Guild Wars 2

Astralporing.1957:

TL/DR: yes, the farming speed is better than originally expected, but the nonfarming, casual gameplay speed is beyond horrible.

Yeah. Everyone was all worried about the time-gating on the recipes, but that’s honestly the easiest part about ascended weapons. (Though gathering up soft wood logs is a bit annoying)

The real time-gate is the darn materials to make the crystal. I was considering making a few ascended weapons. Two for my main, one or two for an alt, but I don’t know if I’ll really want to keep up that farming for that long.

cerberouse.7680:

I’ve gotten more than that 2500 shards since ascended weapons were released with no actual grind o-o
I just do what i want and it flows in quicker than i can keep track of it, and i don’t even WANT an ascended item, they all look pretty horrible to me. Quit complaining and learn that it’s not going to take a single day to get it, we already have enough of these cry-baby threads on the forums.

2500 shards. Yeah….call me skeptical. Are you playing 10+ hours a day. What are you doing to obtain that many?

Maybe you should say that, or is this really just a troll post to call people cry babies?

Mortifer.2946:

why do you need all of them on ascended tier? stat boost is not necessary. It is already easy to play with exotics.

If it looks like a carrot and tastes like a carrot, then it’s surely a carrot.

Hexgame.4802:

I have 4 of my level 80s that I don’t really play anymore camped at a JP. I log into them everyday, loot the chest and switch characters.

Epic Most exciting game EVAR!

TexRob.5183:

Just because you have a bunch of characters, does not constitute an excuse to complain about drop rates.

You are right. The fact that unless i am going to farm hard i will be getting an ascended weapon once every 2-3 months however is.
The drop rate is horrible. Me having 8 level 80 characters that i actually play doesn’t make the problem any worse, but it does make it significantly more noticeable.

Allisa Wonderland.8192:

So, if ArenaNET made everything easy enough to get with a month of play.. what would you do after that? What motivation would you have to go further?

Well, the same as made me play this game in the first place? Fun? or is it now not enough for some?

Allisa Wonderland.8192:

Once you take away the unrealistic expectation of being given everything immediately, you will find more enjoyment in the adventure.

What adventure? Surely you don’t mean gear grind, do you?

Astralporing.1957:

TexRob.5183:

Just because you have a bunch of characters, does not constitute an excuse to complain about drop rates.

You are right. The fact that unless i am going to farm hard i will be getting an ascended weapon once every 2-3 months however is.
The drop rate is horrible. Me having 8 level 80 characters that i actually play doesn’t make the problem any worse, but it does make it significantly more noticeable.

Allisa Wonderland.8192:

So, if ArenaNET made everything easy enough to get with a month of play.. what would you do after that? What motivation would you have to go further?

Well, the same as made me play this game in the first place? Fun? or is it now not enough for some?

Allisa Wonderland.8192:

Once you take away the unrealistic expectation of being given everything immediately, you will find more enjoyment in the adventure.

What adventure? Surely you don’t mean gear grind, do you?

Yup, parking your alts at JPs and mindless champion trains are now….adventure…i have more adventure in taking trash out every few days ;P

Coldin.2840:

cerberouse.7680:

I’ve gotten more than that 2500 shards since ascended weapons were released with no actual grind o-o
I just do what i want and it flows in quicker than i can keep track of it, and i don’t even WANT an ascended item, they all look pretty horrible to me. Quit complaining and learn that it’s not going to take a single day to get it, we already have enough of these cry-baby threads on the forums.

2500 shards. Yeah….call me skeptical. Are you playing 10+ hours a day. What are you doing to obtain that many?

Maybe you should say that, or is this really just a troll post to call people cry babies?

He’s trolling.

I have 1 million “shards” and I only play 1 hour a day. Also, I never leave Lion’s Arch.

It sadly comes down to playstyle. The only reason I have so much dust is because I saved up some champ bags from invasions before the MF change. But that said I still have 25 bricks and a couple of stacks of dust, and enough dragonite ore for 3-5 weapons yet only ~150 empyreal fragments.

I don’t like dungeons so the ~3-5 jps I do a day just have fragments trickle in. I like that we aren’t forced to do 1 thing to get the mats, but it would have been nicer if each activity had a say 50% (or 75%) chance to drop the thing they do now, and a 25% (or 12.5%) chance to drop one of the other mats instead.

Out of entire fractal of the mists all i got was 37 fragments.
So i basically have to do 70 level 40 dailies just for 5 weapons !?!?
Well then that is WAY too long!

Since I’m not really a WvW/dungeon person that means I have multiple stacks of bloodstone and have also deleted several stacks, have one and a partial stack of dragonite and now must consider adding JPs or WvW to my daily routine if I want to go this route. I gather that people who mostly WvW have stacks of empyreal and very little dragonite.

VictoriousMonk.7150:

Coldin.2840:

cerberouse.7680:

I’ve gotten more than that 2500 shards since ascended weapons were released with no actual grind o-o
I just do what i want and it flows in quicker than i can keep track of it, and i don’t even WANT an ascended item, they all look pretty horrible to me. Quit complaining and learn that it’s not going to take a single day to get it, we already have enough of these cry-baby threads on the forums.

2500 shards. Yeah….call me skeptical. Are you playing 10+ hours a day. What are you doing to obtain that many?

Maybe you should say that, or is this really just a troll post to call people cry babies?

He’s trolling.

I have 1 million “shards” and I only play 1 hour a day. Also, I never leave Lion’s Arch.

Aw heck, 1 million aint nothin’. I’ve got a billion and I only play 15 minutes a day. L2P.

Ascended weapons is ment to be your main weapons… (two main handed or 1 twohanded) No one cares for secondary set and underwater combat :P

Agreed. 100 fragments to make 1 star, that you need at least 5 of? And this is required to get the best stats weapon for a character?

What happened to the promise of no gear grind and logical progression? Seems we were mislead and basically cheated.

Needing thousands of 1 item? Sounds like they redesigned this game to be WoW.

Time gating needs to STOP, period.

Time gating needs to STAY, period.

Did too! Did not! Did too! Did not! Did too! Did not!

I’m on every day, for many .. many.. in fact.. far too many hours …

I adventure all over the place, and I have fun, because there are things for me to do, that require me put in some effort.

Your rebuttals to my statements are without merit.

If there was no time gating on the materials, you would be spending your time grinding the materials to get the items NOW, which is completely the opposite of having fun, adventuring.

There is this word, that I think younger people may want to study.. it’s called CHALLENGE.

If there is no resistance to you going over the next hill to see what’s there, you’re going to run out of hills pretty darn fast. How can you not see that?

It’s like Pac Man with no ghosts… Super Mario with a hoverboard..

Less coffee, more warm cocoa.

The real problem is insanely stupid game design that is no different from other MMOs IMHO. Why does every MMO have farming? Because achievement A, or weapon B etc etc takes 100 or so of an item, or kill 100 of that mob, or pay 100G for that jewel etc etc. Mind numbing repetition. So the A-Net solution? Make the numbers you need even higher so it will take farmers even longer… which kills the will of casual gamers, because they have to spend time doing content they don’t like and is repetitive and BORING, but they have to do it to get more and more of that 1 critical item to catch up gear-wise with the people they want to play with. And when they only have time to play an hour or so a day…. why not force them into boring repetitive play during those precious few hours, sounds AWESOME to me!

To stop farming: don’t make people have to get 500-1000 of ANYthing. Make drops more skill and difficulty based instead of random RNG. Make high level coveted items be available based on skilled game play and not running in a mindless zerg or doing your 1000th boring mindless dungeon run. (After all, if I wanted to play WoW again I’d just play WoW)

GW2 PROMISED no gear grind, and yet it is as bad if not worse than other games. Already players are demanding ascended or better weapons and gears for certain groups and that will continue unabated, just like every other MMO. Might as well admit that this is just a copy of every other MMO and get it over with. Yet if you read the high moral ground of the devs in their treatise about this game, they would NEVER let that happen.

—IF— ascended gear still had the stats of exotics, then everything I have said can be thrown out the window, because if someone chooses to get a different look weapon with the same stats, then I for one, would not give a cr*p either way. That’s a choice that doesn’t affect game play any way. The only current choice is one of 2 painful grinds to get either a legendary or an ascended weapon and gear. I assume the design of this game was to make it FUN, and INCREASE player choice of what activities to engage in? I seem to remember the comments from the devs…..

In the time it took to write this, a sad warrior desperate to group with his friends someday finished another ill-designed boring dungeon to get just a couple of the hundreds of empyreal stars, he will need to ever group with them again.

Truly genre changing!

Allisa Wonderland.8192:

Time gating needs to STAY, period.

Did too! Did not! Did too! Did not! Did too! Did not!

I’m on every day, for many .. many.. in fact.. far too many hours …

I adventure all over the place, and I have fun, because there are things for me to do, that require me put in some effort.

Your rebuttals to my statements are without merit.

If there was no time gating on the materials, you would be spending your time grinding the materials to get the items NOW, which is completely the opposite of having fun, adventuring.

There is this word, that I think younger people may want to study.. it’s called CHALLENGE.

If there is no resistance to you going over the next hill to see what’s there, you’re going to run out of hills pretty darn fast. How can you not see that?

It’s like Pac Man with no ghosts… Super Mario with a hoverboard..

Less coffee, more warm cocoa.

There is no more adventure, I’ve been there and done that, been everywhere, seen everything. I come on only to farm nodes and gather, dailies and do the lame LS updates that take 1 to 2 days tops to complete then log off. To have more adventure there needs to be completly new areas of the map opened up which would take REAL CONTENT ADDED in the form of an expansion, it gets boring doing the same thing over and over again, adnauseum and mine and everyone elses rebuttle DOES have merit, it’s like you saying you’re better than the rest which is untrue you nor I is any better than the next person.

Wallace MacBix.2089:

It sadly comes down to playstyle. The only reason I have so much dust is because I saved up some champ bags from invasions before the MF change. But that said I still have 25 bricks and a couple of stacks of dust, and enough dragonite ore for 3-5 weapons yet only ~150 empyreal fragments.

I don’t like dungeons so the ~3-5 jps I do a day just have fragments trickle in. I like that we aren’t forced to do 1 thing to get the mats, but it would have been nicer if each activity had a say 50% (or 75%) chance to drop the thing they do now, and a 25% (or 12.5%) chance to drop one of the other mats instead.

Agreed. The imbalance between mats from playstyles is incredibly poor design for a game that was touted as allowing players to play the way they want.

I currently have over 1500 dusts, almost 500 ores and only 216 fragments. So now the one option is to focus more on the game content that I have little interest in doing? I guess my mistake was playing the parts of the game I actually liked. This is certainly a novel approach to try to keep players interested in a game.

Boom! http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Empyreal_Fragment
Alooooot of places to get em, i do a tonne of WvW and i have 2 many of these dam things

Agreed with Dr Overlord…. if the real goal was to get players to play content they like, the rewards would be better balanced per activity. Seriously, exp mode dungeon runs are pretty much necessary to get your ascended gear or u can wait a few months when they will make legendary stats better than ascended, and then we are like every other MMO. Gear grind to the MAX! Awesome!

There were peeps who said ascended would not have better stats than exos… so…
whats to stop them from buffing legendaries next?

Betcha 5 ectos it is coming….. they lied about no items better in stats than exos, they will lie again…. a matter of time only.

Then noone will be able to hold up this “no gear grind” BS that I don’t think any1 believes anyway since ascended gear.

I don’t think you were supposed to get full decked out in Ascended weapons. They’re like the ultra-rare gear you get in some other games, without the massive stats increase. You’re supposed to feel proud you got a piece.

This is quite evidenced by the fact that they provide roughly 5% more damage over exotics (not accounting for accessories before someone bashes me on this), indicating they’re supposed to be more of a ‘cosmetic’ stats item for people who just want to see their stats go up ever so slightly.

There’s nothing cosmetic to ANY true MMO player about being 5% better than opponents. Ask anyone! So legendaries will be 5% more than ascended…. so 10 percent more than exotics….

Super legendaries or whatever they will call them will be 15% more… feel free to qoute me on it! How is this new and different????

Brutaxia.5098:

Betcha 5 ectos it is coming….. they lied about no items better in stats than exos, they will lie again…. a matter of time only.

ArenaNet talked about a possible level cap increase months prior to release. They never claimed exotics were the end of the line. They haven’t even said ascended is. There will be something better one day, but for now, they can still do the multiple levels of infusions and ascended runes/sigils.

GW2 is basically on a 1-2 year gear treadmill. For comparison, other (active) MMOs usually run on a 2-6 month cycle.

Legendaries will be better than ascended one day, but they will never be better than the highest tier available at that time. That’s one thing they’ve directly promised, so long as legendaries remain the way they currently are. They could for example add a new tier, like ascended, but instead of actually adding a new rarity, they combine it with the legendary rarity. Then legendaries could have better stats, since they would be much quicker to obtain.

Lopez.7369:

Assuming everyone uses a one-handed weapon, off-hand weapon, and two-handed weapon, you need 1,500 Empyreal Fragments. Then there’s two underwater weapons. That’s 2,500 Empyreal Fragments.

The best way to get all of those fragments is dungeons. Each dungeon gives 20 Empyreal Fragments. That means all the ascended weapons require 125 dungeon runs. Assuming each dungeon run takes 15 minutes, that’s 31.5 hours of gameplay just for Empyreal Fragments.

If someone wants to do it through jumping puzzles, it will take an average of 625 jumping puzzles to get 2,500 Empyreal Fragments. Assuming each jumping puzzle takes five minutes — a very generous estimate — that’s more than 52 hours of gameplay just for Empyreal Fragments.

As a comparison, it takes 84 temple events to get 2,500 Dragonite Ore. That’s 21 hours of gameplay at most.

Is this intentional?

Colin Johanson to Eurogamer: “Everyone, including casual gamers, by level 80 should have the best statistical loot in the game. We want everyone on an equal power base. The rare stuff becomes the really awesome looking armours. It’s all about collecting the unique looking stuff and collecting all the other rare collectable items in the game: armour pieces, potentially different potions – a lot of that is still up in the air and we’ll finalise a lot of those reward systems as we get closer to release. And those come off of things like the bosses at the end of dungeons – the raids.”

The very idea of ascended gear wrecked the great promise of no gear progression, its only got worse since. Its a slippery slope Anet are not so much carefully navigating as skiing down with glee.

First off, asc trinkets are available in many ways. That being said, you aren’t excluded from any content for not having an asc weapon, ESPECIALLY water weapons.. really? Everything end game is fairly balanced on a level 80 with full exotics. Fractals are for the extra achiever in you, but offer NOTHING but a skin set, there is nothing else exclusive to fractals. You aren’t missing any game changing content by not having asc weapons.

Also, it’s the top tier of gear, did you really expect to spend a mere 12 hours and fully gear your account?

The only people in this game who should feel a negative effect from asc weapons (and eventually armor) are roamers in wvw. Pve has been done by exotic sets and none of them have been buffed since asc weapons were released, wvw zerg’s are based on group tactics not which one can press 1 faster with a stronger weapon, and spvp don’t get them so no worry there.

Also fractals but its like a ghost town for that dungeon, I see no one doing them as much anymore.

Brutaxia.5098:

There’s nothing cosmetic to ANY true MMO player about being 5% better than opponents. Ask anyone! So legendaries will be 5% more than ascended…. so 10 percent more than exotics….

Super legendaries or whatever they will call them will be 15% more… feel free to qoute me on it! How is this new and different????

We don’t know if there will be more tiers, but they have said that they don’t plan to add a new tier of rarity but to evolve the current tiers (which I assume means some sort of a weapon proficiency levelling system).

In most other MMOs, not having a certain tier of equipment will restrict you from content or put you at a huge disadvantage in PvP. In GW2 no PvE content requires Ascended and having Ascended won’t tge difference between kill or wipe in places like Arah or TA Aether and really only cuts about a minuite maybe off a faceroll dungeon run, even comparing with accessories included.

WvW has so much imbalances by design that the stats difference between Exotics and Ascended hardly matters. Thus you can’t compare GW2 to traditional MMOs.

i dont get this, i throw away a minimum of 1.5 stacks every day, i have nearly 3k saved on a mule, there so easy to get that it makes them annoying trash

I haven’t played Gw2 in about 2+ months, slightly before ascended weapons were released.

Is this stuff more of a grind?

cesmode.4257:

I haven’t played Gw2 in about 2+ months, slightly before ascended weapons were released.

Is this stuff more of a grind?

Yes and no.

It depends on what you do in the game. If you’re a heavy PvEr, then you’ll get materials given to you for in ample quantities for doing anything other than AFKing. By ample I mean not like Exotics ample, where it basically gets stuffed in your face, I mean it takes time but you certainly won’t feel like your grinding.

If you prefer to WvW….. Let’s say you won’t get Ascended stuff anytime soon.

The real obstacle however is reaching 500 crafting to actually make a weapon. That either takes a long, long, time by refining the Ascended materials you get or it takes no time at all but takes a lot of money through just discovering Exotics:

Just you wait until the 6 ascended armor pieces start eating up your materials.

^ they use different materials as shown in your bank slot. Thy presumably come from different activities, like the DE system that’s gathering dust.

I get 2-3 stacks of empyreal fragments a day; I don’t see the problem.

Time-gating needs to go, but Empyreal Fragments are not the problem in my opinion.

They’re fairly spread out throughout the game, and if you actually play instead of kittening around in LA all day, you should have 1500 in no time..

Dragonite, on the other hand…

Coldin.2840:

cerberouse.7680:

I’ve gotten more than that 2500 shards since ascended weapons were released with no actual grind o-o
I just do what i want and it flows in quicker than i can keep track of it, and i don’t even WANT an ascended item, they all look pretty horrible to me. Quit complaining and learn that it’s not going to take a single day to get it, we already have enough of these cry-baby threads on the forums.

2500 shards. Yeah….call me skeptical. Are you playing 10+ hours a day. What are you doing to obtain that many?

Maybe you should say that, or is this really just a troll post to call people cry babies?

I’m in a similar positions (only lacking dragonite) and all I really do is wvw…I think it’s just from the champ boxes (tower/keep lords) I haven’t really been paying too much attention though.

open chests in pve and you’ll get plenty. I have way to much, if they were tradable, id send you mine.

I literally have 2500 empyreal fragments, and I don’t even go out of my way to farm them. Heck I even have a spare Vision Crystal lying around.

Eh, about the dynamic events system gathering dust – even if they introduce some new materials as rewards from DE, people will just stay on the trains anyway, unless some kind of severe diminishing returns for grinding a single zone is implemented.

i only wvw. took me about 2 weeks to get the 500 fragments i needed for one weapon. if you feel it’s easy to get them you just happen do a lot of dungeons. dragonite is not much better.

Asmodeus.5782:

Eh, about the dynamic events system gathering dust – even if they introduce some new materials as rewards from DE, people will just stay on the trains anyway, unless some kind of severe diminishing returns for grinding a single zone is implemented.

They could just make champion events give no Ascended materials, or make the mats purchasable using Karma, and cut the karma rewards from all champion events or Scarlet’s invasions. Keep the karma on Fractals, they deserve some love.

Xae Isareth.1364:

They could just make champion events give no Ascended materials, or make the mats purchasable using Karma, and cut the karma rewards from all champion events or Scarlet’s invasions. Keep the karma on Fractals, they deserve some love.

Sorry, I dont love fractals. They deserve a revamp. I would like karma back from dailies.

What’s that?

You don’t like jumping puzzles and dungeons? What kind of game do you think this is?

You think you can just run around and do what YOU want?

For Empyreal Farming Methods & Locations – Click Here

Guys you’re forgetting that Ascended weapons should be a line between Exotics and Legendary. Cost wise, 200g is just the right amount to fulfill that line.
On the other hand Anet made Ascended to give people goals. Getting Ascended right away might be a hard thing for a newbie but that’s ok, they need to slowly build to the place 1-year olds are right now.

As someone who played from release I’m still not feeling the cost in Empyreal or Dragonite. I DID feel the need for them when they were released first but I already have so many saved in my storage that it’s a releaf to get cleared of it.

If your server does WvW, Empyreal can be farmed very easy without you even feeling like you’re in a farm. I suggest a good mix of WvW and few speedruns in dungeons. But mostly WvW

If you want empyreal from www you need to be that noob who actually rush in lord room and hit lord.