Guild Wars 2

Why has almost every recent patch in the game been needlessly complicated? If it were not for Dulfy and others creating guides, I would have no idea what I need to do in order to accomplish objectives. Maybe I spend way too much time in WvW but if you are going to make me play the game the way you want me to play the game (forcing me to collect raw materials, grind for gold and craft) so I can keep up with the Jones’… make it more approachable.

Take the new ascended weapons. The guide to making one is a few pages long and requires raising a crafting profession to 500, refining hundreds of mats, buying new “reagents” and collecting several types of new T7 mats. Then we sprinkle in arbitrary limits on refining materials, having to buy multiple materials from multiple vendors and laurels which have their own limit on collecting.

Best guide I have found so far: http://dragonseason.com/Front/tabid/124/EntryId/245/Crafted-Ascended-Weapons-A-Guide.aspx

I like a challenge but a challenge shouldn’t mean I have to follow something akin to an overly complicated pre-flight check list to accomplish a goal. Instead spend that time creating challenging but beatable content that is straight forward. Go here, beat self contained content, collect reward. It really doesn’t need to be more complicated than that. The only wrinkle is new content should force players out of the “beat it with a stick” mentality.

IMO ascended weapons and even Legendaries, they should have been tied to achievement points or something similar. Get to this level in the game, here is your reward. HoM and the achievement point system, good (and obvious).

On the note of ascended weapons, how exactly are they complicated? They are the top tier of gear, naturally you should need max crafting. Once you hit 450 and 500 crafting, you learn every recipe needed to make an ascended weapon, aside from the vendor recipes (both of which are sold by the merchant standing right next to your craft). Are ascended weapons complicated because, if you don’t know how to make them on the first day, then you’ll never figure it out?

If you played for a week, you would at have found at least one possible source of any material needed, save for maybe the globs of dark matter and augur’s stone. Ascended Crafting was a step in the right direction (from a crafting standpoint, you can sit here and argue all day why a new tier of gear is good/bad). I finally feel like I have to go out in the world and find something extra special to make that weapon I really want.

Cooking is way more complicated than ascended crafting.

Ascended crafting is also not the main content. SAB is.