Guild Wars 2

I’m curious about the purpose of ascended gear and weapons. They’re not necessary in PVE because we’ve been managing it with less for a year. They’re problematic in WvW for various reasons. So what is the purpose? Is it to give people more crafting, for the people who enjoy that? Is it to prepare us for a level 80+ area (seems unlikely if no expansion, but I don’t know)?

I’ve read the latest blog post. It says the new crafting materials “send players out into the world and make our existing content more rewarding.” So they want to give us reason to explore again. Is that it?

To give us yet another time-gated reason to keep us logging in on a daily basis.

Viking Jorun.5413:

To put it bluntly, ArenaNet went with a CMYK color scale to base their tiers off of. At launch, we had Cyan, Green, Yellow, Orange, Purple. They were missing one step between orange and purple so they added Magenta tier.

It was never about stats. It was about OCD. Now that we have both the primary and secondary colors of the CMYK color wheel, we’re good. No more tiers.

#FunFacts

I like this explanation more than anything else I’ve read.

Viking Jorun.5413:

To put it bluntly, ArenaNet went with a CMYK color scale to base their tiers off of. At launch, we had Cyan, Green, Yellow, Orange, Purple. They were missing one step between orange and purple so they added Magenta tier.

It was never about stats. It was about OCD. Now that we have both the primary and secondary colors of the CMYK color wheel, we’re good. No more tiers.

#FunFacts

You deserve a medal for this

We’ve received two reasons from arenanet for ascended gear:

-bridge the time gap between exotic and legendary.
^^This is hilarious. If you are someone that simply wanted BiS gear, and had no desire for a legendary..then with exotic you had BiS gear. You werent going after the legendary. I also find this logic double-edged…to bridge the time gap. Well, we’ll be spending ectos and time garnering the requirements for ascended weapons and accessories…ectos that could have been used toward your legendary. IMO, this slows down the path to legendary. Silly. Its meant to bridge the gap. But it really just made the gap wider.

-Ascended gear is meant for fractals. You need Agony Resist to withstand the lazy mechanic the devs throw at us in fractals. Dont need ascended anywhere else in game. Funny, because fractals are quite abandoned right now. Same maps since November. I rarely see anyone looking for a fractal group anymore. Everyone is off doing invasions or some other dumb LS achievement.

Viking Jorun.5413:

To put it bluntly, ArenaNet went with a CMYK color scale to base their tiers off of. At launch, we had Cyan, Green, Yellow, Orange, Purple. They were missing one step between orange and purple so they added Magenta tier.

It was never about stats. It was about OCD. Now that we have both the primary and secondary colors of the CMYK color wheel, we’re good. No more tiers.

#FunFacts

You sir just figured out the strategy of an entire gaming company and I give you my respect

cesmode.4257:

We’ve received two reasons from arenanet for ascended gear:

-bridge the time gap between exotic and legendary.
^^This is hilarious. If you are someone that simply wanted BiS gear, and had no desire for a legendary..then with exotic you had BiS gear. You werent going after the legendary. I also find this logic double-edged…to bridge the time gap. Well, we’ll be spending ectos and time garnering the requirements for ascended weapons and accessories…ectos that could have been used toward your legendary. IMO, this slows down the path to legendary. Silly. Its meant to bridge the gap. But it really just made the gap wider.

-Ascended gear is meant for fractals. You need Agony Resist to withstand the lazy mechanic the devs throw at us in fractals. Dont need ascended anywhere else in game. Funny, because fractals are quite abandoned right now. Same maps since November. I rarely see anyone looking for a fractal group anymore. Everyone is off doing invasions or some other dumb LS achievement.

Thanks, I hadn’t heard these specific reasons. I find the first fascinating because there isn’t just time between exotic and legendary but an enormous dedication to all aspects of the game. If ascended gear’s in the middle somewhere it’ll be interesting to see exactly where.

As for the second, I don’t buy it because they’re removing MF and so could easily add an agony resist stat without adding a new tier. I know lots of people who love fractals. I just don’t see how this is necessary.

Makes crafting a little bit more useful I guess.
Makes legendaries a LOT more useful.

Kai.9182:

Makes crafting a little bit more useful I guess.
Makes legendaries a LOT more useful.

Legendaries were supposed to be high-end skins, not something more useful than any other max stat weapon…

We were lied to…again.

I’m of two minds about this.

On one hand, it’s timegated, which is kitten in the long term. On the other hand, my accessories are pink and my clothes are orange, and they clash horribly.

Really though, WvW could use some structural changes so that the weapon damage vs hp/toughness isn’t thrown out of whack. While I like a tier beyond Exotic gear in theory I think the execution leaves something to be desired.

Sarrs.4831:

On the other hand, my accessories are pink and my clothes are orange, and they clash horribly.

Accessorize with pearl and jet to get pink and orange to work well together.

The real purpose of ascended weapons is to kitten up the balance of the game.

Excellent question
Why do we need Ascended gears anyway?
We already facerolled all the contents with exotic gears.
With Ascended gears, we could probably play with our feet.

I highly doubt Anet will introduce harder mobs for ascended gears because
they already said that they are against power creeps, RIGHT?

All any MMO is is a list of things to do. They all work like this for a reason.

There’s no way any development team can create enough content to keep people playing for the ridiculous number of hours people expect to play an MMO for.

You pay $60 for a video game, that lasts 15-20 hours (if you’re lucky). You payed the same for Guild Wars 2…but you’re supposed to play it for hundreds and eventually thousands of hours. That’s the equivalent at least of dozens of games.

No one can create that much content, so instead they give you things to do. You either do them, or you don’t. Or you do the things you want to do.

I’m not sure why this is such a shock to people.

Because Anet wants to show just how much they hate WvW.

I mean, really. Ascended affects NOTHING else. Unless they’ve got some sort of Ascended-mode dungeons or something. But Im not really looking forward to whatever may come with that.

The cynical might suggest that it is to disguise the poor gameplay and hook players by giving them a new layer of shinies to chase after. A chase which involves an inordinate amount of grinding, time gating and RNG.

It’s the same reason we see updates every other week which add new skins and minis to chase after and AP completion to grab.

Fenrir.3609:

The cynical might suggest that it is to disguise the poor gameplay and hook players by giving them a new layer of shinies to chase after. A chase which involves an inordinate amount of grinding, time gating and RNG.

It’s the same reason we see updates every other week which add new skins and minis to chase after and AP completion to grab.

^This is the reason for Ascended gear plus the most important…

Sell gems for $$$.

To keep you grinding for the next 2 years and sinking money in the the Gem Store, After that has been exhausted they WILL add more vertical progression.

Don’t believe a single word Anet say’s.

Remember when anet said that progression would not revolve around vertical progression, but around player’s skill and horizontal progression? Where to look cooler or to have better titles would be a factor of prestige, and an acchievement that you would have to work hard and in turn impress the majority of players for your effort?

This game has almost no resemble of difficulty, and whatever little there is isn’t still properly rewarded. Dynamic events have shown their design flaws, especially in zergs, and in one year, more resources have been spent towards temporary instances and unnecessary grind over improving or expanding the core systems of the game. The icon-rushing exploration turned out to be repetitive. The skill system doesn’t have half the horizontal progression and half the charm of GW1’s skill system. The best pieces of difficult + fun content were all temporary, and they’ll only return as part of a random sequence. Most acchievements to get are easy, as they only require grinding or participation – the few exceptions aren’t usually rewarding enough for their effort.

So, Anet had to do something. They could have improved and expanded the core systems, and make exploration more exciting and unpredictable, make the storytelling and lore expressing stronger, add or improve systems for vertical progression that would deeply affect the fun behind the combat system, and actually bothering in making the fun dungeons permanent and scrap the old ones, instead of the opposite. And they’re certainly doing some of that at a very slow pace.

Instead, Anet simply decided that it was much easier to add gimmicky psychological hooks to keep the playerbase interested in a game that has no longevity otherwise. Grindy dailies that put pressure on the player for logging every day, and ever-increasing time-gates, to the point that logging in GW2, nowadays, means checking out a list of daily stuff to do, in case you don’t want to forgot something and get put behind. Festivals every two weeks to keep players checking out. And ascended gear for the carrot-on-a-stick effect that generic mmos love to use and players in general are getting sick of.

The best case scenario, for the optimistic, is that all these bandaid fixes might just be there to buy anet enough time for their expansion-like content to come out and improve everything. The worst case scenario, for the pessimist, is that this is how the game will be treated until the end of its days.

I’m not going to deny that Anet wants to sell gems. They don’t charge a monthly fee so in order to make a profit, they HAVE to. (And I’m happy to buy them to support a game I love and play).

Perhaps one of the purposes of Ascended gear is to help us in some of the new content they’re developing this year. Some uber-hard dungeon or other content. There’s alot they aren’t telling us.

Just something to consider.

squirrelzilla.5809:

I’m not going to deny that Anet wants to sell gems. They don’t charge a monthly fee so in order to make a profit, they HAVE to. (And I’m happy to buy them to support a game I love and play).

Perhaps one of the purposes of Ascended gear is to help us in some of the new content they’re developing this year. Some uber-hard dungeon or other content. There’s alot they aren’t telling us.

Just something to consider.

no,no,no
Anet is against power creeping, I dont think they will make stronger mobs.

I would guess on the ascended gear being at least partly tied to a major content expansion. There might be a new infusion, although the gear may just be for those of us who leveled all crafts long ago and are disappointed with the payoff for doing so.

I am absolutely crest fallen by this patch. This game suited me to the tee. I have been playing it from the start and while many of the changes that come and go haven’t all been great, Anet has generally shown an enthusiasm to try out techniques that work for both the player and themselves.

This may very well be the game changer for me. It feels like one of those patches where in years to come we will look back and go, “Yeah, Guild Wars 2 was a good game until that blasted patch, shame.”

I have been revelling in the cosmetic progression of this game, spending much time customizing themed characters knowing the whole while that if I so chose, my ranger or warrior were essentially finished; the perfection of my vision. I had just committed full effort towards Frostfang as the garnishing touch to my Norn, only to be presented with this future abomination.

What a sad precedent this sets. Changing the numerous weapons on my characters and having to transmute each one is a soul sinkingly demoralising task. It is a gate, a trial in which I must pass in order to enjoy my characters again, not some fun adventure I choose to opt into. If I want my characters to be respectable I have to endure months of facile, unrewarding effort and gold expenditure.

That seems withering enough, but consider the Ascended Armour….

Sweet mercy, there just isn’t any feasible way I would ever have the time or perseverance to rework all of my 5 character’s superbly themed armour suits (not including alternates) into utterly unnecessary upgraded versions. Who is to say it ends here? It needn’t happen to begin with so the very fact they have opted to follow this route implies it will happen again in the future. A nightmarish cycle of dis-satisfaction.

I really do love this game but I fear this is the end for me. I doubt anybody cares but I feel an obligation to voice my dejection.

Varkronn.9783:

I am absolutely crest fallen by this patch. This game suited me to the tee. I have been playing it from the start and while many of the changes that come and go haven’t all been great, Anet has generally shown an enthusiasm to try out techniques that work for both the player and themselves.

This may very well be the game changer for me. It feels like one of those patches where in years to come we will look back and go, “Yeah, Guild Wars 2 was a good game until that blasted patch, shame.”

I have been revelling in the cosmetic progression of this game, spending much time customizing themed characters knowing the whole while that if I so chose, my ranger or warrior were essentially finished; the perfection of my vision. I had just committed full effort towards Frostfang as the garnishing touch to my Norn, only to be presented with this future abomination.

What a sad precedent this sets. Changing the numerous weapons on my characters and having to transmute each one is a soul sinkingly demoralising task. It is a gate, a trial in which I must pass in order to enjoy my characters again, not some fun adventure I choose to opt into. If I want my characters to be respectable I have to endure months of facile, unrewarding effort and gold expenditure.

That seems withering enough, but consider the Ascended Armour….

Sweet mercy, there just isn’t any feasible way I would ever have the time or perseverance to rework all of my 5 character’s superbly themed armour suits (not including alternates) into utterly unnecessary upgraded versions. Who is to say it ends here? It needn’t happen to begin with so the very fact they have opted to follow this route implies it will happen again in the future. A nightmarish cycle of dis-satisfaction.

I really do love this game but I fear this is the end for me. I doubt anybody cares but I feel an obligation to voice my dejection.

What you’re talking about is stagnation. Things have to change. It is the nature of an online game.

Adapt and improvise.

darkdomino.9578:

What you’re talking about is stagnation. Things have to change. It is the nature of an online game.

Adapt and improvise.

Absolute nonsense and silly rhetoric.

There are countless ways through which to add variety and change to the game, many of which they are doing currently. Adding skins on a regular basis, new zone content, stories, new enemies, new weapon types, new classes, new skills, new trait trees, new battlegrounds, new WvWvW arenas, new siege weapons, new world boss encounters, new cities, new lore, new legendaries, new pseudo-legendaries, new trait/attribute synergies, new sigils, absolutely hundreds of ways.

If anything this is perhaps the most dull and ineffective choice. This changes absolutely nothing in the manner in which the game is played, nor for players like me, the way my character will look. It simply states, “Hey want to do the same things you do now with the same comparative effectiveness? Then you better start grinding money like a mad man because its going be a few months buddy.”

Vayne.8563:

All any MMO is is a list of things to do. They all work like this for a reason.

There’s no way any development team can create enough content to keep people playing for the ridiculous number of hours people expect to play an MMO for.

You pay $60 for a video game, that lasts 15-20 hours (if you’re lucky). You payed the same for Guild Wars 2…but you’re supposed to play it for hundreds and eventually thousands of hours. That’s the equivalent at least of dozens of games.

No one can create that much content, so instead they give you things to do. You either do them, or you don’t. Or you do the things you want to do.

I’m not sure why this is such a shock to people.

Living Story is what we have every 2 weeks for players to do.
Along with everything else people now hardly have time for because they are busy with LS.
Ascended was not needed as something to do.
Personally I think it is the most pointless thing in the game.
It makes no-one happy because for the progression crowd it is not enough and for the anti progression crowd it is too much.
Add to the fact that it is time gated, will amount to a horrible grind and is expensive, I really don’t know how they could possibly think it is a good idea. Unless it is a case of colour-wheel ocd

Happyfool.8951:

you dont like it? gtfo. oh and mail me your gold.
<— my id.

so nice to see who the target for ascended gear is- thanks mate

The purpose of ascended gear….

…is to cure my altoholism once and for all.

cesmode.4257:

-Ascended gear is meant for fractals. You need Agony Resist to withstand the lazy mechanic the devs throw at us in fractals. Dont need ascended anywhere else in game. Funny, because fractals are quite abandoned right now. Same maps since November. I rarely see anyone looking for a fractal group anymore. Everyone is off doing invasions or some other dumb LS achievement.

I don’t understand why they can’t just give fractal bosses %hp based damage attacks and leave the gear tiers alone. Oh wait they specifically made new tier to trivialize their new content.

As for OP’s question: I guess they just want people with BiS gear have a sense of accomplishment. Whether this is going to work or not… we’ll see.

Before they released the first ascended gear the forum was full of people complaining that once their character(s) had full exotic gear there was nothing left to work towards and therefore nothing to do in-game and no reason to play.

Once those same people had the few pieces available they started making the same complaints again, until some more ascended gear was added and more ways to get it, Then they got that and it started again.

The other side of that cycle though is that people who didn’t want vertical progression made all the same complaints that have been made here before each set of ascended gear was released. A few weeks or months afterwards everyone was saying it didn’t matter because it didn’t make a big difference and it’s not really that hard to get if you want it.

I’m sure the same will happen this time around too.

The “purpose” of ascended gear..

Well, to make an analogy… I own an Audi A3.
This car can drive me just about anywhere I want efficiently, I even won a couple rally tournaments with it.
But I could buy a Lamborghini, it would get me there faster and I could partecipate more competitive stuff, as well as having more chances to win tournaments (well, maybe not rally ones hehe).

If Lamborghini’s didn’t exist everyone would buy an A3 which goes somewhat cheap (30k euro here), and then sit back complaining they have nothing to work for, philosophizing about stuff and finally realizing we’re in a society of new-age slavery where money is your new chains.
And then we’d start a revolution against corporates and governments.

That’s why they made Lamborghinis, and Arena Net makes Ascended Gear.
So we stop thinking and rebelling, and instead spend our lives running on a hamster wheel.

Sitkaz.5463:

I’m curious about the purpose of ascended gear and weapons. They’re not necessary in PVE because we’ve been managing it with less for a year. They’re problematic in WvW for various reasons. So what is the purpose? Is it to give people more crafting, for the people who enjoy that? Is it to prepare us for a level 80+ area (seems unlikely if no expansion, but I don’t know)?

I’ve read the latest blog post. It says the new crafting materials “send players out into the world and make our existing content more rewarding.” So they want to give us reason to explore again. Is that it?

gold sinks and gem sales.

Red Falcon.8257:

The “purpose” of ascended gear..

Well, to make an analogy… I own an Audi A3.
This car can drive me just about anywhere I want efficiently, I even won a couple rally tournaments with it.
But I could buy a Lamborghini, it would get me there faster and I could partecipate more competitive stuff, as well as having more chances to win tournaments (well, maybe not rally ones hehe).

If Lamborghini’s didn’t exist everyone would buy an A3 which goes somewhat cheap (30k euro here), and then sit back complaining they have nothing to work for, philosophizing about stuff and finally realizing we’re in a society of new-age slavery where money is your new chains.
And then we’d start a revolution against corporates and governments.

That’s why they made Lamborghinis, and Arena Net makes Ascended Gear.
So we stop thinking and rebelling, and instead spend our lives running on a hamster wheel.

But in real life a thief can steal a Lamborghini. In game a thief can’t steal an ascended greatsword.

Morrigan.2809:

Happyfool.8951:

you dont like it? gtfo. oh and mail me your gold.
<— my id.

so nice to see who the target for ascended gear is- thanks mate

nah, tried being an kitten for once. i didn’t like it.

I for one think some are missing the point, ascended stuff is for fractals, I could care less about the stats and I WvW enough to know that skills>stats(in a ascended vs exotic way, not ascended vs greens).

So like I said, fractals, to open up the higher difficult to players. But i kitten hope the higher difficulties are more than just big hp punching bags, with 1hko attacks. Anet needs to revamp fractal rewards. Bump them up a notch.

i’m very happy of this patch. Finally something that can be crafted and can be as cool as a precursor. I think ppl complaining here have a pair of Dusk at the TP
btw: MMO needs to change constantly. when a wow expansion came out, you just throw away ur current gear.
I find fun in getting better equips, much more then showing the same old ones from 2012 ’till the end of times.
And i never bothered crafting before these patch news!

Frenk the Vile.2596:

i’m very happy of this patch. Finally something that can be crafted and can be as cool as a precursor. I think ppl complaining here have a pair of Dusk at the TP
btw: MMO needs to change constantly. when a wow expansion came out, you just throw away ur current gear.
I find fun in getting better equips, much more then showing the same old ones from 2012 ’till the end of times.
And i never bothered crafting before these patch news!

Except getting this gear takes a couple of things called time and effort. And I doubt anyone liked the fact that as soon as Cata came out, their ICC25 Heroic Gear was 110% obselete compared to Cata Green Quest gear, and vice versa. I’m using the Cata example because it’s the one I recall most clearly, but Im guessing you get my point.

How would you feel if you spent a month farming for a pair of Ilyas, a Vision of the Mists, and a full set of Arah Explorable armor? Ascended Gear says “Hi, nice job wasting your time, Come find me m8” and gives you the middle finger and walks away. That’s what people are irritated by. And whilst I don’t recall if Anet intended to make the game this way, I can say I’ve heard numerous people say that they joined gw2 under the impression that they would be free of the shackles of a vertical progression.

Seven Star Stalker.1740:

Frenk the Vile.2596:

i’m very happy of this patch. Finally something that can be crafted and can be as cool as a precursor. I think ppl complaining here have a pair of Dusk at the TP
btw: MMO needs to change constantly. when a wow expansion came out, you just throw away ur current gear.
I find fun in getting better equips, much more then showing the same old ones from 2012 ’till the end of times.
And i never bothered crafting before these patch news!

Except getting this gear takes a couple of things called time and effort. And I doubt anyone liked the fact that as soon as Cata came out, their ICC25 Heroic Gear was 110% obselete compared to Cata Green Quest gear, and vice versa. I’m using the Cata example because it’s the one I recall most clearly, but Im guessing you get my point.

How would you feel if you spent a month farming for a pair of Ilyas, a Vision of the Mists, and a full set of Arah Explorable armor? Ascended Gear says “Hi, nice job wasting your time, Come find me m8” and gives you the middle finger and walks away. That’s what people are irritated by. And whilst I don’t recall if Anet intended to make the game this way, I can say I’ve heard numerous people say that they joined gw2 under the impression that they would be free of the shackles of a vertical progression.

but the thing is, those weapons you mentioned are still viable. i mean, player’s have been doing just fine without them. the main thing people tend to forget is that ascended weapons were made for fractals. that’s the only place where it would be imperative to have them.

cesmode.4257:

-Ascended gear is meant for fractals. You need Agony Resist to withstand the lazy mechanic the devs throw at us in fractals. Dont need ascended anywhere else in game. Funny, because fractals are quite abandoned right now. Same maps since November. I rarely see anyone looking for a fractal group anymore. Everyone is off doing invasions or some other dumb LS achievement.

I was just pondering this. Seems to me ascended gear should have been ‘fractal gear’ for use exclusively in fractals, kinda like how PVP gear is for use in PVP.

They could have given the fractal fans (fractalists? fractalers? fractoids?) a basic set of ascended/fractal gear and allowed them to earn new (better looking/more agony resistant) gear as they progressed, while leaving us poor plain old open world PVE guys out of it.

But even worse than forced vertical progression thrown through our throats, is that Anet seems to be more focused on adding unnecessary grinding on old and dried content, instead of improving how old content plays and how fun it is now that the playerbase has matured.

So we’re getting this psychological hook in a game that revolves around following farming zerk trains and auto-attacking everything. It’s the worse mindless kind of grind you can find in a MMO, but people swalloed it because it was all for “cosmetic end goals!”

For a game that advertised itself for priotizing enjoyment and exciting experience over statistical grinding, the core systems of GW2 had serious flaws and weaknesses that lead the game to the very same path it didn’t want to do. Even as a cosmetic game, GW2 is incredibly grindy, because almost every single end game goal revolves around mindless farming. It doesn’t matters if the end goals are vertical or horizontal progression: the “adventure” that leads to them is nearly non-existent, because this game has little to no “adventure”. Nonetheless, people rather accepted it because it wasn’t “needed” to make your character stronger. Not even that will be a viable excuse anymore.

On September 3, Anet is going to celebrate a patch that goes against almost every single thing they believed for before they launched the game. They are going to celebrate a patch that goes against what many of its own developers self-declared to not be fun. It’ll be a celebration for the sake of soulless advertising, while even more players in-game will join the auto-attacking, nearly-automatized zerg trains to farm for bosses, now even because it’ll be required to get better stats.

It’s in times like this which I would to love to know what Anet’s own developers think or feel about their own game. Are they satisfied with it? Have they given upon it, and are just releasing this for the sake of psychological hooking farmers and get their paycheck?

But my real problem with this isn’t even the existence of ascended gear. It’s the entire farming process to get it. Since the game launched, Anet had one year, one entire year, to improve their core game. They revealed their intentions to add ascended gear nearly one year ago, but they had that whole time since then to make sure that obtaining it would at least very as fun as it possibly could. Instead of that, they have embraced temporary content, shallow instancing with nearly no storytelling, gimmicky and soulless monthly-acchievements, time-gating mechanics, gear-gating mechanics, vertical progression, etc. Only now do they seem to give signals that they want to add more horizontal progression, make more permanent content, etc. Only now, and only after forcing us to grind daily-gated content and auto-attacking champions to grind for better stats.

The adventure of exploring the world, where is it? The social mechanics to make the community coordenate, participate together or share experiences, where is it? The improved storytelling, or a compelling lore, where is it? The challenging encounters, where outside of temporary content driven by money sinks? The character customisation, either through a personal story or through horizontal progression, do you see much of it? No, no, no, no. And if haven’t played GW2 for a while, and get to it now, where are the fun dungeons that were added, or where is the fun jumping bazaar map?

In this entire year, the updates for this game have been almost always for the numbers. Stat numbers for better gear, day-counting numbers for time-gating mechanics, random number generating for rewards and for gem selling, higher crafting numbers, higher number of materials required, higher number of boss bags required, easy acchievements that reward participation with numbers, and number fixing to not break or to improve economy.

When we get to Lion’s Arch and watch the immersion-breaking mesh of flashy items and cash shop items, and take all this into account, we realize that Tyria is a huge, whole experimental ground for marketing and for numbers. It’s not about the adventure. It’s not about world immersion. It’s not about incentivating community interaction. It’s not about storytelling. All those have been secondary and shy. The main thing Anet priotizes, is the numbers.

It resembles more those casual facebook games where you’re spending more time mindlessly clicking for the numbers, instead of playing through, and immersing into, an actually deep game.

When GW2 launched, I expected the gem store selling unnecessary but desirable items would pay off any residual investment in the game and start paying for maintenance costs and new content within three months. I knew the game would run out of content within a year and only hard core would play. Why does anyone have other expectations?

Happyfool.8951:

Seven Star Stalker.1740:

Frenk the Vile.2596:

i’m very happy of this patch. Finally something that can be crafted and can be as cool as a precursor. I think ppl complaining here have a pair of Dusk at the TP
btw: MMO needs to change constantly. when a wow expansion came out, you just throw away ur current gear.
I find fun in getting better equips, much more then showing the same old ones from 2012 ’till the end of times.
And i never bothered crafting before these patch news!

Except getting this gear takes a couple of things called time and effort. And I doubt anyone liked the fact that as soon as Cata came out, their ICC25 Heroic Gear was 110% obselete compared to Cata Green Quest gear, and vice versa. I’m using the Cata example because it’s the one I recall most clearly, but Im guessing you get my point.

How would you feel if you spent a month farming for a pair of Ilyas, a Vision of the Mists, and a full set of Arah Explorable armor? Ascended Gear says “Hi, nice job wasting your time, Come find me m8” and gives you the middle finger and walks away. That’s what people are irritated by. And whilst I don’t recall if Anet intended to make the game this way, I can say I’ve heard numerous people say that they joined gw2 under the impression that they would be free of the shackles of a vertical progression.

but the thing is, those weapons you mentioned are still viable. i mean, player’s have been doing just fine without them. the main thing people tend to forget is that ascended weapons were made for fractals. that’s the only place where it would be imperative to have them.

Then make ascended gear only usable in fractals.

I mean, those are completely pointless outside, amirite?

Vayne.8563:

All any MMO is is a list of things to do.

Yes, we know that. But they’re supposed to be a list of fun things to do. Is the time-gated stuff they’ve been implementing lately fun? Is there really anything fun about running to a place of power once a day to get a charged quartz crystal? Anything at all?

Sitkaz.5463:

I’m curious about the purpose of ascended gear and weapons. They’re not necessary in PVE because we’ve been managing it with less for a year. They’re problematic in WvW for various reasons. So what is the purpose?

They are a cheap surrogate for content, and a stopgap measure to give devs some breathing space so that they can work on other things.

Basically, the game shipped early, before it was fully finished, and (more important in this case) before Anet managed to create a backlog of content for future releases. They have done halloween, they were working on winter holidays, they had one nice new dungeon in the works, but that was it. At the same timeplayer numbers were dropping like flies, due to the initial wave of locust leaving (and other people just deciding that it wasn’t a game for them after all). It might have been completely predictable, but still someone must have panicked and demanded that devs Do Something. Preferably Right Now.

So they did – and since they had no time for anything more advanced, they went for the cheapest and simplest method of attention grabbing known to MMO’s. New gear tier. And then likely, when the number of people leaving slowed down (due to most of those that wanted to leave being gone already) and eventually even went up (winter holidays, when a lot of people go back to their MMO’s) someone decided that this actually worked.

Oh, you meant their purpose for the players? Why, there’s none whatsoever.

Happyfool.8951:

Seven Star Stalker.1740:

Frenk the Vile.2596:

i’m very happy of this patch. Finally something that can be crafted and can be as cool as a precursor. I think ppl complaining here have a pair of Dusk at the TP
btw: MMO needs to change constantly. when a wow expansion came out, you just throw away ur current gear.
I find fun in getting better equips, much more then showing the same old ones from 2012 ’till the end of times.
And i never bothered crafting before these patch news!

Except getting this gear takes a couple of things called time and effort. And I doubt anyone liked the fact that as soon as Cata came out, their ICC25 Heroic Gear was 110% obselete compared to Cata Green Quest gear, and vice versa. I’m using the Cata example because it’s the one I recall most clearly, but Im guessing you get my point.

How would you feel if you spent a month farming for a pair of Ilyas, a Vision of the Mists, and a full set of Arah Explorable armor? Ascended Gear says “Hi, nice job wasting your time, Come find me m8” and gives you the middle finger and walks away. That’s what people are irritated by. And whilst I don’t recall if Anet intended to make the game this way, I can say I’ve heard numerous people say that they joined gw2 under the impression that they would be free of the shackles of a vertical progression.

but the thing is, those weapons you mentioned are still viable. i mean, player’s have been doing just fine without them. the main thing people tend to forget is that ascended weapons were made for fractals. that’s the only place where it would be imperative to have them.

It’s as viable as human psychology allows it to be, i.e; It’s not. Are the stats good? Reasonably, yes. However look from a realistic perspective.

I drive _______ car from 2005. It’s efficient, it works, and there’s been new models, yes, but the car is perfectly functional. However, many people in this situation don’t care. The car works, yes. But they want a Bently. Then want a Hummer. They want an Audi. Now you can go and tell me which car beats which and which brand sucks and whatever, I honestly give no effs. But guess what. You, me, and everyone else, we’re still going to go for the next tier of quality, why? Because aspiration. Noone likes to be on the lower level. Everyone wants to be at the top. It’s human nature. Its now empires rise and others fall. Dynasties and ruling families change because different groups want control of the region, people or resources.

So yes, is viable. But ANet knows that it has nothing to do with viability. It’s another carrot.

I agree there should be a vote 65%+ of the players dont want any of the ascended crap

Sure thing then i can say that 65% is not even the 1% of ingame people.

Except people knew about ascended gear coming out since Nov. when they released Fractals of the Mist. It isn’t like this wasn’t announced or planned ages ago.

As has been mentioned, the only real point of Ascended gear is that it represents a power level point on an ascending (no pun intended) power curve. In November of last year they added vertical progression to the game apparently to give complainers something to do in the end game. Ascended is simply the initial implementation of vertical progression. And, as has been mentioned, it was a sad, sad day for those who came to GW2 to escape the gear grind.