Guild Wars 2

Im really trying to understand the reason for adding that gear tier.
There are tooooooons of exotic skins, both for armors and weapons.
And there are… pathetically few ascended skins, and I guess more will be added, but it will probably never reach the amount of exotic skins.

And a question, do runes/sigils work in ascended gear, if not thats just sick, that takes away so much from the game.

So again, what was the reasoning for adding this tier, what was the developers explanation, I had a break when it was added so Ive missed it.

Zorion.7504:

Im really trying to understand the reason for adding that gear tier.
There are tooooooons of exotic skins, both for armors and weapons.
And there are… pathetically few ascended skins, and I guess more will be added, but it will probably never reach the amount of exotic skins.

And a question, do runes/sigils work in ascended gear, if not thats just sick, that takes away so much from the game.

So again, what was the reasoning for adding this tier, what was the developers explanation, I had a break when it was added so Ive missed it.

I am not 100% on the reason, but I can answer some of your questions.

-The skins are not too crazy, however most just use a transmutation stone.
-The stats are a bit higher. An ascended staff will have the same stat level as a legendary staff. The difference-
Legendary weapons- you can change the stats to anything you want, as many times as you want. Plus they look way cool!
Ascended weapons-you are stuck with what you crafted unless you want to craft another to transmute the stats over.

Yes you can use sigils and runes on them. You also have a slot for an infusion. http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Infusion

I feel ascended weapons were added almost so that players could have the same stats without breaking their bank.
I also do fractals of the mists a lot. The infusion allows you to get agony resistance which agony can own you in higher fractals.

The drop rate on ascended weapon chests and armor chests rock if you do fractals of the mists with high enough personal level. Temple runs I see them drop once in awhile and have even seen them come from champ train boxes.

The reason they claimed ascended gear exists was because of “a gap between exotic and legendary”. Which basically means there could be infinite amounts of new tiers added to fill an imaginary gap, spin for the win!

Zorion.7504:

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So again, what was the reasoning for adding this tier, what was the developers explanation, I had a break when it was added so Ive missed it.

Content locusts bum rushed to 80, saw there was no traditional “endgame” or gear to pursue outside of exotics and said, “I’m bored! Kitten this!”

It was added because vertical progression is what the MMO masses want. They want to pursue the latest shinies and really don’t care how “fun” it is to do as long as they can sit in Lion’s Arch and link their “phat loot” that is “better” than you “noob casuals.”

And unfortunately, the MMO masses are what this game has to appeal to… because the GW1 veterans alone aren’t enough to cover the higher costs.

Ugly skins with higher stats= gem store purchases so you can transmute the appearance and a grind to keep people logging on. Not to mention making crafting the only way to get the new gear is a huge gold sink.

This is all supposed to be good for the health of the game but in reality all they are doing is kittening people off and driving them away to the new games being released this year.

Fletch.3572:

The reason they claimed ascended gear exists was because of “a gap between exotic and legendary”. Which basically means there could be infinite amounts of new tiers added to fill an imaginary gap, spin for the win!

This gap u speak of was not a gap in stats, it was a gap in cost.

They basicly added something for players to aim for between the exotic (2g) and the legendary (2500g).

It had nothing to do with stats, but A-net decided that while they where at it they would bring them up to par with the original legendary stats.

/thread

Martrim.1078:

It had nothing to do with stats, but A-net decided that while they where at it they would bring them up to par with the original legendary stats.

/thread

Original Legendary stats were exotic. Legendary isn’t a tier, it just matches the current top tier. Before ascended a lot of people transmuted the Legendary skin with an exotic in the stat combo they wanted. Then they changed Legendaries to select-a-stat so you didn’t need to grind out an ascended weapon to transmute with the Legendary skin.

As for the purpose, fractal dungeons and ascended gear were put into the game to give min/maxers and other hardcore players something to do once they got to the “endgame” which originally consisted of Orr and WvWvW.

tolunart.2095:

As for the purpose, fractal dungeons and ascended gear were put into the game to give min/maxers and other hardcore players something to do once they got to the “endgame” which originally consisted of Orr and WvWvW.

The purpose was, frankly, “Agony”. A means of trying to satisfy the people who wanted content getting harder as they went through more iterations and gear to support it via the Agony Resistance. And that was fine.

It went awry when the stats were higher than Exotic, and the acquisition was linked to doing Fractals. Not everybody wanted to do Fractals so it got “handled” over a couple months with releases of Trinkets, Neckpieces, and a few notable Back Items.

It went very awry when Ascended Crafting was added, partially rewarding those who (like myself) bothered at all with crafting and were hoarding materials. While leaving people who were turning Silk into Gold wishing they hadn’t . . . but at least they were a random drop chest in some instances, eh?

Further awry was Ascended Armor not being said to be dropped (though I have heard there are armor chests dropping out there) and requiring a lot more work.

All of this and really the sole reason for it existing is so Fractals can go higher for people who want to challenge themselves. In theory. In practice, it didn’t quite hit the aim (to be charitable) or was completely inadequate for it as well as alienating a bunch of people slowly one release at a time (to be more realistic).

Martrim.1078:

This gap u speak of was not a gap in stats, it was a gap in cost.

They basicly added something for players to aim for between the exotic (2g) and the legendary (2500g).

It had nothing to do with stats, but A-net decided that while they where at it they would bring them up to par with the original legendary stats.

/thread

Not this sad excuse again. There was no gap in price.

Ascended gear was introduced for one reason alone: to give a subset of players something to grind for. Because WoW has conditioned people into stats=everything mentality ANET decided to abandon many of their core principles on game design in order to retain the “looking for better WoW” crowd.

SonicTHI.3217:

Martrim.1078:

This gap u speak of was not a gap in stats, it was a gap in cost.

They basicly added something for players to aim for between the exotic (2g) and the legendary (2500g).

It had nothing to do with stats, but A-net decided that while they where at it they would bring them up to par with the original legendary stats.

/thread

Not this again sad excuse again. There was no gap in price.

Ascended gear was introduced for one reason alone: to give a subset of players something to grind for. Because WoW has conditioned people into stats=everything mentality ANET decided to abandon many of their core principles on game design in order to retain the “looking for better WoW” crowd.

I don’t have any quotes but I was under the impression “the gap in cost” was not price but time and effort. As in it was dead freaking easy to get yourself some Exotic gear, but Legendaries were incredibly hard and subject to RNG (ye olde Precursor roulette with Zommoros).

I also don’t think there was only the desire to sate grind-loving players so much as they had the idea for Agony and went with the new gear.

. . . of which the biggest technical fault was giving it better stats even if “only a little”. The rest just compounded it.

Ascended was added as a vertical progression via minor stat crawl, also known as a dangling carrot.
There was no other reason for it to be added as it serves zero purpose and is needed for absolutely nothing in game, fractals included as Infusion slots could have been added to exotic/legendary.
It’s Anets way of conforming to the tired-MMO standard of having a stat-based endgame gear grind, which sadly many players asked for.

MrRuin.9740:

Ascended was added as a vertical progression via minor stat crawl, also known as a dangling carrot.
There was no other reason for it to be added as it serves zero purpose and is needed for absolutely nothing in game, fractals included as Infusion slots could have been added to exotic/legendary.
It’s Anets way of conforming to the tired-MMO standard of having a stat-based endgame gear grind, which sadly many players asked for.

This was my first thought exactly so when I got my first exo gear I decided to rather roll another toon than grinding for the grind’s sake. Rolling my third toon now and chances are the gamecontent will be exhausted for me once it hits max level. Seeing that all non-meta builds and unpopular abilties are not worth using for anything else than leveling, I don’t even know why I’d want to be in end game.

The reason was because of “dedicated” players, which is what ArenaNet called them. Back at launch, the average “dedicated” player reached 80 in about a week. Like most MMO launches, a large portion of the players came from other MMOs, meaning a tradition end-game was to be expected, which is raiding and vertical progression. The problem was, GW2 offered nothing for these players, so they were the first to complain.

A lot of people play for the progression. If it’s only cosmetic, it doesn’t matter. I remember WoW polling players about a purely cosmetic raiding experience, in terms of rewards, for hardcore players around the time. The general response was no – that’s stupid.

The problem was, exotics were so easy to obtain it only took a few hours to get a full set. Personally, upon reaching 80, I had enough karma to buy 3 pieces, but I didn’t. Instead, I crafted a set after about 3 hours of solo farming over the course of 3 days due to DR. For those wanting progression, the game was over within the first 10 days after launch. The only thing left was doing dungeons for the experience. All open world content was just zergs.

Around a month after launch was when the forums started receiving more complaints over exotics being too easy to obtain and how there was nothing to do. Around a month after that, ArenaNet announced ascended gear along with the introduction of fractals. Ascended gear had to have higher stats because these people wanted progression. Some people just want to feel stronger than others.

After that, they tested the concept of the living story and then up’d it to 2 week intervals with the reason that something new drives players. If the living story existing at launch, it could have changed a few things, but in general, the progression complaints would have still happened and they will happen again, though not as much (I assume most have quit).

Personally, everyone I knew that wanted a traditional MMO experience quit within the first 2-3 months, making it one of the shortest MMOs we’ve ever played together. There was also no content that let us play together without splitting apart, which usually happens anyways due to dungeon group limits. Someone was always left out which made them quit that much faster. The idea of eventually being able to raid usually solved this. They have since moved on to WS and never looked back.

Because GW2 lacks progression, both vertical and horizontal

Because dedicated players were left with nothing to do but pvp, wvw and grinding legendaries.

Because Anet, instead of adding more interesting forms of horizontal progression (or even more interesting forms of vertical progression), they decided instead to add generic, uninspired stat grinding.

Because Anet, in addition to adding generic, uninspired stat grinding, had to make it sure to execute it in the most generic, uninspired, blandest way possible. There’s not even a single quest, a single aventure, or a single piece of lore created to support ascended gear. They simply have thrown lore names into gear’s names, and called it a day. How to obtain it? Farm. Farm. Farm farm farm farm. Very immersive, right? No? But wait, great opportunity to tell a story? Oh, nevermind. But I had to overcome plenty of challenges in my adventure to… oh, wait, not that either. I only had to auto-attack champions, stack with zerkers in dungeons, and grind dailies.

And then when you finally get it, the skins are underwhelming, and the stats barely many any noticeable difference to make it psychologically exciting. But Anet can’t make stats too high either, to not make their core playerbase more annoyed than they already are.

In the end, they annoyed a lot of people who valued their core principles, for the sake of appealing to the normal mmo fanbase, but considering how there are other mmos out there which execute stat-grinding better, I’m not sure if GW2 is very appealing here either.

GW2 was ultimately trying to be a jack-of-all-trades, not-especially-good-at-anything game, which was a huge mistake. Hopefully, after the last CDI threads, this will change.

Zorion.7504:

Im really trying to understand the reason for adding that gear tier.
There are tooooooons of exotic skins, both for armors and weapons.
And there are… pathetically few ascended skins, and I guess more will be added, but it will probably never reach the amount of exotic skins.

And a question, do runes/sigils work in ascended gear, if not thats just sick, that takes away so much from the game.

So again, what was the reasoning for adding this tier, what was the developers explanation, I had a break when it was added so Ive missed it.

I don’t really get complaining about ascended gear being added. This gear has been in the game for a while. It isn’t as if they are going to just go delete if you whine long and hard enough.

ANet put in Ascended gear to add ~10% damage to the top PvE/WvW DPS builds (Ascended Berserker gear) so they could then turn around and take away that 10% with the upcoming change to the Critical Damage percentage stat.

/sarcasm off

In case you’re not up with that change, the Critical Damage % stat will become Ferocity. Ferocity will use the same numbering system as Power, Precision, etc. Ferocity will be scaled to limit the maximum so that the top end builds will lose ~10% and less maximized builds will presumably lose proportionally less.

I’m sure that it’s just a coincidence that 10% is ~ the mean of forum estimates of the damage gain via Ascended. No, really…

i don’t mind there existence, i mind how players see them.
they are pretty much seen as a stamp on how good you are at using your profession, a flawed way to say the least but a way nonetheless.

timidobserver.7925:

Zorion.7504:

Im really trying to understand the reason for adding that gear tier.
There are tooooooons of exotic skins, both for armors and weapons.
And there are… pathetically few ascended skins, and I guess more will be added, but it will probably never reach the amount of exotic skins.

And a question, do runes/sigils work in ascended gear, if not thats just sick, that takes away so much from the game.

So again, what was the reasoning for adding this tier, what was the developers explanation, I had a break when it was added so Ive missed it.

I don’t really get complaining about ascended gear being added. This gear has been in the game for a while. It isn’t as if they are going to just go delete if you whine long and hard enough.

I don’t get what they really want either, because anything they could do to fix it would just anger more people than leaving it alone and staying far far away from trying it again.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

timidobserver.7925:

Zorion.7504:

Im really trying to understand the reason for adding that gear tier.
There are tooooooons of exotic skins, both for armors and weapons.
And there are… pathetically few ascended skins, and I guess more will be added, but it will probably never reach the amount of exotic skins.

And a question, do runes/sigils work in ascended gear, if not thats just sick, that takes away so much from the game.

So again, what was the reasoning for adding this tier, what was the developers explanation, I had a break when it was added so Ive missed it.

I don’t really get complaining about ascended gear being added. This gear has been in the game for a while. It isn’t as if they are going to just go delete if you whine long and hard enough.

I don’t get what they really want either, because anything they could do to fix it would just anger more people than leaving it alone and staying far far away from trying it again.

Honestly, I continue to lambast the Ascended mess to let ANet know that at least some of those who hated the addition are still around. I don’t expect them to revert the thing. I do believe that continuing to talk about it is a deterrent to adding further tiers, and could possibly lead to opening up more ways to get weapons/armor than Craftgate or state lottery level RNG on drops.

IndigoSundown.5419:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

timidobserver.7925:

Zorion.7504:

Im really trying to understand the reason for adding that gear tier.
There are tooooooons of exotic skins, both for armors and weapons.
And there are… pathetically few ascended skins, and I guess more will be added, but it will probably never reach the amount of exotic skins.

And a question, do runes/sigils work in ascended gear, if not thats just sick, that takes away so much from the game.

So again, what was the reasoning for adding this tier, what was the developers explanation, I had a break when it was added so Ive missed it.

I don’t really get complaining about ascended gear being added. This gear has been in the game for a while. It isn’t as if they are going to just go delete if you whine long and hard enough.

I don’t get what they really want either, because anything they could do to fix it would just anger more people than leaving it alone and staying far far away from trying it again.

Honestly, I continue to lambast the Ascended mess to let ANet know that at least some of those who hated the addition are still around. I don’t expect them to revert the thing. I do believe that continuing to talk about it is a deterrent to adding further tiers, and could possibly lead to opening up more ways to get weapons/armor than Craftgate or state lottery level RNG on drops.

People have been whining about it since the moment the first item was released. Since then, they have released more ascended gear and have indicated that they intend to release even more. I expect ascended food as well in the next 2-4 months.

The whining hasn’t deterred anything at all. The whining is getting absolutely nowhere.

It was added because achieving full exotic gear was to easy to get on multiple characters. Needless to say they wanted to give hardcore players some form of a grind other than legendaries.

timidobserver.7925:

IndigoSundown.5419:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

timidobserver.7925:

Zorion.7504:

Im really trying to understand the reason for adding that gear tier.
There are tooooooons of exotic skins, both for armors and weapons.
And there are… pathetically few ascended skins, and I guess more will be added, but it will probably never reach the amount of exotic skins.

And a question, do runes/sigils work in ascended gear, if not thats just sick, that takes away so much from the game.

So again, what was the reasoning for adding this tier, what was the developers explanation, I had a break when it was added so Ive missed it.

I don’t really get complaining about ascended gear being added. This gear has been in the game for a while. It isn’t as if they are going to just go delete if you whine long and hard enough.

I don’t get what they really want either, because anything they could do to fix it would just anger more people than leaving it alone and staying far far away from trying it again.

Honestly, I continue to lambast the Ascended mess to let ANet know that at least some of those who hated the addition are still around. I don’t expect them to revert the thing. I do believe that continuing to talk about it is a deterrent to adding further tiers, and could possibly lead to opening up more ways to get weapons/armor than Craftgate or state lottery level RNG on drops.

People have been whining about it since the moment the first item was released. Since then, they have released more ascended gear and have indicated that they intend to release even more. I expect ascended food as well in the next 2-4 months.

The whining hasn’t deterred anything at all. The whining is getting absolutely nowhere.

Hey, thanks for the insult. As for the complaints (notice how when you don’t agree with the complaint you insult the complainers?), I’m afraid they seem to be working as intended (at least by me, and at least so far) — or did you not bother to read my previous post to understand that “further tiers” does not mean further items in the Ascended tier?