Guild Wars 2

Okay AN heres the thing. Ascended and legendary gear needs to be scaled upon entry to WvW to exotic stats. Unless you do this you have created a gear treadmill for WvW.

Other then that the change is perfectly fine.

What people need to realize is you don’t need the new gear to run and experience the new content. You only need the new gear if you keep repeating the new dungeon over and over, which results in the agony dot getting stronger. Other then that the gear is pretty much a non factor in game play.

And its there for players that like to do that sort of thing….. aka run a dungeon repeatedly. But it is not required what so ever.

So in short you can over react about a gear treadmill if AN doesn’t scale gear down for WvW because really thats the only place it will have any sort of effect no matter how small the effect may be.

A official response on this possibility would be appreciated and seems to be the main driving force behind the “rage” about the new gear…

Summery of current content coming today:
- PvE: Ascended gear is optional, not needed to run the content… becomes needed if you keep beating it and “leveling” your groups difficulty…. which is just a dot that does more damage anyhow the same amount of skill is still needed as mob/boss mechanics don’t appear to change.

-Progression: Players that like new gear and a stat boost for certain pve can repeat the dungeon till its to the point the gear is required or you die from the dot damage being to great. This satisfy’s the progression crowd while also making the casual crowd happy because they can still do it in existing exotics.
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What to add:
-WvW: Exotic is the stat cap so if you have all ascended gear or legendary it gets scaled down to Exotic levels this keeps skill > gear.

Everyones happy. Just add the WvW part in.

And to give WvW’ers incentive there needs to be rankings based on a player level. This could be for a number of things, kills, lifetime points from captures, defend points… etc etc. When you create a ranking system in which players compete to be the best you create incentive to play and be the best. There are a ton of other ways to do this like WvW specific titles for doing certain things (be creative).

Most of my guild has left GW2 WvW and gone back to LoL. Why? no individual progression of any kind in WvW. After 3 months of doing it every night, no one really cares. Server rankings…. meh that doesn’t mean much. Give something on a individual level.

And since I have made a logical thread pretty much putting rage and fears to rest no one will reply because it makes sense. Figures

Oh one more thing, to sweeten the pot add a time trials ranking system to dungeons. You have the progressive difficulty in place. Now make it a contest between the progressive competitive players to see who can do it the fastest, with the least amount of downed states and stuff like that. That would be fun.

Should have named this thread namu’s idea’s thread.

Normalizing stats in WvW would be better then not doing it, but would not solve the problem by any means.

Steely Phil.3952:

Normalizing stats in WvW would be better then not doing it, but would not solve the problem by any means.

How so?

The gear isn’t required to do the new content, thus not a gear treadmill.

The gear gets scaled down in WvW, thus not a gear treadmill as exotic is the best in WvW.

Be a bit more specific on why it doesn’t solve the problem.

Because I want to play PvE and PvP and not grind gear for either. Keeping my exotics relevant for PvP would be nice I guess, but I would rather it stay relevant throughout the game as originally promised.

I am for this kind of down-scaling, but it’d be a nightmare to code. I’d say, the more elegant way to implement it is not allow anything above exotic to be/stay equipped in WvW. And have your equipped gear in WvW differ from the PvE zones/instances, much like heart of the mists swaps to sPvP gear upon entry.

The drawback being those show-offs that want to show off legendary skins in WvW will also have to transmute their legendary to an exotic and lose it for PvE purposes. But I would take that drawback over a treadmill/mudflation-fest any day.

Not allowing higher-than-exotic stats in WvW would go a long way to solving the issue, without making those darn content locusts QQ again…

And to be frank, I’d rather they just didn’t have the stupid stat difference between exo/asc/legendary in the 1st place. They promised us they wouldn’t, and now they break that promise. Too bad it wasn’t a legal agreement, then we could actually sue them and win. :\

You dont have to grind for pve gear though…. when the new content comes today you can jump right in with your current exotics and complete the content.

They however made it so if you play the content repeatedly the agony mechanic makes you take more dot damage.

So not really seeing why you would have to grind if you are merely doing the content to experience the new update. You would do it, say thats cool was fun. Then go back to WvW right? No gear grind involved…. the gear grind is 100% optional…. assuming they actually listen and normalize WvW so that exotic is the best you can bring into WvW.

Namu.5712:

You dont have to grind for pve gear though…. when the new content comes today you can jump right in with your current exotics and complete the content.

They however made it so if you play the content repeatedly the agony mechanic makes you take more dot damage.

So not really seeing why you would have to grind if you are merely doing the content to experience the new update. You would do it, say thats cool was fun. Then go back to WvW right? No gear grind involved…. the gear grind is 100% optional…. assuming they actually listen and normalize WvW so that exotic is the best you can bring into WvW.

You’d THINK they’d do that. But they won’t. I spoke to a couple anet reps idling in LA. They seem to be obsessed with the notion that according to their in-house data, the ‘majority’ want this sort of ‘gear progression’. If this is true, then the content locusts/bandwagoners have won and this game becomes yet another generic MMO.

Agreed, 100% that WvWvW needs to be free of the need to grind for gear. ANet said pvp would be unaffected, so they need to extend that beyond sPVP to WvWvW.

Slic… I don’t know how they could come to the conclusion that the majority want a gear treadmill. They never polled in-game, and if they took that from the forums, the 9k+ post thread at the top of the forums now should tell them something because the majority there do not want anything to do with grind.

Slic.2406:

I am for this kind of down-scaling, but it’d be a nightmare to code. I’d say, the more elegant way to implement it is not allow anything above exotic to be/stay equipped in WvW. And have your equipped gear in WvW differ from the PvE zones/instances, much like heart of the mists swaps to sPvP gear upon entry.

The drawback being those show-offs that want to show off legendary skins in WvW will also have to transmute their legendary to an exotic and lose it for PvE purposes. But I would take that drawback over a treadmill/mudflation-fest any day.

Not allowing higher-than-exotic stats in WvW would go a long way to solving the issue, without making those darn content locusts QQ again…

And to be frank, I’d rather they just didn’t have the stupid stat difference between exo/asc/legendary in the 1st place. They promised us they wouldn’t, and now they break that promise. Too bad it wasn’t a legal agreement, then we could actually sue them and win. :\

Well im not really sure how hard it would be, I mean they already have code to scale gear and players up in WvW I can’t imagine it being that hard to code it the opposite way… then again I am not a game programmer.

But gear grinding for pvp is the worst…… I have one word that haunts me to this day regarding gear grinds and pvp…. AION.

But on the flipside they didn’t really promise they wouldn’t add different stated gear, they promised they would not create a traditional gear treadmill. Which will be true if they implement the WvW change. If they however do not scale stats down for WvW then they will be creating a gear treadmill not for pve but for pvp in order to stay on top you will have to get legendary gear basically. So I dont know if it was poor planning on that side of things or that they just dont care about WvW much.

Either way its not a gear grind pve wise.

They are in a bad spot because they have 2 distinct player groups. People that don’t like progression via gear, and those that have to have some kind of progression. They did well in this update pve wise but totally neglected the WvW population and have created a gear grind for those players.

But if they don’t do something about WvW that will get out of control in the coming months as they make more gear available… basically to the point where it will be legendary gear or gtfo. And WvW will turn into a sort of gated content type deal/ elitism pvp.

Slic.2406:

Namu.5712:

You dont have to grind for pve gear though…. when the new content comes today you can jump right in with your current exotics and complete the content.

They however made it so if you play the content repeatedly the agony mechanic makes you take more dot damage.

So not really seeing why you would have to grind if you are merely doing the content to experience the new update. You would do it, say thats cool was fun. Then go back to WvW right? No gear grind involved…. the gear grind is 100% optional…. assuming they actually listen and normalize WvW so that exotic is the best you can bring into WvW.

You’d THINK they’d do that. But they won’t. I spoke to a couple anet reps idling in LA. They seem to be obsessed with the notion that according to their in-house data, the ‘majority’ want this sort of ‘gear progression’. If this is true, then the content locusts/bandwagoners have won and this game becomes yet another generic MMO.

eh really… I honestly dont care about pve, if they made it progressive cool…. but leave the Wv3 pvp alone…

This would be fine but the simplest solution would be to just have the new gear = exocit stats.

The other option which isn’t as good but works for me is if Anet just said “Hey, we needed a level above exotic and it just wasn’t there at launch”. In that, this new stuff will be the best stats this game will ever see (obtainable via WvW/Karma and other methods like they said). I’m ok with that if that’s the case. At least we know it’s not a treadmill and if it were there at live, no one would be complaining.

Debsylvania.7396:

Agreed, 100% that WvWvW needs to be free of the need to grind for gear. ANet said pvp would be unaffected, so they need to extend that beyond sPVP to WvWvW.

Slic… I don’t know how they could come to the conclusion that the majority want a gear treadmill. They never polled in-game, and if they took that from the forums, the 9k+ post thread at the top of the forums now should tell them something because the majority there do not want anything to do with grind.

Well alot of those complaints are largely people that don’t even know how the new gear works. Only a few of them actually menchon the real issue and that is WvW becoming the gear grind not the pve side of things.

Debs makes a good point. I found it very disappointing when I read the press release and realized that ANet doesn’t consider WvW to be PvP.

And maybe Namu is right, maybe you can complete Fractals without Ascended gear and maybe their are people in the world who aren’t bothered at all by the fact that other players have 8% higher stats then they do as long as they can limp along and still complete the content. I however am very bothered. I don’t want to be the under performing guy nor do I want to have that guy in my party

Arenanet has already intimated that they will be adding other means of earning Ascended gear outside of Fractals of the Mist, including WvW.

I think people need to remember two things here with Ascended Gear:

1.) The level of “stat inflation” is fairly minimal. (Compared to WoW Expansion related gear inflation, it’s not even a tiny blip).

2.) Ascended Gear is initially limited to Rings and Back Armor. Due to the general lack of Back Armor in the game, the back armor may be fairly significant for many players. An ~8% stat increase on two ring slots factors down to a very minimal over all power increase when compared to a few set of Exotics.

We have heard that Fractals of the Mist will be expanded fairly regularly over the months and years to come. It makes perfect sense that we will see additional slots of Ascended Gear to coincide with major content updates to FotM. I’d be surprised if we have full armor/weapon/trinket sets of Ascended gear any sooner than a year from now and it could take even longer than that, depending on their FotM progression plans.

Also, we have zero indication that non-FotM content expansion will be tuned to assume that level 80 characters have all the ascended slot gear currently available. (Nor do I ever expect content to be tuned to assume a character has Legendary Gear). Things may be sightly easier for someone with all available Ascended gear slots filled, but I honestly don’t see that as a big deal and certainly not as something that should bother casuals who may not have the time/resources to aquire full sets of Exotic/Ascended gear.

TLDR;

The stat increase from Ascended Gear is minimal. We only have Ascended Rings and Back Armor in this release, which minimizes the impact of Ascended Gear on “Gear Inflation”. Future “Inflation” will be via the introduction of new Ascended Tier gear slots, but this will almost certainly be tied to major updates to Fractals of the Mist Dungeon, which Arenanet has already indicated will be updated over the months and years ahead.

This entire hub-bub is just a lot to do about nothing.

Steely Phil.3952:

Debs makes a good point. I found it very disappointing when I read the press release and realized that ANet doesn’t consider WvW to be PvP.

And maybe Namu is right, maybe you can complete Fractals without Ascended gear and maybe their are people in the world who aren’t bothered at all by the fact that other players have 8% higher stats then they do as long as they can limp along and still complete the content. I however am very bothered. I don’t want to be the under performing guy nor do I want to have that guy in my party

Thats why the content is progressive. You don’t need the gear unless you are repeating the content on purpose for the purpose of progressive play. Like it literally is not needed if your just running through the content. If you keep repeating it with your group it progressively gets harder via the dot. But as a casual just running through to experience the content you will not be any more or less kittened. Because the dot is not doing the same amount of damage to you as say a group that has ran the instance 20 times for the sake of progression and getting that new gear. Which shouldn’t have an effect on WvW. But I am guessing it will.

And people will either quit over it or suck it up and play anyways. I think more will suck it up over quitting. Because at its core the game is fun. But again just gonna have to wait and see how they deal with it.

Another reason I say the gear is not needed is because you can run it at any level with a group… which stands to reason that the content the first time through is not built around ascended gear. But rather built around exotic gear. And if you choose to repeat it to make the dot do more damage thats where the gear comes in….. but your choosing to grind, not being forced to nor being required to….. unless of course it affects WvW, which as of right now it does unless they change it.

Namu.5712:

Okay AN heres the thing. Ascended and legendary gear needs to be scaled upon entry to WvW to exotic stats.

Not only could I not agree more, this has been my exact thoughts on how to make the niche minority who want a gear grind happy while keeping a massive amount of the population who enjoy WvW happy. It also allows you to bring in the legendaries without being penalized and not being able to or having an edge out of the non-niche farmers/grinders that bought this GUILD WARS GAME for the PVP.

Fiontar.4695:

Arenanet has already intimated that they will be adding other means of earning Ascended gear outside of Fractals of the Mist, including WvW.

The magic words being “will be added”, so for some unspecified period of time PvE players will have a numerical advantage in WvW. That’s uh…Kind of the entire thing that the system was supposed to get rid of. It wasn’t fun in WoW when some raidtard would roll you in his gear, it won’t be fun here.

I’m having trouble understanding why anyone thinks this is in any way “Fine”.