Guild Wars 2

why is ascended gear acquisition tied to crafting first when there are many other ways it could have been initially implemented?

If the main concerns were improving “character progression” and to keep players happily logging in, why design a gearing up system that alienates a portion of the player base without introducing other methods simultaneously?

My guess? They want to throw crafting professions a bone.

Bear in mind, the FIRST ascended stuff was tied solely to Fractals. It took time, but you eventually were able to get it outside of FotM as well.

I suspect we’ll see another (and likely time-gated) way to acquire Ascended weapons and armor at some point in the future.

Arena.net appears really big on this “parceled” approach to things, shipping stuff out piecemeal as its ready rather than wait for EVERYTHING to be ready and dropping it all in one massive clump.

Because you can’t buy badges of honor, dungeon tokens, or karma on the gem store.

A portion of the player base will be alienated no matter how they add it.

Peetee.9406:

Because you can’t buy badges of honor, dungeon tokens, or karma on the gem store.

Nor can you buy any of the t7 mats that you need to craft. Manly ore fragments and dust its all an effort to make all events able to have a use in making these weapons. FoTM was the only way to get trinkets so there was one event that is a hard event so only the top players could get there so Anet put trinkets into daily rewards and drop-able all over the game. By putting weapons and armor in crafting this means that any one can make these items given time with out forcing them to play one event over and over.

As things stand only cooking and jewel crafting are not able to go to 500 odds are in time we will be able to craft trinkets and buy weapons/gear of the ascended level thought daily rewards. Its more of a question how long you can psychologically deal with not having every thing in the game on day one.