Guild Wars 2

Vermillion Hawk.9037:

Did your exotics really just become obsolete?

Your rings have, yes. They are very much last year’s model. New and Improved Rings have them entirely outclassed.

And then in the next update — they promise — they’ll add an amulet, or pants, or whatever. Slow it up for you so you can grind for everything in stages, you know?

Rpgtabbycat.5869:

You can complete dungeons naked. People have.

You can run around WvW and fight and do stuff naked. People have.

You can play WoW endgame stuff in cheap underleveled gear, too. Doesn’t mean that gear isn’t there explicitly to make you do better.

Corvindi.5734:

If there was any justice the next pieces of Ascended would be available only through WvW. The outrage of PVE-only dungeon runners would make for some serious entertainment on this forum.

Enh, they’d just farm the jumping puzzles like people already do for Legendaries.

Namu.5712:

Garenthal.1480:

It isn’t ‘easy’ to obtain at all. It involves a grind, be it a direct or indirect one. Some people will be lucky enough to be able to throw gold at anything they need, which isn’t ideal for those of us who don’t devote our time to grinding money.

Time to wake up buddy.

Getting to 80 was a grind.

Getting your exotics guess what…. oh thats right it was a grind.

I like how people seem to think that with ascended gear theres now a grind…. it was there all along. What do some of you smoke?

I didn’t repeat any content to get to 80 or raise the resources for exotics.

How many times do you have to run Fractals to get a max item? How many hours of Orr farming does it take to raise 60-80 gold for Mystic Forge ingredients? Worlds of difference, man.

Bardes.1870:

http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/13ccl4/mystic_forged_a_quiver/

Just 1 day, someone already has a pink(red) backslot equipment.

Hopefully Anet has good schedule and does not underestimate the ability that how fast players can get upgraded-stat asc gears. ’Cause soon, those who had nothing to do will have 2 asc rings and asc back.

Well, I admit I’m wondering when you will break your promise again — to announce T2 ascended items.

And yet it’ll take forever for someone who plays only 2 hours a day to forge it. Or somehow who plays 4 hours a day, but focuses 75% of their effort on WvW.

I would enjoy the Mystic Forge a whole lot more if most recipes didn’t start with “250 T6 crafting materials + a pile of skill points.”

Elricht Kaltwind.8796:

Anet introduces a new tier of gear — a few months into the game, no less, which may as well be considered launch — and people freak out about a gear treadmill? Do you have logical deduction issues?

New items that require much more playtime to get than the current max tier, and the promise that they’ll be adding more (in this case, the rest of the slots) incrementally through updates, so you keep having new things to grind for? That’s, like, the definition of a gear treadmill.

Elricht Kaltwind.8796:

-Ascended gear is not as good as Legendary gear anyway, which means that there is factually no gear treadmill. A gear treadmill introduces gear which is better than gear that already existed. That is not the case here. Period.

Ascended gear has higher stats than the current Legendary gear. It’s just that Legendary gear will be bumped up when there is Ascended stuff added for that slot.

You do understand that most players didn’t have Legendary gear and weren’t planning to farm for it, right? They’re just cool-looking gear you get for style points, not another tier.

Akari Storm.6809:

Generalization: It’s the themepark EQ/WoW converts that are complaining that there isn’t any progression familiar to them ie power creep cravers, content locust, gear grinders and HC raiders.

Generalization: It’s the sandbox type/skill based crowd that dig lateral progression ie the Guild Wars crowd that are being vocal currently about what was told to them and then hit with the bait and switch or atleast the first step in a baait and switch, more to come no doubt.

I don’t think themepark/sandbox is the right distinction. GW1 was much more of a themepark than EQ. It’s just a question of whether that themepark experience ought to involve a over-eager tourist dad trying to rush you through all the rides.

So, here’s the thing with GW1… I updated my level-20 armor, like, seven times on one character during her lifetime in GW1. But I did that because I felt like it, with new expansion skins, fancy prestige skins, or just figuring out a new mix-and-match style that didn’t cross my mind previously. I did have to do it. The game wouldn’t penalize me for not doing it, unlike the way treadmill games punish you for not re-gearing for every expansion.

Warkupo.1025:

I’m afraid I must throw up my hands in defeat of your logic. You grinded the entire game just to have a moment of realization after you had acquired all the armor you could ever want and say, “you know what gosh darnit, I really just want to walk around the map.”

Something you could have just done whenever. Think of all the time you could have saved if you had just… you know, done that.

Again I ask, why the play the game? Why not just… I guess walk around the map until you are bored of that and then go do something else?

I’m sorry, I just don’t follow any of the thought processes here.

I didn’t relentlessly grind my way to 80 + exotics. For the most part, I just did whatever stuff I wanted to do (except personal story, because that was broken until yesterday). And I continue to do that after I’ve “maxed out” my stats, except now I don’t have “vertical” advancement forcing goals on me or limiting my options.

Ascended stuff from Fractals is the opposite of that. You have to do one specific thing, repeatedly, to get max gear. And it’s explicitly designed to require much more time than getting exotics, on account of some silly “legendary wall.”

Having incomplete gear is just like leveling. You have a clear singular goal being pushed on you by the game mechanics (getting to the next character level / item level). When you’ve completed that, the game is straight-up better. It becomes open-ended instead of linear. That’s the whole point of a real, non-raid-gear-based “endgame.”

Last time I logged into GW1, I was annoyed at how static it was. You really do grow to love all the dodging and stuff. There’s something about the overall pace of GW2 combat that’s highly exciting and addictive.

But, despite that, I honestly have to admit that GW1 had more strategic depth. The stuff I do in GW2 is much closer to just playing a “gimmick build.”

Kelvingts.2035:

Skins alone cannot keep most of us playing the game for longer and longer.

How ’bout skins and new dungeons and explorable areas?

Fiontar.4695:

The level scaling in LA and this weekend in Sea of Sorrows is just for the weekend. The level scaling up in FotM is a permanent feature. Just wanted to clarify.

Thanks! Didn’t know about that.

Permanent.

The “temporary” stuff for this weekend are the one-time events and some of the extra level-scaling they put in to allow everyone to do the new stuff.

Regizer.1763:

I don’t get it, so you not going to run Fractals because it has new tier of armor, but you would run it if armor was only a cosmetic update?

When you’re running a dungeon exactly 45 times (I pulled that number out of my butt) just to keep up with gear inflation, that’s work. I don’t play games to work.

But I’ll repeat content as many times as I find fun. The thing is, making something so obviously be work makes it unfun altogether.

We’ve had a lot of topics on this subject, but I don’t mind throwing a bit more fuel on the fire…

Yes, totally.

I played dungeons repetitively in GW1. Some dungeons, not all of them. The ones I found fun. There were no super-special rewards other than fancy loot skins (that I mostly sold to other players). It was great because there was never pressure to do the dungeon. There also wasn’t a cutoff for “Okay, I got my raid gear, now I am done with this one…” It was just “What do you want to do tonight?” “Dungeon!”

I’m not touching Fractals. Way too much work just to get an obligatory stat boost. Killing my desire to play GW2 altogether. Which is super-sad considering how freakin’ avoidable that problem was. It’s like it just came out of nowhere.

Leiloni.7951:

In GW2 you can get max stat gear quite easily either by crafting it yourself or just buying it off the broker. Then if you want to do dungeons, or Orr, or WvW, that’s up to you. Basically after you have that set of gear, just play the game however you want to play it. Have fun, period.

But now we have ascended gear, with the promise of more to come later. So that’s no longer entirely truly. :/

10,000 SADFACES

If it’s any consolation, the “one-time events” are having some serious stability issues. My guildmates reported sound glitches, invisible monsters, and crashing out just as the event completes only to log back into an overflow zone, then crashing out of that zone as its version of the event compeletes also.

The other stuff will all be there later.

Warkupo.1025:

If you really feel like playing the game is a waste of time, just quit playing it. Whether or not you’re leveling up or grinding for gear, you’re still doing the same bloody thing; advancing your character to get to the next “stage” of the game.

… But I’m not.

I hit 80 and got all my exotic stuff set up. That meant, until today, that I had reached a stage where I can pursue whatever stupid thing I feel like doing at any given moment. That’s awesome. Do I want to explore the map? I can do map completion. Do I want jumping puzzles? I can find some jumping puzzles. Do I want to do WvW? (Yes, yes I do, constantly.) I can go do WvW.

For the most part, I don’t have to give two kitten about what the rewards are, because I have the stuff I need and now the stuff I’m getting is gravy. That’s fun. It’s relaxing. It’s liberating. I played GW1 for, like, five years in this mode.

Except now I’m not done building up my character, because we have ascended gear to grind for. And it’s quite the grind. Siiiigh.

Warkupo.1025:

What do you think levels are? Go take your level 10 character to level 80 content and see how well you do.

Getting to 80 is just a super-slow tutorial.

Warkupo.1025:

Better gear is just leveling up in a different sense. It’s much easier to keep the game balanced that way too, which is why every MMO I know of adopts this as their endgame strategy.

Then go try Guild Wars 1, maybe?

I don’t know how many times we can have this discussion:
“But every MMOG…”
“Yes, that is why we hate them and like this one!”

My biggest complaint is that now I can’t really do any of the prestige stuff I was planning to do. I was gonna focus on WvW and, like, hunt up some cute skins, maybe start saving up to forge some weird semi-legendary, level some additional craft skills if I was bored. But all of that gets sidelined by this weird new ridiculous thing with higher stats that I need to pick up now.

Power-creep in gear stats is awful, because it actively distracts you from actually doing anything other than farming that kitten gear.

AzureNightmare.3914:

So just what /will/ you do if this really is the end of it? No, I’m not looking for “Oh well that’s never gonna happen this is a guaranteed 101% trend now no turning back blahblahblah” I’m honestly just curious- what will you do if this is a legitimately one-time-only tier upgrade and everything was just more content instead of tiers and they just want to add something new to the game?

I’m actually 100% assuming there won’t be Ascended++ gear, only Ascended.

Despite that, though, Ascended gear is already a serious grindfest, and the plan to introduce all the Ascended stuff in waves of a couple of slots each is, in actuality, a gear treadmill.

I was thinking of entertaining myself by crafting one of those half-legendaries (like Infinite Light), but now instead of just stocking up on resources for cute skins I’m going to have to pour everything into keeping up my gear.

lunabaguna.8293:

It will be a rank 2 instance, and everyone will get another notch in their belt. Basically having low rank people helps you up your rank faster by doing easier runs. I dont see why at this point anyone would turn away a lower ranked person.

My understanding is that it’s not “get a rank every time you do a set,” it’s “your rank is the furthest you’ve gotten.”

So if I do the level 1 fractal thingy 10 times, I am still only going to be able to start at level 2. Whereas if I actually do levels 1-10 instead of just repeating 1, I can start at 11.

tjockis.3798:

but everytime its filled with unhappy whinnig ppl. EVERYTIME!

This week is kind of a special case, since the latest patch represents a huge structural shift in what the game is about. Lots of people who don’t, in fact, just sit around forums kvetching have come out to kvetch.

tjockis.3798:

what happend to the small thing called FUN that ppl used to have when playing games?

Well, in the MMOG genre, designers decided to kill fun and replace it with raid-gear treadmills. And then they made money hand-over-fist by doing so, so that became the One True Way.

Selon.7056:

What made the endgame of GW1 so great? Honest question.

First and foremost, there was Hard Mode. You could play any explorable or mission zone in a toughened-up mode designed for maxed-out characters. The achievements and game map provided clear feedback that made “vanquishing” everything in Hard Mode really appealing.

Selon.7056:

You can’t have a game where you get the best gear and then there is nothing to go to from there AND a game that continues to expand on itself by creating new content and, inevitably, gear.

You can have a thriving, successful game where there is still stuff to do all the time but it’s not “get better gear”.

And that game can retain a sizable player base for, like, 6 years while raking in close to $300 per player through cash shop upgrades and expansions.

It was called Guild Wars.

sorrow.2364:

Obviously it won’t kill anyone with 2 casts of PW, but the evade, the stun and the faster attack rate makes that skill better than your autoattack.

Oddly enough, I still manage to kill monsters with 2 casts of PW. Not with, like, 100% probability. But fairly regularly. Certainly quite often with 2 PWs plus 1 autoattack.

I want exotic to be the cap for WvW and overworld stuff.
I don’t mind if there is gear with much nicer stats that are only “active” in dungeons.

Some players really want “vertical progression.” Others only play GW2 to avoid it. Clearly Anet wants to please both, but the current approach is the stuff of many thousands of posts of displeasure.

So, how ’bout you just let us have our cake and eat it, too?

Suggestion: Make ascended items exotic+, with exotic-level stats in “normal” zones and extra power-up stats in dungeons (or just the Fractals-style top-end dungeon content, if that works better for difficulty scaling).

For example,

Red Ring of Death
Ascended rarity
+72 Power
+51 Precision
+4% Critical Damage
Ring
Required Level: 80
+32 Power +4% Critical Damage +18 Precision

… becomes…

Red Ring of Death
Ascended rarity
+92 Power (that’s 67 + 25, same as exotic Ruby)
+63 Precision (that’s 48 + 15, same as exotic Ruby)
+6% Critical Damage (that’s 3 + 3, same as exotic Ruby)
Ring
Required Level: 80
Dungeon power (or whatever you want to call it): +12 Power +2% Critical Damage +6 Precision (these are just the stat gap between RRoD and the standard exotic Ruby)

Doesn’t mess with WvW. Doesn’t make overland adventure zones progressively easier and easier as you release new ascended items. On the one hand, ascended items become much more clearly an “optional” thing for hardcore players; on the other hand, you can go totally crazy on the dungeon stats — +300 Power and +12% Critical Damage? Enh, why not! — without breaking every other part of the game, which I suspect may appeal to hardcore dungeon grinders more than small incremental advantages.

gwaimui.3819:

hmm. that’s a lot of unnecessary kittening around though.

Yeah, it’s kind of an “exploit” (though a harmless one that they shouldn’t ever try to fix). I just thought you’d like an explanation of why people say it can be done already.

Wendigo.7931:

They award achievement points. (did you see the word “completionist” above?) That’s why I play. So no, they do effect my gameplay. Way to read.

Scroll down further and you’ll see a PvP achievements tab with a whole bunch of fixed PvP achievements. And then there’s also a big empty space for your PvP achievements on the login screen. OH NOES! These dailies change everything, though.

Kana.6793:

For all you know there’s going to be a karma vendor in WvW selling Ascended gear. People are freaking out before they even know how it works.

Have you seen the WvW exotic prices?

Avatar.1923:

the little minor differences on stats wont be a huge factor compaired to PLAYER SKILL.

I spend a good deal of time in WvW clusterbombing things. It’s one of the main ways thieves participate in sieges and “zergs.” The projectile is super-slow at long range, so your main goal is to force people away from a static position (e.g. some siege equipment) or to punish opponents’ mistakes. Player skills figures into placing the shots, but you also need massive damage to make them actually do something — if I was only hitting soft targets for 3k, it’d be pretty trivial for most players to pull back and heal up after they’ve overextended, or to stand in the blast and chase me away with focused fire when I’m trying to push them back from their wall. The effectiveness of this whole strategy is directly correlated to gear quality. If I can stack another 15-20% crit damage with jewelry (extrapolate from rings to amulet + earrings), that’s like being 10% more useful to my team. Add that up over several players and it’s a solid advantage.

Nymia.3256:

How does pursuing Ascended gear, which is now necessary, move you closer towards Legendary gear?

Well, I could see this being true. Like this, for instance (hypothetical):
Ascended items cost tokens.
Legendaries require mats, karma, skill points, gold, and precursors.
When you do the dungeon, you get tokens and all that other stuff, and spend tokens on ascended gear while pouring your other resources into your legendary weapon.

The big problem is that you have to chase ascended gear for stats even if you don’t want to chase the legendary for skins.

Vorch.2985:

I’m ok with this new tier because they said it bridges the gap between acquiring an exotic and acquiring a legendary.

Stat-wise, though, there was no gap. Then they added one.

So you had this:
low-grind Exotic → optional super-high-grind Legendary, to be cool

And instead of this:
low-grind Exotic → optional grindy Ascended, to be cool → optional super-high-grind Legendary, to be cool

They gave us this:
low-grind Exotic → grindy Ascended, because you need max stats → optional super-high-grind Legendary

alanis.6094:

Mike.9185:

if they didnt add gear than we would have had a thousand posts saying “whats the point of new content if the stats are the same QQ” theres new stuff to do that is more challenging thus requires better rewards.

why would you do an insanely hard dungeon (fractals of the mists) if you get the same awards grinding an easy 1

For fun, the challenge, cool skins, and a fancy title.

To illustrate:

I did The Deep like 100 times in GW1. Why? Because we had fun figuring out how to speed-clear a 12-man instance with 8 or 9 people. The only rewards were prestige skins and money.

The next year, I didn’t do Domain of Anguish, because the time commitments were a bit excessive and I didn’t really like it as much. But I kept playing the game and buying fancy kittens(*) from the cash shop, because nothing was forcing me to do DoA just to keep up, so not wanting to do DoA wasn’t an impediment to enjoying the rest of the game.

• - I actually just typed “kittens” there, because having the autofilter change my cusses to “kitten,” singular, would make the statement jarringly ungrammatical.

I’ll throw in my own little bit here…

I’ve looked at a lot of the previews and spoilers for what we’re getting.
It looks pretty awesome. I like the fractal mini-dungeons idea. I like the changes to existing dungeon drops. I like the new Apothecary gear type. I’m ecstatic about having my personal story finally unbugged. I question some of the balance changes but, overall, they are a step in the right direction. And I’m sure the fancy weekend event will be fine.

Buuuut… ascended items. Just look at ‘em. A significant stat boost over exotic, even just from rings; and — and this is the stated goal of introducing these things, in order to give you more timesinks while you pursue the game’s ultimate timesink — you have to grind your butt off for them. 90 hours, 40 hours, even 20 hours just to get a single piece of max-gear jewelry is way too much. And then every few months, they promise to introduce a couple of new slots so we can grind for those, too. That’s absolutely killing my enthusiasm for the new stuff, and really the whole game.

I was more likely to actually pursue a legendary before I found out about ascended gear, because it was a thing you could do just for kicks. I was more likely to do Fractals repetitively before I found out about ascended gear, because I figured the gameplay would be fun in its own right. I was more likely to spend money in the cash shop and buy expansions before I found out about ascended gear, because I felt like I was free to do whatever I wanted in this game. Now, I really, really don’t.

I really don’t think I’m alone here. There are games that taught millions of players to expect and appreciate this freedom, to look upon it as the triumph of good design over “Skinner-box” mechanics. Guild Wars 1 was at the forefront of this. Anet guys totally went to conferences and threw down the gauntlet challenging other developers to follow suit. What happened? D:

“Ascended” gear, as implemented, is the last thing that the game needs. Instead of making the Fractals an interesting addition to a big varied set of activities, you’re driving everything else into obsolescence.

5000 DO NOT WANT cat macros.

lagrangeify.5641:

sock puppets

What “sock puppets”?

You do realize that every forum account on here costs $60, right?

The Sacred Voice.1623:

It just irks me that people complained constantly about a lack of endgame content and then when extra endgame items appear along with a new, complex endgame dungeon and another endgame area then all they do is howl that the game is pandering to traditional MMO concepts.

Different people.

Take away these “endgame items” (and the promise to crank out more every few months) and all of the complaints would go away. Nobody’s actually upset by the idea of playing the Fractals, just the way its rewards trample over the entire rest of the game.

gwaimui.3819:

transmutation (which won’t work because the armour can’t be moved to a different character in the first place).

Here’s how it works currently:
Buy the order item on whatever character has access to it.
Get a white item of the same type. Like, you can just buy the cheapest stuff on the TP for a few coppers.
Transmute the skin onto the white item. It will say “soulbound,” but that’s fine.
Put your transmuted item into the bank.
Log into the character that wants to use the item.
Open up your bank. Even though the thing says “soulbound,” notice how it doesn’t say “Soulbound to another character.” You can take the item out of the bank and transmute it again to put its skin on a different piece of gear.

Because warriors are okay as-is? In particular, warriors with longbows aren’t really wrecking the meta or anything.

Did they ever fix that 40k sword-throw bug, though?

My vote would be an aftercast on C&D instead. It removes the amazing compression of C&D→Steal→Backstab but doesn’t make it impossible. And the impact to */D builds outside of the combo would be pretty negligible, I think, since I figure most thieves who C&D on the run are probably taking a sec to reposition anyway before they sneak attack.

Here’s stuff you can do while just playing normally…

Don’t craft unless you have a clear reason to do it. Crafting is great as a mechanism for turning gold into XP, but it’s seldom actually profitable.

Pick up everything. I know this is really obvious, but it’s always good to check, you know. Turn on autoloot because you’ll never not want to pick up an item.

As you run around the map, gather all the ore, wood, and food materials. It’s like free XP and money just sitting right there on the map, and takes only seconds to collect. You can sell the gathered stuff you don’t need (all of it, if you’re not doing crafting) on the TP. Right-click on the stack of materials, click “sell,” then just accept the default lowest listed price (second radio button); or you can use the top order price (first radio button) if you need some cash in a hurry.

When you see a dynamic event, try to join in. You’ll get XP and cash and karma for participating, even a little.

When you’re just running around exploring a zone, try to do map completion. You’ll usually get an item and a big stack of crafting materials (i.e. free money) based on the zone’s level.

BabelFish.7234:

steal being usable in the middle of a combo

If you change Steal, though, and the other shadowsteps are still unaffected, folks will just use Infiltrator’s Signet (no Mug then, though, I guess).

If you also hose stuff like Infiltrator’s Signet, you’re taking away a couple of really nifty tricks, like being able to counter downed-teleporting Thieves and Mesmers.

I don’t hate it. But it’s underwhelming. From a WvW player’s perspective, the mass of SPvP-only changes seems kinda ridiculous (especially since SPvP thieves can’t match WvW/PvE thieves’ massive crit damage — or magic culling invisibility — to begin with). Just having skills with different stats between the two kinda offends me.

Here’s what I would have preferred to see for a Backstab nerf: Add a more significant aftercast to C&D.

It wouldn’t really hurt S/D or D/D too much in protracted fights, since the thief would likely be using the time to try to maneuver into position anyway. But it would reduce the time-compression power of C&D→Steal→Backstab, which addresses the major “I can’t react to this in time!” complaint… well, for players who know enough to stun-break out of Basilisk Venom, at least.

More generally, any patch that doesn’t address the following is kinda punting on game balance, in my opinion:
- The Quickness mechanic as a whole.
- Culling (you’ve heard this gripe 1000 times).

Is this the first time they’ve started splitting skills into PvE/PvP like this?

It’s not that your equipment isn’t scaled up. It’s that it’s scaled up proportional to your level. So a level 45 character in level 45 rare gear is significantly better off than a level 60 character in level 50 blues.

If you’re gonna nerf C&D this hard to punish D/D Backstab thieves, you should probably buff Tactical Strike by more than 10%.

At least get to 60 to unlock the 30-point traits, and get appropriate equipment (level 60 rares).

Bond.4813:

in wvw

Like 90% of this is “culling.”

Against dagger/dagger thieves, I’ll often see hit—-hit-hit-hit-hit before I can see my opponent. Over and over again against the same guy, even (I do a passable job avoiding getting killed with my superior mobility, and then come back for seconds, because I am a glutton for pointless fights). Because the client code is just that slow to draw them.

dimgl.4786:

You mean thieves and engineers have good dodge synergy? Because as a Guardian or a Warrior… good luck achieving this.

… So why do you insist that Toughness and Vitality are straight-up the best stats?

dimgl.4786:

Because once you can’t dodge anymore you need to be able to take hits…?

There are builds that don’t run out of dodges, thanks to good trait choices and synergy between their traits and skills.