Guild Wars 2

Gingelyr.3648:

One three-letter-acronym: NGE.

Smed is teh suke! This isn’t nearly as drastic as that was, but it still sucks. ANET needs to learn from SOE’s mistakes…

Sigh…great. The one game that really finally kicked me off of WoW is now being a clone of it. I hated the gear grind, I hated that I lost to someone not because they were better than me, but that they had better gear than me.

Now, instead of saving my money and progressing towards my legendary, i have to spend more time gearing up, and praying to the RNG gods to give me loot I actually need.

Next thing you’ll know, they’ll implement a group finder tool for said dungeons, the holy trinity will make its comeback as well, you’ll have to do dungeons a,b, and c in order to even step into d, we dont care if its a really cool dungeon, go gear grind in order to get into it.

I sent out one invite for the free trial already, telling my friend that there was no gear grind other than for cosmetic, he seemed excited for that. Now what am I gonna tell him? I don’t even think I am going to send the other two now to try and bring more people in. People want a break from the WoW standard of mmos. For kittens sake gaming companies, stop copying!

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.

Its not one more tier that is a problem in any way, it is the practice of adding more powerful items at regular intervals. This is not a difficult distinction to make.

Jamais vu.5284:

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.

Ask Turbine how this same sort of system worked for LotRO… dungeon gating.. locking off content/items except for a select group and type of player (raiders)… it turned LotRO into a ghost town… if fact it did so much damage to the community that they eventually pulled the system out of the game..

Talloc.6835:

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

But you don’t, Fractals sounds like it will be clear of agony and thus the need for ascended gear until the deeper levels. Which means you can still do Fractals with whatever gear you have. The only purpose going deeper serves is to cater to people who want a greater degree of challenge in their dungeons. This is what I think people are forgetting here, this isn’t a system that flat out prevents you from doing content unless you have the gear for it.

One thing that would have greatly extended content would have been making all zones decent at level 80 in terms of rewards, or at least upping the amount of awards in lower level zones. They built a huge and beautiful world and people spend all their time gathering Ori and repeating Plinx and a few dungeons. The content was there, it just didn’t make any sense to do it. Instead they added this.

Horizontal progression for different skins wears thin for a lot of people. I don’t really understand why you wouldn’t want a new zone with more things to strive for and a cooler dungeon. I DONT log in right now because Plixx is all there is to do if you want to PvE. This may be due to the fact that people won’t spread out and play the game the way Arena Net plays it.

Arena Net realize few are spreading out and playing the game as intended and are reacting as opposed to having a proactive plan. The damage is done, though, the zones are dead. Most people are in Plixx or WvWvW. World completion is extremely annoying due to lack of mob reduction

People are clamoring for progression, people are getting legendary weapons quicker and quicker. Halloween was a success despite the QQ. So instead of strictly a lottery, they are now rewarding skill and offering true progression (remember the whining in that HUGE thread..) but now all of sudden.." But your Manifesto said…"

Look, the game goes live, the realities happen. These guys are responding (well I think) on the fly. They are adjusting to what gamers want here. There is a vocal minority that are screaming “BUT …the MANIFESTO” , however, stepping into the game tells a different story. Plinxx is always on farm the rest of the zones sans starting areas and Lion’s Arch are crickets.

I can tell you I have a full set of exotics and they are extremely accessible and will likely be all that is required for the new dungeon. So…relax? If you don’t have a full set of exotics you aren’t trying. I haven’t had the top tier gear set in a game for 10 years. I have less than 300 hours logged in. I am one of the more casual in my guild. I used 240k and 10 gold and got a set of exotics. I don’t see how a new item tier effects you when you haven’t managed to get something that is rather accessible…So then don’t go after the ascended set. Whom cares?

It sounds fundamentally like the PVP vs PVE crowd to me. I can’t speak for all of us PVE’rs but I can tell you it is extremely snoozy and end game is thin. Haloween made me believe in this live team and these events are the only thing that will keep PVE entertaining. the +2 to Constitution I get on one piece of gear is not going to effect your precious WvWvW so please relax.

Most people pursuing this gear aren’t going to WvWvW…I do it for my monthly its novel. GG. If you want balanced pvp you have SPVP which will only ever be cosmetic…so enjoy.

It really is Pre-emptive QQ’ing over someone having a razor thin advantage over you in WvWvW…you guys can have it. I’ll be in the 10 man dungeon getting my Ascended gear on.

As far as the Manifesto goes. Anyone play The Secret World, Ultima Online, World of Warcraft? SW:TOR? Hell Fable? These games fundamentally changed from their initial vision. It is a business, you monitor the activity of your user-base and you make a decision. I’m not saying that they are perfect by any stretch, but it is not hard to see that when a ton of your population are in 3 out of 100’s of maps it is time to move forward.

So let them move forward, or you could play something else and not pay a monthly fee? Come back after the update? Come back for Christmas while still not paying a dime?

I don’t know. Lack of vertical progression (or progression period) is where games go to die of this genre. period. I don’t care about 20 different sets of skins. I want new areas, new Level 80 content, and properly handled gear acceleration, possibly even trait or skill development or an AA system.

All you have to do is explore the vast empty world to realize that the game needs more zones. (its like the republican V democrat maps…all of the population is in a few areas…)

They should make tumbleweed gather-able in all areas of low population, it would be like the new candy corn.

Yikes.

Will people get over this 2 notion? First, it’s not +2, it’s +5 for that example (3% MF).

Time to compare existing tiers (“rarity”). We’ll use Opal as that’s what Linsey so foolishly used:
Masterwork: 39 Power, 39 Precision, 3% Magic Find + 3% Magic Find, 12 Precision, 12 Power
Rare: 42 Power, 42 Precision, 3% Magic Find + 3% Magic Find, 13 Precision, 13 Power
Exotic: 48 Power, 48 Precision, 3% Magic Find + 4% Magic Find, 15 Precision, 15 Power
Ascended: 50 Power, 50 Precision, 10% Magic Find, 18 Precision, 18 Power

For those that fail at math:
Masterwork: 51 Power, 51 Precision, 6% Magic Find
Rare: 55 Power, 55 Precision, 6% Magic Find
Exotic: 63 Power, 63 Precision, 7% Magic Find
Ascended: 68 Power, 68 Precision, 10% Magic Find

So take that, double it for the two rings we wear. Add in the unknown back piece. Then they’ll be adding the rest of the pieces (Linsey says so). The upgrade is very worth it.

All it means is that people will now hit 80 and go for Ascended gear rather than Exotics, thus killing all previous content (dungeons, crafting, etc.). And this hurts, bad.

EDIT: And yes, we have to have this gear “to get to the fun stuff”. To succeed in this new dungeon, you have grind out the Ascended gear and then grind out the slots. Previous dungeons were only made easier with “better” gear. This one flat out puts a death timer on you unless you have this Ascended gear.

And I still don’t get why we’re “ascending”.

Yes, players wanted something to do at endgame., but this wasn’t it. Please just add content; many more DE’s, dungeons, landmasses, jumping puzzles etc. etc. to the game. Many of us have what we concluded was our final equipment and could now enjoy what was to come this is not what we wanted to come. BTW LotRO had a similar “radience” gear they scrapped because it was not only confusing but tended to make the elitist segregate the casuals. Please don’t do this to the game I prefer my MMO experience to be a friendly one.

Meh. In GW you had to get a special attribute on gear to protect you from an agony condition. Thats not really a big deal. I actually thought it was a nice throw back.

As far are the new tier of gear…meh as well. It’s a co-op game. Myself and my guild do dungeons almost exclusively and we have never run in to “gear checks” or anything of that nature.

Lots of people are still just using what they can craft, equip or afford. The other night someone pinged their jewelry in HoTw (a lvl 80 dungeon) and they were still using a Hero’s band. I made a joke about it and someone else said “Hey Im still using that too”.

It might appall some of you to know, but a very large percentage of people are still running high level content in blues and greens.

So, other than WvW, assuming there is nothing to balance it. What exactly is the problem? Its not like you will be declined groups because you arent fully decked in ascended gear.

Relax. You all sound neurotic.

Jesus christ people. They’re adding a tier to bridge the gap between exotic and legendary, for perfectly valid reasons that they explained.

There’s no reason to think they’ll keep doing it until it’s a gear treadmill. I’m not saying there shouldn’t be a discussion, but you’re all freaking the hell out over almost nothing.

So I bought the game thinking I’d finally escape the gear treadmill and you add one in the first content patch?

Agony and infusions? Ok I guess. Vertical progression? I feel betrayed.

And now I look stupid in front of the friends I got into this game by telling them the treadmill wasn’t going to happen.

I really think that MMO devs need to take a look at action games. Of course you can’t expect an MMO to be as action-y as an action game. But they manage a sense of progression without gear stats. That’s with increasingly more epic encounters and difficult fights. That’s how you know you’re going somewhere.

fixit.7189:

zaxziakohl.5243

Jeez I take my level 10’s in and do well in WvW. Gear really truly doesn’t have a huge affect on gameplay!

The scaling system is kinda out of whack, my level 2 guardian raised to lvl 80 is doing at least 2x the dmg that my lvl 80 full exotic ele can. He is doing 2-6k per swing in starter gear.

Real test is true 80s in exotics vs true 80s in Ascended. By looks of things, Ascended with legendary weapons will win unless they are truely bad.

I noticed this, too, as I leveled, I seemed to get weaker. Thought it was just me somehow, but if you’re right, I guess I know how to get around the dungeon grind. I’ll just reroll and play at level 10.

Except of course with limited skills that will get old fast, even if it will be hilarious for a bit.

Teva.2807:

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.

The fanbois said the exact same things about us clear-eyed folks on the SWTOR forums… right up until EA admitted that thing was the epic fail it was. What you weakly perceive as negativity and hate is the passionate constructive concern of people who love a game and don’t want to see it crippled or dead. Running away and pretending everything is great when a company does something that will make players flee in droves—that’s being negative.

Talloc.6835:

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.

Yea and it gave more stats/health to, which is entirely the point..

I didn’t have trouble killing people on my Ranger 1v1 all day long even when they had the Orbs.

Monis.2634:

Talloc.6835:

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

But you don’t, Fractals sounds like it will be clear of agony and thus the need for ascended gear until the deeper levels. Which means you can still do Fractals with whatever gear you have. The only purpose going deeper serves is to cater to people who want a greater degree of challenge in their dungeons. This is what I think people are forgetting here, this isn’t a system that flat out prevents you from doing content unless you have the gear for it.

Ah, so the poopsockers get better gear than me now. I’ll just play WoW if I want to be harassed by someone with 15 more stat points than me.

How about we just add gearscore and get it over with?

I know I’m coming off as a dick, but I really like this game and I don’t want it to turn in to a gear grind. I don’t want anything resembling a numbers game.

More difficulty and more epic encounters are the only progressions that combat needs. You don’t need stats for that.

This is all true, as I said in my thread. Some players want to achieve and move forward. If you don’t, no one is forcing you.

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.

A) Orbs are gone now; aren’t they?

B) I used WvWvW as an example. You will also be able, with full ascended gear, to kill mobs in PvE 26% faster. You’ll be able to do 26% more damage during DEs; perhaps pushing you over the damage treshhold for “tagging”, or generating loot, from more mobs than those with exotics. Really, my point is that 26% is nothing to scoff at.

You broke my heart dudes…

Only a small portion of the populace wants them to break the manifesto. This thread is a perfect example; the nays far out number the yays.

I want to see a real personal response from the Devs about this rather than a pre-written blog that was more than likely created weeks ago.

Tell us why you are going back on the manifesto. Is it a monetary decision? NCsoft breathing down your neck to gain more revenue? A design decision to make this game similar to that other game and it’s countless failed clones? What do they really think and what is their response to this massive thread?

Talloc.6835:

Monis.2634:

Talloc.6835:

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

But you don’t, Fractals sounds like it will be clear of agony and thus the need for ascended gear until the deeper levels. Which means you can still do Fractals with whatever gear you have. The only purpose going deeper serves is to cater to people who want a greater degree of challenge in their dungeons. This is what I think people are forgetting here, this isn’t a system that flat out prevents you from doing content unless you have the gear for it.

Ah, so the poopsockers get better gear than me now. I’ll just play WoW if I want to be harassed by someone with 15 more stat points than me.

How about we just add gearscore and get it over with?

But we have no reason to believe that deeper levels give better gear. Also there’s no need for name calling here. I’m trying to understand your point of view, and explain mine.

I need to add another voice to the side of “pure disgust”.
Anet, what the hell are you doing? You promised us that this wouldn’t happen. Who are you pandering to? 99% of the people I see in game are casual players running around in hodge podge gear even at lvl 80. I just barely finished my full set of exotic armor (still operating on rare weapons and trinkets) and finally got the armor look I wanted.
Now you’re telling me that the feeling of contentment is going to be snatched away with the next tier?

There’s a fine line that has to be played with when you’re dangling a carrot. You need to know whether the carrot will motivate your audience or if it will just annoy them. Dear ArenaNet, you messed this one up because you don’t know your own audience.

Bornthisway.4609:

This is all true, as I said in my thread. Some players want to achieve and move forward. If you don’t, no one is forcing you.

Yeah. You will do just fine in that common-rarity merchant armor without upgrades.

Personal Story

A storyline that was not only repeatable, but fun to repeat.

Yes! I wish the story had a lot more variation to it, where choices you made actually matter and caused the story to play out in different ways. It feels like none of your choices meant anything while playing. There weren’t any meaningful decision making and the story didn’t branch out at all.

I stopped the story with my main near the end, because it became a one direction lackluster path, and Trahearne stole my spotlight…

Dungeons
Put Ascended gear in exploration dungeons. If this is to be the end game items, then give us more than one way to obtain them, and make the THE final step in gear progression. No, astronomical, and godlike, and unfathomable items after this. Please.

Also put more paths onto existing dungeons, and more gear for each of the existing dungeons, so we can do more with our tokens. That would be brilliant.

Exploration
Well, there’s already a trend of new jumping puzzles and things to find being implemented with each major patch. So, yeah, keep it up.

PvE Level 80
First, I’m on the ‘dislike Orr’ side of things. I wont go into details, there’s more than enough threads on the subject. Here’s hoping that Lost Shore will add some good fights for high level characters.

Also, I like the idea of a compact zone, this gives you the opportunity to make singular insane meta events running through the entire zone. This will require every player present to work in unison, even if they aren’t together, to fulfill objectives all over the map.

Crafting
Add more challenging things for crafters. Put them through their paces. Why not make a few ascended items available for crafting, but make it quite a challenge to craft?

Dungeons+
Not sure what to call it, but it would be fun if there was PvE content for more than 5 players to do, so a few guildies can go out and have a good time. An instance, sort of like Underworld or FoW. Here you’ll have tough battles and sweeping event chains, and you don’t need to hold back, you can really make the events go nuts.
There should be intense boss battles, many objectives and really fun, challenging content. It can even last for a few hours, and maybe there can be an ascended item at the end, or tokens for some new exotics.

I don’t PvP so have no suggestions on the topic. A PvPer will have far better insight than I’ll ever have on improving it.

Monis.2634:

Talloc.6835:

Monis.2634:

Talloc.6835:

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

But you don’t, Fractals sounds like it will be clear of agony and thus the need for ascended gear until the deeper levels. Which means you can still do Fractals with whatever gear you have. The only purpose going deeper serves is to cater to people who want a greater degree of challenge in their dungeons. This is what I think people are forgetting here, this isn’t a system that flat out prevents you from doing content unless you have the gear for it.

Ah, so the poopsockers get better gear than me now. I’ll just play WoW if I want to be harassed by someone with 15 more stat points than me.

How about we just add gearscore and get it over with?

But we have no reason to believe that deeper levels give better gear. Also there’s no need for name calling here. I’m trying to understand your point of view, and explain mine.

The LS preview does state more difficult dungeon levels will result in better drops.

Webba.3071:

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?

yep stamping out the bots would have been a two fold gain. It would have stabilized the economy, and sold more boxes.

I guess the bots really did create a problem that is difficult to handle.

fixit.7189:

Only a small portion of the populace wants them to break the manifesto. This thread is a perfect example; the nays far out number the yays.

I want to see a real personal response from the Devs about this rather than a pre-written blog that was more than likely created weeks ago.

Tell us why you are going back on the manifesto. Is it a monetary decision? NCsoft breathing down your neck to gain more revenue? A design decision to make this game similar to that other game and it’s countless failed clones? What do they really think and what is their response to this massive thread?

They wont have a response other than pushing this content live and silently telling us to deal with it. Too bad for them that the way I deal with it is with my wallet.

Instead of adding new items here and there, they should expand WvW. The maps are too generic, and not enough small scale fights going on because there’s no incentive to go solo instead of zerging.

Monis.2634:

Talloc.6835:

Monis.2634:

Talloc.6835:

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

But you don’t, Fractals sounds like it will be clear of agony and thus the need for ascended gear until the deeper levels. Which means you can still do Fractals with whatever gear you have. The only purpose going deeper serves is to cater to people who want a greater degree of challenge in their dungeons. This is what I think people are forgetting here, this isn’t a system that flat out prevents you from doing content unless you have the gear for it.

Ah, so the poopsockers get better gear than me now. I’ll just play WoW if I want to be harassed by someone with 15 more stat points than me.

How about we just add gearscore and get it over with?

But we have no reason to believe that deeper levels give better gear. Also there’s no need for name calling here. I’m trying to understand your point of view, and explain mine.

There was no reason to believe gear would get better, but then we have that screenshot posted a few hours ago. I’m just frustrated because what was a sure thing is up in smoke.

A more optimistic question: Will we be able to buy and craft Ascended gear on the trade post like any other armor?

Furthermore, will we be able to obtain stats like Power+Vitality+Toughness?

A minority of us prefer to grind Risen in Cursed Shore, and don’t actually like dungeons..

DrCereal.1765:

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.

A) Orbs are gone now; aren’t they?

B) I used WvWvW as an example. You will also be able, with full ascended gear, to kill mobs in PvE 26% faster. You’ll be able to do 26% more damage during DEs; perhaps pushing you over the damage treshhold for “tagging”, or generating loot, from more mobs than those with exotics. Really, my point is that 26% is nothing to scoff at.

Orbs were gone because they rewarded the “higher” population side more, Personally I disagree with removing them, As relics were in DAOC for years and it was perfectly fine.

Now I agree with disabling them till they bloody fixed people stealing them through hacks (which is the other reason they were removed)

For whatever it might be worth, I’d just like to point out that adding a new tier of gear is either a pointless decision, or the first step towards in inevitable gear treadmill. There’s no in-between.

If this is the only tier that will ever be added, its pointless. Why do it? If the player versus monster power ratios are somehow imbalanced in such a way that the gear is needed to fill that gap, you should either put the stats on exotics and call it a day, or shave a little power off of the enemy mobs. Adding another tier of gear is the worst way to go about it and (quite clearly) upsets the player base.

If this is not the only tier of gear to be added, which seems to be everyone’s fear, then the game is absolutely on its way to a gear treadmill. If you’re putting this in to give people who already have full exotics and are bored something to aim for, what do you do in another week or two when they have it all again? They’ll be back with exactly the same complaints about ‘nothing to do at end game’ once again. Do you add another tier? You just became WoW. Do you refuse? Then why was Ascended gear added in the first place? Is there going to be dungeon power creep? Will this gear be needed to be on par with the enemy strength in new dungeons? What about the dungeons after that? Another tier?

This isn’t some brave new world of unexplored territory. The slow and steady power increase path is a very well-trodden one by every MMO for the last decade. There’s no way to add more powerful gear, whether it’s adding one stat point or 100, and not instantly step right into the middle of this same old cycle.

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

First of all, punctuation. Second, go read the actual news post and look at the item comparison. Without the infusion, Ascended gear has much better stats. The bonuses that would otherwise be on the runes are baked into the item itself, and they’re also higher than the rune is. All told, each stat gains a +5 point increase. On a single item. Multiply that by a possible 14 item slots, and you get yourself a significant stat difference over Exotic items with the best runes.

If the same farming mechanic is in place the gear will be as big a fail as the legendary weapons are. Another win for farmers.

MMOWarrior.9312:

Ask Turbine how this same sort of system worked for LotRO… dungeon gating.. locking off content/items except for a select group and type of player (raiders)… it turned LotRO into a ghost town… if fact it did so much damage to the community that they eventually pulled the system out of the game..

This is actually a valid concern, however we know nothing of the frequency of Agony mobs, particularly those that will be added after Lost Shores. Maybe they’ll be concentrated on a select few elite monsters in a dungeon or two. It’d be unfortunate if some close minded PUGs would lock you out on those particular ones, but I doubt the rest (i.e. most) future endgame content will need it. ANet isn’t dumb. They realize the casual, particularly new, players won’t attain Ascended gear any time soon, and will design future content around it.

Alright, I read the blogpost.

My verdict: Disappointed. I have been a supporter of this game, not a original GW1 player, but I came since a friend advertized me. The manifesto, and what it contained, were why I bought the game. I hate statcreep, you see.

This is statcreep, with an addition of resistance gear. Feels like Ahn Qiraji, back in the days when I played World of Warcraft. Having to farm the nature dragons to fight Huhuran on progression wasn’t fun.

This was precisely what I wanted to avoid in a game. I even told my friend that it would turn out like this, but she assured me it wouldn’t. I do, kind of, feel betrayed. But it’s just a game, and at the end of the day, you always end up moving on from a game for one reason or another. This is my reason to move on from GW2.

I truly hoped for one game that would break from the statgrind formula. It seems I have to keep waiting for another MMO to do so.

So far, I bought 60$ of gems or so, buying at least 800 gems/months to show support, more when I liked content (such as the halloween one). I hope the additional money from the people that love statgrind will be enough to offset the loss of revenue from people like myself.

I wish you the best, Arenanet, and I definitely got my money’s worth – definitely more playtime spent than two skyrims so far! You did a spectacular game! The jumping puzzles were awesome, and I liked the direction you seemed to be taking the game into. Until now.

Take care, folks, and goodluck with the game.

Unlike raiders and statgrind fans, I feel no need to stick around and keep complaing. All I am doing is leaving, as of this posting. -1 fangirl.

I don’t really post, but I’m doing so now to urge you guys to reconsider — I think this is a step in the wrong direction. One of the things I loved about GW1 is that me and my buddy could load some heroes up with the cheapest gear we could afford and take on the Fissure of Woe or the Underworld, for better or for worse. We’d get our kitten kicked, but that was due to our skill/build, and not because of gear. Gear grind is going to be a huge problem for me and gamers like me. I really like GW2 as is, a LOT. This would really tarnish it for me.

Endgame is already being expanded without a treadmill. Ascended gear isn’t an upgrade. It’s a side-grade. The gear is on-par to slightly worse than exotics outside of the new dungeons, because they can only take infusions in their upgrade slots. When they add more new content, they simply need to add a similar but separate class of gear that is again, only useful in their newer content, and equal to exotics outside of it.

I think more than another rank of gear to go after, they need to improve the loot tables for the entire game. Right now, once you start getting exotics, loot rewards from bosses, champions and treasure chests are very unrewarding. They also seem to be nearly or completely random. The best item you normally get is a rare quality item that’s worth is directly tied to the value of Globs of Ecto that are salvaged from it. There is no Froggy Scepter or Bonecage Scythe or anything like that in the game. There’s nothing rare and interesting which drops reliably from a certain enemy or boss. There’s a lot of interesting things they could add as drops and make them more reliable drops in some manner: things like a unique skin recipe for crafters, a special bit of town clothes, a unique weapon skin, or a unique backslot skin.

Ascended gear, as far as we’ve seen, does nothing to help improve the meh of opening a treasure chest in the game.

GOSU.9574:

Anyone else find it disturbing that the overwhelming majority of posts concerning this is negative yet they “did it for the players”?

Very, very sad. Again, 2 years from now they will conclude it was a huge mistake. 2 years to late.

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.

Welcome to internet forums, were 90% of the posts are from people who are complaining about something. Generally speaking, people do not voice their opinion when they agree or like something – it’s when they are upset about something that they are compelled to let out that frustration with words.

And it should have been clear that showing magic find was the worst thing to do. I imagine that its odd rounding of the low MF number that allowed us to show 43% when primary stat increases for every other jewelry wouldn’t be that high. But this is all they gave us. More importantly this is what they gave us to try to appease the “its not a gear grind/tiered gear system”. Furthermore I suspect they showed the magic find gear because to them it looked less innocuous than the regular stat spread gear. Because they saw a 3% increase and only thought about the number 3, which is of course small. Nevermind that the MF is the primary stat and that it is effectively a 43% increase.

If the level of competency shown in giving us this preview is consistent with the level of competency show in creating this gear is constant, it doesn’t bode well.

Don’t worry guys “Ascended” gear will be the last grind. After that we can finally enjoy the game..

..thinking for a minute..

But oh wait! Why not scrap this stupid idea all together and enjoy the game now?

Its a sad day for Guild Wars 2- I will also like to add my sorrow to the idea of gear/monster progression and not more complicated fights or puzzles.

Lets lay this on the table first off, infusion in this game is nothing like infusion in gw1. It is an entirely new tier of gear and is not a flat “doesnt affect me now” boost like in gw1.

I have seen this in lotro (radiance) and in wow (nature resistance/fire resistance) before. And I have to say, it is one of the things I hated most the entirety of the time I played any mmo. They were meaningless grinds set up only to force players to grind their progress to a halt. They took time and effort that should have been spent actually doing the things you loved in a game. I had to spend hours farming marudon for for nature resistance armor. After we cleared princes huhu, I made the vow that I would never do that horrible method in any game ever again. Now look what arenanet is trying to introduce? An terrible 8+ year old mechanic that should have no place in a modern game (didnt have a place in games back then either).

Not to mention a new tier of gear THIS EARLY in the games life. No I think that plus the infusion grind is a mistake and will have to stop playing if its not removed.

Anet, I trusted you. After countless other developers and companies lied to me and spat in face, I still trusted you.

Anet you have taught me a valuable lesson, I should not have trusted you and expected your words to be exact, literal and meant.

Sincerely,
Someone who enjoys GW2 and it’s manifesto/golden rule.

Just venting but I’m going to repeat what so many others have said in this thread and elsewhere: voice your opinions with your wallets. Don’t buy gems. Don’t give them any revenue.

I’ve given them my money before, but I promise that if this goes live, they will never get another cent from me.

Catrenna.4298:

All of you are suffering from social equilibrium. If everyone were praising the change, so would you.

I wrote my post before reading the thread specifically to avoid that sort of thing from influencing my personal reaction to this news.

I’ve been accused of being a fanboy more than once these past few months when it comes to defending ANet. This is a tipping point for me. I still love the game, I still have some hope that they won’t manage to screw this up (and there are a few – a FEW – ways they can make this work), but the trust feels broken. Now I look at that screenshot of the Ascended ring compared to the Exotic and don’t think “Well, it’s only 2-3 stat points, it shouldn’t be THAT bad”. I think “Well well, I see they didn’t include a slotted infusion in their big announcement post. Wouldn’t it be just so clever to put most of the big stat boosts in the infusions they conveniently haven’t shown us, so they can divide the impact of player outrage?”

That sort of cynicism isn’t how I used to look at ANet. It’s how I looked at Bioware in SWTOR, and EA Mythic in Warhammer, and how I started looking at Turbine after what they did in MoM. I’m really, genuinely disappointed to be thinking about ANet like that.

elsbeth.3567:

Teva.2807:

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.

The fanbois said the exact same things about us clear-eyed folks on the SWTOR forums… right up until EA admitted that thing was the epic fail it was. What you weakly perceive as negativity and hate is the passionate constructive concern of people who love a game and don’t want to see it crippled or dead. Running away and pretending everything is great when a company does something that will make players flee in droves—that’s being negative.

It’s not fanboi’s to point out you whining over War Hero gear Battlemaster gear is silly..

War Hero gear was a decent upgrade over BM, but honestly, It had no effect on you winning or losing a fight.

Class Balance will always come down to if you win or lose…The stat difference between WH/BM only determined by how much you won or lost.

Now you’ll have people that are like “Well what about when you have two people of the same class with equal skill” and I say it’s hogwash statement..Because that never happens…ever…in an MMO

I fought people on my Pyro Powertech who had full War Hero on their Pyro Powertech when I was in BM Gear..I won fights in that game based entirely on crits alone..Or if I attacked first…

In this game, I’ve yet to run across a single ranger out in World vs World that i’ve not stomped completely into the ground rather handily. I play a Ranger..Now either i’m the greatest ranger to ever play (Which I assure you I’m not) Or My spec has to do more with winning the fight then anything else..

This game will be the same way

No matter the stat increase, It’ll come down to Class then Skill then Luck then Stats.