Guild Wars 2

Why the hell is celestial gear still timegated? Why was it even timegated in the first place. For most classes it’s even worthless, but say you want to experiment with celestial gear, you just can’t because you first have to do something daily for 30 days. This has no place in the GW2 philosophy… Right now, i would love to do some experimentation with celestial guardian, just for the fun of it, idc if people say it’s bad. But i can’t cause there is still a timegate on one type of armor, for no reason at all. I get that you put time and effort into ascended gear, but exotics, of any type, should be just instant purchaseable.
I’m waiting to have fun here…

In the first place, the time gating was just a cheap way to keep people from getting the achievement for making 10 Charged Crystals right away during the Bazaar of the Four Winds. As least, that’s my guess on it. Now there’s no real reason. At least, not a good one, anyways.

I don’t see a reason either, Celestial gear is some of the most fun to experiment with cause it uses all stats, even if that’s bad for some classes, it should be available nonetheless, it has no special requirement in pvp, yet in pve and wvw it’s gated for no reason.

Agreed, no reason for it. I also wanted celestial to experiment but ended up making ascended celestial due to the timegate. I mean, if I have to wait 30 days I might as well make it ascendant.

True, but then that is a huge risk, i still need to make ascended gear for some other chars, and wasting it on something you’d like to try, that seems like wasting a whole lot of money.

I feel the same. When I first heard about celestial I decided to make it purely because I was playing a guardian at the time, and the name ‘celestial’ seemed fitting… and then I looked up how to make it…

Needless to say, I didn’t bother.
At the very least, the exotic set shouldn’t be timegated… and/or should be tradeable.

yeah the timegate is one thing, at least make the insignia’s tradeable

If everybody could charge as much quartz as they wanted and the charged crystals or celestial gear was tradeable, we would run out of quartz quite quickly because speculators would buy up all quartz and charge it in order to save 96% of the storage space.

Wanze.8410:

If everybody could charge as much quartz as they wanted and the charged crystals or celestial gear was tradeable, we would run out of quartz quite quickly because speculators would buy up all quartz and charge it in order to save 96% of the storage space.

There are admin tools to address in-game rates on just about everything.

On the subject of gating: It is the most hair ripping aspect of GW2. Hurry up and wait.

Never mind that it already takes time to acquire the gold or materials unless you are dropping real cash, and cash shoppers are not shelling out to wait for something.

Take ascended gear for instances. Every step of getting a recipe to make something is overly gated by forcing the crafter to purchase those recipes with karma and laurels which have to be acquired over time, not to mention gathering the materials for the actual crafting. But in addition to that the crafter is then being forced to purchase not one but two 2 recipes for a specific single “type” of weapon or armor every-time.

In a nutshell I should only have to purchase the greatsword recipe once, and the purchase of inscriptions should cover the specific types I can make.

With regard to flippers, I know people who have or had over 150.000 gold in the past, I know people who could debalance markets when they wanted cash, cause they could buy up the WHOL supply for “rare” or better items and put m back a dozen silvers (or sometimes 100’s of gold higher.

To discourage the poeple contnuing this stuf was hidden behind gated walls…

People can buy EVERYTHING. but some can buy ALL of EVERYTHING.

To make sure this is limited some stuff was restricted, either behind a play wall (sinister, zealot nomads gear), a timegate (celestial) ascneded crafting mats (well now supply is ok, but when people started making asc. paying 50 gold for 1 damask was normal…

I got the celestial / wupwup ascended light armour and didn’t have any problems making it, i think you shouldn’t focus so much on the time and just go with it. It’ll be done eventually

30 days. It take 30 days to charge up enough quartz for a full set of exotic armor, that then gets promoted to ascended status (with more time-gated mats you can be working on simultaneously) making it account bound and you never have to make another piece in that weight class ever again in the multi-year life of the game.

I think people have had maybe a little too much instant gratification. A whole month to achieve a terminal goal in an MMO is NOTHING.

PaxTheGreatOne.9472:

but when people started making asc. paying 50 gold for 1 damask was normal...

Not even close.

Nike.2631:

30 days. It take 30 days to charge up enough quartz for a full set of exotic armor, that then gets promoted to ascended status (with more time-gated mats you can be working on simultaneously) making it account bound and you never have to make another piece in that weight class ever again in the multi-year life of the game.

I think people have had maybe a little too much instant gratification. A whole month to achieve a terminal goal in an MMO is NOTHING.

Yeh its really not that long. Is the op a millennial by any chance?

You should carry a stack of quartz at all times and charge whenever you come across a hero challenge.

cupcakesandcatnomz.3924:

I got the celestial / wupwup ascended light armour and didn’t have any problems making it, i think you shouldn’t focus so much on the time and just go with it. It’ll be done eventually

I think the point here is that the EXOTIC celestial armor is time-gated.

Fox.3469:

Why the hell is celestial gear still timegated? Why was it even timegated in the first place. For most classes it’s even worthless, but say you want to experiment with celestial gear, you just can’t because you first have to do something daily for 30 days. This has no place in the GW2 philosophy… Right now, i would love to do some experimentation with celestial guardian, just for the fun of it, idc if people say it’s bad. But i can’t cause there is still a timegate on one type of armor, for no reason at all. I get that you put time and effort into ascended gear, but exotics, of any type, should be just instant purchaseable.
I’m waiting to have fun here…

Celestial Guardian is very fun, with a bit of a learning curve and a whacky build, if you want to experiment with builds before investing yourself to them, try it out in PvP…. You don’t have to actually PvP if you don’t want too, there is NPCs around for you to try out your builds

I think they should make Charged Quartz Crystals not account bound and can be sold on the TP. This would be like how damask and such are handled ie, paying a premium to go around the time gate.

First, time-gated charged quartz is a minor issue: at worst, it prevents instant gratification in creating celestial gear. That said, the benefits of gating are equally minor, especially considering that the charged quartz is account bound.

Probably the only reason the time gate remains is that it would take some effort to remove it; there are probably several bits of code that need to be tested after making even this minor adjustment.

In other words, we’re stuck with the time gate on celestial because we are.

Celestial was a dry run for Ascended time gating of needed mats. When introduced it was to prevent the Daddy Warbucks of the game from having a full celestial set on day one.

And since you can’t buy charged quartz, celestial insignia or any form of celestial armor it’s the type of armor that many players were clamoring for, one that required participation, in this case crafting at level 400, to acquire rather than just buying it.

Honestly you need 30 days to make the 30 charged quartz you need for a full set, is that really too much to effort? After all it’s going to cost you more than 1g per 25 quartz for raw materials. Not everyone is speedrunning dungeons or farming Silverwastes.

Behellagh.1468:

Celestial was a dry run for Ascended time gating of needed mats. When introduced it was to prevent the Daddy Warbucks of the game from having a full celestial set on day one.

And since you can’t buy charged quartz, celestial insignia or any form of celestial armor it’s the type of armor that many players were clamoring for, one that required participation, in this case crafting at level 400, to acquire rather than just buying it.

Honestly you need 30 days to make the 30 charged quartz you need for a full set, is that really too much to effort? After all it’s going to cost you more than 1g per 25 quartz for raw materials. Not everyone is speedrunning dungeons or farming Silverwastes.

30 days per set. 4-5 sets for different rune layouts. Add in a couple alts and it’s stretching past a year for the time gating.

Not everyone plays spam 1 guardian.

It’s not wonder people tend to just grab a cookie cutter build and armor set and never think of changing it at all.

Notsoperky.4291:

Behellagh.1468:

Celestial was a dry run for Ascended time gating of needed mats. When introduced it was to prevent the Daddy Warbucks of the game from having a full celestial set on day one.

And since you can’t buy charged quartz, celestial insignia or any form of celestial armor it’s the type of armor that many players were clamoring for, one that required participation, in this case crafting at level 400, to acquire rather than just buying it.

Honestly you need 30 days to make the 30 charged quartz you need for a full set, is that really too much to effort? After all it’s going to cost you more than 1g per 25 quartz for raw materials. Not everyone is speedrunning dungeons or farming Silverwastes.

30 days per set. 4-5 sets for different rune layouts. Add in a couple alts and it’s stretching past a year for the time gating.

Not everyone plays spam 1 guardian.

It’s not wonder people tend to just grab a cookie cutter build and armor set and never think of changing it at all.

Not my problem that you feel you need multiple armors. What percentage of players do that?

Notsoperky.4291:

30 days per set. 4-5 sets for different rune layouts. Add in a couple alts and it’s stretching past a year for the time gating.

I gotta know: What three or more rune sets are you running with Celestial on a single profession?

The alts thing? You’re trying to convince us that you are so meticulously detail oriented as to run multiple rune set but you don’t invest the effort to promote the gear to Ascended – which makes it account bound?

A year or more. Yeah, right.

Nike.2631:

30 days. It take 30 days to charge up enough quartz for a full set of exotic armor, that then gets promoted to ascended status (with more time-gated mats you can be working on simultaneously) making it account bound and you never have to make another piece in that weight class ever again in the multi-year life of the game.

I think people have had maybe a little too much instant gratification. A whole month to achieve a terminal goal in an MMO is NOTHING.

I wouldn’t call a month “nothing”. I’ve played games that scaled exp so high, it would take a month to get 1 level.

I’m getting tired of pointing out time and time again that the game’s design proactively promotes crafting as the core of high level activity. Not only that, but sheer variety of crafting projects suggests they intended us to do multiple projects over the year. Now I can understand a Legendary taking time, because its requirements encompass the whole game. But more importantly, its considered the most frivolous of pursuits… done only by those who for prestige or profit.

Ascended armor on the other hand is in the realm of a practical project by its Stat rating. Its the highest form crafting that actually yields functional results. However, its requirements are incredibly steep, and ORIGINALLY had no bonus, nor any other purpose then to house infusions for high level fractals. But giving that bonus forced the game to elevate the build standard, even if its not cost effective. People tend to blow 5 increase in stats as being small…. but in the multiplicative nature of the formula they use for damage, that 5 bonus can translate to a couple hundred extra points of base damage per attack. So despite not being cost effective, we’d still take it once cost is no longer a hurdle.

But then you have a whole exotic line on this time gate. Thats 5 days to create 1 piece of gear, which wouldn’t sensible to use until you’ve assembled a full set. Its like paying for a car, and getting one piece of it every day for a month before you can use it. And if you get busy, or forget to pick up a piece for one day, the guy you’re getting from refuses to give you an extra for the day you missed. In this case its not just the time gating (which is bad enough), but the sheer insanity of how they scaled the material requirements for its use. This has only gotten worse after the event was over, as the source Crystals can’t even keep pace with the requirement needed to produce 1 charged crystals, UNLESS you spend the money for a home node AND religiously gather it, and 3 nodes in Dry Top, AND be lucky enough to have a Lvl 4 favored Sandstorm, AND be able to beat or sneak past the Skritt queen to get the rich node. Giving you a grand total 22 crystals. Oh wait!! you need 25 to fuse a charged crystal?

starlinvf.1358:

Its like paying for a car, and getting one piece of it every day for a month before you can use it.

Or like paying for an expansion without knowing when you will get it but you will be able to play some broken parts for a short period before release.

starlinvf.1358:

I wouldn’t call a month “nothing”.

After 35 months I DO call a month nothing. And after 8 years of LotRO I still consider the farming quest that takes three months to complete (plant in summer , come back in the fall – real time) to be one of the most clever things in that game. There is nothing wrong with activities you can’t bull your way through faster than the next guy with massive quantities of free time.

I’ve played games that scaled exp so high, it would take a month to get 1 level.

Are you coming to a point with this example? If so I’ll wait. Probably not a month though…

Ascended armor on the other hand is in the realm of a practical project by its Stat rating. Its the highest form crafting that actually yields functional results. However, its requirements are incredibly steep, and ORIGINALLY had no bonus, nor any other purpose then to house infusions for high level fractals.

You and I remember the introduction of the ascended tier very differently. They ALWAYS had a modest gain in stat points (5%) under my little blue sky.

But then you have a whole exotic line on this time gate. Thats 5 days to create 1 piece of gear, which wouldn’t sensible to use until you’ve assembled a full set.

Again with the total nonsense. If you are aiming for Celestial stats,every single piece is a step forward, and you put them on as you get them. Unless you are arbitrarily stomping on your own foot so you can come to the boards and complain about it…. oh.

Quartz was introduced July 9, 2013. 24 MONTHS AGO. It can be bought from the Trade Post at any time day or night. You have had OVER 700 opportunities to make charged quartz crystals. 700. It takes 30 to make a full set of armor. No one who wants it that badly hasn’t been able to get it by the double fistfuls.

Nike.2631:

Again with the total nonsense. If you are aiming for Celestial stats,every single piece is a step forward, and you put them on as you get them. Unless you are arbitrarily stomping on your own foot so you can come to the boards and complain about it…. oh.

Well, at least for an exotic armor set, it would be cheaper to buy the recipe for the satchel/box compared to buying the 6 individual recipes for each piece.
And if you craft the satchel/box of celestial armor, you need the 30 charged quartz all at once before starting to craft.

It’s not just that it’s 30 days (you have to log in every day). It’s when it’s placed against its other alternatives. The armor doesn’t exist in a vacuum.

For ascended gear, that’s generally time gated anyways and of a much higher cost so making celestial ascended isn’t that big of an issue.

For exotic celestial, you could probably come up with a mishmash of gear that has comparable use that you don’t have to wait for at all. Celestial isn’t even necessarily better than what it’s competing against. Exotics are largely just stopgaps, and it doesn’t make any sense to be devoting such an inordinate amount of resources and time towards it. Especially when crafting the equivalent ascended wouldn’t take much longer. To me, this is like having timegated green or yellow armor. It has no reason to exist because greens and yellows are either salvage bait or something you slap on yourself because you don’t have better.

A good example is when my ele hit 80. I was thinking of some celestial which I did, but I only had enough to make 2 pieces so at this point I decided just to forego it instead of waiting 2 more weeks just to be able to play my character. Instead I took the opportunity to craft other stats, which helped level tailor to 500 and actually produce something useful for the future. Turned out to be a good idea, since I now have enough charged quartz to make whatever I want. But at least in my case, exotic celestial was always going to be an inferior option. And this is when I had the luxury of having a quartz node.

In any case, I don’t think it hurts to make the charged quartz non-account bound. There will still be a premium on those that refuse to wait, and there’s extra incentive in going out to fuse them.

I just want to respond to some of the comments here, as there seem to be some misunderstandings. I don’t mind the timegate on ascended gear. I mind the timegate on exotics. And for a really simple reason: other exotics don’t have this time gate. Imagine, if in the future due to the introduction of hardcore content, one of the classes actually lands in a “celestial” meta. While another for example is best suited with knights, or berserker, or soldiers. At this point you have one character lvl 80 ding, instantly exotic or even ascended geared, and another lvl 80 ding, oh kitten i gotta wait.

The problem here isn’t the timegate, the problem is that armors of the same strenght, but different stats, require way way different effort to get. One you just craft or buy of the TP, one you HAVE TO craft and have to wait 30 days to do so. Ascended gear is fine (the armors) because ascended gear is all behind the same amount of time, so it’s equally hard to get, while the effort needed for the exotics is vastly different.

Crafting ascended gear directly isn’t a solution, since i want to actually test this in dungeon runs before i commit to it…

sidenote: Tbh i don’t understand why ascended gear isn’t account bound when made, but boe when put on, and allows us to swap stats like legendairy’s. This would make so much more sense to me. But i guess that bridge is burned. Right now i’m punished for liking racial skins, thx for that.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

First, time-gated charged quartz is a minor issue: at worst, it prevents instant gratification in creating celestial gear. That said, the benefits of gating are equally minor, especially considering that the charged quartz is account bound.

Probably the only reason the time gate remains is that it would take some effort to remove it; there are probably several bits of code that need to be tested after making even this minor adjustment.

In other words, we’re stuck with the time gate on celestial because we are.

I believe this: at this point, i don’t see any good reason to mantain this time gate.
Anet can always introduce more ways to gain crystals if necessary.
Also, the “Daddy Warbucks” have no problems to make any other stat from day one, if I remember correctly.
So the only anomaly (for exotic gear) is celestial gear and personally the only anomaly that i like to see is a certain focus skin…

ArchonWing.9480:

I think they should make Charged Quartz Crystals not account bound and can be sold on the TP. This would be like how damask and such are handled ie, paying a premium to go around the time gate.

It needs some kind of premium, yes.

It makes me wonder why Mystic Coins aren’t used for more things like this. We only get a few at any given time, so supply is limited, but those who don’t care to bypass the time gates can sell to those who do want to buypass (pun intended :P) the them.

WoW did something sort of similar. The “create special craft item” recipe on 24-hour cooldown was relatively easy to do. The “I want it now” recipe came with a later patch, and it cost a lot more in materials, including more of the original craft materials.

So, the “I want it now” crafting would probably be something like 35 quartz and a mystic coin plus some item from the mystic forge vendor. Buuut, that still wouldn’t stop the market from going insane as people buy up insane amounts of quartz. (But let’s do it anyway, I’d love to sell 500 quartz for 500 gold, mwahaha! ..ahem.)

When celestial came out, I was not sure if I wanted to use it or not but just incase I started charging crystals as I got them.
Now I have hundreds of charged crystals in my bank. And it didn’t cost me anything but a little patience.
I have not to date made any celestial items but due to just a little planning, I could make a full set at any time.

I agree with the OP, it doesn’t seem right that one exotic type is gated while the next one is not, but the workaround was quite simple.

I wish they’d at least ease it up a bit, let us refine even a little more Charged Quartz a day, like 3 or (gasp) 5.

I’ve played games that scaled exp so high, it would take a month to get 1 level.

I laughed so hard at this. How about a game where mobs give around 200 exp ea kill, no quests, no exp scrolls, and you need 8,705,986,960 exp to gain 1 level. Means you need to kill over 42 million mobs. 1 month ? That’s peanuts. Oh, and when you die you lose 5% of the total exp of that level.

at least 5 would mean 1 armorpiece a day

Yeah, Celestial represents less specialization and kind of works best for experimentation. It should actually be easier to get than other combinations, not harder.

If they want to make it harder to get, they need to make it better. Increase the stat total.

okay this might be a minor thing but its really annoying – why again can i only charge crystals once a day? I have no issue with that but then PLEASE dont make them ingredients in basic recipe…

To craft sinnister gear you need those crystals for the jewels – its really ridicoulos that tihs takes you over a week simply for the fact that you have to wate – like a free to play mobile game – i dont understand the reason – its not a factor in other recips and just annoying…

You can buy charged ambrite at the BL TP.. completly ignoring the timegate. also you’only need 6 for and armor vs 30 for celestial so do not worry, oh btw, you cannot but those for celestial from the tp.

sure but still – it is a stupid mechanic – in what way does it make the game or the experience for the players better? I dont see any reason behind it

Nemesis.6938:

sure but still – it is a stupid mechanic – in what way does it make the game or the experience for the players better? I dont see any reason behind it

For one, it caps daily consumption of quartz, which makes it easier to balance supply and demand.

It’s not designed to benefit the player.
It is designed to slow you down.
To make content artificially take longer than it otherwise would, because a lot of people blow through content as fast as possible and then whine they’re out of things to do.
The kind who skip all cutscenes/ignore all NPCs and then complain there was no story.

It was a bit much then and has gotten simply asinine now.
No exotic stat should ever be that kind of gated, it goes against one of the founding ideas of the game, that stats would not be a grind (we’ll ignore the addition of the “optional” ascended grind), that would be left to the cosmetics.
Adding yet another set locked behind this time gate is ludicrous.

The reason behind it was they didn’t want players to obtain a full armor set, because they were rich, the first day the set went live. While quartz can be traded, everything else from charged quartz to celestial insignia to the celestial armor itself is account bound so not only time gated but a player needed the correct armor crafting skill leveled up to 400.

You could think of it as the dry run for ascended armor. Although you can buy the timegated refined mat and insignia from the TP the final armor still needed to be crafted by the player.

So if they learned from celestial and applied that lesson to ascended, why haven’t they gone back to “fix” celestial? Well the only fix would be to make charged quartz and celestial insignia tradable and not the timegate.

i can see some reasoning behind this for cele gear – but on a standard sinister gear? no – otherwise set a zerker armor behind the same wall….