Guild Wars 2

Spencer.1386:

Breaking their manifesto has broken my trust and I just can’t understand why they chose to betray the community like this. How are these decisions making them money?

Been playing since GW1 and in a year I will most probably still be playing GW2. However, whenever I play, I can’t seem to get this terrible after taste out of my mouth…

I also have this sneaky suspicion that this can’t be over. I mean, nothing is explained. What are the karka, and where do they come from? Are they somehow connected to the Dragons? Where did the Consortium come from, exactly? Why haven’t we ever heard of them?

So many unresolved questions.

From all that has happened, I’m still not quite certain how the face of Tyria has been changed. I mean, statements like…
“a massive one-time world event that will change Tyria forever!”
“Tyria will never be the same!”
“Lost Shores will change the face of Tyria”
…were used.

Well, the karka made an effort to take LA, but we pushed them back. They showed up at two locations in Caledon and Kessex, but didn’t get far. We took hold of their island. Then we conquered their “leader”, I guess you can call it that.

I’m not sure what exactly has been changed in the whole of Tyria. Other than a new island being discovered, and us finding out that the Consortium are a bunch of self-serving prats. Otherwise, the rest of our activities in Tyria seems altogether unchanged.

I’m not trying to diminish what the update tried to achieve here, but the way it was marketed, I just feel that the effects should have been a bit more far-reaching. I honestly thought that new content in the world would have been introduced as a consequence of our actions on the island. Like a huge explosion causing an avalanche somewhere that opens a new jumping puzzle, something along those lines.

Epic Brownie.5843:

The design was awesome, but the execution was flawed.

Couldn’t have said it better myself. The amount of lag and invisible mobs spawning on top of you marred this event to such a horrendous degree. Worst of all is you could definitely see what the designers had in mind, and it was brilliant, epic in scale and well thought out. And the payoff at the end made it worth the hours spent.

As for the rest, whoever decided that the servers needed to be overloaded on one spot, while they clearly lacked the capacity to do so, and also had the bright spark to hold an ‘invite a friend’ party during a major event weekend, seriously, they need to sit down and reevaluate their stance, because you’re hurting this game more than you can possible understand.

ArenaNet needs to have a long hard look at everything that went wrong with this event, and outline some clear goals of how to proceed. Because from here on out, your fans will become less and less forgiving.

Was about to make a post about this.

Haven’t gotten around to him myself, tough I’d really like to hear what they’ve changed. Can someone tell me, and add a spoiler tag for those who don’t want the experience spoiled?

gamefreak.5673:

Or just remove him for now, and just have a chest if they drop one, or a way to skip a broken event.

I am completely in favor of this. Instead of just leaving it, and saying you’ll eventually address it, because that in effect only cuts us off from content that we wish to explore.

Voice Acting
The voice quality drew me out of the story a bit, although, I love the voice of the male charr. Yes, and the script is just as guilty. Some conversations had a good feel, at some points I even laughed, but on far too many occasions I just shook my head. For the expansion, it really requires some work.

Dialogue scenes
When I first read about the inclusion of dialogue cutscenes, it intrigued me, because it was something different. Now, I can honestly say its terrible. It feels so rigid, and formal. As Malin pointed out, there’s the simple matter of immersion, which it completely throws out the door. You feel taken away, and I can’t help but think that the whole thing could have been done better.

Story Impact
I loved compiling a biography, and seeing it play out was amazing. Then, nothing mattered any more. Euryale, the survivor of my warband, faded into the background; the fact that I helped redeem my father, a shaman, was never referenced again; even the order I chose made little difference in Orr. Nor did the choices I made during the Orrian mission really have any impact.

Now it’s fun to point hindrances out, but here’s how I would have liked it to have played out:
- When I joined my order, I would have liked it if my warband and chosen legion perhaps had in impact on that. Sure, it’s a new beginning for my character, I appreciate that fact, but my heritage should have played into that.
Maybe my warband could have assisted on some missions, and helped out at a few spots.

- I allied with the skritt, and gained their trust, but honestly, did it mean anything. Why didn’t they help me out at Claw Island. Or more to the point, why weren’t they at my side at Orr. Which brings me to my biggest complaint…

- Orr. Everything before Orr felt irrelevant. My warband, supposedly my brethren through thick and fin, wasn’t even at my side. The skritt, whom I toiled to aid me in the troubles ahead, didn’t assist me on my missions. But most of all, the orders blended into one encompassing pact. That didn’t even make any sense. Why were the Priory (scholars), and the Whispers (agents of espionage) all on the front lines.

Why didn’t past decisions play into Orr, and why didn’t the pact differentiate themselves a bit more. The vigil doing missions head on, the Priory focusing on lost artifacts and arcane lore, while the Whispers reconnoiter to find weaknesses.

Even the choices at the end should have had unique impacts. Rather than strings of missions that eventually met up at the same point, why couldn’t choices have changed entire aspects of the level. Like changing the enemies, or adding in new objectives, or causing quest parameters to flow in a different way.

The problem was, yeah, we had choices, but it felt like none of it really mattered.

Guess this issue wasn’t addressed in the latest build. :/

Amarinth.8534:

This is what happens when you combine the launch of a new content update, a series of one-time only events AND a free trial period.

slow clap

Well done, Arenanet. Well done.

Yeah, worst thing is, this isn’t going to look good to people giving the game a go for the first time. I think ANet shot themselves in the foot with this one, which is sad, because the game is really good.

It all started last night. I think the karka’s best weapon against us isn’t impenetrable armor, it’s lag!

But seriously though, something went wrong the moment the Lost Shore switch was flipped, and this is getting bad.

Paul.4081:

Orr is the definition of what gamers think of as absolute torture, never once have I been to Orr and thought – FUN!

So many things in this game needs to be fixed, and Orr should be no.1 on that list.

The other part is fun gear. Blizzard has proved with D3 that numbers on gear isn’t fun either. Who wants to look at their numbers go up. Sure, your tiers need to improve, but on top of that it’s the other things on your gear that should make it interesting.
I think ANet still needs to learn that.

Since last night’s event, my gameplay experience has been reduced to a crawl.

I did some fractals this morning, with a strong amount of lag hampering me the entire way. I just thought it was because of it being new, and so many people running it. I left the game to do chores, and came back a while ago.

After struggling to get a group together for HotW, since everyone is doing FotM, eventually I got in. I thought it would be just another run, but I couldn’t have been more wrong. It was last night all over again. Skills took seconds to activate, people were teleporting around, and in most fights everything came to a halt for about four seconds, hen speed back to normal, usually leaving me in a downed state. About halfway through, I dc’d…

I know this issue isn’t on my side. The game has never lagged before, and everything checks out with my internet connection.

I just want to know what’s going on.

Hellkaiser.6025:

The only question I’d like to ask is if A-net are “dedicated to improving the quality of the game” why repeat a mistake in over-utilizing LA again after the last event of a smaller scale had many players complaining of the lag and how it takes over the game to the point where only the event matters.

Why didn’t they just use the Claw Island instance for this? I know LA is this hub of civilization, and it would suffer most from an attack (story wise), but gameplay wise we were the ones suffering.

Claw Island would have been prime for this sort of thing. It’s built for an attack, and directly in the path of the karka force on its way to LA.

This could have been the place where we were called to investigate the brewing troubles, plus it’s a military fortification. From a gameplay perspective it would have acted as a perfect zone where the players would have been throttled to the prime amount. Not to mention, a karka attack on Claw Island would have been EPIC!

Gray.9650:

even if you didn’t play rift, it should’ve been obvious after mad king that doing an even in LA was recipe for disaster.

sure, all these mobs running around spawning other mobs and 10 times the stuff going on compared to MK will SURELY work out…

Hubris is a funny thing.
JK, you know I love you ANet.

But yeah, I’m not sure how they couldn’t have seen this coming. MK was a good example of insane lag and people being kicked, and back then there weren’t even any fighting to worry about.

Hopefully they learned a lot, but the sad thing is, later there’s going to be another kickoff event, and tomorrow is the super hyped, world changing, one time event. And tomorrow is supposed to be a lot more packed than yesterday.
Not that I doubt your abilities, ArenaNet, but I’m preparing for another disaster.

The way I see it, the Fractals dungeon was almost exclusively constructed with guilds in mind. I’ve only ran it once, but so far in my guild people are more than happy to get guys up to higher levels, and those who have run it are more than willing to get the newbies up to speed on how each fractal works and what’s expected of them, while teaching them.

I had a blast, but almost entirely due to doing it with my guild. I can’t imagine doing it with a PUG, and that Balthazar I’ll never have need to.

Nightwatch.2653:

Continents.4013:

Is there any chance that we can call this weekend a “stress test” event and then have the updated one next weekend?

+1

Unplayable event is unplayable. Please run this through next weekend, or run it again next weekend.

The problem probably is, ANet test these things among themselves, and that’s around a few hundred people. Everything goes smoothly, and they’re thrilled and can’t wait to unleash it upon the public.

Then they hype up the event, make sure as many people as possible can be online, and then when the time comes… Well, a few hundred thousand (who knows how many exactly) people fill up the servers, all go to one spot in the game, and then the servers can’t handle it.

When placed into perspective it’s not really a big surprise. ArenaNet should just have planned it better, because from what I heard across my server, the amount of lag didn’t affect “some” people, but nearly all of them. The only time it actually got better was when people started going offline.

Ninth Requiem.3250:

I’m working on my CoE set, and only need a few more pieces. Not being able to do 3 paths each day puts a huge dent in things.

My thoughts exactly.

Hmm, +5 condition damage… Is that it? Is that what infusions are all about?

I honestly thought it was going to be something more, something interesting, along the lines of…
- every fifth hit received, activate 2s of might
- when damage received equals 20% of max health, refill endurance
- whenever you take a critical hit, your next hit will be critical
- after being revived, your ability with the longest cooldown remaining will be restored
- when you are knocked down, adjacent enemies get’s pushed away
… you get the idea…
Maybe it could even have been something unique that we haven’t seen before.

Honestly, I thought the game was going to have more fun stuff like this to play around with, but there are far too much number crunching going on. I thought infusions was going to be different, but this just feels so… uninspiring. Color me unimpressed.

Edited some properties to be more ‘interesting’

In the Lost Shores highlights, this two statements come up:

Tyria will never be the same!
Lost Shores will change the face of Tyria

What do you think it means? This surely suggest sweeping changes all around, but how exactly will the Lost Shores affect the rest of the world. What do you think/hope will be changed in the old world?

After the Holloween fiasco, I cringed when I found out about the Consortium Chests. However…

- The Consortium Chest has been added to the gem store in the Consumable category for 250 gems each or 10 for 1800 gems. No key is required to open these chests; simply double-click them in your inventory.

When you open the Consortium Chest, you will receive some number of crafting materials and one random item.
Some items in the chest include: shoulder skins, breathing masks, weapon skins, hats, and minis.
All items in the chest are new and have never been available before.
Weapon skins are rare, and the minis are very rare.
All items can be sold on the Trading Post.
The Consortium Chest will only be available for a limited time.

- All the items found in the Consortium Chest can also be obtained as rare drops from any creature from the new Lost Shores event.

Brilliant! ANet listened to all the Halloween feedback, and this is much better. No keys, just event items, and all still tradable at the TP.

Nicely done ArenaNet.

We have dailies and monthlies, so who would like to see weekly achievements?

Personally, I’d like it to fill a randomized niche, chosen from a list and uniquely generated for each player. I like the idea of logging in each day and having certain tasks to fulfill before moving on.

More so, I’d like ANet to take further initiative in the future, and have all sorts of activities for players to do.

Yeah, the hit box problem counts for a lot of things, it even affects events where you need to hit inanimate objects. Very annoying to accomplish some task when your struggling to do damage to something while your being beaten up.

Is it just me or are there less ori nodes in Malchor’s Leap and Cursed Shore?

It seems not even they know…

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/So-about-the-patch/first#post736706
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Patch-tomorrow/first#post731177

I find it mindboggling that someone from ANet would promote, or even mention that horrible piece of failure called a LFG system they currently in game. I mean, all you can do is flag yourself, that’s it. So, if you do flag yourself, are you merely in the mood to play with a group, do you want help with a tough event, or in case you want to do a dungeon, which dungeon do you want to do, is it story or exploration, which path.

It’s really a sad, kitten attempt on the developers part. And for a game that promotes playing with others, more than any other MMO, this is unacceptable.

Well, until they actually get of their kitten the best thing to do is to stand around in LA or in front of the desired dungeon, spamming LFG. But not to much though, because they implemented a spam filter…

So, any official response, maybe….

I don’t get all this secrecy. Being in the loop would actually be quite helpful.

Filled out the survey. Was rather fun.

Hope to see the results soon.

Kirin.7306:

Hopefully not.

Don’t try to be like WoW, Anet. the kids will just grind the gear in a day and leave until you add more “gear progression” ad infinitum.

What?!?! Hopefully they don’t patch the game… What are you talking about?

What? We get usually get a small patch once a week, of about 20-40mb. The larger patches happen once a month, maybe. Would you rather they not release new content, cause I don’t understand your request.

SausageStorm.4293:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/info/news/Lost-Shores-Heads-Up/first#post646309

That’s the event, I’m talking about the actual patch, that we need to download.

There’s also a lot of changes and content coming that isn’t Lost Shore centric, like 5 pages worth of balance changes, for instance.

I didn’t ask when the event kicks off. My question was, when will we download the patch and experience the changes? Tonight, or tomorrow night?

So, tomorrow is the 15th. Do we get the patch with the changes tomorrow, or will everything be held up to the last day, Friday?

The best response I can give is to quote South Park…

“He took yer job!”

Pretty much that. You are the hero of the story, building yourself up over this long tale, achieving personal growth, working your way up through one of the orders, brokering an alliance with another race, and fighting back the risen. You felt like a hero.

But then he stepped in. Taking charge, giving you orders, and taking credit. The game went from ‘this is my story’ to ‘welcome to Trahearne and friends’… And he is so boring. He shows so little personality.

This is how it should have been…
When you got to Orr, you should have led your order through many campaigns. Meanwhile, Trahearne acts as a mediator between the orders, taking information from one to the other, and let them deal with what’s happening. The Vigil leads its forces on the forefront. The Priory uncovers arcane orrian knowledge and artifacts, granting the Vigil an edge in the war effort. The Whispers fight from the shadows, reconnoitering strategic info back to the Vigil, while assassinating key targets.

Trahearne should have been a intermediary, not a commander, while you lead the initiative on Orr. Uncovering info as Priory, doing espionage as Whispers, and taking the enemy head on.

At least he should have had some personality, not being flat, and ‘boohoo, I cannot do this or that, ooh but wait with my friends I can do anything’… ugh, he feels so cliched.

jakep.9572:

Let’s get something straight:

People who came here from GW1, the fans of ArenaNet who have been excited about the game for the last 5 years, have not been asking for stat progression. We have understood that the philosophy of Guild Wars is to have an easily obtainable stat ceiling where players are equally geared and then the effort becomes about being a better or more strategic player.

There may have been many people asking for stat progression or better items, but they are not the groupies. They are not the fanboys. They are the people who are now pandas off in a different world

Yeah, which is why I said, 143 pages of dissent.

There’s been a lot of these ‘make the game like other MMOs’ guys, asking for this exactly, and ANet is giving them what they want. Like I said, you should be careful what people ask for, because now everyone’s paying for it.

143 pages…

All I can say is, people have been clamoring for meaningful end level progression since release. And now here it is. If you dislike it, then be careful what you wish for, I guess…

Players should be rewarded equally for doing things all over the board. Perhaps there should be more dungeon paths, and each of them a short intense experience, rather than a string of long, stretched out battle against unending bars of boss monster. More challenges that keeps you on your toes.

And Karma needs to play a larger role, something more easily acquired and perhaps play a larger role other than exotic gear. Which is why I liked your idea:

Zaishen Daily Dynamic Events – Each day 1 zone is selected (Outside of Orr/Frostgorge). For the first completion of every dynamic event in that zone the player would be rewarded a large % increase to Dynamic event rewards. Significantly higher than that of Orr/Frostgorge. For example: Orr/Frostgorge reward something like 378 karma for completion. ZDDE would reward 500. Once every dynamic event in the zone was completed the player would be rewarded with a 20-30 T6 mats of their choice & a fair sum of silver. ZDDE applies to 80’s only. (Yes, I’m aware it would have to be affiliated with some other organization, just using Zaishen as a GW1 reference)

Two things I’d like to suggest:

1 ) Make it two zones, rather than one. This way one zone wont be flooded with players and spread out the activities evenly.

2 ) Rather have a token system, like in GW1. This will allow players to acquire tokens and then buy whatever rewards they feel matters most to them.

We had a discussion elsewhere, and I’d like to share my input here:

“Here’s what we believe: If someone wants to play for a thousand hours to get an item that is so rare that other players can’t realistically acquire it, that rare item should be differentiated by its visual appearance and rarity alone, not by being more powerful than everything else in the game. Otherwise, your MMO becomes all about grinding to get the best gear. We don’t make grindy games — we leave the grind to other MMOs.”

-Mike Obrien, President of Arenanet

---

The problem is, the game has already a bit like that up to now.

I mean, you need to run a dungeon 23 times to have enough tokens for a dungeon set, and that’s excluding the weapons. Full karma gear cost 252K karma, and that’s requires quite a bit to get to. I’m also not against the idea of ascended gear, but it needs to be dealt with in the right way. I actually a suggestion on this topic, so I’ll just leave it at that:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/What-ascended-item-stats-should-be/first#post725357

I’m not being negative, or trying to say ‘well, the game is like that, so there’s nothing to do about it’. What I am saying is, there’s already some fundamental flaws, and I think Anet knows this. They’re tweaking dungeon tokens, and already added jugs of karma, but I don’t think it’s enough. Dungeon tokens should be universal, or at least tradable from one token type to another. Karma jugs should be a chest reward in game and not just awarded from achievements.

The game should award more for playing how you want to play, and have more to do in lower areas, perhaps even adding ‘danger’ events that’s harder to do, but grants good rewards and a purpose for higher level players to be in lower level areas. Across the board there should be more things fitting into one another.

I think the one thing ANet thought when they said that there will be little grind is, there are events everywhere, you can enjoy them all, meanwhile building karma in the background, and thus slowly make your way towards karma gear. Or play dungeons as you like, there are paths thus meaning less grind. Little did they know that players felt that they were forced to run Orr to get to exotic gear, because its the most effective way to make karma. Or that that players will try to do the quickest dungeon paths, because it felt like the least annoying way to get tokens as they did dungeons over and over.

Players usually seek the path of least resistance, and I have an idea that ArenaNet thought they had found a way around that.

I actually feel that ascended gear have a place along side exotic gear. I’m not going to say everything on my mind here, since I already made a topic elsewhere.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/What-ascended-item-stats-should-be/first#post725357

First off, I’m not against the idea of ascended gear, but a few facts irked me, somewhat. I thought a little about it, so I came up with this…

The upgrade slot stats are already built into the item, great. But when I look at the example ’Yakkington’s Ring’, something feels off:
https://d2vn94glaxzkz3.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/Ascended-EN.png

Here’s what I think could set ascended items apart, but keep them in check.
Allow the stats to be higher than the exotic values, but don’t repeat the same stat. Using the ring as an example, power and precision are repeated. Rather replace those stats with something else, like toughness or condition damage. The item will have a better overall potential, but not force a single stat over the edge.

Basically, the functionality of an ascended item would be to have an all round stronger value. An exotic item will have lower stats, but you can upgrade it to raise one or two stats beyond ascended values, thus making them specialized.

Meaning ascended items are overall stronger items, on the other hand exotics will be a bit more flexible and build specific, while lacking the infusion property. Thus ascended will still have a bit of an edge, while not completely eliminating the usefulness of exotics.

Just curious…

Will people be less upset if ascended gear becomes available in WvW?

aocypher.9172:

But I’m on board with ascended gear matching a fully upgraded exotic, while having an infusion slot that is dungeon specific.

I like what your saying,

Keep the upgrade stats on them, but let the infusion mechanic allow you to deal with certain threats inside dungeons.

Arq.8026:

Azjenco.9425:

yurtshone.7325:

Do the math. A 26% stat increase across the board with all slots filled with the new armour, weapons and accessories. ATM they are only releasing two items but more are promised. These stats will work outside the dungeon. Only the infusion slot is for the new content.
And BTW talk to us like adults please. Do not be disrespectful

26% you say. Not sure how you came down to that percentage, but the exotic ring stat total is 133 and the ascended ring total is 146, that’s less than a 10%. Or maybe my math is off. :P

Seriously though, people are over exaggerating. If ANet added entire ascended armor sets, then there would be cause for alarm. However, their only adding rings and back slot items. Only three of the fourteen possible equipment, that’s a small increment.

Adding only these few items make it seem like a test run. Once the content is released, and it’s really bad, then we can vent, and the situation can still be salvaged.

Your math is off because you are ignoring the MF stats on the gear , which most people ignore for some reason. If it were an other type of gear like knight , you would see the real increase more accurately.

they are adding 3 items, lest assume MF=Crit Dmg in terms of statweight, then you will gain an extra %9 crit dmg just from the patch they are gonna impliment. Assuming you have %80 crit chance like me ,

thats gonna be %7,2 dmg increase , just from 3 items

O_o

Please ArenaNet, adjust ascended gear to be on par with exotics, they’ll still have the infusion slot, but please equalize the gear.

I just can’t stand the moaning that’s taken over the forums.

Naqaj.6219:

LFM Fractal ppl w/o Ascend need not apply

That’s how it’s going to affect people.

Well, I haven’t seen this in chat before:

LFM Arah full exotic chars only

So, I’m not so sure if that will happen.

yurtshone.7325:

Do the math. A 26% stat increase across the board with all slots filled with the new armour, weapons and accessories. ATM they are only releasing two items but more are promised. These stats will work outside the dungeon. Only the infusion slot is for the new content.
And BTW talk to us like adults please. Do not be disrespectful

26% you say. Not sure how you came down to that percentage, but the exotic ring stat total is 133 and the ascended ring total is 146, that’s less than a 10%. Or maybe my math is off. :P

Seriously though, people are over exaggerating. If ANet added entire ascended armor sets, then there would be cause for alarm. However, their only adding rings and back slot items. Only three of the fourteen possible equipment, that’s a small increment.

Adding only these few items make it seem like a test run. Once the content is released, and it’s really bad, then we can vent, and the situation can still be salvaged.

Personal Story

A storyline that was not only repeatable, but fun to repeat.

Yes! I wish the story had a lot more variation to it, where choices you made actually matter and caused the story to play out in different ways. It feels like none of your choices meant anything while playing. There weren’t any meaningful decision making and the story didn’t branch out at all.

I stopped the story with my main near the end, because it became a one direction lackluster path, and Trahearne stole my spotlight…

Dungeons
Put Ascended gear in exploration dungeons. If this is to be the end game items, then give us more than one way to obtain them, and make the THE final step in gear progression. No, astronomical, and godlike, and unfathomable items after this. Please.

Also put more paths onto existing dungeons, and more gear for each of the existing dungeons, so we can do more with our tokens. That would be brilliant.

Exploration
Well, there’s already a trend of new jumping puzzles and things to find being implemented with each major patch. So, yeah, keep it up.

PvE Level 80
First, I’m on the ‘dislike Orr’ side of things. I wont go into details, there’s more than enough threads on the subject. Here’s hoping that Lost Shore will add some good fights for high level characters.

Also, I like the idea of a compact zone, this gives you the opportunity to make singular insane meta events running through the entire zone. This will require every player present to work in unison, even if they aren’t together, to fulfill objectives all over the map.

Crafting
Add more challenging things for crafters. Put them through their paces. Why not make a few ascended items available for crafting, but make it quite a challenge to craft?

Dungeons+
Not sure what to call it, but it would be fun if there was PvE content for more than 5 players to do, so a few guildies can go out and have a good time. An instance, sort of like Underworld or FoW. Here you’ll have tough battles and sweeping event chains, and you don’t need to hold back, you can really make the events go nuts.
There should be intense boss battles, many objectives and really fun, challenging content. It can even last for a few hours, and maybe there can be an ascended item at the end, or tokens for some new exotics.

I don’t PvP so have no suggestions on the topic. A PvPer will have far better insight than I’ll ever have on improving it.

All Legendary items going forward will be of Ascended power.

Yes, this is what I wanted to hear. It has always felt wrong that legendary items are on par with exotics, and this change makes a lot of sense.
The only question I have is:

1 – What are infusions exactly? What do they do? Saying that there are offensive, defensive and omni doesn’t really say what they give you, exactly. Weill it just be more stats, or something else entirely?

I hope it’s something else, because just throwing more power or toughness on just feels a little redundant.

2 – Why can you only find ascended gear in dungeons? What are the non-dungeoneering players supposed to do?

Here’s an idea:
You log into the game through the current launcher, same as now. Then you encounter the BWE screen, with three options:
Continue Game (with your last character), Character Select, and Cinematic (the Gamescom 2009 trailer, only because the game doesn’t have a game introduction, and this artwork cinematic is brilliant).

Zefiris.8297:

gear treadmill in the game right now.

Nope, there isn’t. I never needed to get greens or yellows at 80, it was straight to full exotics for me.

But hey, you’re right. It’s nothing to be angry over, which is why I’m not angry. It’s just a reason to pick a different game. No big deal at all, after all, I picked a different game after skyrim as well.

Games aren’t religions, if one stops being fun, you pick another. Unless it’s Valkyrie Profile, of course, that game DOES count as religion

Yeah, at a stage I did dungeons in some greens and later only yellows before moving onto my exotic dungeon set.
In WoW, if you’re not geared properly, well, first your party will chew you up and spit you out, and secondly you wouldn’t even be able to do heroics. Your damage/healing/mitigation wouldn’t hold and your party will constantly die. Then, you need heroic gear to even think about doing raids… In GW2 you can do explo in greens, and you don’t even need to be max level!

Anyone who thinks GW2 has gear progression grind has no idea what they’re talking about.

New Ascended Gear & Infusions

Introducing Ascended items, artifacts of great power that can be improved by a special new type of upgrade called Infusions, which can be found in dungeons. Look for more information about Ascended gear soon!

I pretty much highlighted the most important part, dungeon*s*, as in not just the new one, I’d assume. ArenaNet said they’ve heard the cries about dungeons having lackluster loot.

Ascended gear may very well be the answer to the problem. I’d reckon all dungeons will have it to an extent, making this the new reason why we’d want to do dungeons.

When you find a piece of armor, essentially it is stat-less, there’s nothing in it. Now, from here you’ll have just upgrade slots. Each slot can hold whatever you see fit, and as such armor is purely cosmetic, while you can then modify the stats exactly the way you want them.