Guild Wars 2

I’m going to resist going manic and overreacting to the Ascended gear announcement; there is a fairly steep gap between exotic and legendary and it’s going in to support some new content. If the implementation is good, it could maybe even turn into something interesting and add some depth to the game.

However, and this is a big however, I beg you with everything I have to not let this result in an endless stream of WoW-styled power creep that ends up needlessly gating new content and needlessly obsoleting older content. Perpetually escalating numbers do nothing worthwhile for the game and in fact are detrimental to both the immersion factor of the world and the polish of the game’s systems.

The last thing I ever want for this game, ever, is to in a couple of years be at level 120 and hitting baddies for 600k with my tier 5 legendary/ascended/whatever item and running around with 17 million health, all but locked into a tiny, newly released part of the world because it’s the only place I can do anything that matters. It’s just silly, period. Find ways to expand the end-game in horizontal directions, not vertical ones, as per your original manifesto. I implore you. There are great suggestions littering the forums, and I’m sure you already have some things in the works.

Hey, this dungeon has already made the old dungeons obsolete because they do not reward you with ascended gear. Anet has already made content that is 3 months old irrelevant. Weeeeeeeee.

They said they would be adding methods of getting Ascended gear to existing content. We simply don’t have enough info, which is my actual beef with Anet. Too much hush-hush.

Einlanzer.1627:

there is a fairly steep gap between exotic and legendary and it’s going in to support some new content.

Where is this gap? Legendary weapons have the same stats as exotics.

People are freaking out because ascended items are creating the gap, not filling it.

Aaron.4807:

Hey, this dungeon has already made the old dungeons obsolete because they do not reward you with ascended gear. Anet has already made content that is 3 months old irrelevant. Weeeeeeeee.

Is anyone actually running dungeons for upgrades? Last I checked the gear I got from a dungeon only served to give me money and materials, and tokens.

Gliss.9713:

Einlanzer.1627:

there is a fairly steep gap between exotic and legendary and it’s going in to support some new content.

Where is this gap? Legendary weapons have the same stats as exotics.

People are freaking out because ascended items are creating the gap, not filling it.

They will have noticeably better stats then exotics starting this patch… GG NO RE

Aaron.4807:

Hey, this dungeon has already made the old dungeons obsolete because they do not reward you with ascended gear. Anet has already made content that is 3 months old irrelevant. Weeeeeeeee.

Honestly, I never even played the original dungeons for stat-based gear—I did it because I liked the looks of the armor. I could get better optimization just by buying a set off the TP and slotting in some runes.

In general? People are freaking out over nothing; you’re simply getting a reward (that’s barely better than what we currently have) for playing more difficult content. I wouldn’t be surprised at all if Ascended gear is just as easy to get as exotics, given enough time; we’ll have people rolling in them and no one will care about the so-called “gear grind” anymore.

Which is what’s happening now, at this very moment, by the way.