a new Condition is being brought into the game called "agony" where you will have to focus on a specific "resistance stat" in order to beat tougher content because of Agony.

this scares the hell out of me, i have seen a few games try to add a specific "defensive stat" to PVE encounters. this is usually done as a gate mechanic and usually seperates communities between those that have it and those that don't. you think you will see "group looking for 2 more with Ascended gear"? no what you will see is "group looking for 2 more must have 300+ "agony prevention stat""

i have seen this type of defensive stat added to one of my favorite MMOs ... EQ2. It was called Crit Mitigation and if you did not have enough you would get one shotted by raid mobs, and no amount of skill would stop that from happening. Eventually you needed X amount of Crit Mit in order to even join PVE groups especially raid group.

EQ2 finally removed this stat from the game EVERYONE was happy, from the casual game to the Hardcore Raider.

i think Agony is a terrible mechanic, thats going to split the PVE elitist from the rest even further. this is in my opinion worse than ascended gear.

Agreed - this kind of 'soft-gating' always polarises players and in this one case goes directly against the ethos of the game - that skill is more important than gear.

If I cannot do the higher challenges of the Fractal Dungeon without LOTs of agony resistance then it is an issue.

If agony gear is not difficult to get however, AND they introduce upgrade components for ALL gear with agony resistance on it - I am not so concerned.

You got something wrong here. There is no "elitist" in this game. EVERYBODY is the same, for those that want a challenge, they need to get the agony stats. Otherwise, for the casual gamer there is no benefit whatsoever from getting loot from that new dungeon since this is not tier 1.5 or something. The stats on this "ascended armor" are a VERY small improvement to the exotic lvl 80 armors. Exactly like exotic -> legendary stats. Actually it's even a smaller improvement than exotic -> legendary since they mentioned ascended armor to be in between those 2. 

My guess is that ascended armor will not be as hard to obtain as legendary armor, so in a way they are catering to the casual crowd.

Thought people finally realised this isn't WoW 2.0, where the game is also called grind for top tier.

I never played EQ but LOTRO had a mechanic called Radiance which was used to gate some of the raid content in Moria & proved so wildly unpopular that it was removed.

This though sounds more like a mechanic from the original Guild Wars.  One specific class of enemies which appears towards the end of the Prophecies campaign (also in the later War in Kryta quests) has a special attack called Spectral Agony which reduces the target's move speed, attack speed and skill activation speed as well as causing massive damage over time.  This effect can be mitigated by getting one's armour "infused" which can be done in a number of the later main plot missions.

Above was pointed out repeatedly in the earlier threads discussing the new armour type, by the way.

If Agony isn't effective enough it's a wasted effort in time and ressources.
If it does, it goes against everything they preached.

They better kill this now it can only get's worse. It's a completly lose / lose situation for everyone.

But i doubt the "genious" who is responsebile at Anet for this, is any different than all the "genious" people who came up with that in WoW, Lotro, EQ2...before them.

It really depends on how they handle this. If Infusions are easy enough to obtain and offer different ways to counter Agony, essentially giving you more build options, it's fine. However, if they're hard to obtain and gate you from content, it's very very not fine.

IMO they should've just made Infusions an additional upgrade slot and added it to all Rare+ gear. We'll see how the system works. ANet is usually smart about things like this, but they've had some awful failures in the past, like the Ursan Age of GW1.

Come to think of it, GW1's Ursan Age was a result of ANet trying to add vertical progression to GW1. Umm, yeah. That went well.

Oh god, this will be lotro hope gear debacle all over again.

Lotro originally was a nice casual MMO were everyone could raid with any gear and raid gear was nice but not a must, there were no gates. The mines of moria expansion changed all that. And every patch since has tried to undo the disaster that caused people to first not bother with Moria and then leave for other games as they got sick of being asked to please get raid gear so they could help out with raids to get raid gear...

If I wanted that, I would play WoW. I don't.

One of my chars has full exotic gear, I got lucky with silly skin drops and got 200 gold from selling them during halloween, so splurged. Normally I don't bother, crafted is good enough for me. I will help with a dungeon if needed but worrying about drops is just not my thing.

This is not a "I want top gear easily" it is a "I want to play the game without having to make it into a job". If I can't enter a dungeon, I won't and then raiders who need me to heal can go find someone else who is willing to grind for a random loot drop.

Gated content only divides the player base and the last thing a MMO needs is that.

Originally posted by Ecoces

a new Condition is being brought into the game called "agony" where you will have to focus on a specific "resistance stat" in order to beat tougher content because of Agony.

 

this scares the hell out of me, i have seen a few games try to add a specific "defensive stat" to PVE encounters. this is usually done as a gate mechanic and usually seperates communities between those that have it and those that don't. you think you will see "group looking for 2 more with Ascended gear"? no what you will see is "group looking for 2 more must have 300+ "agony prevention stat""

'Elitest' = Folks that ask for you to have achieved the same as them in order to not repeatedly fail the content provided.

I can't hate them for that. In fact I prefer them over the 'everyone has to be equal' people.  

Originally posted by 1vald2

You got something wrong here. There is no "elitist" in this game. EVERYBODY is the same, for those that want a challenge, they need to get the agony stats. Otherwise, for the casual gamer there is no benefit whatsoever from getting loot from that new dungeon since this is not tier 1.5 or something. The stats on this "ascended armor" are a VERY small improvement to the exotic lvl 80 armors. Exactly like exotic -> legendary stats. Actually it's even a smaller improvement than exotic -> legendary since they mentioned ascended armor to be in between those 2. 

My guess is that ascended armor will not be as hard to obtain as legendary armor, so in a way they are catering to the casual crowd.

Thought people finally realised this isn't WoW 2.0, where the game is also called grind for top tier.

You are wrong. And the reason is that Ascended armor has higher stats, which are potentially needed for WvW and that new skins for weapons can only be gotten from said dungeon. ANET took the lazy way of increasing diffculty of dungeons. Its the same as giving a mob more health. They should of went with stuff like, in order to beat this boss you have do this puzzle or this bosses is hard because theres traps all over the place, or this boss is hard because theres a special way to kill it.

Seems to me that it would have been more in line with their manifesto and original design philosophy, if they added this new dungeon, and it was like the Mad King's Labyrinth, where everyone gets bumped to lv.80, and it's not gated at all.  They could even make it a public instance the same way, so that instead of forced grouping, you'd just have to find some people to run with, once inside.  This would go a long way to taking the edge off the elitism of these new mechanics.

They could do something like that, similar, but unique, different, original, and true to their vision.  Instead, they do appear to be going the WoW-clone route of gated content and gear grinds.. and we know how well that's worked out, for every single MMO that isn't actually WoW.

I want to reserve judgement.. but this is all sounding pretty bad, to me.

As I wrote in the already closed threat. I see this Agony and ascended gear as a way to make the game more challenging for myself. I stil dont know the numbers, but running the dungeon without or with only one or two ascended items will make it more challenging, so this si kind of Hard Mode from my point of view.

I pleaded several times on the official forums and before that on Guru, for personal Hard Mode option. Either a switch or self/party buff that lower your stats even more. That way the environment become harder for you, but it stay the same for everyone else. I see this infusion exactly as this challenge I miss right now. Will see if it will work that way.

Originally posted by Ecoces

a new Condition is being brought into the game called "agony" where you will have to focus on a specific "resistance stat" in order to beat tougher content because of Agony.

 

this scares the hell out of me, i have seen a few games try to add a specific "defensive stat" to PVE encounters. this is usually done as a gate mechanic and usually seperates communities between those that have it and those that don't. you think you will see "group looking for 2 more with Ascended gear"? no what you will see is "group looking for 2 more must have 300+ "agony prevention stat""

 

i have seen this type of defensive stat added to one of my favorite MMOs ... EQ2. It was called Crit Mitigation and if you did not have enough you would get one shotted by raid mobs, and no amount of skill would stop that from happening. Eventually you needed X amount of Crit Mit in order to even join PVE groups especially raid group.

 

EQ2 finally removed this stat from the game EVERYONE was happy, from the casual game to the Hardcore Raider.

 

i think Agony is a terrible mechanic, thats going to split the PVE elitist from the rest even further. this is in my opinion worse than ascended gear.

Agony could be Spectral Agony from GW1 - had infusion in GW1. Nothing new here....

Originally posted by Lobotomist
Agony = straight copy from LOTRO "Dread" (and radiance gear needed to reduce it)

Actually. took from Spectral Agony from GW1:Prohpecies. Infusion was needed to reduce damage.

Originally posted by Lobotomist
Agony = straight copy from LOTRO "Dread" (and radiance gear needed to reduce it)

Exactly and what was the end result for LOTRO? It was stupid, people hated it and it was removed.

"As of Update 2 - Echoes of the Dead (March 2011), radiance has been removed and is no longer required for any raid."

Learn from past mistakes!

Originally posted by botrytis

Originally posted by Lobotomist
Agony = straight copy from LOTRO "Dread" (and radiance gear needed to reduce it)

Actually. took from Spectral Agony from GW1:Prohpecies. Infusion was needed to reduce damage.

and as I have pointed out to you in another thread. It was something you infused into existing gear. GW1 gear progression remained horizonal with stats. This new infusion is not the same as GW1 as it requires special higher stat gear.