Guild Wars 2

Ok, i Try to open a different topic this time, im a strong oppositor of this set, and im not playing the game for now, but this set is here to stay, and maybe i will return when this thing will be fully released (so i can definitively plan my equipment and build).

So where do other player Wish to get the ascended items in the future?

for now we have 2 options:

• FOTM
• Mistic Forge.

But its obviously not enough… so ill put some idea to discuss.

• Other dungeons tokens , now the exotics from dungeon cost something like 180 – 330 token (i dont remeber the exact numbers) so i single ascended piece can cost something like 1000\1200 tokens. Its an high price for sure, but its not so Impossible to manage.

• crafting a lot of players put time to max crafting, i have 4 maxed professions on my char, and other 3 on the mid way, i dont have a clear idea for what an ascended crafting recipe have to use as component, but im strongly convinced that the ascended piece MUST be craftable.

• WvW the whole WvW rewarding system must be reworked, and when it will be fixed, id like to see an intruder ascended set.

• karma vendors we have a new island, so why dont have a karma vendor with new items?

• cultural tiers cultural tiers, before the lost shore patch was supposed to be only an expensive cool looking skin, but the patch have changed the value of our golds, and now it pretty useless to spend 100+ golds on a skin set with yellow stats. Why don have an upgrade of the cultural tiers to ascended level? the same reasoning can be done for the “factions set”, they can add a new tier with the same skins (but i hope better new skins) and with ascended stats.

• “Rare exotics” and “Mystic Items” This items cost a lot, not as a legendary, but they cost A LOT (like the tryforge pendant) this item need some deep love, when the whole ascended tier will be Fully released.

• World boss drop The world boss need some Love, a lot of poeple are asking for raid, but we have raids! but this raid are not rewarding and not challenging. So why dont add a good droprate for exotic (now) and ascended (after) so a player can be satisfied after a jormag battle, with an event difficult increasing to balance the new drop rate. (the stage 3 of the lost shore event teach something, excluding lag, that is the difficult that a WORLD BOSS MUST HAVE)

Edit with other proposal.

Jairyn.6913:

I’d especially like to see more epic quest/scavenger hunt/skill challenge kind of mechanics applied to assembling ascended, just collecting mats and farming points is boring.

alcopaul.2156:

basically using Gift of Ascension and our current exotics. Yes, our current exotics as precursors for ascended.

Its simple – all the same ways as exotics and of course not 10 times the effort of exotics. This is the only solution for thier statements “Play where ever you want!” and “We dont make grindy games!”

All of the above. So far as I’m concerned, unless virtually all avenues of play award max stat gear, eventually, the entire “play your way” paradigm is bunk.

I’d especially like to see more epic quest/scavenger hunt/skill challenge kind of mechanics applied to assembling ascended, just collecting mats and farming points is boring.

In other games but too late for that.

Guys please i agree if you are still concerned by all this, but its not the reason why i opened this topic.

anyway

I’d especially like to see more epic quest/scavenger hunt/skill challenge kind of mechanics applied to assembling ascended, just collecting mats and farming points is boring.

ill add this to the first post

All of the above options, except prices (no more than twice the exotic cost), so dungeons (for tokens – including FotM), crafting, open world drops, open world boss chests (dragons etc) and champion drops, karma vendors, WvW drops and token vendors. Cultural sets should be bumped up to ascended level as well.
As a side matter, preferably karma vendor armor should be different depending on the temple (the god-themed shop costumes from gw1 could be used as a base, they were decent-looking).

OP: Thank you for this thread. Its a good topic and certainly something.

Jairyn: I freaked when I saw your name that my account might have been hacked lol

Ascended items: If they were the same power as exotics they could stay in the fractals cause there would be no need to fight agony elsewhere. Because they are better people want them and the anger comes from people who hate dungeons now having to do them. Its the same problem DAOC had with artifacts in Trials of Atlantis and its odd that the devs obviously patterned a lot from that game but would make the same mistake.
How to fix it. Put them everywhere. Nobody complains about how hard dungeon exotics are to get that they are forced to do it because there are wvw badges, karma, crafting, drops, and gold vendors.
To fix ascended put them in the same ways and then put agony elsewhere in the game.

I can understand the devs wanting the incremental difficulty of the fractals. It gets repeating content for players without having repeating content development for the devs. But it didnt fully work out.

I can see no reason why the OP’s suggestions should not be put into practice and i’d relish the chance at having more ways of gaining equipment – this includes the expansion packs which inevitably will also have new gear (more powerful or not!)

I’d like to see ascended items in lots of places – but most importantly in the open world. It is vital we encourage players to get out into the beautiful world and the lower level zones, to bring some life back into them.

So – scavenger hunts and world bosses would be a great start. Then let’s have the mini-games or activities planned for the five other cities and offer ascended items for them by way of tokens etc – perhaps you’d need to do activities from each city to get a full ascended set.

Bring in some form of weekly activity like Nicholas the Traveller that will encourage players to visit new areas each week – and then saving up 250 presents will reward an ascended item.

I would prefer it if there was far more variety than just more RNG via the Mystic Forge and dungeon chests.

All of the above methods, with no more grind than it was to get full exotics, and absolutely no further statistical progression (short of, possibly, an expansion but I am skeptical of even that). Anything else is unacceptable.

Better still, don’t have Ascended at all for armor/weapons. Add “precursor” armor for people to start work toward legendary skins, same as the weapons.

A little off Topic.
If they follow the existing building method, if with an expansion they add 10 levels, this will result on a base stats value of 1118 on each stats (now its 916) and +200(100 × 2) stat bonus from the traitline. So nothing that justify another item stat increasing.

But remember that im only speculating on the values, following the existing rules.

i posted this in a thread.

“if I was in Arena.NET’s “Department of Making Awesome Excuses”, i will make it appear like Ascended item was the natural progression of item upgrades.

How?

By telling you players that Exotics which accomodated runes and sigils are meant to be ascended with the runes and sigils and jewels attributes.

See, exotics will be the first step in the process. you can configure your exotic jewels to be berserker+emerald jewel and whalla, ascend it to have berserker+emerald stats with a slight increase. or you can configure your exotic weapons and armors with runes and sigil, ascend it and the ascended version will have the rune/sigil attributes.

this ascended versions are fixed and cannot be reconfigured but the infusions and the only way to reconfigure your ascended gear is to go the exotic way again and do all the configuration there with the appropriate jewel, rune or sigil and ascend them again.

with this setup, exotics are not obsoleted and is a prerequisite to get the ascended item.

and yes, thank you, A.NET in advanced. i’ll take a donation."

basically using Gift of Ascension and our current exotics. Yes, our current exotics as precursors for ascended.

alcopaul.2156:

this ascended versions are fixed and cannot be reconfigured but the infusions and the only way to reconfigure your ascended gear is to go the exotic way again and do all the configuration there with the appropriate jewel, rune or sigil and ascend them again.

I think they will give us ascended armors and weapons with the double slot (1 for upgrades and one for infusions), its the only way to keep effective runes and sigils.

For the rest of the post, someone on the past weeks have already suggest an exotic upgrade to ascended stats. i personally dont like this way, but if they create something like this, i will not refuse it. ^^

I don’t want Ascended items. At all. Ever.

Crafting:
One simple Level 400 recipe per profession (like Ecto + 100 Ori/Wood/Scraps) gives an account bound shard. Put all of them together → Random Ascended Piece

Darroc.5237:

Crafting:
One simple Level 400 recipe per profession (like Ecto + 100 Ori/Wood/Scraps) gives an account bound shard. Put all of them together -> Random Ascended Piece

Why a random piece by crafting? i find this nonsense O.o

I would like all of the above even though myself I’m planning to use the crafting option. I’m maxing more crafting professions and would love to craft my own ascendeds.

I’d love to make my exotics ascended in some way. Right now I don’t think any of the back pieces or rings give Carrion stats (power, vitality, condition damage). I love my build and don’t want to change it

I got vassar’s ring after beating the jade maw on lvl 10 and it makes me weaker so i’m not using it, even in fractals!

It’s not so much where you place the treadmill. The offense is having the treadmill in a non-grindy game.

Ascended gear needs to be obtained from literally every portion of the game because the whole matra of GW2 is “play how you want to”. I want to play casually(2-3 hours a night), while obtaining the best in slot gear while running DEs or dungeons.

They need to put this stuff into:
Orr Dynamic Events
Southshore Dynamic Events
Random drops in any 75+ zone
Pattern drops in any portion of the world for crafting disciplines.
Drops in any explorable dungeon.
WvW

etc.

I would love to be able to aquire my ascended items via some epic quests, scavenger hunt etc. (i.e. just by playing the game). But of course this requires the most work from the developers and is most prone to bugs.

rozcinana.7249:

I’d love to make my exotics ascended in some way. Right now I don’t think any of the back pieces or rings give Carrion stats (power, vitality, condition damage). I love my build and don’t want to change it

I got vassar’s ring after beating the jade maw on lvl 10 and it makes me weaker so i’m not using it, even in fractals!

And this is something that I hope they are paying attention to. Your whole post brings to light two things:
-A way to convert the STATS of your exotics to ascended level.
OR
-Give us stats for each stat “group” such as carrion, knights, etc.

Edit: Thinking about it now, a simple “upgrade kit” from exotic to ascended is a far better idea than finding new items all together. Reduces bag/bank space and it might feel less like a grind.

alcopaul.2156:

i posted this in a thread.

“if I was in Arena.NET’s “Department of Making Awesome Excuses”, i will make it appear like Ascended item was the natural progression of item upgrades.

How?

By telling you players that Exotics which accomodated runes and sigils are meant to be ascended with the runes and sigils and jewels attributes.

See, exotics will be the first step in the process. you can configure your exotic jewels to be berserker+emerald jewel and whalla, ascend it to have berserker+emerald stats with a slight increase. or you can configure your exotic weapons and armors with runes and sigil, ascend it and the ascended version will have the rune/sigil attributes.

this ascended versions are fixed and cannot be reconfigured but the infusions and the only way to reconfigure your ascended gear is to go the exotic way again and do all the configuration there with the appropriate jewel, rune or sigil and ascend them again.

with this setup, exotics are not obsoleted and is a prerequisite to get the ascended item.

and yes, thank you, A.NET in advanced. i’ll take a donation."

basically using Gift of Ascension and our current exotics. Yes, our current exotics as precursors for ascended.

This.
Farm the 500 fractal relics(I think its 500 for gift), and there you go. Simple, easy, gives people that slight verticle progression they want without creating the grindy game that you dont want. This I could deal with, and you would have some more Gem purchases from me in the gem store if this sees the light of day.

Please.
Please.
Please.
Please.
Please.

Ascended gear and infusions should be attainable from every area of the game where they are useful.

Crafting. And I don’t mean the mystic toilet either I mean full on crafting mats and recipes for the regular crafting system already in the game. With mats readily available to craft these items, either buyable with karma or some other means to make sure that casual players can get these items as well without stepping a single foot in any dungeon anywhere.

The problem isn’t just crafting tho. They need to make the drops for crafting exotics more readily available because 36 silver per glob just ain’t gonna cut it.

Ascended gear is basically Exotics with a Rune already added to it and an infusion slot. The infusion slot is useless everywhere aside from the areas specific to it. Eventually we will have legendaries with the same stats as the ascended and an added slot for runes so this means the next level of gear will match those. Now if you have legendaries you are set and done – no more need for gear unless you want to do the fractals/karka stuff.

I want WvW equivalent gear to the ascended available through WvW the same way it’s available now. Karma/Badges but they need to fix the badge drop issues. Crafting is also a good way to get it but the reqs are insane.

alcopaul.2156:

i posted this in a thread.

“if I was in Arena.NET’s “Department of Making Awesome Excuses”, i will make it appear like Ascended item was the natural progression of item upgrades.

How?

By telling you players that Exotics which accomodated runes and sigils are meant to be ascended with the runes and sigils and jewels attributes.

See, exotics will be the first step in the process. you can configure your exotic jewels to be berserker+emerald jewel and whalla, ascend it to have berserker+emerald stats with a slight increase. or you can configure your exotic weapons and armors with runes and sigil, ascend it and the ascended version will have the rune/sigil attributes.

this ascended versions are fixed and cannot be reconfigured but the infusions and the only way to reconfigure your ascended gear is to go the exotic way again and do all the configuration there with the appropriate jewel, rune or sigil and ascend them again.

with this setup, exotics are not obsoleted and is a prerequisite to get the ascended item.

and yes, thank you, A.NET in advanced. i’ll take a donation."

basically using Gift of Ascension and our current exotics. Yes, our current exotics as precursors for ascended.

This one post made more sense than the entire Anet team put together.
+1

I would make ascended items available anywhere that they provide an advantage to their possessor. For example, if they give an advantage in dungeons then they should drop there, and be available for whatever currency is used in that dungeon. To have ascended items drop exclusively in FOTM or via the mystic forge and give advantages in WvWvW is a situation I would like to see avoided. Someone may prefer to play WvWvW exclusively and there is no reason to force them to play content they don’t want to just to remain competitive in WvWvW. Ascended items should also be available in open world drops and via crafting.

alcopaul.2156:

i posted this in a thread.

“if I was in Arena.NET’s “Department of Making Awesome Excuses”, i will make it appear like Ascended item was the natural progression of item upgrades.

How?

By telling you players that Exotics which accomodated runes and sigils are meant to be ascended with the runes and sigils and jewels attributes.

See, exotics will be the first step in the process. you can configure your exotic jewels to be berserker+emerald jewel and whalla, ascend it to have berserker+emerald stats with a slight increase. or you can configure your exotic weapons and armors with runes and sigil, ascend it and the ascended version will have the rune/sigil attributes.

this ascended versions are fixed and cannot be reconfigured but the infusions and the only way to reconfigure your ascended gear is to go the exotic way again and do all the configuration there with the appropriate jewel, rune or sigil and ascend them again.

with this setup, exotics are not obsoleted and is a prerequisite to get the ascended item.

and yes, thank you, A.NET in advanced. i’ll take a donation."

basically using Gift of Ascension and our current exotics. Yes, our current exotics as precursors for ascended.

The only addition to this fine thought: make the Gift availlable through all kinds of gameplay, not just FotM. And I’d say, make it tie in properly with GW1 lore this time. It’s those small details that makes a GW veteran smile.

Create new content in the PVE with a low chance and dont concentrate it in one map.. Just keep them lvl 80 even if its queensland.. Get lvl 80s (ie most of the populatine) back into the empty maps.

moirweyn.9872:

Ascended gear is basically Exotics with a Rune already added to it and an infusion slot. The infusion slot is useless everywhere aside from the areas specific to it. Eventually we will have legendaries with the same stats as the ascended and an added slot for runes so this means the next level of gear will match those. Now if you have legendaries you are set and done – no more need for gear unless you want to do the fractals/karka stuff.

I want WvW equivalent gear to the ascended available through WvW the same way it’s available now. Karma/Badges but they need to fix the badge drop issues. Crafting is also a good way to get it but the reqs are insane.

i hope they dont make the mistake to create armor and weapons like the existing ascended rings. The rune choice is a BIG part of the character building , and limiting this with a fixed value is like killing the building experience.

I hope they create various type of set, to re-create that variety of equipment that we have with the exotic items, but not only the existing type of set (knight, rampager’s…etc etc) but also new variants, like equipment with 4\5\6 stats increased(im referring to an item without rune, crest or jewel bonus), but with lower values per stats, or the opposite, set with 1 or 2 stat but with a really high value.

To make an example

if we have an item that give us 3 stats:
the primary with a value of 100, and the 2 secondary with a value of 50, in the item we have 200 total stats point.

so they can create for example and item with 4 stats : the primary stats at a value of 80, and the 3 secondary with a value of 40

or an item with two stats (130 the primary and 70 the secondary)

The actual sistem have full room to a real customization, they need only to tweak what they already have.

let me buy on the TP, or armor merchants.

alcopaul.2156:

See, exotics will be the first step in the process. you can configure your exotic jewels to be berserker+emerald jewel and whalla, ascend it to have berserker+emerald stats with a slight increase. or you can configure your exotic weapons and armors with runes and sigil, ascend it and the ascended version will have the rune/sigil attributes.

this ascended versions are fixed and cannot be reconfigured but the infusions and the only way to reconfigure your ascended gear is to go the exotic way again and do all the configuration there with the appropriate jewel, rune or sigil and ascend them again.

with this setup, exotics are not obsoleted and is a prerequisite to get the ascended item.

I rather like the sound of this.

I definitely hope they find a way to retain the customization of runes as they roll out ascended armors.

It also would be nice to have ascension, infusions, and agony worked into the rest of the game, particularly the lore of the game. Use the upgrade process as a means to advance the story somehow, like in GW1, where it was part of the plot.

Reading the item descriptions was, in my opinion, one of the little highlights of the Baldur’s Gate series and Tyria has a pretty rich background of lore to draw from, I’d like ascended and legendary items to be able to have similar depth and flavor, to enrich the long process of their acquisition.

I like to see them in WvW and “hero” quest where you work for weapons though quest only for each class and or weapon.

Jski.6180:

I like to see them in WvW and “hero” quest where you work for weapons though quest only for each class and or weapon.

Something fun can be something relating to your order, something like orders sidequests.

Some kind of new PvP zone where guilds can fight for chests which drops ascended items. These chest could spawn in WvW zones too and three servers could have huge battle royal who can loot that chest. Looting chest should take like 1 min and damage would interrupt looting.

WvW and mostly all dungeon tokens .

I’d like to be able to get them (or a chance to get them) at the end of jumping puzzles and mini dungeons, or after beating a dragon. Also one of those and/or precursors should have a chance of dropping at the end of Arah story for ALL party members.

Would be ok if they also dropped from normal mobs, like a random deer or boar. =)

only with the old dungeon tokens.

at least then you are guarenteed to get them for known time spent.

crafting? hell no, RNG mats and TP price gouging.

WvW? hell no, the token drop rate is so bad now you can play for 3 hours and not even loot 10 tokens at times.

Is that a reason to NOT have them available with those methods in addition to others?

I’m pretty cool with most of the ideas, though I think my personal favorites would be:

a) purchase from other dungeon tokens (or even some from fractal relics, as I am starting to build a small collection there) – in part because I like the designs of the other dungeons and would like to see a little more attention paid to keeping them current, updated, and a good time investment.

b) some kind of solo questline(s), for those who prefer to work on their own, or for those times when you just can’t get a group together. The effort/time investment would have to be similar to other methods.

c) A similar upgrade path that they have now, but with a much more reasonable amount of mats. Going from 15 t6 crafting materials to 250 crafting materials is NOT in any way a small step, especially considering that aside from agony resistence, the upgrades are minor (couple of stat points) and less flexible (because the “upgrade slot” stat points are already allocated instead of letting you choose an alternate – say a Ruby Jewel on an otherwise defensive-geared/Toughness item).

d) I don’t pvp aside from a bit of WvW dabbling when I’m bored, but there should be an option for PvPers to upgrade as well, either through WvW tokens, some sort of objectives tracking (ie Capture x number of towers/supply camps), or something similar. I’ll let the PvP players take over with idea specifics.

IMO, the more options we have, the better, though I understand that things like “epic questlines” (my personal favorite parts of mmos) take time to develop. As long as the time/effort/gold cost is reasonably comparable across all methods. Which I think is where the current system fails.

Bonus points if these new acquisition methods get us out actually playing the game, instead of shuffling items on the trading post. Personally, I’m not even against a small amount of actual grind (I think some grind in MMOs is necessary and inevitable, just not to the extent that the current pieces require), but I’d rather grind mobs or events or anything out in the world, than feel like the only recourse is to grind gold to purchase the items instead of obtaining the items myself.

Ummeiko.5318:

IMO, the more options we have, the better, though I understand that things like “epic questlines” (my personal favorite parts of mmos) take time to develop. As long as the time/effort/gold cost is reasonably comparable across all methods. Which I think is where the current system fails.

Bonus points if these new acquisition methods get us out actually playing the game, instead of shuffling items on the trading post. Personally, I’m not even against a small amount of actual grind (I think some grind in MMOs is necessary and inevitable, just not to the extent that the current pieces require), but I’d rather grind mobs or events or anything out in the world, than feel like the only recourse is to grind gold to purchase the items instead of obtaining the items myself.

Grind is not really a problem when its not mandatory.
If you need that particular item that request a lot of grind, then grind it, its your choice to do that, but when grind become the only choice to do things, and to be equal (i talk about stats) to the other players, well in this case we have a problem.