I'll be honest about the gear and gearchecks

#1 - Nov. 19, 2012, 11:31 a.m.

Hi there.

First of all, i want to point out that that i’m not beeing sarcastic here. And second, I am sorry for my bad english, i am no native speaker.

I played GW1 for a very long time, and i really loved the game, PvE and PvP.
One of the most fascinating things about this game was the lack of geargrinding. You hit max. Level and you can buy the best armor and weapons for almost nothing. That was fantastic.

The thing is, it is different for GW 2 now. In GW1, i would never ask anybody if he is good at the game or what kind of equipment he uses, because it doesn’t really matter. I would help him, and we would work together to finish the dungeon or whatever, because i knew one thing: There is no better equipment, he/she just needs some advice or help in playing the game.

But now, with Guild Wars 2, it causes me problems. When I team up with a group of players to do, for example, the Fractals of the Mists, I really wish for all of those players in my group to have exotic gear. I hate myself for thinking that way, but the difference in stats means that we could (possibly) finish the dungeon faster.

On the other hand, with non-exotic-equipped players, I feel like…those people could waste my time. Because we die more often. And I have to repair my equip more often etc.

I have not started to ask my party to link me their equipment or anything like that yet, but I think, on higher Levels in the Fractals, i would start doing so.

Sure, I could just go in and whipe a few times and have fun, but still…beating a dungeon faster is more fun that dying a lot of times, for me at least.

What do you think about that? I don’t want to do that, but I feel like I am forced to check out my partymembers right now, because of this whole difference in gear.

AmBoSS

AndrewMcLeod

#67 - Nov. 19, 2012, 4:43 p.m.

This is something that existed prior to ascended gear, and was something that we saw happen all the time in GW1, even without any sort of gear progression. Some players, typically people who play the game a lot, tend to only want to play with other players that play like them. They require some sort of proof to get into their party, whether it be displaying your Lightbringer Title, equipping or linking some type of gear, or using some other method of showing that you have already done and are experienced with the content. While ascended gear might be the new excuse, this behavior happens regardless.

While this is not really something that we want to encourage, players do have the choice to play the game in the way they want. We can’t force those players to be all-inclusive in who they invite to the parties they create, and to be honest, doing so would probably make people even more unhappy than they are now, and lead to a lot of undesirable behavior.

AndrewMcLeod

#130 - Nov. 19, 2012, 6:09 p.m.

Derk.3189:
Stormleaf.1769:
Erulogos.2591:
Quoting you both as you both make the same argument, essentially, and miss the same issue.

The issue is not with -current- content. No Ascended gear is required to finish every dungeon and kill every boss currently walking Tyria.

The issue is with -future- content. It was stated, when Ascended gear was announced, that Agony (and thus Agony resist) was something that would be involved in content going forward. It was not stated, one way or the other, if it would be required to even attempt future content, and it therefore becomes a simple question: grind Ascended and Agony resist now, so you are ready for the new content no matter what, or wait and see if it will be required, and hope that, if it is, enough other people waited that you can get groups to grind it out.

It is true that as of this moment in time, the grind heavy gear is not required to see any of the content in the game. But we don’t know when or if it will be, and Anet has not said one way or the other. A lot of folks saying it is required are basically taking the cautious path, assuming it will be and preparing for the worst.

The issue with this is that ArenaNet could have easily made this content require Agony resistance from the beginning as well, by making it some Mystic Forge thing and introducing Agony at fractal level 1. They didn’t; heck, they even made it so low levels can participate. Exotics aren’t even a requirement for the early difficulty levels. If they didn’t do it now, why do you think they’re magically going to start doing it in the future? None of the content in GW2 has been restricted like that. There is zero indication of ArenaNet ever restricting content like that, and it’s simply not helpful to base your argument on an assumption that they’ll magically start doing it.

AHHAHA You really think they did that for the players? Its just there to draw out the content, an additional carrot on another stick. Oh you want to see what agony is like? Hit me up 10 levels.

The Agony mechanic wasn’t introduced at the start of the dungeon so that everybody can experience the content. While one of the goals of the Fractals of the Mists dungeon was to provide some difficult content for players looking for a challenge, we also wanted the dungeon to be available for everybody to experience. While getting far into the dungeon requires agony resistance from ascended gear, the content was designed to provide challenging content, and to allow players to choose what difficulty they wanted to play at.

As for ascended gear, to reiterate what Chris has said (https://forum-en.guildwars2.com/forum/info/news/A-message-from-our-Studio-Design-Director-Chris-Whiteside), it’s not intended as a treadmill, but rather as a tier of rewards that can help bridge the gap between Exotics (a few hours of effort to acquire a piece) and Legendaries (hundreds of hours of effort to acquire one). They’re currently only available in the Fractals of the Mist Dungeon, but we’re going to be adding new ways to acquire them, both inside of WvW as well as elsewhere in PvE.