Guild Wars 2

So, Ascended shards.

Problems with Season 5: 1) 1200 shards took no time to get. 2) A full set of armour required 1300 shards. 3) No incentive to repeat Byzantium, so PvE players had no reason to stay long term.

Season 6 changes attempted to solve some of that, but the numbers are overtuned, especially considering the crafting requirement.

Season 6:

1) 1200 shards for a full set of armour. Likely 1200 shard cap per season too, but we’ll see.

2) To get 1200 shards requires completing the reward track once for 300 shards, then Byzantium a further 18 times for 900 more shards. This requires 3240 additional pips, or optimistically, 300-324 wins. At a 50/50 win rate, that’s over 400 matches, easily. Potentially 500 matches or more. Attainable, but not for the faint of heart.

3) On top of that, we have a crafting requirement. #2 above alone would have been enough to justify no crafting requirement at all, because of the sheer effort (far more than raids or fractals).

IMO, it should have been only #2, or only #3. But, to be fair, I think a good balance would be 100 shards per chest, with 50 for the repeatable Byzantium. This brings the effort down to only 12 repeatable Byzantium chests, which is far less daunting, and much more attainable for fairly casual pvp, but not ultra casual where it can be done in a single night. Keep the crafting if this change occurs, as it’s a fairly good balancing point.

Thoughts?

This is ArenaNet’s balancing in a nutshell, unfortunately, in season 5 it was undoubtedly too easy to obtain these rewards so in season 6 they all but removed them. There’s now no reason to play sPvP for the ascended equipment. You would be far better playing in PvE (where you can get the crafting materials you need).

They just can’t seem to resist twiddling all the knobs available to them when adjusting something.

Yeah, I think increasing the shards per chest would be the best way to go.

In PvE playing the auction house and doing my T4 fractal dailies, I can make about 40-50 gold per hour.

To craft a full ascended set, it’s about 500-600 gold depending on stats. That’s 10-12.5 hours of playtime in PvE to make yourself a set of ascended armor from PvE.

What’s more, T4 fractals which take at most 1 hour to do all 3 (and quite frankly can easily be done in 30 minutes) have a good chance to drop an ascended armor chest.

Anet balancing is a joke. WvW/spvp has no reward whatsoever. God forbid pvp formats were remotely profitable.

I have to respectfully disagree with your last statement OP.
I don’t see how it is a fairly good balancing point to force PvP players in a self proclaimed “casual” mmo to not only spend the time gaining the required ascended shards at the annoying pace of a 50-50 win loss ratio but to also force them to invest in level 500 crafting and then go out of their way to craft tokens to obtain gear. It is not casual, and it is not fair to us,after previously having only been required the first currency(shards).

Brigantia.5746:

I have to respectfully disagree with your last statement OP.
I don’t see how it is a fairly good balancing point to force PvP players in a self proclaimed “casual” mmo to not only spend the time gaining the required ascended shards at the annoying pace of a 50-50 win loss ratio but to also force them to invest in level 500 crafting and then go out of their way to craft tokens to obtain gear. It is not casual, and it is not fair to us,after previously having only been required the first currency(shards).

I only bring it up because it’s probably too late to rescind the crafting requirement. ANet wants vendors to involve Crafting. Considering how heavy handed they were with this change, I don’t see the crafted token going away. Hence, increasing the shard count for the first completion of each chest to 100 shards. Or even 150. They can set how much PvP effort it takes to get the currency by changing a number.

It’s a good balancing point considering the current situation. Crafting never should have been added to PvP to begin with, I’d be completely fine with having to repeat Byzantium 18 times IF it didn’t involve crafting.

Which is the intention behind this: “IMO, it should have been only #2, or only #3.”

Keep in mind, in the process of completing Byzantium 12-18 times, you’re getting 26.5 gold per completion. That’s 300-500g in your pocket. Enough to buy out the stuff you need for the tokens (and enough gold to level crafting too).

Sure, it’s annoying that crafting is forced onto PvP players, but I don’t see ANet taking that back, while retaining the current effort needed to get shards.

So here is my two cents…

PvP players get boned because too many PvE’rs (like myself) came to PvP for the quick ascended set. HOWEVER, I stayed and do very little in PvE except to keep mapping my main as new maps drop but nothing more. I have come to like running around with others in WvW and enjoy PvP.

So while I see what ANET TRIED to do will reduce the PvP pool further as I can tell you I have no desire to run that many games quickly to get the shards. I have a crafted cloth set and a Heavy PvP set and a couple of drops yet to be opened. So I guess we’ll see what ANET does at the end of this season or how it rolls out.

I definitely picked an unfortunate time to return, reading/watching about Season 5 which I missed out on. Now shards are nerfed and it requires PVE aspects like 500 crafting and more costs. I will still PVP but I think there will be a lot less PVEers engaging pvp—which is probably why the incentive was added—thus leading to longer queues. Maybe a more middle ground can be met? Otherwise I can see why people are not happy if they have to play more and get less than they did before.