Guild Wars 2

Aevitas.4503:

So you’re saying they never ‘promised’ it if they even put it up in a blog at june 19th, 2012? Barely 6 weeks before the game has released…

Forgive me if I missed something from that blog, but Yes… nothing in that entire body of text was a promise. He’s also talking about the game in it’s current state and makes no assurances that these principles a guaranteed to remain constant. He also doesn’t lie about the loot. He says that the gear grinds aren’t mandatory and I don’t see fractals being mandatory even though there’s a clear incentive to do them.

Lol, everyone still eagerly awaiting a proper answer (from anet) to this very specific question. If answering this question actually gets an anet employee in trouble, then I don’t know what to say other than – “under new management” indeed?

Bruno Sardine.2907:

Aevitas.4503:

So you’re saying they never ‘promised’ it if they even put it up in a blog at june 19th, 2012? Barely 6 weeks before the game has released…

Forgive me if I missed something from that blog, but Yes… nothing in that entire body of text was a promise. He’s also talking about the game in it’s current state and makes no assurances that these principles a guaranteed to remain constant. He also doesn’t lie about the loot. He says that the gear grinds aren’t mandatory and I don’t see fractals being mandatory even though there’s a clear incentive to do them.

you.re choosing to willfully misunderstand the intent of what is being said.
nobody is saying what was wrote was legally binding. That isnt the issue
the intent and inferrence was clear.
he knew what he was asking us to believe .

and as a side if a manifesto isn’t an actual promise as you say, then why does the kittene hit the fan so bad when a politician breaks a manifesto commitment?
because they get elected on a manifesto which is understood to be the principles and pledges they will operate by when they get elected.

I’m normally not one to visit forums to complain about things. I haven’t done so in like 7 years of WoW. But this whole ascended gear thing is a mess. Why should I grind fractals countless times when I could be in WvW instead, fighting epic battles? If someone who grinded his heart out in PvE has an advantage over people that do WvW 95% of their playtime, there’s something wrong. That all happened already in WoW Vanilla when people in T3 dominated battlegrounds, and it sucked.

signed,
Someone who doesn’t enjoy running the same dungeon 300 times

THE ANSWER

Well I got a shocker for you the reason is they are adding in more legendary items. Namely armor, which will have the best stats of any item in the game. Ascended is just a means for us poor people who don’t have mass loot or have failed to benefit by Anets poor economic workings.

Ascended items are a hamster wheel, it literally is a step in the grind toward legendary’s.

Ok just finished counting the posts on the threads 80% is negative reaction to ascended gear

dunkelhaar.5781:

I’m normally not one to visit forums to complain about things. I haven’t done so in like 7 years of WoW. But this whole ascended gear thing is a mess. Why should I grind fractals countless times when I could be in WvW instead, fighting epic battles? If someone who grinded his heart out in PvE has an advantage over people that do WvW 95% of their playtime, there’s something wrong. That all happened already in WoW Vanilla when people in T3 dominated battlegrounds, and it sucked.

signed,
Someone who doesn’t enjoy running the same dungeon 300 times

Reminds me of the early days of WoW when people were just starting out raiding and almost everyone was in either blues or greens. There was this one horde guild on my server that basically raided nonstop and got all epic gear. Then they would join in PvP and just face roll everyone. They were sub par PvPers but were almost impossible to kill due to their gear.

I look at this whole ascended thing in a similar light. Right now, with only 3 items it’s not really bad but once whole ascended sets and weapons get introduced it’ll be a different ball game. People will basically need to have it to stay relevant in WvW.

It’s still not too late. Not many people have ascended gear yet.

Just set them all to exotic level stats and add an infusion slot. Shouldn’t be too difficult, if legendary stats can be adjusted as they see fit. If they do that, I think most of us will forgive.

This is my response on ascended gear..sent this to my guild leader this morning.

So, questing hatred aside. The thing I loved most about GW2 was the gear cap, I didn’t have to worry about random drops or “wanting to get a item” I could get it if I put the time and effort into it. With this new change and the desire to put grinding/rng into the mix. I won’t be playing anymore.

Been fun, been great. Hope you guys do enjoy, I will be taking the vent server down as I won’t be playing on this game and I do not wish to continue paying for it if not using it. I will be uninstalling the game

It’s the mother of all grinds, in a game where you can shorten grinds through the cash shop.

Probably not a coincidence.

I wasn’t expecting ascended gear. But when I saw there were Legendary weapons and Legendary pvp armor, I fully expected them to add Legendary PvE armor into the mix. I guess I was the only one that was expecting that to happen.

Volomon.9147:

THE ANSWER

Well I got a shocker for you the reason is they are adding in more legendary items. Namely armor, which will have the best stats of any item in the game. Ascended is just a means for us poor people who don’t have mass loot or have failed to benefit by Anets poor economic workings.

Ascended items are a hamster wheel, it literally is a step in the grind toward legendary’s.

This doesn’t answer the question. If they would have introduced legendary armors, it would have been with exotic stats, just like the weapons.
The Ascended gear stats upgrade has nothing to do in the game and must be removed.
The question is: why is it there?

Please remember that your exotic has a gem in it as well, by using my ascended backslot I actually lose some of the stats I consider primary in favour of stuff I don’t really want..

I totally think that it should never have had more stats then exotic to start with.. just the infusion slot would have been enough (fighting with the agony debuff on bosses is actually fun past level 10 fractal!)

It really isn’t a big deal basically

Perhaps they leave this thread here as theapy. The stages of grief:
Shock & Denial
Anger
Depression & Detachment
Dialogue & Bargaining
Acceptance; exploring options, new plan in place
Moving on

I gave money to a start-up on Kickstarter today. I never played Ultima, but people say it’s kind of that breed of sandbox game. Called Greed Monger (I know, stupid name), and it looks interesting. I won’t be spending anymore gems in the cash shop anyway, so my holiday gift to the gaming world.

Deadcell.9052:

Its amazing how a small stat increase on the few items released made all previous dungeon content obsolete, very rare do i see anyone spamming for other dungeons now. Not sure if this was intentional on ANets part.

this is only the beginning and it’s already at least 20% better. that isn’t small.

It’s interesting to see how much this one has fallen.

I have seen many threads over the last week or so (as well as the massive thread on ascended gear) filled with complaints about ascended gear and what its done to the gear ceiling in the game. I have seen complaints ranging from “casuals being shafted” to “WvW players are now forced to farm FoTM” from many people who really haven’t taken the time to investigate ascended gear. The aim of this post is to investigate the difference between a fully exotic geared player to one who has full exotic with the available ascended pieces, to judge if these complaints really are legitimate.

For the purposes of this post I will be looking at a player who is speccing full glass cannon Pow/Prec/CritDmg. The reason for this is twofold, A – its about as extreme as builds come with stacking certain stats so you are likely to see the biggest effect, B – it is far simpler to analyse as the purpose of this build is purely to maximise damage output. If anybody does find any flaws in my analysis please feel free to comment constructively below and I will try to address any questions.

Firstly as there are only 3 slots in game that currently have ascended level gear we only need to consider these three slots and the net change they will bring. Back + 2 rings.

So if we consider a player with previously the “best in slot” selection of Pow/Prec/CritDmg gear. This would be a Guild Assassins Backpack with a Exquisite Ruby Jewel slotted + 2 x Ruby Orichalcum Rings of the Berserker.

Total stats from this setup is:

Pow : 229
Prec: 155
CritDmg : 16%

Let us now consider a player with full Ascended gear in these slots. Before we do so lets look at what ascended gear is available.

So from my experience in gathering my own ascended gear and doing FoTM there are 10 back slot items, these can then be upgraded to infused items (not to be confused with slotting an infusion) – NOTE infusion only adds +5 agony res to the base stats, it does not increase anything else so therefore has no effect on gameplay outside of FoTM. The same applies to rings, each ring has an infused version which only adds +5 agony res. Back slots are crafted by a base recipe of the form:

1 x Vial of condensed mist essence + 250 x Ectos + 24 skill points + 250 x T6 rare mats.

Of the T6 rare mats only 5 are used in making a back slot : Blood, Fangs, Claws, Bones and Scales. The choice of T6 mat determines the stats on the back slot, so this accounts for 5 of the 10 items. The other 5 have the same stats but are determined by ones choice of skill point item. Crystals (can be bough at 5 for 3 points) of which 40 are required will give the player a book back slot which will have a defensive infusion slot, Philosophers Stones (can be bought at 10 for 1 point) of which 240 are required will give the player a quiver with an offensive infusion slot.

This leaves us with rings, A list of rings can be found on GW2DB and rings are looted from the Jade Maw daily reward with a random chance of giving a random ring. For the sake of our investigation we are looking to maximise the stats stated above so the “Best in slot” items of choice for us will be the Quiver of Swiftness and 2 x Crystalline Bands. We will also infuse these 3 items with a +5 agony res +5 Pow infusion. Total stats from this setup is as follows:

Pow: 279
Prec: 173
CritDmg: 21%

So by obtaining all the new “Best in slot” items we have gained 50 Pow/ 18 Prec / 5% CritDmg.

So looking just at the effect of the Power boost, on a fully exotic geared Pow/Prec/CritDmg player you will have approximately 2400 Pow after gear and traits. So getting this new gear has given you a net increase of 2% on your Power stat (also looking at precision you have gained a ~1% increase and then the +5% crit damage also). You dont have to be a genius to see that these increases are marginal at best.

Now this is the part where the maths gets a bit shady and some assumptions are made on my part. Ignoring crits and just looking at the base damage increase with this new gear, let us investigate how much of an advantage our new geared out player has.

According to the wiki (I assume this information is correct), Damage done is calculated as follows:

Damage done = (weapon damage) * Power * (skill-specific coefficient) / (target’s Armor)

From this equation it follows that ignoring everything else a 2% increase in power will result in a 2% increase to your damage done. Once you add in the precision and crit damage lets be very generous and say this boosts overall damage output by up to 5%. Personally in a game with as involved combat system as GW2, I dont view a 5% damage boost as such a game breaking boost, especially considering how easily doable most of the prior endgame PvE was in not full exotic gear.

In conclusion how does this effect players? For starters in PvE this gear is completely unnecessary and overkill outside of the new FoTM dungeon, its main purpose is to be used to combat the new agony mechanic and the difficulty of its procurement acts as a gating system to keep end game PvE players engaged. A role I believe it has achieved.

Do “casuals” NEED this gear? no, is this gear beyond the reach of a casual player? also no, they will just achieve it at a slower rate which quite frankly is not an outrageous thing for a video game, nothing good comes easy so don’t expect it to be so.

As for this gears effect on the WvW scene, quite frankly one players output is a very minor part of a servers performance in WvW. Looking back at the numbers lets say the new gear will give you a 5% boost to whatever it is you do, if 20 players all have this gear that should equal in output the efficiency of a 21 man group. So if I were a WvW player I would ask myself, Do I have the time/resources to get this gear? If yes then get it, if no, spend the time just finding yourself another friend amongst the millions of people who play the game and it will most likely do you better than the gear would anyway.

With regards to the top WvW bracket, if you want to be the best you have to be willing to go the extra mile. If the people you play against are willing to get this gear to have the edge and you do not, then they deserve their victory. Plus with the time it takes to get a perfect set of this ascended gear its likely ANet will implement a WvW alternative in the interest of balance and not forcing players to play aspects of the game they don’t enjoy, before an entire server is kitted out as such.

TL;DR – I will not provide a TL;DR as I feel the last few paragraphs express my opinion in as brief words as I am willing to put them, it doesn’t take much longer than 5-10 mins to read this post, just read it and you may learn something.

Thanks for your attention,

~Zinkey

I am curious about this topic’s question as well. I was fully expecting that if ascended item status returned from GW1, that it would involve a quest/mystic forge with some serious time/effort/materials with the end result being a simple upgrade to the quality of exotic armor pieces (from exotic to ascended with the only difference being a new infusion slot in each armor piece). This way exotics are still the upper “tier” of gear, but the ascended property is more of a horizontal upgrade meant for dungeons and whatever new content you have planned. Ascended would just be exotics with special properties, so the gear would act the same as exotics in any situation that infusion isn’t necessary such as WvW.

Instead, ascended items are completely different items from exotics and have better stats to boot which is instead a vertical gear climb. Why is this?

Rpgtabbycat.5869:

In a way, the manifesto is still correct. You don’t need Ascended gear unless you plan to do Fractals past level 10. So you can still see and do the Fractals content up to that point . If you want to continue to progress, at that point you would need to get the available ascended items. Therefore, you don’t need Ascended gear to experience every element of the game. There is no gear treadmill. There is simply an optional Fractals progression and corresponding armor items.

But because these items are better than exotic, people feel they will be forced to grind them to remain competitive with those people who wanted to do the fractals content and have already obtained them.

I just wanted to edit and add that ArenaNet could have avoided this entire fiasco by simply making the new Ascended items have the same stats as regular gear but with Infusion and better looking/more desirable skins. Thus players would have only been affected if they wanted to do Fractals and collect those armor skins. But by increasing the stats, for whatever reason the devs had for doing it, they opened a big can of worms.

Wrong. Ascended gear is at least 20% better than exotics so you MUST have it to compete in wvwvw.

Zinkey.6983:

Firstly as there are only 3 slots in game that currently have ascended level gear we only need to consider these three slots and the net change they will bring. Back + 2 rings.

It was nice of you to include the counter-argument so nobody has to type it out, at least.

Rpgtabbycat.5869:

There is a difference between want and need. You can complete all the current content excluding fractals with Exotics. You don’t “need” the ascended items to complete them. But having the stat increase would make it easier and therefore more desirable to have them. At this point it still remains the only thing you “need” Ascended armor for is the infusion to mitigate agony.

so you expect those of us who love wvwvw to just get rolled and stomped by people who have ground through the treadmill? that sounds like a fun game. Sorry, do the math. you must have this gear or get curb stomped in wvwvw.

The math is wrong. Add up the stats. the differences and the combinations thereof generate at least 20% higher stats with the new tier. they are a must have, and this is only the beginning of the grind.

Man its a dying age I hope the world won’t end on december 21 because I really want to see this entitlement generation next years demands in mmo’s . This is the first mmo where you have everything handed to you on a plate and too many options for the casual crowd to get into high end gear. People in here saying they want rollbacks on gear now ? Sorry bro some of us have ascended backpieces already forget about it.

Some of us are running fractals 10+ on a daily basis because we are gamers afterall and we don’t expect everything to be served on a silver plate. People crying about a ring and a backpiece on a 200 thread page is a joke indeed. What’s next demand on free legendary’s drop in every daily dungeon event ?

Im starting to miss the wow crowd /sad days.

Columba.9730:

The math is wrong. Add up the stats. the differences and the combinations thereof generate at least 20% higher stats with the new tier. they are a must have, and this is only the beginning of the grind.

As stated in my post I am looking at Net stat gain at this point in the game, not relative stat gain. My numbers are in fact correct when you look at a players full stats, not just the difference between the two sets of accessories.

This post is about what is already in the game and its effect on the game. Not speculation about further gear and its effect as we have no idea what ANet have in mind for this.

It isn’t speculation. They’ve plainly stated their intentions.

Columba.9730:

The math is wrong. Add up the stats. the differences and the combinations thereof generate at least 20% higher stats with the new tier. they are a must have, and this is only the beginning of the grind.

There is very little value in comparing the 2 tiers of items; instead we should compare the effects that these items can have on an entire character. This is nowhere near the 20% you claim, and there is no way my character that has 2 of 3 available asc. is near 20% stronger than yours.

Columba.9730:

It isn’t speculation. They’ve plainly stated their intentions.

The actual stats of the items, how they are to be obtained, when they are to be introduced is all speculation. It is also not in the game yet, so is irrelevant as my post is about how this affects the game right now.

offence.4726:

Im starting to miss the wow crowd /sad days.

Then go back. You should have never bought this game because it wasn’t made for you. But because of illiterate dungeon trolls like you who can’t be bothered to read about a game before buying it DEMANDED that ArenaNet give them a hamster-wheel to run on, they ruined the game for the people that they originally pitched the game to.

Its because of you content locusts that the MMO genre just got pushed back into the dark ages after only 3 months in the sun. You’re a piece of scum. Enjoy the rest of high school.

Rpgtabbycat.5869:

I wasn’t expecting ascended gear. But when I saw there were Legendary weapons and Legendary pvp armor, I fully expected them to add Legendary PvE armor into the mix. I guess I was the only one that was expecting that to happen.

No, I was fully expecting Legendary Armor since it only makes sense.
I did however expect Legendary Armor to have the same stats as Legendary Weapons, which had the same stats as Exotics.
This makes it optional and not a requirement and entirely a matter of vanity and bragging rights. As it should be.

Baron von Berenstain.3864:

I am curious about this topic’s question as well. I was fully expecting that if ascended item status returned from GW1, that it would involve a quest/mystic forge with some serious time/effort/materials with the end result being a simple upgrade to the quality of exotic armor pieces (from exotic to ascended with the only difference being a new infusion slot in each armor piece). This way exotics are still the upper “tier” of gear, but the ascended property is more of a horizontal upgrade meant for dungeons and whatever new content you have planned. Ascended would just be exotics with special properties, so the gear would act the same as exotics in any situation that infusion isn’t necessary such as WvW.

Instead, ascended items are completely different items from exotics and have better stats to boot which is instead a vertical gear climb. Why is this?

Precisely so.

The answer to your question, OP, is found right here:

“Our desire is to create a game that is more inclusive for hardcore and casual players alike, but we don’t want to overlook the basic need for players to feel like they are progressing and growing even after hitting max level.”

and later in the same blog

“adding challenging new combat mechanics to end-game content and ways to mitigate those mechanics through gear progression for high-end players”

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/linsey-murdock-unveils-new-high-end-ascended-gear/

What many people forget and what this whole discussion is about, this is only the beginning of vertical item progression. It was clearly stated that ANet plans to bind more content to it and perhaps even existing content.

Yes, at the moment you do only need it in Flavour of the Month. But there will be green infusions, yellow infusions and orange infusions, perhaps legendary one as well.

That changes in the long run the face of the game completely and once this is through, like Noam Chomsky calls it, a norm is established.

Attacking a generation is still ad hominem.

It’s really, really simple: people want the game they were sold on. That game featured a stat plateau and cosmetic rewards.

To me the Ascended gear is not the problem, the problem is the slippery slope ANet seems to be going down with the slotted Infusions.

By themselves Ascended vs Exotic makes for a reasonable tradeoff due to the flexibility Runes give. So sure you get better overall stats with Ascended but you can get better individual stats with Exotics + Runes. But because the slotted Infusions can add to base stats, & at least on the surface look like they will have a power progression, that tradeoff eventually gets null and void by the shear power increase.

If Infusions only gave power/defense increases that applied in areas with Agony then there wouldn’t be a problem IMO. Yeah people would need to “grind” to be able to do the higher difficulty PvE but as long as any content added works like FotM and lets everyone see the new content I don’t think there is problem having a barrier to reaching the highest difficulties of said content.

There is an interesting game with WvW style in development.
Hopefully they don’t fail to fit there costumers needs as others just horribly did.
Time to hiss banner under Queen Ayrenn I guess.
With a bit luck we see each other TES-O ;P

I’ve pretty given up expecting any satisfying feedback from ANet.
There must be a grave reason for this turn of events and I wouldn’t expect us to get an honest answer about the internal workings or decisions made within the company.
Three of the staff have now come out to try to convince us this is not a change in direction. Probably just time before they have all made the same statement.

It looks like they are backed in to a corner. Some of us won’t believe what they say, others will accept whatever they say and many more won’t even be aware of what they say.
I guess they are just hoping that losing the core player base that this game was originally aimed at will not negatively affect them in the long run.

I’ve had my say in the forums and now I’m just apathetic to the situation. I don’t see a satisfying conclusion to this debacle. And would rather not spend any more time here. Good luck and have fun everyone. Hope it turns out for the best.

Columba.9730:

It isn’t speculation. They’ve plainly stated their intentions.

Not only this, but for a brief period before they repatched the game to ‘hide’ it, Legendary weapons had Ascended stats on them. There is absolutely going to be Ascended pieces for every equipment slot, so pretending that this is all that we need to consider is a bit like saying “Just go touch the stove; you don’t know that it’s going to be hot again just because it’s glowing red. Stop all this pessimistic speculation!”

I mean, hell. If the math on just these three pieces of equipment adds up to a 5% difference in effectiveness, a full set of equipment is 12 armour and accessory slots, plus the stat bonus on a weapon, plus the base damage of the weapon will increase (by about 5%, if I recall from the screenshots of Legendary stats – which compounds with the base stat increases). So you’re looking at more than a 20% increase from the stat bonuses, plus ~6% (120% of 105% base damage) from the weapon itself.

And that’s going to come with extra defenses over an Exotic Berserker’s set, because of the base stats on the armour.

That’s a massive jump.

There are really two questions here. The question just under the surface is does Ascended gear represent the addition of a gear-based, vertical progression and it must be asked first. Of course, the answer is yes. In terms of necessity, rather than argue the necessity, why not just benchmark it as we already have the experience with gear-based, vertical progression from other MMO’s. In my experience in those MMO’s there really was never a question about whether you acquired the new tier of gear, that’s what you do in grindy MMO’s. So, if you understand the nature of power creep and a vertical gear-grind you really don’t need to ask whether or not it’s necessary as we already have the experience to answer that question. It’s simply what you do in grindy MMO’s.

That makes me a feel a bit better about the impact on WvW if it pans out that way in the end. I wish they didn’t allow it at all in any of the player-v-player arenas, but knowing that it might not be that big of a deal I guess makes that moot.

Ultimately I wish they had made it something that was useful ‘specifically’ for vertical content, like that new dungeon and possible raids in the future, for anyone that wants to play the vertical progression game, and keep it out of the other environments. PvE out in the world? Happy to have them. Dungeons? I don’t do them, so I don’t particularly care, and as a mod posted (and they are right), if it wasn’t ascended gear, it would have been something else. There’s the ‘Starbelly Sneetch’ crew that likes vertical progression and that’s great, they should have access to that type of content if that’s what interests them. I just don’t like it so much when that content crosses and impacts other content in negative ways.

Thanks for the write up.

What we need ASAP is for several people with a full set of Exotics and all the new Ascended gear to go slap a training dummy around and post the results. Better yet, put it on Youtube.

Zinkey.6983:

Columba.9730:

It isn’t speculation. They’ve plainly stated their intentions.

The actual stats of the items, how they are to be obtained, when they are to be introduced is all speculation. It is also not in the game yet, so is irrelevant as my post is about how this affects the game right now.

Talk about the present all you want. This isn’t about a single patch with 3 slots of gear, it’s about the slippery slope that follows once you are going down that path.

If the difference is 2% now and 10% later, why would I continue to play knowing the gap will only widen over time? They’ve said future ascension gear is coming. Why should I continue to play knowing I’m only going to fall further and further behind? Why would I support this company with my pocket book when I’m considered a 2nd class customer because I can’t devote hundreds of hours to this game?

Argue all you want about the present, but some of us think further ahead than that. I won’t support a game that puts me further and further behind the longer it exists. If I wanted that, I would play WoW.

Zinkey.6983:

NOTE infusion only adds +5 agony res to the base stats, it does not increase anything else so therefore has no effect on gameplay outside of FoTM. The same applies to rings, each ring has an infused version which only adds +5 agony res.

From Robert Hrouda:

different infusions supply different stat combos based on whether they are offensive or defensive.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/Infusions-and-Offensive-Defensive-slots/first#post807559

First few difficulties of FotM are Kitten Easy. it is not gated content at all.

They already said they will be adding new ways to get this gear including WvWvW.
That is Not speculation, it came from the horse’s mouth.

I’m sure Anet didn’t envision this would upset so many people. Exotics and Legendary gear have been on the table forever. They got the idea to be nice and bridge the gap between Exotics and Legendary gear sets, and everyone has a massive cow.

Its been stated multiple times that Ascended gear will be available through WvW play and everyone’s still crying about dungeon grinds without even giving the game a chance to fully implement the mechanic. Three months in and there’s already massive cries from a crowd that was ferociously loyal to the game last week to down the game on metacritic and amazon? Are you serious?

When I first began reading this thread, I thought there were some interesting points, but this massive outrage based primarily on speculation and conspiracy theories has me doubtful for the future of the game due to community fickleness, not because I don’t want Anet to shut up and take my money. Though there have been some good points to be made about the psychology of “gear checks,” the unavailability of people to run content that shouldn’t have become outdated 3 months in, and whatnot, its just been a couple of days people. Of course most of the player-base is still fiddling around with the new content. In case you haven’t noticed, this game is all about rapid-fire updates – You’re going to see another one real soon!

I hope when they fully implement the ascended system, when ascended gear is getting thrown at you for everything you decide to do, including PVP, all the people who helped ruin this game’s rep on amazon and who left their guilds as such a knee-jerk reaction to make a point about how betrayed they feel have some trouble getting back into their guilds. = |

Let’s also point out that the degree to which Ascended gear improves a character is largely irrelevant. What people are angry about is the qualitative effect they have: Your character’s maxed out gear is suddenly downgraded to less than maxed out.

Read that a few times, and notice what’s missing.
It’s not “downgraded to 25% less than maxed out”.
It’s not “downgraded to 20% less than maxed out”.
It’s not “downgraded to 5% less than maxed out”.
It’s not “downgraded to 1% less than maxed out.”

It’s “downgraded to less than maxed out”. How much is irrelevant.

@StormGryffen yea spot on. So much for the “loyal” fanbase of the game series. Someone above me talked about high school. From what I recall high school teenagers where a bit more understanding

NaughtyProwler.8653:

Zinkey.6983:

Columba.9730:

It isn’t speculation. They’ve plainly stated their intentions.

The actual stats of the items, how they are to be obtained, when they are to be introduced is all speculation. It is also not in the game yet, so is irrelevant as my post is about how this affects the game right now.

Talk about the present all you want. This isn’t about a single patch with 3 slots of gear, it’s about the slippery slope that follows once you are going down that path.

If the difference is 2% now and 10% later, why would I continue to play knowing the gap will only widen over time? They’ve said future ascension gear is coming. Why should I continue to play knowing I’m only going to fall further and further behind? Why would I support this company with my pocket book when I’m considered a 2nd class customer because I can’t devote hundreds of hours to this game?

Argue all you want about the present, but some of us think further ahead than that. I won’t support a game that puts me further and further behind the longer it exists. If I wanted that, I would play WoW.

the main reason to play a game is, fun. if you aren’t having fun then there is no reason to continue.

Zinkey.6983:

Columba.9730:

It isn’t speculation. They’ve plainly stated their intentions.

The actual stats of the items, how they are to be obtained, when they are to be introduced is all speculation. It is also not in the game yet, so is irrelevant as my post is about how this affects the game right now.

Folks looking into the future is affecting the game right now. Some people are thinking crap, i will eventually have to grind a full set of this stuff. Pffft…isn’t worth it…..i have a fully decked out toon in (insert mmo here), and the gameplay experience isn’t that much different.

offence.4726:

@StormGryffen yea spot on. So much for the “loyal” fanbase of the game series. Someone above me talked about high school. From what I recall high school teenagers where a bit more understanding

Loyalty infers a devotion to a cause or ideal. If the developers are willing to give up on their ideals to go after more subscriptions, they deserve no loyalty.

Wait, why should the fan base be loyal if the game creators turn around everything they promised? What?

Also, wow, didn’t notice that Amazon score.