Guild Wars 2

Where is the GW philosophy in that? As many others, I would express my disagreement to the introduction of this new tier of item.

I really think there are other ways to fulfill the goals you want to achieve with those items.

People want something new to feel some achievement and progression? No problem.
=> just release some really cool exotic armors and weapons with a story and make it quite uniques. Make it obtainable through some events and link it with the GW lore (a mighty staf of an ancient dwarf king by example)

Awesome skins made GW1, don’t let that down now! Infusing our armor didn’t need stat changes in GW1, why would it now.

Athena.3579:

As many others have said, I don’t understand why they can’t just treat Ascension in GW2 as they treated Infusion in GW1. Why can’t we just “infuse” our current exotics into ascended somehow?

They could, but they have chosen to go in a different direction than GW1 with this game. I too loved the philosophy behind GW1, and wish they had held to it.

Shunsui Jiraiya.9103:

jboynton.7894:

Miragee.3604:

jboynton.7894:

Shunsui Jiraiya.9103:

Anyone heard of an MMO that you can put down, play some single player games for a few months and come back to still be at top stats?

I would love a game where time invested is fun with some visuals being the byproduct reward.

Maybe a day one game where the designers dont need to add bodge treadmills to keep sub’s coming in.

Also it would be awesome to have lots of epic skins to buy for either £/$ or in game currency.

Man, that would be toast-balloons.

Will keep an eye out for some type of manifesto that sets the scene for a game like this to be created over a 5 year period. They may even start a blog to reinforce their ideals…. What could go wrong…..

GW1. It’s still available for purchase here .

And GW1 is, sadly, not blessed with getting new content. Some of us played this game 7 years and saw about everything in this game. Yes I will go back but I’m realistic and say: Not for a very long time again. If there comes a new addon, I would definately buy it (ok, implies that it is a GW1 Addon, not another random mmo addon).
The problem with viable games of that type is, that they need some new content at some point and in this case there aren’t real options.

I was simply posting that in reply to his sarcastic comment that a game does not exist with no vertical gear progression. When in fact one does. GW1.

You miss understood my post, or rather I did not clearly explain.

Im a GW1 fan and followed GW2’s development for years. My dig was the developers seems to have forgotten about their ideals.

Anyways. Im resigning on this tread to get some sleep.

I honestly hope that the post was written poorly and its 1 new tier what will never be replaced. maybe its just a single extra tier as the exotics was far too easy to be the Plato.

I posted a few suggestions back at the double figure pages so wont re-post again but I believe they need to get the PR team out to either offer apologies for the misunderstanding or admit they are scrapping their original core ideals.

Also signature will be updated once I know the outcome

Gotcha. The forums can be a bad medium to try and get a point across when attempting to use sarcasm or other conversation norms to stress a point.

This is not a discussion about gear grind, vertical vs horizontal progression, or even the gating of content. Just about the new mechanic.

This extremely dangerous condition ticks percentages of player health away and can’t be cleansed by normal means. Players who wish to delve deep into the Fractals will find that Agony makes progress increasingly difficult, until they reach the point where some defense against this condition is a must. The only way to mitigate Agony damage is by building up resistance through Infusions

So, it doesn’t matter what your stat build is, how you proportion vit/toughness/power/etc. Doesn’t matter what weapon sets you use, what utilities, what elite – doesn’t matter when and how you use them. It doesn’t matter when you time your dodges, or how you conserve endurance. Basically everything Anet has built the game around “skillful play” is rendered obsolete by Agony. There’s only one thing you can do:

Get new gear that mitigates the condition. No active skill on your part, just a new passive defense against the new condition.

What has this added to the challenge of the game?

I can imagine, say if Agony was an environmental effect around some of the new mobs – say an invisible one of shifting densities, and the densities determine how much damage you take. Perhaps the more infusion, the better you can see the low and high density areas of Agony Mist (this could be as simple as the famous red rings, with different widths to indicate strength). That would at least involve new player skill, new player tactics. Perhaps its sometime advantageous to risk a higher density area to gain positional advantage – or any host of other possibilities.

Now, that idea is rather uncreative and is not necessarily what I think should be done. But its an example that the new mechanic could have added something interesting to the game – interesting meaning it involves player skill, not just a pair of Agony Proof Underpants.

This is my challenge to all of you defending the new Ascended/Infusion gear. What does it really add to the game to challenge player skill? You are all very quick to shoot down opposition to it – but can you defend it as an interesting game mechanic? Can Anet? I do want to know – does this very simplistic damage/mitigation really add something?

veldt.5032:

You are betraying my expectations!

They are not betraying our expectations, they are betraying their own promises.

Also, most “every big MMO that introduced some sort of new mechanic of thingamajig” have bled out and died because of those actions, assuming that you are referring to “copy generic MMO’s” like the context of your posts indicates.

matts.8320:

If the Ascended gear had the same stats as Exotics (base stats + gem) and an infusion slot (which only helped in Dungeons) then I’d be fine with it but the extra tier of gear…. No thanks.

I see a whole lot of ifs like this in this thread. People are going ape kitten over speculation. All I’ve read is that ascended gear will be roughly 8% better than BASE stat exotics. Since ascended gear doesn’t have an upgrade slot, the upgrades are built in. That also means ascended gear won’t be as flexible as exotic gear stat wise.

Relevent to the topic.
Why Boycotts Fail Where Whining Tantrums Win..

I really hope all the people against this keep going/posting and don’t just cave in when the content comes out.

trapline.8541:

Let’s calm down a bit here and discuss this, are people really going to give up customized runes for a small state increase? All we’ve seen bundled in is magic find…

As I said before the ascended in the picture has +10 stat points and +3% magic find. 3% magic find is 67 stat points if you replace it with an other stat on exotics ex.(67 48 48) so on a non magic find ascended ring you’ll probably have +77 stat points. Now imagine a full set of ascended with stat differences like these.

Strang.8170:

We don´t want that kitten, not even in a 1 bloody ring.

Exactly. We don’t want to even open this door. It doesn’t lead somewhere good. We’ve seen where it leads. There are Pandas at the end.

Omega.1473:

Sawyer.9713:

OK so I understand why people are getting so upset about this, but dam how does anyone know that this is not the only time they will do something like this?

“The new additions in November are just the start of our item progression initiative.” – Murdock’s closing paragraph in the blog.

This is just the start…

Why do I hear in my head “IT BEGINS” in a risen voice when I read that. Such an ominous statement.

Siphaed.9235:

I’ve watched this “manifesto” video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=35BPhT-KI1E

WHERE in it do they say that item progression is bad and should be/will be avoided? In fact, most of that Manifesto is about Dynamic Events and the game’s world and art style. Very little of it is (if any @ all) is about dungeons or progression on that weight.

People who are saying “you’re going back on your Manifesto” are lying…. they are either fooling themselves or are trying to deceive the community into turning against Arena.Net.

In fact, the ONLY thing I can think about that might be incorrect in that Manifesto is the part about Grind; but that’s only in relation to Legendary weapons. Then again, it’s not really grind if you rotate it casually with normal play, WvW, guild and friend events. It just scuttles into the background of fun.

In the manifesto they state that they took everything we love about GuildWars and included it in GuildWars 2. Having no stat progression once you reached max level along with the fact that the level cap was never increased are two of the things the GuildWars community loves most. We know it and Arena Net know it too. They never explicitly said that there won’t be any stat progression (at least not in the manifesto), but the fact that they used that phrase implied that there won’t be any.

trapline.8541:

Let’s calm down a bit here and discuss this, are people really going to give up customized runes for a small state increase? All we’ve seen bundled in is magic find…

its not just about stats its about the separation of the community people wanted to get away from in other mmo`s ,
The elitism.

What we will see is people asking for full geared Ascend party players only or face kick from group.

Some people currently ask for exotics when grouping but its pretty easy to get groups any way, adding further tiers of dungeons exasperates this ten fold.

Players wont want to run old content , they will be obsessed with running only the most difficult runs in the new dungeons requiring full resistances.

So what does a new player do? they have a dilemma they need to get at least a set exotics to run the basic new dungeon (which many people are no longer doing) , but their are virtually no people running older content for them to get to that stage.

Every time you add a new set and dungeon based on sets , it makes it harder and harder for new players to join so they quit.

you start gateing your user base , separating casual players from hardcore.
Removing the level playing field not relying on actual player skill but all based around what gear you own.

The same also applies to very casual players whom get left behind , this is some thing ANET promised would not happen.

Drtrider.6314:

If the only way to get the gear is through the dungeon, then bad Anet no bisect. You guys finally broke the stupid gear-grinding-dungeon treadmill I hated. Don’t make me run a dungeon to get best in slot gear when I don’t want to! Give me alternatives just like you did with day one, can some one smack the intern that thought of this?

They didn’t say it was only going to be obtainable through the dungeon… Currently they are only releasing rings and backpacks of which they can be obtained:

“Players will be able to acquire Ascended Rings in the Fractals of the Mists dungeon, and Ascended items worn on the back can be acquired through special Mystic Forge recipes.”

Eventually they are planning to bring out armor but they haven’t said exactly how it’s going to be gotten just that it would be tied to the new 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. […]
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).”

Stevoli.8795:

I see a whole lot of ifs like this in this thread. People are going ape kitten over speculation. All I’ve read is that ascended gear will be roughly 8% better than BASE stat exotics. Since ascended gear doesn’t have an upgrade slot, the upgrades are built in. That also means ascended gear won’t be as flexible as exotic gear stat wise.

But only fools would take exotic jewelry and put a different rune in them to vary the stats since all crafted jewelry comes with a free gem. Changing it means throwing away a perfectly good gem while you could just get the two earrings of a different type than the rest and get more or less the same stats in the end, cheaper and with more flexibility.

Funny how people seem to complain about a small stat increase on a armor slot.
Considering this game has no damage meter or anything to really see the difference in the different stats.
So far it hasnt really made a difference at least for me if i did a dungeon in full exotic or in rare magic find gear.
So why would it make such a big difference between fulll exotic and some new ( small upgraded ) armor?
Apart from the 2nd upgrade slot which is probably needed to do something about new boss mechanics in dungeons.

Stevoli.8795:

matts.8320:

If the Ascended gear had the same stats as Exotics (base stats + gem) and an infusion slot (which only helped in Dungeons) then I’d be fine with it but the extra tier of gear…. No thanks.

I see a whole lot of ifs like this in this thread. People are going ape kitten over speculation. All I’ve read is that ascended gear will be roughly 8% better than BASE stat exotics. Since ascended gear doesn’t have an upgrade slot, the upgrades are built in. That also means ascended gear won’t be as flexible as exotic gear stat wise.

Again, please stop spreading misinformation. Ascended items are equal to an exotic item with upgrade plus 8% more stats.

one of the things i love(d) about this game was the fact that you could get max quality gear from any desired end-game activity: you could craft it, you could buy it with karma, you could buy it with dungeon tokens, or you could buy it with WvW tokens. so i really really really hope that this new level of gear is added to all those options, and not just to this new dungeon and/or the mystic crap hole.

If you can get it through all the major end game activities, great. if not? then i’m super bummed because i really liked this game and wanted to play it for a long time, but i won’t if i’m forced into some crap dungeon to get gear the gear i need for WvW.

and the worst part i’ve read so far is the dungeon specific condition “agony” with it’s associated required gear. that’s just about the worst and laziest mechanic ever invented, and i definitely won’t be taking part in that.

SonicTHI.3217:

Azjenco.9425:

Just curious…

Will people be less upset if ascended gear becomes available in WvW?

No. Its power creep either way and goes against the manifesto and blog posts.
The only way this would be fine is if the infusion thing only applied to the dungeon and you could put it on any exotic or on items with the same stats as exotics only found in that dungeon.

no actually there is another way that this could be fine: when you take the asura gate to Lost Shore your equip changes like it does when you go to the Heart of the Mists.
In lost shore you will have your new item set and you can go to complete your dungeon.

What it does do is assure progression through a set of dungeons. You’ll have to get gear from the first to be able to do the next. Which I don’t mind.

It’s great for the people that love PvE and enjoy progression.

As for your suggestions: You haven’t played the content yet, don’t be so quick to critique.

This is a funcom level of disapointment, truly.

With 114 pages of responses it is obvious that there is a large playerbase that DOES not want stat progression on gear.

Anet, if you want to claim that you listened to the playerbase, do not listen to the 2 posts a day always by the same folks that want gear progression. Add the surveys you had in the betas that worked so awesome.

Im willing to swallow this update, barely, just because I have much faith in you with GW1

What needs to happen to not totally ruin what you stand for
1) ALL DUNGEON gear is upgraded to this stat level, its endgame gear afterall
2) The stat is available to WvW
3) Craftable

Turn exotic into rare drops

ANet, you have opened a door that should have stayed shut.

MikeTsa.7396:

Colin Johanson wrote:
“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.”

Less than 3 months after launch :“In November we’ll unveil the first Ascended items. This new rarity type
falls between Exotic and Legendary on the spectrum of rarity and has
slightly higher stats than Exotics.”

I guess anet just proved they’re just like every other company out there, tend to the whiners follow the money ^^

Oh and Ascended items are not just “slightly better” than exotics. From the picture of the rings they posted you can see an extra +10 stat and a +3% magic find wich is 67 stat points on exotics right now if you put some other stat there.
Pretty sure they posted the item with the magic find % on purpose so the difference doesn’t show that much wich is probably +77 stat points from just a ring.
Imagine a full set when or if they implement it…

Agree, this has nothing to do with whining or complainig that they took away my precious casualgamer jewel.

My problem with this patch is ANet is breaking promises, I don’t care if it’s +1 or +100 stats per item.

I bought GW2 specifically because of the absence of gear treadmills as stated by more than one developer, they gave their word and this is what happens after only 3 months.

I had my fair share tier grinds, now I am sick of it, it’s not like I can’t spare 2/3 hours 4 times per week, I just don’t want to.

I want to enjoy the game as it was advertised: horizontal progression.

There’s no end to vertical progression, look at WoW, look at how many tiers Blizzard pumped into that game. The power creep’s hunger will never be satiated.

I bought what ANet said to be an orange, only to find out it’s a reskinned apple.

Nothing wrong with apples, but I paid for an orange.

Just read the post by Linsey Murdock. I was having so much fun running dungeons too. Now I’m going to be stuck behind “Must need x level of agony resistance to join party for dungeon run.” sigh

There is no ignoring of this Issue. Whether you support the decision or despise it.

This is an added change most weren’t expecting. I for one did not.

I’m still on the fence about how I feel about though. I left WoW because I got tired of every single major patch or expansion I had to start gearing my toon all over again. I thought I wasnt going to have to do that with this game, but it appears that I am going to.

I do know that alot of the folks I play with have already jumped ship. I am afraid this is the beginning of the end of this game. I hope not because I love it, I really do.

Anet, you guys need to have a come to Jesus meeting on this one. People are pissed.
And whether or not the players are for or against this change, you may not wanna throw this on the table.

I guess I’ll wait and see. I will play where my friends are though. At this rate I dont think its gonna be Tyria for much longer though.

/sad

Overall I feel sad and disappointed in Anet’s decision on this. You have done some of the best game and system design out there, and this is the solution? There are so many more creative ways to implement this kind of system without “+5 to power”. You are better than this Anet.

Stevoli.8795:

matts.8320:

If the Ascended gear had the same stats as Exotics (base stats + gem) and an infusion slot (which only helped in Dungeons) then I’d be fine with it but the extra tier of gear…. No thanks.

I see a whole lot of ifs like this in this thread. People are going ape kitten over speculation. All I’ve read is that ascended gear will be roughly 8% better than BASE stat exotics. Since ascended gear doesn’t have an upgrade slot, the upgrades are built in. That also means ascended gear won’t be as flexible as exotic gear stat wise.

I wouldn’t say i was going “ape wordreplacement” over this and that “if” was part of a suggestion…..

I’m just not interested in playing a gear grind MMO which Ascended gear is….

ChairGraveyard.2967:

Again, please stop spreading misinformation. Ascended items are equal to an exotic item with upgrade plus 8% more stats.

If you are referring to the ring in the article, did you notice that the exotic has a blue upgrade on it? While we are speculating, why not include the option that they may be adding exotic upgrades as well.

Fox.3469:

I’ve always defended Arenanet in everything, i love their game and would have kept playing for years even without any content update, but now i feel like this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QiZNSzWIaLo

lol! So true.

So it’s better gear, they will release it piece by piece (even giving us some of it for free from what I read) and yeah…

I’m sick of this in MMOs, all of them. For all of the people talking about ‘it gives us something to do!’ Not really. That’s a fallacy. You know how this works, you power through it, get your pieces of whatever, then quit. Coming back only to get new pieces of when they are available before returning to GW2 dormancy, sort of like the Elder Dragons themselves. Only instead of rising to eat all the magic in the world you rise for the best phat lewts to stand around in town in for a week so the peasants can gawk at your superiority before you get bored and leave again.

If they wanted to give us gear that affected specific dungeons or made them easier in a progressive manner, why not just make it so the existing exotics could be modified in certain places or in certain ways that were interesting or difficult enough to satisfy this supposed majority of QQing ‘hardcores’ who want to start the gear grind all over again?

It just… baffles me. In GW1 we had max stat gear, and when they added Hard Mode we never got anything better. We had to make due with the skills available to us and our wits. That’s more of an achievement IMO than doing a dungeon X amount of times or farming X coin so you can ‘feel’ like you’re achieving something simply by virtue of your stats.

Some people approach this game with the old school MMO way of thinking, fretting over max stats, the ‘best’ builds, and the Legendary Grind. A-Net advertised this as a new way of doing things, no stat grind, do things for fun! What I’ve seen is that some people can’t comprehend doing something for fun without some sort of arbitrary reward to make them feel accomplished. I was hoping A-Net would listen to their fans and not alter their vision just to appease a minority of players, who in my experience in many MMOs over the years, cannot be pleased. Yet RNG is fairly rampant (even for freaking goofy Holiday skins, which should have been purchase from the cash shop just like armor) and this new ‘tier’ of gear has started making me think that this elusive army of ‘hardcores’ (of which I guess I could count myself in name only) who supposedly desperately want these features, are the people they are listening to the most.

PS: Wow, this post ended up being much longer than I intended.

TL;DR:

They did the arbitrary debuff/required dungeon gear thing in LotRo and it was horrible. They eventually removed it due to player outrage.
It’s not a new mechanic. It’s just lazy and annoying.

veldt.5032:

Protip: majority does not equal the loudest population.

Excuse me while I go and play with the hundreds of thousands of players perfectly content with the game, regardless of future patches.

Top tip indeed…which makes me have even less of a clue on why Arenanet based this “item progression initiative” on this 2nd paragraph of the blogpost:

“As we watch Guild Wars 2 mature in its Live environment, we have found that our most dedicated players were achieving their set of Exotic gear and hitting “the Legendary wall.” We designed the process of getting Legendary gear to be a long term goal, but players were ready to start on that path much sooner than we expected and were becoming frustrated with a lack of personal progression. Our desire is to create a game that is more inclusive for hardcore and casual players alike, but we don’t want to overlook the basic need for players to feel like they are progressing and growing even after hitting max level. Adding item progression is a delicate process normally undertaken in an expansion, but we feel it’s important to strive to satisfy the basic needs of our players sooner rather than later.”

So Arenanet implemented this item progression because of the demand of “the most dedicated players” who were becoming “frustrated of lack of progression”.

Tell me when did the (majority of) players who hit level 80 AND done their world completion AND got their cultural/dungeon armour sets AND got their Legendary weapon became so loud and vocal that Arenanet couldn’t possibly have a (different) choice than to implement this “item progression” sooner than they actually planned?

It’s surely can’t have been any more demanding than the hundreds of thousands of people who are perfectly happy with the (current) content of the game and it’s philosophy, can it? (retorical question btw)

Daisai.5879:

Funny how people seem to complain about a small stat increase on a armor slot.
So why would it make such a big difference between fulll exotic and some new ( small upgraded ) armor?
Apart from the 2nd upgrade slot which is probably needed to do something about new boss mechanics in dungeons.

Here is your answer so if you don’t have the right Ascended gear with resistance don’t expect a group invite.

" In the upcoming Fractals of the Mists dungeon, we’ll introduce a new monster condition called Agony.
This extremely dangerous condition ticks percentages of player health away and can’t be cleansed by normal means
Players who wish to delve deep into the Fractals will find that Agony makes progress increasingly difficult, until they reach the point where some defense against this condition is a must. The only way to mitigate Agony damage is by building up resistance through Infusions "

MajorMelchett.6042:

Relevent to the topic.
Why Boycotts Fail Where Whining Tantrums Win..

I really hope all the people against this keep going/posting and don’t just cave in when the content comes out.

Well, for me at least, I know I’m still going to play. My alternatives for an open world fantasy MMO with good action combat (TERA need not apply, not being able to move while attacking sucks) are extremely limited. Until Neverwinter comes out, probably.

That said, I definitely won’t be purchasing any gems if this whole “going back on the entire design of the game” nonsense continues.

Here’s a thought, break into two server sets
a. Those who want gear treadmills get the 8% stat increases
b. Those who don’t, Ascended armor stats remain like exotic

In a month or two, see how populations have adjusted themselves. This way, people can choose (or vote) rather than the noisiest 10% posting on the forums.

Sawyer.9713:

OK so I understand why people are getting so upset about this, but dam how does anyone know that this is not the only time they will do something like this?

The addition of infusion is great and prob would of been much harder to implement on existing gear, so making a new level of gear was a smarter choice IMHO.

They’ve said why they did this. To cater to people that need constant improvent in their gear to reflect their vast play time. That means to cater to these people they will have to continually do this again and again.

Also, the infusion mechanic is not great. It is singlehandedly the worst aspect of the content update. As many people have mentioned this exact mechanic was attempted in LOTRO and it caused the game to fail and go F2P and get removed anyways. World of Warcraft removed attunements before the end of Burning Crusades because of how many players it alienated.

Think on that. The most successful gear grind MMO of all time does not have attunements anymore, and hasn’t for years. Why are they adding a Gear/Content Gate at all? It’s a flawed mechanic that will fail their game. The evidence of that abounds.

For people that had nothing to do in this game, I do pity you.

I am always broke. I haven’t had much over 5g on me at any point.
The money I make in PVE I mostly just turn back over into PVP siege weapons.

I don’t have anything fancy for gear, not even the most expensive runes and sigils, I have second grade “major” versions instead of superiors.

I don’t have any of the feast recipes for my cook because I can’t afford the 4g+ price tag of the vendor materials.

I’m used to being a crafter/pvper in other games and crafting here just does not pay off well. My cook items don’t even have a vendor price.

My personal guild is earning points all the time and those upgrades aren’t done.

I have never ran any dungeon, only stepped inside, solod one mob and left, felt just like every other dungeon. Mobs waiting to be killed with a scripted story and path.

I don’t know how you think you have nothing to do and want a new grind. I login practically every day.

I’ve barely touched the mystic forge.

I haven’t done every event chain in every zone.

My personal story isn’t even done.

I was looking forward to housing and fantasized that mine would be underwater. What, I like the way underwater looks.

My views on gear grinding match the majority – especially when it comes to having to PVE to stay competitive in PVP. I simply don’t have enough time to do it all like when I was still in college. I have to clean my house, do my job, take care of my pets and give them attention. I have a 3 bdrm house with a wooded lot, I’m an adult now. When it needs things I have to put it above the game. Same with work, I have to read up on new tech to stay in the IT field, it’s easy to fall behind and become just a legacy person and I can’t let that happen. When there is a new exploit my boss expects me to know how to protect us, not just plugging it into the search engine. I can’t even fit a relationship into my life and aren’t dating because when would I see them. No, I can’t do the grind, I just can’t. I can’t play wow 2.0.

I’ve been putting in more hours on the game than I should just because it was new and exciting to know that my progress wouldn’t be continually a dungeon grind.

I do pay for another MMO monthly that I don’t even login to but I won’t stop paying for it because they did nothing wrong. It’s a niche mmo but I have something to return to if things don’t work here. I guess I just thought this game was planning on being different.

TLDR – I’m not bored, I don’t need new gear. I would rather see bug fixes over new zones and continued gear progression.

I feel like I got slapped in the face by Arenanet. “Here! This is what you get for believing us! That’ll teach you!”

Great, my 6 complete dungeon sets feel just a bit useless now.

Dungeons that are already hard for some servers to get groups in, will be completely deserted now for the general public. The level 80s will now be running the new dungeons over and over grinding out for the new best in class armor stats and ignoring the dungeons except for the few that want a specific skin.

If you are a casual… good luck getting any dungeons runs in after the 16th. This screams of NCSoft forcing item gearing into the game to try and retain customers when they simply do not understand the current MMO marketplace.

A.net should have given us MUCH more cash shop town cloths and things to do with them like the FREAKIN minigames they annouced in beta.

I was an entirely smitten person with Anet but since the launch of GW2 I have been losing hope with them. Frankly… at this point I am starting to wish GW2 was never annouced at all.

Stevoli.8795:

If you are referring to the ring in the article, did you notice that the exotic has a blue upgrade on it? While we are speculating, why not include the option that they may be adding exotic upgrades as well.

Exquisite Opal Jewel is an Exotic quality upgrade. Text color has no meaning here.

I think it’s too late for ArenaNet to remove this feature. It’s not many days left left for the patch and this is probably one of the major ‘’selling points’’ of this patch, I would guess.

If they remove it now, the dungeon will be totally useless, and they would probably have to remove it too.

I would be glad if they scrapped this feature, it wouldn’t bother me if the dungeon would be useless for this time being, because I don’t like at all where this is heading.

And who knows? If they remove this system now with ascended gear, how many patches in the future they got now will be totally useless because it’s all built around this one thing.

If the problem is only for the scaling difficult of thins new fractal… there is one simple solution:

1)ascended gears with same stats of exotics
2)make “tiers” of infusions with +% resistance to agony +% stats buff when you are in the fractal…when they release a more difficult part of the fractal, they release a new tiers of infusions upgrade, so you need only to change the buff, and not the whole equipment. (no wvw unbalance as well)
3) (optional)make exotics upgradable with infusions too.

Daisai.5879:

Funny how people seem to complain about a small stat increase on a armor slot.
Considering this game has no damage meter or anything to really see the difference in the different stats.
So far it hasnt really made a difference at least for me if i did a dungeon in full exotic or in rare magic find gear.
So why would it make such a big difference between fulll exotic and some new ( small upgraded ) armor?
Apart from the 2nd upgrade slot which is probably needed to do something about new boss mechanics in dungeons.

How about when i’m in full exotics doing WvW and I happen to come by a player with full ascended with a +x% stat boost compared to me? I don’t care about dmg meters but why make me do PvE so I can compete in PvP?
So problem 1 for me if it’s only from doing PvE and you can’t get it from trading post, crafting or WvW while it affects me as a WvW player.
Problem 2, it goes against what they’ve promised us and I quote:
Colin Johanson :
“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.”

For those wondering why ANet hasn’t responded to this thread:
When a designer makes a decision that is not liked, a knee jerk reaction is to be expected. Normally, if you leave the player base alone for a day or two, these reactions will simply cease. Thus, they can safely ignore the pages and pages of outcry thus far. Want to make them listen? Keep talking, and refuse to be soothed by a technique for infants.

kistell.5684:

its not just about stats its about the separation of the community people wanted to get away from in other mmo`s ,

This is an important thing that has been breezed over in this thread. Not necessarily the elitism, as that will exist in some form or another no matter what. While gear gaps are clearly definable and promote elitism that much more, that is not what comes to mind for me.

The other form of separation in PvP and PvE in the form of gear. I am PvPer. Of that form I choose WvW because of it’s large scale, quickly evolving, dynamic nature. However, from time-to-time I enjoy the occasional dungeon. Especially if it includes progressing towards a skin I like.

However, Ascended gear will now gate content to PvEers with that specific type of gear only. It will cut down on the potential player pool available to run those dungeons.

It is the same sort of gating that hurts PvP in other games like WoW and SWtOR. It gates people from participating because they don’t spend enough time in that particular type of gameplay to have gotten the necessary “resilience” stat to be competitive. So rather than jump in for some casual PvP (thus giving us PvPers a larger potential pool to draw from and increase our fun), they opt out of it altogether.

Additionally, none of those stats make the player any better. It is an artificial feeling given to that specific type of gameplay.

No one but the most hardcore will be able to have two sets of armor to be competitive in both aspects of gameplay. Separating the community with an PvE/PvP specific stat is never a good thing.

ChairGraveyard.2967:

MajorMelchett.6042:

Relevent to the topic.
Why Boycotts Fail Where Whining Tantrums Win..

I really hope all the people against this keep going/posting and don’t just cave in when the content comes out.

Well, for me at least, I know I’m still going to play. My alternatives for an open world fantasy MMO with good action combat (TERA need not apply, not being able to move while attacking sucks) are extremely limited. Until Neverwinter comes out, probably.

That said, I definitely won’t be purchasing any gems if this whole “going back on the entire design of the game” nonsense continues.

Which is kinda why i posted the video, loads are saying “well i’m leaving” or “if you don’t like it leave” but just because we are upset doesn’t mean we should leave. We can still play and we can still “whine” on the forums as much as we can, and we can show our disapproval in other ways (not buying gems etc) all while still playing the game.

Basically as the video states, whining works a lot better than just leaving and we need to keep whining until we get heard.

hmmm are we sure its actual armor? and not accessories like back pieces and rings? so far the only photo i have seen that shows anything has someone in gear that is easy to get, but with a back piece that has never been in game. Sooooo…. if we dont even know what kind of pieces they are…. then why are we freaking out over something we have nto enough information on to make an informed decision?

Despite the massive amount of negativity here, I’m quite looking forward to the content.

I want to believe that this is a horizontal progression path, rather than a vertical one. Adding minor buffs to characters for the PvE content of the game through infusions gives lateral progression where before there was none. As long as stat inflation doesn’t touch sPvP and Arena Net are VERY cautious there isn’t a problem.

mcarswell.3768:

one of the things i love(d) about this game was the fact that you could get max quality gear from any desired end-game activity: you could craft it, you could buy it with karma, you could buy it with dungeon tokens, or you could buy it with WvW tokens. so i really really really hope that this new level of gear is added to all those options, and not just to this new dungeon and/or the mystic crap hole.

If you can get it through all the major end game activities, great. if not? then i’m super bummed because i really liked this game and wanted to play it for a long time, but i won’t if i’m forced into some crap dungeon to get gear the gear i need for WvW.

and the worst part i’ve read so far is the dungeon specific condition “agony” with it’s associated required gear. that’s just about the worst and laziest mechanic ever invented, and i definitely won’t be taking part in that.

This !!!

/signed

Yep, I don’t think the game will die off because of this, but I know that many players won’t even think twice about their future expansions if they continue with this.

Bad design decision Anet; there are so many other ways you can go about adding in that illusion of progression some players seek, but you had to go with the most unimaginative and overused one in MMOs.

I mean I have put hundreds of hours into games like Modern Warfare 1, MW2, and Left 4 Dead… guess what? No gear grind! No (need) for leveling! Everything is perfectly viable from the start in those games and keep players playing for much longer than what I have put into them! Yes, they are of a different genre, but that doesn’t mean that some of the mechanics that keep players playing couldn’t work as a form of progression here.

Point is you can branch out and go with other design mechanics and there are plenty of them to go with that would easily bring a fresh and exciting face to the MMO genre.

nachtnebel.9168:

Siphaed.9235:

I’ve watched this “manifesto” video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=35BPhT-KI1E

WHERE in it do they say that item progression is bad and should be/will be avoided? In fact, most of that Manifesto is about Dynamic Events and the game’s world and art style. Very little of it is (if any @ all) is about dungeons or progression on that weight.

People who are saying “you’re going back on your Manifesto” are lying…. they are either fooling themselves or are trying to deceive the community into turning against Arena.Net.

In fact, the ONLY thing I can think about that might be incorrect in that Manifesto is the part about Grind; but that’s only in relation to Legendary weapons. Then again, it’s not really grind if you rotate it casually with normal play, WvW, guild and friend events. It just scuttles into the background of fun.

In the manifesto they state that they took everything we love about GuildWars and included it in GuildWars 2. Having no stat progression once you reached max level along with the fact that the level cap was never increased are two of the things the GuildWars community loves most. We know it and Arena Net know it too. They never explicitly said that there won’t be any stat progression (at least not in the manifesto), but the fact that they used that phrase implied that there won’t be any.

Now that’s stretching it by a mile at the very least. Going from “taking everything we love about Guild Wars and putting into Guild Wars 2” and turning it into “there won’t be any ‘stat progression’ at all”. Would you like a slice of lemon with that major twist of words?

And, if you’re furious about stat progression @ 80, shouldn’t you already be upset that there’s level 80 whites, blues, greens, rares, and Exotics? I mean, if you really wanted absolutely NO stat increases at 80, then there should only be Exotics; right?

Also, I don’t see this as the same thing. Tiers are flat-stat across the board when it comes to comparing it to other Tiers. All 80 rares are in the same tier and would have the same attributes; same with 80 exotics; and now same with 80 Ascended items. This is different than other MMORPG’s that may have 50 different level 80 “rare” purple items, each having a different stat configuration and one being more powerful than the rest and so on.

The item tier set up in Guild Wars 2 is still uniquely different than that of other MMORPG’s and still is NOT a grind fest that people think of. When players run a dungeon: EVERYONE GETS REWARDED! Everyone gets the tokens when the final boss dies. Everyone gets to open the chest and loot stuff from The Claw of Jormag, rather than just 2 people for two random items out of 40 participants.

You think this is grind? You really think that GW2 is grind? YOU KNOW NOTHING OF GRIND!

Nachyochez.9758:

For those wondering why ANet hasn’t responded to this thread:
When a designer makes a decision that is not liked, a knee jerk reaction is to be expected. Normally, if you leave the player base alone for a day or two, these reactions will simply cease. Thus, they can safely ignore the pages and pages of outcry thus far. Want to make them listen? Keep talking, and refuse to be soothed by a technique for infants.

That’s one possibility. The other, slightly more optimistic one, is that the largest ragestorm over a proposed MMO patch in years actually DID make an impact and their damage control team is currently discussing a smooth way out of this mess while saving their collective faces.

One can always hope…

In either way – we need to keep our voices heard in case you’re right.