LF2M Max Ascended Only!
“They’ve also effectively entered into the Pay to Win territory since the requirements for Ascended gear can be bought on the trade post.”
Could you please elaborate on this claim, as it’s quite a controversial one unless it’s merely an opinion, which I feel you should state
Sure can. Here are the reported items necessary for making an ascended back item:
250 T6 mats
50 Ectos
24 skill points
1 Mists essenseT6 mats are the rare ones (ancient bones, blood etc.) Both those and the ectos are tradeable so once the recipe becomes widely known you can expect the prices on those items to skyrocket. Now as you know, the game allows you to effectively buy gold from the cash shop by allowing the conversion of gems to gold. That means if you have enough real life money to buy gold, those T6 mats and ectos are not an obstacle to you, hence pay to win.
edit: you may be tempted to counter that the person I describe could already do that with exotics but the difference is that exotics were 1) able to be obtained from multiple sources and 2) not that hard for even casual players to acquire so it’s not really an apples to apples comparison.
Beyond ridiculous. T6 mats are already spiking. A berserker’s ascendent with this formula is over 60 gold PLUS dungeon grinding.
Remember the legendary wall? It is now going to be 10 times thicker.
LF2M Max Ascended Only!
The premise that no gear treadmill has ever existed in this game is false when you consider legendary weapons. That being said there is no overwhelming advantage to getting a legendary other than bragging rights because the stats aren’t much better than exotics which are easy to obtain.
Legendary stats were never better. It was a key marketing point. That is a FUTURE change.
LF2M Max Ascended Only!
I think the problem is that their ‘manifesto’ is purposefully vague, and the vast majority of the consumers interpreted that as they liked.
It isn’t vague at all. The game was sold as no grind for max stat gear. I think we can say you need at least 20 hours of efficient Fractals running before you can get 1 of the 20 or so items a build will use regularly. (Your first items won’t come that quickly) A reasonable person will admit that this is to a level that will certainly be considered a grind.
A lot of people are really being quite selfish here, and they want Anet to just fold and do what they want and disregard anyone who likes the changes but doesn’t post about it on the forums (the silent majority)
Honestly, I would think that the silent majority don’t give a care about Ascended gear one way or the other. They aren’t calling for it, they aren’t going to grind for it, they won’t obtain it, and they won’t be around long enough to see it’s impact. The silent majority just isn’t invested in the future of one single game.
LF2M Max Ascended Only!
They NEED to make a statement, why exactly? They’ve already made a statement — both in what you call a “convoluted” blog post, and here in the forums.
I assume you’re talking about the ascended tier and the fear of them adding more in the future. It’s a baseless fear, as they have already made “Legendaries” which are an insanely long grind for most players and laid out in the game as the ultimate achievement. They’re not going to be able to make gear which has higher stats and is perceived as a better reward than those items, so they are naturally capped in how much they can add.
Ascended gear is really much like resistance gear in other MMOs anyway — a set of gear which you accumulate to counter a specific mechanic.
Until they have legendary items for every gear slot, there is no cap. And if your “cap” is getting 20 legendary items (many, many more if you want to do other characters/builds) then I don’t know what to say.
Ascended gear (with infusions) will be as strong as exotic gear tier is. It isn’t just about fighting agony.
LF2M Max Ascended Only!
“Adding item progression is a delicate process normally undertaken in an expansion, but we feel it’s important to strive to satisfy the basic needs of our players sooner rather than later.”
“… normally undertaken in an expansion …”
More tiers coming? I don’t see why you have any reason to believe otherwise. Eventually the grinding crowds will have full ascended. What then?
LF2M Max Ascended Only!
If you are seriously sparking a new thread, it would be effective to outline the changes and bugs you are wanting to discuss.
LF2M Max Ascended Only!
It is entirely possible, if not probable, that the eventuality of full sets of Ascended Gear could be a year or two down the road.
Doesn’t matter to me if this is true or not. I didn’t buy GW2 to play one character and one set of gear that I spent 1000 hours grinding so that I can keep spamming ‘1’ ‘2’ and ‘3’ all day long. I also didn’t buy it to be stuck in the original content forever because I don’t want to do the above. They effectively killed a ton of variety and content for me.
LF2M Max Ascended Only!
By the outrage expressed by the vocal minority, you’d think that they had spent hundreds of hours earning the Exotic Gear that will no longer be the pinnacle of power as Ascended gear enters the game! The easiest to acquire Exotics just do not take very long, no matter which of the available paths you chose to take in acquiring them. Arenanet isn’t trivializing some extremely long and difficult Exotic gear grind with some arbitrary gear inflation treadmill.
As of now, with full Exotic gear I have maxed out equipment.
Once Ascended gear hits, I am one tier under maxed out equipment.
Functionally, this patch is exactly the same as if ArenaNet had taken away all of my equipment, and replaced it with Rares.
And to get my ‘Exotics’ (ie: top-level gear) back, I have to run on the arbitrary gear inflation treadmill for what seems to be, according to all concrete information released so far, hundreds of hours of grinding.
I have three level 80s. I play all three. One is fully equipped with Exotics. One is half equipped and one has only rares. I have zero problem playing what ever content I want with my Exotic free character. I pursue my Exotics for the sense of progression, not because I need them.
The only people who ostensibly “need” Ascended gear will be people pushing the difficulty limits in Fractals of the Mist and those people will aquire it as part of the natural progression. Arenanet has said that Ascended Gear will be available via other routes, not just FotM, including WvW. For the WvW-centric players, that gear will come as they play the game.
If you plan on delving deeply into FotM, You’ll get your ascended gear in a natural progression, your exotics just being another stepping stone along the way, like every other piece of armor you aquired from levels 1-80. If you WvW, you will eventually aquire your Ascended gear and maintain your gear parity with the other WvW-centric players. If you aren’t interested in WvW or FotM, you’ll still have some ways of acquiring Ascended gear, but let’s be honest, outside of WvW or FotM, there is no actual need for Ascended gear, other than to provide a sense of progression for those who want/need it.
As to what changes tomorrow, let’s put things into perspective. Yes, with the shortage of back armor in the game, the ascended back armor will be desirable. However, as far as I’m aware, there are no current exotic or even rare back armors in the game, so ascended back armor is not trivializing your previous efforts by offering something new and improved. The only other Ascended gear at this time are rings. Are people really going to get bent out of shape because there will now be upgrades to pursue for two exotic rings? Really?
Perspective.
Besides, what gear inflation there is in the jump to Ascended Gear is miniscule compared to the routinely ongoing gear inflation in almost every other MMORPG we’ve seen in the last ten years and is literally nothing compared to the gear inflation seen with full expansions for games like WoW, where the new Greens often render obsolete gear that took hundreds of hours progressing through multiple tiers of raids to acquire.
Perspective.
How about this for perspective? People are estimating 70+ hrs per piece of ascended gear. One character uses 17+ pieces for a single build. And this will not be the end of it…
LF2M Max Ascended Only!
Enjoy running the dungeon 5000 times! All other content is laid waste after just 3 months. Funny that anyone considers this “more to do.”
LF2M Max Ascended Only!
How is this false advertizing when they NEVER said exotic was going to be the last tier of equipment? They just said this wasn’t going to be a vertical progression game in terms of gear. But as I’ve previously stated there is ALREADY a progression table in place. Up until now exotic has just been the top.
How is adding more tiers not vertical progression?
LF2M Max Ascended Only!
What part of this statement dont some of you understand?
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.
I mean they have spelled it out for you guys… All im saying is have faith and trust what they say…
No, it says they don’t have a goal to create a gear treadmill but are doing it anyway. It says they won’t do it every 3 months, but that implies 4 months is OK. Why should I have faith and trust when they told me something entirely different before I bought the game and leveled a bunch of characters?
LF2M Max Ascended Only!
I highly suspect that most people that think GW2 is a grindfest don’t have any idea what a real “grindfest” is.
I have reached the top 1% of players in a Korean grinder that had aged 5 years, so I know what a grindfest is.
Max gear isn’t difficult to achieve RIGHT NOW. But guess what? It isn’t difficult to achieve in a grinder at first, either.
However, there are super rare skins that require 200+ hours of grinding or 500+ hours of casual play to achieve. So there is an optional grind already.
LF2M Max Ascended Only!
One thing that a lot of people misunderstood – the highest gear tier is and its going to be legendary (not exotics as some of you states). Ascended gear will not change that… Or any other tier.
Yeah we misunderstood when we were told legendary tier was the same stats for a very important reason.
LF2M Max Ascended Only!
Really? The stat increase from Exotic to Ascended is only like 2 points. Anet isn’t forcing you to get it.
It’s more than +2 stats. That is just one stat on one piece. Look around forums; general consensus is that each part is 8% better individually and when combined in a full set = 26% better.
This is also not factoring in buffed legendaries which will bump the difference in over all combat performance even more.
This makes them BiS and a must have if you want to compete in Wv3.
Even one item is +5 in secondary stat… which is likely +18 stats total. And that is just one ring. Over 14 items, you are going to have something like 300 more stats AND more armor and weapon damage? This is almost as important as the exotic tier, and makes a joke of rares.
LF2M Max Ascended Only!
My biggest issue was not that there was no progression, it was that loot was inherently meaningless. In all the time I’ve played, I have not seen a single exotic drop. Not one. While its great that there’s a gear ceiling, GW1 had the same thing, and yet it would actually happen that from chests, or even regular monster drops you could see a weapon or item that was on par with what you already have. This never happens in GW2 and as such all loot at 80 falls into the category of Vendor Trash, Crafting Mat, or Items you salvage.
Don’t give us new tiers of stuff that will make loot even more useless, make loot better.
Max gear dropping quickly makes max gear worthless, especially with a market system like GW2 has. Loot is all relative.
LF2M Max Ascended Only!
world completion gets you account bound gifts. you dont need world complete on a toon to get a legendary
If this is true, I will jump (excuse the pun) for joy. I’m not doubting you, but can you confirm this?
Gifts of exploration (given at 100% map completion) are account bound.
LF2M Max Ascended Only!
The real Million Dollar Question is “Will they make another tier with better stats than Ascended?”
If no, then we have nothing to worry about.
If yes, then we have a problem.
The official notice told us not to worry that they would be adding a new tier every 3 months. They also told us legendaries will always maintain best in slot status. Reading into this, it tells us that they have no qualms about releasing further tiers.
LF2M Max Ascended Only!
Anyway rant aside, a “gear treadmill” in an MMO is inevitable as its what these games are built around.
Inevitable you say? I’m pretty sure there’s an extremely relevant counterexample that disproves that.
If GW1 was actually an MMO, you might have a point, but it’s not in any sense of the word. Unless you consider any game you play online, a MMO:)
This is actually true. GW1 was known as a CORPG (Cooperative Online Role-Playing Game) and was marketed as such. GW2 is marketed as a traditional MMO. I don’t know where I’m going with this aside from backing your statement up.
The distinction is moot. Are you suggesting that have open instances somehow introduce a requirement of a gear treadmill? If not, what exactly the difference between a “CORPG” and an “MMORPG” that creates this mandate?
LF2M Max Ascended Only!
Your premise is that because a reward is guaranteed that it cannot be a treadmill.
This is simply incorrect. The treadmill occurs because your goal is not to acquire a specific item, but to achieve the “best in slot” item. When you achieve this goal, the item is downgraded and becomes no longer “best in slot.” Then, you must continue running. Again and again. THAT is a treadmill. You can never finish because the goal is always redefined.
Consider this. Any game that you can trade for a best in slot item, you can purchase with profits even if you don’t get the drop straight up. Yeah, it might take you a year of bad luck to be able to afford that item. But you are guaranteed to be able to buy it eventually. So, by your definition, none of those games would have a treadmill either.
LF2M Max Ascended Only!
Not admitting that this is a gear treadmill is not realizing the facts or simply not telling the truth.
Gear treadmills are much like a zombie-plague – either you escape before it escalates or you will eventually become one of the zombies moaning incomprehensively about more nourishment right after you are done with what you have just gotten. GW2 was my safe haven from the zombies, come this Friday I will be on the search for a new place where I don’t have to listen to the zombies moan and more importantly where I dont turn into an elitist antisocial motherKITTEN again…
Orrrr you could just get legendary weapons and never have to worry about being not on par with the new tiers. And then wait til legendary armor comes out and do the same. DONE.
Right. We can just get legendary weapons… lets see any character I play probably wants a 2-handed melee weapon, a 2-handed ranged weapon, a 1 handed weapon and an offhand as a basic minimum of options… 4+ legendaries to play? No grind there!
LF2M Max Ascended Only!
I will definitely stay and I am unbelievably ecstatic about the introduction of new powerful gear.
Why? Because having exotics really means nothing anymore since EVERY other level 80 you see has exotics. There is no uniqueness to people, and with new more powerful gear people will be UNIQUE and actually stand out.
Incredibly wrong. This destroys uniqueness. How many tier 3 cultural armor, whisperblades, mjolnirs, wall of mists, etc do you see? These make your character unique. It is a lot of work just to be different, so people will pick a couple to acquire if they want to stand out. But people aren’t going to spend the resources on these incredibly expensive items because they are too busy chasing tier 5 ascended armor because EVERYONE HAS IT and they need it too. Oh and everyone needs a legendary weapon now, even if they hate the skin, so be prepared to see rainbow staffs on everything from mesmers to necromancers in the near future. The people that don’t get this stuff just won’t be around very much, so you won’t be seeing much else in your dungeon raids.
New gear means something new to strive for, and for the more dedicated players that is absolutely fantastic news. People who were complaining about small endgame now have something to strive for, but ofcourse some people just need to complain and can’t just enjoy the beautiful creation that Tyria is.
Tyria was a beautiful creation, but the people that hit ESC at every vista didn’t understand it. There was no shortage of goals or endgame, but the WoW conditioning led people to think there was.
LF2M Max Ascended Only!
Definitely less. My 4 “alts” are now rendered an overcommitment. My “main” will need nothing new save a couple of items, and those make me angry enough that I won’t enjoy going for them. I will not be collecting alternate exotic sets for different builds. I will not be bothering with exotic exotics like whisperblade, because now it is legendary or bust. In short, my progression, the horizontal progression advertised as the a tenant central to the game, comes to a halt. And I really have no desire to sign on to another vertical progression scheme.
LF2M Max Ascended Only!
The fact there is nothing you have to do is what made GW1 so great, you could just log in, do what ever you wanted and then maybe played something else for the next two, three or even six month without losing power. This is what most of the old community expected GW2 to be like too.
The worst thing about the power creep or gear treadmill is that it is absolutely unnecessary. You don’t need increasing stats to do new or harder content cause mechanics don’t care about numbers, they work no matter if you have 20k or 50k HP.
this post is bs.
you could get level 20 gear in gw1 that was weak as piss and you would be slaughtered everywhere you went. you had to work extremely hard to be on a competing level. gw2 makes it so easy that those exotics people are complaining about being useless probably took no more than a week to get a full set.
I would love to see someone get max gear at max level in gw1 in a week or two.
What on earth are you talking about? Max damage weapons rain from the sky so if you go to a city and say you will buy one you can get it for practically free. Or join a guild and someone will give you one. Maxed armor is purchasable from a vendor for a low price. Max stat mods are mostly equivalent to one valuable mat drop…
Not to mention PVP characters start at level 20, can make max items out of thin air, and can compete in all PVP content (not just one arena).
LF2M Max Ascended Only!
And this was how GW2 was meant to work based on their publicity, only its not. The grind for exotic gear may not be that much of a grind but its a grind nonetheless and its a fallacy to state, as some have, that exotic is something you pick up in the normal course of playing the game.
It isn’t a fallacy. Farm a few nodes in Orr, run a few events, and you have the mats for an exotic. Run a few dungeons and you have an exotic. Be reasonable with your gold and you can buy several before you even hit level 80. How is it a fallacy? Yeah, you aren’t instantly decked in exotics when you turn 80 but with sensible play you can quickly add pieces while doing just about anything.
LF2M Max Ascended Only!
Yes, but it isn’t even a -huge- stat gap. Not to mention they are going to release it in stages and not all at once.
The complaints about it were -mostly- based around the fact that people -thought- it would result in a gear treadmill. That isn’t the case, as they have pointed out.
Now if you’re going to make that big of a deal over a tiny stat difference then -wow-, just -wow-.
Oh -also- they are going to release it for other aspects of content as well. WvW and whatever else. Chill your kitten, seriously.
The difference isn’t tiny. You go from 7% magic find to 10%… with 14 pieces of improvement that’s 42% magic find, and that is just one stat. Or, I could swap in many pieces of non-magic find gear and get hundreds of more stat points while maintaining the same magic find. And berserker’s ascended is going to be scary.
LF2M Max Ascended Only!
Look at this.
Now please stop your complaining. Thanks.
No, it still sounds terrible. Exactly what I don’t want.
LF2M Max Ascended Only!
But pve wise, I don’t know anyone that doesn’t want to see their character grow…. no matter how small the amount is. New skins are cool but really its just more of the same after a few expansions. Same skills, same everything. Not sure how people cant consider that anymore or less boring.
Let me get this straight… you are claiming new skins are more boring than having the number ‘50’ instead of the number ‘48’ in your character window? Nothing is more boring than pointless stat creep.
Nor do I understand the argument about a gear grind….. when HELLO your doing the same thing if it were just a skin…. I mean comon folks pull your heads out!
Once you had a skin you are happy with, nobody was going to come along and make it unpleasant looking so you had to get a new one. You could not play for 6 months and your character would still look nice. With a gear treadmill, 6 months of activity means you are out of the loop and your friends are out grinding content that you can’t. That’s so cool!
LF2M Max Ascended Only!
It’s always had gear grind, what do you think exotic is?
Again, if the new quality had never existed it’d be the same, you’d need exotics.
Through normal play you can probably earn half the amount you need before you even hit level 80. You can score an exotic just by playing for fun for a day. If you really want more, you can get one by grinding for 2 hours (or even less).
This allows you to play more than one character without kittening your “main.” It allows you to experiment with different weapons, builds, and gear sets… all with max gear.
A more intensive grind requirement throws this out the window.
LF2M Max Ascended Only!
Can you fearmongerors please stop using the term “gear treadmill”, adding Ascended gear is in no way the beginning off a gear treadmill. By logic and definition this is NOT a gear treadmill!
The fearmongering and the lies in this thread are deeply disturbing, there is NO evidence suggesting that they will introduce a gear treadmill, NONE! They have said multiple times that they hate gear treadmills!
And then they told us that they would be repeatedly giving us new gear with higher stats to obtain… do you even understand what a gear treadmill is?
LF2M Max Ascended Only!
It’s what exotic should have been, SHOULD HAVE.
…..
Make karma and dungeon gear give ascended, let them sell it. Don’t make it super expensive, but make the dungeon and karma vendors sell it.
Uh that is what exotics ARE…. readily available end game gear. What exactly are you saying ascended gear would cost? And how is making you run a dungeon 50 times to get a piece fun?
LF2M Max Ascended Only!
They said it in the blog: to lessen the huge gap between obtaining exotics and legendaries, exactly what the community, as a whole, has been asking for the past month and a half or so.
Did they need to do this? no. But they did exactly what the community was asking, and now they’re getting a huge amount of drama from everyone and their grandmas. It’s not rational, and it’s not fair.
As you can see from this massive thread, “the community” was not asking for higher stat gear.
Probably because that “free” content is showing every sign of forcing players to grind new gear repeatedly, which the developers explicitly said would never happen. Just because it annoys you doesn’t make it any less valid.
Care to point out what “signs” are leading you to conclude this will be a grind? Max stat exotics can hardly be considered a grind, and now you’re saying the next step up, with absolutely no indication of how you even acquire them, will be a grind? Rubbish. We don’t know anything about them. Just saying what you feel doesn’t make it valid.
Signs? A little reading comprehension of the Linsey Murdock piece is all that is required. The ascended gear is being introduced specifically to occupy people’s efforts and give them something to do. If it takes a day then poof everyone is back to this so-called legendary wall and it was pointless in the first place.
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So the ppl who played TOEE or Keep on the Borderlands or any other D&D module and got their +1 or +2 magical weapons to beat the harder enemys where crack addicrs too?
This isnt just an MMO its an MMORPG, Character and Item progression where always a part of RPGs if you dont like that maybe you should ask yourself if RPGs are even the genre you like.
Did you spend 1000+ hrs to get your +2 TOEE sword? Did you have to play it and skip out on life just so you could hold that sword and not be left behind by your peers? How exactly do you equate the two?
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I don’t feel anywhere near the hatred for this move that some of you are displaying, but I do have some reservations about it.
From today’s post by Murdock:
“By adding challenging new combat mechanics to end-game content and ways to mitigate those mechanics through gear progression for high-end players, we can add personal progression without making the game feel like an endless treadmill of gear that is just out of your reach.”
Doesn’t the above statement seem a little contradictory? Even reading it in context, it doesn’t make sense to me. You create new mechanics that can only be dealt with by “gear progression” and then say that this creates a sense of personal progression without creating a gear treadmill. O_o
Am I missing something?
Nope. You’re pretty much just as befuddled as the other 105 pages full of posters.
It will feel so easy to get a legendary now that you have more stuff to grind first.
LF2M Max Ascended Only!
The ‘MMO Manifesto’ is looking more like an ’MMO Rough Guideline".
Let’s be clear, a Manifesto is merely a declaration of intentions, motives and perspectives by the author…. not a binding contract that locks them into a set of conditions.
While I don’t think this is necessarily the best solution for Anet, let’s recognize that they have total freedom in terms of deciding how they wish to move the game forward…. Total freedom doesn’t mean that all possible decisions they can make are good ones, there are still consequences and this decision might not shake out they way they want it to.
If you buy into something because of the manifesto behind it, and then 3 months later are told ‘never mind, we’ve secretly been working against all that’… well, that is a serious breach of trust and it completely shatters all credibility. Just saying.
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Lastly, to anyone who absolutely abhors any sort of expanded, end-game content I say this:
You payed for the game without this new content. You’ve already received what you paid for. This expansion is free for anyone who desires to take part in it and is unlikely to diminish the experience you already paid for. If you don’t like it…don’t play it. Unlike other MMO’s, you’re not paying a monthly sub so there is no loss if you don’t partake.
This is just not true as this is an MMO. First of all, I paid for a game where it was relatively easy to have my stats maxed for WvW. Secondly, I paid for a game where I could get these stats by doing a variety of content. And finally, I paid for a game where others were interested in doing different content. I paid for a game where a level 35 dungeon can be as popular as a level 80 dungeon. Making everyone else busy on a narrow gear treadmill will pretty much render this game dead to me.
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HURRAY, good job Anet, reward players for playing.
If people want to play without getting rewards please feel free to do so, I for one am very happy to see i’m not going to play for nothing.
Brilliant!
The idea of playing a game is that playing it is rewarding. That is GW2 as advertised.
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GW1 has no mechanic as described by ascended armor. You do a quest, get infused, and move on. It gives you no stat bonuses other than resistance for some story missions.
In GW2 ascended armor is described as being a goal between exotic and legendary (i.e. not easy to get) and has higher stats (so without it you are at a disadvantage in WvW and will suffer from gear discrimination in dungeons).
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