Guild Wars 2

if it takes the same kitten materials(and a lot of them)? if anything it makes the gap larger

Because, if wiki’s correct, you can upgrade an exotic backpiece (the ~1300 relics ones) to ascended, and upgrade ascended ones again (adding agony resist, so that’s not upsetting the balance). If that goes all the way up, you can eventually get a legendary, through smaller steps. 1300 relics is steep, but better than a traditional precursor I suppose.

Note: this does not explain why ascended needed higher stats, they don’t add anything. Adding an agony resist slot to the exotic version (and the upgrades themselves not adding stats) would’ve already been an upgrade, after all.

There wasn’t a gap to bridge, actually. Exotics and Legendary shared the same stats—no gap. Legendary was in the game to provide a heroic feat that heroic heroes could accomplish to distinguish themselves. All the distinctions in the game in terms of gear were cosmetic they didn’t cause the problem of power creep which the Ascended gear does. The problem with the Ascended is that they actually. really create a gap between players, that wasn’t there, that affects how they will be able to play the game. Please don’t think this can be justified by reference to degree of power creep. Power creep creeps; that is its nature.

All I see Ascended items doing is making the gap larger by doing two things:
– Eating up resources that could be used for Legendary weapons. Each ecto or skill point you use on an Ascended item is one you can’t use on a Legendary. All the time you spend in FOTM is time you don’t spend in WvW or another dungeon getting their components of the Legendary
– Raising the prices of those resources. Meaning that, even if you skip Ascended items, you still have to pay more.

This isn’t bridging a gap. It’s making the gap wider. Maybe even finding a gap that is bridged and blowing up the bridge.

Their was no gap to begin with. Legendary and Exotic had the same stats.

Indeed, “the gap” was fabricated by the latest patch to provide the ++numbernumber grinders something to “earn” through their “hard work”.

“The gap” is not necessarily in reference to a statistical gap. For all the crying about the game not having to be about statistics, you certainly don’t look past the statistics.

Vermillion Hawk.9037:

“The gap” is not necessarily in reference to a statistical gap. For all the crying about the game not having to be about statistics, you certainly don’t look past the statistics.

Because ArenaNet have made it about the statistics now. Before Ascended was implemented, how much talk did you see about stats?

my personal understanding is the gap they talk about was not a statistical one but rather one based on effort required to obtain. takes 1 or 2 weeks to get a full exotic set with casual play. Takes 6 months – 1 year to get a legendary with casual play.

That means that people who dont like to wait 6 months+ to get a reward didnt have anything to work for once they’re done with exotics. (personally I though named exotics were a good fit for such people but well since there are just weapons perhaps arenanet felt they’re not enough dont know!)

Anyhow Ascended armor sets are meant to be something you’d get after working for them for more then a couple of weeks but less then a bunch of months.

So you blame a corporation for not only patching a game but influencing your thought processes?

The gap is larger now. I use the mats/time/gold for a Legendary. I can’t waste my time getting ascended gear.

the gap they bridged was TIME people... TIME...

Its to give us something to go for along the road to legendarys.

As others have said, ascended gear uses the same mats as legendary gear, so it’s a waste of time to even pursue unless of course you have unlimited time to spend grinding or you don’t want a legendary for some reason. Fake gear gap is fake.

it doesent iuse the same mats man..... unless u want it too....

or do we use relic for legendarys nowadays?

I don’t have to worry about getting ascended, neither does anyone else.

All 20 people in the square in lion’s arch are on different levels and none will group with one another.

Jezath.7395:

the gap they bridged was TIME people… TIME…

Its to give us something to go for along the road to legendarys.

Except that “going for” ascended gear leeches time, effort, and resources that you could be putting toward actually getting that legendary.

ive made a post to solve this in suggestions

Jezath.7395:

the gap they bridged was TIME people… TIME…

Its to give us something to go for along the road to legendarys.

except it uses up your legendary materials in order to make. so its in no way something to do “on the way” as it directly puts your legendary on hold

wrong again as u get those other mats in the same dungheon aslong with your relics

NaughtyProwler.8653:

As others have said, ascended gear uses the same mats as legendary gear, so it’s a waste of time to even pursue unless of course you have unlimited time to spend grinding or you don’t want a legendary for some reason. Fake gear gap is fake.

Is this not a paradox? It’s a waste of time to pursue something with limited time whereas an item which costs more in the end with the same limited timeframe is more acceptable?

Keep in mind Ascended gear does not, in fact, require the same “mats” as Legendary gear. Legendary gear, among other things, requires 100% completion of the map, as well as 200 skill points.

Fazzi.4876:

Jezath.7395:

the gap they bridged was TIME people… TIME…

Its to give us something to go for along the road to legendarys.

except it uses up your legendary materials in order to make. so its in no way something to do “on the way” as it directly puts your legendary on hold

You can just buy the stuff with relics

If not then i agree, it needs a little tweak, but thats all.

Vermillion Hawk.9037:

NaughtyProwler.8653:

As others have said, ascended gear uses the same mats as legendary gear, so it’s a waste of time to even pursue unless of course you have unlimited time to spend grinding or you don’t want a legendary for some reason. Fake gear gap is fake.

Is this not a paradox? It’s a waste of time to pursue something with limited time whereas an item which costs more in the end with the same limited timeframe is more acceptable?

Keep in mind Ascended gear does not, in fact, require the same “mats” as Legendary gear. Legendary gear, among other things, requires 100% completion of the map, as well as 200 skill points.

You’re right I guess. Not all ascended gear requires the same mats. But I guess, why work on that stuff when you can put that effort towards legendary? Mind boggling.

This is why Ascended exists. People can easily get exotics. People might not have the time or the inclination to work towards a Legendary. This is the gear gap.

The problem is you’re looking at it the wrong way.

Say you get your vial drop.
It will run you about 50g to buy every mat for the backpiece.
Then another 30-50g for the infused
and another 30-50g for the infusion
(assuming you spend no fractal tokens for any of these steps)

so 150g and 1-2 RNG items. For 1 ascended piece.
But, compare, what does a legendary cost? 120g, 1.2million karma, ETC ETC. You all know the costs by now.

The issue that occurs is that there is currently only 1 type of legendary: the weapons. Compare how much effort goes into a legendary. Imagine if there was a full set of that, armor, earrings, amulet, ETC. Now compare to the ascended set. See how it would fit in the gap between exotic and legendary?

If there were ascended weapons that cost 150g. Would you consider them in the gap between exotic and legendary weapons? Probably. But because the only current ascended pieces are backpacks and rings, and you have no legendary to compare them to besides the weapons, you see no gap and thus complain.

Now, is it a kitteny system? I think so. I dislike the RNG nature of it, and the stat advantage that it gives, but it certainly does fill the gap.

Please see raine’s post (third one in the thread), it sums it up nicely.

There was no “legendary gap”.

There was a lack of variety in the choices of gear skins which should have been addressed rather than add a dungeon and tear tier incongruous with the rest of the game, but no “gap” existed pre-patch.

plasmacutter.2709:

Please see raine’s post (third one in the thread), it sums it up nicely.

There was no “legendary gap”.

There was a lack of variety in the choices of gear skins which should have been addressed rather than add a dungeon and tear tier incongruous with the rest of the game, but no “gap” existed pre-patch.

Please then refer to my posts. It’s not about statistical gaps.

Vermillion Hawk.9037:

plasmacutter.2709:

Please see raine’s post (third one in the thread), it sums it up nicely.

There was no “legendary gap”.

There was a lack of variety in the choices of gear skins which should have been addressed rather than add a dungeon and tear tier incongruous with the rest of the game, but no “gap” existed pre-patch.

Please then refer to my posts. It’s not about statistical gaps.

Seeing as there were named exotics with unique skins that were costing more than ascended items now (and hard to make) – yes, there was no gap. And the gap between ascended and legendaries is now as big as before legendaries and normal exotics, due to increase of mats prices (while you can decide to use different mats for ascended and legendary, among the population it evens out, causing every t6 mat – and ectos – to go up in price rapidly. The nerf to drops didn’t help too.)

ASB.4295:

They wanted to make the journey to max stat armor longer. The gap was time investment. They want max armor to be something that involves a certain degree of work. It took them over 10 years, but they’ve finally caught up with the industry standard: Long term vertical gear progression is a must in PvE. A lot of people like it, a lot of people don’t. If you don’t like it, there’s sPvP or GW1 waiting for you. Have fun.

Two million copies were pre-ordered on the manifesto ArenaNet published stating there would be zero vertical grind.

ASB.4295:

They wanted to make the journey to max stat armor longer. The gap was time investment. They want max armor to be something that involves a certain degree of work. It took them over 10 years, but they’ve finally caught up with the industry standard: Long term vertical gear progression is a must in PvE. A lot of people like it, a lot of people don’t. If you don’t like it, there’s sPvP or GW1 waiting for you. Have fun.

That is certainly an option. Now, a question to you – if that was indeed their intention, why won’t they admit it? Why they continue to claim that is not what they intended to do?

(of course, if that is true, and they decided to go WoW way, the game will die eventually. It is not made to cater to the grinder’s crows, and trying to force that change without completely rebuilding it will only damage it even more.)

But there isn’t zero vertical grind. You still need to work your way up to exotics. At no point did they say there would be no vertical progression.

Vermillion Hawk.9037:

But there isn’t zero vertical grind. You still need to work your way up to exotics. At no point did they say there would be no vertical progression.

When my toon hit 80 before the patch, I went to the TP and had enough gold for all exotics. (in addition to nearly 100k karma)

I know certain dungeon sets have the stats I want, and did not feel pressured, so I purchased loads of dyes instead.

Still, I had the option of fully equipping in exotics just from the stuff I found and sold. (and I hoarded nearly every material meant for my crafting to the point it piled in my bags, which means others likely had more gold)

Requiring minimal resources be spent to equip yourself is very different than a vertical gear grind involving funnelling yourself into one aspect of the game and dealing with people shunning you because you’re not level 10 or you’re not in exotics.

plasmacutter.2709:

Two million copies were pre-ordered on the manifesto ArenaNet published stating there would be zero vertical grind.

What exactly is this vertical grind stopping you from enjoying? sPvP? No, there’s different gear for that. WvW? The small stat increase won’t be noticeable at all. PvE? You can do the dungeons without ascended gear.

As far as I understand there’s really nothing this vertical grind is stopping you from enjoying. In the end it’s all pixels, you’re the one who chooses which pixels to grind. Some want to invest time in legendaries, some in achievements, some in slightly better gear.

Did you start the game at level 80?

Again I think people don’t read patch notes or only what they want to see. Legendary weapons were boosted to be on par with ascended gear. So really thier wasn’t a power creep just added a step in between most people never even was going to try for a Legendary in the first place.

Hell I had a 50 post long thread where most people complained they wasn’t going to do it. Now you get a easier road to take and people complain about that lol….Mainly because they didn’t read all the patch notes and raged out. That’s why I am so hard on the whiners because they are completely off base and incorrect. And majority of them are mad about things they were never going to do in the first place. And now your mad because a easier way is there? Yea um if I was Anet I wouldn’t respond to that failure of common sense either.

Astralporing.1957:

Now, a question to you – if that was indeed their intention, why won’t they admit it? Why they continue to claim that is not what they intended to do?

Good question. Personally, I think they somehow came to the conclusion that they attracted a lot more people in favor of infinite gear progression(a.k.a treadmill) than old school GW1 players, way, way more. Backed by whatever statistics they had available, they tried to come up with a way to satisfy the majority, which would’ve complained about there not being anything to work for, while disguising it as something that won’t offend the portion of customers that preferred the GW1 style. They knew exactly what was going to hit them and hunkered down, occasionally throwing out pre-formulated statements for the angry mob to devour and concentrate their hate on.

I don’t think they will fail, because there’s a lot of players that will continue playing, believing that GW2 is the game it was when it launched. And technically, they did never say there wouldn’t be a gear treadmill, only that they wouldn’t force you to grind. That statement however can be interpreted in multiple ways, which ANet knows and deliberately worded that way.
You don’t have to get rares, exos or ascended gear if you want to enjoy all the content. The only gate in the game right now is the infusion mechanic, which will kick in sometime after you have experienced the new dungeon multiple times. There is no new content that you cannot experience without having those infusions equipped. When there is, and random open world play won’t give you the gear that is necessary to even experience the content once, then it’ll be a full fledged gating mechanic.

Thinking of it, there’s another gating mechanic in game. One which I hate, but tolerated until the new update. You cannot experience dungeon content without at least two other people. The player requirement is a gating mechanic, a very weak one, because of the nature of MMOs, but it’s still one.

Arshay Duskbrow.1306:

Jezath.7395:

the gap they bridged was TIME people… TIME…

Its to give us something to go for along the road to legendarys.

Except that “going for” ascended gear leeches time, effort, and resources that you could be putting toward actually getting that legendary.

If you’;re willing to put the time for a legendary go for a legendary rather then ascended gear!

Rhotsbin.8579:

Indeed, “the gap” was fabricated by the latest patch to provide the ++numbernumber grinders something to “earn” through their “hard work”.

The thing is you really can’t “earn” it, because the rings are RNG rewards.

they manufactured a gap where one didn’t exist as an excuse to create a gear grind.

Spoiler alert: They meant as something to get after getting exotic but that doesnt take as much time as getting a legendary.

And yes when you are getting your ascended gear you are also looting a kittenload of rare in fractal of the mist so you can get ectos pretty fast for your legendary.

They are refering to the “time” needed to spend.

Exotic is so easy that it takes only a couple of days for dedicated players to get the full set from TP. But I must say that they still didn’t bridge the gap in the end because they just pushed legendary further away.

There’s only 2 ways to acquire it.

1) Ectos and 250 tier 6 which will cost you a fortune that you’ll push your legendary away. They require the same resource as the legendary.

2) 1350 fractal gems on a single backpack when the time spent is better on other normal maps to farm tier 6 materials for the legendary. Fractals droprate for tier 6 is quite bad. I think I never even receive one with so many tries.

They should improve on ways to acquire ascended while people are farming mats for legendary. Ascended and legendary shouldn’t interfere with each other progresses. It’s normal to get ascended first, then legendary. But not ascended first, then your legendary becomes fortified. A proper bridge that is accustom with human nature should be made.

Jezath.7395:

the gap they bridged was TIME people… TIME…

Its to give us something to go for along the road to legendarys.

How does it bridge the gap when you take longer using their Ascended ‘bridge’ than you would if you just skipped straight to Legendary ?

Don’t bridges make it faster to travel from one side of their span to the other than it would be if you don’t use the bridge ?

Galen Grey.4709:

Arshay Duskbrow.1306:

Jezath.7395:

the gap they bridged was TIME people… TIME…

Its to give us something to go for along the road to legendarys.

Except that “going for” ascended gear leeches time, effort, and resources that you could be putting toward actually getting that legendary.

If you’;re willing to put the time for a legendary go for a legendary rather then ascended gear!

Except that, because Ascended gear uses some ingredients that Legendary weapons use (eg ecto), the price of those mats has gone up. So the path is longer even for people who skip Ascended items.

At this point I’m starting to think that the Ascended weapons will require you to spend more buying their ingredients than it costs to buy Legendary ingredients. So the only difference will be how you acquire the untradeable ingredients.

Anet manufactured the gap to appeal to the most dedicated and preferred player. These leet grinders who Anet wants above all else and will cater to them whatever the cost.
There was no gap before and had Anet been ready for those who said there was nothing to do (treadmill) with suggestions or stating that they didnt want to go down that route maybe things might be different.
All they are doing now is pushing more and more grind and dividing the community
with the frac level stuff and only 1 viable way to obtain t6 mats.It will take incredibly longer to get the new gear and legendary and that is what they want.

I dont like it and already got a friend to not purchase this game. He asked me about it because of the sale and told him the truth about Anets 180 turn and he skipped buying it.