Guild Wars 2

First things first, I’m indifferent about gear treadmills, I’m only proposing this idea for mere discourse.

Right now we have Exotic and Ascended. Many, including myself really hate the time-gated format of crafting ascended. So how about the process of crafting to the final ascended piece was the gear treadmill.

Let’s say there were 5 steps to getting your completed ascended piece. With every step you get a wearable piece with better stats than the previous step. Thus, step 1 ascended would be better than exotic, and step 2 ascended would be better than both exotic and step 1, so on and so forth. This would ultimately mean that step 5 of the ascended crafting process would be the best of the best (and what we currently have).

I think it would be cool if part of the steps had some sort of exploring factor, similar to precursors, as opposed to just needing crafting materials. We can still time-gate everything but this way it feels like over the course of that month or two you are slowly progressing gear wise. Which, ultimately, is the goal; to satisfy those that are looking for a gear treadmill.

It has no use… we have a clear cut build up of gear
Ascneded gear is a nice buff over the exotics whiCh are usable in

Rare’s ~lvl 39-lvl 64 ¹
price:
30-50 silver per armor piece in the TP ; craftable with recipe’s
some weapons might be a bit more expensive

• they are adquate even up to lvl 80, but a significant loss in power and armor.

Exotics: lvl 65-80 ¹
armor price ~75s-5 gold on the TP , crafted minimally 11-15 gold / armor piece; most stuff is craftable with recipe’s whcih might need some effort to obtain
Weapons are cheaper, provided you do not care about the skins

• PVE
• Dungeons
• Worldbosses
• WvW zerging
• Low tier fractals(t1/t2)
• As secondary or exploratory sets
• crafted as neccesity

Ascended: lvl 80
Price:
Weapons Crafted ~50-70 gold per piece_
Armor Crafted ~55-110 gold/piece

• preferred in Raids (due to more stats)
• needed in high level fractals (AR infusions)
• preferred in high level WvW groups (WvW infusions occasionally req’d by WvWguild groups)
• min-maxing (stat infusions)
• crafted for prestige
• end game neccesity provided you do play raids, do high end wvw or t4 fractals.
• stat swappable for a cost

Legendary lvl 80
price:
Armor: about 350-400 gold per piece, and a minimum of 3 months of raiding provided you kill all bosses/week
Weapons: ~2000-5000 gold per piece…. maybe a couple of 100’s cheaper when crafting it yourself.

• usable for everything
• has all advantages of ascneded armor and will swap runes on legendary armor
• time sink, gold sink, end game goal
• stat swap for free
• skin, almost only purely aesthetic
• purely optional…

¹) note: you’ll need to have armor withing 5 levels of your actual level else you’re effectiveness drops hard especially when downscaled. having relevant runes and trinkets is also mandatory

Final words:
This game was made not to have a gear treadmill and level or armor progression… since december 2013 no new armor levels were introduced.

legendary and breathers might seem to be new levels, but both are on par with ascneded. The name is just a handle.

If other things happen we will see this happen in due time, but I do not expect, nor require new levels of gear. Really I do not.

Correct about tiers, but I think that Fractals may hold the gear treadmill. If they increase the cap, you need more, higher infusions, thus creating a treadmill so to speak. So I hope they don’t add new tiers and just add new fractals.

I would rather not see a gear treadmill at all. If someone wants a skin treadmill, fine, go on a legendary journey. As it is legendary=ascended and ascended is not a lot better than exotics. Some of my characters have ascended and some exotics but I would not want to feel I NEEDED to craft ascended for everyone to keep up with the Joneses (especially since I like to keep as many of their available weapons handy as possible).

I wouldn’t consider rare to exotic a part of the gear treadmill, especially during the leveling process. Getting exotics is incredibly easy and the transition into ascended is boring. You’re just sitting there, crafting the required mats every day and then all of a sudden, poof, you have the best gear in the game. In my opinion it doesn’t feel like you worked for it. I think with this idea it makes you more involved with the process and as a result, more rewarding.

It’s like precursor crafting. With every stage you craft a better precursor (so to speak) until you finish the final step and the precursor becomes its final form.

As Warcry mentioned, I suppose the AR system could be considered a gear treadmill and it actually might be suitable considering fractals are PvE. With the AR system, it lets you do more challenging fractals. That’s rewarding isn’t it? You’re progressing your AR as opposed to just getting the highest AR with some time-gated crafts.

But I don’t want that. It just makes my max level infusions useless and I have to work on getting +12s in all slots, just as an example. Then 2 years later it will be +15s. It doesn’t solve anything except give players a reason to grind. Makes it less enjoyable that way.

Exclamatory.8351:

First things first, I’m indifferent about gear treadmills, I’m only proposing this idea for mere discourse.

Right now we have Exotic and Ascended. Many, including myself really hate the time-gated format of crafting ascended. So how about the process of crafting to the final ascended piece was the gear treadmill.

Let’s say there were 5 steps to getting your completed ascended piece. With every step you get a wearable piece with better stats than the previous step. Thus, step 1 ascended would be better than exotic, and step 2 ascended would be better than both exotic and step 1, so on and so forth. This would ultimately mean that step 5 of the ascended crafting process would be the best of the best (and what we currently have).

I think it would be cool if part of the steps had some sort of exploring factor, similar to precursors, as opposed to just needing crafting materials. We can still time-gate everything but this way it feels like over the course of that month or two you are slowly progressing gear wise. Which, ultimately, is the goal; to satisfy those that are looking for a gear treadmill.

what you seem to be suggesting isnt really a gear treadmill, just some more steps. The treadmill suggests a moving target that changes constantly.

problem is, if the end point is the same, and the time it takes is the same, will it actually feel fullfilling to get so many tiny gains?

also, those that want a treadmill, are more feeling a loss of purpose after reaching max status, more steps wont help them, they want to periodically have the game give them more progress and power.

I don’t think we need more gear treadmill in GW2.(Not that there’s a lot. But we don’t need more.)

If ascended armor came in increments, then Runes could be problematic. If there were long enough delays between increments, then one would want to apply runes. If the increments came quickly enough for runes to not be an issue, then I’d think “why bother” would be the attitude.

I think things are fine as they are.

DeanBB.4268:

If ascended armor came in increments, then Runes could be problematic. If there were long enough delays between increments, then one would want to apply runes. If the increments came quickly enough for runes to not be an issue, then I’d think “why bother” would be the attitude.

I think things are fine as they are.

runes should always have been more removable

No we do not need any more gear treadmill period. If you want more incentive to play then suggest something like an alternative leveling system.

@title: it already is
@op: we dont need to make crafting more complex than it already is

That’s not a gear treadmill. That’s just adding some intermediate steps. So, instead of 5 Tiers of gear and Legendary, there would be 5 + 4 or 5 semi Tiers and Legendary. (A gear treadmill never ends; there’s no ultimate tier of gear, as time goes by.)

I guess what you are suggesting is a (semi) reward for the time-gates… /shrug

Good luck.

The idea of needing to recraft a T1 Ascended to make a T2 Ascended, then a T3, etc. sounds neither no more tedious nor no less tedious than the current crafting process. If the mats needed were greater in number, the process would be worse. If the same, I see little change except for those who want some slight benefit (with 5 tiers, each would be about 1% of what exotic offers) if they are taking time to gather mats. If less mats were needed, there would be an overall benefit, but I have trouble believing that might happen.