Guild Wars 2

So, I will try to keep this short and to the point:

As a preface, I like the fractals and I believe it was a great addition to the game. I think its necessary. What we can mostly agree on, is that the gear tier was not necessary.

I’m somewhere in the middle on this topic, but I dislike how it is separating and dividing the community. I for one don’t have a huge problem with the ascended gear other than it’s effect on the overall mood of folks. (I also don’t think Volcanus should cost 650 gold…but hey..)

How do we fix it? What is to be done?

Folks have suggested that we remove Ascended gear from the game. I would say that the answer is going to be a negative. So what do we do? Some quick ideas:

I am not a coder or a programmer, so some of this may be difficult but I think would be great:

1. Scaling. Why not scale all Ascended gear to exotic stats in the open world? You could take this even further and make Ascended Gear < Exotic gear in open-world situations. Conversely, you could make the Ascended gear > Exotic gear in dungeon/raid gear treadmill situations only.;Thus making this gear ONLY necessary or beneficial during these (what I believe to be necessary) endgame areas. There is a scaling system in place, it can’t be that hard to apply this to gear (or can it?).

2. Immediately render Ascended items useless in WvW — Soon please (I’d hope this happens anyway) Personal note: I don’t even play WvW, but a new tier has no place there.

3. To coincide with a re-working of the statistical advantages of Ascended, develop a system of progression within the current parameters (including legendary) that makes sense for both casual, hardocre, and cashicore.

4. Guild Wars 2 Hardcore server: The entire thing plays like SPVP; with progression being limited to cosmetic items only.

5. Guild Wars 2 Classic Server: Entire progression mimics GW1; great for those with nostalgia.

Let’s make it happen folks

Best option:
Remove ascended gear and the lazy agony mechanic, then encounter designers can DO THEIR JOBS by making the challenge more difficult through more advanced AI, both individually and through attack coordination, introducing more punishment for mistakes, and other items like this.

Second-best option:
Provide full-on ascended sets to ALL aspects of gameplay (world events, dungeon vendors, karma vendors) ASAP.

fractals are fine as “the ultimate challenge mode”, but when you make it the only source of the best gear in the game, you breed elitism and you make a large part of the community feel compelled to “complete” their character by going into these things when they otherwise would not be interested in doing something that (explative deleted) hard.

This results in people taking the lazy way out and excluding the community: “LFM FotM, please be minimum level XX, and if you can’t link all exotics you will be kicked”

Or better, people calling other people scrubs because they don’t have Ascended or are not arbitrary level XX

The obvious answer should be to make the versatility of current gear work for it not against it.

Leave ascendant and agony and all this crap as it is, but by the kitten´s tail confine it to the Fractals ONLY!

Instead just give us a new tier of (non infusion) sigils and runes equalizing the attribute gap.

Thus a major part or the current problem is mitigated as people don´t have to throw away their current gear and just have yet another set of equipment for a specific task.
Similar to having your Magic Find gear.

Probably would boost sales for Transmutation Stones too. Win-Win.