Guild Wars 2

Hi,
So briefly, what we know about ascended gear is that Arenanet planned for it to be in the game, but did not include it at launch(why?). In any case, it is meant to bridge the gap between legendary and exotic(I thought they were the same stat wise), and to give people something else to gear for since we were gearing up via exotic faster than anticipated. We also are under the impression, as per the AMA with Chris Whiteside, that they do not intend to release new ascended item slots every 3 months or so.

With those assumptions in mind, after several installments of ascended gear…one or two years down the road where you are able to acquire every slot of ascended, where do we go from there? What happens then? You’ll hear the gear treadmill, excuse me, \item treadmill folks clamor for more treadmill. And it has also been inferred that Arenanet has no quarrels with increasing the level cap for a major expansion.

SO, with all slots being ascended in one to two years time, and a major expansion in that general time frame(good timing?), they increase the level cap.. We get to the new level cap, for arguments sake 90, and farm the highest tier gear possible. For arguements sake, level 90 exotics. Do you think we will be slapped with an ascended gear climb again? What is the reasoning this time? Arenanet cannot throw the “bridge the gap” excuse at us again.

In summary: When the game has no where else to go in terms of item/gear progression, at a new level cap will we see new versions of ascended gear that will replace top level 90 gear? While level 90 gear. say exotics, would be available to you, would we be thrown higher level infusions to the level 80 ascended gear? How will the stats of level 90 exotic match up with those of level 80 ascended via more powerful infusions?

I thought this would be an interesting discussion that no one has really opened yet. People have speculated how far does ascended gear go in the game, when will it stop, but I do not think anyone has discussed what happens at level cap of a new expansion.

Please keep it civil (toward me) and anyone else that responds. You all will have your own differing opinions. I obviously have my own opinion on the subject that you might be able to interpret here, but I am curious what people think is in store for us after level 80 in terms of ascended/infusions.

Thoughts?

cesmode.4257:

SO, with all slots being ascended in one to two years time, and a major expansion in that general time frame(good timing?), they increase the level cap.. We get to the new level cap, for arguments sake 90, and farm the highest tier gear possible. For arguements sake, level 90 exotics. Do you think we will be slapped with an ascended gear climb again? What is the reasoning this time? Arenanet cannot throw the “bridge the gap” excuse at us again.

Since Ascended grind will already be in-game, they’ll just restart the treadmill. Level 90 Ascended will take as long to get then as level 80 Ascended takes currently. They won’t need to trot out the “bridge the gap” excuse again, nor will they need to say that should have been in before the game released. Actually, I doubt you’ll hear them reference “bridge the gap” again because it’s so absurdly false.

But yeah, expect the whole thing to just start over. You might even see another event to kick off the re-introduction of Ascended gear.

Gear in GW2 doesn’t matter nearly as much as in most MMOs. But, if they do it at all like other games, with a bump in the level cap, you’ll get new gear.

If they bump it to 90, I’d expect the gear difference to be about the same as the lvl 70-80 gap. I imagine they’d give new sets to the dungeon, badge, and karma vendors. I think it’d be nice if they’d again do a slow rollout of ascended gear at the new level cap.

All of this presupposes that they can get the game running to a point that it’ll have longevity and player-base to merit an expansion.

Its understandable that we’ll get new gear, obviously. What Im saying is, will we all experience the same thing we did at 80? Get the level “90 exotics”, only to be slowly replaced by ascended gear or higher level infusions?

If this is the case, this game is really no different than any other MMO. Its a definate treadmill, in some fashion. Im not saying it is a bad game, or a bad treadmill model, and I do think that all content except ascended gear(at least for higher fractal levels) is viable with most any gear, but nobody should kid themselves by saying theres no treadmill.

Mods will attack me.
But really guys, you think this mmo will last with omg i look so cool?
Do you have some kinda weird distorted view on what the mmo genre is?
Do you not realize that a majority of players are not logging in Because omfg i look so cool is not enough?
Do you not realize that if this game wants to be successful people need to login and buy gems and most people aren’t gonna spend money on gems for omfg i look so cool?

People these days….

cesmode.4257:

Its understandable that we’ll get new gear, obviously. What Im saying is, will we all experience the same thing we did at 80? Get the level “90 exotics”, only to be slowly replaced by ascended gear or higher level infusions?

Yes, that’s exactly what they’ll do; “easily” accessible level cap exotics, and “fill the gap” Ascended pieces with 10+ times the cost of an exotic but using the same mats as legendary pieces so they don’t so much fill the gap as they move the goal further away.

but there wasn’t a level increase in gw1. ever.
Why do you think it will increase? It’s not WoW after all.
adding cool updates every month should be enough, and we already have long-term goals(legendaries)
Saying that ascended gear chips away at legendary materials…
Well IDK rings have nothing to do with any materials, while backpack only requires 24 skillpoints(and a stack of ecto to infuse it :P but ectos are abundant in-game)

Evalia.7103:

but there wasn’t a level increase in gw1. ever.
Why do you think it will increase? It’s not WoW after all.

Unfortunately they did confirm that they intend to raise the level cap. And yes, it’s very likely that they will use that as an excuse to keep us on a treadmill (while insisting loudly that there is no evil treadmill here – only “item progression”, and progress obviously is good, right?)

Also… ectos abundant in the game? We’re obviously playing a different game. And as for backpack cost – look for books and quivers and their 250-stack of t6 mats requirements.

I agree with everything atralporing said

cesmode.4257:

Hi,
So briefly, what we know about ascended gear is that Arenanet planned for it to be in the game, but did not include it at launch(why?). In any case, it is meant to bridge the gap between legendary and exotic(I thought they were the same stat wise), and to give people something else to gear for since we were gearing up via exotic faster than anticipated. We also are under the impression, as per the AMA with Chris Whiteside, that they do not intend to release new ascended item slots every 3 months or so.

With those assumptions in mind, after several installments of ascended gear…one or two years down the road where you are able to acquire every slot of ascended, where do we go from there? What happens then? You’ll hear the gear treadmill, excuse me, \item treadmill folks clamor for more treadmill. And it has also been inferred that Arenanet has no quarrels with increasing the level cap for a major expansion.

SO, with all slots being ascended in one to two years time, and a major expansion in that general time frame(good timing?), they increase the level cap.. We get to the new level cap, for arguments sake 90, and farm the highest tier gear possible. For arguements sake, level 90 exotics. Do you think we will be slapped with an ascended gear climb again? What is the reasoning this time? Arenanet cannot throw the “bridge the gap” excuse at us again.

In summary: When the game has no where else to go in terms of item/gear progression, at a new level cap will we see new versions of ascended gear that will replace top level 90 gear? While level 90 gear. say exotics, would be available to you, would we be thrown higher level infusions to the level 80 ascended gear? How will the stats of level 90 exotic match up with those of level 80 ascended via more powerful infusions?

I thought this would be an interesting discussion that no one has really opened yet. People have speculated how far does ascended gear go in the game, when will it stop, but I do not think anyone has discussed what happens at level cap of a new expansion.

Please keep it civil (toward me) and anyone else that responds. You all will have your own differing opinions. I obviously have my own opinion on the subject that you might be able to interpret here, but I am curious what people think is in store for us after level 80 in terms of ascended/infusions.

Thoughts?

You have made some mistakes in this post. They said that will not release a new gear tier every 3 months not a new ascended slot. They have also confirmed that by this time next year we will have all of the ascended gear released.

@killul… Jut in time for an xpac nd to do it all over again. Treamill?

Very far-far-far-fetched assumptions here.

Anet never said they will increase the level cap, and judging by how the game is structured it wouldn’t make sense to raise the cap.
Anet also said the Ascended tier is bridge from exotic to legendaries which means no other tiers.

And even if they do raise the cap and add new exotics while rolling out ascended piece by piece, then what?
It’s the current direction, accept it or you can play all the other myriads of MMOs around with great graphics, action combat, no trinity… yes, all those.

Red Falcon.8257:

Very far-far-far-fetched assumptions here.

Anet never said they will increase the level cap, and judging by how the game is structured it wouldn’t make sense to raise the cap.
Anet also said the Ascended tier is bridge from exotic to legendaries which means no other tiers.

And even if they do raise the cap and add new exotics while rolling out ascended piece by piece, then what?
It’s the current direction, accept it or you can play all the other myriads of MMOs around with great graphics, action combat, no trinity… yes, all those.

Read the ama. Chris whiteside said they epect to increase the cap at some point which means new gear grind. Listn to manifesto which says no gear grind

Red Falcon.8257:

Very far-far-far-fetched assumptions here.

Anet never said they will increase the level cap, and judging by how the game is structured it wouldn’t make sense to raise the cap.

On the contrary, ANet has confirmed raising level cap in expansions.

All exotics will be straight out obsoleted by higher item level exotics. Ascended gear will most likely be obsoleted as well to make room for new fractals/etc in the expansion. I doubt ANet will obsolete Legendaries. It’s more likely Legendaries will require expensive (think 250 ectos + 250 another rare mat) process for upgrading the item level to the new max item level.

Well some of us are hoping they learned their lesson from employing the dungeon only design that they have now and return to the more apt and better designed open world meta event chain system that gave everyone the chance to get the items and things they needed.

Read countless hours of interviews prelaunch about how the meta DE system was so much better then the dungeon design programming because it was faster and took less time to add new content to the game with less cost.

So……where’s the open world content? so far we’ve had 1 event chain for 1 day, we’ve had a new island with in my experience 2 DE’s no metas……

That being said I do hope they will have ascended gear utilizing the already present crafting professions not the mystic toilet. and continue to add little nooks and crannies to the world. and possibly fix the loot so we get rewarded for our time.