Guild Wars 2

Am I still mad about the addition of Ascended gear. No. But do I like it? No.

Ascended gear still feels like a clumsy addition to me. The infusion slots make things extremely complicated with no real advantage gamewise. To show you an example, a guildie of mine mentioned just this week that his ascended amulet didn’t work. After some questions, it turned out that he hadn’t added an infusion yet. However, it wasn’t clear to him that he needed a specific infusion to gain agony resistance. Nor that he could get the basic version for only 75 fractal relics.
The infusion slot type doesn’t matter because ultimately, offensive and defensive get the same options. The difference is the cost only. And if you happen to transmute your backpack, well, then you can no longer tell what slot was in there to begin with.
The second downside is that ArenaNet has to make 2 versions of each item, that in the end are virtually the same. Also, the items being unique isn’t the obvious until after you’ve bought them.

The laurels made availability better, and that was a good move. Jewelcrafting is now useless, and that’s a shame. Forcing people to move to bigger guilds for the earrings…well, maybe people aren’t forced to do so but doesn’t come across as a very well planned move.

So overall, I don’t mind the Ascended gear but overall, I still don’t think it had to be added. And if anything, it needs polishing.

The good news though is that the ‘all stats’ stuff gave my elementalist a major buff. :-)

I always liked Ascended gear.And i’m glad that we have it.I like to feel that i’m getting stronger.It doesn’t matter how fast it will happen

I just don’t like the way it’s obtained. I cannot get my dailies done. I’m mostly a weekend warrior, and there’s no possible way for me to go on a weekend bender grindfest for me to get them.

Time gated to the addicted/hardcore. Near impossible for the weekend warrior.

My… disappointment with ascended gear (can’t honestly use the word anger) has to deal entirely with feeling manipulated by the early marketing of this game. Coming from all the other ‘typical’ mmo’s, I had always thought of chasing gear as the norm. I never really cared much about horizontal progression until this game convinced me it was a better way.

And after seeing how it worked initially, I actually bought into it. My own fault really; I do tend to take early marketing with a grain of salt, but I truly thought these people might mean it. There could/should have been much more openness and honesty regarding the change in philosophy, like admitting such a change had even occurred.

I’m sure there are still loyal fans that honestly believe the game always intended for this gear to be in place, but that it simply wasn’t ready in time for release. It’s because this has been heavily implied, if not directly stated, by the designers themselves. Then recently we get comments from lead designers like:

“As we were looking at the play patterns of players, we noticed they were getting through the last step of progression in our game faster than we wanted them to. That would lead them to run out of things to accomplish. We didn’t want to get into a gear-grind scenario, so what we did was add a new tier rarity called “Ascended items.”

I saw this particular quote in the huge ‘guild missions’ thread, and had to go find it because I thought surely it couldn’t be accurate. This just seemed contrary to what I’d seen before, and was a bit of a head-scratcher. They didn’t want a gear grind…. so they introduced a higher tier of gear?

In my opinion, it was never as much about the gear, the method for obtaining it, nor the gating mechanisms. It was simply a matter of trust, and being convinced that gear grind/progression was unnecessary by the same folks who then introduced vertical progression into their game.

Interesting interview by the way if you haven’t seen it:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/carolpinchefsky/2013/03/12/has-guild-wars-2-become-too-complicated/

Heijincks.9267:

Dante.1508:

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..

“To enjoy the game fully”. So the 0.001% (Fractals) that you cannot “enjoy” matters to you that much? I say “enjoy” because you can still play lower level fractals the same way (and level 10-19 agony doesn’t one shot kill and still gives you ascended).

I think you’re over-exaggerating how badly ascended “damaged” the game. First of all, if ascended was released at launch, no one would be complaining. Second of all, if the maximum tier was rare at launch, if exotics were released later, I can expect an uproar anyway.

Also, given the base populous (and through whatever data we have), I disagree with you that ascended “badly damaged” the game. It’s kind of opinionated, don’t you think?

You are correct, if Ascended had been implemented at the opening of the game it would have been fine as it would have been completely through the game from crafting to dungeons and everyone could get it at their leisure like Exotics etc, but it wasn’t.

5 months later we are still seeing rifts and community at each other over these things, if you cannot see see how “badly damaged” this game was and still is from these things by the exodus of the games populations after it was released i think you are very blind..

Also it’s not just fractals i stay away from its wvw too, people say its not a huge factor in wvw, well in the last 5 months i’ve seen a huge change in wvw since Ascended was added and its very detrimental..

Dante.1508:

You are correct, if Ascended had been implemented at the opening of the game it would have been fine as it would have been completely through the game from crafting to dungeons and everyone could get it at their leisure like Exotics etc, but it wasn’t.

One of the main points of Ascended gear is that it should not be easily accessible, which is the reason why it’s not sellable or craftable(in a traditional sense). If the gear would have been there at launch, you’d still have to run fractals, do many dailes or complete guild missions to get them. It’s prestige armor that isn’t supposed to be worn by everyone, at least not until the next tier or level 80+ version comes out.

ASB.4295:

One of the main points of Ascended gear is that it should not be easily accessible, which is the reason why it’s not sellable or craftable(in a traditional sense). If the gear would have been there at launch, you’d still have to run fractals, do many dailes or complete guild missions to get them. It’s prestige armor that isn’t supposed to be worn by everyone, at least not until the next tier or level 80+ version comes out.

its not prestige gear, prestige gear was stuff like mjolnir, infinite light and legendaries, some of the harder to obtain dungeon sets and cultural armours are prestige gear, none of these are easily accessable, yet gave no stat advantage over exotics

ascended are a cheap crutch to keep some people playing, as opposed to developing interesting new content that isnt just + resist vs +boss dmg. there’s a reason companies like blizzard stopped using resistance gear 5 years ago, it splits the player base.

Shadow Blade.1324:

ascended are a cheap crutch to keep some people playing, as opposed to developing interesting new content that isnt just + resist vs +boss dmg. there’s a reason companies like blizzard stopped using resistance gear 5 years ago, it splits the player base.

Yes it is prestige, in addition to what you just said. The gear is not necessary(yet) to experience any piece of unique content. That and the fact that you have to spend a considerable amount of time farming for each piece makes the stat advantage prestigious. In other words, a-gear isn’t designed to be acquired by everybody but the portion of the player base that is described as “dedicated”.

Calling the locust “dedicated”, while most of the really dedicated players that bought in the game philosophy, that helped advertise the game and make it a success are left out on the sidelines is a slap in the face from the Anet team.

Also, if it was meant to be a prestige gear, they would have started with the pieces that are visible.

Red Falcon.8257:

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.

Good thing that we don’t have three million active players, then.

Oh yes, they’ve sold three million copies, but they definitely don’t have three million active players.

Astralporing.1957:

Calling the locust “dedicated”, while most of the really dedicated players that bought in the game philosophy, that helped advertise the game and make it a success are left out on the sidelines is a slap in the face from the Anet team.

Also, if it was meant to be a prestige gear, they would have started with the pieces that are visible.

Well, it’s pretty clear why they didn’t start with the visible pieces. If they really didn’t have development time to get Ascended in from the start, then clearly they’re not going to have time to create the visual gears first. The most logical solution would be to release gear that’s just an icon at most.

This is a thread about a guy who found his Ascended anger was unfounded. Not ours, not yours. His. Just be happy for him then lol.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

In total it takes 28 days to completely deck out your character in all current ascended gear.

Not if you’re using laurels to do it, it doesn’t. It takes far longer than this to get an amulet, 2 rings, and 2 earrings for just one character.

Aberrant.6749:

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.

Its realty not exotics are not much weaker then Ascended. In fact the different between rare an exotics are a great deal more BUT you can play all the content of GW2 (beyond fractal level 20+) with rares.

Heijincks.9267:

Dante.1508:

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..

“To enjoy the game fully”. So the 0.001% (Fractals) that you cannot “enjoy” matters to you that much? I say “enjoy” because you can still play lower level fractals the same way (and level 10-19 agony doesn’t one shot kill and still gives you ascended).

I think you’re over-exaggerating how badly ascended “damaged” the game. First of all, if ascended was released at launch, no one would be complaining. Second of all, if the maximum tier was rare at launch, if exotics were released later, I can expect an uproar anyway.

Also, given the base populous (and through whatever data we have), I disagree with you that ascended “badly damaged” the game. It’s kind of opinionated, don’t you think?

I was reading an interview with Colin a few days ago and the interviewer referred to “the debacle” of Ascended gear. Everyone in the industry knows this and a large part of the community as represented by the forums knows this as well. There is no possible way to minimize the damage that vertical progression has caused a game that was not about grinding gear.

“We just don’t want players to grind in Guild Wars 2”

“You won’t see another tier between Ascended and Legendary in 2013”

Great, looking forward to 2014.

Astralporing.1957:

Also, if it was meant to be a prestige gear, they would have started with the pieces that are visible.

Dungeon gear – aesthetically prestige – is in the game since launch.

How one defines who is dedicated changes depending on who you are talking to. I’m just paraphrasing what ANet said about who ascended gear is designed for.

Just wanted to add my opinion. I’m sure it’s nothing new, but the more feedback, the better.

Something a lot of people don’t really consider is that a lot of players want multiple sets of gear for different roles/playstyles/builds. That’s a big aspect of Guild Wars. But by attaching such a high cost and time investment on ascended gear compared to exotic, it really kills this philosophy for players that don’t have the time and/or resources to spend every moment of their playtime grinding out dailies and monthlies for laurels or slogging through fractal after fractal. Especially if this means being forced to do content they’re not interested in, which ArenaNet themselves say is a big no-no to them.

Personally, I’m completely burned out on fractals. There isn’t enough variety at the moment, and they take too long (especially when it’s just a random chance at a random ring once a day). Dailies feel more like a chore to me, something I need to get done before I can go out and do what I actually want to do. You can apply that to the pristine fractal relics as well.

The original philosophy surrounding explorable dungeons is still nowhere to be found in GW2, and it’s sad. Very difficult content that, if completed, guarantees you a reward that you want. I’m tired of grinding tokens, laurels, and fractals. It’s not fun. We need rewards tied to completing actual content, without the ridiculous RNG. Now we’ve got the guild missions, and not only is that another grind with commendations, it’s a slap in the face to anyone who isn’t in a 100+ person guild. It’s actually pretty telling that I was nearly about to post this without a word about guild missions, because they’re so out of sight, out of mind.

tl;dr Obtaining a single set of ascended gear takes way too long thanks to relying on RNG, terrible pacing with the daily crawl, and is far too expensive in both a time and resource for people to gear out multiple characters or obtain multiple sets of ascended gear for different builds. Worst of all, every method of obtaining them at the moment is mind-numbingly boring unless you absolutely love slogging through the same fractals every day or you’re in the minority who’s actually able to be participating in guild missions (assuming they’re actually fun).

Shadow Blade.1324:

ascended are a cheap crutch to keep some people playing, as opposed to developing interesting new content that isnt just + resist vs +boss dmg. there’s a reason companies like blizzard stopped using resistance gear 5 years ago, it splits the player base.

Yeah I agree… but I assume it takes A LOT longer to produce actual playable content, rather than adding new items a person has to grind for. As kenshinakh pointed out, they started with non-physical appearance gear, which hints that visible gear takes longer to produce…. which means that playable content would take even longer

It has been mentioned by Colin in multiple interviews that a large portion of the player base was getting through all of the playable content faster than they had expected. Which means that they probably figured they had more time to develop playable content than turned out to be the case and consequently had no backup content with substance to throw at us to keep us occupied. And that also shows short shortsightedness on Anets part… but that’s another issue altogether. In their case I probably would have done the same thing…. throw shallow gear grind content at us to keep us occupied, while they develop content with actual substance (which it seems they have done, as we now have the living story). Of course, this is just speculation on my part, and Anet would do better to be more communicative on the true purpose, rather than being the locked box of secrets that they currently are.

At least we have content, even if it is rather shallow, than going for months without content altogether.

Astralporing.1957:

Calling the locust “dedicated”, while most of the really dedicated players that bought in the game philosophy, that helped advertise the game and make it a success are left out on the sidelines is a slap in the face from the Anet team.

ANet used the word “dedicated” to refer to players who put a lot of “work” into the game. I’ve played a lot. I don’t have a full dungeon set. I haven’t crunched numbers to determine what the absolute best combinations of weapons and utilities are for many situations. I haven’t taken the time to analyze dungeons to determine the best way to do them. There are players who have done all of these things and more. These players spearheaded the rush to the point where they had nothing to do.

You’re using the word dedicated with regard to fandom. People who followed the development of the game, who waited up to five years for it, who — as you say — bought into the expressed vision of the game.

Both definitions are valid. The wording you are referring to was pure PR Speak. I was shocked at the wording at the time, but I’ve let it go. Expecting a corporation to not use PR Speak in this day and age is an exercise in futility.

As a player focused exclusively on PvP Ascended gear has pushed me away from WvW. I am already behind the gear curve in PvP compared to players that complete PvE dungeons. Also, the amount of time it takes to acquire all my jewelry ascended gear through dailies is crazy. It is way too long. I have only enough time to get one set of gear for one character. It means I can’t create a second set of gear for build variety or gear up my other two level 80 characters.

I am at a point where every couple days I mess around in sPvP for a little bit. I would love to get back into WvW but I refuse to PvP on unequal terms. I was ok with exotics in WvW. The trouble to get them weren’t too bad and you could vary up your play style. The constant grind takes away my focus from just having fun, and so I left.

Maybe things will change with the update at the end of this month, March, but I am seriously not happy about how long it has taken for better rewards in WvW. Ascended gear should finally be acquirable through WvW after many months of PvE players gaining clear advantages. It’s an insult.

That said, I do still have a love for this game, but it appears I will be relegated to sPvP.

Cliff.8679:

Something a lot of people don’t really consider is that a lot of players want multiple sets of gear for different roles/playstyles/builds. That’s a big aspect of Guild Wars. But by attaching such a high cost and time investment on ascended gear compared to exotic, it really kills this philosophy for players that don’t have the time and/or resources to spend every moment of their playtime grinding out dailies and monthlies for laurels or slogging through fractal after fractal. Especially if this means being forced to do content they’re not interested in, which ArenaNet themselves say is a big no-no to them.

I did consider this in one of my earlier responses, but I think made my point in reference to alts. In no way does getting Ascended gear cost crafting materials. You can obtain an entire set through Laurels, or do fractals and guild missions to expedite the process (I suppose back pieces are the exception here). Since it doesn’t cost crafting mats, that actually frees up those material resources to craft more sets of exotic gear. Instead of spending materials on two exotic sets of gear, you can have an ascended set, an exotic set and the mats you saved by getting an ascended set allows you to have a third set of gear.

Of course, this takes us back to the argument of whether or not it’s fair to be forced to run around in second class gear, which is going to vary from person to person. Personally it doesn’t bother me as long as Exotic = on par with all game PvE content and Ascended = OP compared to all game PvE content, which is where both levels of gear currently stand.

As for WvW… my only other experience with open world PvP comes from being on a PvP server in WoW, so I guess I am used to being ROFLstomped just because someone has better gear than I do. I feel like when it comes to open world PvP, skill can only take you so far before you plateau and the only progression left after that point is higher levels and better gear. So ascended vs. exotic in WvW doesn’t really bother me either and is just the nature of the beast that is open world PvP.

Heijincks.9267:

They didn’t. I suppose they’re referring to it as a debacle in the relative sense. As far as grinding ascended is concerned, the “grind” isn’t traditional grind. It’s merely time “gated”, but there’s a huge distinction between that and grind itself.

I dunno, I define a grind as performing the same monotonous task repeatedly, over and over, for a reward. Time gated or not, as far as I’m concerned, fractal after fractal for the chance at rings is a grind. Daily after daily to amass laurels to turn in for one piece of gear, resulting in having to continue doing daily after daily for your next piece is a grind.

Are we sitting in a single camp spot for hours killing the same enemies over and over for exp or hoping for a rare drop? No. But it’s still the same thing. At the end of the day, it’s still monotonous, it still isn’t fun, and we’ll still be stuck doing it if we want our characters to get ahead.

LordGustoff.3752:

.. my only other experience with open world PvP comes from being on a PvP server in WoW, so I guess I am used to being ROFLstomped just because someone has better gear than I do. I feel like when it comes to open world PvP, skill can only take you so far before you plateau and the only progression left after that point is higher levels and better gear. So ascended vs. exotic in WvW doesn’t really bother me either and is just the nature of the beast that is open world PvP.

Anets answer to that mess was what they sold the game on, why settle for anything less?

Cliff.8679:

Heijincks.9267:

They didn’t. I suppose they’re referring to it as a debacle in the relative sense. As far as grinding ascended is concerned, the “grind” isn’t traditional grind. It’s merely time “gated”, but there’s a huge distinction between that and grind itself.

I dunno, I define a grind as performing the same monotonous task repeatedly, over and over, for a reward. Time gated or not, as far as I’m concerned, fractal after fractal for the chance at rings is a grind. Daily after daily to amass laurels to turn in for one piece of gear, resulting in having to continue doing daily after daily for your next piece is a grind.

Are we sitting in a single camp spot for hours killing the same enemies over and over for exp or hoping for a rare drop? No. But it’s still the same thing. At the end of the day, it’s still monotonous, it still isn’t fun, and we’ll still be stuck doing it if we want our characters to get ahead.

“Grind” is a really relative term. Most of the things people do in GW2 (minus PvP) is the same thing over and over again, but some people might not feel that it’s a grind.

The grind in this game seems to be more of a “want” than a “need”. As far as ascended is concerned, “grinding” to acquire it isn’t really sped up by investing more time into it like in more traditional MMOs. It isn’t the type of grind which you spend endless amounts of time for a higher chance of acquisition.

Heijincks.9267:

Also, vertical progression has always existed in this game even since beta.

That, of course, would be a red herring in terms of the current discussion. 1-80 is vertical progression; no doubt about it. White to exotic armor is vertical progrogression; no doubt about it.

The key with the GW franchise as it existed in GW1 and as it was advertized for GW2 was that the game was not about grinding gear beyond max level gear at max level. Everyone knew what Anet was talking about in their manifesto and they expected that Anet would continue on with no vertical progression beyond max level gear at max level.

No amount of word jazz or PR speak will change the underlying issue. VP was something ‘new’ and unexpected and that’s why you had the ‘debacle’ of Ascended gear.

Heijincks.9267:

If ascended was big enough of a debacle, they would have removed it.

They didn’t. I suppose they’re referring to it as a debacle in the relative sense. As far as grinding ascended is concerned, the “grind” isn’t traditional grind. It’s merely time “gated”, but there’s a huge distinction between that and grind itself.

This is wrong.

There are a lot of companies that make mistakes in their games all the time and choose not to correct them because they figure that, in the long run, they’ll get away with it anyways.

Star Wars Galaxies made a massive change in the way the game’s character creation worked back in 2005, which stirred up a huge debacle and created a significant exodus from the game. They stayed alive, of course, but their population was much smaller (they were nearly down to100k by the year 2007, having started with about 250k prior to the expansion’s release in late 2005). Eventually they were canned in favor of the new Star Wars MMO that EA and Bioware were making. But they never once thought to reverse the change, even though some of their devs later admitted the decision was a stupid one.

The rush to integrate DRM into single-player titles (such as the Assassin’s Creed series, Diablo 3, and recently SimCity, to name a few) has caused problems in virtually every game it’s been done in, but companies keep doing it. Why? Because you already bought the game, they have your money. What are you gonna do, boycott the game you already bought? Good, that’s less people to harass their overstressed servers. Demand a refund? Many of them have a no-refund policy, except in countries where it’s mandatory by law to offer one.

ANet wasn’t going to remove Ascended, no matter how bad the backlash, simply because by this point, they could deny most of the early adopters their refunds anyways. The company policy at that time stated that anyone who bought the game had 30 days to get their refund, so the people who pre-purchased were being told they couldn’t get one because they had “owned” the game since January. Eventually they had to change that after it drew a lot of complaints in these forums, and you’ll notice that the support ticket for refunds no longer mentions the 30 day limit. It was a positive change in the long run, actually, as it was a decent show of good faith from a company that people felt had burned them. But at that point it was too late anyways.

With that said, I will agree that Ascended isn’t the only reason people left. There are a lot of reasons people left. But you can see that the exodus was significant enough to get them to change their tune, and by December, they were talking about how the upcoming 2013 patches would all focus on “strengthening the core game” instead of pushing lots of new content as they had done from September through December. Regardless of what the “main reason” actually was, their numbers dropped enough that it worried them. The real question at this stage is, will they continue to leave glaring flaws in the Ascended system, or will they fulfill their promise to make the gear accessible in more places? Right now, I don’t really feel that 2 locations per item is at all sufficient.

Heijincks.9267:

Cliff.8679:

Heijincks.9267:

They didn’t. I suppose they’re referring to it as a debacle in the relative sense. As far as grinding ascended is concerned, the “grind” isn’t traditional grind. It’s merely time “gated”, but there’s a huge distinction between that and grind itself.

I dunno, I define a grind as performing the same monotonous task repeatedly, over and over, for a reward. Time gated or not, as far as I’m concerned, fractal after fractal for the chance at rings is a grind. Daily after daily to amass laurels to turn in for one piece of gear, resulting in having to continue doing daily after daily for your next piece is a grind.

Are we sitting in a single camp spot for hours killing the same enemies over and over for exp or hoping for a rare drop? No. But it’s still the same thing. At the end of the day, it’s still monotonous, it still isn’t fun, and we’ll still be stuck doing it if we want our characters to get ahead.

“Grind” is a really relative term. Most of the things people do in GW2 (minus PvP) is the same thing over and over again, but some people might not feel that it’s a grind.

The grind in this game seems to be more of a “want” than a “need”. As far as ascended is concerned, “grinding” to acquire it isn’t really sped up by investing more time into it like in more traditional MMOs. It isn’t the type of grind which you spend endless amounts of time for a higher chance of acquisition.

Grind, like all words, has a range of meaning. And, what constitutes grind for one (used in a negative connotation) would not be a grind for another. The distinction with vertical progression is that the grind is non-optional and this is where problem lies. You have ‘want’ and ‘need’ completely confused if you are talking about VP. Because we are talking about the power level of the game increasing over time, there is no question as to whether you will follow the path of the power curve if you want to continue playing the game. VP doesn’t progress by stopping—it continues on over time. That’s what makes the grind of VP so objectionable. Unlike horizontal progression where any ‘grind’ is optional, with VP the ‘grind’ is mandatory. To believe otherwise simple betrays a lack of familiarity with this element of game design.

It’s not bad at all just getting ascended for a main, for one stat layout.

Getting it for more than one character is disasterous with all the time gates. Ditto if you actually want more than one stat setup even if just for a main.

critickitten.1498:

Heijincks.9267:

If ascended was big enough of a debacle, they would have removed it.

They didn’t. I suppose they’re referring to it as a debacle in the relative sense. As far as grinding ascended is concerned, the “grind” isn’t traditional grind. It’s merely time “gated”, but there’s a huge distinction between that and grind itself.

This is wrong.

There are a lot of companies that make mistakes in their games all the time and choose not to correct them because they figure that, in the long run, they’ll get away with it anyways.

-snip-

Correct. Also, a lot (?) of people have run fractals (and now done dailies and guild missions) to “work” toward acquiring Ascended. If the introduction of the gear caused people to leave, how many more would leave if their rewards for play taken away?