Guild Wars 2

Spiral Architect.6540:

rjnemer.7816:

Also, CJ said at PAX that exotics were not intended to be so easy to get. Thats why they added ascended in the first place.

I don’t really buy that. If exotics were truly not intended to be so easy to get, why did they make them craftable? Why did they make them available for dungeon tokens? Why did they include them in the drop tables?

And then there’s this, taken from here :

“Colin Johanson: Everyone, including casual gamers, by level 80 should have the best statistical loot in the game. We want everyone on an equal power base. The rare stuff becomes the really awesome looking armours. It’s all about collecting the unique looking stuff and collecting all the other rare collectable items in the game: armour pieces, potentially different potions – a lot of that is still up in the air and we’ll finalise a lot of those reward systems as we get closer to release. And those come off of things like the bosses at the end of dungeons – the raids.”

Colin’s statement at PAX strikes me as just spin and smokescreen, concocted to try and get people to shut up about ArenaNet’s about face on the ascended gear release.

Exactly this. Yet another lie.

rjnemer.7816:

Fractals. So sick of only doing fotm 48. I cant wait till they remove the cap and they are revamped later this year!

Nope. You’ve been fooled by Anet. What you need is more AR. Anet could have just added infusion slots to Exotics for fractal players. Higher stats were never necessary for fractals. Fractals was just a flimsy excuse that Anet used to introduce higher stats Ascended gear.

Does anyone not expecting a fight still go to the JP’s? Does anyone go the the JP’s at all anymore?

Doesn’t one of the achievement chest come with a ton of badges? That’s probably why we haven’t had those whining-about-being-killed in the JP posts in a long time.

Altie.4571:

@ point 3.

They have already stated that there will be a list of achievements to be done in order to qualify for a reward. So in that respect your server will see MORE people join WvW and participate because they will have to go and grab camps, take towers/keeps and defend stuff in order to receive the reward.

I can’t comment on the other points because everything is speculation at this point, we simply don’t know what will happen.

This won’t help at all. The higher ranked (and thus the winning) servers get better rewards — expect them to get players.

What we really need is a 1 week boycott. It doesn’t seem like anything will get through to Anet unless it’s numbers. If everyone on the forums complain, they’ll just say forum goers are a minority.

Where did [SE] move to? [Abys] is now on SBI, zerging our pants off (NSP) but it doesn’t seem [SE] is there too.

Did these guilds say they were leaving because of the leagues?

But don’t you want to test your skill against higher tiered servers? LOL

The whole league idea is a mistake. Creating leagues with a 12 rank disparity between the highest and lowest servers is just ridiculous.

Because this League idea is just going to award people for being on servers with the best coverage, I’d say:

Kill enough yaks for the yakslapper title.

stof.9341:

You cannot get shards from SAB anymore. Also baubles have been nerfed.

:(

I guess someone should update the wiki.

What’s the best way to farm for obsidian shards?

As far as I know, you can get obsidian shards via:

• Karma
• Laurels
• Fractal Relics
• Bauble Bubbles

Karma acquisition has been nerfed into the ground. I definitely don’t want to spend Laurels as they’re pretty valuable, being time gated.

That leaves farming fractals and SAB. I haven’t done fractals in a LONG time, but I recall fractal relics were relatively easy to come by. I haven’t tried SAB at all — do Baubles drop at a decent rate?

I’m a primarily a WvW player who does some PvE. I’m willing to go out of my way a bit to get Ascended gear, but generally, I’m just going to play the way I want to play. And if I get enough mats for Ascended gear, then I’ll craft them.

However, if playing this way eventually causes me to feel very disadvantaged in WvW, I’ll simply quit the game.

Obscure One.4357:

WvW is a sinking ship. We know it. The development team knows it.

I think the problem is that the dev team doesn’t know it. They appear to be extremely out of touch with how most of WvW looks like and is played.

It’s probably time to rotate the current WvW dev team to, say, the Living Story and move some new people in.

Handin.4032:

Lord Kuru.3685:

This is especially a problem in WvW. Newer players will take far longer to get geared up to max stats than they did previously (when max stats were exotics).

This puts them at a disadvantage and probably discourages many from even trying WvW. (Imagine a fully geared Ascended glass cannon thief with permastealth and Guard Leech ganking a new player with two hits immediately upon arrival in WvW — is that new player going to ever return to WvW?)

This isn’t as big of a problem in WvW when levelling. An upleveled player in WvW shouldn’t be focusing on any one stat set, but just getting good gear altogether. WvW will give upleveled players decent amount of drops, and the upscaling is actually pretty decent. I went in on my level 25 ranger and I left with a bag full of mostly blue and green items.

Your comparison of a full exotic person ganking an upleveled player isn’t valid here. This is the case now, and it was the case since GW2 came out. That argument isn’t very useful here, at all. Upleveled players in WvW shouldn’t be roaming, and doing so is at their own risk If they join a large-scale war and get ganked doing small group stuff…well…I feel no pity! The upscaling is actually very strong in WvW (I got over 2000 vit on my engi once wearing only greens at level 15), so the gear isn’t AS big of an issue (Though it can be). It’s mostly just experience (I’ve seen upleveled alts taking on lvl 80 players successfully)

This has nothing to do with upleveled toons. Uplevels in WvW know that they are entering at their own risk so death is not a big deal — you’re basically expected to die and if you don’t, you’re happy. Plus leveling to 80 and getting exotics is easy — so (before the introduction of Ascended gear) it wasn’t like you were under-leveled and under-geared for a long time.

The problem lies with new players who are level 80, where Ascended gear is a long way off because of the materials/time investment needed. They will be at a disadvantage in WvW for a very long time. That’s very discouraging. This is also why I’m very opposed to the whole rank abilities (especially guard leech).

Benjamin.6235:

MiLkZz.4789:

/signed

Again, I’ll give it 1 month. If nothing gets fixed, I will look for a new game. Well already looking actually.

We never asked for a buff, it is a stupid idea. This favours the server with the most players, because they can miss the most to hold the points. And you killed GvG in the process. Way to go to dissapoint your most hardcore (14hours+/day) players.

As I said before, Gw2 is a gem. But Anet just can’t identify it.

If you give it a month, Devon will point to the numbers and say that participation is fine and use it as an excuse to go even further with his bizarre vision for WvW. When the orbs go in, just stop playing. Vote with your feet and all that. It might also help for WvW players opposing GvGs to see how empty their game is without most of the hardcore WvW guilds.

If we want them to fix any of this, we’re going to have to immediately stop playing until they do. No exceptions.

This. Organize a boycott of the game for one week. Let it be known to everyone why you’re doing this. If the GvG guilds really are important members of the PPT community (I don’t doubt it) then this should have an impact on the week’s matchups.

It’s only a week, so not too big a sacrifice for the point that you’re making.

I think a large proportion of zergs like to zerg. You’re anonymous and if your zerg gets wiped, it’s not your fault, you are but one man. There’s zero pressure to perform — you can stand at the back and do nothing — no one will notice. Furthermore, you get loot bags so you do feel like you’re contributing. If you look at it this way, there’s no downside to zerging.

There are a lot of people here who assume players either are ALWAYS, 100% of the time, contributing to ppt, or NEVER ever contributing.

Fact is that a significant portion of the WvW population contributes sometimes and doesn’t contribute other times. If you force everyone to contribute all the time, many of these people will leave the game — not because they hate to contribute, but rather because they want more variety.

By the way, if you force everyone to contribute to ppt, you’re not going to get more ppt players… many people will just not log on.

This is especially a problem in WvW. Newer players will take far longer to get geared up to max stats than they did previously (when max stats were exotics).

This puts them at a disadvantage and probably discourages many from even trying WvW. (Imagine a fully geared Ascended glass cannon thief with permastealth and Guard Leech ganking a new player with two hits immediately upon arrival in WvW — is that new player going to ever return to WvW?)

This new system gives you the same chance to give you the stats+weapon combo you want as the system for getting Ascended rings from fractals.

• Ascended rings from fractals: You get a ring, which you definitely can use, with a random stat.
• Ascended weapons: You get a weapon that you definitely can use (as you choose it), with a random stat.

Consider all those people who complained about their banks being filled with useless Ascended fractal rings. This is the same thing in terms of probability of getting what you want.

So Anet learned nothing from the Ascended rings complaints (or chose to ignore).

It’s pretty obvious we’re going to see the snowballing effect — especially when the horribly mis-matched league system goes into effect. I thought snowballing was one of the major problems with the orb mechanic (that and the cheating). Why bring it back?

I don’t even like the stomp-for-points mechanic. We’ll surely see arguments arising when new/up-leveled players get stomped. (We already see complaints of “rally-bots.”)
The last thing we need is for new players to be discouraged upon trying out WvW.

I also think this mechanic is going to cause a lot more Alt-F4’s just before getting stomped.

It should have just been +300% magic find for WvW exclusive skins or something like that.

They must have a favorite server whose gameplay they consider the “standard” WvW gameplay. Otherwise how could they be so out of touch with how the game is being played overall (on lower tiers, for example).

Theftwind.8976:

Well I can try to answer the question as diplomatically as possible and hopefully not ruffle too many feathers. I do not GvG, our guild is a tiny, family guild. Although it does not bother me too much one way or the other I can foresee that it might in the future.

Think about the dynamics of WvW as they currently are. You are doing your best to protect what is yours and to gain points for your server and one of the larger guilds decides that they want to GvG. While that fight is going on, even if it is tucked away in some forgotten corner of the map, you can forget about asking those people for any assistance in defending a keep for example. They are on the map, may very well have a Commander tag up, but they are not involved in WvW, they are involved in GvG. At this point in time they are not playing the same game with the same goals as the rest of the people on the map. If it is one of your larger guilds then they not only are hurting you at that point by not helping, they also count against your map cap and could prevent you from bringing in people from another map to assist.

Secondly, if there is a GvG match going on on the map I am on how do I know it is GvG? If I happen to see red and to me red is dead, is it fair for me to be called out by my own teammates for playing the game as a WvW’er and not a GvG’er?

Going forward, once the leagues are active I can see this division between those that are serious about WvW and those that want to GvG becoming worse as there will be more incentive to gain as many points per tick in WvW as possible. Will it be fair that all players in WvW share in the reward should they win when all “Guild X” did was particpate in GvG while their teammates do all the heavy lifting?

If the GvG goals were the same as the WvW goals then it would not matter one way or the other but currently such is not the case. They are, while a GvG fight is going on, diametrically opposite of each other. Like oil and water they just do not mix. At this point the only thing that would help is a separate map for those that wish to GvG but at the point it becomes another game in itself such as WvW, sPvP and PvE are now.

So hopefully that helps you understand why many people may harbor hostility against those that just want to GvG.

I don’t see an issue at all with your first point (they are on the map but aren’t contributing to ppt). Unless they’re causing queues, just pretend they aren’t there. It’s the same for people who are afk or crafting or doing the JP’s. If you disallowed all these people from doing these things, it’s not like they would suddenly be contributing, they’d probably just log out.

As for putting commander tags on — I see how that can be an issue.

But why all the hostility. GvG’ers and PPT players don’t have conflicting goals at all — each group can just pretend the other group isn’t there — UNLESS it’s a queue issue. But if it’s a queue issue, why don’t the GvG people just transfer to the queue-less lower tiers?

Now that I think about it… isn’t this the exact same problem that fractal runners have had with ascended rings? In both cases, you get an item you can surely use, but for the stats. (Fractals: everyone uses rings. Ascended weapon: you choose the weapon.)

So Anet saw the huge number of complaints of fractal runners filling up their inventory with useless rings and then decided to put us in EXACTLY the same situation with Ascended weapons!

Poaching people from low pop servers that need all the players they can get. Classy.

Why? (I don’t do GvG.)

Is it because they don’t contribute to ppt and cause ppt players to be stuck in the queue and thus hurt the performance of their server?

If this is the case, GvG players would do well to move to the lower tiers where there are no queues except possible for a few hours on reset.

Everybody wins in this case. Low tier servers get some population and GvGers can GvG.

mrstealth.6701:

There was a dev comment in one of the league threads about how the 12th rank server might not have a chance vs rank 1, but they could stand a chance against rank 6. Well, YB is 11, and DB is 6. I think it’s fair to say he was quite wrong.

Really?!?! That truly shows how much the devs are completely out of touch.

Mattargul.9235:

On the note about clockwork recipes — please come up with a better way to handle stacks of 250 in pretty much anything. I’d be happy if I could just order them on the TP more easily.

And next time, for the love of all that’s good and holy , if you think there’ll be so many sprockets that you need to require 250 for a recipe, add an extra token you trade for 250 and then use that on the TP and in the recipes.

But then you wouldn’t have to buy bank slots. Same thing with the T7 dust material.

It’s more like a daily soap opera that spits out episodes at a rate that’s too fast to have any quality. Anet: We want “The Wire,” not “Days of our Lives.”

If you get a stat for a playstyle that you don’t already have complementary armor/trinkets for, then that drop is pretty much useless.

That’s why it’s better to get a choice of stats than a choice of weapons. Each profession uses several weapons. So there would be a much higher chance of getting a drop that you can use.

Of course that’s probably why Anet lets you choose the weapons — they know you’re likely to get something you don’t want. They want you to take as long as possible to get your Ascended weapon because in the meantime they don’t have to produce meaningful content for the game.

robocafaz.9017:

I’m looking forward to seeing it in action. More objectives to spread the zerg thin. Especially since it caps so slow and has a fixed rate.

I think they may be one of the first objectives in WvW where zerging isn’t the greatest solution.

The zerg will just have one more thing to do as they pass between bay and hills. It won’t spread them thin at all.

Contiguous.1345:

The stomp mechanic is bad news.
This will mean that people will be competing for kills, something this game has so far avoided with good reason.

It’s going to adversely affect the spirit of camaraderie, which has been one of the nicest features of the game. I’d hate to see this go the way WoW ended up with people trading insults in chat and on the forums.

One poster above mentioned that a stomp was worth 1/5 of a supply camp. That actually sounds very significant. I wonder if this is enough to give people reason to Alt-F4 right before the stomp. The answer is probably “yes.”

Marthiarn.8107:

Lord Kuru.3685:

Marthiarn.8107:

Blix.8021:

Marthiarn.8107:

I agree whole-heartedly. It may take a little while for people to realize “Zerging the center is bad for PTT”. However once they figure that part out and leave it to smaller groups to fight for, it’ll be wondrous.

And even if the zerg does decide to try and fight in that center, they will be forced to split. Smaller fights, even 10-20 vs 10-20 is a massive improvement in engagement scales in t1.

If zerging the center gives good rewards people will do it regardless of ppt. Maybe not on tier 1, but on every other server with people who do not care about ppt.

So far, all it seems to provide is stat boosts for a fairly large time commitment.

Sure you could zerg it up and spend 10 minutes grabbing buffs. Meanwhile the smart server next door is taking yo cookies from bay.

Imagine the zerg that’s already got your bay (and the rest of your BL) with even more stats! That’s what we’re really going to see.

Don’t know what tier that is. However in T1, the winning server still cannot keep control of EVERY point of every map. Zergs may roam through there every once in a while to get the buffs if necessary, however when there are actual things that cost PPT that need to be taken, these things will be largely ignored.

Pretty soon, we’ll be doing the seasons, and we’ll see totally insane matchups between servers with huge ranking gaps. This is only going to exacerbate the curbstomping that the lower ranked servers will receive.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Lian Olsam.9541:

onestly it is no funny with the weapon, cause u have to farm gold or mat, and in the gw2 manifesto was wrote “no grind no farm” i think that u made it wrong with weapon but is already done, you also need alot of money for crafting exotic for reach the lvl 500 many ppl doesent farm gold, omg its gw2 not other mmo let me fun, not farm, a big mistake, cause now who dont have alot of money is *

with armor i suggest to require, karma that u got from ANY part of game with the same quantity, skill points cause u learn xp in ANY part of the game, a BIT of laurel, so u just have to play all THAT U WANT, not a part of a game, and a small ammount of fractal relics and token, wth its ascended its for ppl that play fotm, why those ppl doesent anything more than others, they need it for play his favorite dungeon…
i know its the best set on the game (except legendary, same stat but more cool) but i dont wanna farm, i just wanna play like manifesto said

dont talk me about easyest and faster then other games cause i dont care about that gw2 should be different, if ppl that like to farm and keep them busy wanna be superbusy just make really hard to do legendary stuff, but for ppl that have a job and life and can play 1-2 hours per day and in those time dont wanna do (they also cant) champ farm, temple farm, 4000 dungeon.. but we wanna just play and have fun
and also dont talk me about “you dont need ascended for play” cause i want it, i like fotm, and i’d like do pairs lvl over 50 so stop with useless reply and be constructive if u dont like my idea find another solution, but i dont wanna play at grind wars 2

thanks

Hi there! Grinding exists, but Anet isn’t forcing you to do so. Because you want an Ascended weapon, you must choose between voluntary grinding, or waiting to get a lucky drop. So the Manifesto still applies.

In that case the Manifesto will always apply: Realistically, getting that luck drop (with the stats you want) is near impossible. So your only real chance of getting an Ascended weapon is to grind.

Player Character.9467:

They’re not locked to 1, rings/accessories/amulets are all available via laurels and wvw badges. Fractal completion and wvw rank chests can give rings. Guild missions can give earrings, the commendations they give do to. etc.

I’ve never heard of anyone receiving an Ascended ring from a WvW rank chest. Are you sure it’s possible?

Marthiarn.8107:

Blix.8021:

Marthiarn.8107:

I agree whole-heartedly. It may take a little while for people to realize “Zerging the center is bad for PTT”. However once they figure that part out and leave it to smaller groups to fight for, it’ll be wondrous.

And even if the zerg does decide to try and fight in that center, they will be forced to split. Smaller fights, even 10-20 vs 10-20 is a massive improvement in engagement scales in t1.

If zerging the center gives good rewards people will do it regardless of ppt. Maybe not on tier 1, but on every other server with people who do not care about ppt.

So far, all it seems to provide is stat boosts for a fairly large time commitment.

Sure you could zerg it up and spend 10 minutes grabbing buffs. Meanwhile the smart server next door is taking yo cookies from bay.

Imagine the zerg that’s already got your bay (and the rest of your BL) with even more stats! That’s what we’re really going to see.

Saelune.5316:

Long as they are reasonably attainable for people who actually put time and effort into WvW. Would be a cool way to identify other WvWers outside of it, and a good marketing tactic to get more players in it. But if its as out of reach as the titles or something, then forget it.

Definitely not like the titles. More like skins for badges, skins as loot drops, skins for some new kind of token (Anet loves their tokens), or skins for WvW ranks — basically the same system Anet uses for rewarding skins in all other parts of the game.

Blix.8021:

SpehssMehreen.5897:

One of the goals of the league is to encourage people to organize and encourage people to get into wvw and to fight for their server, but knowing people on the forums they will be a ton of QQ and refusing to log on due to the assumptions people make, especially the fair weathers leaving their hardcore and organized guilds out to hang.

hopefully servers will get organized, get their own server comms for example, have meetings especially b4 reset and communicate each other

server ts and meetings mean jack when the other people have either more people, more people on who live in australia or asia, or both.

This. Even when two servers are 4 ranks apart, the difference in WvW population/coverage between them servers can be enormous. Imagine A matchup between #1 and #12.

All this is going to do is cause some people to transfer to the top servers, some servers to tank their matches (the current #12 server), and create extremely uneven matchups that devolve into 24/7 spawn camping.

One big zerg will just run a circle around these points wiping your smaller groups. They will cap the points as you run back from spawn.

Stupid. Changes you make will affect all players anyway. This is just an excuse to put any dev time into WvW (as if any is really being spent right now!)

WvW players are rewarded far less (in terms of rewards to time played) than PvE players. This is actually a serious problem now that Ascended gear requires tons of wealth in order to craft.

We need some exclusive skins, that can be TP’d, that drop only in WvW. WvW players can make some money this way, and this might even encourage some PvE players to try out WvW.

For those who might say this is unfair to players who don’t like WvW: if you don’t play SAB or the Living Story, you don’t get the skins — this is the same thing. If you don’t like WvW, you can always buy them off the TP.

Kuzzi.2198:

Everyone here is excited about the upcoming WvW league, but I have to ask some important questions. I read that the league will reward the winning servers with bonuses that affect PvE as well.

Then, what happens to PvE player bases? Should they all switch servers to the winning WvW servers? Is that an intended solution for balancing out servers, by filling up the top WvW servers with non-WvW players?

This will also heavily drop the populations of the losing servers. Is there any plan to eventually eliminate or merge those servers?

Didn’t you look at the forums the day after the league announcement? No one is excited. The devs are totally out of touch — just refer to the infamous “test your skill against higher ranked servers” quote.

kittennit.7648:

If they are in WvW to farm ascended stuff they are doing it wrong, it is A LOT faster to do it in PvE. And if u just do PvD in WvW it’s exactly that, PvE with less rewards.

Probably a lot of these players don’t even have the right maps discovered in PvE to farm well. People just want to get this Ascended gear out of the way so that they can resume playing the game.

Jamais vu.5284:

In North America, 12 servers per league is a very healthy number. It provides variance, less predictability, lower servers can learn from the playstyle of upper servers, it provides opportunity to rise through the ranks and make comebacks. Ambitioned guilds and players will find fun, challenge and many bags.

You don’t know what you’re talking about. The population differential between two servers that are ranked even a few ranks apart is enormous. The playstyle of upper servers is to have more population and coverage.

One of the big flaws in the PvE of this game is that we have all these skills that have practically zero use in PvE.

Mobs rarely give conditions or have boons so we almost never need condi removal or boon stripping skills. Instead, we often get mobs that have special monster skills that provide the same benefits as conditions or boons, but are invulnerable to player skills.

If mobs had some condi and boon removal, that’d make things even more interesting.

Saturn.6591:

eekzie.5640:

If you completed the events the gauntlet would’ve been open for you. There was plenty time to use them when they were switched back to account bound, if you needed them.

What?!?

Are you saying the tickets were switched back from soulbound to accountbound? When? I’ve spent quite a bit of money buying tickets from the NPC’s, when I still had around 40 tickets scattered over my other characters. I’ve never seen any announcement that they were changed back to accountbound.

o.o

When they nerfed the Gauntlet into the ground, they didn’t need the tickets to be soulbound anymore so they stealth changed them to accountbound. A few people on the forums noticed it.

Samhaim.8956:

To those there are complaining about Ascended Weapons saying that you can’t get them through WvW, last time i checked there were crafting stations on WvW as well as gathering nodes and item drops that you can salvage for mats, on top of that you can get all of the ascended mats through WvW, and if you’re lucky you might just get the weapon from the same place.
So saying you can’t get them through WvW is nothing but misinformation.

You must be joking. The number of gathering nodes is very very small. In all of WvW there are at most 2 nodes of Ancient wood. Sure mats can drop, but kill rates in WvW are way below kill rates in PvE.

But that’s not the point. The point is that Ascended gear provides zero positives to the WvW experience. We do not need vertical progression in this game mode (Guard Leech is equally ridiculous).

And yes, WvW is not an equal playing field, but that doesn’t mean you should screw that up even more.

Healix.5819:

Ascended gear is just a fix for exotics, which were far too easy to obtain. It has to have increased stats, because that’s the point. If they could go back in time, the current exotic tier wouldn’t exist and the current ascended tier would be exotic.

If cosmetics were all people wanted, stat based progression wouldn’t be so popular. Even non stat-based games are doing it, like shooters. It’s simply a clear goal to work towards that includes everyone, whereas cosmetics is a matter of opinion. For example, if you don’t care about the way you look or alternatively, like the way you already look, additional cosmetics are meaningless. Stat progression on the other hand is something that everyone will have to face… eventually.

If GW2 had a skin locker that basically treated every unique skin as an achievement, skins would be treated much differently, though it still wouldn’t appeal to those needing stat progression.

Why is stat progression necessary? Why do we need better weapons or gear? Is the PvE so hard right now that people are unable to do it unless they get better gear?

Are people just hamsters running their wheel, happy with the illusion that they’re going somewhere?

Is it not possible to make a game where players want to play because it’s fun/challenging/exciting and not because they just want to see bigger numbers?

Daywolf.2630:

Lord Kuru.3685:

Yes. Their original target group were casuals and those who didn’t want to grind for gear stats. But the game launched beyond expectations, with a large number of buyers who were used to, and wanted stats grind. This got Anet greedy. When these new customers began to complain that there was no stats to grind for, Anet panicked and introduced Ascended gear.

Now we have a game that was developed for the no-stat-grind crowd, but has shifted its model to the stat-grind-fans. In the end, neither of these two customer bases will be happy.

Yeah but that doesn’t mean it’s geared for the hardcore gamer. Quite the opposite, GW2 set out to lure the core gamer but had started to shift to the casual play group. You can dump a lot of time into it and do it all fast (great for core gamers), but generally, especially with time gates now, it’s curved towards the casual player that is going to get on for a little time in the day and then move to some other game.

A good example of a hardcore gamer (not to be confused with core gamers) would be such as in early SWG, where these players would come together and create player built faction towns (similar to EVE). There would always be someone there ready to send out alerts to buddies even off-line to come in and defend an attack against their town/city. No great reward but the honor of dedication to get something done. EQ1, standing out in the middle of non-instanced nowhere waiting hours, days, weeks for a certain MOB or raid to spawn. No mini-rewards every 20m, just dedication to achieving something and maybe have a chance for something worth the time of doing it, down the road.

Here now, you have constant farming zergs, you can just jump in for an hour and then log out. You have daily this and daily that, each giving a reward every 20m or less. Add all these rewards up over time and trade it in for a greater reward. Or even just sell your micro-rewards and buy most of what you need for that bigger reward if part of what it takes to get it is beyond your interest. All very casual minded.

I see it differently.

The way I see it, the time gating is for what you call the “core gamer” — which I interpret as the “usual” MMO audience (those who wish to grind stats).

Considering the amount of materials necessary to craft Ascended gear, the casual gamer will take a very long time to gather enough material for even 1 weapon; forget about a whole set for one toon or alts. So time gating doesn’t affect these people negatively. (However the crazy amount of materials needed for the crafting does, as they will feel more and more left behind as time passes.)

I believe the time gating is for what you call the core gamers. They run through the content really fast and then complain that there’s not enough content. The time gating is to stop them from running through the content so fast. Though the amount of content is the same whether you time gate or not, time gating gives these people the illusion of more content (and almost everyone falls for it). Thus, the core gamers are satisfied.

As for hardcore games: I believe Anet is pretty ambivalent about them — they’re a small enough audience that Anet just doesn’t bother.

Mounts (that increase movement speed, as opposed to being simply cosmetic) would be a bad idea for WvW. That said, Anet will probably introduce them as they move the game closer and closer to your traditional MMO.

Reptile.6583:

I kinda agree with the OP, though.. I’ was never one for rainbows either… My feedback on anything with footprints, is that I would love to see an option to toggle some effects off or on. This way, if I’m in any form of PvP, I don’t leave a nice trail so my opponent can follow the dots, find me and have a nice try at killing me. I know I’m currently having a chuckle at the expense of my trail leaving victims….

Just my thought anyhow… I might bother with Legendries if I could make them less plastic toy like.. but my main is a Necro… so I just stick with Howler… and think about one day crafting my Bifrost and skinning it with another scythe… :-\

Do you mean crafting Bifrost and putting another skin on it? Can you do that and retain the properties of being a Legendary weapon (stat change out of combat, Best-in-Slot gear guaranteed)??

Palador.2170:

What if “Ascended” items had been simply skins, and no stats were included? Looking at the ways to get ascended items and fractal gear, would people still be doing it if it was cosmetic only?

Fractals of the Mists could easily have been given something other than Agony as a challenge that grows as you go deeper. Player levels dropping a point every few levels, for example. There would have been no non-visible Ascended items, but things like the backpacks would have existed as a sign that the wearer had made progress into the fractals. Perhaps different colors could have marked how deep you had to go to earn them.

Ascended skins made by crafting would show that the player had gone far beyond “normal” crafting and into the very difficult “epic” levels of crafting. They would be a badge of sorts, a reward that simply shows that you’ve gone above and beyond normal skills at your craft. Carrying an Ascended ax or staff would be the mark of a master craftsman.

So, I ask, would people have gone for things like this? Did we really need stats, or can you look at the challenges and say “I’d do that for just the skin”, whatever your motivation would be?

Fractals was just an excuse Anet used in order to introduce Ascended gear so that they could appease the stat grinders. They could easily have added infusion slots to exotic gear or made Ascended gear the same stats as exotics but with an additional Agony-Resistance infusion slot (if the coding made it hard to simply add infusion to exotics).

As for cosmetic “Ascended” — we already had all those mystic fountain weapons like Mjolnir that bridged the gap between Legendaries and Exotics. They could have just added more skins to those groups of weapons.