Guild Wars 2

I have full Exotics (Well, minus pants! Who needs pants?!) so this isn’t about jealousy, either.
In GW1 you could VERY easily get max stats and armor was just about how it looks.
I still got multiple sets of armor just for the looks… but I wasn’t forced to do so.

I like the Rune and Sigil systems, and I also like how you can have different sets of gear with different stats.
However the more gear tiers you introduce the more elitism you’ll add to the game.

Even if the Rares/Exotics/Ascended items give a 1% bonus people will feel that everybody needs to wear them.

The game will become a little bit less about skill and a little bit more about gear on every tier you add.

If you’ve paid attention to the Dungeons you’ve no doubt noticed that people are already going for lv80 full Exotic runs.

Right now things are still pretty well.
Exotics are great, but not that hard to get and not really needed, but the more tiers you add the more you move away from the core GW1 fanbase, the people who came here because they hated traditional MMOs.
However at the same time you alienate us you no doubt also please people who like traditional MMOs.

I don’t think that it’s the end of the world, nor will I angrily claim that I’m quitting (I’m definitely not!) but I still think it’s a bad idea and you should think it over.

At most give Ascended gear Exotic stats.
That way you at least restrict the elitism to one area of the game.
“MUST HAVE INFUSIONS X Y Z” is still going to be a reality.

You are splintering the playerbase by telling them that they need certain amounts of Infusions to get far enough.

Right now the hardest part about gearing with having full exotic armor when you ding 80 is finding the temple karma vendor. With the big jugs of karma for daily and monthly achieves, anyone who’s needing gear will have it when they ding 80.

I have to say, tho, that with 2 80s so far, I’ve never got a gear upgrade in GW2 that was really all that noticable. Even going with my 2nd 80 and getting 5 pieces all at once of temple gear, my character didn’t feel like suddenly superman or even any more heroic.

Each step you go up, the difference seems to be smaller and smaller, backwards from how other games do gear progression.

I feel that item rarity was a bad idea… oh wait

GW1 is not a good model to use.

At level cap if you could afford it you were given the crappiest armor set, it just had the same numbers as the top end armor.

But by nightfall, you ended up grinding gear, but for your heroes instead.

Keiran.1896:

I feel that item rarity was a bad idea… oh wait

Tell me one good thing about it.