Guild Wars 2

I love how the people complaining of welfare ascendeds are probably on welfare.

I’ve yet to experience rude players while doing Fractals. Sorry about your luck, mate, but not all of us are like that, and, like a lot of other people I know, we actually realize you are real person, not just pixels. I’ve had really fun groups in the Fractals and I REALLY enjoy the dungeons. They are unique, interesting, require skill, and provide a fun, random challenge. I got nothing but kind words to say to ANet for this patch.

We need a group finder for dungeon

Galen Grey.4709:

Rude players have nothing to do with FotM, the same thing could happen in any dungeon, in the open world and in WvW

The problem you mention is the player in question nothing else!

If he insulted you and used nasty slur as you said I hope you reported him. Its the only way we have to solve this problem!

Other dungeons don’t have progression levels.

Fractals being a treadmill makes players more rude. It leads to them feeling you are holding back their progress.

Other dungeons they get the tokens once complete. No leveling up in the dungeon required.

GADefence.5634:

I love how the people complaining of welfare ascendeds are probably on welfare.

Your argument makes no sense. Since the people with the most time to grind the dungeon probably don’t have a job.

vince.5937:

So I spend about an hour in LA trying to find/set up a Level 2 FotM team. Eventually I just teamed up with a few other 2’s and a level 1 and just ran it because I enjoy the visuals. However, during that hour I experience the rudest treatment I’ve ever received in any game from the players in LA map chat. I was PMed and insulted, called names in map chat, and even got a few nasty slurs and one “die in a fire” for asking why it was so kittening hard to find a FotM team below level 5. According to LA, it’s super easy to find a team! Just spam spam spam! You’ll find one, even though everyone is saying they don’t want my FotM level! Right.

I almost found a level 2 team but they wouldn’t let me join unless I PMed them links to my equipped gear. When I finally did find my team, we entered to the Aquatic Fractal and I promptly crashed. Turns out the rest of my team did too and two of them gave up. No more team.

Between the rudeness of other players, the lack of teams for my FotM level, and the off chance my team will get hammered by a crash I think I’m just going to go back to soloing the PvE content. Hardly anyone does any dungeons outside of FotM anymore so I won’t bother looking for teams for AC, CoE, CM, or any of my other favorites.

Sorry, but this is exactly what ArenaNet wants to happen. Elitism is the new name of the game. Creeps are the new demographic they want to attract. You’re a second-class citizen of Tyria and they’re not gonna care.

Columba.9730:

I think it’s appalling that people are calling this guy a liar. Sad.

It’s just another symptom of the attitude he mentions in the OP.

Zoul.1087:

GADefence.5634:

I love how the people complaining of welfare ascendeds are probably on welfare.

Your argument makes no sense. Since the people with the most time to grind the dungeon probably don’t have a job.

That’s seems to be his point, so his argument – while playing on the stereotypes – makes sense.

Galen Grey.4709:

Rude players have nothing to do with FotM, the same thing could happen in any dungeon, in the open world and in WvW

Then why didn’t it happen anywhere near as often before FOTM ?

You say that FOTM isn’t to blame. If it isn’t, why has the rude behavior increased at the same time ?
Why are all the complaints I’m seeing about rude behavior relating to FOTM ?

Correlation doesn’t guarantee causation. But it’s a pretty good bet when you have a theory for how causation works and no alternative to it.

Snoring Sleepwalker.9073:

Galen Grey.4709:

Rude players have nothing to do with FotM, the same thing could happen in any dungeon, in the open world and in WvW

Then why didn’t it happen anywhere near as often before FOTM ?

You say that FOTM isn’t to blame. If it isn’t, why has the rude behavior increased at the same time ?
Why are all the complaints I’m seeing about rude behavior relating to FOTM ?

Correlation doesn’t guarantee causation. But it’s a pretty good bet when you have a theory for how causation works and no alternative to it.

I’ve never been asked for my level and class for any other dungeon than FotM in GW2.

Snoring Sleepwalker.9073:

You say that FOTM isn’t to blame. If it isn’t, why has the rude behavior increased at the same time ?
Why are all the complaints I’m seeing about rude behavior relating to FOTM ?

Easy. Game design that encourages discrimination coupled with herd mentality. People see a select few rude players make up rules who is good enough to join them and copy those things, thus creating sort of a community etiquette of what is acceptable and what not.

That’s why cliques in highschools have leaders, who don’t necessarily have any qualities that would benefit the group, but are so self confident and dominant that everybody else feels compelled to follow them.

That why I was so glad that there was no open world dueling in GW2. The ridiculous version they added with the costume brawl elegantly negated the problem with people wanting duel to assert their dominance/confidence. It’s pretty hard to run around screaming “IM BEST! Y U L00K 4T M3!?” when you’re a small plastic toy.

FotM caters to the worst category of MMO player, and should be scrapped.

I think The level scaling should be player specific not group specific, sure it would require alot more codeing but would get rid of every single qq about fotm.

vince.5937:

1. You want me to post the names? I even had people in my finally-found group say “Man that (name) guy needs to get stuffed” and “dude people are rude in LA tonight.” Yes, that’s what happened.

Because, obviously, you are always right and everybody else is always wrong. The mere fact that you forgot your own OP(namely the part about “why it was so kittening hard to find a FotM team below level 5” and how you likely said more than that to piss so many people off) rather supports that.

2. I also have a job and two dogs and a wife and real friends outside the game. I’ll say it again: I don’t want to find an entirely new guild just to run one dungeon. I’d gladly play the other world dungeons, but hardly anyone seems to run them anymore in favor of FotM.

Well, if you don’t want to find a new guild, don’t complain that strangers don’t respect you or want to help you. If anything, FotM brought the “i’m entitled to everything and you owe me your soul unless you want me to call you elitist and selfish”-attitude.

3. I didn’t say anything was ruining anything. I said I can’t find groups for any other world dungeons anymore because it appears that everyone’s running FotM instead. I didn’t say Exp mode was elitist and I sure as hell didn’t insinuate that I was doing this for gear. If you read my OP you’ll notice that I actually like to run the Fractals because they’re visually beautiful. This has absolutely nothing to do with gear and everything to do with the behavior of players forming FotM teams. How about not putting words in my mouth?

Please reread my original post and get back to me when you know what it is I’m talking about.

Or you can reread my post and notice that 1 and 2 started with “OP” while 3 didn’t…what does that tell you? Right, that it wasn’t directed at you. Hard to believe, right? That you might not be the centre of every attention….

I am very worried where this game is going to at this rate.

People could say ‘join guild, work harder and by the way everything is optional including playing the game!’. Daily and monthly achievements appeal to casual players iirc it was even advertised as one. In addition it was said that being forced into dungeons is against their design but in order to get this achievement you have to run dungeons and even Fractals. So if you are unlucky to find a group for whatever reason you are not part of the November club. This type of game design is very similar to high-end raiding in WoW where if you did not find a certain guild at a certain level you would miss out on gear and achievements. This breeds the same kind of elitism, the same kind of attitudes, and frankly this worries me a lot because the same issue arises which arose in WoW at some time: You can’t run certain content because in order to run that content you are supposed to run that content. Therefore the snakes bites its own tail which was why WoW introduced ‘welfare epics’ which aside from the controversy bruteforce-solved the issue caused by their own design. /sigh

Guys these matters are delicate, and should only be faced as such. I can also go out and say i have seen that, called that, or seen a flying Ouroboros and, who knows, it might be true!
There are some facts as to the nature of what is really happening out there and that is that both hardcore-elitists, (call em what you like) are opossed to what fractals is about, as well as many casual players. The exact same difference exists though.
While one cannot disagree that this is increasing the rudeness of people, crushes all the “friendly community game” we were seing on betas and so much more, one also has to see the positive side. Its new content and its super cool!
Ascended is not that much more poweful that exotic, and not bringin any kind of equipment gaps between people neither in wvw nor pve.
My personal thought is that if someone wants the best gear in wvw, he better not be a casual, as (as i think it at least) it seems epicly strange to have cheapish-easy to get gear at competitive play! Wvw has other uses for people with low-end equipment,lvl,etc.
As for the pve, being a player who got to lvl20 pug only, i also have my share of bad-frustrating stories to share. BUT HEY, my friends list is that much richer and in my block list i have people i would never have wanted to party not in this dungeon nor any other! In short, that speaks of social progression to me!!
There are just so many faces on so many different sides, each with its own twist!
My overall feeling is happiness and all those positive feelings that come when you do new stuff in a game, and i wish it would have been the same for all of you guys….
Just make some constructive posts, and anet is sure to examine them and plan accordinly on thoughts and ideas..!

“Ascended is not that much more poweful that exotic”?

20% is the figure….

20% is a MASSIVE increase in effectiveness.. if its all invested in one stat its the equivalent of 30 extra trait points.

I was denied multiple times trying to do level 2 on my alt which is level 52. The fact that it takes an while to even find a group doing level 2, I don’t get why people care. Many people have done up to level 5 with low lever chars.

Rainsoul Moonmourne.9743:

While one cannot disagree that this is increasing the rudeness of people, crushes all the “friendly community game” we were seing on betas and so much more, one also has to see the positive side.

Having you seen a topic “I’m lvl 20 fotm and all those noobs keep shouting for lvl 2 so I can’t get a party”? Cause I haven’t. But this is at least the 3rd “I’m lvl 2 and all those elitist lvl 10+ don’t wanna do it with me” that I read. It’s the entitled vs the elitist. Where apparently everybody who won’t go out of their way to run a dungeon they don’t need with a complete stranger is an elitist. Imo, the rudeness originates in the entitled group and the elitist just react to it. That’s also why I find OP unbelievable. I’ve been pugging fotm for a while now and nobody has yet told me to “die in fire” or insulted me in any way. I doubt it’s my lovely personality though….

I’m not really fond of the gating in the Fractals dungeon. Based on Chris Whiteside’s post, ANet is looking to revamp existing dungeons and “Fixing and improving existing content throughout the game, and better tying it into the overall sense of player progression within Guild Wars 2.” Might that mean that FotM will not be the only way to get the Ascended stats? Time will tell. If so, I will ignore FotM. I might ignore it anyway. If it’s just PRspeak to try to appease the negative reactions, oh well.

TWMagimay.9057:

Rainsoul Moonmourne.9743:

While one cannot disagree that this is increasing the rudeness of people, crushes all the “friendly community game” we were seing on betas and so much more, one also has to see the positive side.

Having you seen a topic “I’m lvl 20 fotm and all those noobs keep shouting for lvl 2 so I can’t get a party”? Cause I haven’t. But this is at least the 3rd “I’m lvl 2 and all those elitist lvl 10+ don’t wanna do it with me” that I read. It’s the entitled vs the elitist. Where apparently everybody who won’t go out of their way to run a dungeon they don’t need with a complete stranger is an elitist. Imo, the rudeness originates in the entitled group and the elitist just react to it.

People “get theirs”, and then turn on and exclude those who are trying to play the game for the experience because they’d be an “inconvenience”, and you are calling the excluded people “entitled” for believing they should be able to play the game they paid for without being excluded, in a game which is designed to be inclusive which was the major presented tagline intent of the devs?!

How hypocritical can you get.

The devs put into place a terrible design which rewards people for excluding others, and it’s resulted in this. THAT Is why so many people are pissed.

TWMagimay.9057:

I’ve been pugging fotm for a while now and nobody has yet told me to “die in fire” or insulted me in any way. I doubt it’s my lovely personality though….

Let me reply to this with one of your replies.

TWMagimay.9057:

Because, obviously, you are always right and everybody else is always wrong.

Unless you were there, don’t tell me what did and didn’t happen. You are the player type I avoid.

plasmacutter.2709:

People “get theirs”, and then turn on and exclude those who are trying to play the game for the experience because they’d be an “inconvenience”, and you are calling the excluded people “entitled” for believing they should be able to play the game they paid for without being excluded, in a game which is designed to be inclusive which was the major presented tagline intent of the devs?!

How hypocritical can you get.

The devs put into place a terrible design which rewards people for excluding others, and it’s resulted in this. THAT Is why so many people are pissed.

People don’t “exclude” you on purpose, they do it because most people don’t go out of their way to help others. Do you pull over at the bus stop and offer random people a lift to the other end of the city? Doubtful. Do the people at the bus stop throw stones at your car and call you elitist for excluding them from your car? Unlikely. It’s human nature to be out for yourself and you can’t insult people for being human.

Let’s bring it back to the game. Did you miss the whole, ammm, dungeon system, maps and the general “different activities” part of the game? Do you insult people for running Arah when you need TA? Are those doing WvWvW while you try to get the rich ori in LS excluding you because they are not helping you with the champion? Are the people in a full spvp match excluding you by not being in your match? Are the people running dungeons excluding you because they won’t go do keg matches with you?

The mere fact that you feel excluded and have the need to insult others for trying to achieve their goals instead of your goals is what makes you sound entitled. And I’m tired of people like you. Because you are always the first to insult when smth doesn’t go your way. Do you know how many times I’ve typed “sorry, can’t help you now, maybe later”(because, duhhh, I want to enjoy the game for myself as well) and gotten a “f—- you, b——” as a response? And then that same person would pm me 30min later and ask for my help again. That’s being entitled. Believing that people owe you help while you obviously don’t owe them respect.

But let’s put you to the test. I still need about 70 dungeon runs. How about you run them with me? I mean, you wouldn’t want me to feel excluded, right? That’s not how you play the game. So, please, prove you walk the walk and drop anything you are doing to run those dungeons with me.

vince.5937:

Unless you were there, don’t tell me what did and didn’t happen. You are the player type I avoid.

Oh, that’s great, because you are also the kind of player I avoid.

Just a quick post to share my opinions/experience!
I did 3 PUG runs in FotM. Obviously, these were low level runs and I guess you can imagine people are not very demanding at these levels. Nevertheless, it was never too difficult to find a group to join (15 minutes looking for it, at the most).
Two things people should consider:
1- As the levels are per character, people shouldn’t worry too much about people over-leveled. There will always be low level people running the dungeons. Otherwise, try doing it with guildies or friends (as suggested)
2- (And most important) The success of your party and your runs starts with YOU! Be positive, friendly, and communicate. The only time my group didn’t work out well was because NO ONE would reply (many non-english speakers I think) and I just left as there was no point! Besides that, my experience has always been quite good! I go in the chat, ask questions, tell people I don’t know this or that thing, help when I can help… Like this things go fairly well!

So that’s about it. Be a bit patient and, never forget… YOU are the first person responsible for making a party successful.

Good luck and have fun!

I’ve been in the same guild since about 2006. We are a pvp-centric guild that does some pve as the game requires. Many of us are IRL friends. All of us have full-time jobs, families, lives. Needless to say, our time in game is precious.

After the first weekend there was already difficulty getting full guild groups to run FotM, because of the tier discrepancy. I can’t even imagine what it would be like to try to pug it.

I haven’t even been back to Lion’s Arch since the release of the patch as I have been spending my time split between 100% completion (I was hoping to some day get a legendary weapon), and WvW.

Now that I am well behind the curve of FoTM I just have no desire to play catch-up. I personally can’t stand pve and REALLY can’t stand pve when I HAVE to do it for competitiveness on the pvp side of things.

There is another game coming out that I was planning on skipping altogether. Guess it is time to take another look at it.

Such a bummer.

TWMagimay.9057:

People don’t “exclude” you on purpose, they do it because most people don’t go out of their way to help others.

True. Which is why FOTM is such a badly designed dungeon. Think about how other mechanics in GW2 make the selfish behavior the cooperative one:
– Sharing the rewards for kills means that helping someone kill a tough foe is the selfish decision.
– The same for dynamic events.
– Ressing someone awards you with xp. So people will at least stop to res you as they are running somewhere.
– For dungeons other than FOTM, you want to run quickly. The time spent trying for a perfect party member isn’t worth it, so the selfish option is to grab the first level 80s that want to join you.

The only times GW2 encourages selfish behavior to the detriment of other players is Magic Find gear* and FOTM grouping. Why should we tolerate such exceptions to such a beautiful design choice ?

*Too small of an effect for me to care about.

I haven’t done the FotM dungeons. Regardless of how well they are done, they are the Grinding Grounds to me. Doesn’t sound like to fun to me. I don’t like to prepare to have fun by grinding for a fun future reward. I like to have fun moment to moment.

I’d have to agree with OP. If it so happens that you start doing your fractal runs a bit later than everyone else after the reset, it can be pretty hard to find a group that matches your level.

I was discussing that with the people in my party as we were trying to find the remaining 2 players, and they were appalled by the poor set-up of fractals different levels.

We reached the conclusion that either some kind of steady and efficient group finder should be implemented. Afterall it is one of these social tools that any self respecting MMO ought to have implemented (or should as soon as possible “a la SWTOR”, 6 months later) in its game.

Or there should be less fractal levels so it is easier to find a group to run with. 10 would make sense. By all means make each following level more steep/difficult than it is at the moment, but it isn’t fun to be spamming in LA only to be blocked by the game because you had no choice but to spam endlessly to find a party !
Catch-22 for the win !

There’s no doubt the current design of the fractals is messy at best, not the dungeons themselves but how players get to access them is ridiculous at the moment.

Of course you gonna tell me “find a guild !”, well i have been playing since release pretty much and I’m the lone wolf kinda player. Don’t like logging in and having to chat to people every freaking time, and having to detract from what I intentionally wanted to do with that game session because “blablabla lets do AC instead >.>”.
Doesn’t mean I’m antisocial though, I have developed a steady group of friends some of which have guilds and others not and we do dungeons quite often here and there. Otherwise PUGs for me. Which is fine, and quite often fun because of the random factor.
All this to say this is MY playstyle and I do socialize with people enough to get a group going, but that only works for normal dungeons where there is no time limits because of resets hence no urge to advance through the levels as fast as possible.

When it comes to fractals, most of my online friends are either ahead of me or behind, and all of us just want to do OUR level because of time constraints… even their own guildies behave much the same, although I admit they said it was a bit easier although some guildies are always lacking a bit behind.

Just so you guys know, I actually have joined a guild now JUST for that purpose which is exactly what I didn’t want from my GW2 experience (yeah ironic I know given the game title).

So overall my issues with the fractals grouping are :

1) too many fractal levels to easily find a party

2) the reset makes it hard if you are lacking a bit behind to catch up (which takes us back to point n1)

3) the absence of a group finder is making itself feel more noticeable day by day

I hope Anet is still taking in metrics from the fractals to see how people are doing to get into groups,because right now I pass more time spamming and getting blocked (meaning more waiting) in front of the bloody door than actually running your content.

Anet , optimize your content. DO IT.

It’s like that on any MMO, GW1 suffered their kind too, they were the ones in the Speedclearing teams or the guys doing HM Zaishen dalies. My advice is to just not bother doing that stuff yet and have some patience to find a guild that’s right for you and only run with a select group of people you know and can trust.

Never run with pugs, your blood-pressure will thank you.

I personally have not seen any of this behavior in my time here in GW2 but I am also the type of player who cannot stand running the same content every night/day just for an upgrade, its just not worth it IMO.

This brings me to my next point, the one thing that really differentiates GW2 from other games is or should say (was ) the ability to play the game your own way with equal gear (statistically) available for all play styles (dungeons, wvwvw, de’s, karma,crafting, etc). Players do not care what the gear looks like as long as the stats match, thats what skins are for. For some reason ANet abandoned this philosophy and attempted (hopefully unintentionally) to herd its entire player base to play one way in one place to obtain it. This is one of things that annoys me most about this last patch because I was one of the few players that really enjoyed mixing it up, doing a different dungeon everyday, with some WvWvW and Spvp mixed in, on a good day even do some DE’s in Orr just to mingle with other members of the server, this is almost all gone now.

My suggestion to ANet is many of us have no problem with a slight gear treadmill and a vertical progression type system but if your gonna do it DO NOT make it where you can only do it in 1 place and 1 playstyle, give all play styles there own path in obtaining the most current tier of gear. You put years of work into your game and If I was a developer it would be heartbreaking for me to see the player base abandon my older content just to get 2 power (other stats).

To the OP be patient, there will be groups for the lower levels of FOTM and if people are demanding a gear check for lvl’s 1-9 they are bad and just looking to be carried, don’t waste your time with them.

Waffler.1257:

Your claims have nothing to do with FoTM, people in general are idiots. That’s why I could never be bothered to play most games that require team work. You can go play LoL where there is no grind at all and people will cuss you out simply because you don’t go in the lane they want you to.

The only gripe I have are people who constanly spam you to join a group, Like they did not get the hint the first time you denied the invite. Not that I am against grouping, what I am against is random Invites from players who I do not have an aquatance to at all with. I don’t even know the player. When did asking someone first to join a group go out the window. Stop spaming an invite on me.

If you want a group just ask players, instead of demanding them. Spaming LFG over and over is demanding IMO. Perfect example was me when fractals first came out. All this spam going on in chat, and when you get to the asura gate for the dungeon, you see all these people just standing around.

I asked people useing the say command. I said I will run the dungeon for those that want in. I am inviting random players who wants in. You will be surprised how fast you get a group. The problem with players is they do not want to lead the group, they rather be the wall flower.

Snoring Sleepwalker.9073:

TWMagimay.9057:

People don’t “exclude” you on purpose, they do it because most people don’t go out of their way to help others.

True. Which is why FOTM is such a badly designed dungeon. Think about how other mechanics in GW2 make the selfish behavior the cooperative one:
– Sharing the rewards for kills means that helping someone kill a tough foe is the selfish decision.
– The same for dynamic events.
– Ressing someone awards you with xp. So people will at least stop to res you as they are running somewhere.
– For dungeons other than FOTM, you want to run quickly. The time spent trying for a perfect party member isn’t worth it, so the selfish option is to grab the first level 80s that want to join you.

The only times GW2 encourages selfish behavior to the detriment of other players is Magic Find gear* and FOTM grouping. Why should we tolerate such exceptions to such a beautiful design choice ?

*Too small of an effect for me to care about.

And let’s look at it again:
- To kill the foe you have to be near it, in the same zone, and have the goal of killing that foe. Do you stop every single time you see smb fighting a mob even if you are just running through?
- Yeah, true, same. You only take part in the events you are close to/need. Otherwise the devourer champ in that charr map wouldn’t be staying on for days at a time…
- Depends…if you are in the middle of mobs, they might just as well ignore u xD
- So, if you want to run TA story, you gonna invite the first lvl 80 who looks for Arah exp?

So, how is it any different from FotM again? All FotM does is create a bit more goals. But not even that many. People will generally run it for 3 reasons:
- ascended gear: they’ll settle for the optimal farming lvl
- progression: they will keep going
- obsidian shards: they’ll will run pretty much everything
FotM isn’t the first aspect of the game to offer different goals. It just offers more possible goals compared to other activities, but that doesn’t really make it different.

PS: I don’t get it…people are constantly looking for lvl 1-5 groups. It takes me exactly 2min to find a group(i’m after OS, so the lvl is barely relevant and when pugging, i’d rather go for smth I know I can carry others through) after shouting “LF fotm 1-8”. Am I, like, the only one?!

I was in a level 2 fractals for about 2 hrs and reached the 4th instance. By that time, people left and we couldn’t complete it. Individually, each instance is ok but running them consecutively is not fun for me.

Gated content and stat grind creates inclusive and poisonous communities? Not surprised

vox.5019:

Gated content and stat grind creates inclusive and poisonous communities? Not surprised

Indeed. One of the things I loved about GW1 was that even if I took an extended break I never felt left behind, at least in a power progression sense. I thought GW2 would be the same, turns out to not be the case.

Rude players can happen anywhere, it’s nothing specific to FOTM

Totally agree… They said one of the benefits of no “Holy Trinity” was no waiting in a dungeon’s entrance because you lacked a certain class.

Guess what im doing nowadays in GW2? Waiting in the entrance of a dungeon for hours, spamming the chat….

Well done Anet (sigh), Well done.

So what I read in this thread is Anet needs a LFG system(this is a yes) and people are mean(this is the internet, what do you expect?).

As far as rude players go I just go by “kitten happens”, I simply can not be pissed about a game more then 10 min, it’s like letting them win.
If I don’t enjoy the run because of someone – I’ll block and go on in silence. Second option is to ask the rest of the group to remove the person in question. So far it’s never been a problem to 4 man a dungeon. 3rd option is to leave, but then I might punish people that don’t deserve it – if I’m leader.
It’s usually not hard to find a group if you jump between overflow and main map when you ask for people.
This would be so much easier if you had a proper group-tool though, as you can join the overflow from any EU or NA server. There are obviously players needing and wanting these runs, finding a mate is the problem.
Not to mention stuff gets buried in chat if there is a discussion going on.

Thrumdi.9216:

Four Jacks Twice.2537:

My attitude is if, or rather when, the ascended/infused gear becomes crucial for content outside of FotM (and ignoring PvP in my case since that’s not my thing) then they will inevitably introduce other means of acquiring it. I can see the issues that will cause already, “wahhh I did nothing but grind FotM for months and now some noob is getting equivalent gear from world boss chests waaahhh”, but that’s a whole other story.
In other words, I’ll just wait it out. That’s the beauty of not paying a sub.

I’m just waiting for the phrase “Welfare Ascendeds” to be introduced.

Any bets on when that will happen?

Probably soon. Considering I just had a WoW flashback reading someone post “get a guild” Same thing I read in WoW. Wish this game would of said from beging that vertical gear was what it was aiming for. Hell even 2-3 weeks in I remember reading a Dev post talking about why legendaries were a grind.

vince.5937:

According to LA, it’s super easy to find a team! Just spam spam spam! You’ll find one, even though everyone is saying they don’t want my FotM level! Right.

Those are the same people who seem to think dungeon finders will be the utter destruction to the entire game and its “community” because “WOW IZ BAD LOLZ”.

I read alot this week on this forum that drops seam to have been nerfed. Personally I have also experienced this since the end of the lost shores event. My theory on this is as follows. The lost shore event was such a big fiasco that Anet had no choice but to pump ludicrous rewards during the final event to appease the masses at a risk of destabilizing the economy. So in order to prevent this they tightened drop rates in general after the event. I estimate they will increase drop rates once again in a few weeks. Now I doubt Anet will ever admit it were this the case but it sure seams like it. Just my opinion.

Thrumdi.9216:

Four Jacks Twice.2537:

My attitude is if, or rather when, the ascended/infused gear becomes crucial for content outside of FotM (and ignoring PvP in my case since that’s not my thing) then they will inevitably introduce other means of acquiring it. I can see the issues that will cause already, “wahhh I did nothing but grind FotM for months and now some noob is getting equivalent gear from world boss chests waaahhh”, but that’s a whole other story.
In other words, I’ll just wait it out. That’s the beauty of not paying a sub.

I’m just waiting for the phrase “Welfare Ascendeds” to be introduced.

Any bets on when that will happen?

It will happen as soon as you can get it thru wvw. It won’t matter how freaking time consuming it is to get it people will always say pvp is easier then dungeons (normally the same people who refuse to do pvp. Ironic really)

I don’t really see it as entitled vs elitest with FoTM.

People just play with others that are on their level. That’s really it. The way they introduced the RNG mechanic to the rings also slows down those who are seeking to make rapid progress in order for the others to catch up (my guess).

I myself have done level 10, 5 times already just trying to get the ring so it’s definately slowing down my progress. I’m completely OK with this idea though because it also means that those people that are coming up are able to have a chance to do so as well.

There’s also been many times where I’ve done levels much lower than mine to help people reach higher levels. We all have that choice and the ability to help others and many people choose to.

This thread seems to be degenerating into an argument over whether people are allowed to play what they want with whom they want. If you look at it objectively, of course they are. People claiming otherwise, divorce the issue from fractals and ask yourself, “Do I want developers or other players telling me whom I must play with?”

The real issue is not elitists v. entitled, it is whether the gating mechanism is a good mechanic or not. If people want to be hostile, exclusive, insulting or rude, they don’t need a game’s gating mechanism. The feature may serve as a convenient outlet for such behavior, but it does not cause it.

IndigoSundown.5419:

This thread seems to be degenerating into an argument over whether people are allowed to play what they want with whom they want. If you look at it objectively, of course they are. People claiming otherwise, divorce the issue from fractals and ask yourself, “Do I want developers or other players telling me whom I must play with?”

The real issue is not elitists v. entitled, it is whether the gating mechanism is a good mechanic or not. If people want to be hostile, exclusive, insulting or rude, they don’t need a game’s gating mechanism. The feature may serve as a convenient outlet for such behavior, but it does not cause it.

I’d like to thank you for reading my post and the rest of the thread and actually understanding what I’m talking about, unlike some other posters who keep asserting that I’m a liar and/or an instigator. This situation is pretty identical to what happened to me in Lion’s Arch; I voiced my opinion and was set upon by insults and accusations.