ArenaNet: Linsey Murdock unveils High End Ascended Gear (2012-11-13)

[Vayne]

As I see it there are two different issues here. The first issue is the new stat, which only affects the dungeons that you farm the ascended gear in, and nothing else. I don't care about that at all.

The other question is one of higher stats. Here there are two possiblities. Either these items can be sold in the marketplace, or they can't. This makes it a very different result.

Someone asked me if there was anything you had to farm, progression wise, in GW 1, that you had to do specific content for. The answer is not really, but, if you wanted either ectos or obsidian shards, two different materials needed to make the rarest armor set in the game, you needed to farm both the Underworld and the Fissure of Woe, two elite instances...except for one thing.

I never farmed the instances and got Obsidian armor, by play, because I played enough to earn enough gold to buy those items from players and material traders, which is sort of like an NPC who sells specific mats, but those mats can only come from players.

So those who loved farming the Underworld and Fissure of Woe would run the instances again and again and again, and they'd sell ectos and obsidian shards and ANYONE could buy them. I never farmed them but I bought enough of each to get obsidian armor, and chaos gloves, which required ectos.

If these can be bought and sold on the marketplace, they'll be expensive at first and come down as more and more people farm them. Which means a WvW devotee can play WvW, and get money and buy them. You can make an awful lot of gold running around WvW, if you have an organized group and you're good at it. I make gold quite easily when my guild goes into WvW.

So, if this stuff is bind on pickup, or account bound on pickup, then people here have a very valid point. If it can be bought on the market place, I never have to set foot in that dungeon to get that gear...which means that I can do pretty much most things in the game to get it, including running dungeons, running Orr, playing WvW. The exception is pretty much SPvP, which is its own separate game anyway.

So that's my question. Is this stuff something you can buy off the marketplace. If it is, I don't have huge objections. If it's not, Anet has changed the game sufficiently to make it distasteful to a number of players.

[Lagger]

Hello

The game is going to be like WOW or dont?

No, it ain't.

That was the short answer.

[bokiz333]

As I see it there are two different issues here. The first issue is the new stat, which only affects the dungeons that you farm the ascended gear in, and nothing else. I don't care about that at all.

The other question is one of higher stats. Here there are two possiblities. Either these items can be sold in the marketplace, or they can't. This makes it a very different result.

Someone asked me if there was anything you had to farm, progression wise, in GW 1, that you had to do specific content for. The answer is not really, but, if you wanted either ectos or obsidian shards, two different materials needed to make the rarest armor set in the game, you needed to farm both the Underworld and the Fissure of Woe, two elite instances...except for one thing.

I never farmed the instances and got Obsidian armor, by play, because I played enough to earn enough gold to buy those items from players and material traders, which is sort of like an NPC who sells specific mats, but those mats can only come from players.

So those who loved farming the Underworld and Fissure of Woe would run the instances again and again and again, and they'd sell ectos and obsidian shards and ANYONE could buy them. I never farmed them but I bought enough of each to get obsidian armor, and chaos gloves, which required ectos.

If these can be bought and sold on the marketplace, they'll be expensive at first and come down as more and more people farm them. Which means a WvW devotee can play WvW, and get money and buy them. You can make an awful lot of gold running around WvW, if you have an organized group and you're good at it. I make gold quite easily when my guild goes into WvW.

So, if this stuff is bind on pickup, or account bound on pickup, then people here have a very valid point. If it can be bought on the market place, I never have to set foot in that dungeon to get that gear...which means that I can do pretty much most things in the game to get it, including running dungeons, running Orr, playing WvW. The exception is pretty much SPvP, which is its own separate game anyway.

So that's my question. Is this stuff something you can buy off the marketplace. If it is, I don't have huge objections. If it's not, Anet has changed the game sufficiently to make it distasteful to a number of players.

Vayne. What about people who spent 800k of karma on now obsolete exotics? Or 40 gold on different skins on TP. Or I have no idea how many mats crafting my exotics (and lvl to 400). Or how many FRICKING WvW BADGES that are so hard to get they spent on exotic Invaders gear. All under the very CLEAR direction that there was no vertical progressing and this was final end game gear. How is this not a huge F#$@ YOU to them?

You keep on missing the issue. If they had 3700 tiers TO START then I know whats what and can plan accordinyl. You can't change the game in a major way 3 months in...I don't want to buy them off the TP. Because I already did that thinking I just bought my end game gear. I'm not getting that money back. I'm most certainly NOT getting my WvW badges back.

What was the point of getting crafting to 400 is they dont make the best gear in the game? How was that not a total slap in the face? Why even have it as an option and not make everying a drop or through dungeons from teh start...why just this gear?

How you can't see why this is so different and problematic is beyond me.

[Vayne]

Vayne. What about people who spent 800k of karma on now obsolete exotics? Or 40 gold on different skins on TP. Or I have no idea how many mats crafting my exotics (and lvl to 400). Or how many FRICKING WvW BADGES that are so hard to get they spent on exotic Invaders gear. All under the very CLEAR direction that there was no vertical progressing and this was final end game gear. How is this now a huge F#$@ YOU to them.

You keep on missing the issue. If they had 3700 tiers TO START then I know whats what and can plan accordinyl. You can't change the game in a major way 3 months in...I don't want to buy them off the TP. Because I already did that thinking I just bought my end game gear. I'm not getting that money back. I'm most certainly NOT getting my WvW badges back.

What was the point of getting crafting to 400 is they dont make the best gear in the game? How was that not a total slap in the face? Why even have it as an option and not make everying a drop or through dungeons from teh start...why just this gear?

How you can't see why this is so different and problematic is beyond me.

I don't see exotics as obsolete. You do. I'm not a min/maxer. I don't think those stats are that important. I get that you do, and that's a problem for you. But I might NEVER get a legendary weapon. At the rate I'm going, by the name I need that karma, I'll have it again. In the mean time, for the duration of the time I have it, I'll have better stats.

It's like this in ALL games. How about in Guild Wars 1, the people that beat prophecies without heroes. And then how about the people that went out and did the drinking title the hard way and then they made it easier. Things are only obsolete if you feel they are. My exotics aren't obsolete. In fact, with the number of characters I have, most will only EVER have exotics. I might be able to get one legendary on one character, but you know, with so many characters, exotics is pretty much where I can go.

I'm not missing the issue AT ALL. I'm saying it's not an issue FOR EVERYONE. It's clearly an issue for SOME people. That doesn't mean it will be an issue for MOST people.

Some people seem to think because they have an issue with something, everyone needs to have the same issue. I have other issues with the game than you, and they're pretty annoying to me. However, I'm still having fun, so I'm still playing.

And I can just about guarantee that me with my partially exotic armor (only a couple of pieces so far) will continue to have fun in WvW when I play it, even though I might get out matched sometimes. I'm not seeing what stats anyone else has anyway. Why should I worry about it?

I get that people are upset that Anet has said one thing, and changed it. But you know that's not the same thing as a lie. This happens all the time not just with programs, but with everything. I tell my kid you know, after I get done with this, we can watch a movie. Then it takes me longer than I think and it's suddenly too late. Did I lie?

Anet miscalculated how long it would take people to get through content. It's not really hard to do that, because just about every MMO I can think of has done the same thing. No matter what you do, people will burn through content and leave the game or start to complain.

I'm not Anet. I don't work for them. I don't have hidden spy cameras in their office. I have no clue why they do what they do, beyond what they decide to share. I don't have their data. I don't see their intraoffice memos, I only know that they must think this is a good idea. They must think this is going to make the game better.

Now there's a guy in my guild who comes, not from Guild Wars 1, but from WoW, and he's excited for the patch. So is my son. I'm not particularly excited for it, as I've said before, I'm taking a wait and see attitude. That doesn't mean I love it, and it doesn't mean I hate it. It means I'm waiting to see.

I get why you're frustrated, but you're one person. Centaur is one person. Every single person on this forum still only represents a small segment of the Guild Wars 2 in-game population. Certain people hate what Anet is doing, certain people like it and certain people have prejudged it without even seeing it.

We don't even know what the new crafting recipes coming out are. Do you really think six months from now, three months from now, people in game will even care about this?

It's like everything else. The marketplace didn't work at launch for a week, people freaked. The cash shop sucks, people freaked. And if you look back at those threads, I say the same thing then I do now.

Until I SEE The content, and PLAY WITH the content, I can't JUDGE the content, no matter what that article makes it sound like.

If you think this is unreasonable, shrugs. There's nothing I can do to help you with that.

[Centaur]

Vayne, in this I definitely have to agree with bokiz. People thought that exotic gear was the max level gear, and that they could use that for any content. Now it has become clear that ArenaNet not only intends to release gear with better stats (making exotic gear no longer the best gear in the game, and requiring people to upgrade if they want to remain competitive in for example WvW), but also that there is new content (the fractals dungeon) that requires the new gear. And that this is just the first step... there is apparently much more to come.

So saying that your characters will stay at exotic gear level is basically stating that you will never play this new dungeon or any of the other new content that ArenaNet are working on. And if that's the way YOU look at it, then that's perfectly okay, but MOST people playing this game will want to play the new content that ArenaNet releases, in other words, they will be forced to upgrade their gear, as their current gear no longer suffices... in other words: their current exotic gear is obsolete.

[bokiz333]

OMG, Vayne, please read my posts. I play WvW...I'm not a min/maxer, I'm a "I don't want to lose to somebody because they have better gear and stats" king of guy. You know, the kind of guy that buys a game that promisses him that sort of thing.

You keep talking PVE even though I've said a bunch of times I play WvW. And you didn't address my MAIN point about the fact this wasn't told to us from the start so we used valuable resources we have to work very hard all over again to get just to get this gear. Where's my 800k in Karma Vayne?

Again, you think you don't need this gear in WvW. Are you the type of player that runs around with two others and sees a group of 8 and thinks...there's no need to run, this is a 50/50 fight? You're a guy that casually plays WvW, you don't HAVE to get the best gear. BUt lets be esrious here, do you think majority of people are working on getting masterwork gear or exotics? Exotics ofcourse, so if Ascended are the new Exotic...I wonder what people will work towards. If Ascended didnt have better stats, I could care less. Since they do, I have to get them or I am hurting myself and my team. And GOD FORBID I want to run a dungeon 6 months from now and don't ahve the gear...whats that...content that's no acessible to me? Hmmmm, now I'm confused which game I'm playing.

We can make a bet, if I can't beat a mob of risen in Orr with no armor on, I'll stop talking. If I can, lets agree to keep the incredibly easy and simplistic general non dungeon PVE content out of this (just you and me) conversation.

[bokiz333]

ETA: My God I can't spell.

[Vayne]

Vayne, in this I definitely have to agree with bokiz. People thought that exotic gear was the max level gear, and that they could use that for any content. Now it has become clear that ArenaNet not only intends to release gear with better stats (making exotic gear no longer the best gear in the game, and requiring people to upgrade if they want to remain competitive in for example WvW), but also that there is new content (the fractals dungeon) that requires the new gear. And that this is just the first step... there is apparently much more to come.

So saying that your characters will stay at exotic gear level is basically stating that you will never play this new dungeon or any of the other new content that ArenaNet are working on. And if that's the way YOU look at it, then that's perfectly okay, but MOST people playing this game will want to play the new content that ArenaNet releases, in other words, they will be forced to upgrade their gear, as their current gear no longer suffices... in other words: their current exotic gear is obsolete.

I know the two of you are in complete agreement. I see this. And there are people who are out there who DO NOT have exotic gear yet at all, and it won't affect them at all. But it certainly does affect you. I have some exotic gear and I'm not feeling the same way.

I keep saying, over and over in different threads, that this game came out six months or so early. It's obvious they weren't completely ready. I'm pretty sure they felt they had to launch before MoP came out, because that's apparently doing pretty well. It was a smart move. Yes, I also get they said they'd launch it when it was ready. Well, no MMO is ever ready.

This stuff might have been fixed before launch, and it would have launched with the different tiers and no one would have really had a problem, or at least not the same problem. But it didn't launch in six months, it launched early. So the stuff that would have been worked out isn't yet worked out. it's frustrating and it sucks. I get that.

The difference is, I'm not blaming Anet for having to make a business decision to launch early, even though they said when it's ready.

But what does when it's ready actually mean? Does that mean when it's perfected? Does it mean when it's bug free? This game had too many bugs at launch. And you can easily hold it against Anet that they didn't wait and they launched when they did, but I don't see where they had a choice and I'm not so sure they did either.

So yeah, the stuff that's happening now sucks. But I've been through this stuff in every MMO I've played. And it sucks in ALL of them. Currency that doesn't exist anymore than you get stuck with in your inventory. Items you bought that were useful that aren't useful almost immediately.

There's a ton of stuff wrong with this game. Three months from now, it'll be where it should have been at launch. If this were the first MMO this happened to I'd be screaming like everyone else, but it's happened to every MMO I've seen at launch. The first six months are almost like another beta. They all pretty much suck. Rift went through this, SWToR, even WoW. It's the nature of MMOs.

I get why you're upset. I do understand. And I see that a percentage of people will be upset and leave over this. The question is will more people leave than people who will stay or come back?

No one can answer that. And because of that, there's not really much else to say. I know I don't have 270 staff members to play every week.

- - - Updated - - -

OMG, Vayne, please read my posts. I play WvW...I'm not a min/maxer, I'm a "I don't want to lose to somebody because they have better gear and stats" king of guy. You know, the kind of guy that buys a game that promisses him that sort of thing.

You keep talking PVE even though I've said a bunch of times I play WvW. And you didn't address my MAIN point about the fact this wasn't told to us from the start so we used valuable resources we have to work very hard all over again to get just to get this gear. Where's my 800k in Karma Vayne?

Again, you think you don't need this gear in WvW. Are you the type of player that runs around with two others and sees a group of 8 and thinks...there's no need to run, this is a 50/50 fight? You're a guy that casually plays WvW, you don't HAVE to get the best gear. BUt lets be esrious here, do you think majority of people are working on getting masterwork gear or exotics? Exotics ofcourse, so if Ascended are the new Exotic...I wonder what people will work towards. If Ascended didnt have better stats, I could care less. Since they do, I have to get them or I am hurting myself and my team. And GOD FORBID I want to run a dungeon 6 months from now and don't ahve the gear...whats that...content that's no acessible to me? Hmmmm, now I'm confused which game I'm playing.

We can make a bet, if I can't beat a mob of risen in Orr with no armor on, I'll stop talking. If I can, lets agree to keep the incredibly easy and simplistic general non dungeon PVE content out of this (just you and me) conversation.

I have read your posts. I don't see WvW as a 1v1 area, and never have. It's group one against group two. I can only assume that roughly the same percentages of people on different servers will have roughly the same uptake of the new gear. Groups will be composed of roughly the same breakdown. There may be exceptions, but I never ever ran around WvW and thought, I could only kill him if I had better gear, even though I don't have the best gear now. The thought simply doesn't cross my mind.

The fact is, there are so many variables, this being just one, that to single it out becomes problematical. This is how the argument goes.

If I were to have equal skill with another player (something unmeasurable and frankly improbable), and his profession and mine had the same abilities, and we specced the same way, and the only difference was that he had this different gear, and we happened to meet, he could probably kill me. Unless he was having a bad day, or he was tired, but we'll have to assume we're both at peak performance too.

I don't know how you play but I run with anywhere from four to fourteen other people, and we work as a team, in as much as that's possible for my guild. We get into frays. We take down some parties larger than us and fall to some parties smaller. Did they have better gear? How can I even know?

In the end, we simply see WvW differently. Anet has said it was never meant to be a level playing field all along. Do you need me to go find the quotes?

[bokiz333]

I have read your posts. I don't see WvW as a 1v1 area, and never have. It's group one against group two. I can only assume that roughly the same percentages of people on different servers will have roughly the same uptake of the new gear. Groups will be composed of roughly the same breakdown. There may be exceptions, but I never ever ran around WvW and thought, I could only kill him if I had better gear, even though I don't have the best gear now. The thought simply doesn't cross my mind.

The fact is, there are so many variables, this being just one, that to single it out becomes problematical. This is how the argument goes.

If I were to have equal skill with another player (something unmeasurable and frankly improbable), and his profession and mine had the same abilities, and we specced the same way, and the only difference was that he had this different gear, and we happened to meet, he could probably kill me. Unless he was having a bad day, or he was tired, but we'll have to assume we're both at peak performance too.

I don't know how you play but I run with anywhere from four to fourteen other people, and we work as a team, in as much as that's possible for my guild. We get into frays. We take down some parties larger than us and fall to some parties smaller. Did they have better gear? How can I even know?

In the end, we simply see WvW differently. Anet has said it was never meant to be a level playing field all along. Do you need me to go find the quotes?

Well we can both see this will get us nowhere. You still havent answered where my 800k in Karma is Vayne but that's ok. I didn't say 1on1...I said 3 on 8 in one example.

But no, I get what you're saying. Gear shouldn't play that much of a part in WvW or other aspects of the game. AND I COMPLETELY AGREE. I can't wait when they release Super Ascended gear. Descended gear. Second Gear. Uber Pentultimate Gear. And people can grind away and enjoy the game because as we can both agree, stat differences in gear aren't an issue in the least bit. Honestly, I'm not sure why I made such a big deal about it to start. My bad guys.

[Vayne]

Well we can both see this will get us nowhere. You still havent answered where my 800k in Karma is Vayne but that's ok. I didn't say 1on1...I said 3 on 8 in one example.

But no, I get what you're saying. Gear shouldn't play that much of a part in WvW or other aspects of the game. AND I COMPLETELY AGREE. I can't wait when they release Super Ascended gear. Descended gear. Second Gear. Uber Pentultimate Gear. And people can grind away and enjoy the game because as we can both agree, stat differences in gear aren't an issue in the least bit. Honestly, I'm not sure why I made such a big deal about it to start. My bad guys.

You've got a crystal ball? Are you sure this isn't compensation for something they felt they did wrong, because that's how it comes off to me. I don't suspect that will happen. You might be right. But you might be wrong too.

Just like me.