Guild Wars 2

TL/DR: We need more ways to acquire Ascended gear, so that players of all types are rewarded with progression.

I’m a casual player. That doesn’t mean I’m a bad player, but I have limited play time so I cannot participate in all game activities. On top of that, some activities just don’t appeal to me as I would assume with most players. I’ve been able to acquire Ascended amulets, accessories, and rings through dailies, guild missions, and WvW. However, I find it very difficult to acquire Ascended weapons and backpieces.

For the weapons you are required to craft them through a crafting profession. This can be a long and arduous task (read grind), especially if you don’t already have the required crafting profession at level 400. As for the back pieces, they require that you participate in Fractal of the Mists dungeon runs.

Endgame gear acquisition has a radically shift from Exotic to Ascended. Exotic gear can be acquired via Karma vendors, loot drops, WvW Badge vendors, Trading Post, crafting, Dungeon tokens, etc. Ascended gear doesn’t offer that diversity in acquisition, and that needs to change.

I believe that endgame progression should be achieved by just playing the game as you did from 1 to 80. Over time, your character(s) should be become stronger without feeling you are grinding. I think Guild Wars 2 achieves this more so than other MMOs, but with Ascended gear this is changing for the worse. Again, this needs to change so that players are not forced into activities they’d rather not do and grind them over and over again.

Thanks!
-Cowboy

hopefully, more methods to acquire ascended weapons and back item will be available in the future.

Totally agreed. I hope Anet takes it serious and does something about it.

Didn’t ANet say shortly after the Ascended crafting for weapons was announced that they plan on making them obtainable in other ways? Perhaps it just went to a back burner because we keep them so bloody busy all the time, what with demands for balance, the obvious need for server optimization, and the living story pacing?

No, it needs to be deleted.

“You don’t say?”

Picking stuff from vendors seemed pretty epic to me!

The problem with Ascended gear is not that they are hard to get. The opposite, that’s the whole point of them existing in the first place. Getting exotics was WAY TO EASY, and made the game pretty much lack true end game content. A-net mentioned many times that they didn’t anticipated Exotics to become so common.

Their problem is that they where implemented After the game’s release, and while the game was already designed around Exotics, Ascended are shoved in various places, hardly designed to have them.

The normal way to get such an end-item, is by beating some impossibly hard boss.
But the only such case is Tequatle, and it still has problems by not being instanced, and the item it self being a color palette of the crafted ones.

Kite.2510:

The normal way to get such an end-item, is by beating some impossibly hard.

Well, we differ greatly on opinion there. Perhaps more challenging content could increase the speed in which a player progresses. But making all Ascended gear accessible that way would seem to go against established mechanics.

Right now, the back pieces and weapons seem like a grind. That goes against what I thought ANet was trying to achieve for the game. Not to mention, I don’t like it!

Also yes, I have seen the mentions that Exotics came to players quicker than expected by ANet. However, these have always been available through many routes. It does seem though with the nerf to karma, if Exotics are now deemed okay to acquire relatively quickly after reaching endgame, then the costs for them from the temple vendors needs to come down. But perhaps that is a separate discussion.

I always thought Legendaries were the items that the hardcores where suppose to flaunt. While everything else was to remain reasonably accessible to the rest of the player base.

-Cowboy

Kite.2510:

A-net mentioned many times that they didn’t anticipated Exotics to become so common.

Which is funny, since before that their stated goal wast to have pretty much everyone be in Exotics at level 80. They didn’t anticipate to ever reach their stated goals? Oh, really?

Astralporing.1957:

Kite.2510:

A-net mentioned many times that they didn’t anticipated Exotics to become so common.

Which is funny, since before that their stated goal wast to have pretty much everyone be in Exotics at level 80. They didn’t anticipate to ever reach their stated goals? Oh, really?

Also, everyone coming from gw1 expected to get the best gear fairly quickly/easily/cheaply and then just work on other things that interest them. Plus, why is it a bad thing if people get the best gear easily? It’s only bad for people who want to grind hard for the 1-10% boost, which (besides titles) gw1 was never about.

I’m sure Anet also never expected (which they didn’t cause they temp banned him when they first heard about it) the first lvl 80 to happen in less than 3 days (before the game actually “launched”), or for the first legendary weapon to be crafted in less than a month. That doesn’t mean that they should make leveling harder or legendary weapons cost more.

As for my own tinfoil hat, if they intended ascended gear to be in the game at launch (which they’ve stated before), why not tell us about this when the game launched/ shortly into the release. I didn’t follow the news back then, but when fractals were announce with ascended rings, did they ever mention that eventually they’d release full ascended gear?

agree 100% OP.

I work 10 hr daily and i go out often to drink and party.

I love playing games but is very hard to be 5 hr crafting or grinding (things i don’t enjoy).

You should make weapons like accessories, expensive as hell but at least the people like us that works can get them with the time.

Wallace MacBix.2089:

As for my own tinfoil hat, if they intended ascended gear to be in the game at launch (which they’ve stated before), why not tell us about this when the game launched/ shortly into the release. I didn’t follow the news back then, but when fractals were announce with ascended rings, did they ever mention that eventually they’d release full ascended gear?

Ascended gear was not on the radar available to the customer until November of last year. When it was introduced, it was stated that there would be full ascended — eventually.

Im currently looking for an exotic or better backpiece with zerker stats, and also trying to get Ascended Earrings… I only play a little bit each week, if I even get to play. I have 8 characters, 5 level 80s. Only 1 of those has almost all exotics and a few ascended pieces (the first char and my main char since beta). I would love to get a legendary or ascended, yet I have seen 5 exotic drops in a year. Also, I find map completion to be tedious, to this day I have barely left WvW.

It’s not the answer the original poster wants to hear, but ascended weapons are for the people who put a lot of time into the game. They are not meant to be there for everyone. The fact that some people say they are easy to get only shows the big disparity in currency collection between casual and hardcore players.

I suppose the argument still goes that casual players can do everything in the game. If you want to run dungeons, do events, WvW, or anything else then you can do it fine in exotic gear. The top end rewards are out of reach but that is probably true in other MMOs as well. At least in GW2 you can do everything even if you can’t get everything.

Stooperdale.3560:

The top end rewards are out of reach but that is probably true in other MMOs as well. At least in GW2 you can do everything even if you can’t get everything.

That’s just it, GW2 is (or was) not other MMOs. To my understanding, the top end rewards are suppose to be Legendaries, basically the best skins in the game to show the achievement of top/hardcore players. However, everybody should be able to achieve the same level of stats progress given time.

A couple points…

(1) I don’t equate “casual” with lesser skilled or bad, just short on time to spend in the game. So, things like fractals are going to be less accessible. I’ve always thought, assume skill being equal, that if I spend 40 hours as a casual progressing my character over the course of a month and a hardcore does 40 hours over a 3 day period we should both end up with the same amount of progress. 40 hours is 40 hours, regardless of it being continuous.

(2) Although I see Legendaries as the top top rewards, I still think these should be accessible to everybody. They should require lots and lots of effort (as they already do). However, I think a determined casual should be able to acquire one over the course of several months to a year, while a hardcore player logging many hours a week might be able to pull it off within a month. (I haven’t even looked at getting a Legendary, so my numbers may be way off what it is actually.)

TL/DR: Guild Wars 2 was suppose to break the MMO paradigm, but it seems to be falling into it.

SpaceCowboy.1398:

TL/DR: We need more ways to acquire Ascended gear, so that players of all types are rewarded with progression.

-snip-

Only read that much. Was all I needed.

/agreed

I gave in today and dumped about 50 Gold into getting my Ascended weapon. It really wasn’t “fun” and it doesn’t feel worth it either.

All crafting in this game is just such an epic grind fest with 90% of crafting materials based on the same 4 basic resources.

While I despise cooking for all the excessively complicated recipes at least it uses a variety of things from different sources. Crafting is just all about how much Wood and Ore you can stockpile.

I personally find gearing my alts in ascended rather easy (3 alts w/ all ascended trinkets + bp, working on my 7th ascended weapon now) while only struggling to get dragonite because world events are sooooo boring.

IMO you should be able to buy ascended weapons with fractal relics/pristines. Since fractals are the only content where it is actually REQUIRED.

With that being said, my complaint about ascended is that the games PvE is already way to easy. Everything but fractals can be done in masterworks gear or even naked.

If Anet is going to add this supposed “elite tier” of gear can we get some “elite content” as well? This game needs it bad.

Remove ascended gear. The grinders can go play somewhere else.

I completely quit playing after crafting my first ascended weapon and realized I had 9 more to go knowing that ascended armor is coming soon. This is not the kind of game I want to play. Sucks that it took me 1500hrs to figure it out, had I known it would have come to this I would not have bothered creating an account. I’ve never been a big MMO fan because of kitten like this (and my obsession with having BiS), which is why I bought into GW2 in the first place. Maybe when they add more ways of obtaining them I will start playing again or maybe ESO will suit me better (huge Elder Scrolls fan). Until then I’ll play all my other single player games that I have neglected over the past year.

I would not mind seeing other ways to gain ascended gear.

I would prefer to just be able to craft anything I’d like. As long as this is an option, I don’t mind seeing other ways to gain the gear.

I still think the best way to solve this is to just make the grind for cosmetics and not stats.

Wallace MacBix.2089:

Astralporing.1957:

Kite.2510:

A-net mentioned many times that they didn’t anticipated Exotics to become so common.

Which is funny, since before that their stated goal wast to have pretty much everyone be in Exotics at level 80. They didn’t anticipate to ever reach their stated goals? Oh, really?

Also, everyone coming from gw1 expected to get the best gear fairly quickly/easily/cheaply and then just work on other things that interest them. Plus, why is it a bad thing if people get the best gear easily? It’s only bad for people who want to grind hard for the 1-10% boost, which (besides titles) gw1 was never about.

I’m sure Anet also never expected (which they didn’t cause they temp banned him when they first heard about it) the first lvl 80 to happen in less than 3 days (before the game actually “launched”), or for the first legendary weapon to be crafted in less than a month. That doesn’t mean that they should make leveling harder or legendary weapons cost more.

As for my own tinfoil hat, if they intended ascended gear to be in the game at launch (which they’ve stated before), why not tell us about this when the game launched/ shortly into the release. I didn’t follow the news back then, but when fractals were announce with ascended rings, did they ever mention that eventually they’d release full ascended gear?

Yes. This is the biggest reason I quit playing. There were other factors too of course, but this was the big one. If they ever change this to how it SHOULD be, coming from GW1, I would probably give them another chance.