Guild Wars 2

Leave Ascended gear, it’s a nice balance point between Exotic and Legendary. Make sure it’s flashy and showy. Remove the Fractal-grinding prereq; tying top-tier armor to a single dungeon is a phenomenally stupid idea no matter how you look at it.

The Infusion/Spectral Agony mechanic was a bad idea in GW (notice they don’t reuse the mechanic after Prophecies?) and it’s an even worse idea the way it’s implemented here. Get rid of it. You want to make the Fractals dungeon ever-harder, do it the way you normally do: spawn more mobs and raise enemy levels.

6. Nothing!

I won’t be getting the armor in the first place, IF I continue to play this game. IF I continue to play (which very much depends on the action ANet will take after the 180¤ turn and squitty event), I might just end up doing do crafting, farming mats for same and not invest much in anything major when it comes to ingame content, be that present or future.

Verteiron.8734:

Leave Ascended gear, it’s a nice balance point between Exotic and Legendary. Make sure it’s flashy and showy. Remove the Fractal-grinding prereq; tying top-tier armor to a single dungeon is a phenomenally stupid idea no matter how you look at it.

The Infusion/Spectral Agony mechanic was a bad idea in GW (notice they don’t reuse the mechanic after Prophecies?) and it’s an even worse idea the way it’s implemented here. Get rid of it. You want to make the Fractals dungeon ever-harder, do it the way you normally do: spawn more mobs and raise enemy levels.

Sounds good to me.

Content agnostic ascended and no Agony sounds like a game I’d love to play.

LOL @ the sponsored links on the amazon page. 3 gold farmer sites! GREAT GAME GUYS.

Verteiron.8734:

Leave Ascended gear, it’s a nice balance point between Exotic and Legendary. Make sure it’s flashy and showy. …

For the gazillionth time, how could something be a nice balance between two pieces of gear if they share exactly the same stats? In case you didn’t know, Legendaries and Exotics have the exact same stats. There is no gap, never was.

Nerth.3940:

Verteiron.8734:

Leave Ascended gear, it’s a nice balance point between Exotic and Legendary. Make sure it’s flashy and showy. …

For the gazillionth time, how could something be a nice balance between two pieces of gear if they share exactly the same stats? In case you didn’t know, Legendaries and Exotics have the exact same stats. There is no gap, never was.

Yet still no one even cares about the gap between rare and exotics. The funny part is the gap is actually wider between those two than it is between exotics and ascended. Seems pretty clear to me that stats aren’t the reason people are angry, it’s all squabbling over the alleged broken promises.

NastyPiggy.2046:

Snapydubi.2307:

I have the feeling that infusion slots wont be active in WvW, making Ascended items equal to exotics and only increasing power in the new dungeons, it makes sense if you see the numbers of stats in this items and that the special slots are not the same as jewel or rune slots. This would make ppl who like grinding go and keep increasing power in PvE, and keep things more fair in WvW. I can bet this is the intention of this items but ppl rage and rush to state uninformed “opinions” about everything… my guess is as good as anybody else but im keeping a positive perspective until we got more info about this items.

How about an example from the wiki?

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/File:Ascended_example.png

Want to have the same stats as everyone else maxed out in WvW… you gotta go PvE grind.

How did you got your current equip? magic?? stat difference is not that big for all the kittentorm im reading here and for what i see in the bazaar, ascend equip can be crafted so you can acquire it the same way you acquire exotics, and rlly powerful equipment will be harder to get and equal in power to Legendaries. Either way… i prefer my idea of the infusion being the one material that keeps rising power to the item and making it noneffective in WvW, and increase the variety of cosmetics. Equipment doesn’t win WvW

Nerth.3940:

Verteiron.8734:

Leave Ascended gear, it’s a nice balance point between Exotic and Legendary. Make sure it’s flashy and showy. …

For the gazillionth time, how could something be a nice balance between two pieces of gear if they share exactly the same stats? In case you didn’t know, Legendaries and Exotics have the exact same stats. There is no gap, never was.

In terms of item requirements. Since there’s no Legendary armor, Ascended makes a nice long-term goal for armor collecting. Hence my suggestion to make sure it’s extra-flashy.

Guys, although I’m just as unhappy about this whole situation as you are (and haven’t played the game ever since the announcement), let’s not overreact and start dealing out awful reviews on amazon or metacritic. Let’s give ArenaNet a week or 2 to come up with a plan that can work for all parties involved… us, those interested in some kind of endgame progression, and NCSoft/Nexon. If, after that, they still haven’t responded and they still stick to their current plans of endgame content with gear requirements and gear grinding, then by all means go wild on the reviews.

Cheiron the Centaur.1829:

Guys, although I’m just as unhappy about this whole situation as you are (and haven’t played the game ever since the announcement), let’s not overreact and start dealing out awful reviews on amazon or metacritic. Let’s give ArenaNet a week or 2 to come up with a plan that can work for all parties involved… us, those interested in some kind of endgame progression, and NCSoft/Nexon. If, after that, they still haven’t responded and they still stick to their current plans of endgame content with gear requirements and gear grinding, then by all means go wild on the reviews.

Dude, it’s done. 212 pages, 10583 threads, 129038 views, heavily dominated by negative comments by a mile. If they aren’t going to response now, they will never. Aanet has already made their choice. This thread is a merge threads just to keep stuff clean in forum. They don’t care imo.

Lemuria.3195:

Nerth.3940:

Verteiron.8734:

Leave Ascended gear, it’s a nice balance point between Exotic and Legendary. Make sure it’s flashy and showy. …

For the gazillionth time, how could something be a nice balance between two pieces of gear if they share exactly the same stats? In case you didn’t know, Legendaries and Exotics have the exact same stats. There is no gap, never was.

Yet still no one even cares about the gap between rare and exotics. The funny part is the gap is actually wider between those two than it is between exotics and ascended. Seems pretty clear to me that stats aren’t the reason people are angry, it’s all squabbling over the alleged broken promises.

I care because it’s a major price difference at 80. I can get full set of rare armor/weapons for cheap. The difference for a full set of rare vs exotics is huge and there are people out there that paid real money for gems to convert to gold to get a full set of the top tier gear in a game that said they didn’t have to grind for gear. Low and behold that’s no longer valid, so those who spent a lot of money on gems will now be left standing with 2nd tier armor/weapons while grinders will have the top tier.

If Guild Wars 2 didn’t come out basically laughing at other games putting in grinds(instead of fun), people wouldn’t have had expectations of a no grind game for stats(but a grind for cosmetics), but this wasn’t the case we’re finding out 3 months after release. They could have published “progression in the future” since they must have been deep into development of it when the game was released… but that would have stopped a lot of money flowing in to buy the top “current” gear.

Oh, believe me, they care. This has grown way too big. Even after this patch and the trial weekend, the number of active players on their servers is dropping noticably. ArenaNet will surely realize they’ve made a mistake. They just don’t have a good reply yet. Telling us “sorry guys, we messed up and we know it” won’t solve anything if they can’t also come up with a plan for the future that will keep all parties satisfied. There have been several good suggestions in these threads on how all this could be improved. But I believe that Nexon has a big influence in the direction this game is currently heading into (just like EA was the driving force behind Bioware’s downfall), and unfortunately, I doubt that ArenaNet will be able to change things around without approval from Nexon… meaning they have to be able to convince Nexon, with actual figures, that this approach isn’t working, and that they can come up with an alternative that would work. I’m prepared to just lay this game down, wait 2 more weeks, and see what ArenaNet has come up with. I hope you can do the same.

Snapydubi.2307:

NastyPiggy.2046:

Snapydubi.2307:

I have the feeling that infusion slots wont be active in WvW, making Ascended items equal to exotics and only increasing power in the new dungeons, it makes sense if you see the numbers of stats in this items and that the special slots are not the same as jewel or rune slots. This would make ppl who like grinding go and keep increasing power in PvE, and keep things more fair in WvW. I can bet this is the intention of this items but ppl rage and rush to state uninformed “opinions” about everything… my guess is as good as anybody else but im keeping a positive perspective until we got more info about this items.

How about an example from the wiki?

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/File:Ascended_example.png

Want to have the same stats as everyone else maxed out in WvW… you gotta go PvE grind.

How did you got your current equip? magic?? stat difference is not that big for all the kittentorm im reading here and for what i see in the bazaar, ascend equip can be crafted so you can acquire it the same way you acquire exotics, and rlly powerful equipment will be harder to get and equal in power to Legendaries. Either way… i prefer my idea of the infusion being the one material that keeps rising power to the item and making it noneffective in WvW, and increase the variety of cosmetics. Equipment doesn’t win WvW

So this is acceptable, every few months instead of just WvW you have to go back and grind for new stats. Sure 1 or 2 items don’t make a difference, but a whole suit of armor does.

Equipment doesn’t win in WvW… not in a zerg, maybe not in small skirmishes, but I do believe it makes a difference when you’re caught by yourself 1 on 1 with someone(say running back to your group after a death). I don’t really have a guild nor a normal group to run with so I’m kinda that casual player so yes… stats help you when you don’t have people to lean against.

Lemuria.3195:

Yet still no one even cares about the gap between rare and exotics. The funny part is the gap is actually wider between those two than it is between exotics and ascended. Seems pretty clear to me that stats aren’t the reason people are angry, it’s all squabbling over the alleged broken promises.

I’ll try and explain it to you. As soon as you introduce statistical gear progression the whole meta changes. It’s not about “do anything you want” anymore. What you get is getting the most for your time invested. You become dependent on patch cycles. New patch, new gear. If you are not able to play the game because of school/work/spouse/significant other you fall further and further behind. You can already see that in /map chat. People are trying to minimize time investment for maximum gain hence “lvl80 exotic only” BS.

ArenaNet was advocating that this is a bad MMO design and potential game designers should avoid it for a reason. This is what people including myself are all up in arms about.

Cheiron the Centaur.1829:

Oh, believe me, they care. This has grown way too big. Even after this patch and the trial weekend, the number of active players on their servers is dropping noticably. ArenaNet will surely realize they’ve made a mistake. They just don’t have a good reply yet. Telling us “sorry guys, we messed up and we know it” won’t solve anything if they can’t also come up with a plan for the future that will keep all parties satisfied. There have been several good suggestions in these threads on how all this could be improved. But I believe that Nexon has a big influence in the direction this game is currently heading into (just like EA was the driving force behind Bioware’s downfall), and unfortunately, I doubt that ArenaNet will be able to change things around without approval from Nexon… meaning they have to be able to convince Nexon, with actual figures, that this approach isn’t working, and that they can come up with an alternative that would work. I’m prepared to just lay this game down, wait 2 more weeks, and see what ArenaNet has come up with. I hope you can do the same.

You don’t think that whoever made the decision to put this in the game won’t point at a game like Planetside 2 and say no… it’s not that we put this in the game, it’s that a new big game came out. Push forwad with the progression!

Pino.5209:

Cheiron the Centaur.1829:

Guys, although I’m just as unhappy about this whole situation as you are (and haven’t played the game ever since the announcement), let’s not overreact and start dealing out awful reviews on amazon or metacritic. Let’s give ArenaNet a week or 2 to come up with a plan that can work for all parties involved… us, those interested in some kind of endgame progression, and NCSoft/Nexon. If, after that, they still haven’t responded and they still stick to their current plans of endgame content with gear requirements and gear grinding, then by all means go wild on the reviews.

Dude, it’s done. 212 pages, 10583 threads, 129038 views, heavily dominated by negative comments by a mile. If they aren’t going to response now, they will never. Aanet has already made their choice. This thread is a merge threads just to keep stuff clean in forum. They don’t care imo.

Pretty much this. If you’re talking at this point, it’s just to fight with some crazy white knight defenders of Anet who don’t know what they’re talking about. Which is amusing to do admittedly, so have at it if you guys like, though

Im suprised how thigs have turned on us.

We use to defend the original project of Anet, and now, the grindkittens are the good guys while us have become the whiners, incredible.

Sad thing is, Anet does not give a kitty for us. A game for the players…

Another night of needed sleep has passed, work is over now and I’m still very upset over this. I’m no longer Irate.

I’m still mad though and intent on leaving and getting a full refund if they decide to continue with this course. I’ll still make formal complaints of bait-and-switch with the appropriate authorities as this behavior disgusts me and IMHO neeeds to punished in any business that scams its customers.

I keep looking for a response from Anet over this and find absolutely nothing. Ok. Maybe today as the start of the work week for them they need time to digest our response. Hopefully tomorrow they’ll have something to say but I’m not holding my breath.

So sad…

So basically what you people are saying in over 200 pages is that ur not happy cause is not enough PvE stuff to make you play and enjoy more this side of the game, but ur not happy that they add new PvE stuff including gear. Ok that makes perfect sense!

Tomcat.8375:

But what can we do? IMO go to amazon and tell the other naive consumers what you really think about this game. You want to make a legal impact? Bad reviews at places who sell this game. A flood of bad reviews right before the holidays? That’s one way to be heard.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001TOQ8X4/ref=cm_cr_mts_prod_img

Good idea, I hadn’t thought of that yet. Done.

a merged thread with 99% negative view means it’s a thread they don’t want to hear, don’t want to see and reluctant to respond.

Raziel.1853:

So basically what you people are saying in over 200 pages is that ur not happy cause is not enough PvE stuff to make you play and enjoy more this side of the game, but ur not happy that they add new PvE stuff including gear. Ok that makes perfect sense!

Apparently English isn’t your strong point. I’ll break it down for you.

1. A selling point for GW2 was the lack of vertical “gear” progression and grind.
2. Lots of people bought into the idea of no grind.
3. Other people wanted the grind and many threatened to leave.
4. ANet does a 180 and introduced the gear grind.
5. Forum explodes with those who bought into the no grind idea feeling lied to.

And why do you think they introduced this? Because before the forums explode because wasn’t enough stuff to do in PvE.
You don’t want that gear, then don’t go for it, its not like you need it. I understand your frustration, but its players that made Anet take this decision, if people didn’t want this Anet would not introduce it to the game.

Raziel.1853:

So basically what you people are saying in over 200 pages is that ur not happy cause is not enough PvE stuff to make you play and enjoy more this side of the game, but ur not happy that they add new PvE stuff including gear. Ok that makes perfect sense!

Good job missing the point by miles.

Raziel.1853:

And why do you think they introduced this? Because before the forums explode because wasn’t enough stuff to do in PvE.
You don’t want that gear, then don’t go for it, its not like you need it.

Still not reading I see.

Everyone is going to need the gear in order to stay relevant in the future, that’s what happens when you add the grind and power creep.

ANet is trying to cater to two mutually exclusive play style and they’re going to get burned for it.

I actually wouldn’t mind ascended equipment if they didn’t cost so much. For example, you can get very nice stats combo on an exotic trinket for 3g. An ascended item costs 24 skill points, a vial of condensed essence, 50 ectos and 250 of a t6 mat. This mins 12g for the ectos, and then 39 to 62 more gold for the t6 mats for a decent stat combination (ex. berkserker, cleric, knight, solider, rampager. That means 51 to 74 gold a piece for equip anet said would be necessary to delve further into fractals. And of course it destroys the concept of easy stat equality that I loved in gw1.

Also new gear is hardly any new content, it just makes you repeat old content until you can afford it. They already made the new map and dungeon, they didn’t have to make ascended gear so grindy.

I won’t play the game, period, as long as Ascended armour is statistically superior to Exotics.

get my legendary. Make some alts.

Can we have some servers without ascended gears?
That way I can keep playing a game I loved.
Bonus: separates me from players chasing some sort of ultra elite mega über number game.

This game isnt old enough for “vanilla servers”

Which moderator do you think will come in here and tell us this topic has run its course, and that it will be closed, and that they thank you for understanding?

My money is on Ivonne.

I second this. Also transfering in destroys / locks to an unusable state any ascended gear the account has.

this belongs in suggestions, and no, you can’t have everything you want.
I don’t like this gear either, i may leave for it, but that is the only right i have.

Raziel.1853:

because wasn’t enough stuff to do in PvE.

And this here is the fundamental difference of how people perceive content worth doing.

One side absolutely needs to be rewarded with something that gives their character a definite edge over others in combat, whether that is PvE or PvP. Skins don’t accomplish this for them, invalidating the rest of the content and time they spend experiencing it. The earlier they get this edge in a treadmill cycle, the longer the feeling of accomplishment lasts. Once the masses gain this edge as well, it has lost its appeal and a new edge is needed.

I understand and tolerate this kind of player. If that’s what people need to feel a sense of accomplishment, that their time spend experiencing the content has been worth it, then let them eat cake.

The point is that there is another group of players who detest precisely this kind of edge and accomplishment, the neverending cycle of farm, farm, farm, brag, brag, brag, farm, farm, farm. Those people exist and were drawn to GW2 because it was one of the only places where this sort of progression was intentionally left out.
They viewed getting max armor not as an accomplishment, but more of a relief, after which they could freely choose between spending time on working on things that didn’t make them stronger, that were only useful to enhance their character. Some of them found joy in achieving something they didn’t need to achieve to be the best, like people who climb mountains. Not having max gear is a hindrance for them, because it prevents them from enjoying hunting for frivolous prestige when they could and should work towards finishing to gear up. It’s not about falling behind. In fact, I trust ANet to make sure this negative aspect of the gear treadmill is being eliminated. It’s about being done forever, not having to worry about keeping up, no matter how small the increase in power is.

What one seeks repulses the other. There is no compromise, no middle ground. One group needs to feel what another seeks to eliminate.

I’d move to a legacy server. I seriously miss the good old days of 2 weeks ago. I bet the WvW on that server would be pretty sweet actually, since it would draw in most of the players for whom that is the primary focus.

For those that have requested and gotten refunds, does your account deactivate the moment you put the ticket in? Or does it only deactivate after the request has processed?

I would love this too. It is sad that we already want a legacy server though.

It is a simple matter of taking the whole “Design for casuals” motto in the wrong direction. The GW2 developers did the classic mistake of mistaking “casuals” for “newbies”. This is basically a trap that WoW has created to cause other mmos to fail.

The reason open world content in WoW has gotten easier and easier as the game went on is not because casuals demand it like a lot of mmo developers seem to think. Instead it is simply that the developers of WoW has structured the game into three parts:

• Leveling content – Class mechanic tutorial (as class mechanics change for each expansion, this works well).
• Max level outdoor content – Easy daily grind content to get people to join in brainlessly every day. Quite frankly, this is probably the weakest part of WoW as I have heard of very few people enjoying it.
• Dungeons and Raids – Main content that use a mix of difficulty levels and vertical gear progression to ensure that a relatively small amount of actual content is reused to its most. You get to do everything from going through heroic dungeons in crappy blue gear, to going from them in proper heroic dungeon gear, to facerolling them in epic raiding gear (yes, facerolling in overpowered gear is an intended feature to extend the lifetime of said dungeons).

Where GW2 developers messed up is by thinking that they could make dungeons the main content in a horizontal gear progression PvE game. The simple fact is that it doesn’t work, because they don’t have tools needed to extend dungeon lifetime enough. (you basically need some kind of vertical progression for that)

To make a proper Horizontal Progression PvE game, you need to widen the base of available content to allow it to cater to people of all skill levels. That means you need outdoor content that isn’t brainless. The reason GW1 survived and thrived for all these years is because the vast majority of its content was for max level players, and they eventually also introduced hard mode to further extend the value of all that content. That meant that they could have content for all skill levels.

In GW2, even the max level Orr content isn’t for max geared players. Instead it very much feels designed in the same way as WoW dailies. Faceroll easy content that feels like it is designed for beginners, not casuals, with only very few exceptions. This is the result that a lot of players warned of after Anet eased up the open world content after BWE1. It is one thing to have beginner zones. It is a completely other thing to neglect non-beginners.

Anyway, the way the Anet developers are trying to salvage their mess is not by fixing the open world content, but instead by introducing vertical progression to prolong dungeon content. But really, that makes them a direct competitor to WoW and Rift that are far better at that kind of stuff.

Yeah that server would have a self life of about 1 – 2 weeks because that would be the amount of time it would require for the elite crowd to become bored again.

Ok here is a POV.

Why are people so overly concerned with the introduction of this new gear tier?

If you dont wan’t to do it (obtain, gather etc.) then don’t, simple. Or is it because you know you will do it but could not be bothered with another task?

If the latter is the case then why bother with it?

See, its a loop.

There are lots of tasks/goals/achievements to do in this game. All of which require “grinding” to complete. This new ‘Ascended’ gear tier is no different.

The point is, people are drawn towards completing stuff but hate to put in the effort – well tough luck my friend(s). The higher the reward the more effort needs to be put in.

I don’t see anything wrong with the introduction of the Ascended gear. Its not demoralising, however, what it does is add more content and cater for those who want to use it.

:)

Raziel.1853:

So basically what you people are saying in over 200 pages is that ur not happy cause is not enough PvE stuff to make you play and enjoy more this side of the game, but ur not happy that they add new PvE stuff including gear. Ok that makes perfect sense!

You’re wrong. What people aren’t happy about is that the gear included in the “new PvE stuff” is stronger than all the older gear.

Adding new PvE stuff is great; the game definitely suffers from a lack of it.

Adding new gear is great; more cool looking backpacks (and eventually armour and weapons) is an awesome change to the game.

Making that gear have higher stats than the strongest equipment in the game changes the content from “New stuff that you can do” to “New stuff that you have to do, if you want to keep up”.

That is what people are angry about.

Death Reincarnated.3570:

Ok here is a POV.

Why are people so overly concerned with the introduction of this new gear tier?

If you dont wan’t to do it (obtain, gather etc.) then don’t, simple. Or is it because you know you will do it but could not be bothered with another task?

If the latter is the case then why bother with it?

See, its a loop.

There are lots of tasks/goals/achievements to do in this game. All of which require “grinding” to complete. This new ‘Ascended’ gear tier is no different.

The point is, people are drawn towards completing stuff but hate to put in the effort – well tough luck my friend(s). The higher the reward the more effort needs to be put in.

I don’t see anything wrong with the introduction of the Ascended gear. Its not demoralising, however, what it does is add more content and cater for those who want to use it.

:)

Because it will lead to exclusion based on not having the top gear. When good gear is easy to get, that’s ok. When it’s a grind to get, that’s not so ok. Also, anet stated that ascended gear would be necessary to delve into higher level fractals.

It also means that people will be beating you not because they’re more skilled/better, but simply because they had more money to pour into their gear, because they either grind for gold or got lucky with the RNG.

I’m serious,
I was happy last week, they can keep putting higher and higher levels of gear into one set of servers and leave it at exotics in another.
I WAS progressing last week, with my ability to play.

Yes please, sign me up….. could we get at least on pre Nov 15 server

Wildclaw.6073:

The GW2 developers did the classic mistake of mistaking “casuals” for “newbies”…

…Anyway, the way the Anet developers are trying to salvage their mess is not by fixing the open world content, but instead by introducing vertical progression to prolong dungeon content. But really, that makes them a direct competitor to WoW and Rift that are far better at that kind of stuff.

You nailed it on the head, Sir.

Raziel.1853:

And why do you think they introduced this? Because before the forums explode because wasn’t enough stuff to do in PvE.
You don’t want that gear, then don’t go for it, its not like you need it. I understand your frustration, but its players that made Anet take this decision, if people didn’t want this Anet would not introduce it to the game.

Then I propose the following:

Those who want this grind, go for it. Those of us who don’t should get a five minute quest involving bopping bunny rabbits on the head with a giant mallet. At the end, we get all the gear you guys get for your months of repetitive grind and hundreds and hundreds of gold.

Sound good? I bet we got a deal, right? You happy, we happy, only the bunnies, they not happy, but who cares about bunnies?

Good idea.
1)saves a refund from Anet
2)gets me back playing the game I enjoyed.

I am down with it totally and wouldnt hesitate. How dang sad is that!

If it is a revenue issue – I am open to a sub if there is a contract involved this time.

Guys, come on. Really?

Why is this such a big deal, what exactly changed that the game is significantly worse this week than last? Better dungeon drops, better champion drops, better chest loot, more content, DA KARKA, and you guys want a “legacy” server?

NO ONE is forcing you to play a so called “numbers game.” You choose your play-style, not Anet, not “elitists,” but you.

GreyFeathers.8175:

Yeah that server would have a self life of about 1 – 2 weeks because that would be the amount of time it would require for the elite crowd to become bored again.

The elite crowd can go anywhere and be bored. You think the server wouldn’t manage without them?

Broken Angel.4956:

This game isnt old enough for “vanilla servers”

You might say it isn’t old enough to destroy the premises on which it was sold, too. Since it apparently is not, it isn’t too young for “vanilla” servers either.