Guild Wars 2

I have played GW2 since its release and out of all the dungeons, world bosses, mystic toilet flushes and temple farming not a single precursor dropped. It wasn’t until I decided to take a chance and throw the last 4 exotics I had down the mystic toilet before I got Dusk. However, it is a huge gamble using the mystic toilet as the drop rate for precursors is next to nil.

The precursor drop rate should go up to a margin where at least people can feel like if they work hard towards a legendary they will be rewarded in the end. It’s not fair to the likes of players who have spent over two years (I know some) who have worked to find a legendary and had no such luck, the people I know who have done just that gave up on GW2 due to the fact they didn’t feel rewarded for their hard work. I used to have a guild filled with members and now none of them come on anymore because GW2 is not rewarding, everything is focused on the gem store and now even prices are being reduced where you cannot earn gold unless you spend months farming dungeons or have luck enough to earn a few precursors to sell them on the TP.

In my opinion GW2 is unrewarding and unfair to many players whether they be hard core or casual, the sad thing is that people will now come on here and brag about all the legendary weapons they have. Yes, there are a few accounts that manage to have such luck where they have more than 4 or 5 legendary weapons, but those accounts are few and far between and they will all come to the defense of Anet and their poor excuse of a drop rate.

1.Precursor Crafting
2.Precursor Crafting
3.Precursor Crafting
4.Precursor Crafting
5.Precursor Crafting
6.Precursor Crafting
7.Precursor Crafting
8.Precursor Crafting
9.Precursor Crafting
10.Precursor Crafting
^this

Since the whole fractal dungeon idea sounds great on paper, if you get left behind or unable to run them for various reasons – too low scale – too high scale etc etc….and don’t feel like sitting in LA for hours on end trying to get a group going. Basically, it is going to create a massive divide in players equipment level, and for people saying that ascended gear is only slightly better than exotics, believe me ~ it isn’t. I posted kitten of one of the weaker ascended items that someone linked – I’ve seen way better, even one that had a vendor value of 6g !!

Already noticed in LA, getting a group for fractals yesterday wasn’t that easy – I personally wanted to run a higher scale version, no one else did so I was left with two decisions, wait around for X amount of time hoping others showed up or run a lower level one and not level up my scale. Believe me, this dungeon will become hardcore paradise soon, its not going to be about getting tokens, it’ll be all about the scale.

Basically, like the title mentioned. To keep the playing field as balanced as possible, which was one of GW2 main emphasis and we all saw that with exotics and legendary items, however Ascended items can and will totally destroy any balance unless every player can get them and right now, we all know that probably isn’t going to happen unless something changes in the near future regarding these

If Fractal dungeon isn’t going to be playable for most casual/core players because of scale problems and thus, cannot get high enough level in order to get drops then other means needs to be available for players to achieve the same gear level so current balance in game remains.

Idea #1

New Dungeons/Dungeon NPC vendors that offer same level ascended items for tokens, the same way current dungeon gear is attained.

Idea #2

New zones that give ascended items for 100% map completion

In closing, I’ve personally witnessed many MMo’s suffer from poor gearing decisions and obvious knee-jerk reactions to fix them, such as WoW’s infamous Welfare Epics. Anet, if you want to keep this game more or less balanced – you have to rethink pandora’s box that is Fractal, you’ve opened it and now, you have to deal with the backlash it’s inevitably going to cause.

First, I’d like to state that I like the idea of Ascended Gear and the new dungeon as well. I enjoyed progressing from Masterwork to Rare to Exotic Gear at a reasonable pace (not very slow like other MMOs but not too quickly). And soon I’ll be progressing to full Ascended Gear as it starts to come out and I am fine with it taking some time to get as that is what will keep me and others still playing this game, some sort of progression (although I would prefer that no more higher gear tiers be added after this point, only new gear with the same stats). What I’m not okay with though is….

1. The only way to currently get Ascended Gear is through the Fractals dungeon. This restricts that game right there. Forcing people to play this dungeon just to get the gear that they want. Rare and exotic worked well as you could get it from crafting, loot, trading post, coin, WvW, and Karma. It gave people options and allowed everyone to play how they wanted to. I believe everyone would be fine with this gear if it was obtainable in the same number of ways that exotics are. That way people will achieve it just from playing how they wish, instead of being restricted to this one dungeon or dungeons in general if this continues into the future. Now, it is still early and all the Ascended Gear isn’t even out, so I have hope that it won’t take the road of dungeon only gear.

2. Fractals of the Mists is great, but it has too many difficulty tiers which completely ruins it. It divides people so much it is starting to get very bad in-game. It’s becoming hard to find a group for lower levels as everyone has been grinding away to get to higher tiers and there is no reason to play lower tiers. I’m a player who plays all content in moderation, so I can’t keep up with this and now I’m stuck at level 3 in this dungeon unable to find a group. I would say either let us play all difficulties without having to do the previous one, but greatly up the difficulty, or please restrict it to only about 5 difficulty tiers so it doesn’t take forever to catch up (or any other way that works). Just don’t keep the current way as it restricts and divides us players way too much.

Adding this dungeon and new gear tier to the game wasn’t necessary bad, but how it was added is bad. With the Ascended gear coming only from this dungeon and the dungeon having so many difficulty tiers with lower tiers being mostly useless, the game is becoming restricted to many players and will soon become unbalanced if Ascended Gear continues to only come from dungeons. Please take this into consideration AN, and to anyone who reads feel free to add in your thoughts as well.

When people express the wish that Guild Wars 2 was more like its predecessor, particularly in the context of “vertical gear progression”, a (frustratingly) recurring retort has been: “Guild Wars is not an MMO.”

It’s generally refuted—I’ve tackled it a few times myself—but it keeps coming up. So let’s counter the assertion in detail:

MMOs have fundamental defining criteria:
- Hosted, online
- Persistent world
- Large number of concurrent users (thousands or more)

Does Guild Wars meet all this criteria? Yes, it does. Admittedly, the title is, by design, weakest on the second point, but that attribute is still there, also by design.

Additionally, the website for the title actually describes the game as an MMO that avoids “some of the more tedious aspects” of the genre. Also from the website (emphasis mine):

“Like existing MMOs, Guild Wars is played entirely online in a secure hosted environment. Thousands of players inhabit the same virtual world. Players can meet new friends in gathering places like towns and outposts where they form parties and go questing with them.”

Please note that the aforementioned qualifying elements of an MMO are all mentioned in that quote. Please also note that if the game was not recognized as an MMO by those who designed it, language such as “like existing MMOs” wouldn’t have been incorporated into their product descriptions. Clearly, they were targeting an MMO audience.

Furthermore, the industry and culture that surround gaming have designated it as an MMO (and an MMORPG). Any basic web search will reveal this. Simply enter “Guild Wars” and “MMO” into your engine of choice. Dig further, and you’ll also find that game journalists have routinely referred to it as an MMO (and an MMORPG). Quotes from those journalists calling it such can actually be found on the title’s website.

And then there’s the point of who made the game, where they had come from, and why they set out on their own to begin with.

Now, you might retort, “but Guild Wars is called a CORPG!”

Yes. But who called it that? The industry? No. Players? No. Journalists? No. So where did that label come from?

Guild Wars was marketed as a Cooperative Online Roleplaying Game by the studio that produced it. This was a marketing strategy employed to distance and distinguish the title from many of the recurring conventions of the MMORPG subgrenre.

The subgrenre. Not from MMOs in general. MMOs and MMORPGs are not the same thing.

“CORPG” is not a separate genre, because one title does not a genre make. “CORPG” appears nowhere relevant outside of the title’s marketing language (do another web search). “CORPG”, in the larger context of gaming industry and culture, is meaningless.

But even if it were a recognized genre, it would be a counted as a subgenre of the MMO category.

Conclusion: Guild Wars is an MMO.

Thanks for reading.

Guild Wars 2 is a game where the player base is extemely important, no doubt about that. This means that making changes that upset a lots of players can have dramatic effects on this game’s future.

My suggestion for ANet is to send close-ended question surveys to the player base every one or two month, to get feedback on game progression and opinions on future development.

Consulting the base is an invaluable tool for many things, and especially useful for a game like GW2 that tried a jump into the void trying something different from the usual WoW clones. Possible question could be “What is your level of satisfaction with this game?”, “Did you appreciate the X change?”, “What aspects of the game should have priority right now?”, etcetera.
This is especially important right now, since it’s quite obvious that the Lost Shore patch made a large section of the player base very upset (204 pages of forum thread, right now). Is it really a misstep, or the vast majority of the player base actually like the ascended gear stuff? No way to know without a survey.

Genesis.5169:

Guild Wars 1 wasn’t an MMO it was a single player rpg with co-op options.

Guild wars is (not was, it’s still operating) an MMO:

- Online play, hosted.
- Persistent world.
- Thousands of concurrent players.

That’s an MMO. Those are the baseline qualities that define an MMO. Guild Wars possesses those qualties. Ergo, Guild Wars is an MMO. If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, etc. It also qualifies as an MMOG.

It can even be called an MMORPG, and has been categorized as such as the past. While it’s true that it was marketed as a “Competitive Online Role-Playing Game”, it still possesses the majority of the defining tropes and trappings of the MMORPG subgenre. Thus, it’s more of a divergent model than a whole different genre of game.

All of this is even acknowledged on the website (emphasis mine):

“Guild Wars has some similarities to existing MMORPGs, but it also has some key differences. Like existing MMOs, Guild Wars is played entirely online in a secure hosted environment. Thousands of players inhabit the same virtual world. Players can meet new friends in gathering places like towns and outposts where they form parties and go questing with them.”

So, face it. It’s an MMO.

But even if it were of some completely unrelated genre, subgenre, and model, that does not mean that its underlying design philosophy and approach is automatically inapplicable to Guild Wars 2. So the assertion that, “Guild Wars is not an MMO” is not only false or, at best, is splitting hairs, it’s substantively meaningless.

MMORPG is not a model. It is a genre. Furthermore, it’s a genre that suffers from the looming profile of one particular model. Despite the disproportionate market share that conventional model commands, it is not the only model, has not ever been the only model, and, hopefully, will not continue to be so grossly over-emphasized in the future.

There have actually been MMOPRGs that have much more in common with GW1 than with GW2. If the former is an entirely different entity, how is that even possible? Answer: it’s not. They all fall within the MMO genre.

Edit to add:
And also, MMO is pretty much all NCSoft does.

GW1 is an MMO, it just wasn’t a WoW-clone. Sorry, you’re wrong.

While you’re right that GW1 was not an MMO, your description of what it was is lacking. ArenaNet referred to Guild Wars 1 as a “cooperative online roleplaying game,” or CORPG. It was always meant for people to group up and play the game together, and until the introduction of heroes in Nightfall it was pretty difficult for a regular player to solo. Henchmen were never a very good option.

If anything, Guild Wars 2 is more solo oriented than GW1 was. I played every personal story quest solo.

The comparison between 1 and 2 is important not from a gameplay perspective, but from a design perspective. People are comparing them because the design philosophy that made GW1 work (no grind for high-level items that gave you a statistical advantage) was supposed to be present in GW2, and now it isn’t anymore.

We’re not going to rest on our laurels now. We started this company to innovate and bring players new experiences. Guild Wars 2 is the perfect game for Guild Wars players, but it’s not just the same game repeated again. We took this opportunity to question everything, and we have some exciting answers for you today.
The first thing you should know about Guild Wars 2 is that, this time around, there’s no question that it’s an MMORPG. It’s an enormous, persistent, living, social world, filled with a wide variety of combat and non-combat activities. There’s so much depth here that you’re never going to run out of new things to discover.
So if you love MMORPGs, you should check out Guild Wars 2. But if you hate traditional MMORPGs, then you should really check out Guild Wars 2. Because, like Guild Wars before it, GW2 doesn’t fall into the traps of traditional MMORPGs. It doesn’t suck your life away and force you onto a grinding treadmill; it doesn’t make you spend hours preparing to have fun rather than just having fun; and of course, it doesn’t have a monthly fee.

Need anything else to read?

What ArenaNet had with GW was a UNIQUE game, thats part of what made it so popular.

Now they have dumped that uniqueness and followed a traditional, used before, pretty standard MMO model, there’s nothing in GW2 that’s not been done before, ArenaNet have just looked around at the MMO games and taken bits from them.

And sadly produced a pretty standard game.(Not groundbreaking like it should have been)

Lexicaholic.4718:

This is a worthwhile discussion. Alternatives to power creep:

1. Aesthetic gear and mini-pets.

2. Non-essential consumables (instant res/+ Skill Point consumables that can you can grind for, if you must).

3. Wealth (have gems (as in the real money valued currency) drop in small amounts in high level dungeons).

4. Titles (worked for GW1).

5. Companions (NPCs like heroes in GW1 – they take up a party slot and you can only have one per character – but first you have to complete a ridiculous list of challenges to unlock them or pay ArenaNet).

6. Post 80 bonus rewards for doing lower level content – have lower level content provide level 80 characters with level 80 appropriate drops – this would really make the whole game the endgame. Probably the best option, really.

7. A Karka Mount. Travel Tyria in style, can’t be attacked or attack while on the mount (good for getting from point A to point B in a zone without skirmishing along the way). Costs 10000 Gems or you can grind out an excessive number of rare drops to combine at the Mystic Forge. Doesn’t affect actual combat effectiveness and gives players something to care about working towards. Best way to maximize profit on whales without introducing power creep.

1. If I were them, I would’ve added every max armor set from GW to the gem store as a set of skins.

2. Why the hell didn’t they bring consets back?

3. I actually really like this idea. Even if it’s just a gem per chest per EM path, that’ll still add up.

4. Yup.

5. Hm, honestly I’m not sure. The game isn’t built around a party anymore.

6. Well, drops do scale to your level, but you still get some stuff from the zone’s level.

7. Eh…personally, I don’t like it. Waypoints kinda defeat any desire for mounts.

This is a worthwhile discussion. Alternatives to power creep:

1. Aesthetic gear and mini-pets.

2. Non-essential consumables (instant res/+ Skill Point consumables that can you can grind for, if you must).

3. Wealth (have gems (as in the real money valued currency) drop in small amounts in high level dungeons).

4. Titles (worked for GW1).

5. Companions (NPCs like heroes in GW1 – they take up a party slot and you can only have one per character – but first you have to complete a ridiculous list of challenges to unlock them or pay ArenaNet).

6. Post 80 bonus rewards for doing lower level content – have lower level content provide level 80 characters with level 80 appropriate drops – this would really make the whole game the endgame. Probably the best option, really.

7. A Karka Mount. Travel Tyria in style, can’t be attacked or attack while on the mount (good for getting from point A to point B in a zone without skirmishing along the way). Costs 10000 Gems or you can grind out an excessive number of rare drops to combine at the Mystic Forge. Doesn’t affect actual combat effectiveness and gives players something to care about working towards. Best way to maximize profit on whales without introducing power creep.

Honestly, there are none. The reason GW2 had so much hype behind it is because it was going to be different, and change the genre for the better, forever. GW1 was the beginning, although obviously it played second fiddle to WoW for years. GW2 finally had the financing behind it that it needed to transition GW1 into being a direct competitor, and possibly dominating the genre itself. We all know how that turned out. Bad developers took over the franchise, money and big interests got more involved, and locusts became very vocal, all encouraging the ruination of the entire franchise is only three months time.

GW1 is basically it. It may go down as being the only MMO style game within the space of about twenty or thirty years that ever did it right, more or less. We may see some within the next ten years, especially now that GW2 has embarrassed itself to the entire industry, and shown everyone what to do and not to do. Unfortunately, I think some may take this as notice that it can’t be done, considering how big of a budget and how much support the game had to be the next coming. If GW2 can’t do it, after all, who can? Probably no one.

I’ve always hated MMOs. The only one I’ve ever enjoyed for more than a couple of months is GW1. That will probably stay true, for the rest of my life. Honestly the closest games I can think of are all single player games, as those don’t need anywhere near the budget, and as such, aren’t so obsessed with money.

DegoLocc.5976:

LOL, some of you are so dramatical.

What do you want? To hit 80 and have nothing to do? You want to eat the carrot on the stick as soon as you roll your toon?! People like to feel like their character continues to grow past level cap, it’s called end game.

If you don’t like progression and time sink, MMO’s are clearly not for you.

I find responses like this very single minded. I would personally blame WoW for most of this as its the game that has set the precedent for 13+ million players. It may not be the first, but it had the largest impact.

There was a MMO game called DAOC that had an endgame that was just pvp. It did not have gear progression or better items to get. All it had was realm vs realm pvp for endgame. At the time it was one of the most popular mmo games available. I still remember going out to the RvR battles and seeing hundreds of players on the fields, it was quite amazing.

The point I am getting at is that you cannot say MMO games are not for people.

All you can really say is “gear progression MMO games are not for you.”

There is actually other ways to make MMO games than having endless gear progression as the ‘end game.’ That style of play was made so popular by WoW and its 13+ million subscribers.

However, we have also seen floods of these gear progression type of MMO games released since then with the vast majority of them failing in less than 6 months. So obviously any attempt to say that gear progression is the best method for a successful mmo game would be seen with a certain level of doubt.

Merthax.5172:

DegoLocc.5976:

LOL, some of you are so dramatical.

What do you want? To hit 80 and have nothing to do? You want to eat the carrot on the stick as soon as you roll your toon?! People like to feel like their character continues to grow past level cap, it’s called end game.

If you don’t like progression and time sink, MMO’s are clearly not for you.

I’m not being “dramatical” (sic), I’m asking for suggestions on new games that would fit my tastes better. I expected Guild Wars 2 to fit this paradigm since it was sold as a successor to Guild Wars. They said that they were defying the standard MMO formula.

What I don’t understand is WHY GW2 went this path. With no subscription, the incentive of the developer to include grind is gone.

I like the ability to reach a maximum statistic power, and then meet harder and harder challenges…not through increased statistic power, but by smarter builds and more skillful gameplay.

Grind has the following negatives:
-A wider range of character power means a narrower range of content that is applicable to your character. You are pushed down a linear path instead of having a wide world open to you.
-Discourages experimenting with different builds that will require different gear
-Discourages rolling alts to play different professions. You are effectively locked into developing one character, unless you have huge amounts of free time.
-Makes it difficult to get friends to join you, since it will take a long time for them to attain the same level of power that you have
-Punishes you for taking a break from the game, because you will fall behind
-Feels more like work than actual fun.

Being the heartbroken GW1 player that I am, I feel like a stalker, stalking a old girlfriend (doesn’t feel good). What I mean by that is that I keep coming to these forums, hoping for some official statement that announces that the game is now more like Guild Wars, and less like any other MMO out there.

I keep being disappointed though. It’s clear to me that I’m not the intended audience for GW2, and its that fact that makes me heartbroken.

But I digress.
A game that reminds of the old Guild Wars? Hmm, tough, cause GW1 was pretty unique. I’ve heard that The Secret World has a deep build system similar to GW1, but I haven’t tried it myself. I know there is a 5 day trial though (or something). I’m considering trying it though, but I’d rather not get sucked into something that has a monthly sub.

So without going into the collectible card game genre, I can’t really make any recommendations.

DegoLocc.5976:

LOL, some of you are so dramatical.

What do you want? To hit 80 and have nothing to do? You want to eat the carrot on the stick as soon as you roll your toon?! People like to feel like their character continues to grow past level cap, it’s called end game.

If you don’t like progression and time sink, MMO’s are clearly not for you.

I’m not being “dramatical” (sic), I’m asking for suggestions on new games that would fit my tastes better. I expected Guild Wars 2 to fit this paradigm since it was sold as a successor to Guild Wars. They said that they were defying the standard MMO formula.

What I don’t understand is WHY GW2 went this path. With no subscription, the incentive of the developer to include grind is gone.

I like the ability to reach a maximum statistic power, and then meet harder and harder challenges…not through increased statistic power, but by smarter builds and more skillful gameplay.

Grind has the following negatives:
-A wider range of character power means a narrower range of content that is applicable to your character. You are pushed down a linear path instead of having a wide world open to you.
-Discourages experimenting with different builds that will require different gear
-Discourages rolling alts to play different professions. You are effectively locked into developing one character, unless you have huge amounts of free time.
-Makes it difficult to get friends to join you, since it will take a long time for them to attain the same level of power that you have
-Punishes you for taking a break from the game, because you will fall behind
-Feels more like work than actual fun.

DegoLocc.5976:

LOL, some of you are so dramatical.
…
If you don’t like progression and time sink, MMO’s are clearly not for you.

Nice observation Sherlock… Did you also consider the fact that many of us came (with reservations) to GW2 because “someone” promised that this would not be a “traditional” MMORPG in the sense that getting to max would not require grind, the rarest items would be unique in apperence, not stats and that the game would not have a treadmill?

Actually I wonder how you landed here? Oh, I also wonder why anyone calls a gear treadmill “progression”? (To me the concept is an epitome of de-evolution, not progress)

Halandir.3609:

DegoLocc.5976:

LOL, some of you are so dramatical.
…
If you don’t like progression and time sink, MMO’s are clearly not for you.

Nice observation Sherlock… Did you also consider the fact that many of us came (with reservations) to GW2 because “someone” promised that this would not be a “traditional” MMORPG in the sense that getting to max would not require grind, the rarest items would be unique in apperence, not stats and that the game would not have a treadmill?

Actually I wonder how you landed here? Oh, I also wonder why anyone calls a gear treadmill “progression”? (To me the concept is an epitome of de-evolution, not progress)

Couldn’t have said it better.

This topic is to suggest, ANet, that you not delete posts of protest that are politely worded from threads such as the extremely popular Ascension gear threads.

I realize this is your backyard, and that I agreed to give up all of my rights to free speech and self-expression, but I am sincerely concerned that you are announcing gearchecked dungeons three months after GW2 release.

I love this game. Really, really love it. I’d been anticipating it for years. I would like to keep loving it. A major reason why I’m with you and GW2, Anet, is that I was tired of gearscore and gear grind in WoW. I feel this type of gaming brings out the worst in people. The upgrade focus leads to all kinds of elitism, greed, poor sportsmanship, and was directly responsible for a dramatic shift in the WoW community once it became established there.

I would hate to see this happen to GW2. Oh wait, it’s already happening.

I posted about this in the merged Ascension gear thread, and my post was deleted within minutes.

I would urge you at this point to allow protest posts to remain, if they otherwise conform to the forum terms of service. Believe me: you don’t want to get a reputation as a company that deletes posts arbitrarily and censors it users.

You’ve worked really hard to build this community, and it shows. The cries of protest are because people are afraid to lose what ANet and the player community have worked so hard to develop.

If you go down this road, we will all lose.

Gearscore. Locked dungeons. Gear tiers. PvP. Deleted posts. Think about where this going. It will go there very, very fast if you don’t stop it, and in a very short time, all the plans you have laid for the future of GW2 will mean precisely nothing.

We’re not complaining because we don’t like you. We’re complaining because we care about the game, the community, and ANet.

Deleted posts are not damage control. They are the opposite of that. Damage control would be revealing a coherent plan for how introducing these things will somehow NOT imbalance the game and upset the community.

We’re all ears, ANet. We know you are capable of doing the right thing. Let us know you’re listening. Don’t try to make the backlash appear weaker than it is.

“I really wish there were more tiers of equipment power.”

“Eventually, you’ll be able to kit yourself out with a full set of Ascended gear and high end Infusions to help give you the edge in end game content.”

This quote from the ascended gear announcement has disappointed me.

I haven’t played Guild Wars 1, but I understand grinding is minimal because all gear has the same stats at max level. I heard ArenaNet planned to continue this model in GW2, which is what originally attracted me to the game. In fact it made me pretty excited. I was really looking forward to relaxing and having fun, rather than having to grind just so I could enjoy all of the content.

Having to grind for gear that gives an “edge” of any kind is really the opposite of what I hoped GW2 would be. This is the least creative way to challenge players and create a sense of advancement. I really hope ArenaNet decides not to continue down this path.

Oh, but you don’t have to be 26% more powerful!

TLDR Ascended gear is 26% more powerful than the same-slot exotic. Proof: see below.

Disclaimer

First off, this post is merely to clarify the matter with some math. Some people are saying that ascended gear is only slightly more powerful than exotic gear, including Miss Murdock herself. This is simply not true. The number people are quoting is an 8% increase in power. This is also not true. Ascended gear is 26% more powerful than exotics, as the math below shows.

I will not editorialize, or add my opinions on the matter of Ascended gear. I just feel, very strongly, that people need to be aware of the facts, be on the same page so to speak, in order to cogently discuss any issue. I made a similar post to this one on the main thread discussing Ascended gear, but it obviously got drowned down. People need to know this. So I ask: moderators, please don’t pull this post into the main thread, it’ll only get lost. And forum-goers/readers, please don’t discuss the virtues/downsides of Ascended gear. Let’s keep this thread purely informational. That said, if you find an error in my math, feel free to point it out.

Math

From the blog,

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/linsey-murdock-unveils-new-high-end-ascended-gear/

post we can see that increase, per stat is roughly 8%. The Exotic ring has a total of 63 power, and the Ascended has 68, which is a 7.9% increase (See note). This is where the "8% more powerful* figure floating around gets taken from. However, this is misleading, because that is the increase in one stat. Notice that both rings have three stats. Precision also got an 8% bump, and magic find gets an (10 – 7) / 7 = 42% increase. Yes, that is 42%.

Now, in Guild Wars 2, each stat increases your damage (survivability, etc), linearly. That is, an increase in 8% to your power stat will increase your damage by 8%. When you increase three stats, however, you don’t get a linear increase in damage, you get a cubic increase. To show why this is true, let’s imagine you go from an Exotic Berserker ring, to an Ascended Berserker ring. We don’t have the stats on the Berserker jewelry, but we can extrapolate. Let’s be conservative, though, and assume that the Berserker will increase each stat by 8% only (unlike the case of magic find above).

Now, from the wiki,

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Damage

we have this formula for damage:

Damage done = (weapon damage) * Power * (skill-specific coefficient) / (target’s Armor) (1)

From (1) we can calculate the statistical average damage of your hits taking into account precision and crit damage:

Average Damage done = (weapon damage) x Power x (skill-specific coefficient) x (1 + (crit chance) x ( 0.50 + (crit damage) ) / (target’s Armor) (2)

This looks complicated, but we can just assume that everything but power, crit damage, and crit chance remain constant, and get rid of all the constants, we basically get that (asymptotically) your average damage grows as the function

Average Damage done = proportional to ( power x crit chance x crit damage)

Now, multiply power, crit chance, and crit damage all by 1.08, when moving from exotic to Ascended:

Average Damage done with Ascended gear = proportional to ( power x 1.08 x crit chance x 1.08 x crit damage x 1.08)
= ( power x crit chance x crit damage) x 1.259

Ergo, going from full exotic berserker gear, to full Ascended berserker gear increases your damage contribution from items by, roughly, 26%. See note 2.

Now, I used berserker because it is the easiest to showcase, since you can use the simple damage formula above to show how the three stats multiply each other. However, this increase of 26% is (roughly) also true for any other piece of gear. If you mix defensive and offensive stats, or offensive and magic find, or what have you, these stats multiply together to increase your effectiveness.

Note: An important thing to add here, on edit, is that my calculations already include the stats offered by the jewel in the Exotic gear. So this claim floating around that this disparity is made up by runes/sigils/gem slots that the Ascended gear lack is a canard. What my calculations do not include however, because we don’t know them yet, are stat increases, if any, provided by filling the infusion slot. These “infusions” could potentially increase the power gap between exotic and ascended even further.

Note 2: Important to note that level 80s have roughly 900 points in each stat. Also, you get roughly 1400 stat points from your spec. And, finally, there are stacking buffs like Might which remain the same regardless of gear. So your total damage will not go up by 26%. Your damage contribution from items goes up by, roughly 26%. Hence, the title of my thread that ascended gear is 26% more powerful than exotic.

“There’s no grind in this game”

Whether its a grind or not compared to wow is like saying sea water is better than sewage water.

just because it is better doesn’t make it ‘good’.

The idea is to deliver a great multiplayer and single player RPG experience. Not to create a grindfest that is slightly less grindy.

It will still be a grindfest.

Yes salt water isn’t as bad as raw sewage, however you still die from drinking it. I would prefer a glass of clean water instead.