Its not like ascended is that hard to get… Without farming anything I had enough bloodstone, dragonite, and fragments for a full set after just playing the game. People need to calm down. If there was content that required legendary gear I would understand, but its just ascended. You can always mix/match ascended and exotic too.
your perspective is based on what you were able to do by accident after many months of playing.
Ascended is ok as a long term goal you arent directly aiming for, that is how its aquisition was designed, except for fractals.
But that has changed. Now people need it in the short term to participate with their friends/groups/new shiny content.
note that you could do fractals with zero ascended, and as you got better, and repeated content you got more of what you needed to progress.
point is, dont think of how you accidently got ascended over the last 8 months, think about what you would have to do if you needed a new set in order to play with your friends, with no built up resources.
New players, returning players, people who ignored ascended are all in that boat now.
Is it cool to sit out of your friends new exciting adventures for a month, because you would hold em back?
If you would be noticably holding them back its not going to be because of gear, do your friends really not trust you over a pug with Ascended? Also if you had played with your friends who did Fractals over the last 2 years you wouldn’t be in this situation. Or if you just played over the last 3 years you would be reasonably comaprable to Ascended.
Stop making up problems that don’t exist.
do you really think everyone who they want to play this game has already been playing the game for years?
part of the reason they release and expansion is to get RETURNING PLAYERS and remarket to NEW PLAYERS and the player base specifically told many players DONT GET ASCENDED IF YOU DONT WANT TO DO FRACTALS.
you keep on myopically looking at everything from your own perspective as a guy who has been playing some what consistently for a long time, that is not everyone who they hope to market this to.
They want new players who like raids
they want old players to come back to try raids
they want people who havent tried stuff before to try it now
ascended aquisition is a large impediment to that.
And your assumption that people like to be the kitten guy in the difficult content is false. i have known many friends who quit doing something until they get the gear or level up, if they feel they are holding people back. You can tell them nah dont worry about it, but they dont feel comfortable being the gimpy guy.
lets make something clear, you will ALWAYS be more useful to your team in better gear.
Also, many of these guys arent just competing with pugs, they are competing with GUILDIES, there may be 20 other guys who want to do it, why should they put you in the group when you dont have the gear?
for real, start looking at things how they are, rather than perfect scenarios. Good design considers all the ways a system interacts with its users.
This is not about being for or against anet, this about objectively looking how the systems interact with each other and with players.
go tell your friend oh, you should have been playing the last 2 years when they are sitting out. Real ace move
You say I speak for myself but then choose to speak for Anet…
They made Raids for people that like Raids – they made endgame PvE not ‘just hit 80 stuff’ and they made it deliberately.
I was in a few Raid guilds in WoW, we were server 1st-3rd for 10man throughout Uld, ToC, ICC and all of Cata we NEVER asked a friend to sit out because of gear because we knew it was the skill of the player that mattered the most and we knew they would put the effort in to catch up (be that switching to an alt or coming back after a break). So don’t tell me about asking friends sit out… We had great success and did it with all our friends. You just don’t understand what Raids are or the people who like them – which is fine but don’t try and warp things based around YOUR insufficient experience and drive to Raid.
WotLK was easy-mode raiding when compared to TBC (pre-green stat dumbing down), and some Vanilla raids. I wouldn’t use WotLK as a supporting point for your argument since you didn’t really need to have strong gear unless you were doing 25-man hardcore runs. I, myself, took part in the WoW Raiding environment from Vanilla to Cata if you need credentials on my WoW Raid experience. Hardcore raiding doesn’t seem fun anymore since it was a full time job back then. >.>
Only WoW expansion that really required the “Hey Friend you need to sit out due to your gear not being good enough” was TBC. Guilds were helpful with the gearing process, but you couldn’t take anybody with “good” skills. They actually needed to have X stat or they’d be a detriment to the group. If I recall correctly, the Healers needed to have a minimum of +1200 healing (pre-stat dumbing down) in order to heal for a Karazhan group. If you didn’t have at a minimum +1200 healing (pre-stat dumbing down), didn’t matter how good you were as a player, your heals would not heal enough and the Tank and/or raid Members would die.
Gosh, Karazhan pre-nerf was a challenge. Melee Hate train galore with 360 degree cleave spam. After the Kara nerf and the introduction of the Tier 5 gear, Kara became super easy. Gear grind in TBC was about one to three months depending on how much time you devoted to grinding Heroic Dungeons (some were impossible till you acquired Tier 4 Gear, or certain group compositions…. Shattered Halls pre-nerf was a nightmare for a warrior), and Reputation for Epic items that may have been BiS at the time. I really missed how easy it was to educate players on whether they could handle which raid, based on just stats, not gear pieces.
Hopefully the Gear Score crowd goes away, since that was a disaster in WoW and was pointless anyway. The individual who thought it up had a good idea, but it was so easy to abuse and exploit. Players inflated their Gear Score by using PvP items and other non-beneficial (For example, a Hunter wearing Priest cloth that had higher item level) items in order to hit the targeted number Gear Score number.
As for GW2, I do feel that people have been over-reacting to the raids and everything else involved with HoT. Everyone should just take a nice deep breath and relax. We are all getting bent out of shape on speculation. Until HoT drops on the 23rd, then we can see how hard the raids really are, and if ascended gear becomes the staple requirement to enter the first wing.
On a side note, maybe A-net will avoid making different Tiers of Ascended gear, in order to avoid the gear treadmill for being able to enter each raid after the first one.
