Frustration with Ascended Gear / Updates

They're introducing more ascended gear in the next patch. They are introducing the laurel system to get the gear outside of the Fractals but you can only get that currency by doing dailies and monthlies...not doing the area that you like. So if I like to WvW...now I have to find jumping puzzles and have to spvp and be in spvp tournaments, just so I can get my monthly done so I can get laurels so I can (I assume after months and months) have enough of them to get some ascended gear.

Does a single person doubt that by now they couldn't have introduced Ascended gear in WvW based on the badge system? That in all this time (after they admitted it was a mistake) they couldn't have figured our the correct rate of badges to charge for it? Ofcourse they could have.

My guild has a strong suspicion that when it's rolled out in WvW it will be a new currency and not badges, and all the time spent in there would have been for nothing...badges are hard to get and once you get the invaders gear it's next to useless except for siege. (given the drop rates)

So it will be February, more ascended gear will be out, but still no way ourside of FOTM to get my gear. The earliest I could hope to get something would be after finishing the February monthly, after doing content I don't want to (grind) and I strongly suspect I'll need more laurels that one monthly gives to buy a piece of Ascended gear. So it will be April-ish or later till the non FORM players can hope to get one piece of ascended gear.

Most people here know that i enjoy the game and that my major (only) gripe with the game was and is ascended gear. Their continuing mishandling (well I believe it's intentional) of this is giving many people pause. There is no way to know if ESO will be the GW2 killer, but I can tell you that the ascended gear situation has made the core of my guild, all sign up for the beta and create a website and we're actively recruiting and figuring out the faction situation because we're upset over this....since we're very much a WvW centric guild. I'm just suprised how much AN has really ignored and avoided the strictly WvW playerbase. Makes me a sad panda. /end rant.

I can only imagine that many, like you have been hoping that ascended gear would be available via badges of honor. I am wrong to suspect you have been hoarding them away for such a time?

I could see no way for anet to allow people to already have a stockpile of currency ready and waiting for the new gear.

They want it to take people time(lots of it). MMOS are a time sink in nature.

No surprise to me in this.

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Originally Posted by Alexanian

I can only imagine that many, like you have been hoping that ascended gear would be available via badges of honor. I am wrong to suspect you have been hoarding them away for such a time?

I could see no way for anet to allow people to already have a stockpile of currency ready and waiting for the new gear.

They want it to take people time(lots of it). MMOS are a time sink in nature.

No surprise to me in this.

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Yeah, I have about 2500 badges waiting in my bank.

I can understand the argument that, well we want you to start from scratch and not use stored currency. WHICH WOULD HAVE BEEN VALID ONLY IF THEY RELEASED THE GEAR EVERYWHERE AT THE SAME TIME. (sorry for caps) If they release ascended in WvW at the same time as FOTM, then sure, that makes perfect sense. However, they didn't and they said that was a mistake. So to correct that mistake, you can let people use badges which everyone knows have a poor drop rate. I've been saving badges for almost 2 months and I have 2500ish...thats not enough for a invader set even right now. (current wvw gear) If you ground a dungeon for 2 months, you bet you would have had that gear a few times over.

This isn't game breaking for me yet, just something that hurts my gameplay experience.

Can't make everyone happy.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Alexanian

I can only imagine that many, like you have been hoping that ascended gear would be available via badges of honor. I am wrong to suspect you have been hoarding them away for such a time?

I could see no way for anet to allow people to already have a stockpile of currency ready and waiting for the new gear.

They want it to take people time(lots of it). MMOS are a time sink in nature.

No surprise to me in this.

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I must say, I'm with Bokiz here. As they didn't roll it out at the same time, it would not be too much to ask to get them for badges now. Sure, many will have hoarded them, willingly or unwillingly, because if you play enough WvW, you'll eventually have lots of them, but very little to spend them on.

But the only thing they'd have to do is to adjust the amount of badges required for the ascended items. By now, most hardcore PVErs will have all the ascended gear currently available (Rings and backpiece, if I recall correctly?).

Therefore, it would only be fair, if the hardcore WvWers would be able to acquire all the gear that has been available so far only through FotM right away when they offer ascended gear through other means. This would somewhat alleviate the advantage the PVErs have acquired so far.

And Bokiz is probably a very hardcore WvWer with his 2500 badges. I play WvW almost exclusively, but obviously much less (or much less successfull :) ), because I have had probably 800 badges in all my characters' lifetime and spent some of it on the PVT gear that wasn't available through the karma vendors in Orr (trousers and one weapon).

But on another note: So far, ascended gear has had little impact on WvW and with the option to acquire it outside of FotM now, even if it means monthlies and dailies, is acceptable for me. I mean, I finish the daily every day in WvW, if I play long enough. I've only completed one monthly so far (the first one, were no special event stuff was included), as I don't bother with doing stuff I don't like for it, but the monthlies are usually not that hardcore, so I could probably accept having to do them for the faster acquisition of ascended gear).

Maybe most hardcore PVe'ers have a ring and a backpack but really, what percentage of the population is that? No one in my guild does and most of us play every day. I suspect a very small percentage of players have those items, actually at this point in time.

This whole arguement goes down to grinding doesn't it. doing your monthly over a month is only like 1-2 hours a day, you enjoyed WvW, and had loads of badges you've got nothing to use on, so want to complain that Anet didn't think about your need for inventory space.
a company thinks about the long term - what will keep people playing/challeneged/engaged rather than "what will clear out inventory space."
again, assended gear is not likely to ever be armour, and just weapons/accessory add-ons so your armour is fine.

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Originally Posted by Vayne

Maybe most hardcore PVe'ers have a ring and a backpack but really, what percentage of the population is that? No one in my guild does and most of us play every day. I suspect a very small percentage of players have those items, actually at this point in time.

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You're probably right, with that being only hardcore players, but in reality that doesn't matter, because it all comes down to pricing. In my guild there are some pretty hardcore players that have fractal lvl 30+ and they all have a few rings. I'm not sure, though, about backpacks.

But as I mentioned, they'd only have to think about the pricing, should they decide to give ascended gear away for badges.
If, say, the most hardcore WvWers have 5000 badges right now, in my opinion they would be entitled the same reward as the most hardcore PVEers. So if these really have all the items available right now, then the WvWers should be able to get these too. That would put a ring at around 1000 badges and the backpack (if I'm right, these are very hard to acquire, even for PVEers) at 3000+ badges.

If it would be introduced that way, most WvW players would not be able to get the gear right away (or at least not all of it), as I assume not many would have that huge an amount of badges. Therefore, I don't really see a problem with this. It's just a matter of finding the right pricing.

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Originally Posted by sidxus

This whole arguement goes down to grinding doesn't it. doing your monthly over a month is only like 1-2 hours a day, you enjoyed WvW, and had loads of badges you've got nothing to use on, so want to complain that Anet didn't think about your need for inventory space.
a company thinks about the long term - what will keep people playing/challeneged/engaged rather than "what will clear out inventory space."
again, assended gear is not likely to ever be armour, and just weapons/accessory add-ons so your armour is fine.

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lol...who said anythinig about inventory space? My inventory has 10 slots taken up by badges and then a few more slots taken up by some salvaged Spvp stuff I will need for the mystic forge. I don't really store things in my bank, I sell them. So this has absolutely nothing to do with bank space. It has to do with what I (at least I thought) clearly explained in my post and Bell reitterated.

If you say you make a "mistake" (their words, not mine) then you usually try to FIX the mistake unless you're a scumbag. Not just make sure you don't do the same mistake in the future, you usually (again if you're a decent person) you actually try to make some sort of reparation. So what I'm saying is, it would have been the DECENT thing to make it badges. I'm not an idiot, AN can do whatever they want. They can introduce unicorn coins, that you earn by hugging skritt and thats how you get ascended gear.

And you bring up a point, I have loads of badges, nothing to use them on....hmmm, why did they make badges WvW specific, if they're near useless (outside of siege) while very hard to get. Why doesn't it make perfect sense to use this already had to get currency to get ascended, which is supposed to be harder to get. Doing dailies and monthlies will not be harder, it will just take longer. Because like you said, they want people playing the game longer. But that's not good game design, that's the skinner box and grind and another deviation from what many people expected from this game. How quickly people forget that this game was sold as not making people do content they don't want to and that everyone can have their own endgame and not be at a disadvantage. How quickly indeed.

And you don't think there'd be a major shitstorm if they gave this stuff away for badges for people who haven't been saving them, or have been farming fractals but would rather WvW? The problem is, anything Anet does, they're screwed because a percentage of the population will complain. Right now, the amount of people complaining about not having a ring and a backpack is relatively small when taken against the population of the game. It doesn't affect SPvP at all, and few PVe'ers are complaining about it. That leaves only WvWers and not all of them are complaining either.

So Anet has disenfranchised a small percentage of people at the potential risk of pissing off a large percentage of people. It sucks for those people. I sympathize, I really do, even if it doesn't seem like I do. Anet admitted they fucked up, but that doesn't mean they can just throw a solution down because a percentage of players want it.

That's always the problem with MMOs. What one group of players want will completely piss off another group. Developers can't please everyone.

Sad as it is, making those rings and backpacks available for badges would affect many people. Even people like me. I'm trying to get 500 badges for a legendary (eventually) and it's slow going because I don't WvW that much. Now, if I had the option to either spend those badges on gear that I could get now, or save them and wait longer for the legendary, it would be a pretty tough choice. I mean, the legendary could take forever, particularly since I'm boycotting the dungeon I need to get mine. lol

What makes sense to you because you're in that situation, might piss off people you never thought about. So it's probably not a great idea to do that, once the initial mistake has been made. I mean MMOs are all about six months down the road anyway. Once everyone has this stuff, no one will even care that there was a problem up front.