Guild Wars 2

BadHealer.3608:

Loosifah.4739:

I personally welcome the new content. Especially since they’ve defined that the gear progression WILL end as Rare -> Exotic -> Ascended -> Legendary.

I did pick out your statement, but it had been posted by others.

Why do you think that Legendary is the best? Since it can’t be infused, you can’t run all the dungeons with it. Ascendend will be stronger (if you run the dungeons) and easier to optain. But you could use it, if you need it for a special build.

If you are doing WvWvW you may use Legendaries, but Dungeons will be always Ascendes only or the people will laugh at you.

Legendary will be upgraded to Ascended status.

But Loosifah is still wrong, again, in his post.
Ascended == Legendary
There is no progression between them because the stats stay the same.
Just more bling some people don’t care for at all.

But there is already gear progression. You already go from white to orange gear through the process of leveling. Try _not _ progressing your gear and see how well those starting whites work out 20 levels later.

They seen a gap, they needed to fill it. When they add new weapons that will likely fill some gaps in current profession weapon skill limitations. There was a lack of things to do post 80, they are adding a zone. Dungeons lacked proper rewards, so they buffed them up a bit. They want to add a new feature, but a current mechanic is too limited, so they change the mechanic to be more flexible.

People are freaked out because a change needed to be made to gear. That doesn’t mean the end days are coming. Six months from now we will all have it and this will be forgotten, and people that get the game down the line will never even know the tiers were any different. What greens have been to us between blue and gold, pink will be to future players between orange and purple.

Honestly, 90 days is still a game in it’s infancy. Expect changes.

Who remembers refund points in GW? Nothing is sacred. Even your trait system might get changed and tweaked to work differently. The Dervish and Elementalist patches? Your utility skills might one day have the same name and icon, but do something completely different.

ALL aspects are subject to change. You’ll be much happier if you jsut throw off the tinfoil hat and enjoy the ride.

tkalamba.2541:

Rin.1046:

tkalamba.2541:

The gap has nothing to do with stats, but the time investment from getting a exotic vs a Legendary. You can get your full set of Exotic armour in about 3 days after hitting level 80. Likely sooner if you knew what you were doing, solely through regular play. Legendaries on the other hand require a rather large time/resource investment. There is such a large gap inbetween. They are giving players something to work towards in the end game. I had all my exotic (minus jewellery, never bothered) before I even finished my personal story.

I understand and agree with this, but why the stat boost? They could have achieved this without a boost in stats very easily.

The stats boost offered isn’t even proportional to the difference between Rare to Exotic. It’s there to differentiate Ascended from Exotic likely, sure it may not have been needed. But they wanted people to weigh the option of using a customizable exotic, or using the Ascended to avoid Exotics becoming fully pointless. So Ascended get a slight stat increase to be useful, but given the significant disadvantage of not being customizable. You can a full set of Ascended, but none of the stats could suit your build… which where as an Exotic set decked out with your chosen Sigils, Jewels, and Runes will be built specifically to your needs.

It’s not a direct upgrade in the same way that going from Rare to Exotic was. It’s more of Option A vs Option B. Which would you prefer? Having a set of Ascended that doesn’t suit your build, or the flexibility of Exotics? This prevents one overshadowing the other. The stat upgrade is so small, that it will barely alter your characters stat pool. The +5 stats over an exotic we’ve seen on that ring, out of your characters total pool is so small, it won’t affect anything.

You may be able to work Ascended gear to match your build, but we don’t know if all stats will be available, or if they will all use a primary stat of magic find.

I’m sorry mate bit.. wrong =( . You see, in ONE ITEM it is 5 stats. that means, in all 5 pieces of jewelery its +25, and in all armor another +25, so aprox. +50 of one stat. I am sorry, but that’s not a ‘slight’ edge. What they are encouraging is not new builds, or build A or B, but now some builds won’t even be viable. Say you had this fun vitcrit build (example). If there are no vit+crit ascended items your builds goes to trash.

(My humble opinion).

Rhyaehar.9504:

BadHealer.3608:

Loosifah.4739:

I personally welcome the new content. Especially since they’ve defined that the gear progression WILL end as Rare -> Exotic -> Ascended -> Legendary.

I did pick out your statement, but it had been posted by others.

Why do you think that Legendary is the best? Since it can’t be infused, you can’t run all the dungeons with it. Ascendend will be stronger (if you run the dungeons) and easier to optain. But you could use it, if you need it for a special build.

If you are doing WvWvW you may use Legendaries, but Dungeons will be always Ascendes only or the people will laugh at you.

Legendary will be upgraded to Ascended status.

But Loosifah is still wrong, again, in his post.
Ascended == Legendary
There is no progression between them because the stats stay the same.
Just more bling some people don’t care for at all.

BadHealer’s point is that there’s no indication that Legendaries will have an infusion slot. It seems clear that only Ascended items will have it. If this is the case, Ascended items become better than legendaries

jakep.9572:

Let’s get something straight:

People who came here from GW1, the fans of ArenaNet who have been excited about the game for the last 5 years, have not been asking for stat progression. We have understood that the philosophy of Guild Wars is to have an easily obtainable stat ceiling where players are equally geared and then the effort becomes about being a better or more strategic player.

There may have been many people asking for stat progression or better items, but they are not the groupies. They are not the fanboys. They are the people who are now pandas off in a different world

Yeah, which is why I said, 143 pages of dissent.

There’s been a lot of these ‘make the game like other MMOs’ guys, asking for this exactly, and ANet is giving them what they want. Like I said, you should be careful what people ask for, because now everyone’s paying for it.

Urxx.6840:

They trashed the holy trinity so you could any dungeon without having the classic “LF tank” or “LF priest”.

Wait, now we have “LF full ascended player”. That’s much better.

I have yet to see LF full exotic player. So that argument doesn’t hold that much ground.
Though I guess you will see LF ascended player for deeper levels of the same dungeon.

I have all eight characters I am leveling, but at the very end of things…Elementalists are my love! I don’t play the game to own up, but more to wonder what works and doesn’t work.

I enjoy the time. I don’t rush the content either because i feel I drain myself if I do. If a player rushes through a game, of course they are going to run out of things to do.

So far what I have are many hours of trying out crazy things with elementalist on different builds. I recently got the commander tag and used it to try to help our server in WvW. I haven’t made a Legendary yet due to the fact that I can’t use Power, Vitality and Toughness and if I made a Legendary Weapon, I would like to work towards the stats that I actually want. Not make a weapon and then give its looks to another.

I currently have around 3 exotic armor sets, 2 exotic weapon sets for Ele. I am working on things on my other characters, but the best gift of all is that I am having fun raising a guild from scratch and the people I’ve met to help and share the dream and ambition of it drive me to do better.

Its an MMORPG, Ascended Gear at least adds wonder to a game where most players know almost everything about everything.

The second thing is the special idea that I can truly show that I would represent my favorite of my characters by actually going after ascended gear. Sure, we can all get exotics for our characters, but what about the ones you love most? Your main character? Don’t they deserve something special?

Some believe Ascended Gear isn’t the answer, but didn’t you all scratch your head when you made your Legendaries and asked “Where’s the Legendary Armor to match the Legendary Weapon?”

I don’t mind ascended gear under one condition:

In many games the programmers do the extremely cheap thing of introducing a new tier or new “top weapon and armor” of the game, then a few weeks later, they weaken the characters themselves. Then your top weapon and armor take five to ten times more time than the previous set to get, just to reach your old power levels.

Runes of Magic and Lineage 2 were like that, which was a reason I left the two games.

I remember when I got the highest of the highest gear and then all characters were nerfed since the “top gear” unbalanced the game. Then all the characters with top gear had less power overall than the previous set and it was written of as a “Game Balance.”

I just hope we do not suffer the very same fate.

BadHealer.3608:

Loosifah.4739:

I personally welcome the new content. Especially since they’ve defined that the gear progression WILL end as Rare -> Exotic -> Ascended -> Legendary.

I did pick out your statement, but it had been posted by others.

Why do you think that Legendary is the best? Since it can’t be infused, you can’t run all the dungeons with it. Ascendend will be stronger (if you run the dungeons) and easier to optain. But you could use it, if you need it for a special build.

If you are doing WvWvW you may use Legendaries, but Dungeons will be always Ascendes only or the people will laugh at you.

Wow, you need to re-read the Dev Blog. Your ignorance is notwithstanding.

Rhyaehar.9504:

Legendary will be upgraded to Ascended status.

But Loosifah is still wrong, again, in his post.
Ascended == Legendary
There is no progression between them because the stats stay the same.
Just more bling some people don’t care for at all.

Exactly. Ascended will be the new exotics and exotics will be only good in old content that doesn’t require infusions.

And to those who imply that if someone is unhappy with this new tier it must be because they haven’t read the dev’s post carefully: this is not speculation, it’s in Lindsay Murdock’s post.

AcidicVision.5498:

Vytality.3195:

…
A broken hearted ex-fan.

I love that your guild is Spirit of Faith, and your tag is HOPE, yet you are supposedly abandoning a game based on an update and content you haven’t even played yet.

Even after Chris came in here and said Ascended was the last tier that will be added for mechanical reasons and to avoid it being a gear grind they are rolling it out a few pieces at a time so even casual players can get it at a comfortable pace rather than farming it out. There will not be another tier added. Done. We got our clarification.

If people have forgotten what a tread-mill is, it’s a thing you run on forever and never get anywhere. A new intermediate type of gear that is introduced piece by piece to mitigate grind/farm while being introduced does not a treadmill make.

But he did not say “there will not be another tier”, he said “we don’t plan to add a new tier every 3 months”.

There is a huge difference there. If they planned to never add another tier, why don’t they just pop in and SAY THAT.

If however, they are adding this tier so that people have something to do… what happens once the tier is fully released? Well, as long as it is more than 3 months down the road they will just add a new one.

Vertical and Horizontal progression systems are mutually exclusive. You can segregate them if you want, but they can’t be both used for the same content. It’s either one way or the other.

FrizzFreston.5290:

Urxx.6840:

They trashed the holy trinity so you could any dungeon without having the classic “LF tank” or “LF priest”.

Wait, now we have “LF full ascended player”. That’s much better.

I have yet to see LF full exotic player. So that argument doesn’t hold that much ground.
Though I guess you will see LF ascended player for deeper levels of the same dungeon.

It does hold ground because only Ascended armor can be Infused and thus offer any protection from Agony.

tkalamba.2541:

The stats boost offered isn’t even proportional to the difference between Rare to Exotic. It’s there to differentiate Ascended from Exotic likely, sure it may not have been needed. But they wanted people to weigh the option of using a customizable exotic, or using the Ascended to avoid Exotics becoming fully pointless. So Ascended get a slight stat increase to be useful, but given the significant disadvantage of not being customizable. You can a full set of Ascended, but none of the stats could suit your build… which where as an Exotic set decked out with your chosen Sigils, Jewels, and Runes will be built specifically to your needs.

It’s not a direct upgrade in the same way that going from Rare to Exotic was. It’s more of Option A vs Option B. Which would you prefer? Having a set of Ascended that doesn’t suit your build, or the flexibility of Exotics? This prevents one overshadowing the other. The stat upgrade is so small, that it will barely alter your characters stat pool. The +5 stats over an exotic we’ve seen on that ring, out of your characters total pool is so small, it won’t affect anything.

You may be able to work Ascended gear to match your build, but we don’t know if all stats will be available, or if they will all use a primary stat of magic find.

I’m not totally convinced by this. Though I see your point that Exotics are more customizable, the addition of infusion slots makes ascended gear necessary for fractal dungeons and quite possible future non-dungeon content. If they add world bosses that cause agony, your exotics will be next to useless. No amount of customization will help you then. Plus, I’m not keen on the idea of having a set of gear just for one dungeon.

I still feel that the stat boost is totally unnecessary and progression could have been achieved without it. The inclusion of the infusion slot is fine, I have nothing against that. In fact I quite like the idea. But I really see no need to add more stats. I also do not see why they cannot add an upgrade AND an infusion slot to the same piece of armour. Have Exotics as max stat and infusions as the progressive mechanic. They can also add in extra skins that take more effort to get, to ‘bridge’ that gap to legendaries.

Rhyaehar.9504:

Ascended == Legendary
There is no progression between them because the stats stay the same.

Until the WoW-Item-Chasers are bored again and then they set in a new tier and upgrade legends. ( I think not more than 5% of all players will ever have these legends, so the normal player can throw his “endgear” into the Trashcan again and again and again ). Treadmill.

Loosifah.4739:

They did properly respond to this thread. Just not IN the thread. Read the announcement.

Yeah. There it stands again, that nothing we are complaining about will be changed. Nice that this has been assured again.

tkalamba.2541:

Ganzo.5079:

Loosifah.4739:

From everything I’ve read the new ascended armor has higher base stats because you can’t rune/orb them up to give them a stat increase. Therefore they’re only really useful for the infusion slot to prevent agony in the dungeon.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Infusion

Where is stated that infusion work only for dungeon? i see only that infuse an item give an innate agony resistance, but we don know if the infusion effect give us something like rune or sigils effects that can be used outside dungeons!
So we have all the right to enrage because the information we have are NOT CLEAR. Is useless to complain when the update its already UP… After an update you have only the option to rage quit!

It actually has been clear, and people are missing it. Agony is ONLY a factor in the new dungeon. No where else.

and New Dungeon’s like it

all it is will be a new form of content, i dont think its ment to replace story/explorables

just anouther option for endgame content

Nymia.3256:

AcidicVision.5498:

Vytality.3195:

…
A broken hearted ex-fan.

I love that your guild is Spirit of Faith, and your tag is HOPE, yet you are supposedly abandoning a game based on an update and content you haven’t even played yet.

Even after Chris came in here and said Ascended was the last tier that will be added for mechanical reasons and to avoid it being a gear grind they are rolling it out a few pieces at a time so even casual players can get it at a comfortable pace rather than farming it out. There will not be another tier added. Done. We got our clarification.

If people have forgotten what a tread-mill is, it’s a thing you run on forever and never get anywhere. A new intermediate type of gear that is introduced piece by piece to mitigate grind/farm while being introduced does not a treadmill make.

But he did not say “there will not be another tier”, he said “we don’t plan to add a new tier every 3 months”.

There is a huge difference there. If they planned to never add another tier, why don’t they just pop in and SAY THAT.

If however, they are adding this tier so that people have something to do… what happens once the tier is fully released? Well, as long as it is more than 3 months down the road they will just add a new one.

Vertical and Horizontal progression systems are mutually exclusive. You can segregate them if you want, but they can’t be both used for the same content. It’s either one way or the other.

No need to get hung up on the 3 months part, it was just a reference to the fact that the games been out 3 months.

They realized that what they did with exotics was a mistake. The fact that you could be fully decked out in final tier min/maxed gear in a day greatly reduces the game’s lifespan for a large group of players. If exotics actually took effort to get and at least a month to obtain, then ascended gear may not be needed. With ascended gear, they’re purposely gating the acquisition of it. The first dungeon will be 2 pieces. At that rate, it’ll take 6-9 months to complete a full set.

A lot of people seem to be misreading this line: “we’re only adding the first level of Infusions and Ascended Rings and Back slots”. Some people seem to be reading it as “we’re adding the first tier of ascended items” when it actually says “we’re adding ascended rings and back pieces along with the first tier of infusion upgrades”.

As for claiming there’s a gear treadmill because of a single tier, there will always be one. This isn’t GW1 where the level cap will be the same forever.

Ascended items aren’t even the best items available. Sure, if you look at a simple side by side comparison or don’t care about stats they are, but look at the big picture. It would actually be really funny if all ascended gear had magic find on it, because you know, it comes from a dungeon that revolves around grinding it for rare ascended gear.

FrizzFreston.5290:

Urxx.6840:

They trashed the holy trinity so you could any dungeon without having the classic “LF tank” or “LF priest”.

Wait, now we have “LF full ascended player”. That’s much better.

I have yet to see LF full exotic player. So that argument doesn’t hold that much ground.
Though I guess you will see LF ascended player for deeper levels of the same dungeon.

You don’t see that because currently gear doesn’t have such a steep entry barrier.
In GW1 (where they took the whole agony / infusion idea) you could tell if someone was infused as soon as you were hit by agony. Those who weren’t would die in seconds.

Nobody in GW1 would have took a character in their group who wasn’t infused to do content which inflicted agony. The guy would have been kicked after the first fight against a mursaat.

It’s very simple.

DON’T MAKE BETTER GEAR!

Even after the ‘explanation’ we got, we still think it shouldn’t happen. So please, DON’T DO IT ANET!

Call Me M.6392:

Bardes.1870:

Pants.8315:

A treadmill implies it’ll keep going. If you read the blog post, they say that they intended to add one set. Ascended gear. One set = a step, not a treadmill.

They also stated that the harder to obtain “rarer” ascended items will have added +Agony residence. So apart from the original items (which have also been stated to be attainable outside of the dungeon in the future), there is no need to keep repeating the content to get better ascended items unless you want to.

Completely optional; once the full compliment of Ascended items have been added to the game, PvE and WvWvW, then unless you want extra +agony resistance, which is only useful in that one dungeon, you never have to set foot in dungeons.

It’s one extra set, that contains a slot that has the potential to add repeatable dungeon content for those that want to improve their +agony resistance and infusions, whilst not alienating those that don’t want anything more than a basic set of ascended gear but have no intention of running a dungeon, because if your not running the dungeon then the gated agony additions are entirely irrelevant.

They clearly stated that their goal is to create an extra level of progression between Exotics and Legendary items. Not keep creating better and better tiers. The ascended items contain a slot that is only useful in a repeatable scaling dungeon, giving repeatable content for those that enjoy that. The post said it will be obtainable in other ways, meaning you never have to set foot in that dungeon once extra avenues are introduced to get the gear.

It is purely horizontal and actually quiet clever. Introducing a set of gear with a slot that allows entirely optional extra content if people want it.

Having said all of that. I still cannot work out why it has a stat increase

Well, they said exo would be the cap …. do you really believe the whole plan is just a step?

If they can make a new tier for those who are boring and need something to grind, they will NEED to make another tier for those people again.

Yes, the first time I read it , it sounded convincing. But this is not the complete picture. Difficulty of the content is balanced against the current gear tiers. Adding another tier on top of the current ones, either means that existing and planned content will become easier then originally intended. Or they will make existing content more difficult to counter that.
I expect at least that planned max lvl content will become balanced towards the new planned tiers. This is gated content imo. It might be not the same steep slope as in other MMO’s , but the principe is the same.
Yes, no one forces you to go for this new gear tier. But then no one forces you to equip any tier to begin with. You can already chose to die all the time if you want.

Seriously, there are so many ways to make people to “have something to do”.

If Anet wanna create a new set of gears, it is possible that the cap remain the same. They can make some ascended gems. Players need to grind these gems to create special gear. For example, a condition/healing/+magic find ring requires primary condition asc gems, secondary healing asc gems and secondary mf asc gems. From this way, no cap will be broken. There are just more customizable geras.

Cap doesn’t need to be broken, but they are breaking it. For me, the blog post and what posted by Chris were just all excuse. It seems they are trying to persuade not only the raged users, but also themselves.

ThiBash.5634:

Tyr

All they’re trying to do is fix their initial mistake and make the last tier of gear before Legendary take a bit more time to obtain.

That’s open to debate. To me, getting an easy set of maxed equipment was what appealed to me in GW 1. I really like the concept of working on your skill instead of on getting better gear. On no occasion should it really be hard or time consuming to get a set of maximum equipment. The fact that it will give certain people an advantage in WvW makes it even worse.

So in a nutshell, I’m still against it.

I’m still against it as well. All I’m saying is that I understand why they’re doing it. Eventually, it will all be back to normal once they introduce Ascended gear in outlets other than dungeons and everyone gets back to equal gear footing with each other. What’s uncertain is whether the damage from all this fallout would have made this polarizing change worth it or not. I personally don’t think its worth it, but only time will tell.

Healix.5819:

This isn’t GW1 where the level cap will be the same forever.

And why do you think so? I actually hope, there won’t be any changes in level cap.

Edit: removed mis-quoted post.

Instead of assuming why peopel are unhappy about the new system, how about you actually read what they have to say?

Some people are unhappy because they bought GW2 (mainly) because it promised to get rid of vertical progression, a system they dislike for various reasons They feel victims of false advertising.

Some peopel think that vertical progression will remove the possibility of leaving the game for a longer period of time and coming back stiff on the same plateau of power as other players, something GW1 offered and what was really amazing.

Some people are unhappy because tehy’ve put what they believe to be considerate effort on their part to acquire Exotic: effort they would not go for (to that extent) if they knew there was another tier coming (my girlfriend got her Exotics and then used Fine Transmutation Stones, which she paid for with real money, on each and single one of them to make them look like she wanted – she would not have done it if she knew that’s not the last tier).

Some people see that it Ascended is unbalanced for sPvP, it also means it’s unbalanced for other types of PvP, so WvWvW.

Some people foresee the “LF1M full Ascended min t6 Infusion” in a game that prizes itself on removing the “LF1M Healer only”.
(only Ascended gear can be Infused so if you plan on doing content that requires protection from Agony, you need it)

Some people think all the above.
And there are probably other reasons as well. Make an efford and you will find them, along with some good arguments.

Thorquist.8126:

Healix.5819:

This isn’t GW1 where the level cap will be the same forever.

And why do you think so? I actually hope, there won’t be any changes in level cap.

The fun thing about that was, that even though you could be level 20 in a day, the game only started with that. Here, it seems becoming max is the end of things.

You know, when I first found out about Ascended gear, I was not happy. But now that they have clarified why they added it, and I have had some time to think about…I think it may not be a horrible thing. Here’s why…

First, believe it or not GW2 has ALWAYS had gear progression. Right now, in game, there are four tiers of statistically different gear. And even though exotics aren’t that difficult to get, many level 80’s don’t even have full exotics. I’ve been playing since release, and I still don’t. So to say that they are “adding” gear progression with this update is just plain false…it was ALWAYS there. And I honestly believe that if Ascended gear were in the game at release, then no one would have cared…after all, no one has really griped about exotics.

Second, ANet never promised that would not have gear progression. All they promised was that exceedingly rare items that took an exorbitant amount of time to achieve would not offer significant a significant combat advantage over gear that was more easily achieveable. So as long as Ascended gear does not take an exorbitant amount of time to achieve, then I don’t really see a problem.

And from Chris’ post, we learned that Ascended gear will be obtainable via many different ways, including WvW. This means that you won’t be forced into doing some dungeon that you don’t like just to get Ascended gear for WvW. You should (eventually) be able to acquire it in many different ways…which would make you think that it’s not extremely difficult to achieve.

I guess in the end, we just have to see how difficult it is to achieve Ascended gear. If it’s not too much of a pain to get, then I have no problem with it.

Thorquist.8126:

Healix.5819:

This isn’t GW1 where the level cap will be the same forever.

And why do you think so? I actually hope, there won’t be any changes in level cap.

ANet actually claimed during the development of GW2 that while yes they will rise the cap from initial 20, it will stay capped on the same principle as in GW1.

However, given that no vertical progression was part of that principle as well, I have my doubts if that is still true.

Thorquist.8126:

Healix.5819:

This isn’t GW1 where the level cap will be the same forever.

And why do you think so? I actually hope, there won’t be any changes in level cap.

This update opens up level cap increases down the line as they’ll just say we upgraded legendaries to be in line with the best gear. As well as adding a new gear tier when they do as there will be a gap to be filled again then.

The fact that anet keeps being this quiet tells me they are completely ignoring this. I certainly hope this completely bites them in the kitten and they have to grovel to get a semblance of reliability back.

Nymia.3256:

But he did not say “there will not be another tier”, he said “we don’t plan to add a new tier every 3 months”.

There is a huge difference there. If they planned to never add another tier, why don’t they just pop in and SAY THAT.

IMO he did say that. I guess that’s where we discerned different things from the response. I read “we don’t plan to add a new tier every 3 months” as a direct answer to the thousands of posts screaming “This is the beginning…there will be a new tier every three months!!!”

Sort of like how a parent would reply to a kitten child. “You’re going to leave me in the mall tomorrow!” “No. I’m not going to leave you in the mall tomorrow.” That doesn’t mean the parent plans on abandoning the kid the day after right?

I think maybe you are being just a bit paranoid and looking too literally at wasn’t said instead of what was said and who it was directed at. But then you could tell me i’m being too naive by giving the quote context.

Neither of us can be proven right or wrong for what…at least another 3-6 months right? So then why not just give the new stuff a try and see if you have fun with it until then?

Nymia.3256:

But he did not say “there will not be another tier”, he said “we don’t plan to add a new tier every 3 months”.

There is a huge difference there. If they planned to never add another tier, why don’t they just pop in and SAY THAT.

Never say never. It only leaves you open to complaints when 10 years from now, you decide to. That’s why developers no longer like to confirm/deny future possibilities.

Thorquist.8126:

Healix.5819:

This isn’t GW1 where the level cap will be the same forever.

And why do you think so? I actually hope, there won’t be any changes in level cap.

Highly likely: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DLHfq2lJY5A&t=58m35s

tkalamba.2541:

Ganzo.5079:

Loosifah.4739:

From everything I’ve read the new ascended armor has higher base stats because you can’t rune/orb them up to give them a stat increase. Therefore they’re only really useful for the infusion slot to prevent agony in the dungeon.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Infusion

Where is stated that infusion work only for dungeon? i see only that infuse an item give an innate agony resistance, but we don know if the infusion effect give us something like rune or sigils effects that can be used outside dungeons!
So we have all the right to enrage because the information we have are NOT CLEAR. Is useless to complain when the update its already UP… After an update you have only the option to rage quit!

It actually has been clear, and people are missing it. Agony is ONLY a factor in the new dungeon. No where else.

who talk about agony? read that wiki page before comment, im talkiung about infusion, and reading that, the only thing i understand is that the agony resistance is a side effect of the infusion… so if i am correc, infusion work something like this

Offensive infusion: +x% damage (or another effect, like to the old sigils or runes)
+x% agony resistance when you are in the fractal dungeon.

so if agony work only on fractal the rest of the effect where it work? THIS IS NOT CLEAR, AND NO BLOG HAS CLEARED IT.

if it work in this mood, ALL the old items we have, they become simply useless! because the old runes bonus is already included in the ascent gear!
so followin a simply logical scheme an ascent gear become:

((exotic gear + rune\sigil\jewel) + % stat boost)+ infusion slot bonus

looking this, its not a little boost, its a huge game modification, and i have all the right to be angerer or concearned if NO ONE CLARIFY THIS!

Thorquist.8126:

Healix.5819:

This isn’t GW1 where the level cap will be the same forever.

And why do you think so? I actually hope, there won’t be any changes in level cap.

who care’s about that I dont think it will change But even if it did leveling is so fast and really has no point other than locking you out of content,

the leveling curve is flat if thay added an extra 10 levels i could have it in less than an afternoon.

Just FYI now back on topic

I dont think this new update is as big a deal as some people make it out to be

Bardes.1870:

Call Me M.6392:

Bardes.1870:

Pants.8315:

A treadmill implies it’ll keep going. If you read the blog post, they say that they intended to add one set. Ascended gear. One set = a step, not a treadmill.

They also stated that the harder to obtain “rarer” ascended items will have added +Agony residence. So apart from the original items (which have also been stated to be attainable outside of the dungeon in the future), there is no need to keep repeating the content to get better ascended items unless you want to.

Completely optional; once the full compliment of Ascended items have been added to the game, PvE and WvWvW, then unless you want extra +agony resistance, which is only useful in that one dungeon, you never have to set foot in dungeons.

It’s one extra set, that contains a slot that has the potential to add repeatable dungeon content for those that want to improve their +agony resistance and infusions, whilst not alienating those that don’t want anything more than a basic set of ascended gear but have no intention of running a dungeon, because if your not running the dungeon then the gated agony additions are entirely irrelevant.

They clearly stated that their goal is to create an extra level of progression between Exotics and Legendary items. Not keep creating better and better tiers. The ascended items contain a slot that is only useful in a repeatable scaling dungeon, giving repeatable content for those that enjoy that. The post said it will be obtainable in other ways, meaning you never have to set foot in that dungeon once extra avenues are introduced to get the gear.

It is purely horizontal and actually quiet clever. Introducing a set of gear with a slot that allows entirely optional extra content if people want it.

Having said all of that. I still cannot work out why it has a stat increase

Well, they said exo would be the cap …. do you really believe the whole plan is just a step?

If they can make a new tier for those who are boring and need something to grind, they will NEED to make another tier for those people again.

Yes, the first time I read it , it sounded convincing. But this is not the complete picture. Difficulty of the content is balanced against the current gear tiers. Adding another tier on top of the current ones, either means that existing and planned content will become easier then originally intended. Or they will make existing content more difficult to counter that.
I expect at least that planned max lvl content will become balanced towards the new planned tiers. This is gated content imo. It might be not the same steep slope as in other MMO’s , but the principe is the same.
Yes, no one forces you to go for this new gear tier. But then no one forces you to equip any tier to begin with. You can already chose to die all the time if you want.

Seriously, there are so many ways to make people to “have something to do”.

If Anet wanna create a new set of gears, it is possible that the cap remain the same. They can make some ascended gems. Players need to grind these gems to create special gear. For example, a condition/healing/+magic find ring requires primary condition asc gems, secondary healing asc gems and secondary mf asc gems. From this way, no cap will be broken. There are just more customizable geras.

Cap doesn’t need to be broken, but they are breaking it. For me, the blog post and what posted by Chris were just all excuse. It seems they are trying to persuade not only the raged users, but also themselves.

Ehm yeah, I actually agree with you. I have no clue how I ended up quoting your comment. Somehow I lost the comment I wanted to quote after logging in (logging in always puts you back on main forum page :/ )

Rhyaehar.9504:

Instead of assuming why peopel are unhappy about the new system, how about you actually read what they have to say?

I guess you weren’t replying to me even though you quoted me, because I agree with you 100%.

Healix.5819:

They realized that what they did with exotics was a mistake. The fact that you could be fully decked out in final tier min/maxed gear in a day greatly reduces the game’s lifespan for a large group of players. If exotics actually took effort to get and at least a month to obtain, then ascended gear may not be needed. With ascended gear, they’re purposely gating the acquisition of it. The first dungeon will be 2 pieces. At that rate, it’ll take 6-9 months to complete a full set.

A lot of people seem to be misreading this line: “we’re only adding the first level of Infusions and Ascended Rings and Back slots”. Some people seem to be reading it as “we’re adding the first tier of ascended items” when it actually says “we’re adding ascended rings and back pieces along with the first tier of infusion upgrades”.

As for claiming there’s a gear treadmill because of a single tier, there will always be one. This isn’t GW1 where the level cap will be the same forever.

Ascended items aren’t even the best items available. Sure, if you look at a simple side by side comparison or don’t care about stats they are, but look at the big picture. It would actually be really funny if all ascended gear had magic find on it, because you know, it comes from a dungeon that revolves around grinding it for rare ascended gear.

You know, in GW1 i could level a character to max level in about 8 hours, and even buy him the ‘best’ armour (as in max stats) way before that. People still played for years. Not everyone needs gear progression.

Loosifah.4739:

Also to set one thing straight. Most of us who are enjoying the new content update coming out never played that horrible game WoW.

I know I personally never touched it, granted I’ve played plenty of other amazing games that have gear progression to them.

Yup so horrible it has as of last earning call over 5 times the number of monthly subs then total GW2 box sales. Yup must be horrible.

I just found a magic trick!
As soon as you create a topic with the word “Ascended” in it, your topic will automatically merged into “Thoughts on Ascended Gear? [Merged threads]”.
Regardless of how little it has to do with Ascended Gear.
I will call it the “It-That-Must-Not-Be-Named-Gear”-Spell.

E/:
I’m Harry Potter, lol!

well, here are my 2 cents on this whole incident.

- game release: exotics level is the highest statwise.
- 2 1/2 months later: look ascended gear, now with 8% higher stats + infusions*
- expansion bubbles: ??

• Offensive, Defensive, Omni. Now try to tell me those will not give you more strenght in terms of outlasting / killing your enemy, even if that enemy happens to be found in one dungeon ever. The only way to do that would be “makes you glow softly” or something among the cosmetic line.

As you can tell the problem I foresee is if Arenanet decides to add more tiers with again higher stats thus creating the infamous gear treadmill.
And yes I have read the post from Chris Whiteside and I would recommend him a carreer in politics if he leaves game developement (design).
Why? Well it is written the way you can interpret whatever you want into it. Not adding a new tier of gear every three months? How about every six? Every Expansion? Never? You get the picture.

In short:
We have to wait and see for future updates, in the meantime let us trash our rings and backback and grind for the ascended just to have the relaxing feeling of being done stat-wise again.
Here’s to hope this doesn’t turn into World of GuildWarscraft.

Just a matter of opinion.

AcidicVision.5498:

Even after Chris came in here and said Ascended was the last tier that will be added

Dont remember seeing anything like that. If you could provide the source…

The only thing he said is that they “will not be adding a new tier of gear every 3 months that we expect everyone to chase after and then get the next set and so on”. Which does not exclude the possibility of new gear tiers in the future.

I guess the fear of many people who are complaining here on the forums about this new gear tier is that when you add a higher stats gear to supposedly give players a “sense of proggression” it leads people to believe that this will be norm on future content updates. How will ANet give already fully geared players a sense of progression on, lets say, the next expansion pack? Taking from this example, they will up the level cap and add a new gear tier, since they consider it reasonable.

Thats what basically happens in every MMO out there. The company gives a gear for players to grind for, when they reach that point they release a +1 gear, than a +2 gear,… and that indefinetily. And thats not what many players were expecting from this game, including the majority of GW1 players.

GW2 has already gear progression. Its just not stat-based, but its still progression. You get yourself the first (and easily acquirable) set of exotic gear from crafting, or TP, or completing an area, or storyline missions, etc. Then you can go on, if you wish, and try to get yourself a dungeon set, or a cultural set. Or get the materials for Mystic Forge weapons, and eventually a Lengendary. And you can keep adding new steps to this gear progression without ever having to raise gear stats, following the premise of keeping the grinding on GW2 completely optional. That way you will still have stuff for players to strive for if (and only if) thats what they want to do.

McSlappy.1372:

Loosifah.4739:

Also to set one thing straight. Most of us who are enjoying the new content update coming out never played that horrible game WoW.

I know I personally never touched it, granted I’ve played plenty of other amazing games that have gear progression to them.

Yup so horrible it has as of last earning call over 5 times the number of monthly subs then total GW2 box sales. Yup must be horrible.

I love how he says he never played it, but says it’s horrible anyway. He must be psychic. I’ve played it and I don’t like it, but at least I came to that conclusion on my own, I didn’t just follow popular hate trends. It really must suck to not be able to think for yourself.

“Only ring and back accessories will be available with the Lost Shores release”

wow i didnt know this little bit of info….. way to go all your gear will be useless because you have to upgrade your ring and back slots…… What to Exotic Back slot items even look like!

from all the complaning i thought it was like our weppons and main armor piece’s getting the switch right now

Rhyaehar.9504:

BadHealer.3608:

Loosifah.4739:

I personally welcome the new content. Especially since they’ve defined that the gear progression WILL end as Rare -> Exotic -> Ascended -> Legendary.

I did pick out your statement, but it had been posted by others.

Why do you think that Legendary is the best? Since it can’t be infused, you can’t run all the dungeons with it. Ascendend will be stronger (if you run the dungeons) and easier to optain. But you could use it, if you need it for a special build.

If you are doing WvWvW you may use Legendaries, but Dungeons will be always Ascendes only or the people will laugh at you.

Legendary will be upgraded to Ascended status.

But Loosifah is still wrong, again, in his post.
Ascended == Legendary
There is no progression between them because the stats stay the same.
Just more bling some people don’t care for at all.

The gap is not in stats, but time allocated to earning each tier. You can get Exotics too easily, and Legendaries took too long. Ascended will fill the gap inbetween.

Question to those " i am a GW1 veteran and i want GW2 to be the same game", did you miss the fact that in the first place GW2 was always marketed as a completely different game ? Gw1 was NOT a mmo in the first place, so why comparing ? why event put Gw1 and gw2 in the same sentence when they have so little in common except the lore ?
You want GW 1 then go to play GW1.
(And by the way i come from gw1 myself)

Also i am starting to think that the real answer to all this, is that Anet should make WvW similar to the Spvp (no armor that come from pve, same armor for everyone) that way maybe everyone will be happy, no grinding for ascended, no superior stat, because right now a lot of people are forgetting right now in WvW peoples are not Equals: some are 80 some aren’t, some have food (which give way more bonus than Ascended just in case someone doesn’t know).

Now if thoses who are angry are pve only, i would like to know how can you make a mmo withtout having character improvement over time ? don’t you understand it IS boring in a mmo (while it wasn’t in gw1 because it wasn’t a mmo) to not see you character grow stronger ? haven’t you played a real roleplaying game before ? when your character need to face a new dungeon with new trials that you cannot overcome without a new artefact, a new armor ? THIS is a roleplaying game (as in massive multiplayer online roleplaying game).

Right now when i heard of this new dungeon and this new armor i was exited because i thout hey ! new condition that require me to wear a new armor ! it felt like real roleplaying dvd and stuff.

Now i do understand thoses who enjoy nothing but the WvW only, who suffered from having to (kinda) grind thourgh the pve in order to get full exotic (i know people who did) and i feel sorry for you, perhaps it was a mistake in the first place to have the wvw linked to the pve maybe i don’t know, and i think you should tell to Arena right now to cut the link between WvW and Pve so that we have 3 different mode.

(Sorry if i made some spelling mistakes, english is not my native language and i am a bit tired)

AcidicVision.5498:

Neither of us can be proven right or wrong for what…at least another 3-6 months right? So then why not just give the new stuff a try and see if you have fun with it until then?

“To wait and see” is usually a great course of action, but please don’t forget the “tiny little” detail:
-for many players, this is a totally game-changing and deal-breaking development that comes all of a sudden, and in just 2 days, the update goes live.

If we want to voice our dissapointment, the time is now, not in 3 months.
I’ve said it so many times in this thread to so many people: during the whole development period and marketing pre-release campaign it was always, always claimed that there will be no vertical progression and that Exotics are the top stat-wise. Many people based their purchases and their latest goals on that premise.
This is not a small thing for a lot of people.
If you’re one that likes it or it does’t bother you, great. Good luck, you still have a game you feel you can enjoy. Many of us don’t feel like that anymore.

tkalamba.2541:

Rhyaehar.9504:

BadHealer.3608:

Loosifah.4739:

I personally welcome the new content. Especially since they’ve defined that the gear progression WILL end as Rare -> Exotic -> Ascended -> Legendary.

I did pick out your statement, but it had been posted by others.

Why do you think that Legendary is the best? Since it can’t be infused, you can’t run all the dungeons with it. Ascendend will be stronger (if you run the dungeons) and easier to optain. But you could use it, if you need it for a special build.

If you are doing WvWvW you may use Legendaries, but Dungeons will be always Ascendes only or the people will laugh at you.

Legendary will be upgraded to Ascended status.

But Loosifah is still wrong, again, in his post.
Ascended == Legendary
There is no progression between them because the stats stay the same.
Just more bling some people don’t care for at all.

The gap is not in stats, but time allocated to earning each tier. You can get Exotics too easily, and Legendaries took too long. Ascended will fill the gap inbetween.

You sit and lap up all their bull-kitten… the fact of the mater is most of this forum hates the idea and you are just being a hipster…

Rhyaehar.9504:

BadHealer.3608:

Why do you think that Legendary is the best? Since it can’t be infused, you can’t run all the dungeons with it. Ascendend will be stronger (if you run the dungeons) and easier to optain. But you could use it, if you need it for a special build.

If you are doing WvWvW you may use Legendaries, but Dungeons will be always Ascendes only or the people will laugh at you.

Legendary will be upgraded to Ascended status.

But Loosifah is still wrong, again, in his post.
Ascended == Legendary
There is no progression between them because the stats stay the same.
Just more bling some people don’t care for at all.

But since the Legendary can’t be infused and you need infused to play in the dungeons, you will be locked out without Ascendends.

I don’t want to be locked out, because I don’t want to grind.

good thoughts on this topic:

I think an important question to ask is Will this gear be used any were outside this new Dungeon type, AND how many more of this type of Dungeon will we be seeing, and What kinda stat’s will Infusion give the player outside of the Agony protection

BadHealer.3608:

Rhyaehar.9504:

BadHealer.3608:

Why do you think that Legendary is the best? Since it can’t be infused, you can’t run all the dungeons with it. Ascendend will be stronger (if you run the dungeons) and easier to optain. But you could use it, if you need it for a special build.

If you are doing WvWvW you may use Legendaries, but Dungeons will be always Ascendes only or the people will laugh at you.

Legendary will be upgraded to Ascended status.

But Loosifah is still wrong, again, in his post.
Ascended == Legendary
There is no progression between them because the stats stay the same.
Just more bling some people don’t care for at all.

But since the Legendary can’t be infused and you need infused to play in the dungeons, you will be locked out without Ascendends.

I don’t want to be locked out, because I don’t want to grind.

There will be many other ways to aquire ascended items. Not just a single dungeon grind.

7000 + answers on this topic, never seen before on the forum.
I hope you hear your players !!!

ANet you just introduced a Sword of Damocles into your game.

I felt it the second I read about Ascended gear. I don’t understand the Legendary “gap” you brought up, as I had been working toward the harder to make mystic forge exotic weapons (Immobulus, Volcanus, Mjolnir). Now, I have no desire to work towards those goals.

Legendary weapons are being upgraded to Ascended gear stat level, so that means one of two things: Ascended level weapons will one day be introduced or Legendary weapons will be the only Ascended tier weapons. So working toward anything less than a Legendary right now is pointless, and I’m not interested in the amount of work it takes to get a Legendary.

I’m now playing this great game knowing that all the time and effort I put into my gear is eventually going to be outdated and I’ll have to do it all over again. I’ve taken a break from the game, and just waiting to see how all this turns out. My gut reaction tells me it won’t end well though.