Guild Wars 2

This thread has lost a lot of steam. Now it isn’t because people stopped caring or that they have come to terms with it. No, it’s because these people simply stopped playing as they do not feel like Anet gives a kitten This all due to complete and utter lack of respect towards their playerbase.

No we didn’t see this coming from a mile away /sarcasm

A lot of people pointed this out long ago. Gated content breeds elitism and it only gets worse after time.

After Anet introduced the /rank command in GW1 it got increasingly more difficult to find groups if you didn’t show a sufficient rank for PvP. Thing is that was only a ranked that showed you have played a lot. This will get a lot worse due to gear difference.

I would say wait until they change something you don’t want to see changed due to it being one of the key factors of you buying the game in to begin with. Or are you then going to call it justified behaviour? Most people that say other people are overreacting will act exactly the same way when confronted with a change they truly dislike. Hell most of the time these types of people act much much worse.

I guess you also don’t know what noon PST means than… As that is Pacific

Feedback is a two way street that developers love to forget.

You want more feedback? Go answer our concerns properly in that thread first → https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Thoughts-on-Ascended-Gear-Merged-threads np PR crap this time.

Strifetoe.4502:

Oh for the love of God, please stop posting on this thread, they are releasing it and theres nothing anyone can do..quit if you dont like it…you bought the game they have your money already. The people who dont like gear progression will quit and the people who do will start playing.

And after 2 weeks the game is a ghost town as the grinders won’t have anything to play for anymore and also quit… Yes gross over exaggeration, but that’s where it is headed to.

Creslin.1758:

Conner.4702:

Loosifah.4739:

Urxx.6840:

Snerf.1650:

Loosifah.4739:

I can tell you now they’re not going to scrap Ascension gear and infusions. It won’t be added in sPvP and tPvP, but it’s coming.

So you guys have 2 choices.

a> grin and bear it, and hope they keep their word about no gear treadmill

or

b> leave and if you’re from europe try to get a refund after 600+ hours(which I think is stupid that you can do that).

There are a third option, and it’s the one we prefer.

Let them know through the official forums in a clear, respectful manor why we disagree with the design choice in the time leading up to and immediately after the implementation.

I’m not advocating something ridiculous like trying to get a refund on a product someone has already spent many presumably enjoyable hours on.

But letting a company know why you are dissatisfied with their product has a lot of value to the company.

I don’t think that’s ridiculous. If it turns out the product I bought is not the one that was advertised to me, I have every right to stop using that product and get my money back.

So by adding a new tier of equipment it’s not what they advertized and you should get a full refund after you’ve cost them money by hosting the servers for you to play on for 600 hours? Nice logic.

False advertisement is not allowed in Europe, hence why you will get a refund in situations like this. This is to protect the consumer from being cheated. Take it up with the supreme court and tell them you think it isn’t logical.

Yeah okay, I can see the point of that law. Like if someone sells you 5 boxes of twinkies, and it turns out that they were kittening Ho Ho’s…yeah I would want my money back.

But here’s the problem…THIS NEVER WAS FALSE ADVERTISING.

All they ever said was that items that take an unreasonable amount of time to get (thousands of hours) should not offer a statistical advantage over other players.

Now…answer me this. Do you know for a fact that these Ascended items will take thousands of hours to get? No? Then guess what? Not false advertising.

In your opinion. As you can see a lot of people disagree. Are you going to say your opinion is more important? How about try looking at it from the other side.

Or if you don’t want to.. answer me this. Do you know for a fact no new tiers are going to be introduced?

Ganzo.5079:

Urxx.6840:

Ganzo.5079:

Urxx.6840:

Ganzo.5079:

Naoko.7096:

Sennar.2309:

Naoko.7096:

Arreyanne.2683:

Would I have purchased the game had I had knowledge that they intended to infuse a gear treadmill, or gear progression system. When they repeatedly said that they would not?

They already clarified that the ascended tier isn’t the start of a gear treadmill model but just part of the big update to strengthen/fixes the progression of the game as a whole.

They just go vs their gaming phylosophy.

Snerf.1650:

Even if this was the case, don’t you think that there is something unacceptable with advertising the game as avoiding the gear progression model for years and then suddenly adding it in a few months post release?

I’ll reply both at the same.
I don’t think it’s going to be a gear treadmill model because there’s no evident of it yet. They only released one tier, which is only one. As said by the dev around 11x page, they won’t like release stronger gears every few months. No one knows, ascended could be the only update for the game lifetime that is related to gear progression.

I perceive the update to be more like strengthening the progression between exotic and legendary. The progression between these 2 tiers really needs a serious emergency fix imo. (I reached exotic like in 2 days after Lv80? I calculated legendary going to take unrealistic 8 months on my pace if I play 4-8 hours per day? That’s a big gap.)

Right, no one know, and devs let the door open.
Maybe this new set is the last stats tier… or maybe its only the first new stats tier.
Before to continue to play, and buy other Anet product, i really love to know what’s the Development line they decide to Follow, but without PR Blog or other kitten…
A straight Answer:

1)Yes this is the only one STATS TIER we add in the whole Gw2 Life

2)No, we are going to develop new items with better new stats, increase level cap etc etc etc.

Keep silence here, when they know that most of the players here prefer the option number 1, make most of us thinking that they prefer the option number 2.
So why dont simply clarify this… they are humans as we are and think they are mature enough to confront with their community, but if we talk about business, i think that this silence (and not only on this tread) is really hurting this project.

Let’s say they say 1). That would mean they have already deceived us once, because that tier wasn’t supposed to exist according to what they said for several years. So why would you believe them this time?

The only way they can keep their word and come out clean from this mess is by removing ascended gear altogether and giving infusion slots to exotics.

Call it a development error, during their live they see that esotics are too easy to acquire (even if its easy only for the players that can play 6\7 hours + in a day), and they decide to make another tier (less easy to make)

im a kind of persons that tend to give to the others a second chance, with reserve for sure… if you betray me again, its over… Forever.

Life has taught me to do that the first time you betray me, not the second one.
The ones who deserve trust don’t betray. The ones who betray once, usually do it again if you let them.

People make errors, when a computer make a critical error, i format it before look the hardware part…
Now we cant format the devs team, but we can see if after this critical error they can work as always :P

And when people are honest and have character they can admit they are wrong and fix their mistake.

Naoko.7096:

Arreyanne.2683:

Would I have purchased the game had I had knowledge that they intended to infuse a gear treadmill, or gear progression system. When they repeatedly said that they would not?

They already clarified that the ascended tier isn’t the start of a gear treadmill model but just part of the big update to strengthen/fixes the progression of the game as a whole.

A known liar might tell the truth, but chances are he most likely isn’t.

They might not add anything above ascended, but they fully intend to go the gear treadmill tour if you read the blog post carefully.

Snerf.1650:

stof.9341:

Urxx.6840:

Who played Star Wars Galaxies or Ultima Online still remembers the day when they patched in the changes that would ruin the game forever.

Star Wars Galaxy got ruined. Ultima Online got saved by the changes. The game would have plain be closed a lot earlier without them. As said Origin at the time, either they gave Trammel to the players for them to move to, or they’d all move to Everquest which they were already doing massively.

In the case of UO, you have to somewhat define “saved”.

The game died with the world split. It may have limped on, but the soul was gone and so were most players anyways. I’d argue that not implementing that change could have benefited them more in the long run, as it would have been the single largest factor setting UO up as an alternate MMO experience to EQ.

With the world split, they simply tried to attract the same players who would look towards EQ anyways.

The problem with homogenizing your game is that if you can’t offer a different experience, you must offer a superior experience. There was no way UO could “out-EQ at being EQ” just as there is no way current or recent mmos can “out-WoW at being WoW”.

I believe that this example is absolutely relevant to the current discussion in this thread regarding the ascended gear and potential decisions facing GW2 devs.

For some reason all developers refuse to learn from the past. Most likely due to arrogance in thinking that won’t happen to us. So time and time again we the gamers are faced with the same flawed experiments from developers.

Shall we look at some history. Funcom created huge hype for Age of Conan. They than showed a very polished but very small part of the game and sold it asif the rest was like that. This is known as a lie. They have yet to recover from this as a lot of people didn’t pick up The Secret World due to being lied to and Funcom’s reputation being shot to hell.
This is your reputation on the line Anet. If you go through with this the same thing will happen here at least where a large portion of your current customerbase is concerned. Getting peoples trust back is the hardest thing for any company to achieve.

So I’d say continue at your own risk, but don’t come crying when it blows up in your face and all the gear grinders leave again. History also proves me right on that those types of people leave unless you keep feeding them more and more grind. Until you only have those types of people left.

Namu.5712:

Here’s what I don’t understand.

I understand people feel lied to and so on.

But, didn’t they say they would be increasing level cap? And that they would be releasing new gear? Naturally that would make old gear obsolete, wouldn’t it? Or was it expected that the old 80 gear would maintain the same stats as say 85 gear.

Would that not get a little boring with so little change? If you look at the game as it is now could you see yourself one year from now doing the same exact thing but in a different scenery? Same hp, same everything. Your just smacking a different monster around.

I didn’t play gw1 but didn’t they have some kind of infusion system as well? Or did I read wrong.

Please point out where they said they would raise the levelcap. I’ve never seen them mention that.

As you said you never played GW1 so you lack experience with the system. Most of us did not get bored being level 20 all the time and wearing the same armor.

fixit.7189:

Was loitering around LA today and to my shock found 6 dudes with legendaries having a chat.

Another player passing by asked how they got them which a couple of them pretty much said they just went to a gold seller and bought most of the mats needed to make it. Then they started complaining about ANet crushing bots of recent and hoping they come back so they don’t have to grind…

Not saying all legendary owners bought gold to short cut the process but a bunch infact did…

Like I knew a guy in another F2P MMO who dropped 2 grand, 2 grand to get a better weapon than I did which took me around 2 months of solid grinding to make. People with that sort of disposable income will spend as much as needed to be better than others and or not have to grind.

When legendaries get dmg buffs, these are the people that benefit the most and seemingly the player base they are now catering too? That conversation was kinda depressing if not sickening to listen too, I logged off after that in disgust.

I just hope ascended weapons are not that hard to get and equal to legendaries. I really don’t want to play another game that devolves into who spends the most wins.

If you had it on record of them saying it you should have reported them. To late now unless you screenshotted it.

stof.9341:

Urxx.6840:

The idea of agony/infusion was taken from GW1, but the fundamental difference was that there you could infuse any max level armor by doing a mission. You dind’t need a new special tier of rarity.

Well it seems that you can infuse any max level armor in GW2 too. It’s just that the definition of max level armor changes with this patch.

Any armor could be infused in GW1. Not just max.

The silence from Anet tells me more and more that I can’t trust this Anet. So if I can’t trust them to keep their word, than why would I trust them with my money.

Lheimroo.2946:

I’m hopeful at Chris’s latest post – I mean, the whole move is still slightly disconcerting.. but.

We do have the assurance that they do not intend to keep increasing stats.

So, basically, this is a one-time move intended to give players a bit more ‘meat’ in the gear-up process when they hit 80. Now, bear with me – Arenanet never said getting gear at 80 would be absolutely effortless. They said you’d do it with a little dedicated effort, get your max stats, and then be done. Hopefully that vision is still intact.

As for the whole agony mechanic.. well, heck. I’m going to trust the GW1 vets who said this ‘Mursaat’ mechanic was no big deal way back when. I’ll take a wait-and-see attitude.

He gave no such assurance. He’s completely ambivalent about future gear increases. All he says is it won’t be on a 3 month bases.

Infusion from GW1 is completely different in how it is achieved. You do not need a new armor set just for infusion. Hell I have a starter set that is infused just because I could. It also was part of the storyline. Not a separate entity like this new dungeon.

Gated content is gated content no matter how they try and spin it.

Koega.8653:

To the players trying to communicate their feelings on these changes for the benefit of the game, keep this in mind. Many of the negative posts in these forums are doing far more damage to the community in this game, than the comments Anet has made on Ascended gear. No one outside of their organization really knows what they have planned and negative reactive outbursts/threats based on unconfirmed assumptions.

Sorry Anet has done all this damage to the community by themselves. They are the ones not communicating. No the Blog and that one post is not what I consider communicating. It’s PR crap, which is the same as lying in my eyes.

UnderdogSMO.9428:

“Only ring and back accessories will be available with the Lost Shores release”

wow i didnt know this little bit of info….. way to go all your gear will be useless because you have to upgrade your ring and back slots…… What to Exotic Back slot items even look like!

from all the complaning i thought it was like our weppons and main armor piece’s getting the switch right now

Guess you missed the part where they said they will be releasing more and more ascended gear over time. Including armor and weapons.

Thorquist.8126:

Healix.5819:

This isn’t GW1 where the level cap will be the same forever.

And why do you think so? I actually hope, there won’t be any changes in level cap.

This update opens up level cap increases down the line as they’ll just say we upgraded legendaries to be in line with the best gear. As well as adding a new gear tier when they do as there will be a gap to be filled again then.

The fact that anet keeps being this quiet tells me they are completely ignoring this. I certainly hope this completely bites them in the kitten and they have to grovel to get a semblance of reliability back.

Nyspar.6103:

RamzaBehoulve.5640:

Lothair.8942:

I wish someone would go through 140 pages of this and add up the number of unique responders not agreeing with the change compared to those agreeing. Too bad I have a full time job!

The vast majority of the ones agreeing are not posting, they just had a smile after reading the news and are playing.

I’m one of those people who welcomes to ascended gear. The reason is simple, it gives me a new goal to work toward.

I’ve reached the end’est (yes I made up a word) game you can possible be at.
-I’ve done sPvP to rank 28
-I’ve got 2 lvl 80 Characters
-I’ve got the commander tag
-I’ve got full exotics for both my characters
-I’ve got a legendary weapon

For me the only things to do now are: sPvP or WvW.

This ascended gear patch will give me a reason to do more PVE and also gives me a new goal to work towards

Over 1000 hours played
3 level 80s
2 have 100% map completion
Pretty much full exotics
Every crafting profession at 400 except Armorcrafting, Only 3 were done before hitting 80.
Done all jumping puzzles

Yet I am far from done.
People like you will get bored again after you finish the next content update and complain about being bored again.

Developers need to realise there are more ways to progress than gear.

tkalamba.2541:

Conner.4702:

JSmooth.7654:

There are 138 pages of this… So, I don’t know if this link has been posted or not.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/info/news/A-message-from-our-Studio-Design-Director-Chris-Whiteside/first#post721451

Those of you who are worried about the stat increase should read this. I was very worried about it too. However, this response from Anet helped put me at ease.

Atryue
lvl 80 Guard on Anvil Rock

Don’t see how a post that contradicts itself would relieve worry.

Our goal is not to create a gear treadmill. Our goal is to ensure we have a proper progression for players from exotic up to legendary without a massive jump in reward between the two. We will slowly add the remaining ascended gear items and legendary items in future updates to allow people time to acquire them as we add exciting new content that deserves exciting rewards. We will not be adding a new tier of gear every 3 months that we expect everyone to chase after and then get the next set and so on.

All this says is they will be adding new items… (as in, new flashy swords, rifles, pistols etc.) Right below it says no new tiers after this update… just new skins within the updated structure…. Thats not a treadmill in any way.

It is exactly that a treadmill. A treadmill is nothing but a constant stream of items for people to grind for.

Anet: People have gotten all the current items, time to put the new ones in…

By making them stronger than what is currently in game as well as having them needed to reach even better rewards in the dungeon makes this a gear treadmill

JSmooth.7654:

There are 138 pages of this… So, I don’t know if this link has been posted or not.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/info/news/A-message-from-our-Studio-Design-Director-Chris-Whiteside/first#post721451

Those of you who are worried about the stat increase should read this. I was very worried about it too. However, this response from Anet helped put me at ease.

Atryue
lvl 80 Guard on Anvil Rock

Don’t see how a post that contradicts itself would relieve worry.

Our goal is not to create a gear treadmill. Our goal is to ensure we have a proper progression for players from exotic up to legendary without a massive jump in reward between the two. We will slowly add the remaining ascended gear items and legendary items in future updates to allow people time to acquire them as we add exciting new content that deserves exciting rewards. We will not be adding a new tier of gear every 3 months that we expect everyone to chase after and then get the next set and so on.

munkiman.3068:

chronus.1326:

Egger.2935:

That’s enough for me..

That is a problem because there was never any statical difference between Legendary and Exotic.

They are creating it right now.

The entire gap never existed and if they would have had a true horizonal progression with only cosmetic differences then we wouldn’t even be talking about this.

Then there wouldn’t even be “tiers” and this entire thing wouldn’t even be possible.

There should have been one, i think Anet realized this mistake. Given this thread alone, not to mention across other sites, they’ve introduction a stat increase that people will automatically assume is the standard moving forward, which isn’t the case. I’m actually sorry to see this hyperbole to what it is now, but understand the change. GW1 introduced differences in stat stacking along with insignias, this isn’t a new thing to the franchise. They’ve also patched in new rune sets with the Mad King, which is a slightly more powerful bleed set. They, i’m sure will introduce more controversial stuff and people will be upset over it, it’s pretty much the norm for MMO’s. What bothers me more is that the community has taken the form of an online riot over a change that will soon be forgotten and in most cases accepted.

Different stat stacking was always possible in GW1. It’s just your character would look horrid. Insignias and inscriptions added convenience. It didn’t add a new layer on top of the old one, which is what is happening here.
Also just because other games do this doesn’t mean every game should. Those other games were designed with it in mind from the start. that’s a very big difference you are ignoring there.

Belenwyn.8674:

Nethril.7413:

^^^ It’s simple guys. Guild Wars 1 set a precedence. They claimed Guild Wars 2 would uphold it. I came to this game because it would NOT have the gear treadmill that WoW and soo many others have. This is a direct violation of the precedence AND promises set forth by ANet and the Guild Wars series.

I don’t see why anyone can argue for it? You obviously didn’t read about the game before you bought it if you believe this is acceptable. By saying you are okay with this new tier of gear, you are saying it’s okay for ANet to lie. What’s next? Guilds of Warcraft with 25 man raids, gear score, add-ons, a mini-pet pokemon game, built in farmville?

I am trying to find a solution. The promise is broken anyway now. The goal must be now to keep the gear treadmill away form the other players. A complte separation of the modes PvE and Fractals of the Mists would be the only solution. The fractals should be treated as a separate universe like The Mists for sPvP. There should be no connection gear-wise/stat-wise to the traditional PvE. The Fractals of the Mist should offer nothing what the traditional PvE not also offers with respect to rewards. They should also introduce an upscaling to 80 in the fractals. The only goal in this area should be the item progression. In this way we would have the virus “gear progression” under quarantine. The virus will never infect other areas anymore. Arenanet could keep the progression gamer and the core gamer at the same time with no conflicts.

The problem with that is it will exclude people at some point due to it being gated. The only real solution is to do away with the infusion slots and add a quest line to get your current armor infused.

Rhyaehar.9504:

Urxx.6840:

Shilian.5873:

Guys you forgot something essential:

The gap between exo/ascen is MINIMAL, so not a MUST for WvW or anything, just for the new dungeon, and guess what? you will get the gear while progressing trough it.

Too much fap guys, no reason to go mad.

This is a common misconception. The STAT gap is minimal. The exotic item’s impossibility to have infusions and counter agony is huge. The new dungeon is the only place where agony is incflicted FOR NOW, but things will change.

They haven’t developed a whole new system to use it only in the fractals. We’ll see agony in many upcoming patches.

I disagree, 8% is substantial increase in my eyes.
But I do agree that lack of Infusion slot on Exotic – or any other type of gear for that matter – makes the gap between Ascended and Exotic even higher, especially with time as more gear, more tiers and – probably – more Agony will be added.

They will be adding more agony indeed if they continue.

MrLee.6892:

CharrGirl.7896:

Personally what hurts the most is that people who actually support this wow-ification of GW2 probably have no idea what their initial anti-grind philosophy prior to launch was. This wouldn’t spark such debate, tons of hate posts here and hate comments on youtube and other sites if this is what we were expecting from the start.

If people knew that this game was going to introduce this right from the start, without any promise of eliminating grind and promising horizontal progression, then we wouldn’t be in this mess. They are for some reason going against their own promises and I see this as a concern myself. I put a lot of hopes in this game, personally. Never before a game of this genre came out with such promising set up. Manifesto trailer summed it pretty well, and hyped people for something NEW and fresh.

Now all you can see on the comments below the trailer are hate, hate and more hate. Is this really what we expected? No…

I must say I did put a lot of hopes in this game. I paid more then average player did for the CE, fully supporting them. I paid even more then the average CE customer because of all the taxes and shipping. I went with “wow, this game is promising. Anet cares about their players, and actually makes a game that will be like a holy grail for those who waited for a MMO without grind, player segregation and elitism community”.

Now it’s all shattered – they promised more of these gear treadmills in the future.

Why is this a problem? Because if they can introduce this in 1 dungeon, they can pretty much introduce it for more content, something more people will want to play. It wont be long before you log in, out-geared by hardcore players and get picked on because you “don’t have the best gear, go away noob”. Been there already. It’s frustrating and extremely anti-social.

I must say – if GW2 fails on this level, if it doesn’t deliver it’s promise then NO future MMO ever will. Especially because it was supposed to be the game that changes and innovates this genre.

Let me guess you have only played WoW and that is why you feel this way.

There are many other MMO’s who use gear progression and these “bad things” that you and others think that will happen, don’t actually do happen. You had this problem because WoW had a player base of 10million people. If you get that many people playing a game there are going to be A LOT of bad/rude people. But if you take a game like Rift or LotRO that have a tighter and stronger community, people don’t act like they do in WoW. Even WITH gear progression.

When LotRO announced it was going F2P all people would talk about is how it was going to bring in nothing but “WoW” people. And again people in LotRO would compare them all to WoW. Well F2P happened and LotRO’s community didn’t change. It was still a very good community and it still is today.
Rift and SWTOR known “WoW Clone’s” introduced a LFG system. Everyone was "Look what LFG system did to WoW, it destroyed the community!!!!
That also never happened.

You people sit there and spout off how much this will destroy Guild Wars 2 or how the community will act like elitist jerks. But you really don’t have a clue! Maybe try waiting and see what happens first for you start making accusations?
try learning some patience and just wait and see what happens!
I bet it won’t be anywhere near how bad you make it sound out to be!

You need a history lesson on Lotro and their radiance armor. Simply put it did not end well for turbine.

The writing is on the wall and it is written in blood. A lot of us are seeing that the train is heading for a wall and the breaks are broken. I guess you’d rather hit the wall than change tracks.

Loomii.6014:

Can people just stop complaining? Anet are busting their kitten giving us this great content and all you people do is moan, if you don’t like it play something else

You should really think about the consequence of your comment if they actually listen to it. You are talking about a large group of people just getting up and leaving the game costing Anet a hell of a lot of income if they do. Not to mention already empty zone will become more desolate. Meaning more people will leave until they hit rock bottom. Just look at every major title released in the last 8 years for evidence.

UnderdogSMO.9428:

Conner.4702:

Xyre.5429:

Substance E.4852:

Xyre.5429:

Substance E.4852:

Xyre.5429:

Most players want some form of progression, what Anet has done is add in a specific type of high end gear built around allowing for horizontal progression. A player gets ascended gear and works on getting the infusions to be able to handle the new content. The infusions(that only ascended gear can use) allows players to deal with “Agony”, a new DoT that is specific for the new content(http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Infusion).

Hopefully 3 months from now we will have more new content and maybe a DoT called “Despair” where you will have to work on getting your ascended gear infused again to be able to delve deeper into the next new content….This is not hard logic to follow…and this system isnt a run of the mill system that anyone would expect for vertical progression…it is too unique, and it leans completely in the direction of what someone would expect out of a system built for horizontal progression.

Doomsayers can take their chances and assume that the A-net team is lying and that this system looks nothing like what would be expected out of a horizontal progression system…however, when what I have stated above ends up being the case, I hope you doomsayers ask yourselves if it was worth coming on the forums, making yourself look silly and being butthurt about an assumption?

no…no it wasnt..so please calm down…

You can hope all you want but you know as much as anyone else so please don’t act as though your completely baseless assumptions are any less likely than other peoples assumptions.

Like I said, be butthurt look silly, I actually sat down and said “Why would they make a system like this?…it is a weird way of getting to some form of vertical progression, but it actually makes sense for horizontal progression, and why would they blatantly lie about this being a form of new horizontal progression?”

The difference between you and I is I am erring on the side of logic and trusting their word, where you are assuming the worst and not even considering why this new system would be put in place.

No what you are is hoping that it won’t be as bad as all that. They haven’t given you a binding legal document vowing to not do vertical progression. You are just coming to that conclusion on your own and calling anyone who doesn’t agree with your “logic” butthurt apparently.

Gut instinct =/= logic. Logic is based on facts and established precedent. The precedent is that they are giving in to people who minmaxed and then complained about the lack of content and the fact is that they added in a whole new level of gear to combat the stagnation. If they truly cared about pure horizontal progression this could have easily been done by either creating an infusion system similar to GW1 as these sound so alike I can only assume that the Mursaat will be returning in some form. Or, they could have given us a new item slot that we could use to interchange an ever growing pool of infusions.

FACT: They have stated they are not going to do vertical progression
FACT: This new “need specific infusion to counter agony in new content” is a weird way to go about a form of vertical progression.
FACT: “Assuming” the worst in any situation and being butthurt over it is silly.
FACT: Get butthurt when you have the facts…

FACT: It’s a gear treadmill as it requires new gear with new upgrades
FACT: They stated they will add new infusions, which will require a new grind
FACT: Gear treadmill = Gear treadmill. Doesn’t matter if it is vertical or horizontal.
FACT: They said they would not put in a gear treadmill
FACT: They stated they wanted everyone to be able to do all content, which is impossible when you add gated content

FACT: With out some form of Progression most People will stop playing faster.

even in the old school level 1 to level 10 game’s ((levels = worlds)) there has always been some small progression even if that only meant a new type of Power Up
there was also that Drawl to see the End and to get the High score.

so what do you focus on if your game has no end and doesn’t track score???

And? You do realise there are more forms of progression than just gear progression.
Only those with limited vision focus on Gear as Progression.

MrLee.6892:

Conner.4702:

Xyre.5429:

Substance E.4852:

Xyre.5429:

Substance E.4852:

Xyre.5429:

Most players want some form of progression, what Anet has done is add in a specific type of high end gear built around allowing for horizontal progression. A player gets ascended gear and works on getting the infusions to be able to handle the new content. The infusions(that only ascended gear can use) allows players to deal with “Agony”, a new DoT that is specific for the new content(http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Infusion).

Hopefully 3 months from now we will have more new content and maybe a DoT called “Despair” where you will have to work on getting your ascended gear infused again to be able to delve deeper into the next new content….This is not hard logic to follow…and this system isnt a run of the mill system that anyone would expect for vertical progression…it is too unique, and it leans completely in the direction of what someone would expect out of a system built for horizontal progression.

Doomsayers can take their chances and assume that the A-net team is lying and that this system looks nothing like what would be expected out of a horizontal progression system…however, when what I have stated above ends up being the case, I hope you doomsayers ask yourselves if it was worth coming on the forums, making yourself look silly and being butthurt about an assumption?

no…no it wasnt..so please calm down…

You can hope all you want but you know as much as anyone else so please don’t act as though your completely baseless assumptions are any less likely than other peoples assumptions.

Like I said, be butthurt look silly, I actually sat down and said “Why would they make a system like this?…it is a weird way of getting to some form of vertical progression, but it actually makes sense for horizontal progression, and why would they blatantly lie about this being a form of new horizontal progression?”

The difference between you and I is I am erring on the side of logic and trusting their word, where you are assuming the worst and not even considering why this new system would be put in place.

No what you are is hoping that it won’t be as bad as all that. They haven’t given you a binding legal document vowing to not do vertical progression. You are just coming to that conclusion on your own and calling anyone who doesn’t agree with your “logic” butthurt apparently.

Gut instinct =/= logic. Logic is based on facts and established precedent. The precedent is that they are giving in to people who minmaxed and then complained about the lack of content and the fact is that they added in a whole new level of gear to combat the stagnation. If they truly cared about pure horizontal progression this could have easily been done by either creating an infusion system similar to GW1 as these sound so alike I can only assume that the Mursaat will be returning in some form. Or, they could have given us a new item slot that we could use to interchange an ever growing pool of infusions.

FACT: They have stated they are not going to do vertical progression
FACT: This new “need specific infusion to counter agony in new content” is a weird way to go about a form of vertical progression.
FACT: “Assuming” the worst in any situation and being butthurt over it is silly.
FACT: Get butthurt when you have the facts…

FACT: It’s a gear treadmill as it requires new gear with new upgrades
FACT: They stated they will add new infusions, which will require a new grind
FACT: Gear treadmill = Gear treadmill. Doesn’t matter if it is vertical or horizontal.
FACT: They said they would not put in a gear treadmill
FACT: They stated they wanted everyone to be able to do all content, which is impossible when you add gated content

FACT: If you don’t like it you can go play Guild Wars 1

Way to show immaturity. Should I tell you to go play a gear grinder now? Or you think you can add something more adult to the conversation.

Xyre.5429:

Substance E.4852:

Xyre.5429:

Substance E.4852:

Xyre.5429:

Most players want some form of progression, what Anet has done is add in a specific type of high end gear built around allowing for horizontal progression. A player gets ascended gear and works on getting the infusions to be able to handle the new content. The infusions(that only ascended gear can use) allows players to deal with “Agony”, a new DoT that is specific for the new content(http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Infusion).

Hopefully 3 months from now we will have more new content and maybe a DoT called “Despair” where you will have to work on getting your ascended gear infused again to be able to delve deeper into the next new content….This is not hard logic to follow…and this system isnt a run of the mill system that anyone would expect for vertical progression…it is too unique, and it leans completely in the direction of what someone would expect out of a system built for horizontal progression.

Doomsayers can take their chances and assume that the A-net team is lying and that this system looks nothing like what would be expected out of a horizontal progression system…however, when what I have stated above ends up being the case, I hope you doomsayers ask yourselves if it was worth coming on the forums, making yourself look silly and being butthurt about an assumption?

no…no it wasnt..so please calm down…

You can hope all you want but you know as much as anyone else so please don’t act as though your completely baseless assumptions are any less likely than other peoples assumptions.

Like I said, be butthurt look silly, I actually sat down and said “Why would they make a system like this?…it is a weird way of getting to some form of vertical progression, but it actually makes sense for horizontal progression, and why would they blatantly lie about this being a form of new horizontal progression?”

The difference between you and I is I am erring on the side of logic and trusting their word, where you are assuming the worst and not even considering why this new system would be put in place.

No what you are is hoping that it won’t be as bad as all that. They haven’t given you a binding legal document vowing to not do vertical progression. You are just coming to that conclusion on your own and calling anyone who doesn’t agree with your “logic” butthurt apparently.

Gut instinct =/= logic. Logic is based on facts and established precedent. The precedent is that they are giving in to people who minmaxed and then complained about the lack of content and the fact is that they added in a whole new level of gear to combat the stagnation. If they truly cared about pure horizontal progression this could have easily been done by either creating an infusion system similar to GW1 as these sound so alike I can only assume that the Mursaat will be returning in some form. Or, they could have given us a new item slot that we could use to interchange an ever growing pool of infusions.

FACT: They have stated they are not going to do vertical progression
FACT: This new “need specific infusion to counter agony in new content” is a weird way to go about a form of vertical progression.
FACT: “Assuming” the worst in any situation and being butthurt over it is silly.
FACT: Get butthurt when you have the facts…

FACT: It’s a gear treadmill as it requires new gear with new upgrades
FACT: They stated they will add new infusions, which will require a new grind
FACT: Gear treadmill = Gear treadmill. Doesn’t matter if it is vertical or horizontal.
FACT: They said they would not put in a gear treadmill
FACT: They stated they wanted everyone to be able to do all content, which is impossible when you add gated content

Our Studio Design Director Chris Whiteside just posted this:

“I’d like to respond to concerns players have raised about ascended items. Please keep in mind that we’re releasing this as one portion of a massive November update that introduces and improves many aspects of challenge, progression, and rewards. With this and upcoming updates, we view ourselves as introducing large amounts of content with supporting systems and features, akin to an expansion pack, building on Guild Wars 2 through a series of live releases. So it’s important for us to be able to add an expansion pack’s worth of progression and rewards to support that content.

Our goal is not to create a gear treadmill. Our goal is to ensure we have a proper progression for players from exotic up to legendary without a massive jump in reward between the two. We will slowly add the remaining ascended gear items and legendary items in future updates to allow people time to acquire them as we add exciting new content that deserves exciting rewards. We will not be adding a new tier of gear every 3 months that we expect everyone to chase after and then get the next set and so on.

Ascended and infusion rewards will be available in both PvE and WvW over time, and be made available through all sorts of content around the world including existing content. PvP will remain unaffected to ensure our intended PvP balance going forward. We are also working on other reward and progression systems for the game that tie into current and new content and features. As you know we care very much about your support and opinion and are listening intently to what you say.
Finally we look forward to hearing your thoughts on the upcoming content, and we will ensure we share our thoughts with you on the experiences we share in the Lost Shores."

Chris Whiteside – Studio Design Director

What a load of lies. If anything this thread proves they are in fact ignoring their core customerbase. Saying hey we are going to put in a massive update is completely irrelevant to the issue.
Denying it is a gear treadmill is just plain moronic. Anet is going to have people chasing new gear every few months if they implement more infusion types. That is the definition of gear treadmill.

I suggest Anet to look both at the SOE SWG NGE debacle also EVE and how CCP made a huge mistake by doing the very same thing to their game. You learn history so you don’t repeat other peoples mistakes. Something Anet is failing very much at now.

ShadowBorn.6984:

Yeah try looking at it like this. You go to a restaurant famous for how a steak is prepared. The steak arrives as promised, but 5 minutes into eating it the cook comes running stating he needs to add something and subsequently burns the steak to a crisp yet still wishing you a pleasant dinner after doing so. That’s what Anet is doing here.[/quote]

Not true at all mate. Sticking with your analogy. It’s like this.

Steak is perfect and you love it, he remembers he could do something else, brings you ANOTHER steak, you can either get miffed and say its outrageous he even tried and not want anything at all. Love the new steak and enjoy both, or hate the new steak and stick with the old one.
[/quote]

Sorry no yours is the faulty one as the new gear will impact everything already in game. Or did you not read the fact that Legendaries will be upgraded to the level of the best tier gear. So please enlighten me how that doesn’t affect the game as a whole.

ShadowBorn.6984:

This is mental, all of it. All the commotion created from this UPDATE is just silly. When they make an update obviously they don’t want to lose people. So in their minds they are trying to make things BETTER for us…otherwise, why bother.

So either you(hypothetical you) play the game however you like and for whatever reasons you like, or you simply just stop.

I’m not a so called “fanboy” ANet makes mistakes, and some stuff is just not what I want it to be, but let’s just focus on whichever aspects of the GAME we like.

Yeah try looking at it like this. You go to a restaurant famous for how a steak is prepared. The steak arrives as promised, but 5 minutes into eating it the cook comes running stating he needs to add something and subsequently burns the steak to a crisp yet still wishing you a pleasant dinner after doing so. That’s what Anet is doing here.

alanis.6094:

jaikrsna.1079:

Thank god they are implementing a little bit of progression. Is everyone really afraid that they will turn this into WoW? Are you really afraid of that? I for one just want something to do on my 80 as a semi-hardcore player. For the love of god please give me something to do on my 80 that gives me a sense of progression that IS NOT just cosmetic. How boring that ended up being!

Why did you purchase this game? Did you not read or understand their philosophy regarding cosmetic upgrades, or did you happen to hope that they’d turn against their core beliefs?

Probably was like ooooohhh shiny must have. Like a real life gear treadmill sense.

Never.6014:

RoChan.1926:

Lomax.2463:

good god you people cant read !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
i am amazed there so so many that cant comprehend what Anet is doing

OK FOR THOSE THAT HAVE NO CLUE.

1. There is no stat increase !!!!!! they took away the upgrade slot and put the points that you would have gotten from the upgrade slot into the main stats of the item!
that is right Ascended armor is worse then exotic as it is not as customizable as normal armor!

2. Infusion slot is for negating a new condition call Agony that will only be in this dungeon! that is right it is worthless in WvW or any place outside this dungeon.

3. getting exotic gear is easy and is full customizable with upgrade slots, Ascended armor is hard to get is less useful as real exotic gear outside of this dungeon.

4. this is a cool great new dungeon , it is scalable for the progression players but none of it is any use outside of this one dungeon. it will allow player to brag about i hit 27th level of infusion !!! woot for me but as infusion does nothing outside of the dungeon why would a WvW player even care ?

this is like a PVE dungeon version of the PVP ranking , i think its great .

False. Let’s re-read the blog shall we? I shall disprove your points with facts straight out of the horse’s mouth.

“Eventually, you’ll be able to kit yourself out with a full set of Ascended gear and high end Infusions to help give you the edge in end game content.”

Not an increase? Why then would they say it’s to give me an edge on end game content?

“You’ll also see more Legendary items in the future and an update to our existing Legendary weapons. Legendary items were always intended to be on par with other “best-in-slot” items. So fear not, all existing Legendary weapons, which are currently on par with Exotics, will be upgraded to be on par with Ascended weapons at the same time that we add Ascended weapons to the game. Thus Legendaries will remain “best-in-slot” items.”

Ok let’s do some math with words! It’s called the pathogram theory and this is how it works! If A = B and B = C then A = C. So if Legendaries are the best-in-slot items and they are going to mimic/reflect Ascended weapons wouldn’t that mean that Ascended weapons are also the best-in-slot items? Hmm… sounds to me like a stat increase!

The other half of this math is that they said that Legendaries would be on par with bes tin slot going forward. If they are changing to Ascended, perhaps that is the final change. You know… maybe.

Maybe the real plan is for us to eventually have a full set of legendary everything that keeps up with each tier of gear. That wouldn’t be so bad. You could get one set of gear forever if you want to (like I do) or just keep getting new pieces each tier. It COULD be a win-win.

Except they stated in the blog they want to add new types of infusions in the future. Meaning you will need Armor A for Dungeon A, Armor B for Dungeon B and so on ad infinitum.

It’s bad design. It would have been better the GW1 way to run a series of quests to get your current armor infused. I’d still dislike it though as it still gates content behind specific armor requirements.

spellchekc.5409:

No Dev Blog yet? What happend :-(

This thread happened and now they are panicking at Anet HQ

bcbully.7289:

nachtnebel.9168:

Ayane Hajinmon.9165:

does no one on this forums play gw1? its just infuse armor >_<

That would be fine, but no of those articles sounds like that.

We have to wait for the official statement and until then we can’t do anything expect showing Arena Net that we won’t be happy if they would add a new tier of gear.

speak for yourself. I would be very happy.

Except you stopped playing after a month like you did TSW and went to WoW. Not to mention all the badmouthing you do about this game.

Gear treadmills is the worst type of content to keep people playing. As it is that’s exactly what they open the doors for with what is said.

MrLee.6892:

The elitism of your ascend gear is not good enough you have rank 3 you need rank 4 to join our pug.

Anet is going to segregate the comunity in the haves and have nots with this move. The same problem existed in GW1 if you didn’t have high enough PvP rank you would have difficulty getting into groups.

Any content that isn’t accessible to all due to not having proper gear is bad.

And how would people know that you are not wearing Ascended gear? With transmutation stones and people can’t inspect you, they wouldn’t.

Nice job jumping to conclusions though! Try harder!

Feel free to keep your head firmly stuck in the sand. People will know fast enough when you drop like a fly.

Dynheart.5402:

SoggyFrog.4170:

Dynheart.5402:

cesmode.4257:

MrLee.6892:

cesmode.4257:

Ever since I read this in the morning, I havent logged in. I just found it difficult to log in knowing that any gear I obtain on my main might be replaced in a few days.

Going to log in now, on my alts I’d imagine, but I haven’t had the urge to log in and obtain some dungeon gear today just because of this.

You play an MMO. MMO’s are about progression and additions. Stuff will change. If you haven’t figured this out by now, then I don’t think MMO’s are the type of game for you.

Not this MMO. Not verticle progression. If I wanted a gear treadmill I’ll do it via raiding. Not by simple fact of purchasing gear.

With that logic, why have gear at all?

This game is too big to not have something to do at level 80. Reward your level 80’s eventually. Playing barbie will only go so far.

Reward with what? Bigger numbers? Or making the game slightly easier to play?

Proponents of stat progression sure love throwing out the word “rewards” without explaining their meaning. If the reward is the ability to access certain content because you have gear that’s better than what others have, that means precisely the kind of elitism and gear grind that would put a lot of players off GW2, because that’s not the game they bought.

What elitism, though?

The gear in this game is way to easy to get to brag about. The new stuff? I will bet it’s the same thing!

All this is is to give us level 80’s something to do other than playing dress up. You people who like to play dress up? You’ll benefit, as you will run the dungeon anyway to get the skins/set you want.

If this required mass amounts of time to get the gear/level 80…I would get your argument. But…it doesn’t hold water in this game at all. Maybe for a legendary, but they don’t have stat boosts. Sooo, you can die looking pretty in WvW is about what that amounts to.

Grinding for skins/sets = not a grind is what I’m getting in this thread. 100’s of dungeon runs.

Doing just enough to get your upgrades is a grind, even though you are doing to get the skins/set…is a grind.

This doesn’t make sense to me at all.

The elitism of your ascend gear is not good enough you have rank 3 you need rank 4 to join our pug.

Anet is going to segregate the comunity in the haves and have nots with this move. The same problem existed in GW1 if you didn’t have high enough PvP rank you would have difficulty getting into groups.

Any content that isn’t accessible to all due to not having proper gear is bad.

MrLee.6892:

Tyr.1965:

Rizla.1023:

They give you something to work towards and you all take a temper tantrum. Nice to see the kinda people i’m playing along with.
What if this was in at launch would any of you complained that there was an extra tier of gear? NO!!!!!!

Actually we would because we don’t like vertical gear progression. Go back to Warcraft if that’s what you want.

Grow up and stop using the “Go back to Warcraft” crap. EVERY MMO uses vertical gear progression. At least I can’t think of one who doesn’t besides Guild Wars 2.

Just because YOU don’t like something doesn’t mean it shouldn’t exist. What about all the players who DO want it? Don’t you think they should have something they want also?

Maybe YOU shouldn’t play MMO’s?

Just because you like something doesn’t mean it should exist in every game. What about all the players that don’t like it. Are you that selfish that you must have the same thing in every game you play.

To be honest this whole giving info through 3rd party site reeks of probing the playerbase and that they have 2 ways of handling the situation depending on the reaction of the playerbase /tinfoilhat

Also this doesn’t really sound like infusion the way it was done in GW1. Even if in the end the result is the same. In GW1 infusion was a story mechanic that everyone doing the story experienced when doing Prophecies. This on the other hand feel like segregating the community. Segregation is bad.

Kimyrielle.3826:

Bruno Sardine.2907:

Just out of curiosity…. if this dungeon offers a “gear treadmill” but is totally contained within the dungeon itself, meaning none of the “extra stats” earned work anywhere except in the dungeon, how many people would be opposed to this?

As person totally and vigorously opposed to gear treadmills – this would be acceptable. If they added a stat to this set that would be totally and absolutely useless anywhere outsides of the instance it came from AND if NO other stat on this gear would be better than Exotics, I’d be fine with it.

However, this is a purely academic question, as I have never seen it done that way in any game ever.

The thing I’m most against is this will inevitably remove people from certain content as they will not be geared enough. It does not matter if it is only one dungeon now. After the first they can introduce a second, third and so on. Further removing players from certain content. As far as I know this goes completely against the original vision for GW2

Knote.2904:

Levetty.1279:

Knote.2904:

Waar Kijk Je Naar.8713:

Knote.2904:

Waar Kijk Je Naar.8713:

Knote.2904:

kiranslee.4829:

I just did google for “say NO to mmo grind”.
This is first page i found:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2012/08/28/guild-wars-2-review-part-one-still-grinding-after-all-these-years/

Really for 100th time , please dont make it grind fest, please.

The whole game is a grind fest.

??

No it isn’t. The only grind this game has at the moment is optional cosmetic grind.

Most, if not all people agree with that. A gear-threadmill however, is not OK.

And 2% more stats that isn’t required for ANYTHING, is mandatory how exactly?

Exotic items aren’t mandatory either, right? You’ll do just fine in common-rarity (white) stuff you bought from an armorsmith npc.

What a joke.

LOL what a good example, way to over-exaggerate another point for your own silly argument.

Rare gear is nearly just as good as Exotics, you can do anything in this game in Rare gear with no problems.

And you actually bring up another point, why is there White/Blue/Green gear in this game? It’s a gear treadmill, why aren’t you crying about that???

That isn’t a Treadmill, that is gearing up your character. White/Blue/Green can all easily be got and then Exotics is what you work towards at the end.

A treadmill is when they constantly add better gear that you have to grind to get. We already have to grind up to get Exotics one way or another, why do we have to do it again for Ascended?

No, that IS a treadmill.

Using that argument. If they launched the game with 3 additional tiers past Exotic, that wouldn’t be considered a treadmill until they added a 4th additional tier.

It’s all technically a treadmill.

Nope what is currently in game is not a gear treadmill. At least not one that is required to do content. What this proposes IS a gear treadmill for without it apparently you won’t get further than a specific point.

When gear is needed to advance to new content you are talking about a gear treadmill. As it stands everything in game now is doable in even masterwork gear so no gear treadmill.

To people saying knee jerk and such reactions. I rather stop the train before we go over the broken bridge rather than get it back up the rails while it is hanging over the chasm.

It’s clear a very large portion of the people posting here is against gear treadmills and that Anet will lose customers and probably even have to refund them as well if one is put in. They need to get a statement out asap telling exactly what this entails.

Tosha Daydreamer.9251:

Ravenblade.7685:

Wait. I know raging is good as it requires less coffee intake over the course of the day but we don’t know the exact details yet. Whilst I am not exactly excited about a possible treadmill finding its way in either I am willing to wait for more details.

This. Hold back the keejerk respons and be patient… when we know more details, THEN we can get our pitchfork and torches and go on a complete rampage…

It will be to late to complain afterwards as they are not going to remove stuff

If they put in better armor than Anet can 1 expect a PR nightmare and 2 people leaving due to lying about not putting in a gear treadmill. Who ever came up with the idea should be fired and pay already given returned as well as the person that oked it. All money should then be given to the playerbase as compensation in the form gems.

thegersh.6750:

other than tactics and, as stated above, knowing that defense is also needed.

a commander has to earn respect, both through tactics and how s/he treats others. if its “ON ME NOW! FSakes! FOLLOW ME!!! OMG N00bS!” then well… they can sod right off.

some commanders though have different tactical strengths. if they are a one trick zergaphile they are just mindless and i wont be following them.

they also have to practice what they preach and lead by example. if s/he ask people to do supply runs until all the siege in a tower is complete… they should help do it too at least some of the time. same goes with yak walking to make sure the supplies get to the towers/keeps.

edited: to get rid of “kitten”. i object to the Sesame Street style censoring. at lease use “*” please.

I agree in theory that they should also do supply runs and stuff, but in practice I completely disagree. The commander that does menial work like that can easily lose oversight on what is going on. even worse he can get separated from his forces which would completely halt any campaign being waged. The commanders place is with the main force where he is most effective.

I wouldn’t mind it so much if the slow down was actually linked to being damaged. To often am I stuck in combat for no reason, which is really annoying when you have to jump. I have relogged countless times just to get out of combat.

No Anet promised us 24/7 battlegrounds. The problem is they forgot to make them 24/7. What they need to do is scrap the current setup and make only global homeservers. Thus ensuring that every server has a 24/7 presence.

CalvinHobbes.3541:

Doggie.3184:

CalvinHobbes.3541:

Interesting that you make the comment about skill above persistence when most people that completed it remark that it was due to their persistence. How they tried it for several hours with many failures. No matter how much you try to spin it, repeating something over and over and over doesn’t equal skill it equals persistence.

It equals a learning experience, and some learn faster than others.

That’s not what was implied in the OP. Of course through persistence one can learn the best method that works for them. But really, who cares if that persistence takes place over the course of a few hours, days, weeks, or months?

The ability to learn something is part of the skill equation. The faster you can learn something the more skilled a person can be. I say can be because it is only 1 factor. To me it is the most important factor when talking about skill.

Now a lot more people would complete the clock tower in the long run if it wasn’t time limited, but only those with a certain skill level will do it within the time limit.