New Dungeon, Fractals of the Mists

[Durzlla]

Durz, I think you just described a bimodal system.

What you do in that ONE dungeon and the mechanic needed to progress in that ONE dungeon is a secondary mode of content. A mode which is not seen elsewhere up to this point.

Upgrading armor to access higher tiers is, linear.

Also I do believe armor and rings are "gear" in the vulgar sense. Thus logically, it is a linear gear progression system. Or as Anet dubs it, "item progression initiative".

That has to be the DUMBEST thing I've ever said.... Sorry I was half alseep upon writing that...

What I was -meaning- to say is as long as the vino dal system isn't forced to get gear (which it won't they already said so) and infusions and what not aren't required to do content, with the exception of higher levels of difficulty in the infinite dungeon, I fail to see a problem with it...

[Duncano]

Personally I don't care, I want pvp fixed asap, cause that player base is leaving also...

[InfiniteRetro]

If they had it 'planned' as you said, they would have introduced Ascended gears at release, just for the sake of avoiding the PR clusterfuck they are in right now.

The reason they are adding that is simple -in my opinion-, they are hemorraghing players that are leaving because of the lack of progression and the lack of a proper PvE. They had plenty of feedback either from the official forums or from all over the web to see that they needed to rail in the PvE/dungeons/raiding crowd which is fleeing en masse for MoP.

As I said in the previous thread, Anet was bound to do something bold to get those guys back, I called it and see what happened!

They introduce progression, and if they do it well that progression won't affect those that dont wanna do it, IT IS BRILLIANT!!

Their BIG mistake was introducing a new tier through Ascended, but probably they estimated that was the only way to get back all those people whinning about progression and that left because of it...

umm no offense dude but those players arent going to come back to a game whereby they bought it based on the premise of it all being an even playing field. anet lied, pure and simple and if you think bits of gear is going to lure them back well, you're wrong.

gw2 is dying faster than swtor. and i called it when i said anet were shouting 'we are the best' and they'd fail to deliver. and look whats happening. its all been planned man, dont kid yourself. why else do you think DR wasnt in any of the betas? then was stealthed in 2 weeks after launch? because they got their sales didnt they, they can now do whatever they want. if it was in the betas people would have thought twice about buying a game that claimed to be against grind, allowing you to play your way only to find nazi like impositions in place regarding how content is dealt if you wish to farm.

love or hate it, wow never bullshitted about what it was. we dont or have i ever heard 'omg we are the best, we have no grind' crap. anet, are like amway, very clever at fooling the weak minded.

[Zeek Daniels]

Eh, this entire discussion is pointless in the end.

People that still like the game will just gloss over the whole thing and give Saint ArenaNet a pass on it. Even if it's the start of a traditional gear progression system, they'll manage to rationalize it as being something else.

People that haven't been really liking it or are on the fence will see it as a last straw.

So, eh.

You guys are really thick. Why do you think they called it a new PvE mode? Thats because its totally separate from the current PvE structure. You dont have to do it. Just like you dont have to do WvW and dont have to do Spvp. Now i agree they should not have slightly increased the stats and should have only had infusions which only work inside the new PvE mode, that way ppl realize it is its own separate type of gameplay. I posted in another thread about the gap between Green items and Exotics of the same stats and of the gap between Ascended items and Exotics of the same stats. The % gap between Greens and exotics is over 2x as much as the % gap between Exotics and Ascended.

We have all played Gw2. We all know that every single piece of content can be completed with even blue gear. Why is the short gap between Exotics and Ascended items all of a sudden the end of the world yet the gap between greens or even blues for that matter and exotics accepted. Why does no one have a problem with the current gear gap but everyone has a problem with the future one? Is it just how the items are obtained? You only need the items if your going to do the new PvE mode. If your not doing that PvE mode then why worry about it. Anet isnt just going to expand on this PvE mode on future updates, They are going to be adding more and more high end (level 80) content in the future. That does not mean that you need this PvE mode gear to do the future level 80 content. It means you need the gear if you want to go further and further in difficulty of the new PvE mode.

If they had it 'planned' as you said, they would have introduced Ascended gears at release, just for the sake of avoiding the PR clusterfuck they are in right now.

Yes because putting infusion gear in a game without the PvE mode you use it in would totally not confuse players.

"Hey guys i got this Pink item and it has this infusion slot what do i put in it"
"So i crafted this Infusion thing called "Agony Mitigation" and put it in my Pink item, What the hell is Agony and why am i mitigating it?"
" Hey guys i got all this Pink Gear but all these infusions are telling me im supposed to be mitigating somthing and doing more dmg but im not doing anymore dmg than i do in my exotics, Why you put this gear in game Anet if it doesnt do anything?"

No point in putting the gear ingame if you were not ready to release the PvE mode that comes with it.

[Fencers]

I fail to see a problem with it...

The problem is very simple: such mechanics are contra to anything known, advertised and stated to be a design intent of the series up till this was announced.

Barrier to entry [& completion] in Urgoz or ACx was largely determined by you, the player.

There was never a point when one said, "Oh shit guys, we can't go pass the bridge in HM because we don't have enough resistance to live pass the bats!"

[Deleted]

i'll just wait and see what it is and how much it will actually effect the gameplay before going nuggets.

[Zeek Daniels]

The problem is very simple: such mechanics are contra to anything known, advertised and stated to be a design intent of the series up till this was announced.

Barrier to entry [& completion] in Urgoz or ACx was largely determined by you, the player.

There was never a point when one said, "Oh shit guys, we can't go pass the bridge in HM because we don't have enough resistance to live pass the the bats!"

Yes because everything in developement has to be relayed to the consumer even if it ends up not getting put in game. I remember when blizzard said they were developing War of the Ancients as a raid. Guess how i felt when it got turned into a 5 man dungeon where Illidan barely made an appearance.

Just because they say they are designing the game to be a certain way for players doesnt mean that philosophy's can shift. And maybe feedback from players in the beta convinced them that a game doesnt only need one direction. Maybe you can have a vertical progression game within a horizontal progression game. Maybe you can seperate the two so that the vertical progression only affects one aspect of the game while allowing horizontal progression players to play within that aspect. This way the ppl that want their characters to get stronger get their wish, and players that dont want their character to get stronger can still complete the same content the stronger players are completing but just at a lower difficulty. And when the stronger characters leave that progression content they are still of the same power as those in the outside world. Their power comes from that dungeon alone and is only seen in that dungeon.

That is what Anet is doing. They are letting those who want Power progression have it but are limiting it to a certain area while still allowing those who dont want power progression to play in that area and still get rewarded for doing so and not feel left behind because they dont have the power to see new content.

[ControlBlue]

umm no offense dude but those players arent going to come back to a game whereby they bought it based on the premise of it all being an even playing field. anet lied, pure and simple and if you think bits of gear is going to lure them back well, you're wrong.

gw2 is dying faster than swtor. and i called it when i said anet were shouting 'we are the best' and they'd fail to deliver. and look whats happening. its all been planned man, dont kid yourself. why else do you think DR wasnt in any of the betas? then was stealthed in 2 weeks after launch? because they got their sales didnt they, they can now do whatever they want. if it was in the betas people would have thought twice about buying a game that claimed to be against grind, allowing you to play your way only to find nazi like impositions in place regarding how content is dealt if you wish to farm.

love or hate it, wow never bullshitted about what it was. we dont or have i ever heard 'omg we are the best, we have no grind' crap. anet, are like amway, very clever at fooling the weak minded.

I know what you are trying to do,

You are wasting your time.

Overall what they did was a good move, they are adding the equivalent of progression raiding to the game, people WILL ditch WoW if they can do that for free in GW2.

Their only mistake was badly handling the PR, If they had confirmed to everyone that Ascended and Legendary would the ultimate power ceiling they would never ever get raised, not even a tenth of the people who are angry right now would care.

Also, if they had avoided introducing a new tier there would be no issue at all :P

BUT still overall, they did NOT lie, GW2 has 90% chance to be a game where the power ceiling never increase in years, they just need to let their audience know ASAP that this power ceilling will be Ascended/Legendaries instead of Exotics.

[Durzlla]

The problem is very simple: such mechanics are contra to anything known, advertised and stated to be a design intent of the series up till this was announced.

Barrier to entry [& completion] in Urgoz or ACx was largely determined by you, the player.

There was never a point when one said, "Oh shit guys, we can't go pass the bridge in HM because we don't have enough resistance to live pass the bats!"

The barrier to get through the fucking southern shiver peaks sure as hell was gear related, go through there without heroes (so henchies and/or other players without infused armor) and tell me how that goes, it's ok I'll wait...

And there was a part in urgoz where you couldn't get past the bridge if you didn't brin a specific skill... So yeah, there was non skill gating fencers...

[ControlBlue]

Yes because putting infusion gear in a game without the PvE mode you use it in would totally not confuse players.

"Hey guys i got this Pink item and it has this infusion slot what do i put in it"
"So i crafted this Infusion thing called "Agony Mitigation" and put it in my Pink item, What the hell is Agony and why am i mitigating it?"
" Hey guys i got all this Pink Gear but all these infusions are telling me im supposed to be mitigating somthing and doing more dmg but im not doing anymore dmg than i do in my exotics, Why you put this gear in game Anet if it doesnt do anything?"

No point in putting the gear ingame if you were not ready to release the PvE mode that comes with it.

Mate, I'm on your side lol, I was merely talking about the introduction of the TIER, NOT the Agony/Infusion mechanic.

All I can say is that you are a fine example that Thieves know what they are talking about, ROGUE POWER!!!

[Durzlla]

Mate, I'm on your side lol, I was merely talking about the introduction of the TIER, NOT the Agony/Infusion mechanic.

All I can say is that you are a fine example that Thieves know what they are talking about, ROGUE POWER!!!

Pssssh LEATHER POWER!! Bitch I'm a ranger!! And I was suggesting what Zeek is saying for a while, Zeek is just campaigning more then me xD

[ControlBlue]

That and he has better grammar...

AAAaaanyway...

I'm gonna quote that post I saw on the GW2 forums:

I’ve calmed down a bit since spending all day monitoring this thread yesterday, having been vehemently against this new tier. Mr. Whiteside’s post has a self-contradicting tone at first glance, but I’m beginning to understand where they are coming from with this decision.
ArenaNet made a mistake in balancing the tiers that are already in the game. They made exotics far too easy to obtain in relation to legendary weapons. Both items are equal in power but nowhere near equal in time, effort, and resources to acquire. There is virtually no prestige at all to exotic armor yet a ton of prestige in legendary weapons. When they eventually release legendary armor, it would have been the same case. There is a very extreme gap right now.
What they want to do, is make Ascendant gear be what Exotic gear was supposed to be. Ascended will take longer to acquire than Exotic, the way that Exotic was supposed to take longer to acquire than Rare gear. However, it still won’t take as long to acquire as legendary armor and weapons, which will be eventually scaled up to Ascended level once Ascended weapons are introduced.
Of course, Ascended has to be better than Exotic because Exotic is better than Rare and Rare is better than Masterwork, and so on. We have to think of Ascended as being the new Exotic because ArenaNet simply failed to make Exotic gear live up to its name.
Many players want to work towards something but don’t necessarily want to take the big plunge from Exotic to Legendary status. This new tier will give us all something to work towards over time. When all the Ascended gear is finally in the game, we’ll look back and feel a sense of accomplishment that many of us didnt feel with Exotics and perhaps then, more of us will start working towards Legendary gear.
I know it’s all scarey and it really wants to feel like ArenaNet is turning their backs on us, but take an objective step back and breathe. All they’re trying to do is fix their initial mistake and make the last tier of gear before Legendary take a bit more time to obtain. It wouldn’t seem nearly as scarey if all this were in place at launch.
I won’t get into the Agony mechanic and the resistance gear they’re adding. I personally think that is a stupid, boring, lazy, outdated, and historically unsuccessful mechanic. It is far from eloquent and I hope they reconsider. But in regards to the new tier, I see it as a necessary fix to a system they didnt quite get right from launch.
I think now I can relax and log back into the game and give them a chance. I’m definitely going to be extremely hesitant to spend another dime in the gem store in the immediate future because ANet has handled this entire debacle very, very poorly. Sometimes the community just needs straight-forward explanations instead of convoluted public relations spins and we didn’t get that here, which only added fuel to the fire. But I understand why they’re doing what they’re doing; I just wish they got it right from the start and didn’t have to do this. Let’s hope the road forward is less rocky than it is today.

It seems like they indeed had to break the supposed promise that Exotic would be the end and be all of gear progression. They want to introduce a tier that would give the Progression crowd from WoW and other MMOs their hard to get epics, while making Legendaries a 1000x times more difficult to get. After all, the blog post of the dev did say that they expected it to take much longer for people to get Legendaries.

Seems like they are pretty much paying for their mistake, making Exotics AND Legendaries too easy to get and now have to find a way to give something to people to actively pursue whatever what it may cost them.

[Fencers]

The barrier to get through the fucking southern shiver peaks sure as hell was gear related, go through there without heroes (so henchies and/or other players without infused armor) and tell me how that goes, it's ok I'll wait...

And there was a part in urgoz where you couldn't get past the bridge if you didn't brin a specific skill... So yeah, there was non skill gating fencers...

Infused gear in GW1 was not progressive ad infinitum. It was a story device essentially. You don't even get it till like your about to kill Markis or whatever on the Deldrimore Front.

Skill use is based on you, the player's recognition.

[Ravenblade]

It seems like they indeed had to break the supposed promise that Exotic would be the end and be all of gear progression. They want to introduce a tier that would give the Progression crowd from WoW and other MMOs their hard to get epics, while making Legendaries a 1000x times more difficult to get. After all, the blog post of the dev did say that they expected it to take much longer for people to get Legendaries.

Seems like they are pretty much paying for their mistake, making Exotics AND Legendaries too easy to get and now have to find a way to give something to people to actively pursue whatever what it may cost them.

I get it that if they launched the game with Ascended gear already in place (omgpurplez) people would not have bothered grinding exotics, chances are their entire itemization structure would be different anyway. However they did not and are trying to post-release inject that extra tier now giving every fears about treadmills, wasting of time etc. and encourages outcries about failed pony-deliveries. In the end it's a mistake they are trying to fix.
If it were WoW we are talking about we would say: No big deal, Blizzard realized a mistake and they are fixing it. Not so much here due to much different base design. And where Blizzard would say: "Guys we re-introduced resistance fights and attunements because of <insert lengthy explanation here>" we would get a "What the hell? Stop worrying guys lol! It's gonna be awesome!" from ANet. The key issue here is that one could make a controversial change and engage in player debates and then convince or decide to postpone. I am not even expecting them to postpone or cut it but they should have made more efforts in being more responsive and responsible. Being a bit self-critical does not hurt because we know between the lines of "we listened to feedback" was an admission of a fault. No developer has ever gone through a fault-free post-release period.

That said I won't throw a fit over them introducing it now, the next time however if ANet pulls something like this off with the same level of communication I can't promise my interest in their flagship game will remain as high. I've been following that giant thread on official forums and let's say if you know how to abuse their search function then you will spot tons of deleted posts with infractions. Some of them justified but a scaring amount of it being damage control by tearing down the dangerous soapboxes as well.

[Durzlla]

Infused gear in GW1 was not progressive ad infinitum. It was a story device essentially. You don't even get it till like your about to kill Markis or whatever on the Deldrimore Front.

Skill use is based on you, the player's recognition.

Still forces me to go out of my way to find some stupid necromancer trait an the fuck up my build in order to get past one single area....

And infusion was still a road block if I've ever seen one (not saying I disliked it I really liked how the tanles turned on the mursaat with that upgrade.... Oooooohoho how I loved killing them all!!)

[Azuri]

This definitely is a bad move as for most GW players this feel like the destruction of all the work they put in their exotic gears when Anet promised they would never have to get rid of those.

I think the PR spin they put on that statement was: "Hey guys this is like an expansion and we're not charging you for it" We are the good guys here. Going froward as they put more gear in with slightly increased stats it will be justified by the statement: Enjoy your expansion! (It's really a content patch update) You're welcome.

This is the TL;DR version of attracting a new batch of players who enjoy the gear treadmill design patch by patch. Pretty sure they need to update their manifesto now. /tinfoil hat off.

Other statements saying you only need this gear for this one dungeon etc etc is flawed imo. I'd expect human nature to kick in and say well I don't want to be at a disadvantage so I must have the best available gear in the game at that time. AKA: Gear treadmill.

[Remilia]

You guys are really thick. Why do you think they called it a new PvE mode? Thats because its totally separate from the current PvE structure. You dont have to do it. Just like you dont have to do WvW and dont have to do Spvp. Now i agree they should not have slightly increased the stats and should have only had infusions which only work inside the new PvE mode, that way ppl realize it is its own separate type of gameplay. I posted in another thread about the gap between Green items and Exotics of the same stats and of the gap between Ascended items and Exotics of the same stats. The % gap between Greens and exotics is over 2x as much as the % gap between Exotics and Ascended.

-snip- too long

No point in putting the gear ingame if you were not ready to release the PvE mode that comes with it.
[/FONT]

Yes i really believe they will introduce a new tier just for one dungeon because its not just 1 dungeon. Its a collection of dungeons. Read news posts about it like the one on massively.com

What they are doing in Fractals of the Mists is adding a dungeon that is a progression dungeon. They will keep adding more and more dungeons to the FotM rotation. Right now there are 9 dungeons in rotation. A few months from now it could be 12, then 15, then 18, then 21. You see where im going with this?

-snip- too long

Oh and by new gear i dont mean another tier after Ascended i just mean more ascended pieces, or even stronger infusions which ive already talked about.

So, once again, where's the fact to back this up.

[Zeek Daniels]

Other statements saying you only need this gear for this one dungeon etc etc is flawed imo. I'd expect human nature to kick in and say well I don't want to be at a disadvantage so I must have the best available gear in the game at that time. AKA: Gear treadmill.

Except that common sense kicks in and says well if i wasnt at a disadvantage using blues when others were using oranges then i guess i wont be at a disadvantage using oranges when someone else is using pinks.

Disadvantage in this case means completion of content. You can do all the content in the lowest 80 gear available. If there was a Gear treadmill you would not be able to do all the content in the lowest gear. Gear Treadmill doesnt mean 'I have to get pinks because they are the BiS gear available' What gear treadmill means is 'I cannot do X content without gear set X', Content Y is then released and i cant do content Y with gear set X' but need to get gear set Y', and then content Z is released where i have to get gear set Z' just to complete that. <<<< that is a gear treadmill.

Only a person doing WvW could complain about stats increasesing if the decided to add future tiers which i believe they wont just because infusions = power scaling, and since those wont work in WvW they have nothing to worry about after this set of gear gets fully released. As to the PvE players they also dont have to worry about Agony mechanics showing up outside of this dungeon because then that gear would be a requirement. But as it stands Agony only effects that single area of play and wont effect other PvE content. In the end non progression PvE players will just make the choice of do i want a few more stats on my gear or am i ok with exotics. If i want a few more stats then your going to be able to get those sets without a major grind invovled eventually. The high end infusions however will only be for the players who are doing deep progression in dungeon difficulty. because if your not doing the dungeon you dont need the infusions as they serve no purpose outside the dungeon itself.

So, once again, where's the

facts to back this up.

dont really know which part you want me to back up since you cut out part of what i said. So ima just guess at a few things.

Where do i have facts that they will add more to the dungeon?

"The Fractals of the Mists is made up of nine mini-dungeons, each with its own story and environment."

"Once players have gathered their party members, they will be launched into one of nine 'fractals' that will be randomly selected for each group"

"the game will throw you through a series of three fractals, from one to the next, before returning you to town."

"Ascended items will feature a New infusion slot that will make players even more powerful so they can tackle new challenges that ArenaNet plans to throw at them as they continue to expand on the dungeon over the over the coming months and years."


Ok so now you know they plan on adding more parts to the dungeon. Lets talk about the adding more ascended pieces that i wrote in that post you quoted. Well seeing as how only a ring and backslot are available come release they have to release more right? Because the agony your going to encounter at higher difficulties wont be enough since it keeps getting higher the more fractals you do. So why not slowly release gear so players can keep getting to higher and higher difficulties. Oh wait heres a quote," In November, we’re only adding the first level of Infusions and Ascended Rings and Back slots, so that leaves us a lot of room to build upon these levels of Item progression in future content. As we release more new end game content in the future, you’ll see more Infusions and Ascended item types being added to the game. Eventually, you’ll be able to kit yourself out with a full set of Ascended gear and high end Infusions to help give you the edge in end game content."

So infinite dungeon that increases its difficulty infinitely and infinitely scaling infusions to go along with it. No need to add new tiers of gear just add new infusions. Stats stay the same, everyones happy except those that feel they should be doing higher difficulty runs without needing more infusions.

-psst its the same exact dungeon guys.

[Fencers]

Still forces me to go out of my way to find some stupid necromancer trait an the fuck up my build in order to get past one single area....

And infusion was still a road block if I've ever seen one (not saying I disliked it I really liked how the tanles turned on the mursaat with that upgrade.... Oooooohoho how I loved killing them all!!)

Neither of these makes sense respectively.

GW1's was all about skill swapping to figure out each puzzle.

Infused armor was a direct story device no less so than ascending.

This is the TL;DR version of attracting a new batch of players who enjoy the gear treadmill design patch by patch. Pretty sure they need to update their manifesto now. /tinfoil hat off.

Other statements saying you only need this gear for this one dungeon etc etc is flawed imo. I'd expect human nature to kick in and say well I don't want to be at a disadvantage so I must have the best available gear in the game at that time. AKA: Gear treadmill.

It's actually a more direct and implicit treadmill than merely "human nature". According to Anet there is a hard limit to how far you can delve in the new dungeon without infused gear.

So it is a direct treadmill mechanically indifferent from the cylindrical nature of gear tier in more stat driven games such as SWTOR or WOW.

What we don't know yet is the degree to which one can delve. So at best, one can ONLY take mechanic as currently described on the blog.

Logically it would be something akin to:

Cycle 9: infused #1
Cycle 18: infused #2
Cycle 27: infused #3
Cycle 36: infused #4
Cycle 45: infused #5
Etc.

The blog doesn't name exactly how deep this thing goes. But does say there is a point of non-progression without the minimum infused for the next cycle.

[Exroyal]

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/l...-mist-dungeon/

Official post about new dungeon and a video.