Guild Wars 2

I don’t care about a gear treadmill, power creep or any of that, in fact that sounds awesome. It will give us players something to work for, but can we please get a reasonable non crafting alternative to getting the gear?

Currently unless RNGesus has blessed you to the point you are his pope you will most likely have to craft your ascended set and that is it. The drop rates are insanely low and for BoP that most likely will not have the stats you want it is just not a viable method.

Currently the only method to getting this gear is very anti social (mess with a trains farming and you will see this first hand) and brings about the dreaded MMO burn out that leads to people either quitting or going on long breaks.

Everything in this game screams “play how you want!” except this one area. It is awesome you made crafting something people can get a real benefit from and I in no way want to take from them, but can we get some sort of alternative for people like me who refuse to craft due to finding it a loathsome and boring chore?

I purpose adding to ascended gear as the next tier to vendors that sell exotics. Make them require crazy amounts of dungeons tokens, fractal, relics, laurels and badges of honor so that crafting is still the fastest way to obtain your set, but please ArenaNet give us options here.

Ascended gear is expensive and burn you out IF you are trying to craft it fast.
Take your time crafting the time gated materials, get gold from whatever places you want (dungeons, SW, TP flipping, whatever) and before you notice you’ll have your ascended set.

won’t happen…..and probably shouldn’t. they already practically give away ascended trinkets by making them purchasable by laurels/guild comms.

having ascended tied to crafting keeps it relevant after lvl 80 and keeps mats priced high enough for simply playing the game and salvaging to be profitable….this is a very good thing.

Relshdan.6854:

won’t happen…..and probably shouldn’t. they already practically give away ascended trinkets by making them purchasable by laurels/guild comms.

It was a step in the right direction. Too bad they didn’t continue on that path.

If you would get lucky enough to get an ascended drop make sure you choose the chest piece as that takes more materials than the others and a vision crystal. I have gotten two such drops which made my heavy armor a lot cheaper to make not having to make the chest piece and the second one I chose light armor chest piece since that is sooo expensive to make. I just have not made the other pieces yet.

I got my materials just playing the game and working on them as I went. Never did I try to make it a treadmill, though I did plan carefully as I went. I did not make or try to get stuff every day but I did amass enough silk, leather and steel to be able to make the rest of the ascended armors. I have not done the medium and light because of the single stat issue so I casually continue to make the ascended mats as I get enough materials. I have also made a Legendary in that same time and am currently working on a second one. Planning and organizing go a long, long way to attaining goals and making sure you don’t burn out.

I am not sure crafting falls under “play how you want” other than you don’t have to do it if you don’t want to. There is nothing forcing one to craft other than the desire to be able to make something they really want to have or to sell, complete a collection, or make consumables for use. Making Mawdrey II certainly did not fall under “play how you want to.” You had to do fractals if you wanted it as well as other tasks. It was a goal. I did enough fractals to get what I needed and am proud I did it because it was a great challenge. Did I need Mawdrey II? No, but I wanted her and did what was required. Fractals are not my thing but if there is something else I want to make and it is a requirement I would do them again. This falls pretty much under the same category.

With crafting guides, you can get to 500 pretty quickly provided you have the materials which you have the option to buy or work to get. Planning what you need to do in small bits also helps keep it from being boring. Do a bit every day with reasonable goals. We burn out ourselves – the game doesn’t do it. Not everything is meant to be gotten overnight. Something you get quickly never has the value of something you truly worked for.

Raids are coming people. your guild will be able to Raid for better gear.

Or how about rewarding fractal content with skins and ascended drops that let you pick what you want?…….maybe then there would be some use in doing them

Belzebu.3912:

Ascended gear is expensive and burn you out IF you are trying to craft it fast.
Take your time crafting the time gated materials, get gold from whatever places you want (dungeons, SW, TP flipping, whatever) and before you notice you’ll have your ascended set.

You’re missing the bigger picture here. Anet promised in their manifesto that exotic gear would be top tier and easily available in a variety of ways so each person could play how they want, if you wanted to pve, pvp, wvw, craft, dungeon, or whatever you could easily get max gear enjoying the game how you want to play. Right now crafting is the only reliable way to get ascended.

Now history lesson: when ascended armor came out it wasn’t that big of a deal bc the stats were marginal, about 5%, and since everything could easily be done in exotics anyways it didn’t really mean anything anyways. Was just a nice progression mark for those who enjoy that sort of thing (usually ex wow players lol, just saying ^^ they just have to have that carrot…) Useful for fractals too but the AR could easily be put on the rings/accessories/etc.

Now they are making the stats 10% difference…that’s a pretty big upgrade. Maybe not on 1 piece but on a whole set it would be very noticeable. The only issue is that making it is very expensive and time gated too. The whole point of making exotics easily accessible in a variety of ways so you can focus more on playing the game how you want and sideways progression is kind of thrown out of the window. It’s like anet doesn’t even care what they said in their own manifesto anymore and other interviews. What they promised us.

Personally I don’t care to much b/c currently there is no content that requires ascended armor, and luckily no add-on/mod that shows gear level. Hopefully the speedclear/dungeon crowd won’t get sucked into the whole ping ascended gear trap. I also don’t mind waiting and taking it slow progression wise, working on my 5th legendary atm, plus i’m pretty positive once enough people complain they will make ascended armor easier to get. At least in the expansion if not before then. But if they go that route. and i’m pretty positive in time they will… It begs the question why did we need ascended at all? Once it becomes easy to get again all it did was just another useless tier. Then the vertical progression crowd will qq again and want another tier. Though hopefully when that happens anet will learn from history and even learn from their good ideas like agony resistance, and gw1 infusion and titles/buffs and progress some that way instead.

Belzebu.3912:

Ascended gear is expensive and burn you out IF you are trying to craft it fast.
Take your time crafting the time gated materials, get gold from whatever places you want (dungeons, SW, TP flipping, whatever) and before you notice you’ll have your ascended set.

I’m not talking about me burning out since I straight up I refuse to craft. It is boring to me and just like there are people who won’t step foot into a PvP arena; I will not craft. I tried it and I hated it.

I’m just saying there should be other ways of getting the gear. If there were I’d be logged on right now doing it to get ready for HoT. Since there is not I wear exotic armor and use exotic weapons only logging in to RP with my guild while I wait for the expansion. If for any reason A-Net forces ascended gear on me without another way of obtaining it I will move on to other games.

It just really seems silly that crafting is the only way to get BiS gear. One way of getting sure? The easiest way of getting it? Awesome. But the only way? dumb.

Banono.4597:

I’m not talking about me burning out since I straight up I refuse to craft. It is boring to me and just like there are people who won’t step foot into a PvP arena; I will not craft. I tried it and I hated it.

I’m just saying there should be other ways of getting the gear. If there were I’d be logged on right now doing it to get ready for HoT. Since there is not I wear exotic armor and use exotic weapons only logging in to RP with my guild while I wait for the expansion. If for any reason A-Net forces ascended gear on me without another way of obtaining it I will move on to other games.

It just really seems silly that crafting is the only way to get BiS gear. One way of getting sure? The easiest way of getting it? Awesome. But the only way? dumb.

I’m in 100% agreement, Banono. I also despise crafting, but would dearly love that “not really necessary” Ascended bonus. It should be able to be sold on the TP. That way crafters can earn money from non-crafters, and non-crafters can finally have Ascended armor and weapons.

Hamfast.8719:

Banono.4597:

I’m not talking about me burning out since I straight up I refuse to craft. It is boring to me and just like there are people who won’t step foot into a PvP arena; I will not craft. I tried it and I hated it.

I’m just saying there should be other ways of getting the gear. If there were I’d be logged on right now doing it to get ready for HoT. Since there is not I wear exotic armor and use exotic weapons only logging in to RP with my guild while I wait for the expansion. If for any reason A-Net forces ascended gear on me without another way of obtaining it I will move on to other games.

It just really seems silly that crafting is the only way to get BiS gear. One way of getting sure? The easiest way of getting it? Awesome. But the only way? dumb.

I’m in 100% agreement, Banono. I also despise crafting, but would dearly love that “not really necessary” Ascended bonus. It should be able to be sold on the TP. That way crafters can earn money from non-crafters, and non-crafters can finally have Ascended armor and weapons.

I agree 100% with you Hamfast. One of the biggest errors arenanet got wrong with gw2 is crafting. They basically force it down people’s throats, like it or not. Crafting should have been optional, not compulsory.

I also don;t like how one can be a jack of all trades in crafting. They admitted they got exotics wrong because it was too easy to get. Well crafting to 400 was super easy, and 500 was only a little bit more difficult but very doable. I have almost 500 all crafts now.

However, I make very little money from it (90% of crafters don;t make money – yes there are some recipes I can make gold e.g. corrupted weapons) and actually make a lot more from dungeons etc. They got crafting wrong in 4 massive ways:

1. Not making crafting hard and unique to a character – this would have meant crafters would have to work together rather than solo wars as it is now (95% of game can be done solo).
2. Having no way to critically craft – i don;t mean get exp like crticial crafting now does – instead making better versions of items or more quantity of stuff e.g. 3 omnomberry bars vs 2.
3. By forcing people to level something – this meant they had to lower how difficult it was to get to max level and hence crafting loses it’s prestige.
4. Crafting should have been a way to make a little money e.g. making consumables for others (by critically crafting them i.e. getting more than the average = crafter’s profits, just like it was in ff xi).

The above have made crafting a joke in gw2 and one of the worse aspects of the game. Final Fantasy XI got crafting right, and I loved how you could craft stuff to help guildies out. In solo wars you basically are crafting at 500 for yourself, i.e. crafting is a selfish role in this game and antagonises both players who like crafting (like me) and who hate crafting.

Unfortunately I think its too late for them to change crafting but I hope arenanet learn from this and if they make future mmo’s, get crafting right because right now it’s designed for a single player game, not an mmo.