New Dungeon, Fractals of the Mists

[barackopala]

So those people can leave again in a week? It's a really bad idea to pander to that crowd in my opinion.

It mostly depends on how well executed the content is, you're asuming people will instaleave.

[Newbryn]

Yeah, it could work in A.Nets favor, who knows!

It could and even be a big success doesn't change the fact its a big slap in the face to the loyal player-base.

[Kelesti]

So those people can leave again in a week? It's a really bad idea to pander to that crowd in my opinion.

But when the next patch lets them get even stronger, they'll be back again! Afterall, ArenaNet doesn't care how often you play, flat out encouraging people to take breaks for months and come back whenever.

It's a really shitty way of treating your dedicated playerbase if only to court latecomers that didn't give a flying fuck what ArenaNet was trying to do and just wanted old MMOs.

[Kelimbror]

I thought the concept of no gear progression would be amazing, that cosmetics would motivate me to play and keep going.

Well, it didn't.

I stopped playing before I even hit max thinking about what was to come. Now everyone is up in arms because they feel like a gear treadmill is being implemented. It sounds like they are striking a very delicate balance between doing that outright and tying it into a specific dungeon scheme. Considering how everything scales, I can imagine this gear wouldn't make you much more powerful (if at all) outside of the specific dungeon.

Inside it however, you can start becoming more godlike. This lets you tackle 'greater' challenges and gives you a more solid feeling of progression for your character. And since it specifically says when your health and stats go up, the dungeon will put yuo in harder versions means to me that it's just a great implementation of a gating system for once. People are freaking out thinking this gear is going to somehow let you go out and one shot all the swarms of mobs in between nodes in max level zones. I doubt that is going to happen.

Basically take them on good faith, because they haven't really done anything in the past or right now to warrant such alarm. And who cares anyways, it's not like you are paying them a monthly fee for it. Let them create the game they want people playing.

[Arrowstormen]

MMO's are made for the joy of playing with others, RPG's are made for progression (partly). Currently, the only way to progress or achieve stuff after exotic gear is legendary, which is miles and miles away, leaving a giant gap of nothing. We need some stepping stones, some boosts and milestones to keep us going.

[Zeek Daniels]

Some of you guys are acting as if Anet is going to be developing future dungeons with acendence gear in mind. If they did then you guys are right. But that is not what they said. Reread the posts and the articles on various game sites. This specific dungeon will continue to grow. There will not be others added.

For instance pretend this is an exploreable mode dungeon coming out with 9 paths. In 2 months another patch comes out adding 5 more paths, 2 months later another 4 paths get added to the rotation. The dungeon itself is going to expand as well as its cap on difficulty.

Eventually players who want to progress as far as possible in this dungeon will hit a wall. The acendence gear moves that wall backward so you can progress again and again and again.

For players that dont want to do this never ending dungeon will get new dungeons with story modes and explorable modes in future patches. These dungeons will have an ending and wont have a infinite scaling difficulty. Since you guys dont like the new dungeon you can play here and not worry about what those other players are doing.

This really is just a new PvE mode.

[barackopala]

It could and even be a big success doesn't change the fact its a big slap in the face to the loyal player-base.

Oh the good ole' loyal playerbase... happened on starcraft, people didn't want SC2 to be SC2, they wanted BW2.0 and then they realize BW was made around overpowered units being extremely derpy on their performance.

The "Loyal playerbase" argument is somewhat annoying, if you end up cattering the sort-of elitism from the loyals you'll definately get less new players involved in your game (or interested)

[Arrowstormen]

This is valid, around 20 minutes mark: http://www.gamebreaker.tv/video-game...w/hawks-yetis/

[Azuri]

It mostly depends on how well executed the content is, you're asuming people will instaleave.

Not sure if that's the best idea once you add gear progression into the mix and deviate from your base design you now are competing directly with WoW, Rift and others I doubt that would end well. The GW franchise should stick to their roots or get fed to the wolves if they cater to the vertical progression crowd. To much of a saturated market to compete with and to be frank GW2 PVE would need a complete overhaul to grasp and keep that crowd content.

[Valeron]

On the mark there Azuri. Isn't there a quote someplace that basically states, if you try to please everyone, you'll end up pleasing no one.

[Durzlla]

Some of you guys are acting as if Anet is going to be developing future dungeons with acendence gear in mind. If they did then you guys are right. But that is not what they said. Reread the posts and the articles on various game sites. This specific dungeon will continue to grow. There will not be others added.

For instance pretend this is an exploreable mode dungeon coming out with 9 paths. In 2 months another patch comes out adding 5 more paths, 2 months later another 4 paths get added to the rotation. The dungeon itself is going to expand as well as its cap on difficulty.

Eventually players who want to progress as far as possible in this dungeon will hit a wall. The acendence gear moves that wall backward so you can progress again and again and again.

For players that dont want to do this never ending dungeon will get new dungeons with story modes and explorable modes in future patches. These dungeons will have an ending and wont have a infinite scaling difficulty. Since you guys dont like the new dungeon you can play here and not worry about what those other players are doing.

This really is just a new PvE mode.

Zeek your logic is simply falling on deaf ears, everyone is to blinded by the 2 point stat increases and the "going back on their design philosophy" (which they didn't) to actually listen to reason...

[Valeron]

A nice little blog post that sums up my feeling on it.

http://www.guildwars2hub.com/feature...-ascended-gear

[Arrowstormen]

A nice little blog post that sums up my feeling on it.

http://www.guildwars2hub.com/feature...-ascended-gear

While that's a nice and cozy blog post, I still think there should be something to do for the people who want more than a "I'm bored and got nothing better to do" game. Which it probably seems like to some.

[Zeek Daniels]

A nice little blog post that sums up my feeling on it.

http://www.guildwars2hub.com/feature...-ascended-gear

In that article he makes mention alot of times about "getting best in slot items" My question is why? Why does he need those BiS items? You dont need BiS items to do things in this game. Him wanting BiS is a personal issue that many MMO players have. If its not BiS i dont want it. If his goal is getting BiS items and his secondary goal is cosmetics then he has it backwards. You dont need BiS items for anything in this game. He wants them because it makes him feel better about his toon, it doesnt make him complete Arah path 1 or 2, his skill and build do that, as well as teamwork with his group.

This gear makes ppl who think BiS is top priority in GW2 mad, Because now they think they need to attain it. But thats the thing, you dont need to attain it. You dont need it at all unless you want to tackle 1 specific dungeon at its highest difficulty. If you were able to purchase Acended gear on the TP but never step foot in the dungeon to do the content, then why do you have it.

This is whats really making me scratch my head. Why are players who wont even do the harder difficulties of the dungeon worrying about what stats are on the gear or what new item slot it provides. If your not going to do the content dont complain about how its set-up.

If you think BiS is the be all end all of games then all you play games for is stroking your ego. Yes the patch provides a new BiS list of items. Yes this list will grow with future patches. Yes you can do all the content without the new BiS gear. No the gear isnt going to be required outside of this dungeon. No you cant have your birthday party at Freds house.

[Durzlla]

A nice little blog post that sums up my feeling on it.

http://www.guildwars2hub.com/feature...-ascended-gear

I think the main reason i'm not freaking out about the whole Ascension thing is i'm living in the world where Ascension is the last tier of armor they are adding before they add in the legendary armor (which they've said PRE RELEASE it would be in eventually, just not at launch), where as everyone else is thinking this will be the beginning of the end and treadmills EVERYWHERE!!

But yeah, if i'm wrong i'm going to go burn down the Arena.net studio with the mob of angry GW2 fans...

[Zeek Daniels]

Like I said in the other thread, if you want to use logic like this, then if you follow it to the inevitable conclusion you might as well just support a full-blown raiding system in the game.

"You don't need BiS gear unless you really want to do that one Heroic Raid, and that's optional."

"You don't need the next-to-BiS gear unless you really want to do the Normal Raid, and that's optional."

So on and so forth. Your logic might work, but it's describing more WoW than GW2.

Nope. Because Content is kept from you under the raiding system. The raid itself cant be completed unless the items you are using are of a certain level. This is blocking the consumer from playing a part of the game. LFR helps with this but even LFR wont allow ppl below a certain ilvl into it and is thus another content block.

Now look at GW2 and its FoM dungeon. The dungeon at its easiest does not require BiS gear, no dungeon in GW2 requires BiS gear. BiS gear is just stats that help but dont make or break a dungeon run. Since you dont need BiS gear to complete all 9 paths GW2 is not blocking you from seeing content without first obtaining a certain item set. Now the increased difficulties are the same exact dungeon. Yea the difficulites are being blocked by not having BiS gear but that would have happened anyway and ill explain the beauty of an infinite dungeon.

The infinite dungeon has no end. It has no cap on difficulty. So a group in full exotics would eventually come to a point where they could no longer progress. Then what do you do. I thought it was infinite. But i cant get past X difficulty because the dmg i take from this debuff is unbearable. So without the BiS gear in game a road block would appear. And there would be no way to get past it. Thus the dungeon would not truly be infinite as there would be as exotic gear would reach a ceiling. And then everyone would complain to Anet that the dungeon wasnt neverending and that the true end was at X difficulty because Agony rapes our face. So what did they do? they added a new item set that combats agony. But you only need that item set if your looking to get past X difficulty i previously mentioned. And then a new Y difficulty would appear that even 3 acended items couldnt get you past. So they release 2 more items and that gets you to a ceiling of Z and so on and so forth.

In reality its not a gear treadmill your running on. The dungeon itself is a treadmill. There is no end to it. You guys are getting trolled so hard.

[Deleted]

You can do everything in GW2 even in whites, but there's a reason people go for exotics.
As for the ascended is even worse, you eventually will need it to stand up against spectral agony.

If ANet goes down the route of progression they really need to implement a reliable and cheap way of getting Fine Trans. Stones.

[Kelesti]

Durz, what does "Legendary Armor" mean, to you?
Because it's not supposed to be better than the best-equippable gear, stats wise, only a ridiculously badass skin and effect on your character (the game's not about stats, right?).

So with that in mind, why does there need to be an additional tier of gear for this to be true? Why does it have to be Legendary/Ascended? What functional difference is there between that and Exotic/Legendary that does not appease your ego enough? And why again is this okay now, but won't be if they end up implementing "Majestic" armor in the future (and again upscaling the Legendaries)?

Could you answer these for me, Durz?

[Zeek Daniels]

Durz, what does "Legendary Armor" mean, to you?
Because it's not supposed to be better than the best-equippable gear, stats wise, only a ridiculously badass skin and effect on your character (the game's not about stats, right?).

So with that in mind, why does there need to be an additional tier of gear for this to be true? Why does it have to be Legendary/Ascended? What functional difference is there between that and Exotic/Legendary that does not appease your ego enough? And why again is this okay now, but won't be if they end up implementing "Majestic" armor in the future (and again upscaling the Legendaries)?

Could you answer these for me, Durz?

Its ok if they keep all content accessible and complete-able no matter what gear you are wearing. If they block content because your gear is "subpar" then you are correct. But if they keep adding content that doesnt require the highest gear to complete and can be done with a group in the lowest gear set, then everyone should be alright with it.

I dont care if they add 20 tiers to the game. If i can do all the content in greens and blues or blues and exotics then i am happy and you should be too.

However if they add 20 Tiers to the game and i cant complete all the content because i dont have Tier X then ima be pissed and you should be as well.

[Kelesti]

Its ok if they keep all content accessible and complete-able no matter what gear you are wearing. If they block content because your gear is "subpar" then you are correct. But if they keep adding content that doesnt require the highest gear to complete and can be done with a group in the lowest gear set, then everyone should be alright with it.

I dont care if they add 20 tiers to the game. If i can do all the content in greens and blues or blues and exotics then i am happy and you should be too.

However if they add 20 Tiers to the game and i cant complete all the content because i dont have Tier X then ima be pissed and you should be as well.

Considering how Infusions work, and that they're only limited to Ascended gear, you can't pusg deeper levels of the new dungeon without this. You're effectively gearing up, to get more gear.

The Agony mechanic as a percentage of HP loss is an interesting way to push people harder than just harder and harder hitting sources of 2-shot damage. The fact that they're requiring a certain level of Infusion resustance to overcome it is like melee in diablo 3 requiring a minimum threshold of Life on Hit or you're functionally useless.

It is in itself a gear-wall. And as Bovinity pointed out, Shadow Resist gear for Mother Sharazz wasn't a "fun" mechanic to overcome. The fight itself had an interesting design, but there's a reason Resistance isn't a stat anymore.