Guild Wars 2

(vid 9 might still be processing – if so, it should be up in 1-2hrs)

Ever wondered who’d be crazy enough to craft The Quip and then actually use it in PvP? Ever wondered if it’s possible to go Rambo in WvW? Ever ponder the meaning of life?

Well, these vids might not answer all your questions, but have a look just in case!

Str8 clownin’ since launch. As a bonus, the end of video 8 includes a thorough, academic response to all the haters – be sure to watch it!

Nice use of cropping/keyframes and slo-mo. Din’t really need the blur tbh.

And yea, Shadow Refuge is efin STRONK.

But I never seem to have room for it in WvW. Can’t part w/my extra speed (also an aoe blind for stomping, etc), immobilize and poison! They need to give me 4 non-elite util slots, or just allow me to use non-elite skills in the elite slot.

A little over 2000, if I count the gift of battle + 2 badge exotics I purchased. I’d imagine this would be way over 5000, if all I did was tag in zergs, but that wouldn’t have been very enjoyable.

Just ’cuz.

In academic terms: to get a (read: any) response out of you.

There’s several exploding threads about this already. It’s not a full pickup tab issue. I have nothing on my pickup tab and am out 60-70g worth of t6 buy orders.

Needless to say, I don’t think I’ll be re-grinding that much gold, because I will definitely rage if nothing is done (like nothing was done at launch). If nothing else, I’d at least like a rollback to before 10:30AM (server time) today…

… Is everyone at anet at lunch or what. Come on, there has to be at least SOMEONE watching the system? What kind of shop are you running, that there isn’t ALWAYS at least 1 person watching the system?

60-70g lost, I was trying to buy t6 mats. I repeat, this is UNACCEPTABLE.

Please rollback servers, before it’s too late. You still have time, before players will become PO-ed about losing progress.

UPDATE: Took off 2 more buy orders, no gold for those either. What is going on? Am I going to get my gold back, or is this like the 1st month, where the BLTC simply took my gold and the system didn’t even have an internal log/history by which to reimburse me with?

Same thing. Cancelled buy orders on about 60-70g worth of t6 mats. None of it is in my pickup tab and it’s been ~30mins.

If this gold is lost/not in the system, this is unacceptable. I’m sure there HAS to be some sort of transaction history, aside from my sold/bought tab. Please return my gold, I don’t have any more left!

Sunspear General.7964:

We got champion giant right across from the npcs any tips to get them fighting?

Looks like you already figured it out, but you basically have to get him to AOE-stomp them to death. And IIRC the friendlies aggro once they get damaged by him once.

Sorry that I wasn’t there, I was tabbed out watching SPL 2005 (lame-ish movie, but awesome fight scenes at the end).

This actually will work on any server:

1) Leash the nearby risen giant to the glitched/unmoving friendly npcs. Watch giant kill them.

2) Start the event over.

It would be nice if, say, a large/organized guild could do this for us, sometime this week maybe. I know a lot of players don’t like transferring off the full servers, in fear of never being able to xfer back again. I am now one of those, since the other top-bracket WvW servers are full atm.

Thank you in advance!

Kumu Honua.2751:

Not going to happen.

They don’t do it. Especially for your mistake let alone if it was an error on their end…

I’m pretty sure that soulbound items bought with skill points were intended to be refundable. I mean, there’s already a sellback feature for certain things, and soulbound items being refundable within a 10-30m window certainly wouldn’t be game-changing.

Either way, I do believe that if it’s within their power, it’d be really decent of them to fix my honest mistake. Who knows, it may convince me to ‘tip’ them for the 1st time in forever.

I am in-game right now, I will leave my client up, and be tabbed out for the most part. I’m sure there has to be some way to allow me to quickly regain these 50 skill points, feel free to have someone from anet PM me and try to work something out.

I know you’re not busy working on improving stuff like the droprates of t6 materials, WvW (still no options for badges, aside from crappy soldier’s prefix..) or sPvP… This is a legitimate issue, is it not? These kinds of things are supposed to have a refund feature, right?

And yes, I submitted a ticket before I made this post, you can go ahead and look through your recent tickets for the lines “Slic 2406” under the submission name.

(this is in reference to ticket 121122-000274)

character: Wild Bill
issue: skill point refund pretty please? or reset at least 50 of my skill challenges?

I don’t know WHY this game does not have a sellback/refund option for karma and skill point items. Anyway..

Would it be alright if you removed this Mystic Pistol from my inventory and refunded me those 50 skill points? This would save me a lot of unnecessary frustration, as I am at 150 skill points and the only thing I really need to craft my legendary is the Bloodstone Shard.

Please, PLEASE, is there any way you can? Or maybe, reset some (or even all) of my skill point challenges, without resetting the explorer title completion? If you cannot rollback my skill points, I’d settle for redoing skill point challenges again.

I really hope you can help me out here. It really sucks that there is no refund for items bought with skill points and that the Eldritch tome (the 2nd most expensive item) is right next to the Bloodstone Shard…

If you are in doubt whether I really did accidentally waste 50 skill points, you can take a look at my entire trading post history and see that I haven’t purchased a Mystic Pistol. You can also see that it’s soulbound.

Again, I wouldn’t have the Mystic Pistol in the 1st place, had I not mis-clicked the buy window for the skill point NPC near the mystic forge.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

We haven’t scrapped the old dungeons. We tried something new with Fractals, and so far it’s been very successful. I was on the team that built fractals, and now I am on the bug-fixing live team with a focus on our ‘old’ dungeons to fix bugs in there and see what I can do to spice them up a bit.

We’re certainly not going to just sweep the old dungeons under the rug. I will be working very hard on improving the dungeons.

About the only thing you can do to salvage the situation, is to make every explorable dungeon chest give at LEAST 50 t6 mats. And even that’s a rather weak incentive at this point.

I hope you reply with some answers.. Have you PERSONALLY tried to see how long it takes to get 250 t6 mats? The droprate, even for the best areas, is around 2-3 every 40mins.

If you didn’t intend this game to be a grind, then please look into speeding up the average player’s acquisition of t6 by at least a factor of 30.

Lol, everyone still eagerly awaiting a proper answer (from anet) to this very specific question. If answering this question actually gets an anet employee in trouble, then I don’t know what to say other than – “under new management” indeed?

Maz.8604:

I might be getting it confused. But I think without Infusions (which have non-Agony stats on them) un-Infused Ascended gear is a straight 20% stat markup over Exotic/Legendary gear. That might be the Infused gear though.

It’s a range of 10-40% for most stats, usually ~20% like you said. This is without infusion, which will eventually be able to add up to +20 of a primary stat per piece.

Yeah, please don’t merge, and let’s please get a red reply to here. And something direct, not beating around the bush.

Out of everything wrong with the Nov 15th patch, this question highlights by far the biggest and most popular concern.

Ascended gear already has a gating mechanic JUST for the new dungeon – agony. There is absolutely no need to introduce higher-than-exotic stats, if the only purpose of the content is ‘progression’.

I’ve talked to no less than 3 anet employees via in-game whispers, and still no definite answer, it’s like they’re now afraid of getting sued or fired for saying the wrong thing.

To paraphrase an elegant way a few others have put this: vertical progression in GW1 was tolerable (although still annoying) ONLY because it was localized vertical progression (e.g. lightbringer title).

slazzy.7309:

You can submit that, I don’t know detail about the mechanics. But I do know one thing. Many of you have misled players about the effect of Agony on the game. Now we find progression existed in GW1, at whatever the level, and yet this somehow does not apply. Even when a dev states Lightbringer was just another method players had to filter out those they want to play with. This is exactly the same thing, and you all know it is.

Hey, I could care less if none of you agree or see the point. But now I know from my own research that your complaints are baseless, and this game with thrive. I hope others aren’t affected by the negativity we’ve seen the last several days. That’s my point.

Let’s try something with math.

Berserker-statted exotic ring – 6% crit damage. Berserker-statted ascended equivalent – 8% crit damage. Power/precision is increased by 10-20% as well.

What does this have to do with agony and gating ONLY the dungeon itself? Those stats gate everything else. Extrapolate that difference in stats to 11 other ascended pieces. Ascended zerker = 150% crit damage and 10% more crit than exotic zerker (100% crit dmg). That is a flat ~35%+ damage increase from exotic to ascended, against EVERYTHING. Is this getting through to you yet?

And this is just one example of a stat combination. Every other stat combo is this off-the-wall-obviously-superior when comparing exotic to ascended.

Lightbringer did NOT allow you to do 40% more damage to everything, ONLY to very, VERY specific parts of the Nightfall campaign, and this only started to become necessary in the most difficult and optional portion of Nightfall – Domain of Anguish. It didn’t allow you to do 40% more damage to players either.

AndrewMcLeod.3857:

The Agony mechanic wasn’t introduced at the start of the dungeon so that everybody can experience the content. While one of the goals of the Fractals of the Mists dungeon was to provide some difficult content for players looking for a challenge, we also wanted the dungeon to be available for everybody to experience. While getting far into the dungeon requires agony resistance from ascended gear, the content was designed to provide challenging content, and to allow players to choose what difficulty they wanted to play at.

As for ascended gear, to reiterate what Chris has said (https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/info/news/A-message-from-our-Studio-Design-Director-Chris-Whiteside), it’s not intended as a treadmill, but rather as a tier of rewards that can help bridge the gap between Exotics (a few hours of effort to acquire a piece) and Legendaries (hundreds of hours of effort to acquire one). They’re currently only available in the Fractals of the Mist Dungeon, but we’re going to be adding new ways to acquire them, both inside of WvW as well as elsewhere in PvE.

Ok, please. Step back and actually read WHY most players are complaining and leaving the game. It’s not because of just gated content, or how this new system encourages elitism and fragments the LFG-ers.

The primary reason WHY everyone has a problem with ascended gear is (and always will be!!!) because it has BETTER STATS than exotics.

What is wrong with you people for adding this stupid overall stat advantage. There wasn’t any NEED to ‘bridge the gap’ between exotics and legendaries, because legendaries had the same stats as exotics.

Right now, ascended gear typically has 10-40% more stats than its exotic equivalent, this is a HUGE advantage to not just the new dungeon but everything else in the game. Players feel like they absolutely MUST have ascended pieces, which negates all the hard/tedious/unwanted work they put into getting all exotics.

You do realize a lot of players don’t LIKE to grind/progress through gear? That they only did it to avoid ever doing it again? To have the best gear, and to go do whatever they want afterwards, including WvW, and, I don’t know, obtaining more and more sets of gear for differnt builds and alts? It’s called horizontal progression, something a lot less stressful and tedious than vertical progression.

If you just remove the stat advantage of ascended/legendaries over exotics and revert back to exotics having the highest attainable stats (read: ascended = agony stats only), I’m sure you will regain a HUGE chunk of players, including the ones who already got a refund.

marianitten.1247:

Shayde.2564:

marianitten.1247:

Amazing! another “quoting ANET people” post! we need more of this.
/sarcasm

The new dungeon is not out, the new gear is not available. WAIT to see how they managed this, and then take conclussions.

The new gear is out: http://www.gw2db.com/items?filter-item-rarity=8 Look at it and then tell yourself it’s not necessary to remain competitive.

The gear is not out. You can know their stats.. but you can’t know how to get it. What if they are as easy to get as exotic?

They’re easy to get alright. But also extremely tedious/time-consuming/total grind. People are inside the dungeon, 1 ascended gift costs 500 tokens, 1 exo backpeice costs 1350, and go knows what the other 2 ingredients are to craft an ascended version. Thats ~2000 tokens. You get about 5 tokens every 15-30mins (5 tokens a zone completion, 3 zones a run).

Keep telling yourselves that isn’t a grind. The estimates of 70-90hrs per piece sound about right, now that players are actually entering the dungeon.

Malediktus.9250:

I am excited. I love new and more powerful items.

You’re gonna love the 70-90hr grind (in the same 9 areas) for each of the items, too. Oh, and let’s not talk about the blue-quality infusion recipes , that each cost 1 eldritch scroll + several hundred t6/fractal-drop-only mats. So I guess it’s more like 70-90hrs + 50-100hrs for the blue infusion. As anet specifically mentioned, these blue infusions will need to be upgraded (i.e. overwritten with even grindier ifnusion recipes) to masterwork/rare/exotic/ascended with each new treadmill release.

Yes, you better be REAL excited, because that content will get really, really boring/repetitive long before you obtain even 1 ring or backpiece.

Suddenflame.2601:

Slic.2406:

Arius.7031:

Slic.2406:

Arius.7031:

Slic.2406:

Arius.7031:

Shayde.2564:

marianitten.1247:

Amazing! another “quoting ANET people” post! we need more of this.
/sarcasm

The new dungeon is not out, the new gear is not available. WAIT to see how they managed this, and then take conclussions.

The new gear is out: http://www.gw2db.com/items?filter-item-rarity=8 Look at it and then tell yourself it’s not necessary to remain competitive.

Not much different than rare versus exotic. Yes, you’ll have to grind—but not much. It’s still not a lengthy gear treadmill like in other games. It’s a very short gear treadmill, and even then, you can still play in top notch PvP without the ascended gear—just not the Fractals dungeon.

Are you kidding me? Most are estimating about 90hrs of Fractal grind for ONE PIECE. I’m being modest and estimating~70hrs.

What part of this is NOT a grind and NOT a gear treadmill? They are definitely adding more ascended items and more content with higher agony requirements. That is 1 thing they have NOT been vague about.

And just so you know, a full ascended trinket/weapon/armor set wil give you up to 40% more to a stat then the exotic counterpart. This is true eve if you keep your normal exo armor for the rune bonuses…

And this isn’t counting the higher-rarity infusions that are not yet out – the blue quality infusions have +5 to stats, +5 to agony, rare/exo/asc versions of infusions will probably have at least 20 to that same stat. In which case, the modest estimate of up to 40% will grow to up to 75%.

Meant to say PvE, but the point stands. You’ll still be able to do all of the old PvE content with exotics (like we already do). But more than that, how are people making estimates before it’s out? Do they know exactly how much it’ll require, and how you gain the stuff to make it? Can you give me a link to see where you got this information?

This one’s a good read, start from there:
http://www.guildwars2hub.com/guides/basics/complete-guide-fractals-mists

Pay close attention to the screenshots.

Thank you for the link, that’s very interesting. I’m now very, very worried. But, there is one thing that we need to keep in mind. Internal testing is for testing bugs/balance, these things could be dramatically different when they’re launched. Let’s all get angry after it’s launched if it turns out to be insanely hard to get. Let’s not jump the gun.

The link to the item codes is live. Click on each ascended item in gw2db, copy/paste the code, look in-game.

None of this is test-only anymore. I hate to say it, but all the ‘QQ’ and ‘negativity’ is justified in this case.

EDIT: sorry you replied before I edited, so, for sake of redundancy:
http://www.gw2db.com/items?filter-item-rarity=8

This is all live as we speak.

Dude you need to know how code works. I could put code into the game and find an item that was there during testing or was scrapped but the code left behind. For all we know they put the code in but didn’t take it out. I can pull out a thousand games where this happened such as the Up, Down, Left, Right….. you should get the point. As well you have to consider how many items are there in game? And how many items can i make with code? I bet you i could find hundreds of items that never existed in game and were thought to have been deleted.

edit: Also the items in the link are not the same items linked and shown by Anet. Look at the Yak Ring and compare it to the one that Anet showed us. Notice the difference.

http://www.gw2db.com/items/71363-yakkingtons-ring

51/51/10%MF, then 18/18 again (look at white text below, look at in-game link too)

It’s exactly the same as in the last screenshot of this official article by anet.

EDIT: My bad, it’s actually 1 stat point more on gw2db.

dirtyoldgoat.5496:

Shayde.2564:

marianitten.1247:

Amazing! another “quoting ANET people” post! we need more of this.
/sarcasm

The new dungeon is not out, the new gear is not available. WAIT to see how they managed this, and then take conclussions.

The new gear is out: http://www.gw2db.com/items?filter-item-rarity=8 Look at it and then tell yourself it’s not necessary to remain competitive.

Wow the new gear is awesome. I am looking forward to it.

You will need to spend ~70-90hrs getting each piece of gear, probably doing things you don’t really enjoy. The infusion recipes by themselves take 1 eldtritch scroll and hundreds of t6 mats and dungeon-specific random drops. And these are blue-quality, not masterwork, rare, exotic or ascended. Can you imagine how much more sanity you’ll have to lose to get the higher-end infusions? I personally can’t, because I personally won’t.

As awesome as this new gear is, enjoy spending 200hrs+ getting just the 1st 3 pieces (back, rings). And then another 200+ hrs to get the next 2-3 releases, in the next tier. My guess is that you will be long-bored of the ‘new’ content before you ever get the 1st piece.

And those who are borked in the head and like to grind 10+hrs a day? They’ll be more effective/stronger than you in stats, and will beat you in WvW/lfg dungeon with time spent instead of skill/talent and other less shady merits.

axiology.5807:

Arius.7031:

Edit: Wait, didn’t they say the rewarding scaled the further/harder it got? Doesn’t that mean that we’ll get more the further we get in?

I’m not sure how the reward scaling would work, but to get deeper into the Fractals, you would need some Agony resistance from infusions. This recipe may interest you:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/lostshores/Vitality-Infusion-Mystic-Forge-Recipe

And that’s only a blue defensive infusion. What would a masterwork/rare/exotic/ascended infusion would require? What would those fancy omni infusions require?

Obviously, they’d ‘bridge the gap’ to the legendaries, so they’d require as much as a legendary. GG anet, GG. I didn’t see this coming. Shame on me.

Arius.7031:

Slic.2406:

Arius.7031:

Slic.2406:

Arius.7031:

Shayde.2564:

marianitten.1247:

Amazing! another “quoting ANET people” post! we need more of this.
/sarcasm

The new dungeon is not out, the new gear is not available. WAIT to see how they managed this, and then take conclussions.

The new gear is out: http://www.gw2db.com/items?filter-item-rarity=8 Look at it and then tell yourself it’s not necessary to remain competitive.

Not much different than rare versus exotic. Yes, you’ll have to grind—but not much. It’s still not a lengthy gear treadmill like in other games. It’s a very short gear treadmill, and even then, you can still play in top notch PvP without the ascended gear—just not the Fractals dungeon.

Are you kidding me? Most are estimating about 90hrs of Fractal grind for ONE PIECE. I’m being modest and estimating~70hrs.

What part of this is NOT a grind and NOT a gear treadmill? They are definitely adding more ascended items and more content with higher agony requirements. That is 1 thing they have NOT been vague about.

And just so you know, a full ascended trinket/weapon/armor set wil give you up to 40% more to a stat then the exotic counterpart. This is true eve if you keep your normal exo armor for the rune bonuses…

And this isn’t counting the higher-rarity infusions that are not yet out – the blue quality infusions have +5 to stats, +5 to agony, rare/exo/asc versions of infusions will probably have at least 20 to that same stat. In which case, the modest estimate of up to 40% will grow to up to 75%.

Meant to say PvE, but the point stands. You’ll still be able to do all of the old PvE content with exotics (like we already do). But more than that, how are people making estimates before it’s out? Do they know exactly how much it’ll require, and how you gain the stuff to make it? Can you give me a link to see where you got this information?

This one’s a good read, start from there:
http://www.guildwars2hub.com/guides/basics/complete-guide-fractals-mists

Pay close attention to the screenshots.

Thank you for the link, that’s very interesting. I’m now very, very worried. But, there is one thing that we need to keep in mind. Internal testing is for testing bugs/balance, these things could be dramatically different when they’re launched. Let’s all get angry after it’s launched if it turns out to be insanely hard to get. Let’s not jump the gun.

The link to the item codes is live. Click on each ascended item in gw2db, copy/paste the code, look in-game.

None of this is test-only anymore. I hate to say it, but all the ‘QQ’ and ‘negativity’ is justified in this case.

EDIT: sorry you replied before I edited, so, for sake of redundancy:
http://www.gw2db.com/items?filter-item-rarity=8

This is all live as we speak.

Arius.7031:

Slic.2406:

Arius.7031:

Shayde.2564:

marianitten.1247:

Amazing! another “quoting ANET people” post! we need more of this.
/sarcasm

The new dungeon is not out, the new gear is not available. WAIT to see how they managed this, and then take conclussions.

The new gear is out: http://www.gw2db.com/items?filter-item-rarity=8 Look at it and then tell yourself it’s not necessary to remain competitive.

Not much different than rare versus exotic. Yes, you’ll have to grind—but not much. It’s still not a lengthy gear treadmill like in other games. It’s a very short gear treadmill, and even then, you can still play in top notch PvP without the ascended gear—just not the Fractals dungeon.

Are you kidding me? Most are estimating about 90hrs of Fractal grind for ONE PIECE. I’m being modest and estimating~70hrs.

What part of this is NOT a grind and NOT a gear treadmill? They are definitely adding more ascended items and more content with higher agony requirements. That is 1 thing they have NOT been vague about.

And just so you know, a full ascended trinket/weapon/armor set wil give you up to 40% more to a stat then the exotic counterpart. This is true eve if you keep your normal exo armor for the rune bonuses…

And this isn’t counting the higher-rarity infusions that are not yet out – the blue quality infusions have +5 to stats, +5 to agony, rare/exo/asc versions of infusions will probably have at least 20 to that same stat. In which case, the modest estimate of up to 40% will grow to up to 75%.

Meant to say PvE, but the point stands. You’ll still be able to do all of the old PvE content with exotics (like we already do). But more than that, how are people making estimates before it’s out? Do they know exactly how much it’ll require, and how you gain the stuff to make it? Can you give me a link to see where you got this information?

This one’s a good read, start from there:
http://www.guildwars2hub.com/guides/basics/complete-guide-fractals-mists

Pay close attention to the screenshots. Also, for the millionth time, here are the links to all the existing ascended item codes:

http://www.gw2db.com/items?filter-item-rarity=8

nofo.8469:

Arius.7031:

Shayde.2564:

marianitten.1247:

Amazing! another “quoting ANET people” post! we need more of this.
/sarcasm

The new dungeon is not out, the new gear is not available. WAIT to see how they managed this, and then take conclussions.

The new gear is out: http://www.gw2db.com/items?filter-item-rarity=8 Look at it and then tell yourself it’s not necessary to remain competitive.

Not much different than rare versus exotic. Yes, you’ll have to grind—but not much. It’s still not a lengthy gear treadmill like in other games. It’s a very short gear treadmill, and even then, you can still play in top notch PvP without the ascended gear—just not the Fractals dungeon.

From what I understand this gear treadmill is set to be implemented in such a way that would make Blizzard blush.

5 tokens per 15-30 min run.

~500 tokens per item?

From what I read somewhere, going ahead with this would be absurdly stupid however and even though I’m not a fan of ANet atm, I have a little more faith in them than that.

It’s actually closer to 2000 tokens. The exo backpiece costs 1350, then the gift costs 500. And then there are probably other ingredients, and I fear that 1 of them is the obsidian shard (15 a piece).

Arius.7031:

Shayde.2564:

marianitten.1247:

Amazing! another “quoting ANET people” post! we need more of this.
/sarcasm

The new dungeon is not out, the new gear is not available. WAIT to see how they managed this, and then take conclussions.

The new gear is out: http://www.gw2db.com/items?filter-item-rarity=8 Look at it and then tell yourself it’s not necessary to remain competitive.

Not much different than rare versus exotic. Yes, you’ll have to grind—but not much. It’s still not a lengthy gear treadmill like in other games. It’s a very short gear treadmill, and even then, you can still play in top notch PvP without the ascended gear—just not the Fractals dungeon.

Are you kidding me? Most are estimating about 90hrs of Fractal grind for ONE PIECE. I’m being modest and estimating~70hrs.

What part of this is NOT a grind and NOT a gear treadmill? They are definitely adding more ascended items and more content with higher agony requirements. That is 1 thing they have NOT been vague about.

And just so you know, a full ascended trinket/weapon/armor set wil give you up to 40% more to a stat then the exotic counterpart. This is true eve if you keep your normal exo armor for the rune bonuses…

And this isn’t counting the higher-rarity infusions that are not yet out – the blue quality infusions have +5 to stats, +5 to agony, rare/exo/asc versions of infusions will probably have at least 20 to that same stat. In which case, the modest estimate of up to 40% will grow to up to 75%.

ColinJohanson.2394:

Legendary weapons won’t be updated to ascended stats until ascended weapons are added to the game in the far future.

(Edit follow up: Looks like they got updated early by accident, we’re going to fix this now they should be the same as exotic)

How about you scrap the stat advantage of ascended/legendary altogether? How about you stick to horizontal progression only, and not destroy WvW and everything PvE-related outside the new content? How about the ONLY thing they offer is extra agony defense, so that those dungeon locusts can have their progress and optimal farming spot? How about not adding a gear treadmill? I know you guys refuse to acknowledge it, but it IS a gear treadmill, and 50hrs+ for 1 piece is NOT OK.

Or do you want this to be a repeat of other memorable history lessons, such as SWG NGE, and, oh.. I don’t know.. The Titanic??

ASB.4295:

FaultWeeyam.4302:

Link or it didn’t happen, I’ve only seen the one PR announcement bs pretty much saying they’re going to ignore the negative comments and go through with it anyways. It would have been better if they’d said nothing at all instead of trying to forcefeed us their lies.

One of the FoV threads got merged into the patch feedback thread, but Colin J’s post is still there:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Patch-Feedback-merged-1/page/6

And Martin K’s reply on another thread with the same subject:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Oh-no-zooming-they-made-it-worse-for-me/first#post755059

They have time/money/resource to spend on such a detailed research about FOV, and cannot even once make a non-vague reply to the countless posts on gear treadmill?

Yeah, they’re avoiding the issue, they want to toss us out and hope that players who enjoy the grind will sustain their finances.

I hate to break it to them, but if they read this. The content locusts only really pay when you FORCE them to pay with something like a monthly sub. They would rather spend 100+hrs getting something than spend a dollar to get it in 10 seconds. That is what the content locusts are, and anet is making a huge mistake thinking they will provide more finance than those of us turned away.

biggs.4702:

To those of you saying “I thought this game was about skill not gear,” why don’t you try sucking in your new Ascended gear and see how well that works? For a game to be about gear, not skill, would mean bad players (no skill) could still do well because gear makes up for their lack of skill.

Do you really think this is the case with Ascended gear? And due to down-leveling, would it ever be the case?

So for the sake of the community please spare us the overblown soundbites. They do not help this conversation at all.

I’m going to once again use the berserker exo vs berserker ascended spiel. exo zerker is 50% crit 104% crit dmg, you can 2-3 hit (with autoattacks) anyone whos geared in less than rares. Now, ascended will have around 150% crit damage and 5-10% more crit, if we extrapolate the stat increases in rings/back to all other trinkets/weapons/etc. And they ARE adding more ascended gear.

So what do you have now? Anyone in less than exotics in WvW will get 2hit. Anyone with exotics only will get 3-4 hit with autos if enough of them crit.

Does this sound like an even playing field at all? Does this sound like those stat differences do not matter? 50% more crit damage from zerker, and god knows what else for other stat combos. I’d say it’s even worse with condition builds and tanky builds (unkillable by anything below exo, insanely hard to kill by exo only).

All of a sudden it’s not so trivial anymore, right? Can you imagine the exponential increase in effectiveness, when talking about hitting dumb AI instead of living, thinking players? PvE is even more toast than WvW.

Mike.9185:

if they didnt add gear than we would have had a thousand posts saying “whats the point of new content if the stats are the same QQ” theres new stuff to do that is more challenging thus requires better rewards.

why would you do an insanely hard dungeon (fractals of the mists) if you get the same awards grinding an easy 1

Oh, I don’t know. They could reward you with TON of t6 mats each time you complete the more difficult fractals? They also could reward you with guaranteed precursor drops if you finish them under some time limit. There’s so many ways they could’ve added more options for horizontal progression, but they chose this instead.

They’re not going to survive this, not if they go through with it. And it looks like they ARE going through with it. I hope to have enough players to kill in pvp 1 last time, before I quit.

It’s set in stone that I cannot stay for long – I’m the last of my 30+ friends who played since beta, the remainder of which all promptly quit when they heard of the gear treadmill.

Alberel Leonhart.9640:

Clever.7918:

http://i.imgur.com/BeyFB.png

I dont know why people are getting bent out of shape over this ring, it’s not even that good…unless you want all stats?! Berserker is higher dps stats.

This.

People are calculating allocated stat totals without taking into consideration if those stats are actually relevant simultaneously.

A couple of points:

A) Most players use specialised builds that favour a small number of stats. This means that the current ascended gear we’ve seen is NOT ideal for their builds.

B) Runes/sigils are baked into the equipment which means we have NO way to customise those stats. Again this makes the old exotics potentially better.

C) Ascended gear means we lose rune set bonuses. There are a number of builds that are entirely built around these set bonuses which will not work with ascended gear.

The ascended items seem to have a higher allocation of stat points at a rather hefty cost of customisation and specialisation. I still think people should wait and see.

A) There is a list of ascended gear out already that covers a wide variety of stat combos: http://www.gw2db.com/items?filter-item-rarity=8. I’d imagine they’re going to add even more to that.

B) Since when have you ever overwritten something like a divinity rune in your exo armor? I’ve yet to hear of a person doing that, just to ‘swap builds’. Most players have several exotic sets, all of which will now be nulled, obsolete, a wasted effort. Most of us do not want to worry about getting the next best set of gear, we just want to enjoy content and PvP. We don’t want to come back 3 months later and be forced to tediously grind more gear just to be able to be viable again.

C) AScended trinkets/weapons have no rune/set bonus. Even if your point stays valid, we are still looking at up to 40%+ stat increase just from trinkets/weapons. And guess what is getting released 1st? Trinkets and weapons…..

drifter.8453:

Slic.2406:

Yep. Well, sorry, no, that’s not true.

It’s actually closer to 2000.

But you can guarntee if it is 2.000, aNet will change it later to like 15,000. Just for shiats and giggles. I dunno their track record on each patch seemed to go in the. “How can we make this more annoying to the players.” direction.

Yeah, whenever a player gets their max gear squared away too quickly and can then enjoy the game at their own pace, that’s a BIIIIG no-no. Can’t have players choosing how they want to play!

TimeBomb.3427:

Here are all the infusion gem item codes I could find:
[&AgAAkQAwAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA] [&AgABkQAwAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
[&AgACkQAwAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA] [&AgADkQAwAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
[&AgAEkQAwAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA] [&AgAFkQAwAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
[&AgAGkQAwAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA] [&AgAHkQAwAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
[&AgAIkQAwAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA] [&AgAJkQAwAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
[&AgAQkQAwAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA] [&AgARkQAwAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
[&AgASkQAwAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA] [&AgATkQAwAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
[&AgAUkQAwAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA==]

Edit: The codes appeared to be a little bugged and aren’t showing the entirety of the text for some reason. Go to http://pastebin.mozilla.org/1944010 to see a list of all the item codes. All of them end in “==]”.

There were no other items with a similar ID except for a couple completely unrelated council commendation items that appears to be storyline related.

For those too lazy to see what stats they are (I know I’m too lazy to record it), they are, for the most part, very basic +5 X stat items. There are a couple that are slightly different, i.e. +1% boon duration, +2% agony duration reduction. The gems are all 2 stat only, with the second stat always being +5 agony resistance. There are also a couple items in perfect English that are only +5 agony resistance – no secondary stats.

They’re also blue-quality, and several anet staff have confirmed that there will be rare/exotic and maybe even ascended quality infusions in the future.

Welcome To Grind Wars 2—-

Derk.3189:

moiraine.2753:

I’m excited too.I can’t wait for the new items.

Well, you literally can’t wait around to get them no. In fact, go run that new dungeon, about 2000 times.

Now now. 5 tokens every 15-30mins or so, thats 15 tokens a ‘run’, which is a chain of 3 randomly picked areas. So 3 new pieces total, that’s going to be about 400 ‘runs’. But yeah, times that by 15mins optimistically, or 30mins realistically, since you’ll be spending time looking for lower level fractal-goers to reset that agony gear-barrier.

What you should’ve said is not ‘2000 runs’ or ‘400 runs’, but ‘200 hours minimum’. In fact, there’s other steps to all this to crafting the pieces and getting other components, so most ppl agree that every piece is more like 90hrs. But I’m going to say ~70hrs per piece is probably closer to what it will be.

So, not 2000 runs, but 200-300hrs of the same handful of (rather-small) areas, over and over and over and over.

Have fun with that.

XTreme Risk.5973:

I wouldn’t be surprised, if you look at the amount of sites that say they were giving away 1,000s of keys for this event. I doesn’t matter how many went out by players, every mmo site out there was giving them away too.

Yeah, it’s because these keys are now kinda worthless. Just like anet’s lie and broken promise about ‘no vertical progression, ever, your tediously-earned max stat gear is forever max! you’re safe!’

Um. Considering the direction this patch is heading. I’d say the only accounts that will not lose their sanity playing this game’s non-sPvP content will be bots.

I wish I was exaggerating, but it’s no longer a jest.

What makes you think they’ll add ascended gear to WvW badge npcs, when they haven’t even added more exo stat prefix choices for those? All there is is soldier’s, no zerker, no carrion, no rabid, no shaman, nothing of use.

They probably don’t even have 1 dev on WvW at this point.

Crater.1625:

Fiontar.4695:

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 believe the most agreed upon calculation is something like ~90hrs per ascended backpiece/ring with (over-geared, over-inflated) stats of your choosing. I personally think (well, more like HOPE) that this number is closer to ~70hrs per piece, but yeah. I’m just nitpicking at this point.

In comparison, in GW1, you could get a full set of max armor and weapons (with the corresponding high-end runes of your choice) in about 1-5hrs after you dinged 20. And, when I logged in to GW1 to make sure my account was linked to GW2 right before launch, I saw that I still had max-statted gear on all 4 of my PvE toons, and was able to do any end-game content I desired, including solo farming really hard areas of the game, with high-risk, high-reward, quick-timing scenarios.

Sirge.8934:

Gilandred.9870:

I think most people are excited by this. And by excited, I mean the feeling you get when you step on a hornets nest.

This. I don’t think the Guild Wars community has ever been this excited. Even launch day wasn’t nearly as rousing as this has been.

I know this is just me being redundant now, but. That is such a perfect wording. Erry-1 so excited…

Sir Morgan Malory.2069:

None. Legendary weapons should impress people because the skill it takes to acquire them. Not the amount of life wasted grinding them.

Ah, but we can dream. Maybe 1 distant day, at The Plaza At The End Of The World. That’s the only other candidate now that anet has resigned.

Northern Wolf.1297:

The best part is that infusions add regular stats also! Exotics are totally obsolete. Yay!

Man, I was thinking it was going to be like a 40-50% primary stat increase. I was so wrong dude. Like, shame on me, I’m such a fool.

It’s actually closer to 75% with the higher-end infusions….

Columba.9730:

i cannot get excited to grind 90hrs in a dungeon per piece.

But it’s such a novel, stress-free, grind-free, tedium-free and fun-filled idea, rite??? It’s not The Skinner Box all over again, NO SIR!!

Erry-1 so excited…

So excited brah. So excited…

Derk.3189:

its +5 condition damage, on top of the already higher base stats. and thats with a FINE infusion. Imagine what an ascended infusion would do?

That’s only a blue-level infusion? Umm…

…

Ok, well. That means an orange-level infusion would be ~4x that, so.. ~20 cond damage. No concrete evidence in this case, but if you compare blue to orange on existing pieces of gear, that’s about right.

So actually. It’s not just a 40-50% increase to primary stats. With the high-end, grind-your-face-off infusions (that they are saving ’till we grind-our-face-off getting these crappier ones), the overall primary stat increase of ascended over exotic would be closer to 75%. GG? Ah, if I could spend the 60 bucks I spent on GW2 on a time trip back to GW1 instead…

Irnhide.3428:

Makes me glad I am still sub’d too World of Warcraft.

At least the rewards for grinding come faster.

LOL, I’m trying to come up with some kind of clever excuse to flame you for complimenting WoW, but I can’t.

I don’t even know what to think about that.

Crater.1625:

Fact is, if you’ve been watching feedback here and on other gaming sites, the negative backlash against adding a ridiculous grind and gear treadmill has been way, way, way more prolific, heartfelt, and well-argued than any of the “If I can’t have bigger numbers, I don’t know what to do” moaning was.

If this is a response to player feedback, then Ascended gear should be removed based on much stronger player feedback.
If this is a top-level decision being implemented by ArenaNet just because they want to, then I think they need to offer some more robust reasoning that actually holds up to five seconds of scrutiny.

Anet is too busy gambling away our interest/spending potential to the content locusts and grinders that want to be special/stronger than others just because of time spent doing repetitive/unimpressive things.

Apparently, anet thinks those kinds of players will spend MORE money than someone like me or you. When, in fact, those kinds of players are usually more broke and less willing to pay anything but a cheap monthly sub…

They’re making a huge mistake, but at this rate, once I film & release my last set of pvp vids, I won’t care, because my mark has been left, and my time up ’till now has been fun.

NeedsFoodBadly.2671:

LoneWolfie.1852:

I heard some rumors about 1000+ fractals to make an item, and the fractal drop is 5 per run?

Guild Wars 2 isn’t a game…it’s a 9-to-5 job. O_O

Obviously. How else will those CEOs at NCSoft, Anet and Nexon (yes, Nexon – 15%+ shares in NCSoft since June!) retain their 7-figure incomes?