34 replies to this topic

[ilr]

I'm curious how much soul searching it took them to come to this realization....

I never had a problem with "Ascended gear" stats themselves like most people did.  It was these ridiculous Infusions attached to it that necessitated a series of Dungeons where the only point of those dungeons was to acquire the Gear, VIA TREADMILL, to complete those dungeons faster.  IOW: Copy Pasta from EQ & WoW & any other grindy POS that SOE fanboys have gotten their hands on in the past dozen years....  It's a gateway to turning everything into a grind when you add a very specific type of "Hazard" to any Meta/Zone and only let people avoid that hazard by acquiring gear for it.

I've spent way too much time in Planetside lately (blame the outfit I joined).  It's forced me to do some soul searching too, and maybe I wrote off Anet too easily.  As bad as this kind of grind is.... atleast it's not the bold-faced Pay-to-Win (plus Spray & Pray) I've been subjected to the past month.  Both of their Territorial-control minigames  (IE: WvW vs. "Hex" Capping) are still a travesty and neither one of them instill any sense at all of Progression or Persistence.   But I gave up so quickly on Anet because I was worried (and still am...) that their plans for Progression in WvW would center around the next type of infusions instead of around architecture/upgrades and persistence.  We have no idea what the WvW infusions will grant resistance too.... perhaps Siege damage, perhaps Zerg spam, or just something innocent like a Champion at the end of a jump puzzle.  But as long as it only costs 5 skill points instead of 50..   the concerns about Grind and pay to win are atleast reduced by 90%....


All of this was a mathematical calculation....  as was giving up on Anet like so many have already done.
Maybe we're all a little too obsessed with math in this Genre.  But it's encouraging either way to see Anet admit they misplaced a Decimal point...

Edited by ilr, 17 December 2012 - 10:37 PM.

[Trei]

Sheepski, on 17 December 2012 - 10:34 PM, said:

To be honest this is the exact argument of all those raiders in other games, which we're meant to have moved away from. There are many reasons why people can't or don't want to run a certain instance type; whether dungeons, fractals, raids etc and while the skins should be restricted as they make no difference at all, top stats should be available in a variety of methods, so everyone has an equal chance at getting them.

I am not arguing that the new asc gear should be confined to the fractals.

At the beginning of this particular conversation, I was merely asking the poster why he wanted ascended gear at all, if he hated fractals.
Then I further elaborated why I asked by putting forth my own opinion on asc gear - which is that they are practical only in the fractals.

It is not irrefutably top gear.
We may lose a sigil/rune slot for it.
It is barely more a sidegrade, a trade-off, and that's before we even try to quantify and include the various sigils or rune-sets effects' effective stat values on top of the stats baked into asc gear as compensation for the upgrade slot loss.

Effects like -
10% / 20% / 30% chance to cause a lightning strike on a critical hit.
+10% damage while health is above 90%.
5% to cause your next attack to steal life when hit. (cooldown: 15s)
etc..

Of course, if it ends up that even such similar "set" bonuses would be introduced with new asc armor and weapons... then I may need to re-evaluate my position.


Is the entry requirement to acquire these asc gear high?
All you need is 4 other competent players and 30 to 60 mins of your time to complete a fractal run.
Is this not equally available to everyone?

Contrast this basic requirement to needing more than 10 or 20 highly coordinated players for a minimum of 3-4 hours per raid.
Few working adults can overcome these kind of access barrier, let alone those with families.
I'm not sure if there is a fair comparison here.

Nevetheless, I definitely won't have any objections whatsoever if Anet makes asc gear available everywhere else in the game.

Edited by Trei, 18 December 2012 - 02:47 AM.

[Sheepski]

Trei, on 18 December 2012 - 02:34 AM, said:

snip

(Am half asleep if something doesn't communicate well )

In relation to your original post which I quoted before; my point was that people want/"need" ascended gear because, for me I see 2 reasons. Firstly because it's max stats, the best you can get, and people strive for that. And secondly because eventually, the community will demand it. In previous games so many raiders spam lfg with "lfg tier 1 dungeon, need full tier 3 raid gear" and I don't want to see people demand ascended gear for normal dungeons here.

Because of the RNG factor, it's true that you may not have an effective increase in power. We're not sure how the weapons and armour will be done yet, but I imagine they will still have a slot for runes/sigils. But we'll see for that I guess.

As for the accessibility factor. A lot of the mechanics are off putting, the fragmented community meaning it's difficult outside of a good guild to find groups at the right level and obviously the difficulty at higher levels where ascended items are the rewards etc are possible factors in prohibiting access to the dungeon. There's also just not liking the content, which personally stops me from going there very often.

Obviously some of that is personal to every individual but it still stops those people from going there; the same for any type of content and that's where I think the same standard of rewards should be available elsewhere, to give choice and enable more fun, less obligation.

I agree that in comparison to 2-4 hour raids it's nothing, if you can find people to run with. And that's the flaw with those style games, that working people, or whoever can't/won't do raids, can't get the top stat gear... and it's something that should be obvious that we don't want with this game.

In all other content in gw2, if you don't/can't do content then you're only restricted from cosmetic gear/titles/achievements etc rather than stats.

[duncanmix]

Coren, on 17 December 2012 - 10:10 PM, said:

Were those rings of.the stats you wanted? I doubt that.

Well I like to have different sets, so those 2 rings were one of those I wanted. But I got some other 5 rings for my alts as well. And now with this new token, every 10 fractals u get ring of your choice. People also forget this. Before we had to be lucky to get rings we want. Now after 10 daily fractals its sure u get ring of any stat u want.

Also to this person that is doing with pugs, I totally understand you. I'm lucky that I have 2 friends that are willing to play similar things as I do, so we do fractals together, and now lately it was hard to find party for even level 10 fractals. I had to circle through several overflows to find 2 people for fractals yesterday. Like 2 days ago I had to do lower level fractals, it took us over 30 minutes to find 2 people. And its same with other dungeons. Ac could take over 20 minutes to find two people etc... They really need to implement some easy party grouping for dungeons. And also they should remove those lame pre quests to open gates... Nothing worse then going for cof and u have to escort stupid razen the raider for 100th time.

[MazingerZ]

Protoss, on 15 December 2012 - 07:46 AM, said:

If somebody at A.Net finds the activity fun, it is NEVER grind.

Yes, making money through RMT is fun, therefore, not a grind.