that wouldn’t be enough, since at that point i just wouldn’t believe them. If they said “there will be craftable equipment equivalent statwise to the ascended that will cost in mats no more than twice/three times as much as exotics (with mats equally easily obtainable in game)” and then followed through and actually did that, now that might restore some of the lost credibility. Some.

I’m not sure how much is known about how you get the new gear yet, it seems to lean heavily on the mystic forge. I wouldn’t be surprised if crafting were involved somehow.

BurnedToast.3781:

xtorma.1283:

Who would believe them after this?

^^this

They said no treadmill, no gated content. 3 months later – we have loot treadmill and gated content.

They have lost quite a bit of credibility.

There is no gated content. 9 mini-dungeons, all equally accessible (with a random set of 3 at a time). There is the option of increasing the difficulty of these dungeons over the course of multiple runs, but you will not be required to obtain ascended gear to go into these dungeons.

While this may seem like a treadmill, it only actually qualifies as a treadmill if the gear is required to access the content. Yes, there will be a requirement to start getting infused items as you access higher levels of difficulty, but as those higher difficulty levels are optional, it’s something you can safely ignore if you want to.

Just remove the attributes on ascended gear. Problem solved.

And if we are at it, remove ascended item status and make exotics upgradable with an extra infusion slot.
Even more problems solved.

It’s true that you can be good in WvW in greens or whatever, but you’ll be even better in rares, and better than that in exotics. On an individual level one guy in exotics won’t make a huge difference when two zergs are fighting, but on a collective level, yeah, it makes a difference.

Here’s the thing: for me, WvW is the endgame. It’s what I want to do most. So I want to be as effective as I can – if this means increasing my individual skill level, fine, I’ll do that, and I get a little bit better at Mesmer every day (there are still things I feel like I can improve on – like I should use my dodges more judiciously, and make better use of the daze shatter). But another aspect of that is having the best gear, and if the “best gear” is constantly changing that’s an irritant for me.

They probably have a bunch of stuff balanced around ascended gear in the pipeline already. So ascended gear is gonna happen whether we like it or not. I can live with that if I have some reason to believe that there won’t be new tiers of gear constantly introduced. That would just kill my motivation, the knowledge that I’ll never catch up.

A-net lies. They’ve done it before. But usually, even when they lie, they don’t do anything bad.

In my almost eight years of enjoying the hell out of A-net products, they’ve only screwed up three times, and this will make the fourth. I will still trust them to do smart things, mostly because they do always fix what they did wrong, even if it takes them two years to do it.

I’m not paying a subscription, so likely, I’ll just see you when they get their heads out of their kitten