Guild Wars 2

Thread can be closed whenever, I’ve said my bit and noone has been able to tell me why this system exists outside the laughable reasons hashed out above.

MrHeartless.9164:

Then you have to take into account the people who are actually hoarding the materials to wait for the best time to sell, which is usually during peak hours, or waiting for the average price to go up. Wanze tried to do this with his “control the market experiment” knowing full well there are people who use bank space to hold on to multiple stacks of items, waiting for the time they feel is right to sell such items. So while you “calculated” out that only a “few” crafters are benefiting from this, again, you are wrong. I can bet there are TP traders who are holding on to pieces to sell, they are just smart enough to know that if you flood the market, you drive the price down. The most recent development of this was with precursors once they announced precursor crafting. Suddenly, the high costing precursors began to plummet on the market, because it began to flood from people selling from their banks.

So again, you cant even conservatively estimate how much of one ascended item is in the game just by looking at the tp briefly.
[/quote]

Again, the numbers stated were for the purpose of illustrating the point. For you, I stated the point without the numbers and all you have done was taken second hand info from someone who is not here to speak for themselves. Which is just as bad as when you accused me of going to sites for the numbers I guesstimated.

All of that and you still have not answered the question. Do you agree that the number of crafters who benefit from this timegating justify the inconvenience to the wider playerbase? That’s all I am asking you, I am not asking Wanze, I am asking you.[/quote]

What your asking for, is something only arenanet can answer. I can’t look up how many crafters there are who are making the materials every day compared to total population. I can’t look at people who DON’T craft, but instead buy the materials low and then sell them high, thus not even affected by the time gate. I can also not look into how many people take the ascended crafting bag after so many log ins, and get said crafting materials.

I also cannot speak for the wider playerbase, and neither can you, as I am certainly not inconvenienced by it, and as other posters here have said they aren’t either. You are apparently inconvenience, and you may know others that are inconvenience, but neither you, nor I can make a claim that the playerbase is.

So no, I cannot answer your question, because I am not going to set myself as the speaker of people I don’t know, and don’t know me.

I will speak for myself. No. To me the time gate doesn’t affect me at all. I play different aspects of the game that are fun to me, and rewarding. I have earned enough gold myself by just playing and saving items that I could finish my own ascended set right now if I wanted to, simply by buying off the TP, going around the timer. I have just chosen not to, because I feel there is no rush for it, as the majority of my gameplay doesnt even step into fractals, so ascended isn’t important to me.

And again, I am not going to make the claim the playerbase is inconvenienced, because I don’t know if the playerbase is or feels that way.

As for wanze, I’m not speaking for him, but rather using his research as a source:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/I-FAILED-to-manipulate-a-market-ROUND-2/first

MrHeartless.9164:

Ragion.2831:

In case you haven’t realized an mmorpg is not the type of game that is mean to be played over a few weeks or a few months, but many years. The quickest way to get tired of playing an mmorpg is to burn yourself out by grinding.

If you want an item(s) that will take a long time to get, the best thing to do is go for them when you feel like it would be a fun thing to do, not because you want to finish something you’ve started. If you try grinding for sake of grinding, you will simply get tired of the game as a whole and quit. This happened to me with the last mmorpg i played. I went on questing marathon lasting a few days then took a break which ended up being permanent.

It is true yes gw2’s reward system is probably the worst amongst the top mmorpgs of the last decade but the upside is if you play the game just to have fun with it, you will have some pretty satisfying moments.

Finally about the ascended armour, i don’t think you really should bother with it unless you really want to do fractals. Even then, it is something i would try crafting over a long period of time. Just do stuff that you think would be interesting, you will naturally gain gold and mats along the way then just craft the armour bit by bit. It could take weeks or even months but you would have saved yourself a lot of grief by not trying to grind.

I play a lot of pvp and ive gotten a lot of free ascended armour, trinkets and weapons over time. Most may not be exact stats i am looking for, but ascended dosen’t give any real boost so i just see them as extra shiny things that are nice to have.

People play games for different reasons buddy, my total play time is now about 4 months even after a 2 year break. 4 months is not a small amount of time nor is it the largest but at its core a game should be fun and entertaining.

GW2 is entertaining but just like how pay to win rubs people the wrong way and not others, mechanics like these would rub someone like me the wrong way as there is no valid justification for them being in the game.

I’m assuming when you say 4 month total playtime, it means you logged in frequently for 4 months after release not your total in game hours is 4 months, because that would make no sense if you took a 2 year break. If thats the case then im sorry to burst your bubble but 4 months is nothing in the mmorpg world. In older mmorpgs where it was a grind fest, you hardly got anywhere in 4 months unless you literally locked yourself in and did nothing but play the game.

You may have 101 different reasons to play from everyone else but the truth across the board is this, if its not worth it, don’t do it.

Crafting in GW2 in general is major fail.

Now multiply this by over 9000 and you get ascended crafting.

Ascended crafting is expensive, grindy, timegated, boring, to get to the result you have to craft a billion of other thing which is nothing more than button spamming and time consuming and the result is neither pretty nor worth it.

Wow, I am surprised that I managed to get weaponsmith and tailor to 500. But now that I want to have a druid as main, I would have to get leatherworking and artificier to 500? Even though i could do this in probably an hour or two, I’ll just skip that.
Nah, I would never get that hour or two back.

As someone who almost quit over Ascended quite a while back, I feel your pain.

The daily chores (not just Ascended mat crafting, but the new daily Achievement Point tasks) are a bet by ANet that if you want the reward, you’ll log in and then stick around afterwards. The thing about bets is that they win some and they lose some.

The Ascended apologists will tell you all manner of things from, “You can get it by playing casually.” to, “It’s not really needed.” Their points are even true, for some values of truth. However, the points they’re ignoring are:

• Ascended was created to be desired. It was a carrot put in to keep people playing.
• Crafting is tedious and boring, and the mat list for one piece is longer than the drop tables for the bosses in a 10-boss raid.

The only benefit I see to Ascended is that if you can talk yourself into ignoring it, you can sell the mundane mats needed (like silk) at rates that are much higher than those mats went for before Ascended crafting was put in. That’s kind of the only thing that keeps me in the game at all — that I have been able to ignore it.

MrHeartless.9164:

Thread can be closed whenever, I’ve said my bit and noone has been able to tell me why this system exists outside the laughable reasons hashed out above.

System existed at first to equalize it so people who lived in the game couldn’t have everything right away super fast, while casual players would take years to get it. It equalized it a bit.

It’s now outlived its usefulness.

You know why this system exists? The answer is super simple.

It is ANets way to fight item hyper inflation that they created with all those drops in the first place.

It takes about 24,000 items to tailor a single set, so six pieces of ascended armor.

This number is so beyond any reason outside fighting inflation it is not even funny anymore. It is terrible game design, as it feels futile to even start crafting anything with this number, no matter how easy or hard it is to get these items.
Getting these items feels like a terrible chore, instead of an exciting event. I clearly prefer the joy of an item dropping with a chance of 1/10 compared to collecting 100 of it with a fixed drop of 10. It feels exciting and rewarding and less grindy to me (which is an illusion I know).

Worst crafting system ever. 24,000 items, just think about it. Wow…

Kaiyanwan.8521:

You know why this system exists? The answer is super simple.

It is ANets way to fight item hyper inflation that they created with all those drops in the first place.

It takes about 24,000 items to tailor a single set, so six pieces of ascended armor.

This number is so beyond any reason outside fighting inflation it is not even funny anymore. It is terrible game design, as it feels futile to even start crafting anything with this number, no matter how easy or hard it is to get these items.
Getting these items feels like a terrible chore, instead of an exciting event. I clearly prefer the joy of an item dropping with a chance of 1/10 compared to collecting 100 of it with a fixed drop of 10. It feels exciting and rewarding and less grindy to me (which is an illusion I know).

Worst crafting system ever. 24,000 items, just think about it. Wow…

I’m crafting ascended at the moment as an experiment. I’m playing the way I want to as the apologists for the system say it can be done. I’ve purchased nothing from the TP I’m gathering all of my own materials and I’ll tell you…. It’s a hellish grind. When I made Mawdrey I was unable to gather enough foxfire due to RNG so I bought about half of the needed clusters and I won’t do that again. The real problem is cloth and leather drops. I need a massive amount of silk, 300 a day for my CD. The most I’ve even seen in a day is 100 and 40 of That came from a map completion and that doesn’t take linen or cotton into account which are only slightly less than impossible to gather since my characters are 80s.

The system is 100% against the principles Anet claimed guided their hand in crafting the game and the main reason I purchased it. I enjoy the game but the grind and the RNG are brutal. Now that they’ve announced an expansion my hope is they’ll rollback many of the changes they’ve made. As it stands now crafting in GW2 is almost as bad as the RNG in GW2 and that’s saying something.

I find it unfortunate that people beleive their is an unecessary amout of time to be devoted to finding materials an crafting .I spent 6 years playing GW1 and still haven’t totally “finished”.But thats what I like about this game is its not something you can do in a weekend.This is a game you need to spend months or even years playing to get your characters where you want then.I’ve played GW2 from the begining and still haven’t had a precursor drop but I keep trying .For the folks that find it to dificult or boring because of the lack of instant gratification, you can allways play Tic-Ta-Toe.

MrHeartless.9164:

Thread can be closed whenever, I’ve said my bit and noone has been able to tell me why this system exists outside the laughable reasons hashed out above.

Feel free to browse through this post(thread) on reddit for some insights from Anet regarding time gates in general and specifically for crafting:

http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/1t26yg/cdi_isaiah_cartwright_on_time_gates/ce3kcjo

Mokk.2397:

I find it unfortunate that people beleive their is an unecessary amout of time to be devoted to finding materials an crafting .I spent 6 years playing GW1 and still haven’t totally “finished”.But thats what I like about this game is its not something you can do in a weekend.This is a game you need to spend months or even years playing to get your characters where you want then.I’ve played GW2 from the begining and still haven’t had a precursor drop but I keep trying .For the folks that find it to dificult or boring because of the lack of instant gratification, you can allways play Tic-Ta-Toe.

Interesting, but why is playing tic tac toe for 2 years any better?

what if you are only allowed to play one tic tac toe game a day?

does this make tic tac toe more fun?

@OP:

I have 3 ascended sets. 1 for each weight class. I have found that if you do not focus on it and enjoy playing the game, while having a daily reset ritual, to do you 24 hour, time-gated craftings, it becomes a non-issue. One when you dwell on instant-gratification, does this situation you are referring to become relevant.

I think the whole idea is if you play for 100 hours you’ll probably make enough money to buy a set of ascended armor.

Because just about anything in this game gives you gold. At least for pve. Dedicated wvw players probably spend more money on siege than making money. spvp gives some money but not comparable to pve.

Simple response: time gating IS in place so impatient people and people who don’t spend a significant amount of time playing USE their credit card.

Same as drops being lowered and diminishing returns are put in place to force people to buy gems and trade for gold.

Soon as u realise gw2 is a business then you will understand :-)

Aidenwolf.5964:

I’ve purchased nothing from the TP I’m gathering all of my own materials and I’ll tell you…. It’s a hellish grind.

Why would you intentionally grind all the materials when you could far more easily casually play the game, obtain maybe 10% of what you needed and enough gold to simply buy everything else? If you go in looking for a grind, you’re going to make it a grind.

Let’s say a full set of light ascended costs 700g. How long would that take? For comparison, it would be like buying 6 skins off the gem store (or T3), ~5000 gems.

It took me about 2 months to craft the light armor set. Timegating was not even a hindrance. Silk and linen were the real culprits. The other two were faster, but even they took a month. I guess I just don’t get the hurry: the game will be there for years.

Garambola.2461:

It took me about 2 months to craft the light armor set. Timegating was not even a hindrance. Silk and linen were the real culprits. The other two were faster, but even they took a month. I guess I just don’t get the hurry: the game will be there for years.

different people have different paces of whats comfortable, and time gating works against that

To me the time gating is not an issue. I always have more time gated mats than I have mats for the next step. I hate buying armor from karma vendors and throw it into the mystic forge in order to get linen. This is seriously boring, but it is the only way I see (sitting on 8 80s which rarely get the correct drops to receive linen from normal playing). I play since release and I have got 2 ascended weapons and 3 ascended armor pieces, who cares?

The whole crafting system in GW2 is uninspired and dull, compared to e.g. Ryzom. Ascended crafting doesn’t really make it that much worse anymore.

joe.7684:

Sure, timegating is annoying, but it is what it is; take it as an attempt to simulate the difficulty of making very complex components, move on, and get on with the job.

how about that is literally the worst excuse I’ve ever heard for a system like this. You DO realize that he’s leveled the crafting to max right? HES NOW A MASTER OF THE CRAFT, and he shouldn’t need to have a timegate for something like this. Warframe, another game with significant timegates, has ones that last up too 3 days. but you can skip it “for a little cash” theres no reasoning behind it. They just want more money out of you, now Anet? They don’t have a system where you can spend cash to speed up crafting, so any excuse for a timegate is unreasonable and pathetic.

I didn’t even know that there was a timegate, I never bothered crafting much, I just like the combat system and the world. But after learning this? theres no way I’m going to be making a ascended gear any time soon. What a waste of time

People, why are you complaining?

Ascended was added for those player begging to be allowed to farm for something other then exotic armor, as the exotic armor was WAY TO EASY TO GET in their opinion.

So A-Net was generous and added a extreme farm above Endgame level (Exotic) armor so they could farm their time away. This new armor Ascneded was unusable, or at least not affecting gameplay anyways in 80-85% of the content, which created content for the grinders, pleasing them and leaving the people nagging for a special armor with something to do.

Now after 1.5 years after this new Ascended armor was introduced, new people are nagging getting end game armor (= now to be ascneded in their view) and it’s so expensive….. completely forgetting why ascended was introduced in the first place.

For comparison
Exotic = end game armor, creating it costs 400 crafting and 20 gold or 254k karma or 1320 dungeon tokens for a set, or you buy it on BLTP, cheaply
Ascneded = armor for tier 50 fractals, for Dedicated WVW and for people who need the farm to feel usefull. Requires 30 laurels and 18 gold for the recipes (if you’re lucky)
and 370-525 gold to make. ( well if you want keepers heavy ascended armor you pay 2000 gold for the recipe’s so…) itt is timegated, and the armor pieces need to be crafted and are account bound. Requirinmg a huge investment in both crafting level time and resources. As was requested by the original grinders.

If you look at present meta:
Dmg = King, you kill stuff and survive trough zerk power in PvE
For WvW armor is an important part of your setup and ascended armor is usefull indeed, as you’ll notice the 5% in zerg vs zerg,
In fractals you could be needing the additional infusion slots.

Armor:
Armor adds 2% stats compared over full ascended and your dmg is affected maybe 1% (doubt so tbh with armor)… For 5% added armor , (which is effectively an illusion, as you play for active defence anyways. If you got hit you made a Boo-Boo…..) it’s effectively a waste of time and resources atm.

Weapon:
If you look at the main part of dmg you’ll see the better part of you dmg gain comes from the weapon, it gives +5% dmg flat in weapon dmg. and 1% stat increase…
generally ascneded weapons run 35-45 gold.

Trinkets:
And your trinkets give you the same stat bonus (if not a bit more compared to armor) but for some time inbvestment and 15 gold, ( vs 375-525 gold for the armor…)

Conclusion:
Only usefull things people should go for are ascneded trinkets and ascneded weapons.

Cause you -need- ascended?

Well… In My Opinion: No you do not. unless you are going to do level 49+ fractals or elite level wvw on high tier servers…

The actual gain on Ascended dungeon runs is noticable in lvl 80 dungeon (Arah, COE and HotW and Fractals) and in the PvE world uses for ascended armor are limited to cursed shore, southsun cove, dry top and silverwastes and small parts of malchor’s leap and frostgorge sound…. This is maybe 10-15% of the present world, and when considering the downscaling also 10-15% of the “end game content” (Lol like there should be endgame, you are playing to play not to stop Endgame is laughable. )

MIND 1 THING: HoT will be lvl 80. Ascneded WILL be more usefull there. Introduction of new infusions has been anounced, and they’ll only fit ASCENDED gear (But atm moment we cannot foresee if we should make zerk or something else…)

Patience is a virtue my friend.

Sebalon.9458:

Patience is a virtue my friend.

Lack of patience is a good source of income for those of us with patience though.

Yargesh.4965:

Sebalon.9458:

Patience is a virtue my friend.

Lack of patience is a good source of income for those of us with patience though.

its actually really crappy income, if you are talking about damask.

its 51 silver profit, once per day. 11 gold in materials
so your talking about 4% profit, once per day.

thats not really too great. Even a crappy 3% profit, twice in a day would make you more money.
better off flipping.

Apparently I am part of the minority of players that started doing the timegate crafting long before deciding to actually bother maxing out professions and making ascended armor.

I was no fan of ascended gear when it first came out because I feared it would end in us, having to grind for tons of items that would be replaced by the next higher tier of gear in only a few months, but since it didn’t turn out that way and even after the release of a new expansion, I am fine with it.
I only got one set of ascended gear, since it is enough to have it on your main fractal character and I don’t need more than exotic on my alts/twinks.

Wanting in NOW, the downfall of many MMO players.

@ OP

Ascended Crafting did not make you quit the game. Your attitude towards it resulted in you quitting the game. There is a difference there — one that many people don’t recognize when they create threads such as this.

Regardless….
I hope your endeavors elsewhere prove to be more enjoyable for you.

Eh… I’m going to have to agree with the OP a bit. Most of the arguments I’ve seen floating around are definitely valid, but ultimately I don’t see the point in time-gating.

It was designed in part to benefit crafters. It was designed in part to somewhat equalize the opportunities for both hardcore and casual players. And above all, it was to create an incentive to log in daily.

Nah, I don’t think time gating is necessary. Plus hey, if there was no time gating, I could power through my dozens of stacks of bloodstone dust and empyreal fragments in a few minutes of rapid clicking. I’m still getting more of those per day than I can eat, on average.

But now I have to take that right back, because I know for a fact that I’ll be logging in pretty much daily regardless. So the fact that Anet is limiting certain items or events to “once per day” is annoying and a minor inconvenience at worst.

I’ve said this on a lot of threads recently, but the NEED IT NAO mentality of so many players really gets to me. It’s always “QQ grind” this or “QQ grind” that. What it comes down to is that players don’t want to put in the time and effort to get the shinies in a game that’s all about shinies as the reward system.

I’ve seen plenty of posts complaining about the amount of mats and/or gold needed for ascended (because, you know, they NEED IT NAO and can’t be bothered to put in even a modicum of effort), but this is a new one.

OP has no issue with farming, grinding or otherwise acquiring the mats. In addition, OP has a very, “I’m going to do this the proper way” attitude with the gem conversion, which I also personally share. Take it even farther and notice that the OP wants to craft it all himself. Here’s a guy that is actually willing to put in the effort to get the big shinies. Props to you!

But after all these good points, all you have to show is…a lack of patience? Clearly you have the “grind=reward” mentality, which is perfectly fine, but you refuse to compromise in other areas. You want is right now? You’re clearly the type of players who either has a lot of money or has no qualms with grinding or farming out cash quickly, so why not buy the mats with gold? Not gem conversions, but good honest gold?

You want it now, which imo is a bit silly but understandable, and the thing is you have multiple options to get it now. You can even do it without swiping your credit card! But you refuse to get it now because you want to get it now a different way. On top of that, the fact that Anet does not cater to your needing to both do it your way AND have it now is the source of your ire and the reason you’re possible leaving this game for good.

You claim to enjoy playing for the sake of playing, but clearly you can’t be bothered to put in the time to get the bigger shinies. Ergo, you want rewards over the experience, you’re fixated on destination over journey, and even if Anet did lift the time gating you would likely either A) find a new thing to complain about soon or tire and leave again quickly anyway.

So, although the tone and topic are different, really this is just another entitlement thread. “My things my way or the highway.”

I genuinely sympathize that such a small and childish reason is the spark that is allegedly making you leave the game.

Also if you’re actually cool with gathering mats and doing daily crafting, how do you only have one helmet casing to show for two weeks of work? You’re contradicting yourself OP. Two weeks of daily crafting is 14 damask and deldrimor or however you spell it. That’s a pretty solid start on your way to full ascended, more than a third of the way in fact.

TL;DR (which is really quite rude, as I did put time and effort into typing this)

I agree that time gating is silly and unnecessary.

I think the OP is being entitled, silly and childish.

Crappy income? Maybe, but it is 50 extra gold a month doing absolutely nothing out of my way. Would be 100 plus extra if I had the least desire to run around silverwastes.

I don’t craft ascended either. The sheer cost of the materials and the time-gate is not really the issue, at least the direct issue.

Its the fact that Anet has a habit (both in gw1 and gw2) to change stats/gear in future patches, and if/when they change the stats of, say, celestrial and/or zerk gear, that would make me rage more than anything if i crafted the ascended gear that changed..

Akagami.9861:

If crafting ascended made you quit the game, why are you still here? we don’t need another attention kitten on the forums.

Okay so let me break this down for you like this, Legendaries and Full Ascended Sets are like a woaman, If it’s easy it’s not worth it. You know what else is easy and everyone has it? Rares and Exotics…i mean once you hit 80 with your first character in your first week in the game BOOOM full exotics. Done

I started like a monthor two ago again with a thief, i have almost all the materials for my full ascended set(do miss like 2k silk scraps, but it’s fine), i leveled ANOTHER profession to 500(Already have weaponsmithing and armorsmithing) but the time gated pieces never bothered me. Why you might ask? Your topic is the reason…NOT EVERYONE IS ABLE TO JUST CRAFT THEM…so for me it’s even better ^^ i’m one of the few that can do this, that has the patience.

I don’t want my set NOW NOW NOW NOW NOW. I just want to work towards it.

Also the same with my legendarie, i want one, i have no precursor but i’m almost finished with the “Gifts”, i’m in no hurry, one day one will either drop, pop form the forge, or by the time i finish the gift with 250 powerfull bloods, i’ll have enough money to buy one.

But do you know why i have no problems with ascended/legendaries being so hard to get? CAUSE I ENJOY THE GAME, i do fractals,dungeons for fun, with guildies, have a laugh. Try a new build a new utilitie, do some bosses, farm a little, craft some rare dagger toss them in the forge…(cry a little in the corner cause i got no spark)

If you can’t enjoy the game now withouth ascendend/legendarie, you will not enjoy the game even if you get them.

What Akagami said.

Just because someone reaches 500 in crafting does not automatically entitle one to instantly produce Ascended gear overnight. It was designed to be time gated and something you work at beyond leveling in crafting. Just like Legendaries, you have to work to get the items you need and it is not overnight. It is all about patience and setting goals. I have made one set of ascended armor, one ascended weapon and am closing in on making my second set of ascended armor. I am also nearing having the materials to make my first legendary (bought the precursors, my RNG is NOT that good, lol). Would I like to be able to just slap ascended gear together overnight, certainly yes. Would it have as much meaning for me? No. I do look at what I have made and am very, very proud at the work I put into getting there. And I enjoyed the journey and what I learned in the process which is what the game is all about. I decided to make this stuff after I finished making Mawdrey II and realized if I had the patience to do that I could certainly make ascended or even a legendary.

If you are unhappy not having ascended/legendary gear you most likely will still not be happy if you had it. There is soooo much more to this game than having the top gear, though that is certainly a very nice goal to work for. Look for other things within the game that give satisfaction, set smaller short term goals and baby step your way to what you want. Surprisingly you may find you appreciate what you got a lot more that way and realize you had a lot of fun getting there. I have met the most amazing folk while working towards these goals. Now that is priceless.

You can have 70 agony resistance – enough for fractal 50 – without any ascended armor pieces, just weapons and infused jewelry.

It is, in fact, the cheaper option.

Meh, as has been said you can do 99% of the content with exotics, and 99% of my characters do. Self imposed grinding to get a very minor increase in your stats is your choice, but still still only a self imposed barrier. If it is that important that you have ascended gear then just play the game normally, salvage everything and eventually it will come to you.

MrHeartless.9164:

Seera.5916:

Ascended gear wasn’t designed to be gear to get in a few days or after using a credit card to buy gems to turn to gold to buy mats to immediately turn into gear.

It’s been a well known fact since Ascended gear came out that there are time gated materials. You can either buy the time gated materials or wait the 36 days. If you feel you must feel self-sufficient, you can buy the materials now, but make the materials anyway to sell to others who do not wish to wait.

It was released to appease the players who needed a long term goal to work toward but felt that the legendary was just too much work for them. The players from other MMO’s where vertical progression is the norm and you had to grind out the BiS gear.

Unless you’re doing high level fractals or are in a very hard core guild for WvW or dungeons, then ascended gear really isn’t going to prevent you from doing anything in this game. 36 days really isn’t all that long to wait for a gear set to be complete when the gear set really won’t affect your game all that much.

Especially when they allow the result of the time gated crafting to be bought on the TP. You aren’t forced to wait the 36 days.

The time gate is passable by time or gold.

But you just contradicted yourself there, if it was never supposed to be something that can be bypassed with a credit card, why can people still buy the timegated pieces off of the TP? They can buy gems, sell gems and buy the gear, simple.

I wouldn’t mind that if I was able to craft the gear as a I got the mats which I also stated wouldnt just be afew days. It took me 2 weeks to get crafting to 500 and it will take me another 2 weeks to farm the rest of the mats, thats still a month. Not a short amount of time at all.

Tell me, how much does Dragonite Ore, Bloodstone Dust, and Empyreal shards sell for on the TP?

I’d really love to start buying them now so that when I do get to 500 tailor, I’ll be able to just craft my ascended gear.

Oh wait, they’re account bound. That’s the part that keeps people from just opening their wallets. OP wasn’t leaving because of that part of ascended crafting so I didn’t go into detail. I was going into detail on the time gating aspect of Ascended crafting. You know, the part the OP had issues with.

The game hands out dragonite, bloodstone and empyreal shards like candy.

I too am finding it harder and harder to log in. It’s a two sided coin. On the one side, if it’s too easy to get then people have nothing to work toward. They get it all quick and easily and will get bored. However, if it’s too much to get, then people will see it as unobtainable for them. It becomes disheartening and makes a person want to give up and quit (aka the OP).

Already, crafting is the only reliable way of getting it which that alone is enough to make people not want to bother for it.

Now if people had to max out their crafting and spend months to craft out legendary armor and legendary trinkets, as they do with weapons now, then that would be good. Unlike between exotic and ascended (I don’t care how small, a difference is still a difference), there is no stat difference between ascended and legendary. It’s skin and stat customization only.

Also, legendary should be the one that is time gated. The one that should be account bound upon creation. The one that should only be obtainable via crafting it yourself by maxing your crafting. etc.

Ascended should be obtainable via other means than crafting (merchants using various combination of the currencies). They should be the one that can be traded on the TP (instead of Legendary).

Welcome MrHeartless to the forums where we’ll fight you with semantics and tell you what you need and what you don’t need and how to squeeze extra drops of enjoyment from a dry wood. Hope you enjoy your stay! Oh, you’re leaving, nvm then.

But if by some chance you decide to stay prepare some extra cushions for your seat because what most people don’t realize is that the Year of the Ram(ing) began with introduction of ascended gear.

Ascended items are not necessary in any form whatsoever to participate in this game. If you believe that they do, then oh man you’ve been thinking the wrong thing about this game for a long time.
Anything you can accomplish with (at least armor) can be accomplished without it. People learned to solo Giganticus Lupicus with armor. Then they learned to do it without armor.
Armor isn’t required to play the game, and the stat difference between exotic and ascended is so minimal that you shouldn’t even worry about having ascended as fast as possible. Since ascended stuff was released, the most I’ve ever gotten have been trinkets and weapons, and the most of any armor sets of ascended of the stat I wanted has been 1, solely because I wanted the skins.

Edit: Aside from fractals

This topic has been debated to death (seriously people need to stop making new posts about it and just post in the ones that already exist), but im just going to point out that if you expect to get the best gear in a game in 6 days, mmo’s arent the right kind of game to be playing.

Thats not exactly a bad thing, every kind of game isnt for every player. but if you dont have the patience to work on a long term goal for more than 1 week try playing a moba or fps or a single player rpg or something.

Ascended gear is only really used for high level fractals. Which I avoid entirely because fractals are the largest artificial gating mechanic from any mmo to date really. The grind to get gear with slots for the grind to get agony resistance which is a useless mechanic and used literally nowhere else then fractals.

No thanks, I’ll save my sanity and not do it and never do fractals.

munki.6402:

Zergs.9715:

Welcome MrHeartless to the forums where we’ll fight you with semantics and tell you what you need and what you don’t need and how to squeeze extra drops of enjoyment from a dry wood. Hope you enjoy your stay! Oh, you’re leaving, nvm then.

But if by some chance you decide to stay prepare some extra cushions for your seat because what most people don’t realize is that the Year of the Ram(ing) began with introduction of ascended gear.

I have very casually crafted almost a complete set of light ascended. All six of my characters have ascended weps. I WvW, so I’m a sucker for the tiny stat increase and I simply enjoy playing. I don’t need to craft any of it. I did just fine with my exotic in WvW. I play pretty casually and I had amassed enough to start down the ascended path. I decided to do so. I enjoy planning for it. I have to manage my mats in as far as what I can sell, what I should keep etc. In summation, believe it or not, there is at least one person who does not share your experience or your opinion. Welcome to society.

“believe it or not, there is at least one person who does not share your experience or your opinion. Welcome to society.”

I started the game in Beta as well, and have played all the way through. I completed my third set of Ascended armor 3 months ago, and it was easy to do. I don’t have the attitude of “now or never”. I play the game and work towards long term goals, as the game is designed for that. The reason it costs so much gold to buy an ascended set is because too many (most) people cannot go a day without the best in slot items. I, on the other hand, like the goal of actually achieving something by making it, from harvesting all of the materials to crafting every component. “Good things come to those who work” is a working man’s motto.

MrHeartless.9164:

Healix.5819:

Ascended gear, along with fractals, were implemented to entice a certain type of player, as in the type that wants a generic dungeon grinding endgame. Back at launch, the WoW player base was demanding it, though everyone I personally knew quit before it was implemented. If you’re going to complain about the low stat increase, you’re definitely playing the wrong game because vertical progression isn’t the goal here. The idea was to make something that was slightly better to be appealing, yet also not matter. If you’re downscaled at all, ascended truly doesn’t matter, otherwise it’s only a small increase.

You’re not meant to make a piece a day. It’s meant to be a medium term goal, like one piece a month. Unlike other MMOs, anyone can casually craft ascended gear over time without really trying and the same is also true for legendaries.

I understand all of that but I do not agree that timegating is the way to go. They could have increased the amount of mats needed so the added time would have been spent gathering them and I would have been fine with that. Because on one hand you are building towards something and on the other you are waiting to use something you already built.

It doesn’t enhance the game, and if it doesn’t enhance the game, why is it in the game in the first place?

And there you go, one of the reasons to time gate it. I would much rather have time gate and less grinding for mats. You obviously want more grinding for mats. The time gating is there to actually decrease the grind for mats.

For me it does in fact enhance the game, by decreasing the grind for mats.

This is far too funny.

It took you two weeks to get what, 100 gold to max out crafting? And you now think you have 500~gold to make ascended armor the very next day? O.O
Damask is 12~gold to make (buying ALL materials from the TP) That’s at least 240 gold just to make the damask for a Heavy set. So in 14 days you need to make 240g (when you already took 14 days to make 100gold) SENSEMADE

^^ This so much THIS!

Thanks for posting this. This pretty much destroys two arguments we keep hearing from the people who continue to support the grind for ascended in this game.

The first argument which is the most used, is there is no grind because you can get gold from farming mats. Farming doesn’t exist in this title, it hasn’t since the first day they added DR but trying to get these people who have rose tinted glasses on about it to see the truth of it just doesn’t seem to work because no matter how much evidence you present them it’s easier for them to believe the hype then to accept the truth.

The second one is, it hasn’t happened to me so therefore it doesn’t exist. The grind very much exists in this game. Some people and I’ll admit it’s few because that’s how their loot system works, do get drops worth getting when playing. However in order to maintain their TP centric economic model they have to nerf loot for everyone else which makes it extremely difficult to even farm for gold! Loot matters, rewards matter, and when people claim that everyone has equal chance they simply aren’t being honest with us or themselves.

Ascended is the worst grind I’ve seen in years it’s actually worse than the grind found in games like AA in which you have to build up points in your profession not to the level of 500 but to thousands!

Ascended made me quit the game as well as the problems with a lack of meaningful rewards for playing. People are complaining in the forums of the elephant in the room right now that garrisons are a grind however I can spend 5 days doing 1 daily quest to get 1 piece of gear, that doesn’t happen here in GW2 GW2 has a true grind when it comes to Ascended.

I’d like to point out that time gate doesn’t equal grind however an enormous amount of time getting the materials, then getting those materials refined, then getting those materials put together for parts, then getting those materials into a piece of gear = grind. There IS a difference and these people just don’t see it.

I agree OP I hope that the devs are listening to players like you who’ve spent the time examining in detail what’s required to accomplish what you need for gear progression and make important changes in HoT!

phys.7689:

Yargesh.4965:

Sebalon.9458:

Patience is a virtue my friend.

Lack of patience is a good source of income for those of us with patience though.

its actually really crappy income, if you are talking about damask.

its 51 silver profit, once per day. 11 gold in materials
so your talking about 4% profit, once per day.

thats not really too great. Even a crappy 3% profit, twice in a day would make you more money.
better off flipping.

You use your own mats instead of buying them, and it is 100% profit, so ~ 12 gold profit when using your own mats, not the 51 silver when buying the mats.

The issue isn’t that you need to grind absurdly for it, but multiple times as you wear different sets of gear. Most people got beserker for lolmeta but I carry 2 sets of gear on my guard and end up wearing soldiers quite frequently.

That happened to me too. I was time gated 15 days. And I quit making ascended. I just built 1 ascended backpiece and I said that I will protest by not making ascended. When they fix timegating I will start crafting. So see you in a few years, I hope that they will not bancrupt. This game is really quiet, nobody plays it and nobody knows about it. Every friend of mine has it but nobody plays it. Everyone has their reasons..
Start fixing if you want people to play the game.

Ascended on it’s own made me quit. It should have never been added.

slamfunction.7462:

@OP:

I have 3 ascended sets. 1 for each weight class. I have found that if you do not focus on it and enjoy playing the game, while having a daily reset ritual, to do you 24 hour, time-gated craftings, it becomes a non-issue. One when you dwell on instant-gratification, does this situation you are referring to become relevant.

That’s fine and dandy when you only care about zerker stats. Now imagine HoT suddenly makes condi and support builds viable. Now you’re looking at 2-3 ascended sets for each weight class, same goes for weapons.

It’s just horrendous.

I stopped reading the replies at some point but here’s my view on the issue.

I think the main issue is that your self-imposed set of rules make a game system very annoying and this is ruining your game experience. I think you should define your rules according to the game mechanics instead of expecting the game mechanics to fit your rules.

Selling all the (hard earned) materials for the equivalent non account bound ascended material should be allowed to adapt your rules to the system. You’re basically still converting materials to an ascended but buying the time component. That seems fair to me, it’s really just a small psychological barrier you have here IMO.

Another advantage of this is that you could go a little further and allow yourself to work towards ascended mats with anything that makes gold instead of going full mat gathering (a lot healthier IMO).

If you REALLY don’t want to buy anything from the TP at all (honestly that’s a serious handicap) then you can still try the fractal route : with a nice set of infused jewels and ascended weapons you can do lv29/37/49 and get your armor pieces through daily rewards. That will still be a lot of work (probably even more x)) but could be less annoying to you. Actually this is only reasonable in conjunction with crafting : you just hope to grab a piece or two that you won’t have to craft while you wait for your time gated mats.

I sincerely respect your issue as I am also the kind that will play with self-imposed rules sometimes but I generally tend to adapt them so that they are reasonable in the game’s context. For instance playing chess and always wanting to use a specific opener as a rule is okay, refusing to use the queen however is bound to be too big of a handicap.