This isn’t a thread about how each person personally rates the importance of the many different advantages of the things obtainable outside of wvw.
Instead it’s a basic design principles discussion thread, if someone mainly does pve, should they have gear advantages inside wvw, over someone who did wvw instead? Should alternate game modes to wvw, reward better advantages inside wvw?
E.g. if you do wvw you get exotic armour and weapons for wvw.
If you do pve you get ascended armour and weapons for wvw.
wvw can provide you half of your gear:
Trinkets -> ton of laurels (and tokens + ecto)
Backpiece -> mystic forge receipe with 250 bloodstone dust instead of fractal vial
if you’re lucky, you can have ascended on your level chest (but never count on it to get what you want)
so if you want to be fully equiped, go pve :‘( it’ll be month faster and easier
Laenan de Malkshur — Fort Ranik
Les Chats Du Desert [CDD] — High Tomcat
All Your Dolyaks Are Belong To [Us] — Co-Founder
Ascended trinkets make a far greater difference statwise then the armor. Mats can be bought on the TP, and gear will become available there as well, for a price, or you can ask a guildmember to craft it (assuming it doesn’t bind on crafting or on acquire).
I will not be surprised when they add acended gear to the Wvw armor and weapon smiths. Or other means / awards with which to obtain them, but given the relative difficulty in crafting them I don’t expect them to be cheap.
Wvw is an extension on PvE, that too was a design choice
You can strike it rich by finding a winning lottery ticket in the gutter. I wouldn’t hold out hope for it though.
“We recognize that the changes to [ele] will essentially remove it from play. In the future,
we may consider whether or not there is an incarnation of [ele] that would be viable
but balanced. For now, we do not expect it to see serious use.” – ANet
The slow roll out of ascended trinket crafting when they could make it level 500 already is a bummer. Anet is forcing the fractal grind still for their new content even though it’s been a year now almost. Anet knows that fractals will become a desolate wasteland when people can get ascended rings from crafting.
Try to gather dragonite while doing dungeons.
Try to gather dragonite while doing JPs.
Try to gather dragonite while exploring.
Try to gather dragonite while Champ training.
The slow roll out of ascended trinket crafting when they could make it level 500 already is a bummer. Anet is forcing the fractal grind still for their new content even though it’s been a year now almost. Anet knows that fractals will become a desolate wasteland when people can get ascended rings from crafting.
Hm?
I have two full sets of Ascended Rings, and I have only gotten one of those Rings from doing Fractals.
That means that THREE of them have been gotten without doing Fractals, as such, getting Rings without doing Fractals is clearly possible.
And even if you start claiming that you need Fractal materials in order to infuse them that have literally nothing at all to do with WvW, and it does make sense, seeing as you don’t need those special infusion slots until rather high levels, where it is quite likely that you are already quite close to have gathered all the mats needed.
Simple fact of the matter is you should be able to get the same gear doing whatever you want to do. Since you can’t, then clearly there’s room for improvement. Nothing should be unique to one game mode. Not armor. Not weapons. Not skins. Not finishers.
E.g. if you do wvw you get exotic armour and weapons for wvw.
If you do pve you get ascended armour and weapons for wvw.
The only ascended weapon I have is the one I got from a WvW rank chest.
So, if you plan to get the right ascended weapons and armour for you from wvw play, don’t forget there is some time constraints: afterall in several billion years our sun will fry the planet earth and you probably won’t be done yet
Lots of things to complain about with Ascended but they are attainable from WvW play just not nearly as fast. IMO making a system that is ridiculously tedious, incredibly expensive and is based almost solely on grinding is a horrible design which to me is the real problem. Ascended should have been a milestone for long time players and not feel like a punishment. The forced crafting and the absurdly convoluted process is highly annoying.
Ascended should have been purchased via laurel and some other earned token (badges, dungeon tokens, etc). Simple, attainable without grind and rewarding.
Sarcasm For Hire [SFH]
“Youre lips are movin and youre complaining about something thats wingeing.”
Lots of things to complain about with Ascended but they are attainable from WvW play just not nearly as fast. IMO making a system that is ridiculously tedious, incredibly expensive and is based almost solely on grinding is a horrible design which to me is the real problem. Ascended should have been a milestone for long time players and not feel like a punishment. The forced crafting and the absurdly convoluted process is highly annoying.
Ascended should have been purchased via laurel and some other earned token (badges, dungeon tokens, etc). Simple, attainable without grind and rewarding.
While I agree with the bulk of your post, getting all of the right ascended weapons and armour for yourself just isn’t realistically attainable by wvw play. The crafted ones should be tradeable, and there should also be a wvw badge scheme, and laurels should be les of a bottleneck grind for wvw customers.
It’s failed design. Playing wvw should be a viable and realistic route for having zero stat disadvantage in wvw.
While I agree with the bulk of your post, getting all of the right ascended weapons and armour for yourself just isn’t realistically attainable by wvw play. The crafted ones should be tradeable, and there should also be a wvw badge scheme, and laurels should be les of a bottleneck grind for wvw customers.
It’s failed design. Playing wvw should be a viable and realistic route for having zero stat disadvantage in wvw.
Dragonite is really the only thing that is significantly difficult to gather in WvW but it is still possible. Money to buy crafting up is also somewhat difficult since WvW players are generally at a cash disadvantage. Everything takes longer… a lot longer… but it is possible.
I would vote against buying ascended armor. Ascended items should be a reward for length of play not how much I can spend in the cash shop. They should have used something time gated and something only attainable from play. Laurels with karma, badges or tokens would be preferred. The process should also be dead simple. Get the stuff, talk to XYZ vendor and receive item.
Sarcasm For Hire [SFH]
“Youre lips are movin and youre complaining about something thats wingeing.”
The cash required to raise multiple crafting skills is completely insane compared to wvw earnings.
There are many other MMO’s I could go to (or back to), start over from scratch, and earn a full set of no disadvantage pvp armour, by doing pvp, months and years quicker than the massive grind in gw2.
Gw2 wvw is very very grindy compared to other mmo’s. Doing a set raid schedule every week is much much less time intensive than all the different cash, crafting, living story, daily etc grinds and you have wxp grind on top to ruin it even further.
This isn’t a thread about how each person personally rates the importance of the many different advantages of the things obtainable outside of wvw.
Instead it’s a basic design principles discussion thread, if someone mainly does pve, should they have gear advantages inside wvw, over someone who did wvw instead? Should alternate game modes to wvw, reward better advantages inside wvw?
E.g. if you do wvw you get exotic armour and weapons for wvw.
If you do pve you get ascended armour and weapons for wvw.
Gear/stat progression in pvp has always been problematic. At a certain point it will definitely kill pvp. On the other hand a lot of people who pvp still like to pve, so a bit of grind doesn’t seem to actually deter most people.
It’s a balance. Without some pve, the game would just be less interesting to most people. That’s not my personal preference, but I’m in the minority (I leveled most of my characters through crafting I hate pve).
The point where it’s bad is when you have the combination of a lot of grinding to get the best gear, and the difference is so large that gear starts to overcome skill. Every game that has done that, has killed open world pvp.
IMO Anet has done a pretty good job so far at balancing this for the largest majority of players. But progression has a way of creeping, so who knows what it will be like down the road.
Well after a year and a half of spending all my time for gaming in gw2 wvw, I have ascended items in 3 slots on a character I now fancy a change from. Anet have done awful job in balancing reward to effort in wvw compared to pve modes. The prospect of getting gear (and wxp until they ever get around to account wide wxp) is just totally demotivating.
Anet have made an awful mess of making wvw a viable way of not having gear penalties in wvw. Raising a new character to keep the game interesting is totally undermined by the colossal amounts of grind added to the game over the last year and a half.
Gw2 bears no resemblance to the endgame not being based on vertical power grinds promises that attracted many to invest themselves in gw2 in the first place.
