Guild Wars 2

I am a relatively new player. As far as my understanding goes, exotic and legendary gear prior to the November 15th update had the exact same stats and the only difference between the two were cosmetics and rarity. Now post update, legendary and ascended now have the exact same stats while exotics are slightly weaker? Is that correct?

They added a new tier of gear which is 8-14% better then exotics, that require at the moment a very intense grind and more gold then most players have prob earned playing in the last 3 months. Legendary is not buffed yet but when ascended weapons are out it will be, Anet said Legendary will maintain equal stats to the best items in the game.

The problem is also that they have a slot for “infusions” which is a kind of PVE resilience which many fear will be a segregating mechanic making everyone that doesn’t participate and do this intense grind lost and not able to take part in any future content due to not having enough infusions basically allowing them only to participate in new fluff holiday content.

I think it’s safe to assume they will be designing content from here on out around these infusions in the future so it might be the case all dungeons will be turned into requiring levels of this, gating and segregating many players from a lot of content to come in the future if they don’t want to devote their lives to 100s of runs of a handful of mini dungeons. or buy gems from the gem shop to afford the gear (pay to win model).

Most likely more and more content release in the future will be gated and unavailable to people that do not pay to win or grind 15+ hours a day, and it’s also likely more and more tiers of gear will come.

All these fears go directly against firm quotes of A-net’s agenda pre launch. A lot of people put these quotes in their signatures here out of irony if you want to read some.

Pfft, they added 2 rings and mats for a back piece.

People are just looking to complain.

Oh and I LOVE that legendary weapons will never ever become obsolete – TYTY ANet!

Karizee.8076:

Pfft, they added 2 rings and mats for a back piece.

People are just looking to complain.

Oh and I LOVE that legendary weapons will never ever become obsolete – TYTY ANet!

yes contradicting everything they said this game was, making it an entire mix of pay real money or get left behind and requiring one specific small unimaginative dungeons to be run for more hours then a hard core wow raid schedule IS something to complain about.

Slippery slope is beyond your comprehension karizee, just do not worry about it.

Just because they said legendary weapons will never fall from the top tier doesn’t mean its true. Of course, just because someone contradicts themselves doesn’t mean that they always will contradict themselves, but it does pose a problem for their credibility.

If they do introduce a new top tier, they should probably use a word that literally means “the best,” “the top,” or “the last,” like Ultimate or Zenith, that way it will be all the more hilarious when it is inevitably relegated to second-best as well.

Another way for Legendary Weapons to not become obsolete:

— Keep the cosmetic on them to be as glowy or spiky or spinny or transparent as you want. But keep the cosmetics unique.

— Make all new weapons/gear introduced have the exact same stat distribution – but with different cosmetics (again, unique)

This way, several years down the line, your legendary will still be as unique as it was when you got it. And yet it will still be exactly as powerful as whatever new gear they’ve introduced by then.

Should you want the new spiffy looking gear, you can go do whatever it takes to get it. Should you not, no big deal. You will do just fine with that glowy ghost sword you’ve worked so hard to acquire when the game released and not feel like you’ve missed much. You can go back to actually having fun with your friends playing, and don’t feel like you have to catch up.

Stego.3148:

small unimaginative dungeon

Fractals is amazing – 9 unique environments, EPIC raid worthy bosses – this is the experience I bought the game for

So everyone with legendary gear currently is getting bumped up to ascended level? Is that correct? Or is ascended the utmost top tier of gear in looks+stats and legendary comes before it with slightly lower stats followed by exotics? So basically no matter what you have in the game currently, when full ascended is released, everyone will be grinding for it, in order to get the new stat boost which is better than everything else?

There’s one legendary item available and this is weapon currently. This is still at exotic level but it will become ascended level once ascended weapons are available I hear.

Karizee.8076:

Stego.3148:

small unimaginative dungeon

Fractals is amazing – 9 unique environments, EPIC raid worthy bosses – this is the experience I bought the game for

a boss that freezes you,
a Jelly fish that makes adds,
a giant face that you pick up an item to reflect his super lazer
a dude that vanishes and then throws an axe
a boss where you need to stand near a fire
a boss that’s tank and spank and randomly insta kills party members

3 of these mechanics are handled by one wow raid boss actually already Hodir.

to bad mmo’s in 2000 had better boss mechanics. NES ninja gaiden had better mechanics.

Environments are amazing guild wars 2 art direction, and animations in my opinion are top in the industry.

BroScientist.9875:

So everyone with legendary gear currently is getting bumped up to ascended level? Is that correct? Or is ascended the utmost top tier of gear in looks+stats and legendary comes before it with slightly lower stats followed by exotics?

Ascended is a tier below Legendary and a tier above Exotic.

Legendary stats received a bump to keep them “best in slot”.

Stego.3148:

All these fears go directly against firm quotes of A-net’s agenda pre launch. A lot of people put these quotes in their signatures here out of irony if you want to read some.

Lets just quote them here:

“Here’s what we believe: If someone wants to play for a thousand hours to get an item that is so rare that other players can’t realistically acquire it, that rare item should be differentiated by its visual appearance and rarity alone, not by being more powerful than everything else in the game. Otherwise, your MMO becomes all about grinding to get the best gear. We don’t make grindy games — we leave the grind to other MMOs.”

-Mike Obrien, President of Arenanet

Fun impacts loot collection. The rarest items in the game are not more powerful than other items, so you don’t need them to be the best. The rarest items have unique looks to help your character feel that sense of accomplishment, but it’s not required to play the game. We don’t need to make mandatory gear treadmills, we make all of it optional, so those who find it fun to chase this prestigious gear can do so, but those who don’t are just as powerful and get to have fun too.”

– Colin Johanson

Finally, since combat is such a core part of the gameplay of any MMO, we’ve put a lot of emphasis into rethinking combat. So much of traditional MMO combat is rote and repetitive. You execute the same strategy over and over again, just augmented over time with better and better gear. After a while it starts to feel like you’re playing a spreadsheet. Combat needs to be about making creative choices, and it needs to feel immediate, active, and visceral.

-Mike O’Brien

Ascended items make these lies. Specifically bait and switch advertising.

Some more quotes:

Respect the player

We respect you—as a player, as a human being. This game we’re making may end up competing with your real life. It might fight for your free time alongside your friends, your family, your work, and whatever else you might be doing. Because of that, we want to give you a meaningful experience, not one that is a vapid waste of your time. Whatever your reasons for spending time in Tyria, we don’t want to waste it by doing stuff that isn’t fun.

…

Purpose: To keep us honest.

Forcing people to repeat the same dungeon until they get the gear they want is not fun for a lot of people.
Come to think of it, one time events don’t respect players either.

Stego.3148:

There’s one legendary item available and this is weapon currently. This is still at exotic level but it will become ascended level once ascended weapons are available I hear.

Karizee.8076:

Stego.3148:

small unimaginative dungeon

Fractals is amazing – 9 unique environments, EPIC raid worthy bosses – this is the experience I bought the game for

a boss that freezes you,
a Jelly fish that makes adds,
a giant face that you pick up an item to reflect his super lazer
a dude that vanishes and then throws an axe
a boss where you need to stand near a fire
a boss that’s tank and spank and randomly insta kills party members

3 of these mechanics are handled by one wow raid boss actually already Hodir.

to bad mmo’s in 2000 had better boss mechanics. NES ninja gaiden had better mechanics.

Environments are amazing guild wars 2 art direction, and animations in my opinion are top in the industry.

You are just hating for no reason. And your bullet points actually sounds like you’re selling FOTM. They sound awesome. FOTM is the most fun dungeon in GW2 by far.

Old content will become obsolete.
New content will become geared towards grinders and not all players.
Grinders do not spend real money in the gem shop and the game will die.

monepipi.5160:

Stego.3148:

There’s one legendary item available and this is weapon currently. This is still at exotic level but it will become ascended level once ascended weapons are available I hear.

Karizee.8076:

Stego.3148:

small unimaginative dungeon

Fractals is amazing – 9 unique environments, EPIC raid worthy bosses – this is the experience I bought the game for

a boss that freezes you,
a Jelly fish that makes adds,
a giant face that you pick up an item to reflect his super lazer
a dude that vanishes and then throws an axe
a boss where you need to stand near a fire
a boss that’s tank and spank and randomly insta kills party members

3 of these mechanics are handled by one wow raid boss actually already Hodir.

to bad mmo’s in 2000 had better boss mechanics. NES ninja gaiden had better mechanics.

Environments are amazing guild wars 2 art direction, and animations in my opinion are top in the industry.

You are just hating for no reason. And your bullet points actually sounds like you’re selling FOTM. They sound awesome. FOTM is the most fun dungeon in GW2 by far.

They are pretty good, as far as guild wars 2 dungeons go I agree with you. They are more reasonable in a lot of ways, bosses have less health things do less damage at low difficulty compared to other dungeons. Having it be the only dungeon for progressions though makes things much less awesome. It’s almost impossible to do other dungeons now and I enjoyed the entirety of all the other dungeons doing whichever one I felt like compared to being funneled into just one dungeon that is ok.

monepipi.5160:

You are just hating for no reason. And your bullet points actually sounds like you’re selling FOTM. They sound awesome. FOTM is the most fun dungeon in GW2 by far.

If it wasn’t for Ascended gear, the worst most people would be saying about the Flavor Of The Month dungeon is that they don’t like it, so they won’t play it. But with Ascended gear, they are forced to play it for the stats, so they will complain more.

monepipi.5160:

Stego.3148:

There’s one legendary item available and this is weapon currently. This is still at exotic level but it will become ascended level once ascended weapons are available I hear.

Karizee.8076:

Stego.3148:

small unimaginative dungeon

Fractals is amazing – 9 unique environments, EPIC raid worthy bosses – this is the experience I bought the game for

a boss that freezes you,
a Jelly fish that makes adds,
a giant face that you pick up an item to reflect his super lazer
a dude that vanishes and then throws an axe
a boss where you need to stand near a fire
a boss that’s tank and spank and randomly insta kills party members

3 of these mechanics are handled by one wow raid boss actually already Hodir.

to bad mmo’s in 2000 had better boss mechanics. NES ninja gaiden had better mechanics.

Environments are amazing guild wars 2 art direction, and animations in my opinion are top in the industry.

You are just hating for no reason. And your bullet points actually sounds like you’re selling FOTM. They sound awesome. FOTM is the most fun dungeon in GW2 by far.

Meh if one ever seriously into raiding in games like wow or rift alike. There is no way one will call any of the gw2 dungeon bosses raid worthy alike. They are way too simple in term of mechanic and some of the reason that mechanic is like that it’s partly because it’s being constraint by the whole no holy trinity and dodge thing they are so proud of.
Boss fight in gw2 is anything but epic raid worthy feels, both inside dungeon and outside (de).
It’s all right, but it’s not on that level.

Mmm … example, mention one boss that on par with this fight:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jv93ko3WeK8
I would say nada. Not in term of mechanic, difficulty or coordination level, not to mention that epic feel.

In the last hour or two I’ve seen about 8 different groups still posting not seeming to put it together seeking slight differences in difficulty when really they could all just play together and everything could be fine if it wasn’t for this horrible system, this is linked in some way to the “Ascended Fiasco” also I guess? As you are forced to participate, no idea how it will play out when high pop servers could barely put things together besides AC and COF as it was before, let alone 20 identical versions of one dungeon.

I’d say lupus giant dog guy, maybe some versions of subject alpha, last boss of CoF path 3? are as close as it gets, I agree with you though it falls way short even of Putricide who’s not my favorite but still legit.

Not sure it’s so much because of the constraints of no tank and healer could be partial, I don’t think they care about visual ques so much, a lot of things are unpredictable and buggy, regardless of skill things not being tank build get dropped in one mistake usually and some bosses health pools are insane for most groups. I think this is one reason FotM is so popular due to the lower damage and health pools at low difficulty.

I would have liked a comb over of the old dungeons and making sub 80s scale up better, give them an average of the group stats or something.