Guild Wars 2

Yes, only because people’s unfounded resistance towards better gear, which handicapped ANet into only having only one real option once ascended gear is out in 2014. I think a nice alteration between new gear and higher level cap would be much much preferable to having only one avenue of meaningful progression to explore .

Sometimes people simply don’t know what’s better for them in the long run, of which ANet fortunately seems to be aware.

Crystal Desert suggest more Abaddon lore. More Abaddon lore has a chance to give us more info about Arachnia.

Count me in.

Well, it’s not really problem, is it? Get a max stat weapon of the same tape, use a fine transmutation stone, done. So while it’s not a big deal, if they always stayed BiS it would push their value quite a bit. Get a precursor now and profit later?

Sad Swordfish.9743:

I don’t think Legendary is “end game” for most people. I gave up 5-10% into it, realizing that why it is like that? – is to bar most people from it. Most people must not have this. The whole thing becomes an oxymoron if more people are allowed to have it.

That is something a lot of people can’t understand. Legendaries and ascended gear isn’t casual friendly on purpose, it’s prestigious content designed for the grind-heads(no offense) and gear progression guys. Making these things available for the masses would destroy their prestige, and the reason for grind heads or gear freaks to keep working for them would disappear.

Casual endgame is named exotics and dungeon gear.

Remember back when we wondered why we were going to use normal banks instead of the awesome Xunlai service with their chests of holding, or why there was no mention of the Zhaishen Order in any of the PvP features, this might a good explanation. There’s also the problem with Cantha having become xenophobic and probably wouldn’t allow their citizens to interact or even offer services to non-humans, including the Xunlai guild and maybe even the Zhaishen Order. Although, the Zhaishen Order never really stood under the rule of the Canthan Empire.

Toxyn.9608:

Another thing worth considering is that the Mursaat employed Jade minions…just like what we see in the Solid Ocean Fractal.

The Jade Sea is a result of a gigantic release of energy when Shiro Tagachi(a human) was killed, which also petrified miles and miles of lush forest into a stony jungle.

The Mursaat had/have the power to manipulate this “Jade” like matter into creating sentient guardians for them, but also automatic magic-absorbing defense constructions and fortresses. From what we’ve seen in GW1, the matter they seem to be able to manipulate is very similar in shape and color to the spikes that usually protrude from the Bloodstones, which basically “bleed” magic. Add to that the fact that in the GW universe, the color purple and similar shades of magenta is almost exclusively used to visualize unchanneled, unrefined pure magic, suggests to me that Mursaat are able to create their constructs and fortresses out of thin air by condensing pure magical energy until it forms crystal like shape we’ve seen a lot of in GW1.

Astralporing.1957:

So, what they are going to do at the beginning of 2014, when all the ascended will be out and first group of people fully equipped in them will appear? Introduce another tier or level cap raise, to make all that year-long eq gathering effort a waste?

There’s also level cap increases, so even if ANet won’t announce new gear at the start of 2014, if they time it right, they could tide players over with level 90 ascended gear, or whatever the new level and stat cap will be. Just stopping the gear progression indefinitely is obviously not an option.

Anyway, the only instances where I’ve seen this referred to in game were when a human used the (for him)derogatory term “Charr lover”, and I think a dialogue where a human talked about thinking an Asura girl was coming on to him.

I guess interspecies relationships in Tyria are about as rare or common as interracial relationship are in our societies.

[Edited by Moderator: Quoting a removed post]

It would be interesting to climb the giant arcs from the inside which are spanning the entire nation or Orr.

Astralporing.1957:

They are in no hurry to make them any easier, and seem to think that one month per eq piece is the right amount of time wasted. And that is supposedly their method of correcting the situation after fractal fiasco. That doesn’t exactly fill me with optimism.

Well, it would kind of defeat the purpose of making a de facto end game gear tier easier to obtain before the next tier or superior set of gear is released. Casual play shouldn’t be able to net you ascended, it’s a goal you have to dedicate yourself to, and take away time you would have spent doing other things in game to work towards it.

The “but they said I can play how I want to” argument wouldn’t work here, because if you could make progress towards any item or title in game, and I mean any, with anything you do under the flag of eliminating grind, the game would loose its ability to guide the players and create a sense of purpose, the feeling of really going on a journey with intermediate goals that act as progress milestones once the players finished farming for a number of materials in a certain part of the world.
Gold already acts as this universal currency, but only for the common items, really. As soon as you want something a bit rarer, the prices become too unreasonable compared to just going out and farming the item yourself.
Ascended gear is a set of prestigious, exclusive items players can work for but don’t need to, and since the acquisition isn’t expected not required, the prices or time investment required to get them can be disproportionately high. Giving anyone the ability to easily get them equates to putting named exotic skins on a karma vendor.

Vorch.2985:

Who in their right mind would wield Shiro’s Daggers…on a ritualist, no less?

I only put them on for demonstrational purposes. They were the largest daggers I had on hand.

edit: Oh, and I forgot something. The thematic armor design made it really easy to mix different gear pieces and still look like the set you’re wearing belongs together.

I always loved the level of detail they put into combat animations. They even created unique and very beautiful casting animations for melee weapon wielding Ritualists.

Shanna.4762:

Can you imagine how lame it would be to finally get there and most of what you loved about it that was part of the lore and everything was almost completely wiped out

The only situation that would not disappoint me is if Cantha really had been wiped out by a cataclysm, with only the ruins of a former empire still standing(which I’d hope they could sneak past the asia-censorship). It’d sound a bit too samey to what happened with Ascalon and the Searing, but I would prefer it to a sanitized version of Cantha, or whatever it would be called. For all we know, the Empire might have torn itself apart from the inside until Mordramoth broke out of its Jade prison and wiped out the whole place.

Costume brawl and dueling are mechanically different, with dueling needing more complex rules than C-brawl currently offers.

What happens in costume brawl from a technical PoV is that you switch your allegiance from being on the same team with every other player in PvE to being in a team that can only be attacked by monsters and other members of their team. There’s no limit to how many different players in costume brawl can attack you, and I doubt there code to support that.

What you can do with costume brawling is unrestricted, unbalanced open world PvP, if you strip away the transformation and skillbar change. Open world dueling would need code to allow people to set a state in which they are both considered enemies to one another but not other players, even if they are in dueling mode themselves. Add to that wishes for dueling titles and some sort of progression, and things are growing a lot more complex. The simplest approach adding dueling would be to modify SPvP games to create an instance for two people to fight in. But ANet doesn’t want or just throw something out there without being able to build upon it later, they want to do it right.

There’s many factors to consider. Do they want to allow it anywhere but in closed off 2 man instances? What if people want to duel in their guild halls/towns/open world? Do they want to add some form of progression? Is it necessary to protect carebears from duel spamming in any way?

Right now the easiest way taking the least amount of work to implement some sort of PvP in PvE is to take the costume brawl mechanic and turn it into an open world PvP flag mechanic. It wouldn’t be dueling, but it would satisfy people somewhat until the framework for dueling could be implemented.

WvW isn’t to be taken as serious as sPvP.
In sPvP, balance and fair competition comes before fun.
In WvW, fun comes before balance and fair competition.

That’s why they chose to allow ascended gear in WvW without making it available there right away.

Astralporing.1957:

and devs visible lack of attention.

I wouldn’t say the devs didn’t pay attention and ignored the worries players had. They addressed the issue in two blog posts, which both basically boiled down to: “We knew some players would be unhappy with the change, but we think it’s a good idea, and more of the same will be on the way.”

That’s of course not what players unhappy with the added gear progression would have liked to hear, so they kept complaining. ANet made another compromise by assuring those fearing a gear treadmill that they would slow down the progression, so that the complete set of new gear would be released over the course of a whole year.

To think that they don’t listen to your complaints unless they announce the complete removal or neutering of the end game gear progression system is foolish. They compromised as far as they thought possible without giving up on the core idea, namely always offering players a way to feel like they improved themselves. The amount of players in favor or indifferent to long term stat progression is IMO larger than the number of players having a problem with it, by far. Notice that I said “in my opinion”, which is my personal guess, not a fact.

The three most common objections of a typical gear treadmill or gear grind are that:
a.)you need to do it to experience certain content/get certain cool skins
b.)you can easily fall behind and can’t progress with your friends anymore
c.)it trivializes lower level content, as well as cause pvp imbalance

GW2 has systems in place to solve all of the major caveats, and they are working actively on improving them:
a+b.)Ascended gear is optional to attain, since the game isn’t balanced around it, except for a tiny part called high level fractals. You can get unique fotm skins without ever doing a fractal level that requires ascended gear(correct me if I’m wrong)
c.)Downscaling(balanced correctly) takes care of the PvE side, while they are working on making ascended gear available in WvW. SPvP will always have max gear unlocked for all characters, whether it is exotics or ascended.
They are working on the WvW issue, working on adding more stat variants, working on giving players different ways to work for the gear. They are listening to player feedback about the system. The only group of people they don’t listen to are those who flat out want no vertical end game progression at all, because they fundamentally disagree with them, and there is nothing else to be said that wouldn’t upset this group of people even more.

Ansultares.1567:

So was the game unfinished, or is Ascended just the last minute hack job some of us recognize it to be?

Because the quote I read suggested that they intended to have it in at release, so either they’re lying to cover their kitten (most likely) or the game was unfinished at release.

What most probably happened was that they had one part of the Lost Shores patch ready, but not the other. Either the dungeon wasn’t ready, or the agony resistance mechanic buggy, who knows. Judging from how empty SCove is, my money is on unfinished maps/dungeon.

Zenith.7301:

You don’t get to define what is acceptable for me.

Mirror Mirror. You don’t get to decide what is acceptable for the majority of players or the kind of players ANet wants to satisfy with their endgame.

I guess you didn’t have a problem with the amount of work you put into a legendary, and would never feel the need to complain about not being able to use your legendary on alts, like you could with any uncustomized GW weapon. Ascended gear isn’t needed in low level fractals and naturally acquired through the progression of it. Yes, currently you have to work a month for one piece of ascended gear you can’t get any other way, but that will change. Instead of condemning ascended gear and gear progression, what needs to happen is the addition of more gear, more ways to get the gear and less restriction on how fast you can get the gear.

I get that they want to extend the life time of the gear progression as long as possible now that the horizontal purists forced them to state that they wouldn’t release any more gear this year, but if they artificially slow down the progress too much, then things situations like yours can occur, where a player wants to work hard on end game gear for an alt and has to basically wait out the daily reset times until he can start where he left off with his main.

This is being worked on, so hold your horses. The wisest thing you can do is not to protest the release of more gear any more, although I doubt ANet would listen this time.

The game has rules, limitations and a range of freedoms. If you feel like you deserve easy to acquire max stat gear but the game doesn’t give it to you, all I can say is tough luck. If someone in GW1 told me he deserved 8 sets of easy to acquire 75k armor equipped with Sup Vigs, I’d slap them up one side of the UW and down the other.

Czar Peter.7961:

Keep your max stat privilege out of WvW and I’d have no problem with it.

If you think WvW should be perfectly balanced because it features PvP, you’d have to take that to ANet. They are currently not of the opinion that WvW is in need to be balanced around differences in either gear or player numbers, so yeah. I can see where you are coming from, though.

Ascended gear is anti alt? Good thing you have a choice to not grind for BiS gear on every character. I could understand if you have the desire to do high level fotm with all 8 professions, but somehow I think you don’t have that goal.

The desire to wear best in slot gear is entirely generated by the player’s psyche, because exotics are perfectly able to get you through everything except lvl15-20+ fotm. You think you need to be geared up in prestige gear and have 15% more gold find on all characters? I’m afraid you’ll have to put some work into it. Unlike GW1, in GW2 max stat gear in PvE is a privilege, not a right. Okay, that analogy was kinda bad, but the bottom line is its not essential to deck out your characters in ascended until you are a dedicated fotm runner.

Ansultares.1567:

Now you’re telling me that they need superior shinies?

Sure sounds like the WoW approach to me.

As far as I can see, there has never been a single triple A MMORPG without long term stat progression. It’s not a question of “Did WoW do it?”, or “Does the fact that WoW did it make it bad?”, but simply an answer to a player’s desires, which is to feel like they make themselves better.

You might say stats don’t make a player better, skill does, to which I would agree, but this is about the feeling of improvement, not actually improving yourself. Since the mobs and world don’t learn from your actions and evolve naturally like human NPCs, a player’s ability to feel like they are becoming better in PvE through sheer skill is very limited. The stimuli of beating a discreet piece of content can last only so long before it stops being satisfying. With AI, especially if it’s limited to a simple set of behaviors one can count on the fingers of one’s hand, simply cannot provide content developers with enough versatility to continually create new and unique challenges. Players want and crave the primitive emotion of “ME BETTER, ME STRONGER”, even if is illusionary and doesn’t last forever either. The point is, it’s a reliable way of providing a majority of players with this feeling, over and over. The same type of emotion can be attained in high level fotm. Fotm is simply stat progression applied to the game world, plus some added AI mechanics here and there I believe.
Unique, challenging PvE content, although theoretically a superior form of player progression, is far to expensive and laborious to create in a reliable way that is guaranteed to make a big part of the player base feel better about themselves once they have beaten it. Stat progression is a predictable, reliable and cheaper “Dinging” stimulant to produce. It may not feel as good for some, but overall, its a lot less risky. Usually. It’s not so safe if you give players the impression they wouldn’t be confronted with it and then implement it in a half-aƒƒed way.

Ansultares.1567:

All the extra stats serve is to make the gear attractive to less heavily PvE focused players. Basically, all the extra stats serve is to generate the QQ we see on the forums.

Yeah, that’s what I was talking about in my last post. New gear has to have some sort of increased overall effectiveness to justify the amount of grind. If ascended gear was only exotic stat gear with an infusion slot, the current price for it would have had to be lowered, which would make the gear as easy or even easier to acquire than exotic gear. The whole point of ascended gear being prestigious exclusive end game gear would then become moot.

Yea, that is something ANet is afraid to add because it could facilitate cyber bulling. Technically it’s not a big problem, since there already is costume brawl, but as I said, it’s a bit frowned upon at the moment. But that doesn’t mean people should stop asking for it. If enough players show support for open world 1vs1, the devs may be persuaded to listen.

Revolution.6301:

A little is fine, but what we have here is a monstrosity. You cannot deny this.

What do you mean by that exactly? Do the items demand too much grind? Are the items themselves too powerful? Both?

You see, you can’t just add any gear with any amount of grind required to satisfy people that like prestigious gear progression. If the price is too low, everybody will be able to acquire it very fast and the journey ends too early. If you give some prestigious piece of gear a minimal stat increase and require 1000 hours of play time to get it, even if its virtually ineffective and not required for any content, people will either complain about the unreasonable price or the stat increase being not worth it. You have to strike a balance between relative effectiveness to the next best piece of gear and the time/price/skill it takes to acquire. Ascended gear is noticeably better than exotic gear, but not by a ridiculous amount, and since it’s not needed to experience any PvE content(except agony fotm), the prices can be relatively high compared to other gear tiers.

Could you elaborate on what “monstrosity” you are referring to?

I don’t know if it counts, but for me it’s Sector Zuhl. The first two times I completed it, I soloed the boss at the end, which took a hell of a long time. When I finally got him down, there was nothing, no chest, no new passage, nothing. I thought I did something wrong or missed a clue, but there was no clue to be had. To make matters worse, once you leave the boss room, he respawns, which led me to believe the reward for the jumping puzzle was to be able to farm the boss event in rapid succession. On my way back out(the small passage leading you to the dedge cave cloe to the zone portal) there was a rich vein of something I forgot, but it was placed inside the wall, so I couldn’t even get that. It was only a few weeks later when I joined up with another player to recheck the JP that I was told the chest at the end was bugged.

Teofa Tsavo.9863:

That is the “too small to financially support GW” group?

I’m not trying to pass what I say off as facts, I’m trying to make sense of what I see unfolding before me. The only assumption I make in any of my theories regarding this is that any action ANet has taken and will take is based on taking the game in a direction they think is fun, unless they absolutely have to compromise their vision in order to secure the future of their product.
I won’t speculate on their hand being forced by their owners, and I firmly believe they aren’t so inexperienced that they’re unable to foresee the impact their patches will have.
You can accuse them of being sold out, acting with any other malcontent all you want, and maybe you are right. I’m trying to guess what is most likely, which is what my past posts have been about.

Narkosys.5173:

A lot of players left and people are bashing the game on other sites.

I don’t want to sound rude, and maybe I’m just not visiting the right sites, but could you give me a pointer where all these negative posts are concentrated? Since Nov. 2012, I have checked what I think are most of the big hubs on the net discussing MMORPGS, and what I have seen is that the outcry over ascended gear dropped off gradually over about two to three weeks, until there was maybe one or two threads a month.

Teofa Tsavo.9863:

You are still pushing off your own, personal opinions as being " ANet’s view of GW1’ based on one quote that was more to the order of “not being able to handle all we wanted to do” vs “stagnant”

I didn’t say my interpretation of ANet’s words are correct or the only one. I welcome anyone to interpret their actions and words in their own way, because that’s all we can go by.

Teofa Tsavo.9863:

State your opinions. Stop trying to validate them as ANet views or positions, because they are yours.

Again, these aren’t my opinions, but what I think ANet means. My interpretations may be wrong, yes. I’m voiced my opinion as my interpretation of what the devs say and how I think the number of customers/players disliking vertical progression is not high enough to keep a large MMO like GW2 alive. I didn’t say my opinions where ANets way of thinking, thank you very much.

Teofa Tsavo.9863:

And, I discovered and ended up in GW1 to escape progression, tiers, gating, all of those good things you maintain we all want. The sole reason I bought GW2 was the assumption, and their Design Manifesto, that indicated traditional MMO was not where they were going.

I didn’t say it’s what you all want, but what I discovered the majority wants after I started researching when the Lost Shores Patch hit. I never attacked you or people like you for being angry about how ANet choose to not take over the traits you mentioned from its predecessor. All I said with regards to players is my opinion that the horizontal progression crowd is too small to financially support a game like GW2.

Redfeather.6401:

omg, ASB it wasn’t a flaw. XD

Uhm, I didn’t say I think it was a flaw. I said that ANet themselves might have looked at the low power plateau for PvE in GW1 as a flaw, judging from their(CEO’s) quote about the game having become stagnant. In the context of ANets current philosophy, stagnancy is unlikely to be something positive. What else could I have said to adequately describe ANet’s view of GW1? They didn’t want this kind of stagnancy for GW2, which in their eyes makes the lack of long term gear/stat progression in GW1 not a feature but a flaw.

Grim West.3194:

GW1 was extremely successful, one of the best selling mmos of all time. Your reasoning is flawed.

I never attacked GW1 or said it wasn’t successful. That’s bs. All I said about GW1 is mentioned how the devs look at it and that one of its shortcomings(easy to reach power plateau in PvE), was due to their vision of PvP being the endgame for their player base, and not because they wanted total equality in PvE.
It may have very well been that what they perceived to be a flaw was what a certain demographic craved and liked, and if that was the case, they were lucky to have struck this virtually untouched vein of horizontal progression purists as consumers.
I’m not dissing GW1, I’m just saying that GW2 couldn’t survive if it had the flaw that made GW1 so unique. Will we ever find out if that’s the case? I don’t think so, and I’m sorry that all I can provide you with are theories and educated guesses.

Teofa Tsavo.9863:

I would like to see links to any of your suppositions re gear progression in GW1 being actual statements by any Anet management.

Until then, I will assume you really can’t speak as to what Anet planned, who their target demographic was, or anything else you are claiming.

“Suggests”, ’had they known" "probably"" IMO" etc is supposition, and does not, in any way, validate an absolute statement like “ANet never was against gear progression”

It is all opinion. In my opinion.

It’s all suggestions, interpretations and implications here on this forums, even if someone quotes a dev. They have said that GW1 has become stagnant, and by the powers of logical deduction, which are looking at their stance towards gear progression now, and the lack of marketing towards a stagnant/horizontal progression demographic in GW1 suggests to me that that this is their point of view. Whether or not, my interpretation of ANet’s actions and words was not point of my last post, or the thread.

Here’s something more relevant to the discussion: Vertical progression is needed because without it, a large MMO like GW2 couldn’t survive financially. The amount of players preferring stat progression greatly outnumbers the amount of players that do not, and are necessary to being marketed toward you want to break even or make at least some profit. Proof? None. Indications? ANet’s introduction of end game gear progression and the innumerable posts on other MMO’s fansites such as TERA, SWOTOR, TSW in favor of end game gear progression compared to those against it. The most common complaint about from players about gear grid these days is that it’s too repetitive, or takes too long, not that it’s there at all. ANet improved your run of the treadmill(hah, see what I did there?) gear grind with a balanced, optional gear progression. Grated, it still needs to become more accessible in certain parts of the game, but this is something being worked on as we speak.

You don’t need end game gear to experience anything unique in PvE. You may have a point with WvW, depending from which PoV you are looking, but ascended gear is completely optional at the moment. If you don’t think the price is worth the additional stats, you’re free to spend your time playing for something else, like a kitty tonic, or a legendary.

It indicates their plans at most, OP, but confirmed is nothing until there is a leaked/official statement. They have half of their company(~150ppl) working on an expansion since launch, so a late 2013/early 2014 release would be feasible in my opinion. It’d would also be timed well, as that’ll be the time frame where they will add the last pieces of ascended gear and/or highest tiered infusions to the game. As soon as the most dedicated players have their full ascended gear set and infusions, there’ll be 10 more levels of better gear and leveling to progress. Sounds like a plan.

Here are some points that may help you understand gear progression and why it is necessary and in a good place in GW2 right now:

• Skins and titles are not a big enough incentive for the vast majority of MMO players to spend 100s of hours on
• A typical gear treadmill requires exorbitant amounts of grind to progress in
• A typical gear treadmill requires every player to acquire gear in order to experience newer content
• A typical gear treadmill makes it difficult for newer players to do older content in order to catch up
• A typical gear treadmill releases gear at a faster rate, making power creep a much larger problem

GW2’s gear progression is to a regular ‘old school’ gear treadmill as GW2’s dynamic events are to old school questing. It’s a much better version of the same fundamental idea.

• GW2’s gear progression increases player retention rates as a large amount of players need tangible number progression to feel their play time is worth it
• GW2’s gear progression is prestigious gear not expected to be owned by the masses, the majority of content won’t be balanced around end game gear
• GW2’s end game gear progression is optional and therefore not needed to complete any piece of unique PvE content

According to the developers, GW1 was a stagnant game. Coupled with the fact that they never planned GW1 to have any PvE longevity heavily suggests that had they known about the number of players interested GW1’s PvE from the get go, they would have launched the game with long term gear progression.

Players with a strong preference for horizontal only progression were IMO at no point in GW1’s lifetime a target demographic. GW1’s shortcoming in terms of gear progression was a miscalculation that ANet probably deemed too difficult to fix later on, with a new campaign coming out every 6 months, each one with having to be balanced around players only having one, all or more than one campaign. Adding another big balance factor in terms of gear progression would have been reckless.

In the end, ANet never was against gear progression, it is only against forced gear grind. That never changed.

CM IMO is far easier than TA or AC, so I would say CM.

Kaineng City(and the Undercity) was pretty much my favorite part of the GW world when it came to map design. It was a maze you could genuinely get lost in, even if you tried not to. Now with the tech of GW2, the ability to jump, and 250 years of creative freedom, I hope that the cramped corridors full of 90° turns will have survived in some form for us to explore.

I’d like to imagine the Canthans having built their megacity further into the sky, burying old Kaineng below, just like they did before with the Undercity. With an imperial column of skyscrapers looming above, the city would rely on airships and skyways for transport instead of regular ships, using tall buildings as ports for them to load and unload cargo or passengers. I would like to have to watch my steps constantly(at least as long as I’m not familiar with the area) to not fall into the abbyss of old Kaineng.
I know this is pretty much a pipe dream, but I would like to be able to traverse the whole length of the tunnel the Dredge have supposedly been digging to Cantha. I imagine the exit to be somewhere in old Kaineng, or even the Undercity/sewers, which players had to work their way out of to get to the surface.
Regardless, I hope they will bring the destroyed Asura gate outside Kaineng back online for us to travel through, or even have it moved to the Imperial “towers”.

It’s a pretty good way to give players a sense of meaningful progression, unlike skin and title fluff. It’s not necessary with gear progression already in the game, but it would be pretty shortsighted of ANet to not implement it, especially if the resistance to ascended gear hasn’t dissolved by the end of the year. If they for some reason decide against it, and are afraid to add more gear because of the complaints, the only other alternative for them to keep real progression alive and players playing is through titles that increase skill power with higher ranks. They did it in GW1, but you could max them all pretty fast, too fast for a lasting sense of progression, except maybe for the kurzick and luxon titles.

So yes to higher levels and more real progression.

Quit and start creating a new game together with two ex-colleagues in my apartment.

Because the amount of skill needed to complete dailies is miniscule compared to doing level 10+ fractals. You need to show some form of dedication to get BiS gear, whether that is skill or grind, and since ascended gear is not required for anything but high level fractals, it’s it’s an optional prestigious piece of gear you don’t have to get if you don’t want to, like a named exotic.

Errant Venture.9371:

So, the major flaw with the new Laurel system seems to be that dailies are account bound and not character bound. I can only earn ONE Laurel per day and it will cost me 35 Laurels to get my ascended Amulet.

Hey, if people complained so hard and loud that ANet had to stop their plans for a proper end game gear progression, let them at least structure what’s left of it in a way that creates a little bit of longevity for the endgame(apart from legendaries).

It’s another form of DR basically, which is necessary so people don’t end up maxing their alts in a week and demanding more gear which ANet can’t release because of the horizontal progression guys flipping their crap.

Blueshield.6291:

Dailies became required when max-quality gear was attached to them, which by my reckoning was a few hours ago.

Having BiS gear isn’t a requirement for any PvE content except high level fractals. Gearing up in max level gear isn’t supposed to be an afterthought like leveling to max level, or unlocking all of your skills. It’s a progression system that one can invest into and attain items that are marginally better without being game breaking. Some players want to play dress up with their gold/invested play time, and others(the majority of MMO players I reckon) are a sucker for elite gear. As long as certain hard to attain gear isn’t required to experience new content, gearing up to max is just a preference like farming for a nice skinned weapon.

If you are not dedicated enough to acquire ascended gear, you probably don’t deserve it from an achievement point of view. You only need ascended gear for high level fractals, and once you reach them, you’re going to have at least enough to get to a good level.

Calae.1738:

There are 4 of them.
-Increased Movement Speed by 15%
-Increased all Weapon Range by 5%
-Increased Velocity of Projectiles by 10%
-Increased Endurance Regeneration by 20%

They obviously want to save some interesting stats for their mounted combat feature.

Czinczar.3786:

So, one player who does fractals can easily have 3 or 4 ascended rings PER DAY and the one who doesn’t do fractals has to wait 1 month and be forced to complete the daily everyday ? Don’t you see the inconsistency ? And what is really funny is that rings cost more laurels than amulets. They should make amulets available through fractals (vendor or daily chest) AND lower the price in laurels.

Making all ascended gear available in FotM is a no brainer, agreed, but since this gear is pretty much the BiS “elite” type of gear, even allowing it to be acquired through tasks that require a fraction of skill compared to fractals is a little bit offensive. Lowering the price further so every 2-day-a-week-casual(no offense meant) can easily gear up in them defeats one of the main reasons ascended gear was introduced: as a reward for dedicated players. How you define dedicated can be debated, but I’m pretty certain the term is meant to describe players who either spend the time to complete the most difficult PvE content there is at the moment, or at least have the stamina to work a certain about of time grinding their tokens. One has to show their dedication somehow, and whether that is with grinding time or skillful play is a choice every player has to make for himself.

Czar Peter.7961:

I can’t believe people actually think ascended items “bless the game with even more gear”. New traits and skills is content. New armor skins is content. Ascended items with higher stats that, once acquired by everyone after hundreds of hours of grinding, makes the gameplay no different as if everyone still had full exotics, is not content. It is unimaginative filler.

They are different types of content satisfying different kinds of player needs. Skins and titles are meaningless(or just the kind of filler you think gear is) to a fair number of people who want to be rewarded with equipment that is superior to their old, not just subjectively(skin) but objectively(stats). Don’t hate on peoples wishes.

We will see how big the retention rate will be once there is no new gear on the horizon, but for the coming months we will have a steadily paced gear progression keeping the IMO majority of players interested.

Czinczar.3786:

you have to do the daily and monthly achievements. 1 laurel for daily and 10 for monthly… But, it is not consistent, because you can easily get 3 or 4 ascended rings PER DAY doing fractals, while rings cost 35 laurels and amulets 30…

Uhm, how about being grateful that you are at least allowed to get ascended gear outside of fractals? If you can’t handle the dungeon, you have to grind crowns.

Hey, the complete set will be released incrementally throughout the year, and once they rolled it out, we will see how many people still complain about new gear tiers, and how many will have gotten used to the progression. Provided the acceptance is high enough at Christmas 2013, ANet will once again have the option to bless the game with even more gear. Why do you think they explicitly only mentioned that they won’t be introducing new gear in 2013?

Lvl 80+ ascended gear ahoy!

laokoko.7403:

Now there is actually a reason for “everyone” to use it. Since a +4 tougness or +4 healing boost is too tiny, everyone should be using ascended gear with mf infusion.

Depending on how MF stacks, you won’t be twice as lucky with two +20% mods than you are with one.

If magic find stacks multiplicatively like sigils, this is how much MF twelve +20%MF infusions would net you to your base loot chance:

Sounds like a job for a poll on gw2lfg.

RashanDale.3609:

what?

i mean….what!???

He’s asking for other fans of a show he likes to post their location/names.

Ten years ago it was Poke/Digimon, today it’s Ponies, in a decade it will be talking and dancing cucumbers. What is a fad.