Guild Wars 2

First of all, I’m going to preface this by saying that I’m assuming that Stat Sets are more or less balanced. I know this isn’t true, but let’s pretend :-).

I first encountered this when I wanted to obtain a set of Zealot’s Armor for my Necromancer, and I’m running in to it again while looking in to obtaining a Sinister set for my Ranger.

Why are some stat combinations so difficult to obtain for Exotic Gear?

In the case of Zealot’s armor, you can’t buy or sell it on the Trading Post (Account Bound on Obtain), you can’t discover the recipes through crafting (those you have to buy on the TP), and the only way you can get the mats to craft them are either buying them on the TP or having the watchwork mining pick (gem store purchase). It cost me about 120 gold, all things considered, to craft a set of zealot armor.

Contrast that with Berzerker stats which, on top of actually being highly sought after, is crafted with easily obtainable mats, tradable, and you get the recipe through discovery or by unlocking levels of crafting.

Not only does this not make any sense, but it puts up barriers to diverse builds and theorycrafting that, in my humble opinion, are unnecessary and silly.

For Zealot’s gear, the sprockets can also come from a home instance node you can get from the laurel merchants in cities.

Sinister gear requires you to buy the inscription/insignia with bandit crests. The recipes themselves can be bought on the TP for a few silver each.

Zealot, Sinister, Nomad, and other gear types were added after the release, and they have a theme.

For instance Sinister gear is related to the last four chapters of the Living Story, which is situated in the Silverwastes. The method to obtain sinister gear is through completing the living story, it’s achievements or playing in the Silverwastes.

I find this style of play to be a bit more interesting than just straight up buying it.

Also, different gear types have the same amount of stats (except Celestial), but depending on your build and requirements, there will always be optimal choices.

My answer to the basic question: Poor planning.

They decided to link specific stat combinations with specific materials without considering they could have had a much better, much freer system had they designed a better crafting system at the onset.

Rauderi.8706:

My answer to the basic question: Poor planning.

They decided to link specific stat combinations with specific materials without considering they could have had a much better, much freer system had they designed a better crafting system at the onset.

Its worse still. The made those stats bound to event related areas and drop tables. Sentinels gears is one of the more sought after alternative prefixes, but the materials required to make them (azurite orbs) are essentially non-existant at this point other then the all-inclusive gift of “Mat eaters”. There is the fractal for Frost and Flame, but those only yield one tier below.

For whatever reason, they’ve never added a promotion recipe to turn crystals into orbs. The only possible reasoning for this, and several other sketchy decisions, is that they were banking on Ascended boxes being a primary acquisition method.

ANet wanted to give reasons to do go to certain places and do things. So they added unique materials as gating for certain stat combinations, and made some components obtainable only rarely through parts of the content.

That was a terrible, horrible, no good very bad decision that made getting more gear of those stats nothing but a gruesome chore.

Instead, the unique material should be used on unlocking the recipe, and once unlocked crafting more of any unlocked recipe should require a fixed and standard cost based on stats.

For example, unlocking a Berserker recipe for a single item (e.g.: A single weapon, or piece of armor, or trinket, or crafting component like an insignia or inscription) would require quite some blood, but making more of it would cost some Blood (for power), a bit of claws (for precision) and a bit of fangs (for ferocity) in amounts based on the stats. Unlocking a Nomad recipe would require ambrite, but making more of it would require some Scales (for toughness), a bit of Bones (for vitality) and a bit of dust (for boon duration).

So once the ‘activator’ materials have unlocked the recipe, you just need the standard materials following the same pattern.

So people would still need the unique materials, but would not need to spend the rest of their lives stuck in one area to make more of what they already did before. Only to make new stuff.

The way I figure it, part of the community had a cow when they introdouced Ascended.

The game is supposed to be about horizontal progression. It’s what makes it what it is.
Which means the grind is suppositorily to be about looks only.

Get the stats you want and then choose how much grind you’re willing to spend on looking cooler.

That’s the ideal, the dream.

The problem is that not everyone is happy just grinding for looks, if their character isn’t “progressing” vertically, becoming more powerful, they won’t do it.
Or they’ll do it but gripe its a waste of time.
And they complain, and they complain, we want a gear treadmill, etc.

Welcome to the gear treadmill of the future, where you aren’t grinding for a new tier of gear, you’re re-grinding for a slightly different version of the same tier.

Sure, supply and demand have an impact, but this is a more central aspect.
Keeping people grinding.

I think they just tried out different reward systems on them.

Originally there were only 7 craftable stat selects (zerker, clerics, knights, valkyrie, carrion, rampager and assassin/traveler). The recipes of the first new stat, apothecary, were simply added to the crafting menu, no recipe sheets involved. The 2nd new one, givers, needed recipes for the inscriptions and isignias, which were random loot from wintersday gifts, the recipes for the individual gear pieces was discovery.

Then Sentinel gear was made craftable, with the insignias, inscriptions and orbs random reward drops from the molten facility mini dungeon, no recipes required but also limited, so their went up to 100g, after the event was over.

When the first bazaar came around, celestial gear was introduced and with it recipe sheets for insignias/inscriptions as well as each gear piece. This was a first, just the the account bound nature of the crafted gear, and also the added timegate in crafting (charged quartz), was also a test run in my opinion for ascended crafting, which was introduced later in 2013. The celestial recipes were also limited drops from the bazaar and after some time, some became quite rare and you had to cough up more than a hundred gold (which was quite a bit more then compared to now) to get the recipes for the light cele armor.

The next sets of stats was made available with the ascended crafting update.
Dire, soldier, magi, shaman, cavalier, rabid and sentinel inscriptions and insignias were made salvageable from ecotic gear with those stats, so they didnt have any materials associated with their crafting. Sentinel was also made available from the guild commendation vendor (as exotic sentinel gear didnt drop anymore form random loot) and the settler´s recipes were added to the karka queen loot table, crafted with passion flowers.

During Season 1, another stat set, keeper/zealot, was introduced, crafted with a new material (sprockets) and their recipes, exotic and ascended, were all limited time, random loot from events. They havent been reintroduced since and are in short supply, which basically locked the mayority of the new player base out of ever crafting an ascended set of those due to the absurd tp prices for the recipes. This has been remedied a bit with the last patch, as you only need to craft an exotic insignia or inscription now to get keeper stats forged onto another piece of ascended gear but you still have to spend more than 50g for both exotic recipes. Those exotic inscr/insi are the most expensive ones to craft anyways, as they need 500 sprockets each.

During season 1 and 2, there was alot of feedback about rewards and two common calls were for less limited time rewards and events (like celestial, sentinel or keeper gear, recipes and mats) and more account bound rewards that are earned through completing content that cant be traded and therefore bought with a credit card.
I think Anet answered both calls in season 2, at least to some degree.

Both new stat combos that got released (sinister and nomad) had tradeable recipes from random loot but anything crafted was account bound and you needed to complete some of the new content, in order to purchase the insi/inscr recipes and craft the gear yourself.

Personally, i think both have been integrated the best way, reasonable prices for the tradeable recipes so they still offer some kind of gold value for the farmers with intend to sell, a decent amount of playing the new content required to craft them at reasonable prices and no limited drops but permanent content.
The sinister recipes even came in books, so players can choose, which one they want, which makes it way harder to manipulate their prices on the tp.

Overall, i think Anets is just trying out different ways of reward and progression systems to see which work good and which not.