Guild Wars 2

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Is it fair to say that regarding Ascended Gear we would like to see more ways to earn it and in terms of drop rates, a higher percentage chance of acquiring them through this method?

Chris

RNG is a terrible, terrible way to acquire basic BiS gear, so unless the drop rates were dramatically improved, this still wouldn’t appease many players.

The quickest win that I can see would be to add a merchant who can change the stat combination on your gear, like the trait retrainers. If you need a gemstore version of this, have an instant-one usable anywhere, but this should ultimately be a core game mechanic, not a gemstore convenience service.

This would help everybody, no matter what level of gear they’re currently sitting at, and it would remove the pressure of choosing the ‘right’ gear set for that one build you’re going to lock yourself into because you can’t afford more than one set.

I think there should be more ways of acquisition that is based around working towards a goal, rather than RNG or material farming. It should be something that you WILL get if you complete the goals. I understand that crafting offers that to an extent but there are still materials that you have to farm for. I want to be able to put dungeon tokens toward building the gear, or pristine fractal relics that were basically admitted to be useless on the last patch.

Every time these RNG modes of acquiring gear come about, I just think about that PAX interview where a developer stated how passionate the team was about making sure you can get anything you really want by playing the game normally. It really makes me think, “what does the GW2 team consider ‘normal play’”?

Faowri.4159:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Is it fair to say that regarding Ascended Gear we would like to see more ways to earn it and in terms of drop rates, a higher percentage chance of acquiring them through this method?

Chris

RNG is a terrible, terrible way to acquire basic BiS gear, so unless the drop rates were dramatically improved, this still wouldn’t appease many players.

Quoting for truth.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

VOLKON.1290:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Is it fair to say that regarding Ascended Gear we would like to see more ways to earn it and in terms of drop rates, a higher percentage chance of acquiring them through this method?

Chris

Possibly, or in lieu of that a means to add flexibility to the gear to allow for stat changes without needing to create a whole new set (see my inscription idea as an example).

Someone creates a whole set of berserker ascended and finds themselves getting rolled still (as glass cannons do) in WvW may have buyers remorse when that PVT set starts looking mighty tempting…

Yep thanks Volk for adding Stat changes to the proposal.

’Is it fair to say that regarding Ascended Gear we would like to see more ways to earn it and in terms of drop rates, a higher percentage chance of acquiring them through this method?

The ability to change gear stats.

The ability to potentially use tokens from encounters (allowing users to work toward acquisition of Ascended Gear) that would otherwise only offer RNG chances on Ascended Gear, allowing users to work toward the items (courtesy of Nike and others)’

Note this is the formulation of a proposal for discussion.

Chris

Yes yes yes! I am actually okay with Ascended being “hard to get” if it had more utility to it to justify the “hard to get”. I do not want it to be as common as exotics, or what was the point of putting it in the game??

What I would like to see:

Account bound (as it is now), Hard to get initially (just like it is now actually…no change on that aspect), but then subsequently easier to get (making your first set of armor opens up a “armor box” that can be made for 1/4 the materials, this opens on all of your other crafting disciplines…so Tailor, Leatherwork, if you already created your first set on Armorsmith)…this would allow people with “Alts” an easier way to outfit them….Keep the equipment “rare” but easier for a single player to outfit multiple characters.

Make infusions and runes swappable (I am even okay if this was done with a gem-store item…after-all ANET needs to make money)

Give the ascended gear either “limited” stat swapping or full stat swapping like legendaries…or a way (a quest for instance) that would allow you to Add a stat for stat swapping.

This would make ascended gear retain its rarity (not hurting players who already spent a ton making theirs) while still allowing people to gear up ALTS (its the same player after-all who already paid the price)…while giving the ascended gear enough utility to make it worth the cost of creating a set.

Nike.2631:

I remain (strongly) opposed to the ability to change their stats. It wasn’t necessary for Exotics and if access improves it won’t be necessary for Ascended.

If Ascended are supposed to occupy your time between a full exotic load-out and getting a Legendary, then amassing one set and being done forever puts them way, way, WAY closer to the Exotic side of that sequence of play. If we add some means to purchase them, filling out your Ascended tier one-&-only-once could easily end up taking less time than amassing 2-3 sets of exotics does…

The entire tier becomes fully self-defeating at that point.

I can’t possibly disagree more with this opinion. If accessibility becomes to easy you will soon enough find a new problem where some players have all the ascended gear they want. As a result they’ll begin to demand more progression past ascended. If you keep accessibility a long term thing but add flexibility to the stats you can alleviate that to some degree. If the stats are on items (inscriptions) that can be replaced and these are crafted items that can be traded you open up further uses for materials, new markets, expanded crafting options and more means of horizontal progression by simply being able to add new stat combinations on inscriptions

I worry about faster not always being better.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Is it fair to say that regarding Ascended Gear we would like to see more ways to earn it and in terms of drop rates, a higher percentage chance of acquiring them through this method?

Chris

I hate to say that but increased droprates doesn’t matter for me. I have almost 4k hours played this game the drop that was worth most money for me was a an exotic staff worth 8 gold on fractals scale 14 I think. At this point I’m completly fed up with all forms of RNG, can you imagine that dedictet players get annoyed by this system? I mean I played everything around 30k kills wvw, rank 40 pvp , fractals 81 , early dungeonmaster 2 weeks after release ect.. Still I can’t afford an my legendary staff after all these hours having 7 lvl 80’s char played every aspect of the game…

Is it really so hard to implement some fix reward for hard content or some things like having done a event x times rewards for sure a certain skin or stuff?

Can you imagine that it is annoying that you see the way you played the game was stupid? There are people with way less gametime higher pvp ranks ( Skyhammer exploit they dind’t get reseted), Made money on tp have mutiple legendaries and bought they’re dungeonmastertitle (wich is perfectly legit I know), and played fractals to lvl 30 in before patch ( so they didn’t loose those 51 levels) and only leveled up with dailies instead of rushing to 50 ( cause of leaderbaords ) thus having more rewards there again. With the glory that didn’t get removed from skyhammer farmers they can even easy buy lvl 80 chars now with the new way to level with books and glory.

It’s just a feeling like getting hurt again and again instead of awarded for beeing a loyal player since about 8 years of guildwars.. and it’s way worse than not having a legendary or anything.. it’s the feeling that I feel like there is no point in progressing today since I can do it in 10% of the time tomorrow.. ( I could have played 2 weeks skyhammer to get my rank 40, in about 10% of the time, I also wasted about 90% of the time in fractals for going to scale 80 using rez orbs money for repair cannisters and stuff)
Those are the main 2 issues that there are to less fix, and accountbound rewards!
You can buy everything with money… play the tp is atm the best way to aquire anything.. Why the heck making it possible that people can basicaly buy ascended armor?
Why are legendary weapons buyable?

In my opignon the main issue with progress: It is pointless, as long as
a.) You can buy it with money as well
b.) You can farm it in a way and don’t get banned for it making the progress and time spent for other people obsolete ( example: Skyhammer , Gladiator title in gw1 (farmable bevor update))
c.) Your progress can get deleted without compensation ( see fractals ( I keep saying this till I have an answer that is honest and makes sence))
d.) You can’t really progress RNG( You can do 10000’s fractals and not get a single skin if your unlucky

Only fix prestige rewards in the game are : Liadri, SAB Tribunational mode weapons!

I still think and what I know at least from the more dedicted playerbase the main issue is that you completly lack of rewards that are special and tied to some gamemode.

I really hope you can start making things as fix reward for special work , or at least make things REALLY accountbound. ( You should not be able to buy time ( time gated materials if you are rich im my opginon)) and legendaries shoulnd’t be sold as well….

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Is it fair to say that regarding Ascended Gear we would like to see more ways to earn it and in terms of drop rates, a higher percentage chance of acquiring them through this method?

Chris

I think it depends. Drops are often tradeable which I’m totally against. I don’t know the numbers, but I think there are too many VERY rich people out there, and too many poor ones. Ascended shouldn’t be for rich only, since this would go against the “gem shop cosmetics only” credo.

Is it set in stone that the current system (tradeable mats for ascended) stays as it is?

I’d love to see it drop in the open world, yes… but not without effort (or a bit of luck). I like the idea of having rare spawning mobs wandering around the world which drop rare stuff. It would create a tension: do I kill the (soloable but strong) mob with a chance of some rare reward, or does it kill me and will be gone once I’m back from my waypoint respawn? Risk – Reward.

Gnat.9405:

I think there should be more ways of acquisition that is based around working towards a goal, rather than RNG or material farming. It should be something that you WILL get if you complete the goals. I understand that crafting offers that to an extent but there are still materials that you have to farm for. I want to be able to put dungeon tokens toward building the gear, or pristine fractal relics that were basically admitted to be useless on the last patch.

I agree that it should be a guaranteed reward for … dungeon tokens, badges, commendations, laurels, jumping puzzles.

I have to stress nobody is waiting for additional farms though: if they added it to fractals, most wouldn’t bother getting it cause fractals are not something a lot of people like to play (last time my guild did a fractal run is some 3 weeks ago and we didn’t even finish it).

VOLKON.1290:

Nike.2631:

I remain (strongly) opposed to the ability to change their stats. It wasn’t necessary for Exotics and if access improves it won’t be necessary for Ascended.

If Ascended are supposed to occupy your time between a full exotic load-out and getting a Legendary, then amassing one set and being done forever puts them way, way, WAY closer to the Exotic side of that sequence of play. If we add some means to purchase them, filling out your Ascended tier one-&-only-once could easily end up taking less time than amassing 2-3 sets of exotics does…

The entire tier becomes fully self-defeating at that point.

I can’t possibly disagree more with this opinion. If accessibility becomes to easy you will soon enough find a new problem where some players have all the ascended gear they want. As a result they’ll begin to demand more progression past ascended. If you keep accessibility a long term thing but add flexibility to the stats you can alleviate that to some degree. If the stats are on items (inscriptions) that can be replaced and these are crafted items that can be traded you open up further uses for materials, new markets, expanded crafting options and more means of horizontal progression by simply being able to add new stat combinations on inscriptions

I worry about faster not always being better.

I agree with VOLKON. Plus, people already HATE the looks of ascended…giving them more utility (with stat-change) would not stop people from going after other types of armor for the looks…heck I went out and bought (with Karma) some of the “Dark” set of armor (greens) just for the looks to apply to my exotic set I crafted…..and I have changed my “looks” at least 5 times as I got bored with the previous…working on a new “look” right now…ANET makes a lot off of me in transmutation stones.

If I could keep the same armor and work on “horizontal” progression of new builds / different looks" rather than grinding the gold to buy yet another set for the additional stats…I would be an extremely HAPPY player.

VOLKON.1290:

I can’t possibly disagree more with this opinion. If accessibility becomes to easy you will soon enough find a new problem where some players have all the ascended gear they want.

I think the direction gaining momentum is less that acquisition needs to be faster and more there need to be multiple paths of comparable difficulty/time investment.

Making each piece count as all 17 possible pieces (and hey, what happened to Giver stats anyway…?) at the same time as allowing players to acquire them by multiple tracks simultaneously is gonna turn the tier into a rubber stamp, not an intermediate activity while inching up on your Legendary.

I understand the appeal for the players, but I don’t think it’s a good call for the game.

As a result they’ll begin to demand more progression past ascended.

I don’t think I’m alone in my willingness to tell those players “bite me.”

‘Vertical progressionists’ had their say once already and the result is this morass we’re digging out of now.

Lets not indulge in the insanity of repeating it.

Wow, I leave for the weekend and we are no up to 24 pages. GG. Here my thoughts on the issue. I think one of these should be put into place.

1. All Ascended gear should be account bound. I accept that Ascended gear is here to stay. I am also accepting the fact that it will take a long while to acquire. However, for people who like build experimentation and or have multiple characters this is punitive. Making all Ascended gear account bound would go a long way to resolve this issue.

2. Ascended Gear and Fractals of the Mists.
Players should be able to acquire all fractal/agony related materials IN FRACTALS of the Mists. This should be acquired with Fractal Tokens.

Since ANET is unifying the tokens by allowing Pristines to be turned into regular relics I will limit my proposal to the later.

Fractal relics should be able to buy you: trinkets, amulets, ascended infusions, Agony infusions +1, Ascended armor, Ascended weapons, Ascended Materials and Fractal skins. The price for these can be set to be consistent with rings which take 10 pristine relics or (150 regular tokens). It does not have to be cheap, but it should really be sold there.

It has been a year and there have been no changes to the merchandise that can be purchased with relics in fractals.

I prefer with doing with the terrible implementation of Soulbinding, but either of these would greatly improve the game by allowing for build diversity and or various classes use. It will also give Anet a more cohesive philosophy in regards to their currency.

Changing stats should stay legendary exclusive. Otherwise there is no reason to go for legendary if you dont like the skin.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

VOLKON.1290:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Is it fair to say that regarding Ascended Gear we would like to see more ways to earn it and in terms of drop rates, a higher percentage chance of acquiring them through this method?

Chris

Possibly, or in lieu of that a means to add flexibility to the gear to allow for stat changes without needing to create a whole new set (see my inscription idea as an example).

Someone creates a whole set of berserker ascended and finds themselves getting rolled still (as glass cannons do) in WvW may have buyers remorse when that PVT set starts looking mighty tempting…

Yep thanks Volk for adding Stat changes to the proposal.

’Is it fair to say that regarding Ascended Gear we would like to see more ways to earn it and in terms of drop rates, a higher percentage chance of acquiring them through this method?

The ability to change gear stats.

The ability to potentially use tokens from encounters (allowing users to work toward acquisition of Ascended Gear) that would otherwise only offer RNG chances on Ascended Gear, allowing users to work toward the items (courtesy of Nike and others)’

Note this is the formulation of a proposal for discussion.

Chris

RNG as Nike correctly stated is quite poor for the player when looking at the personal experience. What if you’d mix progress and more reliable rng a bit?

like that:

• there is zone progression: do unique events (not the same on and on) in one zone to progress on a zone-bar.
• Once high enough different kinds of rewards are unlocked
• A soloable strong mob randomly wanders around a zone – sometimes
• He can drop an Ascended piece, but the droprate is very low
• Zone-progression unlocks a “Signet of Capture” which only works in that zone and costs quite a bit of karma. 1 time use.
• Using that Signet on that rare mob in that zone gives you a 10 (random number) % chance of that piece of Ascended gear.

TL;DR: there are hard to find rare mobs in a zone which drop Ascended gear with low droprates. Droprates can be increased greatly by progressing in that zone and purchasing a Signet of Capture for Karma.

Nike.2631:

I remain (strongly) opposed to the ability to change their stats. It wasn’t necessary for Exotics and if access improves it won’t be necessary for Ascended.

If Ascended are supposed to occupy your time between a full exotic load-out and getting a Legendary, then amassing one set and being done forever puts them way, way, WAY closer to the Exotic side of that sequence of play. If we add some means to purchase them

PSA: It should be known that no one else reading in this thread agrees with the hardcore pro-grind mentality of Nike.

filling out your Ascended tier once-&-only-once could easily end up taking less time than amassing 2-3 sets of exotics does…

You can buy 2-3 exotic sets for 20-30 gold.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

VOLKON.1290:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Is it fair to say that regarding Ascended Gear we would like to see more ways to earn it and in terms of drop rates, a higher percentage chance of acquiring them through this method?

Chris

Possibly, or in lieu of that a means to add flexibility to the gear to allow for stat changes without needing to create a whole new set (see my inscription idea as an example).

Someone creates a whole set of berserker ascended and finds themselves getting rolled still (as glass cannons do) in WvW may have buyers remorse when that PVT set starts looking mighty tempting…

Yep thanks Volk for adding Stat changes to the proposal.

’Is it fair to say that regarding Ascended Gear we would like to see more ways to earn it and in terms of drop rates, a higher percentage chance of acquiring them through this method?

The ability to change gear stats.

The ability to potentially use tokens from encounters (allowing users to work toward acquisition of Ascended Gear) that would otherwise only offer RNG chances on Ascended Gear, allowing users to work toward the items (courtesy of Nike and others)’

Note this is the formulation of a proposal for discussion.

Chris

All of those listed are things that would greatly improve the enjoyment of the game for me. It is really important to be able to acquire the best-in-slot items through playing enjoyable content, instead of being forced to do the champ trains and craft, or deal with the fact that you will never have top-tier gear.

The game at launch was quite enjoyable and a breath of fresh air compared to many other grind-filled MMOs, and I hope that the development will once again take this direction.

Nike.2631:

The entire tier becomes fully self-defeating at that point.

The entire tier existence itself is self-defeating in a game like Gw2.

That’s why one year later Devs are struggling to handle it.

Craftable “inscriptions” that can be put on top of the existing stat set would be interesting, similar to how inscriptions worked in GW1.

“berserker insignia: +power, precision, +crit% – replaces current insignia”

players can craft these for materials that are relatively easy to come by, and stockpile them in their inventory for access whenever you need to change stats.

Jamais vu.5284:

PSA: It should be known that no one else in this thread agrees with the hardcore pro-grind mentality of Nike.

I’m gonna trust that people with two brain cells to rub together can figure out you don’t know me, you don’t play with me, and you aren’t psychic enough to back anything you just said.

And even a casual read-through of my comments would show I’m all for increasing the accessibility of the gear. I just oppose trivializing the process.

You can buy 2-3 exotic sets for 20-30 gold.

You speak dismissively of 30 gold and I am the hard core grinder??!?

I think I did a really, really bad job trying to explain what I was thinking regarding stat changes due primarily to having too much blood in my caffeine as well as a bit of a brain fart. So let me try again.

Right now, creating armor, a part of the process is creating the inscription which determines the stats of the armor. The idea I’m thinking may work well is simply this… let us take an ascended piece of armor that’s already made and slap a new inscription on it, thus changing the stats of the armor. The old inscription is destroyed and replaced with the new one.

Basically – I have a piece of Knights armor. I craft a Berserker inscription. I slap the Berserker inscription on the armor, changing it to Berserker armor. Knights inscription goes >poof<.

I don’t know why I failed to word that so simply earlier. Sigh…

The idea could, hypothetically, spread to cover any and all armor types, however I’m thinking from an ascended point of view.

Now… there is one potential problem with this… it could make transmutation stones obsolete, and I’m not sure how the accountants would like that. You could hypothetically require something similar to t-stones (or allow t-stones to do it) in order to replace the inscription, but you’d have to watch for complaints about money grabbing and all that, so a balance may need to be met. Need to look at these proposals from all angles, not just with tunnel vision about getting more stuff now.

OK… I don’t think this sucks…

I have a piece of Knights armor. I craft a Berserker inscription. I use a transmutation stone to replace the Knights inscription with the Berserker inscription on the armor, changing it to Berserker armor. Knights inscription goes >poof<.

What do we get…

1. Flexibility with our ascended gear stats, saving time over multiple sets for a single character.
2. ANet doesn’t lose out on T-stones, possibly sees an increase in their use.
3. We still have a sink for ascended and T6 items in the crafting of the insignias, and the crafting professions already make these.
4. I become famous.

Simple, elegant and solves and/or prevents many problems.

ColinJohanson.2394:

A question to help direct the discussion a bit:

What are some of your favorite progression systems of all time in others? Be they horizontal, or vertical, just which ones really got you excited and were fun for you to continue to progress in?

TL;DR? Read just the first 2 paragraphs…
One of my favourite progression systems of all time was GW1 Skills. Getting new skills was the best part of the game. Making new builds and combinations based off those new skills.
Collecting Elites through Signet of Captures was an amazing concept of getting out in the world and performing specific tasks to get those skills.

And the final beautiful piece with this whole system was Skill Tomes.
Those were the most amazing alt-friendly things in the game! Already achieved that skill on your main? Great, here’s a slightly easier way to get that skill on an alt as well!
//End TL;DR

Even after I’d collected every single skill for every single profession on my monk main, I could lose hours just digging through skills looking for new combinations to try out. Some of the builds that emerged were met with amazing or hilarious results in the competitive missions like JQ, FA and AB.
Despite considering myself a mostly PvE player in both GW1 and GW2, some of my best memories were from all the different builds I used in those competitive missions. Sometimes the builds were similar to meta (necro sacrifice bomber, air of enchantment monk) and sometimes they weren’t:
- my ele heavy fire nuker which used 3 enchantments to maintain energy while literally spamming the most expensive and hard hitting skills in the game
- our 3 player AB team build that had us each bring dragon’s stomp/earthquake for 6 coordinated AoE KD’s using the elite signet to avoid exhaustion.

About the only thing I didn’t really like about GW1 skills were the PvE only skills that were horribly imbalanced. Ice storm was junk while “You Move Like a Dwarf!” was so amazingly strong it outclassed almost every single skill in the game, including elites.

GW2 really feels like a step backwards when it comes to skills:
- Weapon skills locked to weapons reduce skill and build flexibility by a huge amount, especially with the limited selection of weapons available. The weapons concept force you to take skills you never use just to get the skills you actually want.
- Elite slot can’t take anything but elites. I have a number of builds where I’d just prefer to just take another utility. This could be improved upon by the introduction of more elite skills, but until that happens I typically forget about my elites on about half my builds simply because they are not worthwhile and have insane cooldowns.
- Further, only a single healing skill when in half my builds, I have utilities in there that are just weaker heals/defensive skills.

Here’s an example of how the GW2 weapons fail, including something that keeps getting pushed as “one of the main benefits of the ele”:
D/D – instead of the attunements with a bunch of skills I don’t really need. I’d rather have a single skill bar with a subset of those skills (with slightly reduced cooldowns ofcourse) because most of the skills in the rotation are barely worth the time and only get cast cause I have nothing else to do. So here’s my D/D skill bar, without even changing any of the slots of these skills.
1 – Vapor Blade (longest range D/D attack)
2 – Cone of Cold (self heal – looking at you “only 1 healing skill”)
3 – Burning Speed (fire combo field)
4 – Earthquake (blast finisher, KD)
5 – Churning Earth (blast finisher, cripple, bleed, heavy hit)
What about all those other skills? meh.
Dragon’s Claw? meh. Fire Grab? meh. Frost Aura? meh. Lightning Touch? blech. Impale? blech. Magnetic Grasp? ugh. Ride the Lightning? not bad but should be a utility. Updraft? meh. Ring of Earth? meh.
Sure they all do some little thing, but a ton of “mediocre” does not add up to “amazing”.
The end result of weapons? You need to take a bunch of junk, to get what you actually want/need.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

VOLKON.1290:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Is it fair to say that regarding Ascended Gear we would like to see more ways to earn it and in terms of drop rates, a higher percentage chance of acquiring them through this method?

Chris

Possibly, or in lieu of that a means to add flexibility to the gear to allow for stat changes without needing to create a whole new set (see my inscription idea as an example).

Someone creates a whole set of berserker ascended and finds themselves getting rolled still (as glass cannons do) in WvW may have buyers remorse when that PVT set starts looking mighty tempting…

Yep thanks Volk for adding Stat changes to the proposal.

’Is it fair to say that regarding Ascended Gear we would like to see more ways to earn it and in terms of drop rates, a higher percentage chance of acquiring them through this method?

The ability to change gear stats.

The ability to potentially use tokens from encounters (allowing users to work toward acquisition of Ascended Gear) that would otherwise only offer RNG chances on Ascended Gear, allowing users to work toward the items (courtesy of Nike and others)’

Note this is the formulation of a proposal for discussion.

Chris

My order of important is:
1 stat changing so I can try different builds
2 other methods of obtaining besides crafting and rng
3 Speed of acquisition is far far far less important to me if #1 is done.

I think stat-changing (in the way you have on Legendaries now) on Ascended gear would work IF:

1) It remains pretty much as hard to get as they are now
2) You decide to never introduce Legendary armor

If you make it substantially easier to get, a stat-switching method like Volkon is suggesting may be ideal.

Malediktus.9250:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Is it fair to say that regarding Ascended Gear we would like to see more ways to earn it and in terms of drop rates, a higher percentage chance of acquiring them through this method?

Chris

Thats not what I want. Crafting would be pointless yet again.

No it wouldn’t. Crafting Ascended gear would just be one of several different avenues players could use to acquire Ascended gear. The current system is too narrow. Not everyone wants to craft, some just want to play the game the way they want. Having crafting becoming a focal point of their experience isn’t something people want to have to deal with.
If your concern is that adding other means of acquiring Ascended Gear would undermine crafting it, then why not make crafting a standard for acquiring the gear? If it takes a player, at minimum, 5 – 6 days to craft an Ascended chest piece, then why not make obtaining the same piece through, as an example, Dungeons, take a player 6 days to do so? Crafting would be just as viable of a method to acquire the gear, but other options are still available to players who don’t want to feel forced into crafting to get the gear.
This is about variety. Limiting the scope of acquisition to only crafting isn’t making the game enjoyable to a lot of players. Especially when the only other option that we get is luck, and I think there’s enough proof in this thread to say that placing a barrier of that caliber towards obtaining Ascended gear isn’t a good one.

I realize this is a bit behind the current debate but it was a good question which seemed worth answering.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Agreed. Let’s spend a little more time discussing and brainstorming the following questions:

Controversial: Vertical Progression acquisition can be a pain but what if any elements do you like about Vertical Progression?

Lets keep coming up with some awesome Horizontal Progression systemic ideas and also reward ideas?

Try to tie these ideas into the core foundation of GW2’s systems and mechanics please.

Chris

While I prefer horizontal progression, vertical progression does not in and of itself suck, the problem is that ANet chose perhaps the poorest quality way of developing vertical progression. Vertical progression via items is particularly terrible because of its innately “temporary” feeling, bottom line sooner or later all of the effort you’ve put into vertical progression via item grind becomes pointless. I’ll try to explain my thoughts on the subject succinctly below.

What is fun about vertical progression?

• The feeling of character growth
• The thrill of progress and the feeling that your efforts are being rewarded
• The ability to display your time and effort spent

What is not fun about vertical progression?

• The invalidation of all of your past efforts
• The feeling of monotony

What might be done to make vertical progression in GW2 more enjoyable?

• Attach more progression to your character rather than gear
• Make gear upgradeable rather than disposable

People rarely point out SWTOR as a brillaint show of MMO ideas, but lots of the account unlock ideas worked into SWTOR would work nicely in GW. This material was all doubtlessly vertical progression but it wasn’t attached to RNG and the newest “Sword of Pwning +1” that would soon be made worthless by your “Sword of Pwning +2”. Even in GW2 the new approach to infusions (though it sucks that they can’t be removed, fix this) is built on developing strength rather than replacing it. You combine your +1 infusions to get +2s, rather than just throwing those +1s away.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Is it fair to say that regarding Ascended Gear we would like to see more ways to earn it and in terms of drop rates, a higher percentage chance of acquiring them through this method?

Chris

Yes, to a point…

Higher random drop rates are only the beginning.

I (personally) would like to see a relatively high chance of a drop for specific tasks that don’t involve crafting for hours, spending ungodly sums of money or grinding (insert insane number) of special rocks to get.

For instance, one could aquire through a legendary (no pun intended) quest chain, or reaching a certain global achievement level, or a higher than “normal” chance of getting it through a raid-quality boss (Tequatl doesn’t count.)

If you’re needing a gold sink, there could be a casino or other odds-style gaming, or maybe even an epic running race, where you pay an entry fee of say…10g and race with a group, with the winners getting a piece of ascended, 2nd place a rare or exotic, and 3rd the standard mix of blues and greens.

The key is variety. Those who wish to grind and craft for the guarantee of getting a set can still do so, and the rest could either win it, find it, or take their chances in the (games.)

um… as a side suggestion, (adding more work for you, I know, but…) Have the ascendeds gained through crafting look graphically different than the sets gained through open world content. It allows for the “look at me” factor and still gives those who crafted their own sense of uniqueness.

Just a thought…

Malediktus.9250:

Changing stats should stay legendary exclusive. Otherwise there is no reason to go for legendary if you dont like the skin.

Legendaries were originally supposed to be cosmetic prestige options, and lots of players sought them as a long-term goal even before stat-switching became possible on them. I don’t see this as a valid argument for blocking a major convenience service for build diversity and experimentation for all players.

AndrewSX.3794:

Nike.2631:

The entire tier becomes fully self-defeating at that point.

The entire tier existence itself is self-defeating in a game like Gw2.

While I don’t disagree in principle, the reality is it here, and people have already invested massively in it.

I think its possible to build on and around what’s already in play in a way that improves most players’ experience without taking a big dump on early adopters.

Even if I were to suddenly reveal I am ANet’s secret 51% shareholder and were to simply declare by divine fiat “Do it my way so things will get better” it would still be weeks if not months before changes hit the live servers.

Every. Single. Day. More people are crafting Ascended Weapons and Armor. More people are pondering how to spend their pristine relics. More people are coughing up for crafting skill ranks and extremely expensive additions to their library of recipes.

One quality a working solution MUST HAVE is to not treat these people like fools for doing what the game told them to.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Is it fair to say that regarding Ascended Gear we would like to see more ways to earn it and in terms of drop rates, a higher percentage chance of acquiring them through this method?

Chris

And updating existing items with ascended stats (T3 cultural, storyline weapons, dungeon gear).

There’s so much cool item artwork out there that’s been completely invalidated by ascended items… Unless you plan to have a few dozen additional ascended armor sets with unique looks? begs for additional tier of dungeon set items, wants more nightmare court armor!

I still prefer the whole tier to be removed from the game completely, though

On Horizontal vs Vertical Progression. Long time MMO players are familiar with both systems. It basically comes down to the carrot and the stick. With vertical progression we know the carrot. The stick is gated difficulty relying on earning the carrot to get to the next stick. Or Gear Gate [score], rare,exoctic, Ascended.

But in Horizontal Games there’s more RNG involved. Pen and Paper games taught us this stick and carrot. But those loot tables were also very balanced. Right now in GW2 the Stick and Carrot for horizontal progression seems to be very janky. We have short sticks with big carrots in speed dungeon runs/Champ Farm [5 dungeons doable in 45+ min]. Medium Sticks with medium carrots in Fractals [45+min best case]. And Large sticks with small carrots in WvW Season 1 [4+weeks, long queues, some rares, below 80 exotics]. And No Stick, Huge Carrot in the Gem Store.

Please see that we’re being trained to do the short stick, big carrot [Dungeons] so we can also invest in the no stick, huge carrot [Gem store].

Is there any plan on balancing out time invested [Stick] and reward [Carrot]?
Is there any discussion on redoing the rewards for the Seasons before Season 2 so the new carrot makes the stick worth it?

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Yep thanks Volk for adding Stat changes to the proposal.

’Is it fair to say that regarding Ascended Gear we would like to see more ways to earn it and in terms of drop rates, a higher percentage chance of acquiring them through this method?

The ability to change gear stats.

The ability to potentially use tokens from encounters (allowing users to work toward acquisition of Ascended Gear) that would otherwise only offer RNG chances on Ascended Gear, allowing users to work toward the items (courtesy of Nike and others)’

Note this is the formulation of a proposal for discussion.

Chris

I think people’ll like hearing this.

We just want a reliable way to progress towards ascended gear that feels fun. The components of that are making ascended gear rewarding to own and less repetitive and/or less lotto-ish to acquire.

I’m going to bring up an issue, though, with the fact that there’s a much greater variety of skins available to the exotic tier. If each method of acquiring ascended had their own look that’d help that some, and perhaps can we think about bumping up some of the rougher to acquire skins to ascended level?

I’m grumbly here. The sheer variety of skins available to exotic tier tells me it was always originally intended to be the final tier of gear to chase; now we’re left with a situation where the BiS stuff has much has fewer possibilities, and that requires transmute stones to overcome.

A system of ‘upgrading’ exotic gear would be awesome for that.

The more ways I look at ascended gear.. the more the whole decision to add it just feels poorly thought out; it’s redundant and it invalidates so much of the core game, and half this discussion and half the innovations since have been about making devalued stuff worth doing again – dungeons, pvp, world bosses, and yet gold farming remains the most necessary thing in the game. Yuck.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Is it fair to say that regarding Ascended Gear we would like to see more ways to earn it and in terms of drop rates, a higher percentage chance of acquiring them through this method?

Chris

Yes!

But as Nike said: increases in droprates have often been minimal in experience. If the drop chance of an ascended weapon box from Tequatl is increased from 0,01% to 0,1% that is a very big increase, but it still means that I’m not likely to ever get that weapon.

When it comes to the rarity of items, I believe that top stats should be more accessible than exclusive skins. Especially when considering the accountbound mechanic.

Example:

I didn’t mind farming endlessly for a voltaic spear to give as a present. Even though I was very unlucky. The farm itself was pretty cool since I had an interesting role to play. Eventually I got my spear after just over 500 runs. (They usually didn’t take very long, up to 10 minutes, but it was still a big grind)

The reason why I didn’t mind taking so long, was because I already had BiS gear on all my characters. I had farmed those green weapons by killing specific bosses and completing storylines. The droprate of greens on most bosses was about a 10% chance I believe. We could sell them though, so they rapidly dropped in price as players found ways to farm the bosses. But GW2 doesn’t have this problem

Player stat changes to ascended and legendary items would make it much better already. Just dont make us throw it in the toilet so we dont lose our slotted items.

That would solve the multiple build problem and it would give us the extra reason to get ascended gear other than fractals. For a non-fractal player, the stats are really so tiny that it is barely significant.

It would not solve the alt problem. Maybe a crafting (500) could “duplicate ascended” with a not too costly mat requirement, like that dust/dragonite everyone has too much of, however, you’d have to make the original piece not recreate itself so we dont lose upgrades on it. It could even incite people to level up another class, thus, buying character slots #$$$

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Agreed. Let’s spend a little more time discussing and brainstorming the following questions:

Controversial: Vertical Progression acquisition can be a pain but what if any elements do you like about Vertical Progression?

There aren’t that many elements I find appealing in vertical progression.
I did like the fact crafting was bumped to 500, because I like crafting.
Though I did not like that the Ascended weapons all have the same art except the colors are different.
One ascended scepter looks just like another, only this time in blue.

Had Ascended weapons been useful in making Legendaries, then that would change how I look at them.
To be completely frank, if ANet stops making more and more BiS stuff I’d be happy.
I stopped playing other games because of gear treadmills.

Vertical progression in the form of elite missions for only level 80s, people who completed the Personal Story, or even the Fractal levels is a better form of vertical progression to me.

Folks that put effort into playing should be rewarded with more challenging missions and events.
You are obviously a skilled player because you can handle Fractal level over 9000 or whatever.

Lets keep coming up with some awesome Horizontal Progression systemic ideas and also reward ideas?

Try to tie these ideas into the core foundation of GW2’s systems and mechanics please.
Chris

Art from armor and backpieces we’ve earned in events shouldn’t be one use only.
Allow them a place in the Achievements skin box like the Radiance pieces I already have.

Give us something worthwhile in the Home Instances. We have nodes and that’s a good first step.
Other things we could use are guild halls, statues which commemorate certain markers in the Personal Story (A monument to Tonn or Apatia, or maybe a wall of the fallen for those dead due to the artillery strike as examples).

Giving us markers, art, statues, or even small books to pick up which retell some instances in the Living world we participated.

Another form of Horizontal Progression I’d love to see is something where professions can specialize based off more specific traits than what we have now. Other games that I play do something similar.

GW1 had the two class system, but I doubt GW2 can do such a thing.
At best we could have one special trait per line and you can only use one of these special traits.
Doing so would give you great benefits in that trait or perhaps unlock something that profession can’t do initially. The cost could be a reduction in efficiency on another line since you are so focused on one.

No two Guardians or Warriors should be the same in my ideal game.

Similar to Firefall’s method. I have an Assault frame and a more specialized version called the Firecat.
While one deals with standard blow uppey damage, the latter is geared towards AOE at the expense of spike damage.
There’s another, Tigerclaw, which is faster and spikes beautifully but against a group it doesn’t do as well.

I like that type of dynamic.

Maybe different missions that can be repeated based on the inital Order we joined?
Where I see Vertical Progression as how difficult a game is, I see Horizontal as how many choices I can have.

Also more skills for weapons or even give us the chance to use different weapons that certain professions could not use before. My poor Engineer is stuck with Rifles and Pistols, but I would love to see a Tazer Mace!

I’m sorry I couldn’t go into depth more, I’ve been busy elsewhere too much.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Is it fair to say that regarding Ascended Gear we would like to see more ways to earn it and in terms of drop rates, a higher percentage chance of acquiring them through this method?

Chris

Though I don’t care much for them, yes. Better drop rates for particularly difficult content would be a better reward than more bloodstone dust or whatever is filling up my bank slots.

Kind of a late reply, and I’m sure everyone has said everything that needs to be said about post-80 progress.

But what about progress 30-80? Of all the games I’ve played, GW2’s leveling progress has to be one of the most boring I’ve ever played. mostly it boils down to the fact that, once you’ve reached 30, you’ve basically unlocked every skill for your profession; there’s nothing new for you. I mean, yeah, there’s traits and all but I’ve never really found traits to be particularly organic… or as fun as a ‘new power’.

Secondly, any sort of weapon crafting is really boring as well, mostly because every since weapon you craft, except for the rare and exotic 80 tiers look exactly the same. There’s only so many times I can craft a gnarled stick stave and not loose my mind. surely it’s not that hard to give us more skins per level tier?

Still no Dev comment that I’ve seen on Time Gates, something that many players brought up early in this thread. Sort of disappointed by that.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Is it fair to say that regarding Ascended Gear we would like to see more ways to earn it and in terms of drop rates, a higher percentage chance of acquiring them through this method?

Chris

At the very least that should be the proposal, and it should be there form the beginning. Also really important: volume of materials, and time gating. Stat “swapability” could also add real value to the tier, I really hope it’s part of the new proposal.

Now, is restricting ascended slots and extra stats only to fractals or dungeons totally out of the table on anet’s side, Chris?

What about on the player’s side? What you guys think?

Vertical progression should be more about the character than the gear — my characters should not be mere vehicles to transport pink goodies to battle.

I saw someone earlier in this thread suggest that there should be a way to modify/improve ascended weapons.

What if there was a way to turn ascended items into a legendary quality item. Meaning with more effort you would get the stat change ability inherent to legendary items, but without the special legendary skin. Remember that initially legendaries did not have stat swapping, and only really had the special skin, but people still got them anyhow. This could be a nice stepping stone, used as like a half way point or something, and getting the other modifications to add to it would be the other half.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Is it fair to say that regarding Ascended Gear we would like to see more ways to earn it and in terms of drop rates, a higher percentage chance of acquiring them through this method?

Chris

What if instead of collecting a ton of armour, worrying about drop rates, long time to make all these different sets with different stats, you could infuse existing armour sets with new stat combinations for a subcost, with the end result similar a legendary weapon, just not giving that to you up front so legendaries still feel legendary.

Example
Step 1: Craft Zerk Ascended Armour
Step 2: Acquire Knights insignias
Step 3: Infuse Ascended Armour with Knight with “transmutation crystal”
Step 4: Ability to switch (in town/out of combat etc) between Zerk and Knights Stats.
Rinse and Repeat for each new stat set, giving you new options to switch between without needing you to get an entire new armour / weapon set.

The same could be done for skins.
Apply Skin to ascended armour / weapon using “transmutation crystal”, adds skin option to drop down on armour / weapon piece.
- This retains “buy 1 skin for 1 character”
- This removes “losing a skin to salvaging or getting a rune off or not having the right stats”
- This improves ability to switch between skins and customize your looks mixing different elite skins around

Taking this another step forward (not sure how far you’d want to take this) apply this concept to sigils / runes? Infuse an item with another rune, get a drop down out of combat to switch up the rune on your equipment to anything already infused on this weapon.

Xomic.5792:

Kind of a late reply, and I’m sure everyone has said everything that needs to be said about post-80 progress.

But what about progress 30-80? Of all the games I’ve played, GW2’s leveling progress has to be one of the most boring I’ve ever played. mostly it boils down to the fact that, once you’ve reached 30, you’ve basically unlocked every skill for your profession; there’s nothing new for you. I mean, yeah, there’s traits and all but I’ve never really found traits to be particularly organic… or as fun as a ‘new power’.

Secondly, any sort of weapon crafting is really boring as well, mostly because every since weapon you craft, except for the rare and exotic 80 tiers look exactly the same. There’s only so many times I can craft a gnarled stick stave and not loose my mind. surely it’s not that hard to give us more skins per level tier?

I have to second you. Leveling in GW2 seems intrinsically unvaluable. It doesn’t mean anything at all because from level 1-30 you have learned everything you need to learn and 30 to 80 is basically a pointless grind, with traits being rather unimpactful unless you are level 80 and have exotic armour.

I just want to say that while I agree changeable stats on gear should be implemented (a la Legendaries), it should NOT be limited to Ascended gear. I think we’re in danger of letting it become another carrot when it should be a feature throughout the gear system.
Different materials should yield different cosmetic appearances.

Xomic.5792:

But what about progress 30-80? Of all the games I’ve played, GW2’s leveling progress has to be one of the most boring I’ve ever played. mostly it boils down to the fact that, once you’ve reached 30, you’ve basically unlocked every skill for your profession; there’s nothing new for you. I mean, yeah, there’s traits and all but I’ve never really found traits to be particularly organic… or as fun as a ‘new power’.

+1 for you because level 30 ish to 80 is usually a dead zone where I’m just trying to get points only for the purpose of reaching 80.
Usually that is the most boring part to me and I’m so glad you brought it up.

Mungrul.9358:

I just want to say that while I agree changeable stats on gear should be implemented (a la Legendaries), it should NOT be limited to Ascended gear. I think we’re in danger of letting it become another carrot when it should be a feature throughout the gear system.

Different materials should yield different cosmetic appearances.

What does this last addition mean? Different stat combinations > different cosmetic looks?

Chris Whiteside.6102:

FeveredDreamer.2693:

I realize this is a bit behind the current debate but it was a good question which seemed worth answering.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Agreed. Let’s spend a little more time discussing and brainstorming the following questions:

Controversial: Vertical Progression acquisition can be a pain but what if any elements do you like about Vertical Progression?

Lets keep coming up with some awesome Horizontal Progression systemic ideas and also reward ideas?

Try to tie these ideas into the core foundation of GW2’s systems and mechanics please.

Chris

While I prefer horizontal progression, vertical progression does not in and of itself suck, the problem is that ANet chose perhaps the poorest quality way of developing vertical progression. Vertical progression via items is particularly terrible because of its innately “temporary” feeling, bottom line sooner or later all of the effort you’ve put into vertical progression via item grind becomes pointless. I’ll try to explain my thoughts on the subject succinctly below.

What is fun about vertical progression?

• The feeling of character growth
• The thrill of progress and the feeling that your efforts are being rewarded
• The ability to display your time and effort spent

What is not fun about vertical progression?

• The invalidation of all of your past efforts
• The feeling of monotony

What might be done to make vertical progression in GW2 more enjoyable?

• Attach more progression to your character rather than gear
• Make gear upgradeable rather than disposable

People rarely point out SWTOR as a brillaint show of MMO ideas, but lots of the account unlock ideas worked into SWTOR would work nicely in GW. This material was all doubtlessly vertical progression but it wasn’t attached to RNG and the newest “Sword of Pwning +1” that would soon be made worthless by your “Sword of Pwning +2”. Even in GW2 the new approach to infusions (though it sucks that they can’t be removed, fix this) is built on developing strength rather than replacing it. You combine your +1 infusions to get +2s, rather than just throwing those +1s away.

Good post Dreamer. Excellent food for thought.

Chris

On this line, gear tiers could be upgradable at considerably lower mat costs than what it costs to make a brand new piece. And all ascended gear should be precursors to legendary gear, that’s the only way it’s gonna fill any gap between exotics and legendaries, otherwise it’s just competing for resources.

Still, VP as far as combat power goes, always stumbles on WvW. Otherwise WvW is only going to mean Wallet vs Wallet or my free time vs your free time. There is enough “unfairness” and random circumstances to keep things interesting. Making it more unfair will break it.

I disagree with proposals of adding a system which allows for progression in the lines of “combine two +1 dmg infusions to get a +2 dmg infusion”. What this would cause is an endless grind, a constant struggle to keep up just so that you can be competitive when it comes to the forming of parties for content.

Leaving the gear at a statistical plateau is extremely important, in my opinion, for this game to remain enjoyable for a larger portion of the population. With such system, it is extremely likely to see way more elitism and overall more toxic environment.

I don’t think Ascended weapons should have changeable stats. But the ability to Hot-swap up to 3-5 Sigils and Infusions from a drop down when out of combat would be awesome. Then I have the trade off making different stat types vs going for the legendary.

All stat ideas for gear will be on hold until they release the Scavenger Legendary Hunt for a month or so and they can gather data on the success.

Moshari.8570:

Give the ascended gear either “limited” stat swapping or full stat swapping like legendaries…or a way (a quest for instance) that would allow you to Add a stat for stat swapping.

If there were epic quests in place where you could unlock stat combinations for your gear that’d be.. awesome. That would be unbelievably awesome.

No more grind; make it about challenges.