Guild Wars 2

Rising Dusk.2408:

I don’t get the point you’re trying to make. Obviously ascended gear is better than exotic gear, so it makes absolute sense to use ascended gear if you can. Obviously times will be faster with ascended gear. Obviously the recommended quality for your gear is the highest for the hardest content in the game. Obviously many pubs will require ascended gear because it gives a statistical numerical advantage over exotic before you even have to account for player skill. Even if the enrage timer were 50% longer, people will still require ascended gear because obviously you want the strongest.

In spite of all that, I still think exotics or more likely an exotic/ascended mix will be totally playable for groups who have figured out better what to do and how to maintain high DPS throughout all phases of the fight. If you’re adamant about never wearing ascended gear, and you are in one of these groups, you’re probably fine. Lastly, it’s a far different ordeal to have only one or two people in some ascended as opposed to having no ascended in the entire raid group.

Let’s also not forget that it’s also absurdly easy to get ascended trinkets, even if you can’t/won’t grind for ascended armor, and ascended weapons are a mere 50g each that can be acquired in less than 10 hours of very average playing… and if you need to you could totally get away with just 1.

Suffice it to say I really don’t think it’s that bad, and… raiding is not nor should it be for everyone. If you’re seriously not willing to put any effort into your gear whatsoever, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect that you probably won’t be accepted for pub runs of raids, let alone organized group raid takedowns. Raids are designed to be something that not everyone can do.

Point is first lets agree that ascended will be as you said heavily expected for most groups. The person and some others claim they will not be.
Accepting that is the case, the problem i see with ascended is:
1) time gated ramp up time of a month IF you have a guild that does missions.
2) experimentation and player ability hampered with multi sets. (inventory and grind/time investment)
This would be more feasible if you had ffxiv like armory system. (seperate armor inventory and build macros that can swap gear/skills)
And lower repetition farm based grinds or time gated for many ascendeds (most try to make you take at least a month for hardcore, more for casual)

Ayrilana.1396:

phys.7689:

Ayrilana.1396:

phys.7689:

actually what the dev tweeted is exactly in line with what the results showed.
for the first raid you should have a mix of ascended and exotic(they had full ascended) in order to beat the first wing.

It’s only in line with the results shown because you’re downplaying all other factors that contributed to the successes and which could be improved upon.

once again reccomended is not based on perfect run.
The gear required for a perfect run is called a hard requirement. Reccomended means hey you can try this without X but its not what we had in mind.

most teams did not succeed, including some dungeoneers. Keep in mind the first mini boss of the first raid in a game is the minimum requirement in difficulty.

People are not going to willingly make content 10% harder for themselves for no benefit (most of the time) especially when the content is difficult/time consuming.

The reality is most groups aiming for a win are going to require ascended. I dont know why people are acting like im talking crazy.

Im not saying it should be balanced around exotic, but be honest, this content is meant to be done in ascended, and most of the time people going for a win, will expect all members to have a decent amount of ascended gear, if not all.

on to the next factor, one month+ ramp up time is too high imo to start raids. In all the raid games i played, i could be raiding/difficult content within 1-2 weeks of hitting max level.
In one month, i was like 1/3rd through the raid/endgame teirs in FFXIV. I think i tried firsr bahamut coil, like 5 days after i hit max level tops. My friends in WoW who tried to get me to play suggested i could be fairly far in the raid progression within one month. In wildstar, a few days after i hit max, i had the gear reqs for the first raids. SWTOR, basically by the time you are max level, you can buy gear from tokens or craft/buy crafted that puts you at beginning of raid reccomended item level.

short version
1 month of grinding the equivalent of dailies is a very long time in an MMO before you can get to endgame activities.

Once again, I refer to my post:

you’re downplaying all other factors that contributed to the successes and which could be improved upon.

Once again you miss the point.
Recommended gear is above what is required for a perfect run.
Yes some people will be able to beat the raid in exotics eventually
no, most of the people who beat the raid will not be able to, or desire to.
and they werent designed to.

Regardless, almost all serious attempts at success in raids will expect players to have ascended.

Stop decieving players by leading them to believe wearing exotics will be viewed as viable for the vast majority of raiders. It will not be. I know you like trying to win an argument, but be realistic here. This is not about what is possible, this is about what will be expected from players.

Ayrilana.1396:

phys.7689:

actually what the dev tweeted is exactly in line with what the results showed.
for the first raid you should have a mix of ascended and exotic(they had full ascended) in order to beat the first wing.

It’s only in line with the results shown because you’re downplaying all other factors that contributed to the successes and which could be improved upon.

once again reccomended is not based on perfect run.
The gear required for a perfect run is called a hard requirement. Reccomended means hey you can try this without X but its not what we had in mind.

most teams did not succeed, including some dungeoneers. Keep in mind the first mini boss of the first raid in a game is the minimum requirement in difficulty.

People are not going to willingly make content 10% harder for themselves for no benefit (most of the time) especially when the content is difficult/time consuming.

The reality is most groups aiming for a win are going to require ascended. I dont know why people are acting like im talking crazy.

Im not saying it should be balanced around exotic, but be honest, this content is meant to be done in ascended, and most of the time people going for a win, will expect all members to have a decent amount of ascended gear, if not all.

on to the next factor, one month+ ramp up time is too high imo to start raids. In all the raid games i played, i could be raiding/difficult content within 1-2 weeks of hitting max level.
In one month, i was like 1/3rd through the raid/endgame teirs in FFXIV. I think i tried firsr bahamut coil, like 5 days after i hit max level tops. My friends in WoW who tried to get me to play suggested i could be fairly far in the raid progression within one month. In wildstar, a few days after i hit max, i had the gear reqs for the first raids. SWTOR, basically by the time you are max level, you can buy gear from tokens or craft/buy crafted that puts you at beginning of raid reccomended item level.

short version
1 month of grinding the equivalent of dailies is a very long time in an MMO before you can get to endgame activities.

Ayrilana.1396:

phys.7689:

Windsagio.1340:

fun dev note from the dev that started this whole brouhaha;

It’s recommended, not required. The first Vale Guardian kill over the weekend had over 1:00 left to the enrage. Skill and builds are going to be the bigger factor in the success of your raid.

So yeah, what we’re saying. Skills and build are more important than arbitrary gear.

Obviously skills and builds is the most important factor.

That doesnt change that what happened completely supports her statement that a mix of ascended and exotic is reccomended for the first raid.

Best of the best teams, in full ascended after trying for 2-3 hours were able to beat the easiest(1st you fight ever) boss with 9/10 berserker with only a minute left (roughly 15% time)
You really think regular players will be able to beat the whole raid in gear that provides substantially less dps and survivability? Needing maybe 2 non zerk to survive?

Sounds like not going in with the right ascended will be highly ill advised for the first raid, which is exactly what the dev suggested in her tweet.

As is expected with very challenging content as has happened before.

Not enough time was available for a lot of people to properly test the raid.

Once the strategy is provided, and fine-tuned, to what the precise mechanics are, including which roles are necessary (not the same as classes), then others will likely start completing it as well.

Ascended gear does not provide nearly as much of a DPS increase as a highly skilled group coordinating their rotations with each other would.

no one said it does, but the most effecient player is never the benchmark for a reccomendation.
basically a reccomendation is based on the lower teir of the expected range.

If you expect a range of 7star to 10 star players to be able to succeed, the reccomendations are based on what the 7star team needs, not the 10star team.

IE the reccomended requirements are not based on the most exceptional players/teams.

They could say they reccomend exotics, but that would be a lie, not many players will be able to beat this content in exotics

Keegers.2573:

I understand the need for having timers, as to prevent raid fights from becoming too long due to lack of dps. However I’ve noticed that groups that tried to sway away from the “zerk” meta(say 6 zerk, 2 tanky supports, and 2 healing focus supports) did not beat the raid due to lack of dps. If anet is indeed serious about getting away from zerker only, than maybe they should consider another rage mechanic instead of a timer. Or have two separate raid types, normal mode which would be untimed and Challenge mode, which would be timed.

Thoughts?

those teams can probably win, they just need to be hyper effecient. Less dodging/moving and more soaking dmg in order to do dmg. Its not a playstyle most people who play this game have mastered.

on the otherhand, the best players have been practicing glass style play for 3 years.

If you go glassy, the challenge is not to die
If you go defensive the challenge is to push dps

the former has a lot more practice.

Windsagio.1340:

Yes, because ‘recommended’ is so wishy-washy.

I recommend that you give me $3.75 to take the BART home.

~~~

They had one day to get the encounter down. Do you really think they were even close to max play efficiency?

It’s a question of tuning. If they tune to the degree needed for ascended to actually matter, they’re excluding far too much of their customer base.

reccomended is never balanced around max player effeciency.

its the reccomended requirements for most players not to have a problem.

like reccomended pc requirements to play this game are not based on the best PC possible.

best people who tried needing 8-9 zerkers to beat the FIRST MINIBOSS and 2.5-3 hours with full ascended means ascended is reccomended, and most people will have disproportionate difficulty trying to do it without it.
keep in mind the vast majority of players in full ascended failed. In fact i would say players were below her expectations in terms of expected dps. Looks like anyone with less zerkers is almost guaranteed to fail if not in ascended. 8/10 to 9/10 zerker is on the higher teir of difficulty to complete. That type of team should have obliterated the time requirement if ascended wasnt reccomended

imagine in a dif game they swapped a healer for a dps, those guys should be 10% faster just by having the extra dps alone. (even though the fight has less room for error defensively)

so far she is completely on point with her statement.

spoj.9672:

Astralporing.1957:

spoj.9672:

You would have a point if gw2 was only about stats. But its not. So you dont.

No, it is not only about stats, but their importance seems to be getting stronger and stronger lately.

No its not. Thats just paranoid delusions. Caused by one poorly thought out dev comment that people just blew out of proportions.

actually what the dev tweeted is exactly in line with what the results showed.
for the first raid you should have a mix of ascended and exotic(they had full ascended) in order to beat the first wing.

Should does not mean you must have, it means that reccomended for most people.
and lo and behold, only the best teams, after 2-3 hours, were able to beat the first raids mini boss before enraging, in full ascended.
Many teams failed even with full ascended, even teams who knew the mechanics failed with only 4-5 dps.

first miniboss. that you ll ever fight in a raid, the best people who tried, with 8-9 zerkers(basically highest dps/lowest defense/recovery stat compisition possible) only had a minute left.

Sounds like the players are falling exactly within her predictions, if not under performing.

in the hardcore players defense, many didnt get to play due to the timing, but seems like yall need to get your skills up if you want to call her statement inaccurate.

Windsagio.1340:

fun dev note from the dev that started this whole brouhaha;

It’s recommended, not required. The first Vale Guardian kill over the weekend had over 1:00 left to the enrage. Skill and builds are going to be the bigger factor in the success of your raid.

So yeah, what we’re saying. Skills and build are more important than arbitrary gear.

Obviously skills and builds is the most important factor.

That doesnt change that what happened completely supports her statement that a mix of ascended and exotic is reccomended for the first raid.

Best of the best teams, in full ascended after trying for 2-3 hours were able to beat the easiest(1st you fight ever) boss with 9/10 berserker with only a minute left (roughly 15% time)
You really think regular players will be able to beat the whole raid in gear that provides substantially less dps and survivability? Needing maybe 2 non zerk to survive?

Sounds like not going in with the right ascended will be highly ill advised for the first raid, which is exactly what the dev suggested in her tweet.

PopeUrban.2578:

Astralporing.1957:

MissKitty.9054:

I think people are missing the point of what the raid is about. people in dungeons have been isolating people who want to be tank/support/healer in the group by kicking them then whispering them “go get your zerker armor scrub” or something demening like that. personally when I watch the LFG I see more post about Zerker lvl 80s only then Lvl 80s only groups. the raid i see it will bring more ppl out of the dark(tank/support/healers) an in to the light, so everyone can be appart of something. ofc the change is hard for ppl an most ppl dont like change at all.

Have you actually seen that last encounter? DPS is the key, you are not going to kill that boss if you exchange your precious zerkers for some healers or tanks that not only aren’t needed, but also increase your chance of failing the enrage timer check.

It’s still “go get your zerker/sinister gear scrub” but this time it is improved to “get your ascended zerker gear”.

To kill a trash miniboss.

In an untested raid.

That may be significantly overhauled due to the fact people actually zerked it in BWE-supplied exotics

bwe supplied ascended. everyone in the group had full access to full ascended in the stat of their choices via an npc in the dungeon.

Erukk.1408:

phys.7689:

actually what i saw was, we are here to cover the gap in your base healing and damage you are unlikely to avoid.
so basically the opposite of what you saw.

I’m not sure how that’s the opposite really. If people’s base healing is so low that they are forced to rely on the heavy healing of the druid to survive an encounter, I would still label that under “wipe due to stupid and/or missteps” and not “absolutely needed”.

We know the devs didn’t make or design the druid to be the sole healer of the game that’s absolutely needed to finish all raid encounters. We also know that the devs are going to try and dethrone the zerker meta in this expansion. So any super heavy reliance on druids to keep the raids alive is probably going to be not out of necessity but out of laziness.

As I said before, it’s going to be up to the players on whether or not they decide they “need” druids because they can’t survive through all the sustained damage with their zerker gear and dodges alone, because the designers have already said their piece on that type of party setup.

its absolutely needed, because if they had more healing power, they wouldnt beat the enrage timer.
They had parties with only like 4 dps who never died and got the mechanics, but were unable to get the enemy down bast 30%

so basically you need dps for timers
and you need healers to keep the dps and tanks alive, or they slowly die from unavoidables.

dlonie.6547:

It’s also worth pointing out trinkets. The bulk of the stat increases come from ascended trinkets and they’re thrown at you from pretty much every game mode. You even get some just by logging in daily and saving up laurels.

Getting a decent amount of ascended gear isn’t really a grind at all. Armor can be if you want to craft it, but you can get “enough” ascended gear to be useful without much trouble, and collect the other pieces as they come.

its grind or time gate, rings i will say have the best aquisition method, accessories, and amulet require a signifigant time gate. backpiece is a signifigant grind gate

Its not really better to tell people who want challenge to do boring stuff for a month or log in and log off before they are ready.

The methods of aquisition for ascended overall, are not engaging, and far too time gated. I feel like you will lose a lot of players before they can even attempt a raid with those type of hurdles before playing.

Dante.1523:

phys.7689:

Dante.1523:

Of course it won’t do that. This is not supposed to be content that you can do casually like the dungeons we have right now. This is supposed to be content that you have to work for, not only concerning skill, but also preparation.
If you don’t even want to put in the time to get ascended gear or just play the content that rewards you with ascended gear anyway I highly doubt that you are the person that this content is aimed at.

what does grinding silk, or silverwastes have to do with a relatively short skill gated content?

I have ascended and a few legendaries, ill tell you that is in no way indictive of my readyness/ability/personality type to do raids.
Those things are all about repetitive grinds and logging in consistently. In other games, where gearing up requires you to go through progressively harder content at whatever pace is natural for you, i would say sure, the gates make sense. This is not the case in gw2.

getting full ascended means little in terms of skill/or playtype

I’ll just quote an earlier response:

Rising Dusk.2408:

Ascended gear is really easy to get for free from just playing the content that rewards it. The trick is to not grind for it, but to always do content that has a chance to reward it. Do fractals L50 a bit, or L40 if you think L50 is too hard. Go organize Triple Trouble wurm with TTS. Seriously, the amount of totally free ascended items I’ve gotten from doing these things over the years is enough to get at least one character a full ascended meta build after they added the ability to change stats. And before anyone cries RNG, it’s statistical inevitability when you do the content that rewards it enough.

which i responded to already.
he is thinking of this like person who has been playing for years.
fractals is nothing new, by the time you hit 35, While i do enjoy it, Having to repeat something 40-50 times for a 8% chance per day, per peice.
that means on average, it would take someone with average luck 12 runs X 6 pieces or 72 runs after they hit 50, with a daily timer.
thats average luck btw, for someone who is slightly below average luck that could easily be 2-3 times as long (note the people who couldnt get ascended rings even though they were level 25 when fractals came out, before they added pristine relics, and that was like a 30% chance)

That is not including all the other crap, and you are still talking about a time lag of 1-2 months before you can seriously be considered for raids.

1-2 months is not required to reach the skill level of raids.

Nike.2631:

phys.7689:

Nike.2631:

I think the thing I love best about this thread is that in the time it’s been running you could have MADE a piece of exotic armor and be well on your way to having a weapon done too if it uses wood. I haven’t bothered with final assembly, but I’ve made all the time gated mats for my gloves while following the drama. Just need helm and shoulders and one more weapon.

6 armor slots and 2-4 weapons. It just NOT that high a level of expectation from most people planning to be playing for a year or more.

better get going! we both no serious group is gonna take you on raids with full exotics, amirite?

Like I said, I’m 2 pieces away and need one more weapon for a full set. I’ll be done by the 23rd no problem. And since I’m one of those freakish personality types that likes healing, I doubt I’ll have too much trouble getting into my guild’s core group if I exert myself just a little bit. And I’ve waited a long time for this game to have content where a off-healer would be welcome, so I probably will exert myself .

No serious group is not going to ask “how far along is your gear?” Skill will always be the larger consideration, but no one impresses the coach by showing up for practice with their shoelaces untied…

the coach doesnt ask if you are wearing your uniform, he expects it. Skill is the most important, but you still need to be this tall before they let you on the ride.

By making it entertaining/non grindy to actually obtain ascended they ensure a better game experience for people looking to do high level challenging content

Dante.1523:

Of course it won’t do that. This is not supposed to be content that you can do casually like the dungeons we have right now. This is supposed to be content that you have to work for, not only concerning skill, but also preparation.
If you don’t even want to put in the time to get ascended gear or just play the content that rewards you with ascended gear anyway I highly doubt that you are the person that this content is aimed at.

what does grinding silk, or silverwastes have to do with a relatively short skill gated content?

I have ascended and a few legendaries, ill tell you that is in no way indictive of my readyness/ability/personality type to do raids.
Those things are all about repetitive grinds and logging in consistently. In other games, where gearing up requires you to go through progressively harder content at whatever pace is natural for you, i would say sure, the gates make sense. This is not the case in gw2.

getting full ascended means little in terms of skill/or playtype

Nike.2631:

phys.7689:

Nike.2631:

We’ve been threatened with “Challenging group content” for 9 months now.

Sure, you may not have armor done for every weight class (since they’re all account bound and freely transferable between classes sharing an armor type) but one set for the class you most wanted to raid on over the course of 9 months is a pretty casual endeavor for a part of the game that’s trying to be not casual at all.

except not everyone has been playing the game for the last 9 months? do you really think thats a reasonable expectation of grind/boredom for new/returning players looking for challenge?

If they’re looking “for a challenge” they can find somebody to carry them. If they’re wanting to be fully prepped the path is pretty plainly laid out. If I’m building a raid group naturally I’ll make allowances for skilled players who are making an effort to get caught up. But if actual experience shows they’re dragging us down they get benched for a while until they are caught up because its unfair to the other nine people. That’s how team activities work – the team is more important than your inability to perform for whatever reason.

This is like arguing “I don’t wanna use food.” Fine. Don’t. But do it somewhere else because frankly I don’t have this on farm mode yet and I expect the people on my teams to at least be trying to do their homework. Preparation is as much a part of raiding as scheduling.

Im not saying that you should take them, in fact im saying it would be everyone else carrying an undergeared persons weight.

Point is, yes, ascended is expected, and yes you will probably have to get it, or be seen as a negative.

So how fullfilling is it getting ascended in this game, especially if you like challenging content?
thats the problem they need to solve.
Ascended is boring and time gated to aquire. I got one set complete, and i never want to do it again. I dont think its reasonable that my friends suffer the same grinds to achieve it.

The solution?
Improve ascended aquisition through interesting gameplay and lower grind/hard time gates.

dlonie.6547:

Some people will certainly enforce ascended gear. Min-maxers aren’t going anywhere.

Some people won’t enforce ascended gear. Casual players and guilds aren’t going anywhere.

My guild won’t be enforcing it. We’ll recommend it and help people who want it get it, but there won’t be hard exclusions for just having exotics.

I can’t even count how many posts I see from casual players complaining that min-max groups are excluding them. At the same time, I very rarely see posts from casual players actively looking for a casual group to play with. Why do they jump to “This is wrong, these people need to be forced into my playstyle”, rather than simply saying “I don’t enjoy playing that way. Anyone else want to join up with me and play this other way?”

If people don’t want to play with groups that enforce BiS gear, they need to find new people to play with. There are less hardcore sections of the playerbase. We’re out there, they just need to look/ask.

BTW, shameless plug time :-P If this post caught anyone’s attention, [ARES] is recruiting. You can find more about us here and here.

kudos to you and your guild, though i dont think game will encourage much success with undergeared teams. We ll see.

Erukk.1408:

So far, GW2’s heavy support healers like Druid (and possibly others down the line) seem to be going the route of, “We’re here to make sure the raid doesn’t totally wipe due to stupid and/or missteps.” and not “We’re here because we’re absolutely needed.” And I’m fine with it staying in that position.

Whether or not that might change in later raid wings is up to debate though, since I can see certain groups (especially those that might cling to the zerker meta) pushing for more healers against bosses with more sustained damage. It will be a balancing act on what’s more important to those people. Do they want more healers to counter the sustained damage so they can keep their max dps, or do they have to tweak their builds and gear for more survivability for the fight?

actually what i saw was, we are here to cover the gap in your base healing and damage you are unlikely to avoid.
so basically the opposite of what you saw.

Nike.2631:

I think the thing I love best about this thread is that in the time it’s been running you could have MADE a piece of exotic armor and be well on your way to having a weapon done too if it uses wood. I haven’t bothered with final assembly, but I’ve made all the time gated mats for my gloves while following the drama. Just need helm and shoulders and one more weapon.

6 armor slots and 2-4 weapons. It just NOT that high a level of expectation from most people planning to be playing for a year or more.

better get going! we both no serious group is gonna take you on raids with full exotics, amirite?

Nike.2631:

We’ve been threatened with “Challenging group content” for 9 months now.

Sure, you may not have armor done for every weight class (since they’re all account bound and freely transferable between classes sharing an armor type) but one set for the class you most wanted to raid on over the course of 9 months is a pretty casual endeavor for a part of the game that’s trying to be not casual at all.

except not everyone has been playing the game for the last 9 months? do you really think thats a reasonable expectation of grind/boredom for new/returning players looking for challenge?

Rising Dusk.2408:

Ascended gear is really easy to get for free from just playing the content that rewards it. The trick is to not grind for it, but to always do content that has a chance to reward it. Do fractals L50 a bit, or L40 if you think L50 is too hard. Go organize Triple Trouble wurm with TTS. Seriously, the amount of totally free ascended items I’ve gotten from doing these things over the years is enough to get at least one character a full ascended meta build after they added the ability to change stats. And before anyone cries RNG, it’s statistical inevitability when you do the content that rewards it enough.

Astralporing.1957:

Calcifire.1864:

it’s recommended in the same way Zerker gear is “recommended” for dungeons.

Nah. You can do dungeons without zerker just fine. For raids however, the mechanics will enforce both ascended gear, and zerker meta. Because apparently that is more hardcore, or something.

sigh Of course DPS will be necessary in a raid, or else you could bunker your entire team, no one would ever die, and you would be able to clear the raid boss in an hour of combat. Forcing some measure of DPS is critical to both ensure enough danger that it is fun, but also to manage the time demands of the encounters. I would like to remind you that every single win from this past beta weekend involved at least 1 non-pure DPS build per team, and in one group’s case 2 such builds… oh and the win with 2 non-DPS builds had ~1:20 left on the clock, which means they had a lot of leeway for less DPS than they had.

Rising Dusk, lets be real, based on what you saw, do you think there will be many successful teams that do not ask their members to have ascended gear?

Now im not saying it should require exotic, but i think this whole pretend that everyone will not expect you to be wearing ascended for this content is pure kitten.

Ok, once we accept that for the most part everyone is going to be expected to get ascended.
2 things come into play.
1) what does one have to do to get ascended gear
2) how many armor sets are people expected to have.

people saying ascended isnt that hard to get miss the point, its either time gated, or fairly expensive.
time gated means a level 80 will most likely spend AT LEAST one month (if they have a lot of playtime, and can get all ascended in the most effecient way possible)
expensive means they will spend a substantial amount of time grinding the most effecient gold earning activities, which are generally the least engaging, least raid like contents in the game. (silverwastes farms, eotm, etc)

And as for the gambling means, aside from the fact fractals needs high level before you can attempt to roll the dice, Luck varies from person to person, and even am above average luck person will probably be gearing up for 1 month plus via that method.
BTW statistical inevitability is a matter of perspective, and in the moment, your chances never increase.
IE you can say someone who tries 1000 times is likely to get some ascended, but in reality, if they didnt get it 999 times, they are no more likely to get it than the guy who tried 2 times.

The point? ascended grind is about 1-3 months per set, which is too long doing repetitive boring content from when you hit 80, or decided to get ascended from zero resources, for it to be a gate to this content.

you really think itll sound good to tell your returning player friend or new 80 friend cool, in about a month you ll be ready to try a raid with us! Or your casual (1-2 hour 5 days who plays challenging content) friend in small guild, dont worry you can just buy it in a few months of play.

Windsagio.1340:

phys.7689:

Windsagio.1340:

The funny thing is to me a player that demands ascended is one that doesn’t understand game systems well and I should feel free ignoring (although the dev shooting off might change that some).

you are wrong. The dungeon groups that require exotics are not the crappiest ones. High tier players generally dont reduce their chances of success unless they like a specific person, or decide to try to do something just for kicks.

the reality is weather its literally required or not, the content is difficult enough no one is going to willingly kitten their group with full exotic guys.

to be clear this is NOT the old game, this is a dps check that is tricky for coordinated dungeon runners. They arent going to be taking exotic people on average.
and pick up groups, or small groups working together, definately wont.

If you really think they will, you have not played MMOs very much. I have never seen groups demand the minimum requirements for the best players for any difficult content. Heck they rarely allow it for average difficulty content

i have been in multiple fractal groups where they kick the guy who barely has enough AR to survive, its never about whats possible best case, but about whats probable.

You converted ‘ascended’ to ‘exotic’ in there, not quite sure how.

The rest of it, ‘what and what’?

~~~

Let me try again, got lost in the salad there;

1) It’s exceptionally unlikely that ascended vs exotic gear will be a significant determinator in speed as compared to group makeup and player skill.
2) A player that doesn’t understand the numbers or game system enough to understand that fact isn’t worth listening to.

~~~

AR is a special case, but otherwise Ascended gear is one of the very last things you should be worrying about in building a team. Thus, I feel comfortable saying ‘if someone were to demand that it would be safe to dismiss their opinions’ – while still abiding by their stupid LFG criteria if applicable. (you’re probably better off not grouping with them though)

Ok, you dont really get it.

The “meta” for requirements is never based around the minimal requirements for an encounter by the top end players.

Yes, some of the best teams may not need ascended. They will be using them anyway, and expecting everyone in their groups to have it.

Yes skills are more important, but the gear is the mimimum they expect from every player.

Have you ever played another MMO raid like content?

sure you can beat the toughest contest with an underleveled, undergeared guy in your group. BUT NO ONE IS GOING TO WANT TO BRING THAT GUY, unless he is the lovable bum in the guild everyone loves having around.

Go ask people in the Dungeon subforum how much zero ascended people they want to bring with them into raids.

You can dismiss the standards that players will enforce on everyone as mathematically unsound as much as you want, they will still kick you, and ask you to ping your gear.

Have high end zerker teams been taking people in less than exotics into dungeons? And that is much further from required than ascended in the easiest part of the first raid.

Do you really think most raid gear r

Short version: Any content where people have difficulty, THE FIRST THING they will seek to do is increase their chances numerically. After they are sure that gear is a non factor, then they will start focusing on skills.

Ohoni.6057:

Crystal Reid.2481:

It’s recommended, not required. The first Vale Guardian kill over the weekend had over 1:00 left to the enrage. Skill and builds are going to be the bigger factor in the success of your raid.

If it’s possible for a group in all ascended to come within 1 minute of failure, do you really think that groups won’t be highly selective about allowing people with only exotic in?I imagine that most groups that succeed won’t have that comfortable a margin, and any group that fails by 10-20 seconds is going to turn on the Exotics players first.

this is why the dev made the tweet, the tweet is accurate. Their goal is to have most groups ask for ascended.

you are better off trying to change aquisition of ascended, at the end of the day, any difficult encounter would be noticeably easier with 12.5+ more dps. Exotics never had a chance for difficult content as long as ascended exists.

Fox.3469:

After trying out the raid encounter, i think it will be perfectly possible for groups with perfect coördination to run this in exotics, however anything less then the best groups and it becomes a problem. Full ascended groups hit the enrage yesterday because they didn’t have a grasp of the fight enough to actually be able to do enough dps in that time.

This isn’t meant to be pug content anyway so if your guild is ok with you rocking some exotics then that’s ok.

keep in mind, the first part of the first raid, that devs said they reccommend at least A MIX of ascended.
Its likely the other bosses in the raid will be more difficult.
this is exactly on par with the first dev prediction of a reccomended mix.
Later ones will most likely expect even more tight play.

basically, ascended WILL be enforced by players, except when they want to test their own limits of top teir skill.

Windsagio.1340:

The funny thing is to me a player that demands ascended is one that doesn’t understand game systems well and I should feel free ignoring (although the dev shooting off might change that some).

you are wrong. The dungeon groups that require exotics are not the crappiest ones. High tier players generally dont reduce their chances of success unless they like a specific person, or decide to try to do something just for kicks.

the reality is weather its literally required or not, the content is difficult enough no one is going to willingly kitten their group with full exotic guys.

to be clear this is NOT the old game, this is a dps check that is tricky for coordinated dungeon runners. They arent going to be taking exotic people on average.
and pick up groups, or small groups working together, definately wont.

If you really think they will, you have not played MMOs very much. I have never seen groups demand the minimum requirements for the best players for any difficult content. Heck they rarely allow it for average difficulty content

i have been in multiple fractal groups where they kick the guy who barely has enough AR to survive, its never about whats possible best case, but about whats probable.

Coulter.2315:

Windsagio.1340:

Sykper.6583:

Nike.2631:

Nike.2631:

((looks at dungeons))

((looks at open-world farming festivals- er, I mean “events”))

The Devs for this game don’t have the slightest idea what “top tier” players are capable of. Let them tune it for “all ascended” gear… If the first raid boss hasn’t been reduced to a roflstomp within 3 months that people are doing in all yellows just because they’re bored I will be STUNNED.

Hmm. Players killed it a man short in 5 hours.

Yeah. Not finding GW2 “challenging” group content all that intimidating.

Going to be a bit optimistic and assume the difficulty will continue rising quite heavily from the first boss onwards.

The first encounter might need to be tuned a bit better though towards the tougher end unless they intend on making the 2nd boss a brick wall.

It’s more a problem of people assuming that ‘difficult’ would mean ‘difficult for the top 1/10th of 1%’ as compared to ‘difficult for the top 15%’.

They’re very different things. Of course, that distinction is why the ascended thing makes no sense. For ascended to matter it would have to be the former.

Thats exactly why it was retracted and not true… I can’t believe people still believe it is… I mean its impossible to balance something so perfectly you can tell 5% difference would make a difference in a game mode played by masses of people with many random occurances and unknown classes playing.

It was just an aspiration – it was never true, just an employee misspoke.

thats well within the realms of required by the game populace. These are the same type of teams which in general beat dungeons 4 times faster than normal groups, and generally demand all the players being wearing exotic.

High end players will demand ascended for effeciency and reduction of chance to fail
and regular players will require it for a decent chance of success.

anybody thinking people are going to knowingly let you decrease their chance of success in difficult content unless you are their team mascot are smoking crack

Crystal Reid.2481:

It’s recommended, not required. The first Vale Guardian kill over the weekend had over 1:00 left to the enrage. Skill and builds are going to be the bigger factor in the success of your raid.

Which in reality means required by all teams except the guys who like someone enough to carry them and risk failure.

Windsagio.1340:

Astralporing.1957:

Obtena.7952:

Lachanche.6859:

Draknar.5748:

Wow some serious knee-jerk here. At no point did anyone say it was required.

the dev litterally just said thaton twitter. before retconning it on reddit.

No, I read the twitter :

@blacklionchest Earlier wing bosses can prob be killed by top tier players in mix of asc/ex. Last boss should be full asc.

Doesn’t say it’s needed.

Yep, but it does say that the dev in question thinks that not having full ascended on earlier bosses makes the fights uncertain for top tier players (hint, most of the raiders will not be top tier, even if they consider themselves skilled). It also strongly suggests, that the dev thinks that not having full ascended on the last boss will likely end up in failure. Even if you are top tier.

There have been plenty of posts showing how this opinion doesn’t make sense currently.

We’re really left with a small number of options.
1) Infusions (doesn’t seem to be true)
2) Blatant PR-speak not reflecting the game
3) Dev was just talking out their kitten and was wrong (could link to #2, the retraction implies this is true)
4) Some kind of a large revision to ascended gear is coming.

3 seems by far the most likely case at this point, even with how unlikely it should be that a designer is so wrong about the design.

from what i heard the raids have pulsing unavoidable aoe dmg. What this means is math starts to come into the equation.
Also, they do expect you to have certain abilities/roles or fail.
so they could easily tune unavoidable dmg such that you need
X amount of healing constant protection and thus have X amount of time to beat the raid.
while highly coordinated and skilled/specific teams can get around things, like people who beat level 80 fractals with necros, search and rescue, etc, for the large majoirity, it basically required to get agony resist.

Basically unavoidable dmg and enrage timers changes the past equation of gw2.
will they make it that tight? who knows, but its definately possible now that they have unavoidable arena size aoe dmg as a “mechanic”

Straylight.7529:

glaphen.5230:

Straylight.7529:

glaphen.5230:

I have never seen an expansion offer so little for the same price as the base game, name me some other expansions like this.

Are you refering to expansions of MMO’s where you have to pay a monthly fee?

Yes

Warlords of Draenor: Costs 50$ plus another 15$ per month. Does if offer more content per dollar than HoT?

Heavensward: Costs 40$ plus another 12-15$ per month. Does it offer more content per dollar than HoT?

Hell, no!

sorry bro, heavensward blows hot out of the water, soundly.
Your whole point of monthly fee is irrelevent, because this is gem shop game, but even if it wasnt, the question is, what can you do in the same time period.

I can buy heavensward and a month sub for 45 dollars (in fact at launch i was able to get heavensward for 30 bucks)
in that time i have 3 new proffessions
10 new levels per class with new abilities
expanded crafting and crafting skills(which is actually content in ffxiv)
7 new areas
new raids
new boss battles
8 new dungeons
refinement of their guild hall like system with more options and building of airships
new race

gw2 in that month, for 50 dollars
i get one part of a raid
4 new maps
specializations
1 new proffession.
2 guild halls, with linear growth limited customization

So yeah, lot more to do in that same time for less money. Heavensward generally extremely postively reviewed btw.

gw2 isnt is saving you any money if you only play hot content for a few weeks.

Astralporing.1957:

PopeUrban.2578:

If I remeber correctly, the fact that shortly after launch that you and all of us had several top tier sets for every conceivable situation was why they added ascended in the first place though, right?

Wrong. They added it, because people were asking for more content, and Anet at that time was unable to deliver. Gear grind (yes, they fully intended going hamster wheel with gear then, which is clear if you look at their posts from that time) was just a cheap substitute for introducing new zones, events, boss fights and dungeons. It was also a kneejerk panic reaction to the content locust leaving the game, that was most likely done without much of a forethought (because at the time they made it game was still fresh, and they didn’t have any meaningful data they could base it on yet).

well from what i hear, anet dev team was always afraid they needed to add grind. A sizable portion of the staff didnt believe in the quick gear vision. So most likely they interpreted the problem as one of grind. Though ascended rings were probably the least grindy addition.

kinda funny how the grind kept increasing per gear type.

Anyhow they made ascended a huge grind, which doesnt really make it an appropriate gate. Especially for a content which they want people to try different builds and experiment.
they must think everyone can just hit the free gear button like they can in the dev environment

Ayrilana.1396:

phys.7689:

Ayrilana.1396:

phys.7689:

Ayrilana.1396:

Full ascended is only a 10.28% damage increase (unless you get all the costly infusions) over exotics with the bulk of that damage increase coming from the trinkets and weapons. Armor, which is the costliest part of a full set, provides less than a 2% increase in damage. At such a smaller percentage, it’s doubtful that Anet could make a raid in such a way that lacking this 2% would prevent players from completing it.

Since ascended trinkets are so widely available to all players, they should be used in place of exotic trinkets when comparing the two.

ascended trinkets are not so widely available, they require 30-45 laurels, people always think of this like people been playing the game for 3 years.
it takes about 2 weeks to get to 80
you cant even buy one ascended with that.
after you hit level 10 fractals, you can get a random wrong stat ring, one attempt per day with about 25% drop rate, or beat it 10 more times to select 1 ring.
unless you join a guild mission running guild that has already fully unlocked guild missions, you will probably be getting 1 acessory every 4-6 weeks.

short version
laurels =30+70+80laurels 100 ectos +250 t650 ectos and fractal stuff
wvw= 20+50+80laurels+100 ectos+750 badges+250 t6+50 ectos and fractal stuff
fractal runner= 30+80 laurels+100 ectos, and 30+fractal runs and 26 days of running fractals

short story, acessories take like 1-3 months for hardcore players, thats hardly negligeable

Rings can be obtained from fractals using pristine relics. You can get at least 1 per day so that’s 20 days back to get both rings. Or you can go to to the WvW laurel vendor and buy one for 25 laurels and 250 badges.

Amulet can get gotten from the WvW laurel vendor for 20 laurels and 250 badges. Badges are easy enough to get from EotM but a brand new player should get enough from their first few achievement chests. They can also do WvW achievements.

Both accessories can be bought for a total of 24 commendations and 10G. It will take you 4 weeks of guild missions to get both. I often see guilds that are advertising for assistance or anyone that wants to join for their guild missions. It also doesn’t hurt to join a guild solely to do guild missions so long as the guild leadership is aware of this beforehand and approve.

You can pretend that it’s difficult to get ascended trinkets but it’s really not. Any new player is capable of getting them within a month of hitting level 80.

30 days after hitting max level is a long time.
and thats, like i said the super effecient method

`

Which doesn’t require a whole lot of effort. Laurels require you to simply log on. Badges you’ll get without much issue just by playing the game until you get to level 80. Guild missions require an hour or two a week. You can do the lowest tier fractal for 20 days which would average about an hour every night. Or they can simply wait an extra month and buy the rings with laurels.

You can keep arguing that the ascended trinkets are not accessible for new players all you want but it will not change the fact that they really are. We also do not know exactly how demanding on stats the raids will be.

The point is not the difficulty, its the opposite, its that you have to do boring things for like 30 days in order to get ready for raids. (except fractals)

imagine you had a friend
they like challenging content
they hit 80 in two weeks. And have beaten all paths on every dungeon except arah
now you tell them in about 30 days, they will be ready to attempt raids.
Thats a good design to you?

Cyninja.2954:

phys.7689:

And the main thing is you shouldnt have to grind for a month or more after hitting 80 to try a you re first raid. No raid mmo i have ever seen did that.

Except for the biggest raid MMO out there, WoW. Or do you truly want to tell me, people got into motlen core straight off the bat after hitting 60? Or Black Temple straight once they hit 70? There were even attunement quests which took hours to just be allowed to enter. (I could go on, but I guess you get my point)

Also, no one says you can’t give raids a shot in exotics, just that you won’t get that far. No one forces you to wait a month too. You can craft full ascended equipment within minutes.

my friends who tried to get me to play wow say you can usually get the gear to attempt the top raid in less than a month(from level 1). to attempt the first raids are substantially less.
You mention hours for attunement, but people here are talking about 30 days AFTER you hit 80 for the most effecient playstyle. thats not a small amount.

Ayrilana.1396:

phys.7689:

when he says map, you think about zones.
hes basically saying it adds maguma jungle, which is one region. for comparison gw1 generally added 4-5 regions per campaign.

they also added substantially more skills, twice as many new classes, and a story much larger than season 1+2

Different games and different combat systems. Like comparing Mario 3 maps to Mario 64 maps. Since you brought up story, I’d say that both season 1 and 2 story exceeds that of Factions and EotM. I’m undecided about Nightfall.

do you mean season 1+season2?
because season 2 probably takes like 4-5 hours tops to complete, whereas gw1 factions was more like 4 times that.

As for levels, at the end of the day, how much content people feel you have is more important than the cost of development. If people get more satisfaction from playing a 1993 final fantasy than a 2015 final fantasy, it means they have went backwards.

I will say that gw2 strengths are a more active combat system and a more engaging world map. But those thing existed since release, and it doesnt appear that Hot has evolved or improved on them much. It definately has not expanded either one that much.
basically the reason people complain is based on what is known now, hot is light for a 50 dollar dc, and light for a 50 dollar expansion. Thats basically what it really boils down to.

DanniBooba.5304:

phys.7689:

DanniBooba.5304:

There is so much self entitlement going on in the GW2 community surrounding the release of HoT. Call it not, if you wish, but it is what it is. Just because you stood around for hours does NOT mean that you deserve anything as compensation. You could have been testing the rest of the BETA content that was available and working. Anet did not say “Stand by the raid portal aimlessly while we work vigorously until 3AM our time attempting to resolve this issue.” That was your choice not to be doing something more productive, for lack of a better word. You did purchase the $50+ expansion, however that was with intent to play the expansion and have it working as intended, NOT for the BETA weekend which was graciously offered. You are not owed anything from this company until October 23rd. Get a hold of yourselves people.

On a side not, thank you dev team and mods for your work. I, like the rest, was genuinely looking forward to the raid testing but.. that’s what BETA weekends are for right? Finding this kind of bug/hole and patching it prior to expansion release. You guys do an excellent job, and thank you for keeping the lines of communication open with updates and all. BTW, the Reaper is awesome. Don’t change it at all.

well beta is beta, but then again if you are essentially selling beta accekittenanges the relationship.
anyhow less worry about compensation, and more worry about the fact that a lot of this stuff seems like it needs to be tested live, but they dont have that sort of system in place.

I trust that Arena Net will take care of their passionate fan base, as well as their … passionate customers surrounding HoT release. It just doesn’t help anything when people react to an adult situation like they are children. Last I checked, kicking and screaming while sitting in the shopping mart went by the wayside around the same time as diapers. I hope, too, that everything is in working order Oct. 23rd., don’t get me wrong, but I’m not going to scream and cry and bash Anet surrounding a BETA weekend (meant to discover faults) about a fault!

actually being quiet about your gripes is not the best way to handle anything. The people who ask for a lot and make their desires known get pretty far. It boils down to personality types, but it has been shown that the demanding people are more effective.

yeah, it may be annoying but its actually more effective, Even for developers, the worst thing is silence and the belief some one magically always knows what you want.

Ayrilana.1396:

phys.7689:

Ayrilana.1396:

Full ascended is only a 10.28% damage increase (unless you get all the costly infusions) over exotics with the bulk of that damage increase coming from the trinkets and weapons. Armor, which is the costliest part of a full set, provides less than a 2% increase in damage. At such a smaller percentage, it’s doubtful that Anet could make a raid in such a way that lacking this 2% would prevent players from completing it.

Since ascended trinkets are so widely available to all players, they should be used in place of exotic trinkets when comparing the two.

ascended trinkets are not so widely available, they require 30-45 laurels, people always think of this like people been playing the game for 3 years.
it takes about 2 weeks to get to 80
you cant even buy one ascended with that.
after you hit level 10 fractals, you can get a random wrong stat ring, one attempt per day with about 25% drop rate, or beat it 10 more times to select 1 ring.
unless you join a guild mission running guild that has already fully unlocked guild missions, you will probably be getting 1 acessory every 4-6 weeks.

short version
laurels =30+70+80laurels 100 ectos +250 t650 ectos and fractal stuff
wvw= 20+50+80laurels+100 ectos+750 badges+250 t6+50 ectos and fractal stuff
fractal runner= 30+80 laurels+100 ectos, and 30+fractal runs and 26 days of running fractals

short story, acessories take like 1-3 months for hardcore players, thats hardly negligeable

Rings can be obtained from fractals using pristine relics. You can get at least 1 per day so that’s 20 days back to get both rings. Or you can go to to the WvW laurel vendor and buy one for 25 laurels and 250 badges.

Amulet can get gotten from the WvW laurel vendor for 20 laurels and 250 badges. Badges are easy enough to get from EotM but a brand new player should get enough from their first few achievement chests. They can also do WvW achievements.

Both accessories can be bought for a total of 24 commendations and 10G. It will take you 4 weeks of guild missions to get both. I often see guilds that are advertising for assistance or anyone that wants to join for their guild missions. It also doesn’t hurt to join a guild solely to do guild missions so long as the guild leadership is aware of this beforehand and approve.

You can pretend that it’s difficult to get ascended trinkets but it’s really not. Any new player is capable of getting them within a month of hitting level 80.

30 days after hitting max level is a long time.
and thats, like i said the super effecient method

`

DanniBooba.5304:

There is so much self entitlement going on in the GW2 community surrounding the release of HoT. Call it not, if you wish, but it is what it is. Just because you stood around for hours does NOT mean that you deserve anything as compensation. You could have been testing the rest of the BETA content that was available and working. Anet did not say “Stand by the raid portal aimlessly while we work vigorously until 3AM our time attempting to resolve this issue.” That was your choice not to be doing something more productive, for lack of a better word. You did purchase the $50+ expansion, however that was with intent to play the expansion and have it working as intended, NOT for the BETA weekend which was graciously offered. You are not owed anything from this company until October 23rd. Get a hold of yourselves people.

On a side not, thank you dev team and mods for your work. I, like the rest, was genuinely looking forward to the raid testing but.. that’s what BETA weekends are for right? Finding this kind of bug/hole and patching it prior to expansion release. You guys do an excellent job, and thank you for keeping the lines of communication open with updates and all. BTW, the Reaper is awesome. Don’t change it at all.

well beta is beta, but then again if you are essentially selling beta accekittenanges the relationship.
anyhow less worry about compensation, and more worry about the fact that a lot of this stuff seems like it needs to be tested live, but they dont have that sort of system in place.

Ashen.2907:

phys.7689:

Ayrilana.1396:

Full ascended is only a 10.28% damage increase (unless you get all the costly infusions) over exotics with the bulk of that damage increase coming from the trinkets and weapons. Armor, which is the costliest part of a full set, provides less than a 2% increase in damage. At such a smaller percentage, it’s doubtful that Anet could make a raid in such a way that lacking this 2% would prevent players from completing it.

Since ascended trinkets are so widely available to all players, they should be used in place of exotic trinkets when comparing the two.

ascended trinkets are not so widely available, they require 30-45 laurels, people always think of this like people been playing the game for 3 years.
it takes about 2 weeks to get to 80
you cant even buy one ascended with that.
after you hit level 10 fractals, you can get a random wrong stat ring, one attempt per day with about 25% drop rate, or beat it 10 more times to select 1 ring.
unless you join a guild mission running guild that has already fully unlocked guild missions, you will probably be getting 1 acessory every 4-6 weeks.

short version
laurels =30+70+80laurels 100 ectos +250 t650 ectos and fractal stuff
wvw= 20+50+80laurels+100 ectos+750 badges+250 t6+50 ectos and fractal stuff
fractal runner= 30+80 laurels+100 ectos, and 30+fractal runs and 26 days of running fractals

short story, acessories take like 1-3 months for hardcore players, thats hardly negligeable

Perhaps, but should people expect to be raiding immediately upon reaching level 80 ?

Most people I have played with were not yet very good at playing their chosen character immediately upon reaching 80. I am not certain that raids are the place to learn to play your character.

I also think that there is a decent amount to do in game after reaching 80, before starting raids.

For me the laurels seem to quickly accumulate while doing other things that interest me.

yeah, those who wish to raid should probably be able to do it in less than a month after hitting 80.
Most games by the time you are max level, you are ready for the first teir of raid difficulty.
they dont make you do 1 month of logging in, and putting around to no real end before you can try your first raid.
keep in mind that in this game, once you hit 80, and do the dungeons, (which you could do along the way) the other activites basically revolve around grinding easy content for gold and cosmetics. The exception is fractals, but you have to do it a ton, nd the ascended progress part is also time gated.
Id say, if your not interested in farming, youd probably have to repeat dungeons and fractals like 50-80 times each before having ascended
Thats way too many times just to be ready for endgame content

Ayrilana.1396:

DistantStatic.6098:

Same game studio, same team (larger now), same game name… Only differences are a newer game engine (They had a “new” game engine when GW1 came out as well). And you very well can. Especially when you have more man power now. Don’t talk unless you’ve actually been part of any real software development process.

Play GW1, or if you already have, and tell me if the maps are the same as those in GW2. There’s not at all the same. The GW1 maps were very bare with hardly anything to do in them. There are no events, the maps have no vertical space, and the walk-able areas are much much smaller than in GW2. The combat system is also vastly different as playing both games is night and day.

DistantStatic.6098:

Yo, true, we’re getting some pets, and…. that’s about it. Some small stuff sprinkled around. “Icing on the cake”. That’s not what you buy expansions for. You don’t buy expansions for the insignificant extras, just like anything else you might buy. You don’t buy a new car for a new car seat for example. If you feel that is a responsible use of your money then I have nothing to say to you and you shouldn’t bother addressing me.

Perhaps you should do research yourself and see what all is included in the expansion. Cherry picking something like new pets and using that as an irrefutable proof to back your claim is a little ridiculous.

Zenatsu.2930:

Here’s what’s going on right now, they are just trying to sell it asap and for as much as they can. ALOT of players who bought it didn’t even know what they are getting because finding that info needs a research which is so stupid and should be right at the purchase screen…

It took me 2h to find out what are the expansion includes and that Core players are actually not getting a thing from the expansion which i was sure that core player are getting at least the masteries from the way it sounded.

So yes basically a quick cash grab while no one is really sure.

They’ve been having blogs, livestreams, there’s the wiki, gamer sites, the official HoT website, and so on that have all of that information. I find the two hours that you claim to be an exaggeration. It was never stated that the core players would get masteries and it was made quite clear from the beginning. I don’t know how you got confused and thought otherwise.

Zenatsu.2930:

Other than that 50% for so little content is way too much when i bought the core game when it came out i didn’t feel sorry at all but after buying HoT and playing the beta weekends i feel like i got totally screwed. The new areas are much easier then the current Orr maps, the 4 new maps are more like 1 big map with 3 floors quite alot to do in them but surly not 1k+ hours i got from the core game.

Let me guess, you played a single beta, that consist of an intentionally incomplete map, and believe that you have the entire expansion nailed down? This is the fourth beta that I have played and the expansion zones are much more difficult than Orr.

I also don’t see where you got the idea that the four new maps are like one big map with 3 floors as they’ve only showed one map in the betas and we still haven’t seen roots layer yet.

when he says map, you think about zones.
hes basically saying it adds maguma jungle, which is one region. for comparison gw1 generally added 4-5 regions per campaign.

they also added substantially more skills, twice as many new classes, and a story much larger than season 1+2

Sizer.3987:

SNIEVES.3964:

so basiclly your saying the average player who has exotic armor and maybe a coup,e of kitten trinkets(jewlery), will have a hard time in raids and possibly getting into raids, because they did not have the gold and expesinve crafting materials to craft asscended armor, thats just like saying you can not get in to DOA in guild wars1 unless you are wearing Obsidian armor set, because any other set of armor your wearing is going to get you kill quickly and alot, thats not fair, basiclly Raid will fall to the Few elite players who have these expensive armor and weapons, thats not fair, and you expect areanet to keep a high fan and player base, right.

Ascended weapons take like 50g to make, thats about 10 hours of gameplay, plus around 100g to level crafting, so add 20 hours. Trinkets require 30 seconds a day for a month to get laurels, plus about 4 hours spread over that month to finish missions. Armor is useless (people already stated reasons why). Lets just call it 40 hours total, or heck, assume youre slow at making gold, so call it 50.

So only a small % of the playerbase has put 50+ hours into this game? Right……

one month lockout for the most effecient means(basically you joined a high teir guild, did fractals since level 80 everyday, and burned all your gold on leveling crafting) yea, thats not a lot of crap to do before being “ready” to raid

Ayrilana.1396:

Full ascended is only a 10.28% damage increase (unless you get all the costly infusions) over exotics with the bulk of that damage increase coming from the trinkets and weapons. Armor, which is the costliest part of a full set, provides less than a 2% increase in damage. At such a smaller percentage, it’s doubtful that Anet could make a raid in such a way that lacking this 2% would prevent players from completing it.

Since ascended trinkets are so widely available to all players, they should be used in place of exotic trinkets when comparing the two.

ascended trinkets are not so widely available, they require 30-45 laurels, people always think of this like people been playing the game for 3 years.
it takes about 2 weeks to get to 80
you cant even buy one ascended with that.
after you hit level 10 fractals, you can get a random wrong stat ring, one attempt per day with about 25% drop rate, or beat it 10 more times to select 1 ring.
unless you join a guild mission running guild that has already fully unlocked guild missions, you will probably be getting 1 acessory every 4-6 weeks.

short version
laurels =30+70+80laurels 100 ectos +250 t650 ectos and fractal stuff
wvw= 20+50+80laurels+100 ectos+750 badges+250 t6+50 ectos and fractal stuff
fractal runner= 30+80 laurels+100 ectos, and 30+fractal runs and 26 days of running fractals

short story, acessories take like 1-3 months for hardcore players, thats hardly negligeable

Shoe.5821:

what? arenanet has always delivered on adding new story content. you’re just wrong to insinuate otherwise.

how much new story did you get in the last 7-8 months?

Shoe.5821:

the cost was always going to be higher than MMOs with sub fees

since charging for subs and expansions both is a huge ripoff

peopl’ll pay $150+60 to play an MMO for a year, but balk at at kitten expansion to gw2.

edit – why is " $ 5 0 " censored? lol

what that means is that they value the game time greater.
I havent played gw2 consistently for 6? 7? months im really not sure.
monthly fees only occur while you are playing the game, and are pay as you go.
I played ffxiv for a month or two, and you get what you pay for, access to everything, new dungeons, raids, less grind (yes it was way less grind than gw2) Stopped playing cause a core member of our friends went on an 8 month away navy tour, but i dont regret the time i played at all.

essentially, would you rather pay 15 a month for fun, or pay nothing for boredom.

Now, at one point gw2 was fun and exciting, but they havent done great job expanding the game and adding interesting replayable content. Many were hoping this expansion would be that, but right now it seems pretty light, and not substantial or polished. It also has one of the highest expansion costs in the buisness, but delivers less in the box.

Also, they need to let the sylvari go.
season one was the introduction of the sylvari crazy
season two was the secret of the sylvari race
season three is the battle with the sylvari god

5 races, and we still obsessing over the same culture. Move on. They got 4 other races, and new cultures, climates, etc.

NTDK.4897:

keep in mind you are paying for future updates too that could be for 3 next years, not just things that have been announced and available on day 1.

it could also be in one year,
and they could add no new content but story based content
take a look at the last year

you basically only got silverwastes and new story missions since oct 23 last year

Raqanar.3648:

There are so many people writing stuff like “The content isn’t worth the price.”
I wonder how are you measuring this. Are you looking at all the announced things and put numbers on them? I can’t get it.

Are you really saying people shouldnt be able to judge the value of the product 20 days before it is released, based on all the information that the company released?

What are they supposed to do, buy everything and then return it later?

And the main thing is you shouldnt have to grind for a month or more after hitting 80 to try a you re first raid. No raid mmo i have ever seen did that.

PopeUrban.2578:

With this logic, you’d think people would be demanding to be able to pull off raids in white gear.

They’re balancing what’s supposed to be the most challenging content in the game around the absolute highest obtainable mechanical power in the game. If they did not do so then the balance of that content would be off from day 1.

You don’t NEED ascended, just like you don’t NEED exotics to do HoT open world stuff. However, the content is designed around that tier of gear. It would be irresponsible from a design standpoint to say “this is your challenging end game content” and simultaneously release it with an untested 5% mechanical margin of error that automatically impacts its intended challenge, possibly trivializing the content on the day of release

Dev saying reccomended level basically means players will definately say must have.

For any difficult content the first thing people will look towards on failure is gear.

What the re wording by isiah said, is im sure one day when people figure out everything some people will probably be able to beat it with less stuff.

Which essentially means highly skilled individuals who are extremely coordinated and know the encounter like the back of their hands, might be able to beat with lesser stats.

Basically ita expected and balanced around ascended.
Stop pretending that because there is a possibility of doing it with less, that people will willingly group with substandard geared people on purpose except in special cases.

Terra.8571:

White Hunter.3416:

Terra.8571:

Astralporing.1957:

Terra.8571:

But simply basing the encounter’s so that the bosses/ mobs do damage against players assuming they had the BiS gear available, for the hardest content in game, seems logical.

Ascended acquisition was so far balanced around it not being required for any content beyond fractals – and even fractals weren’t balanced around ascended stats, merely around AR.
If the above doesn’t hold true, then all the acquisition methods need to be rebalanced in order to make that tier more easily obtainable.

They’re not required now afaik. The tweet never said it was physically impossible to do in exotics, she just said she think’s ascended will be needed because that’s what the Dev’s have required to beat them.

These are the same Dev’s that constantly underestimate the player base – who would have though most dungeons could be done in under 10mins, many under 5mins. They never thought legendaries would be made within 6 weeks or that all their content would be chewed through in a couple of months. Some of the hardest bosses this game are even being soloed e.g. fractal 50 bosses or Lupicus.

Even recently, they release a skill like WHaO without realising the infinite boon uptime that can be gotten with it. Dev’s make mistakes, I think at the very least, they needed to balance this content around ascended stats. I bet, unless there’s some physical link to ascended gear e.g. % damage mitigation, in time, some of this raid content will be farmable with pug exotics. We’ll see, but bottom line is they are balancing content on ascended, that’s a logical thing for the most difficult content.

Ascended are not needed to enter the raid. Just expect many wipes until the community masters them.

TA Aether sayes hello.
Still hard, really hard to find group without firsttimers, or crazy elitists.

Find a nice guild, do it with them. No need to worry about elitists then and the experience is much better. TA Aether isn’t hard, it’s more the rewards don’t justify it’s length. Bosses can all be killed in 5mins or less. It’s just frustrating trying to do some of the events in pugs because of a lack of coordination/ knowledge.

Astralporing.1957:

SO? Devs think it is required now. The same devs that earlier balanced ascended acquisition around it not being required. Since by their own admission that previous assumption no longer holds true, i believe some rebalances are in order now.

Yup, they balanced ascended acquisition on contents 2 Years, read that again, 2 years old. The new content is meant to cater to a higher level of difficulty. It would have been flawed to say this is the hardest content possible and then base it off exotic stats.

A full raid group (10 people) of ascended zerker will do 15% more dps per person than an equivalent exotic group. That’s around 52% more dps by the ascended group. Add to the fact that fights will probably last longer than the 2-3mins most bosses take currently, that increase dps is now significant. Not to base bosses of ascended stats could trivialise content.

It has now been confirmed that ascended gear is a recommendation not requirement. Feel free to try raids in exo gear, but the fights have been tuned for ascended.

you are correct, they basically had to base it off ascended, but they did create ascended aquisition as a long term prestige goal, that wasnt needed to see any content, except reruns of the same content in fractals.

So while you are right, they needed to balance around the highest teir, he is right that the current aquisition doesnt make sense.

In most raid based games, the required aquisition from one content to the next is relatively small. IE the barrier to entry from say open world, to your first raid is pretty small.
your 1st to your second raid, generally not need that many runs. From level 1 newb to hardest content in the game took me about 20 days in FFXIV to meet the requirements for that top content. Actually beating that top content and getting the gear from there might be a different matter, but less time than trying to gear up full ascended by far. And those games generally have only one applicable stat set per class. Whereas GW2 has many, and they even suggest you are supposed to be changing builds in the raid

Bandit.8279:

Calcifire.1864:

ProtoGunner.4953:

Ascended gear is out an eternity, if you don’t have single character with ascended gear you’re doing it wrong. Raiding won’t be your thing then anyways, the game has lots of other stuff to offer.

there are reasons for not having ascended gear, for example:

I have a necro, mesmer, engi and ele.

I plan on maining Rev exclusively when HoT is released.

guess what ascended armor and crafting profession I DON’T have?

I’m just praying that the early bosses will be doable in just ascended accessories, the cost for making ascended armor in a timely manner is just stupid, 12g (or 300 scraps of silk) for a bolt of damask, and I need 25 >_>.

You have several weeks before the first wing is released and it was stated partial mix of ascended/exotic will be fine for skilled players. So you should already have the trinkets ready or can get them ready in time for any new alts.

Then we have who knows how much time until the raid wings that actually are recommended to have full ascended get released. Meaning you have tons of time to prepare.

Not only that but if you’ve been doing high level fractals, SW farming, guild missions and World Boss runs then you should also have a few ascended boxes and trinkets laying around in your bank. You can also get ascended items from achievements and collections.

If you haven’t been doing end game PvE content on a consistent basis then why do you think you should be given a free pass for the harder end game content? Self-entitled gamers!

We all have plenty of time to prepare people. Stop with the excuses and whining and get to work!

lol your funny. ascended boxes are random drop. You could be playing for massive amounts of hours and never see one drop. Back when i was grinding fairly hardcore in the game, like 6+ hours a day on average for months, i saw one single ascended weapons box.
a person with a normal/healthy play per dsy 1-3 hours would probably never see one.

I also find it odd you consider world bosses and silverwastes endgame play, or good preparation for raiding.

TheRandomGuy.7246:

Calcifire.1864:

TheRandomGuy.7246:

It is not that large now as it was 2 or even 1 year ago. And it will be even less of a grind in hot. Amount of gold game just throws at people for barely doing anything is going up every few months.

if you are wearing light armor, you need 10800 scraps of silk.

currently silk is selling for 2s 79c

that means that you need to spend 301g 32s to make the armor.

now let’s add the rest of the materials, shall we?

according to gw2spidy, the current cost to make the damask is 467g 63s 64c
the cost for the leather is 18g 67s 74c
crystalline dust is 28g 51s 20c

so a minimum of 514g 82s 58c

and that’s not including the cost of exotics for dark matter, the insignias you need for the stats (hope you don’t want celestial, because that’s an unavoidable 30 day time gate), or vendor bought materials like thermocatalytic reagents or gossamer thread

over 515g and 36 days to make a set of armor, even more expensive if you want to skip the time gating

and you say that that ISN’T a grind?

when you start measuring things in quantities of TEN THOUSAND in a game with a stack size of 250, the devs need to re-evaluate their recipe costs

compared to a few years ago, the grind is WORSE, silk has exploded in cost since then.

And if you actually play this game for at least 2 hours/day you can drop this price to less than 100 gold.

how so? by grinding gold/mats for 2 hours?
btw two hours a day is considered a decent amount of playtime, raid are probably going to be an hour once a week for comparison

Lian Olsam.9541:

Agree with linfang

No one force u to raid if u dont like harder content, no one force u to get ascended gear, just do something else for one year then go on youtube and look how to do it naked
Pretty easy

I hope ascended will be REQUIRED for higher wings, and even with full ascended will be harder, because when u fail once twice etc etc isnt beauty, but when u do the “impossible” the sensation is awesome.
This game has too many noobs stuff, grind maps, 1111111 on boss etc etc… I’m ok with this variety is ever the best way, but this game need something really hard, and i hope raids will be

problem with your theory, is ascended armor is a fairly large grind. And funny part is the solution is legendary armor/trinkets/weapon. But in order to get legendary armor you will need to invest in ascended armor, which will then become obsolete.
genius

gw2 throws away the gear treadmil, and creates the gear skyscraper stair.

the real deal is, there will be strictly enforced party set ups and builds. keep in mind, the cost in resources and time of ascended armor is not small at all.
people will not be changing their gear often to test what might work. People talk about using ascended mystic forge swapping, but from what people said here, that uses 5-8 gold and 10 skill points. per piece
Most people wont want to do that very often. Also appears not to work on trinkets?

So yeah people are going to be looking for meta, they will be a lot less adaptable (cannot realisticly ask people to change stats to compensate for a missing player type)

Also means you cant simply say, ok guys ill be healer today, or ill be tank, unless you invested in new armors and weapons.
Looks like even for those who can do that, they will probably be storing whole sets of inventory
inventory wars2.
annnd that means you will be specialized to certain armor types.

man anet keeps building on flawed systems.
Ascended time and effort required basically prevented ascended players from playing with new stat builds, which was primarily mitigated by having few viable stat builds.
The armor/inventory system lends itself very poorly to trying an obtaining new stat sets as well.
And then they go and make raids and are like we want you to play with various builds and use different stats! I think they play in their dev environments too much, where they hit a button and get whatever gear they want to have.