Guild Wars 2

Still, you cannot go from "We want everyone on an equal power base” to “Exotics were far too easy to obtain compared to our plans” which means “BiS items should take a lot of work to obtain” with nothing between to warn us of the change of plans.

Of course, warning us of such a change might have lost them the sales of many GW1 fans so they weren’t about to tell us I guess?

chemiclord.3978:

Or, could it be possible that maybe (just maybe), their plan at the start wasn’t working to keep the player base they felt they needed… and so they had to cave a little on their original intentions?

And then lie and pretend that 180 was in fact their plan from the very start?

dcypher.2590:

Just because the game doesn’t have a tank role doesn’t mean that bosses should not require tanking, let me elaborate. Have situations where all the members of the party have to take turns tanking due to a debuff or some other mechanic. Make kiting something fun…design the settings boss fights take place in to harbor kiting in unique ways.

There’s no mechanic to control aggro so no way to take turns tanking.

Kitting something isn’t fun because ranged weapons are pea shooters compared to melee, so kitting something means a slow and boring fight.

Vayne.8563:

First of all, I never said the game was gaining in popularity. That’s your words not mine. I said the game is busier now than it was back in November. That’s a bit different.

Oh really?

Vayne.8563:

In the meantime, I think this game is gaining popularity, not losing it.

You know, your posts look more and more like the ANet PR posts.

Trajan.4953:

For a game you buy once and never have to pay again, unless you value your time enough to spend real money, this game is beyond brilliant. The amount of work the A-Net team does on a daily basis to give FOR FREE to players is astounding.

It doesn’t matter that it’s free. If we don’t enjoy it, it’s not worth it.

Trajan.4953:

The amount of hate and vitriol I see on these forums by sad cases that just wanted GW1 with better graphics just saddens me.

We were promised GW1 with better graphics. And we mostly got it at release.

Trajan.4953:

The game has changed, and as any living world it should change, all the time.

You shouldn’t change the core of the game like that. It feels like playing a completely different game, one I won’t enjoy now.

Actually, I want the Ascended gear out of this game :o That or they remove the extra stats compared to Exotics.

What lack of constructive criticism? There has been PLENTY of remarks on how to improve the ascended mess already, some dating back from November last year.

Nothing was listened too, all we got was worse and worse implementations. First the Laurel daily gating for necklace, then the stupid idea of locking the earrings behind zerg guild missions, with an “alternate” scam of paying a huge amount of ectos and laurels for them.

And now, as if the complaints about that ecto price for non zerg guild access for earrings was nothing, let’s put the weapons behind a 250g markup price in our savings for the first weapon. All that without ever fixing the stupid idea that 2H weapon costs the same to craft than a single 1H weapon (in the most expensive mats)

ryokoalways.3450:

You really only need your main-hand to have ascended. Most of the offhand abilities do not do much damage (if any), so an ascended is pretty useless. The stat increase is marginal, and the reason to get ascended is for the 5% increase in base damage.

Or the agony resist. Then you need to pay twice as much for it. And god forbid you weapon swap at the wrong time! Twice more for the second weapon set.

They are bound to rework Pistol #2 one day or another, the skill is that awful. That day, it’s likely that PP would be considered as having received a buff, even if nothing else was changed.

kokiman.2364:

Just as a reference, when I reached Level 20 in GW1 I wasn’t even close to my first set of max armor + max weapons.

Well unless you mean something different and talk about that rune thing that was ultra expensive, I did get max armor shortly after level 20. Getting just THE right weapon required me to finish a campaign first though but then it was given for free for me.

The equivalent in GW2 would be getting the ascended weapon set of your choice (on 2H or two 1h) after we beat Zhaithan.

As for the sigil/rune thing, you could get by with the next best one and only losing like, 9 max HP total?

The fact people can reach crafting 500 without buying mats on the TP is pointless since for opportunity costs reason, the mats you farmed yourself still have value.

maddoctor.2738:

No. I said you will have enough materials to craft an Ascended Weapon not that your fresh level 80 alt will enough materials to get to 500 Weaponsmithing. I never included getting to 500 Weaponsmithing in my calculations.

Yes you did. You said the Dark Matters will come from salvaging the exotics you made to level your craft to 500.

Also, nobody gets 450 Mithril while leveling from 1 to 80 unless they go out of their way to gather as much as possible.

maddoctor.2738:

You need exactly 6 weapons to get to level 450 on any crafting discipline, and you can even make a profit selling them, or salvage them for Dark Matter. I won’t go above it until they “fix” the Ascended recipies and make them reward exp beyond 450, it’s silly that it doesn’t.

So your plan to craft an Ascended weapon with a freshly level 80 alt includes getting enough mats out of nowhere to craft 6 exotics, and then waiting for ANet to nerf the costs themselves because you say so?

Sounds good to me.

You completely ignore the cost of leveling one craft to 500, except at the part about Dark Matter.

For example, you say that for one ascended weapon it costs only 5 T6 mats. Yet you get Dark Matter by salvaging the exotics made in the 400-500 part. You need like on average, 10 exotics to get your Dark matter. That’s already 50 T6 mats and 50 Globs of Ectoplasm extra you didn’t count.

Last time I checked, you needed 500 in a craft for a weapon. It costs around 180-200g in materials to do 400→500 even counting the money you get back by selling the stuff you craft which is partly stupid since you need to disassemble them to get one of the components for Ascended.

Here’s the breakdown : it costs more to level your craft from 400 to 500 than to straight buy a full set of cultural T3 armor. Are you telling me that any fresh level 80 would have enough money to get one set of cultural T3 armor?

Btw, your huge wall of text never mentioned Dark Matter. Why?

maddoctor.2738:

By the time you reach level 80 you should have enough of the Ascended materials to craft an Ascended Weapon.

By the time my alt reaches level 80, he doesn’t even have close to enough gold and materials to craft a full exotic set, not to mention leveling the 4 crafts needed to do it to 400.

What makes you think a freshly level 80 char got enough mats for even one Ascended Weapon? Did you see how much ore and wood it costs?

Although having some bosses focused on bundles aren’t bad, I still play a dungeon mostly to play my char, my class and my build, not something fixed I’ll never see again elsewhere.

maddoctor.2738:

No it doesn’t. Ascended doesn’t make as much of a difference in large scale WvW battles, sure it affects roamers and duelers a lot, but not large scale combat. Profession/build matters, gear does not.

I guess Ascended is completely useless then since it doesn’t matter in anyway. ANet should just delete it all and the game would be better.

Wolfheart.1938:

Colin, Eurogamer, September 2011. So in a grand total of 2 years they did a 180° turn on this important game design choice. I wonder what’s in store for 2014.

A system when you consume a stack of 50 ecto for a chance to enchant itand it gets a chance for +1 enchant, or it breaks completely. Only works on ascended items.

Zoid.2568:

Now we weren’t supposed to have exotic once we hit level 80. Whoever said that lied or got the wrong information.

Lied or wrong information?

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

Treborlavok.3504:

You know what would be nice and make it all worth while and worth the grind…

If they let you choose your stat combos on your ascended gear. Since they’re making ascended the be all gear, aside from legendary weps, why not be able to choose our stats on the fly like legendaries?

Sorry, that’s for the Transcended gear they’ll release next year with 5% more stats above Ascended.

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

It doesn’t take 5 minutes to get 5 ectos.

Olba.5376:

@OP: Did you forget to consider that maybe Ascended weapons aren’t something that they intended for you to have on every single slot? Kinda like how you’re not expected to have 1-4 Legendaries on your character?

ANet fell a long way from their time of GW1 then.

“Sorry guys, we don’t expect people to have BiS items any time soon. GW1 was too fair and skill based you see? We want it to be about who is the biggest farmer”

If we could choose our stats but not the weapon, every weapon drop we got could be of use to an alt. Whereas, since they force us the stat and let us choose the weapon, a good chunk of those drops will be completely useless. Ie, it lengthens the grind which seems to be the new way things are run in Grind Wars 2.

kossman.8206:

Threatening?? No.. Comical…

Games evolve… And this thread is stemming from an interview taken from September of 2011.

Some of us based our purchase decision on that kind of information you know. I could nearly be grounds for a lawsuit even no? False advertising.

whyme.3281:

So 95% of the Armorsets we have were designed for WvW and PVP?

It’s pretty obvious the stat system was thought of for sPvP and not PvE or WvW.

Since the patch, W2 difficulty seems about right. Except that room with the boxes and the many dart traps. Who though it was a fun idea to hide some of those between two boxes, firing through a tiny gap XD

Well, reskin your exotic zerker GS with the Ascended cleric one then :p

Chuo.4238:

Speculation on this will likely get this thread locked. I’d suggest taking it to Reddit or somewhere like that. I’ll look for you there

Sure, but well, Reddit already ran enough around the topic anyway, not much more to discuss really

P2W is not about wining, it’s about convenience. Only the very worse games made it a requirement for wining.

The question is, how much convenience is ok and how much becomes P2W?

OnlyFate.8549:

Do you gain more reward if you finish it faster?

You know the saying? Time is money. The saved time is spend outside earning concrete gold coins :p

They should cut by 90% how much we loot. And cut by 90% how much we need to craft too XD In less than one hour of play I already filled up a full stack and I’m far away from the skill level to refine it :/

Chuo.4238:

Agree completely. Had all this Ascended gear just been shiny skins, with the same stats as any other gear (or arguably, an infusion slot for Agony, and otherwise the same stats), I’d be happy as a clam and playing GW2 (mostly) contentedly.

Shiny skins, infusion slots, utility like easy sigil/stat change. There was plenty of opportunities to make Ascended very desirable without making it better statistically than exotics.

xephire.8324:

According to Robert he wanted to make a permanent dungeon that withstood time instead of temporary dungeons.I think he must have offended the higher ups for not realizing his dream and following their plan so he got the boot.

He never said he was fired for that. We don’t know why he was fired in fact.

Although I suspect it’s because he wasn’t that good at his work in the end. Most of the content we know he designed wasn’t that great you know.

Vayne.8563:

Every game with progression requires some sort of “working toward a goal”.

As long as that goal wasn’t more stats, it would have been fine.

The problem would have been greatly diminished if ANet made the ascended weapons extremely cheap to craft, concentrating the core of the cost into leveling a craft to 500. The weapons themselves shouldn’t use any of the existing mats except maybe a few T6 fine mats to select the stats and the new ascended time gated mats.

And it would have been more alt friendly too :/ Such a waste of opportunity.

Of course it hurts them. But the amount of gem sale is only proportional to the value of the items they put for sale there.

Do you think that Ascended weapons contribute in one way or another to more gem sales? I don’t see how. There’s nothing in the gem store related to those weapons or how to craft them. Short of Black Lion Salvage Kits which I have 5-6 extras I don’t use for example.

On the other hand, people that want alts really need gems for more char and inventory slots. Yet ANet makes the game alt punishing. Is that for real? They need more transmutation stones than normal to change their looks than main only players. They need more cash shop skins to dress up.

Also, I’m pretty sure the middle ground pleases nobody. What will the VP crowd do at the end of the year? The ascended armor will be released, and judging by the track record of the weapons, people will have full sets 3 days after the patch. Then what? No more VP guys. Ah wait, where are you going! Here’s the transcendent armor! And the level cap upped to 100!

kiba.2768:

because it’s magic!

the vision crystal is a magical reagent…or some such alchemical nonsense…

The same issue exists for exotic or rare weapons.

Rouven.7409:

Charr is “only” 2% behind sylvari and 3% behind asura. Norn are only 3% over asura.

Basically 1/3 are playing human and 2/3 the rest.

I guess only weaponsmiths should be updated in the future as well.

Except the point was probably that making an armor for humans means it’s automatically done for Norn and for Sylvari too short of a couple tweaks. Whereas making the same armor for Charr and Asura would need to start from scratch.

And that is even counting the fact that Charr and Asura only have male models for armor.

PrivateSoftcore.6291:

Funny how people vote with their wallets, right? If people spend money on these games, it’s because they enjoy them. GW1 was out for more than enough time. GW2 has been out for more than enough time. People have voted with their wallets. This model does not work.

The minority who go against the mainstream models always pretend that their way is superior. It’s the same with COD haters. COD SUCKS MAN, THAT’S WHY IT SELLS SO MANY COPIES, RIGHT?

Now now, you are getting a little ahead of you. Who said only one model can work? That’s the problem here. I have little doubt VP works. Horizontal Progression MMO would work too. It’s just that maybe it’d work at a smaller scale? Profitable doesn’t require you to get all the money, all the MMO players in the world. It only requires you to get more money than it costs you to operate.

PrivateSoftcore.6291:

I think it’s cute that people think the GW1 model is sustainable and profitable. There’s a reason AN can’t follow it and expect to stay in business.

I think it’s cute that people condone the constant lack of originality in the video game creation market (outside of Indies).

“GW1 model cannot work today! Why? Nobody tried it and proved it worked, we got plenty of data that shows VP treadmill models work though.”

Right, let’s just spend decades polishing unoriginal copies. If we polish it enough, the shininess might attract some skritt.

Nirvana.8659:

“More peoples play human and Norn race”?!
I can’t belive a GW2 developer told that , to explain the persistent trouble with charr armor,sorry.
If he told that for real , i’d say give us the change race scroll.
I’m an asura,but i would use it too ,cause weapons are INVISIBLE on the asura race.

Gotta love metric driven development no?

Or maybe to keep it simple, 2H costs 2, 1H and offhand costs 1. Thief got 0 offhand weapon, only uses main hand weapon as offhand. And for the class, 1h = 2.5 skills (yeah, it does, special rules for #3 skill)

As for Defiant, I think ANet should just make the stacks decay quickly over time.

2H weapons should have required two insignas to craft from the start, that’s the problem.

Until ANet uped the grind to “Korean level” to make items, it wasn’t much of an issue. Now though?

That because the same flaw exists in all crafting and to a lesser extend in dungeon gear buying.

Dodging doesn’t need to be made irrelevant. But in the current game it’s a kind of magic bullet used to avoid all damage. PvE could use some variety on that front.

Hawkian.6580:

Wait, why wouldn’t you just go straight for the legendary if you’re working toward one?

Because getting BiS items trumps getting a nice skin. Well I think, the effort for both is so big I’m not sure anymore.

TooBz.3065:

Which is why you probably shouldn’t craft one. Instead of spending 200 gold to craft ascended work toward the legendary which is a) not time gated and b) guaranteed to be BiS.

But one legendary will not equip my main 4 weapons + various swaps :/ If I want to be full BiS, it’ll cost me absolutely all my savings since the game start, savings I wanted to put into one Legendary.

If I go for BiS, I lose all progress towards legendary, if I go for Legendary I’m missing 3 BiS items.

Thanks ANet, that’s exactly what I needed to improve my DotA 2 skill.

Neve.7134:

Bad thing is Arachnophobia also was +Magic find and Now i’ve got a soulbound bow on my mesmer i cannot even use or sell -_-

Really ?

Infinite Light, Immobulus, The Crossing, The Mad Moon, Arachnophobia, Cooguloosh, and Seasatchel will all allow their stats to be permanently chosen as a one-time ability but not become account bound.

Vol.5241:

They already said the purpose of ascended was to bridge the wide gap.

I’m pretty sure the sheer cost of making one ascended weapon (around 200g for craft and 40g in mats after) is actually widening the gap between me and a Legendary.