Guild Wars 2

Forgive me if this topic has been beaten to death in front of me without my knowledge. I try to keep up with the CDI’s, forums, and reddit, but it’s a lot of reading for often little gain.

I would like to start a discussion focused on what changes could be made to ascended items that would make them more appealing to everyone as long term goals while making them something special that people look forward to completing rather than an arbitrary hurdle many people feel like they must jump to reach the top stats or agony resist for fractals.

Some of the current problems I see with the system:

• Ascended items are expensive and/or time consuming to obtain.
• Getting ascended items for a specific stat/build can make you feel trapped in that type of build.
• It can be very difficult to outfit more than one or two characters with a full set of ascended equipment even in the very long term for many players.
• All of these problems are exacerbated by the fact that the only bonus to ascended items are the 5% stat increase and infusion slots and many players feel compelled to obtain them as they are the top stats available.

My ideas for ascended item changes:

The primary thing that I think that would make ascended items more appealing would be to allow the player to ADD characteristics to those items. My idea is simple at its core. Everything that you apply to an ascended item becomes an option in a drop down menu. The ascended item starts out when it is created having only one skin, one stat combination, no upgrades, no infusions. This would allow for the recipes that players have learned for laurels to still have value in terms of the skin created and the first stat combination available on the item.

From this point you can add any of those characteristics to the item and they will forever thereafter be changeable from drop down boxes (or perhaps a new interface) where you can select any skin, stat combination, upgrade, and any infusion that had been added to the item.

A system such as this would allow ascended items to be of value in character progression in a horizontal aspect as well as a vertical aspect while making spvp style build experimentation a possibility in the pve side of the game. This system would also help with the community want for a skin locker.

I feel that the current modifications should still be applied in the same way as they are now. Skins should be applied with transmutation stones and upgrades should be applied to the weapon by consuming them. The one area I can’t quite come to a decision on is what I think the best method for adding stats to the item would be.

The conditions that the method should meet I feel are as follows:

• It should take 1/4-1/2 the time/cost that current ascended items take to acquire.
• It should not require laurels in anyway (there are already a good range of sinks for those).
• It should not simply be a gem store item akin to transmutation stones.

A rudimentary idea that I have for it would just be allowing you to craft a consumable item that will apply a new stat set to the appropriate item type using a lesser vision crystal and an ascended insignia/inscription/jewel. However, I’m not completely satisfied with this idea as it doesn’t allow the player to add stats in parallel to creating new original ascended items.

I also thought about a vision crystal and an exotic component which I think is a little too cheap. Or just being able to consume ascended stat components directly which doesn’t lower the overall cost much or allow it to be created in parallel to new ascended items, but it divorces it from the vision crystal paradigm which for many can be a major choke point because of one or two of the three account bound materials. The other potential for this type of item would be for it to be a lootable item as well as craftable.

One other thing that bears mentioning in this is where I view legendaries in this system. Essentially I would suggest that legendaries gain the ability to take on other skins/upgrades/infusions like the new ascended items theoretically would, but as their special non-cosmetic bonus come with all available stats unlocked and continue to gain any newly released stat combinations as they become available.

It would also still leave legendaries as something expensive/time consuming to obtain but at a certain point they could conceivably actually become equally or less expensive alternative to fully upgrading an ascended item to have all of the available stat combinations, but the nice thing about the ascended alternative would be that it could be done progressively as you needed a certain stat combo.

Anyway, I know that got kind of long but I’m really interested to see what the rest of you guys think and to know if any of my ideas would make ascended items more valuable or appealing to you.

I´d support this idea if they make every ascended item 15 times more expensive to craft.

Why would the cost need to increase if there is cost inherent in adding then new characteristics to the items?

For example, making the original ascended Zojja’s Claymore “15 times more expensive to craft” would make it cost 825g and take 135 days (4.5 months) to complete for a sword that is merely an ascended berserker’s greatsword with no upgrades or infusions with the default skin in addition to making it even more restrictive to build experimentation than ascended items already are.

If you want ascended weapons to have even more functions and gimmicks as legendaries, then the effort and price of them should actually be higher than that of a legendary weapon. It is as simple as that.

One good idea would be that ascended item would give some special effect if you transmute it. It would be awesome if you could modify some normal weapons effects too. Like you could make entropy that have green particle effect and so on.

I’m quite happy that i don’t really see a reason to get ascended armor and don’t really want reasons that makes me feel that i now HAVE to get some.

I’m not sure there’s much demand or need for ascended items to be “more appealing” given how many ppl complain everyday about feeling forced into having to obtain them.

You need ascended items to do higher level of fractals.

Beyond that – it is a complete and utter waste of your time, money and resources.

The OP is correct though – Ascended does need something to make it have worth because currently it has none.

Guy Montag: I proposed this a few months ago during one of the CDIs. Maybe this would fill your void of making ascended items more appealing?

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Character-Progression-Vertical/page/23#post3381034

Beldin.5498:

I’m quite happy that i don’t really see a reason to get ascended armor and don’t really want reasons that makes me feel that i now HAVE to get some.

GrandmaFunk.3052:

I’m not sure there’s much demand or need for ascended items to be “more appealing” given how many ppl complain everyday about feeling forced into having to obtain them.

The idea doesn’t really mean in anyway that you have to do it, and a lot of the people that feel forced into making ascended armor/weapons don’t feel like it’s a worthwhile investment for them but feel compelled to do it any way. This wouldn’t be a solution that would make getting alternate sets as fast or as easy as it was when exotics were the top tier but it would allow you some bonus horizontal progression ability, and again if ascended stats and the ability to mix/match your stats and skins doesn’t appeal to you there is nothing here forcing you to ditch your bag full of exotic items that you probably use to compensate currently for a skin locker style system in game.

Part of the reason I would like a system like this is because I feel like I need to make these items because they do give me the best stats in game and min/maxing is something I enjoy in MMOs. I also like the idea set forth by Anet for the potential for horizontal character progression via skin collection, and I have always been a fan of GW1’s ability to change builds on the fly and the fact that in GW1 armor was a lot less restrictive to builds. Ascended items in their current form, however, put all of these facets of the game’s design at odds with each other.

If you choose the vertical progression side of things, it can feel extremely restrictive to the idea of skin collecting because changing skins requires constant use of splitters/transmutation cyrstals (which is something in the horizontal CDI the devs mentioned a long time ago that they would like to alleviate), and the current implementation of this vertical progression makes the goal of build diversity and build experimentation something that feels inaccessible to many players because the cost/time required to make a set of ascended gear to play alternate builds is so high.

On the other side of things currently if you prefer the idea of collecting skins/stat combos/rune sets to either change the look of function of your character often then it can feel restrictive in the way that it keeps you from ever having the best stats for the builds/looks that you like to alternate between.

Name.9625:

I´d support this idea if they make every ascended item 15 times more expensive to craft.

I don’t think this game needs any more grind. The current amount is plenty.

Yalora Istairiea.6287:

Guy Montag: I proposed this a few months ago during one of the CDIs. Maybe this would fill your void of making ascended items more appealing?

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Character-Progression-Vertical/page/23#post3381034

That is definitely an interesting idea for adding a way to modify/progress existing skins; however it does not necessarily the idea of being able to collect skins and experiment with builds.

Though I really like your idea of bringing back the modification component type items from GW1 as a method for weapon customization. Perhaps something akin to staff wrappings could be the method for adding different stats to the weapon.

In the end my idea is more to bring together the best of both the pve and spvp gearing methods in the game as it is. I enjoy the freedom afforded in spvp to look how I want while experimenting with different builds/amulets, but I also like the idea of this being something where I have to unlock this ability in pve as a horizontal progression method.

P.S. I really like your idea for adding the ability to modify animations etc. Though, I feel like they would involve a lot of development work for the art team.

Edit: Fixed the opening train wreck of a sentence to be coherent.

Name.9625:

If you want ascended weapons to have even more functions and gimmicks as legendaries, then the effort and price of them should actually be higher than that of a legendary weapon. It is as simple as that.

The idea wouldn’t be for the ascended items to have more or better functionality than legendaries. Essentially what I advocate is making it so that the ascended tier of items is a step up in functionality both in the vertical and horizontal progression aspects from exotic, and then legendaries would inherit these abilities from the ascended tier while also being created with all of the stat combinations unlocked and their characteristic sigil unlocked while still having the exclusive skin associated with them.

This lets legendaries keep their current boost over ascended primarily through their special skin (which is supposed to be their primary point anyway) but also through the convenience of already having all stat combos ready for use as well as getting all future stat combos as they release.

I’d be opposed to adding value to Ascended items.

Ascended was ANet’s Big Compromise, a VP gear stat increase with a steeper acquisition curve, (so far) without the treadmill of yet another tier beyond Ascended, and not used as a bar to any content. All fractals can be experienced without it, if a player wants to. Some might think that Mistlock Instability constitutes content. I don’t — it’s more like GW Hard Mode — a way to give existing content new life.

However, let’s not forget that ANet has stated there will be VP going forward. I’ve seen nothing to say they’ve changed their minds on this. This VP was slated to be in the form of more powerful infusions. Infusions can only be slotted into Ascended gear. Ergo, Ascended acquisition will be a gate to participate in that additional VP.

Let’s also not forget that the real carrot in GW2 endgame was supposed to be the legendary items. Ascended “bridges” the gap between exotic and legendary only in that it put something else in the way, not in the more common sense of the term bridge (making it easier to get from one place to the other). Widening the gap between exotic and legendary by lengthening this so-called bridge does not sound appealing.

IndigoSundown.5419:

I’d be opposed to adding value to Ascended items.

Ascended was ANet’s Big Compromise, a VP gear stat increase with a steeper acquisition curve, (so far) without the treadmill of yet another tier beyond Ascended, and not used as a bar to any content. All fractals can be experienced without it, if a player wants to. Some might think that Mistlock Instability constitutes content. I don’t — it’s more like GW Hard Mode — a way to give existing content new life.

However, let’s not forget that ANet has stated there will be VP going forward. I’ve seen nothing to say they’ve changed their minds on this. This VP was slated to be in the form of more powerful infusions. Infusions can only be slotted into Ascended gear. Ergo, Ascended acquisition will be a gate to participate in that additional VP.

Let’s also not forget that the real carrot in GW2 endgame was supposed to be the legendary items. Ascended “bridges” the gap between exotic and legendary only in that it put something else in the way, not in the more common sense of the term bridge (making it easier to get from one place to the other). Widening the gap between exotic and legendary by lengthening this so-called bridge does not sound appealing.

This idea doesn’t make acquisition of the ascended tier higher or more lengthy. In fact the idea is to make it less lengthy and open up player choice in build construction and look customization.

Also gear progression has never been intended to go all the way to legendary. The legendary tier has always been presented as a prestige tier that has a special model with special effects and a marginal functionality improvement. This was originally better weapon damage but has been changed to stat switching to avoid vertical power creep.

Also to this point Anet has expressed a desire to allow there to be some form of vertical power progression in the form of things like agony resist that offer a stat gate to content but do not inherently make your character more powerful in all aspects of the game. Right now ascended items have the most worth in a very narrow aspect of the game (fractals). The idea would be to broaden the scope of who would find the ascended tier rewarding without increasing power creep in game modes like WvW, dungeons, and open-world PvE.

Beldin.5498:

I’m quite happy that i don’t really see a reason to get ascended armor and don’t really want reasons that makes me feel that i now HAVE to get some.

As someone who has multiple level 80’s and only plays WvW and sPvP, I second this.

Azreell.1568:

The problem isn’t the grind.

The problem is the complete lack of any real reward for your grind and thus the reason the OP’s asking to change ascended to be more appealing.

The grind is most certainly the problem.

Making the grind “more appealing” is essentially just another way of saying that you’d like to make having all Ascended gear become mandatory. I don’t play this game to grind gear out; if I wanted to do that, I’d go play WoW or some Korean RPG.

One of this game’s founding principles was that all players at level 80 would be on equal footing, whether you’ve had that character at 80 for a year or for just five minutes. Improving Ascended gear in any fashion that is not purely cosmetic defeats that philosophy and would be a make-it-or-break-it deal for me unless they made it a lot easier to acquire said Ascended items.

TooBz.3065:

Name.9625:

I´d support this idea if they make every ascended item 15 times more expensive to craft.

I don’t think this game needs any more grind. The current amount is plenty.

The problem isn’t the grind.

The problem is the complete lack of any real reward for your grind and thus the reason the OP’s asking to change ascended to be more appealing.

Azreell.1568:

TooBz.3065:

Name.9625:

I´d support this idea if they make every ascended item 15 times more expensive to craft.

I don’t think this game needs any more grind. The current amount is plenty.

The problem isn’t the grind.

The problem is the complete lack of any real reward for your grind and thus the reason the OP’s asking to change ascended to be more appealing.

Exactly, I feel like the current grind to get that first ascended item in that slot is perfect. It takes a little over a week for each one (if you craft on your own), but you haven’t earned anything other than a stat upgrade that is less than an orb on most of the equipment. My idea is that the longest part of the grind should be to reach the ascended tier. Then once you are there you would like new skins or different stats it should be easier to add these things to the ascended tier item than it was to make the original one, but at the same time it should not be free so it gives you additional progression goals for your character.

I think it might be easier to understand with an example. I’ll use my guardian since he is a perfect case for this. Right now I have some berserker, soldier, and cleric sets that are a collection of ascended and exotic items with some expensive skins on them.

My WvW set consists of cleric armor with the normal 2/2/2 water/monk/traveler runes, and then either cleric or soldiers weapons/trinkets depending on what I feel is most useful at the time. I have the phalanx skin on the armor and the weapons are skinned with the Ebon Vanguard skins.

My PvE set consists of berserker everything with ruby orbs. It is skinned with chest/legs/boots from human t3 and the radiant gauntlets/shoulders. Then the weapons are skinned with genesis, cobalt, firey dragon sword, etc.

Let’s focus on the chest piece. Under the system I propose, I would choose to make Zojja’s Breastplate first because I would like to have a berserker set complete for fractals first. This costs me exactly what it does now, and I receive an ascended chestplate with berserker’s stats the standard ascended skin and no upgrades. I then get it all set up for fractals as I currently do with an simple agony infusion and a ruby orb. This still functions like normal. I now decide that I don’t like the skin and would prefer to have my t3 human chest. I take a transmutation crystal and apply the Protector’s Armor to the Zojja’s. In the current system, I would now have a static item that looks like Protector’s but has stats like Zojja’s.

The way I would change this is now instead I can select either to have the default ascended skin or the protector’s armor with the ascended stats.

Now say I want to get set up for WvW with my healway build. In the current system I would need to create a whole new item to skin with my phalanx skin and add my runes to. In my proposed system, what I would do instead is create a consumable item (let’s say an embossment to follow with Yalora’s idea) that would let me add cleric stats to my existing Zojja’s Breastplate that has been skinned with protectors armor. I then add a Superior Rune of the Traveler to the upgrade slot and attach the phalanx chest skin to it. Now what I have is an ascended chest that I have unlocked berserker and cleric stats for as well as ruby orbs or Traveler runes, and it can look like the standard ascended skin, Protector’s Armor, or phalanx armor.

Additionally I would be able to add a WvW +1% vs guards infusion and then be able to pick between that or my agony infusion depending on what I’m doing.

Thus in the end I’ve only really lowered the cost compared to the current method by about 50-75% of the cost of an ascended weapon, but the added bonus is you have more freedom to pick your looks/stats/upgrades independently from each other than you do now.

The idea is just to make ascended items a little more fun to build while putting together a system that gives more build fluidity, “skin locker” functionality, and reduces the strain of gearing alts all while maintaining the idea of having long term goals via ascended items.

Azreell.1568:

TooBz.3065:

Name.9625:

I´d support this idea if they make every ascended item 15 times more expensive to craft.

I don’t think this game needs any more grind. The current amount is plenty.

The problem isn’t the grind.

The problem is the complete lack of any real reward for your grind and thus the reason the OP’s asking to change ascended to be more appealing.

The problem is the grind. Having 11 80s it was no problem to give them all full exotic armor without problems, but it would be a hell of a grind to deck them all in ascended.

That would be like 16500 Dragonit, Bloodstone, Fragments alone .. and maybe around 5000 gold or whatever. So yes .. for people that don’t play only one character its a hell of a grind. And that is of course only for one set .. now if you want maybe even have different stats ..

So no .. i’m against everything that makes me more wanting ascended armor, as long as the cost of a complete set would maybe not more than one ascended weapon.
Btw.: weapons i made already 13 at least.

And the lack of reward is a good thing .. so you don’t need to do the grind if you don’t want it. And if you think you MUST do that the reward seems to be good anough for you.

Beldin.5498:

Azreell.1568:

TooBz.3065:

Name.9625:

I´d support this idea if they make every ascended item 15 times more expensive to craft.

I don’t think this game needs any more grind. The current amount is plenty.

The problem isn’t the grind.

The problem is the complete lack of any real reward for your grind and thus the reason the OP’s asking to change ascended to be more appealing.

The problem is the grind. Having 11 80s it was no problem to give them all full exotic armor without problems, but it would be a hell of a grind to deck them all in ascended.

That would be like 16500 Dragonit, Bloodstone, Fragments alone .. and maybe around 5000 gold or whatever. So yes .. for people that don’t play only one character its a hell of a grind. And that is of course only for one set .. now if you want maybe even have different stats ..

So no .. i’m against everything that makes me more wanting ascended armor, as long as the cost of a complete set would maybe not more than one ascended weapon.
Btw.: weapons i made already 13 at least.

And the lack of reward is a good thing .. so you don’t need to do the grind if you don’t want it. And if you think you MUST do that the reward seems to be good anough for you.

I know exactly how you feel in this, and that is a major part of the reason I would like a system like this. I have an 80 of each profession that I plan on eventually having one set of ascended for each. I’m fine with this being a long term goal that I accomplish over the course of a year or so. The stat increase isn’t huge and I can work on them a little at a time that way.

This system still doesn’t confer any new power to the ascended tier only some convenience. It would still be cheaper to take all of your skins that you like and apply them to exotics with the stats you want. The idea is to make it so that you essentially achieve the ascended tier and then you are thereafter able to get different sets for that character for a reduced cost.

Though also on the subject of alts of alts it would be cool to discuss ideas for making it easier to deck them out since they are also a major form of horizontal progression potential that many people enjoy that are limited/discouraged somewhat by the ascended tier.

My idea isn’t really a proposal to make it mandatory that everyone crafts ascended items. I’m really just looking for ideas people have for making ascended armor something that is more enjoyable and less restrictive than the current in game version.