Guild Wars 2

Wreckdum.8367:

They won’t lose any value. And crafted exotics will always cost exactly the same price as the mats to make them. Which is the way it is now. Nothing will change.

They won’t lose value. In all likelihood they will get more expensive. And that goes back to the question of whether or not they are worth it.

If Ascended items require Ecto and Orichalcum to make, then those materials are going to be more expensive. Making it more expensive to craft Exotics and a lot of people might not think they are worth crafting or buying at the new cost. Especially for a go between armor set.

Dungeon exotics will still be completely desirable since they don’t take anything to get but a little time and you make money while you are at it.

stof.9341:

Just that one. People say that the ascended ring isn’t as good cause you cannot mix and match jewels into the rings. To that I answer that instead of buying a new jewel and erasing the one built in the crafted ring you bought, you could simply equip all jewelry of one type except necklace and you’d get the same effect for cheaper and easier to fine tune.

Same for armor really. Also it seems that we’ll be getting a lot of ascended items with mismatched “baked in” stats by default.

Im not sure I follow. I think I get where you are going, but another assumption there is that Ascended jewelry, of any particular stat combination, would be cheaper than buying exotic jewelry and the upgrade gem you want for it.

Also, I don’t think you are considering the defensive, offensive and Onmi infusions slots. Without even including Omni (since it will probably be the rarest and last set we get): you are looking at six different pieces of jewelry, of three different stat sets each, and three of each of two different infusions? That’s just not practical man.

BTW, nice to have a conversation about this stuff with someone who can keep a level head and appears to be reasonable.

stof.9341:

How do you know that the ascended armors won’t have access to runes or rune like effects? The weapons?

I really don’t think you do.

There is some room for interpretation. But Linsey already wrote that instead of getting traditional bonuses from runes, crests or jewels, that the stats would be “built in” and the upgrade slot would be used for infusions that are a mechanic to use against agony.

Which is why I prefaced my comment about stat stacking with “Until we know more about infusions”.

At face value, the comment could very well mean that Ascended armor does not get those effects, and that is the trade of for the stats. The infusions work under specific circumstance. Like the agony condition and creatures that cause it.

That’s how I read it. That’s how I see it implemented. It’s very possible the items have baked in stats + infusion bonuses + traditional rune effects also from infusion. But that would mean the new tier effectively has three upgrade slots. And I don’t see that happening.

I could be wrong. But I don’t think its likely. And if I am right, then exotics are still the way to go for everyone except heavies and some med armor users that are using all jewels and crests instead of runes for pure stat boosting already.

…And even THEY have more options with exotics, since they can have their set boosting five or six individual stats and ascended is limited to what is baked in to it. Koda armor for pwr/tough/vit with a shaman crest for vit/healing power/pwr. Where-as the ascended is like being forced to have koda armor with soldier crest that you cant change.

stof.9341:

Every piece of exotic now is worthless. I wouldn’t pay more than 50s for them now.

/sigh.

So many things wrong with this.

Just for curiosity sake, do you know when an entire set of ascended will be available? Do you know what stat combinations will and wont be available? Do you know what the bonuses for infusion gems are and if they make up for the lack of stack flexibility and effects Ascended inherently has?

I really don’t think you do.

Until we know more about infusions, Exotics have a leg up due to customization. The 5-8% pwr increase a player gets for using an ascended set means jack and squat compared to a set of Rabid exotics with 6/6 runes of undead. Combine that with a sigil or earth in your main hand with a sigil of corruption in your off-hand…and you are bringing pain. You are bringing pain that Ascended sets may never come close to.

Ascended benefits characters that are currently using full set crests and jewels over runes. Which are mostly warriors, guardians, and glass cannon thieves.

I’m just amazed that as deep as the system goes and with all of the moving pieces you can tweak and adjust to fine-tune a character, some players get tunnel vision on a bigger number and never mind that the penalty is holding back other options and potential.

I got mine for min/maxing stats.

And I think they exotics have been worth it. My first char was geared using crafting and swapping the oranges you get from 100% in Orr to some other orange I needed. I was lucky enough to get an exotic weapon drop and for the other set I crafted mystic weapons. So they didn’t cost me a whole lot or require any more effort than just making sure I did my dailies, and gathering stuff as I played.

Then I started dungeons…

I earned enough tokens to fully gear my first alt. And with two characters now doing dungeons daily, I have enough various tokens to gear up two more characters if I choose.

More than likely I will have an ascended set eventually for the higher levels of Fractals. But for the most part I will be sticking with exotics. My builds have a synergy between my traits, my armor stat priority, my runes, and my weapon sigils. Im not willing to entirely give up that level of fine tuning and all around effectiveness for a stat boost.

Exotics will still have a place and be worth getting for a good while yet.

Tabula Rasa anyone? Anyways, GW1 has been around for exactly 1/4 of my life. If the servers were to shut down it would be a bit sad. Sort of like seeing a childhood hang-out torn down to build something new.

But I got more than my money’s worth of entertainment, enjoyment and memories from that game by orders or magnitude.

I’m not expecting GW2 to be any different. Same world, same lore, same “feel” (even though it’s not. Some GW players will get what I mean), and same people I’ve been playing with for years.

Exotics are still viable.

1 – You have more options for the trait sets you want
2 – You can modify them to work for your build.

What do you expect to be using while waiting for the entire ascended set to roll out and while you are hunting for all of the pieces you need with the right stats? Exotics if you want to be efficient. And current dungeons are still a direct path to an exotic set.

This isn’t including the people that just want the skins. And assuming they don’t have ascended variants of the dungeon gear for some insane amount of tokens.

The dungeons will be ok.

Rhyaehar.9504:

If we want to voice our dissapointment, the time is now, not in 3 months. I’ve said it so many times in this thread to so many people: during the whole development period and marketing pre-release campaign it was always, always claimed that there will be no vertical progression and that Exotics are the top stat-wise. Many people based their purchases and their latest goals on that premise. This is not a small thing for a lot of people. If you’re one that likes it or it does’t bother you, great. Good luck, you still have a game you feel you can enjoy. Many of us don’t feel like that anymore.

And many people thought removing refund points in the original GW would take away a sense of progression and permanency for your character. And people thought green weapons would make golds worthless. And keys would only benefited the rich. And Vabbian armor was unreasonably expensive. And Kurzick skills were better than Luxon skills and it wasn’t fair. And “Wtf is this Codex bullkitten? It will ruin EVERYTHING!”

…Then the game went on to be profitable and self-sustaining for over half a decade and crossed seven million box sales. Every time anything changes, people freak out and you know what happens later? Most players end up finding the merit in the change, and it’s not as bad as anyone expected. It’s time to give it a little break people.

This change does not indicate the game and all future updates switching to vertical progression FOR ALWAYS! The sky isn’t falling. Voicing a concern in a rational and reasonable way is MUCH different than what has gone on in this thread for thousands of posts.

Nymia.3256:

But he did not say “there will not be another tier”, he said “we don’t plan to add a new tier every 3 months”.

There is a huge difference there. If they planned to never add another tier, why don’t they just pop in and SAY THAT.

IMO he did say that. I guess that’s where we discerned different things from the response. I read “we don’t plan to add a new tier every 3 months” as a direct answer to the thousands of posts screaming “This is the beginning…there will be a new tier every three months!!!”

Sort of like how a parent would reply to a kitten child. “You’re going to leave me in the mall tomorrow!” “No. I’m not going to leave you in the mall tomorrow.” That doesn’t mean the parent plans on abandoning the kid the day after right?

I think maybe you are being just a bit paranoid and looking too literally at wasn’t said instead of what was said and who it was directed at. But then you could tell me i’m being too naive by giving the quote context.

Neither of us can be proven right or wrong for what…at least another 3-6 months right? So then why not just give the new stuff a try and see if you have fun with it until then?

But there is already gear progression. You already go from white to orange gear through the process of leveling. Try _not _ progressing your gear and see how well those starting whites work out 20 levels later.

They seen a gap, they needed to fill it. When they add new weapons that will likely fill some gaps in current profession weapon skill limitations. There was a lack of things to do post 80, they are adding a zone. Dungeons lacked proper rewards, so they buffed them up a bit. They want to add a new feature, but a current mechanic is too limited, so they change the mechanic to be more flexible.

People are freaked out because a change needed to be made to gear. That doesn’t mean the end days are coming. Six months from now we will all have it and this will be forgotten, and people that get the game down the line will never even know the tiers were any different. What greens have been to us between blue and gold, pink will be to future players between orange and purple.

Honestly, 90 days is still a game in it’s infancy. Expect changes.

Who remembers refund points in GW? Nothing is sacred. Even your trait system might get changed and tweaked to work differently. The Dervish and Elementalist patches? Your utility skills might one day have the same name and icon, but do something completely different.

ALL aspects are subject to change. You’ll be much happier if you jsut throw off the tinfoil hat and enjoy the ride.

Vytality.3195:

…
A broken hearted ex-fan.

I love that your guild is Spirit of Faith, and your tag is HOPE, yet you are supposedly abandoning a game based on an update and content you haven’t even played yet.

Even after Chris came in here and said Ascended was the last tier that will be added for mechanical reasons and to avoid it being a gear grind they are rolling it out a few pieces at a time so even casual players can get it at a comfortable pace rather than farming it out. There will not be another tier added. Done. We got our clarification.

If people have forgotten what a tread-mill is, it’s a thing you run on forever and never get anywhere. A new intermediate type of gear that is introduced piece by piece to mitigate grind/farm while being introduced does not a treadmill make.

Turtle Dragon.9241:

We are about to leave this extraordinary MMO that you took 5 years to create…and never come back or hear from you again.

Last night I went through this thread and just picked out a few posts (5) of people saying they felt betrayed, quit, and were never coming back. I added them to my friends list.

By 12am EST four out of those five had signed in and were wandering around in various areas I can only assume having a grand old time.

The thing about people that are fed up and leave is that most of them just do it. There is no compulsion to post some raging fit on the forums and then give your account away. Any emotional investment is gone and with it the urge to let everyone know their feelings are hurt.

Anyway, if you ever wonder why the droves of players declaring “I quit” on forums never causes a dev to shake in their boots…it’s because it’s a largely empty threat.

So rather than cry wolf in a thread hoping that it will change something, why not just play and enjoy the game and see how the content launch goes? In the end you look less silly because you never know how many people out of curiosity will want to call you on your BS and see if you stick to your convictions or were just blowing smoke.

Plague.5329:

Acidic, you really just don’t get it. There’s no hope for you. Greens were just perfect rares meant for non-hardcore players to obtain so they could avoid grinding for a perfect weapon, which was a big problem at the time for most players. This is the opposite of that situation in every way. You obviously are blinded by something, and can’t see that. A shame for all of us, I suppose.

A shame for you? I have an entire room of engineers that understand exactly what I am saying and I didn’t need to explain it more than once. I already ran my logic through the ringer just to make sure I wasn’t being an unreasonable nut-job because some of you honestly had me doubting myself. But I passed with flying colors. So I know i’m good. I just can’t think of how to better communicate it to some of you people. Immensely frustrating.

Plague.5329:

It is not. The same. Thing.

But it is. Not in the literal sense. Which is what you are thinking, since the rest of that post was pretty much morphing ascended armor into greens.

What were greens? They were max stat weapons with limitations. Some of which could be found out in the world, but the best of which were found in dungeons.

Who did they appeal to? They appealed to casual players who would get them eventually and get all giddy that a neat thing dropped for them. They appealed to the hard-core players that wanted to grind Tombs over and over again for Victo’s Blade (it was the most valuable one for a good while pre-factions).

What is ascended junk? Max stat items with limitations. Found in dungeons with other ways to get them within the world.

Who do they appeal to? Hard-core players that will grind the dungeon for that small stat boost. Casual players that get to them eventually and get all giddy that a neat thing dropped for them.

What problem were they both implemented to address? Giving people crap to do until a proper expansion comes out.

So once again….same thing.

It’s moot that they have higher stats. That has been beaten to death in this topic. Stats reach a point of diminishing returns. They have a maximum effectiveness to the point it’s a total waste to put more resources into them.

See my example of stacking power through ascended gear rather than condition augmentation via runes and sigils. The stat increase on ascended is a personal preference. Just because it’s a bigger number doesnt mean its better than everything because of what you are sacrificing to get it. Read the discussion people.

Expired, it’s to the point now you aren’t just expressing an opinion, you are jumping to wild conclusions based on a quote that you are interpreting in a twisted way to validate your theories. No other person that read that article is interpreting it that way. Context. And reading comprehension. Keywords for the day.

Common sense dude, if they are introducing the first level of infusions (offensive BTW, the bit of that you are leaving out) and rings and back slots…whats the next level or “progression”? Let me help…that would be maybe boots, and gloves, and the offensive infusions. After that…perhaps chest armor, and pants, and omni infusions?

The section of the article is about the ascended armor and infusion upgrades. She is indicating the roll out of the rest of the set. She isn’t talking about the uber-armor coming 2 years down the road that has nothing at all to do with this update.

Plague.5329:

blah, blah, blah, something valid and well worth reading but way too long to quote

This is the SAME thing. Honestly…when I get home I am going to need to get on youtube and illustrate this for people.

In GW you traded availability and perfect stats for the ability to customize. In a gold req 9 max weapon you could put in the staff head, wrapping and inscription you wanted. But creating that weapon took time or gold; however, you could run right out the door of Grenth’s footprint and get one of four green items in about five minutes and they would be max, but you had no control over stats.

In GW2 you trade a small stat boost and availability for the freedom to customize. Ascended gear will be hard to get, yet alone the exact stat combination you are looking for, and when you do get it, you can’t modify it with normal runes/jewels/sigils/crests.

Your rose tinted nostalgia glasses are getting foggy.

She is talking specifically about the rest of the infused set. Everyone has already come to that conclusion. If you haven’t noticed, most of us have been discussing full level armor bonuses vs. full infused gear for the last 15 or so posts.

You can safely delete your spamming double quote non-sense from my thread. Kplzthx.

ExpiredLifetime.1083:

One of the major selling points they made with this game was in their manifesto, trying to not copy things from other games because they wanted to be different. Now they’re completely throwing that out the window in an attempt to keep a larger portion of the players busy.

You may be fine with developers trying something that they said they wouldn’t do, but I however, am not.

And that was the entire reason I made this post. In the last day I have heard people saying this content patch was rushed out to give people something to do.

But the SF patch also came out within months of launch. And as far as features go, they are nearly identical. New area that leads to new dungeon with new gear and new enemies that have their own mini story. The blue prints are the same!

This was not a reactionary move to dump out content, it’s the same kitten thing they did before.

Some people cannot see the correlation between adding a perfect unmodifiable item that could be easily obtained, and a higher base stat unmodifiable item that is difficult to obtain. But I promise it’s there. 10/10 software engineers, 50% of which play GW2, agree. If I just had a white board to draw some of you a picture…

Ascended now doesn’t mean another tier of Closer to the Stars is coming next. Just like greens didn’t usher in magenta super weapons. The Ascended junk will roll out slowly along side new stuff, probably an expansion that introduces the Mursaat if they don’t make an appearance before that, and that will likely be the last core gear change we see besides new weapons.

Sure, some people can say it could just as easily go the other way and stat caps will keep going up with every release, but that is just wild speculation. There is nothing to back that up at all or even think this would lead to that. I know myself saying that wont happen is also a fair bit of speculation, but what they are doing now so closely mimicking what they have done before gives more weight to my theory than the other.

They are following their pattern. It’s not broken yet. So relax for now. And if they ever announce double or triple socketed zodiac ascending armor of the lightbringing doppleganger…then ill pick up my torch and pitchfork and be right there with you.

ExpiredLifetime.1083:

What did hoping get us? We hoped that they would stay true to their word. 3 months later they do exactly what they said they wouldn’t.
At the rate things are going, I wouldn’t put it past them. This is the fastest I’ve ever seen a dev throw their ideals out the window to attempt to retain players.

Exactly the reason that I no longer have any desire to stick with this game.

Go back and read your golden rules. Particularly the bit about raking risks, trying new things, and seeing what will work and what won’t instead of just not trying anything at all.

This implementation might blur two principles. But that has to be expected when your design philosophy essentially has one bit that says “we will never do this” and another that says “we are willing to give anything a try”.

So they kept a promise and broke one at the same time. Worth being conflicted over? Yes. Worth tossing out the baby with the bathwater before you have even actually seen the baby? No.

CrazyGoNuts.9536:

For PVE, flat stats are always better than the weird cooldown things on the runes, that is why exotic gems or runes of divinity are the best pve upgrades. And these new items have flat stats built in + additionaly stats you have no way of getting otherwise. It’s not an “opinion” as someone said – it is math, these items are more powerful.

Diminishing returns. As I have already pointed out. There is a point where monsters hit so hard your toughness does not matter, there is a point where mobs have so much health or toughness so high, that your min/maxed power is less beneficial than the guy that stopped 50 points ago and upped his crit chance a bit.

So yes. It’s still opinion. I can upgrade numbers to get my crit chance over 80% raw, or I can leave it at 76% and rune so my conditions do 15% more dmg on top of whatever stacks of corruption I am sitting on. Which do you think is more efficient? Think for a minute people.

ExpiredLifetime.1083:

And how do you know that the infusions won’t give you those options that you have from runes?
Oh wait. You don’t.
Higher base stats with the potential to be customized through infusions is what we’re looking at now. Ascended items are better.

Ready for this…Im gonna do a magic trick…its this thing I have been telling everyone about in this thread for a while now. Its called reading…

“The stats and functionality normally added to gear through upgrade components are actually built into Ascended items. Instead of upgrade slots, Ascended gear has Infusion slots, and rarer versions of the items also come with additional Agony Resistance built into them.” – Linsey Murdock on November 13, 2012

Lest we forget, this is a gimmick added to deal with Agony. So, since everything in the first three pages of this thread is based on speculation anyways…it’s safer to speculate the infusions will give defensive/offensive bonuses to certain effects and the creatures that use them. Also, since the baked in stats are considered a replacement for “normal” upgrades, it would be unlikely that they would duplicate every existing rune.

So what is more believable? That Ascended armor is going to be a tier that is the equivalent of a piece of exotic armor that has a higher base + crest stats with a slot that provides rune + infused bonuses, or that its just another tier that falls between exotic and legendary and that higher baked in stats are the trade-off for not having rune bonuses or crest/jewel versatility?

If you are having trouble, just read that last bit out loud a few times and eliminate the option that sounds completely game-breaking and stupid! …Because that will probably be the one that’s wrong.

Or at least we all hope.

Zefiris.8297:

That’s the thing: It doesn’t need to. The overall difference in power is bigger than 15% swiftness duration could ever hope to be. It’s not even close, in fact

And that’s an opinion. Which again comes back to the original post on how the game will change and how play styles will change. In dungeons in particular monster health pools are huge. And they either have an obscene toughness rating or encounters have mechanics that increase their toughness.

So what good does that extra power do you? How much of a difference is it actually making? It doesn’t matter. Because it still isn’t making as much of a difference as the person that is traited to stack conditions, and runed to increase their effectiveness and duration or augment them on crit.

Toughness. Is that toughness boost going to matter if you get caught multiple times by the Alpha’s AOE? Or how about the Lupicus projectiles? No. You know what would help you with those? 15% swiftness duration or invulnerability when hit below 25% health.

Their is an unhealthy fixation on numbers regarding this update that isn’t considering how the rest of the game works and that there is a point where trait points see diminishing returns on effectiveness, so slots are better used for complimentary effects.

I didn’t do math. You can’t be off on something you didn’t do. But I like you assuming that I did. That shows again people are quicker to toss their opinion out there than read something that might contradict it.

Will ascended gear with it’s baked in stats ever give you 15% increased swiftness duration? Hmm? What was that…oh right…no. Will the ascended gear ever proc a utility skill equivalent effect under certain conditions? oh…well….yep, its still no. But surely those stats will reduce condition and stun duration, or grant a damage increase to opponents that are under the effects of one of your skills….oh. Kitten. They Dont.

Well, at least you have the flexibility to use a jewel so the Ascended piece can boost it’s inherent stats and you can put in three other stats to move some trait points around and…wait NO you cant!

This is where the comparison to green weapons came in. That they were a new tier of gear that had SET IN STONE perfect stats. The trade: They were easier to acquire than perfect rares, but NOT CUSTOMIZABLE THUS LIMITED IN EFFECTIVENESS. Enter Ascended gear with SET IN STONE STATS, the trade off being slightly better stats but unable to get rune effects or augment the same number of stats you can with crests, THUS LIMITING THEIR EFFECTIVENESS.

Where exactly were you lied to…from what I can see, this warning has been quite public since last July…

“Take risks
“Let’s try it.” You hope to hear that phrase at the end of a meeting, especially if that meeting was contentious, or if the idea discussed is new and radical.

Imagine a playground full of kids playing. At its best, playing is making mistakes in a safe environment and learning from those mistakes in a way that encourages growth. Trying out new ideas or making drastic changes is the way we as designers get to play with the game. It’s where we slip and fall, scrape our knees, and otherwise monkey around on the jungle gym. While we don’t try out every idea, we use our collective experience to get a sense for what has promise—what we should follow down the rabbit hole. We look at where our ideas break, how they break, and why they break. You can see this in how we redesigned the sylvari, or in how we have developed the professions. They’ve all undergone quite a bit of transformation over the last few years as we have tried out different approaches and learned from those very playful experiences.

Purpose: To reinforce our general design culture of iteration. You can’t innovate in an environment that is averse to failure. You must embrace the risk of making mistakes. At the end of the day, if something doesn’t quite turn out the way you wanted, it’s not failing, it’s playing—and you grow for having done it."

- http://www.arena.net/blog/the-golden-rules-of-guild-wars-2

Voqar.2349:

You don’t work for ANet so clearly you can’t speak for them.

This game is not GW1 and not a direct sequel to GW1 since it’s aimed at being a more mainstream (but different, or was) type of MMORPG for a wider audience.

ANet did speak for themselves with their oft touted manifesto and clearly different philosophical vision for this game.

First, people are still going on about “superior stats” without acknowledging my second post and the stat/customization trade off. Until those people have time to read, I don’t have time to educate them any more.

Second I refer you, in particular Voqar, to the golden rules that talk about GW2 being a sandbox that they intend on experimenting with and trying new ideas and approaches. They would rather try something and see it not work than dismiss something for fear it wont work. That helps them learn and come up with something better next time. This is one of those experiments.

At the same time you can look at the manifesto and cry foul, I can look at the golden rules and tell you this type of thing was to be expected.

*It still stands, that this release is on par with what they have done before.
*The stat boost from Ascended gear looks to be offset by their total lack of customization options.
*Players who are so vested in the rules and manifesto should have read the bit about growing, changing, experimenting and playing.
*The precedence for introducing new tiers has been established, the precedence for gear power creep has not. So there is nothing but total and pure speculation that this will lead to that.

Now, what reason do you have to cling to that misinformed and hastily made opinion, other than personal pride?

Incorrect. Get out of your little box for a second and consider the system as a whole…

*Exotics can be upgraded with runes…runes provide set bonus effects to offset smaller set bonuses compared to jewels and crests.

*Exotics can be upgraded with crests/jewels…these provide the highest possible stat bonuses across multiple combinations of stats on a single item

*Ascended gear has higher base stats than exotic with preset stats. You do not get the flexibility of crests and jewels, and you get no bonuses from a rune set.

The trade for each choice from the top down is a slight boost in stats in exchange for flexibility and customization. And just like with green weapons as the game and players evolve, customization is going to end up being more valuable than a set of perfect numbers.

Is that so hard to understand? It involves a perspective of the entire game rather than tunnel vision focused on a single change.

As a long time GW vet, this patch is giving me a weird sort of flashback. I recall the first major content patch for the original game. It was the Sorrow’s Furnace update. And it also came just months after the games launch, and introduced a new tier of weapons (green in this case).

Green weapons were much like Ascended gear in the way the stats were max for their level, but were “baked” into the item and could not be changed. They had unique skins and were really neat if you found one that had the exact stats you wanted (Victo’s Battle Axe and Wenslauss Faith FTW). But a lot of people still used rare (yellow) items for their ability to be customized. In fact, as more diverse and creative builds were discovered, more eccentric stat combinations were needed and greens became inferior to the tier beneath them.

Green weapons did not introduce power creep even though they were initially superior to what most players had. This update did not start a vicious cycle of ever increasing item stats. But they were neat for what they were and people continued to “hunt for greens” for the entire life of the game, and probably still are today.

In other words the update was fun and it worked. Players were excited for a while, then they just became a thing to do. You got to wonder if this named boss would “drop his green” this time.

Keep in mind this is only A.net’s second game as a studio. And they are following the pattern they know. Release, content update, expansion. The Sorrows Furnace update introduced a new area on the map that was just smaller than a total zone, and so is Lost Shores. Sorrow’s Furnace introduced a new dungeon and so is Lost Shores. Sorrow’s Furnace introduced a new tier of gear, and so is Lost Shores. Sorrow’s Furnace introduced chest keys…ok, if Lost Shores has chest keys, then im out :p

On paper, A.net has pretty much stayed consistent with their habits. It’s more that the players have changed. Maybe that’s the new audience scared that this game will turn in to the one they left? To them I say, it didn’t happen seven years ago, it likely wont now. Maybe its other former GW players that didnt experience the game pre-Sorrow’s Furnace? To them I say, this has already been done and you continued to enjoy the game for a long time afterwards.

Do you all know who will need Ascended gear? Players that grind Fractals to the point of agony being enough of a problem to need it. Do you know who will be getting Ascended gear? See the above answer.

It’s a little self contained tread-mill for people that like tread-mills.

If you casually play fractals, agony won’t be a problem. Your existing exotics will be fine. If you don’t play fractals, your existing exotics will be fine.

So let A.Net put those players that enjoy that sort of thing in a corner by themselves with what makes them happy and get back to the stuff that makes you happy.

I like this topic. It shows how Ascended might not be the end of the world. I see lots of you are still using rare or even masterwork…yet still doing content, still doing dungeons, still doing big events.

There has largely been a “I’m just going to play the game and ill get it when I get it” mentality.

A new tier of gear isn’t going to change that.

Well, if the change ends up being for better or for worse, making this many of your players this angry is never a good thing. It’s too close to launch now to remove it, but I’m sure this thread and the sheer number of views/replies and complaints will come up if the idea is ever proposed in a meeting again.

A.net was pretty open about experimenting with things to see what would work and what wouldn’t. You guys keep bringing up the Golden Rules, well experimenting and tossing stuff out to see if we would be receptive to it was also one of those.

This was one of those experiments. We weren’t receptive. In fact a large number of people were destructively dismissive and at this point it doesn’t even matter if the content “works” or not. In their own terms here…they fell, scraped their knees and need to pick themselves up and remember this next time.

There are other forms of personal progression that can added to a game that don’t come with the stigma attached to increasing stats in new gear tiers. I’d wager we see start seeing those from now on. Now we should just let Lindsey lick her wounds so she can get back to the drawing board.

Webba.3071:

I would suggest reading the blog post again, all of it this time, and thinking a little more carefully about the implications of it.

I did read the blog post. If you could take a second from being so defensive that condescension is reflexive…what I was asking is how hard are people expecting to be?

We don’t know what their drop rates are. We don’t know how many chests are awarded in each of these dungeons/fragments. We don’t know if those drop rates increase in regard to the level you have reached in the dungeon so you are more likely to get one the closer you are to needing it.

We do know there will only be three slots you can equip infuse-able armor in. Meaning to effectively “max out” you only need three things as opposed to, I don’t know…the entire set of twelve coming out at once.

Now the implications…they are adding another tier of armor…whoop-dee-doo? Something for the min-maxers to rush off towards and keep busy with and the casual players to get too “eventually”. Especially if they only need to find a piece now, and a piece later as they slowly roll in.

A quick tally of players in Lions Arc had about three people claiming to be fully decked in exotics, and about twelve still using golds or greens with an exotic here or there. All lvl 80. All doing dungeons. That isn’t going to change with a new tier. I’m more inclined to say this addition is more pointless than out-right bad.

Edit: Ill add, if you are are strictly talking Anet principles…yeah this was a kittened move. Shame on them. But mechanically, it’s just sort of whatever. If you are doing dungeons and having a great time now with your exotics or lesser gear, this isn’t going to change that. If you want to do the new dungeons, you’ll end up getting the new stuff in the process of doing them.

You’re all making it sound as if a piece of infused armor has a 1% drop rate at the end of each existing dungeon and you need six pieces to beat the final boss at the end of the new dungeon. Thats just not the case. So swallow a Xanax and calm down.

Out of curiosity, how much grind are you all expecting to do to find two rings and a back item that is intended to protect you from a new condition?

I wouldn’t expect these things to be especially hard to come by. Now the exact combination of stats you want, without being able to craft…that would be tricky.

Meh. In GW you had to get a special attribute on gear to protect you from an agony condition. Thats not really a big deal. I actually thought it was a nice throw back.

As far are the new tier of gear…meh as well. It’s a co-op game. Myself and my guild do dungeons almost exclusively and we have never run in to “gear checks” or anything of that nature.

Lots of people are still just using what they can craft, equip or afford. The other night someone pinged their jewelry in HoTw (a lvl 80 dungeon) and they were still using a Hero’s band. I made a joke about it and someone else said “Hey Im still using that too”.

It might appall some of you to know, but a very large percentage of people are still running high level content in blues and greens.

So, other than WvW, assuming there is nothing to balance it. What exactly is the problem? Its not like you will be declined groups because you arent fully decked in ascended gear.

Relax. You all sound neurotic.

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. The last time the BLC was “well stocked” for an event, it meant weapon skins with a less than 1% drop rate and…all the same crap that’s usually in it.

Sure, the MKC was added later, and I appreciate the gesture. People bought keys to open chests “well stocked” for the holiday, and they ended up with holiday stuff from a chest after all was said and done. Just after a lot of kicking a screaming and making people very very angry.

I have no problem at all buying special edition/holiday/event stuff from the cash-shop. But — I wont buy any more skins until we get some sort of dedicated storage or costume maker, and I kitten sure will never buy another chest key.

Has anyone considered this might be a balance thing?

The forums are still full of people that cannot do a dungeon to save their lives. QQ about Lupicus and Alpha on a daily basis and can’t walk around Orr without getting omg-wtk smacked down.

Plainly, the majority of players just aren’t getting as good as Anet expected them to get. Too many habits from other games and failure to adapt.

So how do you help those people along without nerfing the entire game? Add a new tier of gear to shoot for and make the current top tier more accessible to help that base of players while adding some more difficult content on the top end for the more skilled base of players.

This doesn’t mean a new tier of gear is going to be coming every patch. GW had the same base stats on gear for SEVEN years. I’m sure this isn’t a decision they just idly came buy without a litany of reasons behind it.

People should stop counting their chickens and see how all of this ends up working.

Casquilho.1407:

Buying games from this kind of web sites its not like buying cds from a back of a truck, they are autorized reselers and hold the responsibility of selling working keys. Thank you for the advice about the bank though, I hadnt think about it before.

I don’t recall them being on the list of Anet’s approved retailers. But I could be mistaken, I haven’t looked at in in a long time.

From what I understand of the company they are re-sellers. Meaning they buy unused keys from individuals or small businesses in bulk and then mark them up for slightly less than retail. The problem is that the keys might be used, or stolen, or even run through a generator and found to be valid…and then invalid when someone else buys a legit copy and has a proof of purchase, or are keys someone bought with a maxed out/stolen/unauthorized credit card and then sold for cash.

9/10 times you’ll be ok. But eventually something like this will happen. Buying re-sold serials is a roll of the dice.

Maybe call your bank and see if you can do a charge-back on the purchase? It might be too late from that. I think all you can really hope for is that the website you purchased from gives you a refund or a new key. It would be surprising if you actually managed to get that original account re-activated.

You might have just bought a $60 lesson about buying games from legit retailers instead of serial number re-sellers. Also, beware of guys selling perfume/CDs/DvDs out of the trunks of their cars at gas-stations and guys selling speakers out of vans.

Got my world completion this past weekend. Been at 99% for well over and month. The last vista I needed was in the Durios fort in EB. I decided just to make up some strategic merits of taking that spot when we had SM, a commander took the bait and steered the zerg in that direction. Them, and a little help from my guild and I finally got my star.

Could have gotten it a long time ago by server hopping to the blue team on any given week. But I didn’t on principle. Transfers have caused too many issues game wide for me to jump on that train instead of being patient.

Unless your goal is making a Legendary and the only thing left you need to complete the recipe is the gift of the traveler…just get it the right way. It will be much more satisfying.

I would give it until after the holidays or the first real expansion. Those are both going to see a large influx of new players. A huge portion of which are just going to roll on whatever server isn’t full. By then free transfers will also most definitely have stopped casual server hopping so the lower pop servers will have a chance to grow and build their community.

Well Scribe, welcome to Guild Wars. Changing traits, skills, and having a few extra pieces of gear on the side for certain occasions is part of the game (we have special “gear” bags specifically for this). It’s always been part of the game. In the original it was such a prevalent part of the game that you had four pre-sets for weapons and a template system to save specific builds and swap them on the fly.

GW2 doesn’t need something that complicated since you only change major trait perks and there are only 20-30 skills to worry about instead of over a hundred per profession with two professions per character.

If you want to be a specialist character, that is your prerogative. But the side-effect of that is getting fewer groups because you aren’t able and willing to quickly adapt, and even fewer again after the people that do take you see that cant adjust to the party.

I personally cant see why anyone would want to play that way. Three minutes of communication and a few mouse clicks meaning a dungeon runs smoother and faster?

Seems like another case of players accustomed to a system where the game pigeon holes you in to a certain role based on a skill tree you are specced into and gear you grinded weeks to get. That’s not how this game is designed from the ground up. You are expected to change on the fly based on group needs.

Sorry for double post, edit button was gone. It’s worth adding that you can easily change major trait perks and utility skills in a dungeon. So if you find your role is being filled by someone else that might be more effective, its simple to make adjustments to better accommodate the party.

Its pretty common for a group with two thieves or two guardians to change up a little bit on the fly to work better together rather than nullify one another.

Why not just change conditions? I mean, if a Thief notices a warrior is easily maintaining 25 stacks of bleeds on a mob, they why doesn’t the Thief adjust to trying to maintain blind? Why doesn’t the Mesmer focusing on a variety of conditions to maximize the dmg potential of herself and the necro?

Play as a group maybe instead of five individuals that want a system changed so they can do the same thing?

Just doesn’t seem very efficient to me, given all of the options available, to sit there and do nothing because someone else is handling one specific condition.

YPC.6349:

I know you would say everyone can get one using Paypal, but majority of us legendary crafter got/is getting one because we have a superior plan. No, it is not that we farm more or we are luckier.

Except for that is total bull-kitten. I won’t take an credit away from the legit crafters or people that worked with their guilds and friends to make one, but they are not the “majority”

The majority of people with legendaries are the ones that exploited the karma mistake to promote items up to rares and exotics to either burn getting a precursor or to get the gold to buy one. Besides the people that jumped on that early, there wasn’t a follow through on the promise they made to get the ban lifted and people still converted all those items they were supposed to trash.

The majority of precursors in the TP are from RMTs and people running multiple bots. They convert gold to rares to precursors which they sell third party.

Removing the random components impacts the average player much less than it impacts those that have the income, by illegitimate needs, who brute force the odds.

They should still, and I am sure will, be extremely difficult/expensive to obtain. But there are game wide benefits to making components available other ways.

The industry standard is to release patch notes along side updates. Most software comes with a .txt file packed in that list the changes. Most games publish the notes on their websites along side the release or display them on a start up splash screen.

There may be some exceptions. Usually because the content was mostly complete way ahead of time and they were holding on to it to increase the life of the game. Like Capcom games that issue “patches” to unlock things already on the disc. But it is not the norm since things are subject to change up to minutes before its launched. No one wants to publish patch notes for patch notes.

The patch notes will probably come with the patch.

Considering the life cycle, that content is in inhouse testing right now. If something is found to be buggy, exploitable, or imba, they may need to rework or delay that change.

Patch notes come when the patch is final. The patch is final when it is launched.

Compared to everything else in the game, the grind makes up a very small portion of the content. And if you are grinding, its for very specific reasons (like getting mats for a legendary or cultural gear) that can easily be ignored without any penalty.

WoW players dismissing a game for “too much grind” though I think is hilarious. The entire business model of that game is designed around grinding to keep sub money coming it. It’s only slightly better than a straight up unabashedly grind focused Korean MMo.

Some people love their gear treadmills though. That tiny stat increase is what those types of players need to justify their money and their time. Aesthetics are secondary to numbers and in GW aesthetics are more of the focus. So people that enjoy the former will never be satisfied with GW. Just comes down to taste.

I can agree on lots of things along the lines of confirmation. Some stuff is just to easy to mis-click considering its proximity to other options. Especially if you get a little lag. Buying things with dungeon tokens is one example.

This particular instance though is hard to chalk up to anything but user error. The space between upgrade buttons is HUGE. You have an enormous price listed above each add button and addition to some empty padding on each side.

One twitch from an unsteady hand would result in an empty click. It would take a combination of an earthquake and parkinsons to click the wrong add button.

That said, a confirmation dialog wouldn’t hurt anything to have. But it’s hard to see as a priority. And won’t stop the case of people just not paying attention or buying an upgrade they regret after it starts.

You can also cancel things from the queue. You just cant cancel things that are already in progress afaik

Edit: It appears that you can click the cog next to build queue to cancel things in progress. A little red X is put next to active upgrades.

Im not a fan of the pre-cursors or the clovers. In the camp that there shouldn’t be a slot machine involved. Something like part of an item that replaces clovers being granted when you achieve Dungeon master, and the other part when you achieve Dungeon runner would be more appropriate. That would mean you have pretty much dominated PvE.

The majority of players would still need to work really hard just to get that requirement. And it would mean a lot of players would need to raise their, not just be lucky. Arah can be pretty humbling pretty fast.

I hope the changes are somewhere along those lines.

I would wager the requirements just lean more on the activities-to-acquire side than the chance-to acquire side.

The big complaint about legendaries is that they were more about chance than they were skill and dedication.

I’m sure they will still be prohibitively expensive for most players. Considering Anet it will be something like making a chance for pre-cursor or clovers drop from the chest at the end of the new dungeon once a day. The new tower style dungeon that gets harder as you progress and was designed to stick a shoe in the mouth of people complaining there was a lack of hard content.

Just because the ways you can get the parts needed might change, doesn’t mean those ways will be easy.

I like the swimming. I mean, not as much as land combat. But I don’t thinks its bad. My character plays pretty much the same but with the addition of another axis of movement. Then I also liked games like Endless Ocean.

A lot of people really don’t pay attention to their water gear and end up getting frustrated when they aren’t doing as much damage as they want and are taking more than they think they should. There are even more that min/max their characters for a specific gimmick and get zero benefit from it underwater.

It shouldn’t be surprising that the who people kitten themselves for a decent sized chunk of the games content end up not having a good time with it.

I think a proper underwater city would be neat. The art and design teams would probably have a field day with that. The Quaggans have plant like hobbles and the Krait just tie together whatever junk they can find. A race with some actual significant architecture would be pretty welcome.