Guild Wars 2

ButterPeanut.9746:

I also never understood the strong desire in this game to be attached to your build/gear. Whether or not you have solders or zerker is just math…It has no feelings towards you. Why have feelings towards it?

Most ofteh the feeling people have are not for the builds themselves, but for the need to regear for different content/after a balance patch. The cost to do it for some may be a pocket change, but for the majority of players it’s not that cheap or convenient at all.

ButterPeanut.9746:

Like anyone asking you “would you like $10 or $20 for free?” Of course you always pick the better one.

In such a case, why the first option even exists?

ButterPeanut.9746:

Kind of a scrambled rant, but even in an easy mode I personally feel like it would be a large development challenge to design content that has an appropriate amount of challenge for all of the vast build diversity in this game simply due to how strong damage avoidance is versus building for damage mitigation

That depends on your goal and the level of players you’d want to balance for. Though, in general, yeah, the inherent faults of the core combat system create some really serious problems for anyone trying to balance this game.

yann.1946:

To be accurate they want more people who enjoy the gamemode to play Them, not Just more.

Yes, that’s how it should be. Except the only way to get that is to make the gamemode enjoyable to a wider group of players. Using primarily exclusive rewards to entice more players will only cause the situation where, of the people doing the content, less people would enjoy it.

yann.1946:

This is a distinctie difference because Just getting more people in a gamemode is easy, it’s Just not the best thing to do.

Agreed. And, since you can’t change players’ likes and dislikes, you can only change the content.

Yobculture.5786:

It’s faster if you use a meta party composition and not 4N1R.

You don’t seem to understand what meta is.
Yes, the 4 condi reapers 1 druid comp, for fractals is also meta. Just for different reasons.

Feanor.2358:

“Meta” doesn’t mean “required”. It means optimal.

Not even that. “meta” means “it’s what people recommend”. Why something is recommended may change. In most cases it’s for best efficiency and clearing speed. In others it will be for making the run as easy as possible.

zoomborg.9462:

There are games out there that have 2-3 times harder content than GW2 raids. On those forums usually people ask how to progress in the content. Strategies, advice, tips……
Here people asked for things to be catered to them. It’s embarassing really….

Yeah… almost like those games were targeted at different people or something…
Surprising, right?

(When i want to play a hard game, i play a hard game. GW2 i play for completely different reasons however).

Ardid.7203:

Those aren’t limitations, those are are features.
GW2 is not a trinity game.

They are both, actually. The existence of dodge, for example, has a massive impact on design of harder content. There’s a reason why more and more mechanics are being made undodgeable (remember, when you see some major combat mechanic elements getting flat out ignored in an encounter, it means those mechanics create a design problem).

TexZero.7910:

The person you quoted doesn’t share the view of 0 mechanics, they were just expressing the views of the pro-easy mode crowd.

Actually, they were expressing their own, extremely exagerrated view on the view of the pro-easy mode crowd.

Ashen.2907:

My favorite restaurant adding a new dish to their menu, while continuing to serve the dishes that are my reason for eating there, does not bother me. If I dont want to eat the new chicken dish I can continue to order my favorite steak dinner.

If however you will add steak and burgers to a menu of a previously vegan restaurant, and start putting burgers on that restaurant adds, you’re going to lose a lot of the customers. Because meat in that restaurant is going to bother them.

Or, for even better example, try to add pork chops to the kosher restaurant menu. It’s not going to end well.

Ayrilana.1396:

It’s funny though that you first start off by saying that raids changed the identity of the game and now state not many people would purchase it if it were sold separately. How can something that only interests very few players be game identity changing for the rest of the players who do not raid?

Because game identity change in this case is not shaped by players, but by devs.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

But please don’t try to make the argument that raiding is somehow inherently wrong for ANet’s franchise.

Not wrong in the moral sense. Just damaging.

Just as a vegan restaurant and a steak bar are equally good franchises, with none of them better than the other. And yet trying to transition either way is likely to ruin the business.

Raids are not wrong. Liking them is not wrong. Their introduction was just a mistake for this game.

Ayrilana.1396:

Just because something has the potential, however small, to change doesn’t mean that it will happen.

Agreed. But it also doesn’t mean it won’t happen.
“We didn’t originally intend it to work like that” is not the same as “we won’t do this”

I just hope the changes you’ll make won’t cause Migraine to be even more a pain in the behind it is now.

zealex.9410:

Astralporing.1957:

zealex.9410:

Astralporing.1957:

zealex.9410:

Astralporing.1957:

zealex.9410:

it tends to happen passively while running your dailies you get ar and drops how do you thing i geared all my chars? And i didn’t even payed attention one day i said i want to gear up my guard and had the gear and the ar collecting dust.

It may not be a problem to a veteran that played a lot of fractals before, and doesn’t have many alts. It is extremely annoying to someone that is a more recent player. Or, to someone that has a lot of characters/builds, and likes to test them out.
Personally, i never have enough infusions around. The gold cost is also not so insignificant.

Also, while it may happen passively, it also takes a lot of time. As i said, it’s a grind just for a grind’s sake.

Why would i be a veteran? I have a little over 1000 hours and i got into fractals after hot ( srsly that is building an asc armor and looking into the infusion system). I also have all my character slots filled with lvl 80 chars which i gear to get into fractals so i know how making a new character fractal ready pretty much feels like. The gold cost is insignificant 2 days worth of fractals is usually enough for a +9 infusion. The costs is also ~3g for the + 9 ones and less for the +7 ones. Now dont get me wrong im all in for a system where you can get cheaper infusions once you maxed out you main character but no its not a grind for grind’s sake its a grind for bigger challenge/reward’s sake.

Gearing up a second character is definitely a grind for grind’s sake, as there’s no longer any challenge here, if you already can do t4’s.

No not really experience creates challenge. I’ll tell u what i main mesmer, i can say im a decent if not a really good mesmer and iv come to a point where playing mesmer in fractals is just ez. I recently geared a guardian to do fractals and the diff in playstyle creates a big challenge as the 2 classes do not have the same way they deal dmg/avoid dmg/cc and move around during the fight.Because of that i can appreciate the existance of ar coz it smoothened my fractal experience with that character since i did a few t3s and then i jumped into t4.

Remember, that most people first get infusions with their already geared up (and running t4) character, and only then equip their alt. They don’t gear up the alt the same way they did with original char (by running the fractals with that char and getting gear/infusions that way). And there’s really no point in having that method take long or be too grindy (well, apart from it being a gold sink, of course).
As i said, it’s grind for grind’s sake.

i did not say anywhere that i geared up my alts the same way i did with my main

If you weren’t farming infusions with your mesmer, then how exactly the need to farm them smoothened your experience?

zealex.9410:

True but theres is no reason for them to leave it there since the audience they targeted with raids like them and they would like even harder encounters.

Correction. Some of those people would like even harder encounters. Some do not.
Also, the “progression” of difficulty has one flaw you don’t seem to notice. It’s something that would only shrink the community.
Remember, that increasing difficulty will mean, that at every threshold some people would get left behind. When people get left too far behind, they get discouraged and some of them will leave. And with more and more raids (and increased expectations from the raiding groups), less and less new people will be able to join.
That’s a recipe for disaster.

On the other hand, yeah, let’s do that. Make each new raid encounter harder and harder until only few groups on the absolute top will be able to keep up. I’m pretty sure that many of the people i am usually arguing with would come to see my point very fast after ending in “not good enough” group.

Basically, all of the above.

you are likely to be better geared now (especially if you have ascended). From what we heard, dungeons were balanced around rare equipment.
You quite possibly had lower levels then.
There was a massive powercreep tied to the elite specs.
There was a condition rework
There was a defiance rework (that’s a massive indirect nerf to bosses)

At the same time, there were some nerfs to the content:
At least one general (and significant) nerf to all dungeon bosses (tied to the disabling the waypointing while in battle option)
Several reworks of scaling system, that generally made level 80 characters stronger in below 80 level zones and instances.
And, also, specifically ascalonian catacombs story mode has been made easier.

Hockmed.9417:

What do I mean by that? If you can get what you are interested in from raids without raiding, why bother with creating or running raids?

Good question. Why should you need to raid, if the thing you are interested in is not raid itself, but merely something that has been packaged together with it?

I have yet to hear a good answer to this one.

maddoctor.2738:

The fractals team is making new content for fractals that have nothing to do with Raids. The “stepping stone” phrase means experience in instanced content, and the game in general, nothing more.

No. It was mentioned directly that the increase in difficulty in the new and reworked fractals was due to them wanting those to serve as stepping stone to raids. It’s a design goal now. That’s having one content having an impact of design decisions of another content that should be completely idependent. That also means that this one content (raids) is considered more important. Even for the devs from the group working on that other content (fractals).

Additionally, words have an impact. The company that once claimed that “whole game is the endgame” now says, that raids are the endgame content, and that fractals are a stepping stone to them. Since it’s a company that doesn’t say much if they can help it, it can only mean that they want the players to shift their outlook in the same way. They want players to think that raids are the most important PvE content, and that fractal importance lies in them being a pathway to raids.

I don’t think it’s a good message to send.

zealex.9410:

Astralporing.1957:

zealex.9410:

Astralporing.1957:

zealex.9410:

it tends to happen passively while running your dailies you get ar and drops how do you thing i geared all my chars? And i didn’t even payed attention one day i said i want to gear up my guard and had the gear and the ar collecting dust.

It may not be a problem to a veteran that played a lot of fractals before, and doesn’t have many alts. It is extremely annoying to someone that is a more recent player. Or, to someone that has a lot of characters/builds, and likes to test them out.
Personally, i never have enough infusions around. The gold cost is also not so insignificant.

Also, while it may happen passively, it also takes a lot of time. As i said, it’s a grind just for a grind’s sake.

Why would i be a veteran? I have a little over 1000 hours and i got into fractals after hot ( srsly that is building an asc armor and looking into the infusion system). I also have all my character slots filled with lvl 80 chars which i gear to get into fractals so i know how making a new character fractal ready pretty much feels like. The gold cost is insignificant 2 days worth of fractals is usually enough for a +9 infusion. The costs is also ~3g for the + 9 ones and less for the +7 ones. Now dont get me wrong im all in for a system where you can get cheaper infusions once you maxed out you main character but no its not a grind for grind’s sake its a grind for bigger challenge/reward’s sake.

Gearing up a second character is definitely a grind for grind’s sake, as there’s no longer any challenge here, if you already can do t4’s.

No not really experience creates challenge. I’ll tell u what i main mesmer, i can say im a decent if not a really good mesmer and iv come to a point where playing mesmer in fractals is just ez. I recently geared a guardian to do fractals and the diff in playstyle creates a big challenge as the 2 classes do not have the same way they deal dmg/avoid dmg/cc and move around during the fight.Because of that i can appreciate the existance of ar coz it smoothened my fractal experience with that character since i did a few t3s and then i jumped into t4.

Remember, that most people first get infusions with their already geared up (and running t4) character, and only then equip their alt. They don’t gear up the alt the same way they did with original char (by running the fractals with that char and getting gear/infusions that way). And there’s really no point in having that method take long or be too grindy (well, apart from it being a gold sink, of course).
As i said, it’s grind for grind’s sake.

Ayrilana.1396:

A story mode (easy mode) was not intended for raids. This is explained in the dev post.

There’s a ton of things in the game that weren’t originally intended. Raids themselves are a good example. So, “not originally intended” is a weak argument nowadays.

Vayne.8563:

This attitude of it’s not hard for me so it’s not hard is one of the things that make people resent raiding so much.

This.

redux.1502:

But making an easy mode is the worst possible way to make the game mode more accessible.

Why? Because you think so?

redux.1502:

The sense of love and enjoyment and feeling of success that comes from overcoming raids at their current level of difficulty is so satisfying.

For those that are overcoming them at the current difficulty, perhaps. For the first few times, anyway (later on it’s just “the same as usual”). You forget however, that the difficulty is not an universal factor. Things difficult for one, are easy for another and impossible for some.

Additionally, not everyone find their enjoyment in the same things. Some will find success after many failures a thrilling and invigorating experience. For others it will be just a relief that the tedious and annoying part is already over.

Rink.6108:

@Obtena you can find my suggestions in the first post on this page. If Arenanet made collections for the game that are obsolete because of the prices, then the work Arenanet made for this parts of the game is for nothing.

Perhaps. On the other hand, it’s not the first system they’ve put a lot of work into, and then abandoned. it’s no more likely to receive a rework than dungeons.
And collections are economically obsolete not due to the current prices, but due to their original design (Anet wanted them to be a gold and materials sink, which tied them too much to TP. At the same time they didn’t want them to be cheaper than on TP, which made sure that TP will end up as the more economically sensible choice most of the time).

So, everything is working as intended. It’s not a bug, it’s a feature.

(notice: i don’t agreee with that original idea, and i think that the whole system was badly designed due to it, but that’s a separate discussion)

zealex.9410:

Their excuse was that ppl just got better at the game because of the previous raid. If thats the case the next raid should be a step up from the last or ppl will just get bored. This is supposed to be “the hardest pve content” not “the hardest pve content for the first times you do it and then its the same every release”

You don’t have to increase the difficulty for it to be “the hardest pve content”. Even if all future raids were to have a difficulty slightly below the current newest wing, they’d still be more difficult than all the remaining, non-raid pve content.

The whole idea of treating anything as a stepping stone to raids is a big mistake. It’s only demeaning to that other content, and presenting the idea that raids are somehow more special than the rest of the game (there are no “stepping stones” for wvw or spvp after all, and the only stepping stone for fractals are fractals themselves).

The only content that could possibly do something like that is “easy mode” raids.

zealex.9410:

Astralporing.1957:

zealex.9410:

it tends to happen passively while running your dailies you get ar and drops how do you thing i geared all my chars? And i didn’t even payed attention one day i said i want to gear up my guard and had the gear and the ar collecting dust.

It may not be a problem to a veteran that played a lot of fractals before, and doesn’t have many alts. It is extremely annoying to someone that is a more recent player. Or, to someone that has a lot of characters/builds, and likes to test them out.
Personally, i never have enough infusions around. The gold cost is also not so insignificant.

Also, while it may happen passively, it also takes a lot of time. As i said, it’s a grind just for a grind’s sake.

Why would i be a veteran? I have a little over 1000 hours and i got into fractals after hot ( srsly that is building an asc armor and looking into the infusion system). I also have all my character slots filled with lvl 80 chars which i gear to get into fractals so i know how making a new character fractal ready pretty much feels like. The gold cost is insignificant 2 days worth of fractals is usually enough for a +9 infusion. The costs is also ~3g for the + 9 ones and less for the +7 ones. Now dont get me wrong im all in for a system where you can get cheaper infusions once you maxed out you main character but no its not a grind for grind’s sake its a grind for bigger challenge/reward’s sake.

Gearing up a second character is definitely a grind for grind’s sake, as there’s no longer any challenge here, if you already can do t4’s.

There’s a bug that makes it not work sometimes.
Apparently support can’t enable your mastery track, so you need to try again. It’s rare, so it’s unlikely to happen twice in a row.

Wasabi Kitty.8247:

If berserker should be top dps because of the name, chronos should just be able to skip time ahead until after you’ve killed the raid boss.

But they can! By joining the instance after the boss is killed!

Ayrilana.1396:

Raid were meant to be challenging group content from the start. A story mode is unnecessary. This has been brought up almost daily in the raids subforum.

By raiders – because it’s not useful for them.

Ayrilana.1396:

Ascended equipment is fairly easy to obtain.

That’s highly subjective. For some it’s easier, for others it isn’t. Just as there are people that consider legendaries to be cheap, and players that never had over 50g in their wallet.

Ayrilana.1396:

On top of that, ascended equipment is account bound which makes it very multi character friendly. You can just swap them to another class assuming they are the same weight type (for armor) and stat combo.

Which they rarely are. For example, my mesmer, necro and ele use different stat sets. So do my condi ranger, healer druid and thief. Only among heavy classes there’s more uniformity, and only because i don’t WvW on a more invested level.

Behellagh.1468:

Being in a friendly guild was the only way to have a friendly dungeon group.

You obviously played a different game than i did. Any of my “casual run” lfgs for dungeons filled almost instantly, and i had trouble with pugs maybe one or two times (usually due to me forgetting to mention "no skipping " at the beginning).

Healix.5819:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

And then of course there’s my key runner who would be getting the upcoming 5th year present in spite of only being a few days old. That doesn’t feel right.

If they had account gifts, it’d be for the account, not every individual character. Imagine the current implementation, except the account itself was treated as a character.

So, one present instead of many? No, thank you.

ButterPeanut.9746:

And you believe that is a problem? I certainly don’t.

I don’t remember answering a question about whether it is good or isn’t. In fact, i was very careful not to go in this direction.
What i was commenting on was just the thread’s question – viability of “all builds welcome” option. And the answer is, that no, due to raid requirements, that option is not viable.

Whether that’s good or not is a matter for different discussion.

cranos.5913:

The playerbase split has existed for far longer than raids. Does no one remember the zerk meta hate? Casual vs tryhard pug “elitist”? “Only 7k+ ap allowed”?

I do. I also remember, that the groups without those restrictions filled up faster, and yet had the same chance of finishing the content. Elitist atitudes were more damaging to elitists themselves than to other players or the game as a whole.

cranos.5913:

The rose tinted glasses are so real here… Every gamemode has a toxic side in GW2 and had that well before HoT, which includes open world. The flame and hate for commanders I’ve seen after a failed teq attempt far outweigh what I’ve witnessed in raids for example.

Well, Teq revamp was part of the same wave that created HoT and brought us raids. You know, the mistaken assumption that people asking for the game to be made more difficult are speaking for the community, or even for the large part of it.

Yes, the split did exist before, but the game made a lot of effort to minimize its importance. Now it directly feeds it. That is the difference.

sevenDEADLY.5281:

The people arguing that dps meters are kicking people from groups and being elitist to people are the same people that believe spoons make people fat and that cars drive themselves drunk.

More like the people that argue that you should keep guns away from general populace, because, while some people can use them responsibly, the damage caused by those that don’t is just too big.

My personal take on dps meters is that they are fine, if all in the squad agree to their use. They are best when used in static groups as a tool for self-improvement (and having a look at them, they are mightily useful here), but start causing problems as soon as they appear in pug groups. Because many of people there just aren’t responsible enough.

And even in static groups you need to know how to use them, because they can cause some real damage even if you didn’t have any bad intentions. My advice here is that, when used in training of new would-be raiders, unless you’re 100% sure of the reaction of your group, you should never show the results to anyone until that group starts performing on some satisfactory level.

Ookamikun.6472:

ThomasC.1056:

Ookamikun.6472:

I like how Champions Online did it. When struck with a successful CC, you gain a Defiant stack. A stack adds 10% chance to be immune from CC. The player will continue to gain a stack for each successful struck CC. If finally the player resisted the CC, the stack vanishes.

Not sure it’d be really useful because the stunlock trend doesn’t come from CC being long, but being spammed.

If you look at daredevils, or centaurs, or giant bloodstone elementals with little bombs, or Grella or so many other examples, they spam a lot of CC’s, hence wrecking stability stacks, and stun breakers available.

Such a system wouldn’t help against that many SPS (stun per second :p), and same goes for food.

But it does prevent spammed CC since in Champions Online they tend to occur too. In CO, the Defiant buff remains there and even goes up until you resist the CC, which then resets the Defiant buff stack.

And then you get CC’d again with next attack half a second later.

mauried.5608:

I really dont understand the logic of , I must be able to do all the content in the game , or the game is no good.
No MMO has content that 100% of the player base will ever do.

It’s not about the “content for 100% of the playerbase”. It’s about the content in the spotlight.

GW2 has moved from “whole game is the endgame” to “raids are the endgame, and fractals are a stepping stone to raids”. It’s a completely different design approach. It’s a completely different marketing approach as well. Image does matter a lot – and the current image of the game, that can be derived from most of dev statements we see around here is that raids are the endgame, and every other content is only important as a pathway to them. Basically almost every dev action, no matter how seemingly unrelated, underscores that raids are special (see changes to ascended vendors, and how the raid one got exempted). If you add to it the apparent abandonment of WvW and sPvP…

In that regard, gw2 now is really a different game than when it launched. And it’s now very much more similar to other games on the market. Especially since all the other games look closely at GW2, deciding which of its better elements can be easily incorporated into them. If this direction continues, then who knows? GW2 may end not being the game for its initial target group.

We’re not there yet, but so far devs seem to put a lot of effort for this to happen as soon as possible.

The Bitterfrost Frontier map can just be walked into by any character after being unlocked once. Other maps need to be unlocked by per character basis, using story, scroll or teleport to friend.
All of them require their respective LS chapter unlocked on account to enter, all of them also require HoT to enter.

Wasabi Kitty.8247:

So say you find 10 people that are interested in raiding. And you do an “all builds welcome” raid attempt. You’ve got one full healer druid, a couple 5 signet rifle warriors, a standard staff thief, a chrono with random gear and no plus boon duration, a couple eles in full soldiers gear, a necro in knight’s gear, and a couple others. And you head into wing 1 and try to bring down VG. And after multiple wipes you get familiar with all the mechanics of the fight and you’re positioning properly, you’re not getting teleported, and you’re standing in greens. And then you start hitting the enrage timer and wiping to it. And even with perfect execution of mechanics you’re still hitting enrage timer with 40%+ on the enrage timer. So then what do you do? Would you start kicking people? Would you start asking/telling others to modify their gear? Do you tell the warriors that they have to change to a PS build? Is it still an “all builds welcome” raid at that point?

Precisely. Raids are a game of hard numbers, and usually there’s no way around specific requirements (except, in some cases, for equally specific alternative team setups). No matter how skilled and experienced in the encounter’s mechanic people are, many team setups are just non-viable (and i use viable correctly here).

SlippyCheeze.5483:

Astralporing.1957:

SlippyCheeze.5483:

Raiding isn’t easy, but it’s really a game of coordination, not raw numbers.

It’s both.

Technically true, though all the numbers I have seen suggest that the “raw numbers” part is low enough (on the order of 10k/s/player) that it’s achievable without too much hardship?

those numbers are different for different bosses. For some they’re lower, for others they’re higher. And the hardship in achieving those numbers depends a lot on which class/build/team setup you play

OnizukaBR.8537:

Blaeys.3102:

There is a reason this thread keeps naturally reoccuring on both these forums and on Reddit.

Yes, and the reason its because some players feel that the content need to bend to their will and schedule.
Do you see topics like this “Please continue making new Maps with which LS Episode?”

I do see threads asking for more raids. In fact, i saw them long before raids were introduced into this game. I don’t see how threads asking for easy mode are any different.

OnizukaBR.8537:

So this is why you see topic like this one and not topics like “Continue to make raids like these”

…but i do see threads about making more raids…

SlippyCheeze.5483:

Raiding isn’t easy, but it’s really a game of coordination, not raw numbers.

It’s both.

ButterPeanut.9746:

Please explain why you cannot do this? Is there some extraterrestrial force that has control of your mind and body that is preventing you?

You can raid. Everyone can.

If that was true, you’d find either raid difficulty levels adjusted, or most of the raiders screaming bloody murder.

…oh wait. No, you’re right. Everyone can raid. Not everyone however can raid succesfully.

OnizukaBR.8537:

Remember how immersive is the Zaithan fight on the story mode? No? So yeah thats how immersive an easy boss is.

Mordy (especially in migraide mode) is equally immersive however. Too hard is as bad as too easy.

And the real problem with Arah story mode wasn’t that it was so easy. It was because it was mindnumbingly boring due to long periods of doing absolutely nothing.

apharma.3741:

IWhat’s sad is that people don’t recognise that a good ele is still worth their weight.

More likely, people recognize that most eles aren’t that good at all.

Ashantara.8731:

Feersum Endjinn.4179:

I must be one of the only ones who agrees with ANet on this, it was far too cheap to get ascended from PVP. It is supposed to be difficult to get, it is not a requirement that you get it as you can run around with exotics all you want and still win. Those of us who have put the time and effort into crafting, spending up to 100G a piece for ascended gear only to see cheap kitten in PvP makes you wonder why you bother, but luckily they have now seen the error of their ways.

Yes, but now crafting is the most efficient way to go, time- and money-wise. Who wants to grind several hundred matches plus invest gold on top of that when they can simply craft their armor and weapons?

This whole new system is useless and turns new PvP players off. No motivation for casual players, either. Who wants to put up several hours a day with toxic kids and griefers without even being rewarded for the nerves wrecked during the time? I certainly don’t.

Why, don’t you feel that working hard for the privilege to buy your rewards at a pretty much normal cost is a good enough?[/sarcasm]

OriOri.8724:

Astralporing.1957:

Vinceman.4572:

Fluffball.8307:

What??? Is that english?

Also I am not being unfriendly, the people that are being unfriendly are the people that think change is bad.

Really? Just because a majority is content with the current situation after having experienced so too many revamps for fractals and a single player jumps in the forum complaining about it because he/she doesn’t want to put effort in special things?
Seriously…

And now you are attributing your own opinion to the “majority”.

Just so you know, most of the players i use to do fractals with would not be sorry to see AR go. The amount of people that actually like this mechanics is most probably really small.

It is annoying. It creates the situation where you run one character through fractals, because gearing up another one would be too much of a bother. And it doesn’t actually introduce anything meaningful. It’s just a grind for grind’s sake.

I like the idea of AR a lot. Its a really awesome concept where you have to progress your character in order to survive jumping through the mists, but I agree that the implementation can sometimes be annoying.

That said I don’t know if I could agree with removing AR entirely, but it would be nice if it was somehow made easier to get AR on your toons once you have reached certain milestones on 1 character. Say once you have a character with +100 AR, the infusions from the vendor only require 75% as many +1 infusions to purchase, and once you have a character that has +150 AR, the infusions from the vendor only require 50% of the original +1 AR to purchase? That’s just off the top of my head, but something along those lines, where you build 1 character up to 150 AR and it makes it easier to build up others, would be much appreciated. It would make it easier for players to gear up more than 1 character to do fractals, especially if they are different weight classes (since that would make gear swapping impossible, and swapping your infusions every time you wanted to do fractals would get expensive quick).

Maybe just something as simple as changing +1 infusion drops from higher fractal tiers to +2, +3, +4 (accordingly to tier). I remember, that it was supposed to be like that, actually, when those infusions were first introduced, but Anet never followed on that.

TexZero.7910:

Logos.1306:

but to buy ascended from Fractals you need fractal pages and they are also time gated and limited.

and does it take you 3 weeks to get 1 piece of gear ? Because that’s what it takes for a raid.

Only for chest. There are pieces that can be done within one cap, without needing to wait for even one week. Also, you get magnetites from doing normal raids, but rewards from recommended low tiers aren’t exactly encouraging, so you’d be doing them only for pages.

OriOri.8724:

I think its fine. It gives players a guaranteed way to get their precursors without RNG and without being forced to buy it from the TP.

I don’t see a difference between buying precursor, or buying a kittenton of mats (because only a tiny fraction of people will ever be able to farm those mats directly). Except of course that buying prec directly is cheaper, and doesn’t require added grind of unbuyable mats (like geodes).

SlippyCheeze.5483:

We can only infer from what they do in three to nine months. If this remains, they are happy with how it performs so far.

Possibly. On the other hand, they have been known to leave unchanged a lot of things noone was satisfied with, just because they didn’t want to admit to making a mistake

Rising Dusk.2408:

You’re not wrong, but the thread literally asks if we’re happy with the change, so I answered that question for the only person for whom I can speak: myself. As far as this change goes, I will go from never buying this ascended gear to still never buying this ascended gear. I would be very surprised if I were the only one.

You’re definitely not the only one. And i think it’s telling, because generally we represent a wildly different playing style, likes and dislikes.

SlippyCheeze.5483:

FWIW, I’m doing them the hard way because I care more about the experience than the gold.

I do care more for the experience as well… which is why i absolutely hate the 2nd tier of all precursor collections. It turns what was supposed to be fun into nothing more but a massive, boring grind.
In that case, i’d rather just buy it off tp, as it doesn’t leave as much of a bad taste.

Rink.6108:

Since a few months prices for precursors for vanilla legendaries have dropped, causing them to be more expensive to craft than to buy from trading post.

That was actually true of most legendaries from the very beginning. Only for few of them using the crafting route was better.

The real reason is that Anet doesn’t really care if people are using the craft way – what they wanted was to guarantee that precursors remain as big a material and gold sink as possible.
What’s more, it is a system that has been already abandoned. It turned out to be too much of a design and implementation hassle for Anet to keep sticking to it. And Anet is not known to work on abandoned systems.

Thus, i don’t see any changes happening to it in the future.

Ayrilana.1396:

And what makes you think that?

Observation of trends before the caladbolg events. We’re talking about market that could supply or eat several hundred of lilies in the manner of days. Yes, dumping several thousands would destabilize it for a while, but it would also completely cut off supply (because noone would be farming for them). After a month of two we’d be back to the previous routine, but balanced around a lower price (due to the additional potential source from event chest).

Ayrilana.1396:

Before the recent current event, supply was relatively stable with buy/sell orders not fluctuating all that much.

They were fluctuating enough to see that it was a living market, not stale one. People were actually supplying and buying lillies, it wasn’t just a number of long-term sell/buy offers that took a long time to fulfill.

Ayrilana.1396:

Any change was likely the result of the AB farm which could especially be seen within the weeks leading up to its nerf.

Since lillies didn’t drop from it, i don’t see how ABML might be relevant there.

Ayrilana.1396:

There’s not a huge number of players going for them to cause any large fluctuations in those numbers.

only because of the price. There would be a lot more interest in them if they were more affordable. We’re not talking here about a luxury/vanity item but about a base utility one.

Ayrilana.1396:

If you add thousands of supply into that do you really think that that glut would go away in a timely manner that players would not get impatient?

Yes. Some players would get impatient, of course, but it would also bring only a short-term instability. Eventually the market would balance around a new price. And that price would almost certainly would still be well above vendor value.
There’s no reason why the impatience you bring up would create a permanent effect.

Ayrilana.1396:

I’m not against the price going down. I’m against the suggestion given because it adds too much too soon. Just increasing the harvest rate would be sufficient.

Increasing the harvest rate might actually cause a much bigger impact – because it would not have a cutoff at a certain price floor.

Ayrilana.1396:

Adding them to hero chests will increase the number that come into the system that supply will easily outmatch the demand for them even with the current event.

But only until their price dips below amalgamates. After that, the supply will go back to the previous situation, because people will stop choosing them. The demand seems to be high enough that the initial glut on the market should be cleared in relatively short time.

Yes, there will be one big dip in price, but it’s going to stabilize shortly after.

Hyper Cutter.9376:

Why exactly is lilies dropping to be equivalent to the other HoT crafting materials bad, again?

Most likely because someone is profitting from their scarcity and would like to profit more. So, obviousy, it’s bad for everyone. [/sarcasm]

Ayrilana.1396:

Astralporing.1957:

Ayrilana.1396:

FrizzFreston.5290:

Ayrilana.1396:

FrizzFreston.5290:

Why would players pick maguuma flowers over amalgated gemstones if the price is lower, jsut to up supply and get less money?

That’s not at all what I said (if this was directed at me).

It was just posing an additional question on your theory. It seemed to me to be a huge factor yet you dont seem to mention it.

I did in my first paragraph. I’ll add another sentence at the end to make sure it’s clear.

People would choose them up to the point that they’re equal to amalgamated gemstones. Once they went lower, they’d stop going for them. What will drive the price further down would be the large surplus of supply that’s slow moving due to so few uses. Players would get impatient and undercut each other in order to sell the items rather than have them remain on the TP.

But there wouldn’t be undercutting, as noone would pick lilies over amalgamates at that point (and their influx from current sources is negligible).

I had covered this in my post. It’s not about choosing it from the daily chest once it hit or went below the price of the amalgamated gemstones.

You might have a point if it was worthless before Caladbolg reforging event got introduced. It wasn’t. It was anything but worthless then.

So, if they would be selectable from the metaevent boxes, their price could at worst drop to the price of amalgamates. It would not drop significantly below it. If anything, it might even cause the price of amalgamates to rise a bit.

There’s apparently a bug with that event. One of my friends also didn’t get their mastery track unlocked even after receiving a kill reward and achievement for that encounter. From what i heard, it has been happening to others as well.
It also seems completely random, as the very same attempt unlocked mastery for others (and in fact can unlock it also for people that just maneged to enter the instance seconds befor the boss kill – you not only don’t need to be alive, but also do not need to tag anything, or even be present until the very last moments before McLeod is killed)

The one to Rule.2593:

Actually they have. and on multiple occasions.

I’d advise you to look up what exactly they actually said. You’ll be surprised how many loopholes each of those statements had.
If they’ll someday decide to introduce a new tier, they won’t break any promises, and won’t go against any statement that weren’t already invalidated by introduction of ascended. And that’s without even considering possible level cap raise.

Neither of those are likely to happen now, that’s true, but if you believe there’s any definite statement precluding one of those from happening, you weren’t paying attention. And if you believe that even if such statement existed, it would stop Anet if they decided they want to change it, you’re naive.

Ayrilana.1396:

FrizzFreston.5290:

Ayrilana.1396:

FrizzFreston.5290:

Why would players pick maguuma flowers over amalgated gemstones if the price is lower, jsut to up supply and get less money?

That’s not at all what I said (if this was directed at me).

It was just posing an additional question on your theory. It seemed to me to be a huge factor yet you dont seem to mention it.

I did in my first paragraph. I’ll add another sentence at the end to make sure it’s clear.

People would choose them up to the point that they’re equal to amalgamated gemstones. Once they went lower, they’d stop going for them. What will drive the price further down would be the large surplus of supply that’s slow moving due to so few uses. Players would get impatient and undercut each other in order to sell the items rather than have them remain on the TP.

But there wouldn’t be undercutting, as noone would pick lilies over amalgamates at that point (and their influx from current sources is negligible).