Guild Wars 2

Toggles.1783:

Death by Chickens.6902:

This outrage is hilariously stupid.

I guarantee an ANet dev will post in the next few days and explain that NO, they said nothing about adding new equipment tiers every 6 months, and as the blog explained, they saw a need to bridge the gap between Exotic and Legendary by adding ONE new tier.

You people are going to give yourself aneurisms over nothing. Stop freaking out. Constructive feedback is great, but ya’ll are taking it too far.

Just a fyi incase you don’t know, a lot of people think the anti-outrage is, as you put it, “hilariously stupid”.

You say they saw a need to bridge a gap. Do you realize that they’re doing exactly the opposite of that?

They are actually creating a gap between exotics and legendary.

Actually what they are doing is demoting Exotics to fancy Rares.

Mada.5319:

Fallen Angel.5092:

Talloc.6835:

LF2M Fractal, link all Ascension gear or NO INVITE

LF2M AC, link all Exotic gear or NO INVITE.

See what I did there?

So long as ArenaNet doesn’t make the dungeons impossible to do without Ascended gear, but can be done in your Greens and Blues, there is no problem.

To be speculative of the blog post, sine people are choosing to take the OMG TREADMILL path, I’m going to speculate on the Deeper through the Fractals path. What I read into this was its infinitely scaling difficulty, not the first “tier” of the dungeon. I could be wrong, but the lot whining and wailing about a gear treadmill (that already exists in the form of fine, masterwork, rare, and exotic) could be wrong as well.

The doom and gloomers in this thread are not the majority, this design choice clearly makes it out you’re not. I doubt your leaving this game will have a dramatic effect on my, or anyone who decides to stay, gameplay experience.

Umm, exotic gear isn’t REQUIRED for the current dungeon. You can complete them easily with rares and even masterwork armor. I know I have.
Any new content that is added in the future is going to REQUIRE ascended armor since it can’t be completed without the infusion buffs. His point stands and yours is invalid.

This all depends on what you’re interpreting “deeper into the dungeon” as. For all you or I know it could be your 100th run through before Agony is too much to not have Infusion to defend again. This goes for any other dungeons they have planned using this Agony effect. Only Anet is in the know for how long you will be able to withstand Agony before you need infusion. So my point is not invalid based on my interpretation of the information they have posted, nor is his in a sense. My point was there is already player gear gating in place and of course the new dungeon will be no exception. However, to believe one entire run of the 9 wings of the new dungeon, which are randomized mind you, will be unbeatable without this new gear that NO ONE CURRENTLY HAS is pretty foolish.

“Well guys, we’re going to have to reset and hope we get the 4/5/6 wing set instead of the 1/2/3 wing set because 1/2/3 is too much Agony damage.” This scenario is what I will never see happening for at least one entire clear through Fractals of the Mists. After that, so long as item rewards aren’t better (quantity != better), the extra difficulties are artificial progression for kitten flexing. Nothing more. If Anet applies this to every dungeon they create later on, there is nothing wrong. It’s when they make your T14 WoW raid gear required for Normal Stratholme a problem.

As long as i can get these items in a decent ammount of time ala make them no harder to get then exotics and they release it with expansions and new content only i don’t see it as a big deal, i don’t want it to be a gearcheck game like diablo 3 and wow. Trust me but a little item progression isn’t a bad thing, one thing that worries me is they added this 2.5 months after release which seems too soon, i was hoping they’d do somthing like this when a full expansion came out. I like a little progression just not a full gearcheck>skill game. Infact i like that quote i just said

as long as gw2 remains skill>gear then im fine, as in someone skilled in exotics can beat someone unskilled in the above teir.

DUAxWolff.2759:

Volmarg.4310:

DUAxWolff.2759:

50 pages of posts in 18 hours, not to mention the 10 other threads that have yet to be merged.

Anet remains quiet.

sigh

General Almorra “Some must fight, so that all may be free.”

Not understanding your reference. :\

What I mean in that case is the fact that we, have to fight to keep the game as it is, without any overpowered items which requires grinding.

As I slowly read the posts. I see than many ppl are mad, not just me.
Can’t blame them, because we just want to relax, and spend time with friends instead of months of grinding.

Some wrote about idea of using the power slot ,,It can allow You to go deeper to the dungeon".

And that would be the perfect solution of our problem.

No. I really don’t like the ascended stuff.

What’s the point of Ascended Gear that can only be used in fractal dungeons? This new dungeon is suppose to get harder as you play it. But Ascended Gear makes the dungeon easier. Doesn’t that defeat the purpose of the new dungeon.

when 1 people disagrees with you, you may say it is due to different view of things.
when 10 people disagree with you, you may say they are dumb that’s why they don’t understand your ideas, time will prove you right.
when 100 people disagree with you, you may say innovative idea will not be accepted at first, people will eventually agree with you once your brilliant ideas become famous and success.
But when nine out of ten, majority of people are opposed with you, you gotta know that, this time, YOU ARE DEFINITELY WRONG IN THIS.

Can we stop with this stupid website linking? It’s taking away from what has actually been a civil debate.

Cousland.2187:

Dogblaster.6713:

whats next ? ..

sPvP gear progression incomming in december

And mounts! Lots and lots of mounts!

They better be huge and flying or I’m not interested. I need something to block the LA banker.

Zanthrax.6538:

For all we know its a one time addition of another rarity to items. Not an ever increasing new tier of gear. /shrug the guild convo’s we have been having because of this though is quite interesting.

Well, doing a bit of exegesis we can conclude there’s more to come:

This is just the beginning. […]

Eventually, you’ll be able to kit yourself out with a full set of Ascended gear and high end Infusions to help give you the edge in end game content.

So it is not a final thing. More is to come. Albeit it is at first only the missing items for the other slots. What’s more worrying is that they are now talking about end game content as a level 80 thing as opposed to the famous level 2 quote. This is a paradigm switch which goes closer to traditional MMORPGs than to their own original statements. The other thing is the deviating away from player skill being that thing helps giving you the edge, suddenly it’s high-end gear.

The new additions in November are just the start of our item progression initiative.

Here the choice of words is important. As it means that item progression will be a thing to stay and the November update is not going to be the final thing but more over the start of an initiative.

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).

So here it is again. The fact that each new high-level content gets its own Ascended and Legendary items. Paired with the item progression initiative above this will definitely mean that over time (since your number of item slots and switchable stats are limited) they are going to increase some items with more power.

That is of course just my interpretation of it.

Sirge.8934:

So, Ascended Armor. Agony. Infusions. People are ticked. It looks like the start of a gear treadmill. And I agree that a gear treadmill would be bad for the game.
However, a few have replied that this is what the community has asked for. People were completing every event, obtaining 100% exploration on the map, and then quitting, due to lack of endgame.
GW2 has forms of endgame, such as PvP, WvW, and cosmetics. However, we wouldn’t be having this conversation if it was enough.
New content is great, but players consume it faster than devs can create it.

So, my question is this: How do we expand the existing endgame (things to do after “beating” the game) in Guild Wars 2 without implementing a gear treadmill? How have MMOs lacking gear treadmills, such as Guild Wars 1, kept an active player base through the years? Discuss.

EDIT: The purpose of this thread is not to discuss Lost Shores, or whether or not Lost Shores is a gear treadmill. I mentioned it only because that’s what brought this topic up. There’s a ton of other threads to debate ascended armor in.

Um, add more content with better looking/different looking gear for progression? Make said content fun.

Ok…. this Yakkington’s Ring.
That’s enough for me.

→ ,,I hope you are all as excited about these new items as I am!" <-

Oh yes… I’m NOT.

A huge, huge no for higher stats and a mob mechanic that rewards a gear stat over skill.

I only like it when new skins and content is added. With no stat improvemnts.

Dogblaster.6713:

Death by Chickens.6902:

This outrage is hilariously stupid.

I guarantee an ANet dev will post in the next few days and explain that NO, they said nothing about adding new equipment tiers every 6 months, and as the blog explained, they saw a need to bridge the gap between Exotic and Legendary by adding ONE new tier.

You people are going to give yourself aneurisms over nothing. Stop freaking out. Constructive feedback is great, but ya’ll are taking it too far.

There is no difference between legendary and exotic .. they are totally the same stat-wise

So they added something even better than legendary … use brain next time

Lol you just said there’s no difference in stats, then said ascended is better than legendary?

There’s no point in getting in an argument about this. Everybody is obviously assuming that ANet plans on adding more and more tiers of progression, when they’ve explained the reason for adding this ONE tier.

Give them feedback, make sure they don’t plan on continuing this. Great. But they had good reasons for giving people a halfway step so that players don’t feel stonewalled by the impossibility of exotic -> legendary.

ALL I’m saying is that this is getting blown out of proportion. There is no reason to believe they plan on adding new tiers every 6 months. And yet everybody is ASSUMING they will. The infusion system can be used to create different effects that can be applied to different dungeons, more of a horizontal progression. But it required that they add a new tier to implement the new system.

Talloc.6835:

Alice.8694:

Talloc.6835:

Alice.8694:

Alexander Dragonfang.1759:

Alice.8694:

If you can point out, which part of this announcement explicitly points out that arenanet are turning GW2 into a gear threadmill, power creep snowball. Then your argument might actually hold weight. But you cannot, because it’s simply not there.

Maybe you missed it but…

https://d2vn94glaxzkz3.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/Ascended-EN.png

There you have it, power creep, small, weak, almost unoticable, but power creep after all.

But not a snowball, that is simply a higher plateau. The argument you are making is that somehow these ascended items are going to break the level limit and get progressively stronger.
Nothing mentioned here actually supports that.

Do you know what the snowball argument actually is? Please don’t give me a link, I’d like it in your words.

The snowball argument somewhat ironically is another name for the slippery slope fallacy…
But since you are more implying how it relates to this situation:
The sheer act of increasing the item power will somehow cause a momentum that forces Arenanet to add additional levels of power in order to continue the intended effect of adding the first.

It’s basically an assumption that because they added A therefore they must then add B, C, D, E, F and G to sustain the effect intended by adding A.

Which implies a deliberate ignorance to the current system in place and how what they’ve specifically said would effect it.

And what is your reasoning that they won’t add more progression now that their foot is in the door? I’ve got about five dead MMOs backing up my worries.

I can honestly say I wish I shared your optimism, but this announcement has given me a familiar feeling.

The problem is that a little learning is a dangerous thing. These kiddos heard somewhere that the slippery slope and the snowball are “fallacies.” They are not fallacies by logical necessity. They can be false analogies, but obviously there are real-life slippery slopes and snowballs—literally. It’s an actual phenomenon and when you extrapolate logically from known data, including relevant prior experience, it’s a perfectly valid argument to use. Back to logic and rhetoric class for people who use little cliches without understanding them.

I can’t believe this. First they promise us that there is no gear grind in this game, then they introduce it two months later. Disappointing. Worst part is that you will NEED the gear to do the content and possibly even every other content due to players only willing to group with others with the ascended gear.

Death by Chickens.6902:

This outrage is hilariously stupid.

I guarantee an ANet dev will post in the next few days and explain that NO, they said nothing about adding new equipment tiers every 6 months

Direct Quote from the Blog Post:

This is just the beginning. In November, we’re only adding the first level of Infusions and Ascended Rings and Back slots, so that leaves us a lot of room to build upon these levels of Item progression in future content.

As we release more new end game content in the future, you’ll see more Infusions and Ascended item types being added to the game. Eventually, you’ll be able to kit yourself out with a full set of Ascended gear and high end Infusions to help give you the edge in end game content.

The new additions in November are just the start of our item progression initiative.

They may not have put a time-stamp in there, but that seems like a pretty clear indicator or “More of this to come.”

Talloc.6835:

Go back to WoW if you want your +5 rings.

No need to.

Now that GW2 is all about the gear treadmill, too, he can stay with GW2 if he wants his +5 ring.

Although it’s actually +4%. And 4% in three months makes 17% in a year. That’s more than the difference between rare and exotic.

I am simply devastated by this change. I used to love (used to) GW2 because it was the only mmo out there where I didn’t need a party for anything. Where I didn’t need to have a guild or friends. Where I could play alone and have the very very best gear in game. Even legendaries if I worked hard enough/was lucky enough.
But now you had to just come and cave in to moronic WoW fanboys whine who can’t live without carrot on a stick and you made this new tier of gear.
I can not express how much I am disappointed in you, anet and your game after this. Don’t give me this kitten about “it’s only 3 items” it’s 3 items already with 13 stats difference between them just for one item, 39 for 3 items. My enemy in WvW will have already 39 of some stat more than I do just because he does something I hate to do (dungeons).
Well…. You know… I’m sure you get a point by now so I’m just going to add this: unless you change this update to only exotic level gear with special stat only useful for dungeons, or unless you simply allow us to get these items nice and fast and cheap like we could get exotic gear, I’m quitting GW2 and you won’t see any more money from me. Leave gear progress, rewarding bigger nerds and elitists and overall idea of “play better to have better gear” to WoW. It does NOT belongs here. It won’t work. You won’t get ppl, you’ll only lose them.

phooka.4295:

Talloc.6835:

Go back to WoW if you want your +5 rings.

No need to.

Now that GW2 is all about the gear treadmill, too, he can stay with GW2 if he wants his +5 ring.

Although it’s actually +4%. And 4% in three months makes 17% in a year. That’s more than the difference between rare and exotic.

Actually, it’s 42%, assuming every slot is filled.

NO…

I was promised since BWE2 that I would never have to do mindless grinding for “better gear” and that I could play the game how I wanted to play it, never having to do events/dungeons/content that I didn’t enjoy. So…ANet, keep your promise!

Are you crazy Arena.net? Now i need to farm dungeons to obtain more powerfull back and rings? What about your manifesto? I have purchased the game for those things and i feel betrayed as customer.

While I think the new gear is ok-ish, I do prefer not having additional gear tiers added to the game.

Let the game stand on the gameplay, not on the gear on the horizon \o/
Add more designs, more colours, add weapon dye boss drops, such stuff.

The funny thing is that the vocal minority that wanted this change is already back to playing WoW.

I’m not that kind of guy that go whining around like a tittle kid because of a knee-jerk reaction.

But Folks, i have to say i’m really disappointed in the direction that they want to follow. They are frustrated because a buch of nerd has already obtained full exotics and legendary so HEY let’s just put a tougher goal to reach !!

Well, you know what ? IF you let people use REAL MONEY to acquire an EASIER WAY to obtain full exotic / legendary than DON’T COMPLAIN if 3 months away from the release you’ll see a bunch of people already having it.

No lifers, hardcore gamers and easy goers ALWAYS EXISTS and you can’t revolve a game around those kind of players making CASUAL suffer about that. Yeah becuase, you know A.Net in your “Manifesto” you catered around CASUALS players saying “Heyyy we will not give you an equip-based progression” and guess what ? BAM … is there.

It’s not about those jewels they are going to add this weekend.. it’s about the ITEM PROGRESSION SYSTEM they are going to GRADUALLY implement in the game. Making Legendaries on par with Ascended .. they were just for the look !

it’s not about that “SLIGHTLY” powerful than exotic. It’s about the contraddiction with your original statements. It’s about LISTENING to whiners and kill your reputation that in 7 years of hard work you gained…

Wooohooo, finally theres something to look forward to.. I don’t mind a gear grind at all, Ill only be disappointed if I have to grind for gear that doesn’t look good. ITS GOTTA LOOK GOOD! I don’t know how this is gonna turn out but Id like to say Thank you to Anet for doing something like this. I’m so close to quitting the game because to be honest I need a goal and this might be it. Maybe I can finally say what people say to me now, "we love our game:)

NO.
I’m not excited, I’M WORRIED.

Vice.5247:

I am simply devastated by this change. I used to love (used to) GW2 because it was the only mmo out there where I didn’t need a party for anything. Where I didn’t need to have a guild or friends. Where I could play alone and have the very very best gear in game. Even legendaries if I worked hard enough/was lucky enough.
But now you had to just come and cave in to moronic WoW fanboys whine who can’t live without carrot on a stick and you made this new tier of gear.
I can not express how much I am disappointed in you, anet and your game after this. Don’t give me this kitten about “it’s only 3 items” it’s 3 items already with 13 stats difference between them just for one item, 39 for 3 items. My enemy in WvW will have already 39 of some stat more than I do just because he does something I hate to do (dungeons).
Well…. You know… I’m sure you get a point by now so I’m just going to add this: unless you change this update to only exotic level gear with special stat only useful for dungeons, or unless you simply allow us to get these items nice and fast and cheap like we could get exotic gear, I’m quitting GW2 and you won’t see any more money from me. Leave gear progress, rewarding bigger nerds and elitists and overall idea of “play better to have better gear” to WoW. It does NOT belongs here. It won’t work. You won’t get ppl, you’ll only lose them.

Exactly how I feel.

Talloc.6835:

Alice.8694:

Talloc.6835:

Alice.8694:

Alexander Dragonfang.1759:

Alice.8694:

If you can point out, which part of this announcement explicitly points out that arenanet are turning GW2 into a gear threadmill, power creep snowball. Then your argument might actually hold weight. But you cannot, because it’s simply not there.

Maybe you missed it but…

https://d2vn94glaxzkz3.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/Ascended-EN.png

There you have it, power creep, small, weak, almost unoticable, but power creep after all.

But not a snowball, that is simply a higher plateau. The argument you are making is that somehow these ascended items are going to break the level limit and get progressively stronger.
Nothing mentioned here actually supports that.

Do you know what the snowball argument actually is? Please don’t give me a link, I’d like it in your words.

The snowball argument somewhat ironically is another name for the slippery slope fallacy…
But since you are more implying how it relates to this situation:
The sheer act of increasing the item power will somehow cause a momentum that forces Arenanet to add additional levels of power in order to continue the intended effect of adding the first.

It’s basically an assumption that because they added A therefore they must then add B, C, D, E, F and G to sustain the effect intended by adding A.

Which implies a deliberate ignorance to the current system in place and how what they’ve specifically said would effect it.

And what is your reasoning that they won’t add more progression now that their foot is in the door? I’ve got about five dead MMOs backing up my worries.

I can honestly say I wish I shared your optimism, but this announcement has given me a familiar feeling.

Your dead mmos are meaningless because there are too many variables involved in game development for you to use them as examples. Everything from design philosophy to the guy who makes the coffee in the morning could have some potential factor on how each of them didn’t perform. And more than likely, most of them didn’t die because of adding an additional tier of item rarity. Though you’re welcome to list them so I can speculate on why they died, for a laugh.

Your issue with the game, currently isn’t present. Had they already added a previous tier of item rarity and suddenly their adding another a few months in. I would understand and completely agree with your concerns. But this is the first time they’ve done this. While yes, this is shakey ground from here on. How they proceed from here is very much what decides if they use ascended as the new plateau or if they sucumb to a gear treadmill power creep.
But you cannot claim the latter, simply because they’ve added a new plateau for the first time. You can worry about it however… But there is a difference between worrying and outright claiming their implementing a gear treadmill power creep without any evidence to support it.

My advice to you is:
A. Calm down.
B. Make your concerns for the future known.
C. Don’t make sensationalist rage posts claiming the worst is already happening without evidence.
D. Drink some Tea, Coffee or beverage of choice.

Death by Chickens.6902:

This outrage is hilariously stupid.

I guarantee an ANet dev will post in the next few days and explain that NO, they said nothing about adding new equipment tiers every 6 months, and as the blog explained, they saw a need to bridge the gap between Exotic and Legendary by adding ONE new tier.

You people are going to give yourself aneurisms over nothing. Stop freaking out. Constructive feedback is great, but ya’ll are taking it too far.

I’m not convinced that you are in a position to guarantee anything or that there is any substantive meaning to your assertion that hundreds of commenters here fall into some undefined area of “taking it too far” that only you can judge. I’m convinced that you’re uncomfortable with conflict and want to control other people’s reactions. It’s an unpersuasive, unconstructive line of argument.

Death by Chickens.6902:

Dogblaster.6713:

Death by Chickens.6902:

This outrage is hilariously stupid.

I guarantee an ANet dev will post in the next few days and explain that NO, they said nothing about adding new equipment tiers every 6 months, and as the blog explained, they saw a need to bridge the gap between Exotic and Legendary by adding ONE new tier.

You people are going to give yourself aneurisms over nothing. Stop freaking out. Constructive feedback is great, but ya’ll are taking it too far.

There is no difference between legendary and exotic .. they are totally the same stat-wise

So they added something even better than legendary … use brain next time

Lol you just said there’s no difference in stats, then said ascended is better than exotic?

There’s no point in getting in an argument about this. Everybody is obviously assuming that ANet plans on adding more and more tiers of progression, when they’ve explained the reason for adding this ONE tier.

Give them feedback, make sure they don’t plan on continuing this. Great. But they had good reasons for giving people a halfway step so that players don’t feel stonewalled by the impossibility of exotic -> legendary.

ALL I’m saying is that this is getting blown out of proportion. There is no reason to believe they plan on adding new tiers every 6 months. And yet everybody is ASSUMING they will. The infusion system can be used to create different effects that can be applied to different dungeons, more of a horizontal progression. But it required that they add a new tier to implement the new system.

Please learn to read with understanding.

Legendary are items already in game and they have the exact stats of exotics, but are hard to get.
However, Legendary =/= Ascended.
And if you look at the new Ascended ring, the difference in stats between it and Exotic is more than between Exotic and Rare, so it’s not even a small difference, as mentioned.

MrLee.6892:

QFT!! I am actually WANTING a gear grind again because level 80 is so kitten boring! So what is this new armor has a few stats better than exotic! Then we all have something to do again!

Wouldn’t it be great if we as players would play stuff we find enjoyable, ignoring whether the game awards us an achievement, and whether that achievement comes in the form of a shoulderpiece?

How does this give you something to do if you – apparently – find the game boring? Why do you play a boring game, independent of whether it gives you better gear or not? If you don’t like PvE, don’t play PvE, whether you wear green gear, yellow gear or pink gear. If you don’t like PvP, don’t play PvP. If that means you don’t like GW2, don’t play GW2.

I see the same feedback with Nintendo’s no-global-achievements stance, and it makes me wonder how Skinner-Box-trained most are, by now. It seems getting that digital carrot is much more important than whether the gameplay is actually fun or not.

Blissified.8369:

You people get a grip, their adding another teir, so what? You have to do dungeons to get dungeon gear now dont you? I doub’t their going to make it as hard as legendairys to get its probably going to be between exotic and legendary. Don’t want to get it? Then don’t. This is why i don’t play mmo’s the playerbase is full of qq babys,

• **************IM NOT* saying anet made the right move here, but IM NOT saying they made the WRONG move here UNTIL WE SEE HOW IT FULLY WORKS******************

The thing is you dont, i repeat DONT have to do dungeons to get gear just as good. You do them to get the skin. With this change this new dungeon will be the only way to get those stats. Which makes friends that might not normally do dungeons be of 0 help should they be nice enough to come along if your a man short. Currently there atleast of use because they can get the same level of gear in other ways.

stemare.2578:

NO.
I’m not excited, I’M WORRIED.

Pretty much this.

NO to Ascended armor, this is just crap…

mjalkar.5284:

Well, you know what ? IF you let people use REAL MONEY to acquire an EASIER WAY to obtain full exotic / legendary than DON’T COMPLAIN if 3 months away from the release you’ll see a bunch of people already having it.

This already exists. Buy gems, trade gems for gold, buy exotics.

I won’t play another endless gear grind so I can grind out more gear just so I can prepare for the next gear grind.

http://poll.pollcode.com/zryv2e

I am interested to see the number of people we get to vote on this and your thoughts.

Please post here when you vote to keep this thread alive.

Edit, post about ascended items: https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/linsey-murdock-unveils-new-high-end-ascended-gear/

Alice.8694:

Talloc.6835:

Alice.8694:

Talloc.6835:

Alice.8694:

Alexander Dragonfang.1759:

Alice.8694:

If you can point out, which part of this announcement explicitly points out that arenanet are turning GW2 into a gear threadmill, power creep snowball. Then your argument might actually hold weight. But you cannot, because it’s simply not there.

Maybe you missed it but…

https://d2vn94glaxzkz3.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/Ascended-EN.png

There you have it, power creep, small, weak, almost unoticable, but power creep after all.

But not a snowball, that is simply a higher plateau. The argument you are making is that somehow these ascended items are going to break the level limit and get progressively stronger.
Nothing mentioned here actually supports that.

Do you know what the snowball argument actually is? Please don’t give me a link, I’d like it in your words.

The snowball argument somewhat ironically is another name for the slippery slope fallacy…
But since you are more implying how it relates to this situation:
The sheer act of increasing the item power will somehow cause a momentum that forces Arenanet to add additional levels of power in order to continue the intended effect of adding the first.

It’s basically an assumption that because they added A therefore they must then add B, C, D, E, F and G to sustain the effect intended by adding A.

Which implies a deliberate ignorance to the current system in place and how what they’ve specifically said would effect it.

And what is your reasoning that they won’t add more progression now that their foot is in the door? I’ve got about five dead MMOs backing up my worries.

I can honestly say I wish I shared your optimism, but this announcement has given me a familiar feeling.

Your dead mmos are meaningless because there are too many variables involved in game development for you to use them as examples. Everything from design philosophy to the guy who makes the coffee in the morning could have some potential factor on how each of them didn’t perform. And more than likely, most of them didn’t die because of adding an additional tier of item rarity. Though you’re welcome to list them so I can speculate on why they died, for a laugh.

Your issue with the game, currently isn’t present. Had they already added a previous tier of item rarity and suddenly their adding another a few months in. I would understand and completely agree with your concerns. But this is the first time they’ve done this. While yes, this is shakey ground from here on. How they proceed from here is very much what decides if they use ascended as the new plateau or if they sucumb to a gear treadmill power creep.
But you cannot claim the latter, simply because they’ve added a new plateau for the first time. You can worry about it however… But there is a difference between worrying and outright claiming their implementing gear treadmill power creep without any evidence to support it.

My advice to you is:
A. Calm down.
B. Make your concerns for the future known.
C. Don’t make sensationalist rage posts claiming the worst is already happening without evidence.
D. Drink some Tea, Coffee or beverage of choice.

I could come up with some eloquent, flowing paragraph to cleverly hide a “kitten you” remark, as you seem to have done. However, I’m just going to say, as I’ve said in more detail in previous posts, that gear grinds are stupid, stat upgrades are stupid, and I think the game was fine without them.

They created this shakey ground, as you put it, of their own choosing and it’s my choice to speak out against it and hope they’re simply testing the waters to decide what direction the game is going.

This blog post, dating back to june, 19th 2012, titled “Is it fun?” was the one that made me dream about a long term fun with no grind or “I play more time than you” gear, I actually bought the game after reading it.

http://www.arena.net/blog/is-it-fun-colin-johanson-on-how-arenanet-measures-success

Now, 5 months later, reality brings me back on planet earth and the answer is “No, it is not fun”.

Obviously, I’ll wait and see what these armours are and how they impact the game (especially WWW), but I’m too experienced to not see what is going to happen here (Daoc=> TOA expansion, War => Tomb King, etc., etc.).

Sorin.6713:

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.

It’s not a side grade. It’s an upgrade.

“Ascended gear works a little bit differently than other gear types. The stats and functionality normally added to gear through upgrade components are actually built into Ascended items.”

https://www.guildwars2.com/en-gb/news/linsey-murdock-unveils-new-high-end-ascended-gear/

If you look, those stats and functionality that are built into the ascended items are also higher. So the base stats are higher than the base stats of exotics, and the built in upgrades are higher than the upgrades that can be added to exotics. It’s not an infusion slot instead of those other upgrades, but in addition to them.

As for the question, there’s already plenty of content….much of which is still bugged or unbalanced, which makes it less fun for casuals and hardcore players alike. Adding more potentially buggy content before the existing content is working as intended doesn’t seem like a good solution.

Also, this isn’t a sub based game so why is it a bad thing if players come and go?

I thought that was the point.

Well I’m not even quite sure what ascended items will be at this point, so I’m not voting.

Fallen Angel.5092:

mjalkar.5284:

Well, you know what ? IF you let people use REAL MONEY to acquire an EASIER WAY to obtain full exotic / legendary than DON’T COMPLAIN if 3 months away from the release you’ll see a bunch of people already having it.

This already exists. Buy gems, trade gems for gold, buy exotics.

I know right .. but they said that they are frustrated because we were so fast obtaining those items.. in fact i was just saying that’s just plain stupid to say “Hey i’m frustrated because you were so fast” and then they give an EASY way to obtain this and they they all go SURPRISED becuase many of us already have that kind of equip …

If you give a man an easy way and a hard way to obtain a thing they will be tempted to follow the easy way so you can’t just be surprised if something like that happens .. it’s logical and predictable.

I kind of want to throw up. Part of why I was so excited for this game and loved Guild Wars so much was that there was no gear treadmill. Now they’re adding one in, after a bunch of other mismanagement problems that have haunted this game since launch with the economy and such.

I waited 5 years to enjoy playing this game for a couple months and now it’ll become the things that I hate in other MMO’s.

This genre just might not be for me anymore.

As a player from original GW this new Ascended gear concerns me a great deal…

I don’t have a problem with the Infusion, that was something we had in original GW.

Armor infusion is the only reliable protection against Spectral Agony, the monster skill used by the Mursaat and their Jade constructs.

This new Agony condition for Fractals of the Mists dungeon is pretty much the same thing. I’m going to assume that the infusion is meant to work in the same way that it did original GW:

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Infusion

But this Ascended gear nonsense…?

Quoting from Is it Fun? Colin Johanson on How ArenaNet Measures Success

When your game systems are designed to achieve the prime motivation of a subscription-based MMO, you run the risk of sacrificing quality to get as much content in as possible to fill that time. You get leveling systems that take insane amounts of grind to gain a level, loot drop systems that require doing a dungeon with a tiny chance the item you want can drop at the end, raid systems that need huge numbers of people online simultaneously to organize and play, thousands of wash/repeat item-collection or kill-mob quests or dailies with flavor text support, the best stat gear requiring crazy amounts of time to earn, etc.

But what if your business model isn’t based on a subscription? What if your content-design motivations aren’t driven by the need to create mechanics that keep people playing as long as possible? When looking at content design for Guild Wars 2, we’ve tried to ask the question: What if the development of the game was based on…wait for it…fun?

Okay so Ascended gear has more stats, slightly better stats, all for this new content that is coming out, right? Well what happens after The Lost Shores? With more new content more gear that is slightly better? That makes our previous gear (Ascended) obsolete. And now we are starting a gear treadmill…the endless grind to get the higher stat gear.

Will it stop there though? What will be next? Level grinding? Because there is a level cap of 80 and we are bumping up our gear stats we are going to be bumping up our character level as well?

I don’t want the endless crawl of grinding like there is in World of Warcraft and many other games that use that same kind of structure. Guild Wars 2 was suppose to break away from typical traditions, that is what we were promised. Arena Net, you are going back on that promise.

Also pulled from the same blog as above…

• Fun impacts loot collection. The rarest items in the game are not more powerful than other items, so you don’t need them to be the best. The rarest items have unique looks to help your character feel that sense of accomplishment, but it’s not required to play the game. We don’t need to make mandatory gear treadmills, we make all of it optional, so those who find it fun to chase this prestigious gear can do so, but those who don’t are just as powerful and get to have fun too.

When I read that I think of Obsidian Armor, like in original GW. All of you GW veterans surely know what I’m talking about, but for those of you who are new and never played original GW:

From the Guild Wars Wiki

Historically, this armor set has been the most expensive in the game: it requires the greatest amount of rare materials and its required materials (Obsidian Shards and Globs of Ectoplasm) are among the most expensive (whether acquired in Trade or from a trader).

Players worked hard to get this, it still had the same stats as all the other max level gear in the game though. It was just something extra that we could work towards as a show of our hard work or whatever else.

That was always one thing that I felt GW did perfectly, we didn’t have to grind for gear if we didn’t want to. We could stick with the basic look OR we can go for the more challenging gear and farm to save up for it, because of the amazing look it had as reward. Again, it was something to strive for and a sort of personal accomplishment, but only if we wanted to do it.

If people want more challenging content, that’s fine. You don’t need to throw gear grinding in to it so people can have hardcore content. Think back to original GW, max gear was the same stats across the board and we were able to do Hard Mode content with no problems.

It’s a bad idea

Im totally excited.. I have no idea how people play this game but I seriously have nothing to do. I need to keep progress in order to have fun, this sounds like it might be what I’m looking for. I don’t know why people are against progression. Anet I don’t know how this will turn out but this is a brave move and I respect that. Believe it or not, most MMO players need to keep progressing otherwise they quit.

Continuing from my previous post:

Now to address those who are saying that many of us who disagree with Ascended Gear are simply ‘QQing’. No we aren’t, we have a really good reason to be disappointed over it. Most of us have assumed that Exotic Gear is end of content gear, we have settled in to our armor sets. Many have multiple Exotic armor sets with different stats for varying situations.

For those of you are saying we don’t fully understand the situation and are jumping to conclusions? We know exactly what the situation is and no, we are not jumping to conclusions.

And I quote from https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/linsey-murdock-unveils-new-high-end-ascended-gear/

This is just the beginning. In November, we’re only adding the first level of Infusions and Ascended Rings and Back slots, so that leaves us a lot of room to build upon these levels of Item progression in future content.

As we release more new end game content in the future, you’ll see more Infusions and Ascended item types being added to the game. Eventually, you’ll be able to kit yourself out with a full set of Ascended gear and high end Infusions to help give you the edge in end game content.

Maybe those of you who don’t see this as an issue are used to this from whatever game you’ve come from. That’s great! With all due respect those games are amazing in their own right.

Guild Wars 2 is NOTone of those games… or wasn’t meant to be.

I’m pretty sure most all of understand that this new Ascended gear nonsense is because of the fact that people blew through content and rushed to get Exotic. Ascended gear is suppose to fix all of that and be a cure to those who are complaining.

Guess what is going to happen? Those same people are going to rush through the Lost Shores and get Ascended armor and weapons. Now we are starting a trend. Now each new content release or new expansion armor will have upgraded stats.

So…what will happen?

• Makes all of our current dungeons obsolete.

• Encourages gear requirement to even get in a dungeon group.

• Leaves behind those who stick stick with Exoitc armor. (Also left out of experiencing new content/end game)

• Forces players to dungeon grind for gear. (Because we can’t craft Ascended like we can craft Exotics)

This is an issue, this isn’t the GW many of us loved. To those of you who have apparently wanted this new change, I have to wonder if you even took your time to enjoy the beautiful world that ArenaNet has given us; not everything has to be a grind or be rushed.

It’s only been roughly three months since the games release! Have respect for this game and the way it works, the way it was meant to work.

So, basically, in a month or two any berserker thief/warrior/whatever use that jewel that doesn’t do dungeon but almost only wvw will find other thief/warrior with about +20% critical damage than him…
To me there is no problem to a gear prerequiste for a particular dungeon, but keep them in the dungeon, keep the infusion slot, but you can’t possibly force someone in doing dungeons to equip for wvw :|

Earlier on, ArenaNet promised:

We don’t want the player to ever have to grind and do something they don’t want to do to progress in the game.

And Mike O’Brien said:

Here’s what we believe: If someone wants to play for a thousand hours to get an item that is so rare that other players can’t realistically acquire it, that rare item should be differentiated by its visual appearance and rarity alone, not by being more powerful than everything else in the game. Otherwise, your MMO becomes all about grinding to get the best gear. We don’t make grindy games – we leave the grind to other MMOs.

So I have one very simple but important question for ArenaNet: will we all be able to obtain this new level of gear progression without any form of grinding… including grinding those dungeons?

afoot.6932:

Another player’s 2 cents:
I’m also uncomfortable with ascended armor as it’s described in the massively and mmorpg articles. I thought exotic gear was supposed to be the best, and anything beyond that simply a cosmetic improvement. I’m concerned over how having gear more powerful than exotic would affect the balance of the rest of the game, since I’m just now getting to experience the higher level dungeons. My gut feeling is that, if what people are afraid of is true, ascended armor will only make the game more complicated, not more fun.

Update, given Linsey Murdock’s unveiling:
I need more details, especially on how Ascended items will affect crafting. I’m slowly becoming OK with being able to obtain items of a slightly higher stat grade, but I want to be able to use crafting to do so. Will I be able to craft my own ascended armor, accessories, and weapons? Why did you say that ascended rings will drop in the new dungeon; won’t jewelcrafters also be able to make them? How will not having a normal upgrade slot affect jewelcrafting? Does this mean exquisite jewels are now useless?

As hard as the dungeons and high-level areas are, I actually find the idea of a small stat bonus appealing, as long we don’t keep getting ridiculous new tiers of items hereafter (ala the gear treadmill). From a lore standpoint, ascended/infused armor being the best makes sense and is kind of cool (again, as long as they remain the best, and are not replaced by a new tier of uber-items in a couple months). However, crafting better remain viable, or I’ll be yet another upset customer. I don’t want to have to play in the new dungeon to get ascended items, nor do I want to have to buy them directly off the trading post. I want to craft ascended items, and I await further information regarding this topic.

Note that I’ve seen the blogpost stating that there will be 200 additional recipes added, presumably for ascended items.