Guild Wars 2

I’m really tired of reading all these threads of endless complains how gw2 is not alt friendly. All currencies are account bound, you don’t need to level for pvp, you’re up scaled in WvW, we have down scaling system in PvE, we have experience scrolls, we have tomes of knowledge, we have scrolls of knowledge, now we got account bound fractal level and soon – account bound WvW levels, how is that not alt friendly?
In many MMO’s when you create a new character, you start from SCRATCH, sure it can always be more alt friendly and it is definitely getting there, in any case, at least for me, this is one of the most alt friendly games I have ever played.

Do away with Soulbound items in favor of account bound items, and you have a point.

Asia Skyly.7198:

Do away with Soulbound items in favor of account bound items, and you have a point.

And destroy plenty of markets in the process?

No.

I think the argument falls in the Entitlement category. Some players feel that they should be able to get all the BiS gear quickly and easily. Because Ascended gear takes time and effort to craft, you get the push back from players who don’t want to expend the time and effort.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

I think the argument falls in the Entitlement category.

Ah yes entitlement, the fallback position to demonise those who don’t want to grind.

Sigh, I was enjoying the time we had without a thread about this. For or against, now you’ve opened a can of worms.

For the record I find GW2 to be VERY alt friendly. The most alt friendly game I’ve ever played in my life. And now moreso with FoTM level combine and WvW level combine. The only thing that would make it better would be account bound gear and not soulbound. It generally does suck that my Warrior can’t wear the full Exotic set I have sitting in my bank because it is soulbound to my Guardian. They’re like best friends and are the same size, they totally don’t mind sharing armor. Breaks my RP immersion. ANET FIX

Go ahead and make 5 ascended weapons for 8 characters and come back here to tell us how alt friendly GW2 is.

Seveleniumus.5973:

I’m really tired of reading all these threads of endless complains how gw2 is not alt friendly. All currencies are account bound, you don’t need to level for pvp, you’re up scaled in WvW, we have down scaling system in PvE, we have experience scrolls, we have tomes of knowledge, we have scrolls of knowledge, now we got account bound fractal level and soon – account bound WvW levels, how is that not alt friendly?

What you say is correct and yet the whole ascended system is so far the other way that it shifts the overall issue far to the side of altunfriendliness. Not to mention if you want different builds for each toon.

morrolan.9608:

Smooth Penguin.5294:

I think the argument falls in the Entitlement category.

Ah yes entitlement, the fallback position to demonise those who don’t want to grind.

If it doesn’t affect me, then you issues are your issues. You are entitled.
If it does affect me, then it’s injustice. RAWR.

There, I saved you from reading most of the threads around here.

Jrunyon.3012:

Asia Skyly.7198:

Do away with Soulbound items in favor of account bound items, and you have a point.

And destroy plenty of markets in the process?

No.

Can you please list the markets that will be destroyed? I do not think any markets will suffer for this, consistent change. For everyone one out there that would argue that X legendary will be passed between characters, I can list someone who argues that they did NOT get a legendary because of the Soulbound status. I can also point to the many of us who would have multiple legendaries if you could move them around between your characters.

This mentality that soulbinding is a required is antiquated. In GW1, souldbinding had a HUGE benefit. Here? None. It is a limitation with no upside. Get rid of it.

Asia Skyly.7198:

Can you please list the markets that will be destroyed? I do not think any markets will suffer for this, consistent change. For everyone one out there that would argue that X legendary will be passed between characters, I can list someone who argues that they did NOT get a legendary because of the Soulbound status. I can also point to the many of us who would have multiple legendaries if you could move them around between your characters.

I’ve got to laugh at the notion of protecting the market anyway, as if its some exemplar of a free market. Its ludicrously compromised.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

I think the argument falls in the Entitlement category. Some players feel that they should be able to get all the BiS gear quickly and easily. Because Ascended gear takes time and effort to craft, you get the push back from players who don’t want to expend the time and effort.

I find it interesting that the same people who argue how best in slot gear should be hard to get, ALSO argue that once obtained, I should not be able to share it among my characters. That is inconsistent to me. If I spent the time to make the gear, the same gear you put in one character, the same time you spent making said gear, why can’t I put it or move it between ALL of my characters?

My argument is not so much that I am against the whole ascended gear grind (I am), it is emphasized by the fact that once I grind it in one character, once I put the “time and effort” I have to do it all over again for the next character. That is punitive to those of us who play multiple characters.

Calae.1738:

Go ahead and make 5 ascended weapons for 8 characters and come back here to tell us how alt friendly GW2 is.

GW2 is alt friendly. What you are describing is a feature in pretty much every MMO. It’s par for the course. Sure I’m totally for making everything account bound rather than soulbound, but the fact it isn’t like that doesn’t mean the game isn’t alt friendly. It just means they went with the standard feature on that. The game doesn’t have have complete interchangeability with everything and all characters to be considered alt friendly. That’s just silly.

Caring about the market economy in a video game more than caring about having fun.

GUILD WARS 2! Your number one source for market society simulation.

GW2 is the most alt friendly MMO on the market. Go try out any other MMO and see how much it caters to people who enjoy alts compared to how it is here.

I feel that GW1 was a lot more alt friendly, but that is just me.

ArchonWing.9480:

morrolan.9608:

Smooth Penguin.5294:

I think the argument falls in the Entitlement category.

Ah yes entitlement, the fallback position to demonise those who don’t want to grind.

If it doesn’t affect me, then you issues are your issues. You are entitled.
If it does affect me, then it’s injustice. RAWR.

There, I saved you from reading most of the threads around here.

Exactly. Amazingly on point.

Jrunyon.3012:

Asia Skyly.7198:

Do away with Soulbound items in favor of account bound items, and you have a point.

And destroy plenty of markets in the process?

No.

well, there are things like LS skins & such that should never become soulbound. tbh though, I think skins should just unlock in your account collection when you use a stone to unlock them.

Asia Skyly.7198:

I feel that GW1 was a lot more alt friendly, but that is just me.

I didn’t play GW1, did they do account bound only items instead of soulbound?

Draknar.5748:

Asia Skyly.7198:

I feel that GW1 was a lot more alt friendly, but that is just me.

I didn’t play GW1, did they do account bound only items instead of soulbound?

GW1 had a mixed mechanic. Armor was soulbound to the character, but it was super, super cheap to get BiS gear. Once you had level 20 armor, you were done. The quest turned into a quest of not looking like a scrub.

For weapons they had something called customization. Weapons can be passed from one character to the next however customizing the weapon to a character would “soulbind” it to said character, and that weapon would do an additional 20% damage. 20% extra damage was the price of making the weapon soulbound. IN GW2 is simply a penalty.

morrolan.9608:

Ah yes entitlement, the fallback position to demonise those who don’t want to grind.

But here’s the catch. You don’t have to grind. You make the choice to grind because of your desire to have the best stuff. You can enjoy this game normally with just Exotics.

I killed Zhaitan just fine using Rare Armor and weapons, and I would probably kill him using Ascended gear too. So what’s the difference?

Draknar.5748:

Calae.1738:

Go ahead and make 5 ascended weapons for 8 characters and come back here to tell us how alt friendly GW2 is.

GW2 is alt friendly. What you are describing is a feature in pretty much every MMO. It’s par for the course. Sure I’m totally for making everything account bound rather than soulbound, but the fact it isn’t like that doesn’t mean the game isn’t alt friendly. It just means they went with the standard feature on that. The game doesn’t have have complete interchangeability with everything and all characters to be considered alt friendly. That’s just silly.

The problem is GW2 has been marketed as different/innovating from other mmos. Due to their whole ‘no grind’ pr approach they have attracted exactly that kind of player.

The bolded is exactly what alt friendliness is.

Its pretty much what the dude said you go get full ascended trinkets, weapons and armor for each of your 4-5+ characters (as that is the minimum of slots we have not to mention people who really like the game who have 1 of each proffesion or even more characters) not to mention the cost of even just leveling your crafting to become able to make the stuff.

Then your especially screwed if you want to play something else then mindless full zerker dps because its ridiculous to have to do the same thing over again just to get the best out of your build.

Ofcourse you can play the game in exotics or even rares. But who wants to play a game knowing hes doesnt get the best out of his/her set up i sure dont.

Ascended gear and timegated stuff simply punishes people(with alts) who want to play more of their game. Which is the weirdest thing ive ever heard. Punishing people who actually want to put more hours into your game

Draknar.5748:

Asia Skyly.7198:

I feel that GW1 was a lot more alt friendly, but that is just me.

I didn’t play GW1, did they do account bound only items instead of soulbound?

They had soulbound only for armor and for weapons at the players discretion, I believe it was called personalizing, it would put a small damage boost on the weapon damage of an item, and add your name to it, often times considered useless. So essentially all weapons that ever existed in the game were continually circulated, and yet the market seemed so much less inflated than what we’ve experienced here today.

The difference is the grind, how much a person had to work in order to get his or her character optimally functional to participate in all content.

In Guild Wars it was more so about your skills than it was your armor/weapons. Luckily once a skill was unlocked you could learn it on any of your characters through the use of tomes.

I don’t think it ever took me more than a day to level and properly gear out a new character.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

You can enjoy this game normally with just Exotics.

Go and do Fractal level 50 with just exotics and post your video doing so. The choice should be to play without the BiS. As in “Here I am doing FOTM 50 in all white gear!”

Having BiS right now, is not a matter of choice, it is trusted upon us, after we already had BiS (exoctic) gear.

And you’re still not dealing with the issue of having to acquire said gear repeatedly, for a lot of different characters.

That is not Alt Friendly.

Asia Skyly.7198:

Draknar.5748:

Asia Skyly.7198:

I feel that GW1 was a lot more alt friendly, but that is just me.

I didn’t play GW1, did they do account bound only items instead of soulbound?

GW1 had a mixed mechanic. Armor was soulbound to the character, but it was super, super cheap to get BiS gear. Once you had level 20 armor, you were done. The quest turned into a quest of not looking like a scrub.

For weapons they had something called customization. Weapons can be passed from one character to the next however customizing the weapon to a character would “soulbind” it to said character, and that weapon would do an additional 20% damage. 20% extra damage was the price of making the weapon soulbound. IN GW2 is simply a penalty.

Well, aside from BiS being super easy to get as of today, it actually sounds pretty close to what GW2 has going on. That customization thing sounds like a form “Soulbound on Use”.

Although I don’t understand quite what you mean. The soulbound weapons did 20% more damage, but 20% damage was also the price of making it soulbound? Am I reading that wrong.

Draknar.5748:

Asia Skyly.7198:

Draknar.5748:

Asia Skyly.7198:

I feel that GW1 was a lot more alt friendly, but that is just me.

I didn’t play GW1, did they do account bound only items instead of soulbound?

GW1 had a mixed mechanic. Armor was soulbound to the character, but it was super, super cheap to get BiS gear. Once you had level 20 armor, you were done. The quest turned into a quest of not looking like a scrub.

For weapons they had something called customization. Weapons can be passed from one character to the next however customizing the weapon to a character would “soulbind” it to said character, and that weapon would do an additional 20% damage. 20% extra damage was the price of making the weapon soulbound. IN GW2 is simply a penalty.

Well, aside from BiS being super easy to get as of today, it actually sounds pretty close to what GW2 has going on. That customization thing sounds like a form “Soulbound on Use”.

Although I don’t understand quite what you mean. The soulbound weapons did 20% more damage, but 20% damage was also the price of making it soulbound? Am I reading that wrong.

In GW1 when you soul binded a weapon it got a 20% damage boost.

I think he meant the price of it being non soul bound was losing 20% of your weapons damage

The game was alt friendly at the time of the original design. This has generally continued through the living story. The top level of itemization is now working against alts and will continue to do so as the gear grind continues continues. Making the fractal levels account bound appears to work for alts but the cost of high level AR could well exclude alts from top level fractals.

Sorry about that: Soulbinding made your weapon 20% more powerful.

I meant to say that, to me, that was a reasonable trade of. Do I want to lose the ability to pass this weapon to another character or perhaps sell it in the market?

Do I really want to have that extra 20% on THIS character?

That choice, to me, made sense. Right now, in GW2, equipping a weapon and soulbinding it gains you nothing.

Asia Skyly.7198:

Smooth Penguin.5294:

You can enjoy this game normally with just Exotics.

Go and do Fractal level 50 with just exotics and post your video doing so. The choice should be to play without the BiS. As in “Here I am doing FOTM 50 in all white gear!”

Having BiS right now, is not a matter of choice, it is trusted upon us, after we already had BiS (exoctic) gear.

And you’re still not dealing with the issue of having to acquire said gear repeatedly, for a lot of different characters.

That is not Alt Friendly.

Aha! Fractals are elite dungeons that you’re required to be geared for. So your argument is moot, since you can’t compare 99% of the game to one type of hard dungeon.

That said, this game is definitely alt friendly. You can have 15 different characters, and it wouldn’t be too expensive to gear then all in at least Rare level weapons and armor.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Asia Skyly.7198:

Smooth Penguin.5294:

You can enjoy this game normally with just Exotics.

Go and do Fractal level 50 with just exotics and post your video doing so. The choice should be to play without the BiS. As in “Here I am doing FOTM 50 in all white gear!”

Having BiS right now, is not a matter of choice, it is trusted upon us, after we already had BiS (exoctic) gear.

And you’re still not dealing with the issue of having to acquire said gear repeatedly, for a lot of different characters.

That is not Alt Friendly.

Aha! Fractals are elite dungeons that you’re required to be geared for. So your argument is moot, since you can’t compare 99% of the game to one type of hard dungeon.

That said, this game is definitely alt friendly. You can have 15 different characters, and it wouldn’t be too expensive to gear then all in at least Rare level weapons and armor.

Yes either play one character with max gear or 15 different ones with rare gear.

Thats not alt friendly.

Why even get yellow gear at all. Why not just white gear or naked. You can still kill stuff naked so why use armor at all.

GrimHero.5140:

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Asia Skyly.7198:

Smooth Penguin.5294:

You can enjoy this game normally with just Exotics.

Go and do Fractal level 50 with just exotics and post your video doing so. The choice should be to play without the BiS. As in “Here I am doing FOTM 50 in all white gear!”

Having BiS right now, is not a matter of choice, it is trusted upon us, after we already had BiS (exoctic) gear.

And you’re still not dealing with the issue of having to acquire said gear repeatedly, for a lot of different characters.

That is not Alt Friendly.

Aha! Fractals are elite dungeons that you’re required to be geared for. So your argument is moot, since you can’t compare 99% of the game to one type of hard dungeon.

That said, this game is definitely alt friendly. You can have 15 different characters, and it wouldn’t be too expensive to gear then all in at least Rare level weapons and armor.

Yes either play one character with max gear or 15 different ones with rare gear.

Thats not alt friendly.

Why even get yellow gear at all. Why not just white gear or naked. You can still kill stuff naked so why use armor at all.

That’s true. You can play this game normally with White, Blue, or Green weapons and armor.

For everyone who is mistaken a lot of stuff about GW1, I’ll try to put it more clearly. Although I’ll probably end up writing a wall of text that is badly organized…

In GW1, you had different systems for armor and weapons. Armor was ‘soulbound on acquire’. But the thing in GW1 was, getting BiS armor was the least of your concerns when making a character. You could fully deck out a character in max level, gear, runes, weapons, etc in like 5-6 hours without even doing an effort.

For weapons, every weapon in the game was tradeable. Even after being equipped. You could equip a weapon, use it for 6 years and sell it. You could, however ‘customize’ a weapon, which meant soulbinding it to that character. What you got in return was a 20% base damage increase. Now, please note, that in GW1, skills and damage worked differently. When attacking a foe, you would have your autoattack that needn’t be activated, you just had to engage, and you would start auto attacking. Then you had your skills, which, in case of melee weapons, added an extra amount of damage to your attack. For example, a weapon skill like Death Blossom:

Dual Attack. Must follow an off-hand attack. If it hits, Death Blossom strikes target foe for +20…40…45 damage and all adjacent foes take 20…40…45 damage.

would have this tooltip. Those numbers seem low, but most people had around 500-600hp in GW1, so keep that in mind. Now, the xx damage you see in the tooltip, would be added to the base damage you did. If you did 15 base damage with 15 attributes in Dagger Mastery, you would do 1545 = 60 damage. Not accounting for a critical strike.

If you customized your daggers, you would do 15*1.2 + 45 = 18 + 45 = 63 damage. So this increase in 20% damage would be minimal.

Especially for casters, who got most of their damage from their spells anyway, because spells did not get the extra +xx damage from the weapon, since it only applied to actual attacks, customizing a weapon was not only dumb, but also a waste of money, however little money it would be that you lost.

The only place where customization was actually taken seriously was the high-end PvE scene where some people used weapons from PvE (PvP weapons were automatically customized) and the +20% damage increase could make the difference between a successful spike and a failure.

This is why customization didn’t see much use in GW1, and although weapon markets weren’t optimal, inflation was a non-issue.

Hope that was clear enough.

As for the game not being alt friendly… I agree in the sense that having an alt is pretty useless other than playing experience now. Doing dungeons or Fractals more than once a day is strongly discouraged by the current system. Resulting in people doing a fixed set of dungeon tours and maybe a Fractal run and then not touching the content anymore for the rest of the day. People might have complained about Fractal levels not being account bound. But at least we could do more than one 48 daily before the patch, and not feel like we wasted our time.

Something should be done about the dungeon token/fractal daily accountbound issue, and then I’d agree with the premise of this thread. Otherwise, I strongly believe that it is very alt-unfriendly.

It’s more alt friendly than most games are, but to people that come from Final Fantasy XI or XIV, it definitely doesn’t seem too friendly. There are a lot of thing that need to be repeated if you want to just play as a different class.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

GrimHero.5140:

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Asia Skyly.7198:

Smooth Penguin.5294:

You can enjoy this game normally with just Exotics.

Go and do Fractal level 50 with just exotics and post your video doing so. The choice should be to play without the BiS. As in “Here I am doing FOTM 50 in all white gear!”

Having BiS right now, is not a matter of choice, it is trusted upon us, after we already had BiS (exoctic) gear.

And you’re still not dealing with the issue of having to acquire said gear repeatedly, for a lot of different characters.

That is not Alt Friendly.

Aha! Fractals are elite dungeons that you’re required to be geared for. So your argument is moot, since you can’t compare 99% of the game to one type of hard dungeon.

That said, this game is definitely alt friendly. You can have 15 different characters, and it wouldn’t be too expensive to gear then all in at least Rare level weapons and armor.

Yes either play one character with max gear or 15 different ones with rare gear.

Thats not alt friendly.

Why even get yellow gear at all. Why not just white gear or naked. You can still kill stuff naked so why use armor at all.

That’s true. You can play this game normally with White, Blue, or Green weapons and armor.

And then here comes the punchline. Dungeon parties wont like you running sub par gear. Neither will WvW zergs or PvP teams. Youre at a natural disadvantage regardless of skill if your wearing a lower tier armor then your opponent.

People say ‘’you dont have to have max gear’’ i didnt have to buy the game. But its something you do in your spare time. Gaming should never feel like a chore for people who want multiple alts which is whats happening here.

And many players themselves dont like the idea of running sub par gear.

And with timegated stuff like laurels even if they want to put the work in for their alts its is going to take a long time. Regardless of the effort they put in. Which is alt unfriendly

Time gating being account wide and not character wide. Especially when it comes to crafting. I don’t see why I can’t craft 8 time gated item with 8 alts that are each at 450 armorsmith.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Some players feel that they should be able to get all the BiS gear quickly and easily.

Oh yes, those crazy entitled players who dared to believe exactly what the devs were saying pre-release about the gear system for GW2.

GW2 is alt-friendly in a few ways (shared bank, account-based achievements, wallet etc.), and then steps on its own feet in other ways (so many unnecessarily soulbound items, time-gated content and rewards, one-per-account rewards, skins that are consumables instead of unlockables even if bought with real money). Like many aspects of the game, there’s a terribly confused game design vision going on that can’t decide which way it wants to go. Ascended gear is really the epitome of the confusion because it marks the start of Anet being unsure what audience it is designing the game for, and trying to make it a jack of all trades while simultaneously making it a master of none.

Faowri.4159:

Like many aspects of the game, there’s a terribly confused game design vision going on that can’t decide which way it wants to go. Ascended gear is really the epitome of the confusion because it marks the start of Anet being unsure what audience it is designing the game for, and trying to make it a jack of all trades while simultaneously making it a master of none.

Exactly!

Make soul-bound into account-bound and you begin to equalize this in-congruent system they have and develop a cohesive gear philosophy.

@ OP
Some of your points are valid. But they don’t address what makes the game not alt friendly.

• Vertical gear grind (promotes playing char with best build)
• Long grind for gear stats and look (promotes playing 1 char)
• Role locking based on gear (choice between build diversity or playing alts)
• Soul bound (promotes playing char with best soul bound gear)
• Long leveling process (it is long I played Gw1)
• the most interesting gameplay and most fun content is @ max level.
• Content encountered during the level up process does not have replay value, save story mode dungeons and some personal story (which can’t be replayed)
• others things not off the top of my head.

Both sides of this argument have valid points which is why there people that like the current state and people who don’t.

Nevermind being Alt friendly, it isn’t even friendly to my main which has 3 builds (5 weapons and 3 armor sets) that I use in WvW. The way ascended is done will severely hinder build variety, experimentation, and of course Alts. Sure I can experiment with exotics but why would I spend months upgrading a good build to ascended when I know the balance team will probably wreck it for me half way through the grinding process.

I would say Defiance is rather alt friendly when you think about it. At the same time having an alt in that game is rather useless if you’re still bothering to think.

Seveleniumus.5973:

I’m really tired of reading all these threads of endless complains how gw2 is not alt friendly. All currencies are account bound, you don’t need to level for pvp, you’re up scaled in WvW, we have down scaling system in PvE, we have experience scrolls, we have tomes of knowledge, we have scrolls of knowledge, now we got account bound fractal level and soon – account bound WvW levels, how is that not alt friendly?

All these changes you mention were the result of the complaints you hear. So why would you criticize people’s complaints when it finally made the game more alt friendly because of it? If these people did not complain, these alt-friendly measures would not have occur.

This game isn’t alt friendly in the story lines AT ALL, weaps and armor aside. You have to be a few pixels off if you think otherwise. 8 lvl 80’s and same old broken record everytime. Let them fix that then I agree the game is totally ALT friendly. GAME ON

Is the game alt friendly compared to the average other mmo? sort of.
Is it alt friendly compared to GW1? absolutely not.
The problem here is, the manifesto advertised a system close to GW1.

Based on my expectations coming into the game, it is neither alt friendly nor friendly to build swapping and build experimentation.
But i think soulbound items do not nessecairly affect this, since most gear is tailored to a certain build with stats and upgrades and pretty much only works in the context of that build. Being able to exchange a set of armor or a weapon from a necro to an ele does not really help the issue.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

You can enjoy this game normally with just Exotics.

Did you mean to say, “I can enjoy this game normally with just Exotics ?”

I ask because I do not think that you can judge how anyone other than yourself can enjoy the game.
———————————————-

Before ascended gear I felt that the game was alt friendly. After, not so much.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

I think the argument falls in the Entitlement category. Some players feel that they should be able to get all the BiS gear quickly and easily. Because Ascended gear takes time and effort to craft, you get the push back from players who don’t want to expend the time and effort.

Ascendent gear takes grind of old content, giving back nothing because there’s no content made for the Ascendant stats.
Wich means, ANet gives you grind to hide the lack of content.
After promising that you could have the BiS with no effort or grind.
You call this “Entitlement”, i call it “Being lied to”.

My argument is with Laurels. They are time gated AND account bound meaning you can only gain a given amount of laurels over a given period of time YET anything you purchase with those Laurels becomes soulbound on use. For this reason GW2 is extremely alt-unfriendly.

I can get dragonite ore with each of my characters running the same event in the course of a day yet I cannot do that for Laurels.

Good to see someone posting the inevitable ‘gw2 is alt friendly’ in response to my thread about it being the complete opposite…

Those of us with varying tastes or a low boredom threshold or who like changing play styles every now and then find the game increasingly unfriendly towards either build diversity or alts, with time gated materials and especially laurels causing the biggest problems, followed quickly by the fact that ascended stuff is non-tradeable.

Making it tradeable would make the game a lot more alt friendly as well as allowing those that only play one build on one toon a way of cashing in on their laurels and love of FoTM.

Just wait for the screams when they nerf warriors into the ground 12 months from now and people realise they will have to regear their toon or even worse build a whole new set of armor for their new FOTM class….

Faowri gets it. The game we were sold considered best-in-slot gear to not be a reward but rather the standard, and that assorted horizontal progression tracks would be the rewards. The game we have right now has only skins as horizontal progression and the vast majority of weapon skins and all armour skins take less effort to obtain than their best-in-slot equivalent.

Fortunately the stat gain from ascended isn’t as severe as it would be in another game and we do have a kinda-sorta promise that ascended is as high as tiers will ever go, but the entire premise and execution are so aggressively against the philosophy we were given pre-launch that it can’t help but leave a sour taste.

When they nerfed the tokens I get from running alts through dungeons… Yeah.

Coldtart.4785:

Fortunately the stat gain from ascended isn’t as severe as it would be in another game and we do have a kinda-sorta promise that ascended is as high as tiers will ever go,

Just note they haven’t made any such promise regarding infusions.