Guild Wars 2

Cassius.4831:

This is my question, very simple, very plain, too understandable for being ignored.

You, devs, say that you want more interaction with us, players. Well, then I’d like to know the answer to this question in order to know what I should do. Ascended gear is comming. I have 8 characters and I’d like to return to the game and to create more characters when more races or professions are released. But if ascended gear is as alt-unfriendly as weapons, I’m out.

So… will ascended gear be alt-friendly?

Thank you for reading.

depend what you mean by alt friendly, but i would hazard to guess probably not. ascended is personal charachter progression really.

there is a slight bit of alt friendlyness, alts can get more mats for vision crystals faster. thats about as much as you can expect really

Ashen.2907:

phys.7689:

But you cant really expect them to keep what amounts to a dev bugged zone as the standard.

I would be inclined to agree if ANet refunded the money spent on gems to access the “bugged zone.”

why should they refund you gems for accessing the bugged zone? no one ever asked you to try to break the wall via gems? If we found out using the speed boost item allowed you to run through certain walls, and behind these walls was an unfinished dungeon, should they refund your gems for buying this item?

When they closed this use, and you only had access because you unlocked what amounted to a waypoint, didnt you figure hey guys we are in a bugged zone that isnt currently accessible except by us and the people we choose to invite.

Should they make everyone now do everything you did, when they never intended you to break through the wall?

They mislabeled it an infinite dungeon, it was not that. But you guys had to realize you werent where you were supposed to be some time ago. You enjoyed being there, but dont expect the game to cater to you, or refund you money for the tool you used to break the mode.

fractals was essentially made to be gear gated, and thats why its a bit of a seperate universe from the rest of GW. Also, ascended armor has nothing to do with this. in the new system you can get infinite AR from just 3 slots.

annnd level caps have been a possibility since before the game was released, they publicly said so in multiple interviews. Did you also know that early on they wanted to have no level cap at all? with DR on levels?

just pointing out that the idea you had about what the game was about, is not exactly what they were presenting in interviews.

Content gating really isnt a bad thing. its about how its handled. I dont really think AR is necessary to pull off what they wanted to do with fractals, but it doesnt really make that much of a difference anymore.

Wethospu.6437:

phys.7689:

—
as for reseting people to 50=>30
there will be some new mechanics, but i dont know if this requires a reset he says fractals 30-50 wnt really be harder, although they may be different. perhaps they should let people keep their levels up to 50. the 50+ people ehhhh your levels mean nothing because that mode doesnt really exist and was not really intended to. the multiple patches to disable 51+ kind of made this obvious. You guys were basically breaking into an unfinished map, cant expect them to cater to you too much. It was fun while it lasted.
—

They could have changed ONE value in their code to prevent access to scale 50+. Either they are extremely incompetent (why bother making so many patches and still fail hard) or they allowed us to go there.
Also how is just going to fractals now “breaking into an unfinished map”?

All we wanted to do is play their game and now we are getting punished for it.

Depending on how it was programmed it may not have been a simple change. maybe it was, regardless it was impossible to do without a gem store item, and eventually even that failed, or so i hear.

Basically they put a wall up, and people got by that wall because they already passed that wall. When it became the case that no new people could pass that wall, it should have become clear that you were in the forbidden playground.

Im not saying your evil, im saying you guys broke the game, but it wasnt really hurting anyone, so they didnt rush to reset you all, and turn off access and all that. They probably at that point werent even sure if they were going to eventually lower you, perhaps they may have continued and let you keep the levels. But that was just a chance.

Im also not saying they shouldnt make content for you, but to be honest making the new mode of fractals only available to people 80+ is too long of a grind, and was never intended. There wasnt much real change from 30 to 50 other than damage/enemies (according to devs) they want there to be a qualitative difference in play earlier on. im guessing they havent unlocked 50+ because when and if they do, they want it also to have a qualitative change, that alters the mechanics, or feel of playing past 50.

Not really saying they should punish you, but you realize with this patch there will be no access to 51+ right? what exactly would be the point of your level 80 if there is no longer any access to that zone? if 50-80 end up being entirely new content, should you be able to skip it because you beat some old archaic mode that no longer exists?

now the 50-30 people, they may have a point, it was doable, and sanctioned, the new levels apparently wont be more difficult than the old level 30-50, (though they will be different) resetting them to 30 seems to be mostly leaderboard focused, and i dont know if that really matters. I think they should probably give people who go 30+ 40+ and reached 50 under the old system some type of cosmetic, or title upgrade, heck they could even give people 50+ something like “fractal breaker” title. But you cant really expect them to keep what amounts to a dev bugged zone as the standard.

LordByron.8369:

To people defeinding the patch.

Not only they will lower fractal level….they will also give fractal skins from level 10…

Lets make a similar experiment…

lets put a npc in lion arch selling Molten skins for 1 Gold …..

Nothing else will persuade me that they are not totally ruining dedicated fractal players progression….

But i can see why people that almost never played fractals will be happy with the patch.. still i believe to be really selfish on your side.

You want an easy way to preserve old fractal players progression?

Change trail color on NEW fractal weapons so old fractal players at least have something exclusive….

OR

Make skins sellable…at least we recover some gold we lost playing the hardest and lowest reward istance in game

Also give something to people with fotm level >30 PER character.

Don t selectively delete months of progression of some players!

going by the dev, they say they did not alter the fractal drop rate

“Spoiler: there was always a rare chance to get them in the 10-20ish. The only change we made was to make them skins so you can apply them without spending a transmutation stone”

If this is true, the fractal weapon change is not a change and is not easier to get.

as for reseting people to 50=>30
there will be some new mechanics, but i dont know if this requires a reset he says fractals 30-50 wnt really be harder, although they may be different. perhaps they should let people keep their levels up to 50. the 50+ people ehhhh your levels mean nothing because that mode doesnt really exist and was not really intended to. the multiple patches to disable 51+ kind of made this obvious. You guys were basically breaking into an unfinished map, cant expect them to cater to you too much. It was fun while it lasted.

that said i think they missed a chance here to create a system for those who just like super hardcore stuff. Maybe they should add increased difficulty teirs, and a title which can display your current highest progress, think like wvw ranks.

create a mechanical difficulty algorithm, (more mobs, more dmg) and just let people see how far they can get. point out that it is unbalanced and may not be possible to get pst certain levels.

so it would be like beat 50, unlock bronze 1, beat bronze 50, unlock iron 1.

give people a title that shows whatever they are currently. iron runner 49 for example.

ehhh well something along those lines

cesmode.4257:

Making your personal difficulty and reward level account bound means there will be less people running low level fractals. Which means people who are late to the fractal party will have a much more difficult time finding a group since a lot of people are already above 30…good luck trying to find groups under 10 now.

I pointed this out as a potential problem exactly one year ago.

you can do higher level fractals to advance difficulty.
they also may keep the karma boost for low level ones. Its really not that muchof an issue

Nevets Crimsonwing.5271:

phys.7689:

Nevets Crimsonwing.5271:

Here is my perspective:

I leveled to FOTM 80 because it was the only content in the game that I found moderately difficult and enjoyable. I didn’t have a set group, but usually leveled with a mix of friends and a mix of pugs. It was a lot of time, very little proportional reward, but a whole lot of fun.

The clutch moments on level 79 shaman where the 4/5 people die and one person manages to res the rest… that was why I played high level fractals. I enjoyed it.

Looking at the new changes, I am hesitantly disappointed. I know I’ll have to test out the new levels 30-50 before I can fully judge, but from what the developers have been saying you can get to level 50 with less AR than before, and the overall difficulty curve from 1-50 has been lowered. The devs said they’d open up levels 50+ in the future, but not now.

I’ve waited over a year for them to “re-officially” open 50+. I quit the game a while back due to school, and was really looking forward to this patch to maybe bring me back in. But instead of a new challenge being opened to the rest of the player base, the cap on 50 is still in place, and from what the devs said, the content has been dumbed down a bit.

As it stands now, this really isn’t encouraging me personally to come back to the game.

I was one of the people who played from 50-80 not for the rewards, but for the challenge and fun and yes, admittedly, a bit of guild prestige. I don’t care about the leaderboards, don’t care about the rewards, and don’t care about the “new” fractal if it’s going to be easy. I want the dungeon that they said, and now are saying again, has “infinite” levels, that increases in difficulty, so I can challenge myself and have some fun in the process.

Edit: Also, if and when they open 50+, if it requires AR grind, I’ll never enter the dungeon again.

i get what your saying, and it actually saddens me they are making it easier, the loss of the ever increasing difficulty sucks.

Dont get the last part though, fractals were set up from jump to be a AR grind, not a bad one imo, but AR grind none the less, why would they take that away now?
also, Mr Ordon said the level 50 fractal has the AR requirement for 50-59, so shouldnt be that bad really

Level 50-80 didn’t have any additional AR requirement. Maybe it was because those levels weren’t finished, but lots thought it was because they only wanted the AR hurdle to be for people just starting. Afterwards, it’s learn to dodge

im thinking its becaused they were unfinished. I expect it will actually scale up in the future, otherwise the infinite AR potential of (infused) items is pretty limited. On the + side its highly likely someone who does fractals often will have more AR than they no what to do with7

Nike.2631:

Crysys.1297:

3) they ARE reducing AR. “infused” rings will no longer have the +5AR built in… rather, they will already have AR in the infusion slot… what happens to people that grinded the 250 ecto infusions?? will they be given 100s of gold they spent to get them?

Just to put a brief pause on the hysteria, my understanding is the new rings will have the same slot they always did (and your very expensive infusion remains there safe and unharmed) and the +5 fixed bonus of the ring is replaced with a new slot that starts at +0 AR but can go much, much higher in the long run.

So yes, there is a temporary drop of up to -15 AR (5 AR from each of three pieces, giving you 3 of the new unlimited slots)… laying the groundwork to regain not only that 15 AR but potentially infinite AR opening up new tiers for fractal difficulty in the hundreds.

it will not drop, they will give them a +5 agony infusion

Crysys.1297:

phys.7689:

Bright.9160:

So what this update has done is the following:

• Screw over a bunch of people that got to lvl50+ or 50 by invalidating their work and putting them on the same standard as some random scrub that just hit lvl30.

• Hand out Fractal weapons to everyone: if anything, they should have changed them to only drop in lvl30 or lvl40+, not lower the requirement to get them.

• Remove any incentive to do more than 1 Fractal run/day, because they are now account bound and doing a daily again is basically a waste of time. The only reason the day after the patch to do extra levels is in order to get to 50 first. Woopdi-flipping-doo. As if this game wasn’t alt-unfriendly enough.

• Cheat a bunch of people out of 100’s of gold because of the t6 mats they used to make special infusions.

• Show yet again how incompetent Anet is as a company.

• Show yet again how little Anet cares about their hardcore high-end PvE community.

*1 maybe true depending on your prespective

*2 supposedly drop rare hasent changed and they were always possible from 10 on, just highly unlikely (well thats what the dev said) i have gotten one in the 20s though.

*essentially the daily system is almost exactly the same, except its acount bound now.

*the old infusions are not being touched, no one will have less AR, there is no a possibility for higher AR, nothing really different here

*since all your beefs except 1 are inaccurate, i dont know if you can really make that claim, but regardless, it sucks that you lost your title, i suggest they give you another
Alpha fractal runner X
x= level of fractal over 30 you obtained

@phys, you are actually incorrect on all accounts.
1) weapons ONLY dropped 20+ at a rate of ~5% (~15% at 38, ~30% at 48)
2) you could run multiple dailies, one from each “tier” (i.e. 48, 38, 28)
3) they ARE reducing AR. “infused” rings will no longer have the +5AR built in… rather, they will already have AR in the infusion slot… what happens to people that grinded the 250 ecto infusions?? will they be given 100s of gold they spent to get them?

he answered all these questions in the fractured forum, i had the same questions

he said,
1)apparently they could always drop from 10-20 fractals they just almost never did (this is what the dev said, i never saw it before 20, but this is what he said) he went on to say that its rate wasnt changing really

2) he specifically answered my question in the fractured forum and said, there are different dailes for each tier 1-10 11-20 21-30 etc. the main difference is that this is account bound now.

3) the infused thing was confusing but he explained it after many questions
essentially its like this
old infusion slots will not be touched, this includes the the versatile/mighty/precision stuff
a new type infusion slot will be added to the item types called infused, like
infused red ring http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Ring_of_Red_Death_%28Infused%29

instead of having the base 5 infusion it will now get a slot specifically for an agony resist type infusion.
agony resist type infusion only goes in this slot
old items will start with a +5 agony infusion in this slot

you will be able to create higher agony infusion to put in this slot.

so if you had 55 AR, you will still have it, none of your old infusions will be touched

check out Mr Ordons Dev posts in fractured sub forum

Nevets Crimsonwing.5271:

Here is my perspective:

I leveled to FOTM 80 because it was the only content in the game that I found moderately difficult and enjoyable. I didn’t have a set group, but usually leveled with a mix of friends and a mix of pugs. It was a lot of time, very little proportional reward, but a whole lot of fun.

The clutch moments on level 79 shaman where the 4/5 people die and one person manages to res the rest… that was why I played high level fractals. I enjoyed it.

Looking at the new changes, I am hesitantly disappointed. I know I’ll have to test out the new levels 30-50 before I can fully judge, but from what the developers have been saying you can get to level 50 with less AR than before, and the overall difficulty curve from 1-50 has been lowered. The devs said they’d open up levels 50+ in the future, but not now.

I’ve waited over a year for them to “re-officially” open 50+. I quit the game a while back due to school, and was really looking forward to this patch to maybe bring me back in. But instead of a new challenge being opened to the rest of the player base, the cap on 50 is still in place, and from what the devs said, the content has been dumbed down a bit.

As it stands now, this really isn’t encouraging me personally to come back to the game.

I was one of the people who played from 50-80 not for the rewards, but for the challenge and fun and yes, admittedly, a bit of guild prestige. I don’t care about the leaderboards, don’t care about the rewards, and don’t care about the “new” fractal if it’s going to be easy. I want the dungeon that they said, and now are saying again, has “infinite” levels, that increases in difficulty, so I can challenge myself and have some fun in the process.

Edit: Also, if and when they open 50+, if it requires AR grind, I’ll never enter the dungeon again.

i get what your saying, and it actually saddens me they are making it easier, the loss of the ever increasing difficulty sucks.

Dont get the last part though, fractals were set up from jump to be a AR grind, not a bad one imo, but AR grind none the less, why would they take that away now?
also, Mr Ordon said the level 50 fractal has the AR requirement for 50-59, so shouldnt be that bad really

*1 maybe true depending on your prespective

*2 supposedly drop rare hasent changed and they were always possible from 10 on, just highly unlikely (well thats what the dev said) i have gotten one in the 20s though.

*essentially the daily system is almost exactly the same, except its acount bound now.

*the old infusions are not being touched, no one will have less AR, there is no a possibility for higher AR, nothing really different here

*since all your beefs except 1 are inaccurate, i dont know if you can really make that claim, but regardless, it sucks that you lost your title, i suggest they give you another
Alpha fractal runner X
x= level of fractal over 30 you obtained

Outlaw.3421:

Posted this somewhere else but I will post it here:

So, if I am getting this right…if you have 55 already…and that won’t change…you essentially don’t need to do anything with this new method unless you are going up into the higher tiered fractals right?

If you have 40 agony resist and you are just doing 30 – 39 then you already hit the cap where agony can only do 1% damage per tick. 55 agony resist is only 6% in 40 – 49.

So really this change doesn’t affect anything but makes it more of a grind for newer players?

actually new players will be uneffected, they will get enough resist from regular rings. midlevel-highlevel players will have the option of infusing instead of getting accesories and a necklace and a weapon

annd people who just want to see how high they can go, can go to insanely high resist levels just for kicks.

folly dragon.4126:

Without going to deep into this discussion

I believe you cant compare this to sports considering sports teams dont have to have 24 hour coverage and also they get breaks in between games.

Personally, they need to break us up by time zone and have the PPT be rewarded as such

Red Time Zone score – EST
Blue Time Zone score – EU
Green Time zone score – OCE

As examples.

We may be more skillful during our peak but it doesnt show because our off peak isnt there.

Setting us up on a 24 hour counter is where the problem is.

They could have even designated servers where from time A – time B = PPT growth, this means NA players could go up against them for skill rather then coverage.

EU players could take on other EU players, etc.

Currently, the only problem with WVW is coverage issues.

what if you work evenings, or play mornings, like to avoid the queues and play off peak

Rouven.7409:

Just pondering, since I’ve only done a fractal once – I keep reading that fractals are a good source for karma – any changes there?

yeah, id like to know that. however it was good karma when going lower than your personal level.

thinking maybe they are going to eliminate it as a karma source, man karma gonna be slow in the future

Char.4209:

+5 infusion means = 16* +1 infusion
You have to do just 4 runs on lvl 10 to get it.

You needed till now to infuse:
1 Gift of Ascension = 500 Tokens
Thats ~8 runs on lvl 10 (with daily chest)

Thats twice the effort

+250Ectos

You should consider ether give +(8 to 10) for already infused backs.
or give the tokens and ectos back and let the slot empty.

the only way to get a backpiece with the new infusion is probably the same old recipe, you cant put the new agony resist infusions into the old infusion slots

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

Every time you finish a complete set of Fractals (3 Standard Fractals + 1 Boss) you will receive the daily reward, restricted by account, which is consistent with other dungeon rewards. Each 10 levels of Fractals has it’s own daily reward. So if you played level 1, 11, 21, and 31, you would receive four daily rewards.

thanks for the reply

Korossive.7085:

Thanks for answer to 1.

What’s the answer to 2 and 3?

2 is a no, you wont be able to apply the new agony resistance infusions to anything but the agony resist slot, which is only going to be on infused rings and backpieces (the items that say infused)
for example http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Ring_of_Red_Death_%28Infused%29

the answer to 3 is unknown, but i would bet on, nope, you have to make a better one, put it in, and start from scratch again.

Im assuming higher resist infusions will drop at higher difficulties cutting the time a bit though

eekzie.5640:

phys.7689:

well since he said it would be a little easier up to 50, im now wondering if there is an above 50, especially since they are adding this seemingly unlimited agony resist, whats it for if 50 is the cap?

What I’m thinking is there will be a lot of changes to the out of order scaling. For instance, mages in the ascalonian fractal. That would make the leveling easier.

But, you will get something in return to make it harder. The instability stuff.
I’m looking forward to the new challenge

And I’m thinking the agony will work in a different way than it does now. Hence a higher level will be needed. But that’s just my speculation.

ah yes, some one pointed out that the blog says it only goes up to 50. so yeah… why we need 3billion agony resist again? are they going to make it do more dmg now?

Korossive.7085:

phys.7689:

Korossive.7085:

… and about my question? Can you help?
(+5 AR / +5 Precision = wasted T6 mats)

he answered it in a different thread.

essentially the old infusion slots will not be altered.

the infused items will be given a new unique slot that only holds agony resistance, you cant put mighty or precise infusions there
they will be get a +5 agony infusion in that slot, you can later upgrade the agony in that slot past 5.
your precise one stays the same, and it cant house the upgradeble agony infusions anyhow.

Didn’t understand anything from this. I have a SunRise with 2 x +5 AR / +5 Precision.
1. What will the new SunRise look like (socket-wise)? Will it have 2 x AR sockets? or maybe 2 x Offensive + 2 x AR sockets or it’d be equivalent?
2. Will my composite infusions be upgradable? e.g. +6 AR / +5 Precision?
3. To upgrade, will I be able to “unsocket”? I fear that re-socketing will destroy the existing composite infusion…

Why can’t an official company answer ever be clear?

It will be the same, the only thing that will change is items that are called infused ______. will instead get another slot that houses special new agony resist only infusions

items like infused red ring and infused fractal capacitor for example

CuRtoKy.8576:

Above 50? No

Based on the wording it seems like the daily chest is the same as before except it is account bound.

Equipment rewards are for the individual fractal chest which I believe never dropped fine materials and just dropped blues, greens, and some times rares and exotics.

Karma no idea. I would assume yes

well since he said it would be a little easier up to 50, im now wondering if there is an above 50, especially since they are adding this seemingly unlimited agony resist, whats it for if 50 is the cap?

Nike.2631:

phys.7689:

Nike.2631:

I think what people are missing is the old level >30 fractals are GONE. From this point on much more challenging versions have replaced them and your older progress tracker doesn’t apply. beating the old 42 will be a cakewalk compared to the new 42.

looks like it will actually be easier from what was said in the fractured forum

The ‘mistlock instabilities’ don’t sound easier to me, and adding two new boss levels you could get instead of the extremely simple puzzle fight that is the Maw is going to be a bit more lively too in my estimation.

I could see leaving the current levels in place – but mostly because it’d be funny to stand by the portal and listen to the sizzle-scorch-gurgle-silences as groups wipe over and over jumping directly to their maximum level, refusing to pause and learn the new mechanics.

Yes, its a bit baby-buggy-bumper, but it’s probably for the best in ensuring the new material gets used instead of our most daring-of-old rage-quitting after a difficulty 48 Mai Trin hands them their rumps AGAIN and AGAIN on their first run into the new fractals…

yeah, i was thinking that, but he actually said they rebalanced it to be a little easier up till 50.
so while it will have this new mechanic from 30 onward, it probably wont make it that much harder compared to what was there before.

BazeDragon.3927:

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

You won’t lose any Agony Resistance in this update.

It goes very, very high.

So does this mean if we have a +5AR infusion, with the +5AR stat on an [infused] item, we will have the infusion automatically made a +10 infusion?

Other question: What level Artificer will be needed to craft +5 and +10 AR infusions?

you will get an item with an agony infusion slot of +5 and a regular infusin slot with whatever infusion you had put in there before.

Korossive.7085:

… and about my question? Can you help?
(+5 AR / +5 Precision = wasted T6 mats)

he answered it in a different thread.

essentially the old infusion slots will not be altered.

the infused items will be given a new unique slot that only holds agony resistance, you cant put mighty or precise infusions there
they will be get a +5 agony infusion in that slot, you can later upgrade the agony in that slot past 5.
your precise one stays the same, and it cant house the upgradeble agony infusions anyhow.

oh yeah different question, but do fractals have a level limit again? or does it go past 50 and even 80 now?

thanks anthony for answering some of the questions posed, i think i get how the new infusion slot will work.

A couple more,
Daily chests, will it still be a different daily for every 10 levels
IE i can do level 30 for one daily chest, level 20 for another, and level 1 for another

Is the daily chest going to be account bound rather than charachter bound now? (assuming yes)

the blog says blue level equipment, does this include lodestones, or is that off the drop table for chests?

Will we still recieve karma for doing lower levels? If so, will it still be the same amount/formula?

Turtle Dragon.9241:

I would appreciate an answer to this:

When you Infuse a Ring/Backpiece in the MysticForge, you lose the current Infusion in it.
Example:
I have a Healing Signet w/Mighty Infusion in it.
I want to make it Healing Signet(Infused).
I place my Healing Signet + mats in the Mystic Forge.
It comes out Healing Signet(Infused) w/ EMPTY Infusion slot.
Therefore, I lost my Mighty Infusion.

Since there is currently no Infused Trinkets/Accessories/Weapons,
Will there be a way to actually keep the current Infusion in the future?
Or should I only use Infusions on Infused Rings/Backpieces for now until the Infused version of the Trinkets come out?

This is important because those Mighty Infusions are not cheap apiece.

Rephrasing the question: are you going to make a way to simply create the new agony-specific"socket"(Infusing) on our current Ascended Trinkets?
Or are you going to keep making us exchange(via Mystic Forge or Crafting) our Ascended Trinkets for Infused versions and lose our Infusions in the process like the above example?

I am currently keeping my Ascended Trinkets/Weapons/Accessories practically empty, because it would be wasted effort to put Mighty Infusions in them if those are just going to be trashed the moment Infused versions of the items come out.

your screwed. But you were screwed before, so eh. Essentially you dont want to put an expensive infusion in anything that isnt (infused)

Nike.2631:

I think what people are missing is the old level >30 fractals are GONE. From this point on much more challenging versions have replaced them and your older progress tracker doesn’t apply. beating the old 42 will be a cakewalk compared to the new 42.

looks like it will actually be easier from what was said in the fractured forum

Korossive.7085:

So 5 AR + 5 Precision infusion = junk now?
Can I get my money back?

from what anthony ordon said, im thinking you it will look like this

An infused ascended ring with precision infusion will look like this

Infused Red Ring
agony infusion slot: +5 agony resistance
infusion slot: precise infusion +5AR +5precision

the one that you can increase will only be the agony infusion slot. the old infusion slot will have the same limitions and wont be able to use the new agony resistance infusion types

Titanimite.2534:

phys.7689:

Tongku.5326:

Who cares about how the new AR is going to be obtained ?

What we wanna know is what happens to all the gold, mats and relics that have been spent to obtain the current 55 AR.

as i understand it, you will essentially have the same AR

the difference is that the natural one called infused will now be upgradeable.
the other infusion slot will stay the same

I get the same feeling except that they will reset your current infusion leaving you with +5 on infused items which would effectively reduce your AR by 15. I sure hope this isn’t the case though

i doubt it, lets say you spent 250 powerful blood and 50 flowers t get a agony+stat infusion, they cant delete that.

Tongku.5326:

Who cares about how the new AR is going to be obtained ?

What we wanna know is what happens to all the gold, mats and relics that have been spent to obtain the current 55 AR.

as i understand it, you will essentially have the same AR

the difference is that the natural one called infused will now be upgradeable.
the other infusion slot will stay the same

ok so what your saying is there is new slot called agony resist slot, there is new infusion called agony resist infusion.

Only agony slots can hold agony resist infusions

the other slot stays the same, and can have versatile, mighty infusion etc?

ahhh yes, the infusions with attribute stats on them, can they be used in the artificer recipes? will they retain their attribute stats?

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

You won’t lose any Agony Resistance in this update.

It goes very, very high.

at what rate will it be needed? how much are you expected to have at 20 30 etc?

Mirta.5029:

Atherakhia.4086:

That would have a measurable and negative impact on the playerbase. There is no measurable or negative impact on players by lowering your fractal level to 30. You gained nothing and lose nothing with it changing. You already lost your time and resources getting there, sure. But you had fun doing it. It’s just like when your car is repossesed due to lack of payment. They don’t refund you what you paid because you don’t have your car anymore.

If you can tell me a single item or skill you lose by having your fractal level reduced to 30 we’ll talk.

What items would you lose if your WvW rank was reset and your PvP rank was dropped back down to 0? After all, they’re not removing the items that you have and you had fun raising your rank in the first place, so oyu don’t mind leveling bakc up again, right?

gaspara.4079:

I have a solution, you can keep your level, but you will not be on the leaderboard and cannot enter Fotm until you go to the npc and have them reset your Fotm level to 30. Is that a better solution? You get to keep your effectively meaningless high number but you can never play that content again?

how about doing the same with all of the content then? You can’t enter WvW unless you get your rank reset back to 0. You can’t enter PvP unless you resent your rank back to 0. Oh and you can not do the living story unless you agree to re-level from 1 to 80 again. Sounds fair? After all you can keep your meaningless level 80, but oyu can never wanter out of LA again.
The level reset is simply not needed.

the level reset is essentially because they are altering fractals, 30+ is going to probably play a bit differently now, so giving people credit for a different thing is kind of backward. I dont think they did much design wise from 30-50 except jacking up the dmg.

I think they could have handled this a little differently, though it would have been a little unwieldly, but the result would still likely be the same.

i like the animation, and story telling, however, it does seem a little cartoony, Still on its own its a pretty strong piece of work

Nephitis.8201:

If the new 30+ is supposedly more challenging then the old 80, why can’t they just add it to the old system and make it cap at 100 for a nice number. Everyone would be happy that way.

probably because odd number fractals were useless, and essentially ended up as just a time sink. So they removed them.

It would be interesting to hear

What is the equivalence in difficulty of new system to old?

new 10 = what level old fractal in difficulty?
new 20 = what level difficulty
new 30 = what level difficulty

how does AR scale now? aka how much agaony resist is good at say new 30

Ethics.4519:

Corpus Christi.2057:

Atherakhia.4086:

Corpus Christi.2057:

Korossive.7085:

Agree on pvp rank comparison, heck, reset everyone to 30 too see how the community likes the game then.

^ That.

That would have a measurable and negative impact on the playerbase. There is no measurable or negative impact on players by lowering your fractal level to 30. You gained nothing and lose nothing with it changing. You already lost your time and resources getting there, sure. But you had fun doing it. It’s just like when your car is repossesed due to lack of payment. They don’t refund you what you paid because you don’t have your car anymore.

If you can tell me a single item or skill you lose by having your fractal level reduced to 30 we’ll talk.

See, Kilandros, that’s what I am talking about – precisely the type of a person who is driven by perceptible factors only.

I think everybody should post their fotm personal level. My guess would be that 95% of the people arguing for compensation (both on levels and backpieces) are 40+ with a backpiece, while 95% of those saying we shouldn’t get anything are lvl 39- with 1 or no backpieces.

My point being is those that won’t be affected by this should probably just stay quiet, ESPECIALLY if the reward is a title or something not monetary.

lvl: 48

i mean yall can complain about it, but you should probably just say what you want them to give you, because we all know you arent going to keep your level no matter what.

To be honest i think we are wasting are time with this issue, and should focus on;

how’s the new AR system going to effect infused items
what will happen to the very expensive +5 agony +5to a stat items
be explicit explaining what the Beta fractal capacitor will be like after the update (the notes arent clear)
can you get a daily chest for every 10 level, or is it one per day
is it one per day per account now?
karma?
lodestones?

ok, how about they give people a title who got over level 30
Alpha Fractal Runner XX
XX=whatever fractal you got over 30 in old system

a unique title only available to those who did it the old way

rfdarko.4639:

VOLKON.1290:

rfdarko.4639:

Why didn’t they just open up 50+ with the new challenges, instead of needlessly deleting the only meaningful character progression that exists above level 80? To people saying getting above 50 is an exploit – I’m sure that if it was a serious issue it wouldn’t have taken them nearly a year to simply make it impossible to open higher than a 49.

If someone was at 50, wasn’t their progression done? There’s no more “up” after that, isn’t that true?

So isn’t this going from “no more progression” to “progression with added challenges”?

It’s deleting the progression I’ve already achieved, when they could have left it well alone.

well i suppose they could have deleted every odd fractal
so fractals levels go 2 4 6 8 etc
then they could have made a new mode called omega fractal which requires you to hit level 60 to unlock, and starts from 1
then you guys could have your cake and eat it to.
But it probably boils down to the same thing.

hmm. they need a lot more info here.
lets say they are essentially eliminating all odd level difficulties.
if this is the case 10 is now 20
20 is 40
but somehow, i dont think this will be the case.

I hope a dev will answer some of these.

Will we still get karma for lower levels
is the daily chest once per account or per charachter
will we still have different daily chests for every 10 levels?
i saw no mention of things like lodestones in the chests, will this still be possible?
some confusion about the what happens to items that are infused, what will happen to an infused ascended backpiece that is infused(10 agony resist)?
how high does the combined agony infusion go up to?
How much AR are you expected to have?

Astralporing.1957:

cesmode.4257:

Becka Williams.4978:

Just make the time for spawning longer. Like, say, 30 minutes. Done and done.

Make the spawning random.

Why on earth don’t they do this? Why do they have it set up in such a way that people can almost time when champs can be triggered like clockwork?

Because the same would happen as if they nerfed the drops. People would simply migrate to the next best thing. And the same people that complain now that champ trains make the rest of the zones dead would complain about dead queensdale and frostgorge and ask why noone is doing champs anymore.
And they would stop being done, because they are profitable only when done in larger groups, and with fast rotation. Single champs done solo or in small groups are still not worth the effort.

this is the truth, the only way to make people not feel like they are wasting time not doing the optimal money activity, is making other content more rewarding. They need to increase the value of karma, increase the value of skill points, and create new content that is interesting in more areas. They also need to make people aware of this content.

Vargamonth.2047:

phys.7689:

gems dont really represent inflation though, they represent non paying player interest in black lion items. new armors, new skins. This is what is driving gem cost up. Perhaps there is also less people selling gems for gold.

the gem exchange is more about how people value real world time versus in game time. If people feel they can earn money by actually playing the game, less people will trade real money for gems. That doesnt mean people wont buy gems, just that they wont trade them for gold.

comparing inflation to gems, i dont think that is a good idea, too many other factors involved

Of course there’s not solely related to inflation. Nothing is.

Gems are going up mostly because there are new gem store items every 2 weeks, which hugely increases the demand of gems through gold.
However, this should also increase the amount of gold a paying customer gets for his gems, and even with that, the system is out of balance, mostly because that gold is not appealing at all. That’s IMHO the best indication of the inflation we are suffering.

There’s a lot of gold introduced in the system, mostly from dungeons. Different tasks, like champ trains or gathering, provide a lot of the items dungeons lack (t5/t6 materials, tradeable skins, …) and redistribute that gold through the trading post.

TP taxes are far from enough to eliminate the gold introduced in the system.
Unless investment, most goods will change hands just once, twice at best, which means that most of the remaining 70% of their value should be taken away by other gold sinks, and there aren’t really a lot of NPC services that demand those quantities.
Those cultural t3 armor sets for over 100 gold, they felt expensive some months ago … not so much anymore with the current income ratios.

So, where does all the gold go? I would say that most of the gold that doesn’t just stay, filling someones wallet up to ridiculous levels, is converted to gems.
I probably invest more than 70% of the gold I get on gems and, even without active farming (champtrains, easy and fast dungeons, …) and without selling any single material, my savings still grew up.
For a paying customer, who obviously buy his gems directly with cash, this growth should be far more obvious. Unless interested on some kind of legendary weapon, there’s just no reason at all for those players exchanging gems for gold.

Gold-Gem exchange ratio should be stable in the long run. Higher or lower, it doesn’t matter, just stable.
The current situation indicates that, while gems are more interesting than ever, gold is handgiven in such high amounts that has no value unless you are aiming for something really (and I mean, REALLY) “exclusive”.

but people should feel that if they play the game they can get the things they want. Gem to gold is designed for people who want a shortcut, or dont have the time or desire to get money other ways.

yes this makes it hard to get gem store items via playing, but i think thats ok, you can still get the items by buying them.

Vargamonth.2047:

phys.7689:

Vargamonth.2047:

That’s the eternal debate between nerfing whatever is on the top or boosting everything else to the same level. I usually prefer the first, and specifically for GW2 I think inflation is somewhat out of control.

people can actually afford things now. The question is how much buying power per hour of average play does the average player get. I think now, its more. Therefore i think its better for the economy as a whole. what exactly has gone up in cost much? hw much more does the average player earn now?

That depends A LOT on the item you’re seeking.

Sometimes there’s a market manipulation, an over supply/demand caused by a LS loot/recipe or just core changes that modify that supply/demand or just player priorities.
I bought 1k t6 claws during Queen Jubilee and sold them about 3 weeks ago at double price. Player incomes didn’t double in this time, they just were so cheap during QJ because of destroyer farming.

If you look at exotic weapons, for example, they’re far cheaper, but that’s closely related to tons of them being crafted and sold in order to cap professions.
If you look at gems, in the other hand, they’re more expensive than before champ bags and dungeon reward rework, even when factoring an income increase.

gems dont really represent inflation though, they represent non paying player interest in black lion items. new armors, new skins. This is what is driving gem cost up. Perhaps there is also less people selling gems for gold.

the gem exchange is more about how people value real world time versus in game time. If people feel they can earn money by actually playing the game, less people will trade real money for gems. That doesnt mean people wont buy gems, just that they wont trade them for gold.

comparing inflation to gems, i dont think that is a good idea, too many other factors involved

Dietere.3476:

phys.7689:

NM system was pretty anti gw2, and id rather not see it again in similar form. Standing arounf for 1-1.5 hours for a chance to kill mee deggi, for a chance to get a drop was not good

But that feeling when you finally get those Bounding Boots 1/52…

The big difference in GW2 is that everyone can tag the mob and have an equal chance. This could keep the maps populated while discouraging the zerg trains, even if only a little.

but itd be populated by people idling to immolate some NM every 1-1.5 hours

Vargamonth.2047:

phys.7689:

Vargamonth.2047:

Because the event is rewarding you with far more than it actually does.
After DE completion, you should get some (varying) silver/karma AND some event related reward (10 heavy moldy bags, for example). The change just prevents events being more profitable if they’re zerged (so much more enemies, maybe even champions, spawn), which forces population to concentrate and creates “farming spots”.

you want people to work harder for less reward though. The addition of champs to the old farming DEs made people stop running them, and try to guest to lower populated servers so less Champs spawned. Until the made champs worthwhile to kill. You will primarily create a situation where people dont like seeing other players, because it makes them work harder for the same reward.

It kind of already happened in Orr to a lesser extent, and it killed most of those events.

the key here is to make more facets of the world offer something different or equivalent to champ farms.

That’s the eternal debate between nerfing whatever is on the top or boosting everything else to the same level. I usually prefer the first, and specifically for GW2 I think inflation is somewhat out of control.

people can actually afford things now. The question is how much buying power per hour of average play does the average player get. I think now, its more. Therefore i think its better for the economy as a whole. what exactly has gone up in cost much? hw much more does the average player earn now?

Dietere.3476:

Not to be “that guy” who refers to a different MMO, but…

FFXI had a system called Notorious Monsters (NMs). These were champion-like mobs that only spawned under specific circumstances. Usually there were some placeholder mobs and a window of time in-between spawns for the NM. If the spawn window was open , you could kill the placeholder mobs and hope that the NM would spawn. They even gave the NMs cool names and some even had titles you could earn for killing the mobs. The NMs had some drops that were exclusive, which made hunting them kind of prestigious.

Replace “NM” with “Champion” and problem solved! You could even throw in a rare chance at some minis or something.

NM system was pretty anti gw2, and id rather not see it again in similar form. Standing arounf for 1-1.5 hours for a chance to kill mee deggi, for a chance to get a drop was not good

Vargamonth.2047:

phys.7689:

Vargamonth.2047:

The game just needs to equalize rewards as much as possible, favoring, if anything, harder content.

Mobs spawned by a DE shouldn’t drop any loot at all and DEs themselves should grant some kind of bonus reward (some amount of ore on a Dredge related one, for example) based on their length, trigger rate, proximity from other DEs, …
For world spawned champions, they probably should, as proposed, have a % rate to be an elite instead of a champion. T6 minerals/wood should probably be gotten as a t5 mining proc instead of having their own nodes, which allows alt farming.

It can be a hard work, for sure, but after some time and metric based changes, it should be possible to make almost every open world content equally rewarding.

Dungeon rewards should probably need a revision too, balancing the rewards around the completion time for an average group and the level of difficulty above regular open world content. The effectiveness of speedruns should also be factored.

your plans seem to be to make everything equally not rewarding.
Why should i do an event that has me kill 100 monsters if im getting no drops? good plan to make people avoid events even more

Because the event is rewarding you with far more than it actually does.
After DE completion, you should get some (varying) silver/karma AND some event related reward (10 heavy moldy bags, for example). The change just prevents events being more profitable if they’re zerged (so much more enemies, maybe even champions, spawn), which forces population to concentrate and creates “farming spots”.

you want people to work harder for less reward though. The addition of champs to the old farming DEs made people stop running them, and try to guest to lower populated servers so less Champs spawned. Until the made champs worthwhile to kill. You will primarily create a situation where people dont like seeing other players, because it makes them work harder for the same reward.

It kind of already happened in Orr to a lesser extent, and it killed most of those events.

the key here is to make more facets of the world offer something different or equivalent to champ farms.

Becka Williams.4978:

Just make the time for spawning longer. Like, say, 30 minutes. Done and done.

so people can be mad and ultra competive about killing champions? So champion only exotics go up to 100-200 gold, and people sit around waiting for spawn? yeah i seen it like that before in other games, dont think its a good system

Vargamonth.2047:

The game just needs to equalize rewards as much as possible, favoring, if anything, harder content.

Mobs spawned by a DE shouldn’t drop any loot at all and DEs themselves should grant some kind of bonus reward (some amount of ore on a Dredge related one, for example) based on their length, trigger rate, proximity from other DEs, …
For world spawned champions, they probably should, as proposed, have a % rate to be an elite instead of a champion. T6 minerals/wood should probably be gotten as a t5 mining proc instead of having their own nodes, which allows alt farming.

It can be a hard work, for sure, but after some time and metric based changes, it should be possible to make almost every open world content equally rewarding.

Dungeon rewards should probably need a revision too, balancing the rewards around the completion time for an average group and the level of difficulty above regular open world content. The effectiveness of speedruns should also be factored.

your plans seem to be to make everything equally not rewarding.
Why should i do an event that has me kill 100 monsters if im getting no drops? good plan to make people avoid events even more

Duke Blackrose.4981:

IMO, silver should be removed from champ bags entirely. It’s a relatively small amount of the profit from said bags, but it is a major contributor to the inflation in the economy right now.

They could also allow players to trade champion loot bags, effectively diminishing the value of some of these through tp taxes.

inflation is fine, as long as earning power is going up faster, which is currently the case. prices may have gone up 5% but earning potential of the average player is much larger. people are starting to spend gold on the intended sinks. like gems, legendaries. ascended, etc. People are actually making choices on what to burn up thier money now, instead of in general having none. Its better overall