People complain about the ascended gear like its some end all beat all gear that you MUST have. It serves but ONE purpose, it's statistical difference is minimal compared to the exotic and legendary gear(literally like 3-7 point differences in most areas), Will mostly be for aesthetics and to help players combat the new "agony" condition (which I've seen none of the complainers mention which tells me they haven't read squat!), and won't affect PvP whats-so-ever.

So with all of this in mind...what's the issue? Are you afraid to rustle your jimmies and work for something new? Or do you just want to stick with the same content you have now and never have anything added to the game. Honestly if Arenanet had just added dungeons and a new map you would be crying about how they're not adding any new skins or new weapons to work for and saying that GW2's progression is shallow.

Get over yourselves already. It's coming. Is it a gear grind? hardly...I mean we don't even know what steps are involved in getting them yet. [mod edit]

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Originally posted by TheIronLegion
People complain about the ascended gear like its some end all beat all gear that you MUST have. It serves but ONE purpose, it's statistical difference is minimal compared to the exotic and legendary gear(literally like 3-7 point differences in most areas), Will mostly be for aesthetics and to help players combat the new "agony" condition (which I've seen none of the complainers mention which tells me they haven't read squat!), and won't affect PvP whats-so-ever.

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Oh they all mention Agony, we even have specific threads for it, it's rather more a delusional fanboy hater denial thing so they can make fallacy arguments :)

Originally posted by skydiver12

 

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Originally posted by TheIronLegion
People complain about the ascended gear like its some end all beat all gear that you MUST have. It serves but ONE purpose, it's statistical difference is minimal compared to the exotic and legendary gear(literally like 3-7 point differences in most areas), Will mostly be for aesthetics and to help players combat the new "agony" condition (which I've seen none of the complainers mention which tells me they haven't read squat!), and won't affect PvP whats-so-ever.

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Oh they all mention Agony, we even have specific threads for it, it's rather more a delusional fanboy hater denial thing so they can make fallacy arguments :)

 

*hands you the winning lottery numbers* i like your answer...

Originally posted by snapfusion

I never understood the adversion to end game charcter progression.  How on earth can someone do the exact same thing over and over and over in a PROGRAMMED game, a game with no real variations do to natural causes and get nothing out of it?

The pat on the back for doing it only goes so far.  Sorry you can play the socialist angle where everyone is equal and you get nothing for your effort, but Im a capitalist, I want real progression and rewards for my efforts.  Not a useless achievement marker in some screen Ill never look at.

What is wrong with rewarding people for their efforts?  Nothing.

 

 

I dont mind progression, I do mind when the company states it is going to be different and not have it.

Besides Anet was created to innovate, so why not innovate on character progression.  Instead of gear progression go charachter progression.  GW2 is dieing for some Alternate Advancement system or Realm Rank systems.

Originally posted by snapfusion

I never understood the adversion to end game charcter progression.  How on earth can someone do the exact same thing over and over and over in a PROGRAMMED game, a game with no real variations do to natural causes and get nothing out of it?

The pat on the back for doing it only goes so far.  Sorry you can play the socialist angle where everyone is equal and you get nothing for your effort, but Im a capitalist, I want real progression and rewards for my efforts.  Not a useless achievement marker in some screen Ill never look at.

What is wrong with rewarding people for their efforts?  Nothing.

 

 

I also am a capitalist and I believe in rewarding people for excelence not persistent mediocrity.   The gear treadmill in other games is a problem not because you get better gear but because the means to get it are not based on skill but on time spent.  The first step in destroying this incredibly destructive gameplay mechanic is to remove it entirely.  The next step (Not Sure if Anet will succeed) is adding back in better gear but making it legitimately difficult but not require huge amounts of time.  The dungeon gear is close enough to reward the people who mindless spend hours playing now hopefully they will try introduce legitimately better gear that is skill based rather than time based.

Originally posted by ZeGerman

I also am a capitalist and I believe in rewarding people for excelence not persistent mediocrity.   The gear treadmill in other games is a problem not because you get better gear but because the means to get it are not based on skill but on time spent.  The first step in destroying this incredibly destructive gameplay mechanic is to remove it entirely.  The next step (Not Sure if Anet will succeed) is adding back in better gear but making it legitimately difficult but not require huge amounts of time.  The dungeon gear is close enough to reward the people who mindless spend hours playing now hopefully they will try introduce legitimately better gear that is skill based rather than time based.

Anything introduced that is based on true gamer skill will spark a fire that makes this Ascended nonsense seem like a match.  Look what happened when Arenanet put in a genuinely hard jumping puzzle for Halloween - dozens of complaint pages in dozens of thread.  Now imagine the result if there was an advantage to be gained (better gear, more skills, etc) by completing that puzzle.  Armageddon.

The reason RPG systems are popular is that it's usually possible to outgear a given encounter if allowed sufficient time.  That way people of poor-average personal skill can still complete the content.  If something is permanently gated behind a skill-barrier, people will drop the game in frustration by the hundreds. 

Remember the old NES games that were genuinely tough?  I remember reading some abysmal stat on the number of players that actually "beat" those style of games - well under half just quit the game at some point and tossed it on a shelf forever.  A very bad plan to follow for an MMO.

There has to be some kind of progression that illustrates your character getting better over time.  No MMO can survive without some goal to achieve once the leveling experience ends, and that goal has to have a lot of repeatability built in as development takes many times longer than playing the content. 

Ascended gear seems to be trying a new spin on progression, with the better gear only being relevant to the content you are trying to progress through.  A player with Ascended gear and max infusions OUTSIDE of the Fractals dungeon will be effectively indistinguishable from someone who has only slotted exotics.  At least, that's how I read it, and if so - the plan is to do the same thing with future content (which will presumably be focused on other playstyles).

Did you even look at the stats, William Murphy? There's definitely more than "one or two" points difference between exotics and ascended.

If you're going to write an article on it, please actually do your research.