Guild Wars 2

MiniEquine.6014:

It’s taking off now, but it’s gone through these cycles before. For the entire Fall of 2014 the cost was higher than it is now by almost 50s. When the changes come in and the markets cool down it may eventually settle out or even drop down again. More people will be farming the new area salvaging gear and the markets may even see an overabundance of materials until maybe a few months after release when people want to keep crafting again.

The sticky bit is the lower-tier mats that won’t be dropping in the new areas, unless ArenaNet plans to change that.

So it is now a 4%-8% one. Well great. So it’s no longer optional. Well done, ANet.

Carighan.6758:

So it is now a 4%-8% one. Well great. So it’s no longer optional. Well done, ANet.

All content that could be completed without it before can still be completed without it after, thus it is optional.

It’s like 2 more stats on each piece of gear. Maybe you should explain why this suddenly breaks the game.

“At 99 Power, the game was fine; balance; perfect. At 100? EVERYTHING IS BROKEN!”

The mats price is going to skyrocket from its current position of “ridiculous” into the level of “mickey mouse magic money price”.

Its just going to be crazy.

chronometria.3708:

The mats price is going to skyrocket from its current position of “ridiculous” into the level of “mickey mouse magic money price”.

Its just going to be crazy.

Yup. I’m going to start unloading mats tonight and farm for more.

chronometria.3708:

The mats price is going to skyrocket from its current position of “ridiculous” into the level of “mickey mouse magic money price”.

Its just going to be crazy.

cool…..more money for me…i have all the ascended gear i ’ll ever want

mtpelion.4562:

Carighan.6758:

So it is now a 4%-8% one. Well great. So it’s no longer optional. Well done, ANet.

All content that could be completed without it before can still be completed without it after, thus it is optional.

That may be true now, but I reckon going forward the HoT content will be more difficult. If Silverwastes is any indication, Anet is getting smarter about coding the mobs. But hey, enjoy your advantage. But i will not be one of the sheep that will pay an exorbant amount of gold for the mats because everyone now is jacking the prices up 900%.

With this change, and the trait/skills changes, its almost paying a completely new game. The more frustrating Anet makes this process, with armor, skills or whatever, people will start thinking ‘if i have to start over anyway, mind as well start over in a new game..’

Well when you use exotic you can have better spec and that give much bigger advantage than 10%. Making ascended is so expensive that you can’t always use best of the best super meta spec.

chronometria.3708:

The mats price is going to skyrocket from its current position of “ridiculous” into the level of “mickey mouse magic money price”.

Its just going to be crazy.

http://www.gw2spidy.com/item/19748

I’d really like to hear the dev explanation for this change too. I wasn’t a fan of ascended armor in the first place, this doesn’t make me more of a fan. Is there something wrong with making best-in-slot gear reasonably obtainable? Especially when you have a build system that encourages you to try out a wide variety of stat combinations.

I understand it isn’t a huge difference between exotic and ascended, but BiS is BiS. There’s a rather large psychological satisfaction in knowing your character is geared to the max, and conversely there’s a psychological dissatisfaction in knowing when it isn’t. This change is only going to increase that dissatisfaction among players to whom ascended gear feels unfairly difficult to obtain (especially WvW players).

Aye, I would also like to hear an explanation for this change. I don’t think the change is really needed so would be interesting to hear why it was made.

None of this QQ is new and the reasons for it are still silly. In a game where PVE is balanced around Green/Yellow gear, it’s frankly quite dumb to complain that the gear two levels above THAT balancing point is getting a buff. Carry on.

Gibson.4036:

chronometria.3708:

The mats price is going to skyrocket from its current position of “ridiculous” into the level of “mickey mouse magic money price”.

Its just going to be crazy.

http://www.gw2spidy.com/item/19748

30% increase already? This is going to be brutal.

BrickFurious.7169:

Is there something wrong with making best-in-slot gear reasonably obtainable?

The one thing wrong with it is that there is a portion of players who want to treat a video game like a full time job or hobby. There’s no way to generate enough content for them, so you have to keep them playing with dangling carrots, unless you’re content to do without that portion of the MMORPG population.

I understand it isn’t a huge difference between exotic and ascended, but BiS is BiS. There’s a rather large psychological satisfaction in knowing your character is geared to the max, and conversely there’s a psychological dissatisfaction in knowing when it isn’t. This change is only going to increase that dissatisfaction among players to whom ascended gear feels unfairly difficult to obtain (especially WvW players).

Thank you for articulating this. It’s what the “you don’t need it to do anything but high level fractals” crowd just doesn’t get.

These games feature a character progression scheme. Putting a sudden spike in the progression curve one step from the end and telling them to just be satisfied with second best is jarring, at best. The thing that keeps people grumbling a little but continuing to play the game was the small stat increase that gear gave. A move toward increasing the gap just alienates more players and makes it harder for them to ignore.

Obtena.7952:

None of this QQ is new and the reasons for it are still silly. In a game where PVE is balanced around Green/Yellow gear, it’s frankly quite dumb to complain that the gear two levels above THAT balancing point is getting a buff. Carry on.

None of your derision is new and the reason for it is still silly. In a game featuring a steady character power progression it’s frankly quite dumb to expect people to swallow a sudden spike right at the end of the curve or be satisfied with never completing that progression. Carry on.

Well, now they should also add some way to quickly change the ascended stats, or it’s bye bye to any kind of build flexibility.

In my insignificant opinion, there’s really only one explanation for this: anet has come to the conclusion that there’s significantly more profit to be made, and made with significantly less effort, from vertically progressive gamers.

Gibson.4036:

Obtena.7952:

None of this QQ is new and the reasons for it are still silly. In a game where PVE is balanced around Green/Yellow gear, it’s frankly quite dumb to complain that the gear two levels above THAT balancing point is getting a buff. Carry on.

None of your derision is new and the reason for it is still silly. In a game featuring a steady character power progression it’s frankly quite dumb to expect people to swallow a sudden spike right at the end of the curve or be satisfied with never completing that progression. Carry on.

its not a spike….its 5%……..and nearly every lvl 80 is decked in full ascended trinkets anyway. its simply not a big deal in any game mode until the 10% difference between ascended and exotics becomes like 30%…if it took this long for a 5% increase, you have nothing to worry about…the game will be dead/unsupported by Anet before it ever gets to the point where you “need” ascended.

Gibson.4036:

BrickFurious.7169:

Is there something wrong with making best-in-slot gear reasonably obtainable?

The one thing wrong with it is that there is a portion of players who want to treat a video game like a full time job or hobby. There’s no way to generate enough content for them, so you have to keep them playing with dangling carrots, unless you’re content to do without that portion of the MMORPG population.

That’s a problem of those players. And those players are a tiny (although a very loud) minority. Besides, those people that found the current ascended not enough ? Nothing less than a full scale gear treadmill is going to satisfy them, and by introducing it Anet is going to lose way more people.
They have to decide which group they are going to keep, because it’s becoming more and more clear that they can’t satisfy both.

I’d also like to hear any reasoning beyond this change, because so far there was no explanation whatsoever, and the way it was going to be stealth-added (and would have been if not for the accidental leak) suggested that Anet did know it won’t be received well and is something that the majority of players do not want.

This change is not a good thing, but it’s not a big deal either.

Ascended armour and backpieces will go from providing a trivial stat buff compared with exotic gear to providing a trivial stat buff compared with exotic gear. These are the only pieces that are hard enough to obtain that this sort of change really, really hurts.

Ascended weapons and trinkets aren’t that hard to get.

If there are plans for an ‘armoury’ for account-bound gear, then I don’t think this change is likely to be a problem at all.

Note that in other MMOs, groups demanding excessively high gearscores seem more common than they are because those are the groups that never fill — 90% of the people who meet the requirements figure that 90% of those groups are actually lazy bads who want to be carried.

evilunderling.9265:

This change is not a good thing, but it’s not a big deal either.

Oh, i disagree, it is a very big deal. It’s another attempt of anet to test the boundary of community tolerance to the vertical progression idea. If this one sticks, what will prevent Anet from doubling the difference again (and again, and again) at a later time?

evilunderling.9265:

Ascended armour and backpieces will go from providing a trivial stat buff compared with exotic gear to providing a trivial stat buff compared with exotic gear.

A honest question. When will that difference stop being trivial? (besides, i disagree with you about the weapons).

Surprised this thread hasn’t been locked, like mine was for no good reason and without explanation. I guess there’s too many to silence now. Raising awareness was the point of mine, so I guess it succeeded anyway. This change goes against everything they’ve said about lack of vertical progression and we heard not a whisper about it from the devs. Now the silence still continues, so we’ll also continue to speak out against this change in the hope it is thought better of before it’s too late.

Astralporing.1957:

If this one sticks, what will prevent Anet from doubling the difference again (and again, and again) at a later time?

This change is arriving in a patch that also includes alterations to whole swathes of the maths underpinning the game.

There’s no evidence that Anet even can simply add to numbers whenever they feel like it in the way you describe without having to go back and mess around with the scaling algorithms and other fundamental game mechanics.

Arshay Duskbrow.1306:

Surprised this thread hasn’t been locked, like mine was for no good reason and without explanation. I guess there’s too many to silence now.

Have you even seen 99.999% of the posts here? If ANet were in the business of censoring negative feedback, they’d have closed down the forums ages ago.

pdavis.8031:

Stark.1350:

I want to hear why this change was made – you’ve completely reversed your position on tiers now.

How is this a reversal of position on tiers?
They aren’t creating a new tier. All the current ascended gear you have will be buffed accordingly. You don’t need to go get all new gear.
They simply are making it a bit stronger than it was. Along with all the other gear that is getting buffed.

go youtube their mmo manifesto. you’re wrong. gg

where is the source of this information on the ascended gear change?

Amazing to see so many people defending ArenaNet by claiming this change isn’t bad… While there’s next to no one saying why it would be good.

I guess it speaks a lot about the quality of the game’s updates when people are happy that a change isn’t making the game worse, even when it doesn’t make the game better.

Test.8734:

Amazing to see so many people defending ArenaNet by claiming this change isn’t bad… While there’s next to no one saying why it would be good.

I guess it speaks a lot about the quality of the game’s updates when people are happy that a change isn’t making the game worse, even when it doesn’t make the game better.

its just the times we live in. reading this post actually reminded me a lot about politics. lol

You should avoid for a bit the forums , till som1 from Reddit does some theoricrafting for you :P
Because the Devs dont wanna hassle your brain with irrelevent informations , that why they didnt wanted to bother you .
So you can see that they may increase the Stats by 10% , but in the same time nerfed the ‘’calculation formula’’ (like conditions) = and the Total Damage Gained remains from 3,86%-4% .

(not a clue with the Strengh+Ferocity+Presision combo …. but oh well ….something might happen to it along the way …. like the Conditions ….. in a sneaky way so silly ppl wont moan for it as a nerf ….
but in the other hand Conditions where most hated in PvP and most needed to PvE …… so it felt more ’’whalecomed’’ :P)

Otherwise , i will sdo omething that i promised i never do :
Look or Speak to a GW1 player (exept PvPers – they lost that previlege) :P
And when i do speak to some1 , i do like a Pounding Chest Ape to another …. for sometime … :P

Test.8734:

Amazing to see so many people defending ArenaNet by claiming this change isn’t bad… While there’s next to no one saying why it would be good.

It’s not bad or good. It’s insignificant. Too insignificant to complain about.

I did the calculations and posted on these threads, but nobody seems to care. They are just mad and they already brought their pitchforks. No turning back now…

lordkrall.7241:

Aye, I would also like to hear an explanation for this change. I don’t think the change is really needed so would be interesting to hear why it was made.

I never thought I’d see this day. q_q7

GreyWraith.8394:

where is the source of this information on the ascended gear change?

Provisional patchnotes for next week were circulated to a number of GW2 fansites. Most people are going here

Some verified ANet staff have commented on the relevant threads on Reddit, and apparently

Test.8734:

Amazing to see so many people defending ArenaNet by claiming this change isn’t bad… While there’s next to no one saying why it would be good.

Not every single line item in every single set of patch notes needs to be a clear improvement on its own, because the real world simply isn’t that simple.

The world not being all that simple is also why literally any decision ANet makes about GW2 can be easily turned into a stick to beat them with.

I really hate how they made this and the condi changes without addressing it for WvW. Grinding is what kills the game for me, and that’s why I don’t do PVE. One of the reasons I fell in love with this game is the fact you don’t need to grind anything, you can just play spvp/wvw and exchange badges for gears. Also, I’m someone who likes to play more than one class, so yeah…this sucks not sure how I’ll feel about it when someone is doing higher damage in PVP just because he did the PVE.

OpieOP.7569:

I really hate how they made this and the condi changes without addressing it for WvW. Grinding is what kills the game for me, and that’s why I don’t do PVE. One of the reasons I fell in love with this game is the fact you don’t need to grind anything, you can just play spvp/wvw and exchange badges for gears. Also, I’m someone who likes to play more than one class, so yeah…this sucks not sure how I’ll feel about it when someone is doing higher damage in PVP just because he did the PVE.

I play 95% WvW and I have 2 ascended sets of armor. You don’t have to grind for it if you consider it a long term investment.

bloodletting wolf.2837:

OpieOP.7569:

I really hate how they made this and the condi changes without addressing it for WvW. Grinding is what kills the game for me, and that’s why I don’t do PVE. One of the reasons I fell in love with this game is the fact you don’t need to grind anything, you can just play spvp/wvw and exchange badges for gears. Also, I’m someone who likes to play more than one class, so yeah…this sucks not sure how I’ll feel about it when someone is doing higher damage in PVP just because he did the PVE.

I play 95% WvW and I have 2 ascended sets of armor. You don’t have to grind for it if you consider it a long term investment.

I have 685Hours on my account, and I only play WvW with my rank being 620. What I have is 3 Chests of Loyalty(haven’t opened them because of the expansion), 1 healing signet(got it from a chest) and 1 Eye of Janthir(Laurels). So clearly I’m doing something wrong here. Could you tell me how did you get these two full sets of armor?

Can someone please point me to the announcement about this which everyone is talking about today? All I see is a bunch of salty threads with no sources linked.

Or is this just a delayed backlash against the announcement weeks ago about removing stats from traits while buffing gear?

Xenon.4537:

Can someone please point me to the announcement about this which everyone is talking about today? All I see is a bunch of salty threads with no sources linked.

Or is this just a delayed backlash against the announcement weeks ago about removing stats from traits while buffing gear?

http://dulfy.net/2015/06/16/gw2-upcoming-june-23-patch-notes/

Chrono.6928:

pdavis.8031:

Stark.1350:

I want to hear why this change was made – you’ve completely reversed your position on tiers now.

How is this a reversal of position on tiers?
They aren’t creating a new tier. All the current ascended gear you have will be buffed accordingly. You don’t need to go get all new gear.
They simply are making it a bit stronger than it was. Along with all the other gear that is getting buffed.

go youtube their mmo manifesto. you’re wrong. gg

Are they adding a new tier?
IIRC they also said that ascended and legendaries were optional and not required, and thus was in keeping with their Manifesto.

So please show me where a buff to stats, and a 5% increase to ascended goes against their manifesto.

OK, maths time.

At present, ascended trinkets already grant 10% better stats than exotic trinkets, not 5%, and I’m guessing that this change applies only to prefix bonuses, not to things like weapon power and defence.

From this, it follows that only weapons and armour are being altered. If this is correct, then the final increase in your stats attributable to the doubling of ascended attribute bonuses, assuming that every single thing you wear or wield is ascended or legendary, will be something like:

• Primary stat bonus: +32
• Secondary stat bonus: +22
• Celestial stat bonus: +15

This is not a big deal.

Why not have ascended gear have a 4th stat? Let’s have all the zerker ascended have 300ish vitality attached to a full set, similar to the zerker amulet in Spvp. There are other ways to buff gear then the overall stats. Add another infusion slot to some gear pieces, the infusions are very small stat bonus and add too the the variety of stats you can have on gear.
I get them wanting to buff stats because of the trait stats removal but I don’t like the idea of increasing the gear gap. 5% is ignorable, more then 9 means you get into double digits and that draws people more then anything else. When you hit double digits there is a psychological tick in most people that says that the difference is significant, even when on the major stats on gear could go up by like only 5 or more points.
You could also look at it from a fraction point of view, what are you more likely to complain about a 1/20 difference or a 1/10? That can seem huge to some people.
I have an ascended sinister set, I tried out sinister at exotic and loved it and the reason I went to ascended was because I wanted my sinister set to be final. Not for numbers not for looks, but for the satisfaction that I have a final set of sinister. There wasn’t anywhere else to go, and it’s going to be the only ascended set I ever get but I have it. That is satisfying, that being said on a related note THERE IS NOT A SINISTER BACKPIECE WTF MAN.

Can someone please explain to me how having 1 or 2 sets of account bound ascended gear is enough to share across 8 professions? As in what I can do to get my ele to wear the medium armor set?

And how about runes? Please explain how an engi can benefit from a heavy armor set with soldier runes slotted in?

Interesting.

I was surprised when Anet announced that there would be no need to grind for new tiers of gear with the expansion. It seemed to go against the trend of making GW2 more like traditional MMOs of the past.

I was impressed. It really seemed awesome that they would declare definitively that they were shying away from continuing that form of vertical progression.

I should have known better.

Some really good lawyer/politician speak in that announcement. Nope, no grinding for a new tier of gear. Instead we are expected to regrind for the same tier in order to maintain current builds while the performance gap between the top tier and everything else is being increased in order to encourage grinding it out.

Zplus.4217:

Can someone please explain to me how having 1 or 2 sets of account bound ascended gear is enough to share across 8 professions? As in what I can do to get my ele to wear the medium armor set?

Is there a particular reason you don’t want to just settle into one or two main professions? There’s no game where you’re expected to max out your gear on every single class.

And why does it even matter? The number of players who are actually skilled enough to notice the loss of a pip of crit chance and 32 power might not even be in the double digits.

Chrono.6928:

Test.8734:

Amazing to see so many people defending ArenaNet by claiming this change isn’t bad… While there’s next to no one saying why it would be good.

I guess it speaks a lot about the quality of the game’s updates when people are happy that a change isn’t making the game worse, even when it doesn’t make the game better.

its just the times we live in. reading this post actually reminded me a lot about politics. lol

Not too amazed, it’s almost the norm.
In my opinion people today are being regularly brainwashed by the mmorpgs industry, a business that is slowly killing/reducing any social interaction and challenge in their virtual worlds to ship contents that relies heavily on people void and deleterious addictions.

Because it’s safer to cater to a mass that chase some virtual goods (weapons or armor tiers/masteries,/skins) delivering a narrower variety of activities and requiring the players to repeat a content over and over and over to reach the “cap” or to obtain what they want.

Reached the cap or the achievement of something, players realize that there is “nothing left” (as if other players are nothing else than npc you bring along to complete a specific content) because they had no time to really socialize and/or the ability to impact the game in a meaningful way, then they try to play a little more to find that, ignoring the virtual reward, that content is not so fun to keep them interested.
(Yes, there are people that create solid bounds in mmorpgs, but they are usually a minority and people that have a lot of time to spend on them so they can both clear contents for the virtual rewards and socialize)

Luckily for the developers of this sector is possible to release few more things to make people grind more when the hype if fading and repeat this strategy till the end of time.

This genere is selfdefining itself, it’s not players’ fault. It’s a business.
And there is no courage left, in any company, to think out of the box because it’s a lot easier to make money this way. Why should they invest in something else than things that keep players playing and paying and why should these things require a lot of manpower and investment?

Anet was somewhat different, and this change, always in my opinion, is (again and humanly speaking) in the wrong direction.

The only thing that could counterbalance it would be adding the stats swap to this tier.

OpieOP.7569:

bloodletting wolf.2837:

OpieOP.7569:

I really hate how they made this and the condi changes without addressing it for WvW. Grinding is what kills the game for me, and that’s why I don’t do PVE. One of the reasons I fell in love with this game is the fact you don’t need to grind anything, you can just play spvp/wvw and exchange badges for gears. Also, I’m someone who likes to play more than one class, so yeah…this sucks not sure how I’ll feel about it when someone is doing higher damage in PVP just because he did the PVE.

I play 95% WvW and I have 2 ascended sets of armor. You don’t have to grind for it if you consider it a long term investment.

I have 685Hours on my account, and I only play WvW with my rank being 620. What I have is 3 Chests of Loyalty(haven’t opened them because of the expansion), 1 healing signet(got it from a chest) and 1 Eye of Janthir(Laurels). So clearly I’m doing something wrong here. Could you tell me how did you get these two full sets of armor?

I have a little over 3000 hours and my rank is only about 1000. I spend 75% of my time roaming or tower defending so between food and siege so I’m not exactly swimming in gold.
If you aren’t using your laurels for ascended gear burn them for t6 mats and sell them. Burn your Karma. Clear your bank. Don’t spend your gold on skins or whatever else the kids are spending it on these days. Next time there is a $10 sale buy another account and use it for burning laurels (I just started doing this).
Don’t expect to get your armor this week or next or even this month. Ascended armor is a long term investment.

Gibson.4036:

Obtena.7952:

None of this QQ is new and the reasons for it are still silly. In a game where PVE is balanced around Green/Yellow gear, it’s frankly quite dumb to complain that the gear two levels above THAT balancing point is getting a buff. Carry on.

None of your derision is new and the reason for it is still silly. In a game featuring a steady character power progression it’s frankly quite dumb to expect people to swallow a sudden spike right at the end of the curve or be satisfied with never completing that progression. Carry on.

It would be dumb to expect that people swallow a sudden spike, but this isn’t a spike and the armor is still not needed for playing the game. In addition, if people haven’t ‘rushed’ to complete their ascended armor in the last 1.5 years they have had to do so, what the hell do they care all the sudden now when the game isn’t balanced around it in the first place? First world made up problems. No problem … I’m poised to take people’s money if they still think they ‘need’ ascended armor.

One thing is for certain. Anet do know how to reward people for keeping up and sticking to the game.

Erick Alastor.3917:

This genere is selfdefining itself, it’s not players’ fault. It’s a business.
And there is no courage left, in any company, to think out of the box because it’s a lot easier to make money this way. Why should thet invest in something else than things that keep players playing and paying and why should these things require a lot of manpower and investment?

True. I honestly think it’s too late now. Even if someone wanted to make something different, it would be flooded by MMORPG players (who want all the things you described), and as soon as those players began leaving, the developers would start panicking and adding all those features seen in every other MMORPG.

Which, incidentally, is exactly what ArenaNet has been doing since release.

Erick Alastor.3917:

Anet was somewhat different, and this change, always in my opinion, is (again and humanly speaking) in the wrong direction.

I think ArenaNet has been going in the wrong direction since release.

Ascended gear, Fractals, poorly designed maps like Southsun Cove, poorly designed story elements like Scarlet, ignoring almost all the story hooks they had planted in the game before release, abandoning the idea of interesting events with multiple steps in favor of repetitive events for people to farm over and over… All of it is making the game more of a grind, more like any other MMORPG, and less like a game that “if you don’t like MMORPGs, you should REALLY check out” (remember that?).

Increasing the power of ascended gear is only one more step in the same direction. I’m surprised they are not just adding a new tier of gear, directly or indirectly (such as adding more powerful infusions).

bloodletting wolf.2837:

If you aren’t using your laurels for ascended gear burn them for t6 mats and sell them. Burn your Karma. Clear your bank. Don’t spend your gold on skins or whatever else the kids are spending it on these days. Next time there is a $10 sale buy another account and use it for burning laurels (I just started doing this).

Wow, that sounds like so much fun!

/not

If you are resorting to buying more accounts just to get laurels, wouldn’t it be easier to just buy gems and then convert them to gold? Because if you think you are “earning in-game” your ascended items, well…

Test.8734:

I’m surprised they are not just adding a new tier of gear, directly or indirectly (such as adding more powerful infusions).

The only thing easier for a developer to add for players to grind than a new tier of gear is a reason to re-grind the existing tier.

Erick Alastor.3917:

Not too amazed, it’s almost the norm.
In my opinion people today are being regularly brainwashed by the mmorpgs industry, a business that is slowly killing/reducing any social interaction and challenge in their virtual worlds to ship contents that relies heavily on people void and deleterious addictions.

Because it’s safer to cater to a mass that chase some virtual goods (weapons or armor tiers/masteries,/skins) delivering a narrower variety of activities and requiring the players to repeat a content over and over and over to reach the “cap” or to obtain what they want.

Considering that every attempt by developers to “change the game” in the MMO market has met with almost uniformly abject failure, I can’t imagine why developers would reach the conclusion, “WoW clones is what the people want…”

Not to mention every time Arena.net has tried to mix things up with THIS game it has been met with endless kittening on these very forums…

The problem with games are gamers. We’re our own worst enemy.