Guild Wars 2

“In most games, you occasionally have tasks that are really fun to do, and the rest of the game is a boring grind to get to the fun stuff. We don’t want people to grind in games. It’s not fun, we want to change the way people view combat”.

So, can anyone point me to the part where the said this about gear?

Here are their statements about not putting gear stat progression in their Guild Wars games.

Colin Johanson, Lead Content Designer

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

Mike O’Brien, Arenanet President and Founder

“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.”

I’m pretty sure the janitor at ArenaNet is using a rotor rooter to remove the manifesto from the toilet after the Nexon mole hired as the monetization expert used it to wipe her behind.

Cool. Thanks for the info. While I understand (to some extent) the outrage, I do feel that a lot of people miss the

" it’s not required to play the game." part of that. Example, there was a guy in Gandara LA last night saying “LFG FotM Lvl80 Exo NON00BS”. In 20 seconds, most of map chat was taking the piss out of him for being an elitist prick.

But most of all, I am confused. There’s no real need for Ascended gear at the moment in main PvE, and odds are if you go deep enough in FotM, you’ll get them anyway. I am fully aware of the arguments for and against this new tier.

Again, thanks so this can probably be locked now.

Wow. Nothing more needs be said besides that quote. That’s baaaad.

Twaddlefish.6537:

Cool. Thanks for the info. While I understand (to some extent) the outrage, I do feel that a lot of people miss the

" it’s not required to play the game." part of that. Example, there was a guy in Gandara LA last night saying “LFG FotM Lvl80 Exo NON00BS”. In 20 seconds, most of map chat was taking the piss out of him for being an elitist prick.

But most of all, I am confused. There’s no real need for Ascended gear at the moment in main PvE, and odds are if you go deep enough in FotM, you’ll get them anyway. I am fully aware of the arguments for and against this new tier.

Again, thanks so this can probably be locked now.

I get what you are saying. If Ascended existed prior to launch, I would have never said a thing. The reason I am disgusted by this change is because a) it is introduction of a new gear tier post-launch after we were told Exotics had max stat, b) it was explained to be added for the “end game raiding types”, c) they never provided any concrete evidence that a large percentage of their customer base wanted gear stat progression, d) I bought a product based on horizontal progression and 3 months later they removed this, e) they are planning to have new content that supports this new approach.

Where is the new content to show their continued support for horizontal progression? Why did they throw their manifesto, their 7 year design vision, out the window 3 months after launch?

don ring.2793:

I’m most concerned about coming to Lion’s Arch later on down the road to see everyone dressed in the exact same ascendance gear. All individual looks will be gone because why would people want to look unique when they can kill anyone who does? Groups will take one look at how your equipped and instantly the “noob” argument will come into play which is sad because I haven’t seen any of that going on so far. It was like a breath of fresh air…

Please don’t try to predict the future. Transmutation stones exist so there goes that argument about everyone looking the same. No reasonable group is going to instantly kick people not in ascended gear, unless they’re (surprise) doing FotM at levels that need it or the person is decked out in just blues and greens. Let’s stop painting the progression community all as elitist snobs. Some people are, but then there are plenty of a**holes against progression making attacks on here too.

I really hope Mike O’Brien says something soon about all of this. He has been the manifesto spokesperson for years.

He should explain the reason for this change in his vision.

dalendria.3762:

I really hope Mike O’Brien says something soon about all of this. He has been the manifesto spokesperson for years.

He should explain the reason for this change in his vision.

The reason for this change is obvious: Nexon bought a lot of NCSoft shares, and applied pressure to NCSoft so they are calling the shots at ArenaNet now.

The decision to abandon the Manifesto and target the WoW audience came from them, and ArenaNet has nothing to say in this matter – they are not even allowed to talk on the forums besides statements approved by NCSoft.

ArenaNet developers are so desperate they communicate with little messages in the game (or over twitter).

And Mike O’Brien is probably contemplating what he should do – watch how NCSoft slowly destroys the game and his company similar to EA destroying Bioware, or leave and start something else. Not an easy decision.

cele.7398:

dalendria.3762:

I really hope Mike O’Brien says something soon about all of this. He has been the manifesto spokesperson for years.

He should explain the reason for this change in his vision.

The reason for this change is obvious: Nexon bought a lot of NCSoft shares, and applied pressure to NCSoft so they are calling the shots at ArenaNet now.

The decision to abandon the Manifesto and target the WoW audience came from them, and ArenaNet has nothing to say in this matter – they are not even allowed to talk on the forums besides statements approved by NCSoft.

ArenaNet developers are so desperate they communicate with little messages in the game (or over twitter).

And Mike O’Brian is probably contemplating what he should do – watch how NCSoft slowly destroys the game and his company similar to EA destroying Bioware, or leave and start something else. Not an easy decision.

This makes me sad. But I think some of what you are saying is right. I posted a few days ago that I have only seen companies do this when someone new is put in charge or gains new power. Most company execs will not take such a strategic risk at destroying their brand and core customer base unless they are forced to do so.

i,ll keep bumping this till we get a proper response by the devs

Has anyone else noticed that this thread has more pages than the General Forums?

Corew.8932:

People are even asking about the refunds in mapchat now.. but I’m sure those not on the forum are enjoying themselves, right?

Yeah, I think a LOT of casuals probably just bought the game via word of mouth or an initial look over the company manifesto, and don’t really bother with visiting websites or forums. Finding out what Lost Shores/Ascended armor did to the game might take them some time. As we’ve seen on this thread, people are still coming in as first-time posters to find out what’s going on and finding out they just got backstabbed by ANET.

Even if they aren’t regular website visitors or forum-crawlers, they’re going to figure it out as time goes by.

Sky.9347:

Posted 11 hours ago:

AndrewMcLeod.3857:

Derk.3189:

Stormleaf.1769:

Erulogos.2591:

Quoting you both as you both make the same argument, essentially, and miss the same issue.

The issue is not with -current- content. No Ascended gear is required to finish every dungeon and kill every boss currently walking Tyria.

The issue is with -future- content. It was stated, when Ascended gear was announced, that Agony (and thus Agony resist) was something that would be involved in content going forward. It was not stated, one way or the other, if it would be required to even attempt future content, and it therefore becomes a simple question: grind Ascended and Agony resist now, so you are ready for the new content no matter what, or wait and see if it will be required, and hope that, if it is, enough other people waited that you can get groups to grind it out.

It is true that as of this moment in time, the grind heavy gear is not required to see any of the content in the game. But we don’t know when or if it will be, and Anet has not said one way or the other. A lot of folks saying it is required are basically taking the cautious path, assuming it will be and preparing for the worst.

The issue with this is that ArenaNet could have easily made this content require Agony resistance from the beginning as well, by making it some Mystic Forge thing and introducing Agony at fractal level 1. They didn’t; heck, they even made it so low levels can participate. Exotics aren’t even a requirement for the early difficulty levels. If they didn’t do it now, why do you think they’re magically going to start doing it in the future? None of the content in GW2 has been restricted like that. There is zero indication of ArenaNet ever restricting content like that, and it’s simply not helpful to base your argument on an assumption that they’ll magically start doing it.

AHHAHA You really think they did that for the players? Its just there to draw out the content, an additional carrot on another stick. Oh you want to see what agony is like? Hit me up 10 levels.

The Agony mechanic wasn’t introduced at the start of the dungeon so that everybody can experience the content. While one of the goals of the Fractals of the Mists dungeon was to provide some difficult content for players looking for a challenge, we also wanted the dungeon to be available for everybody to experience. While getting far into the dungeon requires agony resistance from ascended gear, the content was designed to provide challenging content, and to allow players to choose what difficulty they wanted to play at.

As for ascended gear, to reiterate what Chris has said (https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/info/news/A-message-from-our-Studio-Design-Director-Chris-Whiteside), it’s not intended as a treadmill, but rather as a tier of rewards that can help bridge the gap between Exotics (a few hours of effort to acquire a piece) and Legendaries (hundreds of hours of effort to acquire one). They’re currently only available in the Fractals of the Mist Dungeon, but we’re going to be adding new ways to acquire them, both inside of WvW as well as elsewhere in PvE.

umm you possible wouldwant tolook to ascended items/infusions recipes…

They possibly surpasses most korean mmorpg grinding requirement….
Also they almost destroyed economy in few days ._.

LordByron.8369:

umm you possible wouldwant tolook to ascended items/infusions recipes…

They possibly surpasses most korean mmorpg grinding requirement….
Also they almost destroyed economy in few days ._.

To craft 12 Ascended items:
3000 tier 6 fine crafting material
12 vials of condensed mist essence
600 globs of ectoplasm
288 skill points

To infuse 12 Ascended items:

3000 Passion Fruits
1200 Vicious Claws
12 Eldritch Scrolls = 600 skill points
240 Mystic Coins = 240 daily achievements

Enjoy your grind.

Twaddlefish.6537:

But most of all, I am confused. There’s no real need for Ascended gear at the moment in main PvE, and odds are if you go deep enough in FotM, you’ll get them anyway. I am fully aware of the arguments for and against this new tier.

The part I’d like to point out is where you say… AT THE MOMENT. So do you believe they decided to cross a line this one time only? They’ve already said this is just the beginning and bringing ascended gear aquisition in PvE and WvW, they’ve decided to cross a line and continue walking.

Chuo.4238:

LordByron.8369:

umm you possible wouldwant tolook to ascended items/infusions recipes…

They possibly surpasses most korean mmorpg grinding requirement….
Also they almost destroyed economy in few days ._.

To craft 12 Ascended items:
3000 tier 6 fine crafting material
12 vials of condensed mist essence
600 globs of ectoplasm
288 skill points

To infuse 12 Ascended items:

3000 Passion Fruits
1200 Vicious Claws
12 Eldritch Scrolls = 600 skill points
240 Mystic Coins = 240 daily achievements

Enjoy your grind.

Right, but how many ascended item slots are there at present? Three. You can also buy infusions with the dungeon tokens.

Laelgon.8046:

Right, but how many ascended item slots are there at present? Three. You can also buy infusions with the dungeon tokens.

Hmm, who else has the feeling the next step is infusions will be available in the cash shop for a ‘nominal’ fee.

Laelgon.8046:

Chuo.4238:

LordByron.8369:

umm you possible wouldwant tolook to ascended items/infusions recipes…

They possibly surpasses most korean mmorpg grinding requirement….
Also they almost destroyed economy in few days ._.

To craft 12 Ascended items:
3000 tier 6 fine crafting material
12 vials of condensed mist essence
600 globs of ectoplasm
288 skill points

To infuse 12 Ascended items:

3000 Passion Fruits
1200 Vicious Claws
12 Eldritch Scrolls = 600 skill points
240 Mystic Coins = 240 daily achievements

Enjoy your grind.

Right, but how many ascended item slots are there at present? Three. You can also buy infusions with the dungeon tokens.

Yeah, sometimes when I have a very long road trip I will just think of it as a series of smaller segments.

Instead of counting up to 1000 miles, I will focus on the smaller 100 mile blocks. Then it doesn’t seem so bad.

The difference is, of course, that my road trip eventually ends and I eventually arrive at my final destination.

offence.4726:

It’s a personal effort after all , if you are a casual gamer who maxed his exotic set and have probably second BiS inslot why would you want ascendant gear for +5+10+20 stat ? Where will you be using that “hardcore” gear , once a week in wvw or the daily dungeon ? It’s the same previous mmo argument and here it comes: play harder ( work harder ) then the rest get an extra edge it’s just like in the real life or is it not ? No one is forcing you to do it you will still be competitive either way. So why cry about an extra +5 stat you don’t need and won’t use ?

Read the manifesto and marketing literature around GW2; that will answer your question. It’s always good to read the box before purchasing a product.

Laelgon.8046:

Chuo.4238:

LordByron.8369:

umm you possible wouldwant tolook to ascended items/infusions recipes…

They possibly surpasses most korean mmorpg grinding requirement….
Also they almost destroyed economy in few days ._.

To craft 12 Ascended items:
3000 tier 6 fine crafting material
12 vials of condensed mist essence
600 globs of ectoplasm
288 skill points

To infuse 12 Ascended items:

3000 Passion Fruits
1200 Vicious Claws
12 Eldritch Scrolls = 600 skill points
240 Mystic Coins = 240 daily achievements

Enjoy your grind.

Right, but how many ascended item slots are there at present? Three. You can also buy infusions with the dungeon tokens.

[sarcasm]
That’s good, you can divide these requirements in 4 parts! You do one part now and when comes the updates you can do the 3 others!
Let me give you this hamster medal.
[/sarcasm]

Polluxor.5970:

Laelgon.8046:

Chuo.4238:

LordByron.8369:

umm you possible wouldwant tolook to ascended items/infusions recipes…

They possibly surpasses most korean mmorpg grinding requirement….
Also they almost destroyed economy in few days ._.

To craft 12 Ascended items:
3000 tier 6 fine crafting material
12 vials of condensed mist essence
600 globs of ectoplasm
288 skill points

To infuse 12 Ascended items:

3000 Passion Fruits
1200 Vicious Claws
12 Eldritch Scrolls = 600 skill points
240 Mystic Coins = 240 daily achievements

Enjoy your grind.

Right, but how many ascended item slots are there at present? Three. You can also buy infusions with the dungeon tokens.

[sarcasm]
That’s good, you can divide these requirements in 4 parts! You do one part now and when comes the updates you can do the 3 others!
Let me give you this hamster medal.
[/sarcasm]

Not saying it isn’t a grind. But let’s not pretend people need to be gathering 3000 passion fruit this week to be able to play. If I choose to grind content I enjoy for gear I want that’s my decision. I don’t insult your play style, so don’t insult mine.

Most of us aren’t trying to insult those that enjoy gear grinding but one of the main points about GW2 was that there wouldn’t be a gear grind. It would be a fun virtual world with horizontal progression. Especially since vertical progression MMOs are the norm at the moment. ( Rift, SWTOR, Aion, AoC, WoW, LOTRO, STO )

Laelgon.8046:

Polluxor.5970:

Laelgon.8046:

Chuo.4238:

LordByron.8369:

umm you possible wouldwant tolook to ascended items/infusions recipes…

They possibly surpasses most korean mmorpg grinding requirement….
Also they almost destroyed economy in few days ._.

To craft 12 Ascended items:
3000 tier 6 fine crafting material
12 vials of condensed mist essence
600 globs of ectoplasm
288 skill points

To infuse 12 Ascended items:

3000 Passion Fruits
1200 Vicious Claws
12 Eldritch Scrolls = 600 skill points
240 Mystic Coins = 240 daily achievements

Enjoy your grind.

Right, but how many ascended item slots are there at present? Three. You can also buy infusions with the dungeon tokens.

[sarcasm]
That’s good, you can divide these requirements in 4 parts! You do one part now and when comes the updates you can do the 3 others!
Let me give you this hamster medal.
[/sarcasm]

Not saying it isn’t a grind. But let’s not pretend people need to be gathering 3000 passion fruit this week to be able to play. If I choose to grind content I enjoy for gear I want that’s my decision. I don’t insult your play style, so don’t insult mine.

Okay please accept my apologies. I didn’t mean to be mean. I’m just a little bit kittened off.

So much for this being the “casual friendly” MMO.

Hm, I’m just speculating without any knowledge about the current state of those games, so please correct me if wrong:
Wouldn’t now either DAoC Classic (if you like WvW → RvR) or Aion (if you like the usual gear progress stuff) be better choices, thanks to this gw2 nov patch? Aion had great humour, much less bugs, less annoying world zones, and deeper atmosphere, afaik? And DAoC is by far the best WvW-like experience, has Darkness Falls, but.. how many people do play it I wonder?

In a way, the manifesto is still correct. You don’t need Ascended gear unless you plan to do Fractals past level 10. So you can still see and do the Fractals content up to that point . If you want to continue to progress, at that point you would need to get the available ascended items. Therefore, you don’t need Ascended gear to experience every element of the game. There is no gear treadmill. There is simply an optional Fractals progression and corresponding armor items.

But because these items are better than exotic, people feel they will be forced to grind them to remain competitive with those people who wanted to do the fractals content and have already obtained them.

I just wanted to edit and add that ArenaNet could have avoided this entire fiasco by simply making the new Ascended items have the same stats as regular gear but with Infusion and better looking/more desirable skins. Thus players would have only been affected if they wanted to do Fractals and collect those armor skins. But by increasing the stats, for whatever reason the devs had for doing it, they opened a big can of worms.

Laelgon.8046:

Polluxor.5970:

Laelgon.8046:

Chuo.4238:

LordByron.8369:

umm you possible wouldwant tolook to ascended items/infusions recipes…

They possibly surpasses most korean mmorpg grinding requirement….
Also they almost destroyed economy in few days ._.

To craft 12 Ascended items:
3000 tier 6 fine crafting material
12 vials of condensed mist essence
600 globs of ectoplasm
288 skill points

To infuse 12 Ascended items:

3000 Passion Fruits
1200 Vicious Claws
12 Eldritch Scrolls = 600 skill points
240 Mystic Coins = 240 daily achievements

Enjoy your grind.

Right, but how many ascended item slots are there at present? Three. You can also buy infusions with the dungeon tokens.

[sarcasm]
That’s good, you can divide these requirements in 4 parts! You do one part now and when comes the updates you can do the 3 others!
Let me give you this hamster medal.
[/sarcasm]

Not saying it isn’t a grind. But let’s not pretend people need to be gathering 3000 passion fruit this week to be able to play. If I choose to grind content I enjoy for gear I want that’s my decision. I don’t insult your play style, so don’t insult mine.

But what about those of us who feel compelled to do it because of other reasons.
Do not for a second think that competitive wvw guilds will not start demanding for best gear available. It shafts those of us who do have skill to be doing that, but not the patience and time for grinding their way up.
Even playing field was thing that old gw fans were used to, thing that drew in a lot of new customers too and on top of it it was very appointedly made one of the core aspects of the game.

ps. passionfuits are one of the easy parts. Current market price, t6 mats 3000x~20s=60000s=600g, ectos 600x~22s=13200s=132g…or perhaps if you like farming, you could farm for couple of life times +/- few decades.

Antiriad.7160:

Hm, I’m just speculating without any knowledge about the current state of those games, so please correct me if wrong:
Wouldn’t now either DAoC Classic (if you like WvW -> RvR) or Aion (if you like the usual gear progress stuff) be better choices, thanks to this gw2 nov patch? Aion had great humour, much less bugs, less annoying world zones, and deeper atmosphere, afaik? And DAoC is by far the best WvW-like experience, has Darkness Falls, but.. how many people do play it I wonder?

[Edit]

You know, when I heard about GW2 back then with no gear progression and all, as a fan of WvW and not much time to do things like raiding and being no teenager anymore to find fun in doing the same dungeons over and over, but rather getting bored fast of such things, I thought “hey awesome, GW2 will be my game, it’s the only one that seems to appeal to me of all these mmos, I can just log in when I have time, do epic WvW battles, and not have to worry about any ‘gear progression duties’ to keep up with everyone”.
Well, now with this patch I suddenly lost all of that feeling completely The situation on the MMO market to me is as if GW2 was never released, by that I mean that GW2 now takes the same place as all the other mmos basically. It feels weird, lol. But at the same time I’m that more excited to see new alternatives popping up, so I’ll definitely have a look at PS2.

Btw I just read PS2 allows “2000 players on one battlefield”. I wonder how they can handle that many, as we see bad culling issues in gw2 with MUCH less people though? oO

[Edited by CC: Discussing the Planetside 2 launch here is off-topic]

Are you suggesting that ascended gear should be banned to use outside of the said relevant dungeon so that players are not pressured to gear grind. If that is the case, it would be good. Players will not bother to grind them since it is only of specific use.

But is ascended gear banned from use outside of the said relevant dungeon(s)? I don’t think so.

I will also take a nice long look at PS2.

I will not, however, purchase any game until it has undergone it’s first major update.

Thanks ANet, for teaching me that important lesson.

Arenanet you basically set things up to split the community between the haves and have nots. I played wow for years and was always behind the curve and was a member of the have nots. I changed to Guild Wars because there wasn’t a rat race and there wasn’t an elitist jerk culture. Your community has been awesome but it’s not going to last. I was even talking friends into playing your game and explaining that they were not behind even 3 months after release because there wasn’t an endless treadmill. I’m glad this happened before Christmas so I can tell them never mind.

offence.4726:

People already farmed these or are in the course of getting them. Everyone ingame is spamming LFG fotm lvl 1,2,3,4 that means that people enjoy them , it’s not like your getting left behind everyday you see lfg lvl 1 and 2 , they are short even if you grind one level a day you can get up to lvl 10+ and get the ring you wanted. It’s sad that people are so casual nowdays that want one tier gear for 10 years. Life issues and kids aside no one is forcing you to play them.

You just dont get it.

Just because people do it, it doesnt mean they enjoy it. It just means they need to do it in order to get the best possible gear for WvW. It’s the 5th day since patch and its already hard to find level 1 and 2 groups.

The system is also much to unfriendly to people who have alts. You need to grind 10 levels on each alt before being able to grind rings, just to get the best gear for WvW.

The promise from the devs at start was that you could do whatever part of the game you wanted without any hindrance. This patch but a huge block in the way for those that just enjoy WvW and not PvE.

Its the same old song, over and over again, from game to game (sad to say except for WoW and SWToR that I know of), PvE heroes have huge benefits in PvP. Atleast in WoW and ToR there are special PvP sets with PvP stats.

In GW2 since the patch those that do not enjoy PvE one bit will have to sit their with their pants down and get violated by a rusty pink blade in their rear section, just because Anet force them to go do PvE to stay competative in PvP.

In a game that promised that the PvP playing field would be equal and only based on skill at max level. That idea got tossed into a plastic bag and then suffocated.

The latest patch turns those promises into the biggest lies in MMO history. We bought this game due to those promises, and now we have to sit idly by because the vocal minority in this game had their wish come through. Power creep, treadmills, stat inflation and so on.

Will this be WoW 3.0, only with more bugs and smaller major content patches?

ArenaNet separates “gear progression” from “gear grind”. I truly believe that ArenaNet believed that, prior to this Lost Souls event release, Ascended gear was not a grind. Many people obviously disagree. They have hinted at alternative ways to get Ascended that’ll be implemented later on. So they introduce it via fractals and then make it more accessible a bit later on. Not the worst strategy ever, though the moderate lack of transparency behind is definitely a bit frustrating. Given all the complaints and what-not, I imagine that they’ll be speeding up this strategy that was assumedly intended from the get-go.

Rpgtabbycat.5869:

But because these items are better than exotic, people feel they will be forced to grind them to remain competitive with those people who wanted to do the fractals content and have already obtained them.

I just wanted to edit and add that ArenaNet could have avoided this entire fiasco by simply making the new Ascended items have the same stats as regular gear but with Infusion and better looking/more desirable skins.

It would have had to have been different Infusion items. The ones they have created also have stats. So to keep the Exotic and Ascended equal they would have had to remove the stats from the Infusion item or give people a chance to add the Infusion item to their Exotic.

@Rpgtabbycat: Yes you do if you want to be able to stay at the most competative level in PvP. Which makes it a must for every WvW player, even if they hate PvE.

Why did they not introduce the ascendant parts in WvW so WvWers could get them? That would be fair and give everyone 2 options to obtain them. Then have WvW specific infusions and fractal infusions, obtained from their respective field of use.

Tada, simple solution and fix.

For me and my PvP (WvW) guild this is nothing short of unmitigated disaster and worst-case scenario. This new gear in Best in Slot and extremely difficult and time consuming to acquire. It is also not a trivial upgrade, with 1-2% improvement per slot.

I personally feel betrayed by the designers, I bought into GW2 franchise specifically to avoid gear grinding I had to endure in other titles.

SneakyErvin.3056:

@Rpgtabbycat: Yes you do if you want to be able to stay at the most competative level in PvP. Which makes it a must for every WvW player, even if they hate PvE.

Why did they not introduce the ascendant parts in WvW so WvWers could get them? That would be fair and give everyone 2 options to obtain them. Then have WvW specific infusions and fractal infusions, obtained from their respective field of use.

Tada, simple solution and fix.

I could see that for Tier1 and Tier 2 WvW. But Tier 3 and below is not as competitive and have many players that are not even level 80 yet.

Rpgtabbycat.5869:

In a way, the manifesto is still correct. You don’t need Ascended gear unless you plan to do Fractals past level 10. So you can still see and do the Fractals content up to that point . If you want to continue to progress, at that point you would need to get the available ascended items. Therefore, you don’t need Ascended gear to experience every element of the game. There is no gear treadmill. There is simply an optional Fractals progression and corresponding armor items.

But because these items are better than exotic, people feel they will be forced to grind them to remain competitive with those people who wanted to do the fractals content and have already obtained them.

I just wanted to edit and add that ArenaNet could have avoided this entire fiasco by simply making the new Ascended items have the same stats as regular gear but with Infusion and better looking/more desirable skins. Thus players would have only been affected if they wanted to do Fractals and collect those armor skins. But by increasing the stats, for whatever reason the devs had for doing it, they opened a big can of worms.

The manifesto is blown out the water and I don’t see how it’s still correct… it was defunct at the point where they added superior stats and only one way to get said items. Any increase in base stats is useful for normal dungeons pve and WvW so it’s all about the definition of need. I do agree with you that had they stuck to the same stats and only adding infusions that were just useful in Fractals they could have avoided the whole mess.

SneakyErvin.3056:

Why did they not introduce the ascendant parts in WvW so WvWers could get them? That would be fair and give everyone 2 options to obtain them. Then have WvW specific infusions and fractal infusions, obtained from their respective field of use.

Tada, simple solution and fix.

My recent thought is that not introducing it in WvW at the same time was intentional. They know how much content and which content the population consumes (they have the internal stats). Not sure how popular WvW is but I personally enjoy it.

So if they had offered you the path to get the gear in WvW, what incentive would there have been to do the dungeon? I mean incentive for people who enjoy WvW only or more than dungeons. I think they intentionally offered the dungeon path to force people who want the new gear to do it.

Moreover, they increased the stats to tap into that part of the psyche that does not want to feel ‘left behind’ in a game. “I no longer have max stat gear. but I don’t like doing dungeons over and over. Oh well, I guess I have no choice now. fractals here I come.”

500 ectoplasms for one infused ascended piece..

Hey, boys and girls.

Welcome to Guild Wars World of Grindcraft!

We heard you liked grind so much that we put some grind in your grind so you can grind while you grind! Over the next several months we plan to roll out dozens of pieces of new gear dose by dose that will require giving up your family life each time! And if you don’t, you’ll feel the sharp motivation of being up to 20% inferior to your friends!

That’s right, boys and girls. We’re introducing more grind than ever World of Warcraft dreamed possible! Forget the concept of the easy out like that kitten Raid Finder. Our target market has shifted! We’re aiming to capture EvE players who are curious about theme parks!

As an aside.. hey. You guys’ll still be here in three months when the people we’re trying to capture have left us, right? You’ll still believe in our good intentions, right? Of course you will!

SneakyErvin.3056:

@Rpgtabbycat: Yes you do if you want to be able to stay at the most competative level in PvP. Which makes it a must for every WvW player, even if they hate PvE.

Why did they not introduce the ascendant parts in WvW so WvWers could get them? That would be fair and give everyone 2 options to obtain them. Then have WvW specific infusions and fractal infusions, obtained from their respective field of use.

Tada, simple solution and fix.

I think they have every intention to add ascended items to WvWvW reward, as well as dungeons (and hopefully explorable drops and crafting too). They just introduced them in Fractals of the Mists, because they don’t need to break open an existing reward system that way.

Also, the only ascended items so far are rings and back items, covering 3 equipment slots. This is also done deliberately, probably because it will have no impact on the existing exotic weapon and armor sets, and only affects part of exotic jewelry sets.

If and when ascended items for the other equipment slots are introduced, it will likely be done across the board, i.e. all loot and reward tables, and all crafting and mystic forge recipes.

What I’m personally hoping is that the statistical differences between exotic and ascended items will remain minimal, and that the main way to acquire ascended armors and weapons will be to upgrade existing exotics in the mystic forge by combining them with a large stack of some new pink crafting material that can be acquired through all of WvW, PvP, dungeons and monster drops.
That way, there would still be every reason to play dungeons, WvW and exploration, and to keep crafting.

SneakyErvin.3056:

@Rpgtabbycat: Yes you do if you want to be able to stay at the most competative level in PvP. Which makes it a must for every WvW player, even if they hate PvE.

Why did they not introduce the ascendant parts in WvW so WvWers could get them? That would be fair and give everyone 2 options to obtain them. Then have WvW specific infusions and fractal infusions, obtained from their respective field of use.

Tada, simple solution and fix.

The only simple solution would be to admit the error and reverse the power creep. It’s a violation of the manifesto, the thing I bought GW2 on. Adding more routes to the treadmill solves nothing related to the problem.

There is a difference between want and need. You can complete all the current content excluding fractals with Exotics. You don’t “need” the ascended items to complete them. But having the stat increase would make it easier and therefore more desirable to have them. At this point it still remains the only thing you “need” Ascended armor for is the infusion to mitigate agony.

Do not forget:

“When we looked at the concept of “endgame” for Guild Wars 2, we designed it the same way. We didn’t want the endgame to be something you could only experience after a hundred hours of gameplay or after you reached some arbitrary number. We wanted it to be something that players got to experience every step along the way, spread out across the entire world of Tyria, so we’ve introduced game elements that you’d normally associate with “endgame” at every level and every possible opportunity.”

~Mike Zadorojny The Endgame Reimagined

Mike Zadorojny the went on to say, “Agony resistance is some cool kitten though. We know you’ll love grinding for that.”

Antiriad.7160:

Btw I just read PS2 allows “2000 players on one battlefield”. I wonder how they can handle that many, as we see bad culling issues in gw2 with MUCH less people though? oO

Completely different engine. No doubt they´ll have different problems with many simultaneous players on small area though.

Notice the words like “we believe” and “we think” and “manifesto” are not “promise” and “binding contract”. Also, Colin was talking about the game in it’s current state at the time of the interview, not about how it would be in a future state. I guess the “we don’t need to make grinds” can be taken as something they won’t do moving forward…. but can anyone assert that this grind is mandatory? Because technically, it isn’t mandatory even though there’s an obvious incentive to do it.

Wording is essential. Engineers are taught to always say “think” and “believe” because anything stated as fact (something that is and can never be anything else) can potentially be used against you. Nothing in all the interviews and blogs, and manifesto, and whatever were promises, just nice words that people ate up and assumed as a promise.

What people actually say is important followed by interviewers who are actually worth their salt (as in didn’t get their journalism degree from Phoenix Institute Online or some BS school and do real journalism as opposed to writing fluff pieces because they’re part of the PR department or some hack media source) and challenge/scrutinize what the interviewee says….

SneakyErvin.3056:

Will this be WoW 3.0, only with more bugs and smaller major content patches?

A few years ago in GW we used to say: GW has changed the gaming scene so much that WoW 2 will be a GW clone…

One of the things I enjoyed about GW was that I could run several alts with maxed gear and it would never be outdated. I could take a break from the game, come back and just play every area of the game again, including the newly added ones, as if I had never left.

I had 2 accounts in GW and I bought 2 copies of GW2, too. I was expecting, their manifesto about no gear progression ever would again allow me to play with several alts.

Could I adjust to grind 3 pieces of gear for 1 character only now, and than the next three in December….? Maybe, but had I wanted to play like that, I could simply play one of those ftp and free to download gear grinders instead of buying GW2.

Heck, I could not even participate in the Lost Shores final event with both accounts, since they made it 1 time only.

I just came here to say this is the worst possible idea you guys can go through with. You guys were noted for having a game based on player skill, and not worry about gear, that was HALF your market about the game. Youre kind of throwing this away to attract a different crowd and youre really annoying a large portion of your playerbase.

I personally find the whole thing off putting and just dont even feel like playing.

The point is this isnt your style guys, you have a good thing going on, dont ruin it by going down the generic path.

So you’re saying they never ‘promised’ it if they even put it up in a blog at june 19th, 2012? Barely 6 weeks before the game has released…

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/is-it-fun-colin-johanson-on-how-arenanet-measures-success/

Honestly, I was a HUGE fan of GW2. But you need to get off the fanboat and look at the kitten ANet is throwing at us right now with reality. IF they added this at release, it would still be an issue because it creates a wall for players not playing long enough to obtain all the gear / who just started. Which was exactly what they did NOT want barely 4 months ago.

But now they are slowly going to release more parts of the gear and higher tiers of infusions. I dont care if it’s a stat increase of 1% every tier, a stat increase = a stat increase.

Can’t wait until I login and see “LFM Fractals full ascended only”. Oh wait, just asked a refund.