Guild Wars 2

phys.7689:

Elmo Benchwarmer.3025:

phys.7689:

No, sports aren’t supposed to be fair, they are competitive. That is two different things, sports rewards hard work, and natural inclination way more than wvw does.

Sports sets certqin rules, then asks the player if he’s willing to compete. That’s all.

Don’t let the IOC know that. You’ll get sued.

Fairness is one of the paradigms of sports. Just look at the uproar doping caused in the Tour de France. German TV channels stopped live transmissions alltogether. Even technology gets banned for giving unfair advantages.

“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technology_doping”

nothing fair about being born naturally with what others have to dope to obtain. Also people here are against the idea that people who play longer get better stats, the same is true in sports, those who have time to train increase strength, speed, etc.

I dont agree with doping, but to be honest its just a rule that we agree upon before the game. like i said, rules are set, and then you are allowed to do whatever within that rule set, based on your natural talents and training, but its not like sports makes sure everyone has the same statisitics, team make up, etc.

Seriously, what are you talking about?

Squid.6903:

I believe that the way Ascended Gear is released goes against what made GW2 so fun in the past. It didn’t force you into doing stuff you didn’t want to do.

An Ascended weapon means I’ll be doing 10+% more damage than with my Exotic Weapon. That’s pretty huge in any kind of PvP.

So why aren’t there multiple pathways to getting these items? I mean from the start. From release. When Legendary/Ascended Weapons were released, there should have been a WvW method of getting them, or some sort of equivalent.

I don’t mean to say that it should be easy to get these items, but I find PvE boring—This is a game killer for me, and I know it is for some others, too.

Fix it, please.

I disagree very strongly. Without ascended gear in the game I would have been gone long ago, along with many other players as there would be nothing for us to go for. I am currently in process of gearing my 3rd alt in full ascended.

Also, just because you choose not to get any ascended, why should I be so severly punished for taking the time to go after the ascended gear ?

I believe there are many more PvX players in this game then there are pure PvE or pure WvW players, just that the 2 extremes seem to be most vocal. But if it came to cutting down, losing, some game population in order to have an overall healthier game, I would get rid of the extremes, not the majority that sits somewhere in between towards one or the other end of the spectrum.

So if ascended gear in WvW bothers you that much, maybe this game just isnt for you and you should leave for “greener pastures” ?

caiomacos.1694:

phys.7689:

Elmo Benchwarmer.3025:

phys.7689:

No, sports aren’t supposed to be fair, they are competitive. That is two different things, sports rewards hard work, and natural inclination way more than wvw does.

Sports sets certqin rules, then asks the player if he’s willing to compete. That’s all.

Don’t let the IOC know that. You’ll get sued.

Fairness is one of the paradigms of sports. Just look at the uproar doping caused in the Tour de France. German TV channels stopped live transmissions alltogether. Even technology gets banned for giving unfair advantages.

“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technology_doping”

nothing fair about being born naturally with what others have to dope to obtain. Also people here are against the idea that people who play longer get better stats, the same is true in sports, those who have time to train increase strength, speed, etc.

I dont agree with doping, but to be honest its just a rule that we agree upon before the game. like i said, rules are set, and then you are allowed to do whatever within that rule set, based on your natural talents and training, but its not like sports makes sure everyone has the same statisitics, team make up, etc.

Seriously, what are you talking about?

are you seriously asking?

well i was on mobile so maybe the ideas got jumbled.

WvW is a progression based mode, its not supposed to be mode where every one is created equal, its supposed to be a mode where you take what you have built, and fight with that. The builds you choose, the experience you have earned, the WvW experience, the gear you have, the food you buy, the seige you buy.

This is analgous to sports, in the part that, you take what you have developed through your own work to the sport. The exercise, the regimen, the things you have eaten, the amount of hours you have practiced, and your own natural talents. The idea that sports dont reward people who spend more time at them with better “stats” is a fallacy. They work hard for their 1% better strength or running speed, WvW is trying to simulate that aspect, but they made exotics fairly easy to obtain, and they became even more easy to obtain over time.

Ascended weapons are not even worst.

Backpieces are absolute horror. You would need to grind way too many fractals to get one, and you can’t even get decent exotic for many sets. Not to mention many missing trinket sets, some you can get only from fractals and they are soulbound. omg.

The problem as I see it is that you get ridiculous stat boost only if you play this game in certain way. If you like wvw, spvp and doing occassionally some non grindy pve you are left with nothing since prices do not scale well with people not grinding fractals or whatsoever. Not to mention if you like playing several characters in game modes not getting you frequent ascended drops or gold.

jalmari.3906:

Ascended weapons are not even worst.

Backpieces are absolute horror. You would need to grind way too many fractals to get one, and you can’t even get decent exotic for many sets. Not to mention many missing trinket sets, some you can get only from fractals and they are soulbound. omg.

The problem as I see it is that you get ridiculous stat boost only if you play this game in certain way. If you like wvw, spvp and doing occassionally some non grindy pve you are left with nothing since prices do not scale well with people not grinding fractals or whatsoever. Not to mention if you like playing several characters in game modes not getting you frequent ascended drops or gold.

actually there are mystic forge recipes which need very little fractal playing. of course they need 250 of specific teir 6 mats, which runs around 50-75 gold. which is imo a lot. however i guess its slightly easier than regular ascended which are about 50-75 gold, but also require a vision crystal and level 500 craft

Squid.6903:

So why aren’t there multiple pathways to getting these items? I mean from the start. From release. When Legendary/Ascended Weapons were released, there should have been a WvW method of getting them, or some sort of equivalent.

And the ability to sell a drop which has stats you don’t use. Its utterly absurd.

morrolan.9608:

Squid.6903:

So why aren’t there multiple pathways to getting these items? I mean from the start. From release. When Legendary/Ascended Weapons were released, there should have been a WvW method of getting them, or some sort of equivalent.

And the ability to sell a drop which has stats you don’t use. Its utterly absurd.

One of the key facets of ascended is they have an earned component. If you could sell them directly. That would no longer be the case

phys.7689:

morrolan.9608:

Squid.6903:

So why aren’t there multiple pathways to getting these items? I mean from the start. From release. When Legendary/Ascended Weapons were released, there should have been a WvW method of getting them, or some sort of equivalent.

And the ability to sell a drop which has stats you don’t use. Its utterly absurd.

One of the key facets of ascended is they have an earned component. If you could sell them directly. That would no longer be the case

You mean like legendaries which have multiple earned components?

phys.7689:

morrolan.9608:

Squid.6903:

So why aren’t there multiple pathways to getting these items? I mean from the start. From release. When Legendary/Ascended Weapons were released, there should have been a WvW method of getting them, or some sort of equivalent.

And the ability to sell a drop which has stats you don’t use. Its utterly absurd.

One of the key facets of ascended is they have an earned component. If you could sell them directly. That would no longer be the case

So explain why precursors and legendaries can be sold but not celestial and ascended?

phys.7689:

morrolan.9608:

Squid.6903:

So why aren’t there multiple pathways to getting these items? I mean from the start. From release. When Legendary/Ascended Weapons were released, there should have been a WvW method of getting them, or some sort of equivalent.

And the ability to sell a drop which has stats you don’t use. Its utterly absurd.

One of the key facets of ascended is they have an earned component. If you could sell them directly. That would no longer be the case

They would probably sell for 150-200 gold each. To me, paying that price for a weapon means I have to earn it. I can make gold pretty easy while playing (and the TP) but farming mats is the most boring and annoying gameplay to exist. I’m not talking just the ascended mats, those are pretty easy to get except for dragonite. I’m talking about all the wood and metals and the cost of leveling a craft. I dread the thought of leveling my remaining Artificer and Armor crafts when the time comes. It is the biggest gold sink ever and the whole process is very tedious. I would prefer to play the game, forget about crafting and just buy the end product. It would still be time gated cause the guy making them can only craft 1 piece a day, the item would still retain it’s value on the market and I would have the convenience of just be able to purchase it and Anet can still have their gold sink. It’s a win for everyone.

jalmari.3906:

The problem as I see it is that you get ridiculous stat boost only if you play this game in certain way. If you like wvw, spvp and doing occassionally some non grindy pve you are left with nothing since prices do not scale well with people not grinding fractals or whatsoever. Not to mention if you like playing several characters in game modes not getting you frequent ascended drops or gold.

That is what I think too. The only player able to get ascended are:
a) Farming fractals on a very high level (~30), personally I never completed a full chain of fractals because it’s so time-consuming, and I don’t bother with PvE a lot. Also there’s so many bugs with parties, disconnects and then there’s the Lion’s Arch lagg. So no thanks fractals.
b) Farming champions/world bosses/dungeons: this is even worse than fractals, good drops, incredibly boring, no decent combat and requires you to tap #1 and waypoint, waypoint, waypoint. Dungeons are repetitive, there’s not enough of them.

> No way to get ascended if you’re a non-zergy WvW’r
> No way to get ascended if you’re a non-grindy PvE’r

Protoavis.9107:

phys.7689:

morrolan.9608:

Squid.6903:

So why aren’t there multiple pathways to getting these items? I mean from the start. From release. When Legendary/Ascended Weapons were released, there should have been a WvW method of getting them, or some sort of equivalent.

And the ability to sell a drop which has stats you don’t use. Its utterly absurd.

One of the key facets of ascended is they have an earned component. If you could sell them directly. That would no longer be the case

You mean like legendaries which have multiple earned components?

Legendaries are meaningless grind. Seriously. Most players I know disgust legendaries and their owners.

Like so many other servers, my server is currently getting farmed by our stronger opposition. Their massive zerg switches borderlands with a regular precision, caps everything, leaves our borderland when everything is captured and comes back minutes later to restart the farming run.

While it is no fun to see I can’t even blame them since, if you want to stay competitive, it is the only reasonable thing to do. If you want to be on top gear wise and rank wise you really don’t have a choice.

The current state of WvW clearly shows how harmful power creep is to any PvP format. Since Arena Net is probably not going to change their mind anytime soon I really wish they would at least ease the pressure put on players.

A good start would be to make BiS gear available from a WvW weapon, accessory and armour locker (just like in sPvP). Those items could only ever be used in WvW. The moment you leave WvW, you stow your gear away (just like in sPvP). The basic items should be for free (again just like in sPvP) and the fancier looks can only be unlocked through a lot of Badges of Honour or any other combination of currencies or even Mystic Forge recipies (again just like in sPvP). That would allow a WvW player to stay competitive, would give them someting to work for (the notorious horizontal progression) and wouldn’t affect PvE at all. I am convinced that quite some PvE players would even use this convenience to test builds and gear before they purchase it. And since the best way to experience a build is to go pick a fight, we would hopefully see some fresh blood in WvW. As a bonus you take pressure from players to stay on top of the food chain and allow them to define the metagame again unlike it is right now. A game is in my humble opinion only as good as the possibilities the player has. And right now we only have a shopping list and a schedule, both not exactly exciting. With the addition of that convenience the overall WvW experience would wastly improve. Scouting wouldn’t be detrimental. Defence won’t penalize the player. Even if there is still no reward, there is at least no drawback to not farming WvW. The lesser of two evils basically. Right now I for once feel scouting or even roaming (what made up almost 100% my play time up until now) as useless.

Second, the WvW ranks need to change, especially the dreaded Guard Leech and Applied Fortitude stacks. Those bring a severe imbalance to the game and thus again promote farming in WvW. If you don’t got those ranks, you’r at a severe disadvantage. That’s what it pretty much boils down too. You need them to be competitive. So what needs to be done is either make those ranks easily obtainable so that everyone can have them or change them completely so that they only affect NPCs. I would honestly prefer the latter solution. Because again the power creep makes builds available that (at least in GW1) would have been considered griefing. Those are hyper defensive builds that still dish out loads of damage. The lack of offensive gear is compensated by those stacks, the better gear and to some extent food. But for the sake of a healthy PvP environment defensive builds must be low on the damage side. Low offense on defensive setups would in return promote offensive builds bringing more diversity to gameplay or at least force groups to run a mix of offense and defence. You would see increased player interaction (the defensive types protecting the offensive types) and not an environement where every player just looks after himself (first you have to keep up with the farm train, second teamplay is meaningless).

As for the other ranks (Ram Mastery, Catapult Mastery, Trebuchet Mastery, etc.) I think they all need a counterpart. There could be for example defensive siege weaponry that lets you destroy projectiles mid air (just like those canons you had on your airship during the last story mission). Those counter measures need to be player activated, requiring active play and good timing. An associated title could improve the effectiviness of said weapons and balance out the offensive types. The player that destroys the porjectiles would get his WXP reward for it and defence would not be meaningless anymore. Of course you should not be able to secure a keep 100% of the time but it would make objectives defensible again and even promote defence, something that is absolutely lacking right now.

Anyway those are just some ideas (certainly not new ones either) I’m throwing out since I do not want to give in to only negativity (although sadly there is plenty). WvW is a great format and it’s a shame to see it going to kitten (I actually typed that out) hell.

Protoavis.9107:

phys.7689:

morrolan.9608:

Squid.6903:

So why aren’t there multiple pathways to getting these items? I mean from the start. From release. When Legendary/Ascended Weapons were released, there should have been a WvW method of getting them, or some sort of equivalent.

And the ability to sell a drop which has stats you don’t use. Its utterly absurd.

One of the key facets of ascended is they have an earned component. If you could sell them directly. That would no longer be the case

You mean like legendaries which have multiple earned components?

yes ascended is actually more personal charachter progression oriented than legendaries.

you can only get them by actually doing the activities your self. in some ways its more prestigious than legendaries (which you can buy for your level 1 chr)

they are made this way partially so they dont become slave to the TPs value system. since every precursor is account bound, they can only be earned through play. they also have no price.

Julie Yann.5379:

phys.7689:

morrolan.9608:

Squid.6903:

So why aren’t there multiple pathways to getting these items? I mean from the start. From release. When Legendary/Ascended Weapons were released, there should have been a WvW method of getting them, or some sort of equivalent.

And the ability to sell a drop which has stats you don’t use. Its utterly absurd.

One of the key facets of ascended is they have an earned component. If you could sell them directly. That would no longer be the case

They would probably sell for 150-200 gold each. To me, paying that price for a weapon means I have to earn it. I can make gold pretty easy while playing (and the TP) but farming mats is the most boring and annoying gameplay to exist. I’m not talking just the ascended mats, those are pretty easy to get except for dragonite. I’m talking about all the wood and metals and the cost of leveling a craft. I dread the thought of leveling my remaining Artificer and Armor crafts when the time comes. It is the biggest gold sink ever and the whole process is very tedious. I would prefer to play the game, forget about crafting and just buy the end product. It would still be time gated cause the guy making them can only craft 1 piece a day, the item would still retain it’s value on the market and I would have the convenience of just be able to purchase it and Anet can still have their gold sink. It’s a win for everyone.

you can buy the inscription and the ingots, the only part you have to earn is the vision crystal. The main problem is requiring crafting 500. It shouldnt be required to get crafting 500. It makes an optional part of the game kind of mandatory.

like i said
should be a mystic forge recipe that takes
inscription
vision crystal
badge+blade item
badge+hilt item

this way WvW people can craft themselves, or pay gold+ badges and a vision crystal to get their ascended.

I enjoy WvW in this game… I like small group and solo roaming for the most part. I also enjoyed the open-world PvE exploration, hearts, and dynamic events.

I have eight max level characters.

With the release of ascended weapons and armor, and the grind required to obtain them, I find myself in a tough situation.

If I’m unable to earn those things playing the game the way I enjoy playing…then I just won’t get them. There is very little chance that I will ever play long enough to meet the very high grind requirements for armor and weapons on eight characters. So…I just have to watch as my characters get steadily weaker and weaker vs. my opponents. Not a fun prospect.

If I want to enjoy these new rewards, ArenaNet is forcing me to choose a certain character and focus on it, rather than playing all of them like I enjoy, and forcing me into a play style I hate (PvE grinding/farming), if I want to remain on a level field with my opponents in WvW. This very much goes against their supposed design philosophy, and is really a shame.

The fix is so simple…the fact that ArenaNet doesn’t implement it is completely mind-boggling. Just make the materials for ascended crafting available in WvW at the same drop rates (or purchasable with badges). Similar time investment for any play style. If they don’t do it, it’s a clear decision on their part to neglect a large portion of their player base. The extremely high requirements are bad enough for casual players or those with alts like me… don’t compound the problem by limiting the game play.

I really love the game, but I refuse to turn it into a job and grind hundreds of hours in PvE just to continue playing on a reasonably level field with my opponents in WvW.

If I find that I’m at a substantial disadvantage in my chosen play style and can no longer compete without grind, I’ll go play something else. I’m holding out a bit of hope that ArenaNet wants to avoid that outcome for me and other players like me.

Don’t make more bad design decisions like the initial release of ascended items, ArenaNet. Learn from your mistakes. It’s fine to put in grind for those who enjoy that game play…but allowing one play style to gain a power advantage over other play styles… Not okay.

Fozzik.1742:

I really love the game, but I refuse to turn it into a job and grind hundreds of hours in PvE just to continue playing on a reasonably level field with my opponents in WvW.

If I find that I’m at a substantial disadvantage in my chosen play style and can no longer compete without grind, I’ll go play something else. I’m holding out a bit of hope that ArenaNet wants to avoid that outcome for me and other players like me.

Quoted for truth. Very nice post.

And Arenanet is WHERE during all of this?

Very sad what Anet has become nowadays after Anet circa GW1. They atleast communicated with the community somewhat. It was nowhere near Riot’s level of communication but it was there and it was apperant.