Guild Wars 2

We can all agree that exotics where not rare enough to justify an end game content, that doesn’t mean that they were not rare or hard to get. When a top tier item appears all people will target it from the very bottom!

I’m worrying that once complete ascended sets appear on the world, people will completly ignore the exotics that we worked so hard to make and craft and go directly to them, and crafting diciplines will become meantingless.

I know cause it happened to vanila WoW. The Items that people crafted couldn’t possibly match the epic items that droped from raid dungeons in the end game, and the proffessions became meaningless. Later they changed them so Masters of each proffession could craft and use certain usefull items excusive to them, to ballance the proffession usefullness.

In GW2 I saw a neat idea whith the introduction of acseneded gear, implimented backwards. That is having a certain murderus condition being fightable only with a certain rarity of equipment.
This would have forced people to go through Exotic gear before they start building their own ascended, instead of jumping directly to them!
Instead:
The rarity that can fight agony is already the top tier set.
The acsended equipment require only Fractals, dayllies and perhaps the mystic forge but no mention of crafting.
People wont have much reason not to bypass exotics, as all they have to do is to play in greens and yellows for some time untill they get their own ascended.

In WoW they forced you go through all tiers of items before going for epics, buy having all end level raid-dungeons doing insane fire damage, forcing players to build first fire resistance by gathering the last tiers, thus giving a last use for lower tier items before epics.

Why isn’t agony resistance given to exotics?
If ascended are just a step before legendaries, then why don’t they require a combined effort of all of the game’s activities and can be aquired by just dungeon runing or doing dayllies?

Well in my opinion the OP has a point of which could be pretty much expressed on any MMO gaming forum albeit with the correct name of (best gear) available.

However many MMO games usually have an in game situation where the very best gear is obtained via drops or purchased with tokens, rather than crafted. For example in WoW the only real reasons why anyone bothers with professions is for the modest stats and buffs they give, or to make gold.

There are some partial exceptions, some Rift (another MMO game) crafted gear is very close or near equal to the best drops.

But here one of the most appealing features of the game for me is that there is not a great deal of difference in stats between various classes of top end gear (exotic etc upwards) other than the look or skin of the item.

In WoW the advantage of top end raid gear can be quite substantial compared with with what people used to call entry level or welfare epics.

Well, you need to complete the first 9 levels of fractals before you get a chance at obtaining a ring so maybe those levels will act as sort of a barrier between rares and ascended? This depends on how they implement laurels too though. As well as future ascended gear.

Kite.2510:

I’m worrying that once complete ascended sets appear on the world, people will completly ignore the exotics that we worked so hard to make and craft and go directly to them, and crafting diciplines will become meantingless.

Crafting disciplines were designed to be “meaningless”(at least in the sense you put in the word). It literally takes 30 min and under 5g to get any discipline to lvl 400 thus making crafting accessible to everybody and not some sort of endgame status you-are-awesome feature. In addition to that, most stat combinations can already be obtained through dungeons(and those have fancier skins) which also makes crafted gear less desired. Ascended gear won’t change the status of crafting since even know that feature is more of a way to level chars than to create gear.

As for working hard for exotics…puhlease. No matter your playstyle, you can get those as a by-product of doing w/e it is you enjoy(spare for spvp, obvious reasons) in a reasonable amount of time.

TWMagimay.9057:

Kite.2510:

I’m worrying that once complete ascended sets appear on the world, people will completly ignore the exotics that we worked so hard to make and craft and go directly to them, and crafting diciplines will become meantingless.

Crafting disciplines were designed to be “meaningless”(at least in the sense you put in the word). It literally takes 30 min and under 5g to get any discipline to lvl 400 thus making crafting accessible to everybody and not some sort of endgame status you-are-awesome feature. In addition to that, most stat combinations can already be obtained through dungeons(and those have fancier skins) which also makes crafted gear less desired. Ascended gear won’t change the status of crafting since even know that feature is more of a way to level chars than to create gear.

As for working hard for exotics…puhlease. No matter your playstyle, you can get those as a by-product of doing w/e it is you enjoy(spare for spvp, obvious reasons) in a reasonable amount of time.

I totally agree with this.

Anyone using Google can download a step by step guide to levelling crafting here which includes the most easy and efficient use of materials.

To be honest (in my own opinion) Areanet designers were generous in handing a tool to folks that could be used as an alternative levelling route without ever killing a mob or leaving a capital city.

But having crafted items as good as the best drops here, (and easily available) would mean anyone could obtain “best” items, which in turn removes that uniqueness that many other folks love.

For me cooking here may be the profession to level (despite the cost) as the stat food does offer additional end game advantages

BroScientist.9875:

Well, you need to complete the first 9 levels of fractals before you get a chance at obtaining a ring so maybe those levels will act as sort of a barrier between rares and ascended? This depends on how they implement laurels too though. As well as future ascended gear.

As long as grinding instanced dungeons is required endgame play in GW2 then they will continue to lose customers.

Some of us actually enjoy crafting (the actual act of ). That said it is not very profitable nor viable at endgame. I make my own gear and that is the extent of its viability.
What is so destructive or unappealling for the dev’s to add a few crafting recipes for ascended?
In the end they will be as vanilla as the exotic recipes that were included in the crafts. I don’t think we should have recipes available until they are done with including ascended in all areas of the game. Once that aspect is complete crafting will be officially dead or they will eventually have to include recipes to revive it.
If ascended was truly the step between exotic and legendary (both of which are available on the TP) then the next logicial step is to integrate ascended into the entire game, crafting included.
If it was intended before game release, that is.

Join the old discussions… by reading them. There have been enough talk over these topics and a lot of replies and i remember these topics were raised already.

oh god not another ascended topic was my thought.

One possible way to keep crafting viable even if ascended gear is through drops, is to make the ascended gear have a plain or undesirable appearance. People would then have to buy crafted, karma, or cultural gear for looks. It would mean gem store purchases tho so there would be complaints about that.

Okay, the problem here is not that people won’t want Exotics because Ascended is better. That’s a given. There’s no way to fix that people will want better gear.

The PROBLEM here is that crafting in GW2 is unprofitable and unessential. In FF11, you could craft +1 or +2 quality items, even +3. These items would have more stats than their normal counterparts, such as in GW2 you have masterwork, fine etc. However, in FF11, some ubercrafted items by master craftsmen were better than boss drops. Also, you could make a killing if you were a master craftsman tiering up components or finished goods. In GW2, we have the Mystic Toilet and NPC vendors to buy those things from. Until crafting gives a reasonable reward, I’ll keep ignoring it in GW2. I’ll keep running FOTM for the best gear. And I’ll keep selling off the drops for gold.

BroScientist.9875:

Well, you need to complete the first 9 levels of fractals before you get a chance at obtaining a ring so maybe those levels will act as sort of a barrier between rares and ascended? This depends on how they implement laurels too though. As well as future ascended gear.

No it is not…
As people said above, in this game you can pretty much overcome anything with skill and Fractall before 10 are not that hard to justify a full exotic gear.
And people will relly on it, looking for parties for fractals while they are dressed in greens, to go directly to Ascended.
The point is for the game to have enough content to keep people bussy for a long time (and that was a criticism at launch), and by agreeing that Crafting is useless and it’s naturall for someone who just reached the end level to go directly for the best gear in the game, you are not fixing it’s length problems.
IMO they should Have an MF recipe that says "combine 4 Exotics of the same type to get X tier 7 crafting component for Ascended items.
Also they should make all exotics infusable (like some ascended) to make them a nessessary tier before the last one.

Crafting is a good portion of the game, and so are exotic items. Why do they have to become useless?
For a moment there I though that A-net was against the abandoning of old content…

As someone who was against new gear and not really a dungeon player, I was surprised how easy it was to get my first ascended ring. Now I am well over half way to the backpiece. Yes it is a little bit of a grind, but the loot in FotM is good to very good and once you know the levels, they can be fun/challenging. I highly suggest doing them as a guild party to reduce rage quit and grief at the early levels.

However, why not use Karma? Make it very high cost but still use a currency obtained for many sources

I disagree that they werent rare enough. They were just fine and acquiring them was perfect because it let have options and choice.
You get them somewhat quickly but could have multiple sets for different builds. Now you have 1 build with ascend that is it. Poor and horrible design.

It also gave people who had alts the ability to gear up at a hard but decent rate. Now you pick 1 toon and that is it. poor and horrible design.

With that plateau it let you chase after the more exotic of the exotic (named ones) or legendary. But now you need to use resources from that chase for ascend gear.
Again Poor and horrible design.

So for me ascend is nothing but poor and horrible design that has crippled this game for no reason and we lost 35% of the player population so that 1% of the population can have a +1. (who them promptly left and went back to wow)
Again Poor and horrible design implemented without thought or understanding of the consequences.

Medazolam.3058:

As someone who was against new gear and not really a dungeon player, I was surprised how easy it was to get my first ascended ring. Now I am well over half way to the backpiece. Yes it is a little bit of a grind, but the loot in FotM is good to very good and once you know the levels, they can be fun/challenging. I highly suggest doing them as a guild party to reduce rage quit and grief at the early levels.

However, why not use Karma? Make it very high cost but still use a currency obtained for many sources

We’ll have to see how they play out.
What wories me is that I plan to start doing dungeons after the 28jan patch (hated the rez-rush tactics and HPbucket enemies) and the rewards for those are currently mostly exotics! What reason do I have to do them if the rewards are only exotics, that are about to get outdated once the rest of the ascended set get released.

I strongly suggest a use for exotics you get from explorables, ether as ingridiences or to put them on the MF along with other rare stuff to upgrade them to ascended.
If geting the rest of the ascended gear is as easy as it currently is, then exotics are done for, so it’s only natural to find a deferent use for them.

Grim West.3194:

BroScientist.9875:

Well, you need to complete the first 9 levels of fractals before you get a chance at obtaining a ring so maybe those levels will act as sort of a barrier between rares and ascended? This depends on how they implement laurels too though. As well as future ascended gear.

As long as grinding instanced dungeons is required endgame play in GW2 then they will continue to lose customers.

Yes. Because that’s worked out so poorly for World of Warcraft right?

When ascended armour comes out in time, I just hope that dungeon token armours are boosted to ascended status. I would hate to see the hours I spent in the dungeons made obsolete by this. It would also deter people even more so from doing any of the dungeons. Some dungeons are easy, like Ascalon. But some like Arah, take tremendous effort and amount of time to gather the tokens for the armour.

Rhysati.4932:

Grim West.3194:

BroScientist.9875:

Well, you need to complete the first 9 levels of fractals before you get a chance at obtaining a ring so maybe those levels will act as sort of a barrier between rares and ascended? This depends on how they implement laurels too though. As well as future ascended gear.

As long as grinding instanced dungeons is required endgame play in GW2 then they will continue to lose customers.

Yes. Because that’s worked out so poorly for World of Warcraft right?

The people who like that sort of thing already play WoW. Most players came to GW2 because ANET promised us something different. The introduction of FoTM and it’s mandatory grind conicides with the massive drop off in players logging into GW2.

Narkosys.5173:

I disagree that they werent rare enough. They were just fine and acquiring them was perfect because it let have options and choice.
You get them somewhat quickly but could have multiple sets for different builds. Now you have 1 build with ascend that is it. Poor and horrible design.

Weird, I have 3 different sets of ascended for my main, 2 to match my exotics sets and 1 because I am/was considering another build.

It also gave people who had alts the ability to gear up at a hard but decent rate. Now you pick 1 toon and that is it. poor and horrible design.

Dunno about you, but my ascended items, fotm tokens etc are all account bound. Oh, and in addition to the sets on my main, I have 1 set for my 2 alts. Got that by running fotm once a day.

With that plateau it let you chase after the more exotic of the exotic (named ones) or legendary. But now you need to use resources from that chase for ascend gear.
Again Poor and horrible design.

Oh, right, 3 gifts for legendary to match my ascended sets. I started playing in September and looked at legendary some time in November.

So for me ascend is nothing but poor and horrible design that has crippled this game for no reason and we lost 35% of the player population so that 1% of the population can have a +1. (who them promptly left and went back to wow)
Again Poor and horrible design implemented without thought or understanding of the consequences.

Your data comes from…where exactly? And in case you missed it, GW2 is b2p, not p2p.

Welcome to “gear progression”. The point of a gear treadmill is not to constantly move forward; it’s to run as hard to you can to stay in place. 3 months ago people in full exotics had the best armor in the game. Now, new armor has introduced that is the best armor in the game. Want to hold your position in being the best geared? Then you better start running! But the illusion that is created is of forward progression; the reality is that you only have 2 possible outcomes: remain in the same location, or get left behind.

Eventually level increases will come out, new tiers will come out, etc. This is the path of a modern MMO. If you don’t like it… well, not a lot you can do about, huh?

I loved the GW1 model… You could have gear that is JUST AS GOOD as everyone else’s very easily… But if you wanted the coolest looking kitten, and armor that constituted as bragging rights, you had to work for it. I loved it, I was okay with it, I thought it was an excellent way to handle things.

I’m okay with SOME ascended gear, but for the love of God, please do not bring in ascended armor sets and weapons. If you want ascended rings, amulets, earrings, and backs, that’s fine, just… Keep it at that; give more “hard core” players something to work for, but keep the actual armor as exotic, and introduce new exotic sets with awesome aesthetics that people will try desperately to obtain. Add more hard to get weapon skins as well. Let us grind for aesthetics, not the next tier of gear quality, Guild Wars isn’t supposed to be that type of game.

Some ascended is fine, but PLEASE do not seriously make it where every piece of gear is ascended now.

Tolmos.8395:

Eventually level increases will come out, new tiers will come out, etc. This is the path of a modern MMO. If you don’t like it… well, not a lot you can do about, huh?

Of course! The power creep! How could we forget that beast!?

This beast however appears once in 2 years when they want to sell us a new expansion.
Now we are only on the 4rth month, there is no expantion, and the only think we might pay for is a quagan bag. Their strategy should be to keep us into the game, and the best way “not to do that” is to render our existing work worthless.
Powercreeping has it’s up and downs as it allows for new commers to have achange to keep up with old players, but It WAY to early for that!

There should be a long road to the top tier weapon, and that road should be tread through the older content.