Guild Wars 2

It seems that ascended armor will be making its way into the game. Even though i dont like this i wondered if this could be a good opportunity for anet to add challenging content into the game. What i mean is not teqautl slightly organized zerg content but instanced dungeons.
So with the ascended weapons why not create dungeons that are truly challenging that caters to bis stats and also requires good group composition. This is the one thing that is really lacking in gw2 the competitiveness. Not only are there few challenges there are also no achivements or rewards or recognition given to those who complete challenges i.e. solo lupicus. So why not create dungeons like this that even award people who get the fastest times and stuff. There are many people like me who want challenges where you have to pay attention and have to bring good people along so that you can get better and have a sense of satisfaction at the end of finishing the dungeon. I know most people will just say “no you elitist why should they make things harder so people cant play how they want”. My answer to this is ascended weapons already broke play how you want since you cant get it by just playing how you want so why cant we have challenging content now.
Is there any reason why we shouldnt? I mean alot of people dont even care about dungeons and if they added new ones that were hard and also added ones like the current ones no one would mind…well no one reasonable.

Edit: this content wouldnt just be completable with ascended it would be like how content is now where you can use masterwork gear but exotic makes it a heck of a lot easier. So in the case of these dungeons rare would be the masterwork gear… this idea however doesnt revolve around just ascended its just a way to put ascended to good use it can be done without ascended im just wondering why we shouldnt have challenging content atm. the distinguishing factor of challenging content and not challenging is that not any class composition should be able to finish it meaning you have to go in with some skill and a good build / group composition to succeed.

They won’t do it because as it stands, content is supposed to be completable with Rare let alone Exotic gear.

If they made content that required Ascended gear outside of fractals, people would be like, “Toodle-oo ArenaNet ol’chap” and leave, simple because Ascended is only supposed to be needed in fractals if not even needed.

edited to explain my views better. I dont want ascended to be necessary either im just posing a question on why we shouldnt just have it useful somewhere besides fractals. When armor comes out content will be even easier than before because of ascended stats increase and its not like challenging content that im talking about cant be completed in exotic its just that with ascended it would be a little bit easier.

champ.7021:

So with the ascended weapons why not create dungeons that are truly challenging that require the bis stats and also require good group composition.

Why are you suggesting the worst possible thing?..

Sry i meant cater to bis stats not require it. Atm all content we have is able to be completed by any group composition and any stat/ quality. Truly challenging content should not be this way, it should be catered towards a good group composition with the best quality gear or second best. Almost every single dungeon in this game can be completed with 3 bearbows and 2 clerics guardians making it faceroll for everyone else. I dont want ascended as bis either what i meant was that whatever is bis should be catered towards in the hardest content because then why waste time getting it. To make the game even more easy.

Sure. As long as you add an easy way to get the same reward too.

I’m not sure this was the game where challenging content…to the level you’re talking about, was ever supposed to be the main feature. The challenging content we have now is probably too much for most of the player base.

I’m sure the new TA dungeon is too hard for a lot of people.

Vayne.8563:

I’m not sure this was the game where challenging content…to the level you’re talking about, was ever supposed to be the main feature. The challenging content we have now is probably too much for most of the player base.

I’m sure the new TA dungeon is too hard for a lot of people.

OP is one of those lovely people who brought in the terror of Ascended gear in the first place.

I think the answer OP was looking for is FOTM, which is already ingame…

Quite the predicament, innit? Any content deemed “challenging” can be anywhere from marginally to significantly trivialized by people fully decked out in ascended, assuming the content is indeed balanced to be completed by people with naught but rares.

The problem here, as pointed out, is that these same people that aren’t wearing best-in-slot everything can potentially be “shut off” from the content. It would essentially make having the BIS gear actually matter, which IMO is the currently best thing Ascended has going for it right now: It doesn’t (in PvE at least, WvW and better gear is a whole new can of worms).

One solution would be to provide difficulty settings for the content, but I don’t think it would provide enough incentive to strive for better gear. They could implement acheivements for completing the content in “subpar” gear (for lack of a better term), but this just seems somewhat shallow and heavy-handed – in addition to removing incentive to attain the BiS gear.

Either way, Chris Whitefield noted this during his ask-me-anything on Reddit: “In regards to gated content via gear then I think that this is something we are going to give more thought to.” That’s only a small excerpt to signify that it’s something they’ve noted, it’d be a good idea to read up on it if haven’t – or haven’t in awhile.

But it’s definitely going to be interesting to see.

If content can’t be completed with Rare gear, then it has no business being in this game. If they actually release some sort of new content that legitimately requires full Ascended otherwise you can’t complete I would probably move on to another game.

As it stands I can complete any dungeon, any boss, any anything on even my worst geared alts and that’s the way it needs to stay.