Guild Wars 2

Emperor.1360:

Do you kill everything you come across along the way? I’ve noticed that many players do not do that, and instead just run the same events over and over. While doing so is useful for getting karma, I prefer to solo by running around aimlessly murdering everything in sight, and I find a lot of rares. I go to a lot of different locations, and do not stay in one spot and grind (not sure if that helps at all, but it does help for XP gain at least and gaining more skill points to spend at 80). Usually I just have 30% magic find going because my DPS is slowed too much if I’m in my full magic find set when solo.

Yes, I often spend a lot of time just running around completing events, and often just killing red dots (I really miss them not appearing on the radar like in GW1)… I’ve also got several toons so I swap between them a lot. As an example I did a complete fractal run, and I got 1 rare the entire run (out of the Maw chest). I did a couple CM dungeons, and got 0 rares. I could go on but that would be de-railing the topic. Yeah for me the +ecto items are a pipe-dream. I only just got Syzygy a couple days ago.. it’ll be nice to see what changes they made to the ‘all stat ascended items’.

o.O…. they actually added knight’s gear ascended pieces…? gg 3.4k armor 3.1k attack 100% crit warrior lol.

buki.3108:

o.O…. they actually added knight’s gear ascended pieces…? gg 3.4k armor 3.1k attack 100% crit warrior lol.

where did you found that piece? (where can i find it?)

Fractals merchant or Laurel vendor. Interestingly there’s a new set: Precision/toughness/power (Precision being the main stat)

buki.3108:

Fractals merchant or Laurel vendor. Interestingly there’s a new set: Precision/toughness/power (Precision being the main stat)

i guess i understood you wrong then x) but thx anyway

I don’t like this at all. They try to force us choose one character.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

Just wanted you guys to know that these are also available as guild mission rewards as well. You can get them as random rewards from completing missions or from the commendation vendor.

I see what you did, you want people to play the guild missions. However if you put something ONLY in the guild missions people would complain about how it not fair to force them to do something. Because that’s the only way to get the item. Like they did with fractals.

So you made it where the other way to get earrings is way above what it worth.

So people will do guild missions, since thats much faster to do.

Isaiah Cartwright.8569:

These items are mainly earned through guild content, we included them on the laurels vendor to give players the opportunity to earn them if they are not in a guild but they are priced high to encourage players to try and accomplish them via the guild content.

You can’t try and steer players so obviously and not have them resent it. While this may be extraordinarily fun new content, attaching it to such a heinous grind (a month per trinket, again??) and insisting, in practical terms, that all players must now partake has already made it feel like a chore before even starting.

How about just making fun new content and leaving out the heavy-handed stick-and-carrot approach? GW2’s greatest strength is it’s great breadth of play experiences. Why not continue to incentivize players to enjoy the content that matches what they like, while just adding new content for the sole purpose of appealing to more players?

So the game that was not supposed to be about grinding now has it taking about 4 months of playing every day to get a daily and lots of money to buy the 2 new pieces top gear (per character/spec). And the time needed to get each piece is just going up and up.

Remember the slippery slope argument everyone made when ascended came out, seems like it was fairly accurate.

“To make playing in our open world worthwhile, we’ll make it rewarding enough for players to spend their time there across all levels. It’s extremely important that we stay true to our philosophy that you should be able to play Guild Wars 2 the way you want to play the game in order to reach the most powerful rewards”.

The above quote is from Colin Johanson from https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/colin-johanson-on-guild-wars-2-in-the-months-ahead/. Why is it then that we are being FORCED to get ascended accessories through guild missions only? This is a DIRECT violation of your “philosophy”. Placing extremely high barriers to access rewards through other gametypes is going DIRECTLY against this. Why? I think it’s safe to assume that this company has lost A LOT of credibility from launch…imagine, such radical changes to philosophies only 6 months after release.

I’m astounded, surprised, and extremely disappointed that GW2’s LEAD DESIGNER actually just typed that.

other question: why i can’t upgrade (+5 agony extra) the new rings (Cleric Ascended Rings)?

Vazkro.1762:

On the other side at launch it was promised that people that would put a lot of time in items would only get better LOOKING items and not items that have better STATS.

This, more going back on promises from anet. Another genius patch from anet that does nothing but anger large sections of the community.

40 laurels is too much

Slightly confused. Why are the new ascended 40 laurels + 50 ectos? That’s inconsistent with the other prices and ectos are needed for so many things these days without any additional ways to gain them (or improved loot chances).

just think of how much we’d need for an ascended weapon/armor when they come out. great!

I almost wouldn’t mind the price, I just don’t get the inconsistency. Also, why choose an item used for so many other things? Orbs/lodestones/T6 mats in suitable qtys would have been better if this was a route they wanted. Or lower laurel cost to compensate.
Very bizarre

AnonEMouse.7932:

Emperor.1360:

Rares drop all of the time if you have even a tiny percentage of Magic Find (just what an omnomberry bar gives). It’s pretty common to get around 5 rares an hour purely soloing.

Wow, I really SERIOUSLY SERIOUSLY, want your account. I’m EXTREMELY lucky if I get 1 rare during an entire evenings playtime.. and that’s with running about +30% magic find. 5 rares in an hour is fairy tale land as far as I’m concerned.

Same. I run with between 40 and 100% additional MF at all times, and getting 1 rare a day is a fortunate occurrence for me.

Isaiah Cartwright.8569:

These items are mainly earned through guild content, we included them on the laurels vendor to give players the opportunity to earn them if they are not in a guild but they are priced high to encourage players to try and accomplish them via the guild content.

Presumably the guild missions reward them via RNG, you guys still haven’t learned that there should be a reasonable alternative to RNG, this isn’t it.

And on the guild missions can anyone who competes obtain them on the missions or just those in the guild kicking off the mission?

The thing that i dont get about the Ascended item is why arena.net made prefixed stats in the ascended items.

I mean, the Exotic Jewel sistems works perfect you can mix and have a lot of different builds.

Why no put a Ascended Items without “jewel” stats and a “jewel upgrade” similar to the infusion upgrade and choose your mix, like a exotic one. They would put in fractal loot, or in Laurel seller.

If a Amulet cost 30 Laurel now , put for 20 Base amulet+10 “jewel upgrade” for example, rings and earrings the same.

Now you can put the basic Rings/Amulet/Earrings and the “jewel upgrade” and voila you have a better system and people dont have to wait for months to get the stats that you want, the ascended stat system is a great back steep compared with the exotic ones.

And have a seller with a windows full of 60 amulet when only 20 have different stats is silly in my opionoin.

I just dont want what they will do when they put ascended armors, throw to the garbagge the rune system?

Isaiah Cartwright.8569:

These items are mainly earned through guild content, we included them on the laurels vendor to give players the opportunity to earn them if they are not in a guild but they are priced high to encourage players to try and accomplish them via the guild content.

What if someone isn’t in a guild and doesn’t want to be? What if someone is in a small guild and has to take a long period of time to actually accomplish the missions? Why should they be forced to pay a much higher prices for these items or take far longer then those in a larger guild that can run the missions pretty much immediately? I find it amazing that you don’t realise by now how this sort of thing divides the community.

You probably wonder why this forum gets so toxic well this is a perfect example why.

morrolan.9608:

Isaiah Cartwright.8569:

These items are mainly earned through guild content, we included them on the laurels vendor to give players the opportunity to earn them if they are not in a guild but they are priced high to encourage players to try and accomplish them via the guild content.

What if someone isn’t in a guild and doesn’t want to be? What if someone is in a small guild and has to take a long period of time to actually accomplish the missions? Why should they be forced to pay a much higher prices for these items or take far longer then those in a larger guild that can run the missions pretty much immediately? I find it amazing that you don’t realise by now how this sort of thing divides the community.

You probably wonder why this forum gets so toxic well this is a perfect example why.

What he says, we should not be forced upon either a huge guild or a grind that is simply over the top. And I can’t press the matter more about how we were only supposed to grind for awesome looking item SKINS instead of items with better STATS.

Guildwars 1 was one of my favorit games for that reason and Guildwars 2 has even more potential with how awesome the world has been designed. Why go back on your word and just screw over everyone that is in a small guild? I still love Arenanet but this hurts my heart.

This is absolutely stupid.

The player base asks for more variety in ascended gear from the laurel vendors and this is the answer? We’ll give you variety but you’ll have to grind for months to get it?

Ridiculously stupid. I’m not even going to bother attempting to get this even though it would be perfect for my Guardian.

EsLafiel.4517:

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

Just wanted you guys to know that these are also available as guild mission rewards as well. You can get them as random rewards from completing missions or from the commendation vendor.

I see what you did, you want people to play the guild missions. However if you put something ONLY in the guild missions people would complain about how it not fair to force them to do something. Because that’s the only way to get the item. Like they did with fractals.

So you made it where the other way to get earrings is way above what it worth.

So people will do guild missions, since thats much faster to do.

Except they won’t, because those missions got gated for only the biggest guilds. So again, the gap between haves and have nots is going to widen.

I might buy this earrings after few years when I have like 5 stacks of ecto and few more legendaries. Before that is pure waste of resource

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

It’s partially related to the time it takes. Personal rewards for guild missions can only be claimed once per week per mission category. Therefore if your guild only has guild bounties unlocked, it will take you 6 weeks to claim one of these accessories from the commendation vendor (assuming you don’t spend your commendations on anything else).

Since that does not really answer the question, let me rephrase it:
Do you consider 50 ecto + (at least!) a month of everyday play to be a reasonable effort for one ascended piece of equipment?
The fact, that it can be gotten through guild missions is at that time completely irrelevant, seeing as only a small minority of players will be able to access those rewards. If you disagree however, change the above effort to 6 weeks and 6 gold (i believe that is the correct price in addition to commendations?) . You can even completely ignore the massive price to unlock the missions (though really you shouldn’t).

How would you consider that price in light of people playing alts? What is your suggestion for people playing alts, or currently having multiple armor sets for different occasions?

ASB.4295:

Mungrul.9358:

Gah, 50 ectos as well as 40 laurels?
Sure, no grind here.

The whole ascended set has to last people until at least Jan 2014, thanks to the overreaction of some fraction of the player base. That the ascended items are a lot grindier is basically their fault. Had they not complained so much, we could have had much quicker releases of gear at lower costs, and a completely new tier by summer. ANet did the best they could while staying true to their “no new gear tier in 2013” statement. :/

That would have been horrible for the vast majority of players. The current ascended system came from the overreaction of some fraction of another game’s player base. What they are doing currently is damage control to keep the majority of their fanbase.

I sincerely hope ascended is the final tier and if so, I do look forward to completing my characters with it.

That is what I am really hoping myself, if a dev can state ( which they most likely can’t but a man can hope ) that this will be farm for the final gearset ever and that the rest of the new gear will only be of the same stats but with different looks then I’m sure most of the people will be really happy. For those that want to grind up new gears for all alts for the rest of their lifes I can recommend more than enough other games. For those that want a game that is based on having fun and sometimes optionally work for a gearset you think looks awesome stay with guildwars 2.

God I really hope they wont add even higher sets with lots of farming after this one, because stuff like that makes previous farming time wasted and really takes away a big part of the fun for me and most of the people I know bought guildwars 2 because they loved the guildwars 1 way of handling endgame armor.

Yet another reason for me never ever to bother with ascended :’)

Wasn’t planning on doing fractals past level 10-ish though (currently level 2 \0/), and in WvW it does not make a difference for me anyway, so I guess it doesn’t really matter.

I think this is the last straw for me, I took a lot of kitten from anet over the past few months but seriously? 40 laurels and 50 ectos to even have a chance to get one of your characters with an accessory and forcing people to all join the biggest guild they can find so they can farm these… That’s very healthy of you anet. Looks like i’m not going to support this game anymore.

“I just don’t get it. It’s like they have a plan of making the game a nightmare for anyone who wants maximum stats on their bloody equipment”

its called progression and doing it is called grinding. since we dont have this in GW2 by definition we might have to find a new word for it, like uphill-gearing. afterall it was totally impossible to put agony resistance on regular exotic stats.. totally.

1 year after the release of GW1, we got Guild Wars: Factions. 6 months after the release of GW2 we get this patch. WTF? I wish you spent those 6 months on an expansion pack instead of this travesty.

you can also do the guild missions and get one in less than 50 day

Why are people being punished for having multiple toons? Back in GW1 you could get your characters equipped fully in a fraction of the time it takes here in GW2 so people would make more alts and still dress them up appropriately. If GW2 allowed us to fully deck our main characters in equipments we want then we would’ve made more toons, and bought them character slots. If legendaries didn’t take as long to make, then perhaps everyone would be making one for each of their characters. Come expansion pack, introduce a new set of legendary skins to make to keep them hardcore players interested while the casuals can keep theirs and yet won’t make them feel like they’re being left behind.

I would really like to hear a Dev about wether or not they are planning to make this a final gearset or if they will keep adding better gearsets like in for example WoW. I am very curious because the answer will decide what kind off game this will become in the future. A game that forces neverending grind ( which is NOT fun ) or a game that will keep being as awesome as it is now and just adds even more cool stuff to do ( other than grinding gear to have higher stats ) .

There should be a way to upgrade Exotic items to Ascended via Mystic Forge. Then everyone will be happy no one will complain about Ascended items being difficult to get. Example :

For WvW Players : Exotic + 100 Badges of Honor + 2 types of other useless material

For PVE : Exotic + 50 Ectos + 2 types of other useless material

For Fractal Players: Exotic + Gift of Ascension + 2 types of other useless material

I’m so glad I wasted those 30 laurels on a soldier’s amulet since cleric’s is what i really wanted.
Again Anet shows us that waiting is the way to go.
So I’ll just wait until they make the rest of the ascended items available through something other then the insanity fueled laurel system.

I’m getting the feeling ArenaNet are estimating the amount of gold owned by any given player by a simple average. This is allowing the super-rich exploiters and trading post moguls to throw the average gold per player out, so that ArenaNet believe the userbase have more gold than they actually do.
They honestly think these prices are affordable to the average player.

Mungrul.9358:

I’m getting the feeling ArenaNet are estimating the amount of gold owned by any given player by a simple average. This is allowing the super-rich exploiters and trading post moguls to throw the average gold per player out, so that ArenaNet believe the userbase have more gold than they actually do.
They honestly think these prices are affordable to the average player.

It’s not the price. I could live with 50 ectos (though i really don’t know what caused them to add that to the laurel price). It’s the time needed to get laurels that is a problem.
Seriously, one full month (dailies + monthly) for one item? This is too much even for hardcores (for casuals it will be much longer – i don’t expect them to do every daily, or even being able to log in every day).

purpleskies.3274:

Remember the slippery slope argument everyone made when ascended came out, seems like it was fairly accurate.

Well, it wasn’t even a slippery slope argument, because we were presented a plan that mapped this out. I guess they didn’t want to stand down from the plan, and in fact this is a bit worse than I had expected.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

Rising Dusk.2408:

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

Just wanted you guys to know that these are also available as guild mission rewards as well. You can get them as random rewards from completing missions or from the commendation vendor.

That’s good news. Although it really makes me wonder how you guys came up with this price as a valid equivalent to a guild mission. I seriously doubt you expect 6 guild missions to be as difficult as acquiring 40 laurels and 50 ecto.

It’s partially related to the time it takes. Personal rewards for guild missions can only be claimed once per week per mission category. Therefore if your guild only has guild bounties unlocked, it will take you 6 weeks to claim one of these accessories from the commendation vendor (assuming you don’t spend your commendations on anything else).

6 weeks per piece of BiS gear. Less if you are in a larger guild…more time if you are in a smaller guild. Or you can spend a month per piece with laurels. Keep in mind…this is per character.

This is not the same team that I knew. Wth happened to you guys?

What do you people want? You want the BEST gear in the game for a legion of alts in a matter of weeks? Please explain how that makes sense?

Guess I’ll just save up laurels and ectos until I decide which toon I want to outfit with AG. Until then, I don’t mind doing the dailies/monthlies. What I do mind is not being able to do guild missions. And no, I don’t want to join/rep another guild. The people I play with don’t tell me how to spec, won’t prevent me from taking part in something because I don’t use the right utility skills or have the “best” gear, and I trust them. I won’t get that with another guild.

Amun Ra.6435:

What do you people want? You want the BEST gear in the game for a legion of alts in a matter of weeks? Please explain how that makes sense?

Because it was possible in GW1. That’s how it makes sense.
You want to work your kitten off in order to play on a level playing field? You want it to take months to reach the stage where you know it’s your skill that differentiates you, not some arbitrary numbers on a fantasy construct that says its armour?
How the heck does THAT make sense?!

Mungrul.9358:

Amun Ra.6435:

What do you people want? You want the BEST gear in the game for a legion of alts in a matter of weeks? Please explain how that makes sense?

Because it was possible in GW1. That’s how it makes sense.
You want to work your kitten off in order to play on a level playing field? You want it to take months to reach the stage where you know it’s your skill that differentiates you, not some arbitrary numbers on a fantasy construct that says its armour?
How the heck does THAT make sense?!

This is not GW1. If you want everything you had in GW1…play GW1. If you believe its only skill that makes the difference you don’t really need AG right?

Amun Ra.6435:

Mungrul.9358:

Amun Ra.6435:

What do you people want? You want the BEST gear in the game for a legion of alts in a matter of weeks? Please explain how that makes sense?

Because it was possible in GW1. That’s how it makes sense.
You want to work your kitten off in order to play on a level playing field? You want it to take months to reach the stage where you know it’s your skill that differentiates you, not some arbitrary numbers on a fantasy construct that says its armour?
How the heck does THAT make sense?!

This is not GW1. If you want everything you had in GW1…play GW1. If you believe its only skill that makes the difference you don’t really need AG right?

I think he’s saying that skill -should- be the only difference.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

Just wanted you guys to know that these are also available as guild mission rewards as well. You can get them as random rewards from completing missions or from the commendation vendor.

That’s salt in the wound, rather than a solution. You’ve made Guild Missions inaccessible for the foreseeable future for anyone in a small to medium guild who doesn’t find a large guild to let them leach, or doesn’t just quit their small guild to join a large guild for GMs.

It’s really feeling like you only care about Elite players now and the rest of us might just as well take a flying leap.

Why are you insisting on an end game gear grind, when a core design philosophy the game was built around was “no end game stats gear grind”?!?!? Don’t you get that the foundational design philosophy for GW2 is the reason the game is a very rare hit in the MMORPG genre? It’s not holding the game back, it’s the reason the game has the level of success it enjoys!

Anyone who has any clue about the genre knows that developers focusing their development efforts on the nomadic, never satisfied “Elite” accomplish nothing but the destruction of their game.

The “aesthetics as carrot”, rather than stats, could have and still could work if you’d spend more effort creating desirable armor skins for the game, rather than finding ways to make end game grindy and exclusionary! Is it really so hard to find talented armor artists/modelers that you have been forced to return to the failed formula of “end game gear grind as a necessity”?

Arenanet, I feel like I don’t know you anymore.

Amun Ra.6435:

What do you people want? You want the BEST gear in the game for a legion of alts in a matter of weeks? Please explain how that makes sense?

Well its what their manifesto stated, something that attracted a large number of people to the game, and in most mmos you can get it quickly if you’re prepared to grind for it. As some have said recently anet have done the whole vertical progression thing really badly.

Amun Ra.6435:

What do you people want? You want the BEST gear in the game for a legion of alts in a matter of weeks? Please explain how that makes sense?

It certainly makes lot more sense than it taking years (during which better eq will show up, by the way, so i will have to start from the beginning).
Basically, i don’t see much sense in the preparing to have fun phase taking a long, long tiime.

Astralporing.1957:

Amun Ra.6435:

What do you people want? You want the BEST gear in the game for a legion of alts in a matter of weeks? Please explain how that makes sense?

It certainly makes lot more sense than it taking years (during which better eq will show up, by the way, so i will have to start from the beginning).
Basically, i don’t see much sense in the preparing to have fun phase taking a long, long tiime.

I’m sure as hell not going to be spending the next few years preparing to have fun. This game is just disappointment after disappointment. What are they thinking? Do they even know? Who’s making decisions there?

Why the grindy, time-gated, elitist-oriented content? Why the gear tiers? Why all the crap that people hate about MMO’s? I don’t know why ArenaNet has changed – I feel like the studio I spent so many years as a fan of has ceased to exist.

I guess the silver lining here is that other studios have an opportunity to learn from ArenaNet’s mistakes.

Such a disappointment, after all these years of excited anticipation.

Rooks Zaer.5846:

I think he’s saying that skill -should- be the only difference.

Thank you, that’s exactly what I mean.
But then again, I come from an old school Quake death-matching background, where the only difference between players truly is skill.
I look at people asking for vertical progression and I see weaklings needing the crutch of bigger stats to make up for their lack of skill.