Guild Wars 2

Personally I like the fact that they have things like this happen and change the landscape of the world and really hope that this change is permanent. It actually feels as though there is a changing world.

However, I feel as though the tower was just kind of stuck there without much change to the surrounding areas. Namely the centaurs quaggan and humans not reacting in anyway or having any deeper dynamic events going on. Rather than the basic Thistle events I wish there were more story driven events revolving around the Toxic alliance in the region.

MrDmajor.7084:

I really only log-in and start playing heavily again when improvements to skills and things of that nature are introduced.

I missed a week or 2 of GW2 and missed a whole chunk of missions I thought were still available to do for Tequatl Rising.

This temporary content business is complete utter kitten and the fact that they have doubled down on the concept such a blatant disrespect to the player base. I don’t understand the decision making. I understand the need for temporary things to drive traffic but to make it so core to the game is foolish. I HATE IT.

Add Temporary Content to the list of “WTF Are You Doing ANET?” list.

Ok but haven’t the past few updates been all about adding permanent content, except halloween of course, I would hardly call that doubling down. And all the Teq is still there. Unless of course your mad that you missed a handful of achievement points and a backskin.

1. Ascended Gear – Specifically current means of acquisition
2. Rewards – Time vs. Effort and the adding of new cosmetic rewards without large grind
3. State of Conditions in PVE – 25 stack cap making condition builds inefficient in group content as well as against objects that are immune.

Bubi.7942:

Mesmer main here.

GS skill #5, Focus skill #4 EXTREMLY useful in this fight.

Also, I was the last man standing when we downed it:)

^This

I found GS to actually be suprisingly useful for this fight. When he would charge up his power attack you can use the ranged attack to pull in a far away holo then when he is close enough use the #5 to knock him into the boss then finish it off with your berzerker phantasm.

The fights were more or less easy once the mechanics were understood by your team. The ooze puzzle was a little tricky but I kinda feel it was intentional to put a tough puzzle up front to let you know you need to coordinate for this dungeon and not just go in zerging like a chicken with its head cut off.

But I do get what you mean when you say it might not be worth the current rewards that I dropped. However, I would much rather they buff the rewards rather than nerf what is actually a pretty fun dungeon.

Hey can you send me an invite? Would love to start doing some regular Taco slaying

I’m still kinda confused on the concept of leaving a game that you own permanently. It kinda seems irrational.

I get not playing or having a guild switch focuses to another mmo because your not having fun. But leaving a game implies never coming back, which quite frankly seems odd. Why not simply say your not going to play it until its fun for you again?

I mean if down the road they make the game such that it would be fun for you again would you consider coming back, or would you be so set in your ultimatum convictions that you wouldn’t even log back in to see if its true?

Dodge one worked fine for me. I was short on time though so I just let enemies get in melee range and dodge at the last minute. My friend on the other hand got it within 10 min of normal play so seems fine.

As for heal while sometimes it seemed like I had to go out of my way to get it, it was nice knowing that when I died or simply downed people would spring into action to help rather than just pass on by.

Whining/ personal attacks are fairly common place in an mmo forum. Not that that makes it good or acceptable but it is what it is.

Also this forum isn’t really that bad if you want to see a rough forum go to pretty much any other mmo forum or even better check out the LoL forums.

I personally Love the new dailies. They add a little variety and encourage going out and doing things I might not normally do (ex. underwater combat). While they are a little more out of the way than the normal dailies I enjoy the variety they bring.

Side not gotta say I am also loving all the QQing going on because of a simple change.

Ryan.6951:

Ok I’ll bite, please point out where everything needs to be pinky sworn and promised on hallmark cards to be common sense.

Keep narrowing down the list of acceptable answers until none are left to satisfy you then claim victory…. it’s a weak tactic for when you’ve already lost an argument but are too stubborn to give up.

How about this though:

“Finally, since combat is such a core part of the gameplay of any MMO, we’ve put a lot of emphasis into rethinking combat. So much of traditional MMO combat is rote and repetitive. You execute the same strategy over and over again, just augmented over time with better and better gear. After a while it starts to feel like you’re playing a spreadsheet.”

You can find that tidbit at http://www.arena.net/blog/guild-wars-2-design-manifesto

But I guess it doesn’t apply because they didn’t end every sentence with “we promise!!!”, right? Ad besides, grinding 9 rooms for gear tiers couldn’t possibly get “rote and repetitive”

The thing is…. all over the site are all of these quotes and articles and interviews and videos all explaining how they feel that level gear playing fields make the best games….. then this.

WE’re not making things up or misquoting arenanet on this issue.

They came out and said “we’re making an mmo with purely optional grind and no treadmill” and then they introduce the first steps of a treadmill less than 3 months after launch.

It shows that they don’t have faith in their own product or idea.

And again we both read into this different.

I’m not saying they never promised to introduce a gear grind or gear treadmill. They made that clear they were against gear treadmills and calling just adding new gear over and over expanding content. But the difference is I don’t see this as the start of a treadmill.

You see this as a the first step on a gear treadmill. While I see this closer to the introduction of green uniques to the original Guild Wars. A type of gear added to the game post launch that was originally very limited in its acquisition but was later sprinkled through out the later campaigns and served as cool gear to chase for those who wanted them.

Now before you go off saying that the Greens of GW weren’t a stat increase this is very true. However they were in essence “perfect” gear because they were req 9 and those found at lvl 20 were always max damage and whatever stats they came with were max power.

However since in GW2 there is no such thing as “imperfect” gear, the unique class would have to be special in its own way so they gave it a stat boost and added the infusion slot.

You may not agree with implementation of this gear and believe the stat boost shouldn’t exist and I can very much understand this. But can you at least humor the possibility that this isn’t the start of a bunch of new gear tiers but rather just an added tier that they felt was missing between Exotics and Legendaries and that they have no intention of adding any tiers above Ascended.

All they need to do is remove the whole Agony mechanic and I would Love it. I REALLY don’t see the point of having such an obvious and pointless gating mechanic in the dungeon.

Why not just make it a dungeon that gets harder the further in you go but you get better loot drops the further you go and just have it reset when you leave.

Snow.5269:

After this change, anything stated is subject to change. When a playerbase is specifically told “Here is our mission statement” and then it changes to the exact opposite how can the playerbase continue to trust?

Ok I’ll bite please quote the statement in the mission statement where they promised they would never add a tier of gear.

Ryan.6951:

“This is just the beginning. In November, we’re only adding the first level of Infusions and Ascended Rings and Back slots, so that leaves us a lot of room to build upon these levels of Item progression in future content.”

Honestly. To Jamais and JBleezz. That’s verbatim copied and pasted from Linsey’s blog post. First level. Not first pieces. First LEVEL. building upon these LEVELS, not these pieces.

Quit telling me she didn’t say that. She said it.

And to quote Chris verbatim:

“Our goal is not to create a gear treadmill. Our goal is to ensure we have a proper progression for players from exotic up to legendary without a massive jump in reward between the two. We will slowly add the remaining ascended gear items and legendary items in future updates to allow people time to acquire them as we add exciting new content that deserves exciting rewards. We will not be adding a new tier of gear every 3 months that we expect everyone to chase after and then get the next set and so on.”

So their goal is not to create a gear treadmill, so they’re going to create a slow gear treadmill instead and stretch it out over months. Wat?!

Massive jump in reward? What massive jump? Do legendary weapons come with hidden stats? No, there’s no reward jump. Cosmetics? Oh ok, a 200g foefire isn’t middleground enough between pearl and eternity? sigh.

And this is the heart of where I disagree with you.

You read that as Ascended gear is just the first level and the next levels are new tiers of more powerful gear. I read that as the new Back pieces and rings are the first level and that the next level isn’t more powerful gear but other pieces of Ascended gear including armor and weapons.

This is supported by the quote

“Our goal is not to create a gear treadmill. Our goal is to ensure we have a proper progression for players from exotic up to legendary without a massive jump in reward between the two. We will slowly add the remaining ascended gear items and legendary items in future updates to allow people time to acquire them as we add exciting new content that deserves exciting rewards. We will not be adding a new tier of gear every 3 months that we expect everyone to chase after and then get the next set and so on.”

you seem to read this as oh we won’t have a fast treadmill every three months it will be slow. I read this as a snarky comment on the people who have been extrapolating this into there is going to be a new tier every three months. So he is basically saying that no there is not going to be keep adding new tiers.

As for the FoeFire weapons being a middle ground I believe that was their original intent however for those like me who don’t particularly enjoy those skins we are left with no middle and instead face a massive grind for a legendary with no middle goals along the way.

Demented Sheep.1642:

Then they could have added more gear with different skins (since legendary had the same stats as exotic) that are easier then legendary but harder than exotic. If they want something for hardcore gamers to chase why does it even need to be gear? why not a HoM like GW1 had with trophies and titles? It gives you no advantage but shows you were good enough to get it.
By giving these items better stats than exotic they have gone back on everything they said about this post release.

As I have said before looks are subjective. If they did add Ascended gear as gear harder to get than exotics but easier than legendaries with the exact same stats as exotics but different skins you would run into a situation where many might not like the skin of the weapon or would prefer the skin of an exotic. In that case there would be no point in ever acquiring Ascended gear and they would simply skip to the legendary grind resulting in the same problem we already see.

So instead they opted for a small stat boost that would make them objectively valuable to all players and offer incentive to go after to help lessen the grind feeling of the legendarys because you have a median goal to work towards while working on your legendary.

Personally I would have actually preferred something like a HoM or some other achievement based solution since it would have avoided a lot of the concern and controversy caused by the Ascended gear.

Ryan.6951:

Go re-read linsey and chris’s blog post and forum post. At the end of the blog post linsey states explicitly that this is only the beginning. The first tier. Not the first pieces… the first tier…. and that as they release more content they will release more tierS.

Then go read chris’ forum post. Then tell people they’re just paranoid.

The thing is… even once is bad enough. Even once is against everything they said they were building this game around. This thread isn’t about power creep or gear treadmills being bad, this thread is about the fact that arenanet spent over 5 years carefully designing a game with horizontal scaling instead of vertical, then took it out at the knees less than 3 months after launch.

“We’re a community building company that just happens to do so with games” — why add gear tier separation between your community members then?

They absolutely did not say that they will be adding more tiers. What you seem to be referring to is the statement that they will be adding new Ascended item types into the game going forward. Which means that they plan on adding new armor and weapons of Ascended type since the November update only adds rings and back pieces.

“The new additions in November are just the start of our item progression initiative. We’re going to add tons of new high-level content to Guild Wars 2 in the future. As we introduce the new high-level content, we’ll also roll out complimentary Ascended and Legendary items (to say nothing of the other rewards you can earn by playing the content).”

The item progression initiative is talking about expanding Ascended gear and Legendaries not adding new tiers above Ascended down the line.

So please get me a quote where they said they will be adding new tiers.

Ryan.6951:

Ok so then lay it on us. What exactly is the reason this is needed? I’m honestly curious.

What is the reason that doing a complete 180 on their manifesto is now required?

The problem is that there is currently nothing to chase at max level but legendaries which is a HUGE grind. That grind is seriously off putting to a lot of players so rather than decrease the grind they added a tier between Exotic and Legendary to give people something to chase along the way to their legendary.

Haette.2701:

You almost had it, but riddle me this. Why is everyone now forced to work for a “partial legendary” just to keep up in stats? Nobody had to farm for forge exotics just to hit max stats.

What part of “time spent on ascended items is time NOT spent moving towards a legendary” makes the road any easier?

That’s a very good question.

While I am not going to pretend to know what the devs were thinking when they made this change it was probably as simple as incentive.

Due to exotics being easy to attain and legendaries being so hard they needed a partial legendary to give some goal for players on the road to a legendary.

Problem being that looks are so subjective. By adding a small boost to the Ascended they offer incentive for all players to go after them so that the gap between the top tier Ascended and legendaries isn’t as vast as the gap between exotics and legendaries is currently.

In truth while I can see the problem I am along with many uneasy about the solution. I do worry that it could lead to a WoWesque treadmill. Which is why this whole massive forum flaming of ANet has me having mixed feelings.

Happy that ANet will probably see this and be dissuaded from any thoughts of adding a treadmill and at the same time kinda off put by how so many seem to ignore the reason ANet is implementing this in the first place.

Blacksarevok.8104:

JBleezz.2697:

they made it clear dungeon running won’t be the only means of acquiring the gear and that they will be adding more ways to get it including WvW

They said “eventually”. Which could be months or years for all we know.

As for OP, I agree. I’m not a fan of the dungeons in this game, and making that the only way to currently get Ascended gear is crap.

they also said that this patch will only include rings and back pieces. The back pieces gotten by the mystic forge so potentially no dungeon running required. And I don’t even believe they said that the rings would be attainable in the dungeon so really we don’t know yet.

Ryan.6951:

Sure thing man.

Well there are already tons of costmetic bridges, so this “gap” is artificial. There is no gap. So they’re not filling a gap, they’re adding tiers of gear, the first of several with lots of room to grow.

Well it’ll be more effort than exotics and less than legendaries. How much time is ‘insane’ to keep up with the joneses? Fractal gear is not only required for high level fractal runs, but is also best in slot gear for all other pve and wvw content now.

They’ve made it completely clear that they WILL add more and more tiers as time goes on.

Good on ya

Anyways, yeah, no one cares about 1 tier of gear. People care about arenanet changing the game plan without warning. People care about creating strife between players in dungeon groups for not being geared enough to run Magg in under 10 minutes so you get booted. etc etc.

look I get where your coming from but I still can’t help but feel that a great deal of the frustration and anger at A-Net isn’t really that warranted. I can definitely see that if they did end up going back on their promise and decided to just add a new tier every so often and created a gear treadmill that people would have every right to be pissed off.

I also see how the introduction of this new armor can very easily seem like they might be headed down that road. But trying to look at it logically I can see a bit of the problem they are trying to solve.

Look yes there is a sort of cosmetic bridge between exotics and legendaries in the form of expensive exotics with in general cooler looks than the easy to obtain exotics. At the same time however there is an inherent problem with the cosmetic bridge so to speak. Everyone has different tastes. I personally don’t want any of the hard to get greatswords so I am left with nothing to go for except a legendary which is a huge grind, as it really should be.

But the purpose of the Ascended gear seems to be to serve as partial legendaries with incentive for everyone. Its a carrot to make the road to a legendary seem not as bad. Unlike the brick wall a lot of players are currently hitting after easily getting all of their exotics and seeing the insurmountable path to the legendaries.

Also where are you getting the first of several tiers? I read the blog and she was referring to adding new Ascended gear over time not adding new tiers.

they made it clear dungeon running won’t be the only means of acquiring the gear and that they will be adding more ways to get it including WvW

penatbater.4710:

See here is what i’m concerned about: " Our goal is to ensure we have a proper progression for players from exotic up to legendary without a massive jump in reward between the two."

When he said reward, I’m assuming skin since the only difference between exotic to legendary is the skin. But now, with legendaries being pushed to the highest-tier stat, it creates a disparity between legendaries and exotics. No longer can you call out that the best stat items and legendaries will have the same stat. Somehow, legendaries will be significantly better than the suppossed “top-tier” gear.

but wait yes they will the top tier gear is going to be Ascended so Legendaries will still have the same stats as the top tier.

Ok so I have been seeing posts on this for a while now and I have to ask.

How is this added tier to bridge the time acquisition gap between exotics and legendaries a gear grind or a treadmill?

its only a gear grind if it takes an insane amount of time to get and is required for content. From whats been shown Fractals will only require the gear to survive staying in a really long time not required to enter or even to see and experience the content inside.

And its only a treadmill if they continue to add tiers which they have made it clear they have no intention of doing. So why then is there such a fuss.

P.S. Before anyone tells me I don’t understand GW I was a GW player since launch and I hate gear grind but I don’t see this being a gear grind.

Naria.6240:

Don’t agree with this at all for many reasons.

1) They are releasing this weekend with PVE centric for Ascended.
2) It will negatively impact crafting
3) This WILL take away from WvW and this is a WvW centric game (at least I thought it was).
4) Even legendary one has to grind in PVE to get then add more of this?
5) two months after release Exotic are obsolete!
6) This will be TOA to DOAC if it continues.

Unfortunate the first release is PVE centric. I hope they hear and DONT release with this focus. FOCUS ON WvW come on Anet! Get a clue your wrecking a perfectly viable game folks come here to WvW not PVE!

you do know they said that they will be adding ways to get Ascended gear in WvW right?

no if anything they replace exotics as the top spot that isn’t an insane grind. Legendaries will be upgraded when the Ascended gear is introduced so they will still be at the top

I don’t know if they will directly make dungeon exotics into Ascended. Especially in this patch because they are only adding rings and back pieces for now. However I do understand the concern that the dungeons may become irrelevant with the introduction.

But what they could do is make Ascended armor recipies that require a gift from the dungeons bought from tokens. That way doing the dungeons will still have a point and won’t be a waste of time.

Nels the Cornwhisperer.8025:

JBleezz.2697:

I would say that it all depends on implementation. One of the major problems with the Ascended gear as we understand it is that it is earned in a very limited way namely grinding the new dungeon.

If they decided to add it purely to fill the gap between legendarys and exotics and didn’t add new tiers after it I don’t think it would really be a problem. The concern is that it sets a precedent for after the Ascended gear they will add another tier then another and so on.

What Anet should do is add a variety of methods to get Ascended gear outside of dungeons making them harder to attain then exotics but easier then legendarys then don’t add any more tiers.

The problem, Jbleezz, is that if it’s harder to attain than exotics, then you are forced to grind harder to get gear that is required to participate in new content. It’s not that there’s new gear. If they had made new gear with slightly better stats, it wouldn’t matter to anyone at all.

It’s the NEW stat, the one that we’ve been told straight from A-net will be required in order to play the new dungeons beyond a specific point. Instead of “Item Level” your ability to perform in new dungeons will be measured entirely by how much of the new stat you have.

Fair point. I didn’t really touch on the infusion part of it mainly because I am not sure how they plan on making that work. If indeed it is a sort of thing that you need X gear to have any chance in future dungeons and results in a gear grind then I do have to agree that would be a serious concern. However if it only affects this one dungeon then I could probably live with it since it wouldn’t be required for future content.

Honestly I would prefer they drop the whole infusion thing since it seems to only serve the purpose of forcing grind to see future content. And if they do go that route then I doubt I will take part in those dungeons simply because I don’t have the time or patients to keep up with a gear tredmill.

I have to agree it feels like there is tons of game content that is simply pointless at max level. If they were to add a sort of hardmode version to the game with incentives to go out and explore I think it would help the end game grind feeling.

I would say that it all depends on implementation. One of the major problems with the Ascended gear as we understand it is that it is earned in a very limited way namely grinding the new dungeon.

If they decided to add it purely to fill the gap between legendarys and exotics and didn’t add new tiers after it I don’t think it would really be a problem. The concern is that it sets a precedent for after the Ascended gear they will add another tier then another and so on.

What Anet should do is add a variety of methods to get Ascended gear outside of dungeons making them harder to attain then exotics but easier then legendarys then don’t add any more tiers.