Guild Wars 2

phooka.4295:

WHen I came to this thread yesterday saying that I’d just deleted my credit card information, I’ve been told that I’d be immature and that I should wait it out.

Well, no regrets. Just woke up, read the blogpost. Not re-entering it. Forget that.

I’ve been scammed out of quite some money already. I’m not giving a company another dime that lies and betrays their user base. Manifesto is still online but now it feels like they keep it up to add insult to injury.

So you removed your CC information from a game you don’t have to actually spend a dime on?

Yea, that will show them

Well, for me that means continuing to not spend any cash on MT until the first expansion comes out. If they stick with gear progression, I’ll have GTA5 to keep me busy. I’m sad, disappointed and angry about this. I feel betrayed.

Pandering to a base of players that has already gone back to wow by adding a gear treadmill and pissing off the players who stick around because they don’t want a gear treadmill. This will work out just great.

Simple: Just more stuff, designed with players at the max level in mind.

In Guild Wars 1, the original release made you run through about two-third of the campaign before you reached the maximum level with maximized equipment, and then the final third of the campaign was designed for maximized characters – in addition to a couple of extremely large ‘endgame’ superdungeons.
When it came time to release Guild Wars Factions, the balance was shifted around, so that a player starting fresh in Factions maxed out after only 2-3 hours, and the entire rest of the campaign was made with max-level characters in mind, along with a new superdungeon, along with Challenge Missions that had their own leaderboards, etc. Nightfall shook out more or less the same, with only the first few missions designed for non-max characters in mind, and the rest of the game took place with no real vertical progression in place (There was a title/reputation grind that would gradually give you stronger bonuses against certain types of enemies, but I didn’t really like that because it was more vertical progression).

And really, after the first round of “Increase the level cap” players left, after the first release, nobody really found much to complain about with the system, and there are (or were, last time I checked, just before Guild Wars 2 launched) still a small number of people playing those campaigns, even though the last boxed expansion was released in 2007.

Guild Wars 2 potentially has things even easier in that regard, because of the downscaling it employs. There are issues that would need to be sorted out around there being a little too much of a gap between Exotic-geared 80s and level-appropriate characters, but otherwise, it would be perfectly possible and reasonable for future GW2 expansions to create content with endgame difficulty without having to split resources between providing completely separate 1-79 leveling experiences from max-level content.

If the content is fun and difficulty-appropriate, then people will play it. You don’t need to wave a carrot in front of someone’s face to motivate them to play a well-designed game.

Well if this turn’s out to be another wow/rift/lotro clone with gear treadmill, I guess i can go back to GW1 unless they decide to shut it down.

@Tyr Ok, I get that but the increase in power seems so tiny it doesn’t seem like it would matter. So what if I have a barely perceptible power increase over you with a few bonuses that only apply in the deeper bits of dungeons that you don’t even do?

Angrec.6970:

You can quite, you dont play it anymore, dont invite your friends for the invite a friend initiative and you uninstall the game.
1. it will show on their reports with less people actually playing
2. its going to kill their invite a friend initiative
3. there will be no temptation to go back to it if its uninstalled, why should you go back to anet after they go back on everything they originally said?

Pretty much I invited one friend tonight. But already told her about the Ascended gear if she see’s people talking about it in map chat. We’re going to have one last hurah in what should have been one of the best MMOs out there before we finally head back to WoW after this weekend. Just got done redoing my shortcuts. Interesting in Windows 8 tbh. But yeah if GW2 is going the way of the rest of the WoW clones then back to real thing. She’s already been told not to actually purchase because those of us that have been playing for the last two months are all coming back to WoW.

You guys want to hear a funny story?

I crafted three sets of exotic armour for my level 80 characters. And I know it’s ridiculously expensive compared to other options of obtaining exotics but it made me happy. They were my exotics, I made them. It was nice. And I reasoned to myself, “The cost is fine because it’s a one time cost and once it’s done, you never have to do it again.” With my equipment’s stats sorted I then went to work on my character’s appearance. I collected armour pieces and stored them in the bank so I could experiment with different combinations of styles to try and find a look that I thought was perfect. And when I was satisfied, I gave my armour the look I wanted using Fine Transmutation Stones, some of which I ended up buying from the gem store.

And now after being told time and time again that Guild Wars 2 was not like other MMOs and would never be like other MMOs in regards to vertical gear progression we’re being hit with vertical gear progressions. I feel that I’ve simultaneously been lied to and just had my time, effort and gold flushed down a toilet because I made the mistake of actually believing ArenaNet when they said that Guild Wars 2 would have the same design philosophies as Guild Wars 1?

Does ArenaNet not understand that I don’t want to play World of Warcraft? I do not want vertical gear progression. I do not want mounts. I do not want 25 man raids built for players that don’t understand the idea of dodging away from the obvious attack animation or that moving out of the big red circle is a good idea. It’s probably embarrassing to admit this, but I used to brag up ANet to my friends a bit about how different they were to other game companies and that they were one of the few I actually trusted. Now I just feel like a naive moron.

I logged on earlier, wandered around for a few minutes and then logged off. This has managed to suppress my desire to play the game.

Again, I really want to repeat my suggestion that ANET please do not add ascended armor or weapons.

Guild Wars 2 endgame is supposed to be about appearance over stats, as was GW1.

Accessories do not matter because they are not visual, and backpacks were so few to begin with.

However, many players are currently very attached to their armor and weapons, especially those who spent countless hours grinding in dungeons. We would literally have to transmute every item we have to the “ascended” stats.

And many of us even worry that the new “ascended” armor will not have the stats we want! (Such as Precision+Toughness+Condition Damage…)

Please do not change the armor or weapon system. It is fine the way it is.

Thank you!

Webba.3071:

bcbully.7289:

Leiloni.7951:

What, the earnings report that said GW2 is making tons of money and is NCSoft’s biggest earner worldwide? Yes, it makes sense to change a core aspect of a successful game that is the backbone of your companies revenue…

NCsoft stock dropped 10% that day. The bulk of the box sales have already been made. If there is not a huge up tick in cash shop purchases GW2 will be NCsofts smallest earner by the end of 1st qt 2012, maybe even 4th qt this year.

This has the ring of truth to it. While it is disappointing that it seems the only way to make a financially successful mmo is gear treadmilling it isn’t entirely unexpected. Guess WOW will remain king for a while yet.

edit – Thanks Leiloni!

The crazy thing is if GW2 had a sub, they probably wouldn’t have to make this change of direction.

I find it funny how some people say the whiners are mistaken as the majority, but you believe your opinion against ascended gear is somehow a majority.

I’m personally happy with the change.

I have bought GW2 since before BWE1 and this is the first time I am posting on the forum.
I have spend so far about $40 buying gems to support ANet.
Guild Wars 2 is a fantastic game with some great core principles.
To me the most important principle is the lack of grind. I am a casual player and even getting full exotics has taken me a few weeks. However now that I have exotics, I want to be able to enjoy the game without feeling that I need to work towards something.
If this change goes through and Ascended items have higher stats than exotics, then I am done with Guild Wars 2. I want a game where the main difference between players is not gear, but skill.
I would be fine if there was some sort of treadmill isolated to this dungeon. However the simple fact is Ascended items are better in general outside of the new dungeon. At this point I have to make a choice:
1) Grind the new dungeon to have optimal equipment
2) Settle for sub par equipment and do the things I enjoy in GW2

I am not willing to make either of these choices. I feel this is a betrayal of the promises ANet made to players and the core principles of what made me buy GW2.
If I have to make such a choice, I will choose
3) Uninstall and never play the game again

I love playing GW2 and I would be sad to uninstall it. However if I uninstall it, it will be because it is not GW2 anymore.
I hope ANet makes the right decision and backs away from this change.

Yet another gear-grind MMO. And at first glance you are FORCED to do PVE just to get an ascended piece.

What grinds my gears is they left it until a few days until release to tell us this, i bought the guild backpack a few days ago and 2 exotic rings (over 10 gold combined – not much for some, but for a casual like me a lot) What we need is a way to upgrade our exotic gear to the same stats, so our current purchases aren’t in vein.

Like the new back piece, it should require the 5 gold guild backpack as part of its formula, and perhaps another mystic forge formula for the ring that requires an exotic ring and the stats are based off the type of ring it is (knights, beserker etc).

I played in the betas. I wanted this game so badly, I couldn’t even imagine how it must have felt to be a GW1 player and waited years for it. And now this.

I used to watch the manifesto video every week during beta. I would just sit there and say ‘thank you’ to Arenanet, even though they couldn’t hear me. It would bring me to tears to think of being given a game that finally…finally!…broke the mold.

At cap level everyone would be equal. Equal. WvW equal. PvE equal. Dungeons equal. Everyone. Gear was for looks, not stats.

I am stunned. For those folks that want gear progression…that say it’s only for the dungeon, so it’s ok (even though it’s also gated now)…
Will you take off that gear outside the dungeon?
Will you not wear it in WvW?
Oh, and all the folks with legendary that will get bumped up now…will you not bring that to WvW?

Gear progression affects the whole game. I am not in a guild (except my own) so far, but in other games, there was always pressure from the guild to “go on the raid” so you can “get better gear”. I am over it. I am sick of it. I am so sad this is happening. I’m sure watching the manifesto right now would bring me to tears again…but not for the same reason.

Torres.2890:

Yet another gear-grind MMO.

You have to grind for gear now..

I know it’s piling on at this point, but I have to say, reading about this has me immensely disappointed.

Add me to the list of people seriously reconsidering his spending his playtime on GW2 to somewhere else.

I feel almost… betrayed. I don’t play WoW because I don’t like WoW. Why are you turning GW2 into WoW?

Wasselin.1235:

I feel like they didn’t even really try. All they had to do was release Lost Shores without the ascended gear and see what would happen. Did their halloween event not draw in a big enough crowd?

Wasn’t the concept that you make fun content and people will play without needing a carrot? Did ArenaNet come to doubt their ability to make content fun?

nah, the biggest mistake ArenaNet ever made was having a forum. With QQ threads demanding more carrots (“I have full exotics already, now what?” “why should i grind 500 hours just for a skin?”), i am not surprise they decide to add some “meaningful progression” after all…

There you go…“Where’s-the-end-game?” crowds 1, Guild War purists 0

The ring has a stat advantage over an exo ring of 5 respectively 3 points, plus the infusion slot of which we don’t know much yet. If we extrapolate that on all 12 gear pieces (plus their runes/jewels, but without infusions) the stat increase can’t be more than 100.
As an opponent of a classical gear treadmill, I actually like the concept, believe it or not. First of all the items will be, by the sound of it, rolled out over a multi-season time period, perhaps even years.
Many new high end enemies will inflict Agony. With your standard gear, they’ll be still doable with a bit extra effort, but each new piece of Ascended gear you acquire will cause them to progressively lose a bit of their aura of dread and enigma. It’s a nice replication of the Infusion mechanic against the Mursaat in GW1.
We also can not infer from this step that ANet will regularly introduce a new gear tier with major content updates. Maybe this will be stat-wise the final destination for the rest of the games life, maybe the penultimate. But it very much doubt this tier will be buried under a half a dozen higher tiers in a few years. It’s better to implement something like this early in the games life rather than later so that is perceived as the norm that was intended from the start, rather than the newcomer that only got added to artificially lengthen the games half-life.
Last but not least, everyone, even game devs, deserve some benefit of the doubt. Personally, I’m cautiously optimistic about this.

Incredible step in the wrong direction in my opinion, if Anet wanted to keep me in the game its sadly failed.

A skill based shift should of been made to increase longevity to the game not a progressive value change in item stats…. sadly it is just an easy fix without needing thought.

So I now have to grind gear for all of my alts at 80 and now forced to decide which class I take forward into what could be an endless cycle of infusions needed to perform in new content?

No thanks.

Maybe they were testing the waters. Checking where their playerbase’s loyalties really were.

Maybe they know that this could be a very bad decision in a game catered to a niche market, but wanted to be absolutely sure.

Please let this be a test or something.

This is thoroughly terrible. What makes this so much worse is this kind of thing is exactly what the game was supposed to avoid. An added gating mechanic, extra item progression instead of skill progression, and limited ways players can obtain the items. Even after all that crap Anet said it was in no danger of doing and designing a game that would never require such nonsense, it still wouldn’t be as bad if it wasn’t for this:

The new additions in November are just the start of our item progression initiative. We’re going to add tons of new high-level content to Guild Wars 2 in the future. As we introduce the new high-level content, we’ll also roll out complimentary Ascended and Legendary items (to say nothing of the other rewards you can earn by playing the content).

Start of. That is to say, the beginning of item progression and the one main factor besides lore that was being taken from GW1. When I got bored of the original, I knew I could come back even after years and an expansion and that I could pick up right where I left off and still be viable. My skill combinations may be out of date but I didn’t have to get new ones unless I wanted to but, most importantly, I NEVER, NOT ONCE, had to get new gear. My monk’s Elite Woven (originally known as the 15k Wanderer’s armor) could be, and was, used well into Eye of the North. Even after 7 years and thousands of hours, I only got 4 sets of armor and 2 were for Hall of Monuments. I never needed them. I liked the way they looked and wore them my entire GW career.

Now though, the complimentary items in addition to starting gear progression makes me think that other content will have their own gimmicky condition requiring the armor to complete the content. If I quit for a year or so again, it seems I’ll have to grind content specifically so I can catch up and play with friends. I wish I could say that I trust Anet that this won’t be the case but considering how much I’ve been burned (first minor things and now this), I can’t say that anymore.

I have two major concerns. Agony and the possibility of a harsh gear treadmill.
I agree that another gear quality should have been added, as so many people got exotics pretty quickly.

What worries me is if they add more qualities of gear on top of Ascended. I think one more between exotic and legendary is a good idea – but any more than that and we’re going to start noticing the oh so hated gear treadmill.

Next is agony. This is really worrisome. Difficulty and challenges are good. But requiring gear to overcome a challenge? In my opinion and based on what I’ve read and heard from other players, this is the exact opposite of what most anyone wants. Being able to only add difficulty via stats is somewhat worrisome, though not the worst thing ever. But adding a new condition just to make dungeons virtually impossible for people without a specific best-in-slot or near best-in-slot gear? That’s a really, really bad idea. That’s exactly what everyone thought ArenaNet was going to stray away from.

Overall, the gear progression that we are getting was needed IMO – one more layer on top of exotic. I’m extremely worried that they’ll add more layers though, and that’s when it’ll become unnecessary and a painful gear treadmill IMO. Agony is also a huge worry; I really wish they could find a way to not include something like agony and instead actually make it more challenging, i.e. require more skill.

Reminder to all: USE THE +1 BUTTON IF YOU LIKE/AGREE WITH A POST!

this gear will only affect PvE not PvP Cause in pvp the infusion is useless so exotics with full rune set will be better cause you will get the bonus’s full affect are ppl forgetting this

Adding my voice of dissent to this thread. There is no need for this implementation. I’ve played a little bit nearly every day since release, and have just finished completing my first dungeon set. I had planned to put together a couple more to have stat options. What would my compelling reason be now, with Ascended armor coming soon? and then, what point would that have with further gear likely to come down the line?

The notion of a horizontal progression was one of the key elements of this game’s design that I loved. I’m very worried to see it going away.

If the ascended gear was equivalent in stats, and provided a bonus within the fractals, and only in the fractals, and that bonus could improve as you went deeper…I’d be ok with that. Other implementations are highly suspect.

Anet still live up to it’s promises with ascended gears.

Everyone watch this video: (link at 1:22)
http://youtu.be/bKtGxVj3msM?t=1m22s

“In most games, you go out and you really have fun task occassionally you get to do. And the rest of the game is just boring grind to get to the fun stuff.”

Question to players who feel betrayed,
Does implanting ascended gears will prevent you to get to the fun stuff?

Unlike traditional mmo, GW2 actually has made everything explorable for both casual and dedicated players. No matter which tier you are wearing, you will still able to experience 100% of the content this game has to offer to you. You can do all raids, all maps and everything no matter which gear you wear. Having ascended gears will not prevent you to get to the fun stuff.

Some maths, before giving my own thoughts, since everyone seems to be missing this:

What you are seeing from the picture on the blog is an 8% stat increase, from exotic to ascended, per stat. As a reminder: stats scale your power linearly in GW2, meaning that an 8% increase in a single stat increases your power, roughly, by 8%.

However, each item at level 80 has three stats. This means that a linear increase across all stats from one item to the next results in a cubic increase in power. To make this more clear: increasing your power by 8% increases your damage by 8%. But increasing your precision by 8% also increases your damage by 8%, the same is also roughly true of crit damage. If you increase all three of these stats by 8%, as the ascended armor does, you get a whopping 26% in damage.

TLDR Ascended armor, judging from the official info we have available, is roughly 26% more powerful than exotics. If/when ascended items are available for all slots, if you equip them, you will be able to kill people in WvWvW 26% faster than they can kill you.

As someone older and wiser than Linsey Murdock and thus not particularly impressed, and certainly not fooled, by her peppy hype-talk, I have two things to say:

1) This means an elitist gear grind (and/or pay-to-gear-up), which means I just won’t play huge chunks of the game. That means I am even less likely to buy anything in the store. It could mean I ultimately don’t play the game at all, because it is a drastic philosophical change to everything new and different about this supposedly new and different game. The genius parts of GW2 are communal (dynamic events, WvW) rather than ye olde sports-team model (dungeons, pvp). I hate pvp of any kind, yet I have done hours of WvW in this game because it is fair, balanced, skill-based, community-minded and has nothing to do with gear grinding. I am someone who has not hit the “Legendary wall.” In fact, I have yet to finish my personal story because said “personal” story is in fact a raid, and one with a weird timer at that. I’m already upset enough about that. This is just even more of a march toward WoW-town.

2) ArenaNet is displaying a pattern of lying to its players about key developments. The Halloween Black Lion chest scam was clearly deliberate and deeply troubling. (I say that as someone who was not a victim of it.) Now, after promising not to have a gear grind, it will have a gear grind. Adding insult to injury, ArenaNet is saying it’s not a gear grind; it just exactly meets the agreed-upon definition of a gear grind. Linsey Murdock is a little kid holding an empty glass and standing next to a grape juice stain on the carpet, looking up at us and saying, “I have no idea how that got there.” Not fooled, kiddo.

ArenaNet already put a lot of lipstick on a lot of pigs in this game; e.g., doing the same old kill-15-things quests, but smartly using a vague bar instead of a direct number-counter. That’s fine. Not everything can be new and we are ultimately playing a game. But to stand there and lie to our faces about the great Halloween trinkets you can get, or how it’s no gear grind if you need to get particular leveled gear to complete particular dungeons…. Well, you’re asking for a guild war, alright, and one you’ll lose.

If a game goes bad on its own, fine, I may stick around and play the good bits for a while. I played WoW for a long time as it nosedived and excluded me from huge sections of its game. But when the company starts lying, betraying and deceiving, it’s just a matter of a very short time until I’m gone with a vengeance. WoW pushed me to that point a year ago and I’ve deleted all their little coupons and beggings and pleadings ever since. Please do not drive me away from your generally very fine game. I’m only asking once.

Not only is it a gear treadmill but its gated content that’s reliant on RNG in order to get the gear needed to progress. Too bad WoW ain’t worth the money; at least they actually do the gear treadmill right.

bcbully.7289:

Webba.3071:

This has the ring of truth to it. While it is disappointing that it seems the only way to make a financially successful mmo is gear treadmilling it isn’t entirely unexpected. Guess WOW will remain king for a while yet.

edit – Thanks Leiloni!

The crazy thing is if GW2 had a sub, they probably wouldn’t have to make this change of direction.

Report indicates that GW2 has established itself as one of the main earners of the company. Guess the pressure to maintain that position without box sales going forward is pretty heavy. I suppose this may be a result of the gem store not being as profitable as they hoped. Wonder if there were more attractive buys on there, coupled with better results stamping out 3rd party gold selling/botting this would not have happened?

I’ll throw my 2 cents out there.

Past games I’ve played I’ve always wanted to like crafting but I never have because it always seemed like a waste of time. The last MMO I played was Rift and I didn’t care for it’s craft system because the best gear available is done by doing 20 man raids. When I heard that you could craft the best gear in the game I was pretty excited for crafting and have been trying to level them. I’ve gotten a couple professions to 400 and a couple more that are close to 400 as well.

What upsets me about the ascended gear isn’t so much that there is a new tier of gear, but rather that (if I understand it right) crafting professions no longer can get you the best gear in the game anymore. So, for instance, why should I level jewelery to 400 when there’s better gear to be gotten elsewhere? I think that the ascended gear should able to be craftable. For instance you could increase the max cap on crafting professions to like 450-500. And once you max it out you can make ascended gear. This system would also still encourage people to craft exotics sense you would need to craft them to level your crafting profession.

I just really, really think that you should be able to craft the best gear possible if you don’t want crafting to suck like in other MMOs like Rift.

Would it still be offensive to you if Ascended items were just ever a single tier of gear and the only thing that they ever added after this were new types of infusions that only had an impact on the deeper more challenging parts of dungeons (assuming that they use the Fractals model of increasing difficulty)?

Even aside from this being a huge mistake and poor change of direction for the game, going back on a design manifesto your developers have touted for years leading up to its release 3 months after your most loyal base has bought the game is an incredibly dishonest and scum-baggy thing to do. I have over a thousand hours invested in the game and have not even come close to running out of things to do, but the knowledge that if I stop playing the game for a short period of time, I will have a necessary gear grind to catch up on in order to be on the same level as everyone else has killed my desire to play this in the long-term. Maybe the new carrot will scare a large amount of players into putting down the game and keep the population consistent and profits steady. But at a cost you’ve hurt those who believed in your manifesto more than you did.

Monis.2634:

Would it still be offensive to you if Ascended items were just ever a single tier of gear and the only thing that they ever added after this were new types of infusions that only had an impact on the deeper more challenging parts of dungeons (assuming that they use the Fractals model of increasing difficulty)?

Yes, a gear grind that has a limited impact still has an impact, and goes against what they promised.

i dont understand this kittening at all. u mad.

it was OK for everyone that the game have fine→masterwork→rare→exotic gear progression, and now when a.net decides to put one more in between exotic and legendary for whatever reason ppl start kittening and saying that ‘they will leave the game’ and ‘ask for refund’, oh c’mon, you cant be serious.

1 more tier set != gear treadmill. qqmore.

I dont know why I even go on the forums. All of the negativeness and hate just makes me lose hope for the game, I dont want to lose hope. I have to get off the forums.

Crater.1625:

If the content is fun and difficulty-appropriate, then people will play it. You don’t need to wave a carrot in front of someone’s face to motivate them to play a well-designed game.

This. Which is exactly what A-Net kept feeding us during the development of GW2. And then after 3 months, they basically back tracked against the ideal. If they could release content on a monthly basis that equaled or exceeded the Halloween event then I’d gladly play the game, expand on alts, play WvW, and run through new monthly content.

Instead, as the update relates to me, they simply have an upset player who is seriously thinking about quitting the game cause he wanted to be done with the carrot dangling. I’m too old to go after imaginary carrots on a frequent basis to have fun in a video game.

Monis.2634:

Would it still be offensive to you if Ascended items were just ever a single tier of gear and the only thing that they ever added after this were new types of infusions that only had an impact on the deeper more challenging parts of dungeons (assuming that they use the Fractals model of increasing difficulty)?

Why should I have to have a certain type of gear to do a dungeon? Because WoW does?

Athlas Reaver.2705:

this gear will only affect PvE not PvP Cause in pvp the infusion is useless so exotics with full rune set will be better cause you will get the bonus’s full affect are ppl forgetting this

Have a closer look at the image in the blog post, even with full set the ascended gear will out stat exotic gear.

DrCereal.1765:

Some maths, before giving my own thoughts, since everyone seems to be missing this:

What you are seeing from the picture on the blog is an 8% stat increase, from exotic to ascended, per stat. As a reminder: stats scale your power linearly in GW2, meaning that an 8% increase in a single stat increases your power, roughly, by 8%.

However, each item at level 80 has three stats. This means that a linear increase across all stats from one item to the next results in a cubic increase in power. To make this more clear: increasing your power by 8% increases your damage by 8%. But increasing your precision by 8% also increases your damage by 8%, the same is also roughly true of crit damage. If you increase all three of these stats by 8%, as the ascended armor does, you get a whopping 26% in damage.

TLDR Ascended armor, judging from the official info we have available, is roughly 26% more powerful than exotics. If/when ascended items are available for all slots, if you equip them, you will be able to kill people in WvWvW 26% faster than they can kill you.

Really? you’re going to try and bring up WvWvW that had a far greater system in it called Orbs up until a little while ago..

The Bonus stats weren’t the big problem with Orbs, it was the 15% bonus to Health that was the problem.

I too feel disappointed and betrayed. Adding another level of gear just sounds way too much like the introduction of Tier1/2/3 in WoW. In Guild Wars 1, max stat gear was max stat gear, and it has always remained the same. With all their nice tales, the devs have made us believe that Guild Wars 2 would be the same. Apparently, they intend to make this game much more like WoW than like GW1. If that is the direction this game is taking, then I need to start looking for another game as well.

Xsorus.2507:

DrCereal.1765:

Some maths, before giving my own thoughts, since everyone seems to be missing this:

What you are seeing from the picture on the blog is an 8% stat increase, from exotic to ascended, per stat. As a reminder: stats scale your power linearly in GW2, meaning that an 8% increase in a single stat increases your power, roughly, by 8%.

However, each item at level 80 has three stats. This means that a linear increase across all stats from one item to the next results in a cubic increase in power. To make this more clear: increasing your power by 8% increases your damage by 8%. But increasing your precision by 8% also increases your damage by 8%, the same is also roughly true of crit damage. If you increase all three of these stats by 8%, as the ascended armor does, you get a whopping 26% in damage.

TLDR Ascended armor, judging from the official info we have available, is roughly 26% more powerful than exotics. If/when ascended items are available for all slots, if you equip them, you will be able to kill people in WvWvW 26% faster than they can kill you.

Really? you’re going to try and bring up WvWvW that had a far greater system in it called Orbs up until a little while ago..

The Bonus stats weren’t the big problem with Orbs, it was the 15% bonus to Health that was the problem.

All orbs did was give more power to an already dominant side.

Angrec.6970:

You can quite, you dont play it anymore, dont invite your friends for the invite a friend initiative and you uninstall the game.
1. it will show on their reports with less people actually playing
2. its going to kill their invite a friend initiative
3. there will be no temptation to go back to it if its uninstalled, why should you go back to anet after they go back on everything they originally said?

Yesterday morning, I planned to log on a few hours so my alt reaches 70 and can head to orr. Yesterday evening, I just followed the forum with horror and lost all desire to log on any of my chars. This news alone made me lose all incentive to log on. I’m following your directions.

levelnine.7036:

i dont understand this kittening at all. u mad.

it was OK for everyone that the game have fine->masterwork->rare->exotic gear progression, and now when a.net decides to put one more in between exotic and legendary for whatever reason ppl start kittening and saying that ‘they will leave the game’ and ‘ask for refund’, oh c’mon, you cant be serious.

1 more tier set != gear treadmill. qqmore.

The 1st part is gear progession, the 2nd part is a gear treadmill.

Gear progession is when you progress in the game to get to the best items and it has an end (in this case it was exotic as legendary items shared the same stats), a gear treadmill is when they keep pushing the bar further and further back meaning you can never get the best items as it always changes (in this case it’s adding accended items and who knows what else in the future).

levelnine.7036:

i dont understand this kittening at all. u mad.

it was OK for everyone that the game have fine->masterwork->rare->exotic gear progression, and now when a.net decides to put one more in between exotic and legendary for whatever reason ppl start kittening and saying that ‘they will leave the game’ and ‘ask for refund’, oh c’mon, you cant be serious.

1 more tier set != gear treadmill. qqmore.

Another tier set, in addition to a promise of ways to upgrade it further with each content update. That’s what makes it an explicit gear treadmill. Even then, adding another tier is still problematic.

Feeling? It is simple — the “better” stats of acended gears sux.

Why can’t you Anet just provide more customized gears for players? For example, allow players to make a ring with +condition, +healing, and +magic find. Players need to gather different acended gems to customize their gears; and decide which stat should be the primary. Providing some unique stats such as boon duration or condition duration may be cool as well.

Just NOT make incoming gears “BETTER” than old one. It’s really bad.

levelnine.7036:

i dont understand this kittening at all. u mad.

it was OK for everyone that the game have fine->masterwork->rare->exotic gear progression, and now when a.net decides to put one more in between exotic and legendary for whatever reason ppl start kittening and saying that ‘they will leave the game’ and ‘ask for refund’, oh c’mon, you cant be serious.

1 more tier set != gear treadmill. qqmore.

The point is that it’s one more tier FOR NOW. Who knows what else they will add?

levelnine.7036:

i dont understand this kittening at all. u mad.

it was OK for everyone that the game have fine->masterwork->rare->exotic gear progression, and now when a.net decides to put one more in between exotic and legendary for whatever reason ppl start kittening and saying that ‘they will leave the game’ and ‘ask for refund’, oh c’mon, you cant be serious.

1 more tier set != gear treadmill. qqmore.

Fine, Mastwork, Rare, Exotic was for lvl 1 to 79. At lvl 80, you can jump to rare in an instant. With 2 gold, you get Exotic full gear.

That is not gear progression.

From Exotic to Ascended, that can only be grind randomly from a single dungeon, that will be progression.

Monis.2634:

Would it still be offensive to you if Ascended items were just ever a single tier of gear and the only thing that they ever added after this were new types of infusions that only had an impact on the deeper more challenging parts of dungeons (assuming that they use the Fractals model of increasing difficulty)?

The gear itself is not really the big issue, although it’s a worrying change in the manifesto.

The real big issue is the agony and the requirement of having agony resists, and kitten knows what else down the line, in order to progress further. This is counter to everything that GW2 is about, which is accessibility to all content by everyone.

GOSU.9574:

We don’t need a tier system in this game. This game is not WoW, it will never have the draw of WoW’s raiding game. They have caved in and sold out, Anet has. Very, Very, Very sad.

What no MMO dev including ANet doesn’t seem to get is that pretty much everyone who wants to play a gear grinder is playing already playing WoW. It’s the simple reason why every single WoW clone failed miserably. WoW players will stick to the original. That’s the game they invested a lot time and money in. But still everyone seems to think every MMO customer base is just like WoW’s. Which is a silly thing to assume. Looking at this thread, the overwhelming part of the responses are negative about the Ascended gear. Now consider that casual players are usually the ones who do NOT post all that often on MMO forums. Then go imagine what the GW2 playerbase as a whole REALLY thinks about this…

It’s an absolutely disastrous day for this game, which until yesterday I labelled the best MMO ever made.

Did they really think in 2012, the large majority of MMO players would -still- stand silently aside and have a few hardcore players dictate the course of the game with their “We need super-hard content with phat l00t that nobody other than us can get” whining? Errrm…no.

Lying kittens. Way to ruin a good MMO. Looks like I need to find a new game. I despise gear progression.