Guild Wars 2

Ascended Gear is totally wrong idea. I don’t want another gear treadmill MMO.

But, if make Ascended Gear equal exotic stats only with infusion slot OR just make Ascended Gear only usable in the Fractals of the Mists(separate gear, like sPvP)
First “equal” idea more preferred in my opinion.

Of course both suggestions acceptable as long as Agony Condition appears in The Fractals of the Mists only.

Sibe.3512:

exotic armor grinded? what do you mean?
i took only 4 hours after lv 80 for farm my complete exotic gear berserk, other 2 hours for rampage and other 3 hours for knight.
where is the grind? exotic gear is pratically free gear
if you want dungeon skin that is 1 bit grind but you are not obligate

ascendant gear only for dungeon? where you are read this?
they will introduce 200 new recipes if you read the full patch note, it mean ascendant gear will be craftable, but you need infusion for dungeon progression and infusion will drop only in dungeon cause it effect only dungeon progression if you read the full patch note

there no word about spvp and wvwvw, maybe they will put this item in too?
it is soon for say everythink, just wait the release day….

Point us to these patch notes as i’ve not seen anything about recipe’s.

Mungrul.9358:

Pleasing them gets you very little in return ArenaNet, and probably drives away more customers than it gains you. The vast majority of players don’t have the time to dedicate to grinding out new gear every three months. So they’ll probably begin feeling like they can’t keep up, that content is restricted access with them receiving no invite, so they’ll just stop playing.
BAM, you just lost a bunch of potential Gemstore customers.

But those players aren’t dedicated enough! Linsey said so herself.

" we have found that our most dedicated players were achieving their set of Exotic gear and hitting “the Legendary wall."

So, we should have been more dedicated, maybe they wouldn’t have made those ascended gear then…

about those recipes:

There are multiple types of Infusions and Infusion slots. In November, we’ll introduce Offensive, Defensive, and Omni Infusions of Fine rarity from new Mystic Forge recipes.

How long has Ascended armor been in the works?

Just a week? The past month? Maybe the past three plus months?

What does that tell us about ANet and their willingness to mislead the player base about the lack of a gear treadmill?

Ichishi.9613:

They clearly stated you are not completing new dungeon without new gear

It looks like it’s not possible to ‘complete’ the dungeon with or with out it – as it scales indefinitely.

Honestly the exotic gear is a piece of cake to obtain and is entirely achievable even by the casual player. If anything for me the ascended gear fills the void of not having legendary armor sets. I mean would you be crying foul if they introduced legendary armor sets that were the equivalent of what legendary weapons are, including crafting difficulty because the way I read it that is exactly what has been done except this should be easier to obtain.

The fact of the matter is you can’t provide content expansions and not provide something unique to be obtained through it. Unless you just want a level cap increase and a whole knew set of exotics/legendary items every time they add content. I’m amazed by the number of people that instantly rant about a “gear treadmill” but lets face it obtaining a legendary in this game is already more work then the top tier armor set in just about every game I have ever played. Adding the Ascended armor in a fashion that it appears won’t make it nearly as hard to achieve as the legendary weapons doesn’t come close to creating the gear climb most of you seem to believe in.

That said I also agree with those people that have stated quite clearly that its a game that is effectively free if your on these forums complaining since you’ve already paid for it. If you choose to invest more via gems that is entirely a personal decision and give that spending no validity in these arguments. So if you are unhappy with them adding the content you can simply quit and you’ve probably already gotten better value for your money out of this game than many of the MMOs released over the past decade.

They should add different ways to get Ascended stats without playing that dungeon; For WvW that is a must; Items with that stats should be added to WvW sellers, for karma and/or badges. I am not going to play with people with better stats, if I don’t want to play a dungeon; This is not WoW.

Orb.1702:

Why are people complaining about free content? Honestly if your not happy with this game anymore LEAVE ure not obliged to play and it ANET doesn’t force a subscription fee.
Ascended items is something i’m looking forward to after i’ve got my 80 exotic armour

I was happy for 7 years about how GW1 worked with the armors. Gear progression is simply the way anet shoult NOT take. I’m still here because all the effort I put on GW1, and all the effort I wanted to put on GW2.

GW1: 20hrs -> Max character, max armor, max weapons.
5k hrs played

GW2: 700h played, and still not max armor (being max ascendant now). ¿Kidding?

Edit: Every player, even casuals, should be able to get a max armor EASILY, not the same with skins.

Not like posting in this megathread will make any difference whatsoever, but hey.

I join the disappointed crowd, I rather liked the idea of maxed stat gear being natural to attain during normal course of play. I really like the concept, and right now it is still true : as far as gear go, everyone can be on par at max level quite easily, through craft or karma.

I accept that I will certainly never have enough playtime to reach a legendary, and I am fine with that, because while impressive to look at, they have the same stats as my trusted exotics. They do not upset the balance.

From what I understand, this will not stay true for long: hardcore player oriented ascended gear will be better than the common man’s exotics, while legendary weapons will outperform (ever so slightly of course) exotic ones. This, I don’t like one bit.

Fun impacts loot collection. The rarest items in the game are not more powerful than other items, so you don’t need them to be the best. The rarest items have unique looks to help your character feel that sense of accomplishment, but it’s not required to play the game. We don’t need to make mandatory gear treadmills, we make all of it optional, so those who find it fun to chase this prestigious gear can do so, but those who don’t are just as powerful and get to have fun too.

Is It Fun? Colin Johanson on How ArenaNet Measures Success

Guess they need a new success metric, sigh. As a time-limited player who barely hit maximum level on my first character a few days ago, hitting the ‘maximum’ is going to get further and further away from me as new content is released, given that ANet are plainly accepting of introducing new tiers of ‘maximum’ whenever the hardcore slice of gamers gets bored (which is all the time).

It’s extremely disappointing to see this clear deviation from one of the core success principles of GW1, and one which they touted was coming straight over to GW2. Considering that I’m the kind of player who is already screwed for getting exotics within a decent time range, I’ll be 80 years old, not levels, before I get to Ascended. By which point something else will actually be the new Ascended, I expect, and I’ll still be behind on the gear treadmill.

Zumbaro.8376:

Honestly the exotic gear is a piece of cake to obtain and is entirely achievable even by the casual player.

and this is the reason so many players play this game rather than wow or others….

420+ votes! make sure to post!

funny how people use to freak out about stuff that will happen in the future… like everyone already knows what will happen !?!

do you guys have a fortune-teller-sphere or something?

come on, just wait till the content is out and if it acutally is like you all are afraid of that it will be, then come here and give some constructive feedback
because until then its not usefull at all to argue about theories…

its just not possibile to give them constructive feedback to something that we heavnt tested yet..

dont panic!

Zumbaro.8376:

Honestly the exotic gear is a piece of cake to obtain and is entirely achievable even by the casual player.

Hmm, I’m a casual player and don’t have the gold to get exotic gear…

If anything for me the ascended gear fills the void of not having legendary armor sets.
I mean would you be crying foul if they introduced legendary armor sets that were the equivalent of what legendary weapons are, including crafting difficulty because the way I read it that is exactly what has been done except this should be easier to obtain.

Legendary armour sets would only be skins as they have the same stats as exotics. So I doubt there would be a great uproar.

This blog post is unbelievable. Who needs armor progression to feel progression? The WoW crowd already played GW2 for a while and left. Why is Arenanet catering to an audience that is gone at the expense of the audience they carried over from GW1? GW1 players hate this idea. WoW players like it. Which sort of customer does Arenanet think is still playing their game,today?

Since in my opinion every voice matters, I will express my view on the issue.

I will not go into doomspeaking about how A-net got the money they wanted from their loyal fans and now turned to satisfy another crowd so that they can milk the game more, since I thing this is highly exaggerated. I will, however, say that I disapprove of this change. The reason for this is that this is not how the game was initially advertised – multiple pre-release quotes were posted with developer statements on how only the skin of the gear will matter.

I can see where A-net is coming from, and while this decision might turn out being profitable and increasing the lifespan of the game, I think that it deviates a bit too much from what it was advertised as, and no longer caters to the audience that was originally interested in the game.

I, personally, will stick to sPvP, since this is where player skill and team coordination is the main factor, where I can jump right into the fun without having to spend long time in doing activities I find boring in preparation.

To all people who enjoy this kind of progression – enjoy the new patch.

DiogoSilva.7089:

Why is gear grinding a bad thing? Because it’s usually NOT FUN.

Are GW2’s means to obtain ascended gear NOT FUN? We don’t know yet.

No gear grinds are bad because it makes it to where unless you grind that gear you are useless.

no1 complains about ascendent gear per se. they need infusions for the dungeon, fine, thats something u can disable outside of this dungeon. dont care since i dont run dungeons anyway. but they didnt need to implement higher stats on these items, messing aroud with players in wvw or players that just want the feeling of accomplishment finishing a character. this is where the gear treadmill starts and frankly with breaking that particular manifesto promise they lost my trust that ascendent will be the last tier of gear.

Death by Chickens.6902:

She says over and over in the blog post that they’ll be adding more Ascended and Legendary items in future updates… You guys are taking one quote out of context and assuming that it means more tiers of progression, as opposed to many more items to fill out the Ascended tier.

You want a quote war? Fine. Learn to read. I’m getting annoyed by the level of ignorance on this forum.

Stop quoting this out of context:

The new additions in November are just the start of our item progression initiative.

Because HERE is the context:

As we introduce the new high-level content, we’ll also roll out complimentary Ascended and Legendary items

As we release more new end game content in the future, you’ll see more Infusions and Ascended item types being added to the game

Eventually, you’ll be able to kit yourself out with a full set of Ascended gear and high end Infusions to help give you the edge in end game content.

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.

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.

So yeah, stop cherry picking one sentence. It is clear that they want gear progression to be related strictly to infusions, and how infusions interact with high-level monster abilities.

In order to accomplish this they had to add ONE new tier. What else could they do? It’s not feasible to change every single exotic item in the game to reflect this new infusion system. Like it or not, you’ll have to progress through a new tier, but nowhere is it stated that there will be items beyond Ascended, merely infusions.

Read this again:

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.

Simple. Anyone can get maxed Ascended gear in the future and compete in WvW on fair ground. Those who want to empower themselves in the hardest PvE content can use infusions to mitigate new PvE combat mechanics.

I can’t be the only one who is reading between the lines and not freaking out over one sentence.

Hrafn.7638:

The thing that people like you dont understand is that reality isnt some kind of fixed version of your dreamworld, it changes. (also called “Adaptation”)The manifesto was a guidline and not some kind of 10 Commandments. They saw that their approach didnt went so well, e.g. people left/complained a lot about having nothing to do and so they changed their approach.

I’m sorry, and your point being, apart from “I don’t agree with you and I’ll try to insult you passive-aggresively on top of that”? Also, do you have any arguments or you’re just blabbering?

A manifesto is a written public declaration of the intentions, motives, or views of the issuer, the word itself derived from the Latin manifestum, meaning clear or conspicuous.

Can intentions change? Sure they can, though it’s dissapointing in general if someone flickers in 3 months.
However, in this case customers and consumer’s rights are involved, so no, they should not change so dramatically so soon and with so little warning and as a matter of fact, in some civilised areas of the worl, it’s against the law that protects the consumers.

SiNoS.2147:

Sibe.3512:

exotic armor grinded? what do you mean?
i took only 4 hours after lv 80 for farm my complete exotic gear berserk, other 2 hours for rampage and other 3 hours for knight.
where is the grind? exotic gear is pratically free gear
if you want dungeon skin that is 1 bit grind but you are not obligate

ascendant gear only for dungeon? where you are read this?
they will introduce 200 new recipes if you read the full patch note, it mean ascendant gear will be craftable, but you need infusion for dungeon progression and infusion will drop only in dungeon cause it effect only dungeon progression if you read the full patch note

there no word about spvp and wvwvw, maybe they will put this item in too?
it is soon for say everythink, just wait the release day….

Point us to these patch notes as i’ve not seen anything about recipe’s.

this i mean “A new resource to harvest with 200 new crafting recipes”

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/The_Lost_Shores

Hello all forumers and Arena Net ,

I am usually not writing posts on forums but i read them a lot. I am also usually don’t complain but just leave the game when i don’t like what is going on.

But here i like this game very much and i was planning to stay for a long time therefore i decided to write down my thought about this dangerous change.

I agree with some previous post who are stating that the gear should be limited to the “infinite” dungeon. This way you ll make most of the people happy either they are pro or anti treadmill. You’ll just have to create another layer of armor (like for the town clothes) for dungeon and people can really invest their time in this new “end game” if they want without polluting other place of the game.

After this is in place it will be easy to serve treadmillers on one side adding new “infinite dungeon” and regular player with adding new “normal” dungeons and zones. Nobody will be left on the border.

I am already quite a disaster in WvW so i really have problem if the game is forcing me to do specific stuff in order not to be an easy target in WvW or sPVP which will actually just deny these game mode for me. But i also have a problem if i cannot try any of the new content before having done hours of repeating the same dungeon over and over. I have no problem of being left out of part of the content (in this case the treadmill content) but if i cannot enjoy most of the new content then what is the point for me to buy extension.

I deeply hope that you will consider this in order to avoid loosing a big chunk of your player base as this would put an end to the GW2 adventure which for me is a real enjoyment.

Best regards,

Sombre

If the gear is craftable it will be ok, but according to the blogspot it seems that only the back piece will be craftable through the mystic forge along with infusions.

Only way this is acceptable is if they add ascendant gear obtainable through WvW or keep it as dungeon only gear. If they force us to do dungeons to be able to be on equal footing in WvW I might leave the game alltogether.

Or if they rethink the stupid idea of making it better than exotics. Add infusion slots on exotic level gear and call it acendant, that way the stats only effect pve encounters but not WvW.

Huge let down for me reading the blogspot. Sad day indeed. And it made NOTHING clearer compared to the mmorpg article, just fussy info from Anet still leaving us in the dark what ascendant gear will really be.

Dungeons only? Yes? No? Answer us kitten

every topic that i read about the new update i see a bunch of babies arguing that every update is a spoof of WoW and that they don’t like “grinding”. most of you don’t even know what grinding is. try some korean mmo and then tell me what grinding is. i played a korean grind game for 5 years, and this is not grinding. so quit your whining threads and wait for the update to happen and then make threads why you don’t like this and that…
and for god’s sake please stop with the “MMO market will not progress, they are copying ideas from each other” and such.. the market is doing it’s best to fit the player. and there are always people that will not like certain parts of the game. that’s just how it is. make it appealing for 50-70%. there is always that 30% that will not like it. you will never reach 100%. or even 90% for that matter.

it comes down to, you either like it or you don’t. gw2 is versatile enough for a lot of people. you don’t like grinding? then don’t grind. make money by exploring and gathering. you don’t like pvp? don’t attend pvp tournamets. you don’t like WvW? same.. don’t attend WvW. game offers alot of different things to do. or you can try all of that.. maybe you’ll end up liking it

Active players tend to be in-game more than forum.
They rarely visit the forum.

Spoonfeed players tend to explore forum more than actually spending the time now playing the game. They’re the one who visit the forum frequently.

The poll will not be accurate.

Furthermore, you have not even tasted the content yet.
How you know it’s going to be sour?

There’re 30-50 players in Orr now. It’s miraculous considering it’s a weekday. I usually never see more than 5-10 even in weekends. This shows the ascended actually makes the majority feel anticipated. It give them reason to login and do X/Y/Z.

Toggles.1783:

fellyn.5083:

If they started off as a tier above what was/is currently available in the game that would give people the impression that the game is all about vertical gear progression.

The way they are doing it everything stays the same, except for now the best armor to get has pink letters instead or orange letters.

>snip<

I’m sorry but I don’t understand this.

How would it imply vertical progression?

How does this new tier not imply vertical progression?

If everything stays the same except for letter color, how many times can this action be repeated before everything doesn’t stay the same?

Because it would say legendaries are outright better than exotics. Yes ascended armor and legendaries will be better than exotics. But that doesn’t change how it is now.

The only thing anet needs to clarify (imo) is if this is going to be the final tier of armor or not. Until they do people are over reacting for no reason.

Question is – would there have been this uproar had they released the dungeon and the related armour at launch, alongside the other tiered armour?

Or is it the possibility of it being a trend by Anet that is worrying people so much?

I understand the idea behind this, cant blame the game for trying to appeal to different preferences of game play including people who enjoy vertical progression but I am not happy with how this has been implemented for a few reasons: This is not about being resistant to change but rather about what I am seeing as existant problems being compounded by this update.

even if infusions themselves will not give benefits to people fighting anything but the karka the fact that ascended armor has better stats it will to some degree make all zones eaiser then they already are. That to me is a step in the wrong direction, I want to be less powerful in lower ended zone not more powerful! Unless I am mistaken taking part in this dungeon will end up improving your armor in the long run and thus making the bulk of the content (all the zones) easier and easier. This will take away the biggest strenght the game has, that is having all open world to replay at max level. (of course all this provided the only updatable part is the infusions and it will have 0 effect against anything but the karka.. if thats the case It would be nice if this is officially clarified)

While so far its not really an issue, that is provided we dont get any more tiers over and above ascended armor and that upgraded infusions are only useful against karka in that one dungeon / zone, I would also be a bit wiery about ending up with a possible gear treadmill system. Like others have expressed, a major positive point about this game is not the main major strenght of this game is it leaves you free to play as you like. If I want to focus on an activity like exploration, crafting, WvW, looking for jumping puzzles or even takening a break from the game to try some other game that seems interesting to me I can pick up right off where I started without being disadvantaged in any way. It would be bad for me should that change!

Yes. It cant be any more grindy than grinding for mats for legendarys. The gear grind already exists it just doesnt have tiny extra stats added to it to make you feel growth for getting them….right now its grind karma, grind dungeons (lfg speedrun), grind trade mats, etc. in short i think people are over reacting…and while i think theres nothing wrong with the changes…i think theres something wrong with how it was introduced. Arenanet needs to be more transparent with their updates and decisions like Riot is…so people dont speculate and turn into “dooms day” spreaders.

DUAxWolff.2759:

Eddie Van Grog.7095:

Dude, if you want to make a serious pool, make a serious pool!
Just make a pool with yes or no! why complicate with your passionate interpretion of things like “I am going to cry and leave”?
Just make a mature pool like this:
Do you agree with the ascended gear being introduced?
1- Yes
2- No
3- No opinion

And that is all. This is the only way you can make an unbiased and valuable pool.
Good luck with it

Why would you vote if you had no opinion? and that poll give you 50% less data

(edit) Also 325+ votes and counting.

The data you will get now won’t be accurate.

You could even have “How do you agree with this statement, I am happy with the new ascended gear”
1. I fully agree.
2 I agree.
3. I disagree.
4. I absolutely disagree.

5. No opinion.

even so the numbers won’t tell you much iether becouse some might have just read this post and havent read and understood the situation and the answers might be wrong… Polls like this should be put up AFTER the actuall release so people have the opertunity to try it out.

If I say this game is wonderfull and explains why I love it, then people might think they might like it, if I say this game is horrible and expains why I hate it, then people might not even concider trying it.

I’m excited for these new items
Thank you Anet!

Yes if they give a WvW method of acquiring similar items

There´s one thing you guys didn´t realised, there´s only one thing that can save this horrible game: gear progression.

I have tried like 15 MMOs in the past. I am now in GW2 to see things i could not with other games. I left my precious Rift for this game, for not having to face the continuous virulent gear checks, they were forcing me to follow.

As it is right now, i do like to play with my guild in WvW and through constant team effort, try to make a change. Why would you force me to get in a dungeon just to get gear, in order to remain competitive ? One WvW Invaders Amulet costs 525 WvW badges. Do you know how long it takes to get that sheer amount of badges ? How many hours ? How much effort ? Why are you all of a sudden, out of the blue pop up and force me to collect gear ?

GW2 was never supposed to follow the “Carrot on the Stick” model. Changes like that could take place in expansions. Not a mere patch / expansion-wannabe !

As a player, i feel you are letting me down, for not warning me beforehand about changes like this. I do feel betrayed. I don’t care about people whining about gear progression. Adding content would be just fine and dandy! Gear progression, Not!

My 2 cents …

PS : If Anet will do such a change i demand my 55 euros back !

Talloc.6835:

Mike O’Brien posted:
Here’s what we believe: If someone wants to play for a thousand hours to get an item that is so rare that other players can’t realistically acquire it, that rare item should be differentiated by its visual appearance and rarity alone, not by being more powerful than everything else in the game. Otherwise, your MMO becomes all about grinding to get the best gear. We don’t make grindy games — we leave the grind to other MMOs.

Meh. Reading this quote is disheartening

Death by Chickens.6902:

I can’t be the only one who is reading between the lines and not freaking out over one sentence.

Well, reading between the lines would actually lead you a different conclusion. If this was about getting a specific armor quality to counter a new pve mechanic, well, they could have done it this way: you take an armor set you own to a special person, let´s jokefully call him a “seer” if you will, and have that quality added to your armor set. If it was about linear progression along the lines of new content, well, just add an ascension slot to any armor you want to, hence everyone keeps the stuff they worked for till now.

But that is not the way they choose. They make the old items worthless. Do not bring up this “oh, it is just 5 points”-stuff. A lot of MMORPG players are striving for perfection in their character builds, not to mention this could very well be just the beginning of tier after tier of progression. Exotics WILL become subpar items in the eyes of serious players and the new items will be grinded for.

And the speed at which they make old items invalid is breathtaking – the game is barely 3 months old in november and allready the gear rat race begins? I cannot recall any MMORPG that harassed you through gear hell with that velocity.

Usually, I am actually a “progression player” and don´t mind grinding gear, but this here combined with the endless promises exactly not to take this road… man, can you blame any initial buyer for being mad just now?

I didn’t play LotRO; that’s interesting reading.

Twaddlefish.6537:

Didn’t Guild Wars 1 have a gate stat that prevented players from advancing into the final parts of Prophecies.

Yes. Yes, they did. And it was fine.

In GW1, it wasn’t a stat. It was just an effect placed onto the weapons. Unless you were fighting Mursaat, it did absolutely nothing.
If this only applied in the new dungeon, I’d be fine with it. If Ascended items were Exotics with an infusion slot, I’d not complain. But this will affect all other content.

Get ascended items; now all content is ever so slightly easier. GW1 never had that.

See, I don’t get that. I currently have 3 level 80s, my newest being a Mesmer.
I have been really enjoying levelling one of each class, knowing that when they get to 80, I’d be able to get them a set of gear with maximum stats, after which I could just enjoy getting different looks and playing the content. The “Legendary Wall” didn’t exist to me; I played the original game for 7 years and had over 5,000 hours logged. I assumed I would be playing GW2 for just as long and that eventually I’d have everything I needed to buy a legendary weapon. I didn’t need it right now, and I was kind of amused by all the people getting them so quickly. And even if I never got a Legendary (I never got GWAMM in GW1; too much pointless grind), eh, no big deal.
So there was no wall for me. I wasn’t seeking more gear progression, I was happy with what was there. The same goes for my guild members. We aren’t grinding out content to buy gear, we’re simply playing and enjoying the world together.
ArenaNet are now trying to sell me something I don’t want.

No, I just farmed my beautiful nightmare armor.

Gear Progression is the opposite of what was promised to use in GW1 and GW2.

This is a Anet clearing going back on its word. GW1 had many strong supporters without gear progression. I do not see why GW2 and Anet need to cater to those WoW grind grinders now.

Also many people grinded dungeons based on the premise that exotic is the best gear out there. People were just doing dungeons for fun and skins. Now it is no.

So very soon, when ascended full gear comes out. People that just leveled will just craft a exotic set and then grind ascended via the 1 dungeon. How does that help the game and make it fun???

Also ascended gear and infusions will force players to LF ascended gear or kick. This is becoming very similar to Rift and other MMOs that GW2 says it will not be.

But I like WvW and want to be competitive in it. To do that I now need to get a new type of gear (assuming you can put sigils or other bonuses in them) and if I like PvE dungeon content I’ll need to have to grind that new gear to do future content to just grind new gear again.

I’m simply tired of that crappy system.

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

do we want progression: it depends

You know, there is this design decision about horizontal progression. There is this thing about dungeons which lets them be challenging as initially designed, even later on.

where is it?

method 1: to introduce progression: add vertical progression – everybody wants to have the best stats, even if they choose not to do dungeons e.g. —> people are sad, they feel betrayed

sideeffect: dungeons become trivial, the better you become
sideeffect: the content for good players who need a challenge becomes less – the “endgame” dungeons are the only place to feel challenged

method 2: introduce interesting horizontal rewards which everybody wants. (e.g. customization of skill-animations like the sPvP finishers) Add some different ways to achieve those. —> people are happy, they get what they expected (cosmetical rewards)

sideeffect: dungeons have the dificulty they are designed for and won’t get trivialized
sideeffect: new content can be more difficult because of more enemies, more traps, interesting new mechanics,… not because the same number of enemies have better stats.
sideeffect: more content for players who want a challenge. Challenging events/champions stay challenging + you get the new content updates added to this.

+ Anet should increase the rewards for doing lower level zones (so that people don’t feel pushed to orr and other high level zones; content everywhere should feel rewarding)

Quoted for truth.

I’ve seen your “method1” scenario happen myself, only to hear people screaming for new content or old content to be added in a max level version too.

I voted. Still looking for some official word about going back on the promise of no gear grind. I hate being lied to. Oh well, plenty of games out there that want my money.

TTGP.8517:

no1 complains about ascendent gear per se. they need infusions for the dungeon, fine, thats something u can disable outside of this dungeon. dont care since i dont run dungeons anyway. but they didnt need to implement higher stats on these items, messing aroud with players in wvw or players that just want the feeling of accomplishment finishing a character. this is where the gear treadmill starts and frankly with breaking that particular manifesto promise they lost my trust that ascendent will be the last tier of gear.

This is what I’m trying to dispel though, the idea that this is the beginning of a “gear treadmill”. I agree that it wasn’t really necessary to raise the stats on the new tier, however, it is extremely clear that they only added the new tier in order to A ) bridge the progression gap to legendary, and B ) enable them to add infusions as a way to mitigate new monster abilities.

They are so incredibly clear that they will only be adding more Ascendant items, starting with back and accessories. If people want to read out of context and assume there will be more tiers, fine, do that. But if you read the blog post thoroughly it says nothing about this.

YES for the ascended items.

I’m extremely excited.

People know right? The active real players are the ones who play the game more than exploring the forum. The spoonfeeded ones spend in forum more than in-game. Therefore, the majority forumers doesn’t speaks for the majority players. 100 forum whiners can’t beat 1 million actual in-game players.

Right now in Orr, there’re 30-50 players doing DE to farm golds to prepare for the new gears (if it requires any gold for mats). It’s a surprise considering I always see less than 5-10 even in weekends.

This shows the majority are excited about the new ascended gears.

My guildmates are all excited in guildchat. I’m in one of the most active and biggest guild in my server. They don’t bother going forums because they rather spend their time farming, dungeon or wvwvw.

No, this is the WORST thing that could happen to GW2.
I got into this game to get AWAY from the gear treadmill. The idea that you could gear up easily and then your SKILL and not GEAR would matter appeals to me, now this is ruined because before my skill matters I’ll have to grind for new gear.

HORRIBLE decision.

Worst decision ever. No, I do not want these new items.

I don’t want to grind for new items just to be able to play new content. I’ve been a GW fan for years and this is the first decision by them that has truly made me upset.

The simple fact people are upset tells you that this is a big deal and trying to belittle that tells me the kind of people some are. Frankly when the state of the game is at stake let people have their say right or wrong let them be heard. That is what this is about.

Death by Chickens.6902:

She says over and over in the blog post that they’ll be adding more Ascended and Legendary items in future updates… You guys are taking one quote out of context and assuming that it means more tiers of progression, as opposed to many more items to fill out the Ascended tier.

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In order to accomplish this they had to add ONE new tier. What else could they do? It’s not feasible to change every single exotic item in the game to reflect this new infusion system. Like it or not, you’ll have to progress through a new tier, but nowhere is it stated that there will be items beyond Ascended, merely infusions.

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Simple. Anyone can get maxed Ascended gear in the future and compete in WvW on fair ground. Those who want to empower themselves in the hardest PvE content can use infusions to mitigate new PvE combat mechanics.

I can’t be the only one who is reading between the lines and not freaking out over one sentence.

I would totally agree with you but what I read between the lines is that with every new content they will introduce new infusions that I will likely want to link into my gear.
And if I can’t or don’t want to lose my current infusions I will have to get a new items to link them into.

And this would still be a threadmill even if there won’t be any additional gear tiers.

Linsey Murdock:

There are multiple types of Infusions and Infusion slots. In November, we’ll introduce Offensive, Defensive, and Omni Infusions of Fine rarity from new Mystic Forge recipes. Infusion upgrade types must be paired with their like slot, with the exception of the rare and versatile Omni Infusions which can be slotted into any type of Infusion slot.

Note she didn’t say Infusions are only for PvE content.

I’m trying to stay positive but I seriously think this, on top of the lacking of updates, is what is going to kill WvW.

I’ve already spent a lot of gold to get my 3 exotic sets and I will have to grind a lot in this new dungeon to stay competitive in WvW. I know many think the difference with exotics is now minimal (even if it’s like a full set of Superior Divinity runes) but as Linsey said this is only the beginning.

When new content after this will be released if you don’t have Ascended gear already you will get behind everyone else, and with every new content release things will probably get worse.

I guess it’s worth pointing out that everyone is speculating on an entire system, with only a handful of paragraphs.
You’re no better than those donkey’s who keep saying the end of the world is “next month”.
Sit back, chill out, and wait and see.

(You can be pretty certain your argument has already been posted in one of the 50+ pages).

A. Bridge for Legendaries were added by Anet themselves. This is not the solution.
B. Read the blog carefully, legendaries will rise to ascended level. Since we only have weapons as legendaries, guess what type of ascended gear we will get next. From there, armor is not a stretch as you seem to think.