Guild Wars 2

Ohoni.6057:

You may continue to push for alternatives but purposely misrepresenting information is considered as trolling.

Ok, but I’m not doing that, so it isn’t really relevant to anything.

Actually you did repeatedly. Such as

Actually, I didn’t. I said it was " sort of endgame equipment, in that it’s not available until the last 10-15 levels," which is factually correct.

It’s not. Exotic was never meant to be endgame after two months since the release. Putting it “sort of endgame equipment” is misleading.

I also pointed out that it was the highest level gear for the first full year of the game, which is also true, so it was as close to “endgame gear” as the game had up to that point.

You can’t equip common lv 80 equipment if you’re not level 80. It doesn’t make common the highest tier, same concept, you can’t equip lv 80 exotic without being level 80, doesn’t make exotic the highest tier.

And the infamous “promise of no vertical progression” that as well is misrepresenting the game.

No no no, it was YOU who said that – and i paraphrase – “they promise no vertical progression” in fact they NEVER did. It was you who misrepresent information. They did promise us vertical progression and they DELIVERED vertical progression.

But don’t whine about it if they do.

They won’t

It’s not. Exotic was never meant to be endgame after two months since the release. Putting it “sort of endgame equipment” is misleading.

Which is it, “it was never meant to be endgame equipment,” or “it was meant to be endgame equipment prior to two months after release?” It clearly was the only game in town for many slots up through Christmas of the following year.

You can’t equip common lv 80 equipment if you’re not level 80. It doesn’t make common the highest tier, same concept, you can’t equip lv 80 exotic without being level 80, doesn’t make exotic the highest tier.

But there are level 1 common items. There are no exotic items at all below level 62. Until Ascended items were added, they were the highest tier available (in terms of stat bonuses). Even Legendary weapons were not superior to Exotic ones until Ascended were added.

No no no, it was YOU who said that – and i paraphrase – “they promise no vertical progression” in fact they NEVER did. It was you who misrepresent information. They did promise us vertical progression and they DELIVERED vertical progression.

Now that is a deliberate misrepresentation of the facts, for what it’s worth.

They won’t

Want to bet on that? If you were genuinely confident that they would never change their mind on this, you wouldn’t get so bent out of shape at people who are asking for it. If you’re 100% right, then they would never change their plans and such people would just be wasting their time, and you would be wasting your time arguing with them because nothing they want could ever happen. That you feel a need to try and shout us down indicates that you agree that we have potential to effect change which you would view as a negative.

Ohoni.6057:

It’s not. Exotic was never meant to be endgame after two months since the release. Putting it “sort of endgame equipment” is misleading.

Which is it, “it was never meant to be endgame equipment,” or “it was meant to be endgame equipment prior to two months after release?” It clearly was the only game in town for many slots up through Christmas of the following year.

Actually now thinking about it, it’s probably “it was never meant to be endgame equipment.” The design of ascended tier was included with the original release. Clearly by judging the development cycle that from the planning of ascended in September, it was released in November. Whether or not the execution of it was done 2 months later is irrelevant. The plan happened at release. Unless again you can quote your source to show me an Anet dev say exotic would be the highest tier. Which is impossible for you to produce such a quote because there is none.

Ohoni.6057:

You can’t equip common lv 80 equipment if you’re not level 80. It doesn’t make common the highest tier, same concept, you can’t equip lv 80 exotic without being level 80, doesn’t make exotic the highest tier.

But there are level 1 common items. There are no exotic items at all below level 62. Until Ascended items were added, they were the highest tier available (in terms of stat bonuses). Even Legendary weapons were not superior to Exotic ones until Ascended were added.

Actually there are level 80 common items. Maybe take a break and play the game a bit? But that’s besides the point. Yeah until ascended was introduced exotic was the highest tier. But since ascended tier was planned from the start, your point is moot. It’s like saying in the first 2 minutes of the game launch, no one discovered a rare item so it was the highest tier, which is in itself a fallacy.

Ohoni.6057:

No no no, it was YOU who said that – and i paraphrase – “they promise no vertical progression” in fact they NEVER did. It was you who misrepresent information. They did promise us vertical progression and they DELIVERED vertical progression.

Now that is a deliberate misrepresentation of the facts, for what it’s worth.

Oh oh here is a QUOTE that you wrote

Ohoni.6057:

But one of the core promises of this game was that there would be no vertical progression, that you would not never better than exotic gear in order to be able to do any content in the game. They make a lie of that if Ascended gear is going to provide a significant advantage in Raids, but they can make that right by removing that stat difference.

Who’s misrepresenting the information deliberately? It is you. That was your post sir. You lie when you said: "But one of the core promises of this game was that there would be no vertical progression, that you would not never better than exotic gear in order to be able to do any content in the game. "

I say there was no promises.

Astralporing.1957:

…read what i posted again, i already did.

No you didn’t. I mean really specific examples. You would get Legendary Armor Precursors with 10% chance killing Vinewrath, after you finish 10 PVP reward tracks, 5% from Evolved Jungle Wurm etc. SPECIFIC EXAMPLES.

People excluded from doing raids (because they don’t have gear, don’t have enough friends interested in doing them, or don’t have enough time, or because it’s the kind of content that is simply not appealing to them) may be able to reach the same reward goal by pursuing other avenues, that will have different requirements.

Yet you haven’t given any specifics for those different requirements.

Ohoni.6057:

Yes. It’s clear that what you are saying is contradicting what you want. You are saying you want “alternatives that are not easier” but what you are saying afterwards is “I want an easier way to get the rewards”. Make up your mind.

I have made up my mind. My mind is that I want “alternatives that are not easier.” As for what goes on in your mind, I have no control or responsibility.

You are saying you want “alternatives that are not easier” yet directly below you post ways of making the alternatives easier.

Your words and your wants are in direct contradiction. If you have a dual personality I can’t help with it.

I want raids to be the path of least effort, but I want other paths too.

Your words say otherwise. Remember your infamous “the alternatives shouldn’t take much longer than raids?” How is that for least effort?

What part of “all the alternative paths should take longer” translates to “I want it now” to you?

The fact that you never actually said that. In fact you want them to have really equal time frames, even though one of them is challenging while the other is not. Your words.

Of course they are. Challenge is an obstacle in the path to your goal. Time is an obstacle. Something taking longer than something else makes it more challenging. There are other ways to add challenge, but that is still one way.

No it’s not, time alone is no challenge, repetition alone is not challenge either. And when you are given a 100% chance to drop in Raids, 0.1% in other content, you dislike it. You don’t want repetition, forget that.

Still, after 100 of pages between all the threads of the Raids you haven’t posted a single of your ideas of Alternatives. I find that really funny. A case of ultimate trolling? Don’t bother to answer if you don’t give one of your awesome examples of Alternatives, so we can all see what you mean.

Wait wait Maddoctor, here’s a post I just made on the other thread. You might find it funny:

Theorem: There is no alternative but easier options for obtaining Legendary Armor Precursor.

Proof: Let S be the set of all possible ways one can obtain a legendary armor precursor. Place a partial ordering of difficulty on S, denote by (S,<). (This ordering might differ depending on the person, but it doesn’t matter and it might be a partial ordering) Now since S is finite, there is an extension (S,<<) which leads to a linear ordering on S. Since every finite set S in a linear order has a maximal element, we label it M. Now, there is no such N such that M << N since that contradicts maximality of M. Set M = raid, according to ArenaNet.

Since any other way N will diminish the value of M, we let S = {M}.
QED.

I think I can come up with a cleverer proof. Still thinking of how to write it down though.

Burn.5401:

A-Net creates challenging content after 3 years of the same easy and boring dungeons and all the casuals throw a tantrum because they can’t beat completely optional content without working for it. What a surprise.

welcome to gw2 dude, bunch of entitled little babies

Barret.4095:

Burn.5401:

A-Net creates challenging content after 3 years of the same easy and boring dungeons and all the casuals throw a tantrum because they can’t beat completely optional content without working for it. What a surprise.

welcome to gw2 dude, bunch of entitled little babies

Like you mean half of current guild wars 2 population can do current dungeons content without having to sweat as if they have ran a irl marathon? I joined a guild when I first started and omg the so called experienced officers with 8k+ AP insist we only do AC story because AC explorables were so hard and will take forever. I didn’t believe them.

When we tried AC path 1, one supposedly respected veteran members decided to go ranger/longbow camping/with bear and autoattack. Kitting around at the spider queen. For like 10 mins. To make it worse, he took every chance he gets to use longbow 4 on the spider… I told him not to CC, he asked back what’s cc….

An officer was a thief that insisted on camping SHORTBOW and autoattack with it. The above vet member said "oh yeah he does more damage than you [me, an elementalist], because he [the shortbow thief] was wearing full zerk. I asked if he has trinkets and he asked back what is trinket…..

When I tried to teach them how to run things properly, they told me that a newb [me] should be more respectful toward veteran members and they have the right to play however they want.

Long story short, yeah , average guild wars 2 player these days. yeah yeah… oh and this was 2 months ago…

BaconofPigs.1683:

Like you mean half of current guild wars 2 population can do current dungeons content without having to sweat as if they have ran a irl marathon? I joined a guild when I first started and omg the so called experienced officers with 8k+ AP insist we only do AC story because AC explorables were so hard and will take forever. I didn’t believe them.

When we tried AC path 1, one supposedly respected veteran members decided to go ranger/longbow camping/with bear and autoattack. Kitting around at the spider queen. For like 10 mins. To make it worse, he took every chance he gets to use longbow 4 on the spider… I told him not to CC, he asked back what’s cc….

An officer was a thief that insisted on camping SHORTBOW and autoattack with it. The above vet member said "oh yeah he does more damage than you [me, an elementalist], because he [the shortbow thief] was wearing full zerk. I asked if he has trinkets and he asked back what is trinket…..

When I tried to teach them how to run things properly, they told me that a newb [me] should be more respectful toward veteran members and they have the right to play however they want.

Long story short, yeah , average guild wars 2 player these days. yeah yeah… oh and this was 2 months ago…

yea and those are the people complaining about ascended gear. the thing is, even with ascended gear or not, they still wouldn’t be able to do raids cause they don’t even know how to play the game.

Vayne.8563:

If they made rewards sellable, it would cater too more people though. They did this in Guild Wars 1 with almost every single end game item, including tormented weapons, and I don’t really see why it can’t be done here.

And after a while, everyone had a Tormented weapon. At that point, no one cared anymore. Tormented weapons lost their prestige. That’s the problem when you allow everyone to have luxury items. In real life, know why diamonds are so valuable? It’s because De Beers creates artificial scarcity to keep the value high (as someone here brought up).

Anet head enough complaints that Legendary weapons were too easy to get by purchasing Precursors or even the Legendary itself from the TP. While I’m for the trading of these luxury goods because I profit off of it, I fully understand the reason why Anet is now gating all Legendary weapons and now armor. They want people to EARN it.

In order for players to EARN it, they must play the content. If you want Legendary armor, you play Raids. Period. No alternative methods. No buying from the TP. If you walk around wearing the new Legendary armor, you deserved it. You earned it. You’re worthy to wear it. Because you put in the time and efforts to play the content that granted it as a reward.

To address all the other complaints about “this type of content I don’t like, so they should make alternatives”, that’s just code for “give me easy mode”. Why do I say that? Because these players aren’t comfortable with certain game types, so they want another method that falls into their comfort zone. Imagine the following:

Raids = Legendary armor progress

• Player A – “I don’t like Raids, put Legendary armor in Dungeons”
• Player B – “I don’t like Dungeons, put Legendary armor in Jump Puzzles”
• Player C – “I don’t like Jumping Puzzles, let me make it using my high level crafting”
• Player D – “I don’t like crafting. Why am I forced to level my crafting? Let me PvP for Legendary armor”
• Player E – “I don’t like to PvP. I only WvW. Make Legendary armor drop in WvW!”
• Player F – “I don’t have time for any of that. Let me buy it from the Gem store”
• Player G – “I only Roleplay in Divinity’s Reach. It’s not fair that I have to play content to get rewards. How about holding a raffle for a Legendary armor?”

Where does it end? There’s absolutely no way to satisfy the entire player base. So instead of pandering to everyone who players different game modes, just set the bar high on one specific content. Allow all players to have access to the new content, and may the best win and earn the rewards.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Raids = Legendary armor progress

• Player A – “I don’t like Raids, put Legendary armor in Dungeons”
• Player B – “I don’t like Dungeons, put Legendary armor in Jump Puzzles”
• Player C – “I don’t like Jumping Puzzles, let me make it using my high level crafting”
• Player D – “I don’t like crafting. Why am I forced to level my crafting? Let me PvP for Legendary armor”
• Player E – “I don’t like to PvP. I only WvW. Make Legendary armor drop in WvW!”
• Player F – “I don’t have time for any of that. Let me buy it from the Gem store”
• Player G – “I only Roleplay in Divinity’s Reach. It’s not fair that I have to play content to get rewards. How about holding a raffle for a Legendary armor?”

Where does it end? There’s absolutely no way to satisfy the entire player base. So instead of pandering to everyone who players different game modes, just set the bar high on one specific content. Allow all players to have access to the new content, and may the best win and earn the rewards.

Believe it or not, some poster here in this thread believe that Anet should satisfy Player G’s request. That’s the scary part… They really believe that.

BaconofPigs.1683:

Believe it or not, some poster here in this thread believe that Anet should satisfy Player G’s request. That’s the scary part… They really believe that.

Honestly, I know how they feel. I really want a Mini Llama, but I’m not a good PvP player. My friend Zilent is one of the top PvPers, and has tons of Llamas. Is that fair? Not to me, yet because I understand it’s a reward for the best PvPers to show off with, I’m ok with never getting my own Mini Llama.

I think once everyone understands that certain rewards will always be out of their reach, the world would be a better place. On the flip side, if one truly wants that reward, they can get it if they try hard enough. That’s why I’ve been getting better and better at PvP. Before the Mini Llama, I only PvP’d Casually for the daily. I was never comfortable with PvP in GW2. Now, I’m playing more hardcore, and got myself up to rank 64 fairly quickly.

I played wow from 2004 first day, till 2009 and I quitted. I played raids ordinarily… but the story didnt appeal that much, it was more the “wow addiction”, that kept me up… The problem with WoW, is the UIs like dps meter, etc. Made raids like a robot thing. Thats the problem, it is not built for humans, but robots/hybrids instead. Swtor didnt allowed these things like dps meters… and raids are more successful.

1) WoW failed to deliver succesfull raids because of their 3rd party Uis and addons. It become guild exclusive thing and guilds kicked many players, because of their dps or other things.

Swtor in the other hand, has beautiful story and nice raids, but thats that… Swtor is the only mmo I played 3-4-10 raids per week.

1) Swtor didnt allowed these things and you could play raids with pugs, also guilds.
2) WoW you where doomed if not good in raids and you should beg guild masters and officers to play….

GW2 raids are reminding me swtor 1 boss raids. Instead of 1 boss, they added 4 in the raw and its not that good. GW2 has amazing worlds, maps, much better engine that swtor, less bugs, originallity in crafting and greeding and exploring… But they luck in raids and stuff allot.

What I didnt liked in the beta raid is :
1) all bosses have the same looks with different colors
2) 4 bosses but not trash mobs
3) I experience no loot in the first 3 bosses.
4) it is very gear demanding
5) all bosses are very near each other, you dont have to do anything to get into them…
all these 5 elements bind together, made me give it like 2/10 score.. lol

But it was beta and as they stated, raids will come in a later date and I am sure, they will change them allot.

As a suggestion, I wish it to be…:

1) for that instance size, I experienced in the beta, make it 2 boss raid
2) add some trash mobs
3) you could also fit a puzzle.

Actually now thinking about it, it’s probably “it was never meant to be endgame equipment.” The design of ascended tier was included with the original release.

That is factually incorrect.

Unless again you can quote your source to show me an Anet dev say exotic would be the highest tier. Which is impossible for you to produce such a quote because there is none.

Here’s a quote from Mike O’Brien near launch

“Here’s what we believe: If someone wants to play for a thousand hours to get an item that is so rare that other players can’t realistically acquire it, that rare item should be differentiated by its visual appearance and rarity alone, not by being more powerful than everything else in the game. Otherwise, your MMO becomes all about grinding to get the best gear. We don’t make grindy games — we leave the grind to other MMOs.”

I think it’s fair to say that Ascended armor qualifies as something he’s saying they wouldn’t do to us. Now they clearly changed their minds, but if you are claiming that they knew then that they intended to add Ascended armor, then you’re calling him a liar in that interview.

Here’s a GW2 news post from Colin from summer of 2012

“When your game systems are derived and designed to fill this prime motivation of a subscription-based MMO, you potentially sacrifice quality to get as much content in as possible to fill that time. You get leveling systems that take insane amounts of grind to gain a level, loot drop systems that require doing a dungeon with a tiny chance the item you want can drop at the end, raid systems that need huge numbers of people online simultaneously to organize and play, thousands of wash/repeat item-collection or kill-mob quests or dailies with flavor text support, *the best stat gear requiring crazy amounts of time to earn, etc.”*

, clearly indicating that GW2 would not be that sort of game. He then goes on to say later,

“The rarest items have unique looks to help your character feel that sense of accomplishment, but it’s not required to play the game. We don’t need to make mandatory gear treadmills, we make all of it optional, so those who find it fun to chase this prestigious gear can do so, *but those who don’t are just as powerful and get to have fun too.”*

Actually there are level 80 common items. Maybe take a break and play the game a bit?

When did I say that there weren’t? I said that they were available at level 1, that is the start of the tier. The Exotic tier doesn’t start until level 62 though.

Who’s misrepresenting the information deliberately? It is you. That was your post sir. You lie when you said: "But one of the core promises of this game was that there would be no vertical progression, that you would not never better than exotic gear in order to be able to do any content in the game. "

I say there was no promises.

And you would be wrong, but that is not at all uncommon.

You are saying you want “alternatives that are not easier” yet directly below you post ways of making the alternatives easier.

The methods I listed were not easier, they were just different. Difficulty is a subjective thing, so maybe you would view them as easier, but other people might look at it and go “I’d have to do that for week when I could just do the Raid tonight? Not worth it.” It would balance out on average though.

Your words say otherwise. Remember your infamous “the alternatives shouldn’t take much longer than raids?” How is that for least effort?

It really depends on how difficult the raids are and how difficult the alternatives are. I think you guys grossly exaggerate the value of a raid, of how much it is “worth” that would require balancing out.

No it’s not, time alone is no challenge, repetition alone is not challenge either. And when you are given a 100% chance to drop in Raids, 0.1% in other content, you dislike it. You don’t want repetition, forget that.

I don’t like massive RNG gaps, and I believe 1000:1 is just a preposterous ratio to contemplate, but repetition is not an issue, so long as it’s consistent repetition, as in each attempt is a concrete step towards the goal, rather than another roll of the dice.

And if time is no challenge, then I challenge you to hold your breath for ten seconds. Then I challenge you to hold your breath for ten minutes. See which one you find easier to accomplish and get back to me.

If you’re right though, then they should definitely remove the enrage timers and “I quit” timers on events, because clearly they aren’t accomplishing anything.

Still, after 100 of pages between all the threads of the Raids you haven’t posted a single of your ideas of Alternatives. I find that really funny. A case of ultimate trolling? Don’t bother to answer if you don’t give one of your awesome examples of Alternatives, so we can all see what you mean.

You must remember the previous thread Doc, I don’t see the point of re-litigating it. Ultimately though I don’t have to detail the alternatives, that’s ANet’s job and they have far better data to use than we do at the moment (since we don’t even know how difficult earning them via raiding will be yet). I’m just pressing them to create those alternatives.

Believe it or not, some poster here in this thread believe that Anet should satisfy Player G’s request. That’s the scary part… They really believe that.

Oh? Name names. Exactly which players posting in this thread believe that? Ones made of straw do not count.

Ohoni.6057:

You must remember the previous thread Doc, I don’t see the point of re-litigating it. Ultimately though I don’t have to detail the alternatives, that’s ANet’s job and they have far better data to use than we do at the moment (since we don’t even know how difficult earning them via raiding will be yet). I’m just pressing them to create those alternatives.

Yes we don’t know how we will earn them through raiding so for the time being the whole thing is rather pointless. I think this week they will reveal more info about it.

Believe it or not, some poster here in this thread believe that Anet should satisfy Player G’s request. That’s the scary part… They really believe that.

Oh? Name names. Exactly which players posting in this thread believe that? Ones made of straw do not count.

It depends how someone would interpret Astral’s comment:

Untrue. You just make sure that different methods are aimed at different people. Some methods would require high personal skills (like Liadri, or sPvP), some would require intense time and effort commitment (armor precursor crafting mastery collections)

But as always the main problem with the whole discussion is the lack of actual examples of those alternatives.

Miellyn.6847:

Ohoni.6057:

Single and multiplayer games follow completly different designs.

In some ways, but not in ways relevant to this discussion. They can both potentially offer multiple difficulty modes, and allow players to decide for themselves which they find appealing. If a single player game can offer two difficulty modes, and yet some players still choose the harder option, then there’s no reason MMOs cannot do the same.

I’m against multiple difficulties and they aren’t worth the cost in GW2.
ArenaNet needs to find the middle ground between challenging and accessible. There will be always people complaining it’s too hard.

And people complaining that it’s too easy. I’m very hopeful that ANet would be able to find a balanced difficulty that most players would enjoy, but I guarantee you that if they do, the hardcore raider crowd would pass it off as “too casual.” Meanwhile, if they did manage an experience that the hardcore raiders were pleased with, then most players would find it intolerable. There’s no way that they can make one mode that would satisfy the raiders AND everyone else, so I think the better solution is to give a different option to each group.

They just need to find the difficulty that suites most players. Most serious raider don’t complain it’s too easy. They just leave if the content doesn’t fit them.The complainers are players who think they need to exclude lesser skilled players. You can mostly ignore them.

the complainers are players who think everything needs to be made for them and they deserve everything without effort.

Vayne.8563:

Kevan.8912:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/3obl9x/gw2_raids_endgame_casualpro/

My opinion is that there is no dialogue, and anet can’t cater both kinds of players, casual and raid-fans.
This whole thread and the similar others just prove it, it’s a cycle of the same reasons..

I think that with raids devs have already chosen the latter.

If they made rewards sellable, it would cater too more people though. They did this in Guild Wars 1 with almost every single end game item, including tormented weapons, and I don’t really see why it can’t be done here.

The problem with the GW1 system was the terrible RNG behind those items. In order to keep them expensive in the market they had to make the chances of the items dropping ultra low. You had to farm for ages to get what you wanted. I don’t think GW2 needs more RNG

Oyranos.9750:

The problem with WoW, is the UIs like dps meter, etc. Made raids like a robot thing. Thats the problem, it is not built for humans, but robots/hybrids instead. Swtor didnt allowed these things like dps meters… and raids are more successful.

Well, just no. UI’s are the only way to ensure all players doing their job, not failing, following tactics and so on. Its just way of measurement. Like grades in school and so. If player is not doing his job – he should be kicked. Dont tell me about rights, and so on. You dont want to be kicked? Its simple – just play good. Follow tactics, know encounter and your class. Thats all.
SWTOR’s raids are not really more successful. They are buggy as hell, and with clunky mechanics. Some concepts are nice there though.

Oyranos.9750:

1) WoW failed to deliver succesfull raids because of their 3rd party Uis and addons. It become guild exclusive thing and guilds kicked many players, because of their dps or other things.

But its not failing. WoW-s raids are best at this moment among all other MMO-s. And yes, if you are bad player, you dont deserve it and should be kicked. Or just go to LFR, this pathetic version of raid-like content with same boss models. And even there ppl are failing so hard. Just yesturday my guildies did some lfr for quest things, and saw domething like… 14-16k dps. On dps classes. Hunter, etc. I can give three times more being in tank spec, lol. Surely you wont fall as low to defend them? Cat walking on keyboard can squeeze more dps than such players.

Oyranos.9750:

2) WoW you where doomed if not good in raids and you should beg guild masters and officers to play….

Well you said it yourself – “if not good in raids”. Please think of a reason for raid leader to get you in raid if you are not good? Well, actually they can bring some deadweight players on easy farmable bosses. But on progression – they will never let you in. And will be absolutely right in this.

Oyranos.9750:

What I didnt liked in the beta raid is :
1) all bosses have the same looks with different colors
2) 4 bosses but not trash mobs
3) I experience no loot in the first 3 bosses.
4) it is very gear demanding
5) all bosses are very near each other, you dont have to do anything to get into them…
all these 5 elements bind together, made me give it like 2/10 score.. lol

1) All? There was only one.
2) No, 1 boss and 3 trash mobs with tutorial purpose.
3) Bcz there were not bosses. Actually boss itself too dont give loot, and Anet told it beforehand. Its there just for testing.
4) Well, you know, its RAID after all. Its meant to be gear demanding. You cant faceroll it.
5) Wat is this even? No1 gives a kitten about your score on this, if you failed to understand these basics I told you about.

Oyranos.9750:

But it was beta and as they stated, raids will come in a later date and I am sure, they will change them allot.

I hope they wont lower the bar on raids for casuals. You know, I’m a pretty casual myself, but I know how to learn and to get good. And I will enjoy raids as they are.

Coulter.2315:

Here is what you wrote;

Okay, let’s go point by point. Reminding you also, of what you wrote before.

1. “because they don’t have gear”

1) Ascended Gear is easy to get except Armour which contributes +20 Primary stat and +16 Secondary stat.

Armor gives also 5% armor increase, which may be important in the fight where there are constant damage pulses flying all around (like the boss fight we saw so far). And the rest of ascended gear is still not as easy to get as you seem to imply. It may not require anything difficult, but it’s still a grind. There are many people skilled enough to be in raids, that nonetheless do not have gear for it.

2. “don’t have enough friends interested in doing them”

Coulter.2315:

2) If you can’t be nice to 9 other people and them like you enough to spend some time raiding then you have more pressing concerns than raiding.

Oh, i have a lot of friends. Friends i want to play with. Funny thing though, most of them are not interested in raiding.
Yes, i could “make nice” to 9 other raiders, but, funny thing again, most of them behave in such a way that i wouldn’t want to be in the same room with them.
Besides, i wouldn’t be playing with my friends then.

Also, what you wrote before:

are so abrasive that any choice of 9 people cannot stand to be near you

Might you care to explain where that one came from?

“don’t have enough time”

3) If you don’t have enough time then you clearly have more pressing concerns than raiding.

Maybe. Or maybe i am just not willing to schedule my life around a game. Still do not see a point of that one, by the way.

Also:

haven’t bothered in months to log in

Again, not sure where that one came from.

“because it’s the kind of content that is simply not appealing to them”

4) If you don’t like raiding, don’t raid.

Good. We finally get somewhere. Now, why do you think i am asking about alternate ways of obtaining the rewards that are currently meant to be exclusive to raids? Hint: it’s not because i want to raid.

Coulter.2315:

You are just empty. You are a void of points, a desert of arguments, a barren place where thoughts die and nothing good shall spring from such a place – certainly not raid design anyway.

Oh, going poetic now. Still doesn’t change the fact that you haven’t actually addressed any of my points. And that your previous post tried to heavily misrepresent what i wrote.

maddoctor.2738:

Yes we don’t know how we will earn them through raiding so for the time being the whole thing is rather pointless. I think this week they will reveal more info about it.

Believe it or not, some poster here in this thread believe that Anet should satisfy Player G’s request. That’s the scary part… They really believe that.

Oh? Name names. Exactly which players posting in this thread believe that? Ones made of straw do not count.

It depends how someone would interpret Astral’s comment:

Untrue. You just make sure that different methods are aimed at different people. Some methods would require high personal skills (like Liadri, or sPvP), some would require intense time and effort commitment (armor precursor crafting mastery collections)

That’s not what i meant. I assume that all the methods would require some sort of effort investment, just of a different kind. And while i do believe that in a perfect world the roleplayers should also have a way of obtaining those rewards, unfortunately i do not see any method of acquisition that would work for them and wouldn’t be easily exploitable. Well, actually i do see a few, but they aren’t really feasible and there’s no way Anet could implement them.

As i said, my goal is not to make everything available to everyone (and definitely not for free), but merely to minimize the number of people that are excluded for one reason or another from obtaining them.

“As we watch Guild Wars 2 mature in its Live environment, we have found that our most dedicated players were achieving their set of Exotic gear and hitting “the Legendary wall.” We designed the process of getting Legendary gear to be a long term goal, but players were ready to start on that path much sooner than we expected and were becoming frustrated with a lack of personal progression. Our desire is to create a game that is more inclusive for hardcore and casual players alike, but we don’t want to overlook the basic need for players to feel like they are progressing and growing even after hitting max level. Adding item progression is a delicate process normally undertaken in an expansion, but we feel it’s important to strive to satisfy the basic needs of our players sooner rather than later.”

“As we release more new end game content in the future, you’ll see more Infusions and Ascended item types being added to the game. Eventually, you’ll be able to kit yourself out with a full set of Ascended gear and high end Infusions to help give you the edge in end game content.”

Linsey Murdock, Arenanet game designer, November 13, 2012

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/linsey-murdock-unveils-new-high-end-ascended-gear/

Exotics as endgame were, in Arenanet’s eyes, a problem. They also felt that legendaries as endgame goals were a problem in that they were too grindy to be an appropriate next step up from exotics.

Ascended was added to the game, specifically, to bridge the progression gap. This is why it’s more powerful than exotics, but not so powerful that not having it excludes you from content.

The acquisition of ascended equipment has been the intended endgame progression mechanism for nearly three years. Raids are intended to leverage that gear progression without invalidating it just as masteries are intended to leverage your character levels without invalidating them.

Astralporing.1957:

That’s not what i meant. I assume that all the methods would require some sort of effort investment, just of a different kind.

How do you compare the two types of effort? How do you make sure neither is “easy”?

I already posted the other question:

So choose which is it, alternative methods are easy or you exclude people? You can choose to have both to a certain degree, but then comes the next 2 questions:
A) Where do you put the barrier?
B) How do you justify excluding those who can’t reach that barrier?

And you avoid the first one, only answering the second one with:

By the fact that other, alternate methods exist that would allow the excluded people to reach the same goal by a different avenue – one that would fit them better.

Which contradicts what you are saying here:

As i said, my goal is not to make everything available to everyone (and definitely not for free), but merely to minimize the number of people that are excluded for one reason or another from obtaining them.

So which is it? You want avenues for everyone or you want to exclude as few as possible? And if you want to exclude at least some people where do you set the bar?

Oh? Name names. Exactly which players posting in this thread believe that? Ones made of straw do not count.

It depends how someone would interpret Astral’s comment:

Untrue. You just make sure that different methods are aimed at different people. Some methods would require high personal skills (like Liadri, or sPvP), some would require intense time and effort commitment (armor precursor crafting mastery collections)

I don’t think any of that translates to the tired “standing around in LA chatting” strawman though. It still indicates actual player effort.

But as always the main problem with the whole discussion is the lack of actual examples of those alternatives.

Again though, at this stage, the actual details of the alternatives need to be no more concrete than the details of the primary method. Right now all we know is that “Precursors will be available in raids.” The only point I’m pushing for at the moment is “Precursors need to also be available elsewhere,” OR “Raids need to be convenient and accessible to players of all skill levels and scheduling commitment levels.” Broad strokes. The actual details can be worked out as we learn more specific details of raids.

And given the two latest dev blogs about less items being available via dungeons and more being available via raids, I think it’s leaning towards the latter, they are going to need to ensure that ALL players will be able to participate in raids, even those who previous found Fractals to be too big a commitment of time and effort.

the complainers are players who think everything needs to be made for them and they deserve everything without effort.

No.

Nobody has ever argued “without effort.”

The proposals being put forth just involve effort towards different tasks, doing one thing instead of another, when the initial task is just not ideal for some reason or another.

Exotics as endgame were, in Arenanet’s eyes, a problem. They also felt that legendaries as endgame goals were a problem in that they were too grindy to be an appropriate next step up from exotics.

That post was from after launch, after the game players originally bought. "As we watch Guild Wars 2 mature in its Live environment, we have found that our most dedicated players were achieving their set of Exotic gear and hitting “the Legendary wall.” This indicates that Exotics were the originally intended wall, but they changed their minds.

Ohoni.6057:

Here’s a quote from Mike O’Brien near launch

“Here’s what we believe: If someone wants to play for a thousand hours to get an item that is so rare that other players can’t realistically acquire it, that rare item should be differentiated by its visual appearance and rarity alone, not by being more powerful than everything else in the game. Otherwise, your MMO becomes all about grinding to get the best gear. We don’t make grindy games — we leave the grind to other MMOs.”

I think it’s fair to say that Ascended armor qualifies as something he’s saying they wouldn’t do to us. Now they clearly changed their minds, but if you are claiming that they knew then that they intended to add Ascended armor, then you’re calling him a liar in that interview.

Here’s a GW2 news post from Colin from summer of 2012

“When your game systems are derived and designed to fill this prime motivation of a subscription-based MMO, you potentially sacrifice quality to get as much content in as possible to fill that time. You get leveling systems that take insane amounts of grind to gain a level, loot drop systems that require doing a dungeon with a tiny chance the item you want can drop at the end, raid systems that need huge numbers of people online simultaneously to organize and play, thousands of wash/repeat item-collection or kill-mob quests or dailies with flavor text support, *the best stat gear requiring crazy amounts of time to earn, etc.”*

, clearly indicating that GW2 would not be that sort of game. He then goes on to say later,

“The rarest items have unique looks to help your character feel that sense of accomplishment, but it’s not required to play the game. We don’t need to make mandatory gear treadmills, we make all of it optional, so those who find it fun to chase this prestigious gear can do so, *but those who don’t are just as powerful and get to have fun too.”*

You realize your quotes here never mention that “exotic would be the highest tier”. In fact it heavily implied that legendary is the highest tier, and ascended being equal to legendary in stat but not in look is what they were referring to (granted it might not have been called ascended at the time, but they just simply say highest tier). So you again misinterpret the devs.

About the philosophy of no grind. If you play the game normally (in fact just log in), in one month you get 55 laurels. If you participate in guild mission, you get 24 guild commendations. You play 1 fractal every 2 days. Guess what, you deck out all your trinkets in ascended. You call that a grind? Please. This is exactly what they promised and they delivered it.

If you make 10g a day which is like 1 hour of play. Please ppl can run arah 1,2,4 in 40 mins altogether (and that’s actually SLOW) that’s 10g. Plus more. And if you do 1 or 2 world bosses you get plenty. Bam 30 days? Guess what 300g+ a full set of ascended armor + weapons + trinket BAM. How is that a grind? If you’re slow it takes 2 months, 600g+ plus extra to spare. Oh please. Grind? Of course it’s not grindy. After 3 years, I have collected over 700 bolts of damasks, a thousands of each of the other t6. I can deck out 30 characters in full ascended. The effort for 1? Oh please 1 month is more than enough.

Going to work, will respond to the rest of the post later. Cya

You realize your quotes here never mention that “exotic would be the highest tier”.

Not in those literal words, no, but they made that same point. Exotic items clearly fit the definition of what they are going for there, Ascended definitely FAIL to meet the definition of what they were going for there, so they couldn’t have been talking about Ascended, therefore they must have been talking about Exotic.

In fact it heavily implied that legendary is the highest tier, and ascended being equal to legendary in stat but not in look is what they were referring to (granted it might not have been called ascended at the time, but they just simply say highest tier). So you again misinterpret the devs.

Legendary is the highest tier, but when the game launched it all had Exotic level stats, and their point was that you would never have to grind to get stats higher than that (Exotic). But then they added Ascended, which you DO have to grind out to get stats higher than Exotic.

About the philosophy of no grind. If you play the game normally (in fact just log in), in one month you get 55 laurels. If you participate in guild mission, you get 24 guild commendations. You play 1 fractal every 2 days. Guess what, you deck out all your trinkets in ascended. You call that a grind? Please. This is exactly what they promised and they delivered it.

As I’ve said multiple times, ascended trinkets are not a big deal, nobody is talking about ascended trinkets. It’s the armor and weapons that take significant amounts of grind. If you’re suggesting that they make ascended armor and weapons as easy to acquire as trinkets then there might be something to that proposal, but that’s not the current state of the game.

If you make 10g a day which is like 1 hour of play.

You do understand that 10g per day is NOT the average player income, right?

Guess what 300g+ a full set of ascended armor + weapons + trinket BAM.

It costs ~400-600g for a suit of ascended armor, plus more for weapons. I don’t know where your 300g factors in.

After 3 years, I have collected over 700 bolts of damasks, a thousands of each of the other t6. I can deck out 30 characters in full ascended. The effort for 1? Oh please 1 month is more than enough.

that’s very nice, but your experience is not everyone else’s experience, and if you could understand that, if you could develop the sense that other human beings might be different than you without being lesser than you, then maybe you could understand what we’ve been talking about.

10g for every hour of gameplay?

lol But you know the saying about the majority of statistics…

Ohoni.6057:

Ultimately though I don’t have to detail the alternatives, that’s ANet’s job and they have far better data to use than we do at the moment (since we don’t even know how difficult earning them via raiding will be yet). I’m just pressing them to create those alternatives.

This is the type of post that Colin himself says he doesn’t like. It’s not constructive in any way. If you truly want to change the game, do what other posters have done, and actually suggest your alternatives. Anet Devs read these posts, and compile the ones that people put effort into, thus the reason why we have the new account bound Legendary weapon crafting.

The fact that you can’t name a single alternative is because none exist. You say you don’t like Raids? Ok, then what do you want? “It’s Anet’s job to come up with ideas” is not a statement that will help your cause.

Ohoni.6057:

The only point I’m pushing for at the moment is “Precursors need to also be available elsewhere,” OR “Raids need to be convenient and accessible to players of all skill levels and scheduling commitment levels.”

First point, Precursors will not be available any other way. So that ends the argument right there.

Second point, Raids are already convenient and accessible to all players for all skill levels. Anyone can log in and attempt a Raid. Now if you want clear a Raid, you’ll need to have a team that coordinated, skilled, and geared properly. There is no Easy Mode mote that you can activate. If a player is serious about Raids, they need to make the time with friends or guilds. It’s up to the players to coordinate times to play together. Since this game is active 24/7, you have many hours in a day to get together with others to make an attempt at a Wing.

I’m excited for raiding. I know I’m not ready for it, and that’s ok. My concern is that GW2 raiding will be too similar to WoW raiding…which I left that game because of.

I hated slogging through repeat runs to get gear drops so we could progress in the raid. If I want to kill a raid boss…great, let’s do it. Five or six times even, cool.

But once it becomes you running it just to check the loot drop, and then feeling dissappointed that you have to do it again because of course your gear didn’t drop….sigh. That is my biggest fear.

Just…don’t make gear required for raiding drop from raiding only. Give variety (even if it’s hard variety) in ways to obtain. There’s only so much wash rinse repeat I can take.

(keep in mind…I’m fairly new…and don’t have much good gear yet, so I’m still foggy on how it’s obtained currently)

maddoctor.2738:

Astralporing.1957:

That’s not what i meant. I assume that all the methods would require some sort of effort investment, just of a different kind.

How do you compare the two types of effort? How do you make sure neither is “easy”?

Frankly, it’s not possible to make sure neither is “easy” for someone – you know as well as i do, that there will be people that will consider raids to be a faceroll content.

You are also right, that it’s not easy to balance different kinds of effort. Personally, if i were to do it, i’d take the original content (in this case raids) as a base, and try to decrease some requirements while increasing others. So, if i were to decrease skill requirements, i might for example increase time, add grind (wealth/materials requirement), lower droprates or increase lockout. I’d also prioritize personal skill, having content with lower personal skill requirements require more effort (so be generally less rewarding).

That would make pvp modes the most rewarding, with raids being second (notice here, personally i dislike pvp about as much as raids, and am painfully aware that it’s partly because i am not very good at it. I can still recognize that as far as difficulty goes, nothing can beat having a real player as an opponent).

It’s hard for me to offer at the moment more specific suggestions, because we don’t know the specifics (i.e droprate, how many drop chances on a raid there will be, will precs be selectable or will there be possibility of dropping light gloves 5 times in a row, things like that) about armor precursors (and other exclusive drops). We don’t also know how difficult the next bosses will be (or will Anet nerf or buff the content after beta). I do have some ideas, but at the moment nothing to balance them around.

So choose which is it, alternative methods are easy or you exclude people?

Each method would exclude people, but since each method would be different, it should also exclude different people. With enough metods, it should be possible to reduce the number of people that are excluded from all of them to those that really do not play the game or are unwilling to put any effort into it (so, those strawmen that sit in LA and ask for gear to be given to them for free).

Yes, there would also be avenues that some people would find easy. Just as some people will undoubtely find raiding easy. I see no reason why i should allow some forms of easy and disallow others just because some group of people think one is important and one isn’t.

maddoctor.2738:

So which is it? You want avenues for everyone or you want to exclude as few as possible? And if you want to exclude at least some people where do you set the bar?

I want avenues for everyone, but i am realistic enough to realize, that there will be people that will not use them. Therefore, what I’d like is to have as much differing avenues that someone that wouldn’t pick one would be someone that’s not really playing the game.

Where i set the bar? At being willing to put effort in one gameplay mode that currently offers some decent level of rewards. So, as long as you currently actively play, you should be able to achieve those rewards without being forced into playing some other content you might not like.

So, there’s no contradiction.

Now, all that is obviously not perfect. You did find an example of one group of actively playing people that still might get excluded – the RP community. I’d gladly include a method for them too, but unfortunately cannot think of a good one (it would have to reward for good roleplaying, and at the same time not be easily exploitable). I’m willing to listen to suggestions, though.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Ohoni.6057:

The only point I’m pushing for at the moment is “Precursors need to also be available elsewhere,” OR “Raids need to be convenient and accessible to players of all skill levels and scheduling commitment levels.”

First point, Precursors will not be available any other way. So that ends the argument right there.

Then, if really the first point cannot be argued anymore (it can, as past examples have shown, but let’s play along for now), the only choice left is to press for Raids to get nerfed to the point where they won’t be a pain in the posterior to run.

Perhaps this option would suit you better?

Smooth Penguin.5294:

First point, Precursors will not be available any other way. So that ends the argument right there.

As of now that may be the intention.

It remains to be seen whether the intention will stand the test of time. One thing that can be accurately said about Anet is that they have no problem with going back on what they say if they feel the need.

While I agree with the OP on this one for the most part I have been on the other side of a glass ceiling because of armor being while being in a raiding guild that was very successful.

Some gaming companies become real jerks about armor and locking people out of content the moment this bug gets into their brains.

So here’s the thing to always keep in mind with this stuff :

Did you pay for this game? – I did.
Is your money different than my money? – No.
So what makes you think anyone in their right mind is going to respect a company that says, “Eh, you can pay for this product, but we’re going to make sure a person like you just doesn’t get to be involved in this over here because you work full time.”

Every time you answer wrongly to one of these questions subtract one infinitude from your charisma score.

Since the wording “wrongly” is subjective the complexity of this topic has been sufficiently summarized.

Ohoni.6057:

You realize your quotes here never mention that “exotic would be the highest tier”.

Not in those literal words, no, but they made that same point. Exotic items clearly fit the definition of what they are going for there, Ascended definitely FAIL to meet the definition of what they were going for there, so they couldn’t have been talking about Ascended, therefore they must have been talking about Exotic.

You are misrepresenting the information again. Exotic items never fit this definition. They are never meant to be highest tier The fact that Legendary items fit this tier implies that the only tier they were talking about here is ascended It was all in the plan. Again the release time of the items are irrelevant.

Legendary is the highest tier, but when the game launched it all had Exotic level stats, and their point was that you would never have to grind to get stats higher than that (Exotic). But then they added Ascended, which you DO have to grind out to get stats higher than Exotic.

Exotics were merely placeholders. Exotic are basically trash as you previously mentioned. Again ascended were planned from the beginning. And you DON’T have to grind out the stats.

It’s the armor and weapons that take significant amounts of grind.

No, it’s not. You get them for free in fractal. About 80g for the BEST stat weapons in the game? That is not a grind at all. And no, you made up that ridiculous 400-600g for armor set? It’s more like 300g or rather free if you run fractals. You heard it FREE. So in combination of both crafting and fractals. It’s more like 100g for the entire set of armor. And 100g for basically all you ever need for that character? That’s hardly a grind.

You do understand that 10g per day is NOT the average player income, right?

Oh yeah? Do you have the statistics? It’s moot point to say “so and so average player doesn’t earn”. You don’t have the statistics, neither do I, so your claim is moot.
What I said is 10g per day is an underestimate of what a player can earn. Or maybe if you actually play the game you’ll find out.

It costs ~400-600g for a suit of ascended armor, plus more for weapons. I don’t know where your 300g factors in.

Yeah like your grossly over exaggerated numbers will say anything. Most players get their ascended stuffs free from drops. 300g is an underestimate.

that’s very nice, but your experience is not everyone else’s experience, and if you could understand that, if you could develop the sense that other human beings might be different than you without being lesser than you, then maybe you could understand what we’ve been talking about.

You don’t speak for anyone else either. I merely point out it’s easily obtainable if you play the game as it is intended to be played, you will get ascended in one month. Else if someone here who doesn’t play the game as it is intended to be played, obviously that person won’t be able to earn what’s meant to be earned. Ascended is no grind it’s proven here.

Having some sort of deja vu going on here. I feel like I should stop it but I am always amused by conversations that lead to no conclusion for anyone.

BaconofPigs.1683:

They are never meant to be highest tier*

We were told before launch that BiS would be earned by level 80. Not that we could begin working on a drastically more expensive BiS tier (ascended) after launch. Legendaries had the same stats as exotics at launch.

Initially exotics were intended to be highest tier. Anet changed their minds after the fact.

I also think that exotics were intended to be highest tier. That’s why in spvp, starts are normalized to exotics.

However, many key people including two out of three co-founders left Anet after its acquisition by NCSoft, so the current GW2 team is no longer than same as the old one. That’s probably why they changed their minds…because it’s not the same “they”.

Exotics were stated to be the top tier, and yes, they changed that. They will add another gear level above ascended’s stats in the future if they feel this will make them more money and/or they feel they need to give players additional sumthin, sumthin to do.

Anything that has happened once can happen again, so there are never going to be any guarantees. You can simply hope they won’t reach a place where they feel this would be necessary, but yes, it can happen. If it does, they will simply have another logical explanation for it just like they did when they tossed ascended stats into the mix.

This is the type of post that Colin himself says he doesn’t like. It’s not constructive in any way. If you truly want to change the game, do what other posters have done, and actually suggest your alternatives.

Pengy, it is constructive, it just isn’t doing all their work for them. I’ve made suggestions for alternatives in other threads, but ultimately none of us out here are in the best position to design the system for them. It’s like if someone holds their hand behind their back, and says “I have an amount of gold in my hand. It could be worth $1000, or $1, or anywhere in between. Now you figure out a task that would be worthy of handing you this gold, without being way more work than it would be worth.”

It’s not really plausible. I know that a alternative will likely be needed, but without knowing the difficulty of earning them via raids, it’s hard to predict exactly how much effort would be needed to balance that out, without being way too much. I can at least say that almost all alternatives proposed by the pro-raid side seem to fall into the “way too much” category. All I can say at this point is that it should definitely not be Silverwaste farming or chatting in LA, it should be through activities that involve player engagement, and the costs should be a matter of difficulty vs. time.

The fact that you can’t name a single alternative is because none exist. You say you don’t like Raids? Ok, then what do you want? “It’s Anet’s job to come up with ideas” is not a statement that will help your cause.

Personally the content I prefer is the content that GW2 does better than anyone else, the reason people play GW2 rather than other MMOs, the open world content. I believe that while they can provide all sorts of alternatives, the one I would personally want to do would involve leveraging open world, drop-in/drop-out events.

First point, Precursors will not be available any other way. So that ends the argument right there.

And Dungeons will be the only way to earn Dungeon Armor.

Second point, Raids are already convenient and accessible to all players for all skill levels.

No, not if you use the words “convenient” and “accessible” as they are defined in the English language.

Just because it’s theoretically possible for someone to do something does not mean that it is convenient for them, and raids, as traditionally handled by other games, are massively inconvenient to the vast majority of humanity, whether they are inconvenient to you personally or not.

Not in those literal words, no, but they made that same point. Exotic items clearly fit the definition of what they are going for there, Ascended definitely FAIL to meet the definition of what they were going for there, so they couldn’t have been talking about Ascended, therefore they must have been talking about Exotic.

You are misrepresenting the information again. Exotic items never fit this definition. They are never meant to be highest tier The fact that Legendary items fit this tier implies that the only tier they were talking about here is ascended It was all in the plan. Again the release time of the items are irrelevant.

I’m misrepresenting nothing. They clearly said that you would not have to [do the things one has to do to get ascended armor] in order to earn the best stats, so clearly when they were talking about the “best stats,” they must have been talking about the stats of Exotic armor, because that is the final tier of armor before you run into the the best stat gear requiring crazy amounts of time to earn, etc.” or the "Otherwise, your MMO becomes all about grinding to get the best gear. We don’t make grindy games — we leave the grind to other MMOs.” that they were promising to avoid.

If they had been talking about Ascended armor as the highest tier, then they would have been deliberately misrepresenting their game, false advertising at the most basic level.

No, it’s not. You get them for free in fractal. About 80g for the BEST stat weapons in the game? That is not a grind at all. And no, you made up that ridiculous 400-600g for armor set? It’s more like 300g or rather free if you run fractals. You heard it FREE. So in combination of both crafting and fractals. It’s more like 100g for the entire set of armor. And 100g for basically all you ever need for that character? That’s hardly a grind.

I’ll need a source for your 300g figure, every source I’ve found is 400g for Medium, 600g for cloth at current prices. And RNG drops don’t count, otherwise Legendary Precursors would all be “free” too. The price is the market value. Here’s a calculator I found

Oh yeah? Do you have the statistics? It’s moot point to say “so and so average player doesn’t earn”. You don’t have the statistics, neither do I, so your claim is moot.

You’re the one claiming that 10g is a reasonable amount, the onus is on you to prove that, not on me to disprove it.

Yeah like your grossly over exaggerated numbers will say anything. Most players get their ascended stuffs free from drops. 300g is an underestimate.

Again, cite your source that most players in the game earn Ascended gear for free.

Since some of yall are talking about the quote on best statistical gear, here is the actual quote

From September 27, 2011 Source

Eurogamer: How are you handling endgame loot – will we be farming bosses?

Colin Johanson: Everyone, including casual gamers, by level 80 should have the best statistical loot in the game. We want everyone on an equal power base. The rare stuff becomes the really awesome looking armours. It’s all about collecting the unique looking stuff and collecting all the other rare collectable items in the game: armour pieces, potentially different potions – a lot of that is still up in the air and we’ll finalise a lot of those reward systems as we get closer to release. And those come off of things like the bosses at the end of dungeons – the raids.

When you get to the end of the dungeon and you kill the boss, when the five of you take a boss out, everybody gets a token. And you can turn those tokens in and use them to get whatever reward you want from that dungeon at the end.

Ohoni.6057:

No, not if you use the words “convenient” and “accessible” as they are defined in the English language.

Nope, once again you are using semantics. You have no ground. This point is wrong. You haven’t proved that these words don’t mean the same as in game meaning of it. Sorry do better

Ohoni.6057:

Just because it’s theoretically possible for someone to do something does not mean that it is convenient for them, and raids, as traditionally handled by other games, are massively inconvenient to the vast majority of humanity, whether they are inconvenient to you personally or not.

No statistical sources. These are again made up. vast majority of humanity lol really? You’re actually believing that?

The contents accessible to the vast majority of the average players. That’s what ArenaNet’s aim here.

Ohoni.6057:

I’m misrepresenting nothing. They clearly said that you would not have to [do the things one has to do to get ascended armor] in order to earn the best stats, so clearly when they were talking about the “best stats,” they must have been talking about the stats of Exotic armor, because that is the final tier of armor before you run into the the best stat gear requiring crazy amounts of time to earn, etc.” or the "Otherwise, your MMO becomes all about grinding to get the best gear. We don’t make grindy games — we leave the grind to other MMOs.” that they were promising to avoid.

Nope, they said once you get earn your best statistical equipment you are leveled with everyone in the said. As we have proven that there is no grind for ascended. Only you perceived it as grind.

Ohoni.6057:

I’ll need a source for your 300g figure, every source I’ve found is 400g for Medium, 600g for cloth at current prices. And RNG drops don’t count, otherwise Legendary Precursors would all be “free” too. The price is the market value. Here’s a calculator I found

Half of the cost would assume you collect RNG drops, mats, salvages etc. Of course it is taken into account. Hence the 300g. See? Your spreadsheet agrees. Let me show you the math: 600/2 = 300. You are posing a scenario where a player would buy everything from the market. Which is strawman. And your analogy with Legendary Precursors are also strawman. Do better.

You’re the one claiming that 10g is a reasonable amount, the onus is on you to prove that, not on me to disprove it.

I never said anything about reasonable. Again you’re lying. I said it is possible to earn 10g within 1 hour of play.

Arah p1: 3g31s, Arah p2: 3g31s, Arah p4: 3g31s plus some extra changes. I hope I don’t have to do the math for you. Oh nevermind maybe I’ll do it anyway in case you need to know: its: 9g93s + loots (which is often about 1-2g worth) there you go. I’ve proven to you. That it is possible to obtain 10g in one session play within 35 minutes. Should I link the vids too?

Again, cite your source that most players in the game earn Ascended gear for free.

Cite your source that most players will crank out 600g for an ascended armor set. Yeah it’s on the spreadsheet that it would cost you 600g if you buy everything. Cite your source that most players do that. You were claiming it first.

The point is, you’re just wrong. Ascended is accessible to everyone. If you actually sit down and play the game please. It seems you don’t actually understand how the process work. We can help you earn some ascended stuffs if you ask how to do it.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Since some of yall are talking about the quote on best statistical gear, here is the actual quote

From September 27, 2011 Source

Eurogamer: How are you handling endgame loot – will we be farming bosses?

Colin Johanson: Everyone, including casual gamers, by level 80 should have the best statistical loot in the game. We want everyone on an equal power base. The rare stuff becomes the really awesome looking armours. It’s all about collecting the unique looking stuff and collecting all the other rare collectable items in the game: armour pieces, potentially different potions – a lot of that is still up in the air and we’ll finalise a lot of those reward systems as we get closer to release. And those come off of things like the bosses at the end of dungeons – the raids.

When you get to the end of the dungeon and you kill the boss, when the five of you take a boss out, everybody gets a token. And you can turn those tokens in and use them to get whatever reward you want from that dungeon at the end.

He did say at the time 2011 which before we know anything would existed yet. Heck we don’t know if such tiers were there. Maybe there was a tier called Divine, or Superawesomemagicthingy. A lot of things have changed since 2011.

He also never said or equate dungeons rewards (which granted are exotic) would be the best didn’t he?

Nope, once again you are using semantics. You have no ground. This point is wrong. You haven’t proved that these words don’t mean the same as in game meaning of it. Sorry do better

So now your contention is that the words “convenient” and “accessible” effectively have no meaning, because they can be used interchangeably with “inconvenient” and “inaccessible?” Like “Aloha?”

I disagree.

No statistical sources. These are again made up. vast majority of humanity lol really? You’re actually believing that?

Do you disagree? Are you honestly contending that the vast majority of humanity would have no problem finding time for multi-hour raids?

Between this and your “10g per hour,” and “everyone has full Ascended” stuff, I’m really beginning to wonder how in touch with reality you are.

Nope, they said once you get earn your best statistical equipment you are leveled with everyone in the said.

Yes, and at the time that would be exotic armor, because Ascended wouldn’t be available until over a year later. That statement would be meaningless if it meant “we’ll keep raising the bar but so long as you keep matching the bar, you’ll be at the level of the bar.”

The point he was making is that they would not raise the bar.

Half of the cost would assume you collect RNG drops, mats, salvages etc. Of course it is taken into account.

Anything you receive as drops are not “free” either, that has cash value, and if you spend it on the armor then you aren’t selling it or spending it on something else. There is no part of the Ascended armor that you can just write off as “free,” it all has to be earned through activity, and all the non-bound components can be resold for gold value. If Ascended cloth armor contains materials that could be sold for 600g, then that is 600g armor, no argument.

You are posing a scenario where a player would buy everything from the market. Which is strawman. And your analogy with Legendary Precursors are also strawman. Do better.

. . .
I’m not sure that you understand what the term “straw man” means.

I never said anything about reasonable. Again you’re lying. I said it is possible to earn 10g within 1 hour of play.

Arah p1: 3g31s, Arah p2: 3g31s, Arah p4: 3g31s plus some extra changes. I hope I don’t have to do the math for you. Oh nevermind maybe I’ll do it anyway in case you need to know: its: 9g93s + loots (which is often about 1-2g worth) there you go. I’ve proven to you. That it is possible to obtain 10g in one session play within 35 minutes. Should I link the vids too?

It is possible, and I’m aware that it’s possible to make more than that, but “possible” is not the point. The standard is not what is possible, it’s what is likely, what the average player is likely to bring in on an average evening. That is not 10g. What is possible really doesn’t matter if it’s not likely to happen.

Cite your source that most players will crank out 600g for an ascended armor set. Yeah it’s on the spreadsheet that it would cost you 600g if you buy everything. Cite your source that most players do that. You were claiming it first.

That isn’t a claim I made.

The point is, you’re just wrong. Ascended is accessible to everyone. If you actually sit down and play the game please. It seems you don’t actually understand how the process work. We can help you earn some ascended stuffs if you ask how to do it.

Again, I could have all my characters in full ascended tomorrow if I got around to it. This isn’t about me, this is about the good of the game as a whole. Unless you’re prepared to help out every single player in the game, it’s a moot point.

Astralporing.1957:

I want avenues for everyone, but i am realistic enough to realize, that there will be people that will not use them.

You do understand that having all those different methods gets us back to the initial problem of having everything locked behind gold, right? If you add so many different ways of earning the rewards then we go back to square one. I thought going as far away as having everything behind gold was a major objective for Anet to make the game feel more rewarding.

You do understand that having all those different methods gets us back to the initial problem of having everything locked behind gold, right?

Not if none of those methods involve gold.

maddoctor.2738:

You do understand that having all those different methods gets us back to the initial problem of having everything locked behind gold, right?

No, i do not. That would be true only if farming gold for items would be more efficient than getting the items directly.
That’s indeed true for most item currently, but that doesn’t need to be true. Besides, pure gold doesn’t need to be one of those avenues. Unless you consider TP flipping to be playing the game, of course (personally, i’m undecided here).

Ohoni.6057:

You do understand that having all those different methods gets us back to the initial problem of having everything locked behind gold, right?

Not if none of those methods involve gold.

Oh, they may involve gold, just shouldn’t probably be all about gold. The revealed precursor collections are a good example here – tier 2 is about gold, mostly (though there seem to be some account bound currencies there). Tiers 1 and 3 are about personal acquisition/exploration however and cannot be skipped by paying at all.

Ohoni.6057:

So now your contention is that the words “convenient” and “accessible” effectively have no meaning, because they can be used interchangeably with “inconvenient” and “inaccessible?” Like “Aloha?”

See? strawman. Use the words “inconvenient” to compare with “convenient”? and “inaccessible” compare to “accessible”? At this point I’m not sure what you disagree on.

Do you disagree? Are you honestly contending that the vast majority of humanity would have no problem finding time for multi-hour raids?

The onus is on you to prove your point otherwise. You said it.

Between this and your “10g per hour,” and “everyone has full Ascended” stuff, I’m really beginning to wonder how in touch with reality you are.

Another lie. I never said “everyone has full ascended”. I said “everyone can get full ascended if they play the game”. And of course 10g per hour is really easy actually. Yes I’m very in touch with reality. I don’t know about your reading comprehension though.

Yes, and at the time that would be exotic armor, because Ascended wouldn’t be available until over a year later. That statement would be meaningless if it meant “we’ll keep raising the bar but so long as you keep matching the bar, you’ll be at the level of the bar.”

Another lie here. We have shown that ascended has been planned since the release and came out 2 months after the game launched.

The point he was making is that they would not raise the bar.

Yes, they won’t raise the bar beyond ascended. Were you there when they said that?

Half of the cost would assume you collect RNG drops, mats, salvages etc. Of course it is taken into account.

Anything you receive as drops are not “free” either, that has cash value, and if you spend it on the armor then you aren’t selling it or spending it on something else. There is no part of the Ascended armor that you can just write off as “free,” it all has to be earned through activity, and all the non-bound components can be resold for gold value. If Ascended cloth armor contains materials that could be sold for 600g, then that is 600g armor, no argument.

I said you don’t need to spend more than 300g in to get your ascended full. Never said anything about potential cost, which is part of playing the game. You use the mats that dropped to make the stuffs. Maybe if you actually learn to play the game again.

You are posing a scenario where a player would buy everything from the market. Which is strawman. And your analogy with Legendary Precursors are also strawman. Do better.

. . .
I’m not sure that you understand what the term “straw man” means.

Yeah your scenario is dead wrong. Prove it otherwise.

It is possible, and I’m aware that it’s possible to make more than that, but “possible” is not the point. The standard is not what is possible, it’s what is likely, what the average player is likely to bring in on an average evening. That is not 10g. What is possible really doesn’t matter if it’s not likely to happen.

So you agree it is possible to make 10g per hour. Now show me the statistical data that it " it’s not likely to happen."

Cite your source that most players will crank out 600g for an ascended armor set. Yeah it’s on the spreadsheet that it would cost you 600g if you buy everything. Cite your source that most players do that. You were claiming it first.

That isn’t a claim I made.

You said it cost 600g and people would pay for it. Are you withdrawing your statement that it doesn’t cost that much now?

Sykper.6583:

Having some sort of deja vu going on here. I feel like I should stop it but I am always amused by conversations that lead to no conclusion for anyone.

“lead to no conclusion for anyone” would imply that reaching a conclusion is the goal. One group has their absolute ideal the other has theirs, its more a question of who can bang their head on a brick wall the longest than trying to reach a consensus.

I prefer to do things my way at my own pace, I can play nice with others just fine but only for so long before I lose interest. Long group content is clearly not for me so personally I don’t mind either way what happens to Raids.

That said, raids are hard, the “special snowflakes” that get through them deserve a pat on the head and a noddy badge, but what I don’t want to see however is too many desirable items being exclusive to raid rewards or developer focus and time being disproportionally spent on that game format . There’s a fine balance to be maintained, special snowflakes want to feel special so let them but if everything else pales in comparison or the quality is of a lesser standard then you cater too much to the snowflakes at the expense of everyone else. In practice, although perhaps not in intent, punish the diversity that is suppose to be the products main selling point.

Harlequin.8593:

I prefer to do things my way at my own pace, I can play nice with others just fine but only for so long before I lose interest. Long group content is clearly not for me so personally I don’t mind either way what happens to Raids.

That said, raids are hard, the “special snowflakes” that get through them deserve a pat on the head and a noddy badge, but what I don’t want to see however is too many desirable items being exclusive to raid rewards or developer focus and time being disproportionally spent on that game format . There’s a fine balance to be maintained, special snowflakes want to feel special so let them but if everything else pales in comparison or the quality is of a lesser standard then you cater too much to the snowflakes at the expense of everyone else. In practice, although perhaps not in intent, punish the diversity that is suppose to be the products main selling point.

We don’t know which group is actually the “special snowflakes”. Only ArenaNet has the data and they responded with their player driven data by making the expansion. There is no reason to satisfy the “special snowflakes” minority group while the majority of the player base enjoy the content and the rewards.

Ohoni.6057:

You do understand that having all those different methods gets us back to the initial problem of having everything locked behind gold, right?

Not if none of those methods involve gold.

Astralporing.1957:

No, i do not. That would be true only if farming gold for items would be more efficient than getting the items directly.
That’s indeed true for most item currently, but that doesn’t need to be true. Besides, pure gold doesn’t need to be one of those avenues. Unless you consider TP flipping to be playing the game, of course (personally, i’m undecided here).

How is that relevant? What’s the current problem with gold? Multiple activities with different gold incomes -> players choose the path of least resistance lowering the value of other types of content. Also, gold = more grind and leads to a less rewarding game.

If once again you add loads (one for each playstyle no less) methods of acquiring rewards then you cause the exact same problems, problems that the devs are trying to fix.

See? strawman. Use the words “inconvenient” to compare with “convenient”? and “inaccessible” compare to “accessible”? At this point I’m not sure what you disagree on.

Ok, let’s backtrack because you seem to have gotten completely lost. First, I said that “Raids need to be convenient and accessible to players of all skill levels and scheduling commitment levels.”

To this, Penguin replied “Second point, Raids are already convenient and accessible to all players for all skill levels. Anyone can log in and attempt a Raid. Now if you want clear a Raid, you’ll need to have a team that coordinated, skilled, and geared properly. There is no Easy Mode mote that you can activate. If a player is serious about Raids, they need to make the time with friends or guilds. It’s up to the players to coordinate times to play together. Since this game is active 24/7, you have many hours in a day to get together with others to make an attempt at a Wing.”

Whcih essentially translates to “Raids are already convenient and accessible to all players for all skill levels, so long as they do a great many things that most players would find inconvenient and inaccessible to them.” Which begs the question of whether or not he understands the meaning of either of those words, which I pointed out to him. To this, you responded “Nope, once again you are using semantics. You have no ground. This point is wrong. You haven’t proved that these words don’t mean the same as in game meaning of it. Sorry do better”

Which was itself an argument of semantics, and didn’t really advance the dialog in any useful way other than to attack me as a person, and now here we are.

The onus is on you to prove your point otherwise. You said it.

Fair enough. 60% of the world’s population doesn’t even have Internet access, of of those that do, only a very tiny fraction own a copy of GW2, so I think it’s perfectly fair to say that the majority of the Earth’s population would have difficulty participating in GW2 raids. I didn’t think that needed hard data, but you constantly surprise me.

Another lie. I never said “everyone has full ascended”. I said “everyone can get full ascended if they play the game”.

It’s the same thing, everyone plays the game. When you say “play the game,” do you mean “Play like Bacon does,” or do you accept the idea that there are perhaps people that are genuinely playing the game, just as often and robustly as you, but whom perform different activities than you do?

Another lie here. We have shown that ascended has been planned since the release and came out 2 months after the game launched.

You have not proven that they were in development before launch, just that they released the easier to implement within two months of launch. And even if they were in development before launch, they were not in the game at launch, and they conflict with the statements developers made about the game prior to launch, so if they were planning to include them before launch, then those developers would have been falsely advertising the product they were selling. I do not believe that they would do such a thing.

I said you don’t need to spend more than 300g in to get your ascended full. Never said anything about potential cost, which is part of playing the game. You use the mats that dropped to make the stuffs. Maybe if you actually learn to play the game again.

Why do you insist on personally attacks on my game playing? As I said, I’ve been playing daily since launch, I do not need any gameplay advice from you. And I was talking about the actual cost of the items, which is 400-600g. However much you wish to dismiss portions of the cost, the actual value remains. If you insist on only counting materials that you don’t have on hand, then the price of anything is meaningless and far too random to calculate.

So you agree it is possible to make 10g per hour. Now show me the statistical data that it " it’s not likely to happen."

Ok, fair enough. According to GW2 Efficiency, the mean player with up to 500h under their belt has a total account worth (including account-bound items) of around 960g. That would amount to 1.92g per hour in game. The mean player with 2000 hours in the game, has 7100g in value to his account, which would balance out to around 3.5g per hour. Even if we only consider the top 10% of players in the 2000 hour category, they have a total wealth of around 13,000g. or 6.5g per hour played.

Now keep in mind two things about those statistics. First, this total value analysis represents a maximum value, because it takes into account numerous non-fungible assets, for example unlocked dyes, unlocked armor skins, various things they may have gotten through story missions, hundreds of gold in “value” that could never have been put to use in buying ascended gear, so the actual hourly returns in cash or items that could be converted into cash (to make Ascended armor with) would be significantly less.

The second thing to keep in mind is that this data is based only on the reported figures from players who have signed up at GW2Efficiency, not of all players of the game, and since this is a site that tracks player stats, it stands to reason that the site’s users will skew towards those players that are highly invested in the game, and away from those players that are casual, in other words, casuals would be massively under-represented by the statistics, and that means that the total results would likely be significantly less gold per hour played than the site would suggest.

So I think that’s solid reason to believe that 10g per hour is not typical, unless you have other data proving the opposite.

You said it cost 600g and people would pay for it. Are you withdrawing your statement that it doesn’t cost that much now?

I’m really unclear what point you think you’re making here. My position has always been that at current market values, a set of Ascended armor would cost around 400-600g in gold and materials to make, and that remains true.

How is that relevant? What’s the current problem with gold? Multiple activities with different gold incomes → players choose the path of least resistance lowering the value of other types of content. Also, gold = more grind and leads to a less rewarding game.

If once again you add loads (one for each playstyle no less) methods of acquiring rewards then you cause the exact same problems, problems that the devs are trying to fix.

Being able to play the activities you enjoy is one of the best things about this game, not a “problem.” It becomes a problem if you are shoehorned into specific activities that you do not enjoy.