Guild Wars 2

Mercutio.6312:

You have promised no gear progression in GW2. Remove Ascended gear or I don’t buy the first expansion.

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

Nothing technically changed here though? Legendaries are still differentiated by their rarity as they will have the exact same stats as Ascended in they release the Ascended Weapons.

It will still be in line with the top tier item, thus that quote remains 100% accurate. None of the quotes even say Exotic will be the final tier. There’s still no grind in order to compete, you can still do the content, theres nothing you will miss out on, and Ascended Items are only a bit harder than Exotics to get. So no promises really broken.

AW Lore.5682:

“And guess what? These ascended items, they’re going to be a 50-100x worse grindfest than the exotics you spent time/patience getting. And the legendaries that will be even higher stats? Well.. Yeah.”

and how do you know they will be 50-100 worse grindfest?

Go to the Lost Shores forum section, look at the ‘quiet about rewards’ thread (too lazy to link, go look). You get 5 tokens for completing 1 fractal area. Now look at how many you need for just 1 exotic-leve backpiece. Yeah. Now look at the ascended gift that you will probably forge ascended versions of backpiece/etc with. 500 tokens. Yeah. And now look at 15 tokens per obsidian shard, which I can guarantee you will be used in ascended recipe as much as in legendaries. Yeah. Are you getting all this? Read up, it’s all there.

50-100x more grind than buying an exotic for 1-3g off the TP, or crafting it yourself after leveling crafting for a day. Grind Wars 2 for life, right??

AW Lore.5682:

@spyderArachnid
they will be crucial tools ot survive, yes that is true, but you are forgetting where, INSIDE the fractals DUNGEON, this new dungeon is going to be what, 1% of what the current game is?
also its a dungeon, there will be people who will be bound to love this dungeon, and people that will loathe the dungeon, because they loath dungeons in general and dont even go into the normal ones, but as far as normal pve progression is concerned, exotic items are still just as good as they have been

You seem to be forgetting that this is going to be a permanent thing going forward with the game. If you want to experience any of the new content that is coming in the future, you are going to need these items.

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

As we release more new end game content in the future, you’ll see more Infusions and Ascended item types being added to the game.

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

So basically if you don’t upgrade to Ascended gear and don’t start getting those infusions, you are going to be locked out of any new content coming in the future. So sure, you can stick to your exotics and enjoy the base game and all the content it provides. You just won’t ever be able to do any of the new content that comes over the years unless you upgrade.

Sennar.2309:

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

you know what the worst part of this is for me?

The simple fact that this idea must have been ready before launch.
No way they put this whole thing together in between haloween and Christmas…

It’s not even that they cave in to the ‘WoW crowd’ now, they must have known all along.

KasNova.8936:

How exactly is forcing players into instanced dungeons to progress going to help keep people around for dynamic events?

Exactly. Same thing happened with Rift. Everybody was too busy gearing up in the dungeons/raids to bother doing the rift events/invasions.

Question: is there only a chance to get the gear after going through the dungeons? If so, any guess on the drop rates? Thanks.

Sennar.2309:

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

Brazen. Very brazen. To come out with this and then, when the game is barely off the shelves, do a complete 180 on their MMO philosophy. Truly they’ve become a company without shame.

Relentless.5678:

Snerf.1650:

Relentless.5678:

Relentless.5678:

Wow. Content looks great! I’m really excited.

Thank you Arena Net.

Clarification: The content includes everything. I am lumping everything together. This includes ascended gear. I wasn’t being exclusionary.

Do you mind if I ask you how the act of raising the stat ceiling beyond exotic gear increases your enjoyment of GW2? Or rather, what current issue you have with the game that this addresses?

I don’t personally get any enjoyment out of stats, and I have no objection to Arena Net introducing a new mechanic, like infusion, which does not impact a pre-existing portion of the game.

I can only guess that the new tier was introduced for some technical difficulty with changing all currently available and existing exotics. This would be the obvious choice, but perhaps there is a systemic problem with doing so.

Also, I believe they must have have been working on this content for longer than the game has been live. Surely it would take longer than a couple of moths to plan, code, develop and implement content of this scale? We as a community can hope that they take great care when rocking the boat, and make no decision lightly. I expect nothing less from a group of professionals.

Thank you, that makes quite a bit of sense.

So even though you are looking forward to all the changes as a whole, keeping the progression model horizontal would also have been perfectly acceptable in your views?

Cyric.7485:

SpyderArachnid.5619:

It makes Exotics obsolete because of the new Infusion slot, not just the stats.

It was quoted by Anet saying, “After a certain point, our new Ascended items and Infusions become crucial tools for survival.”. Proving that Ascended items will be mandatory over Exotics (since Exotics don’t have an Infusion slot).

Which in turn, will make Exotics obsolete if you wish to participate in any future content.

I’m going to assume that one liner quote is taken out of context and as thus, proves nothing without it’s surrounding paragraph. I also have the feeling that quote is talking about FotM and the new Agony condition. Feel free to correct me with a link or something, I admit I haven’t been losing my mind and blowing things out of proportion much, kinda just read the blog and went about my daily life.

Also, your signature is so ironic it hurts.

Wasn’t taken out of context. Just a summary of what the entire thing was about. Here ya go. And I don’t see at all how my signature is ironic, sorry.

To make Fractals of the Mist even more challenging, every time you re-visit the hub, the dungeon scales up in difficulty. That’s right, a scaling dungeon! The dungeon will remember your progress, and will poll the party’s levels when you enter, scaling the dungeon to the highest common attained level. It’s a true challenge, but as you hit higher and higher scales, the dungeon will get more and more rewarding. You’ll have to have some serious skills and solid tactics to make it through these Fractals. After a certain point, our new Ascended items and Infusions become crucial tools for survival. To learn more about this new type of high-level gear, check out this post from designer Linsey Murdock.

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/leah-rivera-on-the-new-fractals-of-the-mist-dungeon/

Snerf.1650:

You make some good points, and I appreciate you sharing these thoughts on the subject.

I just have to ask, why does the carrot need to be “better stats”?

Thanks. As for your question, I don’t know about it myself. I guess it’s human nature to like the illusion-feel of being stronger than the pve monsters while they progresses. I only feel that item progression is better than no progression, which is why I welcome ascended addition. I agree that there’re more kinds of progression that can be placed besides gear progression. (I can’t wait for house progression too. )

The current only skins progression as end-game isn’t effective because of the human nature of “beauty is in the eye of beholder”. Many players feel a wall is built infront of them after they achieve their favourite armor skin. No matter how much skin they add into the game, they still want to wear their favourite skin, and not new ones (unless the new skins became their favourite).

Columba.9730:

Question: is there only a chance to get the gear after going through the dungeons? If so, any guess on the drop rates? Thanks.

Probably the same as Exotic was – 0.001%… but if you get your 150% Magic Find your chances skyrocket to 0.0015!

Anyone know if there will be a special skin / token set (exotic quality most likely) associated with this dungeon besides the Ascended gear? It’d be nice if it wasn’t just rings/backpack to work towards for another month before they add in more skins

Yes, like I said. it’s about 50-100x more grind than getting the exotic counterpart of the same piece. And you HAVE to do this grind in order to experience future content and in order to stay BiS and not have to worry about coming back after a hiatus.

This is just like every other MMO now. Guild Wars 2 is gone. It’s Grind Wars 2 now.

AW Lore.5682:

“And guess what? These ascended items, they’re going to be a 50-100x worse grindfest than the exotics you spent time/patience getting. And the legendaries that will be even higher stats? Well.. Yeah.”

and how do you know they will be 50-100 worse grindfest?

Without a grind-fest, then whats the point of introducing them when players can get them easily?

50x is an exaggeration but they must have thought of minimum exotic dungeon armour level kind of grind to entice stats-seeker to get the equipments, probably grinding enough to get 250 lodestone-rare mats?

Dungeon armour (exotic) grind mostly for vanity then.

tkalamba.2541:

Mercutio.6312:

You have promised no gear progression in GW2. Remove Ascended gear or I don’t buy the first expansion.

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

Nothing technically changed here though? Legendaries are still differentiated by their rarity as they will have the exact same stats as Ascended in they release the Ascended Weapons.

It will still be in line with the top tier item, thus that quote remains 100% accurate. None of the quotes even say Exotic will be the final tier. There’s still no grind in order to compete, you can still do the content, theres nothing you will miss out on, and Ascended Items are only a bit harder than Exotics to get. So no promises really broken.

Implementation a new tier of items above the previous max post release absolutely goes against the intention of Mr. O’Brian’s quote. Regardless of whether it specifically mentions the word “exotic”.

Nurse.1085:

Anyone know if there will be a special skin / token set (exotic quality most likely) associated with this dungeon besides the Ascended gear? It’d be nice if it wasn’t just rings/backpack to work towards for another month before they add in more skins

I think there are skins surrounding the South Shores content specifically. Probably stuff like shields made of giant crab shells and other thematic skins.

tkalamba.2541:

Nothing technically changed here though? Legendaries are still differentiated by their rarity as they will have the exact same stats as Ascended in they release the Ascended Weapons.

It will still be in line with the top tier item, thus that quote remains 100% accurate. None of the quotes even say Exotic will be the final tier. There’s still no grind in order to compete, you can still do the content, theres nothing you will miss out on, and Ascended Items are only a bit harder than Exotics to get. So no promises really broken.

You can play the semantics game as much as you want, but if you have only just a bit of intellectual honestly you’ll admit a week ago nobody would have thought that that quote was pointing to a new tier being introduced and legendaries increased in power.

The fact exotics were and were expected to remain best-in-slot was implicit because legendaries weren’t any more powerful than exotics even though they were the rarest of items.

When you induce someone to believe something by omitting a piece of information (in this case the fact they were workin on a new more powerful tier) you aren’t in good faith. ANet isn’t in good faith and has manipulated the community’s perception of the lifespan of exotics to induce people to fund their exotics via gem store.

You know what? If this is where a gem store leads a game, then I prefer a monthly fee.

Naoko.7096:

Rukia.4802:

@Naoko

You are the problem with MMO’s today. We don’t need a carrot, the whole point of GW was to remove or rather let us eat the carrot instead of endlessly chasing it. Again, trillions of other posters have said this but let me be clear with it: if you want grind, pandaland is that way —-->

If you say that I’m the problem of the mmo, it’s the same as saying people are the problem of this world. Progression is part of human nature. People wants to keep evolving. People wants to keep themselves anticipated.

The point is not about chasing carrot. <- This is a treadmill. Read carefully.
The point is that there must be a carrot after you ate another carrot.
That is progression in mmo.

It’s not where everyone reach the end and it’s a wall.
Let’s not just say “gear or skin progression”. It’s the progression as a whole.
Progression: Once you reached a goal, there must be another goal.

Item progression like ascended is better than no progression.
I see quite a big potential in the ascended gears. (infusions progressions and stuffs)
Take it like ascended was meant to be part of gw2 future addition.

Games are about goals. You play it because you want to achieve something higher and higher. If there’s no goals, people gets burned out after experiencing everything.

The problem with the current state of gw2 is that player is given every carrot in the game and they ate it all within 2 weeks to 1 month. Once all carrots are eaten, you don’t have anymore carrots to eat and leave the place. This is human nature. In mmo term, it’s called being burned out.
—————————
I really like ascended as it is to be between exotic and legendary. It’s because the progression betwen exotic to legendary is really horrible. The gap is unrealistic and 99% dedicated players rather not go for it. This causes dedicated players to stop their goals and creates low concurrency of players online per day. The ascended can be a good remedy for the progression between these 2 tiers.

I don’t know how guild wars 1 works but I’m curious to know the concurrency of players online in-game per day. With the lack of progression, the game feels like you only log into the game only if there’s a big event like halloween and christmas. On the rest of the days, players never log in. Only the small group of skin collectors are actually active. Why small group? It’s because beauty is in the eye of beholder for looks. Most players don’t feel the need to farm another armor look once they wear their favourite ones already. Evidence? It’s already in the game.

Small concurrency of players online per day isn’t good for guild wars 2 structure because most of the content is best when you experience with another player. It’s dynamic events. Imagine on a low concurrency day and there’s 10 dynamic events but only you and another player online. The rest of the players were not online because they are already satisfied with their gear looks and have no more goals. Those kind of inactive players are those who only come online if there’s any world event or major updates going on.

Sorry that people have to read the long post.
I just want to add something positive since there’s too much negativity around.
I want people to see that there’s both sides of the perception.

It’s a treadmill if they see it as treadmill.
It’s a progression if they see it as progression.

You say Potato I say Pototo
As to you comment about small concurrency, over half the servers are FULL 24/7. There are approx 2-4 servers that fail to reach FULL at some point during the 24 hour period.

based on the above i would say at present Concurrency is not a GW2 problem.

Again if this was a design that was thought out before release and they had the time table laid out at Anet to release this 90 days after release. Then everything every person that works for Anet said prior to release was just a PR ploy to make the initial release cash flow zoom upwards.

Would I have purchased the game had I had knowledge that they intended to infuse a gear treadmill, or gear progression system. When they repeatedly said that they would not?

I cannot honestly answer that, nor can anyone else as that was not was being said to the general public

One thing is for sure in m mind Legendary Armor not just weapons will be rolling out sometime in the future. I’d bet the farm on that

SpyderArachnid.5619:

Wasn’t taken out of context. Just a summary of what the entire thing was about. Here ya go. And I don’t see at all how my signature is ironic, sorry.

To make Fractals of the Mist even more challenging, every time you re-visit the hub, the dungeon scales up in difficulty. That’s right, a scaling dungeon! The dungeon will remember your progress, and will poll the party’s levels when you enter, scaling the dungeon to the highest common attained level. It’s a true challenge, but as you hit higher and higher scales, the dungeon will get more and more rewarding. You’ll have to have some serious skills and solid tactics to make it through these Fractals. After a certain point, our new Ascended items and Infusions become crucial tools for survival. To learn more about this new type of high-level gear, check out this post from designer Linsey Murdock.

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/leah-rivera-on-the-new-fractals-of-the-mist-dungeon/

Thanks for the link, I hadn’t seen that particular blog, much appreciated. As I said though, that quote is directly related to FotM and the Agony condition, nowhere in that blog does it mention you’ll need Ascended gear for future content. That being said, it wouldn’t surprise me if resistance to Agony was needed for future content but it hasn’t been mentioned by ANet yet so any attempt to spread that around just looks like fear mongering to me.

Naoko.7096:

Snerf.1650:

You make some good points, and I appreciate you sharing these thoughts on the subject.

I just have to ask, why does the carrot need to be “better stats”?

Thanks. As for your question, I don’t know about it myself. I guess it’s human nature to like the illusion-feel of being stronger than the pve monsters while they progresses. I only feel that item progression is better than no progression. I agree that there’re more kinds of progression that can be placed besides gear progression.

The current only skins progression as end-game isn’t effective because of the human nature of “beauty is in the eye of beholder”. Many players feel a wall is built infront of them after they achieve their favourite armor skin. No matter how much skin they add into the game, they still want to wear their favourite skin, and not new ones (unless the new skins became their favourite).

Even if this was the case, don’t you think that there is something unacceptable with advertising the game as avoiding the gear progression model for years and then suddenly adding it in a few months post release?

I mean, even if someone supported gear progression as a design (which is their prerogative), wouldn’t this act be somewhat disrespectful to the customers who have bought and played under the idea that it was not in the plans?

Koolthulu.9682:

KasNova.8936:

How exactly is forcing players into instanced dungeons to progress going to help keep people around for dynamic events?

Exactly. Same thing happened with Rift. Everybody was too busy gearing up in the dungeons/raids to bother doing the rift events/invasions.

The Rift events were also completely pointless to do if you had raid gear. Not only there were no drops on the entire surface world a person in raid gear would ever be interested in (of course not – nothing great is allowed to drop outsides of raids, remember!). But the gear was so powerful that you could aggro every single mob in the area at once and they still couldn’t put a dent into you. Which is one of my most basic gripes with vertical progression – it makes all other content in the game obsolete except the currently highest tier of content.

The above is the reason why I quit Rift a while ago despite it it was -otherwise- a nice game. But gear “progression” completely killed it. All people still did was standing around in their faction’s capital, waiting for their guild mates to show up for a raid/dungeon etc.

toomuchtatose.6874:

AW Lore.5682:

“And guess what? These ascended items, they’re going to be a 50-100x worse grindfest than the exotics you spent time/patience getting. And the legendaries that will be even higher stats? Well.. Yeah.”

and how do you know they will be 50-100 worse grindfest?

Without a grind-fest, then whats the point of introducing them when players can get them easily?

50x is an exaggeration but they must have thought of minimum exotic dungeon armour level kind of grind to entice stats-seeker to get the equipments, probably grinding enough to get 250 lodestone-rare mats?

Dungeon armour (exotic) grind mostly for vanity then.

There’s no good reason AT ALL to have the stats-seekers be given any advantage, aside from fancy looks and vanity. No reason. At all. And I spend mroe time in this game than 9/10 players. I don’t want this.

Where did their fairness/equality stances go? Where is GW1’s original, carried-over idea of ’a person who started < 1 week ago can gain access to all the tools a 2+yr vet can, the only difference becomes skill)? They blatantly broke their manifesto and promises, this is now just another treadmill MMO in disguise.

Cyric.7485:

Thanks for the link, I hadn’t seen that particular blog, much appreciated. As I said though, that quote is directly related to FotM and the Agony condition, nowhere in that blog does it mention you’ll need Ascended gear for future content. That being said, it wouldn’t surprise me if resistance to Agony was needed for future content but it hasn’t been mentioned by ANet yet so any attempt to spread that around just looks like fear mongering to me.

In the other blog post, it mentions how they will be using Ascended gear and the Infusions for future content.

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

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

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

(I actually just posted this a few posts up already. And no, that is not taken out of context.)

Aside from the infusions, you have to recognize that the stats increase from tier to tier is very small in GW2.

A naked untraited character has about 2000 attack. With full power gear, you’ll have about 3000 attack. Adding a few points each to 3 slots, you just won’t see any change. Even if eventually we get all 12 gear slots with a few more points each, it doesn’t add up to a noticable change in performance (meaning a mob that takes 10 hits to kill with full exotics will maybe take 9-10 hits after you upgrade every single piece of armor and accessory).

Urxx.6840:

vox.5019:

Exactly, it all basically points to this being a decision, made long before release, to shift from the Guild Wars paradigm to more standard MMO fare. While still espousing the Guild Wars paradigm. These are the things at the core of my disapproval.

Not only that. I’m not one of those fundamentalists that says GW2 must be identical to GW1 in all its mechanics.

Departures exist already and a lot of them improve things.

But then, if you ANet want to be honest and respect your customers, you talk about ascended gear right from the start.

At least if I invest in exotics it’s an informed decision, because I know an higher tier is coming.

This way it’s not. It’s insulting our intelligence. Sneaking in a new tier like we were idiots and couldn’t understand the implications it carries with it, after you repeated for years that having to grind to get items higher in power was not ok.

Agreed there too. Had I been informed, my own decision would have been that this wasn’t the game for me and oh well, sad to see it’s not going to be the GW that I wanted but no biggie, stuff happens. But I guess it’s not that far of a leap to conclude that that’s exactly why they didn’t let us know before release.

Slic.2406:

toomuchtatose.6874:

AW Lore.5682:

“And guess what? These ascended items, they’re going to be a 50-100x worse grindfest than the exotics you spent time/patience getting. And the legendaries that will be even higher stats? Well.. Yeah.”

and how do you know they will be 50-100 worse grindfest?

Without a grind-fest, then whats the point of introducing them when players can get them easily?

50x is an exaggeration but they must have thought of minimum exotic dungeon armour level kind of grind to entice stats-seeker to get the equipments, probably grinding enough to get 250 lodestone-rare mats?

Dungeon armour (exotic) grind mostly for vanity then.

There’s no good reason AT ALL to have the stats-seekers be given any advantage, aside from fancy looks and vanity. No reason. At all. And I spend mroe time in this game than 9/10 players. I don’t want this.

Where did their fairness/equality stances go? Where is GW1’s original, carried-over idea of ’a person who started < 1 week ago can gain access to all the tools a 2+yr vet can, the only difference becomes skill)? They blatantly broke their manifesto and promises, this is now just another treadmill MMO in disguise.

But you know… this game is not run by players or ANet…

Arreyanne.2683:

Would I have purchased the game had I had knowledge that they intended to infuse a gear treadmill, or gear progression system. When they repeatedly said that they would not?

They already clarified that the ascended tier isn’t the start of a gear treadmill model but just part of the big update to strengthen/fixes the progression of the game as a whole.

mulch.2586:

Aside from the infusions, you have to recognize that the stats increase from tier to tier is very small in GW2.

A naked untraited character has about 2000 attack. With full power gear, you’ll have about 3000 attack. Adding a few points each to 3 slots, you just won’t see any change. Even if eventually we get all 12 gear slots with a few more points each, it doesn’t add up to a noticable change in performance (meaning a mob that takes 10 hits to kill with full exotics will maybe take 9-10 hits after you upgrade every single piece of armor and accessory).

Have you seen a 1v1 fight btwn a full-exotic lvl80 and a lvl20 in greens in WvW? I hate to say it, but the difference is there, and rather noticeable, even if the 80 uses nothing but autoattack…

Try it sometime, if you don’t believe me. Gear matters a lot already, this will further discourage newcomers.

Naoko.7096:

Arreyanne.2683:

Would I have purchased the game had I had knowledge that they intended to infuse a gear treadmill, or gear progression system. When they repeatedly said that they would not?

They already clarified that the ascended tier isn’t the start of a gear treadmill model but just part of the big update to strengthen/fixes the progression of the game as a whole.

They just go vs their gaming phylosophy.

SpyderArachnid.5619:

Cyric.7485:

Sarcasm aside, my point is that the increase in stats isn’t nearly as tremendous as everyone seems to think. Yes, it’s a better item stat-wise. No, it doesn’t make Exotics obsolete… not by a long shot.

It makes Exotics obsolete because of the new Infusion slot, not just the stats.

It was quoted by Anet saying, “After a certain point, our new Ascended items and Infusions become crucial tools for survival.”. Proving that Ascended items will be mandatory over Exotics (since Exotics don’t have an Infusion slot).

Which in turn, will make Exotics obsolete if you wish to participate in any future content.

Your taking that out of context, they are talking about progressive dungeons. You can still do the new content with exotic gear.

I could be wrong though because the writers that posted this stuff left much open to speculation and fear.

Snerf.1650:

tkalamba.2541:

Mercutio.6312:

You have promised no gear progression in GW2. Remove Ascended gear or I don’t buy the first expansion.

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

Nothing technically changed here though? Legendaries are still differentiated by their rarity as they will have the exact same stats as Ascended in they release the Ascended Weapons.

It will still be in line with the top tier item, thus that quote remains 100% accurate. None of the quotes even say Exotic will be the final tier. There’s still no grind in order to compete, you can still do the content, theres nothing you will miss out on, and Ascended Items are only a bit harder than Exotics to get. So no promises really broken.

Implementation a new tier of items above the previous max post release absolutely goes against the intention of Mr. O’Brian’s quote. Regardless of whether it specifically mentions the word “exotic”.

The intention I see here is that Legendaries will never be exponentially more powerful than the top tier gear. Nothing else. Maybe its my interpretation of what he said, but if you take what he says here literally, thats all it says. Not, we’ll never add another tier above Exotics. The only tier mentioned here is Legendary, and maintains flexibility in the message.

Ascended gear may not even technically be the best gear. There are disadvantages to the gear, as in you may not get the stats you need for your build. What is going to happen when there is only one backpiece, and it offers Magic Find as its primary stat? May not be useful for all builds now will it? People will opt to not use it.

If you can’t upgrade the items, and are pigeonholed into a very specific stat set, than the items are limited in their nature, and very well may not be the best to use.

It still fits within the above quoted text, as Legendaries still will not lose their place at the top, and will only be rarer, but not more powerful than Ascended gear.

If you interpret the quote as saying we’ll never add new tiers, or change stat values, or add new weapons and items types, then that is something your seeing in the message that perhaps is not there in the first place.

Naoko.7096:

Arreyanne.2683:

Would I have purchased the game had I had knowledge that they intended to infuse a gear treadmill, or gear progression system. When they repeatedly said that they would not?

They already clarified that the ascended tier isn’t the start of a gear treadmill model but just part of the big update to strengthen/fixes the progression of the game as a whole.

Except that they are making changes to the game to indicate that’s not the case.

They also have not made any comment that states that: “there will never be a stat tier higher than ascended”.

So really, there is absolutely no indication that it isn’t vertical gear progression. Simply calling it “item progression” instead of a “gear treadmill” is nothing more than word choice.

Snerf.1650:

stof.9341:

Urxx.6840:

Who played Star Wars Galaxies or Ultima Online still remembers the day when they patched in the changes that would ruin the game forever.

Star Wars Galaxy got ruined. Ultima Online got saved by the changes. The game would have plain be closed a lot earlier without them. As said Origin at the time, either they gave Trammel to the players for them to move to, or they’d all move to Everquest which they were already doing massively.

In the case of UO, you have to somewhat define “saved”.

The game died with the world split. It may have limped on, but the soul was gone and so were most players anyways. I’d argue that not implementing that change could have benefited them more in the long run, as it would have been the single largest factor setting UO up as an alternate MMO experience to EQ.

With the world split, they simply tried to attract the same players who would look towards EQ anyways.

The problem with homogenizing your game is that if you can’t offer a different experience, you must offer a superior experience. There was no way UO could “out-EQ at being EQ” just as there is no way current or recent mmos can “out-WoW at being WoW”.

I believe that this example is absolutely relevant to the current discussion in this thread regarding the ascended gear and potential decisions facing GW2 devs.

For some reason all developers refuse to learn from the past. Most likely due to arrogance in thinking that won’t happen to us. So time and time again we the gamers are faced with the same flawed experiments from developers.

SpyderArachnid.5619:

In the other blog post, it mentions how they will be using Ascended gear and the Infusions for future content.

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

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

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

(I actually just posted this a few posts up already. And no, that is not taken out of context.)

Ah, fair enough then. Suffice to say, I’m not at all bothered or concerned about this change. In fact, come to think of it, it kind of gives me something to do now. To each their own, I suppose.

mulch.2586:

Aside from the infusions, you have to recognize that the stats increase from tier to tier is very small in GW2.

A naked untraited character has about 2000 attack. With full power gear, you’ll have about 3000 attack. Adding a few points each to 3 slots, you just won’t see any change. Even if eventually we get all 12 gear slots with a few more points each, it doesn’t add up to a noticable change in performance (meaning a mob that takes 10 hits to kill with full exotics will maybe take 9-10 hits after you upgrade every single piece of armor and accessory).

This is essentially my original point. I feel like people are reading a bit too much into it, while I don’t think their speculation about the direction of Ascended is absurd, I think their initial reaction to something that hasn’t even been implemented yet is.

Naoko.7096:

Arreyanne.2683:

Would I have purchased the game had I had knowledge that they intended to infuse a gear treadmill, or gear progression system. When they repeatedly said that they would not?

They already clarified that the ascended tier isn’t the start of a gear treadmill model but just part of the big update to strengthen/fixes the progression of the game as a whole.

However, the original blog indicated that there willbe even more ascended gear for new content in the future. All they’ve said is that it won’t be every 3 months. So it could be every 6 months.

How can anyone argue more +stats is not better than less? I don’t get it.

Whether you like it or not is arguable, not that more is better stat wise.

“By that logic anything up until now that wasn’t an Exotic tier item has been considered an obsolete item? "

Yes. Yes it is. Seriously? Look at rares : 15 silver a piece. Look at exotics, 1+ gold for most of them (usually, the minimum craft cost + a %). . .

Yellows cost more then 15 silver to make, yet sell for 15 silver. WHY? Simple, that’s the price ectos are at. Hence, obsolete. People go drops → maybe yellows → exotics and never look at yellows again. (I went blues/greens to exotics personally)

"

and how do you know they will be 50-100 worse grindfest?"

You have to do 3 dungeon paths (the equivalent time to 1.5 AC paths) to get a boss that has a chance at an ascended item. You also have tiers of ascended items (high end ascended items are slotted, as per ANet). This puts them “in between legendaries and exotics”, as per ANet. Hence, 50x harder then exotics.

Naoko.7096:

Arreyanne.2683:

Would I have purchased the game had I had knowledge that they intended to infuse a gear treadmill, or gear progression system. When they repeatedly said that they would not?

They already clarified that the ascended tier isn’t the start of a gear treadmill model but just part of the big update to strengthen/fixes the progression of the game as a whole.

The problem with that, is there is no gap that I have found. There is an exotic weapon at every point all the way up to and ABOVE legendaries (mjolnir and infinite light cost the same to more then legendaries).

Check out http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Mystic_Forge/Other_Items that is just some of the more high end options to chose from. The biggest issue I find is, that since the recipes are only listed in places like that wiki, how to obtain said items is not well known leading to the feelings of there being a huge gap between the random drop tp items and legendaries.

Snerf said: “Also, I believe they must have have been working on this content for longer than the game has been live. Surely it would take longer than a couple of moths to plan, code, develop and implement content of this scale? We as a community can hope that they take great care when rocking the boat, and make no decision lightly. I expect nothing less from a group of professionals.”

Which calls into question why Linsey Murdock prefaced here statments about the “item progression initiative” with “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.” … as if the idea for item progression came as a result of their watching the live game unfold, and as if it wasn’t precisely the game design plan to (1) get exotic-quality gear fairly easily, and (2) reserve legendary skins for legendary efforts.

What she is implying is that they decided to start up item stat progression power creep in contradition to the stated game philosophy because the live game was was playing out exactly as the original team expected – indeed, exactly how they had planned it.

Even if server populations dropped (which there is no hard evidence for), this is still exactly how the game was designed, and the kind of playstyle it was supposed to generate – a game where you didn’t have to devote your time to it, and you could “drop out” for a few months and revisit when new content came in.

These posts that try to claim “something went wrong, so they had to change course” are ignoring two things:

(1) None of thosehypothetical scenarios/reasons/excuses include anything that wasn’t expected by the original GW2 team. In fact, they spoke about these very subjects at length.

and

(2) this content had to have been originated long before there could have been such information available.

Conclusion: this content direction was a top-down decision made before launch and in contradiction the design philosophy that drove 5 years of development and advertising. It was in fact, at least in the final months, a deliberate case of bait and switch.

Namu.5712:

SpyderArachnid.5619:

Cyric.7485:

Sarcasm aside, my point is that the increase in stats isn’t nearly as tremendous as everyone seems to think. Yes, it’s a better item stat-wise. No, it doesn’t make Exotics obsolete… not by a long shot.

It makes Exotics obsolete because of the new Infusion slot, not just the stats.

It was quoted by Anet saying, “After a certain point, our new Ascended items and Infusions become crucial tools for survival.”. Proving that Ascended items will be mandatory over Exotics (since Exotics don’t have an Infusion slot).

Which in turn, will make Exotics obsolete if you wish to participate in any future content.

Your taking that out of context, they are talking about progressive dungeons. You can still do the new content with exotic gear.

I could be wrong though because the writers that posted this stuff left much open to speculation and fear.

Like I said before, it wasn’t taken out of context. They blatantly said that in order to progress further, you will need Ascended items and Infusions to survive.

So while you can do the first few parts of the dungeon in Exotics, you won’t be able to last for the rest of it. You’ll need to upgrade to stand a chance.

Look at it this way. If you didn’t need them at all to survive the dungeon, then why would they of made them in the first place? If you didn’t need the items at all to progress, then why aren’t they just skins? Why instead do they have higher stats and a new infusion slot? They wouldn’t go through the trouble of making this new gear if you didn’t need it and it was useless.

Naoko.7096:

Arreyanne.2683:

Would I have purchased the game had I had knowledge that they intended to infuse a gear treadmill, or gear progression system. When they repeatedly said that they would not?

They already clarified that the ascended tier isn’t the start of a gear treadmill model but just part of the big update to strengthen/fixes the progression of the game as a whole.

A known liar might tell the truth, but chances are he most likely isn’t.

They might not add anything above ascended, but they fully intend to go the gear treadmill tour if you read the blog post carefully.

What is amazing to me is that there is clearly a sub-set of the gaming population who wants 100% horizontal progression for a MMORPG.

We want a gear cap and level cap that remain the same through the life of the game.

We want to have FUN, not be enticed to WORK HARD.

We have a lot of money, and have been playing games a long time.
We are tolerant of mistakes and bugs, and we are patient enough to give you time to get your stuff fixed and fully prepare for new content releases.
We don’t tear through your content and then complain.
We want to build an awesome community.
We want to stick with one game for a very long time, without any sort of power creep.

And nobody wants to make a game for us? WE HAVE MONEY, please take our money and give us a product that we want to purchase. Yes, we fully understand that we aren’t the largest subset of the population… but we are also not able to find what we want in ANY OTHER CONTEMPORARY MMO.

Arena Net promised us a game that we really wanted. We promised them loyalty and financial support.

Sadly, it now seems as though we have been disenfranchised. I hope you are competitive for that highly fickle group of “dedicated players” that have an entire genre of games to choose from.

ANet logic:

Q: What’s in between looking average and looking fantastic?
A: An invisible ring with +8% stats!

I’m so glad I can now bridge the gap between exotics and legendaries.

(anyone who said “looking good” or “looking great”, please stay after class for remedial math and logic)

If the op were correct, Anet would have made a post that said as much, and nipped this in the bud.

Wintyre Fraust.6534:

Snerf said: “Also, I believe they must have have been working on this content for longer than the game has been live. Surely it would take longer than a couple of moths to plan, code, develop and implement content of this scale? We as a community can hope that they take great care when rocking the boat, and make no decision lightly. I expect nothing less from a group of professionals.”

Which calls into question why Linsey Murdock prefaced here statments about the “item progression initiative” with “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.” … as if the idea for item progression came as a result of their watching the live game unfold, and as if it wasn’t precisely the game design plan to (1) get exotic-quality gear fairly easily, and (2) reserve legendary skins for legendary efforts.

What she is implying is that they decided to start up item stat progression power creep in contradition to the stated game philosophy *because the live game was was playing out exactly as the original team expected – indeed, exactly how they had planned it. *

Even if server populations dropped (which there is no hard evidence for), thi is still exactly how the game was designed, and the kind of playstyle it was supposed to generate – a game where you didn’t have to devote your time to it, and you could “drop out” for a few months and revisit when new content came in.

These posts that try to claim “something went wrong, so they had to change course” are ignoring two things:

(1) None of thosehypothetical scenarios/reasons/excuses include anything that wasn’t expected by the original GW2 team. In fact, they spoke about these very subjects at length.

and

(2) this content had to have been originated long before there could have been such information available.

Conclusion: this content direction was a top-down decision made before launch and in contradiction the design philosophy that drove 5 years of development and advertising. It was, in fact, at least in final months, a deliberate case of bait and switch.

While I agree that it could have been in the works for quite a while (though honestly, it’s an irrelevant point in my humble opinion), it wasn’t me that said the original quote.

Kimbald.2697:

Sennar.2309:

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

you know what the worst part of this is for me?

The simple fact that this idea must have been ready before launch.
No way they put this whole thing together in between haloween and Christmas…

It’s not even that they cave in to the ‘WoW crowd’ now, they must have known all along.

I don’t entirely agree with you on that, I believe the progression in gear is a knee jerk reaction – its soooo poorly done that they can’t have been planning this for more than a month. Let me elaborate:
1) According to the blog the rings can only be acquired through the fractals – had they had this ready from the get-go there would other sources as well, especially for WvW since the stat increase says f… you to those who don’t want to run the fractals

2) They would have known the backlash from the community – they advertised another game than what we are currently getting and I see no real attempt at damage control what so ever…They would have prepared for damage control from the get go if they had planned this for a long time

3) The way the rings work – there is no longer a “real” upgrade slot – that seems silly, I personally think it’s because they haven’t yet added the code for two upgrade slots (1 regular 1 infusion") if they had the code for two upgrade slots I don’t see the point in kittening those specs that are more all-round compared to those who are more focused.

GADefence.5634:

“By that logic anything up until now that wasn’t an Exotic tier item has been considered an obsolete item? "

Yes. Yes it is. Seriously? Look at rares : 15 silver a piece. Look at exotics, 1+ gold for most of them (usually, the minimum craft cost + a %). . .

Yellows cost more then 15 silver to make, yet sell for 15 silver. WHY? Simple, that’s the price ectos are at. Hence, obsolete. People go drops -> maybe yellows -> exotics and never look at yellows again. (I went blues/greens to exotics personally)

The biggest difference in moving from rares to exotics are the base stats such as weapon damage and armor value. The additional Power/Precision/Toughness/etc increase is hardly noticeable, to me anyway. I had no trouble stomping the PvE scene or the WvW scene with my rares and when I upgraded to exotics I saw a slight increase in my performance but nothing that made me think “OMGWTFHAVEIBEENDOINGTHISENTIRETIME!?!?!”. Anyone who deems something “obsolete” because it’s lacking a whopping 5 stat points is, IMO, probably a min/maxer. I can kick someone’s teeth in with 3k Power or 2k Power, hardly makes a difference in the grand scheme of stats.

Naoko.7096:

Arreyanne.2683:

Would I have purchased the game had I had knowledge that they intended to infuse a gear treadmill, or gear progression system. When they repeatedly said that they would not?

They already clarified that the ascended tier isn’t the start of a gear treadmill model but just part of the big update to strengthen/fixes the progression of the game as a whole.

You forget ANet sat there doing and saying nothing, selling gems which in many cases would be used to invest in that same exotic gear they were making obsolete with the very work they were doing in that moment.

Sennar.2309:

Naoko.7096:

Arreyanne.2683:

Would I have purchased the game had I had knowledge that they intended to infuse a gear treadmill, or gear progression system. When they repeatedly said that they would not?

They already clarified that the ascended tier isn’t the start of a gear treadmill model but just part of the big update to strengthen/fixes the progression of the game as a whole.

They just go vs their gaming phylosophy.

Snerf.1650:

Even if this was the case, don’t you think that there is something unacceptable with advertising the game as avoiding the gear progression model for years and then suddenly adding it in a few months post release?

I’ll reply both at the same.
I don’t think it’s going to be a gear treadmill model because there’s no evident of it yet. They only released one tier, which is only one. As said by the dev around 11x page, they won’t like release stronger gears every few months. No one knows, ascended could be the only update for the game lifetime that is related to gear progression.

I perceive the update to be more like strengthening the progression between exotic and legendary. The progression between these 2 tiers really needs a serious emergency fix imo. (I reached exotic like in 2 days after Lv80? I calculated legendary going to take unrealistic 8 months on my pace if I play 4-8 hours per day? That’s a big gap.)

Gronba.8621:

Kimbald.2697:

Sennar.2309:

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

you know what the worst part of this is for me?

The simple fact that this idea must have been ready before launch.
No way they put this whole thing together in between haloween and Christmas…

It’s not even that they cave in to the ‘WoW crowd’ now, they must have known all along.

I don’t entirely agree with you on that, I believe the progression in gear is a knee jerk reaction – its soooo poorly done that they can’t have been planning this for more than a month. Let me elaborate:
1) According to the blog the rings can only be acquired through the fractals – had they had this ready from the get-go there would other sources as well, especially for WvW since the stat increase says f… you to those who don’t want to run the fractals

2) They would have known the backlash from the community – they advertised another game than what we are currently getting and I see no real attempt at damage control what so ever…They would have prepared for damage control from the get go if they had planned this for a long time

3) The way the rings work – there is no longer a “real” upgrade slot – that seems silly, I personally think it’s because they haven’t yet added the code for two upgrade slots (1 regular 1 infusion") if they had the code for two upgrade slots I don’t see the point in kittening those specs that are more all-round compared to those who are more focused.

And furthermore -

They are adding RINGS (which have no in game 3d model)
and BACK (which were probably originally exotic models, since there are very very few back items)