Guild Wars 2

Don’t worry, ill pick up the torch and pitchfork you dropped.

If i could farm laurels all day long or get more than 1 per day. I could get full ascended gear in 1 extended weekend. Yep around 4 days of play when i got time.

How long does it take me now? 3 months. Can i enjoy the game without ascended gear? Nope, because i know im not playing as good as i could, i know im not using what i could be. And i know that someone who has a more regular playtime and not a irregular playtime like i do will be better at WvW than i will, even if i would invest more playtime into the game and were better.

So im still mad for this hastly pushed out content that just dangles a carrot infrot players in an attempt to keep them logged on every day so someone can say look we have a huge potential buyer base for all those cash shop items.

PiSquare.2904:

Don’t worry, ill pick up the torch and pitchfork you dropped.

If i could farm laurels all day long or get more than 1 per day. I could get full ascended gear in 1 extended weekend. Yep around 4 days of play when i got time.

How long does it take me now? 3 months. Can i enjoy the game without ascended gear? Nope, because i know im not playing as good as i could, i know im not using what i could be. And i know that someone who has a more regular playtime and not a irregular playtime like i do will be better at WvW than i will, even if i would invest more playtime into the game and were better.

So im still mad for this hastly pushed out content that just dangles a carrot infrot players in an attempt to keep them logged on every day so someone can say look we have a huge potential buyer base for all those cash shop items.

You’re not having fun all because simply because your gear is “inferior”. You’d rather get your ascended ASAP. In other words, you prefer it if this game was a gear game like all other MMORPGs.

Sounds like you’re the kind of people who’d push for ascended in the first place, and in addition, want ways to get it through actual, traditional grind.

Oh, and cash shop items, asides from a few things under “service”, are all pretty much useless. I don’t see how ascended relates to it at all. People who log on for laurels only probably don’t even log in enough to want to spend on the cash shop anyway.

Heijincks.9267:

PiSquare.2904:

Don’t worry, ill pick up the torch and pitchfork you dropped.

If i could farm laurels all day long or get more than 1 per day. I could get full ascended gear in 1 extended weekend. Yep around 4 days of play when i got time.

How long does it take me now? 3 months. Can i enjoy the game without ascended gear? Nope, because i know im not playing as good as i could, i know im not using what i could be. And i know that someone who has a more regular playtime and not a irregular playtime like i do will be better at WvW than i will, even if i would invest more playtime into the game and were better.

So im still mad for this hastly pushed out content that just dangles a carrot infrot players in an attempt to keep them logged on every day so someone can say look we have a huge potential buyer base for all those cash shop items.

You’re not having fun all because simply because your gear is “inferior”. You’d rather get your ascended ASAP. In other words, you prefer it if this game was a gear game like all other MMORPGs.

Sounds like you’re the kind of people who’d push for ascended in the first place, and in addition, want ways to get it through actual, traditional grind.

Oh, and cash shop items, asides from a few things under “service”, are all pretty much useless. I don’t see how ascended relates to it at all. People who want laurels probably don’t even log in enough to want to spend on the cash shop anyway.

I was the one with pitchforks and torches when they announced ascended. I did not want it in game. But im the kind of player who wants to finish one character then play him. Or at least play like i want. Cash shop items atm are pretty needed if you want to go for a legendary. And with cash shop items i can make a lvl 80 in a day, that will net me more rewards that are locked at 1 per day per character.

If they put something into the game i want it to be obtainable trough my effort put into the game, and not locked out by a time gate.

Fractals. No thanks. Time gates? Nope. Excluding players based on guild size? Not smart Anet, just not smart.

I can hardly wait for an Ascended piece (let’s say all-stat weapons) to be introduced to WvW, and exclusively to WvW. I’m sure you’ll all rediscover your rage.

PiSquare.2904:

Heijincks.9267:

PiSquare.2904:

Don’t worry, ill pick up the torch and pitchfork you dropped.

If i could farm laurels all day long or get more than 1 per day. I could get full ascended gear in 1 extended weekend. Yep around 4 days of play when i got time.

How long does it take me now? 3 months. Can i enjoy the game without ascended gear? Nope, because i know im not playing as good as i could, i know im not using what i could be. And i know that someone who has a more regular playtime and not a irregular playtime like i do will be better at WvW than i will, even if i would invest more playtime into the game and were better.

So im still mad for this hastly pushed out content that just dangles a carrot infrot players in an attempt to keep them logged on every day so someone can say look we have a huge potential buyer base for all those cash shop items.

You’re not having fun all because simply because your gear is “inferior”. You’d rather get your ascended ASAP. In other words, you prefer it if this game was a gear game like all other MMORPGs.

Sounds like you’re the kind of people who’d push for ascended in the first place, and in addition, want ways to get it through actual, traditional grind.

Oh, and cash shop items, asides from a few things under “service”, are all pretty much useless. I don’t see how ascended relates to it at all. People who want laurels probably don’t even log in enough to want to spend on the cash shop anyway.

I was the one with pitchforks and torches when they announced ascended. I did not want it in game. But im the kind of player who wants to finish one character then play him. Or at least play like i want. Cash shop items atm are pretty needed if you want to go for a legendary. And with cash shop items i can make a lvl 80 in a day, that will net me more rewards that are locked at 1 per day per character.

If they put something into the game i want it to be obtainable trough my effort put into the game, and not locked out by a time gate.

Not having ascended bars you from having fun in the game. That by itself is a pretty laughable statement because it’s such a trivial thing. It’s not ascended that’s preventing you from having fun. It’s your obsessive compulsion.

Is ascended barring you from playing the game? Quite hardly, maybe just 0.001% of it (that being fractals 20 and higher). That hardly justifies your reasoning.

Sure, buying gold will give you a lot of convenience. It doesn’t give you any statistical advantage though other than getting exotics quickly. No ascended here. Sure, you might also get additional level 80s faster (via crafting). But what benefits does it achieve at the end in terms of ascended? It doesn’t increase the rate you can get ascended either.

And that’s supposed to be what’s preventing you from “having fun”.

Now don’t shoot me for saying this but… Ascended gear being more easily attainable now is great but they are most useful in fractals where they were previously only available. I think it’d be nice for them to introduce something else other than fractals that could make use of the AR.

I’m also really hoping that for weapons and armor they still have upgrade slots, pure stats on trinkets is fine but it’d suck to lose the ability to customize your sigils and runes (which can really impact your build).

I´m surprised nobody is thinking about infusions:

Anet said they won´t add better gear then ascended, they never said they won´t add better infusions then blue ones – figure out a full set of ascended gear with exotic infusions, you certainly would want this.

hydeaut.1758:

I´m surprised nobody is thinking about infusions:

Anet said they won´t add better gear then ascended, they never said they won´t add better infusions then blue ones – figure out a full set of ascended gear with ascended infusions, you certainly would want this.

Fixed that for you, for better clarity of your message.
And it’s still unclear if armor and weapons won’t have “ascended” rune/sigil versions.

Once all the ascended “gear” is in, I’m certain we’ll see ascended upgrades. :/ Oh well. Keep on keeping on I guess.

callidus.7085:

Now don’t shoot me for saying this but… Ascended gear being more easily attainable now is great but they are most useful in fractals where they were previously only available. I think it’d be nice for them to introduce something else other than fractals that could make use of the AR.

I have to disagree. The more content they add Agony to the more required infusions become. As infusions can only added to ascended gear that means I need to get that gear to do future content additions. It becomes a must have rather than a nice to have. It’s already a must have for fractal runners, but at least it’s available from there as well.

bpphantom.8243:

callidus.7085:

Now don’t shoot me for saying this but… Ascended gear being more easily attainable now is great but they are most useful in fractals where they were previously only available. I think it’d be nice for them to introduce something else other than fractals that could make use of the AR.

I have to disagree. The more content they add Agony to the more required infusions become. As infusions can only added to ascended gear that means I need to get that gear to do future content additions. It becomes a must have rather than a nice to have. It’s already a must have for fractal runners, but at least it’s available from there as well.

My point was that Ascended gear is now available outside of fractals, so it should be useful (other than the increased stats) outside of fractals. Otherwise, what’s the point? Perhaps introducing Agony wouldn’t be the most desirable way to make them useful outside of fractals, but that was my intended idea: use the infusion slot for something. Reduced damage from siege weapons perhaps in WvW? That’d be a new defensive infusion slot? and other infusions for PvE… It’d just be pointless to have the slot sitting there unused.

I have been pretty busy, but have been slow reading all of the responses and wanted to give a couple of comments.

WvW aside, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to only have one toon in top end gear after 6 months. I didn’t go after ascended gear until after I got my ascended amulet. Which means most of that time I was running around in Exotic gear and the game wasn’t any harder than before. Considering Ascended gear can be gotten without the regular materials, it serves to reason that it means it would be easier to to deck out alts in the more than adequate Exotic gear, since you aren’t spending those mats on getting the top tier gear for your main.

Yes, using only laurels is much slower than other methods of acquisition, because Anet wants to encourage us to do these things… but I have changed my mind on this subject. I had no intention of doing Fractals, and then I tried it, and lo and behold I found it fun. Other methods of acquisition wouldn’t be a bad thing though because you can argue that the current system gives the impression “if you aren’t doing fractals or guild missions you are doing it wrong”. So I can understand the frustration there.

I’ve always found it interesting that some people’s view of ANet time-gating Ascended gear via Laurels has pretty much resulted in a directly opposing opinion to mine.

‘I have to wait a month (or more) to get a piece of Ascended gear via Laurels!?’

vs.

‘I get a piece of Ascended gear every month for playing the game no differently to as I was playing before? With very little effort?’

I’m likely misrepresenting the first reaction because I want it to be concise, but I still feel that the relative impact these changes have had on me are essentially minor unless I one day became bothered about how my gear was impacting on my effectiveness in WvWvW (read: none – I’m legitimately not skilled enough for my gear level vs. an opponent’s to really have any significant impact on me and I believe that there are more factors not under my control influencing this sort of thing).

LordGustoff – I’m happy to hear that you’ve reconsidered your thoughts, if only because you seem happier in yourself now. I was never bothered about Fractals and I felt it was something that would push players towards hyper-efficiency and elitism, but the truth is that as little play time I’ve spent there, I’ve enjoyed it all. I’m a very casual player in that I prefer to chase goals under my own steam and not someone else’s – or the expectations of the community – and this has resulted in a lot of play time being generally very inefficient. But regardless I’ve enjoyed myself.

Lord Gustaff: Good work! To be honest, players shouldn’t fall for the standard “I want it now” mindset. It happens almost all the time, but if they weren’t so stubborn at times and looked at it from a different perspective, thing surely wouldn’t be so doom and gloom for them.

Also, when you said 7/8 dungeons, is it safe to assume you’re talking about Arah Path 4 being the only path/dungeon left?

DanteZero.9736:

Also, when you said 7/8 dungeons, is it safe to assume you’re talking about Arah Path 4 being the only path/dungeon left?

I believe that is one of them… I’ve done Arah story and the Forgotten Path. My understanding of Arah is that the paths are extremely long. It’s been a while since I’ve run the Forgotten path, but the 45 mins or so I believe it took us (this was with running/skipping a lot of unnecessary stuff), started to wear on me. So I haven’t done them because I don’t think I could stand being stuck in the same area for 1+ hours :P

INB4 someone asks, how do you get through fractals? I run it with a regular group of people and we have become extremely efficient at running them. That and the fact that you change areas every 15-20 mins helps to stave off my dungeon “cabin fever”.

bpphantom.8243:

callidus.7085:

Now don’t shoot me for saying this but… Ascended gear being more easily attainable now is great but they are most useful in fractals where they were previously only available. I think it’d be nice for them to introduce something else other than fractals that could make use of the AR.

I have to disagree. The more content they add Agony to the more required infusions become. As infusions can only added to ascended gear that means I need to get that gear to do future content additions. It becomes a must have rather than a nice to have. It’s already a must have for fractal runners, but at least it’s available from there as well.

That assumes Agony will be introduced outside of Fractals . . . which is not a bad assumption, just an assumption.

If the Mursaat emerge again, then expect Agony to be among their favorite tricks.

The time frame they have going is fine for a main, pretty questionable for gearing alts though.

Ascended rings are in a good place for alts atm. Rest needs work.

Something else I have been thinking about since posting this thread: The game has gone through some major changes since launch, that people feel like the company has betrayed them. I wonder how many of these changes have been made because it turns out that in practice some of the design philosophies they really wanted to include just doesn’t work in the MMO game format?

I have been playing since beta, and had head start access. Since launch the game has kept me occupied for 600+ hours over 6.5 months. I’ve spent most of that time doing something I wanted to in game, and then finishing up my dailies as my final act of the night.

I’ve been playing since beta and had head start access. Since the launch the game has kept me occupied for 600+ hours over 6.5 months. I’ve spent about half that time doing something I wanted to in game (the other half being crappy PvE grinding which I’ve barely tolerated).

Now ANet demands that I do more crappy PvE grinding.

LordGustoff.3752:

Let me begin with the Laurel system. At first I hated it… I saw it as an arbitrary filter to slow down the acquisition of ascended gear. Having to wait another month for my amulet after I had already been playing for months, as well as feeling my dailies were suddenly a requirement, left me jaded. Recently I decided to calculate where I would be in terms of laurels if they had existed at release. That number came out to about 265 laurels. (I am not counting the possibility of having completed the Aug 2012 dailies/monthly, nor the days people were able to get multiple laurels due to patch releases)

A full five Ascended accessory set for one character costs 180 laurels… which would have left me with a whopping extra 85 laurels breathing room, or nearly 3 months worth of dailies I could have skipped without concern. Or by now I would have one main decked out, and any two accessories of my choice on an alt if I only used laurels. Not so bad. And then it got better.

The problem with what you’re saying isn’t that you have to put in the hours, it’s the way that you have to play each and every day to get those hours in. You can’t ignore the game for three weeks of hard study time, then get to spring break and dump 100 hours in a single week and be at the same spot you would be if you put in an hour a day for three months. The only people that would have those 265 laurels are the ones that spend, at the very least, an hour each and every day, without fail, in a video game.

This design does stop the very-vocal locusts who have devoured every bit of content in 1.76 seconds flat from screaming that there’s nothing left to do. Personally, I don’t find that to be enough of an advantage to lose the freedom of playing when there is time available instead of every day, day in and day out. Back in the good ol’ GW1 days I would sometimes see Gaile Grey urge a player to take a break and come back later — there’s no subscription and nothing to lose by setting the game aside to avoid burnout. But that’s just not true anymore. Not with the time-gated content that has been added with laurels and commendations. Now it doesn’t matter if you put in 600 hours — if you don’t do it on daily basis it is costing you currency.

Guild missions are great fun, and I’ve really enjoyed doing them with my guild! But, with about 100 player schedules to contend with I find myself running bounties 5 times a week to be sure that everyone gets the chance to get their commendations before week’s end. This is incredibly difficult for guild leadership and is definitely creating a strain for having time for other activities that my guild and I enjoy — WvW for instance.

Requiring players to be in game each and every day to be able to achieve best in slot equipment is a poor design decision.

Dailies are annoying as hell.

They should have weeklies that require 7x the grind for 7x reward. Except you only do them once per week fitting within your personal time management, rather than the asinine “dailies” model.

Edit:

“Weeklies” were one of the few good things SWTOR had going for it.

At first I hated ascended gear

And I still do.

The whole system spits on the name of Guild Wars.

Rukia.4802:

At first I hated ascended gear

And I still do.

The whole system spits on the name of Guild Wars.

And yet it’s the only thing that keeps half of the playerbase from quitting GW2.
Sadly progression is needed for longevity.

Sure we could do with just 1m players instead of 3m, but I for one prefer to have an harmless progression if it means more players in the game.

LordGustoff.3752:

Something else I have been thinking about since posting this thread: The game has gone through some major changes since launch, that people feel like the company has betrayed them. I wonder how many of these changes have been made because it turns out that in practice some of the design philosophies they really wanted to include just doesn’t work in the MMO game format?

The only part of the philosophy that has been abandoned is “no vertical progression.” Horizontal progression works in an MMO format, it just didn’t work for enough customers to satisfy the financial decision makers. I’ll get back to you if they change classes to provide for tanks and healers.

Red Falcon.8257:

Rukia.4802:

At first I hated ascended gear

And I still do.

The whole system spits on the name of Guild Wars.

And yet it’s the only thing that keeps half of the playerbase from quitting GW2.
Sadly progression is needed for longevity.

Sure we could do with just 1m players instead of 3m, but I for one prefer to have an harmless progression if it means more players in the game.

I’m not so sure that Ascended gear is what is keeping half of the current players playing… A lot of the people in my guild got their Ascended rings pretty quickly and only continued to progress because the loot was better the further up in fractals they went, really just running the high levels for Exotic drops.. for Exotics, not Ascended gear (as they are account bound anyway). I have a feeling that if they just introduced fractals without Ascended gear or Agony that things would still be in about the same state as they are now. There are still posts going on saying there isn’t enough of a gear treadmill and there are posts still complaining about the introduction of Ascended gear (not that this is one, I know it isn’t / wasn’t meant to be). Either way, it happened and it’s here to stay I just wanted to point out the possibility that the Ascended gear might not have as drastic of an impact on the populace as you might think.

IndigoSundown.5419:

LordGustoff.3752:

Something else I have been thinking about since posting this thread: The game has gone through some major changes since launch, that people feel like the company has betrayed them. I wonder how many of these changes have been made because it turns out that in practice some of the design philosophies they really wanted to include just doesn’t work in the MMO game format?

The only part of the philosophy that has been abandoned is “no vertical progression.” Horizontal progression works in an MMO format, it just didn’t work for enough customers to satisfy the financial decision makers. I’ll get back to you if they change classes to provide for tanks and healers.

That’s the problem with wanting to make a game that is different and attracts even people who usually dislike MMOs – you’ll still attract enough MMO-hoppers who were only expecting ‘more of the same’ and start crying if they don’t get it. What I’m reyll interested in is whether that portion of the player base really spends more money in the cash-shop…

Ascended gear already had a drastic impact on the population. A kittenton of people quit the day that stuff was announced, and even more quit once they tried the Fractals.

Gated content, no matter what the gate, is just not keeping people happy.

@Lord Gustaff
I’m glad you’ve found a way to enjoy the game. That’s great.

That said, I disagree with you.

Going off of numerous comments from various people at Anet I’ve come to an interesting theory on this matter. You see, they often talked about gear treadmills and how having to grind a new set of gear every six months sucked (I believe Colin said something along those lines), and everyone thought what he meant was that they weren’t going to have more tiers of gear. I now theorize he was talking about the delivery system for the new tiers and not necessarily the new tiers themselves.
Now take into consideration another comment where they specifically said they were going to add new gear tiers with “zero grind and a shallow power curve” (I think that was from an AMA, possibly with Chris Whiteside[sp?]).

So, considering how Ascended keeps being added one piece at a time I believe what they’re doing is converting the gear treadmill from grinding a full set every 6-12 months to “not” grinding one new piece every month or two. I think they believe that by making them available through laurels “you get anyway” they don’t count as a grind.

On the surface that doesn’t seem so bad does it? Just upgrade one piece a month?
Well, one piece per alt per month, so only grind out 8 new pieces a month?
Oh right, it’s time gated to string people along.
And means you can’t spend laurels on any of those other interesting things.

I know people approach MMOs differently. For me, gearing up is part of the “building the character” phase. Get to level 80, gear up, and then the real playing of the game begins.
At that point I can do anything I want, go anywhere, start considering aesthetic improvements.
But as long as I’m short on gear Anything I do needs to move me towards the gear. Sometimes I enjoy what I’m doing in spite of it but mostly its “I’m doing not really fun stuff right now to get my character to the point I can do the fun stuff”.
Sure there are people on the other side of the fence, for whom gearing up is playing the game and without another set of gear to grind for they have nothing to do.

Those of us who want to reach BiS and then play the game aren’t asking for it to just be mailed to us, we do want to earn it, that’s part of building our characters.
However, we do not appreciate being drip-fed our gear one piece a month through areas of the game we have no interest in.
We do not appreciate leveling eight crafting professions to 400 only to watch them get shot in the head and thrown in a gutter, left completely useless because heaven forbid they introduce new gear to a system where people who have already put in effort might get the items before people who haven’t.
We want to earn it, not grind for for it. It’s a subtle, yet huge, difference.

The worst part? This setup means if you take a break, end up in a coma, get abducted by aliens, or what have you, and come back in six months. Not only are you going to be 6 months of gear behind, you’ll also be six months of currency behind, which means that six month gap is now more or less permanent and no matter how much effort you put in you won’t be able to catch up.
Thus it becomes a grind, even at one piece a month. Given that the treadmill is then on all the time instead of once a year some might even consider that to be worse, because as soon as you get one months upgrade you have to start worrying about the next. ymmv of course.

If this neither effects nor bothers you, great. Those of us who are bothered by this system are simply hoping for some adjustment so we can enjoy the game too, just because you enjoy spending all your time on the treadmill doesn’t mean everyone else should or will. And just because you don’t mind running everything in sub par gear doesn’t mean we should have to settle for it just because you do.

Red Falcon.8257:

Rukia.4802:

At first I hated ascended gear

And I still do.

The whole system spits on the name of Guild Wars.

And yet it’s the only thing that keeps half of the playerbase from quitting GW2.
Sadly progression is needed for longevity.

Sure we could do with just 1m players instead of 3m, but I for one prefer to have an harmless progression if it means more players in the game.

How many players have left because of ascended grind? How many will leave?

Lol harmless gearflation. What a cute little slippery slope.

Aye.8392:

The problem with what you’re saying isn’t that you have to put in the hours, it’s the way that you have to play each and every day to get those hours in. You can’t ignore the game for three weeks of hard study time, then get to spring break and dump 100 hours in a single week and be at the same spot you would be if you put in an hour a day for three months. The only people that would have those 265 laurels are the ones that spend, at the very least, an hour each and every day, without fail, in a video game.

You are right. But I don’t feel like it’s a requirement to log in every day, even at the loss of a laurel, because in PvE there is not a larger, constantly evolving, meta game I feel I need to catch up to; at least not one that requires Ascended gear.

Ascended gear, to me, feels like playing a new Mario game. I pick it up, play it for a while then put it down for a few weeks before coming back to it. Sure I could have finished the game in those three weeks, but I am not worse off than if I had played straight through. Right now at least, in my opinion, GW2 PvE plays the same way.

Ascended gear as an embodiment of vertical progression is a problem in itself, regardless of implementation. But, as one of those with eight or more max level characters, the time-gating is a significant problem with the implementation. If they were to revert from the Feb monthly to requiring dungeons or WvW for monthlies that would mean a minimum of eight months for me to get each character one piece of ascended gear. That’s ridiculous on the face of it. And, there are other pieces in the game already and will be more. The time-gating and lack of diverse paths to acquire the gear make it a problem for those playing max-level alts. Perhaps if I had one character that I was moving along the power curve I would feel differently.

Red Falcon.8257:

Rukia.4802:

At first I hated ascended gear

And I still do.

The whole system spits on the name of Guild Wars.

And yet it’s the only thing that keeps half of the playerbase from quitting GW2.
Sadly progression is needed for longevity.

Sure we could do with just 1m players instead of 3m, but I for one prefer to have an harmless progression if it means more players in the game.

I like to see them do it like FF11 where they will add in “stronger” gear but it would be stronger in odd ways much like the HQ item set that was hard to get and added very small amounts to the player. There was an odd progression in ff11 before they up the level cap past 75. You could get most of your gear from the AH (ff11 version of TP) yet at the same time you could get items off mobs events Gods etc.. Its odd because no one called it a treadmill in ff11 but for this game its trying to be labeled as such and its not a true one at that in GW2. This is how i see Ascended items in GW2. They are the HQ version of exotic yes they are stronger but they are not that much stronger.

There was a jock in ff11 if SE added in toilet paper every one would be mad at you unless you used toilet paper +1. Its these persecution we put on our self and others that are more of the problem in mmorpgs. It keeps community unable to work together because one person feels they are playing with ppl whom are too week or that another person feels that they cant get to the level of what that person wants them to be like. If any thing the players will never get beyond mmorpgs to make a community if they cant get past these small things.

In the end its not Anet chose its YOUR (the players) chose.

I could go back to GW and start a fresh character in Prophecies right now and have maxed out gear in less than a day. I could even shave a few hours off that if I permitted myself access to the expansion.

Show me how to do that in GW2, and I’ll stop believing that Ascended material and time costs aren’t absurd.

Had to give the OP a +1 just for his TL;DR.

As for the topic, I never saw much of a reason to get bent out of shape about ascended gear at all. It’s as accessible to me as it is to anyone else, which is the only thing that would concern me. Length of time to acquire it is not relevant. I’ll get it when I get it, if I get it.

Shayne Hawke.9160:

I could go back to GW and start a fresh character in Prophecies right now and have maxed out gear in less than a day. I could even shave a few hours off that if I permitted myself access to the expansion.

Show me how to do that in GW2, and I’ll stop believing that Ascended material and time costs aren’t absurd.

Ever considered that capability you had in GW was intentionally left out of GW2 because it’s dumb in terms of retaining players who spend real money in the cash shop?

ANet is in business and need to pay the bills and would like a steadyish cash flow so they can do more work and keep the servers up. Having a whole bunch of players insta-max level/max gear doesn’t lend toward that goal you think?

I have over 20 alts. I can assure you the one laurel per day – ten laurels per month is not going to get them all their amulets. The first question I asked when laurels were announced was about other ways to get them, and I got a positive response. So I didn’t get to the holding my breath and stomping my feet and screaming that ANet doesn’t really love me.

Now we have the once a week thing with guild tokens and earrings. Eventually you’ll be able to get more than just two tokens a week as guilds start adding the other events, but even then, that is gated to just the big guilds, and seriously gated to real world time, not game time. This is bad, but I’m holding out hope that ascended gear will work its way into other acquisition methods.

Ultimately, I wish ascended gear would become craftable. Craftable items already have a plethora of acquisition methods. You can run around harvesting. You can farm bags. You can buy with gold which in turn means practically all the content in the game leads towards being able to make your item. I expect that ascended items would need lots of high end mats, but I’m totally okay with that provided that I really can do anything in the game I want and still be making progress towards acquiring BIS gear.

Behellagh.1468:

Shayne Hawke.9160:

I could go back to GW and start a fresh character in Prophecies right now and have maxed out gear in less than a day. I could even shave a few hours off that if I permitted myself access to the expansion.

Show me how to do that in GW2, and I’ll stop believing that Ascended material and time costs aren’t absurd.

Ever considered that capability you had in GW was intentionally left out of GW2 because it’s dumb in terms of retaining players who spend real money in the cash shop?

ANet is in business and need to pay the bills and would like a steadyish cash flow so they can do more work and keep the servers up. Having a whole bunch of players insta-max level/max gear doesn’t lend toward that goal you think?

Just to give you a counter-example:

Champions Online makes most of its income from costumes. Players happily spend real money to get more choices for what they wear. This means that players who have maxed their characters (I have 71 of them maxxed out) still have lots of reasons to give them real money that have nothing to do with grinding.

Behellagh.1468:

Shayne Hawke.9160:

I could go back to GW and start a fresh character in Prophecies right now and have maxed out gear in less than a day. I could even shave a few hours off that if I permitted myself access to the expansion.

Show me how to do that in GW2, and I’ll stop believing that Ascended material and time costs aren’t absurd.

Ever considered that capability you had in GW was intentionally left out of GW2 because it’s dumb in terms of retaining players who spend real money in the cash shop?

ANet is in business and need to pay the bills and would like a steadyish cash flow so they can do more work and keep the servers up. Having a whole bunch of players insta-max level/max gear doesn’t lend toward that goal you think?

I think that you are assuming that vertical progression is the only thing that will satisfy players over time and produce a profitable game. In actuality, it is simply one method of offering a sense of progression and a motivation for continued play. And, it’s an old idea that many thinking gamers are frankly tired of. Here are a couple videos that present issues and critical thought on the subject:

http://www.penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/power-creep

http://taugrim.com/2012/04/19/why-games-should-scale-horizontally-instead-of-vertically/

LordGustoff.3752:

Something else I have been thinking about since posting this thread: The game has gone through some major changes since launch, that people feel like the company has betrayed them. I wonder how many of these changes have been made because it turns out that in practice some of the design philosophies they really wanted to include just doesn’t work in the MMO game format?

Yeah well I’d respect anet more if they actually came out and admitted this rather than try to say that they haven’t compromised their manifesto.

I would say though that there are more horizontal progression options that haven’t been done in the game as yet.

If you have ONE character you’re OK-ish. If you have multiple it’s a huge pain. Ascended gear is a large time/monetary investment (depending on how you obtain it)… Doing that for multiple characters isn’t easy to say the least.

Even if you just have one character… with all of these constant buffs/nerfs it isn’t possible for some one to keep up with the current state of the game and obtain the appropriate gear for their class (unless you’re a warrior… because nothing ever really seems to change for them). Ex… One month your class could be doing great with a condition build… the next it’s nerfed and all of your hard work is now trashed and you need to start ALL over again.

At least with a legendary I can transmute it over and it’ll still keep the legendary status… ascended has nothing like that…

Behellagh.1468:

Shayne Hawke.9160:

I could go back to GW and start a fresh character in Prophecies right now and have maxed out gear in less than a day. I could even shave a few hours off that if I permitted myself access to the expansion.

Show me how to do that in GW2, and I’ll stop believing that Ascended material and time costs aren’t absurd.

Ever considered that capability you had in GW was intentionally left out of GW2 because it’s dumb in terms of retaining players who spend real money in the cash shop?

ANet is in business and need to pay the bills and would like a steadyish cash flow so they can do more work and keep the servers up. Having a whole bunch of players insta-max level/max gear doesn’t lend toward that goal you think?

No, if their goal is to keep players on a hamster wheel of chasing after higher and higher stats, then giving players easy access to max gear isn’t a good idea. However, I would rather that ANet had a goal that is actually meaningful and enhances the game’s experience versus tying players to a treadmill, and a terrible one at that.

Behellagh.1468:

Shayne Hawke.9160:

I could go back to GW and start a fresh character in Prophecies right now and have maxed out gear in less than a day. I could even shave a few hours off that if I permitted myself access to the expansion.

Show me how to do that in GW2, and I’ll stop believing that Ascended material and time costs aren’t absurd.

Ever considered that capability you had in GW was intentionally left out of GW2 because it’s dumb in terms of retaining players who spend real money in the cash shop?

No, because that is simply not true. According to Anet’s own info GW was actually doing very well financially until they dropped a bridge on it.

I’ll say it quickly and concise.

Ascended damaged this game very badly, it has been badly implemented and helped cause a huge rift in this game and the community..

To enjoy the game fully i’m forced to use it.. (grind or time sink grind) there is no “option” no matter what others say.. unless i limit myself only to certain parts of the game..

I dread how powerful this stuff will be when the rest is added to the game..

I think GW2 is one of the best games ever made

but it would be even better without Ascended gear.

Of course no game is perfect.

And if you,say wanted to do something silly like change your build you would need another 3 months of everyday dailies just to get the gear for it-yay for build experimentation and variety!!!

Only problem with laurels is you can’t get them while doing sPvP… which means It will be a very very long time before I get Baron Von snufflepaws or whatever the cute puppies name is.

Dante.1508:

I’ll say it quickly and concise.

I dread how powerful this stuff will be when the rest is added to the game..

Maybe you’ll enjoy yourself while you play the new content.

Not sure why of this obsession with BiS some people have.
Back in the days I played for at least 1-2 months with exotic weapon, yellow armor and green trinkets.
Now I upgraded everything to BiS but didn’t really notice a real difference in PvE or WvW.
It’s more of an obsession than a reality really.
+5-10% to all stats won’t make you win a fight that you would lose without.
This isn’t a stat-based game, most of the outcome is your skill, hardware and optimal keybinds.

I laugh at people who wear BiS but then backpedal, keyboard turn, wasd in melee, circle-attacks in a game with auto-facing, no gaming mouse, wireless connection…
I do own those people with 15k health left, if I was wearing greens I would have 10k left.

It’s a natural tendency for gamers to aspire for BiS items. Then again, if it isn’t as good as everyone thinks, then what’s the point of even introducing them in the first place? Ascended gear isn’t necessary so why then are we given a hard time acquiring them (too limited)? The time/effort:reward ratio of these items doesn’t seem to be very well balanced. It destroyed the rate by which people get what they want (and need) when exotics were BiS. Back then, one can focus on spending their time and money doing whatever they want and wouldn’t worry about getting left behind in terms of equipment. Ascended detracted away from grinding for aesthetics into tier/stats which was supposedly not what GW2 was initially about, regardless of how much the “pro” players dismiss their worth. Good for you folks who’d rather enjoy having the second best tier, but some people aren’t ok with settling with ‘ok’ instead of ‘best’ (underachieving). Pointing out that skills are the only thing that matters in GW2 is a mere rationalization for how poorly the new tier was introduced. Laurels, guild commendations, fractal relics, pristine fractal relics and now ectos, just how many currencies does a person need for 1 tier? If this continues, it’ll make the other currencies (karma, skill points, tokens) obsolete eventually.

It’s 10% more stats and up to 20% more effective stats… it’s like saying you never bothered to get exotics because rares are ok. You should see a difference with a 10-20% increase. A large one.