Guild Wars 2

Jia Shen.4217:

I’ll preface this with I don’t like gear grinds either. Someone probably has already brought this up but how is something you don’t need a grind? You don’t have to do it. You only need ascended gear to do the one optional dungeon at higher than base difficulty. So you are not locked out of doing any game content. In fact you don’t even need it to have the dungeon be harder. It is only there for those players who “NEED” to have some reward given to them by the game for doing something more than once that they feel is better than they had before.

It is no better than any gear already in the game when used outside of the harder modes versions of this dungeon’s mechanic..

except your wrong it IS better for all aspects of the game. its the new best stuff period.
so pretty much the best stuff in WvW means soon your gonna need it or find yourself kittened in there.

Jia Shen.4217:

I’ll preface this with I don’t like gear grinds either. Someone probably has already brought this up but how is something you don’t need a grind? You don’t have to do it. You only need ascended gear to do the one optional dungeon at higher than base difficulty. So you are not locked out of doing any game content. In fact you don’t even need it to have the dungeon be harder. It is only there for those players who “NEED” to have some reward given to them by the game for doing something more than once that they feel is better than they had before.

It is no better than any gear already in the game when used outside of the harder modes versions of this dungeon’s mechanic. Heck even exotic gear is not required and by no means offers any significant advantage over rare. It’s not even 15% better like how customizing your weapon in GW1 and that was not seen as an advantage over those who chose not to customize their weapons. There are far too many variable associated with combat mechanics for it to be. If both you and the opposition stood in place and did fixed damage to each other and one side did X% more than the other then yes it would be an advantage. But again ascended gear does not grant X% more over the current top gear in the game. And as such there is no gear grind just as there is no gear grind in the game up to this point.

Exotics and related gear are meant to be something you earn for long term sticking with the game. You simply go about playing the content you enjoy doing and eventually you get what is needed to make it. Only those who enjoy making getting the gear their sole goal for playing should dedicate their time to getting it that way. For everyone else just enjoy the game the way you like to play it and get the gear when, as a result of dong what you like to do, finally happen to get what you need for the gear. Things only become a grind when you are doing something you don’t like to do so why do something you don’t like to do when you can get the same thing by doing something you like to do. Do you (generic you) really have to have everything fast? If so then even casual MMOs might not be the kind of game for you.

Under the Anet philosophy in GW1, I gained max stat gear once I hit maximum level, which is 20. Six years later, I am still wearing that same gear from when I first hit level 20 and enjoying all the new content. GW2 is different than GW1 but the Anet philosophy is/was the same. I hit max level in GW2 and obtain many different gears to change my play style a look. None of the gears offer better stats than the others. Three months later in GW2, my gear is not top stats.

Now if a few stats do not matter in PvE and I can keep all my old gear to continue to run dungeons, then I guess gear would not matter. But it will matter with new content (infusion). No matter what the change in stat is, no matter how watered down the flavor is, the same philosophy that I bought when I paid money to GW2 was that of the Mission statement and of GW1; otherwise if I wanted to keep obtaining gear, I would have re-opened my WoW account.

Huge thread was locked but here is the link if you want to review the feedback:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Thoughts-on-Ascended-Gear-Merged-threads

They will eventually respond but it may be too late for customers that hate the product change. At this point, it has reached sites outside of the forum. The word is spreading about the change in direction.

That is really the issue here. Not “an introduction of gear with slightly better stats.” Customers, bloggers and now reporters are questioning them on the reason they did a 180 degree change in their design approach. That is bigger than introducing some new content with a different flavor. It raises questions about the company itself.

Astraea.6075:

“Our goal is to ensure we have a proper progression for players from exotic up to legendary without a massive jump in reward between the two. " – Prior to this patch, exotics were easy to obtain

Some Exotics were easy to obtain. If you wanted the better looking Exotics, it required more work and time.

Maybe some people did not realize there were different type of Exotics.

They said Exotics were the max stat gear. They differentiated the Exotics based on cosmetics. This approach aligned with their horizontal progression approach used in the pre-patch GW2 and GW1.

There was no huge effort gap between Exotics and Legendaries. If you wanted the better looking version of an Exotic, it took more effort and/or required more resources (gold, mats, etc.)

PopeUrban.2578:

Whiteside: “We’re not making a gear treadmill.”

Forum users: “YOU LIE AND YES YOU ARE”

Whiteside: "We will not be adding a new tier of gear every 3 months that we expect everyone to chase after and then get the next set and so on.”

Forum users: “WE DON’T BELIEVE YOU. YOU ARE WRONG.”

Chill out guys. I think the concerns about ascended gear are pretty much covered. Ascended is the “mid-term goal” and is just as optional as legendaries ever were in all content aside from high level fractals. Which, let’s get real here, aren’t gated content. They’re a harder version of the same content you can do just fine in exotics.

As for WvW balance in terms of ascended gear… Which is a larger benefit to your team. 100g on ascended items, or 100g on siege weapons bps and cap upgrades?

The only effect Ascended gear, implemented as it is, will have on WvW is to change the excuses people use when they die. In stead of “outnumbered” or “cheese tactics” they’ll now blame ascended gear. Once the ascended gear moves over to WvW acquisition and becomes more common they’ll find something else to blame.

They are going to add more pieces every 3-4 months. Just because its a small tread mill doens’t make it any less of a treadmill. They also introduced content gating and even more grind.

Whatever I feel about the ascended gear is a moot point. The fact of the matter is that ArenaNet has not issued any response to the issue other than some deflections and evasions of the issue. I’m not sure they know what to say. They have managed in a short period of time to split their gaming community to the core.

If they were just adding something people didn’t like to the game, the reaction would not be this strong. People feel betrayed and that emotion is not an easy one to overcome. Compound this fact, with the fact that those who feel betrayed are commonly being attacked by the other part of the community, and this isn’t some easy fix problem. I don’t see the possibility of mending the broken community any more. It has gone too long without Anet stepping in and doing something.

It is for this reason that I think this internal game matter has gone outside the game to bloggers, mmo websites, etc. They call into question Anet’s actions and in some cases, lack thereof. They’re 100% correct in doing so. This wasn’t a player created problem, it was a company one. How a company deals with such is extremely telling on numerous levels. Anet has chosen not to deal with it at all.

Frankly, that’s the cowards way out. Anet created the mess and now they need to deal with the consequences of their actions. At this point, I don’t think there is any other choice than for Anet to suck it up and pick a side. They need to leave the talking out of both sides of their mouth to the politicians, and put this matter to rest one way or the other. It’s not going to go away if they do nothing, which seems to be their hope and plan.

It’s pretty insulting that that “answer” with all of its vagueness and lack of any real response to the issues we’ve brought up is what we were directed to as their official response when they closed threadzilla (not that I think finally closing it was unacceptable given the reason.)

Gilandred.9870:

Anet broke off the relationship. You’re hurt. Confused. You want to know what happened, what went wrong. Like any relationship gone bad, does it really matter in the end? Just time to move on……they have, and so should you.

You never move on without communicating what went wrong in the relationship, EVER.

That’s what we’re doing.

Sad tho that the other party isn’t communication as to why it was done or what they plan on doing in the future, because in this case it is Anet that wishes to keep players (us) so if they want us to come back, even if it’s for a makeup, they’ll have to prove to us they can be trusted again after this fiasco.

I don’t plan on getting another Anet game ever at this point. Nor NCSoft, but most of their games were grindy anyway, but I still played them because they had some good things about them and good word of mouth.

Speaking of word of mouth, Anet should realize that someone is more apt to say something bad about a company than something good. I was an irregularity, I spouted so many good things about GW1 and GW2. But, now I have done a 180 because of this. I have told many people they are not worth it anymore.

“Anet broke off the relationship. You’re hurt. Confused. You want to know what happened, what went wrong. Like any relationship gone bad, does it really matter in the end? Just time to move on……they have, and so should you.”

I don’t pay for a relationship. I payed for this product. I am moving on when I get my money, or my product, back.

GADefence.5634:

“Anet broke off the relationship. You’re hurt. Confused. You want to know what happened, what went wrong. Like any relationship gone bad, does it really matter in the end? Just time to move on……they have, and so should you.”

I don’t pay for a relationship. I payed for this product. I am moving on when I get my money, or my product, back.

Yeh me to, a real shame it had so much potential. Seems they are gong the WAR route of giving the players exactly what they do not want while making broken features even worse.