Guild Wars 2

Azure.8670:

im sorry ascended gear drops in many different places. its been out for years. If you dont have a set of ascended gear you have less than 500 hours of play time and arent ready for raids anyway. if you have more than 500 hours and dont have 1-5 sets of ascended armor stop sitting in lions arch mulling around map chat. I have a f2p in my guild thats already working on ascended gear and he just hit level 80.

Haha 500 hours needed for GW2s easy PvE content.

@Ohoni.6057
That defeats the entire purpose of adding ascended gear in the first place.
Conveniently, exotics are easy/cheap/quick to get, and very close to being as good as ascended. Wearing full exotics means you are viable and ready to tackle nearly all of the game’s content, including the first couple raid bosses.

Ascended gear exists because exotics fell short. They were too easy, too cheap, too quick to acquire, and the game needed something that would require greater investment from the player to get. Exotics were short term goals, and legendaries long term goals. They needed a mid term goal for players to strive for, to keep the market spinning and players motivated.

People don’t “strive” for Ascended armor, they either have it or they don’t. They aren’t nearly desirable enough to “strive” for.

It helps the market because a lot of material goes into ascended gear, and there’s a high demand for them. That keeps the economy alive and combats gold inflation through TP taxes and the like.

It hurts the market more than it helps. It inflates the value of certain mats, making them out of reach for players trying to level their crafts “as they play,”

While it wouldn’t be as bad as blue/green gear, making ascended “way cheaper[to get]” is similarly making it redundant.

As long as it retained value about Exotic, I don’t see that happening. It sounds like the going rate is at least 70g per piece. If it were say 10g per piece, that would still be several times the value of exotic armors, and making it would still require the self-crafted elements.

glaphen.5230:

Azure.8670:

im sorry ascended gear drops in many different places. its been out for years. If you dont have a set of ascended gear you have less than 500 hours of play time and arent ready for raids anyway. if you have more than 500 hours and dont have 1-5 sets of ascended armor stop sitting in lions arch mulling around map chat. I have a f2p in my guild thats already working on ascended gear and he just hit level 80.

Haha 500 hours needed for GW2s easy PvE content.

the average person playing since launch has between 3000-6000 hours. 500 hours would mean youve played roughly 6 months to a year. haha?

Azure.8670:

im sorry ascended gear drops in many different places. its been out for years. If you dont have a set of ascended gear you have less than 500 hours of play time and arent ready for raids anyway. if you have more than 500 hours and dont have 1-5 sets of ascended armor stop sitting in lions arch mulling around map chat. I have a f2p in my guild thats already working on ascended gear and he just hit level 80.

I’ve only had an ascended armor box from PvP and from WvW (bonus chest after leveling). I’ve not seen it drop anywhere else. On my second account, after almost 1000 hours, I’ve not seen one ascended item you didn’t get from achievements.

(and map chat on AG is stupid in LA, I prefer to leave there asap or turn off map chat…)

And good for that guildy of yours that managed to get his crafting to 500 (requiring loads of money or time to gather the required materials) and even still have enough linnen left to craft those armour pieces and the insignias!

(according to gw2crafts.net, you’ll need at least between 70 and 80 gold to get an armour crafting profession to 500, add to that the laurels you’ll need for the final crafting, which are a lot harder to get as a F2P as you don’t get dailies…)

If u do daily fractal 50 and tequatl ull get ur ascended.. or most of it then u can cheaply alter stats to ur liking in the forge

the average person playing since launch has between 3000-6000 hours. 500 hours would mean youve played roughly 6 months to a year. haha?

I’m in the 3000+ bracket myself, but still, 500 hours should be plenty to be competitive, even 200 hours should be enough if it’s well spent. Expecting people to have three solid years worth of growth under their belt means that new players could never reasonably catch up. I would expect them to want people who started F2P this summer to be able to compete in raids by this winter if they apply themselves.

I’ve only had an ascended armor box from PvP and from WvW (bonus chest after leveling). I’ve not seen it drop anywhere else.

I’ve never seen one drop, although I think I did get one for a story completion or something. The rest I’ve got I had to make myself.

(according to gw2crafts.net, you’ll need at least between 70 and 80 gold to get an armour crafting profession to 500, add to that the laurels you’ll need for the final crafting, which are a lot harder to get as a F2P as you don’t get dailies…)

Although to be fair, players will have to buy HoT to do raids anyways, so F2P only works so far.

Unless the raids have Agony or an actual gearcheck, Ascended won’t be required.

It would be pretty much impossible for them to make an encounter where the miniscule difference between Ascended and Exotic gear was the deciding factor, even if we’re talking about the whole party and not the individual members of it.

Being able to change the stats at a small fee and being account bound is already a pretty good incentive for most people to go for Ascended.

Olba.5376:

Unless the raids have Agony or an actual gearcheck, Ascended won’t be required.

It would be pretty much impossible for them to make an encounter where the miniscule difference between Ascended and Exotic gear was the deciding factor, even if we’re talking about the whole party and not the individual members of it.

Being able to change the stats at a small fee and being account bound is already a pretty good incentive for most people to go for Ascended.

And what about…glider mastery in raid?
I’m sure that it is a “deciding factor”.
Just as Agony Resistance that we already have.

If you have 10 people pumping out 100 damage each, 5% for each person is an extra 5 damage. So if you add the total the damage its 1000 and include the total increase % its 50 damage. Which is still 5%. NOT 50%

i think his point was that its the equivalent of half another person in terms of damage. moreso, since its more efficient and less vulnerable to aoe.

glaphen.5230:

Yeah sorry I’m totally going to waste my time to get their exact statement after 3 years and not playing for a year. How was the system not working out exactly? There was no one complaining about not having stronger gear to grind but tons complaining when this crap was released. Why aren’t people complaining for higher tier, come on ANet let’s see raids give higher stat gear than ascended. Also are you ignoring fractals? You need to grind ascended to do fractals so they completely ignored their promises.

There was no one complaining about not getting stronger gear? You weren’t paying attention.

A couple of months after launch, people were leaving this game in droves. Now not all of them said that Anet needed to put vertical progression in, but some of them sure did. What was being said, however, and said often, was that people had nothing to do at 80.

Since a game company can only design new content so fast, and since everyone got exotic items quicker than Anet thought they would, Anet made the only decision it could make. Introduce something that would take longer while new content/a new direction was explored.

I’m sure Anet wasn’t at at happy that people found nothing to do and left. I’m pretty sure they really believed at launch that people would just accept that farming for skins was end game, and some of us did…but many people did not.

I’m sure when you’ve invested millions in the creation of a program, you wouldn’t ever change anything if your initial expectations weren’t working. Fortunately, Anet is a professional game developer and did what they thought they had to.

I don’t like the ascended gear on a personal level, but I know people personally who came back to the game to craft it.

GuzziHero.2467:

I wouldn’t have been happy unless each alt had their own gear. So most of my alts became obsolete.

While I in general agree with your post it’s also something of a hyperbole thats a little late. We’ve had these discussions for about 3 years now.

I’m an altoholic but I’ve slowly been chipping away at their ascended gear. So I don’t agree with your obsolete statement. I’d be more inclined to say it’s a state or mind.

At this point, if it still bothers you, don’t play.

GragorR.9768:

To be completely honest, i don’t believe for a second that ascended will be REQUIRED for raids. It’s 5% superior to exotics. I’d take a decent player in exos over a scrub in full pink any day.

5% with a full set. If you have weapon+trinkets, then the difference is trivial. 1 small mistake or class disparity or build diparity is way heavier.

Using rune of the dolyak vs rune of strength makes a much huge impact then +2% damage (that is less then 1 stack of might).

The raid is balanced around full ascended gear, but good groups will be able to do it in yellow gear.

This game is skill based and I like it this way.

Zelkovan.2630:

Yeah and Arah was centered around 5 man groups in full exotics, yet people have solo’d it naked.

There weren’t any timegates (enrage timer) in Arah, so basically you could take is as slow as convenient for you.

GragorR.9768:

To be completely honest, i don’t believe for a second that ascended will be REQUIRED for raids. It’s 5% superior to exotics.

5% superior in stats, and 5% superior in dps on top of it (which adds up to more than 10% due to the power, precision, ferocity interaction). Which becomes significant the moment we start talking enrage timers.

Kidel.2057:

This game is skill based and I like it this way.

For what i know, Masteries level in gliding will be required in raid to jump platforms.

And also before HoT, Agony cannot be ignored by skills.

I recall Anet did say its not “Required” to have ascended but it will help tho Pug groups will probably make it an requirement no doubt ^^.

We don’t really know what Anet considers “Hard” anyway for example “Liadri in pavilion was nightmare to many but easy to some”

If you plan to run with Friends/Guild i don’t see any issues with not having ascended gear, tho as i said Pug groups will most likely be different just like in all contents ^^

Ashen.2907:

Thobek.1730:

You do realise you can buy them of the Trading Post, or simply craft the items yourself.

Glad I could help.

My apologies.

I did not realize that ascended weapons and armor were no longer account bound. Do you by any chance remember when this change was implemented ?

Thank you for your assistance.

Edit: Apparently ascended weapons and armor are still account bound and cannot be traded on the TP. I shall assume that you are merely mistaken rather than engaging in dishonesty via the spread of misinformation. Perhaps you are merely new to the game or don’t understand what you are reading when looking at item descriptions, wiki entries, or forum posts.

The materials, on the other hand, can.
If you have been hunting for ascended for 3 years, just from drops, you should have enough gold now to buy your way to 500 crafting, buy the materials and craft the gear.

Not to mention that ascended gear is a (not so) rare drop from PvP and World bosses like tequatl and the Wurm. With the recent ability to restat those things, its not even that hard to find a few pieces… Either you’re REALLY, really unlucky, i don’t know how its possible that you only got 3 ascended pieces of gear from regular gameplay in 3 years. I got way more than that in the last 6 months (twice that ammount, not even counting fractal drops, and i play 2-3 hours a day usually, on weekedays, more on weekends, not really a no-life grind).

Don’t get me wrong, there’s a HUGE issue with Ascended gear, which will also bleed into the guild halls. Cloth is just too kitten expensive because of how ascended armor crafting was made.

If anet changed ascended weapons so that you could change their stats in the mf, won’t surprise me if they make the same change for armor. That seems like a logical change and supports anet’s statement that it does not force you to grind gear.

Furthermore, if anet follows the path of every mmo, EVER, raids will start out extremely hard and then get incrementally nerfed as time goes by. This allows the hardcore player to enjoy the content at its most challenging setting at launch while still allowing the casual, gear-challenged player experience it at his/her own pace.

ReaverKane.7598:

Don’t get me wrong, there’s a HUGE issue with Ascended gear, which will also bleed into the guild halls. Cloth is just too kitten expensive because of how ascended armor crafting was made.

Sure would be nice if ascended insignias could be crafted from cloth OR leather, don’t you think? /wink@anet

Anyone that is comparing the so-called “grind” required for ascended gear in GW2 has not truly played games like Tera or Archeage, at a minimum (certainly there are a million others) where the grind is REAL. Where you can’t do diddly and are one shot easily without good gear.

Stop grasping at threads and searching for every reason to fuss and whine like a baby without his binky.

GW2 is fun. There are a million aspects to the game in which to either earn or craft ascended or luck into drops. I played wvw since launch, took a 6 month hiatus, came back and have played pve almost exclusively and with only a recent exception, worked full time and had at most 2-3 hours a night to get this gear. The drops and the gold is out there to make ascended within reach. Do some work and figure out what things most appeal to you—and no, they may not be your favorite things, but they will accomplish your goal—and do these things until you get the gear you need.

I’m SO OVER the every child gets a trophy mentality, the everything should be for everyone INSTANTLY mentality. Please. Just stop.

For me, Anet, you are aiming at exactly the right goal. I LOVE that there will be content that requires a little work to be able to try. Yeah, people are going to work out the mechanics and we’ll all be dancing around those raid bosses in just our panties eventually, but the idea that Anet has a significant challenge-focused venue aimed at people who have put some effort into the game makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

So, please, please, Anet, do not cave to this pressure.

tl;dr: Too many whiners too often ruin the fun/joy of accomplishment for everyone.

Welp, just thought of a good way to fix the system. If the raid is possible with Exotic armor, then the answer to this just became obvious…we get tokens for completing the raid, 5 runs gives you enough tokens to trade for a single piece of ascended equipment of your choice. I can deal with that, since it means if you can’t craft the stuff and if you can’t find it, you have to do the hardest content 5 times per piece if you wish to get ascended.

I thought when they said, “Difficult Group Content” they meant gated for player skill not gated for entry. I get that ascended isn’t required, but when are they gonna take off their rose colored glasses and realize the community is going to gate this just like the community gates every other form of instanced, group-based content they’ve had in this game?

If you weren’t already doing high level fractals (and thus making ascended), then raids are not for you.

Azure.8670:

glaphen.5230:

Azure.8670:

im sorry ascended gear drops in many different places. its been out for years. If you dont have a set of ascended gear you have less than 500 hours of play time and arent ready for raids anyway. if you have more than 500 hours and dont have 1-5 sets of ascended armor stop sitting in lions arch mulling around map chat. I have a f2p in my guild thats already working on ascended gear and he just hit level 80.

Haha 500 hours needed for GW2s easy PvE content.

the average person playing since launch has between 3000-6000 hours. 500 hours would mean youve played roughly 6 months to a year. haha?

I’m saying that you are kittened if you think any content in this takes 500 hours of practice to play besides top ranked PvP possibly.

Vayne.8563:

glaphen.5230:

Yeah sorry I’m totally going to waste my time to get their exact statement after 3 years and not playing for a year. How was the system not working out exactly? There was no one complaining about not having stronger gear to grind but tons complaining when this crap was released. Why aren’t people complaining for higher tier, come on ANet let’s see raids give higher stat gear than ascended. Also are you ignoring fractals? You need to grind ascended to do fractals so they completely ignored their promises.

There was no one complaining about not getting stronger gear? You weren’t paying attention.

A couple of months after launch, people were leaving this game in droves. Now not all of them said that Anet needed to put vertical progression in, but some of them sure did. What was being said, however, and said often, was that people had nothing to do at 80.

Since a game company can only design new content so fast, and since everyone got exotic items quicker than Anet thought they would, Anet made the only decision it could make. Introduce something that would take longer while new content/a new direction was explored.

I’m sure Anet wasn’t at at happy that people found nothing to do and left. I’m pretty sure they really believed at launch that people would just accept that farming for skins was end game, and some of us did…but many people did not.

I’m sure when you’ve invested millions in the creation of a program, you wouldn’t ever change anything if your initial expectations weren’t working. Fortunately, Anet is a professional game developer and did what they thought they had to.

I don’t like the ascended gear on a personal level, but I know people personally who came back to the game to craft it.

Surely it was because of no gear to grind even though they only added accessories at that point and they already made promises of the opposite so they were getting what they paid for? But I guess it makes sense to kitten off people who bought it for what it was for the people who would leave after a week with nothing left to grind till 2 years later when they grind money.

Azure.8670:

im sorry ascended gear drops in many different places. its been out for years. If you dont have a set of ascended gear you have less than 500 hours of play time and arent ready for raids anyway. if you have more than 500 hours and dont have 1-5 sets of ascended armor stop sitting in lions arch mulling around map chat. I have a f2p in my guild thats already working on ascended gear and he just hit level 80.

Over 3800 hours across 2 accounts, and that is with not having hardly played since NPE.

I have Ascended trinkets, sure.

I struggle to do Fractals. When you work shifts like 1000-2030, or 1235-0030, you have little free time or energy to grind fractals. I could probably do 1 or 2 a week, if I was lucky enough to find a group from my guild online, but I have a life outside games.

If you don´t have time to do fractals, how will you do raids? Stay with energy aka commitment instead of time, your argument is much better then.^^

I did say that I could find time to do 1-2 fractals per week. I would have time for a raid or two per week.

Nice attempt, but BZZZZT. Wrong answer.

Hm, really? A fractal is likely shorter than a raid. And you said you could “probably” have time, so my energy aka commitment point still stands.

So still the right answer.

I don’t work 7 days a week. If I set time aside, I could make a raid. But I don’t get enough time or a good enough schedule to regularly run 100+ fractal runs to get a half decent set of Ascended. You have no idea how frikkin annoying my work schedule is. So still, the wrong answer :p

Enough time to close a raid or not, I think it’s better to have choice and decide on the spot if he wants to keep logged a few additional hours a week , instead of being forced to skip raids because of no required/sufficient/peoplewillkickhimfromparty ascended or masteries…and being forced to waste that hours or much more on grinding mats/gold to be properly geared for months.

And again, you’ll answer that casuals shouldn’t desire to do raids because they don’t “deserve” it…he/me/anybody else will say that they want to because at the beginning they expected so…up to a treadmill of arguments.

well, the issue is still here, because gw2 tried to make very different audiences play the same stuff (well, it was just apparently: as in fact they tried to split them in pro-raiders-fractals and casuals-unskilled zerg and farm open world events. exactly what i don’t like), but in fact they have totally opposite desires.
Well, it CAN’T work. you cannot sell a game as one" for everybody" “different than other mmos as it doesn’t drain your time”, then start to lock FOTM with AR, raids with masteries and ascend…and legendaries with raids and ..and expect nobody to leave the game/whine.
I’m the "casual/unskilled extremist ", that one of “don’t want to wait a second to enter endgame, at all”…except the necessary time to learn how to do it (and then being kicked in the teeth by champion mobs, but it is alright, i wouldn’t whine about my missing skill. what I hate is numbers, stats, determinism, being bound to lose because i’ve not grinded enough. i just want to play, try, explore. not grind ..and then, but only then, lose because of my lack of experience as a player.)..not “working” towards it" .

There is no solution, except than choose one of the two “extremes” and follow it.
they knew it, of course they had to do a choice…and they did it. they considered the old population they sold the game to at the beginning…as expendable.
In fact I won’t buy HoT, as they expceted to happen but tried to sell the espansion the same. nice try..
But if you look at the expansion, to me it’s evident that even thinking of create a raid, the true core of pro-gaming tradition, it’s a new manifesto and underlines very well what audience they want to satisfy.

I understand, it’s how things go. people change. games change. i’m sure that many will enjoy it…but not me.
good luck and have fun!

But how will you do a raid if you don´t have ascended? And how do you practice raiding when you have only such a limited amount of time? With that argument, raids are useless for you anyway as you surely won´t succeeed raiding on the first attempt, and probably not on the second or tenth attempt, so we´re back at the commitment to work out the armor problem to join a raid that you have limited time for. Therefore I suggested that you should stick with the time problem, it is so much more reliable than the other one.

But hey, if you just don´t want to grind ascended armor, I understand that. Why not just buy the materials and bite in the sore apple to level one crafter for your prefered armor, built it and get over with it? If you´re a shift worker, you probably can afford the cash to do that, because you can either put money on the table or grind the materials needed if you think you need it to succeed your desired content. I feel forced to do raids for other reasons, so we´re both screwed in a certain way by the same problem but from a different approach.

Torolan.5816:

The funny thing is, OP, that you and your supporters show exactly the type of entitlement raiders are notorious for.

To quote the band Queen here:
“I want it all, I want it now!”

You want the shot of glory, instantly, now, pure. You are on the other hand unwilling to suffer through the pain a glory junky has: work, equipment check, work, practice, work. Do you think people that jump from sky scrappers, climb the K7 or do pearl diving without air tanks do that with their old equipment if new one is available? Of course you can continue to attempt to reach the deep sea with your trusty snorkle, but to give you a spoiler, it won´t work.

And speaking of fairness:
I find it to be gloriously fair that if I am forced to do raids if I want the shinies, you on the other hands are forced to make the grind to get an ascended armor if you don´t want to be shunned from your own brethen for being a lazy bum. Just because you don´t like it does not mean that there should be ways around it. That sentence sounds familiar to you? It´s the here often used argument to defend content exclusivity, just in the reverse direction.

I seriously think you’re missing the entire argument. Easier does not mean easy. More obtainable does not mean handed on a silver platter for free by a vendor in lions arch. all that it does do is help players get on the same level so that there isn’t some massive rift between those who have ascended and those who have exotics.

This rift is ALREADY causing toxic behaviour. Arguments like “if you don’t have a full set of ascended by now, you’re clearly not playing the game” and “if you don’t have ascended gear, then you shouldn’t be raiding” etc.

This toxic behaviour will drive away people. This behaviour will prevent people from even wanting to try content like raids because of the toxic environment it’ll create, as has ALREADY been shown on these forums. Do you think i’d want to raid with people like that?

“Get into a raiding guild” well not with that friggin attitude i wont. “You don’t NEED ascended gear for raids”, well apparently there are many people saying that you do need it, and those people will probably exclude more casual players.

This rift cause by ascended gear needs to go. and thus ascended gear needs to be more easily obtainable (again not a merchant in lions arch handing items out for free, just not the fractals grind and material grinding it currently is). doing this will make for a healthier game. have unique skins that are harder to obtain and need the current ascended armour marathon trek to get those unique skins. Having this gear rift makes the games playerbase hostile towards more casual players.

And now having a full set of legendaries will do the exact same to an even higher degree unless it’s made easier to obtain OR obtainable outside of raids and fractals for the armour and back pieces.

legendaries will almost CERTAINLY be a requirement after a few months, when all the hard core players have full sets of legendaries. they will actively block people from raiding because they don’t have legendaries.

So tell me again how this is entitlement to not want to be discriminated against and be actively removed from content because a single armour pieces is orange instead of pink?

Dungeons are designed to be done by 5 people, however most can be done by one or two if they know the mechanics and their professions. Even if Raids were designed to be done with Ascended, it seems likely that they will also be doable with exotics.

So how about if we wait to find out if Raids actually are gear-gated before discussing whether ANet should adjust other mechanics.

It is indeed not entitlement that people don´t want to be discriminated. But take a look around here and you will see that a considerable number of raid supporters almost promote that not everyone will be able do the raids and that they are the chosen 2% with content just for them and pugs should step up or shut up. If you want to fight against discrimination of that kind, I am with you. In GW2, there are already people discriminating others everywhere. Wrong type of armor, unskilled, slow, these are all pariah fringe groups if they don´t create their own groups. You can´t change being clumsy or disabled, but nobody is interested in that kind of players from the start in this kind of duscussion, so discrimination starts at a much deeper level than gear checks already.

If I find someone that has a time problem and wants to avoid grinding for his armor, I just can´t think of a better word than entitlement at first. GuzziHero is neither disabled or lacks skills to make his armor, he just does not want to invest time into it bt still wants the armor. For me on the other hand, making a raid is a grind until I have legendary armor, then I can leave it behind until the next shinie appears. Anet is offering me no alternative to raiding to obtain legendary armor, so I have to deal with it or forget it. And anyone who has the same problem as OP could probably also look at it this way for the sake of not going nuts over it.^^